But in fact the question is: Is the green ball more likely to be the green ball in the second case than in the first case?



I think we are asking something like: Is there a smaller chance of you being you when there are more people in existence. — Mind Dough

You first need to define what makes each ball unique. What makes one green ball different from another green ball? Do the green balls each possess essential and intrinsically individuating properties, or is their individuation a holistic property of the set they belong to?

If you have children who are identical twins, they will always at least possess geographical uniqueness. But if you yourself are part of an identical twin, any conceptual notion of uniqueness here is unrelated to the former notion.

Suppose you were one half of a pair of Siamese twins and you experience pain. Does it necessarily make sense to attribute your pain sensation to only one of the bodies? It is conceivable that your opinion might be irreconcilable with those of onlookers, in virtue of irreconcilable notions of sameness.

"my consciousness is an illusion" can only mean that my stimulus-responses aren't publicly understood.

If society concludes that my judgement of an object's color is wrong, it only means that my behavioral reaction towards the object isn't inferentially useful for society.

Supposing Dennett tricks you in a change blindness experiment, whereby you are provoked to gasp
"I could swear that I was talking to the same person!". Your statement at this point says nothing about your original experience. Rather, you are merely reinterpreting your original expression of your experience as being inconsistent with your present inclinations.

None of the opinions I have tomorrow about today, can refute my current opinions about today. Because tomorrow isn't today. And it is only through a post-hoc reinterpretation of yesterdays judgments, that we can say yesterdays judgments about today are wrong. For today didn't exist yesterday.

The philosophical problem here, is that there is no definite meaning of 'living at a particular date', and we get very different answers to our question depending on whether we are referring to phenomenal aspects of time comprehension, mathematical descriptions of time, or public denotations of time as a network of synchronized clocks and calendars. These relations are very complex, and our theoretical definitions are under-determined.

If we think of time in the traditional realist way, we think of nature as the real calendar of events that we culturally represent and approximate using our calendars; we naturally end up interpreting existential probabilities across time in terms of a linear scatter-plot of calendar-ordered frequencies. Consequently we end up with a philosophically dissatisfying answer to our philosophical question as to the probability of living at a particular time, for all we end up here is with a circular framing of the problem that answers in terms of frequencies, when we were implicitly questioning the relationship between calendar use, physical time, and personal experience.

On the other hand, when trying to understand time directly in terms of personal experience, we run into the problem that the content of personal experience is vague and repeatable without an absolute ordering; I cannot, for instance, distinguish the current appearance of my living room wall from its appearance last Wednesday. So my living room wall does not serve as a calendar.

I am only able to refer to the appearances of my living room wall at different dates by taking it's appearance in conjunction with something else serving as a calendar - for example, other memories I have that are different from one another and that I associate individually with the respective dates. Or if my memory is failing, photographs. But then a similar problem of repeatability resurfaces with respect to the conjunctions of experiences; we can therefore only speak of calendar-like relations as existing between phenomena when they are suitably interpreted, but we cannot phenomenally speak of the existence of absolute calendars - in direct contradiction to realist intuitions.

Phenomenal time therefore isn't linearly ordered and non-repeating as suggested by calendars; and the psychological past isn't immutable and separable from the psychological future, rather they are both mutable and inseparable aspects of present experience. Therefore any empirical attempt to conceptually reduce physical time to a phenomenal foundation must abandon the linear-ordered-time orthodoxy; Cartesian notions of time are merely practically convenient, without a phenomenally legible basis.

On the surface, the law of entropy sound appealing as a justification for absolute temporal ordering. However, entropy cannot serve as a justification for an absolute temporal order; for the notion of increasing disorder is relative to the labeling conventions we use for describing a system, and in science our labeling conventions are deliberately chosen so as to maximise the information we get from an experiment. Entropy is therefore an epistemological notion as opposed to a physical or metaphysical notion. From an omniscient perspective, there is no absolute 'law' of entropy.

The assumption of time symmetric microscopic laws is a big give-away that entropy isn't real; for any microscopically time-symmetric system that is observed to decrease in order, there exists an alternative labeling of it's micro-states in which it is described as increasing in order; to see this, simply imagine a simulation of a deck of cards being shuffled. At the end of the simulation, identify the top three cards on the shuffled stack and give them an identical label. Then replay exactly the same simulation from the beginning, remembering the cards we previously labelled. When re-interpreted with respect to this new labeling convention, the card shuffle increases in order. Therefore entropy isn't a phenomenal intuition and neither is it a physical concept. Entropy refers purely to epistemological uncertainty; to state it mathematically: Given a random assignment of labels to micro-states, the average entropy change of a time-symmetric system is zero.

