I seldom see leftist accounts, only rightist accounts which are mainly complaining about leftist accounts. I think the algorithms have concluded that I am a bourgeois fascist who needs to be kept safe from leftism. The rightist accounts think that I am a woke leftist communist etc who has no business reading their accounts. I live in England but seem to receive the internet from all kinds of places.

Oh, another thing, inside Twitter, if the users are not agree with you, they quickly call you "fascist"
The fascist word is overused in Twitter — javi2541997

I never get called a fascist. I get called a woke leftist liberal communist degenerate. I used to get called a woolly liberal, which on the whole was rather more accurate.

Regarding the topic - yes, the internet is beautiful. All electromagnetic phenomena are beautiful from the Northern lights to the static on your woollen cardigan and from the sway of a compass to the crackle of connections on an electricity pylon. If you imagine yourself to be a single electron then you can explore the universe. There is also a distant terror in beauty, although you can search terror from top to bottom and find no beauty at all.

trying to argue that 1 + 1 = 3 — Michael

Rhetoric, but that is very similar to what happened with 'square root of minus one'. It was as if people said - "We know that negative-one has no square root - but if we act, for the purpose of solving a particular problem, as if it does have a square root - if we just declare it to be so and stipulate how it operates in our arithmetic - then we can solve our problem." Other people got very frustrated and upset at this apparently arbitrary way of doing maths. They saw it as running against the whole idea that the world is what it is and we can't just redefine things when we find them inconvenient.

A. Regardless of what (if anything) we call a 'dog' or a 'leg', dogs have four legs. There are brute facts.
B. Dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'. There are no brute facts.

Aside from dismissing the one I happen to disagree with today as nonsense, I can't see any way yet of deciding between A and B that does not beg the question.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Judith Butler treated the midwife's announcement "It's a girl!" as performative, making the attribution of sex as much an institutional fact as the naming of a ship. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/11/14/judith-butlers-performativity/

I think it's tempting now to say that Searle and Austin were stating the obvious and making a big logical fuss out of simple observations about language. But they were working against a background and a history of rather fierce logical positivism and the view that we must be either stating facts or talking nonsense. I'm thinking of A J Ayer.

So, "the Almighty commanded kill them all" is actually "the Almighty commanded do not kill them all. — Agent Smith

:flower:

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

“Look, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again,” — The Onion, after 9-11

https://www.theonion.com/god-angrily-clarifies-dont-kill-rule-1819566178

The example is out of this world. Cushions with balls laying on them eternally presuppose an eternal gravity field. — Haglund

There is no presumption in Kant's example about eternity. Kant's example is drawn from everyday experience in which balls and cushions seldom stay in one configuration for very long. Suppose someone put the ball on the cushion and someone will take it off again. His example is an illustration of how, now that the ball is on the cushion, it's causing a dip. This shows that causes and effects can coherently be supposed to be simultaneous and that objects can be supposed to be causes. Of course, he might be wrong. But to show that he's wrong we need more than the stipulations that causes must precede effects and that objects cannot be causes.

The ball can only be the cause if it's laid on it, which isn't the case here. — Haglund

Suppose someone laid the ball on the cushion. And suppose also that the ball is causing the depression in the cushion. I'm supposing both those things. The ball got there somehow. And now that it's got there, it's making a dip in the cushion. The ball is the cause of the dip. Of course the ball wasn't always there. There's no reason to imagine that it must have been. But now that it is there, it's causing a dip and continuing to cause that dip until it's removed - which will probably also happen.

The above may be mistaken. Perhaps objects cannot be causes and causes cannot be simultaneous with effects. But since the last para is how we discuss causes frequently - in practical situations - when we are concerned about what is or isn't the case - it is not obvious that our talk is wrong, incoherent or somehow theological.

I think Kant's example gives us difficulty only if we have a prior theory - namely (1) Causes must precede effects. (2) Only events can be causes. My suggestion is that the example is straightforward and well chosen. The problem is not the example but the prior theory.

So, tell me, what is the cause for the cushion's deformation? — Agent Smith

The ball is the cause. In the same way, the props are causing the wall not to collapse and the magnetic field is causing the compass to point north. Ropes are holding up swings and holes in water tanks are causing leaks everywhere.

In these examples, objects are causes and effects are happening simultaneously with causes.

