This is painfully bad commentary but as you are Catholic, it is unsurprising. — AmadeusD

It saddens that the comment came from a Catholic instead of a Protestant, but by reading his introduction he is not actually Catholic, just a tradcath/orthobro without eucharisty or sacramental confirmation — I guessed as much when I read "United States".

Most atheists I know found the famous four fairly underwhelming as thinkers, more like good polemicists — Tom Storm

Even though that is true, I don't think it is bad. Those polemicists are still leagues better than any apologetics hacks like WL Craig and that dude who hammered his father's head and uses it as a talking point.

I was just stating that I can find no way to explain how it would be possible for one point on the wheel's circumference to to be traveling at a different speed to another point on the circumference. That just cannot happen. — Sir2u

The tire is spinning at the same speed as the car (v). The angular speed is v/r where r is the radius of the tire. That is how the car moves.
A point in the left or right side of the tire is not only moving at the same speed as the car, because the car is moving, but it is also going up or down. A point on the top is moving twice the speed of the car because not only is it part of the moving car, it is also spinning towards the direction of movement of the car, so it goes twice the speed in relation to the ground. A point on the bottom of the wheel is at speed 0 in relation to the floor because the speed of it spinning and the speed of the car cancel out, giving 0.
That is only about instantaneous speed.

But we can always add to that the speed of rotation of the earth, the speed of orbit of the earth, the speed of the sun orbiting the Milky Way. — Sir2u

We can't because it is completely irrelevant.

We should approach all topics available for scientific inquiry as if the goal is further reduction to physics. — frank

Isn't that already the case ontologically? We know that chemical laws boil down to physical laws, and that biology ultimately goes down to chemistry. We don't use physics to study biology because biological systems are too complex to track each molecular interaction (methodology), but nonetheless we are aware that, physically, biological phenomenons are derived from physics.

I will try to organise it as much as TPF-ly possible. We are dealing with metaphysical and logical possibilities only, not physical possibilities.

P is the proposition "body can act on mind". It is simply saying that bodies can interfere with minds somehow, nothing beyond that.
M is the metaphysical framework of parallelism, a dualist theory in which there are two substances, mind and body, and the two cannot interact with each other, mind can only act on mind and body on body.
M has at least two axioms:
A = "body can only act on body"
B = "mind can only act on mind"
From A, B, and the laws of logic, we can derive several theorems, but the only ones that matter for us are:
T = "body cannot act on mind"
U = "mind cannot act on body"

P is a logically possible statement.
P is a metaphysically possible statement — indeed it is, in the dualist doctrines of epiphenomenalism and interactivism.

So where is the metaphysical impossibility? Well, it can only arrive if we state M ∧ P, I don't see any other way. But because M→(A∧B) and (A→T)∧(B→U) and T→¬P entail M→¬P, M ∧ P is a logical impossibility too.

"Shakespeare:
If only I were not as fat and ugly and uncreative"
— Lionino

In this example, it is logically possible that X but actually impossible that X; but according to your reasoning actual impossibility would collapse into logical impossibility: which does not happen here. — Bob Ross

Yes, I agreed to that. X is not logically impossible, (X ^ P) is logically impossible.

Note 1: When we say "physically", we are already talking from within a framework, which are the known laws of physics.
When we say "metaphysically", there is no framework assumed so far, as we have not said which metaphysics we are operating under.

Which, what they would want to say in this case is that, !(Y ^ X) ^ Y → !X. P, in this case, does not produce a logical contradiction with X such that X ^ !X but, rather, that X ‘violates’ the law of gravity, which Y, and posits if that is true than it is “incoherent”, albeit not logically contradictory, with X. It is perfectly logically validly to posit that “a human being can fly” and “’a human being can fly’ violates the law of gravity”: nothing logically wrong with that.

I think you are conflating the logical impossibility of someone accepting X outside of the theory logically contradicting the theory (i.e., !{X ^ [P → !X] }) with the theory itself demonstrating the logical impossibility of positing X. — Bob Ross

Sorry, I am having lots of trouble with these two paragraphs, some sentences are not understandable.

