In other words, we can refer to:
(1) facts that are independent of how someone feels about those facts, and we can refer to
(2) how people feel (about whatever facts).

We can call both (1) and (2) "quality," or "harm" or "pain," or whatever we'd like to call them, but:
(A) we need to be careful that we don't conflate (1) and (2),
(B) for some of those terms, it would be unusual to take (1) as the connotation rather than (2), which is one of the reasons we need to be careful with conflations, and
(C) If we're trying to say that people should care, should make particular decisions about any of this stuff, then we need to say why they should if we're talking about (1) instead of (2)

You mentioned your mother and father. Another term for that is "family."

Also, you mentioned place, time, etc. That would put you with the group also born in that place, at that time, etc.

Even changing the entire universe wouldn't do it (especially if one is a nominalist). It's still two different instantiations of the "same thing" (in quotation marks because it's not literally the same thing).

I am in the US. It was not meant for any specific class — Marius

So who assiged it?

Anyway, another suggestion. How about a paper on what mathematics is ontologically?

Most of this article has to do with this issue: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/

And here's a good book about it (though one biased towards a particular answer): https://www.amazon.com/What-Mathematics-Really-Reuben-Hersh/dp/0195130871

Your premise is that time is change. So "was" in the sense of "past time" is meaningless by that premise — Metaphysician Undercover

That comment simply makes no sense. I'm not saying anything like "There is no time." I'm in no way eliminating time. There is time. I'm simply saying what time is ontologically. Time is change. Past time is changes that have happened.

You completely ignored the entire content of the post explaining the issues by the way.

Truth isn't propositional in content. Truth is a relation between propositions and something else (the something else depends on the truth theory you subscribe to). And I'd say that the relation is a judgment that individuals make.

You'd miss too many new movies/TV shows, albums, video games, books, etc.

Children are morally pristine, innocent, — TheMadFool

I don't know what kids you've spent time around. :razz:

It's not for a particular class? (I'm guessing this is not in the U.S. then)

What sorts of topics have you been learning about? Have you studied philosophy in school, or you're just interested in it and that's why you want to do a paper on it?

The difference is that with the Sentinelese and similar tribes, there's no reason to expect them to be familiar with the bulk of cultures' interlaced history of laws, ideas of human rights, political discourse and diplomacy, etc. So invoking violence to make them adapt to any of that--which is surely what we'd have to do, not only seems unjustified but it would possibly just wipe them out altogether.

That's not the case when we're talking about the U.S. and Mexico, or Israel and Palestine, etc.

What course is it for? What have you been studying in that course?

Understanding is knowing. Knowing is having a set of rules for interpreting sensory data. — Harry Hindu

Not even on the same planet as how I define those two terms.

How is this different from any type of change? All change is a matter of taking back something that already is. that's just what change is, and it is by definition an identity violation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Let's say that A is five feet to the right (from perspective x) of B.

They move relative to each other, so that A is now six feet to the right of B.

Now, no matter what we do, A was five feet to the right of B . We can't change that fact. We also can't change the fact that A is now six feet to the right of B. And once more changes happen, we can't change the fact that A was six feet to the right of B.

What you tried to propose was via later changes, that we can somehow "travel" to A being five feet to the right of B and change things so that A, say, stays five feet to the right of B, and never moves six feet to the right of B. That's an identity violation in the sense that you're trying to "erase" the fact that A was six feet to the right of B.

And you'd need to explain how you could travel in change . . . which maybe you tried to do later in the post, but I didn't and won't read past what I quoted.

One thing at a time if you don't want stuff you type to be ignored.

Think of it this way, Metaphysician Undercover:

A, B and C change to D, E and F.

You want to propose somehow "traveling back to that change," to experience it again, or to change it some other way, or whatever.

How exactly would it make sense to "travel back to that (particular) change"?

Let's say that all that you really mean is changing D, E, and F back to A, B and C, and then A, B and C change to G, H and I instead. Well, that's just two additional changes. It doesn't somehow erase the initial change. That's was the case regardless. It happened, It can't unhappen.. We just had further changes.

