IIRC the mammoth Principia didn't get quite that far, although @Pfhorrest probably wouldn't want to start as far back and proceed as rigorously as W & R.

Max Tegmark in one of his mathematical universe papers sketches a hierarchical roadmap of this type (leading to fundamental physics, natch).

What's the end game - something like Quantum Field Theory? Quantum gravity? Anyway, even if we accept the premise of the "mathematical universe," there are still a couple of issues here:

1. If you are aiming at some fundamental physics, such as QFT, that still leaves out every non-fundamental theory that is not reducible to fundamental physics - which means pretty much everything, from solid state physics to derivative trading. Now, it is plausible, though still controversial, that, to the extent that they are accurate, those "special sciences" supervene on fundamental physics. However, it looks ever more certain that they cannot be built from the ground up, the way you suggest - there will be a discontinuity where you have to jump from one level to another, with no analytical bridge between the two.

2. You realize that there isn't a unique construction, even for something as basic as the integers, right? Even with set theory there's more than one way to do it.

Much to my surprise, no duplication of the experiment has been reported. — god must be atheist

Why would you find that surprising? Few experimental studies are duplicated.

Anyway, epigenetics in general is not controversial, and hasn't been for a long time (even if the OP is trying to evangelize it as if it was the latest miracle cure). But popular media and various cranks have sensationalized and distorted it to the point that honest biologists cringe when they are asked about it.

I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way ["The Notion of Subject/Object"] or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes. — Xtrix

This seems to be too thin for a philosophical basis. Can you elaborate? Not the specific meaning of "subject/object" (I think we have clarified that part), but how you think that forms the philosophical basis. A philosophical basis would have to be something substantive, non-trivial, something that is both consequential, and that could plausibly be constituted differently and have different consequences.

This sounds plausible if we don't get into details, but that doesn't amount to inevitability. Staying at the same level, unencumbered with expertise, here is an alternative scenario that may sound just as plausible: All genes that can affect sexual attraction are specific to the sex chromosomes. This, if true, would neutralize your argument.

's is the most plausible hypothesis that I have heard. It's quite possible that there is more than one pathway, including perhaps the classic site mutation, aka the "gay gene." But that couldn't be the dominant mechanism, for a number of reasons. Yes, it is not wholly impossible for gay people to reproduce, and yes, gay people may have benefited their community, and thus indirectly their gene pool. But the negative selection on the specific gene would be too strong to overcome those mitigating factors. The rest of the genome may benefit, but not the "benevolent uncle" gene, which will be selected against. However, if part of the gene pool conspires to sabotage another part, as in the scenario described by @Bitter Crank, that could be a viable strategy for evolution to pursue.

Your OP was pretty empty of substance, and you haven't added much to it in the follow-up, instead directing us to your website and podcast for details. This is the problem, not the fact that you have links in your profile.

If you want to engage with other members, then don't count on them listening to your podcast or reading your off-site posts. You are not my guru - you are some random stranger from the 'net. If you don't post anything of substance, then I am not going to chase after your teachings elsewhere.

(From what little you have revealed here, it looks like you are of those... impressionable individuals who got too enthusiastic about the ever-fashionable epigenetics. That's not as original as you might think. Geneticists who give popular talks dread the inevitable questions about epigenetics that they always receive, no matter the actual topic of their presentation.)

All I can do is invite you, and I have.

I no longer debate these things. I don't have to, or need to. — Mapping the Medium

Then why are you here? Just to plug your podcast? This is a place for discussion. If you are not interested in discussion, then go away before you are banned for spamming.

@Wayfarer is right, in natural language "A is B" can mean different things, depending on context. It can indicate class membership (people are animals), it serve as a reduction (people are [nothing other than] animals), and so on. In the case of this Spir fellow, what he has in mind would be more precisely called permanence, or more generally, invariance. That is not the same as the simple equality/identity used in logic and math. Such sloppy use of language has occasioned a lot of miserable sophistry (cf. Ayn Rand's abuse of the "principle of identity").

