Sounds right. :up:

How do you mean exactly? Certainly, I'm construing it within the composite framework of the subject-object system. As such, it is measurable and quantifiable. More radically, I think it may be a feature that is "conferred" by subjectivity on the system. But it is still in evidence as a systemic feature. — Pantagruel

You're saying that if I have more choices, I have more freedom. The way I think about free will is that it's about the ability to choose at all. To me, it's fundamentally about unity vs duality.

I think this issue is good for revealing how people think and what biases they have. Notice how each participant in this thread has their own take on what it means.

It sounds like you're equating freedom with potential. That's an interesting take.

So there's no interest from the public, they just want to move on to other stuff. — Christoffer

I hear you. I recently spoke with a doctor in private practice and he expressed the opinion that all the hype was for nothing, that we damaged our economy out of hysteria. The problem he has is widespread: nobody saw what was happening inside hospitals, so they don't understand how close we were to losing control and having people dying in their front yards like in 1918. We limited the effect with lockdowns, drugs, and vaccines (and huge amounts of oxygen).

The thing about a more severe pandemic is that it might shake the foundations of society so that what comes out the other side is not the same entity that went in, you know? Like the Bubonic plague created a middleclass because of labor shortages.

I think the US is tipping toward authoritarianism, so another pandemic might be the final ingredient.

Sure. If you know Archimedes principle of the lever then you can lift something you otherwise couldn't. Practical knowledge is inherently instrumental. In doing so, it creates a greater "degree of freedom" in the system - i.e. it expands the phase space of the system that includes it. — Pantagruel

I guess you mean that if I have the knowledge to build a bridge, it makes it easier for me to cross the river, and so I'm more free?

You define the terms for the sake of progress?

Free will is about possibility. If you're going to make a choice, there must be multiple possibilities, as if time is a branching thing and you can choose the path you'll take.

But every event has only one outcome. That outcome was the only one that was actually possible. All the others were merely logically possible. Hence the existence of free will is about actuality.

Doesn't the condition that there is no free-will exclude the possibility of the instrumentality of belief, and therefore of knowledge? And yet knowledge clearly has instrumental value. — Pantagruel

What's instrumental value? Could you give an example?

Finally, what is the motivation for even asking the question? The only one that I can think of is "denial of responsibility for the consequences of ones' actions." — Pantagruel

It's an intellectual challenge in its own right.

Anyway, are we (people, societies) ready for the next one? — jorndoe

No. The next one might be a variation of Ebola. We'll see.

I would like to know where I misunderstood you, because indeed that does happen. — Tobias

Sure. Oaths, covenants, verbal contracts, and promises are ideas that come to us as parts of a religious heritage. For our ancestors, a marriage was a holy sacrament, and oaths were made using Bibles. God was involved.

For us, all the divine trappings have fallen away. There's nothing but people talking, people behaving in a certain way. People don't usually talk about whether promises exist somehow, but if we had to make sense of that, we'd say the proposition involved in the promise exists as an abstract object. This means it's an element of intellectual life. So yes, they exist. In another sense, they don't.

It's like when Margaret Thatcher said, "There's no such thing as Society." If you really don't understand what she was saying, that's your choice. Most of us understand it perfectly.

A better question is: have you been able to shape your world so that it's a paradise you roam in? Or is it a hell you constantly fight against?

Ok. You get the last word. Carry on.

You finally allowed the existence of abstract objects. It only took you ten years to do it, but you made it! Congratulations professor!

You know better than this. The promise is an abstract object. You yourself deny their existence as features of the world. Stop playing this game.

Your claim is that there are no promises. — Banno

No, he didn't. Stop with the provocative crap.

That happens a lot. — Banno

:: virtual hug::

You misunderstood me. No offense, but I'm not interested in pointing out how you misunderstood me, only to have you respond with the same misunderstanding. I'll leave it there.

It indeed does! Our introspective abilities to tell after the fact my means of which mental means we arrived at answers to question also are fallible. In the case of LLMs, a lack of episodic memories associated with their mental acts as well as a limited ability to plan ahead generate specific modes of fallibility in that regard. But they do have some ability (albeit fallible) to state what inferences grounded their answers to their user's query. I've explored this in earlier discussion with Claude and GPT-4 under the rubric "knowledge from spontaneity": the sort of knowledge that someone has of their own beliefs and intentions, which stems from the very same ability that they have to rationally form them. — Pierre-Normand

I've been thinking about that recently. It's interesting to see the AI play it out.