So you'd have to explain how it would make sense to "travel back in change."

That change is an identity violation is tautological. — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't say that change is an identity violation. I said that the idea that we could "take back" something that changed is. Look at what I wrote again: "You mean change something that changed so that it doesn't change that way?" That's what would be an identity violation. Change isn't.

There must be something which changes or else there could be no change. — Metaphysician Undercover

(1) Relations and (2) things could appear or disappear.

How is the idea of traveling in change nonsensical? — Metaphysician Undercover

By not making the slightest bit of sense. You'd have to explain what it would be to "travel in change." Changing isn't the same thing as "traveling in change." Change isn't a place that you can move around in. Change is a process. "Traveling in change" would mean that change is some sort of "thing" that we can move around in . . . which is a difficult idea to even clearly express in words, because it's just completely nonsensical.

Why can no one on here see where I'm coming from or see the value of Ayn Rand's ideas? — AppLeo

I read Rand when I was a kid--I was (and still am) a big Rush fan. 2112 came out when I was 13 years old. I was a pretty straightforward U.S. party-styled Libertarian (although on the minarchist side).

I read more of Rand's nonfiction--I was never a fan of realist/drama-only fiction (as opposed to "genre fiction"--fantasy, SciFi, horror, etc.), but I liked Anthem a lot (which of course is her SciFi/fantasy book). I haven't read Anthem in decades, but I wouldn't be surprised if I still liked it.

However, I wasn't only reading Rand--I had actually started reading other philosophy when I was 11, prior to reading any Rand. And from the start, I disagreed with Rand on quite a lot, especially her attempt to ground value judgments (ethics, aesthetics, etc.) in objectivity.

And then in the past 20 years, I've also moved away from being a U.S. party-styled Libertarian. I still have a lot of libertarian views/tendencies, but I don't agree with libertarianism on the economic/social services side of things any longer. I now consider myself a "libertarian socialist," although I'm a very idiosyncratic sort of libertarian socialist (idiosyncratic enough that I appear to be the only person in the world with my particular views re governmental ideals).

So I can understand Rand and her appeal, but she got a lot of stuff wrong (as has every other philosopher in my opinion).

Anyone care to discuss why and/or how these are logical fictions, — creativesoul

For one, they all have false premises.

Transcendental isn't the same as transcendent.

Transcendental just means "conditions of possibility"
Transcendent is something like, "beyond our limits of understanding", or in contrast to the immanence of experience.

Or I guess he meant to say "the transcendentalists..." — Marty

This. Transcendental arguments make sense and are a very sophisticated way to approach argumentation for something.

"Transcendent" as it's used to make excuses for the idea of a god, for example, is just nonsensical.

You mean change something that changed so that it doesn't change that way? How would the idea of that even make sense? It would be an identity violation for one. Remember that time only is those changes. It's not something aside from them.

Once something changes all you can do is change it some other way. You can't "travel in change," the idea of that is just nonsensical .

"different degrees and instantiations of empathetic tendencies lead to very different moral stances."

So, for example, psychopaths will have at least some very different moral stances than the norm, because empathy is instantiated very differently in psychopaths--that's one of the defining characteristics of psychopathy/sociopathy.

So the idea isn't that the fact that there's empathy leads to predictable moral stances. Empathy is realized differently in different people, in terms of degree, properties, etc.

Yes, as well as Husserl and others.

But the finite uuniverse, which at this moment of our understanding is the scientific consensus, most definitely posits the question how did something come from nothing. — Rank Amateur

They actually posit nonsense like "it came from quantum fluctuations," and then completely ignores how we get to there being quantum fluctuations.

You mean analytic philosophy, I assume? Continental philosophy seems rife with psychologism in my opinion. Just look at, for example, The Structure of Behavior: Maurice Merleau-Ponty or even Hume. — Wallows

Yeah, analytic philosophy primarily. And re Hume, the rejection of psychologism occurred in the 19th century. So after Hume.

