Sweden. Better infection rates, better mortality rates. No response other than wash your hands and take care. Last I looked the US was doing better than Canada, infection and mortality wise, but I admit, it's been a few days since I bothered to look. — Book273

The shit-stain is lying through his teeth.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths

I am pretty certain we're dealing with someone with some kind of mental illness. — Echarmion

Yeah, I figured his posts were too lame and deranged to even qualify as dangerous misinformation. One would have to work to be misinformed by them.

Compare to this so-called Great Barrington Declaration. As wrong and mendacious as it is, it at least makes some kind of sense and was competently written, which is what makes it dangerous.

But more interestingly, why was it called Parler rather than Parlour? — Banno

I thought it was French (par-LEH)?

I see people using incel language and the like (e.g. calling women as "females"). — deusidex

I don't think "females" is incel language. I don't like the word myself (but I am not a native speaker, so what do I know); however, I think it is more commonly used as a politically correct, age- and social status-neutral way of referring to, well, females - as opposed to "girls" and "women." Same with "males," of course.

So Obama got the Nobel peace price basically for not being Dubya. How are they going to top that with Biden now?

The bad news is that the bar has been set so low, he doesn't even need to try in order to get approval from those who would support him in the first place, or even more broadly, those who opposed Trump. And those on the other side won't change their mind no matter what, so they don't matter either. So yeah, he could repeat that infamous Trump line about shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn't be wrong.

Good stuff. — ChatteringMonkey

Agreed.

Don't healthy immune systems attack and kill invading viruses? — Roger Gregoire

Only once the virus infects the organism and starts to reproduce and possibly (a) sicken the individual, (b) develop an advantageous mutation, (c) infect other people. The immune system response works to mitigates an already existing problem, a problem that could have been avoided through social distancing, among other measures.

For the most part, healthy immune systems don't replicate and spread the virus, ...they attack and kill it. — Roger Gregoire

No, immune systems don't replicate and spread the virus :roll: The virus takes care of that with the help of its host. And yes, even people with light or nonexistent symptoms replicate and spread the virus for many days after they become infected. This has been observed in numerous studies, including studies on young children.

No offense SophistiCat, but the purpose of the analogies is to put a rational perspective on this whole situation. Right now, the general public is being fed misinformation in the form of "fear mongering" which is only making a bad situation much, much worse. — Roger Gregoire

Your analogies only lead you astray. You are bone-ignorant about science and public policy, you can't formulate a sound argument to save your life, and yet you presume to advise experts and decision-makers. Normally I just ignore internet cranks, but I make an exception here, because bozos like you spread disinformation that does real harm.

SophistiCat, it seems that you view healthy people (those with strong immune systems) more as "spreaders" of the virus than as "removers" of the virus — Roger Gregoire

People aren't "removers" of the virus. Once it is out of its host, a virus dies on its own if it doesn't find a new host, which is nearly always. You don't need people going around "hoovering" virus particles; just leave them alone for a few hours or days and they'll become inactive. If a virus succeeds in infecting a new host, even someone who for whatever reason doesn't show symptoms (it's more complicated than just having a healthy immune system), that by definition means that the virus is reproducing - increasing the probability of its further transmission (asymptomatic carriers are infectious) and of new mutations arising. The more hosts it infects, the more immune systems it encounters, the higher the probability that it mutates to become more infectious and resistant. This is what we are already seeing. It is probably no accident that a recent more infectious strain appeared in a country that had one of the highest infection rates to begin with.

You need to stop thinking in terms of analogies and think about the real situation, which isn't so complicated that one cannot understand it otherwise. We are all, hopefully, familiar with the basics of the germ theory of disease. And educate yourself a little before pontificating on this topic.

I know, I know… your first thought after reading this title is “Wow Roger, now you’ve really lost your mind!”. But humor me a bit and take a look at this analogy first — Roger Gregoire

You don't understand how to use analogies. An analogy can illustrate an unfamiliar scenario in more familiar terms to provide an intuitive feel for it. But first, you need to make sure that your analogy really does function the same way as the real scenario in all relevant respects. And second, an analogy is not a substitute for an argument, it's just a rhetorical aid for making the argument more accessible.

What you do is make up an analogy (multiple analogies: blood cells, car tires, fire extinguishers...) without clearly and convincingly showing how it parallels the real situation, and then draw conclusions from the analogy (and then constantly refer readers to the analogy, as if it constituted an argument).

