Philosophers have been bandying words for millenia, and they have yet to convince one another of much (or so it seems to me).

The way it seems to you is the way it really is.

Of what use is that pursuit, if agreement amongst the experts cannot even be reached?

I was in my 50s when I came to realize that, after a lifetime of thinking philosophy was a waste of time, I'd actually been doing it all along. I figured I should at least learn how to do it right, and so I went back to college and got a degree in it.

Philosophy is not about learning what to think. It's about learning how to think. You don't learn that by finding some authority to tell you. You learn it by watching the authorities argue among themselves about how to do it and then reaching a judgment of your own as to which of them is getting the better of the others.

Well, I did not expect that, I was surprised when I saw the pic.

To answer this, remember that while the weird will and the physical condition of the brain goes hand in hand, it does not mean that the brain affected the will. Allow me to give another analogy. If a speedboat and a cargo ship goes west, it does not mean that the cargo ship is pulling the speedboat. It might be the Will of God to cure him from that dual will condition when we try our best to cure it, Him being merciful. After all, leaving a patient in that condition might not be the best that can happen.

According to you, you tried to make compassion a habit. But I can't help but to remember the sermons of John Vianney. He said that religion should not be mere habits, but should be a religion of the heart.

Anyway, if brain is holding the will and other faculties of the soul, then we are sure prisoners of the body. Yet we always long for freedom. Why do we long freedom so much, if there is not one liberator? For if there is no liberator, men would have given up the quest for freedom far long before. After all, the Greeks are not that primitive.

Problems of the mind are not devil, they are evil, for the good not being accomplished. If demons were only inhabiting the intellect, then why did our heart shrinks? They are chaining us in despair that comes from pride. Notice that one who despaires will show pride in the beginning. Judas, he was so prideful he thought he knew better than Jesus. He plotted, thinking that he would be able to outsmart the "problem". Yet Jesus was captured, he panicked, being guilt - ridden, and despaired, resulting in him committed suicide.

Once again, I am close to the limits of my capacity. But I'm glad to be posting here!

Lol, someone my wife's facebook picture is appearing as my avatar, I think I've somehow associated both our facebook accounts with the discuss account. I'm male.
My problem is that I've made my life so much better by using science and reason to determine "moral" or right action. I have my own food laws (based on the affect of food on the functionally of the brain), I engage in mindfulness, I cultivate patience and compassion as a matter of habit (I think this is clearly found in Christianity) but I do it as a matter of understanding neuroplasticity. Compassion and love are directly linked to feelings of well being, reduced stress and long life. In a nutshell, doing the right thing and selfishness are inexplicably linked, if what we really want is to be happy. Not only is my own life better, but my wife and kids are happier, so are people I deal with at work. Happiness is contagious, and it isn't the same thing as pleasure or pain, it is something much deeper in the mind. We know chemicals like drugs influence moods, intellect, and moral behavior so this shouldn't be a surprise. I also reject the soul hypothesis, there is too much neurological evidence that contradicts it.
One of the biggest examples is split-brain syndrome:
"Gazzaniga and Sperry's split-brain research is now legendary. One of their child participants, Paul S, had a fully functional language center in both hemispheres. This allowed the researchers to question each side of the brain. When they asked the right side what their patient wanted to be when he grew up, he replied "an automobile racer." When they posed the same question to the left, however, he responded "a draftsman." Another patient pulled down his pants with the left hand and back up with the right in a continuing struggle. On a different occasion, this same patient's left hand made an attempt to strike the unsuspecting wife as the right hand grabbed the villainous limp to stop it."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201211/split-brains

So we have people that have a different "will" on each side of the brain, and one of the "wills" disappears when the split in the brain is repaired. Tons of neurological evidence supports the idea of "will" as being the product of a noisy committee composed of different brain regions. Damage to certain regions affects the "will". There is a lot more where this came from.
In summary, I understand what Christianity is trying to accomplish, but I think we now have tools to do understand what is going on inside our heads better, and do a better job than Christianity was able to. I think this is actually fulfilling Christ's mission, to help the world and reduce suffering. I'll close with a scripture from Mark 9
38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone[j] casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 Whoever is not against us is for us. 41 For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

In the spirit of Christ, truly I tell you the goal of modern psychology and neurology is to cast out demons (problems in the mind). I'll let Jesus's words speak for himself. Surely, there are multiple ways of casting out demons, and I am not anti-Christian. Mine is a difficult path of academics, it is not for the faint-hearted. I simply have found a hard path that I believe is better at casting out demons for me. As someone who is basically an atheist, I am still united with Christianity in what I believe is it's ultimate goal.