But perhaps you are right. Perhaps these things are not causes and cannot be causes - and perhaps it is incoherent to claim that they are. Yet such causal claims are made every day (outside the philosophy laboratory) and sometimes they are made truly and sometime falsely, just as if they are meaningful, coherent and testable. So it's not obvious that we should adopt a theory which does not accommodate them.

@Agent Smith

We can adopt two theories. (1) Causes must precede effects. (2) Only events can be causes. But these two theories will not stand by stipulation alone.

Firstly, causes and effects can happen at the same time. You lift a cup. The movement of the cup is caused by your lifting it. But the movement of the cup is simultaneous with your lifting it. Secondly, things other than events can be causes. A ball carries on causing a depression in a cushion for as long as nobody kicks it off. What's the ball doing to cause the depression? Well, nothing. There is no event. Yet it's continuing to cause the depression. Props continue to support walls long after the builders have gone home. A magnetic field causes a compass to point north.

These are ways of conceiving causes. They are incoherent examples if we adopt theories (1) and (2). But since the examples seem coherent, perhaps we should instead reject the theories.

The ball causes the indentation. There are two things: (1) ball and (2) indentation. In the case of self-creation there would be only one thing - some entity E. The entity E causes the entity E. Let's grant (for sake of argument) that simultaneous causation is coherent and also grant that objects as well as events can be causes. We would still need an argument to show that "E causes E" is a coherent sentence.

We can conceive a ball without an indentation in a cushion and an indentation without a ball. This possibility gives sense to the claim that the ball causes the indentation, even if both are always and have always been co-existent. We cannot conceive E without E. So it is not clear how to give sense to the claim "E causes E". It may be possible. But we need additional argument for it.

literally no clue — I like sushi

next to no idea — I like sushi

This sounds like an idea that is as close to zero as it can get without actually being zero. Is that a thing in maths?

If I have to wait till way into my thirties to know what mathematics is, then I'll be waiting for ever.

D Marsh wrote: 'We Will Rock You "is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band."'

As far as I know, that is the whole case for the prosecution. Marsh did not seem to recognise the reference to the Czech Christmas lullaby - we will rock you, rock you, rock you etc
https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/rocking_carol-2.htm

FM wasn't a fascist, he was a diva. It's not marching, it's prancing. Mein Kamp. So I submit m'lud.

It wouldn’t make sense for the advocate of free-will
to argue that the willing self is nothing but a randomness generator. — Joshs

As far as I know, that's nobody's claim.

The argument I was answering is this:

1. If actions are not determined then they are the result of pure chance. 2. They aren't pure chance. 3. Therefore they are determined.

The answer is this;

1. is a false dichotomy. The categories 'determined' and 'result of pure chance' are not exhaustive.
There is (or could be) a third category -

Free action is neither determined (by prior physical causes); nor is it the result of pure chance, because the actor can (at least sometimes) give reasons for action and is subject to no whims but their own — Cuthbert

What's Y? Say in the context of a face of a die, X? — Haglund

We now need to make sure that (a) there is no Y such that Y is neither determined nor the result of pure chance; and (b) there is no Y such that Y is both determined and the result of pure chance. The libertarian argument is that (a) is not established. Free action is neither determined (by prior physical causes); nor is it the result of pure chance, because the actor can (at least sometimes) give reasons for action and is subject to no whims but their own. The claim is that the categories are not exhaustive. There is a third category - free action. Which is the very subject of dispute. — Cuthbert

An example of 'Y' is 'freely willed action' from a libertarian free will point of view. Freely willed action is neither determined nor the result of pure chance. So to claim that our actions are either determined by prior physical causes or simply random begs the question.

There is also the question whether there can be a 'Y' that is both determined and the result of pure chance. I'm not sure. You ask about the die. The result of a die throw is pure chance. It's also determined by how the particular throw was made. Someone might argue that is an example of 'both determined and pure chance'. I don't think that works - but perhaps it does. Even if it does work, it doesn't help or hinder either side of the argument I think.

@jgill Amazing images, thank you!

For non-programmers with basic skills (me), there is a way to explore chaos with a simple iterative function on a calculator or in Excel.

Begin with a number between 0 and 1 in the first cell. Next cell = previous cell x (1 - previous cell) x some constant between 2 and 4. Copy down a few hundred times. Graph the outputs.