This seems to be your argument in its entirety (paraphrasing to get rid of an unnecessary analogy):

We fail to recognize that intentionally holding the healthy population (those with strong immune systems) on this planet from an infection means that the infection will grow and mutate unabated.

This is ignorant on a very basic level. Population mutation rate is proportional to (virus) population size. That is to say, the more the virus reproduces, the more mutations will appear. Letting the virus run wild through most of the population is guaranteed to produce more mutations than restraining the virus spread as much as possible.

Add to this the fact that we cannot practically separate the "vulnerable" population from the "healthy" population for many months, while we wait for the "healthy" to acquire herd immunity. "Vulnerable" people live among us (and for most people we don't even know the extent of their vulnerability). They have families and caretakers; they will come in contact with other people. Only by restraining the overall infection rate can we protect them.

Government experts are quick to reject those that say we should allow the healthy cars to speed up and run free (i.e., implement “strategic herd immunity”) as being misinformed quacks — Roger Gregoire

Expertise is not acquired quickly. It takes years of training an experience. And yes, they are right to reject random inputs from misinformed quacks.

They don't read the same to me, Chester was quippy, counterpunch is an essay writer. — fdrake

So then you are not denying that @jamalrob is putin? I knew it!

Physicalism is not a theory of everything, so you are severely misguided if you think you can "pound" physicalists with such questions. They'll tell you to go pound sand and they'll be right.

Physicalism isn't married to the third-person perspective. If physicalism is compatible with the existence of first-person perspectives in general (it had better be, otherwise it would be immediately ruled out), then there's no reason why a physicalist cannot assume a first-person perspective when giving a description of the world.

Where can I read up on the idea that they are controversial? Do you mean controversial in that it's a bad thought experiment? Or controversial in the sense of they are being discussed? — DoppyTheElv

I just mean that there is a diversity of opinion when it comes to exotic imaginary scenarios involving personal identity. Our intuitions don't seem to deliver a uniform verdict. Some have strong (and divergent) opinions, others are uncertain.

The teletransporting / copy-beam thought experiment shows that it is unclear what the objective solution is, not that there is none.
Both the beaming and my thought experiment show the same thing: physics has an explanatory gap with personal identity => physicalism is incomplete. — SolarWind

Well, your thought experiment shows only that if you assume dualism at the outset, then dualism is what you will conclude. Same with identity thought experiments: they need not pose problems for physicalism unless you have already assumed that they do.

Well, it’s possible for one to simply fail to see the connection between the premises and how they necessarily lead to the conclusion. Sometimes, seeing that connection may just give them reason to reject one of the premises of the argument but sometimes someone may reasonably just accept the conclusion. — TheHedoMinimalist

That is certainly true with more complex arguments (or else mathematics would start and end with setting out axioms).

The problem with the moral argument is that seeing the connection between P1 and P2 implies that P2 can only be defended by reasons that assume C. — TheHedoMinimalist

Or the other way around, depending on which of the premises moves you most. Those who reject moral realism, especially former theists, sometimes associate it with theism, thereby acknowledging P1. But yes, if you already accept one of the two premises, acceptance of the other premise will go in lockstep with accepting the conclusion. Not saying that this cannot happen, but it's really a two-step process, not three.

But do all syllogism have this problem to an equal extent? My whole point is that the moral argument is especially vulnerable to these conflicts and thus it should be regarded as inferior to other theistic argument. — TheHedoMinimalist

I would agree that the argument, as presented in the OP, is weaker than others. It is a structural weakness. I actually mislabeled it as a syllogism above; a classical syllogism includes a general proposition (major premise) together with a specific proposition (minor premise), while this argument has just two minor premises.

I think the original argument can be put easier with clones. — DoppyTheElv

Thought experiments involving cloning or teletransporting differ in an important detail: they start with there being a single person, who then undergoes some transformation. More importantly, these thought experiments are (in)famously controversial; they are the opposite of an argument. If anything, their controversy suggests that there may not be objectively right or wrong answers to the questions that they pose.

When you go to the toilet, how can you say you are the same person afterwards as before? — SolarWind

Wow. That took an unexpected turn.

OK, I think we are done here.

