Sure, so is Herbert Hoover president now?

It seems like a tautology isn't sufficient to make ontological claims about what obtains at a particular time, no?

2. Social collapse will be worldwide, and in the next 10 years or so. — unenlightened

A claim like that is sufficient to not take the paper seriously. Maybe the guy should have stopped studying climate change for a few months so that he could learn something about epistemology instead.

As I said, I'm never trying to be disagreeable. So I won't be shooting for that at all.

Does gravity require assigning meaning? Does spacetime not govern the behaviour of all mass?

Are there no rules involved? — creativesoul

I'm not a realist on physical law, but we weren't talking about physical laws anyway. We were talking about rules that people construct, whether intentionally or not.

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.

I think it's worth (1) asking why there would be any need to prove this, and (2) analyzing just what it is that we're doing when we're constructing proofs in the first place.

In your mind I am guessing the phrases "general rule" or "rule of thumb" (I apologize for sexist undertones in that second one) mean "not a rule"? Because both of those expressions refer to basic guidelines, not "do it or else." — ZhouBoTong

I'd say that those expressions do not use the term "rule" literally. Not all language is literal. When we're doing philosophy, though, ideally we're trying to use terms as literally and precisely as we can.

Jumping in here, considering whether ontology is the way to go, I think meaning is being overthought, or given to much credit. Considering words as behavior, meaning becomes: the use of words that are acceptable to others (including oneself in an internal conversation). and knowing how to respond to words acceptably. Words are learned through emotional commitment to the situation in which the are learned, and continue to be used base on that emotional commitment. For example, a child learns to behave the word ball acceptably because the parent gives bright smiles when he does. So, for those smiles, the child behaves the word ball in an acceptable manner. He has not learned a word, he has learned a behavior driven by the emotional result. I think all words carry that emotional commitment, and are behavior that does not refer, or point, but interacts. Thus the definition of meaning given above. — forswanked

On S's view, your account can't be the case, because in his view meaning obtains just the same even when no people exist.

Remember this?

But once they're established, I simply ask: wherefore art thou, necessary dependency?

I go by the realist logic, which seems very reasonable to me, that if x means y, then x means y.

I don't go by any logic which I think Russell would call psychologism. That is, something like: x means y if x means y & if and only if x is understood by S & y is understood by S &... — S


So, beforehand, x means y. And, absent any contradiction, afterwards, x still means y. You create your own contradiction because of your additional premises. But I don't have that problem. Neither do you, internally, but then you have logical consequences I find weird and implausible. For you, x just wouldn't mean y anymore. But that is not at all convincing to me. — S

So, "If 'flirt' means 'give someone a sharp blow' or 'sneer at,' then 'flirt' means 'give someone a sharp blow' or 'sneer at'"?

Wouldn't that also go for "If Herbert Hoover is president, then Herbert Hoover is president," "If the Azure Window is in Malta, then the Azure Window is in Malta," "If Hershey's makes Reese's Elvis Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Cups, then Hershey's makes Reese's Elvis Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Cups," and so on?

If the same wouldn't apply in those cases, why not?

You just keep on moving to the left one step at a time forever. — fishfry

That's otherwise known as "arriving at something" and having an infinite regress.

I'm more confused than ever. What would it have to do with logic?

The ink marks would say things like, "planet - a celestial body moving in an elliptical orbit round a star". Why wouldn't that be what the word meant in English, as per the definition? — S

I'm not saying it can't be what the word means in English. I'm querying how that works. It works in some nonphysical way in your view?

We write down "planet . . . " and then that causes some nonphysical thing to happen?

The result, you eventually arrive at something that has to have existed infinitely, regardless of what you call it and regardless of what attributes you give it. — GigoloJoe

Wait--what happened to the (a) option--"nothing"?

in the end there is no method for determining which one of us is correct. — Moliere

If we're making empirical claims, how about making empirical observations? In other words, how about if we check the facts?

So have you decided to join the respectful? I'm ready to engage when you're ready to be more charitable poster. You can keep (believing you are) seeking truth, but there is no rule that truth-seeking is proportional to simply being confrontational and disagreeable. — schopenhauer1

If you're ready to engage in a conversation, just start already.