Well, for Presentism and neo-Kantianism, the probability of living now is one :)

From the standard realist perspective, averaging over all possible futures that are consistent with current cosmological information makes the probability of living at this moment of time vanishingly small, i.e. undetermined but convergent towards zero.

At the risk of antagonizing most of the contributors above, I would say any 'bunch of words we care to utter or write', including this one, has one function only...to attempt to facilitate the choice of future action, including the next 'bunch of words'. From that pov, dichotomies like 'subjective-objective', 'truth-belief' have import only in their promoting 'what, if at all, happens next'. The only context that matters is this one, and unless these discussions impinge on our praxis of living, we are indulging in little more than a type of social dancing with a bit of jockeying about 'who leads'. — fresco

I agree that there is much to be gained by considering philosophical disputes to be cultural conflicts, in which the role of the philosopher is that of a propagandist or social influencer. But personally I don't see this position as being necessarily negative or critical about the role or status of philosophy.

The problem is, the truth conditions and semantics of our physical ontology, i.e. our enumeration of 'what things exist', is defined in terms of publicly observable criteria that are definable in terms of third-person subject predicates, where the "third person" is generally the response of a measuring instrument; for example a physicist might say "The presence of an electron here is confirmed by the presence of this white streak in the bubble chamber". As a consequence, our physical ontology has no direct experiential interpretation, that is to say physics is epistemically irreducible to first-person experience - contrary to the hope of phenomenalism.

Unfortunately, to many this suggests that physics must also be metaphysically irreducible to experience - which is nonsensical given that first-person experience is the tribunal upon which all claims of existence are judged.

Suppose somebody sends you a circle in the post. You then proceed to verify that the circle isn't perfect. Does "perfect" here refer to an internal property of the circle or to our inspection of it?

Here is what I think. Whenever we construct a set ourselves, we must choose the next element to include in the set, either explicitly, or by implicitly by defining a rule of selection. But in order to do so, it must be first be assumed that our elements are individuated a priori for a process of construction to make sense. Yet if we are given a set, say a parcel through the post, it's elements aren't individuated until we inspect the set. If the parcel we are given is called "infinite", all this means is that we shouldn't expect the termination of our parcel inspection to be decided by a property internal to the parcel.

Mathematics tends to call parcels with non-individuated elements "equivalence classes" of elements. Like in the above example, this allows mathematics to either construct sets in a 'bottom up' fashion from elements, or to construct elements in a 'top down' fashion from parcels.

Probability should be considered as part of set theory, rather than classical set theory being considered to be a foundation for probability theory. For the semantics of probability is the semantics of empiricism and directly concerns both "volatile", uncertain and undetermined empirical sets as well as logically constructed sets, yet unfortunately these two meanings of probability are obscured if probability theory is reduced to classical set theory.

For instance, consider a sigma algebra (i.e. a sample space) denoting the set of possible outcomes for an infinite sequence of coin tosses t(1),t(2),... i.e. a coin toss process whose length is undefined a priori. Coin tosses aren't a mathematical concept but an empirical affair, and conversely mathematics isn't an empirical theory. Therefore it makes no sense to insist that the sigma algebra of infinite coin tosses must be constructive. For it might well be the case that a sequence of coin-tosses is truly random in the sense that cannot be represented by any computable function. This is the case if it is believed that for any computable binary function f there exists a subsequence of observations t(1)..t(n) that isn't equal to f(1)...f(n). Unfortunately, set theory fails to distinguish externally observed processes from internally constructed processes, hence the reason why finitists and infinitists continue to argue past one another.

I don't know what is a volatile and unbounded set. Can you provide some examples so I can understand what you're saying? — fishfry

Yes, any programmer's use of an infinite FOR loop. We all know in practice that infinite loops are, in a pragmatic sense, merely finite loops whose termination condition isn't specified by the program. In other words, the termination of the algorithm isn't internally constructive from the point of view of the program itself.

