The first few minutes of the video show how standard economic theory fails to take thermodynamics into account. — Banno

This reminds me of this classic:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. — Creationist who almost discovers the sun

Well, credit where credit is due: this "radical economist" is one step ahead of the creationist-who-almost-discovered-the-sun: he did notice the "giant outside source of energy" up in the sky. Now if he could also spot the giant outside energy sink, he would be golden.

Is waste heat produced by human activities important for the climate?

No. The sun provides almost 10,000 times as much energy to the Earth’s surface per time unit and unit area, namely 342 Wm-2, as we emit into the atmosphere or waters through industry, transport, housing, agriculture and other activities by using fossil fuels and the nuclear fuel uranium (0.03 Wm-2). — Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie

What it is is a codification (and in some cases, perversion) of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species. — hypericin

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter. This is all too common in discussions such as this.

It is not the definition of moral theory I am after. Note how this "definition" puts the burden of analysis on the "target", then proceeds to defer to psychologists, anthropologists and the rest. — Astrophel

No, you got the wrong idea. Read on.

Good question, but it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that it's been given some attention already.

The topic of this entry is not—at least directly—moral theory; rather, it is the definition of morality. Moral theories are large and complex things; definitions are not. The question of the definition of morality is the question of identifying the target of moral theorizing. Identifying this target enables us to see different moral theories as attempting to capture the very same thing. And it enables psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and other more empirically-oriented theorists to design their experiments or formulate their hypotheses without prejudicing matters too much in terms of the specific content a code, judgment, or norm must have in order to count as distinctively moral. — The Definition of Morality

I'd heard some of Andy Akiho's percussion music before, so I didn't dismiss this as a gimmick, and boy was this rewarding!

Andy Akiho: "Ricochet" (Ping Pong Concerto)

I've only ugly-cried twice so far this listen through: — Noble Dust

I haven't been digging ambient music until now - it just seemed like pleasant but thin muzak. This might change my mind... a little :)

If you have a more specific question, maybe I can help out. But I think the point here is to show how we've had to lower the standards of intelligibility in human enquiry, because we know much less than we thought. — Manuel

Thanks. I don't find any specific passage particularly confusing - I just don't see the big picture yet. So far it looks like preparatory notes for a future article or book (or two), rather than the finished thing.

The purpose of this thread is to (hopefully), get a few people interested in reading this very important article by Chomsky: — Manuel

I am reading this essay (?), and finding it pretty frustrating. Not because it's difficult, but because it reads like unstructured reading notes interspersed with meandering musings. The themes and books that he touches on are interesting in their own right, but so far I don't see what this essay accomplishes, other than giving us a glimpse of Chomsky's intellectual interests.

But what about relativity? Isn't it built on thought experiments that were later verified? At least some of our native reason works? — frank

Yeah. Einstein understood that Newton's laws could only go so far, it had problems it could not account for, such as the orbit or Mercury.

So Einstein's theory is better for many aspects of astronomy, including say, GPS. Though Newton's laws work pretty well for objects here on Earth. — Manuel

I think you are missing Frank's point. Einstein wasn't fiddling with Newtonian mechanics in an attempt to fix a discrepancy in the orbit of Mercury. It wasn't then thought of as a problem with Newtonian mechanics. Astronomers - quite reasonably - hoped to find a new celestial body that would account for the discrepancy. That GR would eventually solve the problem was entirely unforeseen.

The received view to which, I think, Frank was alluding is that, rather than searching for a best fit for some specific empirical observations, in developing his Special and General theories of relativity Einstein's thinking was motivated by very general philosophical intuitions, which he illustrated with his famous thought experiments. The result of which was a more thoroughgoing application of the principle of relativity (or general covariance) than the Galilean relativity that was at the heart of Newtonian physics. (But see John Norton's review General covariance and the foundations of general relativity: eight decades of dispute for a more nuanced analysis.)

I'm curious to hear what people think are the actual and meaningful limitations of the metric, and what benefits or value (personal or social) it provides.

Am i asking for factual information that is easily available here? If so, I'm not aware of where to find it, or I would have done so. Rather than pointing out my failure, would you be so kind as to point me to a source that will answer my request? — Reformed Nihilist

OK, sorry, I wasn't being fair in putting the blame on you. The questions that you ask are substantive, and the answers are not straightforward, not exactly settled facts either. However, these questions are addressed in psychology and social sciences - they aren't simply matters of opinion or contextless philosophizing.

