Since there is an infinity of possibilities, to the amount of time between that beginning point and the ending point, that amount of time is indeterminate. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's not an infinity of possibilities with respect to the frames of reference in question. There are different possibilities in different frames of reference, but none of them are indeterminate.

When we say that A is B, aren't we either just calling it a different name or focusing on a different set of facts about it, a la morning and evening star? — Terrapin Station

I don't understand this. — AppLeo

So, one thing you said was, "You can call something a different name, but that doesn't change what it actually is."

Sure. And "A" and "B" can represent different names. So one thing we can be doing when we say that A is B is using the two different names. "Robert is Bob."

Another thing we can be doing--often in conjunction with different names--is focusing on a different set of facts about the thing in question.

For example, the morning star is the evening star. The different set of facts is that in the one case, we're talking about the "star" (it's not actually a star, though) we often see as the brightest star in the morning--it's often the last "star" we can see prior to sunrise, and in the other case, we're talking about the "star" we see in the evening--often the brightest/first star we can see at dusk. In both cases, we're actually referring to the planet Venus.

Another example there: Bruce Wayne is Batman. "Bruce Wayne" typically refers to the person in question in his everyday guise, as an uber-rich philanthropist businessman, etc. "Batman" typically refers to him in his crime-fighting superhero capacity. Each side, which is accompanied by different names, focuses on a different set of facts about the same person.

Those are examples where A is B. "The morning star is the evening star"--they both refer to the planet Venus. "Bruce Wayne is Batman"--they both refer to a particular person, as does "Robert is Bob."

If statistics and other external facts go against someone having a good quality of life yet they believe they have then that raises questions about their judgement. — Andrew4Handel

You'd have to believe that people should feel the same way, should make the same assessments, as most other people. But what would be the argument for that?

Something subjective can still be wrong. For example illusions such as where one line seems longer than another or when a bush looks like a cow in the night. — Andrew4Handel

Right, if we're talking about something where you can either match or fail to match what's the case with x in the external world. But what would anyone be matching or failing to match re quality of life assessments? You're thinking that they're failing to match how most people feel and that they're trying to match how most people feel?

I think the likelihood of people enjoying a situation is fairly objective. — Andrew4Handel

I think that, too, given what likelihood is--that is, given how statistics work, etc.

The problem is this: what does that fact have to do with whether someone can get their quality of life wrong?

One clock measures 499, the other measures 500. Therefore the amount of time between those two points is indefinite. — Metaphysician Undercover

?? This makes no sense to me. If the one reads 500 hours on the nose and the other reads 499 hours, 58 minutes and 30 seconds, then the amount of time between those two is not indefinite, it's a minute and 30 seconds. That's very definite.

I never said anything about "psychological time". I'm talking about time itself. From the human perspective, time is indeterminate. — Metaphysician Undercover

But that's not true. Again, we can know that on the ground, clocks are going to read, say, 500 hours on the nose, while on the space station, clocks read, say, 499-point-whatever hours (I don't know what the exact difference is--I'd have to research it) relative to the 500 hours on the ground.

How is that indeterminate?

In that definition it says to be measured against other things of a similar kind.

So it would probably involve comparing states of being. So If you live in poverty you know there is a better state of being you are not in and compare badly to. — Andrew4Handel

Okay, but wait. It seems like we're brushing over this too quickly.

If we're talking about there being a standard as measured against other things of a similar kind, we can't just talk about measuring against things of a similar kind while bypassing the whole notion of there being a standard of that. The standard is the focus of the definition, and "as measured against other things of a similar kind" is telling us some more detail about the standard.

Re your example, "I live in poverty compared to x," doesn't tell us anything at all about the assessment someone makes with respect to their quality of life. Maybe they think this factor is irrelevant. Maybe they even think it's better to live in poverty. They could have any assessment. And it especially doesn't tell us anything about what's a right or wrong assessment.

.

Here is one of the first definitions of "Quality" that I found: "the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind" So this to me implies an objective standard something being a measured against as opposed an opinion. — Andrew4Handel

What would you say is the process for establishing an objective standard?

I know, but the human perspective gives us the potential for infinite frames of reference. Therefore from the human perspective, time is indeterminate. — Metaphysician Undercover

So "psychological time"? Yeah, that's highly variable.

I am not convinced quality of life is based on how someone feels. People can be happy whilst suffering. They don't believe they have a great quality of life but they have found some things to be happy about. So I don't think feeling happy means you have a good quality of life or that you believe that you have a good quality of life. — Andrew4Handel

???

Quality of life = how you feel about your quality of life. In other words, it's your assessment of your quality of life. I'm not saying it's how you feel about something else.

