It is the nature of life, it is the entire purpose of being alive, the sole definition of life itself is to flourish competitively. — Marzipanmaddox

That's not even close to the actual definitions of life being proposed by biologists.

The nature of life is just to flourish as much as possible. Every organism has this instinct, regardless of whether they are conscious or not, all life seeks to do is flourish to the greatest extent that it possibly can. — Marzipanmaddox

What is the evidence of that?

Life spreads and consumes fuel in the exact same manner that fire does. — Marzipanmaddox

Literally in the exact same manner?

Life exists purely because there was this potential energy that could be reduced, and it exists solely to reduce this potential energy, in the same sense that fire exists with the sole purpose of reducing combustible chemicals with high volatility into less volatile molecules with lower potential energy. — Marzipanmaddox

Purpose to whom?

The natural action would be to pursue this end and only this end, to ensure our own indefinite and perpetual survival to perform exactly the process that life naturally and spontaneously arose to do. — Marzipanmaddox

What is a "natural action"? How do we establish what is natural?

I even go so far as to argue that the more we stray from this natural definition of life, the less and less the human race can truly consider themselves life. When we stop pursing this natural goal, this maximization of the reduction of potential energy induced by life within the universe over the lifetime of the universe, we stop being life all together, we simply become death, we are no longer the righteous fire that was birthed from fuel, but smoldering ashes that failed to sustain the blaze. — Marzipanmaddox

And just why should we care about being life according to your definition of it?

Yes, but, according to @Terrapin Station, I am sure that you are still making "factual claims".

"Eels don't reproduce. They spontaneously generate from the mud." That's a claim about a fact. It's asserting something about what the world is like, how the world works. It's wrong, of course, but that's irrelevant. It's a claim about facts. — Terrapin Station

I'm not following you on this one. Are you saying that facts can be false?

I pretty much agree with your vision of life and human life. But I don't think of it in terms of "purpose". When I say that morality is based on flourishing, I don't mean that in a kind of "universalist" sense, but I am saying that is the most useful, fruitful and coherent way to think about it.

The very idea of being moral is conceptually based on the idea of benefiting others, and the idea of being immoral is based on the idea of harming others. Again I don't mean to claim this is some kind of "empirical fact", but just that it is the most coherent logic of morality.

When I say that everyone wants to flourish and no one wants to languish, I don't mean that absolutely everyone wants to flourish; I realize that some people are fucked up and that maybe they, or at least some perverse part of them, would rather languish and die instead of living and flourishing. But I see such attitudes as dysfunctional, dis-eased; in need of correction, if possible. Animals do not suffer from such dysfunctions and diseases as far as I am aware, at least not until they are physically sick or very old and do not have the energy for life anymore.

I'm not following you on this one. Are you saying that facts can be false? — EricH

Factual claim = a claim about a fact.

Facts are states of affairs. Ways that the world happens to be.

You can get wrong how the world happens to be. So a factual claim can be wrong.

OK. I understand what you're saying - we're on the same page there. I just find the wording a bit confusing. Maybe it's just me, but I find this a bit clearer - if a bit more wordy

Factual claim = a claim about a possible fact.

The word "fact" is polysemous. It can refer to propositions, information and states of affairs. This fact ( :wink: ) seems to cause much confusion.

fact (fækt)
n
1. an event or thing known to have happened or existed
2. a truth verifiable from experience or observation
3. a piece of information: get me all the facts of this case.
4. (Law) law (often plural) an actual event, happening, etc, as distinguished from its legal consequences. Questions of fact are decided by the jury, questions of law by the court or judge
5. (Philosophy) philosophy a proposition that may be either true or false, as contrasted with an evaluative statement
6. (Law) after the fact criminal law after the commission of the offence: an accessory after the fact.
7. (Law) before the fact criminal law before the commission of the offence
8. as a matter of fact in fact in point of fact in reality or actuality
9. fact of life an inescapable truth, esp an unpleasant one
10. the fact of the matter the truth

From here: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/fact

h yeah, well my definition of life is the best, most perfect definition of life imaginable, and it reflects the ideal, objective, scientific, utopian vision of a blah blah blah. — S

Ok. Logically, life has a definition. It is a finite noun, it has an explicit definition. I argue thay my definition is fairly accurate and functionally accurate, that's all I'm doing

I argue that my points are very well founded and the explanations I provide justify the definitions I use. Disagree all you want..