So let's define how you're using "suffering" and explain which negative/undesired states of body/mind count as suffering and which do not.

My argument set out what it was beforehand and rejected that it would magically change. The only possible reason for it to change without magic is if your hidden premise is true, but if you haven't justified your hidden premise and I can find no justification by my own assessment, then I have no reasonable basis for believing your hidden premise to be true. — S

So first, we're going to assume that it doesn't "magically change" when there are no people around.

If it doesn't magically change, and meaning exists independently of people once it's created, then once people are absent, there should still be meaning. So, the question becomes this: in a world with no people, how exactly does a dictionary, for example, amount to meaning, when all we're talking about is a set of ink marks on some paper?

You know my argument, though. Or you should do — S

I don't remember you ever trying to explain just how it would be/become something other than a set of ink marks on paper. It always seemed that you just avoided confronting that problem

Because it's also a statement, a definition, and it means something. — S

That's your claim. The question is how it does any of that when we just have a set of ink marks on paper and no people exist. The justification for my position is the complete absence of any account or explanation how it amounts to anything aside from a set of ink marks on paper.

Monozygotic twins are those that develop from the same zygote (sperm+egg) and are described as identical twins. They have identical genetic codes. In other words the physical aspects of such twins are indistinguishable i.e. insofar as the physical is concerned monozygotic twins are perfectly identical.

Yet, even such twins are vastly different in mind. One may like action movies and the other comedy, etc. Each runs on different philosophy. There are also people with two heads and the same body with each head having a different personality i.e. their minds are different.

Now if physicalism is true then shouldn't monozygotic twins be mind-identical?

They are NOT. — TheMadFool

"Identical" simply means that a single zygote splits during development. It isn't using "identical" in a logical sense, so that we're talking about two things that are indiscernible. After all, if identical twins were indiscernible, if we were using the term in a logical sense, it would be literally impossible to tell them apart via appearance--that's the whole idea of indiscernibility (we also have to ignore that they're numerically discernible, which simply amounts to the fact that you can tell that there are two of them).

Under nominalism, by the way--and some of us are nominalists, no two numerically discernible things are logically identical in any respect.

Genetics aren't the only determinant of an organism. Not only environment plays a factor, too, but genetics are not expressed in some exact, clockwork manner. There are countless ways in which genetic expression varies--and after all, if that weren't possible, genetic mutation wouldn't be possible, and evolution couldn't work.

So this argument hinges on both ignorance of the different senses of "identical" and ignorance of what genetics amounts to.

Re our meaning dispute, I'm not sure if you're imagining people literally being taken out of the picture. If we have something like a dictionary, say, where there are ink marks like this: "dog - a domesticated carnivorous mammal that typically has a long snout, an acute sense of smell, nonretractable claws, and a barking, howling, or whining voice," if people are literally out of the picture, how do those ink marks amount to anything other than a set of ink marks on paper?

A set of rules, ontologically, requires meaning assignments, and that only happens via people thinking about the utterances, the text, etc. in specific ways--which is their brain functioning in particular ways.

It seems to me that death eradicates point and meaning because only the living can have desires.

Death disconnects the individual from her wishes and goals. You cannot connect back with the world after you are dead( it seems) to see what happened to the world in your absence.

For example almost everyone that died before the two World wars and holocaust had no idea that this is what the future held. You can die optimistic seeing the world on the cusp of a positive revolution but you cannot know how this progressed and whether or not there was a reverse in fortune.

I think one main problem with our friends and family dying is that we might never see them again. It is not enough that we have memories of them. — Andrew4Handel

In other news, water is wet. :joke:

Terrapin Station and Metaphysician Undercover: Which part of that seems to disagree with anything Janus and @S have been saying? I see no requirement of consequences and it is explicitly stated that it does NOT have to be explicitly stated (notice "or understood"). — ZhouBoTong

How does a convention or something merely understood but not explicit govern conduct? You don't have to follow any convention. There's no punitive action for not doing so. What sort of government is it if there's no punitive action for not following any of its rules? Under that government, I can do absolutely anything I like. Other folks may not like it, and they might bitch and moan, but so what? I can do whatever I want, including murder, rape, etc. I'd not be controlled in any way. I'm only controlled if there is specific punitive action for breaking rules. Otherwise I'm not really governed, am I?

