I disagree. I think it would be obvious to anyone with a little familiarity with philosophy of math that this question opens up in multiple directions, from contemplation of infinitesimals to set theory.

But wait, NOS said something about Trump. Let me go slam some brain cells together to answer him!

ha. It was supposed to be about instantaneous velocity, finitism, all that stuff

Eh. Who cares.

Yes. But let's talk about Donald Trump instead of philosophy. :up:

Are causes in the world or in the way we describe the world? — Banno

whereof one cannot speak...

If it is a way of thinking, is causation then not a thing in the world but a way of understanding things in the world? — Banno

What does the way we are bound to think have to do with the way the world is?

Schopenhauer wanted to answer that by way of Kant. Wittgenstein says we can't have an answer to that question.

we can't not think in terms of causation by our very nature. — Moliere

Schopenhauer agreed. He called it the law of explanation.

What does this actually tell about the West itself? — ssu

Nothing. Gaza was a giant refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, spewing demoralizing attacks on its neighbor.

The west cautioned Israel not to go overboard attacking Gaza because of all the helpless, innocent people who would suffer or be killed. Israel didn't listen. What was the west supposed to do about it?

:up:

ALL IS ENERGY. — boagie

Not first thing in the morning

Plotinus by Eyjolfur K. Emilsson — Manuel

I read this one! How did you become interested in Plotinus?

:up:

I don't mean given in the sense of something given once and for all without the need for explanation. — JuanZu

Sorry, that's what I meant. "Explanandum" was changed to "explanation" by my autotext. Fixed.

I would simply say that there are phenomena that are given — JuanZu

I think that's similar to saying gravity is an explanandum in its own right. We're just saying it's a given.

I don't think this got the attention it deserves:

The statement that "only physical statements are true" is not a statement in physical terms. It is neither falsifiable nor demonstrable.
— Banno — Banno

This is sort of what Wittgenstein is saying in the Tractatus, right? It doesn't get the attention it deserves because it spoils all the fun. :razz:

Maybe. I just don't see how physicalism differentiates itself from the wider umbrella of naturalism in that case though. I can't think of any reason why objective idealists, dualists, or physicalists couldn't overlap completely on methodology. "Methodological physicalism," seems like a misnomer to me. It seems like it would just be naturalism + a certain set of theory laden ideas. The difference isn't in the methodology, but in contents of the theory ladenness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The physicalist sees a "dead" universe, so to speak. Scientists don't consider the possibility that the universe is alive or developing according to psychological rules. If an idealist looks at the world that way, then yes, that idealist is basically a naturalist.

As a philosophy of mind, I think physicalism has some killer arguments that suggest it gets at least some crucial details right. Physicalist philosophy of mind also doesn't have the same need for reductionism to be coherent, minds don't need to reduce to brains, embodied cognition still works, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Embodied cognition just aims to explain some features of functionality. But I admit that the term kind of irritates me. It's not like we overlooked the relationship between mind and body as we went about discovering how the body works.

What many physicalists would like to say is that the physical facts underlying any mental facts are more essential, and that the physical in some way causes the mental. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But multiple realizability means it may not be possible to identify that kind of causal chain. Supervenience becomes the default.

If you abandon the idea of the physical being fundemental and the mental being caused-by/emerging from the physical (and not vice versa) then it appears like the monosubstance from which all things emerge being "physical" doesn't really explain anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True. So maybe physicalism has never been an explanation. Maybe it represents a certain mindset? A way of problem solving? One of the outcomes is that if a person is struggling emotionally, they're likely to be piled high with medications meant to support them. To the extent that doing that works, that's the argument for physicalism.

It seems to me constrained by the burden of the physicalist presupposition though, — Pantagruel

I think that just comes out of being conservative. At least in the anglo-american world, physicalism has been an assumption for a good while.

It about being able to talk about the same thing at two different levels of abstraction, what is viewed as the emergent level and the pre-emergent level. — wonderer1

I think so, yea.

Because we would really like you to stay our democratic ally. — Beverley

I see. :up:

I think that the only possible argument for physicalism has to start from a neutral monist metaphysical position, then argue that emergent psychological properties are real, in a strong sense. So mind is not denied but rather affirmed at the physical level. — Pantagruel

I think this is the most popular view today, right?

t seems to me that supervenience is all about existential dependency — creativesoul

I don't think it's about dependency. It's just that two things that track together: "There cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference."

praying you lot pull together because we could really do with you putting your differences aside and showing a united front right now! — Beverley

Could you explain why?

But more than an argument it would actually be an operation. The operation would consist of an effective reduction of all the contents of the world objectified by the sciences [biology, economics, psychology, sociology, logic, mathematics, phenomenology, philosophy, etc.] to phenomena, terms, relations, correlations, operations and demonstrations of that specific science that is physics.

For example, a physical theory of supply and demand that reduces it to relationships between, so to speak, their masses and their covalent bonds. A physical theory of the Pythagorean theorem that reduces it to relationships between atoms of some element, etc.

