Re: Style -- I can understand him writing the way he does. Where I'm writing out the short version I'm mostly doing the thing where I'm checking myself to make sure I understand the basic message as a sanity check to my understanding. The style makes sense, though, because his justifications for his philosophical moves come from a large number of philosophical concerns and comparisons; the concept simply isn't easy to write about in a philosophically persuasive way.

Also, great rendition of the prologue. I think a lot of my silence comes from unfamiliarity, so your more thorough synopsis is helping me to think through things better.

Re: the game, and cards. The game, I thought, would be what comes after having laid out how one is thinking in the first place. So the application of negative dialectics to its detractors, or towards other subjects other than an exposition of negative dialectics (albeit, it seems to me, a consistent one -- i.e. this reflection comes from a dialectical process)

“Since Hegel attempted to do the impossible, namely to apply philosophical concepts to that which is irreducibly nonconceptual, an account is long overdue of the relationship of Hegel’s dialectic to dialectics in general, and why the attempt failed.” — Jamal

Ahhh thanks. That makes sense.

I'm going to catch up in a couple of days, but I might post something about the prologue first. — Jamal

Oh yeah, no worries. I wasn't sure what to say about those so I just hopped into where I was beginning to have difficulties (page 1) -- but take your time.

I'm just going to begin with the first section in trying to summarize what I'm understanding. It's thick enough that I'm having to slow down and type out things just to make sure I'm reading it correctly. Here's my attempt at the beginning section of the introduction -- and on paragraph four I've tried to describe my confusion:


On the Possibility of philosophy.
1. Theory is once again relevant.
2. The philosopher has been overshadowed by the engineer – the engineer has demonstrated to the world positive cognition just at the moment philosophers turned on their discipline and away from positive cognitions. This to the point that philosophy appears to be a product of commodity society. (What do the last two sentences mean?)
3. The course of philosophy supports the notion that the engineer has overshadowed them since philosophy in its academic form splits into several sub-discplines, much like the scholastics of old, instead of reaching for the world concept. Where philosophy confuses the scholastic concept of philosophy for the world it de it degenerates into sheer ludicrousness, and then forgets the distinction when immanent truth is what philosophy depends upon.
4. If a philosophy cannot realize the difference between the concept and the non-conceptual which it is about it is too naïve to be worth thinking about. We must instead ask, in light of Hegel’s failure, whether philosophy is possible in the exact manner that Kant investigated the possibility of metaphysics after a critique of rationalism. There is an account which is long overdue – that account is of the Hegelian doctrine of the dialectic: a representation of an impossible goal showing that the representation is equal(fit?) to the task of (what was ultimately heterogenous to such?****
This is the part of the paragraph I begin to lose the plot on, just at the end. “what was ultimately heterogenous to such” I do not know what that sentences is referring to.

And after “an account is long overdue…” – “of its relationship to dialectics”; of what’s relationship to dialectics?

Getting lost in the pronouns on that paragraph

But, really, if you think about it I don't even know if I'll finish in the month -- I'm committed to responding to all 13 with the same amount of care, on their own terms, and I have the reading group that I intend on keeping up with -- so, in terms of time I think I can commit it's also just an honest appraisal of how long it'll take to write 13 in-depth responses to everyone on their own terms.

With pride ;)

Oh, to give me time, and just because it feels right.

My plan is to create the general discussion and "Whose who?" thread on the 15th of June, and since I've orchestrated the thing and know whose who I'm reserving my comments for after June, but will still follow through with my promise to give every submission a proper response.

I wasn't sure, so thanks @Jamal.

EDITOR: PART 2

3.6.6 The Minimal State and Structural Indifference
Nozick’s state exists to protect contracts and property. It cannot address systemic injustice. It cannot act on discrimination, poverty or precarity beyond affirming formal liberty. If someone is free to starve or live without healthcare, the theory offers no help. It defines liberty only as non-interference.

This turns liberty into abandonment. The state recedes but inequality remains. Exploitation continues but is no longer recognised as injustice. What’s left is a theory that mistakes inaction for fairness.

