• Identification of properties with sets
    Then she is mistaken. Or has been misread.
    It does not matter how we specify the set, or how we order its members, or indeed how many times we count its members. All that matters are what its members are.
    — Set Theory An Open Introduction
    Banno

    I stumbled over this same issue, so you're not alone, but you're wrong. In the club metaphor, the set is the membership list, not the members themselves.

    A set is an abstract object. That's the part you have to get in order to understand set theory.
  • Identification of properties with sets
    Nuh. The set is the teachers. The criteria are not the set.Banno

    nope. Read Mary Tiles' book on set theory. The club metaphor is from her book.
  • Identification of properties with sets
    Identical" is defined extensionally by substitution. I hope we agree that there is nothing more to the set {a, b, c} than a and b and c, no additional "setness" in the way RussellA supposed by adding his box.Banno

    A set is not its elements. Imagine a club that all teachers automatically belong to, by virtue of being teachers. The set is this membership criteria, not the actual teachers. A set is an abstract object.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body

    My comment on your argument is that direct experience is inviolate. If you experienced X, you experienced X. If you deny that, you'll end up in the middle of a reality crisis after you've realized you have no criteria for determining what's real and what isn't. To keep your bearings, you hold to your direct experience on pain of being tortured to death.

    On the other hand, explanations for your experiences should, at least to some degree, be in flux. You may have your pet theory that explains your experiences, but you should hold out the possibility that new information will appear and revolutionize everything you believe, so direct experience is the center of your universe. Explanations orbit and possibly explode if they're disproved.
  • Climate Change

    Look for information about what the world will be like in 2100. For instance, much of the Middle east will have become uninhabitable, with human life only possible near the coasts...
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Oh, word?AmadeusD

    Word to your mother.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Obviously not.AmadeusD

    I discussed it with the world the other day and it said it definitely hates Israel.
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    It's very common, as in you are walking on the street a fellow civilian gets hit by a rock or bitten by a dog - whatever. Or you find him injured and he says his leg hurts, you may either see an injury or assume the pain is not visible to the eye. You don't doubt he is in pain.Manuel

    Right. I think my point might be too obscure. Let me tell a story.

    I was once sitting in a cafe and I found myself becoming agitated and angry. I couldn't pinpoint why. But I eventually realized what it was: without consciously registering it, I was looking at a man with an angry look on his face. I realized I'd experienced empathy that wasn't mediated at all by the intellect. There was just: anger, and I thought it was mine, but it wasn't. I was experiencing this other guy's feelings as if they were my own.

    My point is, all this about distinguishing my feelings from someone's else's: that's all higher level intellectual functioning which attends to identifying threats, and so manages things like motive and my feelings versus yours.

    Without the intellect setting out borders and providing explanations, there is just emotion. It doesn't belong to anybody. It's just there. Does that make sense?
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    That's why it's not particularly puzzling why - when someone has a broken leg, or even a cut and say, "it hurts", we understand what they mean, because that's what we would say if we were in a similar situation.Manuel

    Just thinking it through, but what if you say "it hurts" in certain situations because you're a natural born mimic? Over time, you learn to associate certain actions with certain feelings, but you have no language for the feelings other than what you learned from copying? Like this:

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8wTmSIbGsIA
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    It is a first-person phenomenon, so-called experience, that anything with the ability to experience knows what it is like to have such a certain experience rather than other experiences, given what you are, where you are, etc.MoK

    I came the same conclusion. If you tried to say anything about what's unique about your own experience, it would be a description of your history and present location.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    That reminds me of the way the parts of a single sentence gain meaning relative to one another, even though it's expressed sequentially. In the middle of expressing a sentence, you may have a sense of freedom, the ability to say anything, but the beginning of the sentence limits the ways it can end. Toward the end, the possibilities narrow down to just one. At the end, there is no freedom, and the constraints are coming from the imperative to say something meaningful, and meaning is fundamentally holistic.

    I wonder if that idea about sentences could be generalized to cover all of thought.
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    I cannot seem to fathom how we can appreciate time without partially transcending it.I like sushi

    I understand what you're saying. My theory is that the conception of time is related to anticipation. Agriculture creates anticipation throughout the year: farmers plant around the spring equinox, they wait all summer to see how the crop will do, they harvest around the fall equinox, and then wait all winter for the next spring.

