But you are expecting more from common sense than it will deliver. — Ludwig V

I don't know, my common sense has delivered to me consistently.

But it doesn't follow that it is common sense to everyone. — Ludwig V

Well, yeah. Democratisation of knowledge wasn't the best blessing to this world. Now we have literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers to prove their case when they don't even know what a p-value is, and unfortunately such rubbish gets exposed to thousands of naïve people. But it is not like those people matter in the big picture often, so it is not too bad.

Didn't someone once tell me that science textbooks are always out of date by the time they are printed? — Ludwig V

Science books? Sometimes. Textbooks? That would defeat the purpose. Joe must exercise his common sense.

My point with Lionino was that the relevant difference between punching someone in self-defense and injecting someone with a needle to provide immunity is that the latter case has a means which has a double effect whereas the former has one effect that produces the other effect. — Bob Ross

And my point is that it has not been proven that injecting someone with a neddle has a double effect while self-defence has one effect after the other. In fact, Aquinas says self-defence has a double effect, and vaccination seems instead to have only one effect, where the harming comes before the healing, instead of simultaneously.

And if it is proven, one wonders why in this case that would even be relevant on whether I shall pursue X or Y course of action. Is the principle of double effect one of your stipulations?

At least you have middle age to look forward to. — RussellA

I would look forward to it everyday if I had dementia.

there is insufficient information [...] to know which sentence "this sentence" is referring to — RussellA

Most people think otherwise, they know exactly what sentence it is referring to.

The syntagma 'this sentence' in 'This sentence has fifty words' refers to 'This sentence has fifty words'. Therefore it is false.

It is quite possible you and Tones went through this exact point, but honestly if I read through all 8 pages I might develop dementia before I even hit middle age.

The big difficulty is that one has to have competence in a field in order to assess how authoritative a source is — Ludwig V

In practice, that is not true. Competence in the field is not required, just common sense. A physics textbook by a professor from Utretch, used in physics courses internationally, is authoritative, a researcher's blogspot is not.

I don't need to know neuroscience to have the common sense to not take at face value a research paper (which isn't made for laymen) from 2011 with 2 citations and 1 no-name researcher.

Electrolysis — AmadeusD

Just using electric current to split molecules.

Agreed, it is mostly gibberish.

Do you buy the existence of humanity as a miracle of improbability? — ucarr

That is the fine-tuning problem and most secular philosophers don't think it is a miracle (I am taking "miracle" here to mean intelligent design or sheer chance (~40%)).

Do you deny the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was worked out as a math inequality? — ucarr

No. The HUP still is not about the "limits of quantised physical interactions". It has a clear physical meaning. There is no connection between Gödel and Heisenberg besides that they are meta about their respective fields (Gödel's more than Heisenberg's).

It's not a cop-out to assume everyone posting there incompetent? — ucarr

My issue is not with Quora, but more that you don't seem to be competent with physics in a way that you are in a position to judge good from bad in non-authoritative sources.

The best you could do for Islam is look for (former/) Muslim scholars (secular and religious) and see what is available translated to your mother tongue or some tongue you speak. Of course, reading the al-Quran and the hadiths is relevant, even if translated. The more knowledge of Arabic you have, the better you will be able to understand Islam.
https://quran.com/
https://sunnah.com/

There is also this encyclopaedia I quite like, called Encyclopaedia Iranica. I haven't read much about Islam from it, so I don't know how its approach is. Atheist Iranians can have quite the negative bias towards Islam, while Muslim Iranians will obviously have a positive bias, but it is up to the reader to trust the scholars to remain as neutral as possible.
For example: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/eschatology-iii

Distinction between Sunni (majority), Shia (Persians especially), Sufi (Oman).
A Persian scholar might have a more shia perspective, while Saudi scholars may have otherwise. You will have to read from different sources and synthetise.

