@Zoldy Quines are cool, I didn't know about their application in satellites!

Another thing I remembered is that the self-referential paradox known as the Berry Paradox is used to prove that the Kolmogorov complexity of an algorithm is not computable. This could be considered "practical" in the sense that we can be sure that trying to calculate the minimum required "complexity" of a computer program is a waste of effort (although there may be other ways to estimate it). Though again, this is all very much in the field of computer science and mathematics rather than philosphy per se, although simplicity plays a (large?) role in the philosophy of science.

There are certainly people who believe that the Russell paradox says something profound about math and logic. — Clarky

Reading some Penrose lately. I think I see now where this is coming from, it has to do with the idea that some mathematicians have of mathematical "entities" inhabiting a sort of world of ideal forms (see e.g. Plato). That is probably a topic for another thread, but I would agree that paradoxes (incl. self-referential) can say something about the limitations of mathematics, even if it is just regarded as a language.

Alas, I'm not able to bring any surprising yet practical paradoxes this time, just a little more rambling...

fallacy of tendentious nomenclature

That's a fun phrase. BTW thanks for putting that list of articles on your profile, the couple I've read were very interesting.

So I've watched the video and had a bit of a look around and now this thread seems to be mostly people arguing past each other (including my first post to be honest) and arriving at the fairly obvious conclusion:

A theory of how consciousness works would of course be very interesting, but I think we can agree that it would require more details. Minimising free energy is a very high-level idea, an abstraction at the level of thermodynamics and definitions of what constitutes information. I think we can agree that consciousness is more complicated than heat. Still, it's useful to have abstract frameworks because they guide the more detailed hypotheses, and limit the possibilities that are worth considering.

Then again, if he got something essentially right, then these kinds of big-picture narratives can be valuable as setting directions for future research and providing an insight into large-scale patterns. — SophistiCat

:up:

It's true, he does get a bit too excited with bashing other ideas. Underneath that, I interpret that he does not actually condemn wholesale all that much. I actually think he did have a specific overarching goal: to reveal lurking nihilism in 19th C (Western) culture. Part of that was an attempt to explore the history of philosophy to find when everything started going wrong. He points to the death of tragedy, a crime that was supposedly committed by Socrates:

We need only consider the Socratic maxims: "Virtue is knowledge, all sins arise from ignorance, the virtuous man is the happy man." In these three basic optimistic formulae lies the death of tragedy.

BT 14

This is why the image of the dying Socrates, man freed by insight and reason from the fear of death, became the emblem over the portals of science, reminding all who entered of their mission: to make existence appear intelligible and consequently justified.

BT 15

At the same time,

[To] ultimately prefer even a handful of ‘certainty’ to a whole carload of beautiful possibilities [ . . . ] this is nihilism and the sign of a mortally weary soul.

BGE 10

In this praise for ignorance and uncertainty, and for the problematic character of life itself, Nietzsche finds himself close to Socrates, indeed perhaps closer than he acknowledges.

Reginster, "The Affirmation of Life", chapter 6 part 2

That's what happens when you philosophize with a hammer. I'm still ambivalent about a lot of his writing as soon as it gets into science, rationality, etc. As someone who tries to play a bit of music, the angle of "life is actually art, and your precious rationality will implode without it" was at first appealing, but I'm not so sure anymore. It's a similar sentiment to what I think Lovecraft expresses in e.g. The Silver Key. However, it seems to me that the trajectory of modern (neuro)science could well lead to real knowledge of art, maybe even to the death of the soul?

---

Why does Nietzsche reject Aristotle's and stoicism also — Ross

Again, good questions. I can't quickly find a passage of his criticism of Aristotle, do you have an example? I'm not doubting that he does this. His criticism of Stoicism:

In truth, the matter is altogether different: while you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal, on nature—even on nature—and incorporate them in her; you demand that she should be nature “according to the Stoa,” and you would like all existence to exist only after your own image—as an immense eternal glorification and generalization of Stoicism.

BGE 9

Seems problematic. I'm not about to go full solipsist, but current ideas about how our brain functions suggest that we are constantly minimising misfit between predictions based on our model of the world and our experiences. So yes, we are constantly "imposing" stuff on "nature". Not clear how else morality or ideals or any of that are supposed to happen. I agree that it seems like he is trying to spin this as dogmatism, which he can then dismiss in terms of his overarching anti-dogmatic project.