3.6.7 A Systematic Apology for Inequality
Nozick’s theory is not a defence of liberty. It is a defence of existing power. It grants legitimacy to outcomes no matter how they came to be. It offers moral cover to inherited privilege while posing as neutral and principled.

If radical individualism rests on Nozick, it rests on sand. What looks like a theory of justice is a polished excuse for inequality. The real question is not whether to interfere with liberty but whose liberty is already constrained and how.

What emerges is not just a flawed theory but a political project: one that praises formal liberty while shielding structural power. Before concluding, we must return to the broader implications of how this worldview reshapes institutions, reframes moral responsibility and rewrites the terms of political life.

4. No One Is an Island, Not Even A Libertarian
Radical individualism offers a seductive vision. It promises a world without interference, where each person is the sole author of their fate, untouched by history, insulated from obligation and immune to the needs of others. It is, at first glance, a philosophy of dignity and moral clarity. A defence of the self against the claims of society.

But it is also, fundamentally, a myth. And more dangerously, a myth that rationalizes inequality, conceals power and undermines the very conditions of freedom it claims to protect.

The sovereign individual of radical libertarian thought is not the baseline of political reality but its exception, often sustained by vast unseen structures, whether economic, cultural, infrastructural or familial, but that go unacknowledged in the name of self-sufficiency. The theory flatters the ego but fails the world.

It misunderstands the self, imagining identity as self-generating rather than socially constituted. It oversimplifies freedom, reducing it to non-interference rather than also enabling capacity. It obscures power, treating the absence of government as the absence of domination. It denies dependency, recasting mutual obligation as moral failure. And it misdiagnoses the problem of institutions, demanding their erasure when what is required is their democratization.

Nozick’s philosophy distils these errors into a coherent but deeply flawed system. His libertarian utopia, free from patterned justice and redistributive politics, leaves unresolved the historical and social forces that make liberty unequally available. It offers purity instead of fairness, formalism instead of justice and procedure instead of repair.

What we need is a different conception of freedom. One that acknowledges our interdependence, values solidarity and invests in the public institutions that enable each of us to act meaningfully in the world. This is not a call for collectivist uniformity or authoritarian oversight. It is a call for participatory, responsive and just institutions. In other words, more democracy everywhere that recognize the individual not as an island but as a node in a shared and fragile network of life.

This is not merely a philosophical quarrel. It is a live political dilemma. The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox is not confined to podiums, podcasts or billionaire brainwaves; it shapes public policy, corrodes social trust and legitimizes inequality under the guise of freedom.

When radical individualism is taken at face value, the result isn’t a flourishing of liberty but the quiet dismantling of its conditions: public goods erode, solidarities fray and those most in need are told their suffering is a personal failure, not a systemic injustice. It breeds cynicism toward democracy and opens the door for authoritarian figures to redefine freedom as obedience to themselves. What begins as a philosophy of personal sovereignty ends in the normalisation of power without accountability.

The freedom juxtaposed in the essay against that of radical individualism has no such paradox. The goal is not to reject individual agency but to anchor it in structures that make agency meaningful, reciprocal and just. Those who perform autonomy while depending on unaccountable power cannot escape this paradox; they can only obscure it. But we, as political agents and moral interlocutors, can resist the spectacle and demand something better: institutions worthy of trust, freedom grounded in solidarity and agency rooted in interdependence.

Real freedom is not the absence of others. It is the presence of shared conditions in which dignity, voice and action become possible. It is built not in retreat but in relationship. If we continue to treat liberty as a solitary performance rather than a shared foundation, we will not only mistake inequality for merit but we will also hollow out democracy itself. The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox is not just an intellectual contradiction; it is a political danger. One we must name clearly and confront together.

