Challenge the Philosophy Competition 1 - Quotations 1-51

Quotations from Challenge the Philosophy Competition 1:

~ Latest quotation ~

1. "Our consciousness is our "black hole", whereby through its emptiness, we are disrupting the balance between life and death, or non-collapse and collapse. We ourselves are increasingly being absorbed into our consciousness through our use of it, and at the same time, we are using our consciousness to absorb all other life-forms into its emptiness." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 19).

2. "Freedom is the doctrine of the state. The sword of freedom, being cast in the image of its darkest shadow, has led to such unimaginable human suffering, that bondage pales in comparison. The image comes to mind, of a small group of gorilla's, fighting and squabbling over a huge pile of banana's. Is this what we've been reduced to? What would an enlightened gorilla do? Perhaps pick up a single banana and walk away with it, or maybe just eat some leaves." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 21).

3. "The basis for order in society through law, including morality and ethics, is subjective, thereby partial." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 21).

4. "If we don’t know who we are, we don’t know what we do; and further, what we think we do is not what we ourselves are doing." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 23).

5. "Knowledge is a product of humanity because we invent it. We are a product of knowledge because we exist from it. We are a product of ourselves." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 23).

6."To consider our knowledge and language the same, and separate from who we are is the height of rationality. It is to turn reason on itself and face reason for what it is in relation to who we are." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 23).

7."It is only through the realization that reason is only a part of our existence and not the defining form of it, that detachment from reason is possible." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 24).

8."The interconnectedness of individuals (which in itself is a type of oxymoron) is a function of our existence. Any contrived institutions which serve to facilitate this interconnectedness must inevitably create an artificial separation. Further they must do it at the expense of a living system. That living system is us, ourselves. We therefore become entangled within our contrivances and lose sight of the genuine unity that we share." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 24).

9 "We can't expect our species to continue in its present form, nor should we. Change is inevitable and acceptance is the only reasonable response." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 24).

10. "If we act out 'our intrinsic responsibility to ourselves', and thereby to everything else, we must face the root of our crisis: our existence from thoughts." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 25).

11. "Our hope lies in overcoming our weakness for thoughts without destroying ourselves at the same time." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 25).

12. "The interconnectedness of being remains uncollapsed and unrealized through our present conditioning." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 26).

13. "The discontinuity that exists between components of our social creations and ourselves is inherently schizophrenic. The collective projections that we label as state, religion, economy, etc are immaterial and have no fundamental awareness. Without conscious integration these invented functions can only serve themselves at our expense. Our task is to decide, how much we're willing to pay." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 26).

14. "To confine our knowledge to the realm of the past aka. reason is to close the door to new possibilities, including knowledge in the absence of reason." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 26).

15. "Participation with the world through the dance of conditioned existence can only give us knowledge of the dance itself. We dance alone." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 26).

16. "We are inventing a reality in our minds, and imposing it on everything else, even though our conscious reality is dependent on everything else. Since our knowledge itself appears empty of who we are, we also appear to be replacing everything else with our empty knowledge and its material extensions; and if we carry this perspective through, our system(s) of knowledge and its material extensions, will replace everything else, including ourselves, and then become nothing." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 26).

17. "Since 'who we are' is a dynamical non-reversible process and the sense of self is an emergent property of the process, self knowledge can only be derived through self awareness." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 28).

18. "We cannot know something without intrinsic separation from it." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 29).

19. "We ourselves are intrinsically separate from knowledge itself." Stephen Garvey from Dispute 9 (Response 29).

20. "To live life is to know life, theory is a poor substitute." Ken Bell from Dispute 9 (Reply 31).

21. "Just as a tree is what it is without human beings having to name it, so we are still "who we are" whether we are conscious of our being or not." Rich Tysinger from Entry 38.

22. "It appears that we can exist without thoughts. A harmonious existence would probably arise as we approach a level of instinctual behavior with automated responses to exterior and interior stimuli." Stein Leikanger from Dispute 12.

23. "Humanity must take conscious risk over its preservation." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 48.

24. "The human tragedy is mainly because our defective system of thinking is quite different for each individual." Julieta Petroni from Entry 54.

25. "We cannot know our being is in a state of flux and there be a being to know, without contradicting ourselves." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 67.

26. "Our assertions can only be validated in our minds." Stephen Garvey from Response to Entry 72 .

27. "The sense of self has no other existence except as the implied shadow to the separation [between observer and observed] implied by knowledge." Richard Henderson from Entry 136.

