Can you please elaborate on what you mean by “actually exist”? For example, if you mean to question whether there is a sine qua non that exists outside of my body (or what have you), then I would say that the essay doesn’t argue for or against it: there’s no “objective” vs “subjective” consideration as such is only via the principle of regulation and, therefore, it holds its rightful place in a subsequent essay.

Likewise, can you please elaborate on what you are referring to by “have a tool that is what it says it is”? — Bob Ross

I can't speak for Mayael but I can say how I understood his questions. By 'tools that actually exist' I understood the question to mean the same as I asked. Let's suppose that everything you wrote is the exact opposite of the truth. Let every sentence be negated. Let the principle of regulation be rejected and let sine qua nons go back to being what they were before. If we do that, what has been lost? What problems would that create for us? Is the whole thing a chimera, an airy nothing - a non-existent - a pretence? I am putting the matter more starkly - rudely - than Mayael - who in any case may not have had quite that in mind. So, for what it's worth.

By "a tool that is what it says it is" I understood to mean use of language with clear sense and purpose and without equivocation or confusion. For example:

“existence” (in an ontic sense) — Bob Ross

'Ontic' means 'related to existence' and there is no special ontic sense of the word 'existence'. Ontic existence is a kind of existence only in the way that canine dogs are a variety of dog. It's about not chucking in technical terms that lack technique - tools that don't work - or don't exist. Again, I'm not speaking for Mayael but it's my interpretation.

When did we last hear about societies being toxic and needing to be cleansed of vicious corrupt elements and made pure and healthy again? Oh, I remember, it was in that speech by every tyrant who ever existed.

Do you damn that they can experience themselves
performing this action, or that this is something they do whether they are aware of it or not? — Joshs

No, I don't damn. It would be rather extreme. I'm more inclined to bless. But I don't think either is particularly called for.

It is really a question of whether derivation is arbitrary (i.e., axiomatic) or grounded in a sine qua non. I wasn’t stipulating one as supreme over the other: I simply wanted to derive if there is. If not, then my subsequent essays would have been derived from axiomatic principles for “foundations”. Is that what you are asking? — Bob Ross

I asked what difficulties would be caused by denying everything you wrote - for example, supposing there never is such a thing as a principle of regulation, never has been and never need be. Does that cause a problem in any way? The answer to that might give me an idea about the value of the theory - that is, why it might be needed.

To be fair, no one asks a biologist to predict the next mammal that will evolve, or a neuroscientist to guess what they're thinking of using neuroimaging alone. People's expectations for economists are strangely high. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's because the last economist who said, truthfully, "I have no more idea what is going to happen than a biologist knows what mammals will evolve" stopped getting invited to economists' parties and conferences and eventually ended up swigging cider under the railway arches. It is an expectation that economists have brought upon themselves. G B Shaw noticed this. He likened the economy to a runaway horse doing whatever it wants while we hold the reins and pretend to be in control and have some idea what might happen next.

The way I was positing the essay was more about a purpose rather than a problem—and that purpose is clearly stated in the introduction. — Bob Ross

The primary purpose of this essay is a meticulous investigation of the foundation(s) of all derivation; that is, the consideration of the derivation of derivation and, subsequently, its abstraction towards a recursive utilization (i.e., an unbounded infinite).

I am trying to suppose that derivation has no foundation and no derivation; or that derivation cannot be abstracted; or, if it can be abstracted, it cannot be abstracted towards a utilization; or, if it can be abstracted towards a utilization, it cannot be abstracted to a specifically recursive utilization; and it may be that, even if all that can be settled, the recursive utilization may be unbounded but not infinite (like the surface of sphere) or it may be infinite but not unbounded (like the sum of a convergent series) or it may be neither infinite nor unbounded or it may not even be the kind of thing that could described as either.

I should add that whilst I'm attempting to make these suppositions, I am not succeeding well. I can't get much sense out of any of them - either supposing their truth or their falsity. So I wonder: what problems or questions are you addressing? How have other people addressed them? What difference would it make if you changed your mind and decided to deny everything that you wrote in the essay - say, there is no principle of regulation, never was and never needed to be - what difficulties would that cause for us?

No, we can not use the word ‘sit’ to refer to a doing without concepts, or without some other organized framework of interrelationality ( sensori-motor schemas of movement and perception). — Joshs

Correct. We cannot refer to anything without concepts. And also, hamsters can sit. And they have no concepts. That is because sitting is one thing; and referring is another.

(I have no idea why I chose hamsters. They are not even well know for their ability to sit. I think they might just be able to lie down. If anyone comes here to claim that hamsters cannot sit, I'm fine with that. It someone claims that the reason they cannot sit is because they lack the concept of sitting then I might pop up again. Possibly.)

