Several people sharing what each perceives subjectively = intersubjectivity. The principle of repeatability is basically saying that several people sharing what each perceives subjectively is a good way to approach tengentially the ideal of objectivity. — Olivier5

A Hobson's choice then.

The issue is about observations, whether they're real or not. Hypothesizing comes much later on. If one must talk of hypothesis then that an observation is real counts as one but the method of verification is, unfortunately, identical and thus susceptible to the same problem. It's like buying 3 identical burgers from the same outlet; if one isn't good, the others aren't likely to be good too.

I've often wondered about the pessimistic view of the 4 noble truths.
What is the optimistic version?
1. Life is joy
2. Experience brings joy
ergo
3. To continue joy, one must continue experiencing and questioning
4. (I don't have a path for this) — Roy Davies

ask @180 Proof about how pessimism is the only realistic attitude to adopt. Hint: entropy. Always indebted to you 180 Proof.

If you define religion as consisting in worship of a deity, then Buddhism both does and does not (and neither does nor does not :wink:) qualify as a religion, and this depends on its adherents/ practitioners. There are both superstitious and secular Buddhisms and Buddhists.

It could be thought to qualify to an equal degree as a philosophy as Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation does, except for the twin irrational beliefs in Karma and Rebirth (Schopenhauer's philosophy arguably entertained only one irrational belief, namely the belief in Will). — Janus

As I mentioned in a preceding post, Hinduism had a major influence on Buddhism in its history. The core principles of Buddhism remain atheistic in the sense it doesn't subscribe to an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing being.

The religion of science? — Roy Davies

The essence of Buddhism is rational analysis and in that it resembles science.

The quote is from an old post (linked) that further elaborates. That thread was more or less the same topic as this one. — 180 Proof

If you'll allow me to reframe the question: Which of the existing religions is closest to the spirit of philosophy? Perhaps the star of Buddhism's philosophical nature gets obscured in the bright sunlight of philosophy proper but if I were to compare them to the more or less equally bright stars of other religions, you might be able to discern something.

Ideas might contribute to the successful existence of the entity thinking it, and thus be a positive influence on the entity and idea together, but there are many ideas that can be thought that won't have a noticeable effect on the entity's survival, but may themselves survive or not depending on the environment they find themselves in. An example would be ideas related to a religious cult that self reinforce each other inside the cult, but that outside, would seem ludicrous. From the outside, we would think these are 'bad' ideas and ultimately, the environment they exist in will come to an end. Like an evolutionary enclave — Roy Davies

Possible. Very possible.

I would rather say that objectivity is an ideal which we can approach through repeatability (aka intersubjectivity) but never reach. — Olivier5

Intersubjectivity? :chin:

I assume that you can easily show how the Four Noble Truths are factual. — praxis

The 4 noble truths:
1. Life is suffering
2. Craving is the cause of suffering
Ergo,
3. To end suffering, one must end craving
4. The 8-fold path is a means to end craving

That life is suffering is plain to see. That craving is, if not the primary cause, at least a major contributor to suffering. That to end suffering, craving has to be ended follows from these premises. Whether the 8-fold path is the correct method to end craving is, unfortunately, debatable.

How so? I did mention some elements of Buddhism like the existence of a pantheon of deities could be grounds to infer it to be a religion but these are, to my reckoning, later additions as Buddhism came under the influence of Hinduism.

How do we define philosophy and religion?

The heart of philosophy is critical thinking and Buddhism meets that condition in being both based on facts (4 noble truths) and arguing for a worldview from them.

While religion may not be all blind faith, argumentation is frowned upon for the reason that god is perfect - among other things, is infallible and all good - and so to argue against good becomes, in the eyes of the faithful, both foolish and evil, with greater emphasis on the latter.

Like you, I divided the number of possibilities into 100% — Dfpolis

That would be the wrong thing to do. Landing on a side is more likely.

I'm mainly concerned about objectivity and how there's the principle of repeatability that lies at its foundation.

So you're saying there is a 33-1/3% chance of landing on edge? — Dfpolis

I don't know the probability values for the outcomes. How did you get that number?

Me to not be
is to not suffer, see
And to be
is to suffer, me
Yet to suffer
is to death fear
To ask not to be
To be suffering free
Is to ask for water
and be given fire

A coin can land on edge or on a side. That is 2 possible outcomes. — Dfpolis

There are two sides and one edge.

