I have no idea how you'd arrive at those conclusions. If it is to look at stuff, why are there blind people? And why isn't everything unremittingly beautiful?
Apply your reason and stop the daydreaming! — Bartricks

Gladly, it's obviously all conjecture. But, if you look at the tricks animals do like bird nests or spider webs. We seem to naturally develop a knack for language and proceed to label and describe the world. If in fact all matter is collectively 'awake' then it seems we add something. Otherwise it seems a bit excessive relative to a natural environments survival demands.

Look at stuff, was a satirical placeholder for the whole of human internal experience. I want to focus on this mistake "And why isn't everything unremittingly beautiful?" The same reason the abundance of relationships don't make relationships more valuable. Value derived from scarcity isn't a complex idea. Consider the juxtaposition as an example. Doesn't work without contrast. But, it is used to convey meaning in media constantly. We see the spaces between things as much as things.

Purpose is just to look at stuff and experience the world. Maybe, paint a picture. It's what humans do.

I don't suppose to know what other people think about me; much less what impression I'm leaving with a self perceiving universe. I just try to show it what I like to see.

It's been proven that drinking seawater is bad for your health. No need to run any more tests.

I wasn't trying to prove anything. Only to look for examples we can agree on. I don't see the relevance of criteria. Unless you want to say, being a billion grain collection is a criterion, or a sufficient condition. Fine. Bring it on board. How does it help? — bongo fury

Ok, I didn't realize heaps were an understood matter of consensus. You asked me if a single grain can change a heap to non-heap; rather insisted it couldn't. If your defining heaps by grain number; the only possible context in which your question becomes answerable and therefore implied to be the case, then yes. I can identify that transitional grain. I'm a little lost to what I was supposed to be believing, but it's been a pleasure. Thanks for the feedback.

God exists and if God's purpose in placing us here was for us to have meaningful relationships then we'd all find them easy to acquire and maintain (and they wouldn't end). — Bartricks

Nonsense. Something being easy, abundant, and easily taken for granted would not remain meaningful. Relationships are valued because they aren't always abundant or easy to maintain. Also, something being finite adds to it's perceived value. Literally, the opposite of every point quoted is the truth of the matter. It is possible for people to disconnect from empathy; in which case it would seem more reasonable to think the quoted view is true.

The puzzle, it should be clear, is how to reach P3, or avoid denying it, while accepting both P1 and P2. — bongo fury

Ok, I didn't realize this was the format. I'll keep it in mind.

You lost me. What exactly do we need to agree is implied by P3. heaps exist — bongo fury — bongo fury

If you tell me heaps exist then you can prove the existence of a heap through some criteria. Once I have this criteria I can tell you which grain completes the min. heap.

Not that we need to straight away consider examples, but I'd offer, say, any billion-grain collection. Premise 1, on the other hand, does refer to an alleged counter-example. — bongo fury

Alright, then grain 1,000,000,000 makes a heap. Where do I send the invoice?

Don't waffle on about something orthogonal to this issue. Just focus. Focus on premise 1 and its incredible plausibility. It isn't open to reasonable doubt. To doubt it is to think that there can be representations that lack a representer. And that's to think that the clouds could be telling you about a pie in the oven. — Bartricks

Tell me this isn't satire. A literal 'pie in the sky' argument. Orthogonal? The word used in a premise isn't orthogonal.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat ever amounts to a heap, for any rate of flow? — bongo fury

If premise 3 is true it implies criteria for a heap exists. The same criteria could produce a lower and upper bound. But, none of this addresses a paradox.

Which question asks such a thing? — bongo fury

P3. heaps exist

It concludes heaps exist. I accounted for the existence of heaps by showing the second premise is false. It's only the addition of a single grain at some rate that turns a non-heap into a heap. It's asking how not when.

Ok. And does assuming a rate of flow perhaps render the tipping point unknowable, as per url=https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/559805]epistemicism[/url]? — bongo fury

The question doesn't ask for a tipping point, but rather the method of transformation. Which is clearly the addition of material at some rate if the material is accounted for by single units. The philosopher is asking for an answer to a question that isn't being asked.

P2. adding a single grain can never turn a non-heap into a heap — bongo fury

Adding a single grain at a rate of grains/time is the only thing that can turn a non-heap into a heap.

If corporations knew they could never be held liable for it, then moving past the propaganda into collective reality might be attainable.

