Ah, yes, meditation has secretly revealed to you that words that denote very different concepts are actually the same, because magic. :lol:

Very good. Not a very serious response, but definitely an amusing one.

Sure they are. Either the universe is past-eternal, or it is not (i.e. it came to be "from nothing"). If the one is true the other cannot be and visa versa.

And the only way "infinity and nothing are one and the same" is if you're re-defining one or both terms. Given their usual meanings in English, obviously they're very different concepts.

This one's easy; something from nothing is more far-fetched, and it isn't especially close.

There isn't even anything particularly far-fetched about an infinite past at all; if anything, the proposition that the past isn't infinite strikes me as wildly implausible and far-fetched. That isn't to say a finite past is impossible, only that it would represent a radical and qualitative leap from anything we've experienced or previously known about how the world and causal order works and so the initial presumption is certainly against it.

But what does he get pinged on? "Russia", some stupid riot, saying dumb things. The truth is that if they actually went after anything substantial, they'd all have to hang too because the democrats fundamentally share the same policy positions as Trump with minor rhetorical changes...

Jan 6 is an effort to draw a pseudo-bright line in the sand because if anyone looks too closely, they'd recognize that there is little too distinguish these power hungry fucks whose existence is harmful no matter what stupid colors they wear. — StreetlightX

:100:

Jan 6th is, like Russia and Ukraine, a shiny object to distract Democrats and hopefully centrist/independents from the fact that the Democrats are continuing down Trump's ruinous path towards runaway climate change, white nationalism, militarization/colonialism, corporate welfare, and increasing wealth inequality and socioeconomic stratification. Without a useful enemy to prop up to rally the troops, people might start turning on the Dems.

Also a useful way to head off any burgeoning radicalism or revolutionary sentiment. By opposing the hated Trump (and Trump is scum, make no mistake) to things like the FBI and the national security apparatus, our absolute joke of a "democratic" electoral system, and so on, you've got liberals cheering for and supporting the sorts of things that, in a sane world, they'd be clamoring to tear down (like our batshit intelligence, law enforcement, and military programs).

Its just disappointing how easy Democrats and liberals have turned out to be to dupe and distract. Like, we all already knew conservatives were morons, but you would have liked to think at least some Dems were slightly less gullible.

The argument here is that religious belief is more make-believe than factual belief.

factual beliefs are practical setting independent, cognitively govern other attitudes, and are evidentially vulnerable. By way of contrast, religious credences have perceived normative orientation, are susceptible to free elaboration, and are vulnerable to special authority. This theory provides a framework for future research in the epistemology and psychology of religious credence — Banno

Did you read the paper, would you mind briefly summarizing the criteria for a factual belief as opposed to a religious one?

(I don't mean to be lazy, I just can't read on a computer screen for too long before it starts to give me a headache, and it looks like the relevant section on Van Leeuwen's definition/criteria of factual belief is 10+ pages long)

:yikes: Um... alrighty then

A request that you rejected gracelessly — T Clark

:roll:

Charge is attached to a particle... They can't be pulled apart. — Raymond

Um, right. That's because its not "attached to" it in a physical sense (again with the physical metaphor), charge is a property of a particle, and so its not meaningful to talk about "pulling it apart" any more than it would to talk of "pulling apart" the redness of an apple from the apple.

And in any case, charge is a physical property of a physical object- no mystery there. The problem is the proposal that the mental "resides in" or "is attached to" the physical in the way that a physical property like charge does with a physical object, without itself being physical. In other words, the interaction problem, dualism's harder problem of consciousness.

Care to give us all a tutorial. — T Clark

Um, no? Why would me requesting to know on what basis someone is claiming that Graziano "is absolutely clueless" imply that I'm looking to give a "tutorial"?

If you claim that someone is clueless (on a subject in which they hold a doctorate and have produced a respectable body of scholarship, no less), you probably should have some particular basis for that claim, and so I'm curious to know what it is here, especially given how prone eliminativism is to getting wildly strawmanned.

Why can't mental stuff reside in physical stuff. Physicists even call it something: charge.

