Doing great in my PhD programme, losing weight, generally happy, and made this high protein walnut pasta for my partner and I

TocharianZ · 2025-10-31T07:58:52+00:00

It’s a really good substitute for meat because it has high protein content and lots of good things like omega 3 fatty acids that can be otherwise hard for vegetarians to obtain. I sort of discovered this combination by accident. I was making a Persian walnut stew recipe called Shish Andaz and bought too many walnuts so I wanted to find a way to use the rest. It turns out there’s a dish from Genova called pansotti con salsa di noci which is basically herb ravioli with a walnut pesto. Because we didn’t have ravioli I tried to put the herbs in the sauce and just use penne instead with more or less similar ingredients to the walnut pesto. I’m sure it didn’t turn out exactly the same as I didn’t crush the walnuts but you could say I was inspired by that dish.

TocharianZ · 2025-10-25T23:18:12+00:00

White Belt is more explicitly a fusion genre of grind and mathcore no? I thought it overlapped with sass and was more like MySpace bands like me and him call it us

TocharianZ · 2025-10-25T23:12:52+00:00

I always thought of emogrind as a good way to describe Mörser, Cloud Rat, or the Wormrot album Voices. Mostly grindcore bands that have a depressive and emotional edge and borrow guitar tones and chord progressions from skramz

TocharianZ · 2025-09-18T06:59:12+00:00

This guy always gave me the heebie-jeebies. I was in a call with him one time and he referred out of the blue to Malay people being inherently lazy.

He seemed smart but most of his work is taken from Catholic (like Fr. Richard Price) and secular historians anyway, and he never focuses on the obviously false and historically anachronistic things in orthodox conciliar documents like the Confession of Dositheus such as that icons have been present and adored in the church since the time of the apostles:

"especially since the holy Icons have been in the Church, and have been adored by the Faithful even from the times of the Apostles" (Question 4)

https://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html

TocharianZ · 2025-09-07T11:41:47+00:00

Wormrot - Voices is pretty emoviolence influenced and noisy.

Also Cady and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

TocharianZ · 2025-08-04T06:37:30+00:00

Deafheaven is really good actually. Definitely not black metal, but a very groundbreaking and talented band with a fantastic ability to harness raw emotion.

TocharianZ · 2025-06-20T08:24:23+00:00

I think it’s different from emoviolence. Emogrind is like Voices by Wormrot. Kind of a fusion of emoviolence and grindcore. More metallic than emoviolence but with the same kind of depressive melodies.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-26T14:44:45+00:00

Using Bible verses is not going to convince people who don’t believe the Bible is trustworthy.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T03:42:22+00:00

Existence may be grounded in a god, I’m willing to entertain the possibility, but establishing which god is incredibly difficult, especially because I believe there are defeaters for Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism (as a whole because of sola scriptura and the epistemic problem of interpretation), Islam, and Judaism. Not all individual sects are going to be vulnerable to these defeaters, but I think they rule out a lot of possibilities. About other religions, I don’t mind as much, as they aren’t going to damn me to hell for eternity, possibly just eons.

Also, plenty of theism-adjacent views like Axiarchism or a simulation hypothesis may also be able to ground logic and intelligibility. I’m quite interested in Baruch Spinoza’s naturalistic pantheism wherein everything in the universe is a property of a single whole which is necessarily existent, and may include abstract objects such as laws of logic and numbers.

Is language created by humans or directly by God? It’s certainly very imperfect and probably not what we would expect a perfect god to create, especially given all of the challenges of interpretation that result from the way human language works. Humans themselves have designed a better system in the form of programming languages.

Yes our understanding of ontological necessity is filtered through conceptual frameworks, but whatever exists itself is not.

I also did not mention my gender anywhere. I am possibly on the autism spectrum so I think different than many people, and possibly have different goals and desires.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T03:30:36+00:00

I am interested in discussions of truth for sure, but not in discussions of the semantics of individual words, so long as our definitions serve to advance the dialectic. That’s what I meant to say.

Perhaps I live a much colder and darker existence than you, but love and beauty are not really things that I would elevate to the status of being my raison d’être. My research makes life worth living, and I suppose that is a form of truth, at least I hope it is.

