No. I doubt either of us would find value in that. Deuces!

Sounds familiar, but have you ever played around with imagining that this world really is all there is...

Consider the knight on the chessboard. He can't leave the chess game because what he is is bound up in the playing of the game.

I'm not at all an eliminative materialist. I say that consciousness is identical to physical stuff--namely, to particular brain states. If you want to say "reduces to" that's okay, although reductionism is often characterized in a way that I don't agree with, but arguably it's a straw man characterization.

I'm not using logical identity in any sort of novel manner. Just plain old morning star=evening star identity. — Terrapin Station

So you're a physicalist who's maybe a little foggy on how to characterize consciousness. We could say the very same thing of a lot of neuroscientists. But being that this is a philosophy forum, I think I could point out some ways it looks like you're walking around a philosophical minefield. But I wouldn't do that unless it was understood that I'm not interested in being combative.. I respect your right to think whatever you want... and hey... only if you're interested.

I explained this already. First, I'm talking about identity in the sense of logical identity, not personal identity. Again, these refer to two quite different ideas conventionally. — Terrapin Station

Do you say consciousness reduces to physical stuff or are you eliminative? What is a logical identity.. or a logical x from your POV?

Like some kind of philosophical drive-by. Hmm. Yea. Sorry.

I don't remember it ever being easy to sustain discussions on PF. Stuff comes up. You don't feel like defending or even explaining x. The trust level is close to zero. It's a wonder anything ever happens.

Terrapin cited causality as one explanatory factor. This is what I was responding to - in terms of the argument, I'm making no commitment to any theory of causality - I'm trying to demonstrate that if one appeals to causality here, it fails on its own terms. — csalisbury

Oh. I was addressing the way you kept coming back to "reasonable." All we have to do to determine if the anxiety is common sense is to do a poll. Observe the results.

Determining if the anxiety is reasonable is a different ball of bananas.

The world of philosophy is huge! But an argument cannot progress if we spend it hunting influences, seeking proper names. If we do this, we become more like birdwatchers than philosophers, seeking examples in the wild by their distinguishing marks. It is far more fruitful to follow the argument itself, and where it leads. — csalisbury

Fear not. I wasn't hunting anything. "There is no fact of the matter" seemed like a standard waving amongst enemy troops. Not saying it was... it just struck me that way. Terrapin may have never heard of Quine.

As for your admonition to look to arguments rather than names, you're preaching to the choir. And.. I'm fine with zero contact with you beyond. Happy trails, dude.

You ask me to explain the causal connection of the torturer to the victim. I do. — csalisbury

You did? Especially to a person who just read a bunch of stuff about Leibniz, it's reasonable to imagine that causality here is an illusion. So some reasoning says yes, some reasoning says no. The sequence of words "there is no fact of the matter" was apparently typed by Terrapin, which signals us that there's some Quine on the scene somewhere... maybe he read it... maybe his aunt's next door neighbor mentioned it.. we don't know.

Are you really talking about what's reasonable? Or what's common sense? Or are you conflating the two?

According to quantum mechanics the passage of time is discrete — wuliheron

Could be. I can't do anything with info on quantum mechanics because the fundamentals of it are word salad to me.

What you describe reminds me of what the Buddhists say, that the world ends and is remade from moment to moment, as you say, like a movie. — Punshhh

Buddhists say that? That's weird.

Look at post. It nails ten ways from Sunday what I would say about calling "the moment" a recurring object. Observation of time is inextricably linked to change. Where there is no observable change, per Leibniz's Law, there is no change and therefore, the context is eternity. Time is a relation between events, not an event itself.

But I have spent a fair amount of time considering time as discontinuous. It appears to me that the consequences are that All arises from nothing and returns to nothing. Why exactly the whole thing appears to repeat over and over... I don't know. Maybe it's just how our consciousness is wired (sts). Thoughts?

sts=so to speak

In the latter case we have a series of moments as real objects — Metaphysician Undercover

So you're saying that time is discontinuous? If so, what separates the past from the present?

That's a fascinating question, dude. Would you mind if I started a different thread to discuss it?

Oh. I must have my own private Batman.