---

Is it rather the case that many of these philosophical systems of ethics and morality whether it's Aristotle's or Plato's ethics or Kant's moral theory that they are a goal or set of ideas for humanity to aspire to. — Ross

They are, however I think he means that many of them are compromised by subtle ties to dogmatic or religious ideals and tend to use some kind of cop-out to deal with the issue he wants to examine, which is the problem of suffering and its role as a source of nihilism in the modern world. I'm convinced now that he was significantly influenced by reading Schopenhauer, but completely disagreed with Schopenhauer's conclusions. He can't stand the idea of "denial of the will", and from this point of view he distrusts, any aloof, rigid systems that impose boundaries from outside. Of course, some boundaries are necessary in practice, as you said. I think his contribution is to point out that in the highly dynamic modern world, if we want to keep any ideals, they need to be resililent to being constantly challenged.

Also, last time when I looked up Stevens I mistyped it as Stevenson, and so I stumbled on this variation of "carpe diem" (more focus on "play" rather than ambition) by R L Stevenson:

Gather ye roses while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
A world where beauty fleets away
Is no world for denying.
Come lads and lasses, fall to play
Lose no more time in sighing

The very flowers you pluck to-day
To-morrow will be dying;
And all the flowers are crying,
And all the leaves have tongues to say,-
Gather ye roses while ye may.

You read right, "and all the flowers are crying" is a line in a motivational poem for children...

I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

POV: You are a graduate student.

So, I was shifting some files around and found some Swinburne poems that I had saved. Not as subtle as some, but he's good at what he does, which is a sort of extravagant romanticism I suppose. A bit too sulky or long-winded at times. Anyway, I didn't see any of his here yet, although he seems fairly popular.

Here are some bits from "The Garden of Proserpine" (Tilton's "Even This Shall Pass Away" ain't got nothin' on this). Proserpina (aka Persephone) -- goddess of fertility, wine and harvest, abducted by Hades. I'm not great with mythology so I don't think I quite get the reference.

Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

[...]

Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.

[...]

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.

It is a sign of a strength of the free energy principle that the bogus “dark room problem” is the best opposition that might be mustered. — apokrisis

Not sure about sign of strength, and as you quoted I hardly see my comment as the best opposition. I was responding mostly to the OP and what I quickly read in some of the other comments, as well as the linked article itself, which I find difficult to parse. I've re-read your comments and thankfully you seem to be arguing for something different, and this "Markov blanket" is a much more interesting idea. Thanks for the video link, it looks interesting. I wil need more time to digest it.

The trick is then to act in ways that only increase your certainty about the sensations you will experience. If the certainty of your actions effectively reduces the uncertainty of your sensations, then the two sides of the equation are tightly coupled in a way that optimises your ability to exist in the world. — apokrisis

You are winning to the degree your plans for your future don’t encounter the unexpected. But an organism lives in the world. It exists because it can tame environmental uncertainty through its actions. It can feed itself, protect itself, reproduce itself, etc. It can act in ways that reduce the world’s uncertainty. So it doesn’t need to retreat to the refuge of a darkened room to escape the environment’s capacity to surprise. — apokrisis

This makes more sense.

But the theory actually states that life expresses the drive to avoid becoming randomised by its environment. — apokrisis

I think I get it now, and discussion in terms of this framework would be more interesting. Unfortunately, the language and form of the article and the "dark room" idea are confusing, it seems not only for me.

I am also unsatisfied by the computationalism in popular representations of neuroscience.

Sorry to add to the "tedious misrepresentations". Other than the video, is there maybe a more up-to-date article on this topic that you can recommend?

Good to see all the smart people have clarified iteration vs recursion. I probably did muddle them a bit in my earlier posts, sorry fo that.

I think the interesting question that remains for me here, is if we can find non-trivial self-referential paradoxes, such that they could arise from seemingly well-founded frameworks. I'm no longer sure that it is even possible, and I think @T Clark was right to distrust my intuition about that.