You claim that this is an argument about collectivism, it's not. It's an argument about the definition of civilization and morality, it is pure coincidence that the definition I am able to derived from history is one that is similar to collectivism. The point here is not for me to defend collectivism, the point is for my to defend my reasoning and metrics from which I am able to derive the objective definition of morality.

Perhaps my points seem as empty and meaningless to you as yours do to me, but I never feel that you fully and in detail rebut my argument with actual points. It's a large amount of criticism, but no counter point. You can criticize a point all you like, but if you don't provide a superior and more so legitimate argument, your criticism is pointless.

Meaning you try to condemn the points without fully justifying your condemnation, at least in my eyes. You're calling me a criminal, without providing a thorough explanation of the evidence at hand that proves I'm a criminal. If you don't explain your point fully, it becomes harder to understand what you are trying to say. I believe you think there is some degree of shared thought process here, so you leave out parts of your argument, choosing not to write them out, just because you think "My thoughts are common sense, everyone will have these thoughts, there's no reason for me to explain in detail."

My issue with your argumentative style is that your counterpoints are minuscule when compared to your criticism. The criticism here is not the relevant aspect of having a debate, the only relevant part is the counter points.

The point about providing a hard, quantifiable definition is that it allows for an actual functional system to emerge, an actual system that provides actual answers to questions.

Think of measuring length. The current standard in philosophy is to use non quantifiable length, saying, you define a length of wood as 'Oh so wide', 'about this wide', 'fairly wide', 'a bit short', rather than using explicit countable measurements.

How can philosophy defend its complete aversion to utilizing quantifiable metrics and statistics to define and defend their arguments, when no other field of study is comparably as reluctant to do so?

What advantage is there to describing a kilogram as a 'fairly heavy amount', rather than describing it as a very quantified amount known as the kilogram?

In my eyes it just makes arguments pointless, because they can never be proven or justified in any manner beyond opinionated and subjective explanation. There's never an argument that just says, the data and statistics that have been measured reflect this conclusion, despite the fact that this empirical explanation is the only form of legitimate explanation in every other field with the exception of pure art, which like philosophy, leaves validity and legitimacy entirely up to the authority of human opinion.

Everything within this universe, everything within the planet earth, is inherently numerical... — Marzipanmaddox

I can't see how everything - absolutely everything - is "inherently numerical". — Pattern-chaser

I'll try explain. Logically, you have one egg, you keep counting eggs. You keep counting eggs forever, do you ever get to a number that is not a countable number? Basically, once you start to count things, you can tell that everything is countable.

If you are counting whole single digits, you will never get to a quantity that is infinite, meaning adding and subtracting a number doesn't change the quantity. When nothing is infinite, everything is then finite, and everything finite is quantifiable, it is a quantity, this can be represented as a number.


The only infinite aspects of the universe are infinitesimal, meaning the amount of numbers between 1 and 2, is infinite, because the differences can be infinitely small.
This lack of infinite quantities means that essentially everything can be measured. When everything can be measured, this means it can be quantified and expressed in regards as numbers.

Think of a rock falling from a person's hand towards the ground. This may not seem numerical, but even if it does not naturally appear this way, we can still represent and describe it numerically.

Things like the law of gravity are closer to representations of what happen, describing things rather than counting them, but in the sense that these numerical descriptions can be created with regards to any finite and measurable occurrence, and since the lack of infinite values in the universe suggests that everything is finite, then this set of conditions means that everything can be quantified, defined and represented in mathematical ways.

Even though we don't have to count the gravity, we can still represent what is happening with numbers, variables, and other forms of mathematics. Our ability to do this, to understand these things in this manner allows us to take advantage of these forces behaving so reliably.

Even the human mind, has a finite number of neurons, approx 100 billion. When you start out with a finite number, and you keep adding or multiplying by other finite numbers, you will never arrive at a number that is infinite, you will always have a finite quantity.

Even if you combine every possible combination of neuron firing, and every other aspect of the human body, as these are all finite numbers, they can all be subejcted to explanation by the same style of measurements and explanation that has given us this working standard of gravity.

While a human being is more complex than a rock, time, the mass of the planet, air resistance, and the other elements that were quantified in order to develop the law of gravitiy, this does not mean that humans are any less defined by this sort of natural law as a rock is. Just as the fall of a rock is determined by the law of gravity, ever aspect of human life is determined by some equivalent and parallel law that defines how humans behave in any sort of situation.

