If anyone was really afraid of him, he'd be dead already.

What he had to say was really interesting. He comes from a part of the world where cattle and lamb farming is ultra efficient, but his government is struggling to adhere to Paris climate accords, so they're going to try to reduce meat production.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, there's no interest at all in the meager Paris accords and meat production is crazy inefficient and floods the Gulf of Mexico with fertilizer.

So he feels like idiots are running the world, which is true.

Fine, but heat is heat and you can't identify which degree of heat is from water vapor, CO2, CH4, N20 (nitrous oxide), Perfluorocarbons, hydroflurocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride. My point was that it it practically doesn't matter a lot whether the effect of a GH gas kicks in 10 years from today or 200 year from now. — BC

True. It's just a point that climate nerds who read a lot about it would be interested in: "hey! they changed that!"

What I want to say to agree to disagree is that we are on the hook, and we won't be getting off the hook through reinterpretation. Only by altogether stopping greenhouse gas production can we avoid getting cooked. — BC

He hasn't suggested that we aren't on the hook. People hungry to pile on have shown their disregard for him by continuously trying to pin that on him. It's probably a psychological problem on their parts.

Just as philosophers suddenly get really accessible when they write about aesthetics, the SEP article on supervenience in ethics is much easier to understand than the main article. Some excerpts:

Supervenience relations are covariance relations that have three logical features: they are reflexive, transitive, and non-symmetric. The claim that supervenience is reflexive means that every set of properties supervenes on itself: for any class of properties A, there can be no difference in the A-properties without a difference in the A-properties. The claim that supervenience is transitive means that: if the A-properties supervene on the B-properties, and the B-properties supervene on the C-properties, then the A-properties supervene on the C-properties. The claim that supervenience is non-symmetric means that supervenience is compatible with either symmetry (A supervenes on B and B supervenes on A; as in the case of the ethical and itself) or asymmetry (A supervenes on B but B does not supervene on A; as may be the case between the biological and the microphysical). — SEP article on supervenience in ethics

These claims reflect how use of the word ‘supervenience’ has come to be usefully regimented in contemporary metaphysics. It is worth emphasizing this point, because there is a significant history of the word being used in ways that depart from this contemporary orthodoxy. For example, for a time it was quite common both in metaphysics and in ethics for ‘supervenience’ to be used to mark an asymmetrical dependence relation. Such uses are, however, inconsistent with the contemporary regimentation. This is a point about terminological clarity, not a substantive barrier to discussing such asymmetric relations. For example, one could name the asymmetric relation that holds when A supervenes on B but B does not supervene on A. Or one could name the relation that holds when the supervenience of A on B is accompanied by an adequate explanation. One influential variant of the latter sort of explanatory relation has been dubbed ‘superdupervenience’ (Horgan 1993, 566). More recently, many philosophers have suggested that a certain asymmetric dependence relation—grounding—is of central importance to our metaphysical theorizing. (For discussion, see the entry on metaphysical grounding.)

Given the standard contemporary regimentation, however, supervenience claims state a certain pattern of covariation between classes of properties, they do not purport to explain that pattern, as a grounding or superdupervenience thesis would (compare DePaul 1987). This point is crucial to several arguments from ethical supervenience, as we will see below.

These clarifying remarks put us in a position to introduce four central questions that can be used to develop alternative supervenience theses:

How can we best characterize which properties the ethical properties supervene on?
Should we characterize the supervenience of the ethical in terms of facts about individuals, or about whole possible worlds?
What is the modal strength of the supervenience relation? Does it hold only across worlds with the same laws of nature as ours, or across all metaphysically, conceptually, or “normatively” possible worlds?
Thus far I have introduced ethical supervenience as a thesis about what there is; is it better stated as a commitment concerning combinations of our ethical attitudes? — SEP article on ethical supervenience

We might have to do some superdupervenience here shortly.

Are you saying that the climate scientists at NASA are wrong? — Agree to Disagree

I don't think she understands what we were talking about.

We were talking about the lag between when the CO2 hits the atmosphere and when the effects kick in. At one time models showed that most of the effects of the CO2 we're putting up now won't be felt until the next century. Agree is saying they've backed that down to decades.