Yes, you are right. We cannot use the word 'sit' to refer to anything without concepts and some framework that is organised enough to generate meanings. And also I am right. Pot plants can sit on window-sills and can use no words at all. Both, and.

Stock market players create no value. They build no houses, sail no ships, entertain no crowds, sew no garments, dig up no precious stones, make no medicine, fight no wars, paint no fences, install no boilers, deliver no babies and create nothing of either use or beauty. They encourage one lot of people to lay bets on other people's success at doing these things. They take some of the value that other people have created. They generally keep out of trouble and include some of the sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. They toil hard and spin like crazy. They are not the only drones in the hive politic. They look after our pensions so that we can be drones in our turn. But they are not really doing anything of value.

We couldn't use the concept 'sitting' if we had no concepts. But we could sit if we had no concepts (hamster example). And we do have concepts. So what is left is (a) sitting and (b) concepts. And the difference between them. And the OP still contains the identified mistake. And it still contains some things of value, despite that mistake.

@Darkneos. Wherever we would be sitting, it would not be on a concept. If we had no concepts we might still have somewhere to sit - as a hamster might sit somewhere, for example. Earthquakes can throw chairs around and they don't have the concept of a chair. The post you quoted has some interesting thoughts in it. I pointed out one of the things that is not quite in order. You suspected there was at least one. So there it is, for what it's worth.

I don't fully get it but even I can tell something isn't right about the post — Darkneos

I think the problem starts with the first paragraph. It says

In a world stripped of concepts, there is no existence as existence is itself a concept. Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for existence is the existence of concepts. Concepts however cannot exist without a conceiving entity. Therefore, existence requires consciousness

The concept of a chair is a concept. It does not follow that a chair is a concept. And in fact a chair is not a concept. We can do things with chairs that we cannot do with concepts. We can't sit on a concept, for example. That is a crucial difference between chairs and concepts.

The concept of existence is a concept. It does not follow that existence is a concept. We can say things about concepts that we may not be able to say about existence. For example, without conceivers there are no concepts. It does not follow that without conceivers there is no existence.

From the OP I get the impression that you think people may not behave well in the discussion and now you have raised a suspicion that someone is trolling - on no grounds at all that I can see. Do you think you might go with the flow of posts to some extent and see what results? You may get different and interesting points of view that way. Regarding the essay, I think it is so far an answer without a problem - or at least without a problem having been stated clearly. Maybe we need a principle of regulation. Maybe we don't. What problem(s) are you trying to solve by proposing one? How have other people approached those problems?

The fact-value distinction creates an apparently insuperable obstacle for philosophers, but not for ordinary people. Why?

It's not that ordinary people are unaware of the distinction. "That's just, like, your opinion, man." Plus it's drummed into them in English and critical thinking classes. Plus most people seem to figure it out on their own at some point. But the context for that is always the same: someone mistaking their value judgment for a statement of fact. We call people out on this. We teach them the nuance of recognizing when their claims on based on their values rather than the facts. — Srap Tasmaner

Thank you for this very thoughtful and sensible post. I would say that there is not a clear distinction between what 'ordinary people' and 'philosophers' think and there are traps that any of us (bearing the label or not) can fall into.

Take the question: who is US President? Maybe ten years ago this would have been a schoolroom exercise in speech act theory. An appropriate announcement at the end of an agreed process constitutes the fact of some person's being the holder of the office. The fact itself would not have been in question - the 'original phenomenon' could be referred to, while we discuss the nature of the fact. Lately, this is no longer possible. Perhaps the real president is the one who speaks for the common people, the one who stands up against the sneering intellectuals and federal state power merchants who deny him his rightful position. So it's all about values. Or is it? No, it's about facts. "Oh, but they are your facts and this is my truth." The expression "my truth" itself elides fact and value in a way that you say 'most people figure [ ] out'. Well, perhaps they do, but then they can get stuck on just the same problems as 'philosophers'.

Another curious question that seems to be exercising the minds of people who would not call themselves 'philosophers' - what is a woman? I think when commentators cannot agree on that question or on whether it's a matter of fact, opinion, value or a matter of the conferring or self-conferring of an honorary label, then we are seeing philosophy alive and working outside the philosophy schoolroom. So 'ordinary people' can find themselves bewildered and 'philosophers' may be equally so and for much the same reasons. The 'insuperable obstacle' keep cropping up outside philosophy as well as inside.

This raises the question- so what's the point of philosophy, if it can't help with these apparently philosophical problems? Well, my post is long enough.