Then play with the constant, say starting at 2.5 and raising it 0.01 at a time. The graph will begin as a flat line, then split into peaks and troughs, repeating every second output, period 2, then every fourth, eighth etc output - then it will become non-repeating apparent disorder with bursts of order, e.g. period 3 or 5.

This reproduces one of the ways Feigenbaum used to investigate chaos. I think he started with a calculator, not even a graphed spreadsheet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrYE4MdoLQ

No randomness is involved here. It's sometimes confusing because the concept 'chaos' suggests randomness but 'chaos theory' is about sensitivity to initial conditions in a deterministic system.

..it would be an undetermined free will. One of pure chance. — Haglund

That is true if 'determined' and 'pure chance' are exclusive and exhaustive categories. But a separate argument would be needed to establish that. For some X, X is determined. For some X, X is [the result of] pure chance. Let's grant those two premisses. We now need to make sure that (a) there is no Y such that Y is neither determined nor the result of pure chance; and (b) there is no Y such that Y is both determined and the result of pure chance. The libertarian argument is that (a) is not established. Free action is neither determined (by prior physical causes); nor is it the result of pure chance, because the actor can (at least sometimes) give reasons for action and is subject to no whims but their own. The claim is that the categories are not exhaustive. There is a third category - free action. Which is the very subject of dispute.

good sources on the matter — Captain Homicide

I suggest Peter van Inwagen's anti-compatibilist argument that determinism entails no-free-will; but compatibilism entails both determinism and free will; so compatibilism is false. He tries to show that if you can attribute moral responsibility, then you have to reject compatibilism. Obviously lots to unpick and challenge. This looks ok - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DarUujNrgY

I would also suggest running the arguments against intuitions about credit as well as blame. There are red cards in soccer and courts issue punishments. There are also goals, distinctions in exam results and awards for bravery. Are the accounts that eliminate the concept 'desert' just as plausible in the case of credit?

Well spotted. The application of complex numbers in physics came later and I have to admit that does look a bit 'magical', contra myself...

unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences — Wayfarer

It's not magic, it takes work and re-iteration from pure maths back and forth between the natural sciences. Calculus, complex numbers and chaos theory were developed to cope with the ineffectiveness of current maths to deal with emerging problems in physics. Integers and fractions are ok for most agriculture, then we needed negative numbers and zero for trade, plane geometry for architecture and engineering and spherical geometry for astronomy, set theory for computing etc etc. Also, when I measure and cut wood it never fits.

The weakness in my last post being - "OK, you insist on looking for a cause. Now tell me just what it is that you are insisting on looking for?" Which brings us back where we started.

"The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present." — Wittgenstein

I think that is exactly Hume, provided 'inferred' means logical inference.

"Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus." — Wittgenstein

I don't think so. Belief in the causal nexus is when you think that walking under a ladder will get you to the other side unless you trip. In other words, it's an underlying belief of our everyday lives and of the possibility of living them. Superstition is belief in a cause where there isn't one.

Now here is what I think about causal necessity.

When you know that pressing P must (all countervailing factors excluded) but must (goddammit) get you P - then something is going on that is not an assertion of a fact or a statement of a belief. What 'something'? I invoke speech act theory and hold that it is a normative statement of scientific policy. You are in effect saying - "If P does not apear when I press P then I refuse to give up until I have found a satisfactory explanation. Further, if someone refuses to give up, then I say they are a lazy investigator, shrugging off events as too difficult or not necessary to explain. Further still, what I will count as a 'satisfactory' explanation is one that accounts for all the other stuff we have managed to explain and one that does not stand out in a 'whoa-that's-a-weird-miracle' kind of way." That is the force of the 'must' of causal necessity. You will see that it does not contain any assertions of fact - only normative and evaluative statements. That is because metaphysics is not about the way the world is. It's about how we choose to live our lives and to think about the world.

Suppose I get a flat tire on my bike. Something must have caused it. 'Must' in the sense that goddamit, I'm not going to shrug this off as just the kind of thing that could happen in a notoriously random and indeterministic universe. So I start looking for a puncture.