Reading list:
Isaiah Berlin – Two Concepts of Liberty
Hegel – Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Hannah Arendt – The Human Condition and In Between Past and Future
Charles Taylor – Sources of the Self
Judith Butler – Precarious Life; The Psychic Life of Power
Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish; The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1
Karl Marx – Capital Vol. 1
Robert Nozick – Anarchy, State and Utopia

By: @Benkei

Part 2:

5.
When a Tree Falls in the Forest

Plan:

Show if the tree makes a sound when no one is around.

Mainly

When forests fall with none to hear their sound,
No ear converts their waves to thunder’s round;
No nose detects the scent of broken wood,
No retina makes colors dance and bound.

Without a brain to weave perception’s dance,
No form or texture catches conscious glance;
The world remains pure pattern, undefined,
Till mind gives chaos order’s sweet romance.

See how the black hole’s entropy reveals
That surface, not volume, its nature seals;
Perhaps our depth is but projection’s art,
A hologram that solid space conceals.

Like photon pairs that mirror change through space,
Though seeming separate in time and place,
Remain one pattern in projection’s room,
Where separation yields to quantum’s grace.

The tree that falls, observed or standing free,
Is interference pattern’s mystery;
Until consciousness tunes its signal in,
Reality sleeps in possibility.

This explains how dreams feel just as real
As waking life—both patterns that we steal
From vast arrays of wavelengths interweaved,
Which mind makes solid as the things we feel.

All things connect in overlapping waves,
No true division marks what nature saves;
One vast united pattern fills all space,
While seeming borders mark illusory graves.

Like memory spread through neural matter’s field,
Where every part holds all that’s been revealed,
The cosmos lives complete in every grain,
As Blake’s world blazes in the flowers of yield.

We are the dance, the dancer, and the stage,
The cosmic story and the turning page;
Both author and the tale that’s being told,
As universe peers through its human cage.

The past may hide in holographic whole,
While present moments endlessly unroll;
Each electron’s shake sends ripples far,
As part and whole trade places, pole to pole.

Conclusion

This secret lies beneath reality’s mask:
One fundamental pattern, should you ask,
Indestructible and everywhere at once,
Performing life’s interminable task.

For all is one—no piece can stand alone,
No fragment separate from all that’s known;
The universe complete in every part,
As consciousness makes all its patterns shown.


6.
Religion’s Restraint

Aim:

Show how religion holds us back.


Main

The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,
When He shaped human nature’s acumen.
Temptations He then placed everywhere,
But He’ll punish us for being human!

He binds us in resistless Nature’s chain,
And yet bids us our natures to restrain;
Between these counter rules we stand perplexed:
Hold the jar slant, but all the wine retain!

What master sets a task impossible,
Then damns the slave who proves fallible?
Who plants the tree, then curses it for growth,
Or blames the river for being unstoppable?

He gave us passions burning fierce and bright,
Then commanded us to douse their light;
Like children told to swim with weighted feet,
We struggle in the depths of wrong and right.

Our maker filled our veins with wild desire,
Then bade us quench this self-implanted fire;
What potter shapes the clay to flow one way,
Then breaks the pot when it won’t flow higher?

He set sweet fruits before our hungry eyes,
Then called it sin to feast on Paradise;
What gardener tends the vine with loving care,
Then damns the grape for making wine arise?

The cosmic jest grows deeper still to see:
He gave us minds to question and be free,
Then thunders wrath when we dare ask Him why,
Or seek to understand His mystery.

Our nature pulls us earthward like the tide,
While heaven’s law would have us turn aside;
Between these millstones of divine decree,
We’re ground to dust, yet still must choose our side.

He gave us reason as our guiding light,
Then called it pride to trust our own insight;
Like birds commanded both to soar and crawl,
We’re damned if we stay low or dare take flight.

What justice can there be in such design:
To make the cup, then curse it for the wine?
To shape the heart with longing’s burning core,
Then damn it for the very heat divine?

Concluding

The riddle stands: why plant forbidden trees,
Then punish those who follow nature’s keys?
Why give us wings, then clip them when we fly,
Or grant us sight, then scold us when we see?