Are there eternal souls? As we don't know and have no way of finding out, we might learn to live with uncertainty, unless anything less than certainty is unthinkable. Alternatively we could pick our favoured answer and then deride the opposite one and its proponents. I think both strategies are in operation.

It's argumentum ad argentum.

I'll go with nominative suggestivism. Tom Tugendhat was a Swedish Bauhaus architect. Benjamin Wallace was a nineteenth century chemist and Ben Wallace won bronze in 220m in 1962.

'Twas brexit and the tory coves
Did may and leadsome in the waab
All rees-mogg were the michael goves
And the dominics out-raab.

The connection between epistemology and emotions is a thing and has been a thing for a while:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/epistemology-and-emotions/

we cannot rely on our emotions to determine if reality exists, — Angelo Cannata

Anxiety that reality might not exist, feelings of disembodiment and a fear that other people may not be persons with minds like ours are all genuine emotions. These feelings can be related to psychological trauma. Managing the anxiety will reduce the tendency to be interested in the questions. But taking the edge off psychological discomfort may be different from actually answering the questions.

I forgot that one. Or that group of theories. I think that's probably it?

I suppose it (or they) is a kind of theory that is used when any other theory fails. After explanations have run out then divine ordination is invoked. So in a way we know in advance that it will explain nothing, because its proper domain of concern is those things for which there is no explanation.

Like back in 1974, when my shoelace broke during the national elections... — god must be atheist

Oh no! My brother hit me with his toothbrush in 1962. I know about PTSD.

Well, I think changing OP text mid-discussion can cause confusion - a footnote to say 'I typed X and should have typed Y' is clearer. But I can work out what happened and I'm not f-ing about it.

Sounds like a straw man to me. Nobody has ever proposed a theory to explain everything. A 'Theory of Everything' in physics would not claim to explain why I always join the slowest queue. Marxism would not claim to explain volcanoes. Which theories are we talking about?

To challenge it one needs an argument that implies the opposite or one needs to deny a premise. — Bartricks

I agree.

Let's grant all the OP. — Cuthbert

That was the first premiss in the post I called the 'slingshot' argument. The argument does not dispute any claim made in the OP. Let it be that the infant is undeserving and that the parents commit injustice and that nothing can justify or excuse their actions. Granted for sake of argument.

The reason I called the argument 'slingshot' is that it does not dispute the OP. Rather, it establishes the epistemic cost of agreeing with it.

As you indicate, there is a pessimism to it and a sort of aesthetic sadness for many people in the idea of the end result being no person around.. But that doesn't mean the principle is not true. — schopenhauer1

Schopenhauer, you are willing to bear that cost. It's admirable for consistency. It is unlikely to find wide adherence but that is perhaps not relevant.

And still, as you say, Bartricks, the OP remains unchallenged by my argument, which explicitly accepts the OP for sake of argument.

The second is to argue that despite the injustice that creating us causes, there is something even more morally significant at stake that justifies us in doing so. — Bartricks

The slingshot argument does not claim to establish that continuation of the race justifies any course of action or even that it's a good idea, let alone a duty. The argument establishes that if it is unjust to procreate and if justice is preferable to injustice and if 'ought' entails 'can', then the end of the race cannot be ruled out as less preferable than its continuation. Nothing is said or implied or entailed about the end of the race or its continuation being good, bad or indifferent.

If we all stopped procreating that would not make nihilism true — Bartricks

I agree. Nihilism may well not be true, whether we procreate or not. Actions, right or wrong, do not, merely by being committed or omitted, establish or invalidate moral principles. Murder would be wrong, whether or not anybody ever commits a murder. And if we all start murdering each other, that would not make murder right.

You are implying that we have a moral obligation to prevent moral nihilism from obtaining — Bartricks

That would be an additional argument.

The slingshot shows that if we agree that it is wrong to procreate, then we cannot rule out destruction of the race as undesirable or as something that we might have a duty to prevent. A person might happily agree with the OP and also agree that ending the race is not only desirable but a positive duty.

Conversely, if a person finds it difficult to accept that the end of the race would be a good idea, then they may question the soundness of the OP.

I got it - but I've been listening to Billy Joel ever since you posted.....

Here's a theory:

The 'big questions' (can we know there is an external world? etc) are based on misconceptions and false analogies. To ask how we know whether there is an external world sounds like the question 'How do we know the Earth's distance from the Sun?' But the questions are only superficially alike. Their deep grammar is different. The second question is clear and answerable. The first is mystified and mystifying. Philosophy's job is not to answer the 'big questions' and progress is not to be measured by any answers given. Philosophy's job is to provide the tools to innoculate us against the mystification caused by deep grammatical trickery.

