To minimise resource usage could free more food for starving people to eat. — orcestra

I don't believe that getting more food to people who have trouble acquiring broadly nutritional food has anything to do with problems with resource usage. We could waste 10x the resources we currently waste and easily provide broadly nutritional food to everyone (who wants it).

Rovelli isn't ringing any bells offhand.

Re "representationalism vs nonrepresentationalism" in phil of language, I'm not familiar enough with all of the claims of both sides to say that I'd fall on one side of the fence or another. Insofar as I'm familiar with it, it seems to be trivially the case that representationalism is part of the gist of language, but both sides must be saying something "deeper" than my understanding of the issue for there to be a significant dispute about it.

Ok. The traditional arguments for meat eating being an ethical issues-\
- involuntary harm
- the use of more resources such as food and land for meat compared to vegetables. — orcestra

Yeah, I'm familiar with that. I just don't agree with treating non-human animals as more or less akin to humans ethically, and I don't at all agree with "It's ethically right to minimize resource usage, especially at the expense of all other desires."

"Equal non ethical status" in my view.

I don't see meat-eating as an ethical issue.

you are immediately dismissing the relativity thesis by stepping back into the naive realism of 'objects'. — fresco

First, I am a realist.

Secondly, realism does not at all imply non-relativity.

I don't at all agree with Bohr.

Try thinking of 'the senses' as being a human concept useful in some contexts. — fresco

This again seems like conflating concepts and what they're concepts of/in response to.

I'm not sure why you're doing that.

Not an ethical issue in my opinion.

I have many many coherent paragraphs — TheGreatArcanum

If only you'd share one.

My issue with PCism/SJWism is an issue with desires to control others--their behavior, including their speech, especially when it amounts to controlling aspects of their livelihood/careers, freedom from incarceration, freedom from significant sanctions, etc. It's an issue of just what sorts of things we try to control, to just what extent.

My first thought is this: why is it apparently so difficult to not conflate concepts and what they're concepts of (or in response to)?

I'm not disagreeing with "existence is relative." But existence isn't identical/coextensive with the concept of existence.

Any problem, anything to solve, is going to be about our curiosity or understanding (wanting to know or understand something we currently don't), or wanting to achieve something, having some goal, that's different than our current state.

Outside of our desires, reality has no problems, needs no solutions, etc.

Re the first part of your post, by the way, I'd say that with something like knowledge, the whole point is to analyze what the term is conventionally used to refer to. The Gettier problem suggests issues with the analysis--it suggests that the analysis is not exactly capturing the conventional usage of the term (in common usage, not just specialist/philosophical usage), because people don't conventionally use "knowledge" to refer to something that can turn out to be accidental. So that's not so much an intuition, but an awareness of how people use language, and then an observation that an analysis doesn't match that empirical data.

(Not that Gettier examples suggest throwing out jtb on most accounts. They simply suggest refinements, such as requiring a justification that doesn't turn out to be accidental. And some Gettier examples have problems of their own, but that's another issue.)

I'd say that "intuitions" are (or at least should be) either realizations of relations (matching, not matching) to empirical data, or realizations or "relations to relations"--that is things that are logically necessary, fallacious, etc., as well as conceivable/inconceivable, coherent/incoherent, etc., or some combo of the two.

The ulterior motive seems to be thinly-veiled, ad hoc religious support. (His whole spiel in general that is.)

He's like the "romantic" counterpart to Devans99's more "classical" approach.

That’s when I encountered the haze. A lack of concrete research on the topic of my thesis I could tap into, of an accessible bedrock of literature which I could build a thesis on. There were many papers on metaphilosophy tangentially related of course, but everyone seemed to be coming at it from different angles, groups of people were having conversations that slid entirely past each other. There was no obvious way for me to slip into the party with grace. It seemed to me that there were a great many people who thought they were talking about the same things, but really were talking past each other. There weren’t even always names for the various constellations of positions people took. I was lost. — dePonySum

This reads like you didn't have a dissertation advisor. Did you?

He seems to be using "first cause" to refer to intentional motivation.

like I said, when we act, our reason for acting (final cause) is determined prior to or at the time of our will to act, its first cause. — TheGreatArcanum

That's only the case if it's vacuously the case. In other words, it's only the case if by "acting," we're referring (by definitionally limiting the term) to instances where we have a reason or goal in mind that prompts us to do something.

If we're using "acting" more loosely instead, so that we might be referring to any behavior that someone performs, often enough there's no reason (in the goal sense) behind it.

so physicalism cannot be true. In fact, it’s beyond absurd.

intentionality, by definition, is determining the final cause of an action at the time of or before instantiating from potentiality. so anywhere this is occurring, there is intentionality. when I say that the concept of non-existence is born with us, it must be so that the concept of non-existence came into being prior to existence; and since non-existence is not in the absolute sense, it must be nothing but a concept in mind, and therefore mind must precede the existence of matter. — TheGreatArcanum

The second paragraph there isn't supposed to have anything to do with the first, is it?

to solve the unsolved questions about the nature of existence, one must first ascertain the essence of the set of all sets which do not contain themselves, that is, the set of all contingent things. to do this, one must relate ontology and set theory, or rather, the notion of precedence and set containment or non-containment. by doing this, one can establish a set of principles of epistemology and ontology and determine the nature of the set of all sets. — TheGreatArcanum

You know that sets are something we invented, something we made up, right? Set theory is simply a conceptual tool.

"The set of all sets which do not contain themselves" has nothing to do with the contingent/necessary distinction, by the way.

determinism and intentionality are synonyms. — TheGreatArcanum

There may be someone who is more confused than you about this stuff, but it would take a long time to find that person.

