There recently was a New York Times article Can Prairie Dogs Talk? - entirely one-sided - in which one Dr. Slobodchikoff claims that prairie dogs possess the most complex language next to ours.

It seems that you want to call difficult, uncertain decisions "amoral".

All decisions, to the extent that they are non-random, are ultimately predicated on some value judgments. I don't really see a point in differentiating between "moral" and "amoral" values for the purpose of decision-making. Either way, when we deliberate on a decision, it all comes down to pitting conflicting value-laden imperatives against each other.

If something does not inflict unnecessary or unjustifiable harm, it cannot be immoral. — VagabondSpectre

That's more-or-less a statement of liberal ethics. But not everyone is a liberal, as you well know, and no amount of reasoning will convince a non-liberal to become a liberal: one doesn't reason one's way towards value judgments.

If something does not cause harm to anyone or anything, on what grounds could we deem such a thing to be immoral? — VagabondSpectre

All the grounds of non-liberal ethics. Religious convictions, for example.

Meh, I am pretty sure that many "are not waiting to see what the investigation brings to light". Some have already got him tried, convicted and are only waiting for the sentencing phase.

Heaven help us if Trump actually has his rights respected of being innocent until proven guilty and that 'proof' never comes. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Meh, Trump should be A-ok with assuming guilt without due process. After all, he has extended an invitation to the White House to Rodrigo Duterte, a man who publicly bragged about personally executing criminal suspects.

Heh, Finland has a cause for worry indeed: it was once a part of the Russian empire, and Stalin carved off a good chunk of it at the beginning of WWII. Putin just might come for seconds!

Close to 100%? I think the genuine worry is not the plight of the Crimean people but a major land grab in Europe, something we haven't seen since the end of WWII...

Yes, it's strange. Both this forum and its former incarnation are slanted towards atheism. In a survey of philosophers through history (which are not to be confused with people who write about philosophy -- including members of internet forums), the number of religious people would be far greater. — Mariner

Through history? How is that a relevant comparison? I would assume that participants of this forum are our contemporaries - most of them, anyway.

This 2009 survey of academic philosophers had the following result:

God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%

As ssu says, you just need to take a look at the timeline of the events, which Russian officialdom now largely acknowledges, even if they don't like to talk about some aspects of it. Even its extreme brevity speaks volumes (compare with Scotland's years of campaigning and preparation). It was a classic blitzkrieg.

There is another distinctive narrative here: that of Crimean Tatars. They are now only some 12% of the population, down from the overwhelming majority that they once were, but they are a very cohesive group, and from the outset they were vehemently opposed to Russian plans (their history has taught them not to expect anything good from Russia, and the events subsequent to the annexation have validated their apprehensions). The Tatar leaders, now in forced exile, are basically using the same rhetoric as the Russians, only turned on its head and used against them: they are arguing that Tatars are the true heirs to Crimea, they are the only people who have the right to call themselves "the Crimean people." And therefore "historical justice," with which Russia likes to justify its actions in Crimea, is actually on their side. (I myself don't approve of either side's rhetoric and think that nationalism and "historical justice" are very pernicious routes to take.)

Present-day offshore oil and gas production that Russia seized from Ukraine doesn't amount to much (which is why Ukraine largely relied on energy imports, even before it lost control of Crimea). There are potentially rich deep-sea oil and gas deposits that Russia now controls in the Black Sea, but their size is uncertain, and Russia will have to rely on its own outdated and thinly stretched resources to develop them. International oil giants will eventually wear down Western governments to allow them to work elsewhere in Russia, but I don't see this happening in Crimea any time soon.

For now Russia has to rely on expensive schemes to deliver energy and other resources to Crimea, with which it doesn't even have a land border. Crimea and Chechnya are among Russia's greatest budget sinks.

I'm curious if calling this an "annexation" is actually fair. If the Crimean people really wanted to be Russian and voted for it, should we really feel so bad for Ukraine that we tell the Crimeans they aren't allowed to join Russia?

