Mathematics is not mental in the sense you mean. It is grasped by the mental, but it is not constituted by the mental, because it is external to us.
— Herg

That is an arguable position, but I'm not a default Platonist. The problem is just repeated here. What is this 'external' to us? IMV, we have unclarifed language here. — macrosoft

I'm not a Platonist either. And 'external to us' is perfectly comprehensible: I don't see your difficulty.

Are you trying to sell us idealism? Because idealism is hopeless. It's a philosophical dead end.

Bunch of waves and particles? What are they but concepts and mathematics, very mental. — macrosoft

Mathematics is not mental in the sense you mean. It is grasped by the mental, but it is not constituted by the mental, because it is external to us.

You want to avoid pain, because that's what pain feels like. This sounds like you want to avoid pain because of pain. — bizso09

You've changed my words. Your version is a tautology, mine is not. You're attacking a straw man.

What decided what is painful and what is pleasurable? It's arbitrary.

Evolution decided it, so it's not arbitrary. In general, what improves an organism's chances of passing on its genes is pleasant, and what harms its chances is painful. So eating and sex are pleasant, while disease and injuries are painful.

I live in the UK. For the past 34 years, I have been a non-Tory living in an ultra-safe Tory constituency. Teresa May and Jeremy Corbyn will fly over my house on the backs of pigs, holding hands and singing 'Rule Britannia', before the Tories lose this seat. If I vote for anyone other than the Tory, my vote is simply wasted. In fact it is wasted even if I vote for the Tory, because the outcome is a foregone conclusion every single time.

So I do not vote.

We had a chance to get a half-way decent voting system in the 2011 referendum. I did vote in that one, but of course the British electorate, with its usual stunning grasp of the issue at stake, threw away its once-in-lifetime chance to get rid of this antiquated, unjust and immoral system.

You can put NOTA on the ballot paper if you like. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. It's a complete irrelevance as far as I'm concerned.

All mental content is physical first off. — Terrapin Station

Not sure what you mean. If you mean that mental content is brain content and is therefore physical because the brain is physical, that may be so, but it has nothing to do with the way in which Holmes is physical; he is physical in his own right, as a human being, not as part of anyone's brain. But because he exists only in a context of supposition and not in the real world, he is physical only in the context of supposition, not in the real world.

But there isn't a Holmes who is six feet tall. — Terrapin Station

Not in the real world, no. But there is in one of Griffin's contexts of supposition.

Someone imagines him to be six feet tall, someone has written him to be six feet tall, or an actor playing him may either actually be six feet tall or the actors (and scriptwriter etc.) might be pretending that he's six feet tall. When we say that Holmes is six feet tall, one of the above (or something similar) is all that it amounts to. — Terrapin Station

Of these alternatives, the first is closest to what Griffin is suggesting. To put it more precisely: someone imagines that there exists, in the real world, an object which is Holmes and which is six feet tall. That is all that Griffin means when he says that Holmes exists and is six feet tall in a context of supposition.

I want to survive and avoid pain, but I don't know why that is. — bizso09

You want to avoid pain because of what pain feels like. (And that's an end to the regress.)

Nor do I agree that Holmes is 'in your mind'. He is not mental; he is nonexistent.
— Herg

What a ridiculous thing to say. Holmes is something we're imagining (aside from talking about Holmes as a character someone is playing, etc.) That means that Holmes is indeed in your mind. You're not being Aspie-ish about that, are you? Thinking that people are saying literally that some person is in your mind? Holmes is mental content--something imagined. You're imagining a person. It's not literally a person. — Terrapin Station

Evidently when I said we had no significant areas of disagreement, I was jumping the gun.

Holmes is not mental content. The mental content here is the thoughts someone has when they read a story about Holmes, or in some other situation imagines that there is such a person as Holmes.

Holmes can't be mental content, because he is a physical object. He is six feet tall, he lives in Baker Street, he injects himself with cocaine, he plays the violin, he is a member of the species homo sapiens. Mental content cannot have any of these properties, only a physical object can, and therefore Holmes is a physical object.

However, he is not a physical object in anyone's mind (which, as you rightly say, would mean that he is in the real world), because physical objects (as you again rightly observe) cannot be in people's minds. As an object (as opposed to as a fictional character - see my answer to MindForged above), he is not in the real world in any way whatsoever. He is - he exists - only in some context of supposition, which is just a way of saying that someone at some time supposes or imagines that there is such an object as Holmes.

When you phrase it as "pretending" is sounds like you're calling me deceptive rather than misguided. If that wasn't the implication my mistake. — MindForged

Good lord. No, that was not my intention. What I was trying to suggest is that you and I, when we read a story about Sherlock Holmes, play along with Conan Doyle's game, which he indulged in himself when he wrote the stories, of pretending that there is a real Holmes in the real world. You and I (and everyone else who knows that Holmes is fictitious) at the same time know that this is not the case; and since behaving as if something were the case while knowing that it is not the case usually goes under the name 'pretending', that was the word I naturally chose. But given your reaction, maybe it would be safer if I used the word 'imagining' - or, as Griffin does, 'supposing'.