While clearly we don't have these equations, they are not needed to prove this.

The human exists in the same system as rocks and water, rocks and water are all inherently finite, and can be quantified, measured, and represented using equations and entirely mathematical models, free from any influence of subjective force such as opinion or sentiment.

The human is made up entirely of rocks and water (more so, chemical compounds, but this is semantics), even though these rocks and water are mixed in a very specific way that produces a very specific result that is very complicated, the fact that the base parts, Part A and Part B are finite, means there is no possible way you can Add Part A to Part B and get a result that is not finite. Basically there is no way to create an infinite quantity from two finite quantities, and as humans are composed of these two finite quantities, this implies that any combination of these two quantities will be as equally as finite as the two quantities that are being combined.

Logically, as rocks and water are both proven to be defined explicitly and entirely by natural law, then this implies that any combination of rocks and water, any combination of any amount of chemical compounds, will too be defined explicitly and entirely by natural law in the same respect.

The issue here, is that humans are far more complex than rocks or water. This means that the natural laws that define the human race would be proportionally more so complex than the natural laws that define rocks. Similar to how The user manual for a car is much larger than the user manual for a knife.

Even though they are very complex equations if represented perfectly, we can deduce by what we already know to be true about the natural world, that every aspect of human life is as equally definable by natural law in the same respect that every aspect of water or rocks can be defined and explained with natural law.

The key thing to realize is that even having rough approximations of these equations that define our lives is going to be invaluable. We can have a fairly clear estimation of what the answer to these equations is, even if we don't have pinpoint accuracy. The more accurate these equations become, the easier we will be able to exclude and disprove arguments that deviate from quantifiable correctness.

If you are calculating the sqrt(3), square root, you can never have the correct answer, because that is infinitely long, it is infinitesimal, but you can have an answer that is close enough. Based upon rounding.

If you have the answer of 2, then your inaccuracy is ~ 14%
If you have 1.7, now your answer is only about ~2% different from the actual, correct, infinitely long answer
At 1.73, your are 0.1% inaccurate
At 1.732 you are 0.002% inaccurate

Even though it is impossible to be 100% accurate here, you can get the inaccuracy down small enough to the point where it becomes inconsequential. The same thing applies here, where so long as we know we are fairly close to the answer, we can gain quality answers from these equations.

I believe that Terrapin & I are using the word "fact" as it functions in the context of the Correspondence theory of truth. I do not pretend to be an expert in these matters, but as I understand it, in Correspondence Theory the word "fact" is synonymous with "state of affairs", "existence", "reality", etc. Statements/propositions are true or false in so far as they accurately describe facts.

So definition #5

Philosophy) philosophy a proposition that may be either true or false, as contrasted with an evaluative statement — Janus

is wrong - at least in this context. True propositions describe facts ((wikipedia uses the term structural isomorphism), but the word "fact" and the word "proposition" have very different definitions.

Terrapin, please correct me if I have misrepresented your position.

And another thing. What if morality is not a policy considered and adopted by societies, but is an emergent property of societies that just appears? The way you put it, you expect evolution to get rid of it if it does nothing. But there are many attributes that have no critical survival value, so they are not selected for or against. Maybe morality is such a thing? — Pattern-chaser

As for the sun rising, well, the sun isn't the one drinking the snake oil, is it?

As for this quote though. You might think that morality is not selected for or against, but having an instinctive understanding of morality, having a "moral compass" so to speak, is something nearly all people are born with. If it was not selected for or against, then it would not be so prevalent, found in 99% of the people.

In order for 99% of people to have this trait, this means an instinctive understanding of morality is inherently favored in terms of reproduction in the wild, when compared to a complete lack of morality, such as psychopathy. This could be a more recent development, where instinctive empathy and psychopathy were toe to toe in the wild, but in a civilized world, the people themselves exterminated psychopathic individuals because they were not able to function in society.

By one means or another, instinctive empathy and sympathy, the basis of morality, is found in 99% of all people, and this strongly suggests that it was a highly favorable trait to have, while lacking it caused one to be far less likely to survive. Especially since this instinctive empathy/sympathy is found in much less civilized and intelligent animals like dogs and likely even far simpler animals, this sort of instinct has been present in all animals for millions of years, and over the course of this period of time, the existence of animals, this instinct has proven to be more beneficial than the absence of this instinctive empathy, at least with regards to our species, and this is why it got passed down so thoroughly.