There is some sense in what @Mac is saying. You are right that when we assimilate the concept of equality/identity (whenever and however that happens), self-identity is assumed as part of its meaning - it doesn't have to be learned as a principle that comes in addition to the concept. If x wasn't equal to x, then "equal" would not mean what it does. Also, there isn't really a stand-alone "principle of identity" in logic - it comes as part of the package in the definition of equality (identity). However, when we formally define equality, we do have to explicitly postulate self-identity - it doesn't fall out of other postulates.

tldr: While self-identity does not have any meaning as a stand-alone principle, if we need to formalize the concept of equality, we have to state self-identity explicitly as part of its definition.

Oh boy, you are one of those 0.999... =/= 1 people. Never mind then.

And it has been agreed for the most part, that moral experience with the appearance of objectivity (which are universally shared in a deep principled sense rather than apparently inconsistent shallow comparisons) is properly basic, in the evidentialist sense — Shushi

Agreed by whom? Reformed epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga? ("Properly basic belief" is Plantinga's term that makes sense only in a very specific externalist foundationalist ("proper functionalist") epistemology that he developed, and not widely used outside of his circle, as far as I know. Reformed epistemology derives its name from Reformed theology, aka Calvinism, which tells you just how niche this thing is.) Outside this narrow context, the landscape of epistemology and moral philosophy is much more diverse than you imply.

Personally, I might agree that some of our moral beliefs are basic in the foundationalist sense, in that they are infallible, or incorrigible. We do not require justification for holding them, nor can we reject them at will. But that, of course, pulls the rug from under your challenge, because such beliefs do not require a grounding: they are the grounding.

"0.333~" represents the infinite sum 3 x 1 / 10^1 + 3 x 1 / 10^2 + 3 x 1 / 10^3 + ... + 3 x 1 / 10^inf. It does not represent its limit. — Magnus Anderson

What do you think an "infinite sum" is then if not the limit (if it exists) of the partial sums?

The standard view of the positional notation is that it is a representation of a number as a series, with digits serving as coefficients in front of the base, and their position designating the power of the base (positive before the dot, negative after the dot). But I still have no idea what you think "most people" think of it.

I can't even hazard a guess as to how you think "most people" define "0.333~" (I am more accustomed to the ... notation, but I assume you mean the same thing).

Apple=Banana is true, if the properties of apple and banana are completely identical. Certainly, they are not. So Apple≠Banana. It would explain why an apple couldn't be not an apple. But this logic is only true, if the properties of apple are identical to themselves. — Monist

You just pushed this back from X to properties of X, but that doesn't really change anything. Just do a variable substitution: let Y designate what used to be called X, and let X now be a property of Y. Everything that was said of X would still apply, since it does not actually depend on the meaning of X - it's a purely syntactical exercise. Metaphysics doesn't come into this.

Question: on a ruler one can mark units, then divide the units in half, thirds ( I think), quarters, & etc. But there is no way to mark an exact irrational length on the ruler - unless a line representing an irrational distance is constructed (like the square root of two) and marked on the ruler by direct measurement. Correct? — tim wood

Depends on what you mean by marking off distance on a ruler. If you mean real rulers and real markings, then it's kind of hard to even talk about exact distances. If you have an idealized model in mind - putting a point somewhere on a segment of a straight line, then why can't we mark off an irrational distance? If you make a mark somewhere at random, the distance it marks off is pretty much guaranteed to be an irrational number.

I think you are not giving due attention to the language angle that was proposed in some of the answers. The very meaning of equality and identity in ordinary language already implies self-identity. To question self-identity is not even a metaphysical move - it is meaningless, like questioning the marital status of bachelors. (In math and logic this has to be set out explicitly though - and indeed it is.)

Ulysses I found a bit of a mountain to climb. — Pantagruel

Yeah, that's why I am looking for a helping hand :) I might just end up plowing through it unassisted, but from what I have heard about this book, I fear I'll miss too much this way.

Proust has been on my to do list forever, but I fear it will be even steeper than Ulysses... — Pantagruel

Proust may be a stretch in terms of shear length (of everything, down to individual sentences that can run for pages), but in form and style the books are not a long stretch from the classic 19th century Bildungsroman. It is the subject, which alternates minutely detailed observations of the outside and the inner world, and ruminations on the nature of memory and (at long last) art, that may present a challenge if you are not receptive to it. (It does not help that his self-absorbed alter ego is not all that sympathetic.)

