I'm not sure what the bubble machine metaphor is attempting to assert. I take it the bubbles are akin to universes that evolve the right paremeters over time.

Thing is that bubble machines and factories are designed by intelligences. So the evolutionary bubble process has it's start with intelligent design and intentional decision making to setup a filter process for longer lasting bubble.

The physics of the empirical reality being fed to the BIV would need to be capable of producing a conscious observer for physicalism to be a defensible position. — noAxioms

This is a true, and that's a sticking point. On a Denettian position, it's difficult to see how being envatted and experiencing a fake physical world is possible. And in fact, Dennett has denied this is actually possible, because he doesn't think a computer program can handle the combinatorial explosion of interacting with a fake physical world.

OK, you call it a direct realist here, but that is more or less the physicalist position: that what one perceives is the stuff that we're made of. — noAxioms

Well, a scientific realist need not agree with direct perception. They can be an indirect realist, thinking that our perceptions of color, sound, etc. are illusions generated by the brain, and only the mathematical/physical descriptions are of real properties.

How did this brain come to believe there is actually a physical world (a sine qua non for physicalism)? That is an essential question, because it has bearing on the rationality of its belief. — Relativist

Because the vat is feeding them the sensory impressions of a physical world, similar to Neo in the Matrix.

You're saying that we observe the avoidance of problems associated with other viewpoints, and this is observational support for direct realism. — frank

I'm saying that we all start our philosophical arguments somewhere. And depending on where you start, there are certain considerations that fall out as a result.

I was just reading the SEP entry on solipsism for diversion, and early on a comment is made on how solipsism is a natural consequence of a certain view of the mind and epistemology. If you start out by saying the mind is necessarily independent from the body and knowledge begins with the subjective, then solipsism falls out from that sort of view.

And if being envatted is a possibility, then so is solipsism. There is a certain relatedness to these cartesian and ancient skeptical concerns.

And we were talking about physicalism. Do you see that being identical to direct realism? — frank

Not at all, just that direct realism is a good epistemology for supporting physicalism.

Is this part of the scenario? Or are you asserting it? — frank

I'm asserting that there is a BIV who espouses physicalism to explore whether there position could be consistent or defendable as a BIV, whether they realize their condition or not.

What could you observe that would confirm or disconfirm either direct realism or physicalism? — frank

We all make our philosophical arguments from some starting point, which will have some metaphysical basis. If one begins with there being a physical world that's directly perceived, then that rules out other problems that crop up with a different metaphysical starting point.

Physicalism can't be grounded in observation whether BIV or not. — frank

It can if one is a direct realist, because then you're perceiving the actual physical objects, instead of being aware of some mental intermediary.

I'd rather not think about Trump in the nude, thanks.

To take the math or the models as reality because it is how humans translate is anthropomorphisizing the universe. You are taking the human view to be THE view outside all subjective views. — schopenhauer1

But the models are about something which is outside all subjective views, or at least human/animal ones, because as Apo mentioned, it's invariant across all such views. The mass of a table is not relative to any view. It's true that the concept of mass is human, but the property mass is about is not. It's real.

Perhaps it's useful to recall that when these were created, they represented in many but not all cases the best answers at the time to sets of questions. Our understanding of the world has evolved. We don't ask the same questions today. And the old answers such as they were, won't do. — tim wood

You still have some scientists talking about things like the world obeying laws of nature, or evolution progressing toward greater complexity. You have a guy like Kurzweil claiming that the universe is such that it leads to ever more efficient forms of computation. You have physicists talking about how the universe is mathematical or computing itself, or fundamentally information.

One of the reviews in the OP mentions several modern philosophers who have been reviving Aristotelian ideas. So to say that it's just outdated ideas only good for historical purposes is ignoring that some modern intellectuals and scientists still think along those lines.

