I disagree. Our present time is composed of primarily cinematographic, telecommunicational duration. — Number2018

What is "cinematographic, telecommunicational duration"?

I don't know if I noticed that comment from Purple Pond. I'd wonder what Purple Pond would have in mind with meaning that doesn't involve reference in any manner.

Although actually I think my one-time pad suggestion is a load of rubbish. — Michael

I don't want to speculate why. Why would you say it's a load of rubbish?

So, I recently begun adhering to a daily schedule. At first I felt very restricted and trapped. But as time went on, I begun to felt fulfilled, happy, and "free" in a way. Like, I had no stresses and problems to face since I didn't hold off in doing them. Does being free actually make people feel free? Or are they two separate things? — adamhakeemiforv

We really would need to define just what we're referring to with "free" here. And that would probably answer the question.

I don't want anyone banned, especially not because of any opinion they have/any view they express, but I do find what I call "agenda posters" annoying--basically, obsessives with a single-minded agenda that they're always campaigning for. They're always trying to turn any topic about anything into a discussion about their agenda, so they can campaign for it in that context.

But we can choose to not pay attention to those folks if we find them annoying or whatever.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that "Oh if they never exist, they never suffered", and, "Since they didn't exist their potential happiness never did either". Either what they will experience exists before they are born or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways. — TogetherTurtle

I don't agree with antinatalist views, but I don't agree with your comment here, either.

If something doesn't exist, we can't say it has any properties, potential or otherwise. "They never suffered" is noting that those properties never obtain relative to something nonexistent. Same for "potential happiness never existed."

One big problem with the usual formulations of the private language argument is that they focus on a private language not being able to be "correct." Well, languages aren't correct or not period. There are conventions, but it's not correct to be conventional/incorrect to be unconventional.

Per my analysis of understanding, can there be an expressed private language (where the expression is ever made public) that can't be understood by someone else? No. But understanding on my analysis doesn't imply having the same meanings in mind. (And it's important to remember that on my view, meanings are different than definitions; meaning is a type of mental activity that's not identical to sounds we can make, marks we can make, things we can point to (taking something to be pointing requires mental activity in itself at any rate))

The standard arguments on how we do not have any way to establish the objectivity of our experience. — Echarmion

I don't believe that any of those work. I'm a direct/naive realist. Which ones do you find convincing?

If it's random it's not attributable to the person making the (apparent) decisions, — Echarmion

Sure it is. It's not someone else making the random decision. That would be like saying, if we were talking about a random number generator, that it's not the random number generator producing the random numbers. I don't know how that would make sense. What would you think is producing the random numbers in that case (and could we then say that it's that thing that's producing the random numbers, or would we have to say that something else is)?

(None of which is to argue whether anything is "really random," by the way, but if we're characterizing things that way . . .)

Yes. They were words when they meant something to the people who used them, — Michael

Sure. So that the private language creator doesn't remember, so they can't understand, some word in their private language at a later date doesn't imply that there wasn't (and so can not be) a private language.

These "words" would no longer be words in that language; just random scribbles and sounds. — Michael

That's fine, but weren't they words in a language prior?

Let's say I use a one-time pad to encrypt the word "Michael" as "Fpgyamy". If I don't remember this then when I won't understand the word "Fpgyamy" when I read it. — Michael

One possibility is that you do understand it when you read it the later time, but you assign "Joe" to it (or whatever). In other words, just because you assign a different referent to it doesn't imply that you don't understand it.

But that's irrelevant anyway. Why isn't it a language if you don't understand it on the later occasion? Where is the requirement coming from that in order to be a language, you have to understand it in perpetuity?

Imagine that some virus strikes Earth that rapidly spreads and gives everyone a cognitive fog. A symptom of it is that there are many words in all natural languages that no one understands any longer.

Did we not have languages in that case?

Perhaps there could be a language that works as a one-time-pad translation of English (or any other language)? Would require a perfect memory but in principle I think it would count. — Michael

Why would memory even be relevant to the issue though?

There's an assumption something like "it's not a language if it can't be used just the same way over time (from an objective perspective)." Where in the world is that assumption coming from?

Here's what I'm getting at--I probably wasn't being verbose enough about this:

Say that your referent of "thoughts/beliefs about acceptable/unacceptable behavior" is α.

Well, your referent of "feelings" in a context of talking about what we're basing morality on wouldn't be α then, it would be β, since the two terms in quotation marks refer to something different in your view.

So, I was asking how you'd know that my referent of "thoughts/beliefs about acceptable/unacceptable behavior" isn't α.

You can't know based on me saying that that's what I'm referring to with "feelings" in a moral context, because my referent for that could be α, too. Which would imply that we differ on the referent for "feelings" in this context instead. (Or, you were taking me to be talking about something with "feelings" other than what I was talking about.)

