Ford invites a detailed FBI investigation of her claim. Kavanaugh refuses to do so. That makes it clear who seeks the truth and who is willing to use any evasion to avoid his past coming to light. Add to that the many lies in which Kavanaugh has been caught, and the case is clear as day.

Because eternal is impossible — Devans99

Question begging.

Say you meet an Eternal being in your Eternal universe and you notice he is counting. — Devans99

This shows a total lack of understanding of what it is to be eternal. Eternity is not unending time. It is being at once. Hence anything eternal is unchanging and timeless. So, the idea of an eternal being being engaging in a time-sequenced operation is a contradiction in terms.

Take any physical system with a clock/timer. Make the system Eternal. What does the clock read? — Devans99

This displays the same confusion between time and eternity.

Assume time is eternal. — Devans99

A continuation of the same error.

Relativity suggests the existence of multiple presents, whereas Presentism demands one present — Devans99

Relativity is a theory about the space-time continuum. Eternity is timeless.

Time clearly passes — Devans99

Yes, but this observation is irrelevant to notion of a timeless present.

Negative infinity does not exist mathematically — Devans99

This shows confusion about the mathematical nature of infinity. Positive and negative infinity are not numbers but process limits.

If the universe has been around for ever — Devans99

As far as I know, there is no generally accepted view that the universe has been around forever. So, who are you arguing against?

Presentism is just so depressing — Devans99

It is hard to respond to this, as you have not defined what you mean by "presentism." According to the SEP:

Presentism is the view that only present things exist (Hinchliff 1996: 123; Crisp 2004: 15; Markosian 2004: 47–48). So understood, presentism is an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists (what there is), absolutely and unrestrictedly. — David Ingram & Jonathan Tallant

Your arguments do not seem to address this view. The seem to be aimed against the idea of infinite time, which few if any hold in the era of big bang cosmology. You also seem to be confusing infinite time with eternity, which makes me wonder if you see your arguments as aimed at the notion of an eternal God.

Is the relation a form of projected value from the valuer onto the valued object? — InfiniteZero

No, valuing is the recognition of the worth of the object to the subject -- just as knowing is the recognition of object's notes of intelligibility. Before valuing an object, it was valuable, but its value was unacknowledged. In valuing an object, we form a new, intentional relation to it, but we do not change its intrinsic nature. We don't project anything into it.

the object itself - having the intrinsic disposition to be potentially valued by affecting our senses and perception causally - is what makes itself be valued by the subject it affects? — InfiniteZero

This isn't it either. The object's capacity to help us toward self-realization (the endpoint of Maslow's hierarchy) is intrinsic to the object and why it's valuable. Still, unless we recognize it as valuable and integrate it into our life plan, it will not be valued. So, the object can present itself as valuable, but it can't force the subject to value it. Just as we have to turn awareness to intelligibility to make it actually known, so we have to integrate the object into our life plan to value it. In both cases, personal agency is required for to actualize the presented potential.

if it is Type 2 valuing you may be after, then value in objects is necessarily dependent on there being subjects that can value them, value them insofar as these objects causally affect them. But, given value is yet again being based from an anthropocentric starting point, without the anthropocene, no object has any value. It will be merely left with the dispositional power to be valued insofar as it can affect a subject valuer, without them, this dispotional power is mute, and again we are devoid of any value in the universe — InfiniteZero

As I said, type 2 isn't quite it. Still, while being valuable is intrinsic, being actually valued depends on a valuing subject. I can be argued that the Creator values all His creation by the very act of creating it. Still, on a more mundane level, to be actually valued requires a valuing subject, even if it is not human.

o, both types of valuing here give a relativist type of notion — InfiniteZero

Exactly. Value is a relation between a valued object and a valuing subject, just as knowing is a relation between a known object and a knowing subject. That is my main point. My second point is that in these relations have an objective basis in both the subject and object. The subject is able to know and value. The object is intelligible and valuable.

If that is the case, then an ethical system based on this framework of instrumental value clearly makes us hold humans as mere means to an end. — InfiniteZero

No, it does not. One aspect of human potential that a fully realized human being actualizes is the capacity to love unselfishly. We have the the power to make our beloved's good our good. While we can't do this without a beloved (the object of our love), and while to be valued in this way one must have valuable attributes, we cannot make the good of the beloved our good while simultaneously demoting the beloved to the instrument of our satisfaction. So, the instrumental model does not fit.

What is worse is that if we go further and consider God as a subject and a valuer, then clearly God itself becomes object to our instrumental valuing, and so God itself may be a means to some end. — InfiniteZero

And so God is presented in some religions, viz., those that make personal salvation the ultimate end. In orthodox Christianity, our ultimate end is not salvation, but love -- love of self, neighbor and God. Salvation is an incidental side effect of being loving. Indeed, if the ultimate goal is personal salvation, all other acts are necessarily selfish.

Thank you for the reference.

why must one assume there is a necessity in having to pick any one of these religions? — InfiniteZero

I am not assuming necessity. I'm asking about relevance.

If science tells us the physical world has no intrinsic value, there is no evidence for God and meaning is merely projected by moral agents, does that seem so unpalatable if it were true? — InfiniteZero

As science tells us none of these things, this is a hypothesis contrary to fact. As one trained in physics, I know what science is and is not capable of telling us, and the degree of certitude one should have with respect to what science does tell us.

While every act of knowing has both a knowing subject and a known object, we begin natural science with a Fundamental Abstraction in which we fix our attention on known physical objects to the exclusion of the knowing subject. We care about what Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton and Hubble saw, not their subjective experience (their experience as knowing subjects) in seeing it. This is a rational methodology if our interest is physical objects, but it separates in thought what is inseparable in reality (the known object and the knowing subject). It also leaves the natural sciences bereft of the data and concepts required to address the knowing subject and correlative issues. Lacking these data and concepts, natural science can make no connections between what it knows of the physical world and concepts revolving around the subject (such as subjective awareness, intentionality and meaning).

So, the physical world is not convertible with reality and nor does "intrinsic" mean "objective." Many properties are relational., and are only realized when the object is actually related to a subject. The physical world is intelligible because it is capable of informing an observer -- it can stand as a actually known object to a knowing subject. In the same way, physical objects are valuable because they can stand as actually valued objects to a valuing subject. So, objects have an intrinsic potential to be valued (are intrinsically valuable), for nothing can be actual unless it is possible. In other words, an object is valuable if it is capable of being valued.

As for the supposed nonexistence of evidence for God, there is only one way of substantiating such a claim, and that is to know that there is no God. Why? Because evidence is not self-evident. We have no a priori way of knowing what is and is not evidence. In 1800 an investigator encountering bloody fingerprints would not know that he had evidence of identity. In 1950 a detective examining a crime scene would be unable to recognize DNA evidence, no matter how abundant, and a cosmologist would not know that a rock she found on the beach provided evidence of nucleogenesis in the early universe. Evidence is only intelligible until it is actually understood. So, it is utterly irrational to say we have no evidence of p unless one already knows p is false.