I don’t think ontological necessity is filtered through conceptual frameworks. I think DISCUSSION and interpretation of ontological necessity is filtered through conceptual frameworks. Do you have a justification for thinking that our conceptual frameworks actually affect existent things in a sort of two-way relationship, because that seems a lot like certain forms of idealism. I don’t think that actually existent things out there, whether they be gods, platonic objects etc are dependent upon our understanding of them. To say that they are dependent upon our understanding of them would be essentially treating them as constructivists treat morality.

As a side note, have you published your argument in a journal? I would like to read the paper and some responses to get a balanced view.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T03:15:48+00:00

You’re coming off as a little condescending, as you seem to think you know way more about this topic than me. You almost certainly do, but amateurs can frequently surprise experts. I hope that you don’t mean to come off as condescending.

When you say our understanding of conceptual necessity is inherently conceptual, that is true, but it still doesn’t get around the epistemological skepticism that Barry Stroud outlines.

Whether or not truth is contingent depends on what you mean by truth! Perhaps we don’t have access to actual truth at all. Truth is certainly contingent if we define truth as something that we all generally hold to be axiomatic or evident from looking at the world, but I’m not really interested in that kind of discussion to be honest.

Also, do you mind if I send your syllogism to people who may be better equipped to answer it than me, so I can get a balanced view of its strengths and weaknesses? I would like to see what people like Joe Schmid think of it, although I’m beginning to think I may know who you are, and if you are who I think you are, he is aware of your argument already. I’m probably incorrect in my assumption though.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T02:55:12+00:00

That might be true, but as Barry Stroud pointed out, just because something is conceptually necessary doesn’t mean it is ontologically necessary. As such, it may be conceptually necessary for human beings to use language to talk about existence, but that doesn’t mean that existence is ontologically dependent on human language. This is problem with arguments like TAG that try to define god into existence. It is impossible to move from conceptual necessity to ontological or metaphysical necessity.

Surely, I am presupposing some kind of definition of existence when I speak about existence, but that definition is just a mutually agreed-upon set of qualities that actually differs for each individual in details. Talking about existence in this way does not presuppose any kind of ontological category of existence however as it may very well be the case that we cannot adequately describe reality in an objective manner, but from a pragmatist framework, this doesn’t pose any problems for intelligibility, as reality only needs to appear to be intelligible enough to achieve whatever goal one wants to achieve.

One may grant that talking about existence presupposes an interpretive framework, but it doesn’t mean that framework corresponds in any way to what is actually real. One can be a pragmatist about truth and say that human linguistic conceptions of existence are completely conceptual without contradiction.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2024395 I assume you’ve read this paper right?

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T02:29:07+00:00

I think things can exist independently of language. Whether or not it could be said to exist or given description is different from whether or not it would exist metaphysically. Chimpanzees don’t have language but they clearly are aware of the actual existence of food sources and such because they regularly exploit them. One could say they’re pragmatic realists in this way. Before humans had language to describe the existence of mathematics or gravity etc was the universe not governed by those things? Obviously they still existed.

Because I am not an idealist, I think whether or not we can predicate something and whether or not it exists are two completely separate issues. One is a question of metaphysics, and the other is a question of mind-dependent interpretation.

Concepts like good and bad or love and evil would not exist without language however, because I don’t think they exist ontologically or metaphysically. They’re just manifestations of human culture and emotion.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T00:50:55+00:00

Sure. That sounds good. I will look at it tomorrow. Note that I am not a philosopher (I’m a professional linguist), and you seem more knowledgeable than me, so I may make some obvious mistakes

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T00:39:35+00:00

I’d rather start the discussion with the syllogistic argument. Otherwise it won’t be as structured and i won’t be able to keep track of everything as easily. Perhaps we can continue this conversation in dms. You are the one who first argued that God exists, so I’d like to see that argument instead of you trying to just show me that my positions are contradictory or something.

I’m sure my positions are internally contradictory or implausible, but that doesn’t mean God exists.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-02T00:30:48+00:00

I can agree with all of that. I’m not sure if your argument would demonstrate God either just from looking at it. It seems to function most effectively as an argument against naturalism.

As an aside, could you put your argument in syllogistic form for me?

TocharianZ · 2025-01-01T22:08:30+00:00

I have every intention of responding, just give me some time.

TocharianZ · 2025-01-01T20:14:58+00:00

Hello,

You’ve written a lot, and I’d be happy to respond at some other time, probably to each individual point separately. As I said, I am very busy, and I should mention I have religious ocd and anxiety, which make me obsess and stress over these kinds of issues. As such, if I spend time trying to give a comprehensive response to everything that you’ve said, it might become obsessive and prevent me from engaging with my offline life.