I didn't read the article thoroughly but I'm struggling to see the utility of the "dark room" model being discussed. As far as I can tell, this is supposed to be a place where non-anticipated stimuli are at a minimum:

Organisms that succeed, the free-energy principle mandates, do so by minimizing their tendency to enter into this special kind of surprising (that is, non-anticipated) state. But at first sight this principle seems bizarre. Animals do not simply find a dark corner and stay there. Play and exploration are core features of many life-forms.

Bizarre is about right. The dark room is barren, so why would it be attractive for survival? I don't get it. Where's the food? Or are we assuming an infinite source of sustenance? And how is that at all useful as a model? I think that's what you were getting at before, @TheMadFool, am I right?

Even assuming infinite sustenance or leaving it out of the equation somehow, the model is still unappealing to me. We supposedly discovered fire because lightening struck some kindling. I can't imagine any such perfectly isolated environment for an "organism" to retreat into.

It would seem that "exploration" can be readily explained as something that you do because the pond dried up, or you're all out of berries, and I guess "play" has social origins or whatnot.

But why is minimising surprise the very same as living longest? — Banno

It is for the contrived definition of "living" that seems to be used here, almost entirely by definition. If life is nothing but avoiding non-anticipated stimuli, then minimising non-anticipated stimuli means living longer?

Yes, a human is only one example of a biological system, but you only need one counterexample to falsify a law. — Kenosha Kid

I'm over here struggling to think of an example. Not of a biological system, but of an ecosystem that would even vaguely resemble this "dark room".

Our fear of lurking tigers _is_ quite different from our innate curiosity for the novel, and should be treated as such. — Kenosha Kid

:up:

when the Universe gets cold it means that the Universe is dying cause there isn't enough Entropy — TheQuestion

Not really like that. I'm not the best person for the job but I'll give it a shot: The weird part about entropy is that it always increases. Decreasing entropy globally is the same as turning back time. Think about it like this: Put a block of ice in a room, it melts, because of the surrounding heat (random particle motion). But the same random particle motion will never cause the block of ice to re-form out of the water vapor in the air. Entropy death of the universe is also called heat death, precisely because it wouldn't be super cold. It would be just "meh", but the point is, temperature would be exactly the same, everywhere. Peak entropy.

If the Multiverse theory is proven to be true then that would mean a outside force is funneling energy in our Universe causing a rapid expansion. — TheQuestion

I'm pretty sure the "multiverses" in this hypothesis are necessarily independent. No funnelling. Otherwise they are just "bubble universes" inside a bigger universe like @Nils Loc said. AFAIK the multiverse hypothesis doesn't save our universe, just that some kind of universe will always be there. I could be wrong on that.

And heat is the motivating factor to cause Entropy to make things. — TheQuestion

Note that entropy doesn't produce things, it's just a measure of disorder. Heat can produce things, but only by transforming other things.

Dark energy is out of my field completely, but it sure is weird. I hope I didn't come off dismissive in my earlier reply, it wasn't my intention. You're asking big questions and I only meant to suggest some resources that I found useful, to the small extent that I've delved into them.

Well, I kinda blurted mine out over here, even though this could have been a better thread for it. Oops.

math paradoxes we're talking about are trivial — T Clark

I see, you are looking for examples of subtle vicious circles. I might have one for you, although I'm not sure how "dangerous" it is in practice.

Define a vector. What is it?

It has magnitude and direction? Cool, so what's a direction?

Hey, so this got way out of hand. I hope you'll forgive my brain spew.

I think I am slowly getting out of exactly the same mindset expressed in the OP. I searched through existentialism for a while, and found very honest ideas. For example, I found the closest thing I currently have to a formulation of the "meaning" of life. It has sharp edges still, but I trust you will know to avoid them, based on your morality.

The meaning of life is to regularly overcome resistance.

This basically comes from Bernard Reginster's "The Affirmation of Life" which I made a noise about in some other thread. It's a bit long and academic, since it's actually a Nietzsche interpretation by a harvard prof, so it might not be for everyone. Anyway, I should give a bit more than that.