Volatile is not a term of art in math at all. And its use in C programming is very specific as I think we agree. It just tells the compiler not to optimize the variable. — fishfry

Right, i'm am not so much referring to compiler mechanics, as to the logic of volatile types. Programmers use a richer notion of logic than is used by traditional set theory that equivocates internally constructed sets with externally supplied sets. The consequence of this is mistake is the kludge known as the Axiom of choice that allows the specification of arbitrary unbounded sets, but only for unbounded sets, effectively conflating arbitrariness with unboundedness [/quote]

The integers are unbounded because you can't draw a finite circle around them all. The unit interval is bounded since all its elements are within 1 unit of each other. Yet the unit interval has far larger cardinality than the integers. So I am not sure what you're trying to get at. — fishfry

Whenever we refer to an integer, we are either referring to a integer which we ourselves have or will construct using an algorithm in our possession, or we are referring to an arbitrary integer that is to be delivered to us by some external source. Constructivists make the mistake of conflating existential quantification with construction. It is a mistake, because, say, we cannot run society on software that uses only predictably terminating bounded for loops. Platonists on the other hand, while rightly insisting that non-constructed sets are indispensable in practice, wrongly locate the source of that indispensibility to a priori notions of existence.

In C programming, the equivalent symbol to infinity is the volatile keyword.
— sime

Jeez that's not true. A volatile variable is one that is, for example, mapped to an external data source. Declaring a variable volatile tells the compiler that it can't depend on nearby code statements in order to optimize the variable. — fishfry

sorry, I should have said infinity is equivalent to volatile and unbounded. I am saying volatile and unbounded is equivalent to the specification of an infinite set, considered as extension, in cases where the infinite set is not directly defined in terms of a constructive algorithm.

This simply has nothing at all to do with transfinite ordinals and cardinals as understood in math. It's apples and spark plugs.

it also fails to discriminate sets which are volatile and bounded from sets which are volatile and unbounded.
— sime

This has no referent in math. I am not sure where you are getting these notions. — fishfry

Likewise, Transfinite ordinals divide into those which are specified constructively as tree-growing algorithms and those which denote unspecified trees to be supplied by the environment, whether bounded or unbounded.

Finitism overlooks the fact that the practical use of 'infinity' is merely to denote an unspecified unbounded number. Consequently, If infinity wasn't part of mathematics, then mathematics could not be used by science to describe current physical laws, rather it would only document previously verified event occurrences.

In C programming, the equivalent symbol to infinity is the volatile keyword. When a C program declares a volatile object, say "volatile int myInteger" , the program is declaring that the value of "myInteger" isn't specified by either the programmer or the program itself, but that the value will be supplied later at an unspecified time by the environment. The specification of an 'infinite' number of iterations in a computer program, say while(true) {..}, is therefore equivalent to writing while(volatile int myInteger){....}.

Unfortunately, set theory and logic do not possess an equivalent concept. The closest axioms they possess is the Axiom of Choice, but this axiom is flawed because it is considered to be either accepted or rejected universally across all sets, and it also fails to discriminate sets which are volatile and bounded from sets which are volatile and unbounded. Consequently the status of the axiom of choice remains confusing and controversial.

In my opinion, the historical cause of debates over the existence of infinity is the result of logicians failing to recognise that the semantics of logic and maths isn't fully a priori.

In my opinion, Wittgenstein wanted to use the word "grammar" to refer to the pre-theoretical, intuitive, ineffable and phenomenological aspects of meaning - but found himself unable to do so, due to

i) the common usage of the word "grammar" to refer to the conventions of linguistic protocol.

ii) The paradox that some form of linguistic protocol must be used if grammatical sentiment is to be communicated - which leads to verbal contradictions in cases where we say that a particular word or set of words has meaning but cannot be given a verbal definition.

Am i right in suspecting that Speculative realism is continental-philosophy's muddled attempt at analytic philosophy?

Turn the question around: Is it right for humans to allow other animals to commit cannibalism?

Suppose that we can synthetically mass-produce artificial meat. Then in order to minimize earthly suffering, then ideally, shouldn't we enforce ALL carnivores within the animal kingdom to eat synthetic meat only and prevent them from killing for food?

What is the justification for not extending human ethics into the rest of the animal kingdom? Is it merely a matter of pragmatism?

The idea of the Turing test involves interaction between two open systems. This implies that the dispute over the significance of the Turing test is independent of the dispute as to whether humans or machines are automata.

For whether or not a human or machine is considered to be an automaton depends upon one's definition of their conceptual boundaries across space an time. Is a machine that suffers an internal fault the same machine running the same program? Are sensory inputs considered to be part of the machine's operation? etc. etc.

There are two ways to interpret the Turing test, namely the realist/cartesian interpretation and the anti-realist/non-cartesian interpretation.

The public usually understands the Turing test epistemically according to the realist interpretation, since they normally by cultural default understand consciousness in a cartesian fashion as referring to intrinsic functional semantics of the brain. They consequently view the Turing test as a fallible appearance test of a machine's internal functional properties, properties that exist independently of appearances to the contrary, say if the Turing test gave a false-negative.

