You've started with the premise that inside and outside are sets which they clearly are not. They are descriptions of the areas which become distinct only by the definition of a single set. Inside the set S are all the members of S. Outside the set S are all the non-members of S. The Universal Set (your Thing) contains the subset S. But of course it also contains every possible subset which will include subsets of S, subsets of Not-S, and subsets which have members from both S and Not-S making the whole concept of inside and outside as you originally posited it meaningless. As for the Universal Set itself, it, by definition, has no outside for nothing is Not-U and if U is infinite then it has no inside either for there is no limit (no border, if you like) to be inside of.

So to answer your questions directly ....

The Universal Set usually but Everything will do just as well as long as it literally means literally everything

I see no reason to think that at all. You've set up a false paradox.

No! Universe is a completely coherent a priori concept in and of itself, for example, and it's a set that we have far from completely defined the population of to date.

Eternity assumes that there is some kind of relative time definer. — darthbarracuda

Not necessarily. If you understand eternity quantitatively then it certainly does. If, however, you understand it qualitatively as Plato and Neo-Platonist Christianity do then it is literally timeless

Only if she didn't have the capacity (e.g. being paralyzed by a stroke) or didn't have the opportunity (e.g. because her car had been stolen), or both, do we normally say that she could not have done otherwise. — Pierre-Normand

That's precisely the distinction that determinists argue is fallacious. Everything which occurs to make Sue late, including her 'choices', on this particular day is an incapacity equal to accidents and emergencies like those you describe. There is no point at which Sue can independently intervene in the course of events to change the inevitable outcome of her arriving after the appointed time. She can sit there all day saying she shouldn't have had that last sip of coffee or she should have had the right fare ready for the bus but she did and she couldn't not have.

But again you are using a definition of perfect which is effectively 'not like this Universe' when it is entirely possible that this Universe is as in fact as good as it gets, that a more perfect Universe it is not possible to bring into being. In other words by 'up to standards' you really mean up to your wholly subjective standards not, as you should mean, up to the standards of the Universe creators watchdog..

I have to wonder why you would be opposed to perfection. — darthbarracuda

Quis costodies custodiet? Who gets to decide what is perfect and by what authority? It is a huge assumption that suffering and pain form no part of a perfect existence. As a sufferer from chronic depression myself I do not see my illness as an imperfection that must be eradicated at all costs. Burden though it be there are definitely aspects of it that are beneficial to me and to others, that are life affirming and good. There are many ways in which I'm perfectly happy being miserable thank-you very much. Are you really so sure that there are no such things as necessary evils?

There really is no great difference between the position you are defending and the worst totalitarian idealism. It is eugenics pure and simple. It is but a petty distinction between knocking people on the head and forcing them to be 'cured' of anything that prevents them being happy little citizens. There are more and worse ways of dying than the simple cessation of brain activity.

If perfection means what you are saying it means then the only rational response is to oppose it with every last scrap of our humanity.

I don't see a strict distinction between the eternal and the temporal — Punshhh

I'm suspicious that this is a circular argument dependent on your initial definition of 'eternal' which of course will be the definition that most suits your argument. If this isn't to be just a sneaky bit of sophistry then I suggest you lay out exactly what you mean by both 'eternal' and 'temporal' and indicate what you think their ontological status as, if either or both are considered merely illusory, then it all becomes a bit moot!

All you're describing here is an undecidable proposition which means that, by definition there is no such thing as wrong and right from the point of view either of the participants in this 'debate' or observers of it even if one of them is describing an ontological reality because it is impossible to know that this is the case. Significant? Perhaps, as a problem that we should be aware of and maybe a clincher to prevent descent into scholasticism.

Fellow feeling, of the "I understand where you're coming from" variety. The trap, as he indicates, is that understanding, getting yourself into the mindset, or whatever the modern jargon is for the touchy, feely approach, is but a step away from justifying the offense and thereby becoming the offender.

