Okay, so I want to talk about imaginings, desires, etc. qua imaginings, desires, etc. The identical stuff. Not related stuff. Let's stick to the very thing I'm bringing up.

Do you believe those things are mental-only, or do you believe they occur elsewhere?

Whoa--way too much writing as a response. I didn't read that because it's getting away form the conversation. I wanted you to answer the questions I asked. Let's try it this way: does "x is derived from y" imply "x is identical to y"? (That's a yes or no question. Answer yes or no, please, or alternately, explicitly tell me why yes or no doesn't work as an answer.)

ELP's "Knife Edge" is derived from Janacek's Sinfonietta. Is "Knife Edge" the same as Sinfonietta?

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"Derived from" is different than "is," no?

Peanut butter is derived from peanuts. Is peanut butter the same thing as peanuts?

Ah--and I just noticed that you said NOT a product of mind. (I overlooked the "not" because it's so weird ;-) )

So you don't believe that imagining is something that minds do?

but are these not a product of mind — kill jepetto

That's what I'm saying. Something that's a product of mind. That's not non-local if the location we're talking about is mind.

Again, I'm not saying that anything is a contradiction. I'm saying I can't make any sense of it. If you don't care to try to explain it so that I could make any sense out of it, then we're just stuck. It's not going to make sense to me, and you aren't going to bother to try to explain it.

Re the other part, that's what I'm talking about in all of this--what things are ontologically. If you're not interested in that, then again, a conversation probably just won't get started.

That objects cease to exist when not perceived is implausible. Why would any reasonable person believe that? — S

To me it always seemed like when toddlers believe that they and/or other things disappear when they cover their eyes or hide under a blanket.

It seems like insofar as that belief goes, some people don't move past it. They get stuck in that stage in that regard.

Thoughts, imaginings, desires, emotions, etc.

Can't you be conscious of things that are mental-only? That wouldn't be the non-local.

If there's no social norm element to it, it's not clear how anyone would feel that they're different than their biological sex, because however they feel would be an upshot of what their biological sex happens to be.

Is conception a la idealism a correlative fact in your view, or is it what objects are?

In other words, are you saying that one might be an idealist who allows mind-independent objects, whether they're perceived or not, as long as we correlatively conceive of them, too?

Or is the conception what the objects are? (And then we'd have to figure out how it would make sense posit an unperceived conception, and whether the conception has to be present-to-mind for that or not.)

What part of your initial post do you believe addresses anything I said?

As I mentioned earlier, right or wrong is a property of human actions, the value standard is a property of human beings (certain things are universally valuable to humans) and that standard is also implicit in the action (since an action is done by human beings). — Andrew M

So where do we look to check what the things are that are universally valuable to humans, where that value is independent of human opinion?

Okay. You should probably keep responding to me then.

I don't post in order to get a response. I post because I have something I want to say. It's up to you if you're interested and want to respond. I couldn't care less if any particular person is interested.

And if someone is going to respond like a jerk, I'd much rather they didn't respond at all.

You can claim all the rules you want.

The fact that you'd expect anyone to abide by them just because you claimed them is comical.

So in response to this:

"How can someone like a transgender claim gender to be innate if gender is a social construction?"

Re what I just wrote:

"Claim gender to be innate" = feel they are different than their biological sex says they are

"If gender is a social construction" = especially in relation to the social norms that become associated with biological sex.

Psychological and social, yes. Different from biological sex.

There's nothing to debate, really. People can feel they are different than their biological sex says they are, especially in relation to the social norms that become associated with biological sex. It's handy to have a term for that. The term we use for it is "gender."

Great, more philosophy jargon. Please translate that. — S

Ontic simple = basically it doesn't reduce to something else ontologically. An ontic simple is an "elementary particle" of sorts for ontology in general.

If you can't explain what it is about it which doesn't make sense to you, then your claim can simply be dismissed as unwarranted. I'm speaking in English in a way that makes sense, and in a way that other people can understand. I'm not saying anything like "fribgfh cgjjdfk hjkkfdf vhh" or "hat the field flying at to was". — S

For example, the idea of existents that have no location makes no sense in my view. Everything extant has some (set of) location(s). If the idea of existents with no locations makes sense to you, okay, you say it does, but I can't do anything with it unless you'd be able to explain how any existent could obtain without having a location.

Firstly, I don't even need to argue that they're not abstracts, if that's what I thought, if you're only making a claim without any supporting argument. A claim without any supporting argument can simply be dismissed.

Secondly, I don't really care what you call them. And, like I said before, I would rather avoid going down that route of whether they're abstracts or not. For starters, it isn't even clear to me what's meant by that. They are what they are. We don't need to call them anything extra. — S

I was using "argue" informally there. I just meant "If you want to say that they're not abstracts."

Re "they are what they are," that's what I'm getting at--exactly what they are ontologically. Are you claiming that systems of measurement and rules are ontic simples?