It is perfectly logically validly to posit that “a human being can fly” and “’a human being can fly’ violates the law of gravity”: nothing logically wrong with that. — Bob Ross

Right. I understand what you mean. That {stating a proposition P that breaks some framework F} and {stating that P breaks F} is not a logical contradiction, it is simply a proposition and an account of the facts, fair. However stating P and F is a logical contradiction.

We go back to your original comment:

Metaphysical impossibility is any proposition which violates the presupposed metaphysical theory, no different than how actual/physical possibility is predicated on our scientific theories. — Bob Ross

Likewise, stating P "minds can interact with bodies" and J "P violates parallelism" is not a logical contradiction. However neither of these statements lead to a metaphysical impossibility. J is simply a valid statement. But stating P and parallelism is a logical contradiction, in virtue of J.

In this example, it is logically possible that X but actually impossible that X; but according to your reasoning actual impossibility would collapse into logical impossibility: which does not happen here. — Bob Ross

My reasoning is in fact that metaphysical impossibility collapses with logical impossibility. Physical impossibility does not collapse with anything for me.

1. X is logically possible and is logically possible relative to the axioms and inferences of P. — Bob Ross

Fine.

3. X is actually possible, since you defined it as a “non-physical thing”, as it does not violate the laws of nature, being above nature itself. — Bob Ross

I would not say so because it does not reference physics at all, but it is not really important because this thread does not really discuss physical possibility unless for illustrative purposes, so I will move on.

2. X is metaphysically impossible, because there is at least one proposition, Y, in P that is incoherent with X such that !(Y ^ X) ^ Y → !X. — Bob Ross

Here I think the issue lies. X is metaphysically impossible. But what does that mean? It is impossible because it violates a metaphysical proposition. Here, we are clearly talking about physicalism. When we accept physicalism, we state all its axioms (from A1 to An), and all its theorems (from T1 to Tn); the theorems derive from the axioms. Y is either a an axiom or a theorem here, since it is in P as you say. Unless we state P, we cannot talk about the metaphysical impossibility of X. Before we state P, X remains metaphysically possible. Throwback to Note 1.
Therefore, we are stating P. We are also stating X. Thus, we are stating P and X. As I demonstrated here:

If we then choose physicalism as a metaphysical system M, we are affirming M, which implies affirming all its axioms (A1, A2, A3... An) and consequently from the axioms its theorems (T1, T2, T3). Therefore, by choosing physicalism, we state A1 "there are only physical things", A1 due to the laws of logic can be rewritten to "there are no non-physical things". So, by stating P "there is a spiritual thing" — which due to the definition of these words can be rewritten to "there is a non-physical thing" — we are denying A1. We end up with A1 and notA1, or P and notP, which is a logical contradiction. — Lionino

it entails logical contradiction.

Of course, only stating "X" and "X violates P" is not a logical contradiction, it is fine. But the goal of the thread was to find something logically possible and metaphysically impossible. X violating P is not a metaphysical impossibility; not only is it possible but it is also necessary. And X by itself is not a metaphysical impossibility because we have not yet stated a system (P) that denies it.

a physicalistic theory, P, that demonstrates some incoherence with the theory and X such that !X — Bob Ross

A physicalist theory P that demonstrates some incoherence with itself? I don't understand.

Anything we can justifiably believe. We navigate the world based on beliefs we hold about the world that aren't strictly provable. It can't even be proven there's a world external to our minds. — Relativist

We could draw a distinction between things we believe to be true and things we don't believe to be true, but act as if it is true due to its productivity — free will is a big one for determinists.
Many people somewhat hold a nihilistic view of fatalism, where our lives are inherently meaningless, but many of those 'many people' still don't turn to hedonism; so they act as if nihilism is not true, even though they believe it is. You may call that cognitive dissonance, but hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That is true. But Bob's statement was in reference to my argument that metaphysical impossibility collapses with logical impossibility. So just bringing up logical impossibilities sort of turns Bob's claim into a moot point. Maybe we can wait for his reply.