Maybe you can explain to me how they are irrelevant? I thought I was discussing ontology. The point I make and Banno agrees with is that in the posts of some people here the quality of being provable is mistakenly identified with the quality of existing or not. (Not sure if I have my analytic phil. terminology straight but you know what I mean.). That is an ontological point I would think. — Tobias

Your point seemed to be that a marriage (that is without any other kind of evidence) may be a feature of the world by virtue of your attitude:

But there is such a fact, namely my assertion that I am married. I attest to it, vouch for it, — Tobias

Note that what actually exists here is you demonstrating the behavior of assertion making. Compare this to the value of a currency. Literally the only fact regarding this kind of value is the way people behave. Imagine this exchange:

Ama: There is no fact regarding the value of currency other than people and the way they behave.
Tobi: So you're saying the value doesn't exist? That's crazy! Of course it exists!

We could say value exists as part of an explanation for certain kinds of behavior. As such, it's an abstract object because it's possible to be wrong about value. It's like numbers, sets, propositions, etc. It's a resident of complex intellectual activities that bear on interactions with one another and with the world. But that's their only domain: intellectual activities. They don't exist out there with dirt and dynamos. So we have two ways of talking about existence.

Why though would you hold that these rules do not really exist? — Tobias

This would require a dive into Wittgenstein's private language argument with a little help from Saul Kripke. Is that something you're interested in?

Ha! It speculates about how it answered the question.

Right. The US just isn't in an aggressive mood right now. Though Biden is a hawk (one who is quick to military action), the US on the whole is isolationist. Russia or China would actually have to attack the US to get Americans to approve of war.

Remember, Americans don't threaten war unless they're prepared to follow through. They don't have the mindset of unnecessarily antagonizing countries they aren't in a position to destroy, and that's what they would be thinking about with regard to a war with Russia: complete destruction of Russia's ability to wage war.

The US government doesn't want to provoke a war or attempt to bring about social changes through threats.

There are sentient beings behaving as if they have obligations. For a variety of reasons, the details of this are inscrutable. It's incredible!

If you're talking conceptual existence, which it seems Tobias is, that has nothing to do with what we're actually talking about and i've clarified this multiple times. — AmadeusD

Yea, I don't think he was being disingenuous. He just wasn't up for a discussion about ontology. He didn't seem to understand that his points were irrelevant.

I think the groundwork is forming for a shift in the US toward greater authoritarianism. The trigger for the change would be something like a war. The population is presently split between people who want that to happen (on both the right and left) and people who are apathetic.

Did you see the poll that said Trump is particularly popular among people 18-29? It was reported by The Hill. Like 61% prefer Trump.

Responsibility is a separate issue from knowledge of the good.

I don't see any connection between these two worldviews and Aristotle's. — Bob Ross

The conflict between them is whether knowledge of the good is innate or learned. I think Aristotle was a little of both.

Exactly. What exists in the world is you behaving as if there are certain rules you ought to follow.

I can safely assert it and I would probably be believed by all. However, if there really was such a man, I would still be wrong. He did exist, he just didn't leave a trace. You who told me there was such a man, were right, I was wrong. You won't be believed though, however, that is sad, as you were right all along. The same holds for promises and marriages. — Tobias

@AmadeusD can settle which of us read him correctly when he said "literally no evidence."

I think he meant there is no fact regarding the existence of X. X does not show up in any way in the world. If something belongs to the set of all things that exist in our world, one expects there to be facts associated with this existence. This is not about knowledge. It's about the state of the world.

With regard to a promise of which there is absolutely no evidence, you might think your memory of the making of the promise would stand as a fact. Surely your mental states are facts of the world. But let's look more closely (with Kripke's help). How would you, yourself determine if your memory was correct? How would you answer that?

No, I understood you. I was just saying they've always had an external source of grief. They don't have to generate it for themselves like Gentiles do.

