all of whom can be dealt with by any sufficiently armed group of people. — NOS4A2

True, but a sufficiently armed group of people are not likely to be anarchists.

for he’s already been denied for so long the right and means to protect himself that he’s been left a sheep to the wolves, so to speak. — NOS4A2

Sure, but the alternative has been mob justice, which is judged historically to be even worse than the judicial system we've developed over time.

fI’m not positive a group of anarchists are any better at doling out violence and justice than a government, but it’s difficult to see how they can be any worse. — NOS4A2

While true, a lot of that is a matter of scale. Governments can marshal armies because they have a lot of people. They can protect multinational corporations because we have global trade networks. The anarchist faces the problem of what to do when there's lots of people concentrated in areas. It's all good and fine for small groups of hunter/gatherers to be community-based, it's another thing when you have millions of people nearby. There is a tendency for self-organization to occur, and a tendency for some individuals to take advantage of that. Also a need for large-scale organization as services needed to be provided for those millions, and it's a lot more efficient to have highways than a bunch of privately owned roads.

Also, we have a lot of historical evidence for all the wrong-doings of governments, we have less evidence of what our ancestors were up to before recorded civilization. We do know all the other hominids went extinct along with lots of megafauna. Our hunter/gatherer ancestors may have played a role in both. There is evidence of human migrations coinciding with existing populations being replaced.

The reality is there is no ideal solution. Governments are bad because they are run by people, but what alternative is there? Communities are run by people too. It might be a case of what is the least-bad, realistic approach to governance. Same with economics.

bviously I have no problem with people consensually interacting and voluntarily committing to mutual obligations, preferably also without violence playing a role. — Tzeentch

And if people violate those mutual obligations, or wish to be violent? What do you do with Viking marauders or pirates? Warlords, criminal gangs, serial killers, rapists? What about would-be conquerers who are raising an army? It happened in the past. Plenty of rulers conquered their way into power.

Even if we all agree anarchy was morally superior, how do we suppose the world remains in anarchy? It certainly didn't in the past. How would we even ditch thousands of years of government across the planet at this point? 8 billion people are going to live happily in anarchist communities?

Yet if the politicians passed some law or laws you don't agree with, does anything make those laws so special that they have to be obeyed even if they are dumb or harmful? — AntonioP

And what if I want to do things that are harmful to others, because I'm a selfish cunt and don't agree with rules against exploiting others? How does the anarchist deal with that sort of fellow?

The justification for authority starts with all human groups developing rules to follow so they can meaningfully coexist. That means some restriction on freedom. We learn this as small children when older people don't just let us bite, kick, steal and throw tantrums for any reason. Someone has to decide on and enforce those rules. Governments are a way to do this along with administering societal functions like collecting taxes for roads, defense, etc as humans congregated in larger groups.

My response would be, don't try to control people against their will. — Tzeentch

And if their will is to harm others, what then? What if their will is to control others? Or maybe they just want to burn down the nearby forest because they like burning things. Do you just let people do whatever they want? That's not how any society functions.

In fact, almost all quantum experiments are performed without human observation, and it is only well after the fact that the humans become aware of the results in analysis of the data. — noAxioms

Wouldn't that just mean the results could be in a superpositioned state until some human makes an observation? That's the basis of Schrodinger's criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but how would we rule it out?

Experiments show how subjects’ auditory or visual perception is influenced by what they are told. — Joshs

Does that work for colors? Do you think if someone said you would be seeing a gold dress that it would necessarily mean you saw it as gold and not blue? If so, then how did it become a big controversy on the internet with people disagreeing on what color it was? I'm not aware that color illusions work that way. Anyway, it wouldn't matter for insects or birds who can see visual patterns on flowers or other animals invisible to us.

think the wrinkle is in red is a property as we see it. It's as if 'red' is supposed to do double-duty for some ineffable private experience which is somehow known to be the same ineffable private experience for all (an impossible public-yet-private experience). Ryle attacks this kind of confusion in The Concept of Mind, just as Wittgenstein does with his beetles and boxes. — Pie

If this were true, then we'd have no trouble figuring out what sort of colors a tetrachromatic bird sees, or what sort of smells a dog experiences. It also doesn't make sense out of how some people can experience seeing a gold dress and some a blue one.

Take an experiment with that blue/gold dress before anyone knew about it. How would you know that someone was seeing a different color (blue or gold) than you were (gold or blue) until they told you? You couldn't know just by showing them if they're instructed to keep quiet about what the dress looks like.