I think the sentence was "Sherlock Holmes is more famous than any detective" or something like that, but disregard that. To say the sentence is false seems to require adopting something like Russell's theory of definite descriptions. After all, few would hear me say "Sherlock Holmes is the most famous detective" and interpret that as me saying Holmes exists. Because that's how Russell's theory would interpret that. And obviously that assumption is false and thus the sentence that assumes it.

If that's not how you are determining it isn't true, the only recourse that comes to mind is a restriction of either the Principle of Excluded Middle or of Bivalence. — MindForged

I owe you an apology here, because I have not been explicit enough in saying what I think. Let me try again.

Holmes is an object only in a context of supposition, not in the real world; in the real world, Holmes is not an object but a fictional character. (Fictional characters are not strictly objects, they are complexes made up of words on the page and people's thoughts when they read those words.) Statements that refer to Holmes can be true only in the context in which Holmes has the status - object or fictional character - required for the statement to be true. In some cases the statement, in order to be true, may require him to be both a fictional character and an object in the real world; in such cases the statement 'reaches into' the context of supposition in order to access the properties Holmes has in that context.

Some examples:
'Holmes is a character in books by Conan Doyle' (true in the real world)
'Holmes lives in Baker Street' (true in a context of supposition)
'Holmes is the world's greatest detective' (true in a context of supposition)
'Holmes is a detective in stories by Conan Doyle' (true in the real world, but reaches into the context of supposition to access the property 'detective')
'Holmes is the most famous detective in the world' (true in the real world, because that is where he is famous; but again, reaches into the context of supposition to access the property 'detective')

I hope this clarifies my position.

What do you think about objects in dreams? If you dream about a horse, do you hold that there is a horse? I hold that there is not.

A non-existent horse, yes. An existent horse, no. If one holds to Meinongianism, "there is" is not the same thing as "exists". Being has been partitioned into different kinds so if I speak truthfully about the horse in my dream I'm not committing myself to the existence of the dream horse. It has enough being to predicate things of it but it's a thin sort of being, not physical. — MindForged

I take the same view of dream objects as I do of imaginary objects. I don't believe in different kinds of being. There is a horse in my dream, but in the real world, there is no horse at all, only me dreaming.

Eating too much ice cream isn't loving yourself properly... — matt

Yes, exactly. If Jesus had said 'love thy neighbour as thou wouldst love thyself if thou wert loving thyself properly,' that would have meant not feeding my neighbour too much ice cream. But he didn't; he said 'love thy neighbour as thyself'.

This is not necessarily a good idea. I, for instance, eat too much ice cream and don't get enough exercise. If I follow Jesus' precept, I would encourage my neighbour to become a couch potato like myself and stuff himself with empty calories, which wouldn't be doing him a favour.

I think Jesus is setting the bar too low. We should love our neighbour better than we love ourselves. I'm not saying I would live up to this - almost certainly not - but it would make more sense.

I'd say there actually IS a him; it's actually just a bundle of concepts in your mind. That doesn't imply that "there isn't actually a him," unless one insists on reading language in a completely untenable way. That theory of language is WRONG. Language doesn't actually work so that we can only refer to real-world objects. (And so that we subsequently have to posit nonexistent real world objects). — Terrapin Station

We still evidently have some disagreements on the detail (unless you are merely being a little loose in the way you express yourself). Viz:

I agree that language doesn't restrict us to real world objects; how could we refer to Holmes if it did? But I don't think we can say that what's referred to by 'him' is the bundle of concepts. A nonexistent object is not a bundle of concepts, any more than a real world object is: rather, it's what the concepts are instantiated or exemplified in as properties.

Nor do I agree that Holmes is 'in your mind'. He is not mental; he is nonexistent.

When I said "there's actually no 'him'", I meant what I said: in the actual world (which, not being a David Lewis-type modal realist, I take to be the same as the real world), there's no 'him'. In the case of Holmes, I think that 'him' only has reference in Griffin's context of supposition, in which Holmes exists; in the real world, 'him' in the case of Holmes has no reference, any more than 'Holmes' does.

Holmes is not in the actual or real world in any way whatsoever. He is only in the context of supposition, the context in which we suppose or pretend that there is such an object as him.

Apologies if I am labouring the point to the extent that I irritate you. Always a risk in these discussions.

(a) Within the stories and (b) re how people think about him, catalyzed by the stories, for example. — Terrapin Station

Part of the problem, I think, comes from supposing that there is identity between your Holmes and mine. Since there is no Holmes, there can't be; but it's very easy to write about Holmes as if he is a single object possessing self-identity, as you just did when you said, 'how people think about him'. There's actually no 'him'; there's just a bundle of concepts in my mind to which I attach the name 'Holmes', and a bundle of concepts in your mind to which you attach the name 'Holmes', and a mechanism (Conan Doyle's stories) that ensures that our bundles are similar enough to fool us into thinking there's a single, self-identical object.

I don't think you and I have any significant areas of disagreement on this issue. I will be interested to see what MindForged has to say.