You simply compare the set {A*,B,C,...,X,Y,Z} with the set {A,B,C,...,X,Y,Z*}, where the star indicates which life you would live in the corresponding world. — SolarWind

That's your dualistic premise-conclusion right there. For someone who doesn't already accept dualism there is no you that is independently assignable and separable from the body that it "inhabits."

Conflicted — jamalrob

Thanks for the recommendation. Here is the web page for the podcast (had to google it). The first season was very interesting, listening to the second season now.


You mentioned BBC 4. My favorite show there is In Our Time. The show covers history, culture, science, religion and philosophy. There is one host and three invited experts for each ~50 min episode - and they are all very good, very professional. What I like about the show is that it doesn't try to entertain or to talk down to the listener. Rather, it is an intelligent conversation between an interested layman (the host) and the experts. There are quite a few philosophy episodes that I have found well worth listening to.

The Forum is rather similar in its scope and its format, although it is a little on the lighter side - but only a little. Indeed, I found some of the episodes on the same subjects to be similar in quality.

As has already been pointed out in the very first response, an assertion is all you have going. You postulate a dualistic premise, then illustrate it with your two alternative worlds example. There is no proof here.

There is something about this argument that makes it especially vulnerable to this attack. If you try attacking other popular arguments like this, then you will probably have no luck. — TheHedoMinimalist

Deductive arguments, especially simple ones, are all subject to this seeming challenge: if you had good reasons to accept all the premises, then you should have accepted the conclusion at the same time. Conversely, if you had good reasons to reject the conclusion, you must have had good reasons to reject at least some of the premises (or if you didn't, then you will surely find them when your more certain commitments are threatened).

Abstracting from the specifics, let's consider a general case:

P1
P2
C

You say, in the first place, that if you didn't have good reasons to accept P2, but seemed to have good reasons to reject C, then it should be easy for you to dump P2 when ¬C is threatened. On the other hand, if you had good reasons to both accept P2 and reject C, that can only mean that you have good reasons to reject P1. Note that I didn't even say anything about what the premises and the conclusion were, and yet I came to the same conclusions that you did.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument:

P1: Everything that isn’t infinite must have a cause

P2: The Universe isn’t infinite

C: Therefore, the universe must have a cause

Let’s say someone accepts P2 because they reject the existence of actual infinities and they point to various thought experiments to illuminate their intuitions. P1 does not conflict with the reasons that they have for accepting P2 and neither premise of the argument implies that the other premise is less likely to be true than the conclusion that the argument is trying to provide evidence for. — TheHedoMinimalist

You are right in that the premises in the Moral argument are more tightly linked than in the Cosmological argument. P1 in the Cosmological argument makes a a general statement that happens to include P2, whereas P1 in the Moral argument makes a statement specifically about P2. But this is a difference in degree, not kind. The three propositions in a syllogism are like communicating vessels: if you apply pressure to one, it is immediately transmitted to the other two.

The fact is that when such arguments succeed, they don't succeed in stages. It is not like you are first persuaded to accept the premises, and then - oh dear, I guess I have no choice but to accept the conclusion, like it or not! No, if the argument succeeds, then by the time you are ready to accept the premises, you are just as ready to accept the conclusion. That is because the logical connection between the premises and the conclusion is so transparent that you cannot help but be aware of it, even as you consider one proposition at a time.

It seems that your reasoning would apply equally to any argument (including your own!) Did you pick the Moral argument as an illustration, or do you think there is something about that argument that makes it particularly vulnerable to this attack?

It seems like the only two plausible outcomes are that Republicans let their party be completely consumed by insane Trumpers, or else the party splits. — Pfhorrest

Party members at a gathering of the Republican National Committee endorsed President Trump as the man to lead the party forward, ignoring the turmoil in Washington. — NYT

There was the Tea Party (remember the Tea Party?), there was Trump in 2016, who at the outset was opposed by many in the Republican establishment - the party persevered. I don't see that changing now.

The Right are authoritarian by their nature. All their rhetoric notwithstanding, they have no higher principle than Power. They will support anyone who manages to seize and consolidate power - be it Trump or Putin or...

This sounds a lot like the old idea of a "philosopher king" - or "philosopher kings." There is a reason why this naive patriarchal fantasy was never a reality.

I think you'd have to order them the other way. — Garth

I can order them any way I want. Nothing wrong with ω* order type.