I don't even think that all propositions which are regarded as metaphysically impossible are reducible to an axiom in the metaphysical theory.
— Bob Ross
I agree. — Relativist

What would be an example of something that is metaphysically impossible but does not reference the axioms of the operating metaphysical system?

It may also be motivated by the naive assumption we should only believe things that can be "proven". — Relativist

What other things should we believe in?

I just don't think that 'going against one of the theorems [or beliefs or statements]" in M entails necessarily a logical contradiction — Bob Ross

Because for me, that is the only way to definitely go against the theorems. Other ways, such as short or long hair, are debatable and not definitive. The burden of proof would therefore be on the person who claims that there is a way to categorically oppose a theorem (nothing that is up to opinion) besides stating something that logically contradicts it.



To use physicalism as an example as well, my point, which I originally used epiphenomenalism for, runs around this:
A spiritual being is logically possible. :up:
A spiritual being is metaphysically possible. :chin:
A spiritual being is physically possible. :down:

We are able to make judgements about the first and third because we know what the laws of physics and the laws of logic are. The second requires the question of what the laws of metaphysics are. Until we define what metaphysical system we are operating under, we don't know what laws that would be (unless we find metaphysical laws that apply to every metaphysical system). If we then choose physicalism as a metaphysical system M, we are affirming M, which implies affirming all its axioms (A1, A2, A3... An) and consequently from the axioms its theorems (T1, T2, T3). Therefore, by choosing physicalism, we state A1 "there are only physical things", A1 due to the laws of logic can be rewritten to "there are no non-physical things". So, by stating P "there is a spiritual thing" — which due to the definition of these words can be rewritten to "there is a non-physical thing" — we are denying A1. We end up with A1 and notA1, or P and notP, which is a logical contradiction.

So, to summarise, my argument is that as soon as we choose a metaphysical system, which will have its own semantic system (such as equating "all that exists" and "physical things"), the metaphysical impossibility collapses with logical impossibility. Giving us no way of finding something logically possible but metaphysically impossible.

Are good looking people nicer than average looking people, or are good looking people less nice than average looking people? — Agree-to-Disagree

In my opinion, fat people tend to be quite gleeful and nice, though not always of course.
But on the other hand, generally-ugly people tend to hold a certain sort of resentment towards beautiful people, that beautiful people usually don't show; this resentment leads to some ugliness of character.

the part at the top travels at the same speed — Sir2u

If you are considering linear speed, yes. If you are considering instantaneous speed in relation to the floor. Not only is there speed that comes from the cars movement, but from the tire going around itself.

You define knowing as "most rational conclusion" and your "knowing" can be utterly changed if new evidence is introduced. — mentos987

The distinction seems to be originating from the presupposed theory of truth that each one holds.

I see, by incoherent it seems you mean something that degenerates information within that proposition, even it is not contradictory.

With that in mind, I will reply to your post before this.

Secondly, you threw a curveball here because you posited !X as itself simply affirmed in M, so, of course, affirming M ^ X leads to a logical contradiction (in this case) — Bob Ross

It might be a curveball yes but it was what I was originally struggling to express.

However, it is important to note that the logical contradiction here does not lead to X being logically impossible, it leads us to X ^ !X being logically impossible — Bob Ross

Right.

No this is a logical contradiction, not a non-logical contradiction or incoherence — Bob Ross

We agree then :grin:

This is because M ^ X leads to a logical contradiction which is only due to the fact that one also affirms M which leads to !X—so X is not logically impossible but, rather, it is logically impossible for it to be true that M ^ X in this case because it can be expanded to [M → !X] ^ X. — Bob Ross

Which was what I was trying to express, though in a more simplified and lax manner, when I said that "In S, P is logically impossible", which point conceded, it is not impossible as P is consistent, but indeed that "that S and P are true is logically impossible". Which ties to my point about a specific metaphysics (the second last paragraph).

