Ok then, let's say that a criminal insult is defined as speech or another communicative act that demeans the person addressed or identified as the target of the act. Where demeans would have another definition which doesn't need to concern us.

This law would limit speech, make some speech acts criminal, correct? — Echarmion

??? No, obviously not. If the person isn't even referring to speech, how would it make any speech acts criminal?

Why would it depend on that? I don't see the logic here. — Echarmion

Because it's going to be someone's opinion of just what is problematic or not, just what should be illegal or not, etc. What one individual would call "criminal insults" might have little to do with what someone else would consider "criminal insults," and someone might have criteria for what they're naming "criminal insults" that doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with speech. Which would mean they'd be using the term very unusually, probably, but people can do that.

The whole idea is that I wouldn't have "criminal threatening" where you can just intuit what I'd consider a problem. That's the whole reason for the detailed list of criteria I gave. That whole thing is what I have in mind, which each part of it a necessary component.

As I said above "But I'm defining what I'd name 'criminal threatening.'" It might not have much to do with your, or with any conventional notion of what threatening is.

That's why I made all of that explicit. "Criminal threatening" is just a name. What I'm referring to is what I spelled out. What anyone else might have in mind with that term might not resemble what I have in mind by it.

Insults also don't necessarily require speech. Yet if insulting someone was a crime, it would make certain speech acts (like calling someone an Idiot) criminal. — Echarmion

It would depend on what the person's "criminal insult" criteria would be. We'd have to ask them. Maybe they'd have detailed criteria, most of which don't have anything to do with speech, and where speech wouldn't even be necessary.

But the point is there are circumstances (e.g. pointing a gun at someone) where speech can turn into a crime. It's not just speech, but nevertheless the speech is criminal. — Echarmion

No, it isn't. The whole thing is, which doesn't even require speech.

Does not being in a state of confusion first require a false "belief"? — A Gnostic Agnostic

No.

Confusion occurs when someone isn't sure what's the case and especially when there seem to be dissonances in the information at hand.



Aside from that, what you're looking for has nothing to do with logic, really. Logic is about "what follows from what" given certain assumptions, definitions, rules, etc.

I’m saying there are possibilities/possible worlds (ways things could have been) — AJJ

Which is not additional, obviously.

and that these are abstract objects (something additional about how they obtain). — AJJ

So when I say that possibilities are concrete facts, I'm not saying something additional about how they obtain?

Why would "They are abstract objects" be something additional, but "They are concrete facts" isn't something additional?

So what are you saying additional that's not the same as an assertion that there are possibilities?

I’m explaining how possible worlds exist (as abstract objects) and not simply asserting that they do without any enabling reason why they do/can. — AJJ

But that's what I did. The world could be strongly deterministic. It's not. That's how (non-actual) possible worlds exist.

But there are priorities here, like the truth, like common sense, like being reasonable. — S

"Reasonable" is subjective, "common sense" is often nonsense and appeals to it are one of the lamest rhetorical tactics, and when we're talking about normatives, we're not dealing with things that are true or false.

But at any rate, sure, you're not interested. That's fine. There's probably no reason for us to go back and forth with each other about it then. Let's move on to something you're interested in.

That's a good point, although with the speech issue, I'm not sure off-the-cuff just what the relevant other differences would be, so it would be difficult to address that . . .

Although I suppose one concern might be how one's chances of acquiring and maintaining employment, housing, etc. could be affected via speech acts, but as you know, I'd have a very different sort of social and economic system in place where there wouldn't be the same sorts of challenges for that stuff.

And one of these criteria is that a threat is made (by someone, towards someone else, is implied). — Echarmion

Verbally or otherwise. But as you note, it's not just about (or even necessarily about verbal) threats in the conventional sense of that term. That's the whole point.

But the threat can be speech. — Echarmion

It can include speech, but again, the speech is not at all sufficient for it to be a problem. Hence me spelling out all of the criteria.