It has always seemed to me to be a huge mistake to believe that law has anything whatsoever to do with morality. There many acts that are considered immoral which are entirely legal ('stealing' a man's girlfriend, for example) and many acts that might be considered moral which are wholly illegal (blocking a road to prevent the delivery of WMDs, perhaps).

Law is dedicated to social order and the deterrence of acts which disrupt it. It is not a moral touchstone and it certainly has nothing to do with moral education.

"Who has power in society, and what can we do to eliminate this structure of power?" — Agustino

So Plato's Republic isn't an excoriating critique of 'power to the people' (democracy)?

It seems to me that your argument is subject to death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts. I simply don't think you can make all these distinctions and survive with a coherent understanding. History, it seems to me, is entirely concerned with who has power and how it can be taken away from them and wherever history goes philosophy is sure to follow. This being the case I really don't think you can ignore politicians and rulers any more than you can ignore uppity plebs. It simply isn't the case that philosophy only exists if it is written down by philosophers. Yes, the number of works in this area and the labels they generate have increased exponentially but that doesn't for one second mean that we have only become concerned with the matters that they discuss in the last 200 years or so. Just the complexity of the thought involved in the demands that led to the Magna Carta, for example, demonstrates that even the most ordinary men were actively engaged in critical analysis of power. But without printing presses and universities and media outlets and with engagement in a daily struggle just to stay alive there was no way to academise and thus eternalise such thought.

Just as increased reporting to police does not an increase in crime make, the flurry of academic works does not a new concern make. People today just aren't that different ultimately!

Isn't Aristotle pre-1800 then? Doesn't Plato have a book entirely concerned with the structure of society and the nature of rule? Isn't Augustine's City of God a treatise on the same subject? What else is Machiavelli talking about in the 15th Century or More in Utopia before him or Hobbes after him? Marcus Aurelius? Cicero?

Clearly that's what he means when he says 'transcendent'! :D

up until the 1800s, the concern over power structures was almost non-existent — Agustino

What? What do you imagine the Catholic Church was doing from 325 until the Reformation? What's the burning of heretics if not a concern to maintain power? What were the Crusades about? Why was there a Pope and a Holy Roman Emperor? What was Ambrose doing publicly shamiong the emperor if not asserting the primacy of Chruch over State?

What the heck was Cromwell doing marching around Britain knocking noble head's together if it wasn't a concern with structures of power? I don't think I imagined that he was asserting the primacy of Parliament over monarchy?

And while we're in Britain, do you have no idea just how deeply structured the feudal system was under the Normans?

Because given our current understanding of the universe hinges on the logic of science, which then exclusively relies on mathematics and physical laws to describe how it functions. — Question

Except that it doesn't. Even the most arrogant scientist would not pretend that science gives us a complete understanding of the totality of the Universe. The very existence of theoretical physics (or made up stuff which plugs the gaps as I prefer to call it) is testament to that. And life of even the least complex kind simply blows away any notion that the Universe is describable purely in terms of mathematics and physical laws.

A Universe governed entirely by physical laws is simply an ideal abstraction. An extremely useful one, no doubt, but an abstraction nonetheless for it takes no account whatsoever of acts of will by which those laws can be subverted or outright broken.

I find it odd having finally dismissed the notion of a proof of God's existence that anybody should be replacing it with an argument towards proving the existence of a computer so utterly beyond our comprehension in terms of calculation speed, parallel processing, and complexity as to create a simulation of a Universe which includes life forms with sufficient (artifificial?) intelligence to posit that they might after all be simulations. After all if there is such a computer doesn't that rather beg the question of who built it and wouldn't that builder be God in all but name? Unless of course the builder is also a simulation within an even bigger and yet more complex computer in which case we seem to be on to a very familiar rocky road to infinite regression awfully familiar to those of us whose primary interest is the philosophy of religion! Scream when you want to get off the ride!

It's not a whole lot of differences. It's a list of examples of why pretty much everybody in neuroscience agrees that computers are not an imperfect analogue but no analogue at all.

it is possible for a quantum particle to be in two places at the same time. — hunterkf5732

Oh, it's far more complicated and weird than that!

