What is your justification for thinking?

It’s probably a law here too, although I haven’t heard of it.

My next-door neighbor is retired and I know he likes to stay up late watching TV and sleeps in. I usually wait until about 10 am before doing any yard work.

If my neighbor mows before ten, he starts having trouble with his mower. a lot of trouble...

Who accused us of having -- or not having -- any opinions on things supernatural? One helluva lot of cyberspace has been taken up just for the purpose of venting one's personal thoughts about that.

So do I, my dog Frankie hates the mower! Every time I bring it out of the garage he goes nuts! This morning he actually bit the tire and lifted it off the ground, almost tipping it over!

my mower is about 350 pounds.

and the tires are larger than can be bit.

unless mebbe you had a bear.

and it has a cup holder...

Bears come with cup holders ? ! ? ! ? Who knew?

you gonna tell him no?

bears kinda come with whatever they want.

except that falling bear dude.

and he kinda had a deathwish...

Thomas, please sit down before reading the rest of this response.





I agree with Setanta.

I was the one who needed to apologize...not you.

Unless, of course, this last post was once again an attempt at irony, in which case, I want some beer (lots of it) before discussing the issue further.

The councilman who proposed the law has become known as "the sandman councilman." He has been re-elected time and time again since the beginning of the Clinton presidency!

I can't justify thinking as such because it is what my brain does, just as my liver produces bile. Sloppy thinking, however, is something I do feel a need to justify. I've spent a lifetime trying to minimize sloppiness of thought and have had only minor success, but some people make no effort at all, indeed, they seem to wallow joyously in conceptual compost.

Today, I drove my car to the grocery store while thinking about a programming problem I'm struggling with these days. I got so carried away that I almost ran a red traffic light. If I had run it, I would have caused a serious accident.

Thinking can kill. Friends don't let friends think and drive!

So glad you understand that, Thomas. As a former thinking driver (thunk driver?) myself, I really sympathize.

I've done that too, Thomas, only while walking. On Sunday I got everything ready to go to the grocery store, shopping bags (this is NYC), list, bag of glass for recycling....then I started thinking about the race that morning and how I forgotten my timing strip and how I was going to appeal for a time and the next thing I knew, I was at the grocery store..

...but.
..no bags,
no list,
no glass.

I consider myself lucky to have not walked by the subway entrance.

Joe(I'd be halfway back to Central Park before I came to)Nation

Myself, I don't think, only react to situations. Your post, for example, caused my response.

Being able to tell which propositions is a nice benefit to thinking. But they hardly justify thinking, as thinking is also the cause of such proposition.
Thinking has led to terrible things through history.
Why is thinking still legal?
Why is it even necessary? It's 2012 for gods sake!

That imagery made me chuckle.
But people who do sloppy thinking often express themselves sloppily too. That is a breeding ground for misunderstandings and conflict.

The fact that propositions about the nature of reality spring from mind doesn't prove that they were invented by minds once for that purpose you would have to prove that minds are independent of the natural world and not a consequence of its process, thus you are begging the question...that ideas or in the case propositions on the nature of reality are captured by mind or accessed by mind can be equally a fair argument, you cant prove either way...although one can agree to admit that final proof either way is not known, so far we have no good reason to believe we are all part of a collective mind, which for purpose of reducing complexity, would be a far better argument then posit many minds as a real possibility...individual minds would emerge as patterns of this collective consciousness rather then being totally independent...after all such independence would probably equate to a greater probability of communication not being possible due to transcendental diversity of property's...

Further more the same argument you did could be made against mind, (and that is one of the main reasons I always get so angry with it) that is, "mind" itself is a concept that we don't know the ultimate origin off nor what it ultimately represents...we just assume minds produce concepts based on our empirical experience...but we are not even certain that we have free conscious will...for all that I knows "minds" may well be resumed as complex mathematical patterns on an abstract world on which the experience of awareness emerges but not true decision making...again for all that I know to be compelled needs not be exclusively resumed as to be "awarely" forced onto something against our will...one is certainly compelled by our unconscious processes and all the forces and circumstances of our surrounding background...

How can one not be stressed when clearly seeing that the so said base of the argument against others believes is exactly the very same argument that can cast doubt into what is being presented for alternative ? Its not honest, and there was never a true intention of being so...bottom line as I see it this is more of a fight between fields of science that are trying to enlarge their territory and authority, mainly between soft and hard sciences, and never about any honest attempt on solving the problem...given how hard and fruitless it has been since ever the project for an ontology was abandoned long time ago...all we have now as reason for the philosophical pseudo debate is corporate academic interest on growing its authoritative basis...

I can't quite recall at the moment from who is the signature "no matter never mind" or something of the sort, but it resumes quite well the idea I've been trying to convey on the last posts...its not news for anyone really informed and sufficiently smart in philosophy, not trapped or entangled in the fairly basic dichotomy's of each school line of reasoning, but given the level of ignorance scientific community as displayed on the complexity that such matter requires no wonder debating the issue still seamed a big deal not so long ago...meanwhile some of us moved on for a more abstract approach.

Have you thought about the word 'parody'?

I admit many times it could be hard to tell.