Not all the ancient ideas died out or have been replaced by better ones. We still grapple with plenty of questions the ancients first asked.

t is ignoring the Cartesianism which is the philosophical misstep. — apokrisis

However, the justification for Cartesianism, which has it's roots in ancient philosophy noting the distinction between appearance and reality, is that the way we perceive the world is clearly based on the kind of bodies we have, and not the way the world is. Otherwise, there wouldn't be such a notable discrepancy between appearance and reality.

Again, the third person point of view is rightfully the invariant generality that would be seen across all possible acts of measurement. And so science turns out to know what it is doing. — apokrisis

Sure, but in doing so, it reveals a perspectiveless view from nowhere that is different from how we perceive the world. Science reveals a world beyond perception, or in addition to how we perceive things.

My fault.

Those philosophers and scientists who dismiss metaphysics, often casually and without much argument, have to demonstrate how they can do this without doing ­metaphysics themselves. I predict that they will not be able to do this. Even the logical positivists had metaphysical assumptions.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/08/aristotle-returns — Tim Crane

Indeed. I like the discussion of causality in the review. Also the mention of Nancy Cartwright's work. She had interesting and nuanced ideas about scientific laws.

Do you really not know what "beyond their scope" means - or what I meant by it? If you mean to represent that ancient philosophies are or should be the correct tools for science and research and advancing knowledge, then you are espousing a terminally Procrustean view. — tim wood

It doesn't matter when an idea was put forth. What matters is whether the idea has merit. You're arguing that ancient philosophical ideas should be dismissed because they're old. That's a fallacy.

Also, even though we've made tremendous scientific progress since then, there are still many fundamental questions that haven't been answered. What are laws of nature? What is causality? Why do we experience a flow to time? Why does time have a direction? How is it that the world is intelligible? Why is math such an effective tool? And so on.

Mm, its much easier to wax nostalgic for 'lost knowledge' than it is to actually engage in argument. A favorite strategy of facists everywhere. — StreetlightX

Doesn't the book referenced in the OP present an argument for a revival of Aristotelian metaphysics on scientific and logical grounds? Or at least the review I read summarizing it presents arguments.

I understand disagreeing, but I don't understand being dismissive.

This has probably to some extend prevented pragmatic policies from being implemented. For the believers it was probably never enough, and the non-believers don't want to give in to the lies and all-or-nothing rethoric of the believers... — ChatteringMonkey

This is sadly true of politics in general, or at least it has been in US politics the last couple decades. I wish the pragmatic approach would win out, but polarized people tend to be more motivated to vote and put pressure on their representatives. Compromise should be seen as one of the foundations for a healthy democracy. We won't always agree, but there is usually a reasonable middle ground.

Alarmism, or scare-politics, is a common way to influence people to care about an issue. That is a strategy that politicans use themselves, as do activitists. The problem is that it can also backfire, the boy cried wolf et al... And to some extend that is what has happened with enviromental issues. — ChatteringMonkey

That's what I was wondering. I do think longterm it tends to backfire. There's only so many apocalyptic scenarios one can hear before most people just end up shrugging and going on with their lives. Or they react to feeling mislead by supporting the other side, even if there is reason to care about the issue.

Things haven't been as bad as he had predicted back in the 60's and 70's. So, I hope you're right, but I fear not — Wayfarer

I don't know what being right is. I vacillate between things will work out and we're doomed. Maybe it's somewhere in between.

About a year ago, there was a magazine article on global warming that scared the bejesus out of me. Still can't shake the graphic. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html — Wayfarer

That article is a perfect example of environmental "alarmism". I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong. I don't know the future. But I have heard this sort of thing for the past 30 years, and the doomsday scenarios haven't come about, at least not yet.

But when I hear other things like the CO2 was six times what it is now 240 mya, but life still flourished, it makes me wonder. Granted, life had millions of years to adapt to a very hot and tumultuous climate, and we'd only have decades. And yes, a large methane release would have worrisome short term effects.