"Meaning" is intelligibility, and so is prior to being understood. Thus it is not necessarily "projected" by human agents. The "meaning" of a fossil in this stratum is that a certain species lived in the Cretaceous period, and the fossil had that meaning long before humans evolved to understand it. If you are thinking of "meaning" as value, I have discussed above how nothing can be valued unless it is first valuable.

The question regarding the age of the earth, the universe and the origin of our species and others in general is not for a man-made logical system to determine — InfiniteZero

Of course it is! The relevant man-made logical system is called "science."

It is just as logically possible for the earth to be flat or have a geo-centric view on the solar system. — InfiniteZero

You are confused about the epistemological status of your examples. It is not logically possible for the earth to be flat because were have definitive evidence to the contrary and have had since the time of the Greeks. What is the center of the universe is a matter of representational convention. There is no observable consequence to placing the origin of our coordinate system anywhere we choose as long as we make the appropriate transformations to our dynamic equations. The only difference is the complexity of the equations.

only physics gives us credible knowledge regarding the physical universe, not dogmas from holy scriptures providing "a priori" knowledge. — InfiniteZero

I'm not questioning the competence of physics to deal with the physical, but its competence to deal with aspects of reality it has excluded from consideration a priori. Further, there is no general reason to assume that ancient authors (of whatever tradition) were trying to explain the nature of the physical world as opposed to using contemporaneous cultural assumptions to convey their spiritual insights.

However, arbitrarily choosing between pre-existing dogmas is surely epistemically incredible. — InfiniteZero

It would be, if that were what I suggested. I made no mention of anything "arbitrary." Subjective considerations are just as real as objective considerations -- especially when the question is how one will relate as a subject.

How would science deal with the claim of God? — InfiniteZero

It should not, as it is utterly incompetent to do so.

If the claim is that God is part of the physical world, then it would demand evidence for such a being to exist in the physical world. — InfiniteZero

You're positing straw men. There are very few pantheists. Certainly no mainline Western religion makes such a claim.

Any claim of transcendence after death would require the same from science — InfiniteZero

Why? On what evidentiary basis could science form any conclusion (pro or con) about an afterlife? You seem to be suffering from the misapprehension that science is competent to deal with all reality. I showed above, in my discussion of the Fundamental Abstraction, that science begins by denying itself such competence.

If there are no evidence supporting the claim or "hypothesis" of the Judeo-Christain God, then the conclusion follows that there is no reason to be holding that claim. — InfiniteZero

I'm ceaselessly amazed at how epistemologically challenged physicalists are. You seem to think that the only rational approach to reality is the hypothetico-deductive method. Anyone who has studied mathematics knows that it can proceed quite well without every positing or testing a hypothesis. Instead, it abstracts concepts from our experience of nature, forms judgements relating these concepts (axioms or postulates), and deduces conclusions. Natural theology proceeds in the same fashion to attain equal certainty.

The abritrariness of value judgment in the decision regarding which religion one resonates to becomes to an extent random. — InfiniteZero

Random? So, you are not a determinist with respect to will? How can you not be,and be a physicalist?

Value judgements can certainly be made with insufficient thought. That does not imply that they are necessarily made with insufficient thought. In making important decisions people weigh many factors and give each what they consider to be an appropriate weight. The weights are given for considered reasons (with a view to what needs are met and left unmet), and not "arbitrarily" or "randomly."

If we ignore the teachings of the religion as the basis for determining its "value of worthiness" — InfiniteZero

I have no suggested that. Just the opposite.

If it is solely the spiritual dimension one seeks, then that's clearly going to be an arbitrary choice as that's solely dependent on subjective needs and aspects. — InfiniteZero

This is an utterly ridiculous claim! Subjective needs are as real as electrons. Being the need of a subject does not make anything less actual or intelligible. It does not make it less a cause of observable acts. So, on what rational basis do you dismiss "subjective needs and aspects"?

However, religion is institutional, and has more than a spiritual dimension to it to be classified and regarded as a religion in the first place, so if one seeks only a spiritual connection, religion is no necessary choice, much less a good choice if that was one's sole criteria and reason to choose a religion. — InfiniteZero

As social beings, we often use institutions (with all their faults) as necessary means to ends. It is hard for a lone spiritual practitioner to found a school or hospital. It is considerably easier for a practitioners acting together in an institutional framework.

But what is there to back up the truth in the claims that Jesus walked on water, or Moses split the sea in half to lead his people through, or that Hanuman threw boulders from the tip of India to create a bridge across to Sri Lanka? — InfiniteZero

Nothing. That is exactly my point. Western religions, at least, do not claim that their doctrines are known by reason, as is your example of the earth is round. They are quite explicit that they require a leap of faith. So, criticizing them because of inadequate evidence controverts no actual claim.

So, we have to take it as an agreed upon given that matters of faith are inadequately supported by evidence. Therefore, whatever reason there is for having faith, it is not epistemic. Demanding that it be epistemic is beating a dead horse. Still, it is an on controverted fact that people do believe in religious dogmas inadequately supported by evidence. The empirical approach to this, which I am suggesting, is that one accept the fact and then investigate the reasons for it. As these reasons are not epistemic, they must be non-epistemic. I do not see how you can argue otherwise.

You are not investigating the reality of faith commitments, but imposing your notion of what "ought" to be in the face of the facts. My approach is the opposite. I accept the reality, as any good scientist should, and then seek to explain it. I am suggesting that what people actually do is judge on the basis of perceived worthiness. Then I'm asking what can justify this perception.

I still fail to see why one necessarily needs to pick a religion to resonate with some presupposed notions one already has about certain aspects of life in general? when all these questions can be answered through philosophy and science alone? — InfiniteZero

Really? Surely you jest! Science is going to tell me if I should be a Moron, a Jew, a Moselim, a Catholic or a Buddhist? Philosophy is?? Science does not even consider most matters of faith. Sure, science tells us that the Fundamentalist take on the age of the earth and the origin of species is, shall we say, "peculiar," but it is logically possible, and more so than as the equally peculiar belief, popular with some philosophers, that we are simulants.

So, how would science and/or philosophy deal with the claim that God, though one being, is a trinity of persons? Or the claim that after death we merge into the Transcendent as a drop into the sea?

my critique is on the dogmatic scriptural dimension i.e. its teachings from some holy text. — InfiniteZero

When you look at what religions actually teach, it is not usually the literal word of some text. More often, it is an interpretative tradition (and usually one in competition with other interpretative traditions). These traditions usually reflect a history of controverted interpretation, resolution and perhaps division. Some of these traditions are open to the findings of science, others not. Further, within any one tradition there is often a range of opinion (from conservative to liberal, and along other axes), open to an adherent of the tradition.

So, your characterization of religious traditions as "dogmatic" at least distorts the reality of living and responsive traditions.

Regarding connatural knowledge, I do not think knowledge by connaturality would provide any better reason to decide which religion one can justifiably pick over another. — InfiniteZero

I do not see why not. If God has created our nature (by whatever means), then it would not surprising that our being would "resonate" with authentic spiritual teaching, and that, if we are attentive, we would be aware of such resonance. By "resonance" here, as in physics, I mean a response that is much stronger than typical.

