Perhaps if you read you'd notice I responded to the things you said, quoting or not. It's not hard to read. — MindForged

Again, what I'm requesting, if I'm not making sense to you, is for you to quote something I'm saying--just quote a short bit that doesn't make sense, and point out specifically what words don't make sense to you and why.

You said you were doing that. You weren't. So could you do that if I'm not making sense to you?

What does a personal quality mean? — Andrew4Handel

"Personal" is a feature of quality period. Quality (of anything, in the value sense that we're talking about) is an assessment that individual people make.

If you want to claim that quality isn't personal, then you have some work to do. What is non-personal quality supposed to be?

I am not sure if you are saying quality of life is only how someone feels, — Andrew4Handel

That.

Like I said in my last but one post the way they feel is dictated largely by their spouse cheating on them. — Andrew4Handel

That's an empirical claim, and even with data, which you don't have--you're just making it up, basically--it still wouldn't be generalizable to everyone.

It might be that they are really happy to be cheated on but that would be a small minority of cases and an anomaly. — Andrew4Handel

Of what relevance is how common something is?

I didn't notice you quoting me

You're not making any sense — MindForged

Then specify something I'm saying and point out exactly what part(s) you don't understand. I'll explain those bits in other words so you can understand.

How do we get to non-personal quality?

Quality of life is their spouse cheating on them. — Andrew4Handel

Okay, so you do think it's the same thing.

Why would how the person feels about their spouse cheating on them be irrelevant to their quality of life? At the very least you'd be using language very oddly.

I think that if someone thinks they have a great quality of life, but their spouse is cheating on them, then they have made a false assessment and their real quality of life is different. — Andrew4Handel

You don't believe that a quality of life assessment is the same thing as whether their spouse is cheating on them, do you?

My imagination of Pegasus does not have wings, it doesn't exist in the first place. — MindForged

if you imagine Pegasus, whatever you imagine exists as something you imagine.

No one said what you imagine has to have wings.

And it's like a learning-disabled level confusion--maybe because we're playing a game where we're trying to create problems to solve because we're bored? (and we unfortunately do not want to tackle more challenging but practical problems like making sure that everyone has housing, health care, etc.)--to be confused whether we're talking about what we're imagining existing as something other than something we're imagining.

Pegasus is not defined as a fictional being, though we know it to be so because it does not exist. — MindForged

With Pegasus, for example, definitions almost always mention that it's from mythology.

I'm not sure why you're seeing it matter if a definition specifies this though.

It's not my view that Pegasus "has to" exist as a fiction. It's a contingent fact that it does.

All that means is that people imagine Pegasus. The imagining exists. This is a very, very simple and straightforward thing. There's no mystery to be solved unless we go to pains to create some mystery, or to interpret things as if we're robots or something like that.

Different people have different positions, yes. I wouldn't worry about trying to reconcile them. Let's just tackle issues when they arise.

You originally said:

When we're talking about quality (of life), value, etc., we're talking about someone's personal assessment, how they happen to feel towards something — Terrapin Station — Andrew4Handel

Yes, and I'm still saying that.

Do you understand how I can say that and yet agree with everything in this post:

Someone can assess their quality of life based on misinformation.

Someones quality of life can depend on objective facts and the access they have to them.

A person for example might think they have a great marriage because they are unaware their partner is being unfaithful to them.

If you know this persons spouse is unfaithful then you know that they have made a quality of life assessment based on misbelief. — Andrew4Handel

There has been much said about successful reference. As I understand it, many a philosophical position diverge at this point. There is a fork in the road. The scope of consequences stemming from one path or another cannot be overstated nor can the knowledge of them be overvalued. I am of the very strong opinion that all actual cases of successful reference share the same core set of common denominators. That core, however, is unobservable. Rather, it can only be arrived at by virtue of careful strong groundwork and subsequent consideration. So... — creativesoul

I cut you off here, because that's a lot of very drawn out, mundane rambling on for I don't know what purpose.

Is there some "puzzle" or "mystery" you're trying to solve in all of this? What puzzle or mystery?

Eh, this seems like a dubious claim about what people 'tend to have in mind'. A fiction is, colloquially, understood as something that doesn't exist. And as I don't happen to believe in God, I definitely don't think God exists and does so as a fiction. I would say God does not exist because the idea of God has no referent, it is not among the set of existing things. "Existing as a fiction" sounds like non-existing existent to my ears. There's certainly a collection of proposed attributes and actions written and believed to have been done by some being called God, but I wouldn't attributes any kind of existing to that hypothetical person. — MindForged

Because you're stuck in the standard, misconceived academic phil notion that fictions don't exist as fictions. If you'd just drop that crap, a lot of stuff would be far simpler, a lot of "mysteries" would disappear.

The question of whether closed time-like curves exist in our universe is still open, — Inis

That would have to involve reifying time in an odd way (that's completely without justification in my view).