That isn't (though your previous expression of it was). It's just wrong. A list of properties of the human brain bears almost no points of similarity with the properties of a computer. The ability to come up with the same answers to a limited set of problems does not in any way provide evidence of similarity of process. And it's extremely disingenuous to say that computers process information unless you're prepared to accept that binary code is an adequate definition thereof. Computers simply do not think. They have absolutely no awareness of what is passing through their logic gates and no ability to differentiate. They have no capacity for doubt, for self-correction, for originality or insight. And most significantly of all they are not self-initiating. Anything a computer does that looks even remotely human it does at the behest of a human programmer. They are simply calculating machines, no more than sophisticated abacuses in the final analysis. Are you really suggesting that an abacus is a close analogue for the human brain?

And this is reflected in UK law. — Sapientia

It's a very scratched, dull, and cracked mirror then!

So, you are asking whether beliefs that are not acted upon can be immoral? — John

Is that even possible? Surely belief cannot ever be separated from action. At the very least, belief must moderate behaviour or it's not a genuine belief at all. If I believe that cuckoo clocks are a major health hazard, can I nevertheless enter a clock shop with complete ease? If I believe that atheists are going to Hell, can I have any kind of relationship with one that is completely unaffected?

I think you may need another option .. don't know! This is one very big can of worms you've opened setting all kinds of questions pinging round my brain like ..

Do the connotations of 'wrong' mean that most people are unable to effectively differentiate the two. Is there any real distinction between wrong as a matter of fact and wrong in a moral sense?

Can people help what they believe? If not can they be held morally responsible for beliefs that are wrong (in either sense)? Clearly if they act on those beliefs in manners which break the law they can and must be held legally responsible but, morally responsible?

Is belief changeable? If not is there any point to condmenation or protest of beliefs? If so, are we just replacing one brainwashing with another albeit one with the official stamp of approval from the Good Belief Advisory Council?

Is there not a sense in which all belief good,, bad, or indifferent is morally questionable given that it must involve at least some conclusions based on facts not in evidence?

And that's just in the five minuted between reading this and taking the dog out for her final urination of the day! Who knows what I'll have come up with by tomorrow?

I propose free skin-care for white people! — Agustino

We already do in England. It's called rain!

I sincerely hope that that is not the case. There is no advantage to having AIs that are wrong as much as they're right, prone to abandoning logic and rationality for emotion, and avoid thinking altogether whenever an 'obvious' answer (usually wrong!) presents itself!

There is a common misconception that one is entitled to one's opinion: a misconception that has seen so many internet 'discussion' facilities turn into little more than a series of ever crazier, abusive monologues. One is not, especially in a philosophy forum, unless one can give a rational account of that opinion and justify it from evidence, observation, or logical progression.

Well, I suppose one is 'a number' but I was kinda expecting more! ;)

You do realise that you've just presented an entirely circular argument? Computers are the best analogue of human brains so we figure that human brains must work something like computers? How do we judge that computers are the best analogue? Cos they work a bit like human brains! Needs some work does that!

It is all, of course, irrelevant to Wittgenstein, anyway, who had no experience of computers and nothing but actual human behaviour to work with but I really can't understand this love of the computer analogy. It is on every conceivable level a load of dingo's kidneys, frankly! Just compare the completely automatic way that we catch a ball, say, to the mass of range finding and calculation and recalculation and signalling of moving parts that a robot would require. When you come up with a computer that can recognise and immediately respond to a joke that nobody's ever heard before then I might concede that a computer is thinking more like a human (though personally I do not expect that day to ever dawn). That's as far as I will ever go.

Yes, well, Corsica! Any excuse to poke a finger in France's eye!

Post-revolution France
Post-revoultion Russia
Post-war Zionism
Nazi-hunters
The Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the Counter Counter Reformation (actually pretty much the entire history of Christianity post-Constantine's 'conversion')
Cromwell's Protectorate
Islamic extremism

Where do you want to stop?