I understand that [M → !X] ^ X and (M → Y) ^ !(Y ^ X) are different. But, if Y = !X, I believe that one implies the other, meaning ((M → ¬X) ∧ X) → ((M → ¬X) ∧ ¬(X ∧ ¬X)).
I think the issue of the matter is what Y would be, and therefore how Y could oppose X. My argument is exactly that we can only know !(Y ^ X) if there is a contradiction in terms between Y and X, (X ∧ ¬X) extending from (X ∧ Y), and thus the only meaningful type of contradiction is logical contradiction, instead of incoherence. Using your example, whether hair is long or short is relative to one's opinion, and even to the circumstances on which it will be judged. Maybe we disagree on this issue, I do operate under a somewhat nominalistic mindset.

When we choose a certain metaphysics M, a statement that goes against it, for me, would be a statement that goes against one of the theorems of that metaphysics (t.i. logical contradiction), and assuming that every theorem of M ultimately goes back to the axioms of M, we would have (X ∧ ¬X) extending from (X ∧ Y) extending from (X ∧ M).

I hope my argumentation was sound and understandable.

Yes. Consider the logical touchstone of analytic truth. If x is red then x is coloured. Its analyticity derives from the metaphysical reality of the species-genus relationship. If you denude a proposition of all connection to this categorical content, you are left with a purely formal construct that has no meaning. — Pantagruel

Perfectly and elegantly put :ok:

You know it when you see it.

It's just hard to put it into exact, systematic, interpersonally verifiable concepts. — baker

:up: :ok:

It is about repeatedly (though not always) confirmed personal experience.

How do you see "Doesn't know" as different from "unknowing"? Aren't they the same thing? — Philosophim

My implication is that the word 'agnostic' does not imply anything about god automatically, it is only in the discussion of philosophy (of religion) that it acquires this special meaning.

Agnostic - Doesn't know if God exists or not — Philosophim

That is not what agnostic means, agnostic means unknowing.
In any case, I think my answer in particular back in page 2 fully addresses the problem :^) (I hope this one self-promotion does not break the rules)

Finally! You just admitted French is Latin. :smile: — javi2541997

Haha I never denied it!

French is Latin, but aged.

which is the legitimate etymology of that term — Wayfarer

I don't understand why you keep repeating this over and over, it is weirdly funny. You are not Latin. You are French.

[i.e., M entails a proposition, Y, which is incoherent, but not necessarily logically contradictory, with X]. In this form, it is clear that something could be metaphysically impossible yet logically possible, because Y ^ X is not a logical contradiction; instead, the argument rests on the idea that Y strongly, in a non-logical sense, opposes X. — Bob Ross

I am not sure what you mean by incoherent here, given its many meanings, and also "opposes". Can you define it and give an example?

An example is 'alienate' coined in the 16th century. — BC

Alienate is French, as evidenced by the -e ending, and the word already existed in Latin.

I don't have a problem saying that Latin came into English through French — BC

You shouldn't, because French is English's mama.
Besides, little of what you said connects to my original statement.

:up:

I wouldn’t say that metaphysical impossible is derived solely from the semantics of M but, rather, the underlying meaning associated with those semantics. Semantics is just the analysis of words, not its underlying contents. — Bob Ross

Can you elaborate on this? I am not sure what you mean by underlying contents or underlying meaning, as something that could be beyond semantics. Do you mean the relationship of that semantic content with other semantemas?

It will always be logically possible so long as the logic has no contradiction in it — Bob Ross

But does it not have a contradiction? When I say X violates the laws of M, I mean that the proposition X is the opposite of one of the laws of M. So basically, by stating M, we state all its axioms, and by definition of X, one of its axioms would be ¬X. By stating X and M, we entail a logical contradiction therefore, no? Because we are stating X∧¬X.

No. “In S, light goes faster than c” is logically possible because the logic, if generated within a truth table, does not result in every result being false — Bob Ross

Likewise, by stating P "light is faster than c" and S, one of whose theorems are "the speed of light is not faster than c", do we not fall in contradiction by implicitly stating P and ¬P when we say S and P?

I am not sure I followed this part, so I can’t really comment. — Bob Ross

I know, that part was jumbled and it skipped part of the explanation, I have edited it but I don't think it changes much.