Whether or not their referendum was representative seems a relevant question. — VagabondSpectre

It wasn't. There wasn't anything like a real referendum, such as what the Scots had. Before Russia made its play, there wasn't even much of a separatist movement there; it was just a sleepy and neglected province, more-or-less content to eke out a living from Russian and Ukrainian summer vacationers. But once the invasion got under way, local authorities toppled, Ukrainian media shut down and the propaganda of fear and patriotism revved up, I think it is plausible that most of the population would have voted to join Russia. But they weren't even trusted with their voices.

Clearly both sides just want Crimea to be a part of their economic batteries and not the other's. — VagabondSpectre

If that were so, Russia would've been happy for Ukraine to have Crimea: that battery is shelling their own! Now and in the foreseeable future Crimea is a drain on Russia's resources. And I am not just talking about the international sanctions.

Those Champagne bottles weren't opened in celebrating in Trump's win just for Trump winning, but for the brilliant work made for Russia. — ssu

That's your conjecture. There were a number of plausible reasons for the Russians to support Trump during the election, him being some sort of a Russian mole being probably the least plausible. Firstly, I don't think the Russians even expected Trump to win, any more than anyone else did. The primary goal pursued by their propaganda during the campaign was probably just more propaganda: to discredit democratic institutions and weaken the future leader of the US (whom they fully expected to be Clinton).

As for why they might have wanted Trump to be President, he had positioned himself as an isolationist and a pragmatist, someone who cared little about international affairs and who wouldn't stand on ideology. He would rather break ranks with Europe, make a deal with Russia and get off its back than carp about democracy, human rights and international law - which would have suited Putin perfectly. He could then indulge his fantasy of being a feared and respected leader of a superpower in a multipolar world, like in the good old days of the Soviet empire. Trump's fawning references to Putin (like Putin, he seems to confuse brutality with strength, authoritarianism with efficiency) would have made him look like an ideal figure in the Oval Office.

Perhaps Putin also thought that Trump would be a weaker adversary, easier to manipulate and outmaneuver. And if nothing else, Trump wreaking havoc in his own country and weakening Europe would also have been considered a win by Putin, for whom international politics is a zero-sum game: what's bad for his adversaries is good for him. At least he wouldn't look as bad by comparison.

As for those "politicians" who were reported to pop the bubbly following the news of Trump's win - they are nobodies, mere figureheads. There is no real politics in Russia, at least not as it is understood in Western democracies. Those kleptocrats in the Russian "parliament" have no insider knowledge of any import and make no real decisions - they were just trying to read the mood of the man in power. Which wasn't at all difficult, since they were just following the trend set by all the major media outlets in the run-up to the US elections.

If you are into "mind-trip" movies, I would add Being John Malkovich and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that's been mentioned below. These are actually good movies, regardless of their "ideas". Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos) - perhaps less accomplished, but has obvious similarities with The Eternal Sunshine, also dealing with memory manipulation. Easy on the eye, too :)

Solaris (2002, which I think is a very good remake of the Soviet original). — jkop

Didn't see the remake. The Soviet original was by Tarkovsky, and I don't think it is one of his best. But those who liked that might also like his other philosophical sci-fi movie Stalker. I think of The Mirror as Tarkovsky's masterpiece, also Andrei Rublev, Nostalgia, The Sacrifice - they are not "philosophical" in the sense of having some intellectual puzzle or dislocation at the center of their narrative; more like spiritual and even mystical.

The first movie on that (alphabetical) list happens to be the one I thought to mention. Powerful stuff, as is most of Herzog/Kinsky work.

Yeah, I don't understand the significance of being a member of some set. If some means any, then anything you can name is a member of any number of sets. If it is some particular set, then the burden of definition is shifted to defining that set.

This is a critical insight. Ingenuously* is the way they were intended to be read. The narrative of scripture is compelling. — Bitter Crank

I read Jewish and Christian scriptures for the first time in full at a fairly mature age. While I did not expect a religious conversion, I was actually surprised to find my attitude dimming towards these scriptures, especially the Christian ones. A rather unattractive image of Jesus as a cult leader gradually took shape as I was reading the New Testament: moody, alternately ingratiating and imperious, soppy and short-tempered.

