We do in fact. The encyclopedia is widely considered to be a compendium of facts, that is of true statements. So, 'fact' is an equivocal term which can refer to either true statements (semantic facts) or states of affairs (ostensive facts). — Janus

I was explaining with respect to analytic philosophy.

If I am pointing at a tree and say "look at the dog", that is wrong word usage, no? — creativesoul

If I don't believe that word usage can be wrong, then obviously I'd not say that that is wrong. Word usage can be unusual, unconventional, etc., but it can't be wrong. It's not wrong in general to be unusual or unconventional.

So this is why I think that acts like changing one's mind, repentance, forgiveness, and redemption are strong indicators for moral intuitionism. Sure, we can be wrong. In fact in the face of our own evil we often acknowledge our error and try to make amends. In a similar way in the face of our own falsity we often acknowledge our error and try to amend our beliefs. If we can be wrong then there is something we can be wrong about, unlike our preference for ice cream of which it is silly to say you can be wrong about. — Moliere

People say that they were wrong about their previous music tastes all the time. Do you believe that there are really factually correct/incorrect assessments of music?

I take it that you cannot distinguish between concepts and that which is being conceived of... — creativesoul

Concepts are abstractions. They don't exist externally. There are external particulars that serve as influences or bases for concepts, but concepts are "of abstractions," they're not "of particulars."

The oddity arises not from the mistake, but rather from the insistence of telling me that I'm wrong about my own terminological use. — creativesoul

I didn't say anything like that. I don't even believe that word usage can be wrong.

Again, I'm not engaging further, unless you agree to not be disagreeable, and engage with good intentions rather than simply contention mode. Otherwise, again, no use, no matter how compelling you make your posts. I am only doing this with you, because I know the history I have when engaging you. It's like engaging with someone with a personality disorder and you keep getting aggravating replies to everything.. You keep thinking it's you when it is really th e person who has the personality disorder making you crazy. So agree first to not be such a disagreeable poster..while still disagreeing and maybe we can engage further. — schopenhauer1

The problem is that I'm not trying to be disagreeable, so I wouldn't know how to not be that way if that's the way I'm coming across. I'd have to post in a way that's "not me," a way that feels "fake"/dishonest to me, but I wouldn't even know how to start, because I dont know what, exactly, is coming across as disagreeable or why it's coming across that way.

I thought we did walk through this, though:

People can evaluate anything as good or bad, where that's akin to yaying or booing the thing in question. This can including booing (saying it's bad) the fact that we're not producing (more) people, booing the absence of good those potential people might have experienced, etc.

Booing is a negative reaction. One boos because one doesn't like something. One isn't comfortable with it, doesn't desire it, isn't satisfied, etc.

My impression was that you considered any dissatisfaction, uncomfortableness, etc., to be "suffering."

You said you do not. So we need to clarify just what negative emotions/reactions/assessments count as "suffering," if evaluating something as bad/booing it doesn't count.

That's just an explanation in terms of social relations. What about the language itself? What about what the words mean in the language, according to the established rules of the language? — S

So the point here is precisely this: you believe that what's going on is something other than those social relations. I want to get at just what is going on, just how things work aside from those social relations in your view.

(I don't personally think something else is going on. I'm definitely a reductionist, as long as we're including relations in our reductions. I don't buy that anything is more than the sum of its parts, as long as the parts include relations, too.)

Wrong according to the established rules of the language — S

Sure. So I want to get at how the established rules are the established rules where we're not just talking about social relations (in your terms--my analysis would have a lot to do with how individuals are thinking about things, too). How does that work?

We have to be careful that we're talking about the right sense of independence here. Rules don't establish themselves, after all. But once they're established, I simply ask: wherefore art thou, necessary dependency? — S

Right. So, the group of people define x as y, and then from that point on, x is y, whether anyone in the future thinks so or not, because . . . well, I haven't the faintest idea why that would be the case. So that's what I'm hoping we can dissect somehow. How does that act of christening ("x shall be defined as y") obtain a "life of its own" so to speak?

I also buy psychologism and I think that one of philosophy's biggest blunders has been its attempts to reject psychologism.

rather than try to define truth directly I think a definition could be base upon non-truth.
Filter out any and all significant lies, and what you are left with is truth.. — wax

Say that it's true that the Mississippi River is 2,320 miles long. That implies that it's false that the Missippi River is less than 1,000 miles long.

Let's say that Bob believes that the Mississippi River isn't over 1,000 miles long. Given that, if Bob says that the Mississippi River is over 1,000 miles long, Bob is lying. If Bob says that the Mississippi River isn't over 1,000 miles long, then Bob is being honest.

Honesty versus dishonesty (lying) is a matter of whether someone is telling us what they believe to be true. We don't have an additional requirement that what they believe to be true actually is true. It's enough, to be honest, that you tell us what you really believe. People aren't guilty of perjury in court if they tell us what they believe, but what they believe is mistaken. They're guilty of perjury if they tell us something other than what they believe, and we have evidence that they believe different than what their testimony was.

So getting rid of lies doesn't capture what is true. It just restricts us to what people really believe, but people can be in error.