I am not putting myself forward as an expert. I have read something, heard a talk with a specialist, but this isn't a particular interest of mine. The most I can say for myself is that I know better than to jump to conclusions based on scant knowledge of the subject. Anyone who wants to know more should do their own research. There are books, articles, even the wikipedia will do for a start.

I don't really understand what you mean with this discussion where the subject concerns factual matters that anyone interested can learn simply by perusing widely available sources. Instead you are soliciting and receiving uninformed opinions, prejudices, grudges and personal anecdotes.

psst! It's the same serially banned crackpot under yet another name. Don't waste your talents and your time on him.

"Random" can mean different things. Rigorously defining randomness can be problematic - see this SEP review for starters: Chance versus Randomness.

One important distinction is process vs. product randomness. Very roughly (the above linked article goes into details), process randomness is produced by a random process. What that means is... complicated. Product randomness is something that just presents itself as random. What that means is... no less complicated. Product randomness is often cached out in terms of frequencies, such as the normality criterion, to which I will return in a moment.

I've read that it's impossible to produce a truly random series of numbers. — Tim3003

This likely refers to process randomness, with the assumption being that no process is truly random. This is true at least for ordinary digital computers not equipped with a quantum random number generator (QRNG).

I've also read that the sequence of digits of irrational numbers like the square root of 2 are totally random. — Tim3003

This may refer to the product, or frequency sense of randomness. There are some intuitive criteria of randomness as applied to number sequences. On their own, none of them is perfect, i.e. no single criterion guarantees that every sequence that satisfies the criterion will be perceived as random.

For example, the criterion of normality requires that none of the digits occur more often than any other in the long run. But a number like this, while obviously non-random, would satisfy this criterion:

0.1234567890123456789...

Some numbers have been found to satisfy all popular empirical randomness tests, and this is perhaps what you have heard. Not all irrational numbers would fit the bill though. For example, this number is irrational but clearly non-random:

0.1001000100001...

If I touched a hot stove with my bare hand, I would know my subjective experience.

If I see someone touch a hot stove with their bare hand and instantly jump back exclaiming, I can understand what I have objectively observed, but I can never know what subjective experience that person may or may not have had. — RussellA

It is trivially true that you can only experience what you can experience, but your thoughts and attitudes can be directed at either yourself or at others - and that includes your own and other people's state of mind.

The difference between the self or subject and any object of knowledge whatever is precisely that the self or subject is never an object of cognition as a matter of definition. — Wayfarer

Ah well, that's that sorted out then :roll:

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. — Bertrand Russell

If I want to understand the nature of the mind, I cannot look at the minds of others, which will forever be closed to me, in that I could never discover what beetles others have in their individual boxes. — RussellA

I don't see why not, unless you have very specific methodological requirements for such understanding. Taking "mind" in its ordinary sense, we certainly can have insight into other minds. Without that we would not have been able to relate to and interact with other people. Psychologists even have a term for this commonsense understanding of other minds: Theory of Mind.

I have no problem with the concept that my mind can think about something outside itself, such as the range of the Cybertruck, but I have a problem with the concept of my mind thinking about itself. Does it mean that my mind is thinking about my mind thinking about my mind thinking about my mind, etc. As Schopenhauer wrote: “that the subject should become an object for itself is the most monstrous contradiction ever thought of” — RussellA

I really don't understand this problem with "mind thinking about itself." Isn't this what self-consciousness is? Perhaps you have some unrealistic expectations of what thinking should be like? To think about something is to have some idea, a few reflections about the object of your thought - not an instant and complete knowledge of the thing "as it really is" at that moment.

If I say that "I am my mind", then I am speaking as an inside observer of my mind. But this leads to the problem that the mind is discussing itself, leading to a circularity, in that the statement becomes either "I am I" or "my mind is my mind".
The statement "A is A" may be logically true, but it gives no information as to what "A" empirically is. — RussellA

I would understand "I am my mind" as saying something about your concept of personal identity, i.e. "'I' (my self) is nothing other than my mind (whatever that is)".

We can discuss the mind without ever knowing whether it exists or not
If minds don't exist, we can still discuss them as we can discuss unicorns
If minds do exist, then the mind would be discussing itself, leading to the problem of circularity, meaning that the mind would be unable to determine the truth of its own existence. — RussellA

I don't see a logical problem here.