We existentialists and nihilists are always thinking about the long game. Like, the really long, long game. Others say it's the journey that matters, but we scoff at that. Just like you scoffed at my meaning of life up there. We say:

What? Must I ever be on the way? Whirled by every wind, unsettled, driven about? O earth, you have become too round for me!

and

Too much has become clear to me: now it does not concern me anymore. Nothing lives any longer that I love, - how should I still love myself?

and

So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

And we wrap it up with:

A good wind? Ah, he only who knows where he sails, knows what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.

Where do we sail, if not into oblivion? And surely any wind at all will do to get us there.

I'll admit that there's a bit of a gap for me here. Somehow, complete oblivion at the end is less of an issue for me know. Maybe because I've read enough smart people talking about how time isn't really all that fundamental. Maybe because I've realised that the fascination with infinities and the afterlife is really about other things, like justice. True infinity can't be a goal, anyway. You'll never reach it, otherwise it wouldn't be infinite.

So, how to pick a goal then? I am starting to go with the hardest road, with only one limitation. You should still feel that there is a chance of success. Do the hardest thing you think you can do. Or something close to that in difficulty. If it's too much, re-evaluate and go again. When there is no wind, use oars. And when it's blowing a gale, take a rest.

As for "giving a shit" about your surroundings: Remember it's not just the objects. For me it was about the people. Never forget about the people. Covid sucked for that, but thats kinda why I'm here.

Well this is already way too long, so I'll wrap up. Music is awesome. I play the viola, not very well. This year I joined a casual student orchestra, after like three years of not playing (until it got cancelled because of lockdown haha). My sight reading was really bad, I was the only person playing viola, and the first few times I came out wanting to quit. Instead, I've used the lockdown to practice and I'm going back next year. Why? Because it's something challenging that I might be able to do.

I'm not the master of my destiny, nor a slave to it. Yet in a weird way, I'm both.

Und da sitz’ ich in der grossen Runde, 
In der stillen kühlen Feierstunde, 
Und der Meister sagt zu Allen:
„Euer Werk hat mir gefallen;“
Und das liebe Mädchen sagt 
Allen eine gute Nacht.

---

First two excerpts are from Nietzsche "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" part 4 chapter 9 "The Shadow", second one is Ecclesiastes 2:17 (part of a longer, relevant section). Third one again "The Shadow". Last one is Wilhelm Müller, "Am Feierabend" put to music by Schubert as part of "Die Schöne Müllerin". I felt like including it, not sure why.

I'm not brave enough to answer the title with any definitives, but my hunch is "no". To me, it seems like there are quite a few misconceptions in your posts, @TheQuestion. Forgive me for not offering a full tutorial on thermodynamics, but I sugges to watch some videos from the channel "PBS Space Time" on youtube, or even better: find a good book on the subject (I could suggest thermodynamics textbooks but that's likely not what you want). A short and approachable popular science/philosophy book that touches many of these topics is "The Order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli, I can highly recommend this book.

I wonder if my above example works for this. You didn't really gain any new revelations from reading it, right? You just "percieved" that Steve was described as a bit of a nerd. And then made some connections with other preconceptions. But maybe Josh has a better example.

There are certainly people who believe that the Russell paradox says something profound about math and logic. — T Clark

I wonder if they have the same reaction to division by zero. After all it is just as "dangerous" (undefined vs contradictory, both impossible to execute), just more boring. If they don't then I can finally say I completely agree with your sentiment, that recursive paradoxes are basically useless, and are artificially raised above other mathematical impossibilities.

Meanwhile god laughs at your plans. — Miller

If only he could share with me what they were. :smile: For the sake of argument, let us assume this laughing deity exists. Did He create the world intuitively, in your view? I only ask, because someone once said that God does not play dice...

I don't think this analogy applies. Seems like with the Russel paradox, we start with what appear to be consistent rules and get contradictory results. — T Clark

The analogy is contrived, I agree. I've lost the circularity aspect for one. We start with consistent premises and get contradictory predictions (I feel like those are still not the right words, but it's all I've got at the moment). But they are still predictions. Someone has to go out and build the bridge. It ties into this:

what if you are making those assumptions in arguments that are not liar's paradoxes — Philosophim

where I agree with your response:

The liar's paradox only shows up when we are talking about sentences that we would never use in normal speech — T Clark

Or to put it another way: there is no way to "accidentally" draw well-founded conclusions from a paradox, otherwise there would be a way to resolve it, meaning that it is not a paradox.