So, to paraphrase, philosophy is crap because it isn't science, and only science can be not-crap? Is that about it? — Pattern-chaser

No, I'm saying philosophy is not reliable method of deriving truth because it deviates from the scientific method.

Philosophy needs to produce arguments from experiments that can be independently and objectively verified in order to be legitimate.

"The scientific method is an empirical method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century. It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises."

Basically, without this process, you have no quality control. You have nothing that objectively proves or disproves your argument. You cannot be correct beyond popular opinon, beyond a subjective defense, and this is the issue.

Philosophy needs to be true in a manner that when all people perform a philosophical experiment, they all are able to measure the result and derive the exact same conclusion. Like when people do a scientific experiment, anywhere in the world, if they do it correctly, they will all come to the same result, and this universal, replicable, objective, and impartial correctness is something that needs to exist in order for philosophy to be comparably as legitimate as science.

When correctness is a matter of opinion, then it's hardly as valid as correctness which is unquestionable, right?

I'm not meaning to be insulting, it's just I'm a "no bullshit" sort of person, like a machine, just work, just mechanical operation, no flavor, no bullshit.

"Factual claim" instead refers to "a claim about a fact; a claim that posits what the world is like; how the world works." — Terrapin Station

That's just not the functional definition of that word in the modern world. If somebody makes a "factual statement", they make a statement that is true. Somebody makes a "conjecture or assertion regarding the factuality of a claim", that is something different altogether.

At this point, by your logic, how do opinions exist? Are all opinions factual statements? "Guns are bad", "Guns should be controlled", "Gay marriage is a good thing", or any other political opinion is the referred to as a factual statement?

It is the nature of life, it is the entire purpose of being alive, the sole definition of life itself is to flourish competitively. — Marzipanmaddox


That's not even close to the actual definitions of life being proposed by biologists. — Echarmion

1. This is the definition of "life", that I got.

The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

The point being, without flourishing competitively, you cannot be any of these things, because you don't exist. Competitively meaning, enough to compete, enough to win. If you don't win, you lose, you are dead, thus you are not life, not alive, but rather death, a dead thing.

The nature of life is just to flourish as much as possible. Every organism has this instinct, regardless of whether they are conscious or not, all life seeks to do is flourish to the greatest extent that it possibly can. — Marzipanmaddox


What is the evidence of that? — Echarmion

2. If an organisim did not have the will to live, if it has no chemical reaction that causes it to perpetuate itself, then it would not exist. Perhaps we have a different understanding of flourishing here.

Even just an amoeba in a petri dish is flourishing. You look at cell growth in a petri dish, this is what I define as floursihing. Things growing until they cannot grow any more. Exactly why a petri dish will become full of cells when you incubate it. Cells are not concious, but they still do this, they just grow and reproduce until they cannot do so anymore. All life is esentially defined by this strategy, this action is the backbone of all life, complex life has just refined it, but even then they do not change much from the original single-celled strategy.

Life spreads and consumes fuel in the exact same manner that fire does. — Marzipanmaddox


Literally in the exact same manner? — Echarmion

Yes. The exact same manner. Think of the petri dish again. Those cells will grow, spread, keep on growing until they cannot, until there is no longer and food for them to consume. When that cell culture runs out of fuel, it dies. This growth is for life is identical to that of a fire. The fire grows until it cannot find any more fuel to burn. Life, in its simplest form, grows like a fire until it cannot find any more fuel to burn.

They look different, but they behave in very, very similar ways. The chemical processes very similar as well.

Fuel + O2 → CO2 + H2O -> This is fire, burning sticks

C6H12O6(sugar)+6O2→6CO2+6H2O -> This is what is happening in your cells, this is cellular respiration, it is what causes you to turn food into energy. This is what keeps you warm, this is the process that keeps cells alive.

Notice they are identical? Cellular life is basically just a very complex fire that uses sugar as fuel.

Life exists purely because there was this potential energy that could be reduced, and it exists solely to reduce this potential energy, in the same sense that fire exists with the sole purpose of reducing combustible chemicals with high volatility into less volatile molecules with lower potential energy. — Marzipanmaddox


Purpose to whom? — Echarmion

Purpose, not to anyone at all. Just the reason as to why it exists, not that there is any real intent or meaning behind that. Meaning, basically "This is what caused life to exist, and while life may do other things, this purpose was the only justification that ushered lie into existence."