Also, we should clarify what it might mean to deny the existence of minds. One can intelligibly argue that most traditional philosophical concepts of "mind" are defective, or that simpleminded (heh) folk concepts of "mind" are inadequate. What else?

The mind exists only as a part of language, not as part of the world — RussellA

How would your analysis differ if its object was (what is usually thought of as) a physical entity or process?

Criminal law takes the first person perspective, I experience free will, so assume you do too. — Tobias

I took a very straightforward interpretation of free will as my point of departure. There are others of course. The most sophisticated I have seen is the compatibiism of P.F. Strawson. — Tobias

That is more-or-less the ordinary language meaning of free will, and it is how P. F. Strawson, A. J. Ayer and some of the other compatibilists interpret free will as well.

Not quite sure I'm understanding the distinction you're trying to make. Can you expand? — Reformed Nihilist

Well, you yourself used the word foundation (or ground - same thing). That foundation doesn't have to take the form of an indubitable fact, like Descartes' cogito. It can be a system, a method. The important thing is that, according to this view that you question, the edifice of philosophy must have one and only one foundation.

Then again, it might also be the case that in simply having a perspective, intelligent species cannot, as it were, get out of a perspective to view nature from a "view from nowhere", as Nagel puts it, to see how things are without an interpreting mind of some kind. — Manuel

The flip side of having a perspective - shaped by one's temperament, living circumstances, life experiences, exposure to ideas - is that this perspective forms the ground of our being and our knowledge, whether or not we are aware of it and can articulate it as a philosophy. So perhaps, dither as we might, we can't help but gravitate towards some center, like a person stranded in outer space can't move away from wherever their center of mass happens to be.

Is this a fool's errand? — Reformed Nihilist

I am sympathetic to this line of thought, although I think that ground - ground of all being, or ground of all knowledge - would be a more appropriate word here than certainty. (Of course, those who plump for some such ground will disagree, like @Joshs with his phenomenology.)

It could be both, couldn't it? But to answer your question, yes, I think this is a legitimate criticism. If mind is truly apart from the corporeal world, then it is difficult to find a place for it in the world as we know it without denying or subverting the premise, or straying too far from the ordinary sense of the word.

I take this to mean the footnote, which is exactly what prompted me to comment in the first place, insofar as it appeared Carroll didn’t really know what Descartes’ definitions actually were. — Mww

What Descartes' precise beliefs about mind-body interaction were is still argued over by scholars (which suggests that said beliefs were far from precise), but Descartes doesn't own dualism (whether or not we accept the premise that he was the first dualist), and Cartesian exegesis is not a prerequisite for discussing modern-day dualist positions. Whatever Descartes said or didn't say about the issue of interaction, the issue still exists as a unique challenge for any form of dualism, and that is where attacks on dualism, including the one cited in the article, are often aimed at.

It's just the way it is. — Raymond

Ah, I see that I've mistaken a statement of personal belief for an argument or a proposal. Carry on then.

The article stipulates, “...Mind-brain dualism is the view that brain and mind are derived from entirely different kinds of things—physical stuff and mind-stuff....”, and that, “...for dualism to be true, all of science would have to be false...” — Mww

[Descartes ...]

All that says nothing of other subsequent renditions of the stated dualism, but it’s always best to start from the beginning. — Mww

Of course not. But the argument that the article cites is not confined to restating Descartes definitions. Did you read any further than that opening sentences? (I wouldn't blame you if you didn't - it's pretty blah.)

It's not so much that the mind moves physical things, rather the mind is physical things. — Daemon

That's not dualism then, but identity.

As this can only happen if we are conscious, all physical stuff, by scientific necessity, has an unchanging ingredient or charge, which, when they massively and structured combine in our brain and body, give rise to consciousness. How else can it be? — Raymond

Um... Not that? Are you seriously suggesting that the only possible way that something can emerge is through aggregation of minute quantities of its basic ingredient into a lump of a particular size and shape? So I suppose round shapes are only possible because all matter that composes them has a bit of irreducible roundness in it?

I don't disagree. I do think that what I am trying to do in this discussion is just the kind of due diligence you are talking about. — T Clark

I don't see any evidence of that in your OP, nor in most of the discussion.The thread follows the dismal pattern of all such free will discussions, where the subject is obscure and people talk past each other. (@Tobias at least has a definite idea of the sense of "free will" that he is talking about, but is this what you had in mind? I don't know, and I get a sense that you don't know either.)

