I am sure that all of you are aware of the concept of dualism. So, what's your views on dualism? Are you a dualist or a non-dualist? Personally, I am a non-dualist. I cannot accept that perfect good or perfect evil exists. To me it seems like a fairytale.

If you're referring to the philosophical term, no, I'm not. I reject all that Platonic bullshit about there being our world and the world of ''ideas'', and everything that promotes a spiritual world/force beyond ours. Also, thinking that the human mind is something separate from our physical world is retarded.

EDIT: Hey, I'm sigged by 3 different people right now. Beat that, wonderhearts

Yeah, I refer to the philosophical term. However, the term is not restrained in theory. It is appliable to our everyday life (especially in the religious and political aspect of it).

There are different uses of 'dualism' in philosophy. One of them is Platonic realism, according to which the dual poles are the forms and the world of matter. More often, 'dualism' now refers to mind/body dualism, which distinguishes between mind or soul and body. This is substance dualism, but there is also a property dualism. The best known is Cartesian substance dualism, but most dualists today are property dualists. I imagine there are other meanings of 'dualism,' too, but these are the most common.

Don't forget Zoroastrian dualism: light/dark, good/evil, AhuraMazda/Ahriman--predates Platonism by several centuries at least.

Thank you. It is true. Plato was influenced by Zoroastrian dualism and that's exactly the kind of dualism I'm talking about.

That seems to be a proto-philosophical, religious type of dualism as opposed to the philosophical kind.

Like Plato was a philosopher

I would say no in all aspects of dualism.

Hardcore nominalism to the bone!!!

No, he wasn't. He was a religious freak.

Haha, when will you stop failing?

Hi, normally dualism is used to describe a mind/body dualism. A non-dualist is called a "monist". While it is okay to refer to absolute moralism as a dualism (because it is) it's also pretentious because it's much simpler to call it "moral absolutism".


Ugh, I sound like a less intelligent version of Scorpio, I've been out of school too long.

So far everybody is Parmenidian.

P.S. - You forgot Pythagoras.

Well, Parmenides and Pythagoras are ok but no one can reach the magnificent persuasive powers of sophists and the hand-down logic of Protagoras


DeathForBlitzkrieg, I've studied Plato and his sayings remind me a LOT of the Bible. I cannot consider him a philosopher.

I haven't studied Protagoras or the sophists yet, so i wouldn't know.

Don't you think that Parmenides guy was a little crazy? Everything that is, is. Everything that it is not, it is not and cannot be. So there is no non-existence. So the only thing that IS is existence. It is motionless, since there is nothing outside itself (herslef? himself?) to move itself (with)in. It is ONE. So all motion is apparent and comes from perception, which is all false.

Jeeesus, what kind of person could come up with this stuff?!

whoaaaaa! I can't believe a Greek just said that!!!! this cannot be! the world is coming to an end, and us with it!

I wouldn't call him crazy. To be sincere, I don't know what I'd call him. But I prefer him over Plato and Socrates. Yes, he was a dualist (doxa vs aletheia) but he was not the religious freak that Plato and Socrates (probably a construction of Plato's imagination) were.

I say that exactly because I am Greek. I've been studying Plato's work for quite a time and I cannot consider him a philosopher. His adherents (Neoplatonists) helped Christians to destroy Greek philosophy. Plato himself were religious as fuck. Have you read Plato's Republic? The myth of Yr? The Destinies (Klotho, Laxesis, Atraktos)? He was full of myths. He was also an irrogant cock that thought he was smarter than sophists.

But he denied the valability of doxa, right? By doxa I understand opinion/sensation, VS aletheia, by which I understand reason and logic.

So he was a dualist but he denied the valability of one half. At least that's how I get it.

That's what makes him at least half better than most dualists

I am only a beginner, but I don't think Plato "saw it coming", so to speak. So it is not right (I think) to blame him for something he didn't (and couldn't) foresee.

Besides, as far as I know (I repeat, I'm only a beginner) there's more to Plato than just myths.

So he was a monist in disguise? Or he was a monist, and didn't even knew it!

(off?)topic:

I definitely prefere this topic to " Nun, 79, jailed for sex abuse".

He did not saw it coming. That's true. But he was the one that first that denied logic and our senses. Some say he was an idealist. I just say he was irrational.

so "irrationalism" is bad? and only reason and cand take us to the truth?

anyway, just for the record, I hate philosophy

Irrationalist thought is applied in most theological denominations. That's why I cannot see Plato as a philosopher but as a religious freak.

I'd say I am a realist I don't believe in pure evil or pure good, man's actions depend on a variety of things and are never as simple oh he is good or he is evil. Serial killers are usually deemed as evil in our society, but if you analyze the situation it becomes obvious that those people simply have some type of psychological disorder so in turn we couldn't call that evil could we. Good/Evil is a fairy tale.

Even so, this doesn't mean he was further away from the truth than others. Life IS irrational, rationalism = trying to melt it into pre-defined acceptable and understandable forms. But it doesn't fit.

And is there a such big differece in attitude between a religious freak and an un-religious one? "Freakness" doesn't necessarily connects to religiozity.

Besides, you didn't answer my question.

God I hate this kind of things, but I just can't let go, it's like smoking.

you didn't define your terms... haw do you define "evil" and how do you define "good"?


besides, even if any thing or any fact si both good and evil, this doesn't contradict the existence of pure evil and pure good.

it's like saying:
1. water is formed of a combination of H and O and it is WATER, not just H or just O
2. then - there is no pure H and no pure O, because together they form WATER

follow the logic?

This topic makes me think of Cynic.

many people try to create a false dichotomy in their arguments, but the world is not black and white - its all grey and what is good for one is evil for another

grey doesn't mean the absence of black and white, but a combination of the two.

Personally, I find irrationalism responsible for the loss of what I believe it's our only weapon in this world. And that weapon is logic.

By the way, this is one of the few times that I agree with einvolk (even partially because I see a lot of dualistic semen in racialism).

I was pretty much going to say this and vice versa to that saying.

So, no I don't really believe in this idea personally. It's interesting though.

I am confused by recent developments in this thread. Firstly, Parmenides is lauded as better than Plato because Plato denied our senses. As if Parmenides did not? Secondly, I don't think Plato was especially interested in skeptical arguments against our senses, but rather, his concern was that our senses would trick us into believing in only that which they represent, thereby obscuring the world of forms. The world of forms was of course considered by Plato to be a higher degree of reality. However, most of the time, when he is denigrating sensation, he doesn't mean to deny that it is reliable as far as it goes; i.e., it informs us about matter. His primary point is that the senses are able only to tell us about a shadowy realm of reality, which we mistakenly interpret as the only reality.

The standard interpretation of Parmenides has been that he was openly a monist. It is one thing to distinguish between reality and illusion, but another altogether to think that so doing establishes ontological dualism. If one has an illusory experience, it need not indicate that the 'object' of the illusory experience has being, although one might very well think that it does. Many philosophers do not, however. I learned Parmenides as a monist, but I know that there is a dispute nowadays about this. Unfortunately, I cannot attempt to adjudicate the issue because my specialty is analytic philosophy, and especially formal logic, not the Ancients. Of course, that is not to say that I couldn't look into it, but I have not done so at the time of this post.

What is a philosopher? In my view, it is someone who concerns himself with a particular set of questions(metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc), usually of an abstract nature, and attempts to justify his position with argumentation.