Given that the epistemic problem one has here lies directly in the truth of the teachings of the various religions themselves. — InfiniteZero

I'm suggesting that the choice of religion or spiritual path is not an epistemic problem, but results from a judgement of which is most worthy of our commitment, which is a judgement of value, not of truth. In other words, it is an act of will, which can only be distorted by casting it as an act of intellect.

How can I justifiably follow the teachings of religion A over religion B, and claim to have knowledge — InfiniteZero

I don't know the position of non-Western religions on faith, but most Western religions explicitly teach that matters of faith are not subject to rational proof -- that they are not "known" in any sense generally accepted in philosophy. So, I think you're once again mischaracterizing the nature of religious commitment.

How can I justify my choice and pick one and follow its teaching as if it granted me knowledge about something — InfiniteZero

But, it is not being sold as "knowledge." Perhaps you are misreading this because you have accepted the peculiar doctrine that knowledge is a species of belief. It is not. Knowledge is awareness of present intelligibility and so an act of intellect. Belief is commitment to the truth of some proposition and so an act of will. Thus, Descartes tells us he was in his chamber (showing he knew he was) while he was methodically doubting that fact. His doubt was not an act of intellect. (It did not make him unaware that he was in his room.) It was an act of will: the willing suspension of belief. If knowledge were a species of belief, one could not know something without believing it -- yet that is exactly what Descartes did with his methodological doubt.

But why make a commitment when something is inconclusive? — InfiniteZero

There is no need to make a commitment when the data are conclusive. Then the only need is for honest acceptance.

The commitment is made because framework for living provided is judged to be worthy. To be worthy, it can't be contradicted by what we know for a fact, It's teachings must resonates with one's nature (what Maritain calls knowledge by connaturality), and it must lead to a way of life that is fully human. Hopefully the commitment will result in both self-realization and the realization of others' unique natures.

Obviously all decisions are complex and involve a number of factors that cannot be treated algorithmically. Still, one may reject candidates that make us look down on others ("infidels," "the unsaved," "the unenlightened," etc.), that denigrate one's self as intrinsically evil or one's nature as corrupt, that reduce moral action to following a set of invariant rules or "being saved" to holding certain dogmas, that elevate selfishness over love, etc.

It seems to me that you are making an error in assuming that acts of will, such as the choice of religion, are based solely on the perception of truth. The very idea of faith is that of making a commitment when the data are inconclusive. Let me suggest that the criterion of faith commitments is not knowledge, but worthiness. I believe what I believe, not because I know it is true, but because I have decided that it is worthy of my commitment.

Dennis, if you really believe that philosophical theories are uniquely derived from experience with unassailable reasoning, and that this can be done for Aristotelian philosophy in just a couple of paragraphs, then you are very naive. Anyway, I do not wish to detail this discussion any further. — SophistiCat

I think neither that philosophical theories are unique, nor that they can be derived in a few paragraphs.

I do think that all sound philosophical theories, as reflections of reality, are necessarily mutually consistent. I also think that the insights necessary to support specific conclusions can be provided in a few paragraphs. If they could not, this, and similar, forums would be futile.

You are, of course, free to direct your time and attention where you will.

Well, when it comes to philosophy, at the end of the day it does come down to "taste;" there's no getting around it, unless you believe that you can derive an entire philosophy completely a priori, without any extrarational commitments (which would be an exceptionally crankish thing to believe). — SophistiCat

No, I think you can derive any sound philosophical conclusion a posteriori by reflecting on judgements adequately based on human experience. I see no need for any a priori claims, although I think that some conclusions, once they are come to a posteriori, may be applied a priori thereafter. So, while we cannot prove all premises, those admissible to philosophy can either be proven, or derived from experience. "Taste" is a cover term for intellectual prejudice.

When making an argument one must start from some common ground, and Aristotelian or Scholastic metaphysics isn't such a common ground between us. — SophistiCat

And that is why I do not appeal to authority, but to the data of experience in making my case. So, while my mode of analysis is, as you say, Aristotelian or Scholastic, the common ground I appealed to was experiential data and the acceptance of salve veritate logical moves. If you thought my argument unsound, you could rationally have pointed out a failure on either point.

If you absolutely have to use that framework, then you would have to start by justifying that entire framework to me, or at least its relevant parts. — SophistiCat

And that is what I have been doing. I showed how the concept of potency is required to reject Parmenides argument that change is an illusion. I showed how concurrent causality is required by the fact that to operate, something must be operational, etc.

I received no objections to my justifications, only a rejection of the line of argument based on "taste."

It is amazing how taste can trump analysis.

Nothing can act that is not operational

I am not familiar with that proposition. What does it mean? — andrewk

It means every actuality entails the correlative potentiality. So, unless something is operational (proximately able to act), it cannot act/operate.

And why do you feel the absence of an unrestricted PSR is inconsistent with it? — andrewk

I have already explained this. Since no merely potential reality is operational (or it would not still be potential), no potential can operate to make itself actual. So, the actualization of every potential requires the operation of a being which is already actual (its cause). Further, it is an oxymoron to say that something insufficient to being about an effect brings about that effect. So, the cause must be sufficient.

Creating the universe is not the critical point. The critical point is being the end of the line of explanation. Since everything has an adequate explanation, so must the end so must the end of the line; however, because it is the end of the line, its explanation cannot be something else. If it were, we would not be at the end of the line. So, the end of the line must be self explaining. Since beings explain/cause other things in light of what they are, what a self-explaining being is, must entail that it is.

Based on a statement of Plato in the Sophist, let me suggest that if something can act in any way, it exists. In other words, existence is the unspecified capacity to act. Correlatively, what something is (its essence) is convertible with what it can do. If a being can do everything a duck can do, and nothing a duck cannot do, then it is a duck. So, we may think of the essence of a being as the specification of its possible acts.

So, if a being is to entail its own existence, the specification of its possible acts must entail the unspecified ability to act. Clearly, this is impossible if its specification limits the being's ability to act in any way. Thus, to be self-explaining, a being must have an unlimited capacity to act.

Do you agree that every line (regress) of concurrent causality must terminate in a self-explaining cause? If you do, then God has an unlimited capacity to perform any possible act.

I don't disagree, but I still can't see any support for the idea that a view of the world that does not incorporate an unrestricted PSR would be logically inconsistent — andrewk

It is not inconsistent in se or with principles of logic. It is inconsistent with the metaphysically certain proposition "Nothing can act that is not operational" taken together with the meaning of terms like "potential" and "sufficient."

I favor sound logic over naturalist belief.

It depends on what kind of infinity you are thinking of. Actual numbers are the result of counting operations, which take time and so are necessarily actually finite, but potentially infinite.

On the other hand lines of concurrent explanations necessarily terminate in an self-explaining, and so actually infinite, being. However this infinity is not numerical, but the denial of limitations on the power to act.

Reflections on the world are open to new experiences. Formal systems, which I take to be systems with fixed axioms, are not. The PSR is a insight for reflecting on open systems -- ones which are experience-driven, not a priori.