It is hard to find a framework to judge quality of life and value of life — Andrew4Handel

We could simply ask people and then report the results.

Facts about a disease they have, or level of injury, facts about societal inequality. — Andrew4Handel

Sure, no argument there, but those things just aren't the same thing as their assessment of their quality of life.

Sometimes people feelings are based on inaccurate beliefs.

Yes, that can be true, too, but again, it doesn't amount to being able to get their quality of life assessment wrong. It's also not the case that someone will necessarily change their quality of life assessment just because they were wrong about, for example, whether they had some disease. They might change their quality of life assessment based on that, but they won't necessarily.

What I think is nihilism is the idea that someone who feels that something like child abuse is acceptable cannot be challenged by external facts.

It's rather that it can't be changed by external facts re whether child abuse is acceptable, because there are no external facts about such things. But sure, people factor external facts into their judgments about such things, and different knowledge can change their judgments--but it won't necessarily change their judgments, since no value judgments are implied by any particular facts, and even if their judgments do change, they won't necessarily change in predictable ways.

From the human perspective, there is a variable amount of time between any two moments in time depending on the frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

But time isn't indeterminate in a particular frame of reference. It's just relative--due to factors such as velocity--when you compare different frames of reference. We can predictively calculate those differences to a high degree of precision, which wouldn't make much sense if it were indeterminate.

Economic growth isn't just about "material resources."

And as mentioned above, even with material resources, there's a belief that we'll be able to utilize extraterrestrial resources before very long. We already do to some extent with solar power, for example.

But the potential infinity of economic growth is about the potential infinity of time, the continued "evolution" of creative ways to produce wanted goods and services, creative/more ingenius ways to capitalize on material resources (including things like nuclear power, for example), and the prospect of harvesting resources elsewhere in the universe.

It's indeterminate because from every different frame of reference there is a different amount of time between the two points. Therefore there is no fixed value for that time period. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems like you're thinking something like:

* There's a "Master Time" that overarches all other time,
* Those other times pass differently relative to each other,
therefore
* From the perspective of the "Master Time," there's an indeterminate amount of time between any two points.

Is that right?

Ethically (and this is where it answers this threads questions: the objective meaning to life). Life's purpose is to live, to flourish, and to be happy. Everything has its own nature and it must do what is good for its nature. — AppLeo

What would you say the basis for the objectivity of that claim is?

Can I make the further, more generalized conclusion, that the amount of time between any two points in time, is indeterminate? — Metaphysician Undercover

Just curious what you're thinking there. Why would it be indeterminate?

The alternative where someone is always right about the quality of life means you cannot differentiate between quality of life and is a subjective nihilism, where the individual is always right about their interpretation of the external world. — Andrew4Handel

It's not that they're right. They're not wrong, either. Right and wrong about such things is a category error.

That's because what it is to get something right or wrong is to either accurately match, in belief (and subsequently claim, etc.), how something actually happens to be, or to alternately fail to match how something actually happens to be. For example, if you believe that the surface of the moon is mostly oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, then you're right--you're matching what the moon happens to be composed of, but if you believe that the surface of the moon is made of cheese, you're wrong.

When we're talking about quality (of life), value, etc., we're talking about someone's personal assessment, how they happen to feel towards something. There's nothing to match or fail to match. There's only something to report--the person's assessment or how they feel. It's not a matter of right or wrong. It just tells us something about that person, something about their dispositions, their preferences, their tastes.

I'm willing to talk in PM if you want. — csalisbury

Seems kind of arbitrary, but okay.

I think it's worth casting judgment on the idea that academics can't spend a lot of time and effort on approaching a problem in a fundamentally "dumb" manner, as if they're immune from foibles that plague every other arena of human endeavor.

As with most philosophical problematics, its the conceptual nitty-gritty of fleshing out how these things work that presents the problems. — csalisbury

There's nothing difficult to flesh out about it. The inanity stems from wanting to avoid psychologism, wanting to avoid the subjective realm, wanting to stick with obviously wrong theories of reference, which all stemmed from wanting to make philosophy more "scientific" a la a rather caricatured view of the sciences.
[Para removed by mod]

So, how is it that we can speak about stuff like Plato having a beard or Santa Claus existing on the North Pole? — Wallows

I've never understood the issue here. We can imagine things that aren't the case. What's the big mystery?

Philosophy has always seemed to approach fiction like someone with a significant learning disability.

I don't really know what you mean. — AppLeo

Quote something I said that you specifically do not understand.

What would you say that has to do with the question I just asked?

The idea isn't that A is necessarily B. It's that "A can not be B" is false.

