No climatologist sees any reason that the species itself will be threatened by climate change. Whether civilization can also survive is another question. We've never been here before. We have no experience to draw on in making a guess. — frank

Not to mention that it has nothing whatsoever to do with climate scientists' area of expertise.

But we can't even predict simple sociological phenomena very well, even when we're talking about sociologists making predictions, even when we're making very minor predictions about a very short period of time in the future. The phenomena are too chaotic. There are way too many variables.

The reference to 'nothing' meant that nothing came before the Big Bang was one of the possible choices, making the Big Bang the thing that is infinite. Whatever you arrive at, if nothing came before it, that thing is infinite. Even if we try to characterize what came before the Big Bang as 'nothing' that nothing is something, a void of white or darkness or just 'nothing' but that inself is a characteristic making it infinite, because it had to be. Essentially, everything comes from something, except that which was there at the beginning. — GigoloJoe

Say what? Nothing has no properties. It's not infinite (in whatever respect you're thinking of that) or anything else.

Well, and presumably He'd not even create the rest of the universe in that case, as that would have been doing something, changing in some way.

I would also note that the thread was SO active there was likely to be a bit of banter mixed in. It had over 600 posts in just a couple weeks (when closed I had four responses waiting for me). — ZhouBoTong

I want "bantery" posts anyway, even if we're "strictly" doing philosophy. I prefer chatting to message board posting partially for this reason. It's the pits when people babble on and on for hundreds of words in a very unfocused. rambling manner, broaching what's essentially a couple handfuls or even tens of different issues in the process . . . and almost every single long post does that.

If you cant accept that, will you please prove that it's wrong? — frank

If I were going to bother "proving wrong" every ridiculous or dubious thing that anyone said, that's all I'd be doing 24/7. I'll let a sort of natural selection take care of the insufficiently skeptical as they wind up conned one way or another.

One popular model has God necessarily not doing anything. He's supposed to be "changeless."

No, it can't be forms all the way down, or there would be no potentiality, and thus no change — Theorem

Change obtains because things are in motion. It could also obtain acausally or indeterministically.

Possibilities simply amount to a state not being impossible given contingent facts. "Potential" is often used with a more limited connotation a la possibilities that are statistically more probable than other possibilities.

Things like "principles of pure potentiality" don't exist outside of our thought.

Keep reading. One distinction was the sentence that followed in the post you quoted: "If there are physical laws, it's literally impossible to 'disobey them' (at least in the possible world wherein the physical law obtains). That's not at all the case for rules as we're talking about them."

You guys obviously need to scratch up on your Wittgenstein — S

I don't agree with Wittgenstein, though. (And in my opinion the "Wittgenstein cult" is one of the worst things to happen to philosophy in the last 100 years.) I was detailing that in the PI thread. I'm behind in that thread and need to catchy back up, but I started detailing disagreements with him.

Jesus Christ. We're back at square one again! My argument is all the evidence I need. — S

Square one was me asking you what empirical evidence you're referring to re the unclear-to-me phrase "circumstances of the possible future event"?

Look, basically you think of things like definitions as being meaning, and the definitions still exist as words in a dictionary, say, even when no people exist, and that's about the extent you've bothered to think about this up to now--you've not bothered to think about just how words in a dictionary amount to meaning or anything like that. People commonly call definitions "meaning" and so that's good enough for you. You don't want to think about it any further than that, really, because you don't want to wind up thinking and saying something that's going to seem weird to people who just go with the unanalyzed flow.

No, it's inappropriate in the relevant context. — S

Anything extant has empirical evidence available --it has properties, for example. The relevant context here is whether there's empirical evidence.

We're aware now about circumstances of the possible future event. There'd be rocks. There'd be meaning — S

What? I was saying whether we're aware of empirical evidence. What empirical evidence are you saying we're aware of here? Circumstances of the possible future event? It's not clear what that's saying, especially in terms of empirical evidence.

There'd be empirical evidence. — S

Hence, empirical evidence isn't inappropriate.

We wouldn't be aware of it, which we agree is beside the point.

I just said that whether we're aware of it is pertinent to whether there's any reason to believe it.

Our awareness is about epistemology.

Ontologically, empirical evidence is appropriate if we're talking about things that have properties, that interact with other things. If they do--and everything does, then there will be empirical evidence available of those things whether we're aware of it or not.

For example, empirical evidence was available of Saturn's rings in 10,000 BCE. That we weren't aware of it at that time is irrelevant to whether empirical evidence was appropriate to whether Saturn has/had rings.

Our awareness is pertinent to whether we have reason to believe something or not.

First, the idea re whether empirical evidence is appropriate or not isn't saying anything dependent on our awareness.

So something could exist, have properties, etc. but there could be no evidence of it?

A phenomenon is any event, occurrence, etc.

An existent non-phenomenon? Are you just randomly combining words?

If phenomena exist, there's going to be some empirical evidence of it.