7.
Unfree Will


Purpose:

Show that one cannot will the will.


Mainline

The cause of the experiential is done
By the physical neurological;
We are as tourists along for the ride,
Consciousness showing what is going on.

Our thoughts arrive like winds we cannot call,
From memory’s web where old associations fall;
No will commands these patterns as they form—
They spring from hidden springs beyond our thrall.

Consciousness lags three hundred beats behind
The neural vote that’s already defined;
Our sense of choice is but a pleasant tale
We tell ourselves when truth’s too stark to find.

See how our moods swing on chemical tides,
As serotonin ebbs and flows and rides;
What meaning dwells in molecular chance,
When brain-soup determines how joy abides?

Jealousy and fear arrive unbid,
No choice in what emotions lift their lid;
While personality’s determined course
Runs fixed through sixteen channels, nature-hid.

The mirror neurons in our watching brain
Copy all they see, like falling rain;
Each observation rewires who we are,
Till watching others makes us in their strain.

That ‘I’ we cherish as our deepest core
Merely watches what comes through mind’s door;
No unique subject sits behind these eyes,
Just awareness common to all before.

And Love, that seeming sacred mystery,
Flows from hormones’ sweet chemistry;
Oxytocin bonds our hearts as one,
While reason bows to biology.

We think we choose, we think we understand,
But science shows us mechanisms planned;
Each thought and feeling, every cherished choice,
Springs from causes we can’t countermand.

In Conclusion

Yet in this clockwork dance of flesh and thought,
Some wonder still remains unbought:
How consciousness emerged from neural fire,
And why these mechanisms feel like ought.

For though we’re moved by forces we can’t see,
The very knowledge sets some wisdom free;
Perhaps in seeing through our robot’s eyes,
We glimpse some deeper truth of what might be.


8.
Time and its Blast


Intro

Explain Time, the Now, and then Time’s Ravages

Main Part

Time moves in steps, not flowing smooth and free,
Each Planck-length jump too small for eyes to see;
No infinite division saves the hare
From catching up with Zeno’s theory.

The Now we know spans wider than we think,
As consciousness takes time to form its link;
Each present moment born from what has died,
As past dissolves in memory’s swift sink.

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone,
Sensation savors what is presently known,
Imagination anticipates coming sounds—
The delight is such that none could produce alone!

No block-universe stores time on dusty shelves,
Though What IS might repeat its cosmic delves;
Each moment fresh-created from the last,
As reality continuous evolves.

Let thou thy certainty of the present be
Held mortgage for the Deed of Futurity,
For tomorrow’s just a gleam from afar
And yesterday’s but a cold ash of thee.

The cosmos dances through eternal space,
Perhaps to find each pattern, every grace;
No genius plans the paths that life might take,
But time tries all till some find lasting place.

At first, you sleep in thy dear mother’s womb;
At last, you sleep in the cold silent tomb.
In between, Life whispers a dream that says,
Wake, live, for the rose withers all too soon!

All’s thanks to Death’s prolonged sifting of ‘dies’,
Of the rest from the best, silly from wise,
The pointless from the pointed—selection.
Oh, through ink-black rivers we had to rise!

Hopes flitter and flutter like butterflies—
Whose forms show there can be a second guise,
Although still one chained to time’s sovereignty.
We cannot fly through time’s skies two-way wise.

Throw not life to the breeze; draft this day known,
For yesterday’s winds have already blown
And future’s currents have not yet stirred.
Forget dead airs; now’s breath is all you own.

Each frame of time marks change or stays the same,
Yet stillness seems forbidden in this game;
Forever forward flows the arrow’s flight,
As What IS writes its ever-changing name.

From star-heart’s forge to death’s selecting hand,
Time shapes all things that nature ever planned;
No blueprint laid in some primordial dawn,
But patient change writing in time’s swift sand.

When entropy claims its final victory,
And energy’s last loans no longer free,
The cosmos dims toward its darkening end,
While we arrange what brief light we can see.