Physicists don't use the word "charge" to talk about "mental stuff residing in physical stuff", they use the word "charge" to talk about a particular physical property of matter. So far as I'm aware, physicists don't have a word for "mental stuff residing in physical stuff", because that's not something physics concerns itself with (and if it did, then the mental = the physical after all).

Given the usual English meaning of the phrase "residing in" is certainly is a physical relation ("residing in" is equivalent to being situated, located, or physically present in- a spatial relation).

If otoh you mean "reside in" as something like being a property of ("charge can reside in an electron"), its hard to see how this isn't a physicalist proposal, that the mental "resides in" the physical in the same way that charge "resides in" an election. At the very least, you need to be much more specific here.

Hence our problem (well mine anyway). I can't see a way in which a priest, considering a little 'extra-curricular choir practice' with the boys would actually think "I'll be tortured in hell for eternity if I do this, but at least I'll get my rocks off for a five minuets - whatever, I'll do it". No-one's thinking that way. Which means either a) they don't really truly believe the punishment they claim they do, or b) they really do think it's all about doing the rites properly and not about sin at all (even worse), or c) they're super psyched for choirboys and are prepared to face an eternity of torment for the pleasure. Of the three, I think the former is the more likely. The idea of an eternity of torment for any transgression is just as implausible to them as it is to us (parsimony again, if I can explain their behaviour with beliefs we could share, rather than incommensurable ones, I'll do so). — Isaac

Why is the former more likely? It strikes me as equally plausible that either they accept the doctrine that one is justified by faith (and so belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation regardless of what evils one has engaged in, including child abuse) and so they don't believe they are risking eternal punishment by engaging in child abuse/rape, or that their decision to engage in child abuse simply isn't a rational one involving any calculation of the relevant risks (either of legal repercussions, or eternal punishment) at all.

And there certainly appear to be plenty of Christians who do behave as if they genuinely believe that unbelief can/will result in eternal punishment, going to great lengths to try to convert friends and loved ones and displaying apparently genuine concern over the fate of non-believer's eternal souls.

(I also think you're either confused about what "charge" is- charge is a physical property of physical objects/matter- or are using words in a highly non-standard way without indicating that you're doing so)

Why can't mental stuff reside in physical stuff — Raymond

I've answered this twice now:

Because "residing in" is a physical or spatial relation...

Indeed, in this context its not uncommon to define the physical as that which exhibits the sorts of properties or relations we deal with in physical theory- to be physical just is to have properties like mass, charge, volume, velocity etc. and to be able to stand in physical (spatial, temporal, causal, etc) relations with other physical objects or forces.

If you're saying that "mental stuff" can stand in physical relations with physical stuff, then you're essentially saying that the mental is physical after all (on at least one plausible/common definition of the physical). Either that, or making a category error.

Because "residing in" is a physical or spatial relation. How can a mental substance or entity stand in a physical or spatial relation, without itself being physical? What does it mean to say this, if we're not conceding that the mental is physical after all? No similar problem applies to particles having charge because particles are physical objects, and charge is a physical property.

Indeed, in this context its not uncommon to define the physical as that which exhibits the sorts of properties or relations we deal with in physical theory- to be physical just is to have properties like mass, charge, volume, velocity etc. and to be able to stand in physical (spatial, temporal, causal, etc) relations with other physical objects or forces.

and I conclude that he is absolutely clueless — Daemon

On the basis of what, specifically?

Obviously experts can be and frequently are wrong, but if your impression, as a layman, of someone with a doctorate in the field in question "is absolutely clueless", a lot of times the problem is on your end.

And especially on this topic, given the propensity towards willful misunderstandings/misrepresentations of eliminativism by people strongly (but largely uncritically) committed to a naive/folk dualistic metaphysic.

I don't think this problem is hard to solve. If the mental resides in the physical, all problems are solved — Raymond

Hardly, even supposing that "the mental resides in the physical" (and supposing that this is even a meaningful phrase in the first place, given that "residing in" is a physical or spatial relation) the interaction problem remains in its entirety: how do they interact? Where do they interact? How is a "where" even meaningful when we're talking about a non-physical metaphysical substance?