Well, different story for me. I have found GK Chesterton and you found Bento Spinoza. I'm sure that I'm still ignorant with a whole lot of Catholic teaching, but hey, I already read the dogmas. I can't read the guy's writing because that would endanger myself, thus putting me into sin.

What I can say is that one, Spinoza is loving wrongfully, for love is in the will, not in the intellect. Archbishop Fulton Sheen taught that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is Loving, Beloved, and Love respectively. Holy Spirit is also the Will of God. A->B, A->C, therefore B->C. Since we are the Image of God, and our love is expressed in actions, thus come forth from our will, we can say that Spinoza is willing to love the products of intellect, which is knowledge.

Two, Dogma of the Catholic Church agrees that God can be found by reason, but how incomplete such knowledge would be. Permit me to use an analogy. If we want to know a girl, it is better to wait for her to reveal herself, than simply listening to your friends to know her. Reason is an appetizer for the main course. And St. Thomas Aquinas told us in first part that sciences have a hierarchy. My understanding is this: Science of the natural, such as physics, metaphysical, such as philosophy, and revealed, which is Theology. That could be wrong, but my point is that the lower sciences will have difficulty in knowing God, and even fall into many errors, when we confuse sciences with each other, like Spinoza did, which we can see from him being declared heretic.

I hope this can be a good talk. Sure I did not cover many of your points, and I might get horribly wrong, but that's my capacity. I advise, for the Love of God, to go beyond being right, and start seeking truth.

P.S.: Wait, I thought you are a man! I have just gone to your profile to check your comment history as you recommend when I saw your face and... wait... how feminine...

nice!

Just doing a bit of musing now, as you understand from past comments
of mine, that you may or may not be interested in, as I understand. But
after a recent 'revelation!' in which I finally 'saw' the meaning in a
former comment that Joyce's 'Finigan's Wake' was with respect to states
of consciousness, and relationships both internal and 'external'.
Consequently this a great philosophic satire, suggested with respect
to the post offered on Radioactive Decay and Potentiality and
Actuality,a 'poetic' interpretation which as an examination of my
consciouness can only be complimentary to that described within the
scientific context. .
Within my internal consciousness for instance,
on the assumption that I was 'open' to becoming aware of what
constitutes the 'stochastic' (one perspective on Aristotle's
philosophy) in relation to a possible understanding/reinterpretation of
Aristotle's (modal) logic as well as the 'metaphysics' of causation: I
have now found many possibilites..
My immediate 'presuppositions and
intentionality' readily found an 'answer' which has long been
outstanding in that 'historical/memory relationship of 'self' to
'church'. Thus, it was quite disconcerting to consider that the primary
assumption that I perhaps was taken to assume within a religious context
was that the immediacy of the moment was one of potentiality and not
actuality. This would have left me open to being, within the context of
a universalized metaphysic, merely within a secondary causation to what
is argued as 'being' from an 'epistemology' that there is an overall
comprehension, or omniscience that is the primary cause. I also
considered that this has become a principle of a prior causation not
only identified with God, but with the assumption that rational
explication/interpretation has subsumed 'all?' particulars, even that.of
my immediate 'self' awareness. Thus the assumption that the immediacy
of the intuition of the moment is preceded by a rationality or that
intuition is 'necessarily' dependent on 'reason' independent of my
personal intuitions/pereptions, and that thus I may interpret my self as
being 'locked' within a state of possibility rather than any immediate
actuality either of intuition or perception, and indeed reason. That is
descriptive of many 'passive' states of mind produced .through
processes of external control over an individual..
.
However, If
the actuality of my consciousness in time, as say, a nuclear scientist's
is based on a intuition of what constitutes this remarkable physical
phenomena, then to interpret the words spoken within today's post,
perhaps if I were to be within a state of intuition of potency, even as
interpretated as receptivity, rather than within the 'actuality' that is
generalized in my mind, the phenomena considered (as in the case of the
quanta) could possibly not be found to have any explanation. There
would necessarily be an appeal to 'reason', at some level with respect
to even causative explanation. In this case, the possibility of their
not being a cause within this phenomena, is certainly worth
consideration, for the reason is perhaps not yet sufficient enough to
explain the phenomena..

