Well look what he's calling "Groundless".

I just conversed with him for over 20 pages in another thread where he held the position that all thought must be in relation to some other experience and this was his basis for claiming that all thought is language.

Yet, when I say that this was his position he says that my claim is "groundless".

How can it be "groundless" when it's firmly "grounded" in a 20 page conversation?

That's the 'grounds' for it.

If that's not his position then, clearly I have completely misunderstood what he was attempting to convey, because that's the gist of his position as I perceived it to be.

And I'm not even saying whether his position was right or wrong, or grounded or ungrounded.

All I was saying is that I don't see things that way. I perfer to begin with a premise more along the lines of Rosmimi's view that Lighthouselover posted.

It's just a matter of personal choice. I feel that Rosmini's view is more 'self-evident' to me.

I don't even think in terms of being 'grounded'.

It's just a free choice to decide which view a person feels is more 'self-evident' to them. That's how philosophy should be done, IMHO. Just pick the views that make the most sense to you.

Because obviously it is not quite clear to me (and maybe to others too) what groundless means to you.

Your definition of groundless might be far from mine, so the determination to dismiss something would be entirely based on your definition and not on mine.
That's why I think I have no right to dismiss something as groundless.

This is very interesting to me...as I worked with people who were deemed schizophrenic. I had an ability to "listen" to their stories...to hear them, to hear their story...there WAS a basis to their thoughts...no matter how bizarre they may sound to others..

so, while you say that this "delusion", which as you know is a belief that is sustained over time, is in fact, based on some experience, some perception, some belief...

that thought to that person is grounded in their reality or their perception...

at least IMO...

Lovely catch. That is my point exactly. The story was not meant for debate on truth or not. It is meant to help people to learn about their own actions and the ripple effect. Just because a novel or story is not "grounded" in actual fact does that make it's potential for teaching any less?

Sure if the discussion at hand is delusion, then I agree these thoughts are grounded in delusion which is a real phenomena.

If the discussion is if this monkey really exists even with the labeled properties of invisible and intangible, then sadly this is groundless for a conversation regarding the whether this creature is extant.
No not at all. I agree and again its all about context, in the context of metaphoric understanding leading to the adoption of real life behavioral changes then this claim that this story is meaningful would be grounded in how it changed your perception.

Make sense?


However if your claim was that this story actually happened, you would need more to ground your claim. Persons who saw this take place, facts derived from the story . . . ect would ground this claim.

But if a person claims to 'see' an invisible monkey, clearly they mean that they can see it, but it is just invisible to other people.

Otherwise, if they couldn't see it, how could they even claim that it's a monkey?

Clearly there are things a person can say that would not only be 'groundless' (have no basis in experience of any kind), but it would also be totally senseless (have no meaningful content).

Such a thing wouldn't be 'groundless' it would simply be 'senseless'.

In other words, for anyone to claim to "see" an invisible monkey that is even invisible to them, is a sensless statement because if the monkey is invisible to everyone including them, then clearly they wouldn't be able to see it either.

In other words, they have a direct rational conflict between claiming to be able to see something and not being able to see it simultaneously.

Excellent use of logic to determine the groundless nature of that claim . . .

So basically, you're looking for validation on specific grounds. Let me make that specific criteria instead.

Excellent use of logic to determine the groundless nature of that claim . . .


Yes, but that's a case based on logic.

How could we use logic to determine which of the following premsises are more grounded?

Premise #1: All thought must be relative to specific experiences.

Premise #2: Ulitimately thought must be indpendent of specific experiences.

Here we have two totally different and opposing premises.

Which one is more 'grounded'?

Well, the point is that we could argue grounds for either premise until we are blue in the face.

If we look at Rosmini's view we see that he is demanding that premise #2 is self-evident. Someone else might disagree and think that premise #1 makes more sense to them and seems more 'self-evident'.

So where do we go from there? Logic cannot be used to determine which premise is correct. Or to put that another way, we can find reasons to argue for either case.

It's kind of like the premises:

Premise A: We are the form.

Premise B: We are the thing taking the form.

Logic can't be used to decide which is more 'grounded'. It's a matter of personal choice. Well, we can make logical arguments for either one, but in the end we could never draw any firm absolute conclusions, because even logic is 'ungrounded' ulitimately.