To me the attraction of Aristotelian metaphysics is its conformability to the data of experience -- whether that be sensory, subjective or mystical..

Intelligible state of affairs (ISA): is this just a fact by another name? And we have ISAs and "known" ISAs? Is there a difference between them beyond the implication that mere ISAs are, apparently, not known? Just what is an unknown ISA (or fact)? — tim wood

I do not see these questions as doing more than rephrasing what I said in interrogatory form. I suggested definitions and do not intend to engage in anargumentum in circulo. It is reasonable to object to definitions by giving counter-examples or by saying why you find this or that defining term to be problematic. These questions do neither.

"Intelligible" itself is a problem, here: what does it mean? — tim wood

"Intelligible" means capable of informing an intellect. An intellect is informed when what is logically possible to it is reduced.

It appears to beg-the-question as to what a fact is. — tim wood

I see no such appearance. If you would care to argue you claim, I will consider your objection.

Nor did I mean "text" in the narrow sense you seem to have taken it to mean. Broadly, what I mean is you've either got the thing itself, or a representation of the thing. — tim wood

To my mind, "texts," broadly speaking, are conventional instrumental signs. The do not include concepts, unexpressed judgement and other instruments of thought which are neither conventional nor instrumental signs, but formal signs. If you wish to include unexpressed judgements, how would you distinguish them from known states of affairs?

In this sense I'm calling perception a text. — tim wood

You may use terms as you wish. Most people would not call perceptions "texts," so this choice of terms is bound to lead to confusion -- as you can see from my post.

I'm calling the representation a text, i.e., that it is not the thing itself, but represents it. — tim wood

I would say that perceptions are not re-presentations, but presentations. The make the object dynamically present to us -- not the whole object, but the object as acting on us. My sensory "representation" of an object is identically the object's modification of my sensory system. It belongs jointly to the object (as its radiance of action) and to me as my sensory representation. It is the object dynamically penetrating my being. So, in a sensory presentation I have the object itself -- not in its entirety, but in an informative projection of itself. The object informing me is identically me being informed by the object.

That is, it matters how "fact" is defined. I offered above that a fact is a description, and that influences how the arguments wrt to the OP might proceed. — tim wood

This leaves out one of the most common uses of "facts" -- that in which we seek to find the (currently unknown) "facts." If facts do not exist without an actual description, no unknown "facts" are possible and seeking them is an exercise in futility. On the other hand, by my definition, intelligible states of affairs count as facts that can be discovered.

I'll ask you to demonstrate exactly how you get from, "The red book is on the table," to, the red book is on the table, and vice versa. Or, same question, how you know the red book is on the table. — tim wood

One could write a whole book on this, but the outline is simple enough. The environment acts on me via my senses -- informing them in specific ways. Various objects have specific acts that they are capable of and others that they are incapable of. When I turn my attention to my sensory contents, I can focus on specific aspects -- becoming aware of them. If some subset of sensory contents (an object presentation) evokes the concept <book>, I can class the object as a book. If the same object presentation evokes the concept <red>, I can judge <The book is red>. I can do the same with tables, positional concepts and so on. I can keep all of this information to myself, or I can express it in a conventional way, saying or writing "There is a red book on the table."

Going the other way, after making out the letters and reading the text, the sentence evokes certain concepts and relations between them, so that I can, if I wish, imagine a red book on a table.

Rather it is how the fact-as-text can become the fact itself — tim wood

The fact as text never becomes the state of affairs the text describes unless I am an artisan. All it can do is evoke evoke an intellectual or imagined representation of the state of affairs described. If I am an artisan, I might be able to make an object with the specified features. Still, even if I am an artisan and make a specified object, the object I make was not a fact when I received the specification.

The point of this is that in talking about facts, one has to distinguish between the thing described and the text wherein the description is homed. Confusing the two makes for confusion and bad philosophy. — tim wood

Of course. That is why I started my post by saying "It seems to me that 'fact' has two senses."

It's an illusion in the sense that we tend to confuse it with the whole. — Jake

Yes, but it is an error we can come to avoid.

It seems to me that the role of philosophy is to develop a consistent framework for understanding all human experience: physical and intentional, effable and mystical. If this is so, our starting point must be experience. Language that cannot be cashed out in terms of some actual or possible experience is meaningless. That does not mean that language has to capture or limit experience. It can also point to what is ineffable.

we have these a priori/innately existing perceptual categories of: causality (eg Hume) & (multiplicity & form & change). — Nasir Shuja

Do we? I see no reason to think that our categories are developed my reflecting on experience. We see that these perceived events are similar to those in this way, but not in that way. This certainly seems to be how children learn. I think that in the above posit, you have already committed yourself to some form of Kantianism -- and unnecessarily so.

What is the reality we perceive constituted of, does it exist in any meaningful sense if it is an illusion created by perceptual categories, etc.? — Nasir Shuja

This question is not based on experience but upon an unargued theoretical commitment. If you think about it, what we generally mean by "reality" is the world we normally perceive. If this is so, what can it possibly mean to think of a world "more real" than reality? Isn't the very idea an oxymoron?

I am not denying that mystical experience, for example, might penetrate to the foundations of reality, but that the foundations are those of the reality we perceive.

Perhaps it would be better to say that we see only a tiny fragment of reality, and so the image we have of reality does not accurately represent reality, and is thus a form of illusion. — Jake

To see a part is not to suffer an illusion, it is just to see a part of reality and not the whole. All human knowledge is a projection (a dimensionally diminished map) of reality. It is an error to make divine omniscience the paradigm of human knowledge. "Knowing" names an activity humans actually do. When your theory concludes that humans never "know," you are no longer talking about what the rest of us mean by "knowing."

It seems to me that "fact" has two senses. One is an intelligible state of affairs. The other is a known intelligible state of affairs. That a known fact can often be expressed in text is incidental. A person who cannot speak or write can know a fact. Alternately, a fact might be so novel that there are as yet no words to express it. (Still, one might be able to indicate it in some non-verbal way, such as pointing.)

To the argument that the facts are the things themselves, there arises the problem of just how, exactly, one comes to understand what the fact is. — tim wood

I don't think this is an argument so much as a definition. If we define a "fact" as an intelligible state of affairs, that does not imply that we have access to the fact. When we do have access, we come to know the state of affairs because it acts on us, typically via our senses.

How can something essentially inadequate to a task perform the task? — Dfpolis

Explain, please. — SophistiCat

Of course. The PSR is an observation about the nature of contingent reality -- not an arbitrary posit.

We see that changes happen. We ask how can this be? Parmenides argued:
Every change requires the emergence of something new. Either this new reality comes from something or it comes from nothing. It cannot come from nothing because from nothing, nothing comes. But, nether can it come from something, for if it did it would already exist and so not be new. Since the new aspect can neither come from nothing nor from something, change is impossible.

Aristotle explained Parmenides error by observing that just because a new aspect comes from something does not mean that it actually preexists the change. It can be potential, rather than actual, in what it comes from. So, our experience of change implies the reality of potential existence -- not as a mere logical possibility, but as the foundation in reality for what is actualized in change.