As to the Jewish perspective you've mentioned, full satisfaction does not occur. Otherwise there would be a complete cessation of will/desire in all respects culminating in literal bliss, which does not happen to egos. — javra

Yea. The Jews have never caught a break from holocausts long enough to disappear into the oblivion of bliss.

These are two outlooks we've inherited about the innateness of goodness:

1. Hebrew: You're born blank. You don't know good from evil, and must learn it. Jews see the Mosaic Law as the only description of good and evil available to mankind. You're specifically warned about the dangers of taking your own council. You can tell if a person is good by their circumstances because if they're good, God rewards them.

2. Persian: The universe is divided in half between good and evil and you're born knowing the difference between the two. To be good, you have to actively reach out for the good side and push away from the evil. It's a journey. This is the origin of the idea that progress is good. You can't tell if a person is good from their circumstances. A poor person can be good if they're progressing. A rich man can be evil if he's in stasis, and since the poor are more inclined to want change, they're more likely to be good.

There are other ideas we've inherited, like the idea that goodness is about revelation. This is a companion of the idea of original sin. We're born bad, clothed in flesh, and we're on a mission to return to a heavenly state, so goodness is about bringing the truth out into the open, or the Roman idea was that they were on a mission (given to them by Mars) to bring peace to the earth. In both cases, good is always just out of reach. All you get is doses of it from time to time.

Of all of these viewpoints, the Jewish one is the only one that allows you to be satisfied with what you've got. You studied the law. You put it into practice. You're doing ok. Anyway, it's a way to analyze the emotional tones in your viewpoint.

I have created my own purpose of being good (to your point); and thereby commit myself to the purpose, which I have independently of my created purpose, of being a eudaimon (because that is what I was designed for).

The first is merely a decision I made, and the latter stems from what is good. — Bob Ross

Ok. This is just the opposite of what I thought you were saying. Your purpose is to live in accordance with your nature.

It is something they have. "Receive" and "create" presuppose that purpose only comes from an agent. — Bob Ross

What purpose do you have?

And on what metaphysical theory are you basing that assertion? — Tobias

It's a commonplace that if no evidence exists for X, X doesn't exist. By this we don't mean you have to have that evidence in your hand. It just means that it needs to be accessible in a logical sense.

For example. I tell you there is a little man on the stairs, but this doesn't show up in any facts of the world. He's invisible and he leaves no trace anywhere. You can safely assert that the man doesn't exist. The same would be true for promises and marriages.

If there is no evidence you are married, the marriage doesn't exist. — AmadeusD

This is true, but might not be obvious to some. Some will insist that a proposition can be true even though there is no fact of the matter, a fact being something in the world we can point to. Since this sort of thing is in opposition to Witt's private language argument, and that argument is persuasive on its face, one would need to explain how a marriage can exist when there's no evidence of it. That would be helpful.

I am getting a bit lost: I never suggested people should create their own purposes, so I am confused why you asking me about that. Am I missing something? — Bob Ross

You said:

It is misleading for many people to think of themselves as having no design and instead having to create their own purpose: that leads to radical individualism. — Bob Ross

Are you saying people should see purpose as something they receive? From where?

It is misleading for many people to think of themselves as having no design and instead having to create their own purpose: that leads to radical individualism. — Bob Ross

I think creating your own purpose is more likely to lead you into society because humans are synergistic. For most of us, the greatest expression of selfhood is found in the company of others.

But if you object to the creation of purpose, where do you advise people find that?

Telos is cast aside because final causation is most easily thought of in terms of practical reason*, whereas the is-ought gap only exists under the tyranny of the "objective." (Like I said, the third objection I don't see as actually following from Aristotle's philosophy.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Telos was cast aside by Democritus about 50 years before Aristotle. 'Things do not come into existence for a purpose, but having come into existence, they find a purpose.' Both outlooks are parts of our heritage, and they're both still with us. I expect that if humanity exists 2400 years from now, that will still be the case. Don't you agree?

But you'll get another candidate instead of Biden. — Benkei

Not unless Biden dies or is incapacitated.


So you probably didn't know today is Independence Day for Americans. Like maybe independence wasn't such a great idea. :sad:

One is speaking American and the other... not really sure. — Shawn

I didn't see the debate. I couldn't watch.