That is, if what you say here is true, then one ought be able to replace all your use of the term "feelings" with "thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour" in all the situations where you are making utterances about morality, and the transformation not suffer any loss of meaning. — creativesoul

Are you saying so that grammatically it would work just the same? Or are you allowing that I'd have to change grammatical structures at times, perhaps, to make it grammatically conventional? And the "meaning doesn't change" in whose opinion?

When I'm talking about this sort of stuff--same for when I'm talking about time being identical to change/motion, I'm never making a claim about conventional language usage. I'm doing ontology. I'm not arguing about common language usage.

Do you want to get into concepts? I would argue that all concepts are existentially dependent upon language. — creativesoul

If you want to. I already said that I don't agree with that.

Here's an easy example. I have a concept of "building houses" when musicians are playing together, especially in a jazz context. My concept of that isn't at all dependent on language. It's an abstract concept about ways of playing together/interacting with other musicians (again especially in a jazz context). I could very roughly attempt to put it into words, but that would be rather ad hoc and sloppy. It's not a linguistic concept.

Morality, as it is conventionally understood is the rules of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. — creativesoul

I don't agree with that either. I'm not necessarily asserting the negation. The problem is that we don't have the survey data we'd need to really be able to assert this. It's just as plausible that morality is conventionally understood as judgments about interpersonal behavior a la acceptable/unacceptable, etc., where those judgments include the idea of rules per se, but where rules do not exhaust it--it includes many things that aren't rules, too. Under this, it would be a moral issue if someone feels that it's acceptable or not for a particular person to act in a particular unique way towards another particular person, even if no one is formulating a rule about that. My suspicion is that that's a far more common way of thinking about what morality is.

There's also the issue of what's going on functionally with respect to how people use terms (like morality/ethics), where that can be different than persons' beliefs and conceptions about something a la how they'd define morality, what they'd state is going on in their opinion, etc.

First of all it's not possible to know the configuration of objective reality — Echarmion

Hmm, why would you believe that?

Let's say the entire universe is a dream of me, and my will is actually the only thing that changes it. How can I change my decisions without also changing myself? — Echarmion

That depends on whether you're thinking of your decisions as constitutive of yourself. In other words, if you on a complete whim choose rye bread over whole wheat, does that mean you've changed yourself merely because of that fact?

I'm not convinced that any of what you suggest would be possible, except maybe for the most rudimentary language. In any case the possibility cannot be tested, so there would be no point arguing about it. — Janus

What do you think might make it impossible?

While they weren't languages of just one person, we do have examples of languages that no one has been able to crack yet:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/12884/8-ancient-writing-systems-havent-been-deciphered-yet

What would be the reason that an individual couldn't devise a language in the vein of those?

Will we ever crack them? I don't think there's any way to know the answer to that. Hence my comments about the untenability of the "in principle" criterion above.

I think all suffering is bad- be it suffering through adversity (even if it results in making something stronger) or suffering through collateral damage. You probably only find the latter unwarranted. — schopenhauer1

The demarcation for me is the degree of suffering--the intensity of it, the ubiquity and persistence of it. Collateral damage matters for determining whether it's morally bad. But even with that, degree is still a determinant.

You haven't answered as to how you could overcome the difficulties involved in establishing a private language in the strong sense I outlined in the passage you responded to. — Janus

I didn't get into details because there would be many different ways to do it--it just depends on the person's imagination, ingenuity, etc.

Also, we wouldn't necessarily need thousands of words. It might just be a handful of things.

They could simply come up with novel letters or other symbols or sounds, or even just mentally picture the same--it wouldn't have to be expressed to anyone else, and then think about what they're going to use the letters, sounds, etc. to stand for. They wouldn't have to translate that into some other natural language, though they could if they wanted to, perhaps. And it could be done for any level of abstraction or concrete reference.

Well, because it's too broad. I'm anti murdering people, anti raping them and various other things, but "suffering" is too general/broad. A lot of things it's applied to by a lot of folks are things that I don't agree are bad, especially not morally bad or bad in a manner that suggests doing any and everything imaginable to avoid it.

I'm not categorically anti-suffering.

I think they're trying to figure out whether freedom of will is an illusion, that really they could not have choosen any other option. — Echarmion

Right. But, re your opinion, so you just don't feel that that issue is worth bothering with?

This still really, really sounds like you are appealing to the results of modern science to underwrite one particular view of the world (i.e. indeterminism), though you insist otherwise. — Arkady

It's about understanding why someone would have the views they have.

I'm not asking your opinion. I'm asking what it is that you think that people are doing in the debate, from their perspective? (So an answer would attempt to accurately describe what they're doing from their perspective, it wouldn't be giving your approval or disapproval of what they're doing) No one is wondering whether there's the psychological phenomenon of making choices, decisions, etc.

