Thus — Bartricks

Self-referential paradox results. You're offering us a reason why there are no reasons. You just killed yourself!

Even so, most intriguing

Holism is not the opposite of reductionism! — Bartricks

Why?

You do realize Gnomon doesn't know what he's talking about? — Bartricks

There you're likely mistaken. Who am I though to speak for @Gnomon. If you have any issues, take it up with the man himself.

Gnomon seems to be confusing holism with 'whole-ism'. — Bartricks

Expand and elaborate, please.

There's an infinite number of numbers which no human has ever thought of. What's the point in trying to name a random one of these? Here's one for you though, which might be worthwhile. Try naming pi to its final decimal place. That's a meaningful number which no one has ever thought of. — Metaphysician Undercover

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

They aren't mental objects. — Tate

Why? Explain with examples. Danke in advance.

I don't know. — Tate

:Ok:

Perhaps Art48 can clear up thd matter.

Please wait...

Abstract objects don't "exist" in any particular mind. Pi is an abstract object. It's not a resident of my mind in the way my grocery list is. I can't be wrong about my grocery list. I can be wrong about pi. It's that sort of thing. — Tate

Abstract objects, last I checked, have been, at the very least, more closely associated with the mind than the physical world. So, taking this simple intuition to its logical conclusion, I ask, again, what object, if any, is purely mental?

Also, for the moment, ignore the notion of abstract(ion) and give me an example, if there is one, of an object that's exclusively mind, having no connection at all with the physical world.

Technique: A certain way of accomplishing a task, How does a musician play a given piece? How does a particular artist execute a painting? Quirks/Idiosyncracies receive full expression here. Doesn't require practice, comes naturally and is unique to the individual.

Skill: Synonymous with proficiency i.e. how familiar one is with the tools/instruments (of art). Requires practice, has to be learned that is and is generic.

:snicker:

@Bartricks

I have this feeling you're conflating debunking with unnecessary.

True that as per evolution, there needn't be actual reasons (to believe/do) [unnecessary] even when we believe there are but from this it doesn't follow that there really are no reasons (to do believe) [actuality]. You can't go from possibility to actuality like that, no sir, you can't!

@Art48

It seems I do have something more to say about so-called abstract objects. Can you give me an example, one will do, of a pure abstract object and by that I mean an (abstract) object that has no links whatsoever with the physical world? It should exist only in the mind is what I'm saying.

Now, if you want to do philosophy, try and reject one of Berkeley's premises without assuming that materialism is true. — Bartricks

:fire:

Only a true blue philosopher would say that!

Why is it I think you are not serious? :smile: — jgill

:blush: I'm serious but looks like my idea is ridiculous.

You can be serious and playful at the same time in philosophy. That's part of the fun. — Cuthbert

Muchas gracia señor! You took the sting out of jgill's remark.

Sure, just fix whatever large number you wish and round off to that number. — jgill

Well, I was hoping that a seasoned mathematician like yourself could bring some precision to N_max. For the last coupla years I've been thinking of very large numbers and the way I do it is pick a number at random and raise it to a power that's large and also random e.g. $23^{2017^{3138934}}$. Much to my amazement I found a youtube video on the topic of thinking of a number which no human has ever thought of on the channel Numberphile. It seems that if one is systematic and methodical one can do better than just guesswork.

Lovely exposition! Kudos & danke!

My friend used to keep telling me, when in an inebriated state, "Smith, 2 + 2 $\neq$ 4". :snicker:

:snicker:

We have to play our cards right and we'll get through this antinatalist phase in one piece. That said, life, there's lotta room for improvement and we have, over the past few centuries, managed to better our lot even if at the expense of other life. Guilty pleasures, that's all that's on offer at the moment. If not eliminate, like you said (morphine), minimize suffering (@180 Proof ).

Transhumanism, refreshingly upbeat! I like it - it acknowledges the problem of suffering (nod to antinatalism) but then goes on to say that we can, get this, abolish suffering (nod to natalism).

Most interesting, oui? — Ms. Marple & Hercule Poirot

Yup, the number N_max would differ with what one chooses to count as 1.

That said, I was hoping to find a number such that

1. No calculation ever would exceed that number

2. if in an equation with $\infty$ in it, replacing $\infty$ with the number (N_max) allows us to, at the very least, approximate the state of affairs, mathematically.

Physicists tend to throw their hands up in the air with disgust mixed with utter frustration when they see $\infty$ when number crunching. My post is an attempt to, as you rightly pointed out, cheat the system if possible.

Danke again for your helpful analysis although I must admit some of it is above my pay grade.

Our reproductive strategy gives us a clue about what we were up against - we were prey, on our toes 24×7. Imagine what that would've meant for young children, having to constantly scan the surroundings for predators looking for an easy meal which we were. Our biology betrays the truth about ancient human life - like Locke said, "short, brutish, and nasty".