    All of that requires being relatively stationary. You can't be nomadic and farm, and being stationary is how people were first able to mark out the solar calendar.

    As you say, if you're looking at the whole calendar, your vantage point seems to be outside of the passage of time, in some eternal spot.
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    Cool. I see he quotes Schopenhauer, so I approve.
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    Yes. Do you know Galen Strawson's book, Consciousness and Its Place in Nature? A very good argument for the plausibility of panpsychism.J

    I haven't. Does he talk about the problem of other minds?
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    And if you've been following my discussion with Wayfarer, you see that not everyone agrees on exactly how to characterize the hard problem. I read Chalmers as saying it's a scientific problem, hard but potentially solvable through scientific inquiry. Whereas I think Wayfarer sees Chalmers as being closer to the New Mysterian position of McGinn and others.J

    Wayfarer is mistaken. Chalmers is non-mysterian. He thinks that in order to create a scientific theory of consciousness, we need to posit first-person data as an explicandum, in much the same way gravity was posited by Newton without any accompanying theory. A mysterian would say any such project is hopeless from the start.

    Chalmers has talked about pan-psychism as exemplifying the kind of theory we might start with: just accepting that consciousness is a property of our little universe, and go from there.

    Our worldview tends to say that intrinsic perspective (or subjective experience), is located in isolated pockets, inside skulls? Mine is separated from yours by a region of air. Could you see yourself questioning that assumption?
  • Edward Scissorhands? Are they scissors really?
    Does that make his thumbs scissorsflannel jesus

    :lol: Edward ScissorThumbs.
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    I have a friend who's coined the term "The Impossible Problem" to describe this wrinkle in the Hard Problem. (And yes, Wayfarer, this is the very same question we're examining from different angles in the other thread.) My friend means the problem of actually experiencing another person's consciousness. Why does this seem impossible? It creates a dilemma: If I experience your consciousness as myself doing so, that is clearly not what it's like for you -- there's no observer or alien presence for you. But if I don't do this, and instead simply have your experience (how? but that's a different question), then I haven't experienced it -- my "I" is not present to do any experiencing. Either way, it doesn't seem possible that I can ever know what it is to be you (leaving aside the somewhat ambiguous "what it's like".)J

    We're talking about the most simple, center of everything sort of experience, like the ITT theory graphic:
    check it out.

    Let's call it the intrinsic perspective (for lack of another name?). Schopenhauer speculated that there is only one of these, and it's universal, each person thinks they own it. So Schopenhauer would agree with your friend, not because I don't have access to that most basic level of consciousness, but because if I could "download" your experiences, I might balk at the parts I'm not prepared to deal with. You don't balk because you're use to it. So right there, I'm not experiencing you as you. So here, the definition of self is about a certain history rather than raw intrinsic perspective, right?

    I have more questions about how you think this relates to the hard problem.
  • Edward Scissorhands? Are they scissors really?
    do you call two knives "scissors" just because you momentarily rub them against each other?flannel jesus

    I could use "scissor" as a verb for rubbing blades against each other:

    The chef accidentally scissored his thumb, turning the salad pink.

    So if you scissor something, it would involve... scissors?
  • Edward Scissorhands? Are they scissors really?

    Virtual fulcrum? Couldn't he slide the blades against each other such that a point in space is a fulcrum, but it's not permanent?
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    stock market is up 6%.RogueAI

    That's coming from expectation of the Fed dropping interest rates in September. But the CPI is up, so we may not get it.

    I think the other factor is that people have been expecting a recession since before Trump was elected, and it's never come, so it's a boy cried wolf situation.

    But yea, the notion that everything has gone to shit is just clearly in conflict with reality.
  • Knowing what it's like to be conscious
    As mad as it may sound the only 'reasonable' conclusion I can come to is something about consciousness is atemporal.I like sushi

    Why do you say that?
  • The End of Woke


    Two sad people having a really sad discussion about a really sad topic. This is why woke died. :sad:
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    globalization has already happened in whatever ways. Goods-versus-bads is apparently a hot topic in some circles. Blanket globophobia is a wee immature, though.jorndoe

    Globalization isn't going to survive climate change, and that's actually underway now. Get with the times.