Naturally people are still flocking to PF to wonder about the existence of the external world. They have not had their vaccination or their booster. To ask why we are still stuck on these big questions and to think that means lack of progress is like asking why we still need measles jabs after so many decades. "Why hasn't vaccination worked?" It has worked. But here comes a whole new generation of people needing the jab. To send students away because they are wrestling with generalised scepticism is like refusing to let sick people into your clinic. These are the people who need the treatment. The ones who shrug and say 'whatever' don't need philosophy. Further down the line, when they get embroiled in arguments about driverless cars and trans rights and the truthiness of politics or of science, they might find that they needed it after all.

music of Barry White — universeness

"Don't go changing, to try and please me......"

That's because the consent argument is quite different.

This the problem with most of you - you seem incapable of focusing. — Bartricks

If you are right and if any of us are parents then a lack of focus is the least of our faults. Desert and consent are not unrelated. If I choose to drink too much and get a bad hangover, then I get what I deserve. If someone spikes my drink and I get a bad hangover then I get something I don't deserve. Consent and choice make the difference between the deserved and undeserved in that instance. Not necessarily in all instances. "I didn't choose to be born" is the cry of the adolescent. "I didn't choose to be born - so I don't deserve this" they sometimes add. It's an argument made in temper by immature characters. But it's got something.

To dispute this claim you need to argue either that people are born deserving to come to harm, or you need to argue that despite creating this great injustice there is something else of overwhelming moral importance that justifies a person in creating it. — Bartricks

There is a third option. I could grant the conclusion of the argument and then show that it ramifies to nihilism (the 'slingshot' argument above). It's wrong for people to have children and they ought to do what's right; so no children, no human race; no human race, no ethical debate possible.

When we commit an injustice against somebody we may be required to give them some compensation if we cannot undo the harm. Perhaps the best compensation that parents can give, having inflicted life on an undeserving infant, is to give it the care and love that will as far as possible protect it from further unnecessary harm. Either that or an empty world.

You can be serious and playful at the same time in philosophy. That's part of the fun.

Once another person lands on the island, ethics is now back in play. The absence of people using it, doesn't negate its validity. — schopenhauer1

In this presumed just world, nobody would ever be landing. Justice would be done - no undeserved harm would be inflicted by birth - no-one would be born. There would not even be anybody to pride themselves on having acted with justice. So, yes, it would be just. But completely empty. Mathematics would also be valid but there would be no-one to do it.

An exception is someone who has committed a major crime. If he kills himself then he may be publicly condemned for cowardice and for evading justice.

Sorry, to clarify. The thing that is 'forbidden' in many social circles in the West is referring to suicide as sinful or worthy of condemnation. If you say that a suicide is somehow to be blamed then people will think you are cruel and heartless and have no understanding of the sadness and mental disturbance that leads to someone taking their own life.

It is a big difference. I don't think it has always been that way. When a politician resigns in disgrace, he is sometimes said to 'fall on his sword', that is, he 'kills' himself rather than face the shame of 'living'. It is a matter of honour. 'Death before dishonour' is another Western saying reflecting this principle. In a Victorian novel, a disgraced soldier might be left alone in a room with a pistol, the expectation being that he would 'do the decent thing' and end his own life. But these are relics. The predominant view is that suicide is a sign of mental disturbance. It evokes pity rather than either admiration or blame. To condemn someone for committing or attempting suicide or to express admiration for their sense of honour are now both taboo in the West.

Regarding cultural stereotypes, there is or was a belief in some parts of the West that Japanese culture held suicide for honourable motives in very high regard and that suicide was seen as a duty on a disgraced man. It was believed (rightly or wrongly) that Hindu widows were duty bound to kill themselves on their husbands' pyre. In the modern West, any connection of suicide to honour and disgrace or to sin and damnation is forbidden and will attract the strongest condemnation.

As long as humans exist there is no Nmax. Someone will always pitch up to propose the last number suggested +1. And without humans there's nobody round to ask or answer the question.

There is also a slingshot argument. Let's grant all the OP. Let's also assume that we ought not to commit injustice. Let's further assume that 'ought' entails 'can'. The nobody should, in the name of justice, conceive children. Consequence: no injustice and no human race. No human race, no need for concern about justice or anything else.