What has this to do with the PSR? While what is potential is real, it is not yet actual (not yet operational). As the actualization of a potential is an operation, no potential can actualize itself because it is not yet operational. So, it must be actualized by something already operational/actual, its concurrent cause. (Concurrent because it has to operate at the time and place the potential is made actual.) So, every potency that is actualized is actualized by a concurrent ("essential") cause.

(Note that essential causes, which act concurrently, are not the kind of causes soundly criticized by Hume and inadequately discussed by Kant. That kind of cause is known as an "accidental cause" and is time-sequence by rule. Essential causality differs by occurring in a single event (the actualization of a potential), while accidental causality links two successive events.)

We have now established the necessity for an operative agent (essential cause) in the actualization of any potency. All the PSR says is that this agent must be sufficient or adequate to the task of actualization. This adds nothing to the analysis. It merely makes explicit what was implicit, for the claim that an agent inadequate to actualizing a potential actualizes that potential is an oxymoron.

What we know about reality is not a closed, axiomatic system. One may formulate some subset of what we know into an axiomatic system, but reality is always ready to surprise us, violating our expectations with unpredictable information. Thus, the PSR is not an axiom of a formal system, but an observation about the nature of contingent reality.

It's difficult for me to see what the attraction of an unrestricted PSR is — SophistiCat

Logical consistency. How can something essentially inadequate to a task perform the task?

Whatever explains something explains it in light what it is -- it is the kind of thing that can effect what needs an explanation. So, if something is to be self-explaining, what it is must entail that it is.

What can this mean? Following Plato's hint in the Sophist, we can say that anything that can act in any way exists. This makes existence convertible with the unspecified ability to act. Correlatively, what a thing is (its essence) can be explicated as the specification of its possible acts.

So, for what something is (its essence), to explain that it is (its existence) requires that the specification of its possible acts entails the unspecified ability to act. In other words, what it is can place no limitations on its capacity to act. Thus, it must be able to do any logically possible act (be omnipotent).

Maybe Pantinga didn't reply to you at the actual world but I'm fairly sure he did at some other possible worlds. — Pierre-Normand

Unfortunately, all my mail comes to the real world.

I think you knew in which way I meant the word, so let's move on. — HuggetZukker

Yes, I do. I was suggesting an alternate conceptual framework.

If we can be aware of some intelligibility that does not require neural encoding to make itself present, then there is no reason why awareness cannot continue after the brain ceases to function. After reading W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, I am convinced that we can be aware of such intelligibility. — Dfpolis

Can you clarify what you believe about such knowledge, which does not require "neural encoding?" — HuggetZukker

Yes. Stace found that there were two classes of mystical experience that were reported throughout history and across cultures. He calls these "introvertive" and "extrovertive." The characteristics Stace found to be cross-culturally shared are, in the case of extrovertive mysticism:

1. The unifying vision, expressed abstractly by the formula “All is One.” The One is, in extrovertive mysticism, perceived through the physical senses, in or through the multiplicity of objects.
2. The more concrete apprehension of the One as being an inner subjectivity in all things, described variously as life, consciousness, or a living Presence. The discovery that nothing is “really” dead.
3. Sense of objectivity or reality.
4. Feeling of blessedness, joy, happiness, satisfaction, etc.
5. Feeling that what is apprehended is holy, or sacred, or divine. This is the quality which gives rise to the interpretation of the experience as being an experience of “God.” It is the specifically religious element in the experience. It is closely intertwined with, but not identical with, the previously listed characteristic of blessedness and joy.
6. Paradoxicality.
Another characteristic may be mentioned with reservations, namely,
7. Alleged by mystics to be ineffable, incapable of being described in words, etc. — Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 79

For introvertive experiences, points 1 and 2 become:

1. The Unitary Consciousness; the One, the Void; pure consciousness.
2. Nonspatial, nontemporal. — Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 131

Now it happens to be the case that this total suppression of the whole empirical content of consciousness is precisely what the introvertive mystic claims to achieve. And he claims that what happens is not that all consciousness disappears but that only the ordinary sensory-intellectual consciousness disappears and is replaced by an entirely new kind of consciousness, the mystical consciousness. — Stace, The Teachings of the Mysitcs, p. 18

Since the brain evolved to process sensory content, especially in the case of introvertive mysticism, which is devoid of sensory content, no neural processing is required.

Do you believe that it might require "encoding" in a way, which cannot be described as "neural"? — HuggetZukker

I think awareness is awareness of intelligibility, but that not all intelligibility qualifies as information. I know that sounds confused, but let me explain. Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, defined information as the reduction of possibility. The kind of possibility he had in mind was logical possibility. The reception of each new bit reduces the number of logically possible messages until we finally know the actual message. The intelligibility in Stace's introvertive mysticism does not reduce what is logically possible. If anything, it increases our sense of what is possible. Still, mystics insist it is the awareness of intelligibility. Without "proving" the existence of God, the experience comports with the philosophical conclusion that God's essence does not limit His existence -- so that awareness of God would necessarily be uninformative by Shannnon's definition. Such intelligibility cannot be encoded, because only information can be encoded.

can you offer an example, even a hypothetical one, of a relation between such knowledge after the cessation of brain function, and something else? — HuggetZukker

If mystical experience is awareness of a transcendent reality, which virtually all mystics claim (even atheists such as Bucke in his Cosmic Consciousness), then there is no reason one couldn't continue to stand as a subject with respect to it in the absence of brain function. That is exactly the claim of many who have had near death experiences (NDEs).

I am not arguing that NDEs "prove" anything. I'm merely saying they're part of the pool of experience we need to reflect upon. While descriptions of NDEs often fix on the tunnel of light and meeting loved ones, most NDEs also involve the kind of transcendent awareness described by mystics. And, while people with NDEs haven't "really" died, in many cases we have empirical observations of a cessation of brain function -- which is the point at issue here.

I'm not asking anyone to give credence to the thought experiment. — HuggetZukker

Thought experiments are designed to make us reflect on what we think we know. Sometimes they present a paradox. Still, whatever problem or insight they present has to be resolved in terms of what we can discover from our experience of the actual world. With specific reference to the duplication Gedankenexperiment, a theory that is perfectly adequate to reality may be quite inadequate with respect to an imagined world. A theory adequate to occurent human activity would probably fail miserably in explaining Professor Minerva McGonagall's transmogrification powers. So, I do not see why we would need to modify our understanding of personal identity to account for a case that never actually occurs and is most likely impossible.

But you have not convinced me that the physicalist approach is inadequate. You may say that awareness transforms information from being latent in the physical world into being active in logical order, but "logical order" needs not be founded in a non-physical realm. "Logical order" may well be abstract, but so is the internet, yet has no operational existence independantly of running servers. — HuggetZukker

I have not tried to convince you that physicalism is inadequate, but even if I could not, it is a leap of faith to assume that it is adequate.

Here are a few reasons why it is inadequate.