Being a cynical old man I wondered if they made this up because they knew that people wouldn't bother fighting global warming if the effects were centuries away. :scream: — Agree to Disagree

I don't know. It's not a good idea to lie to people. Once they find out you lied, they won't believe anything you say.

There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it, but that lag is less than a decade.

That's new. They used to say the lag was a century or more. :up:

But in fact you knew exactly what I meant, and you responded by claiming that the "quoted words do not describe supervenience." — Leontiskos

I didn't know what you meant. You're right that I would have understood you if I'd been more familiar with standard definitions of supervenience. But I'm just a poor coal miner trying to think through some stuff. Hope you can overlook it.

:smile:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

You should stay away from details. That's where the devil is.

So the upshot seems to be that Anscombe and Davidson are approaching different issues, and so that they do not, despite appearances, contradict each other. — Banno

Great. Problem solved.

We have two lists that are physically identical, so their molecules are arranged exactly the same?

But the lists were created under different circumstances.

Do our attitudes supervene in the actual lists? Or on the ways they were created?

There is such a thing as overthinking an issue. — LuckyR

I'll have to think about that.

make the most of it. — LuckyR

That's it. :up:

If the Arctic permafrost abruptly melted it would put up a ginormous amount of methane and we'd all die. That could happen at any point. Like tomorrow morning.

We could all wake up dead tomorrow. Like everybody. :grimace:

It would only fail to make sense if someone did not understand that we are considering the possibility of A supervening on B, but this should be apparent both because it is the standard usage which was present even in your OP, and because A and B were introduced explicitly via the entailment relation that you put forward. — Leontiskos

No, it fails to make sense because you left out an important part of the sentence, namely the leading IFF.

Hmm. Both terms have technical and non-technical senses. I don't think any mixture of those senses would support your idea that, "You could also say the music entails these actions." The SEP article covers the difference between supervenience and entailment in some detail. — Leontiskos

Entailment and supervenience aren't identical, but supervenience can overlap entailment, causality, and dependence.

Let me just repeat my claim now that you see that the definition is accurate: — Leontiskos

Well, not to quibble, but because you left the IFF off of the beginning of the sentence, your quote from the SEP didn't make any sense.

But I think the reason "entail" isn't exactly equivalent to "supervene" is because the latter is proprietary wording and the former isn't.

That quoted words do not describe supervenience.
— frank

It was a quote from the SEP definition of supervenience, in the introduction of the article you quoted from in your OP:

A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if a difference in A-properties requires a difference in B-properties—or, equivalently, if and only if exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantees exact similarity with respect to A-properties.
— SEP | Supervenience Introduction — Leontiskos

It makes more sense in context.

The properties of a production of Beethoven's 7th supervene on the properties of the orchestra involved.

The second part starting with "equivalently," is saying that the only way to have an exact duplicate of a musical production would be to exactly duplicate the actions of the orchestra playing it. That's a convoluted way to get the idea across, but it's true. That does describe the kind of relation we're specifying with supervenience. It's definitely an IFF kind of relation.

I think this direction of entailment is necessary but not sufficient for supervenience. This is because A can entail B without "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties — Leontiskos

I don't know what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that supervenience is "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties"?

That quoted words do not describe supervenience.

For example, in your previous post you incorrectly imply that logical supervenience guarantees entailment (via your 'if-an-only-if' definition). — Leontiskos

Could you be more specific?

I am glad that you two are sussing out some of the ambiguity between supervenience, cause, reason, etc. Much of the language in this thread is being used too loosely. — Leontiskos

There is a fair amount of overlap though. The nature of a supervenience relation is formally stipulated. That's what's helpful about it. But there's no exclusion of causality, entailment, or dependency.

I think I have it straight now. To some extent supervenience is intuitive. The music created by an orchestra supervenes on the actions of the players. You could also say the music entails these actions.

Or what if orchestral music evolves in so that it becomes more AI driven. That fact would supervene in all sorts of activities at lower levels.

If we think of supervenience as pertaining to propositions, the truth of "Orchestral music evolved" is true IFF statements about required activities at the lower level are true.

So it has to do with intuitions about emergent events, that they necessarily track events at the lower level.

As applied to the mind body problem, a neophyte might think the debate is about whether the mental supervenes on the physical. Generally speaking, that's not the debate because we already know that pain emerges from nociceptors, and so on.