It is wrong, then, to create an innocent person when one knows full well that one cannot give this person what they deserve: a happy, harm free life. To procreate is to create a huge injustice. It is to create a debt that you know you can't pay. — Bartricks

Do children protest against the injustice, if it is an injustice, of having been born? It seems so. It occurs to some children to remind their parents that they 'did not ask to be born'. This is usually a complaint. But it is not typically brought out in response to suffering. Children who suffer, like adults, might regret living or even wish to die, but it is not in response to suffering that they typically blame their parents for visiting birth upon them. The complaint 'I didn't ask to be born' is usually advanced in response to criticism for moral failings or a demand to shoulder responsibility. For example: "You are making our lives very difficult with your bad temper and sloppiness around the house." "Well, I didn't ask to be born."

Should we dismiss the complaint as the immature nonsense of the adolescent? Possibly. But the complaint has something in it - otherwise it would not be so commonly used. It seems to be a complaint about lack of consent. "You don't like the way I am? Well, you made me. It wasn't my idea." And to that extent it's a well grounded complaint. We do not consent to our own birth or to almost anything else that happens to us for the first months and years of life. We do not have the capacity to consent. But lack of capacity to consent or to withold consent is generally no excuse for acting without a person's consent. The complaining child is casting the parent somewhat in the role of a kidnapper who has no grounds for objecting to their victim's annoying habits. The victim has reduced responsibility to take account of the kidnapper's interests and feelings simply because they did not choose to be kidnapped. When a parent asks a child to take responsibility for making the family home unhappy then the response amounts to saying "But I have no responsibility. You visited this whole situation on me and now you have to deal with it."

So far so good for the argument.

So lack of capacity to consent or to withold consent is generally no excuse for acting without a person's consent. Bad news for drug rapists. In the case of consent to birth, however, the lack of capacity stems from the non-existence of a person. A person cannot have asked to be conceived because there was no person to ask or to be asked. So the kidnapping or drug-rape analogy cannot apply. The conception of a child is not a case of parents' choosing a pre-existent soul to embody into their offspring. Just as no child has lost out from never having been conceived, so no child was done an injustice by being conceived, because no child existed to experience either the loss of opportunity or the injustice.

How does that stand up as a reply?

In my opinion, it stands up but on rather shaky legs. But this post is long enough.

Do drugs, or can drugs, engender a frame of mind which is conducive to insight, or even enlightenment?

I feel they can.

And yet, I am unable to point to any great insight I was able to achieve by drugs. When I bother to write them down (it often feels beside the point to record them, as they occur), they appear either confused or banal. — hypericin

I wonder whether this happens because drugs skew our judgement and perception, making us unable to tell when we are confused and unable to express ourselves other than in banalities. If you've ever met anyone who's stoned when you are not then that description is probably familiar. Drugs can be great fun but as you say they may yield a rather thin crop of insight. Aldous Huxley and Bob Marley got a lot of insight from drugs. But I think this shows that highly intelligent and talented people can draw inspiration from pretty much anything and are not as greatly impaired by chemical assault as the rest of us.

Perhaps the reason we don't have a term for 'without a beginning, but with an end' is that it is incoherent. If a process had no beginning then it would be already infinite. But if it's going on now then it might come to end at any moment - and it is therefore finite. So it would be both finite and infinite. That's the antinomy.

What about just beginninglessness?

As for Wittgenstein's quaint gedanken experiment, in what context did it appear? What was the point he was trying to make? — Agent Smith

It was reported by A W Moore from a lecture by W and I don't know more than that.

Like a lot of Wittgenstein's remarks it is suggestive of an argument without being explicit. Personally I think that it is about the question you raise: does it make sense to talk about a process that has an end point in time (the time 'now') whilst having no beginning (there is no 'first term' of pi written backwards).? The comparison could be this:

I announce that I am going to recite the whole of pi. I begin "3.141....." I have begun an impossible task. I will never complete it. But it's a coherent story. We know when I started and we know I will never finish.

On the other hand, if I announce that I have just finished reciting pi backwards then my claim is worse that weirdly ambitious. It is logically incoherent. If I have been reciting pi backwards then I must never have begun at any particular time - and so I can never be finishing the recitation at any particular time.

I think the example is relevant to Kant's first antinomy:

The first antinomy concerns the finitude or infinitude of the spatio-temporal world. The thesis argument seeks to show that the world in space and time is finite, i.e., has a beginning in time and a limit in space. The antithesis counters that it is infinite with regard to both space and time. — Stanford

yet we don't possess a term for this idea — Agent Smith

I think it is eternity - without beginning and without end.

Wittgenstein in a lecture once asked his audience to imagine coming across a man who is saying, ‘…5, 1, 4, 1, 3—finished!’, and, when asked what he has been doing, replies that he has just finished reciting the complete decimal expansion of pi backwards—something that he has been doing at a steady rate for all of past eternity. — Moore, A. W. 1990.The Infinite.