But isn't the decision to be very observant (like being ultra-orthodox or strictly Methodist) your problem rather than everybody else's? — Bitter Crank

Not if your host country actively seeks to prevent you from doing so while espousing a 'charter' of human rights and religious freedom which as an EU member Denmark certainly does. The absurdity of the burkini bans in France, now thankfully ruled unconstitutional, is a prime example of a country ignoring its own legal system and its philosophical foundations to espouse prejudice. The very opposite of 'your problem, believer'!

The Germans were acquiescing to Nazism well before WWII started (and I use "Germans" as a convenient shorthand for "Germanic people"). — Baden

But that's already a generalisation that is neither true nor useful. It is arguable whether there was ever even a majority of Germans that could reasonably be described as Nazis. (And I do need to remind you that Germanic peoples include the English so your shorthand is itself of a shorthand that is wildly inaccurate!). Any attempt to view the persecution of the Jews as a collective act of the German people is itself therefore nothing but propaganda .

There is of course considerable historical support for the observation that when freed from oppression the oppressed become oppressors. The interesting thing is that it is usually not those who actually suffered that are responsible but the first generation after them, those seeking 'justice' by which, of course, they usually, if unconsciously, revenge, for their parents.

For example, the success of computers in modeling reality via computational means (mathematical truths and logical formulas) in my eyes validates the findings of the Tractatus over the Investigations. — Question

I'm really not sure how computers doing what computers are good at validates any observations on human thinking and communication. Of course there are elements of human thought that bear some resemblance to computation but it is no more than a part of the extremely complex whole and, largely consisting of autonomous and unconscious functions, a small part at that..

However, no such effect is present when for example abusing cocaine, still a cocaine habit is often called a disease. — Wilco Lensink

Huh?

Does anyone know how people have come to the conclusion that addiction is a genetic disease rather than a product of psychological conditioning? — Wilco Lensink

The same way that they have come to most other conclusions; by setting up their studies and reading the results in such a way as to confirm whatever they believed to be the case in the first place! Cynical? Moi? Well yes but only because so much 'research' in this area is absolute pants. As the experiments that are really necessary to establish the facts here are all utterly unethical we have to be content with half-truths and obfuscation. We don't know and we never will. Which of course is great for the 'experts' ...

Obviously. You just get on the pundit circuit. You all go on the chat shows and the colour supplements and violently disagree with each other about what answer I’m eventually going to produce. And if you get yourselves clever agents, you’ll be on the gravy train for life.

Deep Thought

Yes, no and other. For starters you've got to decide what you mean by faith. If faith is voluntary then it proves the existence of some degree of free will in which case it becomes a matter of knowledge rather than faith anyway. If on the other hand faith is involuntary, if you cannot help what it is you believe, then is it really faith at all? The whole question is so beset with paradoxes that it ultimately becomes meaningless.

Consider the position of someone who accepts the existence of free will. Presumably consistency demands that he or she accepts that they have freely chosen to believe in the existence of free will which means that they could equally have chosen not to believe in the existence of free will but if they had so chosen then they would have been committed to the view that there was no such choice even though they had just made it. Similarly the determinist, if consistent, must accept that the dice could have landed either way and it is equally possible that they could be a believer in the existence of free will which would have committed them to accepting that the decision was a free one even though it was pre-determined.

Ultimately it is an undecidable question and the truth is that we are doomed to a life of acting as though free will exists (even the most ardent determinist has to decide what to have for breakfast) without ever knowing one way or the other. I'm really not sure that 'faith' even begins to describe how we stand relative to an undecidable proposition.

So let's look at it from the other way round. I have a new ethical system X which has as its sole purpose an increase in pleasure and happiness. How might I achieve that if I do not first address those things which cause deprivation of pleasure and happiness? Even the most egocentric hedonism must address the problem of interruption to or deprivation of pleasure and happiness by others. In other words it requires rules that ensure that others cannot behave in a manner which negates benefit or, if they do, provides for 'compensation' to restore that benefit.