So why would it be difficult to conceive infinity? We did it in grade school. — fishfry

Did we really though? I think we conceived the conditions for an infinity. I can conceive 10s or maybe hundreds and infer about millions and billions, but saying I'm thinking about the impossible whole of infinity seems reaching.

If it is the use of the term that gives it its applicability, where its use has no perfect standard, neither will its applicability. — Snakes Alive

I'm thinking we use it in a more exact way than we realize. The assumption the exactness is a number seems like the mistake. A heap is usually a large enough amount that having it gathered together is the plausible driving force behind its accumulation in an area. It implies a supply that will be broken down.

Would you want one offered out of a heap?

Out of respect for the victims of some disaster? Ok. But not for any reason relevant to the puzzle. — bongo fury

Perhaps, but I was thinking the time sensitive value they had to each person that might need one. Like the phrase "Guard this heap with your life"; seems silly and I'm suggesting for a reason that reflects a universal subtext. I've been wrong before though.

It has distinguishable senses, like all sorts of words. The puzzle as usually conducted inspires (often) recognition of a sense agreed for the game. With clear examples and counter-examples, and an implication of some kind of boundary. What kind being the puzzle. — bongo fury

People are instructed on how to define something they intuitively understand?

Either physicalism is true or nonphysicalism is true! — TheMadFool

Is static electricity part of the car door?

A heap denotes a number of things. It reflects the import of the resource in question. You never have a heap of donor kidneys.

Is it always just different political views or are there more fundamental psychological differences that make those views appealing to us in the first place? — Apollodorus

I think a version of this is probably the case. We evolved from animals that survived well using group cooperation and during extreme environments animals that fended for them selves well. I'm suggesting altruism might be more appealing to certain people relative to the environment at any given time.

But neat that you relate this to the Problem of the Criterion; there's a similar unjustified expectation of exactitude in what one counts as knowledge, or as true. We don't need a definitive understanding of knowledge in order to establish that we know this thread is in English. — Banno

I would agree that a rigorous definition or rejection of one has no bearing on the use of know in this context. I'd also note that people don't tell each other they know obvious things. So, using the language "in use" as representing knowledge is at least as obtuse as expecting the term true to hold a binary meaning.

Life is essentially meaningless on a physical level. Giving meaning to it seems to be the only reason we are in this eddy of entropy; having exterior validation of the meaning we have given to our surroundings would make it more real and as a result more meaningful.

If God is less than anything he can't be "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." Infinity is the numerical representation of that than which nothing greater can be conceived (God). Ergo, since actual infinities don't exist, God too can't exist. — TheMadFool

How do you go about conceiving infinity? If infinity doesn't exist(never conceived to completion), then God can be less than infinity and exist.

It doesn't make sense to ask "why did nothing cause it"! — Down The Rabbit Hole

It is certainly an awkward phrase, but people rhetorically ask how/why something would come from nothing. Which I think is in the process of being answered by this approach to physics that concentrates on using impossibilities as axioms. Really, at this point it starts digging into the problem of change. If everything is in flux how could something not happen? I think I got lost on my own detour. Thanks for the commentary.

Good point. I was thinking more of subatomic particles, billiard balls, and galaxies. Is "the sky is blue because blue light scatters more than other wavelengths," how or why? — T Clark

It seems like mechanical questions are better suited to 'how'. How implies a terminating point into the state of affairs or corresponding facts that are the subject. How we settled on calling it blue might be a why question that tracks the origins of words.

You just veer from telling me I've contradicted myself to refusing to say clearly which premise you dispute. I ask you what objection you have to premise 1 and you give me concerns that only make sense as concerns about premise 2. You're all over the place. — Bartricks

Yes, we covered the contradictions which you didn't find compelling. So, I was at least trying to understand the matter from your point of view. But, I don't think I can without knowing what implications you believe are being demonstrated by this information. All I honestly know is that it seems you want to make a statement about evolution and you are trying to derive it along the lines of an 'ergo sum'. However, you don't seem to believe it is without flaws yourself due to the excessive appeals to emotion and evasion of plain questions.

In summary;
Premise 1 is said to have defense, but you make no reference to evolution, the guiding or unguiding of evolution, what is implied by "wholly" as in I should imagine there as a degree of precision that is even implied.
Premise 2 is a bit of a novelty.
Premise 3 Inserts the novelty into premise one as if it some how relates to evolution.

It seems like a pseudo religious type argument where there's an irrational implication being reserved because no one would otherwise take this all seriously. What is it out of curiosity?

