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Which of these metaphysical views do you think is closest to the truth?

>>4932 Heraclitus, definitely.

>>4932 Being unless I am misunderstanding what is meant by "being". From our perspective existence has no well defined beginning or end. By beginning I do not mean the big bang, or some flavour of creationism. I mean a beginning as in before there was a universe, or before there were gods to create a universe, or whatever the hell you believe in. The end has the same connotations. Where does the universe go to when it can no longer exist anymore? How is this any different from before there was a beginning? Is a definite permanent ending where something turns to nothing and never back again contradictory to the premise that at the beginning something came from nothing, and that logically something can never come from nothing? It seems to me that the only logical viewpoint, from our perspective then, is being. All we can do is accept our existence. At least until we understand how the damn machine actually works.

nothingness.

>>4932 >In order to understand what it means to no-be, one must understand what it means to be >In order to understand what it means to be, one must understand what one is >in order to understand what one is, one must define the entity of oneself Imo if you can do that, then you will understand the answer to your question

>>4932 the original Buddhism is THE path but it's simply too difficult for human beings to achieve

>>4932 None of them.

>>4932 >>4951 Based Plotin

Platonism makes the most sense to me... I would say that ideal forms exist but correspond to patterns rather than ideas. So while Plato would say that there exists an ideal tree, I would say that there are patterns in the world which we call "tree" and the patterns really exist. This corresponds neatly with modern physics which does not recognize that there is really any difference between "tree" and "non-tree", they're differences in how the pieces of matter-energy relate to each other rather than differences in the matter-energy itself. The fact that these patterns are incredibly complex means that our perception of them and names for them are really very shoddy approximations. Speaking exactly about a pattern is, in my opinion, only possible with mathematics, and even then it is only possible to speak about very simple patterns and not something as complex as a tree. I don't think there's anything special about conscious beings, aside from being very interesting. Consciousness is just another pattern in this framework, not necessarily restricted to the body a priori but certainly finite, just like all other patterns. Also Plotinus is pretty cool but his thing with putting the forms into a hierarchy was misguided imo.

>>4978 I don't know what you mean by "there exists and ideal tree". I don't think ideal forms "exist" in the material world as much as they are assumed to exist by the mind, so they exist only in the mind. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying so tell me if I'm interpreting something wrong

>>4978 This is the Kantian worldview, no?

>>4981 the Platonist view is that ideal forms exist *outside* of human perception, in a non-physical but still very real non-imaginary sense. >>4982 possibly. I found Kant impenitrable.

>>4983 >I found Kant impenitrable just use youtube lectures. they pretty much explain all the soykaf you need to know

>>4982 No, it's pretty far from Kant.

Why not all of the above? One can be, one can become and one is only something by virtue that there exists nothing, null, void, immaterial or whatever representation of non-functioning you choose. That said, philosophy is often just intellectual wanking and when I partake in these kinds of arguments I feel like I just had unprotected sex with a prostitute, a voidless black hole that consumes desires and outputs nothing of substance. As much as I may feel the need to join, I feel worse in the end for perpetuating needless wanking that potentially infected me with bullshit I don't need in which time and effort have been cast into the great nothing. I feel the same about religion. I wish I could get every second back I invested in both and actually lived my life instead of thinking, wanking, about it.

>>4988 of all the ways to waste time, navel-gazing is a pretty good way to do it.

>>4987 Nah, both are idealism, but Plato's is an early stage of idealism

>>5204 >If you can read this, you are a pope! Cool! Thanks, lain!

>>4932 Buddhism by far but it's impossible to achieve in a modern context. You can only do it as a monk, which means you have to subsist on the lays' generosity. It put me off the whole thing. The only way to reach truth is death.

>>5205 >neurosuggesting you got the correct interpretation of the meanings of each letter and their sequence within each other

I'm very fond of Heraclitus myself, and I greatly enjoy the idea of becoming something new at every instant, it really helps me with being "in the moment".

Does it even matter? I don't find these all that distinct from eachother.

For a very long time I didn't exist. Wasn't so bad. I wasn't even bored.

Nothing can be known (not even this). So I choose to arbitrarily believe in objectve physical reality, partially accessible through senses, reasoning, and "innate" (acquired via evolution) intuition. But philosophically, it seems that Pyrrho had it right, if what's survived of his thinking is accurate. I'm not sure where that would fall in the choices given, but Buddhism/nothingness seems most relevant.