Do you understand Gödel's argument? — Agent Smith

I "understand" his Incompleteness theorems only while I'm reading them or a learned synopsis of them.

If you do, kindly sum it for me. If you don't where do you get stuck so to speak?

I guess I'm "stuck" at not being an adequate enough logician or metamathematician.

In essence, what sort of god would you define yourself as? — Benj96

If not an epicurean god, then I would be a god that uses 'my godly power' to do only one thing: by fiat I'd remove every anti-social pathology / aptitude from every sentient being, simultaneously, everywhere in the universe, and until 'the end of days' ... in order to make living a mortal life again significantly less of a letdown after such a brief apotheosis. :smirk:

Hey, 180 Proof, what's that word for defining something by talking about what it's not? — T Clark

Apophasis (e.g. apophatic theology).

Would you like to address the points I am making? — ToothyMaw

I have. Derived from incoherent assumptions, your "points" lack merit. Now deal with my counterpoints if you can.

:eyes: More empty rhetoric.

For me, she's the epitome of courage. :fire:

We have two essential aspects: praxis and metaphysics. — javi2541997

How we live. How we think.

How do you know that you "really know" this?

Probably German philosophy is not practical enough but we cannot get rid of it. I mean it is one of the pillars of Western thought or philosophy. — javi2541997

I suppose, defeasible reasoning and modern sciences notwithstanding, just as we cannot get rid of 'magical thinking' either. :sparkle:

"moral realism" is incoherent (re: assumption that moral statements are empirical propositions)
— 180 Proof

That assumption does not lead to incoherence. — ToothyMaw

:roll: :shade: :point:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/759498

:smirk:

Thanks. And in the spirit of @Amity's OP, a George Harrison 'song of hope' (or joy in a minor key) as interpreted by Nina Simone

and this shorter mash-up remix of the same song:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7gYn8-ziaFI

Another time, mi amigo, it's 5am here ... :yawn: Besides, I suspect @jgill or @Banno can help you out with old Gödel.

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." ~Emma Goldman

What is your experience of hope as a feeling, action or philosophical concept? — Amity

"Hope as a feeling?" Pacifer, or placebo, for fear

"Hope as an action?" Denying risk or improbability.

"Hope as a philosophical concept?" The essential 'triumph of imagination over intelligence'.

Where have you expressed or found it?

In a foxhole there is no "hope" – there's only courage or tears (or both).

Did you find it 'hollow as fear'?

More like, as futile as regret.

:death:

"We invented the blues; Europeans invented psychoanalysis. You invent what you need."
~Albert Murray

"Without music, life would be a mistake... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance." ~Freddy Zarathustra

:flower:

As someone who lost religious faith some time ago, I wondered about any secular songs about 'hope' and if they could be seen as a kind of 'prayer'. How spiritual is the secular?

From Latin for "song" – cantus, cantare, canto – comes, in English, chant, enchant and incantation which connotes, for me, to celebrate or express joy, whether in a major or minor key. So to the degree "the secular" is open to different, even incommensurate, expressions of joy, "the secular is spiritual" as far as I'm concerned (though in practice, far more sectarian or commercial than "spiritual").

George Harrison's 'incantations' were/are exceptions and exceptional moments in the maelstrom of sing-a-long profanities which have always been the bread and butter of tin-pan alley. For decades I've tried to curate my own library of musical joys which, unlike "hope", I find that joy motivates courage.

One must learn to love.— This is what happens to us in music: first one has to learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and delimit it as a separate life; then it requires some exertion and good will to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity:—finally there comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense that we should miss it if it were missing: and now it continues to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it.— But that is what happens to us not only in music: that is how we have learned to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness with what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty:—that is its thanks for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves will have learned it in this way: for there is no other way. Love, too, has to be learned. — Freddy Zarathustra

Amor fati :hearts:

Hope destroys fear.
— universeness

No hope and fear always arise together; one hopes to win and fears to lose. What you claim here is the gambler's fallacy, that leads to addiction. — unenlightened

Or fundamentalism.

