es, every time I'm tempted to show my contempt for the US, and the President it chose, — Pattern-chaser

If we're not to choose him again in 2020 the Democrats had better start getting their act together pretty soon and come up with some viable candidates, people who don't already have a mound of controversy in their past, people who aren't 80 years old or whatever already, and people who have some charisma, with an ability to appeal to some of the people who would otherwise vote for Trump.

Yeah, I'd be fine with 2, 3, 5 and 6. Not with the others. With 1, I'm not only not in favor of the death penalty, I'm not in favor of the prison system as it currently is instantiated. I agree there's a need to separate some people from mainstream society, if there's good reason to believe that they'd continue to perform particular acts of nonconsensual violence, but separation is all that I believe is warranted, not under prison conditions, and not if there's no reason to believe that they'd commit additional acts.

I enjoyed the 2017 Death Note film, by the way. That's the only version I've seen.

I wouldn't eat meat, including fish, if I had to kill and prepare it for myself. Not for any ethical reasons. Just because I'm a lazy f---. I don't even like eating chicken, say, if it has bones, etc. So, for example, I don't like Kentucky Fried Chicken where you've got to eat around a bone. I don't like to have to do any work when I'm eating. I don't like eating shelled peanuts either. I like peanuts, but I'm not going to sit and take them out of the shell to eat them. I also don't like eating fruit unless it's already cut up/deseeded, etc.

So it's not a moral thing, I'm just hate having to do any work to prepare my food to eat. (I don't cook either, by the way. The most I'd do if I were on my own is throw something into the microwave.)

without bothering to ask where that lack of belief comes from — Jake

The thing is that with respect to whether atheism obtains or not, where/how the lack of belief arrives is irrelevant.

What do you propose? — S

Trying to maneuver people who very conspicuously don't want to control others into positions of social influence.

Spain, my country, is suffering a coup d´etat supported directly by Soros (who met in secret our "president" in La Moncloa), — DiegoT

Are you just referencing the Catalonia Independence movement there?

Yet you haven't been able to explain the difference in what they are saying. — Harry Hindu

One difference is that idealsts are saying that not every existent has mass, but materialists are saying that they do.

If one really understands the opponent, then one can trace the logic of that opponent to the place where it goes wrong. — sign

That's what I was trying to get at with asking how we go from a phenomenal tree to thinking "that's just an idea," but no one has really answered that yet.

You cannot compare the idea of a tree with a tree — Jamesk

In Berkeley, there's no non-idea tree is there? If you're claiming there is, what would be the textual evidence of that?

And whether that's in Berkeley or not, if one has ideas of trees and trees and there's a difference, then one isn't an idealist--at least not an ontological idealist.

Right, and just a few hours ago you were talking about the existence of music, and matter. How you contradict yourself. — Metaphysician Undercover

Someone like me who thinks that only particulars exist does not think that concepts do not exist (concepts simply are particular ideas in particular heads), and that's all that abstracts/universal terms are. And we don't think that the stuff that the concepts are in response to don't exist--we just think that those are particulars, too. So things like songs, symphonies, etc. are examples of music. When you experience a song you experience music. And as someone else already pointed out to you, "song," "symphony," etc. are just as much abstracts/concepts/universals/forms/type-terms--whatever you want to call them. The only thing that wouldn't be is a proper name for a particular.

So if your point had been to say that one can't experience a universal, then you wouldn't say that you can experience songs or trees, either.

On a view that's realist about universals, where one thinks that universals are some sort of real abstract that exist who-knows-where-maybe-nowhere-and-everywhere, or whatever nonsense one might believe, then sure, you could say that you can't experience universals (which again would include things like songs and trees), but those sorts of beliefs are extremely muddled, and you can't assume that everyone believes such nonsense.

This will be kind of laborious, but I'm going to start doing this with people who tend to always type in ways that are a bit inscrutable to me.