But is this sort of possibility likely, and is it something we should avoid at all costs? Is it something that should require the governments of the world to strongly curb economic activity, enact population controls, or whatever extreme measure is needed? Or is it something we will naturally adapt to as the technology becomes available in the market place?

For the many unfortunates who are already climate-change refugees or fleeing over-populated regions - the Rohingya come to mind - environment catastrophe and overpopulation are already catastrophes. — Wayfarer

Yes, but the number living in abject poverty is falling, and the main issue is resource access, which is more of a political and economic problem than it is environmental. But it's also true the largest population growth is taking place in countries with the least infrastructure to handle it. So that's a big concern.

As Kelly Ross puts it 'Universals exist precisely where possibilities exist'. So the rational mind is able to infer the nature of mathematical and ideal possibilities, — Wayfarer

This sounds like a form of modal realism.

From the science articles I have read, it seems clear that the rainforests have been diminished by human agency. The Amazon rainforest isn't in danger of disappearing, but it is shrinking at a time when the more forest we have, the better. — Bitter Crank

Right, so there's a difference between being concerned about deforestation and helping people understand the value the Amazon has for a healthy planet, and saying OMG, in 30 years, less than 10% of the Amazon will be left. We're screwed.

Popular fiction often takes its clues from public perception. So in Avatar, which was a wonderful movie, you have the main character telling the Gaia of Pandora how humanity had killed it's Earth-mother, and nothing green grows there any longer. Granted, it's fiction and taking liberties with projections of human impact into the future.

But why does it feel the need to paint a doomsday picture of the future, where nothing green grows on Earth? Because that idea has been in the air the past several decades. You hear how we're in the 6th mass global extinction, half of all species will be gone by 2101, bee colony collapse could effect crop production in a major way, the frog disappearances and lack of insect splatter being canaries in the coal mine. EO Wilson has warned that the Earth could be on life support by the end of the 21st, and that we cant' support 10 billion plus people modernizing to match Western consumption.

But there's another view that isn't quite so popular. It's that human ingenuity overcomes problems, and that we can and will support that many people without turning Earth into a hell hole.

So, you have on reaction to the possibility of future environmental collapse being that we need to curb economic and population growth, and change consumption habits in a major way to avoid the worst. The other view is that growth is what fuels technology and funds science, so we shouldn't be curbing growth, because that's what will get us through. Humans will adapt their consumption as more efficient means of consumption become available.

It's more a commentary on public perception and media repointing, which can influence policy. We're currently on our way to around 11 billion people by the end of the century, so there's a question of what the Earth's carrying capacity is, whether technology changes that, how resilient various ecosystems are to continued human pressure, and so on.

If this was just a science question, I wouldn't post it in a philosophy forum. But it's a question about perception regarding environmental concerns.

How does a necessary being become necessary and what warrants that? — GreyScorpio

Necessary means it's impossible for the being to not be necessary, so there is no becoming. By definition, it can't be the case that God wasn't necessary.

But only if you accept the definition. One could also say that God's existence is brute. Something has to be either necessary, brute, or have an infinite past.

The physics of what led to the Big Bang could be necessary if they were self-explanatory such that it was illogical and impossible for there not to be such physics. Or they could be brute, or there could have been an infinite number of big bangs in an infinite multiverse, or infinite cycle of bangs and collapses.

I don't think you can get around running into one of those options when talking about how anything exists. So criticizing the idea of God on those grounds doesn't really accomplish anything.

Most definitely the designer needs a designer. — GreyScorpio

Sophisticated notions have God as the necessary being for existence, and not some additional thing of complexity that needs explaining.

Of course one is free to disbelieve that there is any such thing as a necessary being. But then one can also turn around and say that the complexity of QM in the vacuum necessarily existed to get the universe going, or whatever it was.

The explanation for why anything exists is going to run into an infinite regress, brute existence, or unknowns.