So, physicists are really studying time-travel into the past. A-theory says they are wasting their time. They aren't. — Inis

Yeah, they are, because the idea is incoherent. But physicists waste their time on all sorts of nonsense. Well, or it's a waste for practical purposes, at least. Sometimes these sorts of things lead to ancillary benefits.

If your belief causes human harm, — Josh Alfred

Not possible in my opinion. It's important not to conflate beliefs, speech, and other actions. Beliefs and speech can't cause harm. Other things are causal to any harm related to beliefs and speech.

At any rate, I was wondering what the TC meant by "responsible." But maybe the idea of beliefs "causing" actions was what he had in mind, I don't know.

In any event, I don't think that anyone can simply choose to believe or not believe anything, if that's what we're getting at.

I don't see how this is even a question really. Consciousness is obviously a bunch of different things, different processes working in different ways, and it's obviously not always "on."

How can mere words be about anything? . . . How do words refer? I — Purple Pond

It's a mental activity. Aboutness/reference are a way that we think. So in other words it's something that brains can do. It's a set of processual properties that brains can perform.

At that, it's not the case that everyone performs these mental activities in the same ways for the same words, sentences, etc.

You can talk about common ways that it works, but you can't make correct universal statements about it (about reference, meaning, etc.)

Yeah, obviously what people tend to have in mind with something like "God doesn't exist" is that he doesn't exist as anything other than a fiction. Folks aren't saying the fiction doesn't exist as a fiction.

Because "imagined" is usually understood as implying non-existence. — MindForged

I mentioned this earlier re wanting to avoid psychologism, etc. It's a big mistake that philosophy makes. Hence it turns very simple things like this into ridiculous problems.

We actually agree on all of that, but we're coming to completely different conclusions about it with respect to quality of life assessments and whether one can be wrong about them.

Do you understand why we're coming to different conclusions?

So for example, if the person has a belief that their son or daughter died in a car accident, the belief is made true or false/right or wrong by the objective fact whether the son or daughter is still living or whether they're no longer living because of a car accident.

Re quality of life being a belief, it's made true or false/right or wrong by what (objective fact(s))?

How about the question I asked, and how about me pointing out in that last post that you didn't answer it?

Why would we say that imagined things do not exist? They exist as imagined things. Saying that imagined things do not exist as imagined things is a big part of the problem. A big part of where philosophy goes off the rails. It's not glib to point this out, and it's not shallow to point out that it's stupid to go off the rails in that way.

And why would it sound "strange" to say that "X is true via corresponding to how we imagine x."

All we're saying is that the proposition "Sherlock Homes lived at 221B Baker Street" corresponds to what Doyle wrote, for example (because that's what he imagined/what he chose to construct), for example. Why in the world would there be limitations like that on what something can correspond to?

There results no problem from the definition of existence — auto to on

The whole dilemma you're proposing here is due to the defintion you're using.

I had a severe toothache once but during that time I did not have the belief that I had a poor quality of life. The judgement I have a poor quality is an overall assessment and substantial elements of this are based on objective fact. — Andrew4Handel

You're not answering the question I asked. I don't know if you're doing that intentionally or not.

You said that you thought that "quality of life" was a belief, and a belief that people can get wrong.

I said that presumably you wouldn't say that it's a belief about how someone feels or what their assessment of their life is, otherwise it wouldn't be any different than what they feel/what their assessment is.

So you'd say it's a belief about what, exactly?

To answer my question, you'd have to tell me what you'd say it's a belief about.

If these two definitions of existence are not reducible to a more general definition, why should they both be called the same? — auto to on

You mean why say that both are "existence"? It doesn't really matter what word you use. But why would there be a requirement to have the same arbitrary definition you chose for everything? Where is that requirement coming from?

In other words, you're creating a problem because of an arbitrary definition you're chosing. So why choose that definition?

Quality of life is a belief — Andrew4Handel

Presumably you wouldn't say that it's a belief about how someone feels or what their assessment of their life is, otherwise it wouldn't be any different than what they feel/what their assessment is.

So you'd say it's a belief about what, exactly?

Let existence be defined as appearing within a domain. — auto to on

Per the definition of "world" above that, it seems like existence of the world (qua the world) should be defined as appearing as the domain (that contains all domains). Not appearing within a domain. The existence of everything but the world itself could use the term "within."

The fact that someone can only express a desire after their body has reached a certain level of functionality means that there is a certain necessary level of functionality required to even have this debate and make judgments, so these are things we are subservient to. — Andrew4Handel

Sure. But again, what does that have to do with the idea of objective preferences?

I see no reason to assume someone is right when they make a claim about their quality of life. — Andrew4Handel

Again, they're not right or wrong. Right and wrong are category errors for this.

I have given reasons why they could be wrong such as having false beliefs. — Andrew4Handel

And I've explained that you're not actually arguing for being right or wrong about quality of life assessments. They can be right or wrong about their relative wealth, whether they have a disease, whether most people have some particular assessment, etc. None of that is being right or wrong about their assessment of their quality of life. They can also have different assessments at different times, and those assessments can change as they come to different beliefs about facts, or different mental health states, etc., but that doesn't amount to their assessments being right or wrong. Their assessment isn't the same as any of those other things.

