Of course you could impose one on yourself, but that you could change at whim. — Tobias

If you do what's right because you're trying to satisfy others, that's a lesser form of morality. If you do what's right because otherwise you'd let yourself down, that's the higher form.

l. They wanted Trump to be assassinated. — NOS4A2

I don't know about them, but I sure did.

Maybe I shouldn't have used "incorporeal," due to its past associations. I really just wanted to get at how these things exist in a way that is substrate independent and without any definite/discrete "body." A recession has existence within time, it begins and ends. I think cultures, along with their laws, do as well. "Minoan culture," doesn't exist anymore, although we can certainly point to it (same with material artefacts that no longer exist, e.g. the Twin Towers). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It sounds like you're most comfortable leaving the parameters of the issue fuzzy. You don't want reduction, you don't want obligation to reduce to personal feelings, which are mental objects, and you don't want it to be described by the established jargon of abstract object.

It's possible that your cup of tea would be the ordinary language philosophical approach. That way you don't really need to talk about anything metaphysical. The cost of that approach is mass confusion, though. Always the best ingredient of an interesting discussion, huh? :grin:

I feel like the right word for things like laws, recessions, culture, etc. would be "incorporeal" as in "lacking a specific body." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So you'd be ok saying they don't exist in corporeal form, wouldn't you? In a context where you detect that "exist" is being used to talk about corporeal entities, would you agree that they don't exist?

Likewise laws continue to exist regardless of whether anyone is thinking of them at any particular moment. It would seem weird to say they flit in and out of existence as they enter someone's mental awareness. "Japanese culture," would be the same way. It exists in mental awareness, in synapses, in artifacts of all sorts, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Incorporeal entities might be described as eternal, in that they don't age. We imagine that the law written in 1860 is the same law we have today. It hasn't changed at all. Nothing that exists in time is changeless in that way. One term that mathematicians use for this sort of entity is "abstract.". If it's incorporeal, but I can be wrong about it's properties, it's an abstract object. Are you cool with that language?

But for the person committed to reductive materialism it seems that "personal preference," cannot be were explanation stops. Why is personal preference what it is? Well here we are going to need to call in biology, psychology, economics, sociology, history, etc. People don't have the preferences they have for no reason at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For a reductive materialist, the explanation would have to stop wherever physics says it stops. Particles? Waves? Somewhere in there.

The driving assumption behind reductive explanations seems to generally be smallism, the idea that any facts about large scale things must be reducible to facts about smaller parts — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's because of discomfort with the idea that parts of the universe are alive and conscious. Seems like voodoo. As Tobias mentioned, it's a minority view at this point.

For one thing, laws themselves end up affecting history, sociology, psychology, etc. The influence is bidirectional. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does it interest you to ask what kind of thing a law is? You don't feel it must be reducible, you don't believe they're mental objects. What are they?

Even if they are reducible to something else, they certainly exist, and I think you'd be hard pressed to make a compelling argument that they reduce to "individual preferences," as some sort of unanalyzable primitive either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What do you think laws reduce to?

Yea, it's an epic like Star Wars where Trump is Luke Skywalker and his wife is the lady with the bobs on her ears so they can't be ripped off by stray bullets.

I know, right? It so feels that way to me too. I can like remember every detail so clearly. — Hanover

Every detail of what?

It was yesterday

I think obligation is something people feel sometimes. "He didn't want to go to the party, but he felt obligated.". Or it could be something that people in the area believe. "Most Americans believed he was obliged to resign.". It's just describing how people feel or attitudes they have.
— frank

There are of course multiple senses in which we use the word obliged. One indeed often feel obliged to do x. But consider the difference between these two sentences: "He felt obliged to go to the party" and "he was obliged to go to the party". They are not the same sentences, but in your account of obligation they are. That is because you think an obligation is subjective. The obligation though has an objective side to it. We are bound to certain acts and that bind we call an obligation. They arise out of certain procedures, being you signing a contract, or a legislator promulgating a law. — Tobias

I think we're just going to disagree here. I said earlier that what exists is people saying and doing things. The rest is feelings and ad hoc explanations. I was hoping you'd agree that obligation comes down to personal sentiment because we could finally explore the way the private language argument blasts away the veracity of the stories we tell about obligation. But instead, you're saying the binding is out there for all to see. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

It's been interesting and fun to talk with you. :smile:

The use of "I promise" over "I intend" is just to emphasise the strength of one's belief that it will happen. — Michael

Or it could come from an attempt to assure someone. Meaning depends on context.