Unlike many atheists here, I was raised secular. Religion wasn't much discussed inside or outside the home. My father, as I later realized, while being of a skeptical disposition, leaned towards deism, and on his deathbed he became convinced of an afterlife of some sort. My mother was leaning more towards mystical spirituality, but she was too complicated a person to settle on any definite religious belief.

I myself gave little thought to god and religion until later in life, but for as long as I remember myself I had, as they say, no religious bone in me. Emotionally, subconsciously, a religious belief or practice just never seemed like a live option. When I did turn my intellect toward these matters, I became increasingly confirmed in my atheism. Though of course I like to think of myself as being open to persuasion, I have not seen any argument that would move me away from this position.

Agnostic. I would say atheist but that is only really towards certain conceptions of gods inside popular religions. I consider myself generally open to some arguments for something supernatural and do not think many of the atheistic approaches to theism meet a good standard to label theism false. — Chany

This quite unfairly implies that those who self-identify as atheists are not open to arguments. One can be an atheist (in the common sense of not believing in any deities or the supernatural) with an open mind, and most atheists probably think of themselves that way.

Didn't Trump pretty much out his motive right in the letter of dismissal?



I don't imply any deep conspiracy here. I myself am more inclined to believe that Trump was just his usual impulsive, irritable, vindictive, bloody-minded, incompetent self. That he was irked by Comey's pushing the Russia investigation (which is, after all, aimed primarily at his people and possibly himself) seems rather too obvious.

This is a good question and the answer is not so obvious, unless you take certain positions for granted, such as utilitarian ethics. This is a good case not so much to come up with answers as to examine our assumptions and prejudices and the role they play in the search for answers - which is what I think philosophy is good for: not to supply answers but to ask good questions, critically examine our thought process, and broaden the inquiry beyond the familiar and the banal.

A better example would be a real case though, and we can find such cases. Laws are not always passed solely for the sake of improving the lot of as many as possible. Religious laws, for instance, though they can be framed in utilitarian terms and are sometimes justified by genuinely utilitarian considerations, nevertheless are primarily motivated by non-utilitarian principles.

Or take ostensibly secular laws, such as prohibition on alcohol consumption that has at various times been put in place in secular democracies. Although health and public safety considerations were important in promoting prohibition, it cannot be denied that there was one other, and in the end perhaps the most important principle in play: this is immoral, and therefore should be illegal.

A similar battle is even now waged in the West over recreational drugs. Although utilitarian arguments have been mounting in favor of lifting the prohibition, i.e. it has been argued that prohibition is less favorable in terms of achieving the greatest good for the most people, resistance to lifting the prohibition is still strong, especially in more conservative societies, where moral prohibitions carry more weight than utilitarian benefits.

Yes, but look at it from the perspective of the edge. According to SR, a clock on the edge, in its own frame, is stationary and thus runs faster, not slower, than the moving clock at the center. — noAxioms

In the proper reference frame of a point on the edge the entire disk, including the center, is stationary. But it is, as you note, non-inertial, which makes SR calculations messy.

I was thinking of the identity of those mental states. I feel like I have a persistent identity (being the same person I was a minute ago, despite a different physical state back then, and being the same person I was when I was 4, despite a nearly complete lack of the original matter of which I was then composed). So how am I not already swampman? What has happened in that thought-experiment that has not happened to me? All that's missing is an unverifiable causal connection between the one version of 'me' and the present state. — noAxioms

The causal connection is what is missing, according to Davidson and other externalists like him. Obviously, this won't matter to those who don't construe consciousness in terms of representations and their causal connections to the represented objects.

I don't get the point about the causal connection being unverifiable. If even your causal connections to your earlier selves are unverifiable, then I suppose nothing is, in which case this is just a truism.

Being able to remember and recognize red sounds like knowledge. We do use "know" to mean experiential in addition to propositional knowledge. — Marchesk

By this definition, we cannot then say that Mary knew everything there was to know about red before she left the room, so the problem is resolved either way without giving us any insights other than clarifying the language.

That's how I understand Davidson's position as well. And the next logical step is to conclude that the copy is not the same person as the original (because predicates that were true of the original are false of the copy).