The galaxies flee faster year by year,
As dark energy makes all disappear;
Each snapshot of the heavens grows more dim,
Till sister worlds can no more draw so near.

Time hurls its million waves of change sublime
Against existence’s rock time after time;
The entropic seas denude all that stands,
While we preserve what beauty we can rhyme.

Our higher mammal moment briefly shines,
A parenthesis in eternal lines;
Like Frost foretold through fire or through ice,
All paths lead where no star forever mines.

The protons fade, then electrons must go,
As particle by particle drops low;
The universe grows thin and ever cold,
While darkness claims all light we used to know.

She, last of all our kind to still persist,
Looks out upon the void where stars are missed;
The window shows but darkness absolute,
Where once bright galaxies kept cosmic tryst.

Conclusion

Yet in this death some hope may still remain,
For What IS cannot die nor show its strain;
No beginning means no final end,
As cosmic cycles turn to start again.


9.
What are the Feelings of the Seasons?

Prelude:

Explain the feelings of Spring Fever, Summer Joy, Autumn Color, and Winter Rest.

Once again, I have lived through winter’s chills,
To see another spring of daffodils.
Eager sap rises in my veins and thrills,
As the sun pours life into my tendrils.

Like trees that slumbered through the frozen night,
My spirit wakes to touch the growing light;
Each cell remembers ancient rhythms true,
As winter’s dormant dreams take verdant flight.

The same force lifting flowers toward the sun
Now stirs my blood—two currents merged as one;
No difference between my quickened pulse
And spring’s green tide that sets the sap to run.

My fingers spread like leaves to catch the ray
That coaxes sleeping buds to greet the day;
My roots, though city-bound in human shoes,
Still feel Earth’s call to join the spring’s display.

This body, winter-stiff, grows supple now
As warming breezes touch each waking bough;
The same sweet urgency that greens the grass
Smooths age’s frost from every limb somehow.

Mark how the daffodils, so lately dead,
Thrust golden trumpets from their earthen bed;
While in my heart, joy’s yellow blooms unfold,
As winter’s grey thoughts flee my flowering head.

Each spring reminds us we are nature still,
Despite our walls and ways of human will;
The same wild force that breaks the seed’s dark shell
Cracks winter’s ice around our spirits’ rill.

My bones, like branches, creak then grow more light
As spring’s warm magic melts the winter’s spite;
Each year this miracle returns anew:
Both garden’s growth and human heart’s delight.

The border blurs ‘tween flesh and flowering things
When April’s resurrection anthem rings;
We’re all Earth’s children, reaching toward the light,
As life’s tide rises on its annual wings.

For what are we but nature’s knowing part?
The universe grown conscious, grown to art;
Yet still we share the daffodil’s wild joy
When spring’s sweet season sets the sap to start.

Joy and exuberance are spring’s largesse;
Sunlight, warmth, and growth are summer’s bequest;
Autumn brings wealth, with its mellow harvest;
Winter’s fruit is peace—its bounty is rest.

See how each season brings its special grace,
As Earth wheels onward through eternal space;
Each quarter of the year bestows its gifts,
As nature’s dance moves at its measured pace.

Spring scatters treasures with a lavish hand:
The crocus jewels that stud the wakening land,
The silver songs of birds returned from far,
And green flames spreading at the wind’s command.

Her wild exuberance knows no restraint,
As buds burst forth with joy that needs no paint;
Each morning brings another miracle,
As life responds to spring’s sweet, wild constraint.

Then summer stretches golden arms out wide,
As warmth and plenty spread on every side;
The long days overflow with growth’s delight,
While solar blessing bathes the countryside.

The garden’s bounty swells beneath her touch,
As fruits and flowers ripen overmuch;
Each leaf spreads wide to drink the living light,
While verdant shadows offer cool’s sweet clutch.

When autumn comes with harvest’s mellow crown,
The fields bow heavy, dressed in russet gown;
Each tree presents its own particular wealth,
As nature’s riches rain their sweetness down.