Now, you're going to have to be way more specific here and go into further detail about that, because it makes sense to me. It should make sense to anyone who speaks English. — S

I don't know how to be more specific about something not making any sense. If it makes sense to you, that's fine, but what am I supposed to do with that?

There's a very simple refutation to all of these sorts of arguments:

If it's possible for something with property x to exist, whatever property x might be, then it's possible for something other than a god to have property x.

So if we say that timelessness or being changeless or whatever is possible and it's necessary that something has the property in question, then we can't say that mundane things that have nothing to do with god can't have the property. If the property is really possible and necessary for something to have or have had, then it's possible and necessary. We can't say that it's possible and necessary but impossible for everything except for some magical being like a god. That would require an additional argument that no one has ever bothered trying to make.

I don't think it's necessarily a monotheistic god, necessarily an omnipotent god, etc.

Should we hope for, or expect, every pupil to achieve all of this — Brett

I think so. And that's different than them all achieving it in the same exact way.

I'm saying that a system of measurement and rules are abstracts. If you want to argue that they're not abstracts, that's fine, but I'd just ask what particular, concrete thing(s) they are then.

Re coherence, I'm not talking about contradictions. I'm talking about not being able to make any sense out of it whatsoever. We'd need to be able to make sense out of it to claim a contradiction. We can't get a proposition and its negation out of something we can make no sense of.

Isn't that only if one accepts particular definitions?

In general, the only immigration restrictions I'd have, anywhere in the world, would be that I'm okay with screening for wanted criminals or people with significant associations with known terrorists.

Was anyone in the thread going "Rah! Rah! Democrats"? I haven't read every post so I don't know.

In the thought experiment, especially given the stipulation that no one knows where land is, I think the best approach would be a bunch of small boats, but where (a) we systematically determine the basic exploration vectors each boat will take, (b) our best navigator, etc. teaches everyone (as much as possible in the time available) navigation skills, etc., and (c) part of the strategy is to come up with an additional exploration plan for survivors to try to contact others in the future, to enable future cooperation, where we can take advantage, for everyone, of what we've discovered.

Per other comments above, I also think this isn't a very good analogy for the free market versus central planning dichotomy, for a number of reasons, including that free markets enable competing with others in a manner that you can "win" by doing things to make certain others lose. I think it's better to make the competition so that you win the most by helping others win, too. The competition should be how to best ensure that everyone's lives are better/easier/etc.

In my opinion, it should be a combo of:

* Acquiring general knowledge/familiarity with culture, in a very broad, varied regard
* Acquiring critical thinking skills
* Acquiring practical life skills
* Acquiring more specific skills useful for making a living

But it's not that we just want to prove existence alone. We also want to prove that God has certain attributes too. — TheMadFool

It seemed to me that the point of this thread was basically that people spend so much time/effort on simply trying to prove existence, but nothing else follows from that even if they were to succeed. No one seems to bother coming up with what they believe are novel, blockbuster arguments proving any of the other supposed attributes.

If it's a human property, then how, exactly, does it occur independently of humans/outside of minds?

That doesn't come as much of a surprise. Okay, so you've told me your position. I don't accept it, of course. You can attempt to argue in support of it if you want to. — S

I think the only "argument" we need is that there's no empirical evidence of, and otherwise no good reason to believe, that there are any real (that is extramental) abstracts. And not only that, but the idea of extramental abstracts can't even be made coherent. (Since nonphysical existents can't be made coherent; the notion of existents without any location can't be made coherent, etc.)

But once we take it to this extreme, language has lost its purpose — ZhouBoTong

The purpose (According to whom? Purposes are alwaysto someone) of language is to pretend that value judgments/evaluative utterances are objective in some contexts? :joke:

In other words say the claim is "The cat is on the mat (and necessarily at time Tx, in regard y, from perspective z, etc.)" We can call that claim P.

A contradiction only obtains when we say both P and not-P. The claim, P, can't change, it can't be equivocated in any regard. We need to both assert (P) and deny (not-P) the same claim (the claim is P), at the same time, in the same regard, etc.

Misunderstanding accompanied by a dichotomy that is inherently incapable of taking proper account of morality — creativesoul

Misunderstanding of what and a proper account of morality per what?

So if the moral property/judgment/whatever-we-want-to-call-it isn't in the action itself, but requires a standard for determination, we need to ask just how/where the standard obtains. What is it a property of/what properties is it?

Even if you see green? — Banno

When we're talking about objective properties, what you see is irrelevant.

What you see matters if we're trying to figure out if something unusual is going on with you subjectively, if we want to figure out what's going on with your perceptual faculties in a case where they seem to be responding unusually to the objective properties at hand, but what you see is irrelevant to the objective properties qua the objective properties.

So Joe's action can be measured against the value standard applicable to human beings. Whether his action is moral or not is a logical consequence of applying that standard. — Andrew M

You just agreed that the standard is not in the action itself.

If the standard is necessary for determining whether the action is moral or not, then the action being moral or not is not in the action itself.

I was just providing some detail to the question the TC asked, "Could it really prevent immigration?" The answer is "no," for the reasons I gave.