An ethical system which pretends to ignore or deprioritise the prevention of harm is simply empty. You don't fill a fish tank that's full. You don't charge a battery that's at 100% You don't provide a code of behaviour for those who do not, or rather cannot, do harm.

You could, of course, subvert this by claiming that pain is not real, that harm is illusion, that loss is delusion so that none of these is any true threat to happiness but I think we all know that not's true or, if it is, it's impossible to free ourselves from the illusion. Buddhists can preach the non-existence of pain all they want but I've yet to meet one that doesn't jump when you stick a pin in him!

Alternatively, you could claim that pain is real but it doesn't matter such is the importance of pleasure and happiness. You don't need an ethic which proscribes harm to others because it is the unavoidable consequence of seeking the true purpose of your own life. But it's easy to say that when it's not you doing the 'inevitable' suffering and hard to maintain when you've been locked up to protect the public from your sociopathic tendencies!

Even if we reduce it to the purely physiological, pain is something we are programmed to avoid, prevent, or relieve at the earliest possible opportunity. Moreover it is normative for human beings to be hurt by hurting others, to suffer for causing suffering. Anything purporting to be a recipe for the good life which fails to address these inescapable truths of the human condition is pie-in-the-sky idealism (with a small I, ie. the bad kind!) at best. At worst it's the kind of blind 'optimism' which informed the eugenics movement or the Aryan supremacism of Hitler! Nazism is the ultimate example of a 'positive' ethics!

I really don't see this as at all puzzling. If it ain't broke you don't fix it. If you're in a boat you don't need instructions on floating but on how to avoid not floating. You don't have emergency services on standby to rush to the aid of people who have nothing wrong with them. Harm, damage and pain are literally emergencies. How could they not be 'pressing'?

There have of course been attempts at what you would call a positive ethics, notably Utilitarianism, but they inevitably find themselves caught in the barbed wire of the realisation that it is rarely possible to promote pleasure or happiness to the primary aim at no cost in terms of harm to others. Increasing the sum total of happiness is an empty goal if the 'wealth' is not evenly distributed especially if some are actively deprived in achieving it.

It is no surprise at all that all the great ethical systems are prefaced on 'first do no harm'.

Non-human animals do not create knowledge; of themselves, of others, of "what-it's-like", or anything else. — tom

This is clearly something that you need to believe for reasons no doubt far beyond my understanding but it simply isn't supported by any rational investigation of animal behaviour. How do you even begin to explain the odd couple bonds between animals of different species, not infrequently between predator and prey, mourning and depression. fostering and community care, recognition of specific animals and humans after extended periods of separation, and a whole host of other complex social interactions if there is no awareness of self and other at all?

Ultimately determinism merely states that things are as they are because they could not be other than as they are. So, in a very real sense, the whole idea of education (of any sort) as a curative is entirely contradictory to the basic premise of determinism. Indeed the very notion of a cure for ills, be they personal, local, national or international is meaningless from a deterministic point of view. Such 'problems' as there are could not not be. If everything is out of our control, then nothing is in our control. You can't have your cake and eat it.

For such reasons a lot of people think determinism (at least, absolute determinism) is a load of dingo's kidneys which leads to a particularly tricky paradox for determinists. It is, if determinism is true, impossible for people who think determinism is a load of dingo's kidneys not to think that determinism is a load of dingo's kidneys, so it is utterly pointless to argue or teach otherwise. Yet if determinism is true then people who argue or teach that it is true cannot not argue or teach that it is true. What fun philosophy can be!

I don't see how that would be near impossible to maintain accurately. Can you explain? — Ovaloid

Under the current system each individual is registered as a voter for all elections and referendums. The proposed system would require that they be separately listed for every single vote (and incidentally who in this system decides what votes are to be taken - do they take a vote on what they're going to take a vote on?) with their proxy defined for every single issue, multiplying the bureaucracy by an unfathomable number of times. And what happens if an unexpected and previously undefined issue comes up. Must we refresh the list all over again before any vote can be taken? What if a decision is required urgently or even immediately (which brings us neatly on to ...)?

