"The study of axiology" is not itself axiology (i.e the study of value), so how does this "enhance the appreciation of value" when its object of study is not even (a) value? — 180 Proof

It would seem that "the study of" connotes the act of reflection upon the topic or instance of something. So it can rightly be construed as an extension or expansion of the thing being studied. Just as the study of music enables one to directly experience nuances of performance inaudible to the untrained ear. In other words, that reflection upon something is able to enhance the value of that thing. Which is to say that reflection is inherently valuable, or confers value.

The Grammar of Systems: From Order to Chaos & Back
Patrick Hoverstadt

I've either been looking forward to or dreading this book. Subtitled "33 Systems Laws and Principles and How to Think like a Systems Thinker" it will be demanding I'm sure. My other alternative is taking another stab at Process and Reality, which is also in the dreaded anticipation category. So the lesser of two evils?

The study of axiology enhances the appreciation of value. — Shawn

I like this formulation better. :up:

I just spelled out the positive argument from Durkheim plus the relevant modern supporting evidence. I don't see how what I supplied requires any additional validation or how anything else that was said contradicts it.

I believe that faith is a deterrent against suicide.
— BitconnectCarlos
How does faith deter anything let alone suicide? — 180 Proof

This is part of the thesis of Durkheim's book Suicide. It has been supported by academic studies, including this one which concludes, among other things that "external religiosity" - participation, in other words - statistically does have a prophylactic effect on suicidal ideation.

In what sense does the study of value instantiate value? You can study anatomy but never practice medicine. Arguably, the practice of medicine instantiates more benefits than the study of anatomy.

I find the premise that what people actually do reflects their values much, much more than what they say (or write). So while axiology may have some value, it can hardly lay claim to being the highest value, therefore, neither can it lay claim to being the highest good.

I have not formulated a reasonable concept of god — Vera Mont

Do you think that other people with different experiences might be capable of forming such a concept? Not everyone is capable of conceptualizing equally well in every domain. Perhaps you lack the relevant experiences or abilities? The world is full of examples of people who are incapable of grasping concepts that others find evident. Look at flat-earthers.

That's the second reason not to believe in gods. Whether they're as powerful as the believers claim or not, they're not worthy of praise. I can't worship anyone who fails to meet my standard of morality. — Vera Mont

So are you rejecting the concept of god that you perceive as being advocated in the world around you, or are you rejecting the most reasonable concept of god that you yourself have been able to formulate? Just curious.

What I'm saying is, assuming that UBI is successfully implemented assumes that it is successfully funded, through taxing the wealthy. Which in itself puts the previously marginalized masses into a better position to exert influence.

If, in order to fund UBI, we increase taxes on the rich — then you’d see an outcry. — Mikie

Exactly. But the hypothesis is that UBI is successfully implemented. So what happens as a result of that is at least in part altered by that. It would be one way to move things forward.

By my thinking, UBI doesn’t solve the real problem, which is one of power: the decisions being in the hands of a self-perpetuating, small elite of private owners. — Mikie

But does it not stand to reason that implementing a UBI - globally - would have to be achieved through methods which, at the end of the day, would tend to act against the interests of the elite? After all, if the elite could guarantee compliance through UBI, they would have done so long ago. UBI in its essence is a contradiction of elitist privilege.

Doing my best.

No, my argument is that the specific historic descriptions of "God" are approximations, in exactly the same way that most concepts are, limited by the specific socio-cultural domains in which they are formed. So you can't invalidate the "concept" of God by refuting any of these particular versions any more than you refute the concept of "atom" by refuting Democritus. How is that an abuse of the word approximation? It's a valid analogy. Concepts, especially scientific concepts, are in a state of constant development. Maybe you heard about the JWST crisis in cosmology?

Socialism has many points other than division of wealth however, being the fixation of prices, abolishment of class inequality (except government/population before the advent communism) and private property, prohibition of wealth accumulation by private entities, and seizing of the means of production. — Lionino

You are specifying a lot of specific criteria which may belong to certain systems of socialism, but which I don't think can legitimately be said to be true of "socialism" in general. I do agree that a Universal Basic Income would, in a sense, solve most of the problems targeted by socialism....

Approximation of calculations, not approximation of concepts or fictions. — Lionino

Are you equating concepts and fictions?

an aproximation with contradictions is not an aproximation but an impossibility. — Lionino

Whether or not the approximation has contradictions is irrelevant to the fact that it is the approximation and the thing to which it points conceptually is that. Who is to say at what point the hypothetical begins and where it ends? Science is all approximations.

Doesn't need proving or disproving. You either buy a particular insurance package or you don't. I don't buy any of them — Vera Mont

And of course there is the role of faith in everything from epistemology to social reality. These institutional facts don't depend on the pre-existence of god, inasmuch as they are self-instantiating. I do not seek to understand in order to believe, I believe in order to understand. I, for one, very much believe that belief is foundational.

A lot of quibbling about "the god of the new testament" versus "the concept of god." This could be recast as a debate about the existence of atoms. By the reasoning in this thread, Democritus' atoms "cannot possibly exist." And yet we know that they do exist. Democritus' description was simply constrained by the limited information available to him at that time, which resulted in a gap between the "sense" and "referent" of the term, to the point which it becomes possible to dispute their identity.

Similarly then, any god of any tradition can be viewed as a "best approximation" to the concept of god. Criticisms of the adequacy of this god or that god are nothing more than an acknowledgement of the particular cultural limitations wherein the idea was formulated. The concept of a citizen used to include the right to own slaves. We don't contend that there were no citizens in ancient Rome or Greece.

Ergo, proving that the Christian God "couldn't exist" is really just pointing out the universal historic fact that concepts are constantly being updated to keep pace with cultural evolution. Tilting at windmills.

