He is saying: 'In my investigation, I don't call the inner 'nothing' (as the behaviourist does); I call the way we talk about the inner a 'grammatical fiction'.’ — Luke

Does that make sense to you, though? I mean, we probably wouldn't have discussions about the taste of coffee if there was no such taste. Is the taste the basis of the meaning of the word?

Meaning implies communication of some sort, so the notion of meaning without a social context is peculiar, and I think relates to previous attempts at logicism by Frege and Russell. It isn't a common sense notion that Wittgenstein is denying. It's the philosophical oddity of logicism.

Cool.

Sleep is good.

Just go to the nearest library or Kinko's. They have computers you can use. Ask the friendly guy behind the counter to help.

You can get a palm sized computer with windows on it for like $150. Just sell your butt on the street until you make enough. Should take you a few months.

I think the point of the Tractatus is that philosophical problems are (usually) a misuse of language, in the sense that language is meaningful to the extent that it's about events within the world we live in. Asking questions about the world as if you're outside it will create nonsense. Btw, Plato makes this same point in Crito.

With the PI, the focus is on how language gains meaning in social interaction. Trying to find some exalted meaning is mistaken.

In both cases, he's wrong because he's neglecting to account for the way philosophical problems are a veil for cultural and psychological issues.

Let alone even sign up, yes, that is correct. — Outlander

What is wrong with you? You register the same way you register in any website.

I'm off to read Homer's Contest.

I'll leave the adolescent philosophy to you. :grin:

Well, your challenge is a bit like the response to "thousands are starving in Sudan..."

Then name one. — Banno

It's a challenge to explore whether Witt's wisdom really solves philosophical problems. I think he struggled with that question himself.

Instead of hand waving, walk through an actual problem. I feel I'm being called back to reddit. My homebase there is the Nietzsche sub. Drop by sometime.

I can list more. — Banno

I was kind of looking for someone who would take the challenge in good faith. I could do it myself, but then I'd just be talking to myself.

It's interesting that Witt is held up as a fixer, but no one wants to get specific about it.

That is easy. All the problems he said he solved in the Tractatus, he showed how this was a misunderstanding of how language works. Stop looking at hidden sensations and other worldly essences, and look at how words are used in the stream of life. — Richard B

Pick a particular problem. Show how it's resolved by looking at language use.

To some extent, philosophical problems come from psychological issues that are related to culture and identity. This is true for both analytic and continental philosophy.

Solve the superficial problem and the deeper psychic war lives on.

Or maybe not.

The challenge I would pose is this:

Show me a philosophical problem that's resolved by Wittgenstein, and I'll show you why it's not resolved after all.

**Fooloso4 and Paine** agree, notably, that not all language games accept hinges — Claude...

I've long believed these two are the same person. There are too many similarities that are unique and eccentric.

I maintain based on the evidence that it’s 3-7 degrees. — AmadeusD

Isn't that an average for the whole region?

My world view prioritizes consciousness. — Patterner

Maybe life is a result of consciousness. Living things have been altering the oceans, the land, and the atmosphere since they first appeared. Every move they've made has led to further expansion and complexity. It's as if Life is a single entity reaching for self determination. Maybe consciousness is what's been causing it all this time.

Is that what you were specifically recommending of his? — Patterner

Only if you're really interested in it. If you take the stance that final cause (or causally closed systems) is just folk psychology, I think you'll end up having to explain why a causally open system (which all dead things are) is raised above the folk level. How is it? Could it be that bias toward a certain world view, which prioritizes physics, is the real motivator? So we end up as neo-Kantians, with an array of formats for organizing things for the sake of comprehension. That would be my synopsis. It's been a while since I read it.

I can't find the article that came from. It wasn't an average, though. It was a look at extremes. The average increase for inland Israel is 8-9 degrees.

nothing in our system of knowledge turns on them. — Fooloso4

Having recently read his philosophy of math, I'd say he would scoff at the notion of a "system of knowledge.". Too abstract.

I assume you mean the book Life Itself. (Also the title of a George Harrison song.) It sounds great. Sadly, not available as an e-book, but not much can be done about that.

If you ever heard of The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, by Hans Jonas? That also looks interesting. — Patterner

Life Itself is a pretty heavy slog through "causally closed systems" and what not. The last chapter was pretty fascinating. I haven't read the Jonas book. It does look interesting.

Due to predictions of decreasing precipitation(both in time period and in amount),[44][45][46][47] falling level of water bodies[48] and increasing temperature, the IPCC "general circulation models projections agree on drying scenarios in the region by the end of the 21st century."[49][50] Since Israel is located in an arid/semi-arid region, any changes to precipitation in the area will severely affect water resources,[51] not to count strategical and geopolitical challenges this could have caused in a high-sensitivity region.[50] For agriculture, Israel depends heavily on irrigation and water availability.[52] The decrease in water availability can be seen in the decrease in incoming freshwater into the Sea of Galilee(notwithstanding temporary changes from raining in individual years, e.g. 2018).[53][51] Any change in freshwater will also result in a change in salinity of the water.[51] In response, Israel has used desalinated water for 60-80% of Israel's drinking water supply, and desalination increased by 120% between 2010 and 2019.[53] This effort has placed Israel as a leading nation in desalination processes and recovery of wastewater.[53][54] Israel's main source of water is the upper Jordan River.[49] Overall, stream flows in the region have been documented as decreasing at a faster rate than rainfall measurements.[49] These data indicate that evaporation is affecting the Jordan River more than a decrease rainfall. — wikipedia

Yes. The only part of Israel that will be inhabitable will be along the coast.