I couldn't find any counter arguments against the cosmological argument? — Varese

Well, the only way you could fail to find counterarguments to common versions of the cosmological argument is if you didn't look. But as for your formulation, I confess that I find it too confusing. For example, I can't tell what you mean by "immanent" - a word that you use a lot, but not in a way that I recognize.

I'll say one thing though. A common feature of cosmological arguments is that they rely on some kind of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), which I think you call the "deterministic principle." I think the most direct way to oppose a cosmological argument is to deny the PSR.

The two big objections to Platonism that arise from conversations like this are that Platonic objects lack clear identity conditions and that the ontology is profligate, a crowded slum, what Quine called Plato's Beard. Reducing every object to Math should answer both objections. — Pneumenon

Well, it is an answer, but why is it the answer? Why one object and not two or 42 or all of them? Why do you elect to be a lumper and not a splitter?

I think you need to back up a bit and tell us why the question matters. What difference would an answer make?

Do you know what I mean ? — Avema

Not really, you just restated what you already wrote earlier. Assuming you are speaking from experience, can you give a specific example where scientists fail to give an adequate definition and how that hurts their efforts?

And it is hard for scientists to do that because they're only used to defining notions that are quite directly related to experiments. — Avema

Well, yes, that's the point. Science is an empirical discipline, so it needs operational definitions.

For example, scientists could try to explain very global concepts such as life, intelligence, welfare, and expose the limits of science in understanding (or measuring, defining) these concepts. But that was never part of a discipline. Some scientists do have opinions on these concepts but they’re not knowledge, it stays at a personal level. And when philosophers try to think on scientific knowledge, well, they often lack the scientific background to do it right.

Does anyone think it would be a good idea to create such a discipline ? Or does anyone know such a thing ? — Avema

I am not sure I understand what you have in mind. Can you elaborate a little further, give a more specific example?

Thanks, I need to revisit that Reich era. Certainly not my go-to, but I'll revisit. — Noble Dust

Reich was new for me. I've been listening to his music for the past ten days or so.

My favorites so far (+ Proverb):

I only mention this, as relativity does not negate what I am saying about states. In fact, relativity is essential to my claim about states. Make the unit of time within whatever relative time frame you want. That doesn't negate the point. Regardless, lets not over complicate the issue and make this about relativity. — Philosophim

The relevance of relativity is not towards the relativity of duration, but towards the relativity of simultaneity. Your "snapshot" presumably includes all events that are simultaneous with each other. The problem is that in Relativity this designation is fairly arbitrary. Given a particular event in space-time, there are other events in space-time that are objectively earlier or objectively later than this event (events in its past and future light cones), while the rest are neither here nor there: they can be earlier, later or simultaneous, depending on the choice of reference.



There isn't a unique, objective way in which you can slice space-time into snapshots or slices. So "state" ill-defined.

Great! if we are in agreement on this point, then what do you think about my conclusion using the premises of the OP, that it is logically necessary that the universe's origin must have a first cause? — Philosophim

Some other time perhaps.

Now, can we write a definition of "identity" that allows us to treat either one of them as an individual object? — afterthegame

I am not sure what you are asking. Are the two balls identical? Yes, because that is a given. Are there two balls rather than one? Yes, that is also a given.

Is this a lead-up to questioning the principle of the identity of indiscernibles?

Let us think of slices of time as "states". — Philosophim

You would have to assume an absolute time for that, that is, something like a Newtonian universe. In a relativistic universe there is no fact of the matter about how the space-time is to be sliced along the time dimension (the technical term for this is foliation). Now, we don't have to commit ourselves to any particular physical framework, but in view of Relativity, neither can we take for granted the existence of an objective foliation.

Let us think of slices of time as "states". At its most simple, we would have a snapshot. But we could also have states that are seconds, hours, days, years, etc. We determine the scale. Within a state, we analyze the existence that has occurred. Causality is the actual prior state, not potential prior state, that existed which actually lead to the current state we are evaluating. — Philosophim

This won't do as a definition of causality. Rather, you could restate this to say that given a causal model, it is the case that every state is causally related to an earlier state, if there is an earlier state (but see my note above).

If there is no prior state, then there is no reason for the first state that is, to have existed. For the reason of a current state, is explained by the actual prior state. All we can say as to why a first state existed, is that it did. — Philosophim

You are conflating reasons with causes (you do that in the OP as well). They are not synonymous.