So re (a), for example, we can say true or false things about Sherlock Holmes via looking at what Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes--it's something true or false about his imagining per se, and re (b), we can say something true or false about Sherlock Holmes a la, "About the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, Sherlock Holmes would . . ." (keeping in mind that to my knowledge, no one has ever written a Holmes story about the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall) , via extrapolating from what Doyle and others (including ourselves) have imagined about Holmes, so that we're positing something consistent with that, though the imaginings of particular individuals will always be the final arbiter there. (As again, its simply true or false about their imagining.) — Terrapin Station

That would only settle the truthfulness of statements about the properties of Holmes within the stories. The issue MindForged and I are discussing is the truthfulness of statements about Holmes in relation to the real world. MindForged says that Holmes is more famous than any other detective, meaning that he's more famous than any real detective. This seems prima facie to be true, and yet if there is no such object as Holmes, as I claim, then it looks as if it can't be true, because if there is no object, then there can be no properties of the object such as being famous.

You can't settle this issue by appealing to Conan Doyle, for an obvious reason: if Conan Doyle does say that Holmes is the most famous detective in the world (I don't know if he ever says this), what is it that would make him right? Obviously not the fact that he says it: he could be wrong. What would make it right is if more people in the real world had heard of Holmes than of any other detective (which is very likely to be the case). And that just throws us back to the problem MindForged is charging me with: how can more people have heard of Holmes than of any other detective if there's no such object as Holmes?

My answer is that people can hear of, and know about, objects that only exist in Griffin's contexts of supposition (or, as I put it, objects that we pretend exist). The reason this is possible is that not only can authors imagine objects when there are no such objects, they can also communicate with us via their books in such a way that we can then imagine similar objects. All that exists here are the author, the readers, and the means of communication (physical books). That's all you need for Holmes to have become the most famous detective in the world. You don't need nonexistent objects.

As I noted earlier, I myself write books. Some of my books have dragons in them. While it would be delightful to think that my tapping away on a keyboard has called dragons into being somewhere, I don't believe it for a moment. Hundreds and thousands of new characters are added each year to the pantheon of nonexistent objects as more and more books of fiction are published; if there are nonexistent objects corresponding to these characters, there must now be millions and millions of them. Where are they all? Why can neither our senses nor our scientific instruments detect them? No, away with these shadowy nonexistents. There's no need for them, and no justification for them.

Reading my posts here yesterday, I realise that being referred to a very expensive book is probably just annoying. Apologies for that. I shall not do this sort of thing again.

I've been posting on this forum for about 3 years and it's a cycle of depression or some other ailment. I just ate a hot dog and some chicken, so I'm feeling less depressed. :) — Posty McPostface

I wasn't going to try and advise you, Posty, because I've never been clinically depressed (though my mother was, for most of her life), and so it seemed very presumptuous of me to suggest anything. But your remark about food has made me think maybe I can say something useful. Depression is an illness, and when I am ill, I notice that certain things can make me feel better. Getting enough food is very important; if you don't eat enough, whatever illness you have will make you feel much worse. Two other things come to mind: do things that in the past have made you happy, because there's a good chance they will make you happy again, or at least less unhappy; and try to spend time with people whose company makes you feel better.

I'm sorry, these are not very sophisticated ideas, but I hope they are of some use. Having watched my mother suffer for years, I know what you are going through. I hope life improves for you.

Suppose a murderer is at your door and asks you where your friend is. Your friend is hiding in your house, but the murderer is going to kill him. Should you tell the truth?

Kant argues that you should tell the truth because the maxim of lying can't be universalized. A lie is always wrong regardless of the circumstances, your intention (even if it is a good one) and the person to whom you lie. We should not create even a single exception to this rule, Kant argues, as it would make all moral duties uncertain and useless. — Happiness

This is like claiming that if one person counterfeited a few coins, the entire system of using money would collapse through lack of trust. It wouldn't. There would have to be extremely widespread counterfeiting for that to happen, and there would have to be extremely widespread lying for the institution of moral duties to collapse.

It is both the case the Holmes is fictional and he is more famous than any other detective. You haven't at all addressed this other than to say I'm unwittingly assuming he is real despite directly saying he isn't. . — MindForged

I've addressed it now, by quoting Griffin's theory in my preceding post.

Unreal things can have properties and relations with real things.

No. We can pretend or suppose that they do, but really they don't.

It's true that the chief reason for proposing that there are non-existent objects is to explain how we speak truthfully about such things.
— MindForged

The reason that people present fictional things is almost never "to explain how we can speak truthfully about such things." For example, A. Conan Doyle didn't invent Sherlock Holmes to explain how we can speak truthfully about Sherlock Holmes. — Terrapin Station

I assume that MindForged means that the chief reason philosophers propose non-existent objects is to explain how we can speak truthfully about such things; it's clearly not why novelists present them.

The disagreement between MindForged and myself is about the status of non-existent objects as it is hypothesised by philosophers (not by novelists, who mostly probably don't think about it). MindForged holds that we need there to be non-existent objects to explain how we can speak truthfully about them; I disagree.

