On March 27 2015 08:43 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: on the other hand, lots of Calvinists worked really hard and tried really hard to seem like one of the Elect, because everyone wants to be the Elect, at least if Max Weber's writing on the protestant work ethic is to be believed as credible.
i personally believe there's no afterlife in the sense of "being" something that can remember the contents of one's life, because i personally believe the experience of consciousness (including memory and such) is an entirely physical phenomena. if you believe consciousness has or requires a metaphysical component, however, it's clear that an afterlife is possible.
Sort of--it was a little bit of both really. I was just providing an example of theist doctrines with similar "non-theist" core ideas to show how the commonly misconstrued concept of afterlife = god is a silly premise. There's lots of possible scenarios where there is an afterlife without god, and lots of scenarios where even i there was a god and an afterlife, that they are not necessarily synced so that appeasing one does not guarantee the other.
As to believing one way or another--brain in the jar scenarios also suggest that what we perceived as physical could all just be a dream and the afterlife does not need a soul since living this reality is fake anyway, albeit systematically consistent, and so dying just wakes us up to our actual physical forms. There's lots of after life scenarios that don't need the metaphysical.
Realistically, what people want is just enough of both while sacrificing the bare minimum o what they have. Just enough faith (in case an arbitrary afterlife is real) but not enough faith that you're willing to compromise personal principles. The value of all those variables will be different from person to person and that more than anything will determine your spectrum.
On March 27 2015 08:30 SoSexy wrote: How do I convince my professor in sending my letters of recommendations??
Everytime I ask he's like 'Yep, I'm doing it' 'Gonna do it tomorrow, sorry!' 'I'll do it asap' but somehow 2-3 are still missing after 20 days... ARGH
is it really time sensitive and for a first-come-first-serve rolling acceptance kind of thing? if so, emphasize that and express your sincere concern that his lack of timeliness is hurting your chances. of course your mileage may vary based on his personality, but i don't think being direct should hurt. if not, suck it up because it doesnt matter anyway, as long as he gets it in by his deadline?
Yeah, he is my tutor and trusts me a lot (even said 'you can do them on my behalf, I trust you', but the majority needs to be sent by his e-mail address anyway). It just bothers me that he says 'I'm going to do it tomorrow' and then 15 days pass. I'll just suck it up, I guess.
I know a few people that wrote their own recommendation letters and just got their profs/tutors to proof read and then copy it into their own email and send it. Not a bad idea.
On March 28 2015 12:06 Orcasgt24 wrote: If I was to convert $10,000 of Canadian money into another currency, which one would give me the largest amount of money?
(Yes I am aware it would still only be worth 10k, thats not the point though :p)
Probably Zimbabwean Dollars, yeah, or whatever currency was used in Germany after WWI and the Ruhr Crisis. That's not used as actual money anymore, though.
The Zimbabwe currency is no long active but yep that's the one lol. over 41 million!!!! Ugandan Shilling is the highest I could find at over 23 million
Because if you say, bought 10k worth of rice and used it for barter--how many grains of rice is that? What about if it was 10k worth of sand for barter?
On March 28 2015 15:37 Thieving Magpie wrote: Do we allow barter?
EDIT:
Because if you say, bought 10k worth of rice and used it for barter--how many grains of rice is that? What about if it was 10k worth of sand for barter?
Don't think you would count the goods like that anyway. You would have to break it down to how it would actually be sold/bartered. You don't buy/barter rice or sand by the grain.
Its isnt actualy a stupid question. The short answer would be that most basic and fundamental meaning of the word concerns many questions who are now disscussed by qantum physics/cosmology/psychology etc. In that sense people will always disscuss metaphysics. Along with some fundamental laws/problems of ethics/epistemology which are in a way metaphysical problems. Those problems are so fundamental that it isnt likely that we will be able to answer them, still they are woth asking because thats the way we learn more about us and universe.
On March 28 2015 19:44 Silvanel wrote: Its isnt actualy a stupid question. The short answer would be that most basic and fundamental meaning of the word concerns many questions who are now disscussed by qantum physics/cosmology/psychology etc. In that sense people will always disscuss metaphysics. Along with some fundamental laws/problems of ethics/epistemology which are in a way metaphysical problems. Those problems are so fundamental that it isnt likely that we will be able to answer them, still they are woth asking because thats the way we learn more about us and universe.
I see, I didn't know that metaphysics can mean so many things. Concerning the epistemology part, it seems that logical positivism is still being heavily debated. Why is that?
On March 28 2015 19:44 Silvanel wrote: Its isnt actualy a stupid question. The short answer would be that most basic and fundamental meaning of the word concerns many questions who are now disscussed by qantum physics/cosmology/psychology etc. In that sense people will always disscuss metaphysics. Along with some fundamental laws/problems of ethics/epistemology which are in a way metaphysical problems. Those problems are so fundamental that it isnt likely that we will be able to answer them, still they are woth asking because thats the way we learn more about us and universe.
I see, I didn't know that metaphysics can mean so many things. Concerning the epistemology part, it seems that logical positivism is still being heavily debated. Why is that?
Because all things should be debated and discussed to ensure an awareness of the reasons why certain ideals are ideal and other ideals are considered unideal?
Because whenever one social group says "We should think _____ way" it should ALWAYS be cause for debate, resistance, and discourse no matter how much you agree with that enforced mind policing?
Well logical positivism failed in constructing a language of pure logic. That doesn't mean that positivism or logic itself failed.
Modern physics couldn't even exist without logical positivism. As Stephen Hawking put it: "... If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes."
On March 29 2015 02:29 farvacola wrote: Why shouldn't logical positivism be heavily debated?
Cause it already failed
Haha, excellent, I'm pretty sure you know I think that as well, but, in the interest of being as pedantic as possible, I think it can be argued that even settled matters touch on things worth debating. At the risk of sounding like a total nutjob, here's an example. Take logical positivism, acknowledge its shortcomings, particularly insofar as its dismissive attitude towards the unprovable is concerned imo, and then look for how its presence in the sphere of knowledge interacted (and still continues to, I'll add) with different and similar ideas. While I find the idea that the things our words have a hard time describing are not worth the attention pretty shortsighted, I think its still important to always remember just how limited the process through which we give words to the experiences of the senses and the conscious mind truly is, an idea that inevitably pays homage to the logical positivists. I'm now tempted to try and defend the idea that one can call Deconstruction a form of non-linear, creative logical positivism, but I'll spare this site for once.
And to be controversial, I'll add that there are times when people like Stephen Hawking or Neil deGrasse Tyson say things that are wrong because they fail to consider the compartmentalized nature of the lessons that ones' own experience and knowledge grant them relative to competing ideas. There's this idea that scientists are also implicitly philosophers, and if one gets into any of the serious philosophy of science like that of Kuhn, Feyerabend, or Quine/Duhem, it becomes clear that this is simply not the case lol.
Logical positivism failed because philosophy would have nothing left to debate about. The irony is that logical positivism itself is part of philosophy. The application of logical positivism creates a closed system that only allows questions to be asked that can be verified. It's like going into a box and close the lid from within the box. Quite beautiful actually. It would mean the end of philosophy, that's why it's not accepted by philosophers.
EPT