All of this is rather obvious. We do dream after-all, and nobody can share our dream experience. Many of us have inner dialogs and day dreams. People lie and there's no foolproof way to always tell. Nor can we always know what someone is feeling or thinking.

I don't know how it's possible to escape the conclusion that we do have private experiences. How else would you make sense of the above?

What really....I mean REALLY....is the problem here? — Mww

In typical philosophy forum fashion, nobody can quite agree on the terms under dispute, in part because we have our philosophical commitments to uphold.

hen the ground of the possibility of both, each limited to its own specific domain, but functioning in unison towards a given end, becomes the better option. — Mww

How would that look?

I've been reading Color Realism and Color Science and Color Properties and Color Ascriptions: A Relationalist Manifesto. The first one is a good overview of colour realism and its discontents. — Jamal

I've read Color Realism and Color Science before. It is a good overview. Seemed like a quality attempt at defending color realism, even if I'm prone to disagree.

...and he was cited as an example of these direct realists. IF you have a different source, perhaps you could cite it for me? — Isaac

I didn't cite him. I'm not aware of Locke being a direct realist. Maybe with regards to primary qualities?

You can read a summary about color primitivism and other theories of colors here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#RivaTheoColo

Direct realism is a separate but related debate, just depending on what the direct realist has to say about color. As you can see on SEP, there different theories of colors, and a direct realist might choose the one they think offers the best defense for direct perception.

Yes. The idea that seems to be bring presented is that red is some property of an object which produces the response we call 'seeing red'. — Isaac

No, the idea is that red is a property as we see it, not something that causes us to have a response, which could be something unlike color, such as a photon's wavelength.

can find no support for this. Both Locke and the colour primitivist agree that we can be mistaken. So they do not think the world is as it looks to us under proper lighting conditions, at least in the visible light range. Otherwise we couldn't be wrong and both admit that we can be wrong. — Isaac

Under normal conditions, when there's not an optical illusion, and taking into account whatever details about color vision need to be accounted for. The claim is the world is basically colored-in as we perceive it to be.

So it appears even the critics are agreed that the colour primitivists are still assuming colour is a property which we detect and produces the way it appears, not that colour actually is 'the experience of red' in an object. — Isaac

The way it appears would mean the color in our experience. Except that one thing is a property of the object and the other is a perception of that same property.

'm not finding, in the sources you've provided, the idea that any direct realist considers objects to actually have (rather than have a property which causes) the 'experience of red'. Do you have any less ambiguous sources, or perhaps you could explain them more clearly? — Isaac

They certainly don't mean panpsychism. They mean the world is as it looks to us under proper lighting conditions, at least in the visible light range.

If there's no laws governing what can be then all theories are equally valid.[/quote]

No laws or no physical laws? Why do laws have to be physical?

But I think there has to be a reason, otherwise, anything goes - because there are no reasons why this should be a brute fact as opposed to something else. It's a brute fact in virtue of the reason it is the wat it is. — Manuel

Agreed. I also think science without universals doesn't work.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that Humean causation isn't the counterfactual theory of causation? — Michael

It is. I'm disagreeing with it on those grounds.

It's not supposed to. The counterfactual theory of causation just explains what it means for A to cause B. — Michael

As a Humean account. Non-humeans call that contingency.

And perhaps there is a(n unsolvable) problem of induction. How can empirical facts allow for deductive inference? — Michael

Physicists seem to manage. Newton said gravity caused mass to attract. Newton didn't have an explanation for how it worked. So a good example of B always following A. But relativity says it's because mass curves space, changing the trajectory of objects. Now we have an explanation for why B follows A.

You seem to be conflating epistemology with ontology. That we can't know that the universe will always behave a certain way isn't that it won't. — Michael

I realize this. But Humean ontology makes it so we can't know. The problem of induction exists because Hume stated that causality was a habit of thought, not something empirical. That's the skeptical bullet he bit.

I want to climb to the top of that mountain — Xtrix

Since I recently just watched it, reminds me of the documentary Free Solo, about Alex Honnold climbing 3200 feet of El Capitan without a rope in 2017. It's the greatest free solo to date. Alex had the goal back in 2009. He kept a climbing journal, and would spend part of the year living in a van at Yosemite, so he could practice with ropes and other elite climbers. His implementation was going over the route until he was comfortable enough to climb without a rope. He had help planning it out from Tommy Caldwell, the most experienced big wall climber who has made his own incredibly challenging routes on El Capitan with ropes (free climbing). He also has a documentary.