It's contradictory to state the emergence of race as natural and then recombination as unnatural. If a logical error is worthwhile. Otherwise, it's a slightly covert rendition of the conspiracy to eliminate Caucasians that has been binding fools to ignorance through fear for hundreds of years.

There might be a hair to split between what is conceived versus what is realized or actual. But, I would approach it as God must be slightly less than infinity and greater than everything else. However uncountable infinity would move the scale in a way that frustrates that conjecture.

But anyway, do you have any objection to what I argued in defence of premise 1? That is, do you agree that for something to be a representation, some agency needs to be using for that purpose? — Bartricks

Frankly, I'm a bit neutral. It sounds like it intends to be self-evident much like the other premise. Are you asking if I'm hearing something I must be deliberately using my ears?

What's the point in coming up with other examples when mine does what's necessary? — Bartricks

I thought it was beneficial to confirm I understood what you were saying well enough to demonstrate it through an adjacent example. I was having trouble nailing down number 1's defense, so why not confirm number 2.

I can't help but notice you didn't address my word choice question again. The selection of the seemingly double negative Not Un-Guided versus Guided. It looks like a cumbersome choice to be made for no reason.

Stop being tedious. — Bartricks

I'm not being tedious. I thought something was hiding behind your choice to select 'not unguided' versus 'guided'. Deciding this is the point at which this exchange became tedious reinforces my suspicion.

No, for it is both metaphysically possible that I am sleeping right now (and thus that this is a dream) and I can believe it coherently. I may even acquire evidence that it is true (if, for example, I suddenly find that I am a horse or something). So just not the same at all. — Bartricks

Really? I assumed it was in reference to an awake person asking some one obviously asleep if they were sleeping. Yes, I am sleeping would be an unanswerable form of awareness. Smells the same.

Child: p v ~p (always true, tautology)
Adult: p (Aagrippa's trilemma)
Child: Why? — TheMadFool

Child In Addendum: It's never true in a superposition. If a thing is in all states it can't be p v ~p

Thanks for all the commentary, I intend to make sure I cover it all in the coming days.

I am just attacking the notion that only science is a reliable source of evidence or that evidence has to be couched in scientific jargon citing p-values etc. — Andrew4Handel

It's a reliable strategy. It cuts down on people having their humors adjusted by leeches.

Hawking radiation

No. — Bartricks

No, as in imprecise or conceptually different?

Because if true, then in combination with premise 2 it tells us that the evolutionary processes that have furnished us with our faculties of awareness have not been unguided. — Bartricks

Why insist on calling something by a negated state? Not Unguided means guided, correct?

It comes across like I am therefore I think.

Mathematics, as we all know, is Axiomatic. In other words, it just is! Axioms, by definition, are assumptions - deemed true sans proof. Whatever else mathematics is, infinite regress isn't one of its problems. — TheMadFool

I would be willing to suppose that it is the same outside of mathematics; that the termination of Why? is most likely an unspoken assumption like reality can't exist in contradiction or the state of affairs was possible long enough to occur and did.

It comes down to what "completely explain the outcome" means. Does it mean "how," or does it mean "why." I think how is all we can know. — T Clark

In the case of human expression it seems leaving out why would miss most of the contextual information surrounding an event like a protest isn't explained by the manner of gathering but the reasons for it. It could be impossible to generalize successfully at this level. I see what you mean by only the 'how' is theoretically explainable. But, it has to contain the set of states that were in impossible in order to be completely explained.

Rolling two dice, one loaded and one fair and they both come up 6 is the explanation different?

After all, common folks (David Hume called them "vulgar") don't feel the need to justify their beliefs, why should I? — Wheatley

In order to raise venture capital.

Like anything, figure the resources and labor hours plus the time value of money until completion. I could cost out what it would take to create a forest.

For an analogy - it is possible for me not to exist, but I am never going to be justified in believing such a state of affair obtains). — Bartricks

Is that analogous to being unable to answer the question "Are you sleeping" in the affirmative?

And what I argue is that for a mental state to have representative contents, it has to be being used by an agent for the purpose of representing what it is representing. — Bartricks

It's less clear how this informs one about the nature of evolution.

I like "Because I said so," although the best answer is probably "There are no answers to the question "Why." We don't or can't know that. The only question we can answer is "How." — T Clark

To say we can give a physical account of what took place but we can't completely explain the outcome when others were possible?