O is too vague — Olivier5

You've gone past a checkpoint without completimg the necessary formalities. The first and foremost concern is whether an observation is real or not. Until you establish that everything that follows is of questionable value. In your examples, you need to first find out whether the woman or the lights are real or not and the only approved method for doing that is to have as many observers as possible and therein lies the rub.

By stating only 2 possibilities (on edge or not) — Dfpolis

So a coin can't land heads or tails then? :chin:

Pleasant, love and compassion
Unpleasant, anger, hate, envy and depression
Look around and it's clear to see
Much to anger, hate, and envy
Try hard and it's a rarity
Things to love, of compassion worthy
Thus, it must be so
Unpleasant emotions truth show
Thus, it must be so
Pleasant emotions are counterfeit dough
Better than one who laughs, the one who cries
What else when even a baby, innocent, dies?

I think it's safe to say that when we talk of god's omnipotence the gold standard for that should be the ability to defy the law of non-contradiction i.e. god is able to perform a contradiction. I say this because what's truly impossible in human terms are contradictions. We may one day rule the universe, create another one for all we know but we would never be able to both affirm and deny something at the same time without the whole thing morphing into nonsense. God, being omnipotent, would be able to do contradictions and still make complete sense.

That there's only one god follows from this ability - the power to contradict himself/herself/itself. Were it that more than one god existed, there would be no contradictions for the simple reason that it's possible for two or more gods to oppose each other in views/actions. For instance Pax (god of peace) and Ares (god of war) are different gods. War and peace though in direct conflict with each other doesn't amount to a contradiction because two different beings are involved. Only when there's only ONE god does war and peace both emanating from the same source amount to a contradiction. Since to be omnipotent, and god has to be omnipotent, there has to be contradictions, it follows that there's only ONE god. :chin:

That is irrelevant to the way you assign probability numbers. Is your principle that "the truth of (A or not A) => P(A)=50% and P(not A)=50%", or not? If it is, then according to you, there is a 50% chance of a coin landing on edge. If not, all your claims about reality are baseless. — Dfpolis

As you rightly pointed out, if you flip a real coin the chance that it'll land on its edge is not zero. The edge of a coin is part of the probability space of coin flips - it's the third possibility.

Let me be clear on this score:

1. Heads = the observation is real
2. Tails = the observation is not real
3. Edge = ?????[what should be written here?]

I deflect that back to you — god must be atheist

Now. X, Y, and Z each toss the coin once. You say that the probabily of tail is 12.5%, and the probability of heads is also 12.5% of any given ONE toss. That is simply absurd. The probability that the coin will land on heads (or else tails) in each one of the three times of the tosses, is 50% times three tosses, and averaged over three tosses.

If the observation decided to be true is 50-50 by each of X, Y, and Z, then the observation's probability is (50%+50%+50%)/3, just like in the coin toss — god must be atheist

This is not how probability calculus works.

It is highly relevant as it relies on the same principle you use to assign a 50% probability to your alternatives. If we can have either A or not A, you say each has a 50% probability. So, since a flipped coin will either end balanced on edge or not, then the probability of its ending on edge is 50% — Dfpolis

As far as I can tell there's no edge (third option) between real and not real.

There is a simple statistical answer to the OP, which is that the procedure you use, multiplying the odds of discrete events to obtain the odds of a combination of them [ p(A&B&C) = p(A)*p(B)*p(C) ], only works when the events are independent from one another. In this case they are not: if I see a flower on a plant, the chances that my wife will see a flower on that plant are very high. If X sees O, the chances that Y sees O are very high. Etc.

If the probability of event B is affected by wether or not A happens, then the two events are not independent and you cannot just multiply the probabilities like you did. Another procedure applies, though covariance and correlations, more complicated. — Olivier5

Good response! However, this would require that X observing O increase the likelihood of O being real when Y observes O and that, in turn, should increase the chances of O being real when Z observes O.

The probabilities would look like this (numbers arbitrary):

1. Probability of O being real when X observes it = 50%

2. Probability that O is real when Y observes it given that X observes it = 70% (greater than 50%)

3. Probability the O is real when Z observes it given that both X and Y observes O = 90% (greater than 50%)

Ergo,

4. The probability of O being real when all three X, Y, and Z observe O = 50% * 70% * 90% = 31.5% and the probability of O being not real = 1.5%

However, the problem with this is that it's a petitio principii. How can the first observation, if it's 50:50 that it's real, increase the probability that it's real on the second observation? To think that it does amounts to assuming the very thing that needs to be proven.