It's one aspect of it, but I feel there's a lot more to be said. — Wayfarer

I don't see that there is more at least with regard to making the distinction between causal and logical necessity. In the case of physical causation, we press P and we get P. We see that it must be so, given the configuration of the computer. We discount all the possible coutervailing factors, faults, power failures etc. We now see that the consequence is in some sense necessary. It simply must happen. No 'but-what-about?' questions, please, because we've already dealt with those. All good. But the necessity in question is not the same necessity as the necessity of logical inference. The difference is simply that there is no self-contradiction in supposing that we press P and all other factors are taken into account and we still don't get P. All that is just Hume with an up to date example.

On the one hand, we press P and we get P by causal necessity.
On the other hand, we press P and it's not the case that we get P by logical necessity.

Two kinds of necessity. Or, if we prefer, let's discard the expression 'causal necessity' precisely because we know we will get confused if we use the same word for two different things.

So what more is there?

Perhaps this. What makes or tempts us to say that the appearance of P after the pressing of P must be so?

more broadly, the link between logical necessity and physical causation seems fundamental to science generally, and even to navigating everday life — Wayfarer

I think we can establish that the link is an ambiguity in the idea of necessity, as above. Useful, but not profoundly interesting. The deeper question is - what, if anything, is causal 'necessity'?

I understand the distinction between inductive and deductive reasoning. — Wayfarer

Doesn't that resolve the deep confusion you mentioned?

Nevertheless scientific principles such as the second law of thermodynamics are presumed to entail necessary consequences, i.e. we will expect them never to be contradicted.

'Presumed' and 'expect', true. That is, when we get some awkward experimental result we have a policy of not explaining it by saying the second law has broken down. That is because without such a policy we would keep leaping to easy but unjustified conclusions. But sometimes the presumed fundamental laws do break down. There was a policy of not explaining planetary motion by discarding the geocentric universe which was taken as a fundamental and necessary tenet. Every other avenue was tried. Ultimately that 'law' had to be discarded, despite its apparent necessity.

So, I have a deep confusion about why philosophy sees this disconnection between logical necessity and physical causation. — Wayfarer

In the case of logical necessity, a set of premisses can necessitate some conclusion. The conclusion will be a 'necessary' consequence in the sense that it would be self-contradictory to assert the premisses and to deny the conclusion. In the case of physical causation, no description of prior states is sufficient to generate a similar self-contradiction. We know the sun will rise tomorrow. But we can never deduce that it will do so from any description of the universe today. That is the 'disconnection.' Why it is considered an important or troublesome disconnection is another very interesting question.

But it seems to me that materialism or physicalism must presume that logical laws are dependent on physical principles, because, in the physicalist view, everything is dependent on those laws (even if only by supervenience) — Stack X link

If the above distinction is coherent, and physicalism cannot accommodate it, then so much the worse for physicalism. That is, the validity of logical inference does not depend upon any particular state of the physical universe. The physical universe works in one kind of a way and logical inference in another. We can say things that are true about the universe and false about logical inference and vice versa. So different things work in different ways as we might expect.

This is the talk, hope the link works

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00168s3

Interesting times — Banno

possible that the focus of feminist organisations will become less distinct — Banno

Here is an asymmetry. 'Trans men are men' is not a slogan. Nobody feels threatened by a person who lacks a penis using the men's changing room or taking up men's sport or entering a men's prison. This makes me think that the root of the problem is not about trans. If it were, we would see approximately equal anxiety about either or any direction of transition.

I think the source of anxiety is male violence and domination. A trans person might be bullied in the men's changing room. They should be able to go to the toilet without fear of harrassment. A woman might be raped in the refuge or the women's prison. A girl should be able to get changed without having to risk seeing a penis. Women's sport should not become dominated by male bodies. These are the problems. Take away the violence and domination and 'trans women are women' would be as unnecessary a slogan as the non-slogan 'trans men are men'. Meanwhile, the ridiculed terfs and and so-called tras get to fight it out and the patriarchy sits back and enjoys the show. It's tragic.

This 10 minute talk is an interesting view - unintended consequences of Queer Theory, sex as a social construct leading to buckling of the concept of 'sisterhood'

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12804/the-meaning-of-woman/p2

I'd rather distinct between propaganda and point of view/belief. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

So you will ignore propaganda. But not just any propaganda. The particular kind that you intend to ignore is feminist propaganda. So the point of view matters to you after all. It's not just the means of propagation that will inspire you to ignore a view. It's a specific kind of content.