    Distrust in Trump's US doesn't mean mutual distrust throughout (if that's what you were seeing); in fact, it can lead to increased cooperation/collaboration/bonding elsewhere.jorndoe

    That's great.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    “The United States’ policy approach could support continued investment in the U.S. manufacturing sector,” says Jim Kilpatrick, former global Supply Chain & Network Operations leader for Deloitte Consulting LLP and a partner with Deloitte Canada. “It could also drive a notable shift in supply chain strategy by prioritizing reshoring while potentially altering recent nearshoring and global sourcing trends.”

    U.S. manufacturers import a variety of products, parts, and raw materials from around the world, and supplemental tariffs levied on these items could affect supply chain strategies as organizations manage costs and potential supply chain shifts.

    “Economically viable opportunities for reshoring production to the U.S. are likely to be higher-value, complex products with strict quality standards, produced with technologically advanced, higher-capital-intensity processes, and a workforce with higher-level skills,” says Kate Hardin, a managing director with Deloitte Services LP.
    WSJ
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)

    That's your boy retaliating because someone said he was ignorant.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)

    The idea that there ought to be "trust" between countries is a leftover from the Cold War. Those days are gone.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    The real problem in the US is in income distribution, not globalizationssu

    They're both problematic. At least we don't have to worry about being invaded by Russia.
  • Why not AI?
    If those posts are of better quality than us humans here (and they probably would be), isn't human philosophical discussion a bit of mockery?RogueAI

    But aren't AI generated posts constructed out of recorded human expressions? It would be a complex kind of plagiarism.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Are you actually in the shower curtain business?

    No. Your whole issue is a thought experiment. Yet if you would link to an article on how the shower curtain business is actually making great advances again in Michigan (or where ever), then there would be more credibility to your argument.
    ssu

    You seem a little hostile about this. What I told you is just a fact. American labor has been competing with foreign labor for decades, and that was by design. It was to cripple American labor unions. It worked. I did provide you with an interview in which the leader of the United Auto Workers labor union stated that the tariffs were a good idea, and he voted for Harris, not Trump. He was just stating the obvious.

    Sticking to your party line in a country where the both parties are at fault of this mess, that I don't get.ssu

    My party line? By nature I lean toward progressive.

    It doesn't once occur to you that autocracies start with giving the people what they want and need. You've rendered yourself blind.
    — frank
    Rooting now for autocracies, Frank?

    On a philosophy forum? Or being ironic?
    ssu

    No, I'm just aware that autocratic-minded individuals flocked to Trump when he was running his second campaign. They came ready to transform the US government and the military into loyalist entities, and they accomplished that. I'm aware that the Vice President favors autocracy and he will most likely be the next president. I'm aware that the last realistic opposition to Trump is the SCOTUS, and he has stated that he doesn't think their rulings matter.

    None of this means the US is bound to lurch toward autocracy right now. But it's very likely. A factor that makes it more likely is if Trump gives American voters what they want in the form of temporary tax breaks.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Whatever you say.Mr Bee

    Darn tootin'

    I really don't think it had to do with tariffs. It's too soon. Sarcasm is for people who are having a shitty life.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    It's hard for me to folllow what his actual plans are if there even are any, but if I recall wasn't this entire thing just to bring back manufacturing to the US? That isn't happening thus far: US manufacturing extends slump; factory employment lowest in 5 yearsMr Bee

    A friend of mine lives in an area that just landed a fairly large commercial jet manufacturer. Supposedly they'll be making about 20 jets per month, which kind of blew my mind. I doubt that has anything to do with the tariffs, though.
  • Why not AI?
    Obviously, you've never seen Battlestar Gallactica.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)

    A year ago, if I wanted to start a shower curtain business, my only option would be to make high end ones for a niche market. I couldn't compete with imports to make regular ones.

    Now, with tariffs, I can. I can hire workers, reinvest profits to expand into faucets, and eventually bathtubs. I hire more people, reinvest, and the next thing you know, there are fewer fentanyl addicts in my community because there are good jobs for them.

    You don't want to see this because you're totally bound to anti-Trump. It doesn't once occur to you that autocracies start with giving the people what they want and need. You've rendered yourself blind.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Now just ask yourself, is truly a huge drop in imports something that makes Americans better off?ssu

    It will help a lot of Americans, yes.