I'm ready for a new government now.

because some people are always throwing the knight out the window. — Metaphysician Undercover

Don't you get cold living under that bridge?

But is there an extra something that is Life? — Patterner

I think Aristotle was the first to notice that life is associated with purpose. I don't know what an anatomy and physiology course would be like if we tried to delete that concept. It's pervasive.

If we want to make biology a branch of physics, we might try to avoid saying things like:

1, The tree grows toward the light to gain energy.
2. It needs energy so it can reproduce.
3. It needs to reproduce so the species will survive.

If you explain all of that by efficient causes, you'll find that you're still using the idea of purpose to organize your thoughts. What does that mean? I know Rosen's book left me believing it's a more profound issue. Anyway, it's too early to wave it off as folk psychology.

The idea is that human endeavors are game-like. You embrace certain rules, certain standards, certain word usage, etc. when you embrace a game.

Yes, you can doubt that the knight really has to move in a little L shaped path. You can even throw the knight out the window, but at that point, you're no longer playing the game.

You are a little queen, looking ahead at an impending knight fork, wondering if this is all there is to you. You say:

"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, [F: poore]
The pangs of despised Love, the law’s delay, [F: dispriz’d]
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear, [F: these Fardels]
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment, [F: pith]
With this regard their Currents turn awry, [F: away]
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Still, biology does emerge from physics and chemistry. Even if we couldn't start from the beginning and predict it, working backwards, we can see that every biological process can be explained by the principles of chemistry and physics. — Patterner

According to Robert Rosen, you'll end up without a definition for life if you try to reduce it to chemistry. He says you need final cause to understand what we mean by life. He proposes getting Kantian about it.

Would it therefore qualify as strong emergence? Debatable?

You don't have to get the special ID to vote in my state. I don't think you can get a passport without it, though.

See, but act
Grow, but stand firm
Love, if only to grieve
And lose nothing

Since the universe was constructed from those laws, there is no reason that those laws couldn't do it again. — Patterner

Right, but as the universe evolved, water waves came into existence, and understanding them means recognizing laws that weren't applicable to the preceding plasma. In other words, if the universe started over, some kind of emergence would happen again, right?

I'd like to clarify that this isn't what I said. I said that my intellect cannot reach out beyond my body to grasp the mind-independent nature of distal objects. Cognition is either reducible to or emerges from neural activity in the brain, and the only information accessible to it is information present in the brain. — Michael

Cool. A lot of the wording you're using could stand some clarification, like what you mean by intellect and information. There's a sense of information that has to do with variations in the sensory input to your brain. Strictly speaking, your intellect doesn't have access to that. It has access to a model that's been updated based on that information.

The model isn't built out of data coming from the outside world. Kant explains in the Transcendental Aesthetic why it can't be. The basic building blocks of the model aren't things you learn at any point. They're embedded in your cognition. But among the features of the model are things like space and time, and therefore the very idea of information, whether it's sensory data or information in the form of facts, obtaining states of affairs, or however you put it.

One of the posters had stated that your activities indicate that your intellect does reach out beyond your body to grasp the mind-independent nature of distal objects. I guess I don't know what that means or how it relates to what your said.

I'm not an idealist. I believe that there is a mind-independent world and that the information accessible to me suffices to justify this belief. — Michael

Mind-independence is an idea that plays a part in a very abstract realm of pure ideas. It ties into your base-line worldview. This is beyond basic perception and navigation of the world. If your mind was a corporation, the part that thinks about mind-independence is the board of directors. They aren't involved in everyday decisions, and if things that you do directly contradict their adopted outlines, they can't really do anything about it. Plus, they're asleep most of the time. They only wake up when you start getting philosophical. Then they brush their teeth, wash their faces, and act like they know what they're doing.

Scientific investigations are not limited to the specialized work of scientists. — Fooloso4

It's not just cheese makers, it's dairy producers of all kinds. :up:

Why are you nice to some people and a jackass to others when everybody you're talking to is equally stupid?

I'm suggesting it does no such thing. — AmadeusD

I agree.

Could you perhaps try to say something I can respond to, if you're going to? — AmadeusD

I might have been responding to the wrong thing. I thought you were talking about mentally verifying mind-independence. Michael said we can't do that. Someone else commented that our actions demonstrate that we're doing it, which is absurd.

I've never seen anyone do anythign remote close to what Michael describes. — AmadeusD

Actions don't demonstrate confidence in mind-independence, as if you couldn't act without sorting that out first. :lol:

That is the solution posed in The Meno. But I think it is actually posed as obviously unacceptable. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not posed as unacceptable, though it may well be unacceptable to you. Any solution is going to end up arguing that some knowledge must be innate, whether we explain that as anamnesis, Kantian categories, hinges, or what have you.

I believe Plato resolved Meno's paradox in The Republic, by positioning "the good" as outside of knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover

Meno's paradox is supposed to support past lives. It just as well supports the idea that much of our knowledge arises from an innate framework.

Yes, I believe that concepts like 3 and polygon exist as individuals following prescriptive rules, — Metaphysician Undercover

Meno's paradox.

The crazy Republican blonde chick wanted the files published. She quit Congress over it, didn't she?