You can say I'm pretending but I'm not. — MindForged

It's easy to have the wrong idea about what you're doing when you think about non-existent objects. Both Meinong and Russell got it wrong. Russell thought that when he wrote 'the present King of France is bald', he was claiming, falsely, that there was a real present King of France. However, he was not; he was pretending that there was a real present King of France.

Which makes it quite difficult to explain how one can truthfully speak about non existent objects. After all, for the sentences about them to be true there must be something making them true. But on your view "existence" and "being" are the same thing so you've no way of explaining truths of the sort I mentioned before. — MindForged

If you say 'Sherlock Holmes is the world's greatest detective', this is not a true statement. We only pretend that it is true, just as we pretend that there is such an object as Sherlock Holmes.

I recommend that you read Nicholas Griffin's paper 'Rethinking Item Theory' in "Russell vs. Meinong: The Legacy of on Denoting" (though I'm afraid this book is rather expensive). Griffin nails non-existent objects. He explains that they exist, not in the real world, but only in what he calls 'contexts of supposition', i.e. we merely suppose that there are such objects. (I prefer the word 'pretence' to 'supposition', but really he and I mean the same thing.) In Griffin's scheme, 'Sherlock Holmes is the world's greatest detective' is true only in the context of supposition in which there is such an object as Sherlock Holmes. This amounts to the same thing as my claim that we only pretend that the statement is true.

What do you think about objects in dreams? If you dream about a horse, do you hold that there is a horse? I hold that there is not.

I am not saying (nor does anyone interpret me as saying) "Pretend Holmes exists and he his more famous than all other detectives". — MindForged

No, you're not saying 'pretend'; you're simply pretending.

If you don't understand this that's because you don't think there are non-existent objects.

No, there are no non-existent objects. To say that an object is non-existent is the same as saying that there is no such object.

Incorrect because everyone knows that I'm not claiming nor at all pretending Holmes is real. — MindForged

False, since 'everyone' includes me, and I don't know that. I think you are pretending that he is real without realising that that's what you are doing. You know that he isn't real, and yet you speak of him as if he were; that's what we all do when we speak of fictional characters while knowing that they're fictional; and that's pretending. Of course, some people may think, mistakenly, that Holmes is real; when those people talk about Holmes, they are not pretending that he is real. But you and I know better than that. We know that there is no such person as Holmes, and yet we talk about him as living in Baker Street, smoking a pipe, etc, things which only a real person could do. Since we attribute to him properties that could only be possessed by a real person, and we do this knowing that he is not real, it follows that we must be pretending that he is real.

The reason most (really, all) fiction writers attempt to keep their stories consistent is because otherwise their story doesn't make sense, even to them. Doing otherwise results in triviality, wherein the world doesn't cohere.

The story I'm referring to is not trivial. It's quite a good story. The point is that logical laws, just like physical laws, can be disobeyed in a work of fiction, as long as the resulting narrative makes sufficient sense for the reader to follow it.

If I say "Sherlock Holmes is the most famous detective", no one thinks I'm pretending Holmes exists. — MindForged

That's not about whether you're pretending, it's about why you're pretending. There can be many reasons why you would do this. You could dress up as Holmes and pretend to be him for a fancy dress party, or you could pretend that he exists to fool a naive tourist to London, or, when you read a story about him, you pretend he exists while you're reading. That's exactly what fiction is - pretending that there are certain objects and writing stories about them. (I know about this, because I write novels, and that's exactly what I'm doing when I write them.)

The principles of logic (or more properly, the principles of the logic I happen to adopt) do not cease to apply when dealing with fictions. Otherwise authors would never structure their stories or try to retcon earlier mistakes.

It's true that fiction-writers usually follow the principles of logic, but that's merely because most of what fiction-writers want to do doesn't require them to depart from those rules. They can produce fiction that doesn't follow the rules of logic if they like: for example, there's a short story - I can't remember who by - in which the rules of mathematics are not determined until someone actually does the maths, and there are aliens who have done the maths on certain numbers before we have, and they have forced maths to work differently for those numbers from the way it works for the numbers we got to first; which, of course, is not logically possible. Existent objects, on the other hand, have to follow the rules of logic.

My mother was always sad that she wouldn't see me in heaven after we both died. She was saved, I am not. She's probably up there now asking for an exception to be made for her little boy, and giving God a hard time about it.

I have enough self-knowledge to know that I need to be saved, and enough intellectual integrity not to believe that there is anyone who can save me. Which doesn't prove that there isn't, because having intellectual integrity doesn't necessarily make you right.

Ehhh, unless you're a dialetheist like myself you cannot really run this sort of argument. Non-existent objects cannot be entertained unless you accept contradictory objects. But in doing so, I think you really have to accept that contradictory existent objects are possible as well, because in principle there doesn't seem to be a reason that the property of existence makes inconsistent properties unavailable. And that's a tougher thing to argue for, though there are arguments. — MindForged

Evidently I didn't make myself clear. To speak of a non-existent God is to pretend that there is a God when there isn't. Since it's a pretence, it's not bound by the laws of logic.

I'm not a dialetheist. I would need you to find me an existent object with inconsistent properties before I could contemplate becoming one.