Things have improved, thanks to our brains! Had prehistoric humans had the time to think things through, mass suicide would've meant the end of humanity. Muchas gracias tigers, leopards, lions, wild dogs, and the occasional coyote for keeping us from pondering upon the nastiness of life by constantly harrassing us - we owe our very existence to you! :snicker:

Let's meet halfway as I've been suggesting, unknowingly, all along. Those who can guarantee a reasonable degree of comfort for their children are welcome to procreate but those who can't should use contraceptives/avail of abortion clinics/at the very least, have fewer kids. Life isn't jannat, but it ain't jahanam either. For reasons that are not too hard to see the exact opposite is the case - the poor, the represntative of the suffering lot, have larger families than the rich, the spokespeople of those who can provide a comfortable life for their children. It's as if we're being led up the garden path and whose operation is this? Ours! :snicker:

@Gnomon & @OP

Reductionism: 1 + 2 = 3. Everything about the whole (3) is explicable in terms of its parts (1, 2).

Holism: 2H + O = H₂O. As Gnomon pointed out, wetness (water) is inexplicable with the properties of hydrogen or oxygen.

What about the observable universe? I read somewhere that the observable universe contains roughly 10⁸⁰ atoms. That should be a good place to start at least when it comes to matter, oui?

By the way thanks for the detailed analysis of my query, much obliged!

a
Well, in line with what you said, antinatalism probably spawned in a fit of severe depression and to that extent its validity is questionable.

Like all things, antinatalism isn't meant for everybody, being reserved as it were for extreme suffering, the kind that makes Thanatos a friend instead of his usual role as a foe in people's lives. Nobody wants to go to hell for sure! That should make natalists think a thousand times before they go preaching door to door.

No. It's better to stare blankly than to dumb down mathematics to what can fit in our small pointy heads. You'll be banning irrational numbers next, if you haven't already. — unenlightened

I was proposing a test-drive, you know, just to find out what happens. In all likelihood there's a number that would make us go "Yeah, this is it! It all makes sense now!" and that number is probably going to be unimaginably large but finite.

Note: We can't do (normal) math with $\infty$. That's what I'm looking to find a workaround for .$\infty$, as per some well-known scientists, pops up in physics equations more often than we would've liked.

I have no further comment on abstract objects, but I do have something to say about all these purported "illusions" the mind creates. If the mind does do this, then everything is suspect vis-à-vis their reality including the so-called truth which is revealed later on. Oui?

Secondly, the generalization from such "illusions" is dubious - just because of a few examples of perceptual illusions, it doesn't imply the world itself is an illusion à la maya or Plato's cave allegory. Going from local to global, bad move sir/ma'am! :snicker:

We all have to die some day.

Better to die a human than live as an animal. — Tzeentch

I don't know if I should give you a :up: or not for that comment!

Many have taken the route you recommend, but some haven't and that's what's interesting. I'm on the verge of becoming an antinatalist which, now that I think about it, seems to be stage in what psychiatrists term suicidal ideation that has global potential if you catch my drift. I must think this over more carefully. Suiciders can't procreate! A surefire way of proving one's point...in style, oui monsieur?

How unfortunate that some are faced with such painful dilemmas. However, ahimsa and one other thing which you're already aware of of course.

I was told that gravity slows time down and hence the acolytes of Einstein claim that frequent flyers live longer than their twins/birthday cohorts (by a few nanoseconds) :snicker: With the entire mass of the cosmos compressed into the singularity of the Big Bang, time didn't flow/pass i.e. time didn't exist before the Big Bang. So yeah @180 Proof there is "no north of the North Pole".

:chin:

Consider two camps: in mine, everything is metaphysics. In the other, everything we call metaphysics is nonsense. For me, it is clear: all basic level inquiry leads to indeterminacy, whether is it about quantum physics or my cat. Ask me what my cat is, where it is, how old it is, if my cat exists, properties my cat has, etc., and I will show you the road to deconstructing my cat into oblivion, referring to all knowledge claims that make cats cats and fence posts fence posts. Time seems particularly fragile because it falls apart so readily. Yesterday? You mean that-which-is-not-this-occurrent-event? Something outside "outside" an occurrent event? No sense can be made of this. Such a thing is unwitnessable.
What does this entail? It depends on how interested the inquirer is. You start putting everything into play in terms of basic meanings, then the world can fall apart. After all, what makes the world what it is a learned phenomenon. We "make" the world from moment to moment. The question is an intrusion, undoing certainty, useful for solving problems. Metaphysics is simply the final problem, which is where religion usually dominates. But religion is reducible to philosophy.