Just to elaborate on one aspect of the question, in mathematics and logic equality is introduced axiomatically, and self-identity is (usually) part of the definition. See for instance equality in first order logic.

As others have noted, you need to first make clear to yourself what question you are actually asking. Once you do that, the answer may become apparent.

Imagine your consciousness disassociating with your body, so that you can observe your body from a distance. — Yohan

This is too convoluted.

Imagine that your consciousness is eternal. Done!

The thing is, you can imagine many things, including things that are counterfactual and even incoherent. There are ways to deploy the mere fact that we can imagine something in a philosophical argument, but they usually hinge on self-reference: the ability to imagine itself must be of some inferential significance (as in Anselm's Ontological argument, for example). In your case this is not obvious. Just because you can imagine your consciousness being separate from your body doesn't mean that this really can be the case.

The sum of any two integers is zero. — John Gill

What are 'integers' in your game? The way integers are usually defined/constructed, they come with addition already baked in.

All I said that what one could easily see even from this forum is that we do not understand infinity yet. — ssu

You said more than that; this is just your go-to defense: to invoke the mysteriousness of infinity, like some invoke the mysteriousness of God. And yet even this seemingly innocuous banality says more than you think it does. It implies that there is some extra-mathematical Infinity that mathematics is trying to grapple with. But mathematics as such doesn't contain anything extra-mathematical. Everything in mathematics exists only to the extent to which it is defined. The Axiom of Infinity is just a name for an axiom (a family of axioms in various systems); it plays by the same rules as every other axiom and doesn't purport to refer to something extra-mathematical - unless you want it to; but that would be an extra-mathematical choice on your part, as would be any use of mathematics to model something extra-mathematical. "Infinity" in mathematics is just a name, a symbol that could be replaced with any other symbol salva veritate. There is nothing inherently pathological about it.

Capping off the year with Time Regained. Took me most of the year to get through all of A la recherche... (though I read other things in between).

Thinking of tackling Ulysses at last. I've read Dubliners and Portrait, but for this one I'd like to find a good annotated edition. Problem is that the text is in the public domain, which means that the ebook market is flooded by cheap crappy editions that often can't even get typesetting right, let alone supporting material. One of Amazon's pricier offerings (among dozens) boasts a "functioning table of contents!" and "annotations" in the form of a short New York Times review (from the same year, and presumably also in the public domain). One proudly lists the title in all caps as "ULYSSES - BY JANE AUSTEN."

But what are we going to do, just sit back and enjoy the ride? — Punshhh

In the first precedent of its kind, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands (where, as our reliable sources tell us, no one takes global warming seriously) mandated that the country cut emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by the end of 2020. (The first ruling was actually passed in 2015, and now the Supreme Court made it final.)

Sorry, I was rude. Let me give it another try.

An axiom is a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. — ssu

This is an antiquated definition, suitable perhaps as an informal introduction to the topic, but not suitable for today's mathematics. And it's not about formalism vs. intuitionism or whatnot. For one thing, this formulation just isn't accurate and doesn't capture the role of axioms, even in Euclid's original books. For example, the fact that a square with the side equal to 1 cannot be inscribed inside a circle with the radius equal to 1 may be self-evidently true, but Euclid did not make it an axiom. Axioms are those propositions that are specifically chosen as the primitive building blocks of a mathematical theory.

More importantly, if axioms were a matter of self-evident truths, then there would be just the one mathematics, because there is only one truth (at least that's how most people see it). But this hasn't been the case with mathematics since long before people even started contemplating foundational philosophical questions like formalism, logicism, etc. The notion that mathematical axioms are some extra-mathematical truths (truths about what?) has been abandoned.

Seems like then you have your your own definition — ssu

No, seems like you are only interested in playing dictionary games. You can join the other idiot then, I am not interested.

My specific contention is that once the set of acceptable answers is determined, the metaphysical and logical questions are mostly settled and usually irrelevant. The "phenomenology" and "intuitions" are mostly determined by asking someone what they're looking for in an answer. — quickly

I guess this turns on the question of what sort of an answer we are looking for: descriptive, explanatory or prescriptive. If descriptive, then reducing the subject to a formal modal logic provides a rough sketch of an answer, but it loses much of the meat in the process of reduction, and the result is only approximate at best, because in reality our modal talk/thinking does not perfectly conform to this system.

