• People Are Lovely
    People Are LovelyAmity
    To the degree they are interesting (i.e. unfamiliar), I agree.
  • Calling on any theoretical physicists or philosophers that enjoy the topic of relativity and quantum
    Given that human facticity is classical and nonrelativistic, I don't see the philosophical relevance – existential import – of either relativistic physics or quantum physics. We are proximate beings (i.e. locally embodied metacognitives), not beings who pre/judge and re/act at the fundamental scales of nature. Explain, for instance, how ethics, aesthetics and/or logic are derived from (or even entailed by) Relativity / QM-QFT, and therefore why 'we (non-academic) philosophers' should even consider such knowledge-domains in our reflections.

    (Btw, my critical concern here is (mostly) pragmatic and not Hussserlian, Kantian or Platonist.)
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Can a number have an application to matter and yet have no connection to matter?ucarr
    As I've pointed out already ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/926546

    Does a map have some type of relationship _connection with/to terrain?
    In this sense, I think so: a map is an abstraction from aspects of the terrain (e.g. regularities of nature) that is instantiated in some other aspect of the terrain (e.g. observers' brains-discursive practices).
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    Blah blah blah ... but what do YOU think, Jack, about the topic at issue?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Today in Trumpenfreude

    Harris will beat Trump, says election prediction legend Allan Lichtman

    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/harris-trump-lichtman-election-prediction.html :victory: :cool:

    ↪NOS4A2
    You're kind of like Sisyphus
    frank
    Syphilis.
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    No doubt, rhetorical non sequiturs. :confused:
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    the hard problem of consciousness and free will [will] not go awayJack Cummins
    Well, imo, that's because both are pseudo-problems generated (mostly) by 'philosophical grammar' and not themselves scientific, or empirical, problems. Re: embodied metacognition (+ property dualism) contra disembodied "consciousness" or "will". :sparkle:

    various authors use the idea differently

    Many of the important thinkers were speculating

    may be insufficient
    So what? For the sake of this discussion, only what we – you and I – think about these topics is relevant no matter how informed we might be by other sources. Stop hedging and think things through for yourself. :chin:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Numbers are abstract, we use them to quantify – map – (both concrete and abstract) objects or their discrete properties (e.g. observed fact-patterns such as regularities of nature) – terrain. Maps (i.e. formalism) =/= terrain (i.e. empiricism); conflating them as you seem to do, ucarr, incoherently reifies abstraction (i.e. misplaced concreteness). In this context, I'm a nominalist-pragmatist.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Today in Trumpenfreude

    NASDAQ (DJT :rofl:)

    31August24 – $19.50 per share 
    (NASDAQ 17,713.62)
    180 Proof
    4Sept24 – $16.98 per share (-36% in a month) :down:
    (NASDAQ 17,084.10)

    :lol: :point: Sell-off erases Trump Media shares' 2024 gains
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    How useful is this area of brain research to the debate between free will and determinism?Jack Cummins
    Not "useful" at all as far as I can tell. Scientific research can inform, even solve, empirical problems but cannot definitively answer philosophical questions (i.e. aporia) or "debates". I think the most rational-pragmatic proposal that reframes this "debate" is compatibilism (i.e. imo, embodied – degrees of freedom – volition ).

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Formalisms measure regularities of nature.ucarr
    No they don't. As I wrote: formalisms ARE USED to measure or describe the regularities of nature (e.g. arithmetic IS USED to count apples in a barrel).

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/929583
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Yeah, makes my point. You''re confusing yourself.
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    :roll:
    you also say formalisms do = regularities of nature.ucarr
    False. Stop shadowboxing with your strawmen, you're further confusing yourself.
    .
  • Rational thinking: animals and humans
    In fact, when you get right down to brass taxes, who's doing much rational thinking at all that leads to anything concrete? We do plenty of post hoc rationalizing to make us feel good about our irrational behaviour though.Baden
    :up: :up:

    Yeah, allegedly even some homo sapiens do. :monkey:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Why are these two statements not a contradiction?ucarr
    Map-making does not "contradict" using[/u] a map for navigating terrain..

    Why are "regularities of nature" not concrete matters of fact?
    The regularities of nature are concrete matters of fact from which physical laws are generalized (i.e. abstracted) physical. I haven't claimed or implied otherwise.

    How are "matters of fact" concrete but not empirical?
    Where are you getting this? This question has nothing to do with what I've argued.

    If self-descriptions ("formalisms...do not refer beyond themselves") have nothing to do with the world (nature), instead being interested only in themselves, how are they meaningful and useful?
    Incoherent strawman. Formalisms, like numbers, do not have "interests", persons who use them in specific contexts of meaning have "interests".

    ...that physical laws are computable does not entail that the physical universe is a computer.
    — 180 Proof

    Does this argument cast doubt on whether we can know reality beyond its human translation?
    ucarr
    No.

    Are the disciplines of epistemology and ontology merely products of human translations?
    Idk what you mean by "translations".

    Is Platonic Realism correct: humans dwell within a (cognitive) dark cave, sealed off from direct and complete experience of reality?
    No. The senses don't lie, only how we mis/interpret (mis/use) our senses lies to us (vide Epicurus et al).

    Can we hope to eventually reason beyond the current state-of-the-art observations limited by imprecision of measurement and incompleteness of decompression? Or is it the case the limited measurements of the wave function and the limited decompression of axiomatic systems reflect existential limitations embedded in [of] nature?
    I do not know. Either outcome is possible.