This thread wouldn't exist if we were all comfortable that sexism isn't a problem. The issue will be around for a few more decades.. maybe a century. So if you're tired, I'd suggest more naps...

but I expect that Harvard would have exposed itself to loss or liability of some kind if it had done nothing — Ciceronianus the White

Probably. The Tonight Show had a running joke making fun of football players. Apparently a number of the joked upon didn't take it well and developed a bit of hatred for Jimmy Fallon. And that with no mention of favorite sexual positions

The reason Americans like superheros is that they stand for what America is supposed to stand for. — Hanover

Batman is a darker figure and on the amoral side... obviously west coast. Where Superman is an alien who is pervasively inexplicable, Batman is rich, high-tech, and menacing. So it's not necessary what we're supposed to stand for. Vigilante justice became a thing in California during the Depression when hordes of starving people with nothing to lose started heading in that direction. But it's not unusual for epics to contain both political theory and history... what we want to be plus what circumstances have made of us.

K's Abraham is an image of the unique dissolved in the eternal... I guess in this case, the Father. "Great by virtue of impotence... Great by virtue of hope that takes the form of madness..." And all that. Volition is a vector pointing toward the earth... not toward the eternal..

That's kind of odd. You could also pick "centimeter" as your thing. Neither of those could be the ultimate subject of a predicate, so thinking of a moment as a thing is mistaking time for something absolute.

And that's what I originally thought SLX was saying about selection.... that it's the selection of what qualifies as a real thing.

Eh... I think the topic has run out of go-juice. Don't you?

My argument has been that the return itself is an instance of the same. And further, that volition, or will-power, is the capacity to resist this natural selection of difference, which occurs at each moment, in preference of the same, return. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not that every moment is a return. You have to name the thing. Sunday. Night. House. Tree. Man. Woman. You should be noticing something Platonic going on.

But which is more real? The Singular Sunday or the unique Sunday? The Singular Will or the unique will?

I am actually very interested in the idea of non-voluntary selection, that's why I asked you for an explanation of eternal return. — Metaphysician Undercover

For what it's worth.. an example of return can be found in the elements of this moment... now. Where I am it's Sunday night. Sunday night has returned... obviously there have been a bunch of them. Yet in some ways this Sunday night is unique. I may be completely and totally wrong, but I think what's been intended by "selection" in this thread is about the ways this Sunday night is unique.

I'd be happy to find out that's not what it means.. because selection is a very confusing way to put it.

.

This is the lowest quality thread in the history of threads.

but at some point it's a choice between Christianity and not, no? — StreetlightX

Jesus. No. You're tangling yourself up in the clothes. The whole point is standing there naked. What is the wound in the self?

Beneath it rumbles another, Nietzschean, repetition: that of eternal return." — StreetlightX

Actually, I think K's faith is the acceptance N talks about. Anyway... they both talked a lot about the significance of the image of Christ. A mash-up of the two is interesting.

This though, all comes after a long interlude where Deleuze heaps praise upon Kierkegaard for coming really close to thinking repetition in the way he thinks it ought to be though — StreetlightX

Cool.

Is there any comparison between Deleuze's take on eternal return and Kierkegaard's repetition?

This is cool. For Leibniz, mind comes in layers. Conscious thoughts and experiences are the top layer. Innate ideas are the next layer down and emerge from structural features of mind. The bottom layer is micro-perceptions (which, per Jolley is first fully articulated by Leibniz, but originally appeared in Spinoza's views).

Mind and body are both supposed to be structured in this way. So physical motion arises from structural features of the physical which are in turn rooted in micro-physical stuff.

One thing this reveals is that the notion that Freud's layering reflected the popularity of geology is at least partly bullshit. I knew it!

Apparently the EU has had problems taking actions to protect itself from terrorism (like keeping track of the movements of known terrorists into, out of, and around Europe.) Per the recent Frontline documentary, part of the problem is deep-seated fear of the loss of civil liberty, but it's also that even during stress-free periods, Europeans have difficultly communicating.

In other words... they can't partake of the benefits of centralized authority. Since that centralization in the US is the result of a civil war, I couldn't criticize... even if I was inclined to.

So Brexit may have been inevitable. From a physics perspective, it's just a matter of time before the right kind and amount of stress comes along and the EU will basically be gone.

I'm glad you liked it. It was a response to something John said in another thread. Unfortunately a bunch of stuff came up and I didn't end up addressing any of the cool points various people made, but I did think about 'em. Thanks guys!

What is it that thinks along certain lines? Which comes first, the mind/brain, or the ability to think along certain lines? — Harry Hindu

Well done, Harry. This is along the lines of objections that existed in Leibniz's time. The concern is that nativism isn't saying anything other than that people have a tendency to think. Definitely not a news flash. How can nativism distinguish itself?

Jim has a tabula rasa and Sue has innate ideas. They both believe the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. As we all know, Jim has a philosophical problem justifying his belief. Sue, equipped with innateness, doesn't suffer from this. Is this a bonus for nativism? I say no. All we've done is move the problem of justification upstream.