While every act of knowing has both a knowing subject and a known object, we begin natural science with a fundamental abstraction in which we fix our attention on known physical objects to the exclusion of the knowing subject. We care about what Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton and Hubble saw, to the exclusion of their intentional experience (their experience as knowing subjects) in seeing it. This is a perfectly rational methodological move if our interest is physical objects, but it separates in thought what is inseparable in reality (the known object and the knowing subject). It also leaves the natural sciences bereft of the data and concepts required to address the knowing subject and correlative issues. Lacking these data and concepts, natural science can make no connections between what it knows of the physical world and concepts revolving around the subject (such as subjective awareness, intentionality and meaning).

Forgetting that natural science does not deal with all intelligible reality, but only with an abstracted subset, as physicalists do, is an example of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. It is treating and abstraction as though it is the contextualized whole.

The other inadequacies of physicalism, such as its supposing that consciousness can be reduced to a physical basis (Chalmer's "Hard Problem"), its failure to account for the contingent forms of awareness (qualia), its lack of a theory of intentionality (Brentano's "aboutness) and meaning, its inability to explain our experience of free choice and the confusion of neural representations with ideas -- all of these follow from forgetting that natural science addresses only a subset of human experience.

"logical order" needs not be founded in a non-physical realm — HuggetZukker

Yes, but not completely. The logical order is founded on the actualization of the intelligibility of physical reality. It is mentally distinct from the physical order, but dynamically linked to it. Thus, it brings together subject and object. What the logical order adds is the knowing subject -- exactly what is excluded from natural science by its fundamental abstraction.

A subjective probability of 50% would mean in half the possible worlds. — Dfpolis

Rubbish. — Banno

I wrote Plantiga to that effect, but he declined to respond.

Good point. So, we can agree that the real world is logically prior to any possible world. — Dfpolis

Not logically prior (logically, all worlds are on par, it's the metaphysics where the differences come, e.g. being actual). It's prior in the sense that it's the world I start with and possibility will often be understood with respect to it. — MindForged

Logical priority is does not relate to epistic value. It is about the flow of information. In a sound syllogism, the conclusion has as much epistic value as the premises, but the premises are logically prior because they are the ground for the conclusion.

So, when you say "if the laws of physics were different," you are excluding from S any proposition specifying the actual laws of physics, the evidence leading us to them and their implications. Thus, my definition is perfectly suited to your example. — Dfpolis

Can you clarify? I can't understand what you're saying here. — MindForged

Yes. Let me work with the latest version of my definition because, while the idea is the same, the formulation is clearer:

p is possible with respect to a set of propositions, S, if p does not contradict the propositions of S.

If we don't specify the kind of possibility, we usually mean that p is possible given all I know. Then S = {propositions expressing facts I know}. In your example, S = {propositions expressing facts I know} - {propositions expressing or implying the actual laws of physics} + {propositions expressing your alternate laws of physics}. I'm not sure if you want to assume your alternate laws, or judge their possibility. If you want to judge their possibility, they would not be included in S.

Of course if I'm talking alternate laws of physics I'm excluding the actual laws of physics, that's a trivial observation. — MindForged

I am not trying to be complex, only to explain how my definition applies.

Not all possibilities are, contrary to your definition, possible simply by being consistent with the set of facts of the actual world. — MindForged

That is why I have allowed S to be constructed however you wish.

if, for example, God's existence is possible (that is, if God exists in at least one possible world) then we can prove in S5 modal logic that God must also exist in the actual world. ... I just picked a fun one (even if I don't think the argument is sound) — MindForged

Only if one assumes the validity of S5 modal logic. I have reservations relative to the axiom (◻A → ◻◻A & A → ◻◊A).

Since you think the "proof" is unsound, even you don't think it adds to our knowledge of the real world by the considering imagined worlds.

"I see nothing to prevent me from being a doctor" ... — Dfpolis

Because modal statements are not like non-modal statements. "I am a doctor" has obviously clear truth conditions (true when I am in fact a doctor). But modal statements are often (even usually) about the way the actual world is not. Even your own rendering of it is just sneaking in a modal notion. "Nothing to prevent me" is just a longer way of saying "it's possible that X" ("prevent" specifically is being used modally), which is the very circularity we are trying to avoid. — MindForged

My statement, "I see nothing to prevent me from being a doctor," is not modal. It simply describes my state of knowledge -- a purely categorical assertion. In your argument for why my use of "prevent" is modal, you leave out the words ("I see nothing") that make my statement a categorical description of my state of knowledge. There is nothing counterfactual in it.

But, even if it were modal, I have defined "possible" independently of imagined worlds.

There's no assumption that any arbitrary world is consistent. In fact, world which are not consistent are deemed impossible worlds. But this has no relevance in the use of PW semantics unless you think that it somehow renders various possibilities impossible. — MindForged

There is an implicit assumption. The only world we know to be self-consistent is ours. As soon as we engage in possible worlds talk, we assume that there are other self-consistent worlds when all we actually know is that there are other imaginable worlds. The situation only worsens when we assume that there are possible worlds with specific counterfactual attributes.

"Our sensory representation of an object" is just another name for the modification to our sensory state brought about by sensing that object. What else can it be? — Dfpolis

Our sensory apparatus is not the same as our sensory state (our perceptual experience). By assumption, our perceptual experience changes due to what our sensory organs being modified by the world and that's translated in the brain as our experience of the world. But that representation is in no way perfect and we can even tell that we miss a lot of what's out there. — MindForged

I did not say our sensory apparatus is the same as our sensory state, nor did I say our sensory representation is prefect. So, what that I actually said do you object to?

We don't have a noisy connection so much as we have an experience of a representation of a partially received phone call from our mother. — MindForged

Did I say otherwise? I hold that all human knowledge is a projection (a dimensionally diminished map) of reality.

I've explained many times now that since they are not actual, possible worlds aren't "there." I've made it clear that their only existence is intentional -- the unparsimonious imaginings of overwrought philosophical minds. — Dfpolis

You're changing the argument again. Just previously your criticism was that W being a possible world was what made it possible that P (not true). Look:

It is the name of the concept because the employment of the tool requires one to construct, or at least recognize, worlds that are possible. — MindForged

I never defined possibility in terms of a world being possible. Also, to say that "possible" worlds are imagined is compatible with saying are constructs. The recognition i referred to is of other's imaginings or constructs.

you've got it way wrong. If P is false at a world W, P is still possible so long as there is at least one accessible world W* (determined by the accessibility relation of the modal logic in use) that can be reached from world W. And to say appealing to modal logic is a misdirection is frigging ridiculous. The whole point of PW semantics is to give semantics to modal logic. — MindForged

We are not talking about being false in an imagined world, but about being false in the actual world. These are not equivalent, as the actual world informs us, while we inform the imagined world. Further, no imagined world is "accessible," except in our imagination. The only way to "reach" an imagined world from the actual world is via imagination.

I stand by my claim that, when discussing what is actual, appealing to modal logic is irrelevant misdirection and distraction.