I hate discussions of free will. The same old arguments over and over and over with no resolution ever. — T Clark

You know why that is? Because people who take part in these discussions fail to do the most basic philosopher's due diligence, like asking themselves what free will is, why it is that and not something else, and how it is relevant to whatever they really want to talk about, because, as in your case, what they really want to talk about is something else.

If we come to a satisfactory conclusion, it may be possible to dispense with any future such discussions. Ha. — T Clark

Nope. See above.

Is there anything to this approach, other than just advertising? — jasonm

You mean, when someone is trying to sell you something, whether a product or a point of view, they'll do whatever they can to persuade you? Well, of course they would.

However, these companies are beginning to lose many of their viewers. It appears that audiences are tiring of combative and demeaning dialogue. — jgill

I think it's just polarization. Fox viewers aren't getting tired of Fox and CNN viewers aren't getting tired of CNN. But Fox gets few CNN viewers and CNN gets few Fox viewers. It's a tradeoff between loyalty and reach.

Well, both positions, as stated, are stupid caricatures. Or the first one is a caricature; the second is just stupid.

Yanis Varoufakis, belov'd of German bankers, sparked my curiosity by claiming that idiotis, in ancient Greek, was a derogatory term for one who refuses to think in terms of the common good — Banno

Funny, I just heard another unsourced version of this factoid: as the story went, there was a law in Sparta (rather than Athens) concerning political conflicts in the polis. Every citizen was obligated to choose a side; those who didn't were called ideos. They were subject to the seizure of property and exile.

This is getting painful to watch. — jgill

This is the same crank whose banning you were lamenting earlier because (he says) he is a physicist and we should be grateful for him being here to educate us... Be wary of unhinged bullshitters confidently throwing around specialist terminology.

I'll take the bow on behalf of the late Jerry Fodor :)

By the way, I am afraid that when they talk about "Fodors’s anxieties" [over epiphenomenalism] they are misrepresenting him. Perhaps they mistook a rhetorical setup for his actual position. For example, here is the opening of the essay that concludes with that vivid wanting-reaching-itching-scratching passage ("Making Mind Matter More"):

An outbreak of epiphobia (the fear that one is turning into an epiphenomenalist) appears to have much of the philosophy of mind community in its grip. Though it is generally agreed to be compatible with physicalism that intentional states should be causally responsible for behavioral outcomes, epiphobics worry that it is not compatible with physicalism that intentional states should be causally responsible for behavioral outcomes qua intentional. So they fear that the very successes of a physicalistic (and/or a computational) psychology will entail the causal inertness of the mental. Fearing this makes them unhappy. In this chapter, I want to argue that epiphobia is a neurotic worry; if there is a problem, it is engendered not by the actual or possible successes of physicalistic psychology, but by two philosophical mistakes: (a) a wrong idea about what it is for a property to be causally responsible, and (b) a complex of wrong ideas about the relations between special science laws and the events that they subsume. — Fodor

Fodor exposes the causal exclusion argument (as it is used here) for the obvious nonsense that it is with a couple of examples, such as:

Consider, for example, the property of being a mountain; and suppose (what is surely plausible) that being a mountain isn't a physical property. (Remember, this just means that "mountain" and its synonyms aren't items in the lexicon of physics.) Now, untutored intuition might suggest that many of the effects of mountains are attributable to their being mountains. Thus, untutored intuition suggests, it is because Mount Everest is a mountain that Mount Everest has glaciers on its top; and it is because Mount Everest is a mountain that it casts such a long shadow; and it is because Mount Everest is a mountain that so many people are provoked to try to climb it... and so on. But not so, according to the present line of argument. For, surely the causal powers of Mount Everest are fully determined by its physical properties, and we've agreed that being a mountain isn't one of the physical properties of mountains. So then, Mount Everest's being a mountain doesn't affect its causal powers. So then - contrary to what one reads in geology books - the property of being a mountain is causally inert. Geoepiphobia! — Fodor

It should be noted that Fodor explicitly stipulates "property dualism" as a precondition for the line of argument that he mocks. That's why he says in this example that "being a mountain" is a non-physical property: just as mental or intentional properties are held to be non-physical because they aren't "items in the lexicon of physics," any property that is not in the lexicon of physics must be ipso facto treated as non-physical on this account.