Philosophy's purpose is to eventually replace religion. — Constance

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

All inquiry eventually ends but not in clarity but in confusion. There are always some presuppositions that haven't been examined in the philosophical sense i.e. they were put into service as (vague) intuitions - like @Clarky keeps reminding us about how metaphysics is about utility rather than truth notwithstanding truth is most useful...or not (lies can be quite handy as well).

$\frac{1}{\infty}$

If we substitute $\infty$ with 1000, we get 0.001 which to an accuracy to the hundredths is 0.00 or 0.

We go from undefined to defined (with caveats). Isn't that better than just staring blankly at a page with $\infty$ in an equation?

Just don’t set it too low, in case we need one more. — Luke

Good call!

Your supposition may not be valid. But entertaining idea. — jgill

Yeah.

Nevertheless, I wanna know, how shall I put it?, the largest finite number that would be required for science. Clearly we don't know how to do math with infinity and hence our inability to wrap our heads around phenomena such as black holes (re Michio Kaku). Ergo, we need to keep numbers finite in our science equations. For instance, in the equations for black holes, why not substitute a very large number (N_max) for infinity wherever, whenever it appears and then see what happens?

Would you or would you not put down an animal who is beyond help but suffering (intensely)? That is to say are you for or against mercy killing? I'd wager you aren't averse to putting the suffering out of their misery with a coup de grâce.

Some of us are in a whole lotta pain, mental/physical/both; so much pain in fact that such folks would even describe their existence as hell! Wouldn't you then honor their request to die (rather than suffer)? If such cases exist and one simply can't ensure that one's children won't ever end up in a similar situation, would you still want to have kids? First of all there's the anguish of not wanting to live and to add insult to injury one has to experience the agony of dying too.

In QG, the planck era ("BB") occurred at the planck scale for which classical metrics (e.g. distance, interval, causality) do not apply. This is why the attempt to reconcile GR and QFT in a "ToE" is so intractably difficult. — 180 Proof

I see. :up: We've arrived at a place beyond which what you'll say further on will go over my head. Au revoir.

I'm gonna tat because I get a tit in return! :snicker:

Buddha is to karma as Newton is to Newton's 3^rd law of motion (action = reaction).

Conservation laws, like spacetime, apply within – immanent to – the (this) universe. Mass-energy belongs to the (this) universe which is not "eternal" (except in Einstein's time-reversible equations). IMO, the only 'physical' candidates which might be "eternal" are the true vacuum or the bulk encompassing (our) spacetime. — 180 Proof

:up:

From an astronomer-physicist's point of view, the Big Bang is when their equations break down and become meaningless. It's as if current cutting-edge science (paradigms + tools) hits a wall they can't penetrate/scale. We could cheat, but I haven't the foggiest what that would look like. Any ideas?

The Nothing Special corollary of The Mediocrity Principle

Any theory/philosophy, including but not limited to idealism, that implies the existence/occurrence of something special is likely to be wrong/nonsense.

The trending social issues like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., their prominence to be precise, especially the positive light in which these minority groups are portrayed is largely due to the backing they get from big businesses. This though very encouraging is also rather disheartening for the simple reason that the support is purely for monetary reasons - bad publicity means losing valuable customers. It's all about money!

Kant's noumenon-phenomenon concept is ripped to shreds by the novacula Occamia. Why 2 when 1 is enough?! Veering towards idealism here.

The OP's query boils down to the metaphysics of time.

The conservation laws of matter-energy claim that neither matter nor energy can either be created or destroyed. Does that mean matter & energy are (@Cuthbert) eternal (beginningless & endless). If so the OP's question can't be dismissed with statements like "north of the north pole" (@180 Proof).

:smile:

Sad that the SCOTUS has been infected by politicians with vested interests. Just shows how weak American democracy is. This corruption will have severe long-term consequences for the US and the world.

:snicker:

This "Supreme Court" want everybody to die — Manuel

That's the idea!

Good one! :up:

Why think in terms of 'we'?

There's nothing stopping you or I from living according to principles of non-violence.

It gets more complicated when one seeks to have others live in accordance with those principles too. It seems desires to impose such principles on others are fundamentally at odds with the principles themselves. — Tzeentch

Indeed, ahimsa has as a clause non-retaliation policy i.e. to refrain from exacting either vengeance or justice if you catch my drift. This is in keeping with your position that we shouldn't think in terms of we; au contraire, ahimsa is designed for a hyper-violent world! Sad that without a tit-for-tat strategem, good folks will be culled from the herd.

While it seems possible that Angelo Cannata is putting words in Heidegger's mouth, I quite like the thrust of the OP.

Objectivity, the concept exists of course, but is it ever achieved? If never, it's utterly useless and serves only to impede progress, by making us chase after what is at the end of the day a mere mirage. Let's be objective and off we go on a wild goose chase!