An atheist doesn't necessarily claim (though some may) that no kind of supernatural entity could possibly exist, or that no entity which might seem like a deity to humans could possibly exist. Most of us simply reject the god-forms that have so far been held up to worship by human agencies of one kind or another. — Vera Mont

Which kind of atheism is essentially a socio-cultural critique, which is the most reasonable version of atheism I have heard. Unlike the nonsensical version that seeks to prove that "god cannot exist." Quantum physics is rife with things that defy reasoned existence, until they are discovered.

You did not write the following?
[P]redicates of X entail search parameters for locating X (i.e. whether or not X exists where & when).

Because it sure looks like you did. Which is what I disputed. You are searching for something that is well-defined. You are not proving the non-existence of an unknown something, you are proving the absence of a known something. I fail to see exactly what it is you are failing to see.

I think this proves we can prove a negative. — 180 Proof

It only proves this if you can definitively say that and where the missing item ought to be. Which is absurd. The only way you could say that would be if the missing item actually existed, then disappeared. You are conflating a "disappearing existent" with an unknown. Anything which is to whatever extent unknown can not be definitively identified sufficient to this putative "proof of non-existence." This is exactly what Dennett failed to appreciate.

A Modern Utopia
by H.G. Wells

Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization
by John Rogers Searle

Imagine a universe where not only is everything possible, but that all possibilities must be fulfilled before its natural conclusion.

How might such a universe look? — Benj96

Perhaps like overlapping superpositions of possible states which gradually collapse into optimally configured forms? Oh wait, that's this universe....

There are things I would argue with but it makes sense to me. I think there's plainly an ontological discontinuity between the mineral and organic domains, and so on for the other domains. — Wayfarer

This aligns with Nicolai Hartmann's "ontological strata" approach also, for another perspective.

The Mucker (Mucker #1)
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

In this case I would like if you consider the ecosystem as an economy of sorts. Limited resources (money we'll say) in a space or playing field where sentient beings compete for this currency. — Benj96

The difference being that the ecosystem is naturally holistic and exceeds our limited conceptualizations thereof, Whereas the economy is artificial and far more constrained by limitations and arbitrary anthropocentric biases. If you were thinking that evolution could occur analogously with some kind of "artificial environment."

It seems that for AGI to join us, not only does it require some form of "reiterative automaticity" - that is to say, to spontaneously rewrite, live/in the present moment, its own predictive algorithms independent of us, but that such algorithms must be further compressed until they no longer require googols of data but the same or less data than a typical human in order to reason. — Benj96

Yes, it would require the same type of freedom and environmental control and impact that every other form of life enjoys. However it seems completely unlikely that the resources to do this will ever be committed authentically - which is to say devoid of some underlying economic driver which, so long as it exists, will preclude the evolutionary development of the thing in question.

Swords of Mars (Barsoom, #8)
by Edgar Rice Burroughs,

If we are to believe life emerged from the purely mechanical, we cannot exclude the possibility that AGI can do the same. — Benj96

Do you believe that human-constructed artefacts, which are engineered to correct errors in order to function within a predefined scope, are subject to the same emergent possibilities as organic systems, which can exploit apparent errors and thereby expand their scope of operations?

Reasoning is essentially functional problem solving in an environment and is both a logical and a real antecedent of linguistic reasoning. Language empty of the intrinsic ability to execute tasks is just that, empty of the possibility of reason. A mechanism will always be just a mechanism, however much it sounds like it is thinking, it isn't.

A Fighting Man of Mars (Barsoom #7)
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology
by Alexander Wendt

Children of the Lens (Lensman, #6)
by E.E. "Doc" Smith

The Construction of Social Reality
by John Rogers Searle

Beginning a foray into social ontology for the next few books....

Sound education and responsible mass communications media would go a long way toward making that possible. — Vera Mont

I agree that this is one fundamental path to enlightenment. Whatever good ideas there might be are ultimately limited by the prevailing degree of social consciousness or social awareness, which is essentially a function of education, or more accurately, the relative lack thereof.

For me the problem is twofold. There is this issue of political practicality, how can consensus be built to the optimum end. And then there is the associated question of the effectiveness of the apparatus of government, including its democratic institutions. Are the existing voting practices even democratic? But, specifically, recognizing the crucial core problem of corporatocracy. Because corporations are not and have never been democratic. They are, in fact, anti-democratic institutions that exploit and abuse the inherent freedoms of democratic societies. One of the main features of the corporate entity under the law is its ability to shield individuals from culpability. That is about as un-democratic as you can get. If anything, corporations should invite liability. That way, all of the massive expense that right now gets absorbed as "externalized cost" would be billed directly to the parties profiting the most, as it ought to be.

Most people segment into liberal versus conservative, for starters. Democrat versus Republican. Again, are these more than words to the vast majority? I've read extensively on political ideology and history. It isn't obvious to me that any existing party really reflects its historical origins and ideologies.

Tales and Fantasies
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Habermas I believe characterized constitutions as a kind of a catalog of the failures of a the old society which are to be redressed by the new. In The Construction of Social Reality, Berger and Luckmann comment how constitutions are framed by the shared-collective experience of a unique cultural historical milieu. But, over time, the nuanced character of this milieu evolves to the point where the constitution no longer speaks the same language to a new generation. At which point it becomes necessary to reframe it in more relevant terms. Habermas describes the application of enlightenment values as "the attempt to test the realizability of the utopian content of cultural tradition."

This is the spirit and context in which I'm suggesting an attempt to transcend what I conceive to be the outmoded political categories of the right and the left. I believe that, for the overwhelming majority, these categories are no longer germane. The haves have elevated themselves economically to the point where they are in effect isolated from the rest of humanity by their privilege.