Again, the point wasn't that one position or another is correct. It's that it's ridiculous to wonder how someone could be a naturalist (or a physicalist, etc.) and not buy determinism.

You essentially said that modern science has somehow disproved determinism, — Arkady

C'mon, man. Read what I said instead of putting words in my mouth. if you were to ask me if science proves anything, I'd emphatically say "No."

I like, by the way, in post after post you're simply ignoring that the point is that it's ridiculous for you to wonder how someone could be a naturalist and not buy determinism.

Basically the same question I asked above--what do you think the issue is, then, if we parse the "free" part of "free will" as simply the psychological phenomenon?

I wouldn't say that "compatibilists go with the freedom side of the freedom vs determinism debate" because they don't see freedom as being opposed to determinism. — Arkady

So in your understanding of the debate, what are we debating? You're arguing that everyone is really a compatibilist and there is no debate?

I'm not sure what this is based on. Most are compatibilists, which at least allows for determinism. — Arkady

I don't know at all that "most are compatibilists" is true. What survey data are you basing that on?

At any rate, compatibilists aren't determinists. They're compatibilists.

You might as well say that compatibilists go with the freedom side of the freedom vs determinism debate.

But that wouldn't be right, either. They're compatibilists. Saying that they're determinists misses the whole point. (unless you're claiming that they don't really buy the freedom side . . . personally I don't think that compatibilism can be made coherent, but that's another discussion)

Look at it this way: In my opinion, beliefs in a "multiverse" are ridiculous.

But I'd never say that I can't understand how belief in a multiverse could be consistent with being a physicist. I very well understand how beliefs in a multiverse can and often do coincide with being a physicist. I just think that the beliefs are very misconceived.

Nope. Soft determinism is one such thesis. — Arkady

Not many philosophers are determinists.

So, the rightness or wrongness does seem to be rather salient, wouldn't you say? — Arkady

Not at all. What I was commenting on was that it's ridiculous to wonder how someone could be a naturalist and not a determinist. That shouldn't be a mystery to you unless you're completely unfamiliar with recent science. That you might think the consensus view is wrong is irrelevant to understanding how the two can coincide.

"Determinism is hardly a moribund view in philosophy" is actually false, too, by the way, but I didn't want to pick on everything.

So, Laplacean determinism isn't wrong? — Arkady

It is per the widespread consensus in the sciences for well over a century. Hence, it's ridiculous to wonder how someone could be a naturalist and reject determinism.

As I just wrote and you seemed to ignore:"The point, by the way, isn't that one view or another is right or wrong."

So, you are taking a position on the question of determinism, and insisting that the results of science underwrite your views. — Arkady

That's false as well. I was making a claim about the widespread consensus in the sciences. Disagreeing with that would only reflect ignorance of what most scientists have been saying for over 100 years now.

You said "Naturalistic views of the world haven't had the world as a place with anything like Laplacean determinism for over 100 years now," and when I pointed out that's not true, you shifted to saying something like "Naturalistic views of the world shouldn't haven't had the world as a place with anything like Laplacean determinism for over 100 years now, based on the results from modern physics." — Arkady

If you claimed it's not true, you're wrong.

I wasn't making a claim about every single person and however they self-identify.

I didn't say anything even remotely resembling the second sentence you put into quotation marks.

The words "thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour" has a different referent on your view than mine. — creativesoul

I don't know if that's the case, though, unless you're using belief to necessarily refer to (beliefs) about externals.

Even physicists are not unified — Arkady

And no one suggested as much, but the widespread consensus for a long time now is that determinism is not supportable any longer. The Laplacean view is seen as a comical historical quirk, akin to a belief in phlogiston.

The point, by the way, isn't that one view or another is right or wrong.

It's that the only way that one can wonder "how can someone be a naturalist and not a determinist" is to be almost completely unfamiliar with recent science. You'd wonder "how can someone be a naturalist and not a determinist" if the widespread consensus in the sciences was that determinism is correct and Laplace's view was right on track.

Right, so you think that philosophers are determinists due to thinking that contemporary science has things wrong because? What would they be basing their ontological traditionalism on there?

Determinism is hardly a moribund view in philosophy. — Arkady

That could be (that it's still alive and well in philosophy) but it shouldn't be the case due to folks being naturalists, unless they haven't cracked a science book written in the past 100-150 years.

Yes, indeterminateness or randomness, as opposed to determinism.

I think it's worth bringing up, because we should know what we're even talking about if we're formulating positions featuring the term, no?

It's kind of hard to debate one side or the other with respect to a term like that if we don't even know what we're referring to.