...As long as you accept that good can make up for the bad... — Down The Rabbit Hole

I do not.

A better life can't make up for all the hard work in getting there? — Down The Rabbit Hole

I am of the opinion that untreated leukemia in children, as an example, leading to excruciatingly painful deaths for what are clearly innocent people to all people of right mind simply does not make sense in a world where there is a God who can stop that from happening, even if there's a cookie at the end of the pain.

In short, if there's a God, he's one sick fuck.

You accept that good can make up for the bad? — Down The Rabbit Hole

That is the very thing I am disagreeing with.

The idea of an infinite reward after death simply does not make up for living a life of absurd and cruel suffering. Mortal life remains absurd, cruel, and incompatible with a God. Perhaps the afterlife is different, but who cares? I have a life to live now, and it's not related to an after life.

I'd much rather not classify it as analytic, I have to agree. I'm trying to look at it in a fairly plain way, at first -- I have lotsa sympathy with the idea that existence isn't a predicate, but to take the sentence more plainly I'd say that it is meaningful. Analytic? I'm not so sure about that because of the two ways you could take "nothing exists" --

"Nothing exists" could mean there is not a single thing which exists at all in the entirety of the universe. In this sense it seems kinda contradictory, again in a plain approach kind of way, since clearly the sentence exists, so the very statement becomes a performative contradiction since the statement itself exists. (A philosophers answer if there ever was one :D )

But we could also say "Nothing exists" in the sense that we mean when referring to atomic structure -- that the majority of atomic structure is composed of nothing, a space between entities in relation with one another. Or, even more plainly, we could say there is nothing in the cupboard, open the cupboard, and indeed see that there is nothing in the cupboard, so we could conclude -- on the basis of this -- that at least in one place in the world nothing exists.

In this second sense I'd say the sentence is not analytic at all, but synthetic.

This doesn't address the evils that are not caused by man that are simply cruel suffering with no benefit.

We don't have to delve into the pit of nastiness. It's not hard to find examples.

I'd say that good and evil do not work like there -- you do not have 5 units of good or 3 units of bad.

Suffering remains as suffering even if we find ourselves in a good place. And the existence of God is not compatible with the evils we live with. It's as simple as that. Even if there's a cookie at the end of the trial, the trial itself can still be cruel and unusual.

Nothing exists....


I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding what it might mean for nothing to exist. So in that way it's unintelligible. But clearly something exists, so "nothing exists" must be false.

In a very simple way, then, it makes sense to say "Nothing exists" is unintelligible, but clearly false too -- since we can picture what the negation of "nothing exists" means, and that negation is all that's needed to make it true (and, hence, would be able to easily infer falsity)


Or something like that. :D

A common line of reasoning against God's presumed omnibenevolence goes like this:

If God was omnibenevolent, there wouldn’t be ... any earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, wars, children with genetic dysfunctions, ... and in general, there wouldn't be any suffering.

But why should the absence of these things be evidence of God's benevolence?

Based on what reasoning should we conclude that the presence of those things is evidence that God (if he exists) is not benevolent? — baker

If there be a perfect being which infinite power and infinite goodness, then we'd expect to see some effects from that -- that the being would use their power to do good things, for instance.

Perhaps we could take the claim down a notch from your beginning, and just leave it at that.

There is so much evil and suffering in the world that it becomes hard to believe in an all-powerful loving God. Not this or that specific evil, but the overwhelming amount of suffering which has nothing to do with moral worth or goodness.

I imagine Hitler, for example, spent quite a bit of time in self-examination.
Why shouldn't his count as an "examined life"?
What are the assumptions based on which it is assumed that someone like Hitler did not live an examined life? — baker

I think some of the confusion comes from zeroing in on "examined" -- and that said confusion is, if not resolved, at least addressed by the apology. The examined life is something pursued by Socrates, so the life of Socrates gives us the context within which we can infer what might be meant by the examined life.

Haha, yeah you're right. Had one word in my mind, and spit out the other.