Also note that whatever one's stance, Jim and Sue have the same belief. What beyond myth-building do we achieve by explaining the cause of that similarity?

What's fascinating is that each view suffers from conundrums which the other side is eager to point out. It's a Mexican stand-off... which suggests that we're due for a synthesis.

Recently, I've been drawn - thanks to my reading of Gilles Deleuze - to thinking about metaphysics as a matter of selection: to 'have a metaphysics' is to have a way to 'select' among the kinds of things that 'exist'. — StreetlightX

Metaphilosophy, divorced from the social climate of any particular bout of philosophy, seems anchorless to me. I immediately suspect that some crap is going to be smuggled in. Is that true of Deleuze?

In time period P:

How did people sort out what's real and not-real? If a philosopher claimed that it's all a Magnificent Lie (whether it was Rumi or Dennett), what motivated that assertion? Did the people of the time assume divinity? Did they assume inner/outer? That kind of question is fruitful to me...

Thanks. — Harry Hindu

Yep.

So... anyway. I take it that the average member of this forum is pretty comfortable with nativism of the sort that Leibniz advocated (affirming a tendency to think along certain lines). Locke's view just doesn't account for expectations that are typical of us. In fact, I think one could argue that expectation in general is the key here.

That leaves me pondering expectation though. Like logic and math (the obvious markers of nativity), there's something kind of mechanistic about expectation. It's actually pretty easy to program a computer to perform expectation. Even zeroing in on hardware, one could argue that expectation is innate in computers.

So the question doesn't really have ontological implications of the sort that make any difference.

I think you're being purposely obtuse, but I'll ask it a different way. — Harry Hindu

Totally honestly, dude... a few posts back in our exchange I began to suspect that you're a troll (saying nonsensical stuff just to get a rise out of people.) So we're having the same sort of experience with one another. That's kind of funny.

You asked me what form "logic takes." Earnestly, that question was meaningless to me. Weren't you really asking what form my experience takes when I note that I'm being logical?

Surely you aren't proposing that a logical principle is identical to any one experience of its application. One can only accept that at the cost of defying logic.

What form does your logic take in order for you to know that you are being logical - for you to be able to observe your own mental processes as being logical? — Harry Hindu

I would describe it as processional like a parade or constructive like a building project. Being logical has the character of walking one step after another. Or it's like mortaring bricks where each one is sturdily stacked on the last (which is why I would describe a really solid logical argument as a brick house.)

What form does logic take? — Harry Hindu

I don't understand the question, Harry. Could you explain it to me?

Is it wheel-barrow or wheel-bearer?

Well, asking for proof is an implicit acceptance that you and I can agree on what constitutes 'proof'. — Wayfarer

What is agreement? We shake our heads up and down at one another?

Besides which, logical proofs, like if B>A and C>B then C>A don't require individual assent, i.e. it's not a matter of opinion whether the proposition is true. — Wayfarer

Inscrutability of reference addresses reference, not truth, so this is a different issue.

As to whether 'statements of logical principles might mean different things to different people', it might be relevant to note that formal logic developed in both Western and Indian philosophy, and that many of the basic outlines were similar, even if the details were different. After all, it's hard to imagine how the Law of Identity or the Law of the Excluded Middle could could vary between cultures, isn't it? — Wayfarer

Principles are expressed by utterances of sentences. One is free to take it on faith that a particular expression is understood in the same way by two different people. Question is: can you prove it?

So though some humans appear to lack the ability to follow a logical argument (children, for instance), Leibniz's view could be taken to be saying that if such an ability were to appear, it would conform to certain well-known rules.

Take away the divine truth-confirmation, and that amounts to saying that humans are prone to thinking a certain way, or there are basic similarities in the way people think. Perhaps the average deflationist would agree?

It's interesting to contrast all of this to Quine's take. He affirmed that that ability to apply logic to new situations has to be apriori. But wouldn't inscrutability of reference mean that it's impossible to say whether people generally think the same way? So statements of logical principles might mean different things to different people.

Sorry, can't help you Harry. I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

No one has denied that reason proceeds from sights, sounds, etc which prompt thought. Thanks.

That one reasons about something is not in dispute. No instance of sensory experience can account for the expectation that logical principles are universal. This is Leibniz' argument.

It is simply a process that engineers organisms to master changing environments, like cockroaches and human beings. — Harry Hindu

Point is that you must have had confidence in basic principles of reasoning in order to accept evolution. Therefore it doesn't make sense to say that observation of the ways of evolution provides you with that confidence.