28. "...much reasoning is actually abductive as opposed to deductive or inductive. That is, reasoning tends to follow from the concrete to the general; but, unlike induction, it is according to a general rule. This type of reasoning by analogy cannot be captured with the use of crisp sets yet we use it all the time." Yuri Kuzyk from Entry 146.

29. "It is through the act of translating into Aristotelian based logic that we suddenly force meaning to reside in a piece of "information" rather than the context from which it has been separated." Yuri Kuzyk from Entry 146.

30. ".... the question is not what type of freedom is best, but to what degree are we willing to consume the world to maintain [the illusion of freedom]". Ken Bell from the Challenge the Philosophy Message Board.

31. ".... it appears that what things come down to in terms of humanity, is who has the power to say and enforce what they perceive to be right or wrong." Stephen Garvey from the Challenge the Philosophy Message Board.

32. ".... if during a typical lifetime of 70 years or so (a period comprised of approximately 2.2 billion seconds) we are able to know who we are for even a second, or even a millisecond during that period, we shall know who we are and be who we are simultaneously, and the proposition is overcome." Steve Burwen from Entry 198

33. ".... [the human] brain is thousands, probably millions, of times more complex than the most powerful computer we can build-- not bad for a blob of "mere matter" that weighs only 3 pounds." Steve Burwen from Entry 209

34. "The real solution [to the proposition] is not so much a solution as a constant criticism of the proposition proposed here which is then spurred to presenting itself in other ways to incorporate the criticisms." Sam Nico from Entry 270

35. "The empty centre [of existence] will never be filled to completion, but its scope can be reduced by representing that which is currently not part of the picture." Sam Nico from Entry 272

36. "... without criticism, views would pave the way to their own isolation and ultimately become only one short step removed from solipsism, which is why it is imperative that ideas remain open in character and welcoming of criticism." Sam Nico from Entry 272

37. "... there must be recognition of the limitations to thought imposed by the scientific perspective which philosophy must resist if it is to have a role to play in the structure of reality, or be condemned to the same round of ideas that have merely altered their cosmetic form since Newton (and others), in an attempt to escape the infinite regress to which it is clearly addicted." Sam Nico from Entry 272

38. "It is up to ourselves to refute scientific perspectives if we want to change our course, by using the very basis for scientific perspectives, reason." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 272

39. "There is no fixed reference, just a relationship between the observer and observed." Yuri Kuzyk from the Challenge the Philosophy Message Board.

40. "If one looks back through the history of scientific development one sees that before any paradigm shift science was always just plain wrong. That is, scientists used the "[experimental] method" to prop up theory that in hindsight was not "correct" at all." Yuri Kuyzk from the Challenge the Philosophy Message Board.

41. "I would say a very large number of people believe scientific method is outside of the language-game, and this gives them a psychological crutch for committing acts that future generations will pay dearly for." Yuri Kuzyk from the Challenge the Philosophy Message Board.

42. "True knowledge is not a necessity for knowledge." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 282

43. "Experimental method cannot be tested by experimental method." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 284

44. "Since formalized reasons [viz., scientific reasons] apparently do not have absolute truth-value, they cannot replace unformalized reasons as [humanity's] fundamental guide [and science's own guide]." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 303

45. "The only possible way to know who one truly is, is if one is." Doug Blanchard from Entry 371

46. "There is no necessity that in order to know or think, and thereby be, that we need self-knowledge with absolute truth-value." Stephen Garvey from the response to Entry 371

47. "... the rules of logic themselves cannot be logically proven: so how do we know that A=A? To take another example, we can say that "I think, therefore I am"--but how do I know that I think? These sorts of statements ("A=A" or "I think") do not come from logic, but they do come from us. They come from a part that is anterior to, or superior to, the logical reasoning brain." Kenny Felder from Entry 373

48. "Yet Competition 1 aspires to touch something greater, something deeper - in fact, I believe that it aspires to explore the relationship between (B-series) existence [(‘linear time’) - Earlier, (Simultaneously), Later] and (A-series) knowledge [(‘tensed time’) - Past, Present, Future]." Nick Pelling from Entry 444

49. "In order for the presented argument "we cannot (more reasonably) truly know ourselves in part or in whole and be ourselves at the same time" to be valid, it must survive the counterarguments." Dennis Stawicki from Entry 510

50. "Truth is not something that you ‘find’ it is something that you create and abide by. And as your ‘truth’ changes... so do you." Sabrina from Entry 541

51. "We will [within limits] never be who we are now again." Thomas Davies from Entry 542

To view the quotations based on categories see quotes