I think you know it but you are intentionally omitting it. I am wondering why. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

I do indeed know it and address it above.

I get your point, but I am not talking about that — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

I realise you were not talking about that. However, I was talking about that. It was a new point of view that I was bringing to the discussion. The question was whether Free Love and family life can be compatible. I noted that to make them compatible you could over-ride or ignore the views of other people, as you proposed to do in the OP. It's not any kind of final word on the topic. There are other aspects as well.

I am not presenting my philosophy in this threa[d]. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

"Free love" philosophy in place, which I share — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

I am wondering why you say you share a philosophy and then say that the philosophy you share is not your philosophy.

If it seemed anti-feminism propaganda, that was unintentional — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

It seemed like an announcement of a policy to ignore views that you disagree with. I noted that this is exactly the policy required to make the philosophy of Free Love feasible within any family. A person can just override other people's points of view. It's an effective policy and even more so if they can pass it off as just a joke and not quite relevant to the matter in hand and somewhat off topic.

One person's propaganda is another person's sincerely held belief. Calling a view 'propaganda' is not to describe the view, it is to dismiss it.

I never did... — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

You did propose to ignore a point of view with which you disagree. I wrote that this could be an effective strategy if you want to get a .....

"Free love" philosophy in place, which I share? — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

The strategy would be this: ignore other people's views if they don't suit your own philosophy.

You already saw the connection for yourself:

Not trying to be mean. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

If you did not already get the point then you would not be worried about looking mean.

Note: Any feminist propaganda speech will be ignored at least by me. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

That could be the answer in this thread and also in life. You can mix free love and family life very easily if you ignore other people's points of view. Blithe indifference is the way forward. It comes at a cost - but not to the ones doing the ignoring.

Perhaps people haven't really worked out what it is they are trying to say. — Tom Storm

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves - Lewis Carroll

We’re like two peas in a pod, you and I — I like sushi

Birds of a feather....

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question−begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. — Orwell, 1946

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any. — Thucydides, circa BC 400

Plus ca change....

Harry Frankfurt dug deeply into the motivations behind some kinds of cloudy vagueness - indifference to truth, bullshit. His concern is with intention more than with style.

For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony. In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake or a phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself) inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong. — Frankfurt

https://uca.edu/honors/files/2018/10/frankfurt_on-bullshit.pdf

Distinguishing between analytical and continental philosophers “is like classifying cars as Japanese and front-wheel drive” - Bernard Williams

.....speculative jigsaw puzzles and says "think for yourself" prompting us to assemble the (often missing) pieces by our own lights in order to gradually uncover, or expose, our own (philosophical & religious) blindspots, biases and irrationality to ourselves (usually) in spite of ourselves — 180 Proof

You could put "Wittgenstein" at the start and it would fit just as well.

I avoid dead metaphors like the plague and never use them in any way, shape or form.

Well said. And listen out for this pre-amble to a politician's speech: "Let me be clear...." Up until now politicians have been giving in to public demand for them to be vague, equivocal and ambiguous. But they have had enough. From now on they will - with our gracious permission - insist upon being clear. As if....

I think that when we find ourselves in a realm of concern where ‘simple fallacies of logic’ have become important to us, we are so far removed from any relevant and significant form of philosophizing that we have in essence substituted calculating for thinking. — Joshs

Not substituting - adding. We need both.

I don't mean to completely dismiss the thought experiment, just that I think if you engage in contemplating it without any greater context, it needlessly limits to the scope of the conversation — SatmBopd

I think you have a reasonable complaint. After WWII there was frustration with moral philosophy. Philosophers had been spending their time dissecting language ever more minutely and discussing Kant and Mill. In the meantime gas chambers were being filled with human beings. After the 2008 financial crisis students were nearly rebelling in economics departments. They were being taught about marginal value and Pareto optimality. Meanwhile the entire banking system was apparently collapsing and nobody seemed to know why.

More ambitious assertions and apparatuses of thought should be in play I think. — SatmBopd

Perhaps we need both. Grand iconoclastic ideas are useless if we trip up on simple fallacies in logic. Nit-picking thought experiments are pointless if we cannot apply the lessons in life. Someone has to build the house and someone has to keep the tools repaired and do the accounts.