By the way, I feel like I have been using a more liberal definition of logical contradiction than other posters here, who seem to be using a strict definition that keeps itself to the syntaxis of an explicit P∧¬P, while I am using a definition that also talks about whether one of the premises of a statement contradicts the other statement. Maybe that is what you mean by underlying contents, though I am not 100% sure. To put it in Socratic terms:
People seem to say that:
"Socrates is a human" and "Socrates is a reptile" is not a logical contradiction.
While I am saying that:
It is a contradiction because every human is a non-reptile (because they are mammals), so saying "Socrates is a human" and "Socrates is a reptile" extends to saying "Socrates is a non-reptile" and "Socrates is a reptile", which is the same as Socrates is X and not X.
In syllogism:
P1 Socrates is a human
P2 Every human is a non-reptile
C Socrates is a non-reptile
P3 (C) Socrates is a non-reptile
P4 Socrates is a reptile
It seems people are saying that P1 and P4 do not contradict, which is fair, but for me P1 and P4 do because P3 and P4 do and P3 comes from P1 through P2.
I believe that both are valid, depending on how lax the definition of logical contradiction is.
Maybe that clears up some misunderstandings, and poor Socrates, transmutating paradoxically through species.

I don't think that "atheist about" is even something grammatically correct. The adjective "atheist" is not like "curious" that allows for a nominal complement (I am curious about something), but rather like "hungry" (I am hungry about). The preposition "about" typically does not even go with adjectives, but rather with verbs and nouns.

More than good or bad looks, I have the feeling, aided by personal experience, that you can determine someone's personality from their face alone. Obviously, it is not fail-proof and not fully accurate, but someone's physiognomy tells you more about someone than ten minutes of conversation —or so I think.

'Spirit' comes from the Latin word 'to breathe.' What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. — Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Should I be a smart-ass and disprove Carl Sagan? Ahh, I will resist the urge this time.

Eve's disobedience warped reality, changed the laws of physics, changed the genomes of some herbivores so much that they turned into carnivores, spawned harmful bacteria and viruses, and turned the sun from a spiked yellow ball with a baby's face on its center into a nuclear reactor that powers Earth's ecosystems but also gives you cancer.

– Anonymous

According to trusty Wikipedia: — Luke

Trusty yes.

The whole statement "I am an atheist about the Christian god" is extremely weird, it is like saying "I am vegetarian about beef" but then stuffing your mouth with chicken. You are not vegetarian then, you just don't eat beef for whatever reason, there is no being "vegetarian about". Describing a Christian as an atheist when it comes to Hindu gods is not only weird but an inappropriate stretch of the meaning of words (so unhelpful that we speak English and not French or German). Someone who does not believe in the God of any religion is simply irreligious.

Seems to me it's not a very accurate list. No mention of the Covid pandemic for example. — universeness

The pandemic was barely talked about in 2023.

Contrary to most people, I do think that outside beauty can to some extent reflect inside beauty. However it can also reflect other things, such as narcissism.

it deems logically impossible, but what appears from the vantage of that metaphysics as unintelligible, senseless and incoherent — Joshs

Aren't those the same thing?

Metaphysical impossibility is any proposition which violates the presupposed metaphysical theory, no different than how actual/physical possibility is predicated on our scientific theories — Bob Ross

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the overly long reply, I don't believe I will even get a reply, but it basically summarises the thread so far.
It is a good point that you drive, and we brought that up in the thread before with the example of epiphenomenalism:

For instance, in the metaphysics of epiphenomenalism it is impossible that consciousness could alter its constituency of brain via the choices consciousness makes, this despite such top-down process being logically possible all the same — javra

I then replied whether in that scenario metaphysical possibility collapses with logical possibility due to the semantics of the metaphysical system:

But I kept the doubt in mind: is it not a matter of semantics even then? Because in epiphenomenalism, the mental changing the material is impossible within that metaphysics. But in epiphenomenalism, isn't the inability to change the material part of the definition of what is mental? And thus the mental changing the material becomes a logical contradiction within that metaphysics? Maybe that discussion ultimately boils down to some analytic X synthetic distinction, but I am eager to hear your take on it. — Lionino

To which javra astutely replied:

Each metaphysical system will then galvanize its own semantics — javra

To deprive epiphenomenalism of the impossibility of mind affecting matter is to then nullify the entirety of the metaphysical webbing of understandings which epiphenomenalism is. This, were it to occur, would then leave a vacuum of explanatory power and, hence, of general understanding, for all those that previously upheld the metaphysics of epiphenomenalism. — javra

This being a longer path toward saying that I fully agree metaphysical differences can be said to boil down to semantics. I’d only add that, for one example, the particular semantic of “mind” in the case of epiphenomenalism appears to me inextricably bound into the entire webbing of semantics—of logic- and physicality-bound understandings—which this one metaphysics in fact is, if not merely being a webbing of understandings from which this metaphysics is constituted — javra

So, basically, when we say, it is metaphysically impossible for something to happen in a metaphysical system, we are saying, given a metaphysical system M and a proposition X, "In M, X is impossible", it seems that whether X is possible or not boils down to the semantics of M, that is, whether some of the properties or consequences of X are in contradiction to the axioms of M, making untrue analytic statements.

I guess you could say the same about physical statements, in a sense. But the issue is that the laws of physics are given to us through the scientific method, while metaphysical laws are not, each person has their own metaphysical views.
Let S be the system where "the speed of light is c" is an axiom — and a physical statement. Then the statement P1 "In S, light goes faster than c" is logically impossible, but P2 "Light goes faster than c" is logically possible, because there is nothing about light that necessitates its speed (as we know, light goes slower in different mediums), but physically impossible (because our definition of physically possible automatically draws from our current laws of physics). Hence we end up with statements that are either logically possible and physically impossible (P2), or logically and physically impossible (P1).

On the issue of metaphysics, however, for a metaphysical system M and a self-consistent proposition X that violates the laws of that system, "In M, X" seems to be logically impossible, as I explored in the previous paragraph with physics as an example, while "It is the case that X" is a logically possible statement, because nothing about X is internally contradicting, but we cannot evaluate whether that statement is metaphysically possible or impossible because we haven't established what the laws of metaphysics are — we could only say so if we established a law that has to be true in every metaphysical system, which is something I explore in this comment. So in the case of epiphenomenalism, we end up always with a logically impossible statement, and outside of epiphenomenalism or any metaphysical system, with a logically possible statement that has no evaluation in metaphysics yet. No statement that is both logically possible and metaphysically impossible.

I hope this post was not jumbled and that it was understandable to you, as I think you drive a good point that suffers from the issue I posed above. Maybe I made some grammar mistakes or skipped a word which made a sentence unintelligible; tell me so, so I can fix it.

This is only possible for a logic that is is purely syntactical — Pantagruel

Agreed.

I wasn't expecting to find lookism here. Good stuff.
Unfortunately the OP has been banned, and I did not find a reason why on Bannings thread :eyes:

Yeah, I remember it used to show up all the time back in 2015-2020 in other corners of the internet as well, now not so much.
I would gladly start one, but I would rather have someone with more knowledge on this specific topic do it instead so I don't make a one-liner thread. Maybe I will bring it to the shoutbox.

But I don't understand when an atheist say I don't believe in "God". Because it already presupposes there is only one singular definition to which they refer. Their own one.
But this doesn't apply to everyone's concept of it. — Benj96

When an atheist says they don't believe in god they are saying they don't believe in any supernatural, personal mind that is outside of space and time, be that mind according to Christian or Hindu theology.

This isn't to say you can't have philosophical discussions about maths problems - like 0.999... = 1 can get into potential vs actual infinity and whether the limit construction in analysis actually represents the concept of infinity. Which makes the OP less philosophy adjacent than 0.999... = 1 — fdrake

Have we ever had a thread about that? I think 0.9̄=1 is quite the interesting topic in philosophy of mathematics.

except I think that "confused" is not the same as not bothering with fully knowing the meaning of a world before using it — mentos987

We could argue about the meaning of the word 'confused', but that would be going full circle in this discussion in an ironic fashion.

Well I was talking about OP and he says he is 40 years old. I dont know who rossi is.