Perhaps it is interesting for you to look for the connection between Islam, pre-Islamic paganism, Nestorian Christianity, and Judaism. The whole praying to a certain direction and prostrating while praying existed in Christianity, and still exists in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Since we are a philosophy forum, it is useful to look into Neoplatonism and Aristotle in Islam, especially the Golden Age. The proclivity of empires in Central Asia to convert to Islam is also noteworthy.

Coptic grammatical influence on Egyptian Arabic:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/597639
TL;DR: not much.


In Belarus, in China.

For more modern affairs, secularisation of Turkey and Egypt and Central Asian and Caucasian countries, apostasy in theocratic Iran, coexistence of Christians and Muslims in Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Hezbollah and Hamas in the Near East, Boko Haram in Africa, the link between Taliban–Al-Qaeda–ISIS.

Whoever else hereabouts might simply recommend you some doctor of Islamic studies from Oxford called John McSmith who has never been to the Middle East and only understands written Classical Arabic.
Don't trust armchair scholars when it comes to things that are all about lived experience — language, culture, religion.

There should be no insoluble mysteries such as: what lies beyond a black hole's event horizon. This must follow if it's true that, as you say: There is no ample scope for "mysteries and miracles" here beyond someone's uneducated sophistry. — ucarr

That physics may not explain everything in our universe does not leave ample scope for miracles. "Miracle" here is used casually and sophistically, but the above fact does not leave ample scope for miracles in a Humean sense either.

This is not to say that God is refuted or atheism is true, but there being unknown facts about the universe does not say anything to us about the supernatural. It would be comedic if it would, our knowledge of the natural is lacking and based on that we make claims about a domain beyond the natural?

I can't work with Quora quotations.

I don't know, but here is what it should do when the whole thing burns:



Leia is Russia btw.

As far as I know, books as we know them, piles of sheets laced together from the back, were created around Late Antiquity. The ancient words for book were used to refer to scrolls before books proper were created¹. Later, the word came to mean only one thing, and another word was picked up for the other thing — that happened in Late Latin at least (confront French parchemin to livre). The Tibetan word དཔེ་ཆ (pecha) supposedly is the same for both book and scroll, but I can't confirm.

^{1 – This information is from the introduction to the edition of The Odyssey I own.}

My argument is that your 1-5 applies to self-defence all the same:

is that it seems like harming the person, unlike in the vaccination example, is a part of the means of achieving the good end — Bob Ross

And harming the child's skin to immunise it is not a part of the means?

as opposed to being a bad side effect — Bob Ross

Couldn't harm towards the attacker be called a bad side effect of self-defence?

It seems your phrase "directional flow" refers to causal flow? If so, I don't think that matters at all. Whether something is a direct or indirect consequence of our course of action — or even part of the course of action — shouldn't weigh on our duties, only whether the consequence happens or not. In other words, the distinction does not seem important to the context.

Those who begin with ethical theory based on moral principles begin, in my opinion, at the wrong end, as if where the inquiry might lead has already been determined before we begin. — Fooloso4

In another thread:

My opinion is that even coming up with a normative ethical theory is already missing the point of what ethics is supposed to be. — Lionino

Yes, I am in agreement with everything. The two philosophers' psychology just could be behind their motivation to devise an ethical theory alternative to the preceding ethics, which placed a lot of value on virtue. Virtue, pursuing a golden mean, requires common sense.

rewriting

It seems to me, under these stipulations, that one could never justify self-defense — Bob Ross

2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad—even for the sake of something good; — Bob Ross

These two together seem to be question begging as well as a sort of separation fallacy.

That 2. is against self-defence seems to be based on the fact that self-defence involves harm ("something bad") towards the attacker. But it is not the case that everything that involves harm is bad:

Tetanus vaccination harms a child by cutting through a child's skin, to which they will have to put on a band-aid, and inflicting significant pain due to the liquid setting into the muscle. But vaccination is not bad, it is a necessary harm that leads to a greater good than otherwise, a otherwise which might imply death. Likewise, self-defence cannot be separated from the harm towards the attacker.

Of course, 2. says that we ought not to intend something bad even if for the sake of something good. But the vaccination example is clear counter-evidence of that: we must intend to vaccinate against tetanus.

If one could separate the immunisation against tetanus from the injection (like those droplets that are available for some diseases), injections against tetanus would be "something bad", especially for kids. But they are not separable yet, therefore they are not bad. Likewise, by definition of self-defence, harm towards the attacker is not avoidable; otherwise, in the case of no harm towards the attacker, we just escaped the attacker and the legal definition of self-defence doesn't even apply anymore to the situation, there is not need for it.

So, either self-defence — involving harm — is not bad, thus falls out of 2., or 2. ought to be rejected. Likewise, either vaccination — involving harm — is not something bad, or 2. is a plainly wrong normative principle.

Too late.

In your above quote you trash personal notions of mysteries and miracles. — ucarr

No, I thrashed ideologically driven drivel.

that implies everything in existence can be known scientifically — ucarr

It doesn't. There are different kinds of knowledge other than scientific.

Fascinating book cover on Moderan, it reminded me of Nick Land's Fanged Noumena:


Though not similar, both have this disturbing somewhat surrealist look.

It's the cover that makes me want the book as much as or more than the content. — Jamal

Surely. Though outside beauty may not stand up to inner beauty, it is still very important. At the end of the day, when we walk into bookstores, we do judge books by their covers, at least a bit.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Haruki Murakami — javi2541997

I like the play on colours. Half and half, and the title square also splits half and half, but with the top half matching more the bottom in colour and the bottom matching the top. I like when they do that.

The quartet of Incompleteness Theory includes: Bertrand Russell, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, and Kurt Gödel. Russell and Gödel have something to say about the limits of axiomatic systems; Schrödinger and Heisenberg have something to say about the limits of quantized physical interactions. — ucarr

I don't know what this means. I take it you are referring to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It is not about "limits of quantised physical interactions".

Are you bear-hugging the hard determinism of the permutations (Three-Card Molly gone cosmic) of a complete physics database? — ucarr

This has nothing to do with what you are replying to, and I don't know what "three-card molly gone cosmic" is supposed to mean.

I imagine that a professional physicist of non-classical fields would be bewildered by this thread.

I will be honest with you and tell you I have no clue what this means.

As to the OP, for starters, 'democracy' isn't 'rule by the people'. Obviously the argument here is etymological, but then it would be 'power by the people'; 'rule by the people' would be 'demarchy', but that is already a word that means 'city hall' in Greek, though it was used once or twice in ancient times as a synonym of 'democracy'. Not an important detail, but just throwing it out there.

There is nothing "geometric" about the matter either. It is another episode of the individual abusing mathematical language to give appearances of credibility to drivel.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems does not automatically apply to physics. The GITs are about axiom systems. Physical theories are not just axiom systems.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/228806/does-g%C3%B6dels-incompleteness-theorem-really-say-anything-about-the-limitations-of

There is no ample scope for "mysteries and miracles" here beyond someone's uneducated sophistry.

Stephen Hawking, by the way, was an atheist.

The individual in question says easily debunked nonsense constantly out of ideological drive. It is better to feed the comments to ChatGPT and let the machine do the job than waste brain cells on drivel.

I can say Elon Musk is an insufferable idiot — Moliere

Alright, but him and other "idiots" like Trump owe several things everybody here uses and have accomplished much more than everybody here together. Who are the idiots after all? Judge a tree by its fruits.

The discussion aroud physics is finished for me. Otherwise, I would like to have the answer to the moment of the following force, in Cartesian coordinates:

Ok, so you are correcting yourself. — MoK

No, I am not. My statement is the same as before. Scroll up and read it.

It is used. — MoK

No, it is not. I could control+F several physics textbook pdfs of mine with 1000+pages each and the phrase "temporal change" wouldn't appear once.

By temporal I mean the strength of the electromagnetic field for example changes at a point in space by time. — MoK

This is complete gibberish.

That is how light propagate in space. — MoK

As I have just said, it is not, you got it completely backwards.

Who said Christians can't rap?

If it were proof of something, it would be something epistemological, not metaphysical.

A solution inbetween trains and buses:

But that is very much not the same as the claim that we can never tell the difference between having a dream and being awake. — Banno

Good thing I never made that claim then.

at the fundamental level — MoK

1 – This means nothing.

We know how light propagates — MoK

2 – I said physics is concerned with 'how', not whether we know how this or that particular fact.

3 – You then proceed to give a physical — though incorrect — explanation of how light propagates, self-refuting your claim that physics isn't concerned with how.

A temporal change — MoK

4 – This phrase "temporal change" isn't used in physics.

A temporal change in the electric field produces the magnetic field and vice versa — MoK

5 – That is electromagnetic induction as given by B-S's Law and L's Law. Nothing to do with propagation of the electromagnetic wave.

Yet we don't know at the fundamental level how a temporal change in the electric field produces the magnetic field and vice versa. — MoK

6 – Cut the nonsensical "fundamental" out of the phrase and it is evidently wrong. Even with the "fundamental" there, one could argue it is wrong too, resorting to relativistic explanations.

Do you know how a temporal change in the electric field produces the magnetic field? — MoK

lol

You are talking out of your butt.

Though it sounds like an anti-jewish epithet at first, Kripkenstein is indeed a "character".

Three years later, Google Translate doesn't have the ability to translate from Attic Greek. To this day, even translations from Modern Greek are far from perfect. So no.

Translators in general, except perhaps those powered by AI, which are exactly trained on translations of different works in multiple languages, won't give a good translation of any philosophy work. Think Chinese room.

Advice. Claude, ChatGPT, character.ai will give you better answers, and quicker, than most here could.

But we can tell when we are dreaming. — Banno

During the dream, we often cannot tell that we are dreaming.

When the dream has been long past, we may confuse memories of that dream with memories of real life.

So we can't, in all circumstances, tell when we are dreaming.

In other words, when seen as themselves - i.e. abstracted from the Substance/God - they are contingent. But this perspective is ultimately illusory and therefore, ultimately, according to Spinoza, it is true that even the modes are necessary (but seen in this perspective, they are not individuals anymore). — boundless

Interesting. There is a revised version of Gödel's ontological proof of God that entails modal collapse because of the given definition of God.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/sensation-of-pain — AmadeusD

Idk what part of the link you are referring to.

In THAT sense, the star is not red. — AmadeusD

Meaning that there is some sense in which the star is red, and another sense in which the star is not red. Since we are not violating the LNC, this must mean that the word 'red' may take on related but different meanings. My original statement.

who's the better dictionary writer — Hanover

I vote for myself.

Yes. Anyway, back to the original point.

The realest dream of a cow is, by definition, indistinguishable from actually seeing a cow. It is the dream when taken as a whole, and arranged temporally with the experiences that came after or before it, that is rationally determined to be a dream or reality. But if the dream is simply the realest dream of a cow and nothing else, and it is so long ago that we forgot about what came before or after that experience, there is nothing telling us whether we dreamed that cow or actually saw it — false memories, deja vu's, may sometimes come from dreams.

IFF they could see the start, it would match their experience of hte red shirt. — AmadeusD

Here is the problem, however:
Even if they don't get annihilated with fatal radiation before seeing the star properly; depending where they are, there is a chance they would just see white from UY Scuti, even though it is red. The Sun itself, classified as a yellow dwarf, looks white, even though spectrographically it is blue-green.

You lost me here. — Banno

I live through something. – Experience X
I wake up.
I live through something. – Experience Y
I go to sleep.
I live through something. – Experience Z.
I wake up.
I live through something. – Experience V.

Experience Y and V are coherent with each other (the sky is blue, my friends from this city are here and not my friends from the other city, I can't fly), while experience X and Z sometimes are completely incoherent.
Additionally, experience X and Z come after going to bed in the preceding experience. Experience V and Y come always start with waking up. There is another distinction between the two groups, though not enough to tell which is real and which is fake. What helps us tell real from fake is coherence.