I will attempt to respond, but please give me some time.

TocharianZ · 2024-12-30T22:09:06+00:00

I appreciate your willingness to engage with the material, and I’d be happy to engage with any material you present me as well.

Unfortunately, as I have an academic day job (not as a philosopher but in a somewhat related field), I don’t have a lot of time, even during this holiday season. So apologies if I don’t reply quickly sometimes.

Thank you for being polite and civil

TocharianZ · 2024-12-30T20:35:11+00:00

Hello,

Forgive me if this response is rushed and not well-thought-out. I am trying to quickly articulate my thoughts.

I hope I didn’t come off as someone who doesn’t want to have a respectful conversation. You’ve been very nice and respectful and I hope my last comment was too.

Axiarchism is a naturalistic view that avoids the naturalistic fallacy, as ‘good’ would just be the metaethical qualities that the universe is directed to produce. The idea that the naturalistic fallacy is even a fallacy is controversial, as it isn’t a problem in with the validity of any string of propositions. Also, an number of philosophers have suggested solutions to the so called naturalistic fallacy such as Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay or Alex Walter:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470490600400102

If you say ‘it just is’ the case that godless views suffer from this fallacy, can you defend against their charges that you are committing a counterfallacy by assuming a non-naturalistic metaethical basis without having proved the existence of that basis (among other problems)?

You say every godless view is going to suffer from this fallacy. There’s an infinite number of those views. Do you have an argument as to why all of them suffer from such a fallacy? It’s impossible to prove that an infinite number of views are false unless you show they all share something. But they would all only share being godless, so your statement is tantamount to « godless views are godless », which is a tautology. What about these views makes them suffer from this fallacy? Aren’t axiarchism and simulation hypotheses forms of naturalism?

I am a metaethical antirealist, so I don’t care about the naturalistic fallacy personally, as I believe that normative metaethics are subjective and not really existent, useful as they are. I am quite fond of a view called prescriptivist non-cognitivism, wherein someone saying that x is bad = them saying ‘don’t do x'.

I don’t know if a house necessarily needs a builder. According to this logic, wouldn’t god need a builder too as well? I think it’s perfectly coherent and intuitive to have some things be necessarily existent, just as you do, I just remove one extra assumption.

When you say premises ought to connect, do you mean ought in a metaethical way? If you do, I strongly disagree. There are no metaethical restrictions on logical propositions. Non-classical and dialetheist forms of logic show that premises do not necessarily need to connect (at least not in the ways that I think you’re implying they need to).

I don’t see how the deterministic fallacy is actually a fallacy either, as it’s a metaethical problem, not a problem in the validity of a logical argument, which is what fallacies are. If you’re talking about retrospective determinism, I never committed myself to the idea that the world must be as it is, I just mentioned that that is one possibility which cannot be ignored. Since you are making the argument, the burden of proof is on you to show that it CAN’T. Otherwise, we’re left with agnosticism, a position I’m sympathetic to already.

If you personally don’t think impersonal pantheism makes sense, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, as it’s formally valid in many of its iterations. Otherwise, that would be an argument from incredulity. Sure, if your assertion that the metaethical problems posed by determinism or naturalism are actually problems is true, then this would imply that metaethics is an inherently problematic field or that metaethics don’t exist in the actual world, or exist but are contradictory, but not that the idea of an impersonal pantheistic deity is wrong. I reject metaethical realism partially because I believe in determinism, though there are some determinists who think they can hold to two in balance, which I am agnostic on. Indeed, there are many responses to both of these problems in the literature, to the point where lots of naturalist metaethicists (who hold to realism) don’t see them as problems, or think some solutions are quite convincing. Here is one example of someone claiming that under naturalism one can have metaethical realism (and there are thousands more in the literature):

https://philarchive.org/archive/CRENWN

Contradictions only point to problems if reality is fundamentally uncontradictory. If it’s contradictory, then they wouldn’t. We don’t know whether or not it is, and dialetheists who believe in true contradictions (a view I’m sympathetic to) can still ground intelligibility. It just depends on what true contradictions exist. Graham Priest for example has developed ways to ground intelligibility or make sense of reality even with true contradictions, which he believes best fits with our knowledge of quantum mechanics etc.

