We find ourselves perceiving and acting in a world characterized by ceaseless motion and change. That experience is organized according to an order of time, a dimension that runs from "before" to "after". We learn to generalize from the temporal order of our experience to understand and imagine the world in keeping with concepts of "past", "present", and "future".

The state of things in the present is always one of indefinitely gradual change, — aletheist

Our grasp of the state of things seems on some occasions and in some respects to change gradually and indefinitely, on other occasions and in other respects to change definitely and suddenly.

as ongoing events bring different abstract qualities and concrete things together, — aletheist

It seems reasonable to suppose that some events are or involve "appearances", and that other events are not and do not involve "appearances".

such that the indeterminate possibilities and conditional necessities of the future become the determinate actualities of the past. — aletheist

In what sense are possibilities "indeterminate"?

What are conditional necessities of the future?

If there are such things as conditional necessities of the future, might they imply conditional necessities of the past, not merely determinate actualities of the past?

Time is real because this process and its results are as they are regardless of what any individual mind or finite group of minds thinks about them. — aletheist

Objective matters of fact do not seem to depend on our thoughts about them.

But our thoughts about them do seem to depend on their availability in experience, as well as on our conceptual (e.g. linguistic) habits.

To all appearances, the temporal character of experience and of the world that appears to us in experience is an objective matter of fact.

Considering this is the oldest known (known) recorded work of fiction, i find the fact that the story relating to eternal damnation as the chief theme to be fascinating. — christian2017

What do you find fascinating about the trope of eternal damnation in the story?

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." God doesn't want anyone to worship anybody but him, but why?

I don't understand why a god with a high self-esteem would need to be worshiped in the first place, but putting my incredulity aside, a person who worships other gods isn't a terrible person.

Making us all worship one god is a good way to bring people together. But the problem is, it creates antagonisms against the "others". And that's a major problem with religion, it causes conflicts.

Thoughts? — Wheatley

What kind of interpretation are you looking for when you ask that sort of question?

We might take the legend as promoting a robust ideal of unity in judgments of truth, value, personal integrity, and community, for instance.

Is that the sort of interpretation you're looking for? Or are you asking for a psychological analysis of an anthropomorphic deity in an ancient tale?

Yet the number of all those possible photos is not infinite. — Zelebg

The fact that you say "every photo, every dream..." does not entail that there is a finite number of photos or dreams.

It seems you have assumed that there is only one thing called "the universe", and that it is finite in space and time.

How do you know this? What is the basis for this claim in your argument?

#1 How can one know what truth is, without knowing what truth is in the first place? — Monist

Our talk about truth is informed by our grasp of the facts.

Truth and falsehood are values we assign to judgments and statements. We don't fabricate these values out of whole cloth. They arise from features of experience common to human beings and other rational animals.

Sometimes our perceptual judgments turn out to be correct, other times incorrect. We recognize this distinction in experience. It is reflected in our talk of truth and falsehood.

Sometimes an expectation we have, or an outcome we conceive ahead of time, is fulfilled in the course of events; other times the course of events runs contrary to that expectation or conceived outcome. We recognize this distinction in experience. It is reflected in our talk of truth and falsehood.

Such ordinary experiences inform ordinary use of the term "truth", and guide our application of that term in assessing the truth and falsehood of judgments in a wide range of particular cases.

Special problems arise when it's not clear that there is a criterion according to which we may distinguish true judgments from false judgments. Some of these problems motivate a distinction between matters of fact on the one hand, and matters of taste and value on the other, and likewise a distinction between matters of fact that can be determined on the basis of evidence and matters of fact that cannot be determined on the basis of evidence.

Similar question #2 Can we justify justification? — Monist

Yes, on similar grounds. But all justification comes to an end somewhere.

There are always conceivable questions, alternatives, and doubts that cannot be definitively ruled out by justifications.

That's not a philosophical problem. It's a fact of life for minds like ours.

1. Is self-love possible without negative and highly selfish traits arising?
2. If so how does one go about doing this? — Shawn

Love is not merely a matter of respect and esteem. We care for the beings we love. We feel obliged to care for them, to make ourselves in some respects responsible for them and to them, to act in their interest and for their sake, and therefore to understand what is in their interest.

This applies to loving oneself as well as to loving others.

Arrogant boasting, egoism, vanity, false pride -- aren't these obstacles to love of oneself as well as to love of others? Don't they seem to flow from anxiety, insecurity, fear, and self-loathing?

Learn to recognize and wear-down these obstacles to loving kindness by practicing mindfulness, sincerity, and compassion.

Compassion includes compassion for oneself, which helps us recognize and wear-down obstacles of guilt, shame, and denial.

Nearly one and a half century ago, Nietzsche noticed the decline of old values. He claim 'god is dead', and he believe that we must find new values in order to survive nihilism. However, more than one century has passed, and few satisfying new values are established. Many of us choose to go back to those old religions, not because they are convinced, but because they have no other choice. Nihilism is growing, and it looks unstoppable. — Rystiya

Is nihilism growing or is it just deeply entrenched? I'm not sure how I would tell the difference.

Is it necessary to "create new values" to make a satisfying response to nihilism? I suspect Nietzsche's call for "new values", like the nihilism he expresses, may be accounted for as a reflection of his anxious romanticism, his precocious relativism, his unfinished reaction to the loss of faith in naive philosophical tendencies of the Enlightenment we may characterize in terms of Absolute Certainty and Absolute Good. In its original historical context, we may interpret that loss of faith along the trajectory of Gothic philosophy from medieval Christian scholasticism, to the Christian apologism of the Cartesians, rationalists, and Kantians, to the post-Kantian idealists, romantics, and existentialists.

Perhaps you're right to suggest that intellectuals influenced by the Western philosophical tradition have on the whole failed to produce satisfying responses to nihilism, and have thus contributed to the spread of nihilistic attitudes among the people of Earth as Western ideas have been exported worldwide.

At bottom, however -- isn't this more a crisis of narratives, rhetoric, and ideology, than a genuine crisis of values? Are things really so different now?

Doesn't a basic problem of value and morality raised in discussions with Thrasymachus and Callicles remain with us through shifts in cultural context?

Aren't our values rooted in our animal nature? Doesn't common sense provide us with means for characterizing and promoting enduring values that come naturally to us -- values implicated in our talk of health and prosperity, loving kindness and compassion, fairness and justice, freedom and liberty, sincerity and truth, community and unity, and whatever we should name among such things?

These aren't new values, and I see no reason to suppose they must be replaced before we can reject nihilism. We may reject nihilism by interpreting it as a facile and precocious reaction to a loss of faith in unwarranted, unnecessary, and misleading dogmas, or by pointing to the emergence in nature of principles of compassion, fairness, friendship, and playfulness in dogs, dolphins, primates, and other animals.

The hyperintellectualization of morality by intellectuals influenced by a confused philosophical tradition and motivated by institutional and market forces to publish and innovate fuels a vain search for new values, new moral theories, new legalistic systems of rules or norms of conduct. The failure of such exercises to produce satisfying results promotes and intensifies intellectual anxieties about the "groundlessness" of human values and morality.

The fruitless chatter of the intellectuals becomes another distraction and another excuse for the personal failure to commit in practice to values we already know we have and already know how to live by.

I suggest the best we can do to offset the trend of nihilism is to learn to recognize and live by the values we already have, and to speak simply about such things. The examples each of us offers in our conduct and our whole way of life is more effective than our speeches, and provides a demonstration of our principles in practice.

My question is once we get past this pandemic, or some countries have managed to eradicate it anyway, what will the shape of society to come look like? Although I was too young to understand the significance of it, I guess I'm framing it in a way we frame 9/11 now, with some of the most fundamental assumptions in relation to how society should work being absolutely shaken and then replaced, for example, airline security. — Dogar

9/11 is one good analogy for the present crisis. The 2008 financial meltdown is another.

Discussion of the conditions that produce these crises has some potential to change their long-term consequences, or at least to inform our thoughts about them.

In each case -- 9/11, 2008, and the 2020 pandemic -- the relevant authorities did not take adequate measures to prepare for or to prevent events that were long anticipated. In each case the "crisis" that erupted when the anticipated events finally arrived was an opportunity to promote mass hysteria and force economic, social, and political change. I take it this claim is in keeping with Naomi Klein's talk of a "shock doctrine".

Some long-term trends come to mind: In government there's increasing authoritarianism, militarism, and infringement of traditional and constitutional rights. In economy there's increasing concentration of wealth, oligopoly, and deregulation. In national politics there's increasing divisiveness, extremism, nationalism, anger, hatred, and confusion. In geopolitics there's increasing destabilization of states and economies unwilling or unable to prosper in keeping with the playbook of global capital.

The shape of the aviation industry to come, then, seems to look towards a consolidation of powers; a monopoly shared amongst the biggest airlines who can afford to keep going through these stressful times. — Dogar

It seems reasonable to expect there will be further consolidation in a range of industries following a similar pattern: In this range, many smaller and weaker businesses will fail, while bigger and healthier businesses increase market share, benefiting from the disruption to the market as well from corporate socialism in the form of government bailouts funded by taxpayers. I expect these effects are likely to be realized not only in travel and tourism but also in food retail and food service, and more broadly in retail and service sectors, and perhaps in distribution that serves smaller retail and service sectors.

Of course the depth and breadth of the shock in these sectors depends in part on the duration of the medical crisis and in part on the character of government response to the crisis. Even in best-case scenarios where stimulus that targets consumers limits the fall in total demand, there may be culling of small businesses most dependent on brick-and-mortar sales .

In France one requires a form to leave the house. In the UK, one can be arbitrarily detained if he is suspected of being infected. Curfews, lockdowns, an economy crippled by our collective absence... It's surprising how quickly people have handed away their hard-fought liberties because of this pandemic. I suppose they were too busy enjoying their liberties to want to protect them, and hopefully an event like this will remind them of the costs of this species of complacency as it did in the wake of WW2.

But for now, authoritarianism is the dominant ideology. I suspect this will be difficult to roll back once we get through this. — NOS4A2

I expect this may be one of the most important and enduring effects of the 2020 pandemic. The way the crisis is being used to promote mass hysteria and force authoritarian policies and precedents is analogous to the way 9/11 was used to promote mass hysteria and pass the Patriot Act.

This indicates the importance of questions about future pandemic-preparedness. Are we on the cusp of a ceaseless "war on microbes", analogous to the ceaseless "war on terror" that began with Operation Enduring Freedom?

In that context, I would emphasize that -- to judge by the information provided by governments and news media, including the focus on "curve flattening" -- the present crisis is not due to the novel coronavirus, but to the failure to prepare for such an outbreak, specifically with emergency plans and stockpiles to ramp up ICU capacity in the healthcare system during a global pandemic of this kind.

Yes. But I want to make the distinction that believing a proposition is false is different than believing something doesn’t exist. — Pinprick

How would you account for this distinction and make it explicit, in the case at hand?

So far as I can tell, denial of the proposition "x exists" entails:

i) a belief that the proposition "x exists" is false,

ii) a belief that the proposition "x does not exist" is true, and

iii) a belief that there is no such thing as "x".

For ordinary purposes we don't need to fuss over the logical form of (iii). It's customary for people to say things like "x does not exist". That should only seem strange to logicians.

For some purposes we might want to unpack (iii) to show that it is not correctly analyzed as belief in an x that does not exist, but rather is belief in a conception of a thing that has no real thing corresponding to it in the way that real things normally correspond to our conceptions of them.

For instance, the way my dog corresponds to my conception of my dog.

Soundseasonable to me, CF. In fact, I might even borrow that quote after checking it out independently. — Frank Apisa

It's a breezy read on an important topic.

But this all refers back to something you said earlier: "Some people provide extensive arguments for their theistic or atheistic claims and beliefs. I'm not inclined to call that "guessing".

Okay...I appreciate that you are not inclined to call that "guessing."

I, however, DO...in spades and in capital letters.

And I am inclined, at times, to calling it bullshit.

(After reading your post, I acknowledge I may have to revise that last part.) — Frank Apisa

It seems likely you and I agree about the speculative character of many theistic and atheistic arguments, but differ in the attitude with which we engage some of our interlocutors, as well as in our evaluations of the reasonableness of some of their arguments.

I wonder, do you count yourself an agnostic or a skeptic?

Do you agree there are some conceptions of deity that are tautologically true and indifferent to many customary disputes between atheists and theists?

For instance, consider the Great Fact, the whole of existence, the eternal sum of whatever is in fact the case, across all time and all space or across whatever "dimensions" we should name alongside or instead of time and space, across whatever iterations of generation and decay of universes or multiverses there may be.... Isn't it a truism to say the World thus conceived as Totality is the "source" or "ground" and "home" of all things and all beings?

So far as I can tell, a conception along these lines is compatible with many varieties of theism, atheism, agnosticism, idealism, materialism, skepticism, and so on.

Moreover, it offers a rational basis for a sort of conceptual closure, and for regulative principles of harmony and unity that may inform the rational imagination in practices of meditation, prayer, and worship -- for instance in keeping with Dewey's talk of "natural piety" in the first section of A Common Faith.

I did not say that. I said that facts do not require belief: they can be practically applied. — SonOfAGun

What do facts "require"?

Who "applies facts" in practice without "believing" the facts they apply?

It seems likely that what you're calling "practical application of a fact" is the same or nearly the same thing I am calling "belief".

I don't think that the epistemological field is as unified as you claim. What about epistemologists who are scientific realists? Perhaps they are not the majority, but exist non-the-less. — SonOfAGun

I haven't claimed that epistemologists all give the same account of belief. But I have claimed that the way I am using the term is consistent with ordinary use among them, and that the way you are using the term is unprecedented in my experience.

Do you have an example of a "scientific realist" using the term "belief" in the way you have been using it here?

Again facts can be practically applied with invariable results. They do not require belief. — SonOfAGun

Forget about the results:

What are the conditions of "application"? How do you "apply facts" without belief?

I knowingly and intentionally reach out for a glass of water. What are the facts that I have applied? Whatever they are: Isn't it ordinarily correct to say, and incorrect to deny, that beliefs like these factor among my beliefs at the time I reach for the glass: I believe that there is a glass before me, I believe there is water in the glass, I believe water is hydrating and thirst-quenching, I believe getting a hold of the glass and raising it to my lips is a way to put water into my mouth...

Perhaps you're conflating beliefs with thoughts in which beliefs are expressed and affirmed? When I say "belief" I don't necessarily or ordinarily mean anything like an explicit "thought" in which a belief is expressed and affirmed. I just mean belief.

Since you know the route belief is not required. — SonOfAGun

Do I also know that I know the route? Do I believe that I know the route? Am I aware that I know the route? Am I aware that I am heading to the grocery store? Do I expect that the route I am taking will lead to the grocery? Do I have a clear notion of why I am heading this way....

These are all conditions in which it's customary to say I "believe" this is a route to the grocery store.

It's not clear to me that you have provided any reason that we should refrain from this custom. It's not clear to me that you have made sense of an alternative to this custom.

The color of the sky is explainable via basic physics facts. — SonOfAGun

What do explanations have to do with it? A belief is not an explanation. Perhaps you're conflating beliefs with explanations?

When I say "This is a glass of water", I believe this is a glass of water. That's not an explanation of what a glass of water is. It's just a belief that this is a glass of water.

Again it seems to me you're objecting to an ordinary use -- the most ordinary use -- of the term "belief" because you have some unusual -- and perhaps severely confused -- conception of what a "belief" is supposed to be or supposed to do. Perhaps we should change tack, and try to clear this up directly:

What is it that a belief is supposed to be or do, on your account?

What do you mean when you say "This is a glass of water"? What do you mean when you deny that you believe there is a glass of water in front of you when you say "This is a glass of water"? Do you also deny that you know there is a glass of water? Do you also deny that you perceive and see a glass of water?

How do you characterize your "cognitive state", how do you characterize what you know or believe or perceive, how do you characterize your cognitive relation to the facts, when you say "This is a glass of water" on the basis of perception and mean it?

I use the interpretation of the older and wiser ancient people.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental efforts that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

So far as I can tell, there are plenty of fools and few wise people, then as now; and the age or period of a saying, text, or doctrine is no sign of its merits.

I'm a great admirer of the Golden Rule, and I try to apply it in practice.

I certainly don't support literal interpretation of myths! I'm aware that there's a long tradition of eschewing literal interpretation of mythology, with ancient roots. On the other hand, it seems this custom may be at least as prevalent today as it was one to five thousand years ago, so I'm not sure what historical point you're making.

It was not a fruit so stop trying to downgrade the command to a mere fruit when it is the knowledge of everything as everything is subject to the adjective of good and evil. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I've heard that some scholars interpret the knowledge in the story to mean "knowledge of everything". How is knowledge of everything "subject" to the distinction between good and evil, on your account? This sounds interesting.

Why do you suggest I'm trying to "downgrade the command to a mere fruit"? Isn't this a rather common version of the story you're referring to -- that it's the fruit they were told not to eat? Don't you think it's at least as likely that I've heard this most common version of the story, as that I'm trying to downgrade anything by speaking of the fruit?

Perhaps you should stop trying to argue against intentions that don't exist. Such unseemly behavior for a Bishop!

Wasn't there a tree in the myth? What parts of the tree were Adam and Eve instructed not to eat of, in the myth you referred to? Do you mean they were also instructed not to eat the leaves, the bark, and the roots? Let me know what parts of the tree they were instructed not to eat of, on your account, and let's proceed. Or do you say there was no tree in the myth, either? Were they instructed literally not to eat "knowledge"? Or perhaps there was no "eating"?

Feel free to retell the myth in your own words here, so our conversation isn't confused by more common versions of the story you're interpreting.

To your first. In the myth, Yahweh ties knowing the knowledge of good and evil to our developing a moral sense and the command tried to prevent that. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Do claim to know the intention of Yahweh in the myth? Isn't it possible that he set it up as a sort of trial or obstacle -- somewhat as philosophers have sought to resolve the "problem of evil" by explaining the existence of moral wrongdoing as a consequence of free will?

Strange that when the Christian ideology says that we should let god do tour thinking for us. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Is there only one Christian ideology, on your account?

What does it say about letting God think for us?

A great way to make people stupid and unable to think for themselves, even as scriptures tell us to judge all things. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I don't suppose you believe this is the only inconsistency in the stack of texts collected in the Bible?

It seems to me you may be drawing the range of interpretations of the myth quite narrowly.

What a beautiful way to describe it, I definitely agree. From what I gather, there is an infinite spectrum of vibration, always one greater, always one lesser. — Antidote

I'm not sure I follow you here.

Do you mean to suggest that the "common ground" I mentioned might be characterized in terms of an "infinite spectrum of vibration"? How does that story go, on your account?

Reason must be purpose. And I only turn to purpose for a reason usually to learn something I don't know. Have you looked at Egypt much or before? — Antidote

I agree that animal rationality is guided by animal purposes, and that the reasoning of discursive sentient beings, including human animals, is informed by their purposes.

I recommend caution in weighing the role of purpose in reasoning: Imbalanced clinging to some purposes might lead one to forsake truth, sincerity, and good sense, for instance, and thus unravel the conditions required for reasonable discourse.

How is Egyptian history or culture especially relevant in this regard?

Definitely so, logic is the lesser of the two by far but then it would be, logic was man made. I see logic at the beginning but then its soon surpassed by reason in the gap between. — Antidote

I'm not sure I follow here either.

It seems to me the conventions of formal logic help us to define our terms so as to speak and reason more clearly and consistently. Their utility is overrated by some and underrated by others.

These conventions are of least utility where the speech acts that we call assertions, and that we evaluate according to the distinction between truth and falsehood, are of least utility.

For instance, when we stop conversing and chant AUM.

I'm not sure how I might reasonably apply the term "reason" or "reasoning" in such contexts.

This is what I want to understand. Have you heard Kasabian - Days are Forgotten? Great tune. I think Plato's Republic - Book 1 gives an insight but I'm open and if the fiction can be put right then its something I guess. — Antidote

Plato and his contemporaries understood the political character of philosophical discourse.

Plato clearly thinks it's acceptable for philosophers to tell golden lies, allegedly for the sake of the common good. He mentions and perhaps seems sympathetic to the tendency among other schools or cults in his day to hide layers of their discourses behind the discourses they present to the public; surely we shouldn't discount the likelihood that his Academy followed a similar custom.

I wonder whether we should treat his dialogues more as advertisements for the Academy and acts of public propaganda than as accurate expressions of his considered view.

But how on Earth would we ever be able to answer such questions definitively?

It seems to me a similar set of problems of political motive and intention apply to all the major ancient schools; to ancient, medieval, and modern Christian philosophy; to classical modern philosophies like Cartesianism and Kantianism... straight through to the present day.

As well as to polytheistic mythologies promoted by Bronze Age elites.

Thanks for the musical reference. Nowadays I listen to a lot of Nikhil Banerjee, among others. Raga Malkauns is a perennial favorite.

I haven't found anything akin to an "one-size fits all" view, howevr here are some of the aggregate views and "wisdom of the crowd" on the subject. — IvoryBlackBishop

What is the question you're seeking an answer to? How would you put it, exactly?

It seems perhaps you're trying to answer a question like this one: "Which is the best sort of sexual practice for all people in all times and places: strict monogamy, strict polygamy, or unregulated promiscuity?"

Is there some reason to expect that there is a "one-size fits all" answer to your question?


Your discussion seems perhaps to overlook the fact that many people in formal monogamous relationships (within and without the institution of marriage) are more or less promiscuous beyond the formal boundaries of their monogamous relationship. Perhaps we should treat this as a sort of hybrid case. Likewise, there is another sort of hybrid case in which people in formal polygamous relationships are more or less promiscuous beyond the formal boundaries of their polygamous relationships.

In some cases one member of a formal monogamous relationship has one or more additional stable and committed long-term sexual relationships. In at least some such cases, we might count this as a sort of hybrid of monogamy and polygamy. In at least some of those cases, one or more members of this web of relationships is also promiscuous beyond the boundaries of the web.

We might further distinguish all those hybrid cases I've mentioned into those in which the "external" relationships occur with the knowledge and consent of all parties to the formal (monogamous, polygamous, or hybrid monogamous-polygamous) relationship; and those in which the "external" promiscuity occurs without the knowledge and consent of all parties to the formal (monogamous, polygamous, or hybrid monogamous-polygamous) relationship.


I see no reason to suppose that any one of these arrangements is best for all people at all times in all circumstances. It's quite common, and potentially healthy and satisfying, for people to go through periods of promiscuity, monogamy, and abstinence. Each of these lifestyle choices has potential benefits that may appeal to different people at different points in the course of life.

If you're not sure which might be best for you, why not give them each a try until you're satisfied?

From a moral point of view, matters of health, compassion, and consent are of central importance. Take precautions to avoid transmission of STDs. Take precautions not to abuse yourself or others. Avoid deceiving or misleading others: What are the norms and expectations involved in a monogamous or polygamous relationship? If you enter a such a relationship and break or change the rules without the knowledge and consent of all relevant parties, it's likely something's gone wrong.

The commitment you make by entering some forms of relationship, exemplified by marriage, should also count for something. That's one reason it may be advisable to get some experience in sexual relationships, including long-term monogamous relationships, before you make the most serious and durable commitments.

At the same time, "hooking up" is something of an adolescent rite of passage for young men and women (ideally with the notion that they will eventually 'mature' into a serious, adult relationship), and the other extreme, such as advocating strict virginity or abstinence until marriage would come across as 19th century Victorian puritanism. — IvoryBlackBishop

Promiscuous sexual exploration is something like a rite of passage, or at any rate a valuable life experience, for many people in a wide range of cultural contexts. That doesn't mean that it's necessary or preferable for all people in all times and places.

I'm not sure how you could do better than to use your own judgment about what's right for you in such matters. As we've each suggested at the outset, there is no reason to suppose there is a single "correct" custom, decision, or practice along these lines.

Of course, using good judgment requires you to understand your circumstances. If it's common in your neck of the woods for fathers, uncles, or cousins to stuff you in an oven if they suspect you of promiscuity, that might give you an incentive to refrain from such activity. Of course I find such practices, and the attitudes that accompany such practices, absolutely abominable.

Likewise, other conflicting views on the topic exist - for example, if one were to pursue "hooking up" as a lifestyle choice, many would object to this, claiming that it is "using" each other, or often more specifically a woman. — IvoryBlackBishop

There's no reason to assume that people who "hook up" are just "using each other". Sometimes people hook up and treat each other like tools for sexual gratification and ego-inflation. Other times people hook up and treat each other with genuine affection and care. It seems to me the attitude, emotion, and intention you bring to the exchange is what counts in this regard.

I agree with your suggestion: It seems sexist and confused to suppose that women are not or should not be promiscuous like men, or to suppose that women do not "use" men like men "use" women.

I am not a literal reader of this myth, but this seems to make sense. It follows then that it makes sense for Adam to ignore Yahweh’s command not to gain an education. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

How do you and Watts unpack this sort of talk?

What counts as "knowledge of good and evil"? How does it make humans "like gods"?

How do you interpret the imperative to not eat the fruit?

What, if anything, is the difference between the "knowledge" represented in the myth by eating the forbidden fruit, and the "knowledge" represented in the myth by the way or word of Christ?

How do you interpret the figure of Christ in the myth? As a unique historical person, or as a Christ-nature in all human beings analogous or identical to Buddha-nature and Atman, or what?

You give too much credit, I'm just a simple person and as such am prone to error like anyone else, so I state this from the off so people don't mistakenly think I am in possession of the truth (I'm just testing everything). I have a passion for Truth, not necessarily consensus, but actual truth in fact. There are errors in anything we do, and to be honest, this type of subject is more prone than any other so if I'm wrong, great because I get an education, but if not well then maybe fiction can be replaced by fact. — Antidote

It sounds to me that we are kindred spirits. I say similar things about myself, about conversations like these, and about the ignorance, error and confusion that comes naturally to things like us. Perhaps you've also been inspired by the example of Socrates?

I agree that truth has priority over agreement. Nonetheless, I aim not only to seek the truth and speak the truth, but also to identify and expand consensus and common ground, in order to promote the common good.

It seems the search for common ground tends to direct my search for truth and the exercise of my critical powers in conversations like these.

I'm also aware how our language (spoken and written) can be misleading for all of us. The errors that it can produce are terrible, because it means someone may have the truth, and yet in the communication, the truth is lost and the false is accepted instead. So I try to be simple and baby steps all the time, to reduce error. My Dad would say to me, "KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!" :)

But don't take my word for it, because I may have made a mistake. Some people want an argument, I don't. I want an answer and the facts. — Antidote

A wonderful custom!

I like to call myself a knucklehead, and I advise others to think like a knucklehead, by breaking complex problems into small manageable parts. It seems to me this sort of practice helps us avoid flying off the handle and chasing our tails in confused discursive adventures.

The "Logic" system can be defined because it was created, so the rules are known. However, Reason doesn't seem to be the same. It seems to have a quality to it that is indefinable and yet it is considered less important than Logic, or worse they are considered the same. If this was an accident, it can be put right. If it was intentional, then that's something much worse (as in a deliberate error to mislead people, myself included). — Antidote

I'm strongly inclined to agree with you, Antidote. And by now I'm fairly certain that if you're as dumb as a stump, then I am too.

It seems to me that reason is the more basic and natural power in things like us. By contrast, logic seems a more artificial, arbitrary, and fragile custom that depends on a prior practice of reasoning.

I'm not sure to what extent our traditional confusion in such matters is the result of intentionally misleading gestures. It's not clear to me that there is an objective basis according to which we might sort out the motives and intentions of the authors who have contributed to our confusion.

Let me put it another way then. None of these things you have listed here require Belief. Their existence is fact. They are objectively real. They are practically demonstrable. Yes you can believe in these things, but in our current highly technological environment, I don't know why you would need to. I have personally confirmed the existence of every item you have on your list there, including personally operated telescopes to confirm planets and stars, as well as, personally being able to comprehend the physics involved with telescopes. — SonOfAGun

Why do you say that we do not "believe" matters of fact? It seems to me these are paradigm cases of belief, and paradigm cases of how epistemologists and ordinary speakers use the word "belief" and its cognates.

How could we perform ordinary actions if we did not have ordinary beliefs about ordinary matters of fact?

How will I get from here to the grocery, if I do not believe I know the route, and if I do not expect the grocery is in the same place it was last time I went shopping?

How will I answer a child who asks, "What color is the sky", if I don't believe the sky is blue?

Why do I change my clothes before heading outside, if I don't believe it's raining?

The fact that I don't need to engage in sophisticated discourses and investigations in order to persuade myself that these beliefs are true is no reason to claim that I don't believe them. To the contrary, the fact that I am already persuaded shows the firmness of my belief in such cases.

Again, we will try another approach. While you are technically correct, and can believe in everything you have listed there, this is not how the human brain works. If the human brain were forced to consider all of these things every time it looked at a table, or anything else for that mater, it would quickly overload and become nonfunctional. It would not be the proper tool we require to navigate the universe. — SonOfAGun

Human beings cannot, do not, and do not "need" to consider every possible conception of things that don't exist. But on some occasions it turns out to be, or at least initially to seem, useful to consider one or more specific conceptions of things that don't exist. Most often, to claim or to suggest that a prior claim -- one's own or someone else's -- that some conceivable thing exists was false.

Once such a conception is considered, and the proposition that some such thing exists is considered, we may affirm or deny the proposition. And if we affirm or deny sincerely, our belief follows the affirmation or the denial.

This is not a miraculous feat. It's no big deal. I'm not sure what you're objecting to. It seems to me you're not acquainted with ordinary use of the term "belief" in the discourses of epistemologists and in ordinary conversations.

In that case: What is it, on your account, that we do in fact believe? What kinds of things are the things our beliefs are actually about, according to your unusual custom of speaking about beliefs?

I recognize that they provide bullshit rationalizations for their blind guesses that either "at least one god exists" or "no gods exist."

Some people have an allergy to "I do not know." — Frank Apisa

I wouldn't call all such rationalizations "bullshit". Ordinarily I reserve that term to characterize discourse in which a speaker does not seem to give a damn about the truth or falsity or reasonableness of their claims. This usage may be in keeping with Frankfurt's flirtatious little essay on the subject.

Consider his distinction between honest speakers, liars, and bullshitters:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. — Harry G. Frankfurt

I aim to follow this admirable terminological convention in my use of the term "bullshit".

I like to reserve the term "horseshit" as an upgrade: For instance to characterize the desperate flailing of a narcissistic bullshit artist who has been cornered by reasonable discourse, and proceeds to kick up a cloud of horseshit in an attempt to avoid accountability for the bullshit he has already released in conversation.

Can two sides with conflicting views of truth both be right? If so, does the concept of truth remain? Can one side’s truth can be considered a greater truth that subordinates a lesser truth? Or, is the essence of a truth that it is a truth, and as such cannot be made less of a truth by another truth? — Mark Marsellli

How could conflicting statements about matters of fact each be true in every regard? Where then is the conflict?

Mediation must interpret competing claims to show that the conflict concerns matters of fact, or that the conflict does not concern matters of fact, or that there is no conflict.

What objective criteria do you use to determine the correctness of two conflicting predictions about undesirable outcomes for the industry?

If both predictions are deemed correct on objective grounds, what standards do you use to determine which set of outcomes is more undesirable? What methods or norms might promote compromise by identifying an alternative that mitigates or avoids both undesirable outcomes?

We as a human species tend to do things without question while under authoratative governing principles, similar to math but I'll get to that point in a little bit. A lot of us get up and work from 9-5 because it is universally accepted to be a part of society without question of it. We read words from the dictionary and almost never question the origins of such words. We engage in religious activities without second thought of whether this is actually true or not.

The only real question is,

Why don't most people want to question these things themselves or try to understand why they do these things without question? I hope it isn't out of fear of possibly thinking for yourselves and drawing your own logical conclusions. And the same can be said for mathematics to a varying extent. — flame2

I'm not sure that's the only real question.

I confess, I'm as boggled as you are about how it comes to pass that human beings tend by and large to take so much for granted, to neglect their own critical powers, and to behave like insensate and unwitting rule-followers. The way they flock to follow fashions! As if cultural trends or matters of convention were "laws of nature" or "objective matters of fact". The way they neglect to criticize their own beliefs, and to identify their own prejudices! As if driven by some monstrous power of vanity.

I suspect the answer has something to do with our animal nature and something to do with problems of culture.

Most people on any topic automatically want to think they are right because they are afraid of possibly being wrong.
I used to be that kind of a person but I am not anymore and it has allowed me to keep an open mind and question everything in the world in which we reside in. Of course it has also allowed me to be more accepting of people's differing opinions if you are thinking. That's just a way of life. — flame2

Congratulations on your transformation into an open-minded critical thinker!

How would you say this transformation came to pass?

But this all leads up to my main topic which is about math, — flame2

I'm not sure I follow all of your discussion on this topic.

If I follow well enough: I think you're right to say that mathematics involves abstract concepts -- chiefly concepts of number and of numerical operations. But I suspect you're wrong to infer from this that math "has no real physical purpose". Doesn't it seem rather plausible that the original purpose of our number concepts is to count physical things, and that increasingly sophisticated applications of number concepts become progressively available once the most basic operations are established?

Your example of the volcanoes suggests as much. It seems reasonable to suppose that our abstract number concepts were formed by virtue of our exercise of conceptual capacities aimed at objects of exteroception, like volcanoes. Would you agree such perceptual objects are paradigmatically physical things?

The story I like to tell about number concepts has been influenced by my encounter with Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic. You might find it an interesting read.


I'm not sure the distinction between invention and discovery is especially relevant or informative here. Clearly number concepts are products of mind and culture. Clearly we use them to make true or false assertions about objective matters of fact. Counting is a custom that emerges in history; but each instance of counting is a real thing that involves a set of physical processes. Once we learn to count, we have number concepts, and arithmetical operations seem to follow "of necessity", as the saying goes.

Likewise, abstract concepts like "dog" and "red" are products of mind and culture. And we use them to make true or false assertions about objective matters of fact. And our dispositions to affirm or deny statements purporting to describe our observations of dogs or red things seem to follow "of necessity".

Of course we refine our concepts of "number", "dog", and "red" over time. But it seems we tend to revise such concepts in light of objective -- formal or empirical -- matters of fact.

When discussing the question of "Does at least one god exist...or are there no gods that exist"...the words, "I believe..." ...is nothing more than a disguise for, "I blindly guess... ."

The use of "I blindly guess..." seems to bother some people, so they use, "I believe..." instead. — Frank Apisa

Some people provide extensive arguments for their theistic or atheistic claims and beliefs. I'm not inclined to call that "guessing".

Is it only a guess of yours that they are guessing? What evidence can you provide for your claim?

I am however inclined to agree that many of those theistic and atheistic arguments involve speculation beyond the horizon of evidence. As a skeptical naturalist, I aim to train my power of belief or expectation away from such speculative claims.

Firstly, I have to point out that I'm as dumb as a lump of wood, so I need things to be explained in as simple terms as possible, what is the difference between "reason" and "logic"? I ask this because the Ancient Greeks (Plato and the like) created logic, but when you look at the definitions of logic, they talk about "reason". Now, before Ancient Greek, there was no logic system in place because the Greeks hadn't come up with yet. However, the Egyptians had already built their pyramids by then, and "being the 1st wonder of the world" nothing has surpassed it. They also farmed land, etc etc.

Now, they were using the power of reason there, not logic. So can someone please help out a stupid person like me and draw up their thoughts? — Antidote

It seems likely to me that the person who asks such a reasonable and pertinent question about terms as confused in our tradition as these, is a thoughtful and perceptive person.

I expect there is more consensus nowadays about use of the term "logic". For the most part people seem content to use this word to refer to something like rules or systems of inference, including syllogistic, propositional, and predicate logic, for example. Sometimes people speak as if abstract systems of symbolic logic are the only sort of proper logic. So far as I can tell, that view is confused. Rules of inference need not be expressed in such terms, and may be expressed in ordinary language.

It seems to me there's less consensus on use of the term "reason". The way people tend to use this word depends on the sort of conversations they tend to have. Some logicians tend to speak about "reasoning" as if it's synonymous with logical thinking or logical speaking -- thinking or speaking in keeping with formal rules of inference, drawing valid conclusions from a consistent set of premises, defining terms in keeping with the principle of the excluded middle, and so on. Some radical postmodern critics speak about "reason" as if it is a confused prejudice of ancient and modern philosophers subconsciously motivated to legitimize the authority of an oppressive social order.

I'm influenced by another line of usage in our tradition. I tend to use the word "reason" and its cognates to refer to the peculiar human custom of "giving and taking reasons" by speaking. I further characterize this practice of reasoning as an exchange of assertions that have the role in speech of justifying actions. Some of the deeds thus justified are acts of speech. Some of these speech acts are assertions, or are in other words discursive claims.

Formal rules of inference are products of culture and convention, made explicit at particular historical periods. The custom of "reasoning" by using assertions to justify actions is a more generic practice, which surely emerged in the world before the articulation of formal rules of inference, and presumably was a condition of or factor in the emergence of explicit rules of inference.

I take it the custom of exchanging reasons in speech is exemplary of a yet more generic process of "rational thinking" that does not depend on language, and that is common to many forms of intelligent animal life. Some people may prefer to use the term "reason" to apply to this more generic form of thought, as does Hume, for instance. I aim to use the term "reason" exclusively to characterize the peculiar human custom I've indicated, without objecting to or entailing any conflict with the more generic use exemplified by Hume.

When an object is thrown at me, and I hope I'm representative of the average human, I make an estimate of the trajectory of the object and its velocity and move my body and arm accordingly to catch that object. All this mental processing occurs without resorting to actual mathematical calculations of the relevant parameters that have a direct bearing on my success in catching thrown objects. — TheMadFool

I would not say I ordinarily estimate the trajectory and velocity. I look and catch, look and throw.

Something in me does estimate the trajectory and velocity when I look and catch and throw. I expect you are right to suggest that this process is largely subconscious and in a sense involuntary or automatic, once I set myself to a game of catch. But the process manifests in my awareness as a feature of the cooperation of my perception, motion, expectation, and intention.

I expect you are right to suggest that this process of anticipation in us does not ordinarily involve mathematical calculation.

The other possibility is that we don't need mathematics to catch a ball and roboticists are barking up the wrong tree. Roboticists need to rethink their approach to the subject in a fundamental way. This seems, prima facie, like telling a philosopher that logic is no good. Preposterous! However, to deny this possibility is to ignore a very basic fact - humans don't do mathematical calculations when we play throw and catch, at least not consciously. — TheMadFool

Isn't it the job of the robot designers to design robots that perform certain actions, like drilling or catching? What does it matter whether the processes involved are the same as the processes in us? How could they be exactly the same sort of processes?

It's not clear to me what claim are you objecting to.

I would think that after a year, people will demand circuses even at the risk of half the world dying. What does everyone else think? — ZhouBoTong

Isn't it more likely that the population will develop natural resistance and immunity to coronavirus before we run out of new circuses?

Meanwhile, there are plenty of ways to produce content from home, not only alone but also in virtual teams. Like the team of chatterboxes cooperating in this circus.

Under what circumstances or conditions do people believe that procreation should be regulated; or do they believe in completely unregulated procreation. — IvoryBlackBishop

I think it's a good idea in principle, if you can find equitable policies to do the job -- especially in technologically advanced global societies facing grave problems of distribution, depletion, and pollution.

Why would you need to believe in any of these things? Their existence is demonstrable. — SonOfAGun

I'm not sure what you mean.

Do you mean to suggest that all beliefs are beliefs about things or propositions or states of affairs that are "not demonstrable"? Or perhaps you mean only that all useful beliefs are beliefs about things or propositions or states of affairs that are "not demonstrable"?

That would sound like an extraordinary abuse of the term "belief" to me, not at all in keeping with the customary uses I'm aware of. Do you know of any precedent for this usage, or is it something you've invented? Or have I misunderstood you?

What does it mean for a thing or a proposition or a state of affairs to be demonstrable?

On what sort of grounds should we affirm or deny claims that entail the existence of nondemonstrable things or states of affairs, or claims that entail the truth of nondemonstrable propositions?

Why in the would you bother your brain with all of these beliefs? — SonOfAGun

For the same reason an atheist bothers to express denials of the proposition that God exists: To make a point in conversation.

In this case the point is to demonstrate that denials of the existence of a putative thing do not entail "belief in nothing".

I thought this was quite clear the first time around.

What do you suppose we're doing here, nattering on like this in a philosophy forum about the logical form of beliefs about things thought not to exist?

Actually, I would say that a denial of existence cannot be a belief. If you deny that something exists, you lack belief in its existence. — Pinprick

Would you agree that to deny the proposition that "x exists" is ordinarily to believe that the proposition "x exists" is false? Just as to affirm the proposition that "x exists" is ordinarily to believe that the proposition "x exists" is true"?

Accordingly it would seem that to deny the existence of x is indeed ordinarily to have a sort of belief, though not a belief in the existence of a nothing. More like: belief in the existence of a false proposition, or of an empty concept.

It's instructive to consider the way the conventions of elementary predicate logic enable us to analyze the form of propositions at issue in such beliefs. For instance (feel free to substitute another conception of the deity):

There is an x such that x is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent creator of the world. I suppose a belief that God exists, or an affirmation of the claim "God exists", may entail some such claim.

There is no x such that x is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent creator of the world. I suppose a belief that God does not exist, or a denial of the claim "God exists", may entail some such claim.

In a different thread, Atheism was being defined, by some, as a belief that there is no God. Doesn’t this essentially equate to a belief in “nothing?" — Pinprick

How did you come up with this question?

Care to show your work? What is the reasoning by which you start from "no God" and wind up at "nothing"?

Can't someone believe in stars and planets, rivers and oceans, plants and animals... and all sorts of things, without believing in God and without "believing in nothing"?

What happens when we deny the existence of other putative or conceivable things? Does any denial of existence, i.e., any belief in the non-existence of some putative or conceivable thing, entail "belief in nothing" on your view?

If so, isn’t that self-defeating? A belief requires an object, that is, something as opposed to nothing. If there is no object your “belief” is referring to, then you don’t have an actual belief. — Pinprick

Right now I believe there is no unicorn on the table I'm sitting at. Also there is no pot of gold. Also there is no lobster....

Do you agree these count as beliefs, even though these beliefs have a negative form, even though they have the form of denying the existence of a conceivable thing or state of affairs?

How exactly is one supposed to vote responsibly? Are there situations or circumstances where it is more responsible to not vote at all? Where exactly does my responsibility lie? Myself? My party? My country? Does it make sense to compromise when the candidate you favor is out of the race and simply vote for the candidate you dislike the least? — Pinprick

I've heard arguments along these lines: Since robust voter turnout is said to add "legitimacy" or perception of legitimacy to an election, eligible voters who are radically critical of a government, an electoral process, or a candidate might do better to abstain, especially if the electoral process seems biased.

I think such arguments are flawed. I suggest that we're obliged to vote even in cases of radical dissent, even in cases of biased or rigged elections.

I would argue there's a significant chance that the votes we actually cast tend to influence the official outcome of elections, and a significant chance that our votes and the outcome of elections actually influence policy. If you can't rule this out entirely, go vote.

There are other ways to express dissent against a candidate, an electoral process, a government, a global order. Try some of those instead of not voting.

It's irrational and counterproductive to abstain just because you're not thrilled with any of the candidates. Go vote for the one that seems least awful to you. In a close contest, you should arguably be more tactical: Vote for the one who needs votes in your voting district to defeat a more detestable candidate.

For example, say three candidates are running. A is your favorite, C is detestable, and B is somewhere in between. A has no real chance of winning. It's a close contest between B and C, and votes in your district will contribute to the result. So you vote for B in this particular election. Try not to cry about it. Vote your conscience wherever you can without sending your city, your country, and the whole world to hell. When there's a bad taste in your mouth on the way back from the polls, consider more productive means of dissent and political action.

If everyone behaves this way, we might be able to push policy and public debate in the direction the people prefer, and thus improve the selection of candidates in future elections. If people like you don't vote, people unlike you will have more influence on the course of policy and debate, and on the selection of candidates in future elections.

Don't be fooled into thinking our votes in one election only matter for that one election. The results of every election have much wider and much more long-lasting effects than that.

However, as the size of each step diminishes the staircase seems to more and more approximate a straight line, which has length the square root of two — jgill

Doesn't the "seeming straightness" of the staircase depend on the character of its visual appearance? Doesn't its visual appearance depend on facts about our visual systems and facts about the point of view we take relative to the staircase?

For instance, if you get up real close, or use a magnifying glass, you see segments of a staircase that doesn't look like a straight line anymore.

That doesn't seem so paradoxical to me. Is there another, perhaps more mathematical, paradox buried in this optical illusion?

There are a variety of approaches to philosophy: realism, idealism, theiem, existentialism and so on.

Is there an over-riding means of evaluating which is better than the others?

Are they distinct or do they share a commonality which suggests they are all just minor variations of a common philosophy?

What makes for a good philosophy? — A Seagull

I say the purpose of philosophical discourse is to cultivate an integrative worldview suitable to inform, guide, and promote harmonious action in individuals and whole communities. Accordingly, philosophical discourse is just a special exercise of a more general sort of philosophical activity that belongs to our nature and that is ceaseless in creatures like us.

I doubt whether there is a single set of noncontroversial objective criteria according to which divergent philosophical discourses, each reasonably coherent in itself, may be evaluated. I expect that people who diverge from each other in philosophical outlook also tend to disagree on the standards by which they would assess divergent philosophical discourses.

Even so, these divergent views might be called variants of the same sort of thing, a worldview, produced by the same sort of process, philosophical activity.

I expect there may be widespread agreement among participants in this forum that values like rationality, coherence, and truth figure prominently among the criteria according to which we engage in and assess philosophical discourse.

What would the difference between ii and iii be if the automaton had an outer layer that looked like flesh and therefore looked human and behaves like a human? The only real difference here would be one is electronic while the other is biological. Are you saying that biological matter gives rise to subjectivity while electronics cannot? I think that is part of the problem. I think we should be thinking of this from a perspective of information processing which can be performed by both biological and electronic machines. — Harry Hindu

Under a wide range of "ordinary circumstances", human observers would be unable to distinguish (ii) and (iii) from each other or from genuine human beings. But once you poke through the outer layer, anyone would be able to tell them apart. Whether or not anyone happens to tell them apart, (ii) and (iii) would in fact differ in physical, if not "functional", composition.

Having an "outer layer" that resembles something you are not does not make you that thing.

I take it the philosophical puzzles about p-zombies do not mainly involve problems concerning how humans may be deceived by human-like appearances, but rather problems concerning our conceptions of consciousness -- problems purported to go much deeper than the Turing test.

The problem with p-zombies is that one is expecting the same effect from different causes. If we should expect the same results from difference causes, then that throws a wrench into all scientific knowledge that we've accumulated over the centuries. — Harry Hindu

To me it seems the other way around: The problem with p-zombies is that the hypothesis proposes different effects from the same causes. For by definition, the zombies are "molecule-for-molecule" the same as we are, take in information and process it just like we do -- by way of the same physiological processes -- and behave just like we do... but somehow, as yet inexplicably, have no "subjective experience with phenomenal character".

They are identical to us in every feature we may observe in the third-person, no matter how deep you cut into the body of the thing, from whatever physical point of view, in any cross-section, under any microscope, no matter what ideal-physics technological instrument you use to explore that body.

This is not an AI problem or a "wires and pulleys" problem. It's weird metaphysics, or an attempt at some sort of a priori test of our concepts of conscious experience.

For me, a p-zombie is impossible, and it is possible for electronic machines to have a point-of-view because a point-of-view is simply an information superstructure in working memory used to navigate the world. P-zombies must have a point of view in order to behave like humans. If they don't then they can't behave identically to humans and would be illogical to expect one to. — Harry Hindu

We're agreed on one thing at least. P-zombies seem impossible to me too. It's beginning to seem that we support our respective hunches on somewhat different grounds.

I'm not sure what it means to say a "point-of-view is simply an information superstructure in working memory used to navigate the world." Used by what or by whom? What is an "information superstructure"?

Doesn't the p-zombie have any "information superstructures"? Doesn't it "navigate the world"?

I might use a camera to help me navigate the world. But the camera does not navigate. Does the camera have any "information superstructures"? What kinds of things have "information superstructures"?

We say I have a point of view, the camera has a point of view, a painting has a point of view, a narrative has a point of view. I suppose we mean something different in each sort of case by the phrase.

Surely there's room in that hodgepodge for an application of the same phrase to p-zombies. What sort of view does it make sense to say they'd have; what sort of view does it make sense to deny they'd have -- assuming for the sake of argument that the notion of a p-zombie isn't self-defeating.

I asked before, "Is it useful to perceive the apple is red?" I asserted that it wasn't. It is useful to perceive that the apple is ripe.[...] — Harry Hindu

What if I want to arrange a room for a photo shoot or a painting?

What if it saves a hungry animal time, calories, and risk, to forage for red fruit instead of ripe fruit, since, in this forest, the reddest fruits tend to be ripe, and to stand out better from green leaves, so it's more efficient to distinguish red at a distance than it is to distinguish ripe at a distance?

I don't see what this calculus of utility has to do with questions of the subjectivity or objectivity of color and the experience of color; nor with the more general themes we're tracking here.

I wouldn't use the term "subjective" here. I agree that our concepts have an objective property as we can talk about others' minds and their contents as if they are just another part of the world. — Harry Hindu

Let's celebrate this piece of common ground.

Do we agree even to this extent: It's not just "as if" minds are parts of the world. Rather, to all appearances, it seems that each thing we call a mind is in fact part of the world.

Subjective is a property of language use where category errors are made in projecting value, or mental, properties onto objects that have no such properties. — Harry Hindu

Do you mean to say that the only correct use of the term "subjectivity" is in the analysis of erroneous speech acts? I don't believe I'm acquainted with this rule of use.

I agree that people often seem to err by speaking about nonsentient things as if they had value in themselves (e.g., moral, aesthetic, or practical value); by speaking about nonsentient things as if they were sentient; by speaking about nonliving things as if they were living; and by speaking about nonpurposive things as if they were purposive.

But would you say the assessment of errors like these are the only contexts in which it makes sense to employ a distinction between "subjective" and "objective", or between "subjects" and "objects"?

You might say that I am committing the same category error in attributing mental properties to computer-brained robots, — Harry Hindu

It depends on how you propose to characterize "the mental" as a category that applies both to humans and to other information-processing machines (e.g. those that pass the Turing test); and on how you distinguish or decline to distinguish "mentality" in this generic sense from a more specific sort of "mentality" enjoyed by sentient beings.

but I am asserting that computer-brained robots have mental properties of working memory and a central executive (attention) that attends to the sensory information in working memory. — Harry Hindu

I can accept all of this without agreeing that "minds" of this kind (even those that pass the Turing test) "have experience" or "are sentient" in the same way human animals have experience and are sentient.

To all appearances, it seems there's more to minds like ours than taking in, organizing, and acting on information.

There would be a "what it is like" for the computer-brained robot. It would be how the information superstructure is organized in its working memory. The information superstructure would be organized in such a way as to include information about the self relative to the world. That is how the world appears to us via our senses. The world appears located relative to the senses. That is what a point-of-view is, or what some would call, "subjective". — Harry Hindu

I agree that instances of the relevant sort of AI, like the hypothetical (and biological) p-zombies, would make reliable introspective reports just like our reports, informed on similar bases about similar states of affairs.

But, unless you can persuade me that some of these "mental" machines are also sentient just like we are, then I will continue to deny that they are "aware" or "sentient" in the relevant sense, that they are "subjects", that they "have appearances" and are "appeared to", that they have "subjective experience with a phenomenal character", that they have "minds like ours", that there is "something it's like" to be such a machine. Though the resemblance be uncanny.

I agree, and is why computer-brained robots with sensory devices like cameras, microphones, and tactile pressure points where information comes together into a working memory would have "experiences", or a point-of-view. — Harry Hindu

By now you catch my drift: It seems to me we should distinguish between i) generic concepts of "mind", "experience", "point of view", and so forth, which we may agree to apply to a wide range of genuine and artificial minds; and ii) more specific concepts of "mind", such as the genuinely sentient mind and the nonsentient imitation mind.

I suppose this remains a contentious position in our times. It seems there's no definitive way to resolve the dispute on philosophical grounds. So we rehearse our conceptions in the face of strange claims, pending further results of empirical investigation.

I’m referring to the contract not at the social level but at the individual. It is the disassociated relation where the creator and receiver depend on one another symbolically without real physical dependence. — kudos

I suppose that's one way to put it. Would you say this "symbolic dependence" involves something like an intention, promise, obligation... of the parties to the contract?

I suppose a sort of cultural contract would be better fit to describe it. That for my experience as a viewer going to, say, an art gallery expecting to find certain works of a certain type I maintain that expectation with another type, and this goes for whether or not the work is ‘received.’

I’m sorry if this sounds muddled. I’m trying to be clear. — kudos

No need to apologize. I'm here to exercise my power of speech, to sort out my own muddled thinking, to practice interpreting the sayings of others. One of the best reasons to engage in philosophical conversation, if you ask me.

Now if I catch your drift, it sounds like you have in mind something like the expectations or preconceptions with which a consumer engages an artwork, perhaps including expectations of skill-level, medium, genre, style, theme and subtext, even the cultural "identity" of the artist... Is that the right ballpark?

In what sense shall we think of such expectations along the lines of a "contract"? Interesting suggestion.

↪Cabbage Farmer
maybe an example may help?

I visit a music festival and purchase a vinyl disc. This musician might take this as a symbol that this type of music has pleased me, and produce more like it, where in reality it was the cultural act of buying the record itself that was of value for me the receiver, and wasn’t dependent on my buying his record or even any record at all. These two perspectives fall out of alignment. — kudos

Yes, it sounds like this musician has jumped to conclusions.

What if 300,000 units are sold this year? Then I suppose it's reasonable for the musician to infer that the music has something to do with it. Though of course many "extramusical" factors are often involved in the consumption of musical works.

The first sentence in the thread [...] — Wayfarer

I presume I've made my stance on the theme presented in the origin of this discussion about as clear as anyone here has done. With respect to the topic engaged in the sentence you have indicated:

I have made plain that I find it absurd to suggest that consciousness is an illusion, and absurd to suppose that sentience like ours, awareness like ours, consciousness like ours, can be adequately understood as if our minds were nothing but fine-grained complex information-processing machines.

I have sought to clarify that what's at issue here is, specifically, an alleged feature of consciousness we may call "subjective experience with a phenomenal character", not some derivatively so-called "consciousness" without the special feature in question. This point seems to slip perhaps in and out of view in the exchanges of various speakers here among us. I'm told the eliminative materialists argue that the feature in question is an illusion; and I'm aligned with those who oppose that claim.

I have suggested that the best way to handle imaginative claims, like those ascribed to the eliminativist, is to shift the burden (their claim is prima facie false, and seems groundless); criticize the concept (what's the difference between a reliable experience and a reliable illusion of a reliable experience); and challenge correlate assumptions (reject the claim that introspection does not inform us about empirical objects in the empirical world).

There's not enough time in a life to address every outlandish claim made by the metaphysicians, materialist or otherwise. Why waste time sucking every one of their pumps, or responding to every single report of an experiment in which a scientifically measured feature of a situation is not quite what it appears to an introspective reporter?

Materialism is not science. Materialism is metaphysics.

Cut them off at the pass.

So, is representative of 'eliminative materialism', which I remarked seems preposterous to many people. D. B. Hart commented in his review of Dennett's latest book that 'Some of the problems posed by mental phenomena Dennett simply dismisses without adequate reason; others he ignores. Most, however, he attempts to prove are mere “user-illusions” generated by evolutionary history, even though this sometimes involves claims so preposterous as to verge on the deranged.' So that's what I'm aiming at in my remarks above. I'm trying to provide an account for why it is that apparently well-educated and serious academics that describe themselves as 'philosophers', and are so regarded by the public, could entertain an idea that others think is preposterous or deranged. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not articulating a general philosophy here, I'm simply making a very specific point about what it is that allows 'eliminativists' to argue as they do. — Wayfarer

Do you mean to suggest that anyone who disagrees with you on what you consider basic principles in philosophical conversation should not be counted a "philosopher"? That would strike me as another sort of unwarranted "eliminativism", even less well-founded than that of the eliminative materialists.

I suppose it's a combination of imagination and ignorance that enables metaphysicians and epistemologists, among others, to make claims and weave complex narratives that seem outlandish to many people. It seems there's no end to the variety of fanciful stories that can be conceived. It's not only eliminativist materialists, and it's not only materialists, who should be taken to task for littering our philosophical discourse with boondoggles.


By your "very specific point", do you mean your claim that:

it's just this fact which makes eliminative materialism possible in the first place. — Wayfarer

and by "this fact" do you mean the fact you impute when you say:

experience is not an object even to myself. — Wayfarer

and along these lines, do you mean to suggest that if everyone would use words such as "experience", "awareness", "subject", "object", and "being" like Wayfarer, then the eliminativist's argument would be impossible to articulate?

I've given some indication of the extent to which you'd have to go to make your peculiar use of such terms comprehensible to me, and your objections to my use of them justifiable to me. I just don't see how this lexicography is relevant to the problem at hand.

In particular, as I've argued, the claim that "experience is not an object of awareness" seems absurd.

Aren't we aware of our experiences?

I'm saying that experiences are not objects of awareness, because that implies a split between awareness, on the one hand, and experience, on the other. — Wayfarer

I call all the things of which we are aware "objects of awareness". I'm not sure this is contentious usage.

If it's reasonable for me to apply a predicate to something, and to say it is or it isn't, it's so or it's not so, then it's reasonable for me to call that thing a logical object, an object, at least, for thought and discourse. Anything we can speak of may be called an "object" in this sense. Should I suppose there is much more implied when we call a thing an object in this way?

In some cases, we say, an object of discourse is also an object of current perception. To apply two distinct concepts to the same object in this way does not imply a real "split" between two different objects, one that is discussed and another seen or touched; rather there is one object considered under a range of concepts. There is an x; I see x; you see x; we discuss x; it seems x is a stick half under water; from where we stand the stick looks bent....

According to this usage, if I am aware of my own seeing then this seeing of mine is an object of my awareness, it is a thing in the world I am aware of. This formulation does not entail that there is one entity, my seeing, and another entity, my awareness of my seeing. Awareness "belongs to" the seeing, awareness "is in the seeing", or there is no seeing. We need only shift conceptual orientation in the act of seeing, to shift cognitive attention from the proper object of visual perception (the thing seen) to the reflexive object of the same visual perception (the thing that is aware of itself as seeing).

When I look up at the heavens, is it the star I see, or only a snatch of its light? Is it the sky I see, or only a small patch of blue? Is it the airplane I hear, or only a chunk of the soundcloud produced by its jets?

It seems there is no fact of the matter in general with respect to such questions. There is a wide open range of conceptual stances we may take in the face of the same perceptual "presentation-to-consciousness", the same appearance. It seems whenever there is something "present to consciousness", whenever there is consciousness, whenever there is awareness; we may adopt an introspective conceptual stance, and consider the fact of presentation, the fact of appearing, in whatever relevant modes; and we may adopt a reflexive conceptual stance, and consider the fact of awareness itself, and whatever thing is aware; so long as we are equipped with concepts adequate to those stances.


"Awareness implies an object of awareness". On its own this formulation doesn't imply anything about what sorts of things may be objects of awareness, or what sorts of things may have awareness, or what sorts of awareness there may be. If there is awareness, there is awareness of something; and if there is awareness, there is something aware. That's all that's implied by such formulas.

I suppose we should call pure reflexive awareness a limiting case, in which awareness "abides in itself", is aware of itself alone. It seems an empirical question whether and under what circumstances this sort of awareness may be perfectly achievable by animals like us with minds like ours.

I think when we undergo experience, then there's no such division, that we are 'in' or 'undergoing' the experience, which is constitutive of our being at that moment. — Wayfarer

I might agree the awareness is "in the experience". There is no experience without awareness.

I won't say that I myself am "in the experience". I see no reason to suppose that everything I call myself is contained within my experience, any more than everything I call this stick is contained within my experience. Likewise, I won't say "experience is constitutive of my being". I'll say my being is constitutive of my experience. It seems I am a sentient animal, not a pure awareness or a pure experience. It seems the thing we call the awareness of a sentient animal coincides with biological processes, much as the thing we call the digestion or the thing we call the respiration of a sentient animal coincide with biological processes.

I can take up Descartes's offer, and conceive of myself as pure mind. I can also conceive of myself as a turtle. Conceiving doesn't make it so. Perhaps I can learn to restrict my use of the term "I", so it refers only to the experience or the pure awareness of this sentient animal, and not to the rest of that thing. But this extraordinary strain on usage does not inform me about the real connection between this mind and this animal, nor about each "part" I have thus imaginatively divided. The sources of that information remain the same as before. It would remain the case that nothing but empirical investigation -- on my view, including but not limited to the noninferential knowledge we acquire on the basis of introspection -- can inform us about those notionally distinguishable "parts" and their connections.

You might say, well if experience is not an object of awareness, then what is? To which I would respond, all the many objects of experience that surround us at every moment of waking experience. Our conscious experience comprises mainly subject-object relationships - relationships with other beings, who themselves are subjects of experience, and so not simply objects, as well as relationships with the objects that surround us. I don't find the subject-object nature of mundane existence especially problematical or mysterious — Wayfarer

I'm still not sure what distinction you're drawing with your terms "experience" and "awareness"; nor how similar our views may be beneath our divergence in linguistic usage in this particular regard.

We've gone down this road together before: I'm still not sure why you refuse to call the things we may call "subjects" in one analysis "objects" in another analysis, nor how you propose to justify this strange dissent. To call something an "object" is not to entail that this thing is not sentient. To call something a "subject" in a subject-object relation is not to imply that the same thing cannot be taken as an object in a subject-object relation; why should we suppose there is a problem along these lines? It seems to me you take far too much for granted in your use of terms like "subject", "object", and "being", without providing any justification for your uses, which so far seem motivated primarily by arbitrary connotations or prejudicial philosophical ambitions. In any case, it seems you'll need to erect a more general vocabulary, atop the layer in which you carve out by fiat rules for use of terms "subject" and "object" and "being". For I suppose even you will allow that the relations you distinguish as "subject-object" and "subject-subject" relations may be considered generically -- say as subject-[subject OR object] relations. And I suppose it's this more general conceptual layer that most of us seem to have in mind when we use the term "object" to ride over such distinctions.

I don't find any of the relations you indicate to be more "mysterious" than any of the others. A conscious thing is aware of something. The fact that it is aware at all, this remains, at least for now, a special sort of mystery. The thing it is aware of -- whether it is aware of itself, or of another conscious thing, or of a nonconscious thing -- remains for all time a mystery, in that we can never know the whole truth about any thing.

We piece our view of the world together over time, in the manner of Gassendi.

If you take as a given that God is a necessary being, does it follow that the Christian belief that Jesus is identical with God is either necessarily true or necessarily false? My reasoning here is that it follows from "God is a necessary being" that:

1. If something is identical with God, then it is a necessary being
2. If something is not a necessary being, then it is impossible for it to be identical with God.

According to this reasoning, it seems like either Jesus is necessarily God, or it is impossible for Jesus to be God (given the premise that God is a necessary being). A third possibility is that my reasoning here is faulty. My questions are as follows:

1. Have I made a logical error, and if so, where?
2. If I have not made a logical error, how would I set about determining whether the necessary truth is "Jesus is God" or "Jesus is not God?" — CurlyHairedCobbler

Let's grant the initial premise for the sake of conversation:

Assume that "God is a necessary being" is a true statement. What does it tell us? What do we mean by the terms "God" and "being" in this sentence? What do we mean by the modifier "necessary" in such sentences?

What is a necessary being? What other kinds of being are there, that are not necessary beings? What other kinds of thing, apart from beings, may be necessary or not-necessary? How can we tell whether a being is necessary or not-necessary? How can we tell what counts as "a being"? How shall we resolve disputes that arise with respect to such matters?

You seem to suggest that, if there is such a thing as a necessary being, then there can only be one such thing, as any such thing must be identical to God. On what grounds do you make this claim?


Granting that "God is a necessary being" is a true statement, composed of terms as yet unaccounted for, you ask, does it follow that "the Christian belief that Jesus is identical with God" is either necessarily true or necessarily false?

What is "the Christian belief that Jesus is identical with God"? Is there only one such belief, or are there a wide range of such beliefs, perhaps not all compatible with each other, held by a wide range of believers who call themselves "Christian"? What are the various conceptions of "Jesus" according to the various sorts of Christian believer?

I expect some such believers are inclined to think of Jesus as a historical person, and to think of the relation between God and Christ as at least analogous to the relation between Brahman and Atman. I expect many of these believers would agree, further, that each of us, each sentient being, is an Offspring of God, though some individuals more than others "realize" or "awaken" to the harmony of all things, traditionally exemplified and idealized in legends of prophets and sages, like Jesus.

I might count myself sympathetic to that sort of theological discourse, without supposing the picture must conflict with principles of atheism or agnosticism.

It all depends on how we unpack the terms we've bundled together so far in this conversation.

Right. One question you could ask is can you ever really perceive experience? I don't think you do. I don't perceive the experiences I have - I undergo them; I am the subject of experience. When I say 'I'm having an experience' - say, if I try and relate what I'm experiencing to someone by telephone - then I'm trying to convey to them how I feel, what I see, and so on, but what I'm describing are all artifacts or attributes of experience. The actual experience is not an object even to myself. — Wayfarer

What sort of experience shall we agree to call "perception", Wayfarer?

There's a powerful tendency in our tradition to divide introspective awareness from perceptual awareness, and to characterize perception primarily along the lines of the paradigm of visual exteroception, to the neglect of other perceptual modalities. These are unjustifiable biases.

I suspect the tendency to divide perception from introspection owes a great deal to the rationalist-theological prejudices and ambitions inherited by the early Kantians, and perhaps, more generally, to the problematic appropriation of skeptical philosophy in the early modern West. At least some of Kant's predecessors, however, including Locke and Hume, used the term "perceive" to characterize our relation to what we may call "ideas", "experiences", or "mental operations". See, e.g., Shoemaker, "Self-knowledge and inner sense: Lecture I".

We should aim to address substantive issues here without getting bogged down in futile terminological disputes. Philosophers like Shoemaker acknowledge that "[p]erception and introspection are of course alike in being modes of noninferential knowledge acquisition" ("Self-Knowledge and inner sense: Lecture II"). Most often I follow them in this usage, though now and then I try another idiom, still perhaps rough-hewn, according to which any instance of awareness is perception.

I suppose that last slogan indicates the sort view I track. To me it seems the most reasonable way to line up our terms according to the balance of appearances. The formulation gives broad scope to correlate concepts of phenomenon, observation, empirical world, and Nature; and facilitates or guarantees the integration of first- and third-person points of view in a single person in a single world.


Along these lines, I would argue that experience is among the available objects of awareness for the self-conscious sentient creature. We encounter our own experiences in time and place. Our experiences are among the things in the world that appear to us.

It's easy enough to characterize experiences, because each of them is shot through with objective character. This objective character extends throughout the body of the sentient creature, and remains open to empirical investigation.

To insist that experience has "subjective", as well as "objective", character, is not to suggest there is a rift between subjective and objective "worlds", "realities", "facts", or "entities". Whoever would make that sort of suggestion need support it on some other grounds, or admit it's only one imaginative possibility among indefinitely many other imaginative possibilities we may project beyond the balance of appearances.

Along those lines, the skeptic puts at bay the claim that sense-perception puts us in touch with empirical objects, while introspection puts us in touch with some supernatural, extra-empirical, domain.


On what grounds would we claim that sense-perception puts us in touch with empirical objects, while introspection puts us in touch with nothing, makes nothing present-to-consciousness, leaves us mysteriously witnessing or knowing-that in an empty arena, without any observable connection to things in the world that are observable?

We learn only so much by gazing. We investigate natural phenomena and empirical objects -- including the things we call sentient animals -- by moving around, trying things out, and collecting observations according to the balance of appearances.

We don't know everything there is to know about an empirical object by catching a few glimpses; nor by recording and assessing ten thousand years of glimpses. What can it even mean to say "everything there is to know"?'

We get a small bit of information about objects, and make fallible, if generally reliable, reports and inferences about objects on the basis of observation in every mode of "noninferential knowledge acquisition". We remain ignorant of "the whole truth" of any object we observe.


Or why should I suppose there's some relevant difference between introspection and other modes of observation along these lines, that I've overlooked so far in this account?

I think it's just this fact which makes eliminative materialism possible in the first place. Because of the fact that the nature of experience itself can never be 'objectified' it is, on those very grounds, never to be found amongst the objects of empirical analysis. Which is how the eliminativist can claim that it is unreal! It's like saying - science knows what is the real basis of experience, which is neural activity and the like; the first-person sense of experience that comprises your sense of self is generated by that, and dependent on it, therefore, it has no inherent reality. And there's no empirical argument against that stance.

Myself, and many others - Searle included - think it's a preposterous argument, but it still keeps being made. But leaving that aside, considering it in those terms at least helps clarify what is actually at issue. — Wayfarer

I hope I've made clear that on the sort of view I favor, experience is objectified along with everything else that appears to us, on the same sorts of bases, the various modes of awareness.

Why trouble with preposterous arguments, when you can cut them down in bunches at the preposterous assumption without which they don't follow?

CHC did start one other thread, on the topic of 'necessary being', where I think many of the questions you raise here might be suitably addressed. However I also note that she's only entered two posts. — Wayfarer

Thanks, Wayfarer. I noticed that post and have begun a reply to it along the same lines. I hope to find time for finishing it off.

Maybe if you returned a greeting and brief introduction to CurlyHairedCobbler, she may be more inclined to answer one of your 15 questions in a new thread. — Galuchat

Do you mean to suggest this thread is a place reserved for introductions and brief salutations, and that here we should refrain from philosophical remarks prompted by otherwise relevant statements made in the course of such niceties?

If so, is this a generally accepted formality among us or a matter of personal taste? If the former, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

? If something is said to be right or wrong in Ethical terms, doing so must be based on values that have already been accepted. What choice do the values provide ? — RW Standing

I suppose it depends on the values; on the way the values fit together or conflict in each particular case; and on the way the agent has learned to apply values, prioritize values, and resolve conflicts of value.