But some physical states are functional and relied upon to keep a human body alive. No one could flourish in an environment that was lethal to the human body. — Andrew4Handel

Sure, and objectively, there's no preference for keeping human bodies alive. That only arrives via individual people desiring it.

Before anyone can express a desire about their life they need to have come to exist and survived in an environment conducive to human well being. — Andrew4Handel

Sure. But that doesn't make any state objectively preferable.

Did you ever adhere to Rand's Objectivism, by the way? Some of your comments seem as if they may have initially stemmed from views similar to hers re how she tries to bootstrap the idea of objective value.

Although I think how they feel still relates to objective circumstance. — Andrew4Handel

Sure. Again, I'm not at all denying that. The point is that "This is a benefit," "This is my quality of life," etc. are not objective circumstances. Those are judgments that individual people make. We can't conflate the judgments and objective things that may factor into the judgments. They're not the same thing.

What physical benefits someone is not about what they feel. — Andrew4Handel

Yes it is. There is no objective "benefit." There are different physical states. No state is objectively preferred to any other state. It's individual people who have preferences, who count one thing as desirable versus another, who count one thing as a benefit and another as a hindrance, who have goals and then desire for them to be met. The world outside of individual people thinking such things does nothing of the sort.

Ayn Rand said that it is a philosophy for living on Earth — AppLeo

First, I'm not interested in philosophy in that sense of the term. That's the sense of the term in which you're looking for some overarching guiding set of principles (or just a single principle) to help you live your life. I have zero interest in that.

I'm interested in philosophy as an alternate methodological approach to what the sciences are doing. Philosophy, for me, is a means to discovering what sorts of things there are (and are not) in the world, what those things are like, how they work, etc.

In other words, I'm purely interested in philosophy as a descriptive tool--a knowledge acquisition tool. I have no need for and no interest in it as a prescriptive tool--a guidance tool..

Descriptively, Rand's Objectivism gets a number of things wrong, particularly when it comes to axiological (value-oriented) claims. Ethics and aesthetics, for example, are not objective. They're subjective. Same with meaning (both in the semantic sense and the "purpose" sense) and many other things.

Indeterminate means having no fixed value. So consider this analogy. Some one asks you what time it is. By the time you say what time it is, it is no longer that time. So "what time it is" has no fixed value, and time is inherently indeterminate. — Metaphysician Undercover

So now it's a point about, what--the notion that we can subdivide time further, or the idea that we can subdivide it into units that are quicker than we can say something?

If you are a building a society you are going to try and build it considering the physical facts concerning what harms people. — Andrew4Handel

Which has to be about how they feel about things, otherwise the very idea of it doesn't make any sense.

I don't accept that quality of life simply reduces to how someone feels about their situation at a given moment. — Andrew4Handel

Yeah, I think it's clear that you don't and won't accept that. The problem is that factually, that's what it is.

there are objective facts about things that are likely to increase someones well being. — Andrew4Handel

Sure. But that doesn't change that quality of life simply reduces to how someone feels about their situation at a given moment. You won't be able to admit or see this, because you can't/won't accept it for some reason.

Isn't the whole issue that one can say true things about objects that don't exist? If I say "Sherlock Holmes is a clever detective" few will say it's simply a false statement. Given it's truth, on it's face, contradicts that correspondence theory of truth (which is seemingly a fairly straightforward way to understand truth) the issue doesn't seem so easily cleared up with derision about philosophers being silly or what have you. — MindForged

It only runs into a problem with correspondence theory if we're trying to exclude "How we normally imagine Sherlock Holmes" or "How A. Conan Doyle imagined Sherlock Holmes" and the like from what our claims can correspond to.

The point is that there is a multitude of possible amounts of time between the first point and the second. Therefore the amount of time between those two points is indeterminate. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's only indeterminate if you're looking for an overaching time perspective, which is why I brought that up first.

Since there is no overarching time perspective, then it's not indeterminate. You just have to specify the reference frames. There's no reference frame-free time. The idea of that doesn't make any sense.

As I mentioned with the just world fallacy they have false beliefs about the external world so they the emotions they feel are being generated by falsehoods. For example someone might feel happy because they believe poverty has decreased then you can hypothetically show them statistics that refute this belief showing that their feelings had a false basis. — Andrew4Handel

But they dont have false beliefs about their quality of life assessment. You're trying to claim that the quality of life assessment can be objective. Quality of life assessment isn't the same thing as facts that might have an impact on quality of life assessments.

I don't think one person claims about their quality of life is relevant in the wider picture of society per se when you are making a calculation about the average desirability of life. — Andrew4Handel

Yeah, it's not going to matter when you want to talk about averages, but talking about averages also doesn't tell you what anyone's assessment is going to be, I don't believe that it tells you what anyone's assessment is likely to be, and it certainly can't tell you that anyone's assessment is wrong.