I had or have a lot of sympathy for the idea that Socrates was simply too idealistic, but I think I have become more sympathetic to Socrates, over time. After all, if you are an old man who has no money and knows you will continue to aggravate the youth against the established order, no matter where you go -- and you know that silence, on your part at least, is not attainable (cuz the gods/goods told ya it's good to talk about what's good) -- then perhaps it is better to die, because you realize that no matter which city you go to you will end up the same. Might as well die now, as a martyr, than later, as a prisoner.

In another thread about the importance of psychology, I stated that the examined life is of importance to Socrates in that it may lead to various terms that lead to a better life. Such terms can be called, "enlightened", "rational", "virtuous".

Yet, without context these terms are ambiguous in terms of living an examined life. If we to take what Socrates said as important to ourselves, then what does it mean to live an examined life, as surely it is to our benefit to do so?

Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so? — Shawn

I'm taking a snippet from the Apology that you're referencing:

What should I fear? That I should suffer the penalty Meletus has assessed against me, of which I say I do not know whether it is good or bad? Am I then to choose in preference to this something that I know very well to bean evil and assess the penalty at that? Imprisonment? Why should I live in prison, always subjected to the ruling magistrates the Eleven? A fine, and imprisonment until I pay it? That would be the same thing for me, as I have no money. Exile? for perhaps you might accept that assessment.

I should have to be inordinately fond of life, gentlemen of the jury, to be so unreasonable as to suppose that other men will easily tolerate my company and conversation when you, my fellow citizens, have been unable to endure them, but found them a burden and resented them so that you are now seeking to get rid of them. Far from it, gentlemen. It would be a fine life at my age to be driven out of one city after another, for I know very well that wherever I go the young men will listen to my talk as they do here. If I drive them away, they will themselves persuade their elders to drive me out; if I do not drive them away, their fathers and relations will drive me out on their behalf.

Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for man, you will believe me even less.

What I say is true, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. At the same time, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve any penalty. If I had money. I would assess the penalty at the amount I could pay, for that would not hurt me, but I have none, unless you are willing to set the penalty at the amount I can pay, and perhaps I could pay you one mina of silver. So that is my assessment.

Plato here, gentlemen of the jury, and Crito and Critobulus and Apollodorus bid me put thepenalty at thirty minae, and they will stand surety for the money. Well then, that is my assessment,and they will be sufficient guarantee of payment.

What do you gather from that about the unexamined life?

I just need to have a means of selecting beliefs from a set — ToothyMaw

I'm not sure what you're asking for here. Are you wanting criteria? Because surely we have the means of selecting a belief from a set. All we need do is point to it! Or, if we want to be more formal, we could set up a map between two sets and then whenever you input whatever it is we're mapping to you output the belief.

the belief is held and can lead to people making choices. — ToothyMaw

That doesn't seem too controversial to me. People hold beliefs, and there are times when holding such and such a belief is the reason behind a choice.

But then you wouldn't be asking a question. What's the puzzle?

A belief can be counted by the number of statements held to be true or assented to.
So a set of beliefs would just be a collection of statements.

But I'm not sure the total number of possible beliefs, even in a context, is countable. Given that beliefs can be false, and can incorporate numbers (since beliefs are just statements which will be assented to), it seems to me that you could not separate beliefs into sets if the sets are thought to contain a finite number.

I don't find that very convincing, at least, on the grounds that it can just be translated back -- it's logically equivalent.

I'm saying that the nested conditional in logic does not behave like a string of two if-then statements in English -- so it's not a matter of applying rules of inference to the way premise 1 is set out, but trying to find a different, reasonable interpretation of the English sentence into a logical syntax that keeps MP intact.

I'm wondering if the English sentence has a different meaning when it nests conditionals than the surface logical syntax would indicate.

After all, it's not like we have parentheses designating which conditional to evaluate first.

It could just be a matter of bad translation.