Is that something impossible? If it is impossible then we need another ontology. A more pluralistic ontology that can identify genres and irreducible categories. But also an ontology that identifies how these genres and categories of what exists are related to each other. — JuanZu

I think you're echoing Chalmers, but going beyond asking for a theory of consciousness to asking for a theory of abstractions (like math) as well. He said we should start with just proposing phenomenal consciousness as a thing to be explained by science, similarly to the way gravity was added, with no insistence that science as it is has to be able to answer it. It could be that we have to wait for more quantum theory answers? Or maybe a type of physics that we haven't thought of yet.

Leaving aside the fact that the Constitution doesn't disqualify candidates on the basis of them being convicted of a felony (a major oversight in my view), do you think he'd be a viable candidate? Do you think the electorate and the Party would be willing to put that aside and vote for him anyway? — Wayfarer

I really don't know. He won't take the popular vote, but as for the electoral college, it comes down to what the swing states do. Biden is the incumbent, and the economy is doing ok. Both of those give him an advantage. The voters turned against Trump in 2020. It's possible that they'll do that again. It will be close, though.

So, do you think if Trump is convicted in the January 6th Trial, where he's charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding etc, and sentenced to prison (pending appeal), that he will nevertheless remain a viable candidate? (The trial is scheduled for 4th March this year.) — Wayfarer

The New York Times says yes. Being convicted doesn't automatically disqualify him. If the majority of states wanted to disqualify him they could, but they won't. That means he'll probably be the Republican candidate, whether he's convicted or not.

Or the other way to read it would be more Marxist -- that you moving to Alaska to be a hunter-gatherer changes nothing about the economic form that allowed you to move to Alaska to become a hunter-gatherer which continues on. — Moliere

What about our ancestors who all lived in huts and hunted moose? I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I just don't understand what you're saying.

The material is the social, and the social is the economic. So the material is the economic. Whether you conceive of that like Marx does or whether you conceive of it like USians do that's the core idea I'm putting forward. It makes sense as a better priority for the real because it cannot be ignored in the same way that the mind-body problem can. — Moliere

So if I go to Alaska, build a hut and live by hunting moose for ten years, did I lift off from reality?

What aspect(s) are you still trying to understand? — wonderer1

The whole thing. :razz:

but that this meaning is better than the one set out by the mind-body problem — Moliere

Ok. What is the meaning you're referring to? Can it be spelled out?

And a good thread it was, too. But perhaps inconclusive. And certainly folk hereabouts missed it. — Banno

I was just trying to understand the term. I still am.

Yes, but at the center of Christianity you have Jesus while at the center of Islam you have Muhammad, a successful warlord with a child bride. Jesus sees an adultress about to be stoned and says "let he who is without sin casts the first stone." Muhammad when faced with the same situation says to stone the woman. These figures are not the same. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. I made the same point earlier. Islam has greater ideological ease with militancy than other Abrahamic religions do. Can't really form this into a condemnation of Islam, though. Christians, with their pacificist central figure, have kicked more ass than anyone.

I am of course against Islamic fundamentalism but I cannot call these groups theologically incorrect -- nor has the Muslim world really spoke out against them. — BitconnectCarlos

Muslim leaders condemn extremism on the regular.

Rather that materialism can be defined by more than the mind-body problem, as can philosophy. Marx was, after all, a philosopher. — Moliere

You're saying there are multiple meanings to "materialism." That's cool.

What I hear you saying is that Marx was a materialist, except we aren't using the meaning usually associated with that term in philosophy. Ok. That's fine.

Except for the traffic lights.

And so finally we arrive at supervenience. Now it might get interesting. — Banno

I did a thread on that!

Manuel mentioned earlier: if dualism is true, we can't figure out how the two substances interact with each other. Monism solves that problem.

Mkay. Focus on the big-picture idea then. "dialectical materialism" because the main perspective thus far has been from the mind-body problem, and I'm attempting to point out that we can think of "materialism" in terms aside from the mind-body problem, such as the terms Marx presents. He's pretty much as die-hard materialist as you can be, but the problem of consciousness is not one for him. — Moliere

I did a dive once to try to understand what Marx's ontological outlook was. I read that he was into Feuerbach, so I read about him. I looked into the way Marx was supposed to have used Hegelian dialectic. Once I came out of the dive, my conclusion was that Marx had no coherent ontology. That's just not where his focus was. Calling him a materialist just doesn't mean much (to me, anyway). Does it mean something to you?

etween the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. — Moliere

I don't think so.

The big-picture idea is that the material is the social world we inhabit. So, given that this is a materialism, no immaterial. "dialectical" because the idea that the social world is the economy is Marx's, and so credit where due. — Moliere

In order for it to be dialectical, there has to be an opposition. That's what "dialectical" means in the Marxist sense. Where is the opposition?

If it's dialectical materialism, where is the immaterial part?