"Venus" picks out multiple objects (one real, many imagined) and so it is a universal, not a proper name. The only alternative is to say that an imagined Venus is numerically identical with the actual Venus -- but to say this is to deny the difference between reality and fiction. — Dfpolis

No, Venus is a name for an object in the actual world. We surely agree on this. What Venus's in other possible worlds are, are simply variations on Venus in, essentially, different situations; it's still the same underlying object. — MindForged

Yes, in reference to the actual world considered in isolation, "Venus" is a proper name. The problem occurs when you talk about alternate Venuses (or is it "Veni"?)

The essential question is: Is the imagined Venus identical with the actual Venus or not? If it is, then there is no difference between the imagined and real Venus, and all of their properties are identical. If it is not, "Venus" is predicated universally, and not as a proper name. I see no other option, do you?

Let's ask: What is the count of Venuses? If each has different properties, we can tell them apart and assign different integers to each. So, their count is more than 1, whether they reflect one underlying object or not. So, "Venus" is a universal, not a proper name.

There may be only one Venus in each imagined world, but, when we consider multiple worlds at the same time, "Venus" has multiple referents, which means that "Venus" is universally predicated.

What is designated by proper names is fixed across worlds — MindForged

Is this a faith claim, a hypothesis, an arbitrary stipulation, or the supposed conclusion some argument?

As I have pointed out, if it is fixed, it is either fixed by a well-defined sent of criterion, in which case it is a universal whose sense is specified by that criterion, or it is not -- in which case its reference is arbitrarily specified and of no objective import.

But definite descriptions are just one way of seeing who or what a term refers to, but it could never give them meaning of what proper names are. If we simply call a new second planet Venus, that's obviously not the same Venus we were quantifying over when we made modal statements about the actual Venus. — MindForged

This does not resolve the issue. It only repeats the problem. How do we know which is the "new second planet"? Either the assignment is on the basis of a well-defined criterion, or it is by fiat.

The possession of inclinations is actual — MindForged

Thank you.

And inclinations certainly aren't like laws of nature. — MindForged

I agree. We have free will and human responses are too complex for single factor analysis. Still, the basis for saying "John would have enjoyed the trip, had he gone," is not the certainty that John would have enjoyed it (because we can't be certain), but his inclinations as revealed by past events. It does not need, nor does one normally use, the apparatus of possible worlds to judge <John would have enjoyed the trip>.

(1) speech is not about meaning, but about purpose. We make a speech act in order to achieve something. — andrewk

I do not see why this has to be an either-or situation. As Aristotle pointed out there are many modes of explanation. Just because Wittgenstein focuses on final causality does not mean that speech cannot be considered in terms of efficient, formal and material causality. The formal projection of speech deals with its meaning without denying its purposes.

(2) parsing speech acts, while occasionally useful, is often misleading and can lead to wrong conclusions, because often the act as a whole has an impact or intention that differs from what might be inferred by zooming in on constituent parts. — andrewk

Yes, that is why we need many projections of the same reality -- of which Aristotle's modes of explanation provide four. Parsing, as reduction to parts, is a material approach to speech. Approach ing speech in terms of efficient causality involves considering the role of the speaker in generating speech acts.

You haven’t non-circularly told what you mean by “reality”, “exist” or “actual”. — Michael Ossipoff

I have said that real objects can act, and some act to inform knowers. I have contrasted this with hypothetical systems which are informed by those positing them and which have no power to act independently of those considering them.

I did not say "actually act." That was your phrasing. Instead, I pointed out that the characters in stories do not act independently of the story tellers and readers thinking them.

If you cannot see that this response is non-circular, I am happy to agree to disagree.

What you said sounds like it’s related to the Cosmological Argument. — Michael Ossipoff

It depends on what you mean by the cosmological argument. The Kalam argument based on accidental or Humean-Kantian, time sequenced causality is unsound. Arguments based on essential or concurrent causality such as those of Aristotle, ibn Sina and Aquinas are sound. The notion that in a necessary being essence and existence are identical is due to Aquinas.

For me, it was a matter of an impression that what-is, is good, and that there’s good intent behind what is, and that Reality is Benevolence itself. I’ve posted about reasons that point to that impression. — Michael Ossipoff

I can see these being reasonable grounds.

But, for one thing, I agree with those who don’t use the word “Being” in that context. We aren’t talking about one of various beings, sharing that noun-description with them. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, "being" does not mean the same thing. Language is poorly suited to the discussion.

In earlier times, such as Medieval times, there was a desire and perceived need to invoke God as the direct explanation for the events of the physical world, and it was considered heresy to speak of physics as the direct explanation for physical events, for example. — Michael Ossipoff

This is a factual error. The study of nature was encouraged and the foundations of mathematical physics were laid. Robert Grosseteste, a bishop, studied geometric optics and laid down canons of the scientific method as we now have it, including the need for controlled experiments. Others advanced botany, developed the ideas of inertia and instantaneous velocity, and laid the foundations of calculus. Copernicus was a priest. Jesuits published 2/3 of the early papers on electricity.

So, natural science was actively promoted by theologians who believed that by studying creation, we learn about the Creator. It is only with the advent of fundamentalism that natural scienc came to be seen as an enemy of religion. I suggest you read James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, or some other recent book on medieval science.

neither did He need to contravene logic to make there be what describably is. — Michael Ossipoff

As I see it, logic, as the science of correct thinking, is based on the laws of being. If we want our conclusions to apply to reality, we had better take the structure of reality into account when we think.

I disagree with the Medieval claim that physical law was contravened to create us. — Michael Ossipoff

I think you need to hold this claim in suspension until you find an actual medieval source for it. Not knowing the details of the creative process is not the same as saying God violated his own laws of nature to create us. The Idea of fixed laws of nature first appears in Western literature in Jeremiah (a generation before Thales). So, it has deep roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Your objective physical reality is a brute-fact. — Michael Ossipoff

No, it is a contingent reality held in being by the uncaused cause.

I base my metaphysics on the experience of being.

I am unsure why you would straddle Kripke with this binary choice. — Pierre-Normand

I'm really not picking on him. I am merely looking for the foundation in reality, if any, for naming imagined objects.

Kripke doesn't view proper names as devices that primarily elicit mental states, with or without objective purport, and with or without associated "well-defined criteria". Kripke rather views proper names as public handles into social practices. — Pierre-Normand

Kripke's or Evan's view may work for real individuals, provided that one realizes that social practices reflect rational processing by community members. It can't work for imagined individuals who are not socially available. Naming them can only result from mental processes in the person who imagines them. By the principle of excluded middle, those choices can only be based on fixed criteria or not. (Note that, unlike tomorrow's sea battle and imagined objects, those choices exist in the real world and so are covered by the principle.)

If the naming choice is not based on fixed criteria, we may rationally call it subjective and arbitrary. Suppose, for example, that in an imagined world, there are three inner planets, with the outer two equally distant from the orbit of the actual Venus. Is the second from the sun, or that closest to the earth's orbit, to be called "Venus"? I see no reason for choosing one over the other. So, how is the binary choice to be avoided for imagined individuals?

We may be reaching an impasse. I do not see how proper names can function in the way Kripke thinks they must.