So I think its fairly instructive that, in a post claiming the problem isn't hard to solve, the best you can do is this same vague mysterian gesturing; this suggests the problem is hard indeed. And so even if the "hard problem" is hard, the dualist's problem is even harder by orders of magnitude. If I were a neuro- or cognitive scientist, or philosopher of mind, its pretty clear which paradigm would look more optimistic and fruitful... and its not dualism.

I still think the OP's proposition is overbroad: the truth of dualism wouldn't mean all science is wrong, since there's a good deal of science that doesn't involve any mental/physical interactions. But it would mean that a significant portion of our current understanding of physics is wrong, as Banno already argued (for instance, regarding energy conservation). And so the fact that our current understanding of physics doesn't look wrong (its predictions fitt the observational evidence extremely well), is itself fairly strong evidence that dualism is wrong.

Yeah neurotransmitters are chemicals, they are physical, they have physical properties which are in principle quantifiable/measurable... so the comparison to the mass of the rocks in a desert actually wasn't a terrible one (and certainly not some decisive argument or distinction against physicalism as javra apparently took it to be); in other words, its practically infeasible, but not impossible in principle.

And just in general, the form or style of argument by those defending dualism here just appears to be one gigantic appeal to ignorance. As with creationism in biology, the idea seems to be that dualism is the default and so if one can pose questions or problems that physicalism is purportedly unable to answer, that suffices to establish dualism. Which, obviously, it does not, this is patently fallacious. And ultimately, even if we grant e.g. the "hard problem" and other popular arguments against physicalism, dualism is stick with its own even harder problem, of how a metaphysically distinct category of the mental interacts with and causes changes in the physical world.

No, you didn't (obviously we both know and understand the difference between "writing a story" that mentions bigotry vs. writing bigoted posts), and no, this is not worth arguing or complaining about. Its not complicated, its not confusing, and its the same as the posting rules or terms of service on any similar website.

Might as well start a thread complaining about the fact that you can't urinate on people at the grocery store. Some websites won't let you do the racism, get over it.

In other words, magic, i.e. mind-of-the-gaps.

Physicalism might not have worked out the precise relationship between mental phenomena and physical states/laws of nature, but at least its actually trying to think through the problem instead of engaging in this sort of lazy, hand-wavey magical thinking. I suppose that you could say that physicalism is the worst ontological proposal... except for all the rest (and especially dualism).

THOU SHALT NOT AGREE WITH ANY SENTIMENT OF THE PHILOSOPHERS THAT IS NOT APPROVED OF BY THE OPINION OF ANY SINGLE MEMBER OF THE PHILOSOPHY FORUM’S MODERATORS

No, not "any" sentiment, just the racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. ones. This isn't complicated at all, just don't post hateful/prejudiced BS and you're fine, same as virtually any other forum or board. Not exactly rocket science, and certainly nothing worth two pages of whining about it.

I swear, threads like these are just for people who enjoy complaining purely for the sake of complaining.

The only insurrection and coup attempts were the activities of the deep state and anti-Trump forces in both parties and in the media, who spent the majority of their time trying to stifle, discredit, and remove Trump from office during his presidency, the will of the people be damned.

The will of the people, eh? I don't suppose you're referring to either the majority of Americans who thought the Russia investigation was fair and its findings accurate, or the majority of Americans who voted for Clinton in 2016?

Also, its funny that you object to using terms like "insurrection" or "coup" wrt the Jan 6 riots, but endorse them in the equally ridiculous context of lawful processes like the Mueller probe or either of Trump's impeachments. If drunk rednecks stealing furniture and holding Trump signs isn't a coup or insurrection, then the lawful activities of journalists or members of Congress certainly isn't either.

Your argument boils down to, absence of evidence is evidence of absence which, fortunately or not, is not as good as you seem to think it is.

It actually is a pretty good argument. I'm not sure where the saying "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" came from, but its simply incorrect: not only is absence of evidence evidence of absence, that absence of evidence is evidence of absence is a provable theorem of probability theory. And how strong of evidence it is, depends on the likelihood or the expectation of the presence of a particular sort of evidence, if the proposition in question were true.