The vineyard’s purple, orchard’s red and gold,
The granary’s treasure more than barns can hold;
While nuts drop plenty on the forest floor,
And berries offer wealth of flavors bold.

Conclusion

At last comes winter with its gift of peace,
As nature’s frenzy finds its sweet release;
The busy world slows down to take its rest,
While snow’s white silence bids all striving cease.

Beneath the frost, life dreams in quiet deep,
As roots and seeds their hidden wisdom keep;
This too’s a bounty—time to pause and mend,
As nature shows us beauty’s quiet sleep.


BENEATH, BELOW, AND FURTHER

In succession due does the large give way and rule
To the ever smaller, the tiny, the minuscule,
And onto the negligibly insufficient ‘awol’
Of not really much of anything there at all.

Yet it was at this bottom here-from that the all
Of the upward progression began its call,
And so here the answer lies to the sprawl,
At the boundary where nature wrote its scrawl
Of existence upon the foam, and back and forth,
A place not necessarily like that we think it is,
A lawless, formless realm that’s ever been the quiz.

Stability too has decreased woefully,
Melting within our descending journey,
And so we must meet the perfect instability
Of the potentially perfect symmetry that cannot be,

For not only is it that everything must leak
But that there can be not even one more antique
Of a controlling factor lurking about,
For of anything else we’ve totally run out.

Here then the pulsations and the throbbings
Of the so-called vacuum that must ever swing
Between here and there, ever averaging to not much
In its rise and fall, alternating here and varying.

Here Eternity and his elemental fellow rhymes
Of Anything and Everything bide their times,
Of which they have and always had continually
All of the time of everlasting perpetuity,

And so then if one waits long enough,
Which is but an instant in Forever’s trough,
Say for a months of Sundays in donkey’s years,
Then not only do the rarest of events come to pass,
But eventually so do all things possible that can last.

By: @PoeticUniverse

Working on it, about to post.

Oh, I have no qualms with utilizing "beauty" in our reasonings about the world -- it's the determinism bit that I don't find beautiful, but terms of elegance, simplicity, and so forth indicate a sort of aesthetic base for judgment in particular scientific fields.

But I wouldn't tie those to a universalizing program like causal determinism of a physical world, or something like that. They are ways of judgment.

It's a good thing. I'm glad to have you reading along to help me realize where I'm getting lost on garden paths.

Heh, fair.

but I want it to...

Heh. I've heard. In fact I think I've put off reading him so long probably because I heard he disliked Jazz, at which point I thought "No man could be a good thinker and dislike Jazz" :D -- so petty.

Looking over Lecture 10 again I can see these are just my little prejudices getting in the way. The real thrust of Lecture 10 is what resistance is, and all the prior examples are him trying to outline what it is not in order to get at what it is.

There we go. If that sounds right I think it all clicked for me finally.

Right -- I think expressions of elitism automatically incur some kind of disdain from me, but you're pointing out significant differences.

I wouldn't expect such language to go down well in a union hall, though :D I can hear the jeers already...

I suppose I don't see the appeal, but for reasons already stated. I don't see it as beautiful, though I don't know if it's ugly either. Determinism appears to me to be entirely inconsequential to my way of thinking or being; a kind of metaphysical toy.

OK, that helps me understand better.

I think I can get used to it, and it's not as difficult as some other stuff I've read, but I might have a look at the original English translation by Ashton to see if it reads any better (but even if it does this doesn't mean it's as accurate) — Jamal

I think I can get used to it too. And I prefer accuracy to readability.

The excessive use of pronouns reminds me of Norman Kemp Smith's translation of Kant. (could be a choice thing -- breaking out the German words that are compact into explicit English sentences which explicitly state, if repeatedly, the meaning)

I'm not sure how else to put it, but I still see this as incorrect.

While I think determinism is impossible to determine empirically, I also don't believe it's true. There are patterns, but if some of those aren't predictable then to call them "determined" looks different from what I thought determinism to be claiming. Something like Dennet's claims about how that one particular event could not be different in the course of things.