I don't think I quite grasped the argument before, but I think I get it now. Am wondering if there are other nested conditionals that have a (on the surface) false conditional as its consequent, with a true premise...

Umm... I mean, if it's logically equivalent, then they are the same?

Just as you can convert "A → (B → C)" to "(A ∧ B) → C", you can also convert it back.

So " If a Republican wins the election, then if it's not Reagan who wins it will be Anderson" is logically equivalent, has the same truth-value, as "If a Republican wins the election And it is not Reagan Then it will be Anderson" (since "not" is being parsed as part of the sentence, and not an operator in the above form)


Once you convert it you have to also convert premise 2 so that the antecedent includes two conditions.







At first blush doesn't it seem like "B -> C" is false, though? Since clearly if Reagan does not win then it will be Carter. What am I missing?

Either way seems fine to me. It's just one of those things where you get positives and negatives regardless of your decision, and I don't see them as really outweighing each other.

In favor: It's nice that there's a way to express how you feel about a particular post without having to post a "me too!" if you feel you really have nothing to add.

But I wouldn't treat it much more beyond that. It's more akin to a social media style expression -- which forums are basically the long form, anonymous version of anyways -- than a sign of quality, I think. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Philosophers need to be social after all :D

So, imo, it's more important to just bare in mind what a like really means and what it entails than anything.

I will speak in defense of the radical position, minus the assertion :

... but it would also pacify the working class . . . — Albero

Only on the basis that the working class is already pacified, with respect to the radical's position.


Pragmatism is political value. One must be able to make compromise, see things along a gradient from better to worse, and so on. In the interest of our better selves let's say that there's a common mistake made in discussing political values where we equivocate between "pragmatic" and whatever goal it is we seek to fulfill.

Here the social democrat thinks that because the Marxist is in favor of the proletariat -- or whatever brand of radical politics you wish to insert, with the attending designations -- that the Marxist should be in favor of Bernie Sanders as the best chance at alleviating some suffering in the world, especially the suffering of the working poor within the United States.



But the goal isn't to alleviate some suffering for some people. The goal is liberation. And if the social democrat wants capitalism tamed by a republican government so that rewards aren't quite as top-heavy then the goals really are at odds with one another.

They are in teleological contradiction, is what I'd call it.

What is pragmatic depends on what we're wanting to accomplish, after all. That's not a fragmentation of the left or pie-in-the-sky dreams. That's simply an assertion that we want different things.

I say all this as someone who did, in fact, vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

Who's working 80 hours a week in a mine for Elon Musk or a sweatshop for Nike? Third Worlders — Albero

I think this is the more important thing to focus on. While there is no general answer to how one ought act in a particular election -- the questions you pose, I believe, are answered reasonably in multiple, contradictory ways -- I think it's important to focus on what is required of our current mode of life.

And thus far, at least, the exportation of low wages and economic imperialism are par for the course.

By all means, if voting for Sanders will work to eliminate *these* conditions, then I have no problem with voting for Sanders. But he didn't campaign on that, so what reason would there to be to believe that he would have? I have none.

If exploitation of human beings in the bonds of work is the ill we wish to cure, then it is the social democrat who must demonstrate how maintaining national divisions will help the exploited outside of his nation, or to accept that this was never his goal in the first place, but to simply improve the lives of the working people within the nation.

I'd ask what it is the social democrat really wants. Perhaps the main disagreement is simply on who is counted.

A hole is a boundary just as a surface is. So a hole, together with the surface of the object the hole is in, encloses or shapes part of an object: a body of water, or air, or slime. — Janus

So it sounds like you're giving existential equality to holes and surfaces, and agreeing with me that there is such a thing?

Yes, I think the primary concept of a hole is that of a gap, an absence in the middle of something. As such, we can very well think of holes in 2D or 1D. When we think of real, three-dimensional things, like a pair of pants or a fence for example, we can conceptualize them geometrically as surfaces or lines, wherein a hole will also assume an idealized 2D or 1D form in our mind. — SophistiCat

I agree with this idea of a hole -- a gap, an absence in the middle of something.