Is this the issue, that mathematicians and logicians don't believe math was invented by humans? That they think it is intrinsic to the world? — T Clark

Yes, I think this could be the case, especially historically. They love the runes so much (talking about the "beauty" of an equation, for example), and why not. It seems like it could easily lead to the emotional conclusion: "maths is discovered". It's too beautiful to be our own work. And us laypeople are partly to blame. Imagine being told over and over: "Oh, you study maths? That's like magic to me." I think here of Tolkien and other fantasy settings where uttering a phrase in some ancient language unlocks an otherwise unattainable power. How fitting, that Spock had ears like an elf...

I'm losing track. Back on topic:

I don't get it. — T Clark

You are right: there is only a danger if this paradox within set theory has an effect within the practical mathematics (which I suggested would necessarily always be detectable, but maybe not trivially apparent). I don't have an example to hand, although they might be found in e.g. differential geometry (foundation for General Relativity) or, where this all came to light, in computability theory (foundation for, well, computers).

As I'm joining the Kahneman bandwagon on this, I feel it's only fair to give a taste of the limits of intuition:

As you consider the next question, please assume that Steve was selected at random from a representative sample:

An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: "Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail." Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?

The resemblance of Steve's personality to that of a stereotypical librarian strikes everyone immediately, but equally relevant statistical considerations are almost always ignored. Did it occur to you that there are more than 20 male farmers for each male librarian in the United States?

As others here have said, it quickly gets into the realm of psychology...

Response to OP. Objection 1 brings a lot of baggage with the words "innate" and "faculty". For example, I do not think the assumption to be that far off when softened to: Humans exhibit an "intuitive", i.e. fast and involuntary mode of cognition from an early stage of development. I am however in agreement with objection 2, probably from the same perspective as @magritte. Knowledge is learned. Intuition can, on occasion, reveal a shortcut to our rational cognition.

Response to thread:

I personally have always enjoyed a highly-developed intuitive sense. — Pantagruel

I hear that cats have fast reactions. Does their physical ability (strength, dexterity, etc.) benefit from this over time?

people assume that they can do meaningful philosophy without the need to be scientifically informed on the subject. — Nickolasgaspar

An uncomfortable truth (full disclosure: I took no more than a single undergrad course). Still, its hard to find people willing to even talk about philosophy... and I guess it's a kind of therapy for some of us. Or just a way to kill time for shut-ins. Maybe we need a new thread: What is the value of this forum? :wink:

The intellect is no less flawed than the intuition. — Miller

The flaw of the intellect is surely its laziness. However, its outputs are statistically more valuable. See, e.g. the work by Kahneman that @Nickolasgaspar;619917 has spoken of.

not being rigorous — Yohan

@Nickolasgaspar;619917 was referencing work which is indeed scientifically rigorous. The book title is actually "Thinking, Fast and Slow". My main criticism is that Kahneman isn't able to pick an audience: the book is both too long and dense for leisure reading, and not technical enough for scientific reference. Still, it's a good travel companion.

Science is counterintuitive because the world that scientific instruments measure is different from our inborn naive intuitions of what the world we imagine ought to be. The fault is with our subjective psychological intuitions and not with objective scientific instruments. — magritte

:up:

An example will perhaps illustrate the difference between intuition and logic: — TheMadFool

This has raised more questions for me: you've put the multiplication into "intuition", and it is clearly some very simple maths, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have put it into "logic"/"intellect"... Maybe the divide is not so sharp...

Ah yes, the elephant in the room. I finally had time to read a little bit about that debate. It now seems silly that I have not read Wittgenstein before.

credibility of mathematics — T Clark

I struggle with this idea. I think of mathematics as a concise language for encoding models of reality[1]. The symbols and rules are invented, but what they describe is discovered[2]. Would it make sense to talk about, for example, the "credibility" of the Japanese language?

I think W. has it right: there are only two causes for the bridge to fall down. Either the model (physics) is wrong, or the mathematical rules were not followed. The same reasons for a failure in communication: either you misunderstand what I am talking about, or I am talking gibberish. The first of those problems has nothing to do with language, so we'll move on to the second.