I generally take probability as an empirical reality rather than a fudge-factor for our ignorance. Uncertainty figures into scientific thought so much that it seems reasonable to treat it as real as all the rest.

I think we believe in universal causation because that seems to be what we observe everywhere, and we also have coherent understandings of why we think we are free (because we cannot be aware of all the forces acting on us, as Spinoza noted) and why we cannot predict everything (because very slight variations in initial conditions amplify to create great differences in outcomes when it comes to the complex systems whose behavior we are not so good at predicting). — Janus

To my mind that begins to look like a ghost -- we can explain it, but we can't say it's certainly the case.

For instance -- Spinoza has an explanation for determinism, but another explanation for thinking we are free is we're born free and so know it as well as we know our bodies, and we can't predict everything because some events are connected by chance rather than necessity.

It seems that, except when it comes to human and some animal behavior, causation is the paradigmatic mode of thought. — Janus

And if Hume is right, while true that it's paradigmatic, it's also just a habit unjustified by logic.

The puzzle there is how intentions which are themselves understood to be the outcome of brain processes, and which are themselves outside of the animal or human ambit of awareness, can really be free of causation. — Janus

I'm more tempted to inverse this -- How can we believe in universal causation (determinism) when we know we are free and can't predict everything?

When they do not behave in the way we have predicted is it not due to unforeseen conditions which when discovered causally explain the anomaly? — Janus

Sometimes. And sometimes it's given "the shrug" -- "Idk, because there are too many possible causes"

Usually that's when you figure out it was a bad experiment after all, or you mess something up.

But every once and again they are discoveries, so unexpected consequences that teach us something.

Following this path, we treat possible worlds not as metaphysical entities but as stipulated language games within which we can evaluate the truth of particular propositions, of how things might otherwise have been. And essential properties are not discovered, nor the attributes of Platonic Forms, but are decided by virtue of keeping our language consistent. They are a thing we do together with words.

There's a lot more that can be said here, but I have to go do other things, an there is enough there for now. The Law of Diminishing Returns applies, too. Is any one reading this? — Banno

I am sir.

I'm glad to see your explicit rendition of possible worlds, because that was my fuzzy notion but you've made it explicit.

So chemical elements do not always combine in predictable ways? In the absence of understandable faults and unusual conditions electrical and electronic components don't always function as predicted? — Janus

Yup!

Much of the time they do -- but not always always. That's why it's still a science. We get it wrong sometimes, in the details.

Can you give an example of a stochastic cause? — Janus

Theoretically I think of a stochastic cause as, using Hume's notion of a necessary connection between events, a set probability between events.

So if I flip a quarter then 50% Heads 50% Tails.

We explain events causally not stochasitically. — Janus

I don't think those exclusive. There are necessary causes and stochastic causes, and others harder to define than these mathematical constructs.

The observed invariance of chemical and electrical processes, which are what constitute everything we observe. — Janus

Maybe it's a professional hazard, but "invariance" is not what I see in chemistry or electrical explanation.

Predictions have improved, but "invariance" seems wrong to me.

It changes, if at a slower rate, but does change.

Genes and the pachinko machine appear stochastic, as does the coin toss, but I think we have reason to believe they are not really stochastic, and merely appear so to us due to our inability to model all the conditions in play. — Janus

What reason?

Actually the question in the OP was whether the idea of the PSR is inextricably bound to the idea of determinism . The OP specifically stated that the concern is not with the truth of the PSR and determinism. — Janus

Yeah. I started there with

↪flannel jesus Wouldn't that just mean that insofar that determinism is true there is a/(some version of the) PSR must be true, namely, the one wherein reasons are causes and there are no other explanations worth considering with respect to the PSR, or something like that.

I think I'd be more inclined to accept the inference from determinism to the PSR than the inference from the PSR to determinism just because reasons and causes need not be one and the same, so it seems obvious to me that one can hold that everything has an explanation without everything having a cause. — Moliere

I'm still thinking that if we accept determinism then the PSR is easy to establish, but cuz of stochastic events the reverse does not hold cuz we can explain events stochastically.

