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Although people cannot define existence and do use the term with some looseness, yet it is possible to give an extensive definition by pointing to the sorts of things that everyone believes to exist. It is still easier to point to the sort of entities that people agree in believing not to exist, and happily, this is really what concerns us most. People mean by saying that causation only applies to things that exist that it applies, if at all, to what can change; and they believe that, if anything can change, it is things like chairs and tables and minds, and not those like the propositions of Euclid and the multiplication table. What would be agreed then is that, if causal laws apply to anything it is to what can change in so far as it changes.
--
Perception, Physics, and Reality : An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can Supply about the Real (1914), Ch. 2 : On Causation; and on the Arguments that have been used against Causal Laws

 

C. D. Broad

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I would encourage people to look around them in their community and find an organization that is doing something that they believe in, even if that organization has only five people, or ten people, or twenty people, or a hundred people. And to look at history and understand that when change takes place it takes place as a result of large, large numbers of people doing little things unbeknownst to one another. And that history is very important for people to not get discouraged. Because if you look at history you see the way the labor movement was able to achieve things when it stuck to its guns, when it organized, when it resisted. Black people were able to change their condition when they fought back and when they organized. Same thing with the movement against the war in Vietnam, and the women's movement. History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.

 

Howard Zinn

 

A: "Your objection to the self-evident has no validity. There is no such thing as disagreement. People agree about everything."
B: "That’s absurd; people disagree constantly, and about all kinds of things."
A: "How can they? There’s nothing to disagree about; no subject matter. After all, nothing exists."
B: "Nonsense. All kinds of things exist, you know that as well as I do."
A: "That’s one. You must accept the existence axiom, even to utter the term “disagreement.” But to continue, I still maintain that disagreement is unreal. How can people disagree when they are unconscious beings who are unable to hold any ideas at all?"
B: "Of course people hold ideas. They are conscious beings. You know that."
A: "There’s another axiom, but even so, why is disagreement about axioms a problem? Why should it suggest that one or more of the parties is mistaken? Perhaps all of the people who disagree about the very same point are equally, objectively right."
B: "That’s impossible. If two ideas contradict each other, they can’t both be right. Contradictions can’t exist in reality. After all, A is A."
Existence, consciousness, identity are presupposed by every statement and by every concept, including that of "disagreement." … In the act of voicing his objection, therefore, the objector has conceded the case. In any act of challenging or denying the three axioms, a man reaffirms them, no matter what the particular content of this challenge. The axioms are invulnerable.
The opponents of these axioms pose as defenders of truth, but it is only a pose. Their attack on the self-evident amounts to the charge. "Your belief in an idea doesn't necessarily make it true; you must prove it, because facts are what they are independent of your beliefs." Every element of this charge relies on the very axioms that these people are questioning and supposedly setting aside.

 

Leonard Peikoff

 

OBAMA: Now, I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books, but that doesn't mean I don't know very well the real pain and heartbreak that deportations cause. I share your concerns and I understand them. And I promise you, we are responding to your concerns and working every day to make sure we are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane and best possible way. Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. [Applause] And believe me, right now dealing with Congress —
AUDIENCE: Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can!
OBAMA: Believe me — believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. [Laughter] I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. [Laughter] But that's not how — that's not how our system works.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Change it!
OBAMA: That’s not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written. So let’s be honest. I need a dance partner here — and the floor is empty.

 

Barack Obama

 

Theoretically, if everyone that disagrees with the lie that has been imposed upon us--tomorrow...if everyone got up and said...'I'm not going to enable the lie anymore'--you would have nonviolent change--and you would have quick change--because the system goes upon our self-rationalizations and self-justifications and insecurity. ...That's how it works and it has turned all of us against each other through distortion...The one thing [these people] fear...is that we would use our minds [to] attempt to see clearly...[and our] apathy makes us the enemy of our descendents. ...They want us to be in a position where all we think about is ourselves...We need to use our minds *to think things through*...[E]verybody is trying to find a way out from the mess they're in and they're using these dark age intellectualizations and remaining confined in these concepts of Freud and all the rest of these people.

 

John Trudell

 

I started hearing from families who had missing members, many of them young kids on our campus, and they all would describe the same sorts of things. A sudden change of personality, a new way of talking...and then they would disappear. And bingo, it was the same sort of thing as with the Korean War prisoners, the same sort of thought-reform and social controls. You find it again and again, any time people feel vulnerable. There are always sharpies around who want to hornswoggle people.

 

Margaret Singer