If we want an explanatory or a prescriptive answer, then the issues mentioned above really stick out. We need a good reason for concluding that a particular formal system drives our modal talk, or that it's what we ought to aspire to - other than that it's simple and convenient and something that we know how to describe.

The definition of an axiom is "A self evident proposition requiring no formal demonstration to prove its truth, but received and assented
to as soon as mentioned" — ssu

That's not the definition of an axiom, as you ought to have learned by now if you were paying attention.

My point was that axioms can be possibly false. Our understanding can change. Best example of this was that until some Greeks found it not to be true, people earlier thought that all numbers are rational. Yet once when you prove there are irrational numbers, then the 'axiom' of all numbers being rational is shown not to be true. — ssu

You put 'axiom' in inverted commas for good reason, even if you didn't understand it. That all numbers are rational wasn't an axiom - it was a definition, an informal intuition, or a conjecture, depending on how they approached numbers in their thinking. And accepting or rejecting an axiom does not amount to judging it to be true or false; as has been repeatedly explained to you, that doesn't even make any sense.

Are atoms, photons, particles, mass, even solids, liquids and gases, essentially instinctive analogies with our own biological cellularity, conceptually embodied as a physical world in deeply erroneous ways? — Enrique

Atomic theory in its recognizable form is pretty recent (I don't count ancient atomists who were speculating in a vacuum). It was shaped and critically investigated through a lot of empirical probing. There were other contenders that fell by the wayside in the process. So no, I don't think it's just an artifact of a prescientific archetype. That's not to say that it is unassailable, and already in more fundamental physical models those atoms and particles have dissolved into quantum fields.

Where we have an understandable blind spot is with weakly-interacting entities, such as hypothetical WIMPs. Possibly other things as well, which we can't easily capture with our instruments in Earth conditions. But with all the wild variety of theoretical models that we have developed in various areas, I don't think that there is much chance that we are missing something obvious that is right in front of us just because we are stuck in some erroneous conceptual pit. Whatever it is that we are missing, we are probably missing for good reason.

I think I disagree. The best analysis of modal language we possess is possible worlds semantics. By systematically translating modal talk into talk about possible worlds, questions about counterfactuals can be made precise. — quickly

I think this is a mistake. In order to make sense of a phenomenon - modal talk - you pick a simple formal model that captures some of its structure, and then you try to make sense of your model by studying more of its structure and trying to relate it back to phenomenology. This is what's backwards. You shouldn't lose sight of the phenomenology, and don't expect to find in your model any insight that you didn't front-load there.

On the flip side, as @fdrake points out, modal logic is too impoverished a model to capture the varieties and ambiguities of meaning and function of modal talk.

Agree, nodding in the direction of modal logic by rephrasing the problem statement using possible world semantics is ass-backwards when answering someone who asks about the meaning of modal talk outside the context of formal logic. We should rather start by analyzing the modal language, and from there, since language games are usually more than just an abstract exercise, we can proceed to grounding modal talk in some explanatory framework - naturalizing it, for example.

As for human nature in general, I view it as dynamic and historical. We are radically cultural and historical animals. Our nature is to have no nature, or our nature is to always be developing our nature. — softwhere

There is no denying that human psyche is variable and mutable, both on the historical and the individual human scale, but that doesn't make us blank states and empty vessels at birth, to be filled and shaped entirely by culture. As @Bitter Crank rightly notes, we cannot escape our biological substrate, our animal nature, and why would we need to?

We understandably tend to focus on our differences, but I think our commonality far exceed our differences - we just take them for granted.

None of this has much to do with metaphysical essentialism, by the way, but rather with the nature/nurture dichotomy, which shouldn't really be a dichotomy, since it is quite clear that neither exists in a pure form, and I don't think there's much serious debate about that left.

Welcome, David.

Oh, so you've had the time to google null hypothesis in the meanwhile. Good for you, maybe you won't be making such a fool of yourself the next time around.