I prefer the original meaning of spirit as Carl Sagan described it, 'animated'. — universeness

:up:

Well Gödel shook Hilbert from that fever-dream. :smirk:

Understanding, what is it? — Agent Smith

My shorthand: to understand is to, explicitly or implicitly, contextualize discourses (i.e. narratives, maps, models), actions or events in order to orient oneself and thereby constrain uncertainty. No doubt, understanding is an infinite task because metacognition is as finite as it is perspectival.

Norms are useful or not useful for some purpose ... — 180 Proof

Commands are not true or false, they are obeyed or disobeyed. Morality is not made of claims of fact but commands, demands, exhortations, pleas, advice to act thus and not so. It is not 'truth apt'. — unenlightened

:100:

:smirk:

I think you're way off. Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment was proposed in order to show that quantum theory (re: superposition, measurement problem) is inconsistent, or incomplete, and not as a claim of "a true contradiction". Certainly, Everett's MWI was not proposed to account for "simultaneous X & not-X", Smith, and the "multiverse" add-on unparsimonously occludes the problems raised by Schrödinger and others.

Norms are useful or not useful for some purpose; they are not truth-claims in any sense. A moral statement like "torture is wrong" is, to my way of thinking, only a shorthand for some custom or norm (i.e. mores).

I've always thought that "multiverse" is a wildly extrapolated misunderstanding of Hugh Everett's many worlds interpretation of the interference pattern from the double-slit experiment. It just doesn't seem to follow that 'classical n-counterpart (parallel) universes' from 'planck superposition (n-worldlines) of a photon', does it? Physicists like David Deutsch seem to suggest this ... but like you say, Smith, what do I know ... :nerd:

Apparently, it hasn't occurred to you, Toothless, that "moral realism" is incoherent (re: assumption that moral statements are empirical propositions) and that, therefore, "error theory" is redundant.

Verificationism (i.e. Logical Positivism) doesn't make such distinctions and designates as "cognitively meaningless" all statements – utterances – which cannot be verified empirically (e.g. philosophical statements) such as ... "verificationisn". :eyes:

... as usual, @Gnomon is just making shit up or limited by poor reasoning. — 180 Proof

What "argument"?

IIRC, logical positivism's 'verificationist criterion of meaning' is itself unverifiable and therefore is, in its own terms, meaningless (i.e. self-refuting).

25 february 1943 - 29 november 2001 :flower:

We wouldn't need to say anytging more but maybe "thank you" to you if and when you deign to cite some scientific experiments which corrobrate your assertion that in modern physics "conservation laws are false".

My response would be ... Back in the 17th Century CE, Malebranche et al tried that with occasionalism and Occam's Razor made quick work of that bit of question-begging ad hockery (pace Berkeley & Leibniz redux); also, Spinoza showed that 'substance dualism', the basis of Descartes' MBP, is logically and conceptually incoherent (re: Ethics, section I "Of God") thereby dissolving the 'interaction problem' (i.e. property dualism ... neutral / anomalous monism ... etc). No need to even bother with a scientific objection to 'immaterial-material interactivity' which, as I discern the issue, is a conceptual non-starter.

I never said anything about occult energy loss and I haven't the fainted idea what you are talking about — Metaphysician Undercover

I never said you said that (note where I put the quotation marks) and, of course, you "haven't the fainted idea what" I'm (or e.g. @universeness, @Banno, et al are) "talking about".

"Murder is wrong" would be an example of a moral claim that could be objectively true (a proposition). — ToothyMaw

And what's the truth-maker? It's a statement like 'I'm sexy' that has a sense (in some contexts and not in some others) but does not convey either a formal or factual truth-value.