I'm not sure the observer is actually necessary, though. We could talk about what would be the case in such a universe, even if no one were around to observe it.

However, I don't see that just any observer necessarily breaks the symmetry. One could appeal to a perfectly symmetrical observer, for instance, perhaps one who is himself spherical, and situated equidistant from each sphere. — Arkady

Right, assume a spherical cow observer in vacuum :)

I think what this thought experiment shows is that Leibniz's construal of identity cannot work with a view from nowhere.

Is this true, though? A person may possibly believe that mental states, while themselves immaterial, nevertheless supervene on physical states (or are otherwise emergent from them). In that case, the physical duplicate would still possess the same mental states.

Perhaps a sort of thoroughgoing substance dualist might deny that there is any connection between the mental and the physical, but I don't see how that view can be plausibly maintained once we accept some basic metaphysical assumptions (e.g. that there are material bodies) and scientific observations (e.g. that memories are neurologically encoded in the brain in some fashion, by long-term potentiation or whatever the exact mechanism is, and mental states at the very least correlate in some fashion with the physical state of one's brain). — Arkady

There are other reasons to deny identity of a duplicate - take Davidson's view of the Swampman, for instance. According to Davidson, who is an externalist, it is not enough for two creatures to be instantaneously identical: diachronic differences matter. A swampman may believe that he is Davidson. In fact, he cannot help believing that, since he is an exact physical duplicate of Davidson and his mental state supervenes on his physical state. And yet, unlike the late Davidson before him, Swampman's belief is false, because the truth-value of a belief is contingent on its causal history and Swampman's causal history has nothing in common with Davidson's.

I am not endorsing Davidson's view here - just pointing out how views on the same thought experiment can differ. And that is really the point of such thought experiments.

Now, with the spheres in the symmetrical universe, there is nothing which can be predicated of one sphere (call it "A") which cannot be predicated of the other sphere (call it "B"), and vice-versa, and yet any putative observer would clearly (I think) see that there are 2 spheres. If there are 2 spheres, then A and B are not logically (i.e. numerically) identical, and yet that conclusion contradicts our starting premise which defines logical identity. — Arkady

A putative observer introduces a point of reference, with respect to which some predicates will differ, e.g. left/right.

I disagree.

I said something similar in my counterfactuals thread. The more implausible a scenario gets the further it is removed from reality and the original premises. It is one thing for all the molecules in a gas to go into the corner of a container but what Davidson proposes goes way beyond that because matter would have to get itself into states of improbability that are supposed to have taken a whole life time and billions of years to reach. — Andrew4Handel

I don't understand the point you are trying to make. First, are you saying that the Swampman scenario is nomologically impossible, or just less probable than something else? Either way, the remove from reality may or may not matter, depending on the argument being made; you cannot just make this criticism in general. When using this thought experiment to probe certain crisp metaphysical stances on issues such as personhood, being improbable doesn't disqualify the scenario, though it may make it easier to bite the bullet.

And there is also the impossibility of a mental state being reformed that was derived from personal experience. For example say my boss at work calls me an idiot and that creates a nuanced mental state in me, then that mental state is inextricably linked to that event and can't be identically copied just by recreating a brain state. It is not the equivalent of making a square template and copying it to create an almost identical square, because experiences are not identical to each other or don't have this simplistic "copyability" structure.

In the end it just seems unclear what this thought experiment is saying. — Andrew4Handel

And that is why you should not offer your criticism without understanding the context in which it was proposed. The thought experiment doesn't say anything on its own - rather, it is reactions to it that matter. Your own reaction, which by the way is not unlike that of Davidson, who came up with the gedanken, reveals something about your metaphysical commitments. People with different commitments react to it differently. The experiment serves to highlight these differences.

"Suppose Davidson goes hiking in the swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt. At the same time, nearby in the swamp another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules such that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death."

What about entropy and the second law of thermodynamics?.....I mean come on — Andrew4Handel

A thermal fluctuation is not out of the realm of possibility, at least from the point of view of classical thermodynamics (recall Boltzmann's Brain, for example). An updated version of this hypothetical involves a black hole emitting a fully-formed brain/human, and that too is supposed to be physically possible.