The less popular alternative view, that appeared to be the view of Wittgenstein, is the anti-realist, non-cartesian interpretation of the Turing Test, whereby it is understood that if a machine passes our consciousness test, then the machine is conscious by definition. In other words, a Turing test isn't so much a test for Turing-test independent consciousness, rather the Turing test articulates the visible circumstances in which we say that a thing is conscious or not conscious.

The critical ontological difference of this latter view, is that the functional semantics of a brain or machine are understood holistically as being irreducible to the brain or machine in and of themselves. As Wittgenstein hinted in PI, A game of chess is only recognized as a game of chess when embedded within a relevant culture. Therefore Wittgenstein would likely have sided with Searle and rejected Dennett's "China Brain"; for while the population of china might be able to use semaphore to simulate the brain's internal organisation, the surrounding context isn't present to attribute intentionality.


As for the question you actually asked, i believe the notion of free-will is to a large extent orthogonal to understandings of the Turing test.

The following is a link to some similar ideas to mine, although not entirely similar, but close.

https://www.academia.edu/7298912/Hinge_Propositions_and_the_Logical_Exclusion_of_Doubt — Sam26

That is pretty close to what i thought you were saying. I wasn't questioning your views, just pointing to directions of further discussion.

My conclusion based on these ideas is that many bedrock beliefs or hinge-propositions are causally formed, that is, there is a causal connection between the reality around us, our sensory experiences, and our mind. This, it seems to me, is what triggers the belief. — Sam26

Supposing a speaker, perhaps a schizophrenic, behaved in a certain fashion while talking in a contradictory manner about his actions (much like a politician). Whereabouts is the contradiction between his actions and his words? Is it in the speaker's mind? or does the contradiction purely concern linguistic convention, with any confusion being solely in the mind of the listener as a result of misinterpreting the speaker?

Supposing a speaker incorrectly guesses the lottery numbers. What is the difference between saying "the speaker's guess about the lottery outcome was wrong" versus saying "the speaker's 'guess' was correct, for he didn't really intend to win the lottery, for his report was in fact a causal response to his environment and we mistook his words for a prediction" ?

The problem is, there aren't any conceivable means for distinguishing the content of a bedrock belief from the content of a verbal belief apart from appeals to linguistic convention. And if beliefs, whether bedrock or verbal, are causal responses, then they cannot be objectively falsified, since behavioral goals are also interpretable in terms of causal responses to immanent environmental conditions.

In constructive logic, the logical rule for introducing existential quantification replaces a proposition that directly refers to a particular, say "My cat is named 'Zeus' ", with a similar proposition that is non-referring, e.g "There exists a cat named Zeus'". Conversely, constructive logic guarantees that an existential quantifier can always be replaced by a reference to a particular bearing the relevant properties.

By constructive logic, "X exists" doesn't refer to a spiritual essence of a particular to which one is presently acquainted,i.e. uniqueness, but merely expresses the ability to locate or to create at least one object possessing the observational properties described by the predicate 'X'.

So the meaning of "Elvis Presley does not exist", "Unicorns don't exist", and so on, without further assumptions, merely expresses the inability to create or to find objects described by the respective predicates.

The difficulty here, is to reconcile the fact that we can talk about unicorns whilst at the same time claiming that we cannot exhibit them. This can be reconciled by first giving unicorns a constructive definition within a hypothetical universe of discourse in which unicorns can be said to exist according to our definitions, and then afterwards asserting that such a constructive definition is inapplicable within our actual universe.

In other words, the non-existence of an object is understood to refer to a constructed object within one universe, that has no equivalently constructed partner within another universe, thereby making non-existence a relation between two universes.

Check out the Rorty clip above. The relativity of 'existence' thesis renders 'things in their own right' meaningless i.e. Kant's 'inaccessihle noumena' was abondoned by later phenomenologists as a useless concept. — fresco

Given that Existence was one of Kant's modal categories of understanding, perhaps Kant was arguing for your very position, namely that existence isn't 'noumenal' i.e. it is an expression of human judgement rather than an assertion of an absolute property.

In that case, it sounds like you are more interested in the policy optimization of Decision processes. Such problems can be implicitly solved via adaptive sampling, i.e. reinforcement learning, of action policies, state transitions and rewards, assuming they caneach be respectively sampled. If the utility function as a function of state, is known explicitly, it might even possible to analytically derive an agent's optimal policy, assuming linearity, Markovian dynamics, observability of states and actions, etc.

