Thriverism
sonyasupposedly.com
sonyasupposedly.com
What?? You want to inquire into meaning and purpose and you ignore the discipline of inquiry into meaning and purpose? That is absurd.
If you can ignore for a moment the archaic sexism of terminology, there’s a reason why mathematics is called “the queen of the sciences” — the king, or Ursprung of them all, including mathematics, is philosophy.
For example, she claims that God exists. A typical trait of God is knowing everything about the universe; say, knowing the positions, momenta, and spin of every particle. But QM gives us Heisenberg's Uncertainty, which prevents anybody, including hypothetical deities, from knowing that information. Indeed, QM typically isn't materialistic; it is wrong to insist that all of those particles definitely have some position and momentum at an instant in time. So, whatever her God is, it isn't the all-powerful one. (The all-powerful God has many better-tread problems in pure metaphysics, like the Problem of Evil, but I don't know what "evil" is and so I'm leaning on QM.)
There is no problem in having to learn philosophy by reading surveys of historical ideologies. Philosophy is cumulative, and as little as one semester of studying historical philosophy can massively improve a person's critical thinking skills.
Really, the problem is in not taking seriously enough the invalidation of old philosophies by newer thoughts, as we continue to improve what we know. There are many positions that are simply wrong, including positions which we currently think are correct!
and the problem of evil is only significant to lay people; in the study of the philosophy of religion it has been considered a rather weak objection for some time now.
We're both deists, by the way. I follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster. However, the FSM is absurd, which means that I cannot use the FSM's existence to conclude facts, and additionally doesn't affect the material universe. Also, the FSM doesn't maintain cults, encourage child abuse, start wars, nor allow simony.
Your "traditional theism" is metaphysically and epistemically weak; it cannot say anything about the world other than that its deity exists and has material affect upon the universe. However, empirically, there is no evidence of the deity (because they are supernatural), and so the deity cannot have any scientific method associated with it. Simply put, there's no room in the natural world for a supernatural being! Every empirical effect is instead considered scientifically.
The only gap left would be for you to show that miracles or other supernatural phenomena are real. On that, I have nothing polite to say, just to wish you good luck on what will definitely fail.
Let's not pretend that naturalism rests not on metaphysical assumptions.
I don't have a straw man. I have any deity which is like Jehovah, with Jehovah himself as a special case. Any deity is subject to self-defeating arguments and open to criticism from science.
I am not a naturalist, but that's the closest position that you can imagine, I guess.
Anyway, if you don't actually want to talk about QM, then we'll just have to talk about how Jehovah's followers keep trying to do something about COVID-19, but all of their appeals have led to nothing. Meanwhile, science and technology give us models for understanding, combating, and preventing the pandemic. Are you really going to pledge yourself to your deity and cough your lungs out?
Science can only posit the how. Not the who or the why. Throwing quantum mechanics at the problem doesn't solve anything either, because ultimately you at some point at the end of a nigh infinite chain of why are left with the question "Why something rather than Nothing?"
The answer is either silence, or God, the recognized nominative signpost of the answer , even by the Wittgensteinian approach.
Your COVID-19 related rantings commit the fallacy of assuming the nature of God, or committing the anthropocentric fallacy of thinking God even gives a rat's arse about us, or that there is enough of a working understanding of prayer to count on it in a technological way. It's not a terribly uncommon itis for the modern theistic skeptic, but does demonstrate a horrendous lack of effort in having grounded one's skepticism through actual effort to confront and dismantle the theistic construct at it's core, or to understand it's place in human society.
Religion has no beef with science, nor the other way around.
Your bold claim "why something rather than nothing?" assumes that there is, in fact, a something to refer to, and QM directly challenges the simplicity of that assumption. So many words to fight against the lack of an ontic wavefunction!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60cspQn3N9d...
I'd be the last person to argue that there is a lot of trash in philosophy. Hermetic stuff that revolves around itself and simulates complexity of thought through choice of words. There are definitely many pearls as well.
90% of everything is trash, that's true nearly everywhere.
Edit: Actually, rereading this article, the author is clearly saying basically the opposite. The author is saying philosophy is useful if it is critical.
"""Unfortunately, many important problems are fundamentally philosophical problems. Philosophy itself is unavoidable. How can we proceed?"""
How can you point to this article as proof that we shouldn't be studying philosophy when the article says it is unaviodable?
This article addresses The Great Man Theory[0] or what I call supernaut syndrome[1] which has affected the masses terribly. Every person has to be all they can be now, and their full potential actualized, otherwise there is no point.
In other words, it probably isn't healthy that we are regularly subjected to what is marketed as the best/brightest/most-anything in whatever category we're looking for information on. There's nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that continued exposure to it can change our view on the type of work that _we_ need to be doing to make our way through the world. It might be an overreach, but it smells a lot like the mind virus of so-called incels: "I'm not remarkable, so why do I have worth?"
Escaping that requires an enormous amount of energy.
The truth is pretty much tautological: "you have worth because you exist."
Not sure I agree with him entirely, but it’s an interesting position.
This practice rather counteracts the belief in the supernaut, since it humbles and demonstrates a kind of solidarity with everyone who isn't "making it". It doesn't exactly counter the negatives of parasociality in these spaces, but it opens the window for the audience to reconsider.
It’s a deeply pragmatic approach.
It reminds me of the Buddhist parable about the poison arrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow
"‘Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first.’ Life is so short. It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth.”
Picked up by way of Mage: the Ascension, where you are a reality bending mage & your general mastery over reality is called "arete". Your efficacy at magic, your excellence... silly intro but got me introduced to the idea & a host of other good ones that still shape my perception of the world.
That game world also has a "trimurti" which closely parallels the Hindu triumvirate, which is another good perspective I've been glad to carry. Creating/sustaining/destroying, crudely said.
Let's use the opportunity to be productive, though. Meanings must live in their own realm apart from sentences, so that when we say that a sentence has a meaning, we imply that there is a mapping from sentences to meanings. However, those meanings cannot be complete and consistent; there must be some sentences which don't have permanently-mapped meanings, because such meanings would lead to self-contradiction [1].
The author should read more Meaningness, especially the section on the fallacies of eternalism [0]. They could also read Derrida on meanings and deconstruction, although Derrida's not easy reading.
Edit: As usual, downvoters, want to reply?
[0] https://meaningness.com/eternalism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theo...
> Dropping religious beliefs is only a first step towards freeing ourselves from eternalism.
And continues to explain how your beliefs, about how there are definite meanings and purposes to life, are illusions. The next page [0] states it clearly too:
> We cling to the idea that there must be a cosmic plan because we fear that without one everything would be meaningless. But this is mistaken; which means that most ideas about meaningfulness and meaninglessness are mistaken. Fortunately, life is meaningful without any cosmic plan or ultimate source of meaning.
If you like arete, you could also stand to read Pirsig. He was very concerned with ethics and values.
Finally, to directly critique your metaphysics, please first consider this phrase you wrote:
> Everything matters, because we feel everything, and thus it matters to us.
And then consider Russell's teapot [1]. Does Russell's teapot matter, floating out there around the rings of Saturn? Can we feel it? A bit of consideration will show that, while everything is connected to everything, not everything affects everything else equally. We are, in fact, far more sensitive to things which are close to us.
Everybody's entitled to their opinion. They're not entitled to immunity from critique, nor are they entitled to have their opinion be true nor provable.