The thing is Tommy said he would never climb El Cap without a rope, because one mistake and you're dead. Part of what makes Alex special is his mental approach. He states that we're all going to die one day, free soloing just makes that very present, and he enjoys doing it because you have to be perfect. Alex had also done free soloing a thousand times on easier climbs. His thing was to get himself into a place where he was no longer afraid, so he could climb a 3200 foot cliff without a rope and not freak out.

Just thought that was a good example of implementing a goal to accomplish something that seemed impossible.

And what does it mean to say that A forces B to happen if not just that if A didn't happen then B wouldn't have happened? — Michael

It means we have an explanation for how A causes B to happen. In physics, the electromagnetic force is the explanation for chemical bonds. Chemistry happens because there is an EM force.

The counterfactual theory of causation is an account of the meaning of causation. — Michael

It is one meaning of causation. It is not the classical meaning. It is a Humean formulation.

But knowing whether or not A will cause B has no bearing on what it means for A to cause B. The counterfactual theory of causation is an account of the meaning of causation. Whether or not A will cause B is a separate matter, and whether or not we can know this, is a separate matter. — Michael

Under a Humean understanding of causation. Not the traditional one. I disagree with Humean causation becues it leads to the problem of induction, and it provides no explanation for why B follows A. It makes everything in the universe contingent.

I'll keep voting and have some victories while you can sit home and let people like me decide your future without opposition. — Philosophim

Your vote doesn't matter. It won't change anything unless you vote in a small enough election where it's possible for one vote to matter. You aren't deciding anything for anyone by voting. The belief that our vote matters is only important on the scale of many voters. Or if you're able to convince enough people to vote a certain way.

Solidness as we conceptually thought prior to atomic theory does not exist, except maybe under extreme gravity like a neutron star. When people first learn that the table is mostly empty space held together by electromagnetic bonds, they're surprised.

What's even more surprising is that we could theoretically walk through a wall if our molecules aligned themselves just right. There is an extremely low probability of that happening, but it's not impossible. Under the classical conception of solidness, it would be impossible.

Yes, I just don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. What does it have to do with the counterfactual theory of causation? — Michael

The counterfactual theory doesn't say whether B is necessitated by A, which the traditional notion of A forcing B to happen entails. Therefore, we can't know that B will follow A in the future under the counterfactual.

I didn't think causality would be the main topic. I thought the object nominalism was more controversial as most people aren't willing to dispense with the reality of everyday objects like chairs and apples.

If they're really arguing that we're never wrong, however the world seems, that's how it is, then they should consider the earth flat, the sun in its orbit, dragons exist, and the weather caused by an angry God as these are all ways the world has appeared to us to be. — Isaac

It's odd because I've made those sort of arguments to the direct realists in this forum before and got argued down. They didn't seem to think there was problem in the world appearing differently than our scientific account, since I guess those were two different modes of experiencing and explaining.

And what is this thing? Is it physical (if so in what form?). If it's not physical then in some other realm? — Isaac

Consciousness.

Dualism here? — Isaac

Probably not physicalism.

I can't see how any amount of thinking is going to pin down the nature of this 'experience of red' since it has no laws governing it. — Isaac

How do you know this? Chalmers proposed a law binding consciousness with informationally rich systems. So property dualism for him. It's just one possibility. Some have tried to work on making a panpsychist theory built up form minimally conscious subatomic particles.

I'd probably opt for neutral monism. The world is neither all physical or mental, but something that gives rise to or contains both.

But if colour is a property of experience, then the statement "an object cannot be two colours at once" is incoherent. — Isaac

Hardly. It just means color as we experience it isn't a property of the object.

Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once. — Isaac

Other than none. Which is kind of the point.

The best you can say is that if colour were a property of objects, then it could not be two colours at once. But here you're creating a counterfactual world in which colours are the properties of objects and claiming you know what physical laws would exist in such a world. Which is an unsupported claim - we only know the physical laws of our own world, the one in which you claim colour is a property of experience, not objects. — Isaac

Before modern science, skeptics made these sort of arguments to claim objects as we experience them don't have those properties. If their arguments were incoherent, then skepticism would have been easily dismissed.

There are some contemporary philosophers who do argue for color realism, and they try to make it compatible with science. I'm not convinced those arguments work.