    Now perhaps we come to a crux of the faceoff between the sciences and the humanities. If the observer is always entangled with the observed, does that mean the two great modalities of discovery: the what and the what it’s like of the what are linked by the biconditional operator?
    Possibly.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    3September24

    ... batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come.180 Proof
    So even before they had announced JD Vance ...

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/03/rfk-jr-trump-vice-president :mask:

    @Baden @Mikie @Wayfarer @Fooloso4 @Benkei @unenlightened @frank
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    The only obsession everyone wants: 'love'. People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole and then you're cracked open.

    Only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everythiing by which you are defeated in life purely, if momentarily, revenged. Only then are you most cleanly alive and most cleanly yourself. It's not the sex that's the corruption – it's the rest. Sex isn't just friction and shallow fun.

    Sex is also the revenge on death.

    Don't forget death. Don't ever forget it. Yes, sex too is limited in its power. I know very well how limited. But tell me, what power is greater?
    — Philip Roth
  • A sociological theory of mental illness
    Like religion, which says we are all sinners who need god to be saved, psychology can sometimes fall into the trap of saying we are all bungled and need insight through treatment.Tom Storm
    :up: It seems to me, (Abrahamic / Dharmic) religions are just Bronze Age variations on psychoanalysis memorialized in Iron Age manuals and rituals.

  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Logic that has meaning and works always assumes the interaction between a human and the marks on the paper:ucarr
    So what? In the context of my replies to your last few posts, that's another non sequitur.

    :roll: Bad physics breeds bad philosophy.
  • How 'Surreal' Are Ideas?
    I think I might have to invest time in this book! :up:Amity
    Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals collection further elaborates on her reading of Plato and Platonism.180 Proof
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Same old vacuous, ahistorical, Zionist/Likudnik talking points which at least half the current Israeli population (and most secular antifascist members of the UN & ICJ) call bullshit. :shade:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    ... for any system that does work, as it goes forward in the systematic process of doing work, the work builds up complexity of detail. This building up of complexity can be observed in two modes: phenomenal (entropy) and epistemic (logic).ucarr
    Stop. This confuses empiricism with formalism – nonsense (i.e. logic is not "doing work").

    This leads to the conclusion that axiomatic systems are a form of compression of complexity and that the increase of complexity is an irreversible process.
    More nonsense. Formalisms (axiomatic or otherwise) are abstract and therefore do not refer beyond themselves to concrete matters of fact (e.g. entropy), rather they are used as syntax for methods of precisely measuring / describing the regularities of nature. That syntax is fundamentally incomplete / undecidable (re: Gödel / Chaitin) says nothing about nature, only about the (apparently) limits of (our) rationality. In other words, that physical laws are computable does not entail that the physical universe is a computer.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    That is cause for worry.BitconnectCarlos
    Since 1967 the US/Nato-backed, land-thieving colonist-settler oppressor regime is "threatened" by the apartheid-brutalized oppressed whom the oppressor regime systematically slaughters and further displaces with indiscriminate collective punishment for "terrorism" by violent religious extremists (i.e. Islamists? Zionists?) ... backed for decades by the oppressor regime in order to preserve the "threat" by preventing – eliminating the possibility of – a "Two State" peace. History teaches: more often than not, oppressors with everything to lose by continuing to oppress have much more to "worry" about than the oppressed with nearly less than nothing to lose – e.g. Rhodesia, Vietnam, Algeria, South Africa, Saint-Domingue, Cuba, Eritrea, N. Ireland, etc – from the river to the sea! :fire:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Still overvalued by about $19.50. Who buys these shit sandwiches?unenlightened
    No doubt only "poorly educated" "suckers & losers". :mask:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    You have not given me any reason to read someone else's thoughts on the matter. Make your philosoophical case, ucarr, and I will respond.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Today in Trumpenfreude

    NASDAQ (DJT :rofl:)

    26August24 – $21.72 per share
    (NASDAQ 17,725.77)
    180 Proof
    31August24 – $19.50 per share :down:
    (NASDAQ 17,713.62)
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    I see no reason to do that. Either succinctly express your disagreement with something I have written that you wish for me to further elaborate on or agree to disagree and leave it there.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    31August24

    Some folks can't tell the difference between eating a shit sandwich and starving themselves (due to low IQ/poor education, ethnonationalist hatreds and/or disingenuous venality). Fortunately, in this moment, they aren't (yet) the majority in the US. :mask:

    Roevember is coming! :fire:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Regarding what exactly?
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Are you proceeding from the premise causal relationships are not fundamental in nature?ucarr
    Nope. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/929175
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    This is not an example of a "fundamental relationship of uncertainty, incompleteness & entropy". Not even close.
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    Is there a foundational relationship between uncertainty, incompleteness and entropy?ucarr
    "Uncertainty" is epistemic, "incompleteness" is mathematical and "entropy" is physical. I don't think they are related at a deeper – "foundational" – level unless Max Tegmark's MUH is the case. :chin:
  • How 'Surreal' Are Ideas?
    Murdo[ch] shows how Plato also sees art as being focused on pleasures as opposed to enlightenment.Jack Cummins
    If you haven't already, read Iris Murdoch's short book The Sovereignty of Good wherein she discusses 'beauty (art) as a way of seeing – attention to – reality' and therefore (an unorthodox) Platonic approach to moral judgment.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sovereignty_of_Good

    previously discussed in 2022
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/705105

    Also Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals collection further elaborates on her reading of Plato and Platonism.