And yeah, obviously it's semantics. Semantics is philosophy of meaning. And we're talking about different ways that we use a word.

I think of "evil" as simply being the strongest form of disapproval someone can give. It's the biggest BOO!

"Naughty" I think of as having a more playful connotation and either being directed towards kids or non-human animals or alternately having a sexual connotation.

Yes the suffering of your posts. — schopenhauer1

Hence you having a problem rather than me. :razz:

my impression of the way the staff now operate is that it's more controlling, more biased, more judgemental, than it used to be. — S

And are any of them really qualified to judge content anyway?

Pretty lame, especially as it's not as if there are too many active threads on the board so that a bunch of stuff is getting buried. The first page contains threads where the latest post is over a day old. Maybe if the board were so active that threads were getting knocked down a couple pages in just a few hours, but even then, it's not as if folks can't look a couple pages in and decide what thread they'd like to post in.

Again, I wouldn't say that you can't use "rule" to simply refer to conventions, but that's just not the way I use the term. There's nothing wrong with people using a term in different ways. We simply make explicit the different ways we're using the term so that we can understand each other.

It would amount to acting in disconformity, and it would likely result in miscommunication, — S

I don't understand how that would amount to a disqualification. Re rules, I explained earlier that I take them to be things for which there is I mean a specific, concrete or practical, non-metaphorical consequence. The consequence is a specific punitive action taken by other persons.

Re a chess disqualification, I'm not just talking about something like "I'm not going to play with you (any more)." I mean a formal organizational decision that someone is taken out of the running to win some tournament, say.

I mentioned disqualification earlier, and you dismissed it, — S

I asked you to explain what it would amount to and you didn't answer.

So chunky stuff all the way down? — Marchesk

Yes. I don't believe that the idea of an existent that isn't something (a la a chunk of something) makes any sense. The idea of "disembodied properties" doesn't make any sense.

In what sense are their rules of chess, though, if there's no penalty (as I described before) for not following the rules?

The penalties that matter are disqualification from a tournament, etc.

That does raise the question of what matter is. Tegmark has a point about physical properties being mathematical. — Marchesk

Matter = "chunks of stuff" basically. I'm an antirealist on mathematics (and all abstracts period).

I don't believe that anyone has any idea what the universe would have been like at the start of time, or even if there was start. Current theories centered on the big bang are primarily the result of reifying mathematics.

Yes, it had to be.

As anything independent of matter and relations, I can't make any sense of them (and I don't believe that's my flaw)

Hey, usually people with these problems rarely or never recognize it in themselves. Can't do much with it. Therapy I can recommend to exorcise the demons..other than that.. Disengaging with crazy-making people is the best solution for others. — schopenhauer1

Aren't you the one complaining about suffering?

One reason why I think it is a very good idea to distinguish habits from rules is to see that each of these two actually have a very different nature. The nature of a habit is that it arises from the choices of a freely choosing being. The nature of a rule is that it is designed to curb those choices, those habits which have been determined as bad. Consider that a lot of what the freely choosing being learns, is learnt through trial and error. By the time that the freely choosing being learns that a particular type of choice is an error, that choosing pattern may already be habitual. Then rules are needed to restrict that choosing pattern. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you'd agree that being a convention isn't sufficient to be a rule?

Life is already suffering enough to deal with people like you — schopenhauer1

I don't believe that I'm the problem here. Maybe you should make some adjustments?

"Abstract(ion)" is a term for a specific mental activity we perform--formulating concepts to range over a number of particulars, via generalizing select features of particulars while ignoring unique details.

Mind itself is not that. That's just one thing that minds can do. And ontologically, they're concrete particuilars.

Mind isn't abstract. Minds are a subset of brain structure and function. You can get that correct by realizing this and get it incorrect by believing that minds are something else.

It’s just speculative philosophy after all, which means it’s being correct is not a consideration, whereas it’s usefulness might be. — Mww

Interesting. I think it's something we can get correct.