According to the empiricist definition of reality, something is real if it can be proven. — Ilya B Shambat

Where did you get that idea from? I'm pretty sure no philosopher has ever suggested that the criterion for something being real is that one can prove it. And re this, "Since nothing can be proven to a man with brain damage or to a man who refuses to listen to evidence," there's no doubt that no philosopher has ever suggested that the criterion for something being real is that it has been proved in the opinion of every single living person, no matter their condition otherwise.

Another bit of nonsense that I have heard is that truth is relative. — Ilya B Shambat

My view is that truth is relative, but that has to do with the "technical" way that truth is conventionally treated in analytic philosophy. It's a long thing to explain, but basically, you're equating truth with what we call facts, where there's a distinction, and where facts occur independently of us. (We don't use "fact" as a name for a "true statement.")

That's not to suggest that my view of truth is a conventional view in analytic philosophy. But my view of truth grows out of the way that analytic philosophy conventionally approaches what truth is.

"Real" has most often been used for (where these are various common usages that aren't necessarily compatible with each other--there are different populations and historical periods that have used these):

(1) Things that exist or "obtain" or occur (or whatever word you'd want to use) period,

(2) The same as (1) above, but with an (sometimes exclusive) emphasis on things that are unchanging--typically a la platonic forms/"ideas", basically abstracts that are in the vein of the "model" for other things

(3) Things that exist independently of us, particularly things that exist mind-independently.

Okay, then we'd need to break down what I was talking about, and try to account for each "thing" and their relations. That's my wording we'd have to do that with, not yours.

So, going back, we have rules, language, following or not following, a person, what he wants, and changing the language.

What next? You want to name or categorise each thing? Seems to me that there are abstractions, actions, a person, a desire, relations. Fundamental laws of logic and facts also seem necessary to make sense of the situation, as does science to some extent. — S

Errands got postponed a bit, so I can answer this now.

What I want to stick with for a minute is meaning on your view (although I suppose that necessarily is about rules on your view, too, so we're kind of doing both). (Also, I'm avoiding that we use "meaning" differently.)

The issue at the moment (remember there are other questions I haven't gotten to yet about this) is how we get from a group of people specifying that x will be defined as y to that somehow "transcending" (or whatever we'd want to call it--I can't think of a better word at the moment) it simply being a contingent fact that those individuals define x as y, that they'll probably not agree to define x as z instead just because someone wants to, that they contingently may not understand someone who defines x as z, etc

On your view, if S defines x as z, and S is the only one, S is wrong about the definition/meaning of x, right?

So I want to figure out how that becomes the case. That we're not just reporting contingent facts about what some group of people are doing, but making true/false normative claims that are somehow independent of what the group of people who defined x as y happen to do.

One place that we're probably going to have a major bone of contention on this is that you believe that "there are abstractions," presumably in some sense where we're not simply talking about an individual thinking about something in a way that we call an abstraction. The latter is what I think. If you think that abstractions are something more than this, I'm going to be curious just what you think they are, just how they come to be and persist, etc..

This just seems like you're making up your own rules about rules. Rules about rules which have some truth to them, but which I don't agree with because they purposefully rule out the rules that I'm taking about if the rules that I'm talking about break your rules for rules.

Blimey, that was a bit of a mouthful. See what I mean when I said that rules are everywhere you look? — S

Re the post above this, I need to take more time with it, so I'll answer it when I get back from the running around I need to do.

Re this one, I was just stressing that we must be using "rule" differently. No problem with that. I'm just pointing it out.

It's just up to you. If you want to ignore the issue, cool. I pointed it out to you, but you can just ignore it if you like. I don't know why you'd not want to try to make the argument unassailable, but okay.

With rules, the consequence is a specific punitive action taken by other persons. I should also add with some consistency of punitive action, by various people, whenever that rule is broken by various others. It can be a range of possible punitive actions, but they'll be actions we can specify (for example, various possible sentences for breaking a law, with laws being one type of formalized rules . . . another example would be the range of fines, suspensions or outright expulsion of an athlete re a particular pro sports organization)

I'm trying to figure out just what we're claiming in terms of "medium-size dry goods"--that is in terms of what's literally going on, from a practical perspective, of people and things "doing things"--actions and events.

The idea is that you'd have to do that in order for the stance/argument to hold water and be consistent, tenable, coherent, etc. It's up to you whether you want to bother with that work or not, but the consistency problems remain if you don't do the work. It's to your benefit. I'm just pointing out problems/objections.

So you'd have to define suffering and explain which negative/undesired states of body/mind count as suffering and which do not.

Wouldn't you say that booing is a type of suffering?

So, why would the absence of a potential person's good be bad, if there is no actual person who is deprived? Is it bad you are not having a child that can experience good right now? If you say yes, I would like to know who is actually suffering from this. — schopenhauer1

Good and bad are evaluations that people make that are akin to yaying or booing. So it's simply a matter of someone booing the absence of potential persons' good.

automatic expulsion or disqualification from the language game. — S

I mean a specific, concrete or practical, non-metaphorical consequence. The consequence is a specific punitive action taken by other persons.