So here's what happens when I read your posts. I'll just do the first paragraph, because this is labor-intensive, and I'm not a fan of long posts:

The living sign is something like a unity of signified and signifier. — sign

I'm stumped why you'd use the word "living" there. I don't know what it's supposed to amount to re "what's really going on" when we're talking about signs, signifieds/signifiers/etc.

I have little notion of what "a unity of signified and signifier" would amount to, or what "something like" that unity would amount to.

The four letters S-I-G-N are just letters in themselves. In German we would use the letters Z-E-I-C-H-E-N for approximately the same purpose. So we might think of or postulate the 'meaning' of sign 'behind' both 'sign' and 'Zeichen.'

No problem with either one of those sentences. :grin:

But do we have an experience of this 'pure' signified apart from its signifiers?

I don't understand what the word "pure" is doing there. Maybe the idea is just what you're saying there, that a "'pure' signified" would be the signified apart from its signifiers, but I don't understand what you're proposing/asking there really.

If you're asking whether we experience the meaning that we assign to a term (or anything else maybe) when we're not thinking about the term, then "usually not," and I'm not even sure it would make much sense to say that we could experience that, although I wouldn't say it's necessarily impossible, either. Keep in mind that in my view, meanings are simply associations we perform, so asking about meanings sans what we're assigning meaning to is asking about associations sans what we're associating. I'm not sure the idea of that makes sense. (So in that case the answer to your question would be "no," but I also would have no idea of its supposed relevance to answering the question I asked you, which was that you were going to tell me what the problem with subjective/personal meaning is in your view.)

However, it's not always clear to me that "signified" isn't being so that it's not the same as "referent," in the sense that can pick out something external to us (although it wouldn't necessarily have to be external--a concept can be a referent, too). For example, we can say that the referent of "moon" is the moon, the astronomical body, in which case the answer to your question would obviously be "yes," but that's probably not what you had in mind since the answer is so obvious (at least to me).

We are admittedly directed away from the merely arbitrary

So, I don't know what this has to do with the question you'd just asked. (I'm assuming it has something to do with it).

If you're suggesting that meaning is arbitrary, I don't think it is. That doesn't imply that I don't think that meaning is subjective. I just don't think it's arbitrary.

toward a stable meaning 'behind' every arbitrary meaning-vehicle.

Presumably you do think that meaning might be arbitrary then. I don't know why you'd think that, though, or think that anyone would be suggesting that, perhaps. And I'd also want to clarify just what you have in mind with "arbitrary," as maybe that would shed some light on why you'd say that.

I also don't know what "meaning-vehicle" is supposed to amount to. No idea what that might be a "cutesy" substitution for, or what it might be claiming otherwise.

Re the idea of a "stable" meaning, you're probably referring to something else altogether with "meaning" than I'd be referring to (the act of making mental associations). I'd guess that maybe you'd be referring to definitions, which are different than meanings, definitions being, for example, the third-person observable strings of words that we're associating with something. (Those are not meanings, beacause the external stuff can't actually make the associations in question.)

I interpret this is a social desire

Are you talking about an individual's desire something-something-to-be-social (whatever the exact desire would be), or are you positing a desire that somehow obtains communally? The latter I think is nonsense. There aren't communal minds.

, connected to the ideal subject

Here, I'm not sure what sense of "ideal" you're using. If you're using the sense re "of ideas," then it seems like "ideal" is probably redundant--you could just say "subject" without the modifier.

If you mean "ideal" in the sense of "perfect," then I don't know what that would amount to for you or why it would be relevant.

Also, "a social desire connected to the ideal subject" would suggest that you probably had in mind a desire that obtains communally--because otherwise that would again be reundant, but I don't think there's anything like a communal mind.

as the space of the signified.

And I have no idea what this would be claiming. You're saying something about the location of signifieds? Are you using "space" metaphorically? If so, I have no idea what the metaphor is here.

Also, it doesn't seem to me like any of this actually addresses what the problem is supposed to be, the problem that you alluded to earlier, re the notion of subjective meaning.