Remember, we need to prove that as the number of observers increase the probability of what's observed being real also increases. By positing that the probabilites are dependent you're in fact assuming the desired conclusion.

Is this post referring to itself? — Yohan

The word "this" suggests it is; after all, "this" is the post itself. However, that the sentence is an interrogative is interesting because it breathes life into these words; the reader is left to wonder whether the post is alive and self-aware and inquiring into its own nature.

As far as I can tell, only consciousness that's reached a certain level of sophistication is capable of self-reference not in a declarative sense like the liar sentence but in an interrogative sense like in the OP.

What intrigues me is whether it could be the other way round? Did the self-referential interrogative capabilities of language lead to self-awareness?

That's my two cents.

They will, and do, but we have enough problem now with people being influenced by technology - this will make it even more complicated. — Roy Davies

A case can be made that it might simplify things.

Making someone say to itself:

This is important and will help me survive.

is the expressway into agreement and engagement. — dussias

To tell you the truth, calligraphy evolved only after the basics of writing was mastered. Rhetoric is an embellishment, a decorative touch, added to written/spoken words in order to evoke a positive response by virtue of its aesthetic qualities. While the value of rhetoric can't be underestimated in debate, one should also be wary of its power of "empty persuasion" and by that I mean rhetoric can move hearts and change minds even when there's no real substance to what is being said or written.

Ah yes. I agree the title is a little odd. The reason for prompting the discussion is part of a larger idea that interests me about human's relationship with technology as this technology becomes more 'human' and natural in their interactions with people. People will fall in love with digital characters (already are, I think). — Roy Davies

Who won't fall in love with digital characters?

I agree. The concept of conjecture and refutation means that an idea is only as good as its ability to stand up to being refuted. A good idea also has to be refutable in its design. — Roy Davies

I don't know. It's too early to tell whether it's true that all falsehoods are bad and that all truths are good, good and bad in re survival that is but as someone once said, "the truth will out" and that's going to be an embarrassment at best and a death sentence at worst.

Roy Davies' Fallacy or The Analogical Fallacy: This fallacy is committed when one sees something in common between two things and concluding both must be same. It conflates an explantory analogy with an argument from analogy. In this particular case, the heatpump is an explanatory analogy in terms of input-processing the input-output which aids us in grasping what minds are about but it's not meant to draw the conclusion that heatpumps are conscious just because they share an attribute with minds.

That’s an interesting point. Though I don’t know about ideas being ‘true’ or not. Some very destructive ideas can exist in a society and thus keep it going, at least for a while. — Roy Davies

By true ideas I mean those that are aligned to truths/facts about our world. As an example germ theory is an idea that's true in the sense it seems to be close enough to the actual truth about diseases to allow us to prevent/cure illnesses.

False ideas are the kind that's constructed around falsehoods and are particularly harmful. For instance belieiving your local shaman's diagnosis of your illness as the work of evil spirits is assuredly going to make things go from bad to worse for you.

However, I'm certain that I've failed to do justice to the complexity involved.

It makes sense to contextualize ideas in evolutionary terms. After all, ideas either make or break us and that being the case ideas would naturally align themselves with the evolutionary goal of survival. Someone, I can't recall who, once said that to believe falsehoods amounts to significantly reducing one's chances of living a full productive life. True ideas then are the equivalent of physical adaptations like agility, speed, strength, intelligence, etc.

The suicidal premise: All living things that commit suicide are humans
This implies, if nothing else, that taking one's own life has something to do with our brains. Brains are logical devices i.e. whatever else they may do, their primary function is logic - rational thinking to be precise. This suggests, to me at least, that there's something rational about suicide i.e. there are good reasons to take one's own life. You can't have the most intelligent member of a group being mistaken about this. Ergo, without going into the details of when suicide is permissible, we can safely say that suicide, sometimes, is a perfectly rational choice. If that's the case, is it possible that euthanasia is one of those times?

Where is evolution in all this? In my humble opinion, evolution is the real mastermind behind all this manipulation - social media being merely the tip of of the gigantic iceberg of devices evolution has put into service to make sure that we keep clicking the metaphorical mouse button of pleasure...forever and more.