Happiness can sometimes be bad, but only when it causes greater unhappiness later on. (You are happy lazing in the sun instead of studying for your exams, but then you fail your exams and end up miserable in a dead end job.) Pain can sometimes be good, but only when it prevents greater pain later on. (You don't enjoy the pain of the needle in your arm, but it stops you experiencing the worse pain of a serious illness later.) Except in such cases, it seems odd to suggest that happiness might not be good or that pain might not be bad. Surely happiness is self-recommending, by its very nature. Surely pain is self-discommending.

I infer that our notions of good and bad are not entirely subjective. It would be irrational to suggest that pain is good, except in cases where it is instrumental in preventing something worse. I find myself unable to be a thoroughgoing moral subjectivist. It flies in the face of what I know about happiness and pain. (But I'm not a thoroughgoing moral objectivist either.)

As for death, since death as far as I know is non-existence, it can only be neutral. The reason animals fear death is not because death is bad to experience, but because the fear of death is in their genes; animals whose genes don't prompt them to fear death don't survive to pass their genes on, so the genes that don't prompt fear of death have generally died out.

There are two strong reasons to believe that death is the end:
1) science has found no evidence of consciousness occurring without brain activity, and at death brain activity ceases
2) science has not found evidence of anyone surviving death.
Unless and until science finds evidence that overturns either or both of these, the rational thing to believe is that death is the end of us.

I think there are two errors in TOA. The first is the assumption that a God who exists is greater than a God who doesn't exist. This is false, because 'greater than' denotes a quantitative difference, and the difference between the existent and the non-existent isn't quantitative.

The second error is to suppose that a non-existent God can't have contradictory properties. Anything we think of that is non-existent is imaginary (by which I mean that we can conceive of it but it doesn't exist), and imaginary things can have contradictory properties (e.g. Meinong's round square, which is imaginary and is both round and not round); it's only things that are existent (i.e. real) that can't.

Your argument Y fails for the same reasons. An existent argument A is not quantitatively greater than a non-existent (i.e. imaginary) argument A, and is therefore not greater at all; and a non-existent argument A, being imaginary and not real, can have contradictory properties, and therefore can be both the greatest conceivable argument and not the greatest conceivable argument.

The number two is something. It isn’t a material object. It isn’t in spacetime. It’s an abstract object.
.
That’s an example of what “abstract object” refers to.
.
It isn’t denied by anyone that there are such things.
. — Michael Ossipoff

It is denied by nominalists. I'm surprised that you don't know that. See, for example, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/

In general, I take a nominalist view of facts. The fact that 2 +2 = 4 can be reduced to the fact that all occurrences of two concrete particulars and another two concrete particulars constitute an occurrence of four concrete particulars. Nothing else, and in particular no abstract objects, are required to describe what obtains.

If all slithytoves are brillig, and if all jaberwockys are slithytoves, then all jaberwockeys are brillig.
.
That if-then fact about hypotheticals is timelessly true even if none of the slithytoves are brillig.
.
That if-then fact about hypotheticals is timelessly true even if none of the jaberwockeys are slithytoves.
.
That if-then fact about hypotheticals is timelessly true even if there are no jaberwockeys or slithytoves. — Michael Ossipoff

Your supposed 'if-then fact about hypotheticals' is actually about slithytoves and jaberwockys, not about hypotheticals, because the supposed if-then fact actually is the hypothetical. And my nominalist view is that there can be no facts about slithytoves and jaberwockys because these are non-existents, and you cannot have facts about non-existents. Your first statement here (If all slithytoves are brillig, and if all jaberwockys are slithytoves, then all jaberwockeys are brillig) is true, but only in a formal logical sense of 'true'; it has the kind of truth that is determined by logic, not by fact.

I get that you don’t value, recognize or take seriously philosophy, or metaphysics in particular. — Michael Ossipoff

Absurd. I'm a nominalist, and nominalism is a metaphysical theory.

I meant that abstract facts, and other abstract objects are timeless.

They aren't in spacetime at all. universes can come and go, and they're unaffected. — Michael Ossipoff

I see no need for abstract objects, so I invoke Occam's razor. Away with them.

Nor do I see a need for abstract facts. Consider the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. Is that still a fact if there are no objects that can be grouped into twos and fours? I see no need for it to be.

I am sceptical of the entire idea of timelessness. Every existent thing of which we have knowledge exists temporally. I suspect the notion of timelessness to be incoherent. If I try to imagine something timeless, I actually imagine something persisting unchanging, but persisting requires time in which the persistence can occur.

A local isolated inter-referring system of abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals doesn't need any context other than its own, in which to be factual. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't think facts about hypotheticals are genuine facts. Consider the putative fact that if there were dragons, they would breathe flame. Is that a genuine fact? I don't think so. I think it is just something we imagine.

I heard that Wittgenstein said that there are no things, just facts. I like that. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't see how there could be facts if there were no things for the facts to be about.

Abstract objects were always there, and didn't at some time appear to occupy what was once nothing.