Now, people often confuse/conflate "evidence" and "proof" and so in at least some cases I think that what people mean when they say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence is that evidence of absence isn't proof of absence. And that is true enough. But it is evidence, the only question is just how strong or compelling it is.

And so showing that the evidence we would expect if Christianity (or anything else) were true (special creation, a moral world order, efficacy of prayer, miracles, etc) is absent, is a strong argument against the truth of Christianity.

Indeed, this basically renders the rest moot. Not getting vaccinated does have negative consequences for other individuals and the community as a whole- that's it, game over, back to the drawing board, Bartricks.

You say this as if "religion" is a homogeneous category that we can speak of generally (at least wrt their emphasis on factual correctness). It is... not that, not at all. And clearly, religions differ on this point, with certain forms of Christianity and Islam in particular emphasizing faith/belief that certain propositions are true (i.e. are factually correct), while other religions or denominations emphasize a code of conduct, set of values, way of life, rituals that must be participated in, and so on.

So, better to speak of specific religions than religion in general, since there are very few things that can accurately be said of religion in general or all religions together. And its not especially controversial to point out that not all religions are concerned with propositional belief or factual correctness- this was mostly a novel development introduced by Christianity, a departure from how e.g. ancient pagan religions, Judaism, etc. had been operating for centuries. It mostly only became the norm, rather than the exception, as Christianity spread.

Apo has a neo-Hegelian tone that is too convenient; dialectic and pragmatism seem odd bedfellows. We had a long discussion years ago in which he insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was actually measured. Olivier5 seems to think something similar when he proposes that facts are observations. — Banno

Not to speak for Oliver5, but facts as discrete observations/measurements or as proven or well-established truths is a perfectly common usage of the term... just not the one typically used in philosophy. So this usage doesn't necessarily commit someone to the sort of metaphysical position wrt truth you allude to here (although maybe that user has expressed such a position elsewhere, I can't say).

Its not solely because the view is absurd, its also because in so many of these cases we're able to trace that absurd view back to a source of misinformation/manipulation like e.g. Fox News. Empirically, a huge number of covid/vaccine deniers have been manipulated and misinformed (and so require a degree of stupidity or at least gullibility)- we can usually even point to the specific origins of this misinformation/manipulation.

And I'd say that the resurrection of the dead is an apples/oranges comparison here since theological/supernatural claims like this don't necessarily involve the sort of straightforward/unequivocal factual claim that covid/vaccine denial does- the resurrection of the dead in Christian theology can be (and often is/has been) interpreted in a variety of ways including entirely non-literal ones, and even a literal claim of a historical miracle (the resurrection of Christ, say) is a trickier issue than something easily verifiable in the present like e.g. the efficacy of vaccines.

I mean, in general its just basic charity (and good form) to assume that a view you disagree with isn't held on the basis of stupidity or misinformation/manipulation or whatever... but its equally irrational to assume the opposite when in possession of direct and decisive evidence that the view is being held on the basis of misinformation/ignorance/etc. Which I think is quite clearly the case here, at least in the vast majority of cases.

It is that their views differ from yours and that it is possible to hold their views whilst being sane, sincere, unmanipulated, intelligent and uncorrupted. — Cuthbert

For most forms of extreme vaccine/covid denial, this is manifestly untrue: it is impossible to believe things so absurd and so clearly and verifiably wrong, while also being unmanipulated and intelligent.

For every person who says "Anti-vaxxers must be brainwashed conspiracy theorists" there is another who says that "Vaxxers must be brainwashed establishment stooges."

You've got the numbers wrong. For every one of the latter, there's several of the former. And in many of these cases, "conspiracy theorist" isn't a pejorative but an accurate description. If you believe Bill Gates is using covid vaccines to implant mind control chips (or one of the many other variations), you're a conspiracy theorist.

It is laziness to hold that the people who disagree with you must be crazy or sub-rational in some other way.

Only when you're lacking an abundance of evidence that they are ignorant, being manipulated, unintelligent, etc.