Only in a thread claiming things about determinism and the PSR :D

Though I'd emphasize my viewpoint here: it's not the quantum level as much as there are natural stochastic processes, such as the pachinko machine, or the genes one is born with. At least empirically speaking.

For my part the addition of uncertainty in classical mechanics is enough to warrant some kind of stochastic reasoning with respect to causality. It may be stupid, but determinism may also be reading into phenomena more than is warranted.

I think any decent definition of 'universe' would involve it being a closed system. If not, it is at best part of some larger structure, just part of a universe. — noAxioms

I think that begs the question.

Though to be fair to you -- to say the universe is a closed system is more or less to affirm the conservation laws are true and applicable to all that we can observe and make inferences about.

A physical coin flip (like Pachinko) should be a reasonably deterministic process. If all state is known to enough precision, the outcome is computable. Still, classical physics is not empirically deterministic, as illustrated by things like Norton's dome. This does not falsify ontic deterministic interpretations, which give cause to all events. — noAxioms

It doesn't falsify it, but I have to begin to wonder what this ontic determinism is -- if it's not empirically determined it can't be falsified.

So why believe it?

That mirrors my experience with anarchist spaces. Disputes, yes -- violence? No. It's all handled by talking through it with everyone. (EDIT: I ought mention that "violence" means "killing, or trying to kill, in order to reach a political objective" -- sometimes disruptive individuals have to be dealt with. But at most what I've seen there is removal from the premises by a group carrying out the disruptive individual. No death, or imprisonment)

What's a better or worse simplification shouldn't be an emotional question, so apologies for my part for that. — boethius

S'all good. I could have been less snarky and more friendly. But no need to apologize for expressing peevishness; we understand one another better through it.

These themes also highlight the focus in anarchism of individual example. Being willing to be the first one to refuse military service on moral grounds (and so be immediately executed) is just as, if not more, important to the anarchist movement as writing a book or being involved in party politics in one way or another. Likewise being willing to be the first one to not beat your children to see what happens, put the hypotheses that they will literally go insane to the test. — boethius

That's a good point. A fellow worker noted to me the importance of the IWW could be seen by its continual involvement in new issues that then became normal. That it wasn't the number of shops organized or membership numbers but the overall effect and continual vigilance at being at the front of positive social change that made it important.

OK I think I've figured it out -- if you've ever just "felt suspicious" of an idea in a philosophical text I think that's it because I can't really pin something down in the text. And I probably "feel suspicious" just because I've thought about happiness a lot in my own thoughts so it's harder for me to disentangle my thinking on the topic because of emotional attachment to it, on a philosophical level.

Oh, sorry. Anarchists.

Oh, for sure.

Bad actors abound.

But just to warn you, it is fairly popular in my experience in this subgroup.

For lack of a better term "identity politics" is largely viewed favorably by anarchists I've worked with.

From a theoretical standpoint it makes a lot of sense, though. Racism is a hierarchy where white people are held as higher than black people. Patriarch is a hierarchy where men are held as higher than women. And all the other -ism's mostly follow that same pattern.

And, really, it's not like it's backed up by nothing. Minority issues are nothing new, they've just been rebranded as "woke", somehow. There are statistics about violence against minorities and all the rest we can go into if we're wondering if there's something objective about these stances, or if they're just ways of identifying one's tribe.

But generally anarchists have soft hearts for the lesser, and so such language isn't hard to pass muster among anarchists insofar that it looks like the oppression they're used to seeing everywhere.

Yup. That's a true description of the big picture in various attempts.

Also, if it wasn't clear, do not read Robert's Rules of Order unless you want to kill your desire to learn anything ever(at least at first -- it's a much later book if you're still interested in further study). It's important, but damn parliamentary procedure is a snoozer to read.

:rofl: Well that's reassuring...

Okiedoke. Then it's just a wondering on my part where I'm not fully following everything.