Time travel into the past is coherent, because the past is real. Having actually occurred, — Metaphysician Undercover

Past events occurred. They're no longer occurring. Time is simply change or motion. It's not something you can "travel in." It rather is the traveling so to speak.

As I've said a number of times, I think that one of philosophy's biggest mistakes was the rejection of psychologism.

The desire to reject psychologism arose with the desire to more or less attempt to make philosophy a science, per a sort of caricatured view of what science is/should be a la the mid to later 19th century. Most academic disciplines attempt to "scientize" themselves by the later 19th century.

It's simply a matter of intuiting whether you're comfortable with some interpersonal behavior or other. Empathy is a big part of it, and different degrees and instantiations of empathetic tendencies lead to very different moral stances.

Can't see how with that understanding - you can rule out a an un-created creator. — Rank Amateur

There's no need for it, and no evidence for it.

Anything you say about a god for this purpose you can simply say about the universe sans any gods.

It proposes that the origin of the multiverse was a speck of anti-gravity material located in a high energy environment — Devans99

What's the origin of the "speck of anti-gravity material located in a high energy environment"?

Or in other words, as I've pointed out before, and as should be obvious, no matter what we posit, we're stuck on either with "something coming from nothing" or something always existing. There's no way to circumvent that problem, so we might as well just stick with the obvious stuff instead of making up things that don't necessarily make any sense--"god," "quantum fluctuations," whatever.

If someone is a pain you don't need to invoke a magic value judgement to assess that situation. There is no magic leap between assessing someone is injured, depressed or in poverty to the claim they have a poor quality of life. — Andrew4Handel

This comment reflects zero understanding of the comment you're responding to.

Is skepticism about doubting everyone and everything? — Hypnos

No.

But you can't realistically say it is not harmful to stab someone. — Andrew4Handel

You can't say that it doesn't have the particular physical effects it does, but those facts imply nothing about any value judgments. So we'd need to cleave using "harm" with a value judgment connotation (which it usually has) from using "harm" to refer to a set of objective physical facts that we're artbitrarily setting off from other physical facts. You're wanting to conflate the two.

It is relevant for making causal explanations and predictions. — Andrew4Handel

Of what relevance to whether quality of life is something that someone can get wrong.

I perhaps see why you might think this if you think it's a claim of existence. But the conception does not result from the definitions of existence, since the definition of the world is what requires self-containment. If the world is the domain of all domains, it should be a domain within itself. The definition of existence only functions as a specific way of framing this self-containment, since it denominates the appearance within a domain as existence. With this additional definition we can then say that the world's existence follows from it's definition. — auto to on

What, what and what??

Let's start with this: " If the world is the domain of all domains, it should be a domain within itself." First off, "The world is the domain of all domains" is a definition you're making up. It's a construction of yours.

But aside from that, what exactly does "It should be a domain within itself" refer to?

Some sense of meaning that can return to itself identically in relfection. — Joshs

That's more confuddled than the term "unity." It seems like you're quickly approaching "insists upon itself."

But take care not to make the mistake of thinking brains can do this by themselves. — Banno

It's a mistake to think they can't, rather. Wittgenstein was wrong (about most things).

And re meaning, it's a mental phenomenon only. Language isn't normally a mental or individual phenomenon only, but It's not impossible for it to be.

There's a history of using "real" so that it refers to being external to mentality. Of course, there's a history of using "exist" that way, too, and they both reflect (because of connotative weight those terms normally possess) an unreasonable bias against the subjective, the imaginary, the fictional, etc.

What does "unity" refer to there, exactly?

The problem is that the whole concept of consciousness is related to the set of notions,
supporting the unity, oneness, and substantiality of primordial "I," substantial cogito, and the transcendental Ego. So, it is not merely a question of the same mind that is able to experience
different states of consciousness. Do these states have entirely various qualities? — Number2018

"unity" "oneness" etc. all seem rather "mysterian" and as if one is trying to make some sort of quasi-religious idea the trump card.

The proposition "Pegasus is a flying horse" and "Pegasus is an imaginary flying horse" are not identical.. — MindForged

It depends on what one has in mind, no?