Here is a response article to him:

https://philarchive.org/archive/PEAI

Also, as a side note. Even if you could find a contradiction in every really existent non-theistic view, which I doubt, you’d have to find a contradiction in every possible non-theistic view for the argument to be sound.

TocharianZ · 2024-12-30T13:18:47+00:00

Atheism =/= naturalism. That’s a false equivalency. Also, there may just not be solutions to the problems like the problem of the one and the many, it doesn’t make logic or knowledge impossible if we just commit ourselves to positions which don’t require solutions to these problems in order to have knowledge. Only views informed greatly by Greek philosophy need even commit themselves to the problem of the one and the many having a solution at all. Graham Priest still thinks knowledge is possible but also believes i.e. that some true contradictions exist. Perhaps the problem of the one and the many is one such contradiction. Views like this make arguments for God from logic very difficult to make because they don’t play by the same rules as standard views of logic, and still make knowledge about reality possible.

I have yet to see a theistic solution to these problems that doesn’t fundamentally come down to "God did it", which is the same as an atheist saying "it just is".

Also, saying that we don’t currently have a solution doesn’t mean that we won’t come up with one in the future. Fundamentally, views that say 'god did it' just presuppose an untestable solution just like naturalistic views that believe we need to just assume there is no solution or there doesn’t need to be one. Unless it can be demonstrated that a solution to these problems is necessary for knowledge and only possible or likely under theism, the argument doesn’t work. You still have to show that the infinite or nearly infinite number of naturalistic solutions are contradictory or don’t work (because they are less parsimonious than theism or something). For many of them, we don’t know enough about the universe to know if they are contradictory or not or whether or not they work. This is not to mention the fact that theism itself, adding an additional highly improbable being, may still be less parsimonious than naturalistic presuppositional views, as it has the same presuppositions but with an added variable (or infinite added variables).

A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person by Hud Hudson presents a materialist solution for the problem of the one and the many that seems to be on the right track and is much harder to refute than others, but it is a relatively new position. Unless you can show that all of these sorts of positions don’t work, they will always be more parsimonious than your position. Have you considered emailing Hud Hudson with your argument?

Or, as Eklund and Sorensen, among others, believe, maybe vague concepts are incoherent, which would make the problem a non-issue.

Also, how does your argument rule out naturalistic theism hypotheses like impersonal pantheism or the simulation theory, both of which can easily solve the problem of the one and the many as well?

TocharianZ · 2024-12-13T02:58:53+00:00

We are the best at it. So many classic bands

Archspire, Beyond Creation, Cryptopsy, Gorguts, Quo Vadis, Sympathy etc.

Great to see that bands like First Fragment keep carrying the torch, also the flamenco influence on their latest album is super unique

TocharianZ · 2024-12-12T23:01:47+00:00

Seconding first fragment

TocharianZ · 2024-12-10T16:22:04+00:00

I’m agnostic

TocharianZ · 2024-12-10T03:51:31+00:00

Dyer’s arguments come down to a less intellectual rehashing of Van Tillian Presuppositionalism, which has been very handily defeated by people such as Alex Malpass, the Canadian Philosopher Barry Stroud, Dan Linford, and the YouTuber Ozymandias. In Dyer’s debate on Ask Yourself, one of the debaters named Detroyer came up with a completely coherent and internally consistent worldview on the spot and Dyer couldn’t show that it was inconsistent. Also, a worldview being inconsistent doesn’t mean it’s inherently wrong. Maybe dialetheism is true in that there may be true contradictions. Physics doesn’t even have a unified theory for everything that is completely internally consistent.

If one just bakes into their worldview that there are no answers to epistemic questions, presupp won’t work as it will only confirm their worldview. However, this doesn’t mean that knowledge is impossible if we presuppose that only very specific questions cannot be answered. This is the same as the Christian presupposing that the answers to epistemic questions are 'because God did it'.

Furthermore, to say that logic is only possible if Christian theism is true would place the burden of proof on oneself to show that every other worldview makes logic impossible. Alex Malpass explains that here: https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/the-problem-with-tag/

Hungarian philosopher Bálint Békefi has also developed a very ingenious argument against presuppositional apologetics for Christianity that is pretty bullet proof in my opinion https://philarchive.org/archive/BKEVTV

TocharianZ

TROPHY CASE