Either a proper name can be assigned to an imagined object in light of some well-defined criteria, or it is assigned by a purely subjective fiat. If it is on the basis of well-defined criteria, the sense of the name is that set of criteria -- a description in your terms. If it is by subjective fiat, then any conclusion that follows from the assignment (such as the necessity of certain propositions) inherits that subjectivity and has no claim to being objective.

Either way, Kripke's analysis does not work.

I'm unsure what work the word "intends" does here. — Pierre-Normand

It means signifies.

If I judge that it is raining outside (because I looked though the window and saw that it is raining) then I am holding the proposition that it is raining outside to be true. — Pierre-Normand

You are confusing two movements of thought. First, you judge <Rain is falling>. This signifies/intends the physical state outside your window and is based on awareness of that state. In the second movement, you turn your attention to the judgement (which did not exist prior to the completion of the first movement) <Rain is falling> and make a judgement about it, viz. <<Rain is falling> is true>. This does not signify something about the physical state alone, but about the relation between your intentional state (the judgement <Rain is falling>) and the physical state, rain is falling -- namely that the judgement is adequate to the reality. (Note how my angle brackets make the shift to the intentional order clear.)

So, when you judge, it may be implicit that what you judge is true, but you are not actually holding it to be true before the second movement is complete.

That's one possible attitude that I can have towards that proposition. — Pierre-Normand

Yes, but, as I just showed, this attitude toward the proposition is not the proposition.

Thus, the proposition is not in the same category as the various "attitudes" you mentioned.

Pardon my mistyping "copula."

The 'is' of identity isn't the copula. — Pierre-Normand

I think you misread my claim. I am not speaking of the "is" of identity. I am saying the copula "is" of "The apple is green" expresses an identity not of concept, but of the source of the concepts. If the same object that evokes the concept <the apple> is not identically the object that evokes <green>, then the judgement is false.

What justifies predicating "green" of the apple, if not that the object evoking <the apple> is identically the object evoking <green>? If one object evoked <the apple>, while a numerically distinct object evoked <green>, the predication would be unjustified. The recognition of identity is essential to the judgement expressed..

its function isn't to signify the numerical identity between the references of "the apple" and of "green" — Pierre-Normand

This relates to the main point. The referent of "apple" is an ostensible unity (ousia = substance). The referent of "green" is an accident inhering in the apple. An accident does not inhere in a substance as a raisin in a pudding -- so that if we ate all the raisins we'd still have substance pudding left -- but as a subset of the overall, perceived intelligibility of the substance. The overall, perceived intelligibility of the substance evokes <the apple>, while a subset evokes <green>. These sets of notes of intelligibility are the referents of the corresponding concepts and terms. Obviously, the "green" subset is not identical to the whole intelligibility, but if were not a contained subset, the apple would not be green.

So, the identity here is that of the pool of intelligibility eliciting coupled the concepts. Of course, the notes of intelligibility have no independent existence. They are merely different aspects of an object.

But if they are object dependent, as Kripke argue is the case for proper names, then they are rigid designators and the identity expressed by "A is B" is necessary. — Pierre-Normand

I think I am attacking Kripke's claim directly.

Two things can be can be dependent on the same, singular object, but still depend on different aspects of that object. If so, then what they depend on may be physically inseparable, but logically distinct. We can't physically separate Clark Kent from Superman, or Hesperus from Phosphorus, but we can see that being a reporter is not being a man of steel, and that appearing in the evening is not appearing in the morning.

So being dependent on the same singular object is insufficient to establish conceptual identity.

it can be the very same thing (that P) that is being feared, hoped or judged. — Pierre-Normand

Yes. My point is that judging is not an attitude. It intends a real state in a way that the attitudes you enumerate need not.

I meant that I can no longer see reasons to believe in this immutable, reified essence of being (or let's just say the word - soul) behind the scenes to make us the same in essence from day to day. I certainly didn't mean to reject the lifelong personal identity. — HuggetZukker

But that is all that a soul is. Aristotle define a soul as the actuality of a potentially living body, and Aquinas seconded him. To have a soul is simply to be alive. It is neither some kind of "stuff" nor a "thing" living within us.

This definition leaves open, as definitions should, the question of whether any aspect of life, such as awareness, survives physical death. If something does, it is not a holistic person, but the remanent of a person.

If we can be aware of some intelligibility that does not require neural encoding to make itself present, then there is no reason why awareness cannot continue after the brain ceases to function. After reading W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, I am convinced that we can be aware of such intelligibility.

Imagine that you can make two carbon copies of me, but only by destroying the original in the process. Now you can ask whether or not I will survive, and if I will, which one of the copies will I become? — HuggetZukker

One can imagine virtually anything. Imagining a "world" does not mean that it is actually self-consistent, for many "worlds" we may think possible have covert contradictions, For example, one may imagine a world in which life evolved, but in which the physical constants are slightly different than in ours. This seems very possible, but the calculations underlying the fine-tuning argument shows it is physically impossible. So, I give no credence to experiments that cannot be performed, or to experiments in which the result is assumed, not observed. The whole point of experimenting is to allow nature to shock us out of our misconceptions.

Devoting attention to imagined issues diverts attention from what we actually know and experience -- which alone should be the basis of our theorizing.

In my view "self" has many concentric meanings (and a few others as well). Starting at one extreme we have what I call our radiance of action (all the things we have acted upon). We see this idea when one says things like "He lives on in his work" or "She will live forever in my heart." Next, we have the self as a holistic organism capable of both physical and intentional acts. Moving in, we come to the self defined by our remembered history. (I am the person who did x and y). This is fragile, even in life, for we can loose our "defining" memories. Finally, we come to the self as the, the center of subjectivity -- as that which is aware and gives or withholds love. Some mystics refer to this as the burglein the little castle which is the last refuge of selfhood. In addition there is the narrative self -- the story, true or false, that we tell ourselves about who we are.

I think any account of selfhood needs to include all these projections of self.

I can't find where I may have suggested that physics should have the competencies to explain such transformations — HuggetZukker

I am not saying you did. I am saying that the physicalist approach is inadequate.

It's true that we are sometimes unaware of what names mean — Snakes Alive

I think here we come to the heart of the matter. On my model, which I think reflects the insights of Aristotle, Peirce and Frege, words mean the concepts they evoke, and concepts mean the intelligibility that evokes them. This allows for both reference and sense. A concept's reference is the set of intelligible instances that can evoke them. Its sense specifies the kind of intelligibility that will evoke it. .

Under this model, it is hard to see how anyone could not know, implicitly at least, the meaning of the names they know how to use.

I assume that you have a different model of meaning -- one that allows names to function when their meaning is unknown. Do you see the meaning of a term as having some kind of abstract existence? Or do you see proper names as having a different kind of meaning than other terms?

I see the meaning of terms changing as we learn more. The original concept of a planet was a wonderer in the sky. Today our concept of a planet has changed so much that we hardly think of them as wondering the sky. It the meanings of terms can change, there is no reason the meaning of proper names can't change as well.