If one is committed to science being an empirical discipline, rather than an ideological one, one had better take it seriously. Alternatively, you're welcome to set up your altar in the corner and join the rest of the fanatics. — StreetlightX

Oh brother :roll: I suppose the null hypothesis for an entomologist that discovers a new fly species is that these flies are spontaneously generated by rotten meat. Because science!

If one understands IR as simply a negative thesis ('X cannot be explained by means of Y') then it amounts to nothing but a base statement of fallibilism. — StreetlightX

But no one takes seriously the possibility that some biological feature is not evolved, let alone the stronger proposition that it could not have evolved in principle. IR is useless as a null hypothesis (if null hypothesis testing is what you had in mind).

My question is - can the idea of irreducible complexity be interesting philosophically?

And also, philosophically speaking, can there be anything that is truly irreducibly complex? — Wheatley

Your question is unclear. There are any number of hypothetical features about which we could say with a high degree of confidence that they could not have evolved in an Earth organism - tempered steel claws, for example. Or, in a more abstract sense, given some processes operating in some environment, there are any number of outcomes that are outside the range of possible outcomes of those processes. For example, gravitational accretion will not result in an object shaped like Taj Mahal.

There seems to be more to the idea of irreducible complexity than just being outside the range of possible evolutionary outcomes - the word "complexity" provides a hint, but it is difficult to elucidate what it is exactly that creationist proponents of the idea are trying to get at (not for the lack of trying on their their part, but they aren't a terribly competent bunch, nor are they particularly concerned with intellectual rigor). That's one problem with the idea, and one reason why it is difficult to treat philosophically.

If you take a particular biological feature of unknown evolutionary origin and ask whether it perhaps could not have evolved, you will have a tough job in trying to prove the negative. What you see is just the end result, which often reveals little about its own origin. Take something as simple and paradigmatically irreducible as an arch: if you try to build it bit by bit without the use of auxiliary structures like centers, it would be unstable, not to mention non-functional during its intermediate stages.



But then an arch could also start as a solid formation, from which material was gradually removed.



With biological evolution the possible paths are so numerous and at times so circuitous that the challenge before an irreducible complexity proponent becomes insurmountable.

Perhaps ironically, 'irreducible complexity' is - or ought to be - the null hypothesis of all evolutionary science. That is, it ought to be the methodological starting point from which any empirical investigation ought to take it's lead - the idea that such and such a feature cannot be accounted for by evolutionary means just is the base hypothesis from which scientific evidence is marshalled to counter. So 'irreducible complexity' should not be seen as something extra-scientific. It lies at the heart of the scientific method without which science would simply become dogma. — StreetlightX

This is a pretty bizarre statement on its face. Is this some kind of misguided Popperianism? I don't think that any evolutionary scientists ever start from the assumption that something is irreducibly complex - not as a formal methodological move, nor in any other sense that I can think of.

Frege has this model of Designation/Sense/Reference.
The designation is the word itself, i.e “chair”.
The Reference is the actual thing which the Designation(word) refers to, i.e an actual chair.
The sense is the Way in which the Reference is presented to us/given to us, i.e we Think of a chair as something to sit on.

This model is pretty straight forward regarding actual physical objects... but what about “concept words”? — marcolobo8

This is only a part of Frege's sentence model. He specifically excludes "concept words" from this part.

Im particular interested in the word “God” since im writing a text about it.
How do i apply Freges model on the word “God”? Is there even a definite reference to the word “God”? If so, is it as an object or a concept? — marcolobo8

God (capitalized) is, obviously, a proper name, both in the ordinary sense and in Frege's technical sense - i.e. the word "God" is a sign that can, at least in principle, refer to a concrete object. Whether the reference exists in reality is another question, but even if the word fails to refer, that doesn't make it a "concept word." This would be a case of "sense without reference" (assuming you do have some sense of what "God" is).

The problem with your argument is that you define what is 'rational' — Tim3003

That's not a problem, that's a feature. Of course I define what is 'rational', as does everyone else.

I don't think voters act irrational actually. We don't see it because we're to removed from them. — Benkei

You mean they don't see themselves acting irrationally. Of course. If they did, would they act that way? When I say that people act irrationally, that's my judgment, not theirs. (Actually, sometimes we do realize on some level that we are acting irrationally and self-destructively, but just can't help it. But most of the time the realization comes afterwards.)