Fodor's own solution rejects the principle of causal exclusion in favor of causal sufficiency:

P is a causally responsible property if it's a property in virtue of the instantiation of which the occurrence of one event is nomologically sufficient for the occurrence of another. — Fodor

On his "covering law" account there can be multiple causes for the same event, and the epiphenomenalist worry stemming from causal exclusion is dissolved. Thus, if we accept that there are mental, or intentional laws of some sort, then the mental is not epiphenomenal. That there are such laws is implicit in the very attitude towards the epiphenomenalist threat that Fodor satirizes: "if it isn’t literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching ... it’s the end of the world." That is, we ordinarily assume that it is true my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching. We treat this connection between wanting and reaching as a law-like regularity. You don't have to call these laws physical if you don't like, but that doesn't matter for the argument.

What motivates all those math people? Tenure/promotion considerations. Prestige within a community. Delight in the exploratory aspects of a subject with few constraints arising from the physical world - free rein for one's imagination. — jgill

Yeah, I think imagination, curiosity and play are underestimated in these reductionist accounts of mathematics, even though they are as much a feature of our psyche as anything else.

From my vantage point as a very senior citizen, the first thing I note is the huge number of people pursuing activities compared with 60 years ago. I haven't a clue as to numbers of mathematicians then and now. But at that time the outdoor sport I became involved with had perhaps a couple of thousand fairly serious devotees here in the USA. Now there are well over six million. World-wide there may be ten million or more. It staggers the mind. — jgill

Ha! You think there is a connection? :) From my own experience, I've known a few physicist and astronomer climbers, but can't recall any mathematicians off the top of my head.

In the quoted passage Brown and Ladyman give only a brief outline of a solution; do they go on to say more? From this one paragraph it's difficult to tell just where their solution is situated, but it does have some resemblance with identity theories (see for instance Mental Causation in the SEP).

They are being a bit coy though in that it is not clear how seriously they take the causal exclusion argument and whether they think that mental causation does have its place. When they switch from subvenient to supervenient, from physical to mental, they no longer talk about causation and instead use the word "description." But is it a causal description that parallels a description in terms of physical causes?

They also use the word "express," which hints at realization.

There is an article on supervenience in the SEP - probably more than you want to know, but relevant to this topic. Here is a handy definition from the opening:

A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”. — Supervenience

The question seems a correspondent of the most popular question “Was mathematics invented or discovered?” and relates to the nature of mathematics as well as to the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics. However, there are anthropocentric and evolutionary features that the philosophical investigations on this topic have not focused on much — Doru B

The idea of naturalizing mathematics is not new. It is how the thesis that mathematics and mathematical truth are discovered (as opposed to constructed or pulled from an ideal Platonic realm) is often cached out.

Though the research in "perceptual mathematics" cited in the article is recent, the general finding that there are innate proto-mathematical capacities should not come as a surprise. This doesn't resolve the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, but perhaps the question should be dissolved as a false dilemma. We might gravitate towards certain mathematical structures due to innate predispositions. We also invent mathematics to deal with empirical problems. We also invent mathematics with no practical goal in mind and then, having a ready-made tool at our disposal, opportunistically find a use for it. Nowadays we also invent a load of completely useless mathematics, of which perhaps a small fraction will ever find an application, and the rest will gather dust in mathematical journals and specialist books. Then again, pure mathematicians share the same cognitive apparatus with the rest of humans, they develop in largely the same environment, and their work is influenced by past mathematical culture.

So, what to make of this tangle? That it's not either-or - it's both and then some.

Here’s a copy of the paper, I responded to a post about it on Reddit

https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1391&context=comparativephilosophy — Ignoredreddituser

Well, the paper doesn't give any detail about the causal continuity theory beyond what you've summarized here, and I don't feel like delving into Buddhist philosophy to find out more. Perhaps there is a more tenable version of the model than just a hand-wavy "causal stream"? Otherwise it's hardly worth talking about.

I don't really have a stake in this argument, since I don't subscribe to the causal continuity theory of personal identity. As a metaphysical theory, I would even object to the presumption that identity has to be grounded (reduced to) something else. As a summation of its semantics (i.e. how the concept is ordinarily deployed in speech and thought) it doubt that it works well.

That said, it would be good to see a fuller exposition of the thesis before considering the criticism. Obviously, personal identity can't be all and only about causality, else it would entrain your entire past lightcone, let alone people around you.

As a possible defense though it could be argued that people and other influential events in (and even preceding) your life do contribute to the development of your personal identity and to how you and others perceive it.

This cracked me up. So you want to write a fugue...



Written (yes, written) by Glenn Gould.