The problem: what should we do if we are presented with contradictory mathematical rules. For the language analogy, this is like finding a contradiction in your Japanese grammar book. On page 24 it tells you to say X in situation Y, but on page 135 (it's not an easy language, you understand) it instructs you to say the opposite i.e. (not X) in situation Y. Solution: buy a new grammar book.

In addition to what @StreetlightX said about the "enworlded-ness" of language (arising from the fact that it is invented by humans), I would like to then add a second point: language is dynamic. It will evolve. We didn't have mathematical rules for talking about circularity in set theory, so we invented hyperset theory. It just takes a bit of coffee and head-scratching.

That's not to say that contradictions are completely harmless (and circularity is hard to think about, so it can easily lead to contradictions). I think some of Turing's fear was justified. It's not nice to end up in a situation where the rules are contradictory. You have to go back to the drawing board and maybe throw out a lot of work. But I fail to see how someone could even construct a bridge, or anything else, based on contradictory instructions. The best that I could offer would be a stream of colorful language directed at whatever theorist had handed me the instructions (actually, it's more likely that I would be the theorist...)

---

[1]: Is this still controversial? I mean, Einstein called it a language. My first year lecturer did the same.

[2]: Without getting bogged down in ontology, I just mean to say that there is some kind of distinction between these processes.

I think think the fascination with self-referential paradoxes specifically comes from their use as a way to refute arguments, especially in epistemology.

I tend to agree. My very uninformed first impression is that it could have some implications for certain normativist viewpoints but as I say I'm not really well versed enough in the philosophy.

For completeness (chuckles), I've just found that the SEP also has an article on non-wellfounded set theory (aka hyperset theory). They have "Vicious Circles" in their references, and a lot of the same topics seem to be briefly covered. Fairly technical, but maybe something useful is there.

The liar's paradox seems like a little joke that people have decided to take seriously. I can't see how it gives any insight into meaning or truth, as some propose. — T Clark

So, it looks like the value of the liar's paradox or Russel's paradox etc. comes from the insight into how we can or can not formulate truth. The authors give a plain-language summary of Tarski's Undefinability Theorem for Truth:

There is no single first-order formula that serves to define the truth of all sentences of first-order logic in the universe (of sets).

parentheses added

Well, I was just responding to say that your question

Why are self-referential sentences like the liar sentence (3) only in the 2nd person while we humans can do the same in one additional way viz. in the 1st person?

didn't make sense to me. Humans can use whatever grammar they like, so I'm not sure what you are confused about here.

Forgive the mathematics, I want to relay (again from that book) what the authors think of as a useful consequence of self-reference in logic. Consider the Russel paradox (a non-reflexive set is a set that doesn't contain itself):

There is a set R which consists of all and only non-reflexive sets:
R = {x | x is non-reflexive}
But then we see that R belongs to R iff R is non-reflexive, which holds iff R does not belong to R. Hence either assumption, that R belongs to or R does not belong to R leads to a contradiction.

They say that in later chapters they prove that circularity is not the villain here... I'm way out of my depth though.

But, consideration of that set is useful because:

Suppose we have some set b and form the Russell set using b as a universe.
That is, let R_b, = {c ∈ b | c is non-reflexive}
There is nothing paradoxical about R_b - The reasoning that seemed to give rise to paradox only tells us that R_b ∉ b. In other words, the Russell construction gives us a way to take any set b whatsoever and generate a new set not in b.

There is no "person" AFAIK these are called "demonstratives" or something like that.

"This" is not second person.

Your other point is about incomplete information, which is indeed the first hurdle for most "silly" kinds of self-referential paradoxes.

I'm just flipping through the book a bit. I realise it's not the kind of thing people would buy just for the sake of an online discussion, so that's why I'm putting some snippets up here. Let me know if it gets too much.

This paragraph right at the end of the book gives an idea of the conclusions they draw from their maths shenanigans:

The tongue in cheek title of our book is intended to suggest that circularity
has an undeservedly bad reputation in philosophical circles. On the other hand,
we certainly do not think that every proposal or argument using circularity
bears close scrutiny. For example, one of the morals of our resolution of
the Hypergame Paradox is that certain kinds of circular definitions really are
incoherent.

