Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by aperson

No, then you can't say that other's cognitive biases lead to fallacious modes of thought like you did above. Oops. You've fallen into a postmodern pit too. Nice one.

You're right, it isn't a refutation but it dismembers most of your pathetic arguments above.

Right. Because calling all perspectives into equal doubt and then building another perspective on top of the rubble isn't hypocritical. Or, if it really isn't why bother deconstructing a perspective in the first place?

Mind pointing out why or how? Oh wait you can't you just like throwing blanket labels on things and casting them aside; get some substance or get the hell out. Haha how postmodern. Haha how perspectivist. Haha how consequentialist. Hold on let me namedrop some Nietzsche be right back.

That's interesting. No really it is. Apparently language is incapable of having semantic value now. I'm intigued. How do you manage to carry on a conversation without meaning?

So basically you just dug yourself a postmodern pit and jumped out right before you buried yourself in it. Nice save.

At least I didn't bury the world in it and pretend I'm the only one still above ground.

And why wouldn't it be just as skeptical to say "Now, again since skepticism is more useful in critical epistemology then faith, I assume that there is no evidence of inherent action beyond our ability to perceive or otherwise deduce."

I suppose there wouldn't be. In fact this would be more skeptical. However, it would also be taking skepticism beyond the point where it is useful in constructing perspectives. I prefer rejecting a perspective because there is no hypothesis which can test it, rather than rejecting a perspective because I reject the concept of a hypothesis in the first place. Is this purely preference? Maybe. The truth is I don't care. I don't have a taste for self-castration, amputation, and lobotomization. Perhaps you do.

Well I'll be damned, there's the negation of your claim worded as a similar positive. Funny how that works. Wrench your brain really, really hard with some far transfer skills and maybe you can fathom how this applies to my original arguments.

Why don't you do it yourself, you're the one arguing the issue.

Here's a direct example of the relativity of positive and negative I was talking about earlier. Haha jesus christ, you said this and can't even notice what is going on. Also, it's hilarious as hell that you're arguing against causality with scientific empricism when every single bit of scientific discovery ever made pretty much underlies the notion that events occur as causal phenomenon. You should really listen to some of the crap you're saying some time.

Actually, you should listen to it, then maybe you would be able to address it rather than talking around it. I never argued against causality, just against singularity of causality. Of course things seem relative when you pretend they're all made of the same element. But then, if everything causes everything, which is the endpoint of your position, once again causation becomes meaningless. The perfect interconnection of all actions makes any sense of consequentialist morality meaningless. Congratulations, you've stripped a language of all meaning. Please, go ahead and do this to all language. Pragmatic language, deontological language, utilitarian language, perspectivist langauge. Oh wait, those are all just words. Words in a language. Darn.

And beyond that, your argument boils down to some thought process analogous to the thought an ostrich makes when it runs away from fear by sticking its head in a hole; well if I can't see it, it can't be there

This doesn't mean anything to me.

"That's great, but it doesn't mean anything because any conjecture on the causal or non-causal nature of reality beyond that threshold is untestable."

How is this ostrich-like? Doubt isn't the same as rejection because, after all, you can't prove a negative. Assuming the negative when you're in the dark isn't retreatist, it's sensible. It's a limitation of language to constructing meanings around that which can actually be observed.

Nice one, you call my stance empty postmodernism then do the exact same thing. You're brilliant, man. This is A+ sophistry right here.

That's nice. Nice but wrong. Actually at this point I wonder why you're bothering to argue at all, if you want to make it clear that I'm capable of being wrong, I understand that. It you want to actually argue in a manner that supports your position you don't have the tools in your possession to actually do it, you've resigned yourself to deconstructing meaning so any act of attempting to affirm meaning is blatant unsupported hypocrisy.

Oh wait you do understand it. You just feigned ignorance above to wrap around my last point and then magically got the picture when you started arguing against moral repsonsibility here. Man that's neat.

Isn't it though? Language has meaning precisely because it has a function within a larger language. Independently of context, language doesn't have meaning. Your example of causality had no meaning. Now it does.

But you know what, YOU'RE RIGHT! Now maybe you can understand that you are making an arbitrary threshold argument.

Well then, if both of us are making arbitrary arguments, perhaps neither of us should be conversing.

You're trying to set a JND (I'm namedropping psychology terms now) on where intentful causality occurs. And you're setting this threshold through some nonsensical view based on your cognitive biases on what denotes a positive action versus a negative (I mean this in the sense of A and ~A, not in the sense of good and bad).

So you reject formal logic now. Ok. Well I really don't know what the hell to do now because apparently there's no language acceptable to you in which to convey a concept. Oh, except yours, of course, and that's not a language used for communication.

Okay and isn't one of his means to choose not to act? Oops glaring contradiction in your entire argument. Maybe you should think more before you choose to namedrop yet more people.

I haven't done any namedropping. And how about you? Bringing up Kant for no reason, bringing up others? No, this stopped being a conversation as soon as you started talking, you had no intention for an exchange of information to occur. One of his means is to choose not to act, but this makes him responsible of bad character not of causation. So how about that, things of the same property

AREN'T ALWAYS CONNECTED!



[img]Highly meaningful response. Absolutely stunning refutation. Especially noteworthy because of clear understanding of concept to which it was responding[/quote]

No really, learn to recognize distinctions. I don't care if you think they're entirely language based and not real, but if you're just going to keep conjoining 6 or seven different concepts and some emotion into a hypocritical mutation of reason I'm not even going to bother.

And you call me a sophist.