I'm trying to spark your intellects by forcing you to think about the concept of non-existence and how it came to be. did it come to be after the concept of existence came to be, or before? Is it a concept or is it a concrete 'thing'? — TheGreatArcanum

Concepts are concrete things.

It's likely the case for everyone that a concept of nonexistence only arises after a concept of existence. I wouldn't say it would necessarily be the case, but I think it would be very unusual to develop a concept of nonexistence first. At any rate, it's not something we could know very well, since such basic concepts develop prior to babies being able to use language.

i’m not sure what you mean by “support?” — TheGreatArcanum

Then how can you make a comment about whether I understand the definition of support?

maybe you don’t understand the definition of support. — TheGreatArcanum

Maybe not. What was supposed to be the support for it?

subjectivity is transcendent of the brain — TheGreatArcanum

That's an unsupported claim.

you guys are all wasting your time. mysticism seems irrational until you become a mystic yourself. — TheGreatArcanum

Why would someone become a "mystic"?

Nothing to do with the topic, but I like the new avatar. Curiously, for some reason I was just thinking about Wacky Packages yesterday, thinking I need to look for info about them online because I hadn't seen them in so long. And then I see your avatar. ;-)

Yes, that's my understanding - God is present AT every location. — Bitter Crank

Right, but there can't be anywhere that God is not located then. Including every cell of bodies, ever elementary particle, etc.

Re Akron, I was born in Cleveland. I didn't actually live there that long--we moved to South Florida and I think of myself as being raised in South Florida instead, but I've got a ton of relatives all over Ohio still.

i'm saying that the watcher of these changes is beyond space... — TheGreatArcanum

If you're simply positing a God of some sort, why not be explicit about that?

I'm an atheist. So I don't buy that there's "a watcher of changes beyond space"

can you give me the true state in absolute detail of any one of your internal parts right now? no? — TheGreatArcanum

No, because I don't know what the heck "absolute detail" would be. Not that that matters for what's the case ontologically, whatever "absolute detail" is. You're making an epistemological request there instead.

a million billion parts working together in harmony... — TheGreatArcanum

If you're just using it to refer to things interacting with each other that's simple enough.

At least half of the time when people use "unity" in a philosophical context I still have no idea what they're referring to, exactly. It's typically very ambiguous and people say things like "that's for me to know and you to find out" when you ask them to clarify.

Wouldn't God have a problem being the same as Paris and Akron, Ohio at the same time? I mean, there are limits on what is imaginable, even for god, right? — Bitter Crank

The idea isn't that every location is the entirety of God. But God needs to be present at every location for omnipresence.

But yeah, a lot of this stuff wasn't thought out very well.

I've been to both Akron and Paris. I recommend visiting Paris first unless you're really into rubber.

that's for you me to know and you to figure out; — TheGreatArcanum

If you're interested in someone like me reading past what I'm quoting, it's for you to explain. You're not required to explain things, of course, but don't expect me to bother reading what appears to be endless gobbledygook in lieu of an explanation.

Re "pure subjectivity" I have no idea. I'd have to ask you. I have no idea what work the word "pure" is supposed to be performing.

What's necessary for the existence of subjectivity? The existence of a mind. Where is the evidence that mind requires body? (What does this have to do with anything else we were talking about, by the way?) All evidence we have so far, including our own and others behavior, including how brain injuries correlate with mental/behavioral changes, including things like fMRI imaging and its correlation to mental phenomena/behavior, and on and on, suggests that mind is a property of functioning brains.

"it" is "non-local substratum"? That's what I'm asking you about. I'm asking you what "non-local substratum" would amount to. I don't know how we can talk about the things having or not having an effect on the "essence" of a "non-local substratum" when it's not even clear what a "non-local substratum" would refer to.

It's not in space, and it's everywhere in space (as well as time, but only in the "non-relative" sense), because the spatial is a subset of the non-spatial, and this amounts to non-locality.

Good work.

The substratum is everywhere, but not in space? So if we point to a spatial location, the substratum isn't there, even though it's everywhere. Is that right?

The substratum is everywhere that existence is? What's "non-local" about it?

Modern scientific discoveries in particle physics support the existence of a non-local substratum to reality, — TheGreatArcanum

What would a "non-local substratum" be? The substratum isn't located where the substratum is?

— Bitter Crank

So how would you say that God wouldn't be the same as Paris if he's omnipresent?

Well, or you're part of God. (This is all of course, assuming that someone buys the notion of a God, buys omnipresence, etc.)

I am present in front of my computer; I am present in my house; I am present in The Philosophy Forum, yet I am not coextensive with my computer, the house, or TPS. Why can't God be present in Paris, but not be the same as Paris? Or be present in your toilet bowl while not being the same as a toilet bowl? — Bitter Crank

Because Omnipresent means "present everywhere." There can't be a location where something isn't present while the thing in question is omnipresent.

What would you suggest as an alternate definition of omnipresent?

By your reasoning, then, everything is God; — Bitter Crank

If God is omnipresent, yes. That's a requirement for omnipresence. The other option is simply not to say that God is omnipresent.

So "individual morality" is only a dot in the center of "the existing individual who is directly concerned with the ethical"?

Why not? I don't see a problem in God being omnipresent in a cosmos that is separate from God. — Bitter Crank

If there's something separate from God then there are places where God is not located.

So you're using the colloquial "transcending the physical world" sense? In philosophy, the bulk of metaphysics is ontology, which is simply about "what exists," "what the nature of existent things/entities/etc. is" and so on.

I feel that the idea of an original sin that causes all humans to be born corrupted — Andrew4Handel

The problem I always had is it is this: just how is that supposed to work ontologically? How, ontologically, does Adam and/or Eve doing something get passed on to us?