So I think that matches your intuition and it at least gives confidence that the kind of separation you talk about should be possible. I'll need to look into it more to give better examples of "useful self-reference".

An example from linguistics (Chapter 4.4). The authors talk about how the following sentences are well-posed:

Professor Hill denounced the judge who had harassed her.

The law school professor who had worked for him denounced Judge Thomas.

Whereas this variant involves a "vicious circle":

The law school professor who had worked for him denounced the judge who had harassed her.

Interestingly, we still seem to understand it.

From chapter 4 of that book (Circularity in Philosophy):

Descartes' "Cogito, ergo sum" was intended to be an irrefutable argument from undeniable premises. Descartes could not doubt the fact that he thought. [...] The reason is that Descartes' act of doubting itself requires thinking [...]. Basically, Descartes' famous dictum is shorthand for something more like: I am thinking this thought, and this I cannot doubt because my doubting requires my thought.

Seems like a different approach to that dictum than the usual, ontological one.

I’d be interested in hearing about situations where self-referential ideas actually contribute rather than obscure.

You're probably asking about philosophy, and I can't really help there. However, as someone who knows a bit of programming and mathematics, self-reference can certainly be interesting in those spheres and even sometimes useful (recursive functions provide concise ways to code certain things).

As the article alludes to at the end, things get even more interesting when thinking about self-modification of programs or self-specialising compilers (I've lost a bookmark to an interesting and not too technical blog post about this, maybe I can find it again...)

In terms of mathematics, the book "Vicious Circles" by John Barwise and Lawrence Moss seems to be a good reference for what they call "hyperset" theory, an extension of set theory that allows for self-referencing and circularity. I haven't read much, and it's very dense. Working understanding of set theory required. I wonder if there are any mathematicians here that could break it down for us.


Reflection is not recursion. I can reflect on the past, but I can't change it. Imagination and reflection are closely linked, it's true. And that's an interesting topic in its own right.

It's been a while since my QM classes and I've moved on to bigger things now. Still, there are lots of resources out there by smarter people about QM and since it's not really a done deal yet, older stuff is still relevant. The thread started by asking about consciousness and observation, but wave-particle duality hits deeper than that. It could mean that time is an illusion, for example.

Max Born wowed everyone with statistics. State is probabilistic:

One does not get an answer to the question, What is the state after collision? but only to the question, How probable is a given effect of the collision? From the standpoint of our quantum mechanics, there is no quantity which causally fixes the effect of a collision in an individual event.

If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success

Schroedinger insisted on an equation. It's got a "wavefunction" in it, whatever that is.

Einstein is having none of it:

God does not play dice.

Heisenberg:

The more I ponder about the physical part of Schroedinger's theory, the more disgusting it appears to me.

Bohm thought that it is actually all deterministic and we just don't have enough information. And there's definitely others I've missed. At the bottom of the wikipedia page for "Copenhagen interpretation" there are some comments about alternatives, which could be of interest.

That's all to say, as far as I know, we're not much closer to putting the finger on any of this. As for the measurement problem, there are some people who dispute the idea of "wavefunction collapse" at all. [1] [2]

Other people still worry about consciousness though: [3] [4]

If you're interested in the consciousness aspect, I think the "delayed choice quantum eraser" experiment could be more useful as a search term than "double slit", which has many variations. Not just a thought experiment either, there are lab experiments of it, e.g. [5]

The third ref is paywall locked, but there could be preprints floating around. I'd love to give my opinion instead of just dumping references, but I'm severely underqualified. Hopefully this can at least motivate people less lazy than myself to look at this stuff.

“Life IS pain your highness, and anyone who tells you different is selling something”

Selling something like Elfism for example. :wink: — DingoJones

A little gem from r/Efilism's "newcomers start here" page/FAQ:

Q: What premises are necessary before I am open-minded enough to consider/accept Efilism?

OK maybe that was a bit low, and I'm not sure why I even looked them up. As @Ciceronianus succinctly put it, the first problem is that it's hard to see how we can simply set "suffering" and "happiness", or whatever variants of those, directly and completely in opposition of each other.