Anyway, so the above is what happens in my head when I read a post like yours.

My "teaching abilities" or the coherence of what I have been saying would be in question if no one, or even the majority of people, could understand it (for which it is not necessary to agree, obviously). I doubt that is the case, and on the basis of a sample size of one who says he cannot even understand what I have been saying; I find poor comprehension skills, limited imagination or simply refusal to admit understanding, as an evasive tactic, to be more likely explanations. — Janus

At least you have humility.

Not to mention your poor teaching abilities. (Under the charitable interpretation that you're not just forwarding nonsense at this point.)

The problem is that at this point I'm not clear on how you're using the term "random," but you're just using it in a sentence anyway, and then you go ahead and tack on the phrase "no determinate possibilities," when I think that phrase is incoherent.

The thought of meaning apart from all public signs is problematic. The thought of the pure subject who experiences pure meanings apart from all public signs is problematic. — sign

Aside from strongly disliking the word "pure" there (partially because I have no idea what it's adding), why is that problematic?

I have no idea, because I'm not clear on either how you're using the term "invariant" or "random" at this point.

"No determinate possibilites" isn't coherent in my view.

And if you're saying something like "infinite possibilities," then you're reifying mathematical concepts.

You don't have to believe in something to know what it means, do you? — Janus

It has to refer to something coherent.

Putting it differently do you believe the behavior of particulars (in the broadest sense of course!) is invariant across all space and time? — Janus

Invariant--never changing? the same?

No to either one of those. Otherwise how are you using that term?

But if nothing occurred "the vast majority of the time" that wouold be true randomness. — Janus

Then we're going to tend toward all the possibilities occuring more or less evenly, which is what you said wasn't randomness.

Again, given a set of possibilities, there are only two choices:

(1) all the possibilities occur more or less an even number of times
(2) some of the possibilities occur a significant number of times more than others

So you don't know what it means to say that natural invariance manifests across all space and time? — Janus

No, I'm not sure what that's supposed to refer to, because all I believe exists are particulars.

Actually that's not true. Their always occurring more or less evenly is a regularity. There not always occurring more or less evenly would be a true randomness. — Janus

Okay but if 1 and 2 (out of 5 possibilities) occur the vast majority of the time, then that would simply appear to be a "law" that either 1 or 2.

Don't be obtuse: it refers to the idea that natural invariance manifests across all space and time — Janus

Or just speak plainly. I'm still not even sure what you're referring to here. I'm not going to lie and say I know what you're referring to when I'm not sure.

No, that limited notion of randomness always already presupposes the operation of natural laws. If things were truly random, no such statistical regularities would reliably occur. — Janus

I can't think how it would be possible to avoid statistical regularlties. If there are multiple possibilites, either they're all going to occur more or less evenly or some are going to occur significantly more than others, and both of those will appear to be regularlities.

But further consideration shows that this doesn't make sense as the last word. The isolated subject gazing on pure signifieds (concepts apart from phonemes) and pure sensations is itself a product of embodied meanings (signs, words in context) and an enworlded community. — sign

No idea what this is saying.

here is a universal web of regularity or invariance which seems to unify the individual regularities and invariances across all space and time. — Janus

What in the world is that even referring to?

Random behavior is unregulated (that's what 'random' means); so if there were no laws to regulate the behavior of phenomena, then the behavior of phenomena would be random. — Janus

"Random" means that if there were 5 possible properties, then over many iterations, 1 is going to occur 20% of the time, 2 is going to occur 20% of the time, etc., for no reason/just arbitrarily.

There's no reason to expect that that would be the case. Expecting that it would be the case is making an assumption about what the world is like by "default." But we have no way to know that.

If there are 5 possible properties, then maybe 1 and 2 are going to come up the vast majority of the time. There doesn't need to be anything to regulate this, it can just be the case as a brute fact. It can just be the way that things happen to be.