An inter-referring systems of abstract facts doesn't need a backdrop, or a medium in which to be, or some sort of global or objective reality. — Michael Ossipoff

As I understand it (which is not very well, since I am no scientist), time only came into being with the big bang, and since 'always' is a temporal concept, there would have been no 'always' if there had been no big bang. This would seem to imply that abstract objects appeared at the moment of the big bang.
This assumes, of course, that there has only ever been one universe. If there are many universes, then presumably each has its own time, and that in turn would suggest that each has its own collection of abstract objects which appeared when that universe came into existence.

Wittgenstein said that the world is all that is the case. I would suggest that nothing is the same as there not being a world, which is then the same as nothing being the case. If it is suggested that this leads to a reductio (if nothing is the case, then prima facie it is the case that nothing is the case, therefore something is the case), I would suggest that this is a mistake, because nothing can be the case, not even that nothing is the case, if there is no time in which it could be the case, and if there were no universe, then since there can only be time if there is a universe, there would be no such time.

Noted, but given the grammatical form of the sentences, the burden of proof here is on the prescriptivist.

For the purposes of argument let's say we have a moral principle that states:

1. One ought to always be honest and one ought to lie to protect the innocent.

there are 2 moral imperatives in this principle.

Since moral imperatives have no truth value, is it technically right to say that the principle is still contradictory? — jancanc

Your example does not contain imperatives, it contains two statements.

These are imperatives, and therefore cannot have truth values:
Always be honest.
Lie to protect the innocent.

These are statements, and therefore can have truth values:
One ought to always be honest.
One ought to lie to protect the innocent.

Since the statements that make up your example statement can have truth values, it is possible for your example statement to be contradictory. If we assume that to be honest means to tell the truth, then since the first statement says that one ought always to tell the truth and the second says that one ought sometimes to not tell the truth, they are contradictory.

I just find that childish, — Wosret

Wow. Powerful philosophical argument! ;)

Since happiness is all that matters, and the only good, one ought to only honor obligations that make them happy, — Wosret

You have moral obligations only insofar as your actions are likely to promote happiness, or relieve or prevent unhappiness. Other obligations, such as the obligation to keep promises, have to be assessed in line with your moral obligations. If keeping the promise would tend to promote happiness or relieve or prevent unhappiness, you should keep the promise. If it would not, you don't have to. It could even be that keeping the promise would cause a lot of unhappiness, in which case you should break the promise.

when making others happy conflicts with my happiness, they can die in a ditch. — Wosret

The second half of my original argument disposes of this.

You either have to make exceptions that put happiness into a second order below another value, without admitting that you hold other values higher, or simply say fuck the world, and everyone else when it conflicts with my happiness, — Wosret

No. As I keep pointing out, you can waive an obligation to yourself but not others, which means you should put others before yourself.

We are recycling arguments now. I think the discussion has run its course.

Your original claim was that everyone wants happiness, and doesn't want unhappiness, without qualification, I only desired to show that this isn't quite true, that both there are things far more valuable than happiness, and that happiness isn't desirable if brought about by certain causes. — Wosret

I'm an uncomplicated hedonist. I take the view that happiness and pleasure are always, and the only, intrinsically good things, and unhappiness and pain are always, and the only, intrinsically bad things. Other things that people think of as good or bad are only instrumentally good or bad, i.e. only good or bad insofar as they promote or prevent happiness/pleasure or unhappiness/pain. So I do not accept that there are things more valuable than happiness, nor that happiness can be undesirable.

Your point now is also simplistic, and takes an unqualified position on pain. You know if you take a bunch of pain killers for long enough, then it will greatly reduce your pain tolerance thresholds. Without experiencing any pain, we will become less and less able to tolerate pain. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and all that. Taking an unqualified position on pain can also lead to unhealthy circumstances. Even "too much health" is bad, in the sense that the immune system grows and matures, and if completely sheltered from germs, dirt, or sickness, then it cannot develop, and you will become much more susceptible to sickness in later life. — Wosret

If you take pain killers for a long time so that it reduces your pain threshold, then whether that is good or bad can only be worked out by estimating A = the total amount of pain over your lifetime if you take the pain killers, and B = the total if you don't; if A > B, then taking the pain killers is bad, if A < B it is good.

My view is that health is only instrumentally good, not intrinsically good, and ill-health is only instrumentally bad. Health is only good insofar as it makes you (and those around you) happy, and ill-health is only bad insofar as it makes you (and those around you) unhappy.

You don't go into why they wish not to prevent it? A proper evaluation requires efforts, risks, involvements, and costs. Just that it is possible for them to prevent it doesn't cover what preventing it may entail. — Wosret

A proper evaluation in principle means doing the hedonistic calculus, i.e. working out the total happiness/unhappiness to people if you prevent it versus the total if you don't. In practice this can't be done to the nth degree, so the moral requirement is to do it to the best of your ability.