]

We don't know. Unless we actually know how consciousness occurs within ourselves, we won't be able to judge the presence of inner life in anything else. Evidently there is some sort of information processing going on within us which is responsible for all this but we only have broad anatomical descriptions, not detailed or functional enough either to replicate or in my opinion to base a theoretical framework. — debd

Too bad. Thanks!

There are two truths to consider:

1. All living things that commit suicide are humans
2. Some humans are not living things that commit suicide

Maybe there's a third truth but as of this moment I'm not aware of it.

Firstly, there's something about being human that makes suicide an exclusively human affair. The only difference between us and the rest of the living world is our brains, its, let's just say, advanced logical capabilities. That means suicide is, at the very least, a completely rational choice!

Secondly, the only difference between one person and another is their circumstances. This explains why suicide is a rational choice for some (those who kill themselves) and not for others (those who don't kill themselves).

What both these truths imply is there's a disparity in circumstances which provides "good" reasons to take your own life or continue living. What's troubling, assuming suicide is something you're against, is that the reasons are "good" i.e. given the circumstances prevailing [in certain sections of society], the most rational being would prefer to end his/her own life.

That's quite an elaborate description of how brain function has been studied. Thanks.

My problem is this: the brain is a chinese room for just as the person who doesn't understand chinese inside the chinese room, neurons too don't understand chinese. The Turing test employed, we'd have to conclude that the chinese room is a chinese person. However, is the chinese room conscious in the sense we are in that direct, immediate, non-inferential, self-evident sense? Is the chinese room a p-zombie in that it lacks that inner life philosophers of consciousness talk about?

So if you don’t count some properties, then two objects with all the same properties (besides the ones you’re ignoring) can’t be told apart. That’s not surprising.

The indiscernibility in question though is of a type that accounts for all properties.

If you look at a red car of a certain model and then a blue car of the same model, but both of them through black and white video screens, you won’t be able to discern them either. — Pfhorrest

Yes, it's not a complete refutation of Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles. As I said, it's a special case. @tim wood said something along those lines in his first post.

At this point, Einstein's relativity seems appropriate. It's not that spatial property alone matters in discernibility, it's actually space-time. Your position stems from the belief that one object can't be in two different places at the same time. Thus,the two cars of the same model are discernible - they occupy two different places at the same time.

Ignore time for the moment and we come to the realization that one object can be in two places e.g. Lewis Carroll was in Daresbury and then in Guildford. In other words, in only a spatial sense, the fact that cars of the same model were in two different locations neither implies that the cars are identical nor that the cars are not identical. Space, by itself, isn't a discerning feature.


If we now include time in the picture a problem arises. Lewis Carroll was in Daresbury but not at the same time he was in Guildford. This is the principle you're using - one object can't be in two different places at the same time - to assert that two models of the same car are discernible.

However, what does "at the same time" mean? Simultaneity, according to Einstein, is relative in the sense that what's simultaneous to one observer is not to another and vice versa. What this means is that what you observed as two different temporal events - 1832 in Daresbury and 1898 in Guildford for Lewis Carroll - are actually simultaneous events for an observer in a different frame of reference. In essence then it's possible for one object to be in two different locations at the same time. The principle that one object can't be in two different locations at the same time is untenable.

Ergo, spatio-temporal properties can't, shouldn't, be part of the criteria for discerning one object from another.

Don't be, yours the blunt edge speaking to the caborundum stone. I understand, and this will hurt me more than you.

The idea is that if you rely on yourself - what you discern of observe, then you're subject to error. How, for example, would you know that all that's true for X is true for Y? If, on the other hand, you rely on the objects themselves, then more likely you will not be in error. Two "identical" cars are by no means at all in-themselves identical, and suitable inspection makes that quite clear. — tim wood

:up:

You're missing the point. It's not the practical impossibility of two objects possessing the exact same attributes that's the issue. What needs to be understood is there's no logical contradiction, ergo its possible, that there exists at least two objects in the universe with the exact same attributes such that they're indiscernible. My case builds on this possibility.

The different cars are discernible in that there are properties of them that they do not have in common: for example, one is here while another is there. If even those positional properties were made the same, then you would have truly only one car, because otherwise you would be in the strange situation of saying that right here in front of us right now at the same time are two (or more) indiscernible cars coexisting at the exact same place and time, even though of course in that situation it would to all appearances seem to be only one car. — Pfhorrest

You have a point. Spatial properties would make the cars of the same model discernible.

However, consider the following situation. You're seated in a viewing area and two events occur.