But it seems to me that the set of natural numbers, for instance, aren't missing anything between the numbers. If we were to compare the set of natural numbers to the reals then we could say that there's something in one set that is not in the other set. But there's not a gap in the set of natural numbers unless we were to take out 3 or something like that.

Analogically, we could take the set of all polygons, and order them in accordance with their sides and the natural numbers excluding 1 and 2. There isn't a hole in between triangles and squares.

I realize I didn't specify which set I was thinking of before, but just set "number line" -- what do you think of this?

A hole in the ground can be thought of as a gap in the surface (2D) or a missing volume of matter (3D), but when you are thinking about planting trees in it or falling to its bottom, you are shifting attention from the hole to the ground.

Are you? consider the ground before you have a hole. Where do you plant the tree? In order to plant it firmly in the ground one must make a hole.

The hole is defined extensionally rather than intensionally, so there's no need to focus on either the 2D surface of the hole or the volume of matter missing, right?

Or does that seem funny to you?

Are those services which have been well known to stop the distribution of propaganda?

Maybe the story is true. Propaganda requires truth to work, after all. I have sympathy for the pain if it's true, but find it hard to feel that sympathy when it's turned into a propaganda model -- it's more of a duty than a feeling.

No, they shouldn't have underwent such horrific events, and yes, it'd be better if trans healthcare was better -- up to and including positive and negative side effects of surgeries. These are reasons to improve healthcare, not wake up to God's calling of warning children and spinning out propaganda for newsweek.

I mean, when I read it, it just reads like propaganda to me. This part especially:

One night I simply couldn’t take it. I wanted to die. I crawled to bed and had another hallucination. My children’s lives flashed before my eyes, and I saw the devastation my death would cause them. Right then, I made a deal with God, the universe, whatever you call it, that if my life were spared, if I were allowed to be here for my kids, I would help other kids by ensuring people knew what the experimentation of transgender health care really entails. I remember my whimpers: “God, an eye for an eye—in reverse. I will fight with a mother’s passion for others if I can be here for my kids.”

Um, what? Isn't that an oddly specific thing to promise God in the throws of suicidal ideation?

Up to that point I felt sorry for the person, but then it switched gear and just began to read like a pamphlet, making me doubt the veracity of the story since it was the most basic manipulation: sympathetic story as bait, talking points as the hook.

Yeah, but that's my old belief I'm attempting to move past :D

How come it is the more you learn of philosophy, the less you really know?

But I see what you mean clearly. Give it a few months and I'm liable to make the mistake again :)

Ok, yes, I see the difference.

It's not the same.

∃xL(x) ^ (x = "hole") — Moliere

was my first attempt at a formalization, but it doesn't get at the inference I was attempting to lay out -- it's just a statement of my position.

Perhaps it'd be better for me to simply point -- by finger, by name, by weblink. The variable is part of language, but the hole is not.

Only an idiot would discount the continuous back and forth accusations of fallacious reasoning :D

To exist is to be the value of a variable
things exist before we give accounts of them

My issue with Quine's account was posed to you. My issue with the account you're offering is that those two claims directly above are mutually exclusive. If the one is true, the other cannot be, and vice-versa. — creativesoul

Can something be the value of a variable prior to a speaker?

Well, it seems so to me.

Water had a density prior to naming mass and volume. We didn't have the conceptual tools to measure it at one point, but our conceptual tools -- so I think at least -- don't effect things like water.

@Banno had a picture somewhere... here it is:



It's not that predicating something truthful of an entity is the criteria of existence -- rather, this is just a good inference. If we're saying true things of something, then that thing exists. It's not the predication that makes it exist, it's the predication that justifies our inference.

I agree with the first claim(although I'm not sure of the significance of saying something "truthful"), disagree with the claim that speaking doesn't influence(some things') existence, and agree with the last claim... (some)things exist before we give accounts of them.