The thought experiment already concedes that the situation is extremely improbable. But why should it matter? Those who hold that there is a sharp, objective fact of the matter with regard to whatever question is being considered here (personal identity, mind, qualia) must accept any challenge, no matter how implausible. Plausibility is a red herring.

Please tell me, just how would we become extinct in 500 years? We are talking about the most adaptive animal that ever has lived on this planet. 1517 was a short time ago. — ssu

We have a much greater impact on our own environment. At earlier times this feedback was much weaker. In addition to exhausting easily extractable resources (which has happened before, albeit locally), we can now easily trigger a mass extinction event on the global scale.

lol, another thing to worry about.

Yeah, I am pretty sure that a population and civilization collapse is imminent, most likely due to a confluence of factors. It may not be one of the commonly imagined apocalyptic scenarios where everything disintegrates over a few days or weeks, but even if it takes decades, it will still qualify as a crash, given our species' total lifespan (which, by the way, is still very brief compared to a typical mammalian species' lifespan of a few million years).

Will this be the end of our species? Hard to say. There will likely be a mass extinction of other species (by some measures, a mass extinction is already underway). We are at the top of the food ladder, which is bad, but we are also highly adaptable generalists, which is good. So, hard to say.

I'm not sure how to take this. You don't understand the difference between saying what something is and saying why it's that way? — Pneumenon

Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. Also, I am not sure whether you think you are explicating preexisting meanings or inventing your own.

That is not to say that our models represent exactly what is being modeled, though. This is glaringly obvious in that we can model nature in such a way as to be intelligible to us only as deterministic, but modern physics seems to suggest that it is "really" indeterministic. — John

Physics constructs intelligible models (what else?), and some of these models happen to be probabilistic (stochastic). Quantum physics is not the first or the last physical theory to have stochastic elements - before that there was (and still is) statistical thermodynamics. Stochasticity is fairly common in applied physics and engineering. It is intelligible and manageable.

Explanation is only different from causation when you are explaining what something is. When you're explaining why something is a certain way, the lines become very blurry. — Pneumenon

I don't understand the distinction.

Your quest to reconceptualize causation is a little misguided, I think, in that the concept you are looking for is just explanation. Explanation is a general concept, and it takes different forms and uses different techniques. Cause is often used synonymously with reason, explanation. But, in physical sciences especially, it is also used in a more narrow sense - which is what you dismissively refer to as "billiard-ball causation" (or, less dismissively, as efficient causation).

Explanation in sciences takes the form of theories. A theory is wholistic, it does not come down to isolated causes and effects. Theories that describe a system's dynamics are often - but not always - causal (and not all theories are dynamical). Their causal character may owe something to our preference for a certain kind of historical narrative, as suggests, but it can't be just that: reality is not so flexible as to accommodate any mode of description for which we might have a preference. And where did this preference come from in the first place? The causal character of a lot of physical theories has to do with the causal character of interactions that occur in our universe: there is an arrow of time; interactions are local; and influences propagate at a finite speed. As a result, we can show how events are shaped by proximate events in their past.

(Quantum physics complicates this idea of causal interactions, but does not necessarily destroy it. It prompts us to think more carefully about locality, interactions, and influences.)

Efficient causation, I think, is basically a heuristic. — Pneumenon

Yes, in the sense in which we tend to talk about causation, focusing attention on the most relevant events (from our point of view) and bracketing out others. But, as I think is also saying, this is no accident, no mere whim. The world is such that, while being wholistic, it is quite non-uniform. Just as its material fabric tends to cluster into things, atoms, its interactions also often lend themselves to such heuristic analyses in terms of prevailing causes.

How about instead of "whatever begins to exist has a cause", "everything that I'm aware of has been brought into being by something else". The only problem with that change of premise (if it's true) is that you can't argue from me being aware of things having a cause of its coming to be, to there being a God. — Purple Pond

You seem to understand the premise (vague as it is) just fine. The only thing your reformulation does is it adds to the original premise an odd dependency on your awareness - an unexpected move that you did not motivate in your preceding discussion. The conclusion of the paragraph does not follow at all, since this is the first time you even mention God.