It's the same purpose/reason as fire. It just exists because it can, because it is in accordance with entropy. I'm tired, plus ran out of cigarettes. I'm falling off, truly wish I could explain better, press me on this.

The natural action would be to pursue this end and only this end, to ensure our own indefinite and perpetual survival to perform exactly the process that life naturally and spontaneously arose to do. — Marzipanmaddox


What is a "natural action"? How do we establish what is natural? — Echarmion

A natural action meaning that which arises without any intent, without any thought, without any convolution. Everything that is unconscious in the universe is natural action. The actions that cells perform are all natural actions. The cells have no ability to question themselves or influence their actions. The same can be said about most sorts of natural life. One would have to consciously make an effort to stray from the natural processes that have come to define life, in order to be unnatural.

Basically it is any conscious decision that an individual makes, which is difference from the unconscious decision that would have been made if your body had remained entirely unconscious but retained it's ability to survive and reproduce indefinitely, in the same respect that a single-celled organism does.

Even with human life, one would have to take into account the capacity of unconscious intelligence, pursuing survival using opposable thumbs and intelligence, without being conscious of one's own existence. Here, consciousness is not the same as intelligence. Think about, you can be blackout drunk, unaware of your own existence, but still be holding conversations. You would still be able to wield intelligence even if you have no control of your body or awareness of your own existence.

I even go so far as to argue that the more we stray from this natural definition of life, the less and less the human race can truly consider themselves life. When we stop pursing this natural goal, this maximization of the reduction of potential energy induced by life within the universe over the lifetime of the universe, we stop being life all together, we simply become death, we are no longer the righteous fire that was birthed from fuel, but smoldering ashes that failed to sustain the blaze. — Marzipanmaddox


And just why should we care about being life according to your definition of it? — Echarmion

As for my definition. I try to justify my definition with evidence. I think the arguments I provide, see the chemical equations, the natural tendency of the universe, the parallels that are found across all life forms, the parallels between life and fire, are all sound arguments to base a point from. As life and fire are very similar in form and function, if humans are to stray from this path, trailblazed by fire, reinforced by life, then how can we consider ourselves to be life, to be fire, when we stray from the only path that our progenitors had ever tread upon?

I'm going to bed. This was good. The questions were good. Hopefully I can get back to this some more tomorrow. Let me know if this makes sense. =)

Yeah I understand Terrapin's usage of the term 'fact'. I was just pointing out that under his usage you cannot have false facts, but under the usage where 'fact' signifies information or a proposition, there obviously can be false facts. Terrapin's term "factual claim" is somewhat of a poorly chosen one in any case. "Empirical claim" would have been less misleading.

Serendipitously, a friend just sent me the link to this series of three podcasts, and I thought you might find it interesting.

https://civilizationemerging.com/future-thinkers-podcast-solving-the-generator-functions-of-existential-risks/

(I'm new, just looking for a place to argue. Hopefully this will be ok.)

Why is subjective morality respected?

By my ken, morality is simple. It is a collective of people mutually sacrificing their natural freedoms in order to empower the collective. They all mutually refrain from doing things that are naturally within their power, and thus the society benefits. — Marzipanmaddox

Communist-like morality.

Morality is a set of codified rules of behaviour. All such rules are subject to the individual(cultural, societal, social, familial, and/or historical) particulars.

The point about providing a hard, quantifiable definition is that it allows for an actual functional system to emerge, an actual system that provides actual answers to questions. — Marzipanmaddox

Yes, but only definitional answers not normative ones. If you define morality as "maximising personal pleasure at the expense of others" that makes clear what is moral and what is not too. It just means that several community benefit actions I take are now defined as immoral. So what?

The thing about measuring is that it has no normative force. To say a shed is 2m tall is to say just that. Not that all things should be 2m tall, or that all things should be the same height as a shed.

If we could agree on what behaviours constitute "moral" we would have ourselves a measure. But if we could agree on that, we wouldn't need a measure.

When I say that morality is based on flourishing, I don't mean that in a kind of "universalist" sense, but I am saying that is the most useful, fruitful and coherent way to think about it. — Janus

Why would you say that morality is based on flourishing when all you really mean is that you think that it would be useful to think about morality in terms of flourishing? There's a world of difference between those two statements. Are you just really bad at expressing yourself?