Why would I care about that?!? — S

I was asked about my view on it. I pasted what my policy would be. If you're not interested in that, then don't read (or bother commenting on) the post. The idea isn't to capture some common notion of the term (or rather some common notion of when it's morally or legally problematic).

If you still have a problem with this, I think you're going to need to state your general criteria for explanations in a way that we can better check what purported explanations are really explanations.

I said, in another context, that I refuse to do arguments that hinge on whether something is an explanation unless general criteria for explanations are given, and this is the perfect example why.

I got suckered into this one, because it didn't seem initially like it was going to be one of these stupid "That's not an explanation" arguments.

So let's look at general criteria for explanations in a way that we can check them without just saying, "That's not an explanation!" "That's not a justification!" etc. at whim.

In my post above, by the way, I'm simply showing that one can do the exact same nonsense from either side.

Here’s mine again: “There can be a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist [belief] because the possibility doesn’t depend on the material world from which we would not be able to derive that possibility [justification].”

My justification gives an explanation for how the possible world obtains on my terms, i.e. I reason that it’s being an abstract object which allows it to exist because on other terms it would not be able to.

It seems to me you can condense yours down to this: “There can be possible worlds because there are possible worlds.” — AJJ

Sure, so here's mine again:

"There can be a possible world where this planet doesn't exist [belief] because the possibility is a result of the world not being strongly(/causally) deterministic; if that weren't the case, there would be no non-actual possibilities [justification]."

My justification gives an explantion for how the possible world obtains on my terms, i.e. I reason that being a consequence of a metaphysics that's not strongly(/causally) deterministic allows it to exist because on other terms it would not be able to.

It seems to me you can condense yours down to this: “There can be possible worlds because there are possible worlds.”

So in short:

Mine: "Possible worlds exist on my terms by being a factor of the world not being strongly(/causally) deterministic; otherwise nonactual possible worlds can't exist."

Yours: "Possible worlds exist on my terms because they do."

That's not just an idea my friend. — creativesoul

If you can show it's not just an idea (per my assessment of course--I don't just mean if you believe you can show it), I'll accept that. We've kind of been talking about that for awhile in the thread.

True, but then it's also not someone threatening someone else. It's a dangerous situation. — Echarmion

?? But I'm defining what I'd name "criminal threatening." Nothing less than what I'm describing would count. That's why I'm spelling all of that stuff out. Those are the criteria. Think of it like a checklist.

Are you saying threatening someone doesn't require communication? — Echarmion

It doesn't require speech. I make that explicit in my criteria.

If I said to you, "I'm going to fucking knife you to death!", — S

No, that wouldn't be at all sufficient. I have specific conditions that need to be met that I make explicit.

You're clearly describing speech acts. — Echarmion

So this, for example:

"it's an immediate, 'physical' threat in the sense of potential victims being within the range of the threatening instruments (whether just one's body, or weapons, or causally connected remote devices or substances, etc.), which are actual and not simply claimed,"

Is explicitly describing something that's not speech.

It seems weird that a lot of arguments here are just doubling down on an objection that makes no sense in light of what someone is actually saying.

You could, but that would be another assertion. I’m not asserting that you’re not providing a justification for the point under discussion - it seems to me I’ve demonstrated that. — AJJ

What did you do different than I did? If you're being serious, it seems weird to me that you believe you're doing anything different than I am.

I thought maybe you were talking about borders more broadly, since for whatever reason that's the direction Janus started pursuing.

But it seems to follow that "speech acts can never be illegal" is not a tenable position then — Echarmion

Again, criminal threatening as I describe it isn't a speech act. It can be accompanied by a speech act--as can murdering someone, raping someone, etc. But the speech act is neither sufficient nor even necessary.

As you could probably guess, I don't think that positing real abstracts is either right or reasonable. So should I say you're not offering an explanation?

The problem I have with yours is it doesn’t actually offer a proper justification, — AJJ

Where of course you'd need to present what a "proper justification" is supposed to amount to.