I think it's probably context dependent. Noam Chomsky said "real" is like an honorific, just specifying that a certain thing is special. Promising can be like that for a declaration of intent.

I mean, the emphasis placed on putting things in writing shows that verbal announcements are of dubious value.

If that shot had been just a few inches to the right. :sad:

You could think of a promise as an act prolonged through time, just like the turning on of a light. — Leontiskos

I guess you could. I don't.

I guess you're asking what "obligation" is supposed to be adding to the act of uttering a promise.

It's a mind-dependent thingy.

I think obligation is something people feel sometimes. "He didn't want to go to the party, but he felt obligated.". Or it could be something that people in the area believe. "Most Americans believed he was obliged to resign.". It's just describing how people feel or attitudes they have.

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.
— frank

The question is, was she right? Of course I understand what she was saying. I also understand what it does when saying that. It was a way to get rid of social policy. I think that is always. Metaphysics, the question what is really real, is idle speculation. What we need to know is, what does ascribing 'reality' or 'existence' to a certain something do? The question is not 'does a promise exist'. — Tobias

I'm an ontological anti-realist. I don't believe the categories of physical, mental, and abstract should be cashed out as more than elements of a worldview. I take that a lot more seriously than most, but I'm still bound to pay attention to what my worldview says. It says mind-dependent items don't exist as any more than the shenanigans of the mind. Is that part of my worldview problematic? Sure. But my worldview grew organically out of the experiences of my kind. It's part of my foundation.

The 'I' that does things is also shaped by the institutions in which it exists. — Tobias

True. I'm conditioned by my environment, including the human world. Still, what exists is me and other individuals, not a phantom society. Don't jump to the conclusion that my take on Thatcher's comment is simple. My interest is in understanding the world. It's not a football game where I cheer for one side.

it's an element of intellectual life. So yes, they exist. In another sense, they don't.
— frank

If that is the conclusion I would think it merits some investigation in what you consider meaningful for existence. What does it matter for the existence of something to be an aspect of intellectual life? My hunch is that it is 'dirt and dunamis' as you put it in an earlier post. What advantage does it have to hold on to a position that cannot make sense of the distinction between rules of evidence and existence? — Tobias

My worldview says dirt and dynamos exist. A philosophical analysis will say we should probably deflate the concept of existence so that we don't run into problems denying the existence of things we can't do without. By and large, I think we're in agreement.

This kind of borderline freaks me out every time I watch it. Look especially for when the muzzle starts receding until the lips are actually behind the nose.

I think promises are for societies where people lie all the time. If you make an oath, you're signaling that you're telling the truth for a change. Otherwise, there's no difference between giving a promise and just doing as Jesus advised, "let your yes mean yes:"

Mattew 5:33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago: Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord.[d] 34 But I say to you that you must not pledge at all. You must not pledge by heaven, because it’s God’s throne. 35 You must not pledge by the earth, because it’s God’s footstool. You must not pledge by Jerusalem, because it’s the city of the great king. 36 And you must not pledge by your head, because you can’t turn one hair white or black. 37 Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one."

Too bad that the implementation of the whole process has proven fragile/vulnerable; — jorndoe

But another thing people forget is that the vaccine was revolutionary. The massive pile of cash coming in to fund it from governments and rich guys was amazing. I really wonder what a socialist world would have done. I'd like to think the freedom to go with a crazy solution would exist there, but I don't know.

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?