I do feel like maybe there is a failure of communication/education involved here. The problems that efilism tries to consider don't really seem very novel. Are philosophers failing to disseminate or articulate modern ideas to a broad audience? If we give efilists the benefit of the doubt, that they are not simply lazy but instead a little bit lost, is there something that can be done better, to engage these people in healthier philosophical debate?

I'm late to the party (anti-party?) so as regards the initial post I'll just say that my thoughts are broadly aligned with those of DingoJones and others, including the last post by Manuel.

Only when life is viewed as an essentially burdensome problem does the search for solutions make any sense. — _db

I take this to say that our tendency to write these books etc. reveals that life is "an essentially burdensome problem", but I fail to follow the causality here. Maybe we are constantly looking for meaning out of the sheer pleasure of doing so? Maybe we are doing it simply for aesthetic value? Maybe what we really like about it is to "disprove the old ways", to get those 15 minutes?

Most likely, these are only a few of the reasons that we "search for solutions". As others here have said, it's about people in the end. Is it all fake, then? Are we "getting somewhere"? I don't know. That's the heart of the matter. Some people say the journey matters more, so the question is moot. Other people say you need a goal to orientate yourself. As far as goals go, finding the good life seems like a fair choice. Yes, it's been done before. But not by you.

We can doubt anything and eveeything. That's how it is I'm afraid. — TheMadFool

Sure, but I read the OP as questioning how much we should doubt. Maybe that's too much interpretation.

I get the feeling that the discussion here got quite diffuse fairly quickly. Maybe because it's the kind of title that invites a lot of interpretation.

@Valentinus said:

The equality of persons as persons does not refer to their capacity or lack thereof. The idea is that, as a person, you are just like other persons, no matter the circumstances one finds oneself within

I think that captures a good chunk of the sentiment found on page 1 of this thread. The problem is that it's practically useless, I think: If the equality of bananas does not refer to their color or shape, or even size or ripeness, then what are we comparing, exactly? "A banana is always a banana". But you wouldn't eat a rotten one, surely?

In other words, I read the OP as "on what grounds can we measure an individual to be equal to other individuals, especially in cases where they exhibit traits and behaviours which we personally find offensive or deplorable?".

Your last post goes into the nature vs nurture thing, and you mention inheritance. I think there is a lot to be discussed here.

But this is problematic because it presents the need for a determination of worth that moves past fixed universals to one that is to a certain extent spiritual and objective.

I think I understand the first part: we can no longer treat individuals simply according to their individual, isolated lives. "The rich kid" inherits some privelege and gains a head start, so his family becomes part of his identity in some sense, I guess this is what you mean by "spiritual and subjective"?

Some very rough impressions:

- You get to "free choice" etc. by saying "an agent ...", but what is an agent? How can that be defined in the case of "strong determinism" (I'm not familiar with the language here, I mean to say, how can you define what an agent is without presupposing freedom of choice). There seems to be some circularity here?
- It is tempting to treat "choice", "agent" using some kind of isolated definitions and just get on with it, but I don't see how they can be decoupled from "society". I think the "do we have free will" people need to talk more to the "what is an individual" people. Laws might be arbitrary in general, but not really so in practice because, wait for it... we live in a society. It's a collective contract, I think. This can get lost when treating "responsibility" as some kind of isolated abstraction.

Not much of a response, since I'm lacking the background. I've only just acquired some Dostoevsky books but won't have time to read them this week... maybe they will be useful here. The titles are promising, "Crime and Punishment"...

@TheMadFool

Yeah, it's a bit of a language issue. I agree we usually define "thinking" as involving a "doer", and that is probably the most practical way. As for your question, Nietzsche remarks later in the same book that he considers thoughts as something that happen to you, rather than actions per se. He presents the observation (purely anecdotal) that often we think something before we realise that we are thinking (or something to that effect). But that's probably for a different post :)

As for the topic of doubt, I think that doubt is healthy in moderation (like most things... all things?) but we should not fail to consider the extremes. Can we "live in doubt", well, the imprecisions of language are evident here again... We can live with doubt, certainly, I would say it is even necessary. But sometimes enough is enough, we will never have perfect information all the time and too much doubt is, like you say about suffering[1], incapacitating.

[1] Despite my response in the other thread, I don't completely disagree about that either...