I'm asking not what's different about the content of the explanations, but.what's different about them structurally that makes one an explanation and the other not an explanation.

There can be a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist because the possibility is a factor of the material world not being thoroughly, strongly deterministic.

What is different about your formulation?

There can be a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist because the possibility is an abstract object that exists independently of the material world. — AJJ

That's just saying what a possibility is on your view.

So would you say that there's no real edge of a cliff, say? We just invent that, so if we decided to think about it differently/invent it otherwise, we could walk 15 feet further out without falling to our deaths?

OK. But we do agree that the threat itself is still a speech act? — Echarmion

There are speech acts that are threats, but what I'm describing isn't just, or even necessarily, a speech act.

Saying the world isn’t “strongly/causally deterministic” is to my mind just another way of saying there are possibilities. — AJJ

So "positing abstract objects called possible worlds" isn't another way of saying there are possibilities?

If I asked you for an explanation why it rains sometimes and you said “because there is a fact that enables there sometimes to be rain” — AJJ

What would be the explanation of rain that wouldn't be identical to the fact(s) that enable(s) rain?

I explain possibilities by positing abstract objects called possible worlds, with this world being a manifestation of some of them. — AJJ

On your view, isn't that the fact that makes possible worlds obtain? If so, how is that an explanation per your criteria? You're insisting that explanations are simply relaying the fact(s) that enables or amounts to what we're explaining.

But you did, in your previous post, state that you'd still have laws against criminal threats. How do those relate to your speech position? — Echarmion

I posted this earlier in the thread, but here it is again:

Threatening anyone should only be a crime when it's an immediate, "physical" threat in the sense of potential victims being within the range of the threatening instruments (whether just one's body, or weapons, or causally connected remote devices or substances, etc.), which are actual and not simply claimed, so that (a) either a verbal (or written, etc.) or body language or weaponry threat is explicitly made/performed, (b) the threat is reasonably considered either a serious premeditation to commit nonconsensual violence or something with negligent culpability should nonconsensual physical damage result, and (c) the threatened party couldn't reasonably escape or evade the threatened actions should the threatener decide or negligently carry them out at that moment.

lol re adding "support" to your definition of claim now. Anyway, the only reason I was pressing this is because you were stressing it, but the definition you were proposing is idiosyncratic.

The reason you were stressing it was as a diversion from the point I was making.

You had asked:

"Are the boundaries (borders) of objects real, according to you?"

And then you asked:

"What is it about the boundaries of objects that is real according to you?"

I answered both of those questions, which are ontological questions, in some detail.

Then you wanted to switch to talking about epistemology. The epistemological question is a different issue than the ontological questions.

I haven't said that philosophical speculations must be testable or semantic — Janus

The question was about the word "claim."

OK, sure you can claim that something is the case without providing evidence or proof. But this is in the context of philosophical, not idiomatic, usage of the word. What about argument? Would you say that a claim counts as philosophical if you make it without providing either evidence, proof or argument? — Janus

First, you didn't answer what I asked you: can you find a definition of "claim," in a philosophical context, that suggests that claims must be testable or semantic?

Oxford dictionary via Google.

Why would a proposition count as a claim, as opposed to merely an idea that one likes, if its truth is not determinable? Claims must be supported, no? If they are neither testable nor logically true, then I can't see how they could be thought to be supportable. Are you appealing to consensus or commonsense or something like that instead? — Janus

So here's one common definition of the word "claim": "state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof."

Can you find a definition of "claim" that says claims must be testable or semantic?

I'm saying that in order to count as a claim a proposition should be either testable or logically true. — Janus

Why would you say that?

Is it just an idiosyncratic way you use the word "c!aim"?

(Also, so we're saying that conflating ontology and epistemology is the result of some sort of quibble over the word "claim"?)

Okay, so why when I'm talking about ontological claims are you reading it as if I'm saying something about them being testable?

I didn't sat that. — Janus

Sure. So then you'd agree that some ontological statements aren't either testable or semantic?