Do you know what meta-ethics is? — ToothyMaw

I know enough now to know that you don't.

true moral claims. — ToothyMaw

They are norms or rules not propositions, so what do you propose any such "true moral claims" would even be like? :chin:

@universeness, a valiant effort indeed, but sometimes the best thing on can do is to laugh and walk away. — Banno

:smirk: :up:

continues to dodge a straight-forward direct question of this Cartesian assumption

However, another way to look at Matter-vs-Mind or physical-vs-non-physical [ ... ] in terms of Classical vs Quantum science. — Gnomon

apparently because, as usual, he's just making shit up or limited by poor reasoning. Prove this is not the case, sir, by answering: How does non-physical A affect physical B and yet remain discernibly non-physical?

At least, "I don't know" would be honest. :gasp:

Metaphysician Undercover

Feel free to ignore science all you want and remain delusional about what you think you know about energy conservation. I will continue to listen to those who actually do know what they are talking about, namely, physicists and not metaphysicians. — universeness

You've done mighty yeoman's work talking physical science to an incorrigible pseudo-scientist. :clap: :up:

Why are you so helpless 180? — Metaphysician Undercover

Pathetic dodge.

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Energy_loss#:~:text=When%20energy%20is%20transformed%20from,form%20of%20energy%2C%20like%20heat.

Notice, there is always energy loss, and "Energy losses are what prevent processes from ever being 100% efficient." Hence the inductive conclusion I made, the law of conservation has been proven to be false.

"Inductive conclusion?" :eyes: :roll:

How can you be so obtuse, MU, confusing the "lack of 100% efficiency" in thermodynamic processes with occult "energy loss"?

Oh, I know how – your dogmatic idealist (anti-physical) misreading (disregard) of all of the extant observational and experimental warrants in favor of 'conservation laws' and 'the principle of causal closure' in modern physical science, and without a shred of experimental evidence to corroborate the single article, which others have shown you've misread, that you obstinantly hang your tin-foil hat upon. No doubt, sir, the Nobel Committee has you on its short list for the 2023 Physics Prize. :sweat:

I don't think we all realize the fundamental assumptions guiding our moral beliefs:

1. we are humans.
2. as such, we have emotions, beliefs, desires, fears, etc.
3. from this, we know we have a common ground upon which a moral discourse can succeed.

That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is a dangerous [self-refuting] moral view. — L'éléphant

:100:

I think the point is not that morals need or don't need justifications, but instead that humans animals and agents, whomever can't thrive properly or healthily under extreme negligence and continuance of this negligence whether intentional or not eventually leads to inevitable demise. — Cobra

:up: :up:

We are in that sense like a structure emerging, for a finite time, from something we are no less a part of, like a wave which rises from an ocean, views the limited oceanscape visible from its peak, and then crashes down and disassembles back into the ocean itself.

The wave, and the ocean, are both water when all is said and done. — Benj96

:100: :up: ... à la natura naturata via natura naturans, sub specie durationis (Spinoza).

If you're promoting as "true" a model which makes predictions that – so far? – can't be tested by experments, then you're promoting pseudo-science (or, in the case of M-string theory, platonizing its mathematics – metaphysics, not physics). Just because one is a theoretical physicist doesn't mean one's work does not require experimental testing of its predictions by experimental physicists. For now at least, Dr Kaku's untested – untestable? – work on M-string theory is indistinguishable from, as Dr. Hossenfelder says, "fiction". That's neither a "good thing" nor bad thing, it's just not yet a 'scientific theory of quantum gravity'.

Again, how does non-physical A affect physical B and yet remain discernibly non-physical?

So how does non-physical A affect physical B and yet remain discernibly non-physical? 'The physical world' as such is not causally closed? 'Conservation laws' do not obtain? 'Modern physics' doesn't explain what actually is going on (and if not, what accounts for us communicating via this electronic medium)?

Dr. Kaku is heavily invested in M-string theory, so much so that he, IMO, exaggerates the salience of its untested experimental predictions. Worse he popularizes his exaggerations to sell books. I enjoy his pop-sci books though since they provide good fodder for writing science fiction stories (which I do occasionally). As Dr. Hossenfelder noted: Kaku's quantum pronouncements make "good fiction."

Of course, there is also the whole is/ought thing which no one can address adequately. — ToothyMaw

I wonder what you make of this contrarian view from an old thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/573153