As for if I owed someone something, and they didn't feel like paying it, so was like, "nah son, I ain't paying" then they wouldn't like it, and there may be consequences like them not helping you, or speaking to you again, trying to attack you or some shit, but you can still do it. — Wosret

Of course you can not pay, but not paying is not the same as waiving the obligation to pay, which is what you can't do if you're the one with the obligation.

if I make a promise to myself to change a habit or some such, but then don't follow through, I'm not only going to feel bad about it, but I'm going to take myself less seriously the next time I proclaim such a obligation to myself, and develop a sense of myself as untrustworthy, and unreliable when speaking about such things. — Wosret

What that would probably mean is that because you are less reliable, you are less able to meet your obligations to other people. That would be the main reason why it would be bad. The fact that it would make you less able to meet future obligations to yourself would also make it bad, but that would count for less than the other.

Happiness in itself cannot be good. It depends on the consequences, and causes. If eating orphans makes you happy, then that is wrong. If happiness is drug induced, then it is shallow. One can say that "happiness is always good" only in a hedonic, shallow sense that it is always pleasurable, or feels good. Not that it is always good regardless of cause or effect, because that clearly isn't so. One doesn't do bad things even if they make you happy, nor refrain from good things, even if they don't. — Wosret

What you're saying, I think, is that there's something wrong with saying that a bad or wrong action can have a good component. I can't see anything wrong with this. Actions and situations are complex, and their complexity makes them philosophically opaque. I think it is philosophically imperative to analyse them into their consitituent parts in order to make them less opaque and more understandable. We do this as a matter of course in many situations. For example, if the dentist hurts you but makes your tooth better, we are quite willing to say that the pain is bad but the overall result is good. This is decomposing a complex into its parts. I think that's all I'm suggesting we do. The happiness got from eating orphans is good, but is outweighed by the bad effects of eating orphans (the orphans die). The happiness got from drugs is good, but is outweighed by the effects of taking drugs (your life falls apart and your family suffer).

I thought that I showed that it clearly doesn't follow that commending something implies any active involvement at all. — Wosret

Well, I don't think you have.

Suppose we try it from the opposite direction. Suppose someone said to you, 'Something very bad is going to happen, and I can prevent it, but I don't feel any obligation to do so.' Wouldn't you think there was something illogical about this? I think there is, and I think this shows that badness is morally compelling.

I think you could take up one of three positions about this, which are:
1. There is no moral obligation to prevent bad things where we can.
2. There is a moral obligation to prevent bad things where we can, but not to promote good things where we can.
3. There is a moral obligation both to prevent bad things where we can and promote good things where we can.

If yoiu agree with this analysis, which do you support? I support 3.

I still don't understand why an obligation to oneself isn't as significant, and can be waived by one to someone else can't be. I mean, clearly physically, and behaviorally they both can be waived. — Wosret

They can be waived, but not by the person obligated if the obligation is to someone else. If you don't accept that then I don't know what further I can say. To me it seems obvious. Imagine telling someone 'I know I borrowed this money from you, but I'm waiving my obligation to you so I don't have to pay it back'? What do you think they would say?

If indulging in fantasies about immoral sexual acts would make it more likely that one would commit those acts, then I would say that it is immoral to indulge in the fantasies. It would be like an alcoholic buying a bottle of booze and taking it home; he would be more likely to drink booze if there was booze in the house than if there wasn't.

So let's say there are two types of people; people who can indulge in fantasies about immoral sexual acts without this making it more likely that they would commit them, and people who can't. Then the problem is: can you be sure you know which type you are, given that none of us is an unbiased observer of ourselves?

No it isnt that some unhealth states involve happiness, its that excessive happiness itself generates them, and if this itself is possible then happiness isnt paramount. — Wosret

I didn't say happiness was paramount, I said it was good. I accept that in some cases it may not be paramount. My argument doesn't need it to be. Even if excessive happiness does cause these things, that doesn't mean happiness itself is not good, nor does it mean that there aren't cases of simple happiness where there are no negating factors.

You need to do more than assert the oughts and ought nots. Give reasons. — Wosret

I don't just assert. I introduced 'ought' in step 3, where I stated that it was illogical to commend something and then not actively try to bring it about if you are able to. If you're not in a position to do something to bring it about, then of course there is no obligation on you to do so, which covers your point about commending "qualities, skills, appearances, activities in others". In most such cases you will not be in a position to do more than commend those people, but in cases where you are, it would be illogical not to do more.

There is a conceptual line between fact and value. I cross this line in step 1, by claiming that happiness (fact) is good (value). By the time we get to step 3 and introduce 'ought', it's already too late to object. IMO, even 'good' is morally compelling.

Thats how debts work that others have to me, which isnt the same thing as an obligation to oneself. — Wosret

The only difference I can see between a debt or obligation to oneself and a debt or obligation to someone else is that one can waive the first but not the second. What other difference is there?

1 is false, mania is excessive happiness, and causes impulsiveness, and reduced quality. Bi-polar is the only mental illness actually correlated with creativity, because one is super productive during manic periods, but destructive, separating the wheat from the chafe during depressive periods. Same with taking a lot of sweet drugs, one is extra creative, but destroyer of worlds on the down turn. One feels much much better than the other, but that has little to do with how good they are. Excess in either direction, or one without the other is unhealthy. — Wosret

Your implied argument is:
There are unhealthy conditions which involve happiness.
Therefore happiness is not good.