In the first event Lewis Carroll is brought before you, then ushered out and then brought back in. You wouldn't be able to discern any difference between Lewis Carroll's first appearance and his second appearance.

In the second event, a car of some model is brought before, taken away, and a second, "different", car of the same model is presented before to you. In this case too you wouldn't be able to discern any difference between the first car and the second car. For all intents and purposes, you would think the first car is the same car as the second one.

In other words, if I remove spatial properties from the equation, identity of indiscernibles is false. A special case scenario of course but definitely one in which Leibniz's law of identity of indiscernibles fails.

Also, what about ideas/concepts that lack spatial properties. Is it possible that two different ideas are indiscernible?

Yes. But that was politics, not philosophy. :smile: — Gnomon

:smile: :ok:

I can see your link between death and justice, especially the whole idea of capital punishment, although of course capital punishment does not happen in this country.
Apart from capital punishment being viewed as unjust in many ways, such as the possibility that a verdict on someone may have been wrong I wonder if it's also linked to an erosion of belief in life after death. Perhaps there is an underlying idea that a life of remorse in prison is a greater punishment than the oblivion of death. — Jack Cummins

Mind if I pick your brain a little bit on this matter because what you say doesn't jibe with facts as they stand? There's the general impression people have that abolishing capital punishment is progress in ethics i.e. doing away with the death penalty is a good thing. Your view in this regard - "that a life of remorse in prison is a greater punishment than the oblivion of death" - turns the anti death penalty case on its head. As per your logic the death penalty is a more humane, thus more ethical, punishment than, say, life imprisonment?

My question is whether being remorseful is bad? Repentance is a critical aspect of ethics and justice in that when the guilty experience it, a genuine desire to repair the damage caused develops in them, paving the way for a positive transformation that benefits all parties involved. Executing people robs them of this opportunity and is therefore, on the whole, a worse outcome than "...a life of remorse in prison..." Right?

I think it would be weirder if you weren't afraid [of humanity]. It's probably unlikely that we're the only ones capable of snuffing out all life on earth but we're certainly on the list of possible causes of planetwide mass extinction.

I can see your link between death and justice, especially the whole idea of capital punishment, although of course capital punishment does not happen in this country.
Apart from capital punishment being viewed as unjust in many ways, such as the possibility that a verdict on someone may have been wrong I wonder if it's also linked to an erosion of belief in life after death. Perhaps there is an underlying idea that a life of remorse in prison is a greater punishment than the oblivion of death. — Jack Cummins

That's something to chew on. Thanks.

Surely, death is an equal event for everyone. All of us will die, some prematurely and even the richest die sometimes sooner than the most vulnerable.
Perhaps rather than bringing death into the matter, it would be better to explore equality with reference to life, rather than let death's angry face glaring at us, poke it's nose into the discussion about justice and equality in this life. — Jack Cummins

Death is deeply linked to justice. Apart from the fact that the death penalty is legal entity still in force in many parts of the world, religion is about escaping death by means of an immortal soul. Against the backdrop of religion and justice, death is a punishment, which makes it even more problematic for the idea that death is an equalizer. After all, what heinous crimes are the poor and weak guilty of to deserve capital punishment? None, right? Ergo, high death rates among the poor and weak, from a judicial perspective, is gross injustice, unfairness on steroids.

Right, philosophy provides a valuable function by providing a view from outside the socially acceptable group think, but one should not expect to be rewarded for providing the service.

There may however be a reward which is built in to the social rejection. If one is tossed out of the social world, the real world is the only place left to go. And whaddya know, the real world is far more interesting than the social world! Yup, it's true, all my best friends are armadillos. :-) — Hippyhead

I'm afraid there is no real world other than this world no matter how deeply flawed it is. Also, philosophers are people too.

Is it? I thought sex was physical. You mean to tell me that I've been having conceptual sex with my wife and not physical sex this whole time? Does that mean that my offspring are conceptual outcomes of my conceptual sex as well? I thought that they are physical outcomes of physical processes. Im really confused now. — Harry Hindu

You have a point but you do know that love triangles are abstractions - it's a pattern in the many kinds of relationships between men and women. The type-token concept seems appropriate. If you have had a love triangle experience it's a token and all such relationships involving 3 people is the type. In fact the last time I read about the type-token relationship it used triangles as an example. Each instance of triangle observed is a token of the type triangle.