You know what is laziness, in all instances? Ignoring the evidence or specific factors in favor of lazy bothsidesism where you blindly assume/posit equivalencies or symmetries that don't exist. which, oh look, is exactly what you're doing here.

Go ahead and form it better, I have run through many different sentences in my mind and any sentence discussing nonexistence in general seems to face a strange language breakdown

That's a pretty strong indication that what you're trying to express is not coherent.

TO the extent that there's anything meaningful to say here, its just tautology and nothing interesting follows from it, certainly none of the religious/theological conclusions you're trying to draw.

Its almost like a sort of Greatest Hits of sloppy philosophy or something: reifying non-existence and trying to say some nonsensical things about it, then concluding on that basis that God exists.

seems like he was trying to "gotcha!" Tegmark in a self-contradiction, like asking the anti-realist wrt truth whether their anti-realism towards truth is itself true. Except... it doesn't really work in this case since there's no contradiction in a mathematical structure (a mind, a physicist) developing a theory about how the universe is all mathematical structures.

With the likes of Butt-chug Brett and Amy Barrett on SCOTUS (!!!) we shouldn't really be surprised by anything at this point, but... still can't help but be slightly shocked by how brazen this was (ignoring precedent, making special exceptions for a conservative hobbyhorse, etc). Bad enough on its own, but maybe even worse in terms of what it indicates moving forward.

It also doesn't help that the Dems continue to insist on showing up to gunfights with a plastic butter knife.

Right, but the point is that that's not really how ancient Hellenic cultures thought about atheism or blasphemy: it didn't matter what people believed so much as whether people honored the gods on the appropriate days with the appropriate rituals (the focus on belief was something Christianity introduced- the pagan world didn't care much about ones personal belief, but about engaging in the correct rituals to honor the gods)... because failing to do so could lead to e.g. famine, drought, etc etc

So I'm not sure that framing this as "was Socrates an atheist in the modern sense" is necessarily the most helpful way to look at it, not because its not a valid question, but because that isn't what would have mattered to ancient Athenians. What they would have been really concerned about is, is Socrates failing to properly honor the gods, and/or is he teaching the youth things that may cause them to not properly honor the gods? (and evidently they thought so, hence his death sentence)

Should be noted that "atheist" used to not only denote someone who disbelieved in the gods, but also someone who said/believed blasphemous things about them.

I imagine the term was probably closer to "heretic" or "blasphemer" (which would cover unbelief as well) than our modern sense of "atheist".

Very similar style

Lol, please- hardly. A similar view, maybe, on this particular topic at least, but no one who's read both our posts can say its a "similar style" (I suspected you weren't actually reading my posts already, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to have it confirmed).

But you're right, I included the name "Jeeprs" so you knew I knew just how long you've been parroting the same dogmatic views without alteration (8 years, yikes!)

(note to mods: hopefully you can see by my IP/location that this suggestion that I'm a banned member sock puppet is not accurate.. and nothing against Sapientia- I always had a soft spot for the guy- but the suggestion that there's any similarity between our posts is just sort of ridiculous and mildly insulting)

yeah Sapientia has an account, as "S". I see that he's banned though, that's a shame.

Lol, huh? I'm definitely not Sapientia. I think Sapientia actually has an account here, no? Nice try though, I guess.

you'll have to forgive me for being somewhat incredulous that you haven't gotten bored, if nothing else, of posting the same shtick over and over for so many years

Its not actually that simple- again, its probably impossible for a fundamental physical theory to be totally bereft of metaphysics- and whether or not string theory is testable, either in practice or in principle, remains a controversial and ongoing debate. Same for the more general question of what counts as a testable prediction in the first place (e.g. does an indirect prediction count?)

Though I realize this doesn't quite fit your shtick about the evils of naturalism and many-worlds/multiverse models and yadda yadda, so feel free to disregard as necessary (or convenient)

What fundamental physical theory isn't, on some definition, "metaphysics"? Is QFT not "metaphysics" in a similar sense? GR? What would such a theory have to be like NOT to qualify as metaphysics on such a broad definition?