Not a valid argument. The happiness part of these conditions is still good, it's just outweighed by the other parts.

3. No necessarily true, I can commend qualities, skills, appearances, activities in others without then feeling it necessary to get myself involved with their being brought about. — Wosret

If you could help, you ought to. If you would hinder, you ought not.

4 is a nonsequitur, from 3. Need something more than that, without spiraling into an absurdly full schedule. — Wosret

By 'an absurdly full schedule' I take it you mean that you want to keep some time for yourself? That's quite natural, but it isn't a reply to the argument.

5 Why is waiving obligations work like that? — Wosret

If X owes you money, you can say to X 'that's okay, don't bother to pay it', and that lets X off paying it. If anyone but you says to X 'that's okay, don't bother paying Wosret', it doesn't let X off. That's just how obligations work.

I think 6 follows from 5, 7 follows from 6 and 8 from 7.

Why shouldn't I just take everything I want from everyone in every moment? — Wosret

I'll offer you an argument.

1) Happiness is good, unhappiness is bad. (proved by the fact that everyone wants happiness and no-one wants unhappiness)
2) What is good is commendable. (because to say that something is good is to commend it)
3) If something is commendable, we ought to do our best to bring it about. (because merely to commend something and not try to bring it about would be illogical)
4) Therefore we have an obligation to try to make people happy.
5) One can waive an obligation to oneself, but it is logically impossible to waive an obligation to someone else.
6) Therefore the obligation to make oneself happy can be waived, but the obligation to make others happy cannot.
7) Therefore one is more obligated to try to make other people happy than to make oneself happy.
8) Therefore, rather than taking everything one wants from other people, one ought to put the happiness of others before one's own happiness.

I should mention, in case anyone is wondering, that for the whole of my 65 years I have consistently failed to get anywhere near this high standard, and I confidently expect this to continue.

It seems you're not making much effort to come to terms with my position, only to disagree with it. — bloodninja

You mean I am disagreeing for the sake of it? That's pretty insulting, and not true. I disagree with you because I think you are wrong.

I'm not saying that the hammer lacks any physical properties, only that the being, or the hammer-ness of the hammer, is not its physical properties. — bloodninja

The being of the hammer and its hammerness are not the same thing. Its being is as a physical object. Its hammerness, by contrast, consists in its being thought of and used by us as a hammer.

Moreover, its being is not some mysterious property added onto it extrinsically. — bloodninja

I haven't said that it is. Its being, which is physical, is not added to it, it is intrinsic. It's its being a hammer that is added to it (by us) and which is extrinsic.

The being of the hammer, as ready to hand equipment, is always already determined by the referential whole (the world). — bloodninja

You have it backwards. The being of the hammer is as a physical object, not as equipment.

The key point, however, is that this kind of being is not a property, as hard as that might be to understand. — bloodninja

Being a hammer is a property. As I have said, it is an extrinsic property. The hammer's being a hammer is not the same as its mere being. Its mere being is the same as its existence, and there is no agreement among philosophers as to whether existence is a property.

To summarise my position:
1. The being of the hammer, its existence, is as a physical object. It has physical properties which are intrinsic to it.
2. The hammerness of the hammer, its being a hammer as opposed to its merely being, is an extrinsic property which is added to the hammer by us.

If I understand you correctly, there's no difference between

1. God that exists in imagination
And
2. God that exists in imagination AND the real world

Why do you say that?
— TheMadFool

I'm saying that the God you imagine in 1 is identical to the super-God you imagine in 4. In both cases you imagine a thing to really exist. — Michael

This is why you need to not use the term "greatest being" and instead spell out the relevant properties. It makes things much clearer. What are the properties of the greatest being imaginable? — Michael

I think I can produce a version of the ontological argument that avoids both of these objections, viz:

Premise 1: A being that is beneficent and exists is more beneficent than a being that does not exist.
Inference 1: If God does not exist, he is not the most beneficent being possible.
Premise 2: God is the most beneficent being possible.
Conclusion: God exists.

Notes:
Premise 1 is supposed to be obviously true, on the grounds that a being that does not exist would have zero beneficence (i.e. would do no good at all).
Inference 1 supposedly follows from premise 1.
Premise 2 is supposedly true by definition.
The conclusion follows from inference 1 plus premise 2.

I would be interested to hear other people's views on this. Personally I would claim that the argument fails because premise 1 is false. The reason I think it is false is that Premise 1 is equivalent to this:

A being that does not exist is less beneficent than a being that is beneficent and exists.

and this is false. It is false because a being that does not exist is the same thing as nothing, and 'less beneficent than a being that is beneficent and exists' is a property, and nothing cannot have properties.

If I am right about this, then I think it shows that there must be an error in any version of the ontological argument in which a comparison is made between a God who exists and a God who is effectively nothing. The God who is effectively nothing may be described in the argument as being imaginary, or existing only in the mind, or whatever, but these descriptions are merely alternative ways of saying that in place of an existent God, there is nothing. So all such versions of the argument effectively depend on attributing a property to nothing, and since nothing cannot have properties, they must all fail.

Comments, anyone?