But I think an eliminativist would deny that the mental supervenes on the physical just because she denies that there's any such thing as a separation between mental and physical. There has to be some kind of distinction.

Next: supervenience and normativity, otherwise known as the is-ought problem.

Yea, I'm pretty sure I screwed that up. I'll need to ponder it a little more.

This is the source of the mind/body problem for the dualist who has to explain why every time I have thought X, I have a neuronal event Y, but the two just happen to exist parellel to one another. — Hanover

True. You wouldn't think the two just accidentally track. :up:

Just about everybody agrees that the mental supervenes on the physical, which means that the only way for a mental state to change is for something physical to change. Disagreements arise regarding the form of necessity here. — frank

The interesting thing about a supervenience relation is that it's not a causal relationship. It's just telling us that there's some kind of ontological connection between two things. So when we say the mental supervenes on the physical, we're saying that if we had two humans who were identical in every way physically, they will necessarily have the same mental state.

In this, we haven't explained anything about why the two things are related in this way. We aren't necessarily being reductionist, for instance.

In the case of mental-physical supervenience, debate centers around whether this relationship is metaphysically necessary, which would mean we can't conceive a universe where this relation doesn't hold, or is it nomologically necessary, which means it holds by our laws of physics.

As with a lot of jargon, philosophical or otherwise, is "supervenience" really needed? What's wrong with "dependence?" I'm not saying there's no need for technical language at all, but when I was an engineer, I had to write for a technical audience but also be understandable by non-technical readers. — T Clark

I think one reason to use jargon is that it allows a bunch of unwieldy ideas to be carted out efficiently. So as I was reading about meaning normativism. The idea is that we can't have meaning without norms. But which came first? Is it that meaning norms are in force because expressions have meaning? Or do expressions have meaning because of related norms? A metaphysical look examines supervenience relations. The problem is: you can't really follow this kind of examination until you grasp the ins and outs of supervenience. :grimace:

And I can agree with that too. I’m not denying the skeptic’s argument. — Antony Nickles

:up:

There is no fact that ensures the extension of a concept into the future or a new context. — Antony Nickles

True, but the skeptical argument goes beyond that. When you communicated in the past, you weren't following any particular rule. Meaning does not arise from community rule following.

So this thread is now a message board for climate deniers to post whatever “thoughts” pop into their heads. :yawn: — Mikie

To begin, we must doubt everything including the concept of climate. Could be an evil demon tricking us!

Education is not needed when you already know everything — Agree to Disagree

True.

Everybody knows that the best way to solve global-warming/climate-change is to NOT get a good education. :sad: — Agree to Disagree

Nobody has time for education. :razz:

You mean you don’t want to get lectured about the basic physics of CO2 from a physics professor internet rando? — Mikie

Mikey, that was all stuff you should have learned in a high school biology class. I wonder about you sometimes. :confused:

We've already lost.

This is silly. — EricH

Ok. Have a wonderful day.

Right. So let's start with some common ground, ok?

There is a carbon cycle. When you eat, you take in carbon in the form of fats, carbohydrates, and protein. Your body decomposes and metabolizes these substances to create ATP. The use of ATP increases the amount of dissolved CO2 in your bloodstream, making your blood acidotic. Fairly quickly, the carbonic acid would screw up your heart and you'd die if your body didn't do something about this. In fact, it does two things: your kidneys buffer the acid with bicarb, and the CO2 dissolves out of your blood into the air in your lungs. You exhale the CO2 out and it travels around the atmosphere.

When you exhale, you're increasing the CO2 content in the atmosphere by a tiny bit. The partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere rises a little every time you breathe out. If it's summer time, the plants around you will absorb a fair amount of that CO2. Some will be absorbed by bodies of water and rocks. The rest will just float around.

Before we move on, do you agree with the above?

Thanks Frank, you have explained the situation better than I have. Many of the other people in this discussion are talking about a different issue to the one that I am talking about. — Agree to Disagree

:up:

Of course this is false and is contradicted by the evidence from every reliable source. — EricH

Could you give an example of that?

There are two subjects I'm going to branch off into, one is the reductive theory of meaning, and the other is normativity of meaning. So this thread is probably at an end for now. :yikes:

The answer is 42, I guess. — Dawnstorm

As always. :razz: