People now use words to describe whatever they decide they mean, accepting no authority over their own opinion. It has got so bad, it is impossible to communicate any more, ... — ernestm

Those people are not describing anything, they're prescribing or pushing their own arbitrary meanings, typically whenever it suits them. For example, when a redefinition of a word saves them from having to admit a lie, or from changing their opinion or ideology.

Throughout history ideologues or liars have relied on the possibility to define or redefine the meanings of words as it suits them.

So, this phenomenon that some call "post-truth" is probably as old as our language, or older even considering the fact that also some animals who don't speak a language can act deceptively as a means to benefit from it.

What's this talk about inevitable misunderstandings?

Both author and interpreter are obliged to comply to the rules and vocabulary of the language that they use.

An interpretation is proper or acceptable when it complies to what is actually there to read, regardless of whether it deviates from the author's alleged intent.

An interpretation is improper or unacceptable when it does not comply to what is there to read, and regardless of whether it would comply to the author's alleged intent.

Likewise, the author's published text can be either proper or improper, acceptable or unacceptable, depending on whether it complies to the rules and vocabulary of the language s/he is using.

Misunderstandings happen, of course, because of mistakes, insufficient language skills, or egocentrics, relativists, or ideologues who might attempt to redefine our language as it suits them.

What should the focus of a government be? How much power should it have? — MonfortS26

A government should focus on fulfilling its function, of course, which is to determine and enforce state policy. Obviously it should have as much power as it takes, neither more nor less.

You can do both: get sufficiently educated for a job you don't hate, and which leaves you with enough time and energy to pursue your own projects on the side. Doing what you like can make you good at it, and being good may increase your chances of doing it full time.

What is 'Snoopy'? Is a concept of the fictional dog atomic, or a composition?

The most valuable thing in life is its variety of values.

Scientifically, a generalised theory of signs - that is, semiotics - is going to have to be the best way of making sense of phenomenal experience. — apokrisis

What have semiotic theories achieved so far in that respect?

On the average I see that good people create a good world for themselves, and bad ones get surrounded by bad things. — Ashwin Poonawala

Good people in bad surroundings become lonely, whereas bad people in good surroundings become famous.

elucidate how I think about images and why, in general, I'd say they are different than what they are made up of. Our experience and perception of an image is sort of bound up in what said image is, if not entirely. — Moliere

What does it mean to say [1] that an image is different from what it is made up of, and [2] that experience and perception are bound up in what an image is made of? Where does that leave the image we see? It makes no sense to me.

Clearly there are individual molecules, which could be sensed, but we didn't develop the means to do this. So our eyes interpret things in that particular way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Prior to seeing something you don't know whether something is present and subject for interpretation. You don't get to sneak in knowledge of its presence and constituents just to say that seeing it as a whole would be an interpretation of, or one of many ways to interpret, its individual constituents.

Furthermore, the individual constituents of a coin are not so individual when they're bound by force into a material compound called metal. The metal has a light-reflecting surface with recognizable properties. So we see a silver oval, because that's what there is for us to see, and which we then can interpret as a coin.

. . you don't see the individual molecules, because your sensing system is interpreting what's there as one object. . . — Metaphysician Undercover

Look, Sherlock, an individual molecule is insufficient for reflecting or emitting light, it lacks electrical charge etc. We'd need a powerful microscope to identify it, because our biological sensing system cannot do it on its own; it does not identify molecules, so it has no individual molecules to interpret as one object. You must be bullshitting.

our interpretation via sensory perception of external stimuli must by definition inescapably involve an interplay between such stimuli and our internal neural processes and so by reduction must necessarily be subjective. — Robert Lockhart

Experience is subjective, not interpretation. What could be subjective about the use of public words?

Instead of sensing the coin as one oval shaped object, it could be sensed as many individual molecules. — Metaphysician Undercover

You don't see them. — Metaphysician Undercover

:-}

Since we know that it exists as molecules, and as atoms, then these are real possibilities, alternative ways, for how it could be sensed — Metaphysician Undercover

That makes no sense at all. How could the projection of an oval that you see be just an alternative way for how it could be seen? Could you see an oval with corners perhaps? Seems like relativist ideology.

You said:

If you consider that the coin consists of atoms and molecules, then ask yourself why do you see it as the presence of a single, coloured, shape, instead of individual molecules, or atoms. Interpretation is inherent within seeing.

I replied: ...

I don't think you see the atoms and molecules...

The argument should be obvious: we don't see the atoms and molechules of a coin, so there is nothing to interpret as a coin prior seeing its coloured shape. Therefore, seeing precedes interpretation.

You don't see them — Metaphysician Undercover

So I said. :-}

isn't it objective fact that seeing is interpretation? — Metaphysician Undercover

No. Hence my argument, which you seem to evade.

we've been fooled by our very fallable perception. — Benkei

Our belief of what it is that we perceive is fallable, not perception, because belief is representational.

.

If you consider that the coin consists of atoms and molecules, then ask yourself why do you see it as the presence of a single, coloured, shape, instead of individual molecules, or atoms. Interpretation is inherent within seeing. — Metaphysician Undercover

So what would seeing its atoms and molecules be an interpretation of? :-}

I don't think you see the atoms and molecules; it is not your interpretation of some undifferentiated swarm of individual particles which sets the visual features of the object that you see but the parts of the object which are present in your visual field and the optics and biology of seeing. The presence of a single, coloured shape is set by the objective facts of seeing. Hence seeing precedes interpretation.

Seeing is a mode of interpretation as well. — Metaphysician Undercover

What is interpreted? We might interpret the presence of a silver oval in our visual field as a round coin. But we don't get to interpret its presence, nor the coloured shape. In this sense seeing precedes interpretation.

"If We Are Not Just Animals, What Are We?" is the title of a current article in NYTimes.

it is amazing how much that is misunderstood even now. — ernestm

Indeed, especially scientific accounts based on arguments from illusion, according to which you'd never see a real colour, only your own hallucination of something unseen. :-}

Human eyes can see millions of different shades of colour. This is not because there are millions of different wavelengths between 400 and 740. — Metaphysician Undercover

Good point. :) ..but then isn't also the range of wavelengths analog and dense...i.e. between two identified wavelengths there is always a third. Hence there are millions of them too.

lol, but that assumes you actually have a will in that which you learn — ernestm

Where is it assumed? Lay it out for me.

It strikes me as funny that everyone attacks the story and ignores the conclusion. — ernestm

What conclusion?

It would take time travel to unlearn something already learned. If they want you to learn and use their methods instead of your methods, then would you thereby unlearn something? Knowledge, skills, methods, habits and such can be revised or replaced, not unlearned.

..songs that bring back floods of memories and emotions... — camuswetdream

Hearing a sound can be like seeing a photograph of the past. As such it functions as a symbol in which you can recognize things and events of which you have memories; the sound evokes those memories, and nostalgia is typically a positive attitude to them.

I am not saying here what the Gestalt psychologists say: that the impression of white comes about in such and such a way. Rather the question is precisely: what is the impression of white, what is the meaning of this expression, what is the logic of this concept 'white'? — L. Wittgenstein, in Remarks on Colour, p 46e.

The impression of the depicted strawberries might be grey-blue, but the meaning of the expression "they look grey-blue" is the colour of the picture, not the strawberries.

Heidegger confined himself to the standards of nazism, and perhaps he thought it was a duty. But I think it was bad judgement evoked in a bad society, and arguably his murky philosophy made him susceptible to it.

how am I conscious of myself. How do I feel what I feel and wonder about you feel. — dm12

To be conscious of something amounts to having one's attention directed towards it.

How a biological organism can have its attention directed towards something is partly explained by the fact that there are things which are interesting enough to pay attention to; typically things which tend to increase the fitness of the organism, such as food, sex, dangers or predators etc. It seems fairly clear how the organism may also benefit from paying attention to itself, its capacities, like the presence of others and their capacities. That's one part of an explanation of how you are conscious of yourself.

The other part would be to explain how all the biology works in terms of synaptic events etc., i.e. how the biological activity of directing attention towards things arises from lower lever biochemical processes. It might require more empirical research but the problem does not seem insurmountably hard as some philosophical dualists would like to have it.

What is there to prove when the assumption, that it would be possible to live in a hologram or simulation, is incoherent?

Would you say the same of God? — TimeLine

God is a religious concept.

. . .functions as a symbol of evil and therefore is worthy of moral consideration. — TimeLine

Why would you consider whether the word 'satan' is evil? Can a symbol of evil be evil? I don't think so.

For example, we can't ask the word to apologize, confess its sins, send it to prison, nor expect it to improve its behaviour etc. It's a word, not a moral agent.

...proof that we live in a hologram or simulation? — Existensialissue

Hologram or simulation of what?

If it is a hologram or simulation of reality, then it is a hologram or simulation of the reality in which we live. It would be nonsense to ask whether we live in a hologram or simulation of the place in which we live.

Furthermore, if the question makes no sense, then talk of proof or references to QM are irrelevant.

Disregarding the many unwarranted assumptions and assertions in the OP (e.g. that nature would be an agent) I believe there is some philosophy to be discussed on the fact that animals kill and feed on each other's bodies instead of plants, minerals, sunlight, and so on. Could it be otherwise? For example, I doubt that my cat could become a vegetarian.

I'm writtin an essay about philosophical concept of Satan based on the analisys of the poem by Charles Baudelaire "Litanies of Satan" (incl. "Prayer").
So, in the text, i need to mention two different philosophical sourses that must be printed and published after 1970.
What's the problem? I am a first year student, not a philosophical direction, and I do not know how to distinguish between philosophical text from non-philosophical. — Maks23

I'd say Satan is a religious concept, not philosophical. Baudelaire's "philosophical" claims have little to do with philosophy. Instead they were deliberately obfuscatory and controversial, a way for the romantic poet to market himself as a public figure.

I guess it will be something like when older industries became obsolete and abandoned. When we run out of oil some industries and places will be abandoned, because they depend too much on oil, whereas new places and industries may run on other energy sources, which will probably thrive in the absence of oil. Perhaps some of the major oil companies will manage to convert to solar power companies even?

Why would you leave out logic, morality etc. from a physical world? Are you thinking that a physical world would have to be some kind of a dense lump of matter without parts? It seems fairly clear that the physical world has different parts, and thus logical relations between them, such as parthood. Likewise, as long as there social creatures in a physical world there are also relations between them which depend on their behaviour. So there is morality in a physical world.

Childhood experiences do not give us a metaphysics, but they shape the stance that we will have. — Bitter Crank

Children might be shaped to believe that Santa Claus exists, but later they learn to think. Thought is not shaped by childhood experiences.

“Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure.” — Peter Strawson

I'm a descriptive metaphysician, it should show in my attempts to describe what is actual rather than possibly better.

That would require magic, not omniscience. Potential is an object of thought, not perception.

the world is the totality of perception — Heister Eggcart

Perception of what?

Aren't things that are perceived through the senses necessarily physical? — Samuel Lacrampe

Investigate what it means for something to be physical, does it leave anything out?