The very idea of being moral is conceptually based on the idea of benefiting others, and the idea of being immoral is based on the idea of harming others. — Janus

No, it isn't. That just shows that you aren't thinking about this impartially.

In addition to what S has already asked about the statement he quotes, I'd also like to know - useful to what ends? Use must have a purpose, nothing is just universally useful, things are useful to achieve certain tasks (and by turns useless at achieving others).

So if you consider such a measure useful, you must have some objective in mind to which use it is put. That objective cannot be merely clarity of definition - as I said above, any definition at all if universally adopted would yield such clarity. It cannot be human flourishing - obviously that would make your argument beg the question. So what is the objective, to which this definition is of "use"?

Ok. Logically, life has a definition. — Marzipanmaddox

Logically? Look, words have definitions, and the word, "life", has a definition, and an acceptable definition can be found in the dictionary.

I'm not going to accept your own made-up definitions.

You claim that this is an argument about collectivism, it's not. It's an argument about the definition of civilization and morality, it is pure coincidence that the definition I am able to derived from history is one that is similar to collectivism. The point here is not for me to defend collectivism, the point is for my to defend my reasoning and metrics from which I am able to derive the objective definition of morality. — Marzipanmaddox

You're delusional. You're also trying to reinvent the wheel, which is a foolish endeavour.

Factual claim = a claim about a possible fact. — EricH

Maybe folks are thinking that "factual" is an adjective that modifies "claim" in the sense of saying that the claim is a fact. But that's not the case. The claim is about a fact, whether the claim is true or false. So with "Philadelphia is south of Boston," for example, that sentence is not a fact*, that sentence is about a fact.

(*The sentence actually is a fact in the sense that we could say, "Terrapin Station wrote 'Philadelphia is south of Boston,'" but that's the same sense in which "Philadelphia is north of Boston" is a fact in the sense that we could say, "Terrapin Station wrote 'Philadelphia is north of Boston'." In other words, saying that those are facts is saying that there's a state of affairs that amounts to those sentences being written.)

I believe that Terrapin & I are using the word "fact" as it functions in the context of the Correspondence theory of truth . . . — EricH

Right, that's what I was just explaining. The fact isn't the proposition itself (aside from the fact that the proposition was stated), the fact is what the proposition is making a claim about.

It should be coined as a fallacy, if it hasn't already, to confuse your own ethical stance for the definition of morality.

Normative ethics and semantics are two different branches of philosophy. Is it not ridiculous for ethical altruists to be claiming that the meaning of "moral" is to be of benefit to others? If you want to argue in favour of altruism, then go ahead and do so. No one is stopping you. If that's what you, personally, judge to be moral, then so be it. But words already have meanings, and you don't get to just make them whatever you want, otherwise you might as well be talking to yourself.

At this point, by your logic, how do opinions exist? — Marzipanmaddox

Opinions are evaluative. They tell us how someone feels about something. "Marmalade tastes great." "Stravinsky is a better composer than Haydn." "Maine is beautiful in autumn." Etc.

Your examples are all opinions: ""Guns are bad", "Guns should be controlled", "Gay marriage is a good thing",

And moral stances are all opinions.

words already have meanings, and you don't get to just make it whatever you want, otherwise you might as well be talking to yourself. — S

Hear hear.

Basically, once you start to count things, you can tell that everything is countable. — Marzipanmaddox

Consider the difference between "less" and "fewer": There are fewer cows in the field, so there is less milk. The concept of countability is this basic. Cows are countable; milk is not.

Think of a rock falling from a person's hand towards the ground. This may not seem numerical, but even if it does not naturally appear this way, we can still represent and describe it numerically. — Marzipanmaddox

No we can't. We can develop and assign numbers to something like a falling rock. These numbers might predict the rate at which the rock falls, but that's as far as it goes. There is much more to be included before we can say that our words "represent and describe" it.

If it was not selected for or against, then it would not be so prevalent — Marzipanmaddox

That's an assumption, not the conclusion of a logical thought process, or at least not one that you've offered in this discussion.

I'm saying philosophy is not reliable method of deriving truth because it deviates from the scientific method. — Marzipanmaddox

Ah, so the only reliable method that exists for "deriving truth" is the scientific method? :chin:

Cows are countable; milk is not. — Pattern-chaser

Not that I agree with the math fetishism he's espousing, but why wouldn't he just say that there's n liters of milk?