Right, we don't agree. What is elaboration going to do?

Elaborate or where won't get anywhere. — S

Elaborate --because you don't understand what I'm saying?

Why should I care? — S

That's how conversations work, dude.

Wtf? I just said that it's ridiculous in my opinion to think that empirical evidence is ever inappropriate, especially when we're doing ontology. That has nothing to do with logical positivism.

Yes -- evidence, empirical evidence. Why do I have to spell that out completely every time? You can't remember what I said?

What happened to what I just typed? There's zero evidence of meaning outside of thought. That has nothing to do with logical positivism.

No one is saying anything about "verification" or anything like that.

The idea that it would ever be inappropriate, especially when we're talking about ontology, is ridiculous.

The empirical evidence there is of us doing something. There's zero evidence of meaning obtaining outside of that.

We obviously do not think of the marks as being meaningless. The question is whether they have meaning outside of that. There's no evidence that they do.

What I'm going by is empirical evidence. There's no empirical evidence of meaning obtaining outside of people thinking in particular ways. There's no evidence of meaning obtaining in any closed environment devoid of people, and there's thus no reason to believe that meaning would obtain in a world absent people.

That could very well be wrong. What would support that it's wrong would be empirical evidence of meaning obtaining outside of thought.

So please, if you want to put this research in bin with the Mayan Apocalypse and Millenium Bug, do so, but politely leave it out of the thread (personal opinion, not moderator opinion). — fdrake

Get lost with that crap.

Societal problems could happen. It's not a bad idea to prepare for that possibility.

The problem is that there's no way in hell to justify an idiotic claim like "2. Social collapse will be worldwide, and in the next 10 years or so."

Let's see if we agree on a couple things so we don't have to go back over them:

We agree that "If x is/means/etc. y, then x is/means/etc. y" is tautological.

And we agree that the tautology in question doesn't imply that any x is/means/etc. y for all time, right? We agree that there is more required for an x being/meaning/etc. y to obtain for all time than just that tautology.

I cannot remember what your objection was. I don't see how creating someone does not create consent problems. — Andrew4Handel

Consent is a category error because there's no one to either grant or withhold consent. We need there to be a person capable of granting or withholding consent before consent is an issue.

Typo--I'm trying to get used to a new keyboard. I guess I wasn't hitting the shift key right. :wink:

Anyway, so I guess I'd need to ask Mr. Gensler what the heck he's talking about re that being an English translation.

The first sentence is the english paraphrase of "1+1=2", — Nicholas Ferreira

I brushed over that the first time I read your post. That's an English paraphrase of 1=1=2 according to whom? It certainly bears no resemblance to anything at all that I think when I think about "1=1=2"

duplicate

I don't see how you think the fact people did not consent to be born or assent to life and society is trivial? — Andrew4Handel

It's not that it's trivial it's that it's a category error. I've explained this to you before. It doesn't stop being a category error just because you ignored that or you didn't understand it or whatever.

What's your point? That wasn't what I intended. I was contrasting my logic with psychologism logic to show you why it wouldn't change from beforehand to afterwards. There is nothing in my logic to imply that it would change. — S

Likewise, there's nothing in "If Herbert Hoover is president, then Herbert Hoover is president" to imply that that will change, is there?

If it obtains beforehand, and the same conditions for it obtaining remain in place, then obviously it will obtain afterwards. That was my point. — S

The conditions for it obtaining are exactly the point, though. What are they? Simply stating the tautology doesn't tell us anything about that. SImply stating the tautology is just the same as stating "If Herbert Hoover is president, then Herbert Hoover is president." Yep--that's a tautology alright. But it doesn't imply that Herbert Hoover is president for all time, because there are certain things that need to be the case for Herbert Hoover to be president, and those things don't remain unchanged for all time, they wouldn't obtain if no people existed, etc.

And it obtains in correspondence to the language rule. — S

And how does the language rule obtain? If it does via something written, for example, then we're right back to asking how something written amounts to anything other than, say, ink marks on paper. Hence why I asked that question. Just repeating some tautology doesn't help. It doesn't tell us anything. No more than repeating the Herbert Hoover tautology.

There's also a rule that Herbert Hoover is president when he is, by the way.

And there was a rule (per your analysis) that "flirt" meant what I noted above. It no longer does. But there was a rule about that.

You don't think either is worthwhile. Okay. So what am I supposed to do with that information now?

What is it that obstructs us from grasping that a highly efficient, entirely realistic, thoroughly non-theoretical, technical mechanism for collapsing civilization in less than an hour is already fully in place and ready to launch at the press of a button by a single person? — Jake

Knowledge of epistemology?

Reason that, or just be quiet, because a claim like yours is sufficient reason not to take you seriously, without an argument, maybe some references to support it, which the author has already. — unenlightened

Here's how that reads to me: "I (, unenlightened,) also do not know enough about epistemology to realize why a claim like that is a problem."