When we say that A is B, aren't we either just calling it a different name or focusing on a different set of facts about it, a la morning and evening star?

The introduction to that is ridiculous: "But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare — why isn’t depression?"

For one, depression doesn't necessarily amount to not being able to have sex. Depressed people may have less interest in sex or take less pleasure from it, but that doesn't mean they don't have sex (and I've had sex with women who were receiving treatment for depression). It only takes one time to have offspring, which means that there's no tendency for it to be deselected evolutionarily.

Re the rest of the article, I'd have to look at the studies they're referring to. Some of that may have merit.

But they also seem to be promoting the idea that depression is caused by particular other sociological or psychological issues, rather than being caused by brain states where the sociological or psychological explanations are rather ad hoc, as a way to rationalize the conscious component of those brain states.

As I brought up in another thread, it's not difficult to understand "Being a part of 'everything,'" even though that has no opposite.

How to start a philosophical discussion, per typical Internet discussions:

No matter what someone said, both (a) disagree with them, and (b) tell them that what they said (i) isn't adequate and (ii) isn't clear. (Nevermind that you're supposedly disagreeing with something you didn't quite understand per (b)(ii)--if they catch that, or no matter what they say, really, simply repeat (a) and (b).)

A cannot be B or whatever else. — AppLeo

The morning star can't be the evening star?

Per Psychology Today, for example, "A depressive disorder is not a passing blue mood but rather persistent feelings of sadness and worthlessness and a lack of desire to engage in formerly pleasurable activities."

I don't know what the benefit would be of persistent feelings of sadness and worthlessness and a lack of desire to engage in formerly pleasurable activities.

I think you are saying that there is only an Explanatory Gap if the Intentional Reality is found to be in the Neurons. — SteveKlinko

"Explanatory gap" talk is a red herring as long as we continue to not analyze just what is to count as an explanation and why, with a clear set of demarcation criteria for explanations, and where we make sure that we pay attention to the qualitative differences--in general, for all explanations--between what explanations are and the phenomena that they're explaining.

Very funny. ;-)

"What if you had been aborted?" — Andrew4Handel

Then I'd not have an opinion on abortion.

So, for one, you seem to be taking me to be suggesting that "Who gets to make the decisions and why do they get to make them" is something that he'd not be able to answer. I was sincerely asking to see what his answer would be (at which point, for whatever reasons, he decided to act as if no one would be making decisions, etc.--they'd somehow make themselves).

Re laws in general, I'm basically a minarchist. I'm a minarchist because I don't believe that anarchy is possible. Under anarchy, someone/some group is going to take control via organized force, and then it's no longer anarchy.

My basic approach to law is to keep especially punitive laws as minimal as possible, with the aim of avoiding more laws/more control of others. That's the gist of minarchism.

That more or less puts me in the Libertarian camp, in the sense of the U.S. Libertarian party. However, I don't agree with their approach to economics. I think it's too important to make sure that everyone has food, shelter, health care, education, etc. as they desire. So I take a (very idiosyncratically) socialist approach to the economy. Hence I describe myself as a libertarian socialist.

In any event, I'm definitely a "nihilist" on many things, in the sense that I realize that things like values (ethical, aesthetic, etc.), meaning, etc. are not to located in the objective world.

I'm done answering these vague questions. — Christoffer

I wouldn't say you ever started. Of course, the problem is that you are finding something very simple to be vague. No need for me to diagnose that. I just need to stop wasting time on this board

Has to know what? — Christoffer

The stuff in quotation marks. "There's a definition of blue by measuring the spectrum of light bouncing from that blue pen. The spectrum shows its green. You are wrong, it is green"

Again, take "There's a definition of blue by measuring the spectrum of light bouncing from that blue pen. The spectrum shows its green. You are wrong, it is green"

Some individual has to know this, and has to note it--that is, make a claim about it and so on, in order for us to take any action with respect to it, correct?

Right, so no, we can't get to that part of the sentence.

Whether A is different from B is a logical judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

No it's not. You don't know what logic is. Learn 101 level stuff like that first.

Can we get to the rest of the sentence? "for us to know about it, note it, do anything about it, someone has to think and assert those things, right?"

You see a blue pen. Someone says it's green. There's a definition of blue by measuring the spectrum of light bouncing from that blue pen. The spectrum shows its green. You are wrong, it is green — Christoffer

What happened to the person who says "There's a definition of blue by measuring the spectrum of light bouncing from that blue pen. The spectrum shows its green. You are wrong, it is green." Even if "the world itself" can do all of that somehow, for us to know about it, note it, do anything about it, someone has to think and assert those things, right?