It seems to me that there are many reasons to have 'grounds' for an idea or position.

1. Logic

But logic can only go so far. Logic cannot be used to determine everything. At the most fundamental level logic fails because at the most fundamental level we must ultiamtely begin any logical analysis with unproven premises that we can only claim to be intuitively 'self-evident'.

2. Intuition

This is actually the basis of all logic at the most foundational level. All logic is founded on intuition at it's base.

3. Experience.

If we experience something this is 'grounds' for stating what we believe that experience to have been.

If we have a conversation with someone and make statement about what we believe them to have said, our 'grounds' for doing that is based on the 'experience' of having had that conversation.

In fact, this is how we communicate in general.

4. Deceit

Clearly if our 'grounds' are to deceive people we can just say things that we know will upset people with total disregard to any other reasons for the things we might say. We could say that this is 'groundless' since we don't recognize deciet as being valid 'grounds' for philosophy.


This is all I can think off right off the top of my head. Maybe someone could offer more?

But according to creative I can dismiss all your 'grounds' just because they don't agree with mine.

What then?

That my dear is a discussion that comes to its end point. When rehashing begins, the very value of any discussion appears to be lost as now it has turned to, sorry if this offends, what I would call "a means of external validation."

Agreed.

I have no clue.

I don't demand that people have grounds for their thoughts.

All I do is try to share my views, and try to at least understand what they are attempting to say.

I don't tell people things like, "It's impossible to think the way you think, and you are only kidding yourself if you think that way".

Yet creative does tell people this. And I can say this grounded firmly on the fact that he actaully said this very thing to me.

That's about as 'grounded' as it gets.

How more 'grounded' could something be?

Yet he's always accusing me of saying 'ungrounded' things about him.

Clearly he believes that he can tell other people how they can think and that they are kidding themselves in they think the way they do.

Where's his 'grounds' for making such extreme claims about how other people can think?

From my perspective he's the one who makes totally ungrounded claims.

This statement sounds groundless, perhaps I missed where he said that, you could quote him to ground this statement.

Make sense.

Yes you do. You call the Bible groundless in your own way every day here on these forums.

PLEASE. It seems like a giant straw man is being built out of what creative posted.

I did not agree that any rules where appropriate, or would achieve what was desired in the first place, but that does not change the fact that groundless claims, senseless claims, absurd claims should be disregarded and WE ALL DO IT every day!

Nothing is “groundless”.
Every printed or worded thought has a “basis”.
The conception of a thought is only your conception of thought. This as we know each is different depending on the person.
Our interests, concerns, ability of creative thought and free will sometimes leads to dead ends in our conclusions of statements by others.
If more people would consider thoughts as a hypothesis instead of a statement of fact, then no thought would be conferred “groundless.”
Human history has been filled with hypotheses, they fall into several categories.
Some categories are: proven, unproven, conception, contain variables and humorous.
As our minds develop, we form ideas and guidelines, some people develop into a triangle, where as their timeline moves forward they become caught between two barriers which finally end at a peak. Some people never form the triangle and are open minded and do not become constricted during their timeline on earth. They keep "maybe" as a possibility.
Truth is a delusion as is factual statements which unfortunately are based on preconceived ideas and non determinative parameters.
Such as 2+2=4.
It depends on what your idea of what 2 represents. Think of it openly, 2 apples and two more apples may end up as four apples, unless someone eats one right before the = sign. 2 people plus 2 people may equal 6 if they mate and have children. As you can see every equation is not definitive because you can interpret them differently. To argue anything as groundless is to say there are no variables.
In binary math we use terms such as yes and no but never maybe.
Our minds are not binary, therefor we can use “maybe”.
To say something is “groundless”, you have forgotten “maybe”.

WOW.

Worst example EVER.

Equations are equations becuase they are equal. The very definition puts to shame your example.

If 6 is on one side, then for it to be an equation would require for the other side to add, subtract, divide or multiply to equal 6.

If you interpret math to be subjective then you FAIL horribly at understanding the purposes of math.

For an equation to be representative of reality we need to set it up correctly. 2 apples plus two apples is 4 apples. If you insert a process where someone eats one then the equation is 2 + 2 -1 = 3



Do you see how in MY example the minus symbol is right before the = sign . . yea that represents the apple being eaten . . .