I suspect our ontologies/taxonomies will differ in a few remarkable ways. Quine's maxim, which you've borrowed here in this account, had an agenda. Namely to target the superfluous nature of the terms "existence" and "exists" and the nature of abstract objects. — creativesoul

So we agree on the first account, then.

For the second and third, let's say that these are at odds with one another. In one account we're asked to demonstrate how it is possible for us to make something exist through language -- something like a promise or a marriage, is what I imagine you have in mind -- and in the other we're asked how things exist in spite of our speech. One is dependent upon speech and the other is resilient to speech. For now let's restrict ourselves to the class of entities which we'd call resilient, because I suspect that accounts of these two types of entities will not be consistent.

What do you think of that?

I won't dwell on donuts any more (never liked them anyway, or bagels for that matter), but I am a bit puzzled by this. Why not 2-dimensional holes? A hole in a plane, for example, would be 2D (or even 1D if it's just one point). Or did I misunderstand you? — SophistiCat

You understood me fine.

Is it fair to call a gap in a number line a hole?

I think it has some similar problems to holes we see in the ground, except that it has the disadvantage of being yet even more abstract. At the very least with holes I can plant trees into them, fall into them, and so forth -- there's a causal interactive network. I'm not as confident when it comes to describing two-dimensional holes because it seems that for any series or function, if there is a hole in it, then that section is simply not defined or is said to not exist.

But perhaps we don't mean all the rest when we say "hole" and simply just mean this gap -- so that the natural number line is filled with holes (and if we can say the space between numbers exists, there would even be more hole than there are numbers)

Well, one way out of the predication argument, for someone who doesn't want to admit holes into their ontology, would be to claim that any talk about a hole can be translated into talk about stuff (similarly to how, according to Russell, names can be eliminated by replacing them with definite descriptions). — SophistiCat

Definitely! That was what my attempt was at saying the hole in Kimberley is Kimberley arranged hole-wise (so that the relationship is not named, but is instead a predicate, and of course we can also get rid of names if we wish and then even Quine the description so that the hole is not a hole but is holing and existing ;)) -- I think that's what the materialist would have to do, is translate the sentence into something more philosophically rigorous.

(This is where you came in with your flat torus counterexample, but I don't think it works.) — SophistiCat

No worries. I'm fine with dropping it if it's not persuasive.

This isn't wrong, but as I alluded to above, I take a looser, more pluralistic stance on ontology and am willing to go along with your/Quinean reasoning. Things exist by virtue of playing a role in our conceptual schemes. Or to put it a slightly different way, each thing exists within the context of those schemes in which it has a role to play - and that's good enough, as far as being and non-being are concerned. — SophistiCat

How would you answer @creativesoul's charge of things not existing prior to conceptual schemes, then?

(Interestingly, in solid state physics holes can be very active players indeed: they can pop in and out, move around, attract, repel, scatter and be scattered...)

Cool.

For me I'm not trying to delve into scientific descriptions here because I think such descriptions assumes too much.

Rather, I would like to build up to things like scientific knowledge than take scientific knowledge as my ontology.

I don't mean where are the horns, but where are the unicorns.

That's clearly just a representation of a unicorn, and not a unicorn.

:D

I've already dropped the point. Do you want me to give you a button that says "winner"?

If so, then here it is: You are the winner. I was wrong and you were right.

What is the secret to being happy in a foxhole? — baker

I don't think there is one. We are vulnerable, weak, and even pathetic creatures -- invulnerability, happiness in spite of circumstances, is a myth. When life is miserable then it makes sense that we are too.

No you can't. Unicorns have horns is true but I can't infer they exist from that fact. — Benkei

I've thought such things before, too, but now i'm going to ask you:

If Unicorns have horns, where are they?



The other thought I had was simply to accept their truth but translate the sentence, but it's not as interesting I don't think -- and I think the above response gets at a strength to the approach I'm using.

C'est la vie! :D

We can repeat ourselves if you want.

