Stop Worshiping False Idols

Sometimes there can be truth in what appears to be false.

Cinephilia is the love of the simulacra and its power to simulate. There is no realm of Platonic Forms which give rise to true copies. The false will always return to haunt those who attempt to separate the copies. We live in a world of surfaces where we slip and slide, with the illusion of depth. Isn't that Scottie's delusion in Vertigo? The feigning of the depths where there is none. That's why he only repeats... the repetition of his phantasm (his muse who's dead - the love for a dead image - but resurrected by desire).

That a metaphysics is no longer popular is not necessarily proof that it was ever decidedly refuted (e.g., there is no way to refute a committed solipsist). We can only state our own metaphysical commitments. And if our metaphysical commitments are merely those of our age, our laurel is merely that we found ourselves located in the herd with everyone else. And when the herd moves over to other pastures (e.g., quantum woo-hoo, simulation hypothesis, panpsychism), and we will congratulate ourselves when we they say things, perhaps such as "There is no physical realm of matter." From triumph, to "Mooo!".

Even within the contemporary paradigm there are universal laws of nature, which implies "form" (in some form, pardon the pun) is also in the mix. The law of nature holds all copies of photons to 1c. If mathematics is, at least in part, discovered and not created, here is more form which is iterable by us (we can compute 2 + 2 as many times as we would like).

And this is a statement of your metaphysical commitment to nominalism. Our commitments have costs. As Weaver put it, "Ideas have Consequences," and here is how he put it in the eponymous book,
These are ancient disputes with various camps, positions, and degrees. If you would slay idealism, I would merely ask for proof (persuasion) rather than the "Moo!" of the crowd (assertion).


Passes the bong...

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This is what happens when two philosophers meet on movie forums...

By all means, continue, gentlemen.

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Being kind to others never goes out of style.

However, this does not mean making illegal copies of your favorite movies!

"There is more to life than movies. Go now!"

For sure. There is also more to life than pizza, but I like that too.

All this also applies to puppies, beaches, messing around on web sites, beer, walking around in the city and other things I won't mention.

Nothing wrong in being a big fan of movies. Or even being obsessed with it.


Falling in love with a sports team on the other hand is another matter.

My response was, admittedly, merely reflecting our current sentiment and has no meaning outside of the milieu in which it is uttered. Throughout history there have been grand proclamations about the death of metaphysics, but what we do not realize is that it is not the task of philosophy (and natural science as well if we were to heed Popper's advice) to prove or establish a certain worldview, but rather to show that certain worldviews are highly improbable or contradictory. Hence my claim that "there are no (x) entities" should be read as a negation rather than a positive metaphysics. It's never about burden of proof, but the spirit of thinking involves bold conjectures and incessant attempts to show that the certain ideas implode on themselves if we were to postulate them as a positive metaphysics. In fact, I am somewhat of an Idealist, believing in a form of mathematical platonism (without the capital P) which is different from substance Platonism implied by the original post of this thread. Moreover, I'm also an Idealist in this regard - that Ideas matter and are both invented and discovered. Even so we can all agree that the nature of numbers is quite radically different in kind than the nature of physical properties and attributes. And even if mathematical entities are indispensable (according to Quine), we still haven't establish a causal relationship between the two (mathematics and matter). The fact that you bring up solipsism as a legitimate position already betrays the spirit of thinking in the first place. But why should we waste our time debating with solipsists, if their only strategy is to use a sleight of hand and shut down/block off all criteria, let alone agreeable grounds, for debate?

Not all of them.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Ah, it seems it is time for the post-modern clown car to make its quinquennial circuit around the forums, bursting forth with the usual thesaurus-fueled pseudo-philosophical concatenation of half-baked musings and Adderall-enhanced freneticism. In no time at all, the thread will be peppered with Delueze, Foucault, Derrida, and all the rest (no, I didn't forget Spinozza, McClane).

As usual, the thread will devolve into a postmodern melee of tremendous proportion, dwarfed only by its participants' predilection for irrelevancy. Most people that actually take the time to read it, or worse... moderate it, will leave, eyes glazed over, feeling as if the entire world was encased in a bubble of glass, and the have been rubbing up against it like a bad windshield wiper.

Let's just skip to the end. Let's get right to the debate on whether or not we actually exist, only interrupting our discourse to order food so as not to starve to death.

Thanks, I think I'll do it anyway.

Haha, indeed, the postmodern clown car appears ever so briefly and ferociously, thrilling us with its tantalizing repartee of esoteric etymologies and abstruse axioms. How jocundly droll, to precipitously embark on a protractive foray into eidetic metacognition, wherein we may muse upon the ontological existence of the multi-dimensional world and deconstruct the boundaries of solipsism with a synergetic diatribe of dialectic exegesis.

Right, there's also music and stand-up comedy.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

This thread is just my excuse to post this epic scene...

Posting this in a movie forum site is a bold choice, but you do you!

Quite so!

Prepare your orifices, I have assembled my library of smart stuff and have ChatGTP4 and brainyquotes opened in my alt tabs. Don't worry, if you can't run with the big dogs, you can always bark from the porch.

I plan on randomly fanning through my thesaurus and just picking words willy-nilly, after which I will plug them all into a randomizer and inject them into other people's posts each day at precisely 4:42pm.

Anyone remember this thread?
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...ad.php?t=46256