The only truly godless idealism that I'm familiar with tends to talk about permanent possibilities of perception being what underlies claims to the effect that unperceived/unknown facts/object etc exist. — MetaphysicsNow

People on here who towed the hardcore idealist line sans God or some universal consciousness would say that perception is brute, and there's no explanation to be had for why perception has the structure it does. Or at least we can't know why.

Yes, with God in the picture, Berkeley's idealism becomes a kind of realism, at least insofar as bivalence can hold of propositions that human beings could not even in principle come to know the truth of. — MetaphysicsNow

I just read that Dummett held a similar position:

By means of science, we have made some progress towards understanding the world as it is in itself—we can point to ways in which scientific descriptions of the world are improvements on the description based on our bare perceptions, so our aspiration to know the world as it is in itself cannot be dismissed as an incoherent longing. But insofar as this aspiration is coherent, "in itself" cannot mean "without reference to the perceptions of any being."
https://www.iep.utm.edu/dummett/ — IEP

He then continues on to make a case for a universal perceiver who holds on things together, which would be God. That surprised me.

IBerkeley tried to deny that his idealism ran counter to common sense, but was way off target if you ask me. — MetaphysicsNow

He at least had God keeping things in the quad when nobody was around. Some of the idealist/realist debates on the old forum which didn't typically rely on God got pretty far out there, with talk of post-apocalyptic chairs at the end of the universe and what not.

How does an anti-realist account for this fact? I guess the response will be that it has meaning because we at least have some idea (perhaps many) of what would count as providing evidence for accepting it to be true. — MetaphysicsNow

I understand, but certain kinds of idealists are going to deny there is anything to Mars beyond our perceptions of it. And that definitely came up with the old debates around here. You had some idealists taking a hardline stance against anything existing that's not perceived by us.

I'm not sure the anti-realist can say there is anything determinate that hasn't been verified without committing themselves to realism of some form. Just being able to give an account of how it could be verified is not enough to say that a statement has a truth value, because then you're agreeing with the realist that bivalence is the case.

An anti-realist theory of truth as justification would seem to be offering rather more to say about what truth is than a deflationist would be comfortable with — MetaphysicsNow

I see. So then on Dummett's account, the anti-realist qua truth rejects bivalence across the board. A statement only has a truth value if you can provide justification for it (as you stated previously).

Does that mean there's (1) no such thing as a proposition whose truth is unknown? Or just propositions where (2) we don't know how to figure out whether they're true or false?

Based on his intuitionist vs platonist example, it would seem it's the first, since the intuitionist denies that any mathematical truth exists beyond constructing it (providing a proof). But that runs strongly counter to common sense (when it comes to ordinary objects at any rate), and ordinary use of language.

Example 1: It's raining outside (where nobody has checked and there is no weather report).

Example 2. The MWI of QM is the correct one.

We know how to verify 1, but nobody has done so yet, so we don't know. Does that mean the truth is indeterminate until somebody looks outside?

For example 2, we don't know how to construct an experiment that would tell us which (if any) interpretation of QM is true.

I suppose if you take the Wittgensteinian approach to language and argue that meaning is use and then look to how the word "true" is used you'll see that it's used to refer to sentences that satisfy some standard of justification. — Michael

While Dummett agrees with Witty on meaning being use, he disagrees that this makes metaphysical statements meaningless. Thus, his argument for realizing that metaphysical disputes are about the kind of logic one prefers. As such, the way forward for resolving these disputes is finding a way to justify the logic of the realist or anti-realist for a given domain.

As far as I'm aware anti-realism about truth boils down to the idea that the truth of a statement consists in its justification (where what counts as justification will vary from domain to domain). — MetaphysicsNow

Isn't that the same as deflationist? Which might be anti-realist, however, "the snow is white", isn't denying a state of affairs, it's just saying that this particular statement is made true by whether the snow is white, and nothing else more needs to be said.