Appealing to intuition is copping out. — Herg

No cop out, that's what morality is.

The foundation for morality is that, other things being equal, pleasure is by its nature good, and pain is by its nature bad. This is why almost everyone seeks pleasure and tried to avoid pain; if subjectivism were true, attachment of the labels 'good' and 'bad' to pleasant experiences and painful experiences would be random, and people and animals wouldn't care whether they experience pleasure or pain; but this isn't the case. — Herg

If you're going to argue against a view, you need to understand the view and not just present a straw man version of it, because when you only present a straw man version, the people you're arguing against are only going to think that you're inattentive (and unconcerned about it), or dishonest, or an idiot, and that's not going to persuade anyone.

Subjectivism doesn't posit or imply anything about randomness.

"pleasure by its nature is good" is at best a stipulative tautology about how one is going to use using the word "pleasure," and it doesn't tell us anything about morality.

No stance is going to be everyone's foundational moral stance, by the way.

But what are those universal regularities if they are anything beyond our conceptions of them? — Janus

I already answered that. They're properties of the particulars in question. There's no reason to expect the properties of the particulars in question to be random.

What you have given here is just a bunch of words, a trite formula, that really explains nothing — Janus

You didn't actually quote anything there, so I'm not sure what post you're referring to.

Re "really explains nothing," explanations are merely sets of words (or mathematical symbols, etc.) that an individual interprets so that it quells some of their "mystery to me" feeling. This, of couse, means that it's a matter of psychological factors. The individual's beliefs, biases, intellectual capabilities, and so on, all have a significant bearing on whether any particular set of words scratches that "it's a mystery" itch for them. That makes whether something counts as an explanation interesting primarily for what it tells us about the person in question's psychology.

What's not going on is that the set of words is "really" explaining or not explaining whatever it's about. Whether an explanation is successful is always a subjective judgment.

So, what is nominalism as explained in physicalist terms? — Janus

There's not a different "physicalist brand of nominalism." The Wikipedia entry I referenced covers the basics.

The idea is that the behavior of things would be random if nothing determined it to be invariant or regular; if there were no universal principles, in other words. Why would you expect things to behave invariantly across vast regions energetically separate from one another, or even locally, if nothing determined that? — Janus

Why would we expect it to be random? What makes the default the default?

And nontheless you know it is unique? If we were looking at the same letter the problem is quite obvious. — Heiko

Unique a la nominalism.

Different properties, not different than the matter they're properties of.

I'm saying the properties are different a la nominalism/contra universals or "type realism"

So, what is the mass or the charge of an electron if it is something other than the electron itself? — Janus

Why would it be something other than the electron itself? I don't understand why you're asking that.

You say a letter is unique but the letter is not a letter, but a brain-state. — Heiko

I didn't say "The letter is not a letter." What a letter is depends on context. They're ink marks on paper, brain states a la particular ideas/concepts (such as the symbol you referred to), and so on. That doesn't mean it's not a letter. Those things are what a letter is.

Aren't you folks at all familiar with nominalism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism

So, what in physicalist terms would the "properties of the particulars" be? — Janus

For example, the charge of an electron, the mass of a neutron, etc.

Are they different? Yes, they're not identical. The nonidentity of discernibles is pertinent here.

What is unique? The ink or the brain-state? — Heiko

Every instance of anything. Every ink mark, brain state, etc.

So there goes the identity. — Heiko

There goes the identity in the sense of it being just one thing, yes. Again, I'm a nominalist. Every instance of a letter, number, etc. is unique.

It's simple the properties of the particulars in question.

The other alternative would be that the properties of the particulars would be random. But why would we assume that?

If you are not a "realist" on natural laws then you don't believe that the universe everywhere behaves in the same general ways re electromagnetic energy, subatomic particles, gravity, entropy and so on? — Janus

There are regularities, but not because of laws that somehow exist as an abstract whatever.

In my view there are no real abstracts. I'm a nominalist in that and other senses.