"All donuts have holes" is false because there exists a donut without a hole. Where? Right there! Pacman's world is donut shaped, unless the surface of a donut is somehow not the shape of a donut, or unless we assume that donuts must have holes simply because that's how we define them.

Now perhaps you're just not convinced -- you're like, hey, no, this is definitely a rectangle. OK, no problem. I disagree that "donut" is analytic or a priori -- it's a word that denotes a shape, denotes a pastry, denotes tires, denotes the motion that things move in. . . and even the denotation of a shape need not be analytic. We can, upon coming to see some other feature of the world -- such as 2-dimensional space which behaves like the surface of a donut -- think that it might be OK to call this thing a donut cuz it's close enough.

But I gather you don't want to. I'm alright with that. It's not really a logical point -- it's just the way we're looking at the problem. To you "All donuts have holes" is true, because that's what it means to be a donut, which means that it'd be impossible -- by the very criteria you're spelling out -- to give you an example. But only because there are specific criteria -- that is asserting "All donuts have holes" is true because of a definition is simply stipulating the boundaries that you're willing to accept when using the word "donut".

No worries. We can agree to disagree. It's not going to collapse the foundations of logic as we know it.

So let's go ahead and skip to the argument from predicates.

The hole in Kimberley is 0.17 km2
Kimberley is 164.3 km2

Both denoted entities have different predicates, so they are distinct from one another. And the hole has true predicates, so we are justified in inferring that the hole exists.

I am aware of these things, Benkei. It could just be that we disagree, you know?

Is there no difference between being taken account of and existing prior to that account?

Seems Quine doesn't honor/accept that distinction. — creativesoul

Just to make sure we're not delving into exegesis, as I also refused to with @180 Proof , let's just drop the name Quine and say "this account", if that's ok with you.

However, I certainly did not introduce anything like that. To exist is to be the value of a variable -- which is to say that first order predicate logic's existential operator is in use. So insofar that an entity is able to truthfully have something predicated of it, then we are justified in believing that it exists. And, I imagine we'd agree, that whether we speak about something doesn't influence its existence either, so sure things exist before we give accounts of them. I'm just not making a distinction really.

Not to be rude, but it seems we're at that point of repeating ourselves, no? I'm not sure what else to say than what I've already said, at least...

Haha I'm still figuring it out!

And maybe it's not the right way of putting it, but I've noticed I'm entertaining beliefs I would not have before, at least.

Holes provide a good example -- in another life I would have made a division between ordinary and philosophical speech (as I have here, but different), but would have favored a more scientific ontology that probably doesn't look at holes as really existing things but rather as artifacts of our cognitive apparatus -- so that statements like "The hole in Kimberley is 0.17 km2" would be true, but the background in which they were true is more like the Manifest Image rather than the Scientific Image.

Something along those lines. This is all very much an exploration for me still, even if I'm beginning to have some opinions on the matter.

(EDIT: A sort of naturalized Kantianism that I find myself no longer believing)

The premise being begged is in the first conditional: "all donuts have holes"

How do we know that?

By the definition of what a donut is.

Hence the charge.

I understand that you're not convinced by the example, so I won't continue on with it with you. But this charge doesn't change from dropping the example with you.

Likely this is a naive materialist response, but for the example in the OP, the word "hole" identifies a collection of physical objects occupying a particular space. What are the objects? Air molecules, dust, perhaps the odd bird that happens to fly by, etc. So this particular "hole" has mass and occupies a reasonably well defined space. To my naive way of thinking that's sufficient to say that it exists.

What about if this hole is on an airless asteroid in outer space - in a vacuum? There's no air. But there are still countless atomic and subatomic particles flying through, not to mention the quantum foam and energy fields that permeate even the deepest vacuum in space.

So I have no problem saying that holes exists. Not sure about shadows, tho. Will have to think about that some more. — EricH

If you happen to come up with a conclusion, please share it with me.

Honestly I find myself becoming more and more a naive realist, but being surprised at what that really entails...