The only thing I can logically conclude from the above premises, is that there is no cause for the existence of any potential universe. Whatever universe exists, exists without prior explanation.

Lets examine this thought process before I move on. Does this clarify my position? — Philosophim

To the extent that this makes any sense, this was a very convoluted path to an uncontroversial conclusion: in a causal model with an initial state, the initial state is the cause of all subsequent states, and there is no cause for the initial state.

Do you understand that by "necessity", I mean actual, and not potential state? — Philosophim

I don't understand why you use modal language if you don't mean it. And if you eschew modality, then what is left of your definition? If we plug 'actual' in place of 'necessary,' we get something like this:

Causality - an actual prior state in time before the current state in time.

???

Before you had a counterfactual definition of causality, which has its problems (one of which I pointed out), but I think that in this basic form it captures a lot of the common-sense, "ordinary language" meaning of causality. With some work it can perhaps be made into something more robust.

But now I just don't have any idea of what you are trying to get at.

Let me clarify for you, as I worried people will interpret it that way. I did not mean to imply potential prior states by "necessary". I mean actual prior states. Sure, A could be caused by B or C potentially. But in this case, A is caused by B. Therefore B is necessarily the prior cause of the A. Perhaps a better set of terms would be B is the actual cause of the actual A?

Thus for a first cause, there is no actual prior causality involved for its actual existence. Does this make sense? — Philosophim

No, I am afraid you've lost the thread. Remember, you were trying to define causality:

Causality - a necessary prior state in time for the existence of the current state in time. — Philosophim

Now fiction aside, can we imagine a place without time? Would any events occur? Can memories form? Or do all possible events occur simultaneously? What is the lay of the land? — TiredThinker

I don't see any conceptual problems with a timeless world. We routinely construct such worlds in our minds. One of the subfields of mechanics is actually called Statics, and there are plenty of other theories and models in which time does not figure. Frankly, I am surprised that anyone with any exposure to science and abstract thought in general would have a difficulty with this concept.

Causality - a necessary prior state in time for the existence of the current state in time. If there is no necessary prior state that entails the current state, then the current state is a "first cause" without any prior causality. Does that make sense? — Philosophim

No, this won't work. Suppose A was caused by B, but it could alternatively have been caused by C. Neither B nor C are necessary for A to occur.

This is a well-known objection, by the way. I don't know why, but philosophers of the previous century loved thought experiments involving murder. So a counterexample might have run like this: Black arranged to kill Smith by dropping a chandelier on him. Instead, it so happened that the chandelier dropped and killed Smith on its own. So Smith was killed by a chandelier, but neither an accident nor a murder were individually necessary for this to occur.

I started reading your "puzzle," but like @Antony Nickles I immediately got bogged down in questions and objections and didn't even get to the "fun" part. I frankly find topics like causality to be more fun puzzles.

Well, this place may be slightly more expert than the general population, on average, but only slightly. There are hardly any professionals here, a few well-read dilettantes, but most aren't very knowledgeable.

Effectiveness is established in the labs in thousands of test tubes by mass laboratory techniques. Before they ever take a vaccine outside the lab effectiveness is already solidly established.
Biological testing with live animals and humans is different. This is where side effects, persistence, and other unknowns are expected to show up before a vaccine goes for approval. — magritte

This sounds like science fiction. Where are you getting your info? Since when is the effectiveness of anything is "solidly established" in vitro?

When the Russians claimed that they had won the vaccine race after supposedly observing an immune response in a small human trial, everyone thought they were nuts. But not even they were crazy enough to stake their claim before running a trial.

Curious, why would you want to solicit opinions from a few random people on the Internet? If you want to know who the best known or most influential modern philosophers are, you will do much better with Google.

A bona fide philosophical piece: Steve Reich gives an appropriately minimalistic treatment to a quote from Wittgenstein: "How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!"



Somewhat less typical in style, but one of his most beautiful pieces IMO.

Having read through the discussion, I still don't really know what you are getting at with all these Capital T's and Absolutes and so forth. Some examples that you gave (1=2, etc.) have to do with so-called analytic statements. On whether those can be doubted see e.g. Quine's Two Dogmas and the ensuing debate. More generally, the meaning and function of truth is a long-standing question in philosophy, one of the less tractable ones, but I am not sure whether your query has anything to do with that.

Perhaps instead of making vague, sweeping statements, considering some specific question would help.