What is democracy worse than and why? — Ovaloid

In its inability to react to quickly changing circumstances it is perhaps worse than all forms of Government. There is no time to take a vote on the correct response to a nuclear warhead falling toward a major city, or a run on the banks, or widespread flooding, or an explosion at a major oil refinery. The buck has to stop with an executive power in urgent and extreme situations. Remember that it was not Christianity that brought down the Roman Empire nor capitalism the Soviet but the bureaucratic nightmares involved in responding to emerging pressures and threats. Add in a plebiscite and only chaos can possibly ensue.

To the extent that it suppresses, represses, and oppresses minorities it is at least as bad as any other form of Government. The increase in public expressions of racism in Britain after the recent referendum appeared to give a mandate to 'send foreigners home' is a classic example of how quickly people rule becomes mob rule.

To the degree that it promotes the opinion of the least qualified to judge and fails to acknowledge the inescapable truth of the fundamental selfishness and irrationality of human beings (original sin, for want of a better term, though not necessarily in any religious sense) it is undoubtedly the worst. People, ultimately, are the last people you'd ask when seeking rational decisions. It simply isn't the case that 'a million people can't be wrong' nor even a million million (I mean ... Justin Bieber!).

And that's just the highlights!

Were it humanly possible there is little doubt that the best form of Government is benign, informed, ethical dictatorship by an individual or small group who are by all possible standards most fit to rule, exactly as Plato envisaged. Barring that, representative democracy, which is essentially a flawed and fragile version of that ideal (Plato-Lite?) and only barely 'democratic' in reality, is probably the least worst pragmatic option we have yet devised. Full, untramelled democracy? That way madness lies!

Impractical because the politically inactive will always be politically inactive. They'll have no more interest in or make any more effort towards appointing proxies than they do to voting themselves.

Unworkable because a register of voters and the proxies they hold and the votes for which they are eligible would be near impossible to maintain accurately, and a huge drain on resources and time that should be devoted to the actual politics.

Corruptible for much the same reasons as it unworkable and because special interest groups would simply hijack the entire scheme gathering up proxies by fair means or foul to wield in pursuit of ever more self-serving agendas.

Like all ideals it collapses immediately it fails to take into account that the whole thing involves human beings who are not ideal, far from it. And worse still in this case it starts from the premise that democracy is a good thing which it so palpably is not and never will be!

What suggest to you that it is necessary that he does any such thing? It is the Platonic position, given its fullest expression by Neo-Platonist Christians that there exists only good as creation is entirely a superabundance of good (identified with God). Existence is not possible without good. Every entity which has being consists only of good. And every action of that entity must therefore be motivated by good. The problem is only that it is falsely perceived, corrupted by ignorance, desire, and the demands of physicality. As Mary Wollstonecraft famously put it ...

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
l

The principal conclusion of interest in this discussion from this position is that there is therefore no such thing as irredeemability. From a secular platonist's point of view punishment by death is by definition pointless (it does not eradicate evil since there is no evil to eradicate) and counter productive (destroying good no matter how tainted). For theists it is also hubris, wresting control of life and death from God, and therefore no less sinful than any of the crimes for which the punishment is being handed out. For both theist and non-theist, those who execute criminals are achieving nothing because they are simply repeating the same mistakes that led to the crimes in the first place leaving the human sphere not one iota improved.

Contrary to your poo-pooing, there are many current philosophers, both theist and non-theist who hold for these and other reasons that evil has no ontological reality. And there is no denying that in most modern justice systems that is the effective philosophical position which underlies the handling of convicted criminals. Retributive 'justice' is, to your chagrin, I'm sure, very much a busted flush, even in the majority of American states, as rehabilitation (redemption) replaces punishment as the goal of sentencing.