Otherwise you have not created an equation that is representative of what happened: that is called being WRONG.

How is this example non deterministic? You easily determined that an apple had been eaten before the = symbol . . .

Math is the only place where proof CAN be absolute. Horrible example.

I've never used the term 'groundless' when referring to the Bible.

All of my arugments against the Bible are based in what I see as logical contradiction in the overall story.

The Bible claims that God is all-wise and all-powerful, then it has God doing things that are clearly un-wise and not the least bit powerful.

For example, the God of the Old Testament commands people to murder heathens and put no other Gods before him. Where a heathen is simply defined as someone who disagrees with the teachings of the this God.

Jesus comes along and disagrees with the teachings of that God thus becoming a heathen by definition, and he also demands that the only way to the original God is through him, thus violating the very command that the original God must be placed first.

From my point of view that's just a blatant contradiction. No concept of 'grounds' are even required.

It's just a story that continually contradicts itself. It does this in a myriad of other ways as well, which I won't bother to describe there.

In fact, the very idea of an all-powerful all-wise God who has to 'sacrifice' his only begotten son to save the world from some evil fallen angel is a contradiction to the very notion that this God is either all-powerful or all-wise.

So I denounce the Bible as being a totally self-contradicting story. Not unlike the reason I gave for rejecting an invisible monkey that no one can see, not even the person who claims it exist.

You seemed to think that was sound reasons for rejecting the monkey story. How is the Bible any different?

No notion of "grounds" are even required. Other than I supposed you could say that my "grounds" for rejecting the Bible is because it totally contradicts the very attributes that it demands that God must possess. And it's stories contradict themselves.

So you could say that I reject it on 'logical' grounds. It logically contradicts itself.

None the less I don't tell other people they can't believe it. I just say that from my point of view it can't possibly be true especially if taken literally.

Other people may see it as non-literal parables and just ignore any logical inconsistencies. Their "grounds" for believing in it may be based entirely on "faith".

I even reject that approach for myself. I ask, "Why would I want to have faith that I failed my creator to the point where he had to have his son nailed to a pole to pay for my failings?"

There's no way I would want to have faith in such a story just to have faith in it. I'd much rather have faith that it's totally false. But I don't need to have faith that it's false. I can see that it's self-contradicting and thus absurd.

So, I suppose you could say that my 'grounds' for rejecting it are that it seems to be totally absurd, logically inconsistent, and completely unworthy of faith from my point of view.

Those would be my 'grounds' for dismissing it I suppose.

I do agree that we all tend to have 'grounds' for most everything we claim. But this is clearly not always the case.

But if someone else believes in the Bible then they also gave 'grounds' even if their only reasoning is a desire to have 'faith'. They probably have faith in the prize of eternal life and just ignore the rest.

But that would be their 'grounds' then I suppose.

So if that's the case, then what could be a "groundless thought"?

How would we even define such a concept if every belief is grounded in something? If even only in pure faith?

In that case it would be meaningless to even suggest that a thought could be 'groundless'.

I have already explained. Its context sensitive. Without context any idea can be valid, but again dependent on context and the claim being made.

If you make no claim, I don't really have any interactions with your ideas outside of what you claim they represent, no claim nothing for which to believe in regards to them except that they happened which I can show easily also has grounds.

You could tell me that you like the idea that rabbits have long ears.

What do I have to say to that? Well that's nice. No claim being made that rests on any grounds which cannot be attributed to you being a thinking human being.

Beings think.
Thinking beings like things.
A thinking being has told me he likes something.
Grounds accepted, I believe you when you tell me that you like rabbits becuase they have long ears. Now if previously you had told be vehemently that you HATE rabbits becuase they have long ears, I might have GROUNDS to question the truthfulness of the second CLAIM.

I really hope this make sense, everyone is all over the place on this one.

That's easy to say when you're talking about something as simple as 2+2=4. But what about Gabriel's Horn?

Gabriel's Horn is a mathematical object that has INFINITE internal surface AREA, yet mathematically it only has FINTITE VOLUME!

Here's the paradox,...

If you had to paint the internal surface it would clearly require an infinte amount of paint because it has infinite surface AREA.

Yet, if you FILL it will paint like as if it is a bucket, then you can only fill it with a FINITE amount of paint.

So much for the consistency of mathematics.