The counterfactual world you're talking about is the world of our experience. It looks like colors are properties of objects and light sources. The world of our experience came before science was developed.

You don't understand that the all possible world is a logical necessity by definition and the other isn't?

All possible universes is a logical necessity. One is not.

So what is which is constrained in an object such that it cannot be both green and purple — Isaac

The wavelength of light the creature sees, which gets represented as a color sensation. I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing about, other than you don’t like calling the color experience qualia.

You don’t see a difference in those accounts of causality? In the all possible universes, it’s impossible for A not to follow B. In the other account, it is possible.

whether or not something is possible has everything to do with causation, outside of contradictory statements.

Possible Universe X: B always follows A. Possible Universe Y: B follows A up until time T.

Compare that to All Possible Universes where: B always follows A.

How do we account for the difference between those two accounts? A causal account would explain that in the all possible universes account, B is necessitated by A.

The counterfactual definition still doesn’t solve the problem of induction, and it doesn’t distinguish between impossible and possible but never happens.

Logic.

Also, I didn’t make a claim about object existence. I referenced the nominalism of a philosopher Michael and I were debating in another thread.

Why would it show that? — Isaac

You can't have something be both all green and all purple. It would show that color is perceptually relative to the perceiver.

Deflecting by saying that we directly experience the light doesn't say anything about whether or not we directly see the apple. — Michael

One could instead argue that we directly see the environment, of which the apple is part of, and environments have lighting conditions. It's a mistake to just focus on the apple, as if it had independent existence from everything else. Of course there has to be physical relation between the object and the perceiver.

That birds would see it as purple? That only shows that green apples look purple to birds, not that there is no green apple. — Isaac

It would show that the apple doesn't have the property of being green or purple. Rather, it's the perceiver in question that sees the apple as having that color. This is basic ancient skepticism. Honey tastes sweet to you and bitter to me, therefore sweetness isn't a property of honey, but rather our taste buds.

As I've said many times over the years, antirealism isn't unrealism. — Michael

So world-stuff exists. The green apple we see is part of that world-stuff, but not as we perceive it. You didn't seem to have any issues with the nominalism of Jody Azzouni. Apples don't exist as such. But features in the world-stuff that can be carved into apples by animals like us do exist. As you stated in that thread, antirealism concerning objects, relations and properties. But not the world itself.

Moreover, if the physical universe itself is an automaton (some­thing with "states" that succeed one another according to a fixed equation), then it is unintelligible how any particular structure can be singled out as "the" causal structure of the universe. — Joshs

So we could use Conway's Game of Life example. There are three simple rules governing the evolution of the state of each cell. And from that you can get all sorts of patterns, depending on the starting state and the number of cells.

What you can't say is that there aren't really rules, because the rules are what makes it a particular cellular automation. Something has to determine what state the cells will change to each generation. Similarly, one could argue that the rules described by physics determine the evolution of all the world states. And we can consider other universes with different rules, and how that would change what sort of universe you get, or how long it lasts.

Here's a counter factual argument. Take something that could happen, but never does. Say the creation of a large river of Sprite flowing through some country. Nothing in nature prevents that from happening. It's not an impossibility. Now take a perpetual motion machine. It will never exist because it's impossible.

How does Humean causation distinguish between the two cases?

This assumes a linear causation chain. I.e., no other cause for B exists. If C also causes B, then A can be false and B true, and still A, like C, causes B. :chin: — jgill

For sake of simplicity. In the everyday world, it will often get messy. The cue ball striking the 9 ball and hitting it into the corner pocket would be a simple example. Or an equation like E=MC^2, where we can say that energy is always equal to the mass times the speed of light squared and use that energy conversion as a starting point for making atomic bombs or reactors.

My own account of causation is taken from Lewis: A causes B if it is not possible for A to be false and B to be true. — Michael

The problem of induction says we don't know this to be true about the future. But if there is a C which makes it so that A can't be false and B be true, then we do know that B follows A in the future.

The C could be in A or B, it could be a law prescribing A & B, or it could be something else connecting B to A. I think it would be easier to discuss an example than just to talk about C in abstract terms.

But these formal definitions seem to be lacking the essential element of our conception of causation; which is some kind of energetic forcing, not mere correlation. — Janus

Yes, it has to be something making B follow A, which would avoid the problem of induction about the future. Because if B is just correlated with A, there's no guarantee it will always be correlated.