Isn't it more along the lines that whilst both the anti-realist and realist can accept that weather reports/general facts about tree stability in the face of high winds etc can justify the claim that the tree fell over during the night, for the anti-realist the truth of that claim actually consists in those justifications whilst for the realist, those justifications allow one to infer the existence of a state of affairs that makes the claim true regardless of those justifications? — MetaphysicsNow

Maybe so for trees. A better one might be:

Realist: Life exists on Mars.
Idealist (anti-realist stripe): There is no truth to this statement until we observe evidence for or against life on the red planet.

However, the idealist might grant that life could have it's own perceptions, depending on the kind of life, and depending on the kind of idealist (whether they are strictly anti-realist about such claims).

303
Incidently, if one is an anti-realist about truth in general, wouldn't that entail anti-realism for all domains about which true statements can be made? — MetaphysicsNow

Yes, but is that a coherent position to take? Or is it just ancient skepticism? Actually, I'm not sure whether skeptics denied that claims could be true, only that we could know whether they were true or false.

An example that comes to mind:

A realist states that the tree blew over in a high wind the night before while nobody was around. The anti-realist will say it is neither true or false that the tree blew over, absent observational justification.

The realist thinks there is a state of affairs in which the tree did or did not blow over while nobody was observing it, while the anti-realist about physical objects does not accept this, since physical objects are what appears in perception, and nothing more.

The realist believes they can use inferences from other observed physical events, such as trees blowing over in high winds, and the weather report from last night, to justify the truthiness of the statement about an unobserved tree falling in the woods. The anti-realist won't accept those inferences.

An ontological existence assertion has an objective truth-value if its truth-value does
not depend on a context of utterance or a context of assessment: that is, if every ontological utterance of the same sentence has the same truth-value, and if the truth-value of these utterances do not vary with different ontological contexts of assessment.

Can you unpack this for me?

What would be an example of a statement which was not meaningful? — Pseudonym

Just randomly:

"The water of green flies into vacuum's innocence, giving us a Trump's tweet of hope."

Pomo Generator:

"The primary theme of the works of Smith is a self-justifying reality. It
could be said that the premise of capitalist discourse states that the purpose
of the participant is deconstruction. Derrida uses the term ‘subcapitalist
deappropriation’ to denote not dematerialism, but subdematerialism."

Clinton:

"Depends on what the definition of is is."

Trump:

Take your pick, but Banno posted a good example today.

Movie:

Starlord: "Where is Gamora?"

Iron Man: "What is Gamora?"

Drax: "Why is Gamora?"

The last one is humorous because it doesn't make a lot of sense to ask why is a person, but it was in response to Iron Man not knowing that Gamora was a person.

I think ‘a domain of discourse’ is a better expression than ‘language game’. Words are used in domains of discourse in which they have shared meaning/s which the participants understand even if they disagree about their meaning. In fact in order to disagree, the discussion needs to be confined to a domain of discourse or ‘language game’. Otherwise you end up with incommensurability [which is frequently encountered in current culture.] — Wayfarer

Which raises the question of whether words can be lifted outside of their domain of discourse and retain their meaning. That's the charge against philosophers, right?

I'm waiting for an elucidation upon the criterion for what counts as being meaningful. — creativesoul

New discussion incoming. This one is probably too far along for others to want to join in, so might as well start fresh.

or its is not a metaphysical statement at all since we can resolve what the term 'meaningful' means and at that point it becomes and entirely falsifiable empirical claim. — Pseudonym

Oh really? So you think if one of us made a thread on meaning that we would have agreement? There's been an ongoing debate in philosophy over meaning, so I doubt you're going to have your agreement. There are different positions on the meaning of meaning.

But just for sake of argument, let's say we all agreed on the definition of meaning. That doesn't therefore mean that we're going to all agree on which statements are meaningful, because all one has to do is claim that a statement isn't meaningful and that it hasn't been explained satisfactorily.

This thread is evidence of that.