Within an 'historical' context to be
'definitive' and thus 'productive' of a causal relationship in which my
'self' is defined within a causative and 'authoritarian' context be it
'Church' or 'State' or 'Other'. then my state of being is indeed
'defined by a rational law and order, (or not as in some cases of
authority that as an example are rule by force) that is 'eternal' to
this self-perception of immediacy in actuality of being, or what is
called today an 'authentic' self.
I could go on, indefinitely with
possibilities. Perhaps this is what they studied in modal logics both
with respect to epistemological definitions, and modal realities.
So
with respect to this, are there, as an abduction, significant
impressions and interpretations of relations within my memory which are
at this moment, or have been, perhaps/possibly in a process of
'radioactive decay! Could there be any possible truth within this
metaphysical speculation? Could this happen, even, during the turn
about of certain neurons in my brain during a reconsideration of active
and passive relations I have experienced during the development of my
awareness of the 'cause' of states of passivity, or even
passive/aggression..
In considering my actual intuitions to the
blog's priority of potency, it is perhaps possible to 'think I am, but
not quite sure' , and indeed this might be a very good description of a
mental state related poetically as 'waves and particles' of meaning
within my mind.
Although is it may not possible to be within the
moment in a state of actuality, potency, or even necessity,
concurrently, as has been predicated on the conception of God,
perhaps,there are various combinations and processes in relation to
both epistemological and ontological categories, that could be made more
explicit, and conscious..After all the 'definition of God' is
considered to be a 'necessary state of being', although I am not aware
of distinctions within the orthodoxy which distinguish their conceptions
of will, reason and judgment, which could be related in any coherent
way, (at least to me) to the existence of a quanta reality.Edited:
as I usually have to do after getting away from it for awhile to have
further (hopefully more objective) consideration of what I have
previously attempted to express. Does not the possibility that both the
movement from empirical evidence to theory, as well as the movement
from theory to evidence, (whether or not that is regarded as the best
'method' as in the first case, to science, and the second to religious
dogma, generally) not suggest that the on-going process of mind within
both theory and practice may be regarded as an interactive process, and
that both may bring discoveries and consolidations..
Final Edit made. Thank you.

Hopefully you wont become responsible for too much humorousness!

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2569

Hey, Papalinton, I've been preoccupied with musing about dialethism but, beyond the style-substance distinction, wanted to comment on the substance (yet again, from a different perspective).

>>>This is intensely interesting, Johnboy.<<>>In which particular point of the seven in your Exhibit A, or collectively, does this militancy manifest? I am curious, because any commonsensical reading of the points identifies all of them as pretty much stock-in-trade standard, serving as they do unambiguously differentiating religious from the non-religious position.<<>>Or does Dennett's militancy manifest itself by having the audacity, nay, the gall to insist on an evidentialistc approach, you know, demand proofs, evidence, facts, verification and some smidgeon of authentication from those that claim a reality immune from substantiation. [Methinks a case of special pleading here.]
<<>>Or is it that Dennett's militancy is reflected in his expectation that these alternative stances, other ways of knowing, must first establish their epistemic credentials from which a standard of reasonableness can be determined? <<>>Clearly the centuries-old hiatus in theo-philosophical scholarship has contributed little to consolidating the bona fides of a theologically-based metaphysical stance let alone as an explanatory paradigm worthy of the name.<<<

Category error. Metaphysics are philosophic not theological, which is why, for example, Christianity has been described as still in search of a metaphysic.

Now, regarding moral reasoning, that must be accomplished in a robustly evidential manner