I don't know if that was intended to be ironic, but seriously, I am not sure what to make of it. I get a feeling that he may be missing the point, or else that the point doesn't amount to much. Dennett is not very clear as to what he is arguing against. That's part of his point: he makes much of the obscurity of the concept of qualia. But if the concept was too confused to analyze, then how could he build a case against it? He should have just stopped at conceding his confusion.

His intention though is not really to quine qualia ("deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant"); the title of his famous essay is ironic. He does not deny, in the face of the obvious, that there is something it is like to have a feeling, to undergo an experience. His beef is technical, having to do with specific philosophical analyses of experience, and to understand his case one must understand the context in which he makes statements such as "qualia do not exist."

Also, just to be clear, Dennett is not the pope of physicalism. There are many philosophers making arguments on both sides of the issue, or rather, on many sides of the issue, because there isn't even a general agreement as to what qualia are and what kind of account physicalism owes to them.

The problem is that some people deny that experiences are subjective — Marchesk

That cannot be right. I wrote "subjective experiences," but that's a tautology - I should have just written "experiences." Experiences are perforce subjective: they occur in a subject and are confined to a subject.

Dennett has stated that we are p-zombies and qualia do not exist. — Marchesk

I don't think so. I must say though that I have read little of Dennett, and what I have read I found surprisingly difficult to understand and accept, given the praise he is usually given for being accessible and persuasive. (Perhaps it is his smug, smart-alecky style that gets in the way.) What is clear from his writings and reactions to them is that he is not making ontological, metaphysical claims here. Rather, he is arguing that 'qualia' as a philosophical term of art serves no explanatory purpose, "cuts no philosophical ice, bakes no philosophical bread, and washes no philosophical windows" (as Putnam said on another occasion).

If I understood him correctly, he faults qualia precisely for their subjectivity. He refers to Wittgenstein's "beetle in a box" metaphor about private language to argue that because qualia are supposed to be inaccessible to anyone but the subject, the specific referent of the term "qualia" can play no role in the "language game" (in this case, the language game that is philosophy) - it is irrelevant and can be cancelled out. While we are talking about "qualia" - not behavior, not objective physical facts, but strictly private "facts" - we could all be talking about completely different things or no things at all, for all the difference it would make. That's the argument, anyway.

I really hate these semantic confusions. — Marchesk

But that's all this is: playing with words in order to finagle a cheap semantic victory. So subjective experiences are not objective physical facts, and physicalists only believe in objective physical facts, therefore... Therefore, there are no "physicalists," as you construe them, because no one in their right mind denies having experiences.

What does it mean to be conscious? Consciousness is synonymous with awareness. — Purple Pond

You are already begging the question with this definition.

Isn't that the same thing as redefining consciousness? Or are behaviorists merely claiming that certain behaviors are indication of consciousness? That you can't have a conscious organism without some resulting behavior, thus p-zombies are impossible? That it would make no sense for a p-zombie philosopher to be discussing qualia. — Marchesk

I am no expert, but AFAIK behaviorists see behavior (understood more or less generally - possibly even including neuronal events) as the explanatory terminus for psychology. Mental concepts, if they have any validity at all, should be reducible to behavioral concepts.

But I still think even the idea that there are people without qualia, who differ in some minimal functional way from those who do, is still one people rule out a priori. — The Great Whatever

Without some qualia, you mean. But then, our mental functioning differs in many ways as it is, so perhaps we should just talk about individual variability of qualia.

We have the reverse situation with synesthesia: there is a small minority of people, with respect to whom the rest are "partial p-zombies" in that they lack the qualia of associating colors to sounds. This ought to be a pretty overt trait though: after all, it is easy to describe and one can see how it might come up in a conversation. , when did you first realize that you did not visualize like most others did?

I don't see sounds in a automatic way the way synesthetic people do, although I mentally associate colors to some musical notes. D, my favorite, is blue. But this might also be a verbal association: having a perfect pitch, I am used to "hearing" the names of the notes whenever I hear them played.