I have no idea what "expulsion or disqualification from the language game" would even refer to.

For example, if a store has a "No shirt, no shoes, no service" rule, then breaking that rule will get you kicked out of the store.

There are rules everywhere you look. There are rules for establishing the rules of the language. So long as he follows the rules, there isn't a problem. If he doesn't follow the rules, then he can't get what he wants - that is, if he wants to change the language. — S

So are we saying that "in order to get what one wants from others, one must do such and such"?

The asymmetry which is a big part of Benatar's antinatalist argument is that absense of "good" is not "bad" unless there is an actual person to be deprived of that good. However, asymmetrically, abscense of bad is good, even if there is no actual person to enjoy this good. — schopenhauer1

The problem with that, of course, is that nothing is good or bad outside of an individual evaluating something that way, and really, there is nothing that couldn't be evaluated as either good or bad by some individual. That includes evaluating "the absence of potential people's good" as bad. They can't be incorrect about that, because no good/bad evaluations are incorrect (or correct).

Language makes no sense whatsoever without rules. Rules are fundamental. — S

For one, you're probably using "rule" different than I'd use it. I wouldn't use "rule" for something that's not both explicit in some manner and that doesn't have specific consequences if it's broken.

Okay, so how does what the group of people do, re their agreed-upon definition, their usage, etc. become the meaning contra what Frank might do later?

You able to "create rules" but you are unable to articulate the rules that currently exist or point anyone towards where they are written. — Judaka

Isn't he just saying that he considers definitions, grammar stipulations, etc.rules ? Those are written in dictionaries, grammar texts, etc.

In other words, is that equivalent to what you're saying?

Are we saying something different than, "The people who agree to think of x in y way will probably not change their mind just because one person does something different"?

He can't change the language on his own, because it is not his language. It already has established rules. If he wants to create his own language, based on the original language, with his own meanings and rules, then he can do so. — S

So once a definition is set forth, it can't be changed, at least not by just one person. How does that work?

Re the post in question, it was asking, and I was answering, whether there even is such a thing as will and whether it's our will. That bit wasn't about the issue of whether it's free.

We know we are actually experiencing the past i.e. the now is a past experience. This has been shown by Benjamin Libet in his experiments. — Coeus

I don't actually agree with that. The present is the changes/motions that are happening in a particular reference frame, as opposed to the changes/motions that already happened in that reference frame (as well as opposed to the changes/motion that have yet to happen in that reference frame). Changes/motion in one reference frame's past can be in another reference frame's present, and will be in yet another's future.

(I'm not using "reference frame" in a strict, conventional physics sense there--I'm using it more in the vein of "perspective," but where we're also not necessarily talking about a person's point of view, just any ontological/spatiotemporal "situatedness.")

So if Frank uses or defines the term differently, then the the meaning changes on those occasions?

He learns the rule, which he could do through witnessing how the word is used in conversation, or by looking up the definition in a dictionary of the language. — S

Okay, and one question here (this is kind of the easiest question, so I'll start with it), is that the way the word is used in conversation or the definition given in a dictionary isn't just the way the word is used in those particular conversations or the way it's defined in that particular dictionary (so that it's a fact that it was used that way in the conversation in question or that it was defined that way in the dictionary in question), but somehow it becomes the right/correct meaning, correct?

Wikipedia:
Determinism, in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes.

Your decision is determined partially by the choices you are aware of at any given moment. Of course there are other factors (like time available). Like I said, it's a complex algorithm you're using when making decisions. — Harry Hindu

You just asked if other possibilities are available at the moment a decision is made.

Again, that has nothing to do with determinism.

Why not?

Well, say that we have four possibilities, a, b, c and d, and a completely random, acausal mechanism for selecting them. Once one is selected, the others are no longer a possibility for that particular iteration. But this has nothing to do with determinism.

So that the occurrence of a decision precludes all other possibilities has nothing to do with determinism.

Maybe I wasn't clear. There is no choice in you whether you will do the command or not. You do execute it. — Henri

Whether anyone is making a choice is irrelevant to what I was responding to as well as my response.

Who owns the code in a piece of software? Software or programmer? — Henri

"Your thought" is simply another way of saying "it occurs of (or we could say 'in') you."

Right, so it's your thought.

Once something from the set of possibilities is actualized, then the other possibilities are no longer possible with respect to that particular actuality, sure. None of that has anything to do with determinism, by the way.

The phenomenon in question is the thought, "I intend to do x" for example. So that's your thought?

It's of God. — Henri

So it's God's thought, not your own?

If free will is a willful act of a conscious being which ultimately originates within that being, then a being has to be eternal, without being created at certain point in time, in order to have free will. Maybe to add, if that's not a given, that such being must not be subjected to randomness. — Henri

A problem with this answer is that earlier, when I wrote this:

Say that some phenomena can happen acasually. You'd say that it can only happen acausally via an "eternal being" I suppose. Why would you say that? — Terrapin Station

You didn't do the "Why would you say that" part. I tried just ignoring that you bypassed it, but since you're bringing it up again, we need to figure out why this would be the case.