And this. Why must logic and maths be either discovered, or invented. Why not both? — Banno

The problem is, set theory fails to explicitly distinguish 'constructed sets' that correspond to an algorithm known to the logician, from 'discovered sets' encountered externally in the real world, but whose construction is unspecified.

If Set Theory were to insist that all sets can be constructed by an algorithm, then Set theory would also insist that nature is describable by an algorithm, i.e. that a Theory of Everything exists. Yet it cannot ever be known if such a Theory of Everything exists:

Take the example of a vending machine that dispenses a set of items. Should it be the job of set theory to insist that every vending machine has a mechanical implementation, whether or not we know of it's inner workings? Should Set theory automatically assume that every can of coke within the vending machine has a distinct identity before it is dispensed?

Standard non-constructive set theory has a means of specifying an "unspecified set", such as that produced by a mysterious vending machine, namely the Axiom of Choice. But ironically the name of the axiom is a misnomer, because the Axiom of Choice is only useful in mysterious situations where we cannot specify a choice procedure.

I think you're referring to modal logic, i.e. to possibility.

Syntactically, modal logic looks like the inverse of deduction, due to the fact that deduction allows different premises to lead to the same conclusion.

yes, we appeal to external witnesses, such as the operations of computers, or to the opinions of others, in order to conform whether or not our reasoning is tautologous. But this external checking not only confirms whether or not our reasoning is in accordance with our logical definitions, but it also constitutes part of the very meaning of our logical definitions. For the meaning of "ideal" logic must ultimately be witnessed by practical state of affairs, if it is to have public meaning.

So in my opinion, logical necessity is empirically contingent, although not contingent upon the testimony of any particular external witness.

"Logic doesn't require facts" - Only when our process of deduction isn't in question.

Remember, we usually need to verify our proofs via appealing to external facts, e.g. a calculator.

Presumably you mean formal logic (since the question is logical in its very nature). Formal logic is in an identity crisis imo, due it's failure to explicitly distinguish "necessary" objects that are constructed according to convention and are hence fully specified, from objects encountered in nature that are vague and unspecified.

For example, I can construct a sequence of cakes from a bunch of ingredients by iterating a recipe in my possession. But I can also obtain an identical sequence of cakes by repeatedly pressing a button on a vending machine. Neither logic nor set theory take care to distinguish these two sets, because the process of construction is viewed as being either irrelevant to, or identical to, the meaning of "existence".

Consequently a hideous "bugfix" called "the axiom of choice" was invented in order to accommodate "non-specified" entities, causing mass confusion and yielding ridiculous implications in failing to treat sets and their construction on a case by case basis.

Yes, as I understand it, verbal knowledge - the sort of knowledge discussed by epistemologists, is trivial and irrelevant to Gettier problems, for verbal knowledge must, at least under a naturalistic understanding of the mind, be reducible to linguistic convention.

For example, suppose Bob insists "The Earth is flat" and Alice is convinced that the opposite is true.
Then Bob and Alice aren't referring to the same thing. For if they were both referring to the same thing, then they wouldn't be in disagreement.

Rather, Bob and Alice are separately expressing to one another their own observations, goals and behavioral dispositions in a jointly incompatible way with respect to their shared language. Their conversational disagreement is only the result of each of them attempting to enforce their semantics on one another - and not just verbal semantics but behavioral as well; For example, perhaps Bob, in order to maintain his assertion that the earth is flat, refuses to circumnavigate the earth. His personal refusal to circumnavigate the earth would be part of his meaning of "the earth is flat".

On the other hand, the non-verbal practical knowledge of a solitary person, comprising of his actions in his personal pursuit of a goal, is where the Gettier problem has relevance. For here, linguistic convention matters not, while it is generally important to an individual that he can trust his watch, which necessitates a concept of practical-knowledge justification.

In PI Wittgenstein examines "Moore's Paradox", namely the sentence "It is raining, but I believe that it is not raining" and as I recall he concludes, in contrast to moore, that the sentence does indeed have sense when spoken about oneself in the present, namely as a situation in which one comes to realize that one's verbally expressed beliefs are in contradiction with one's actual behavior.

So the sentence "It is raining, but I know that it is not raining" also makes sense, when one is verbally certain about one's beliefs but comes to question one's behavioural "bedrock". So philosophers shouldn't equate behaviorally implied beliefs with verbally expressed beliefs.

Ironically, lucid dreamers use the presence of their dream hands within a dream as a cue to detect that they are dreaming. Said in this dream situation, is the sentence "I know I have hands" a hinge proposition or an epistemological claim? If a dreamer insisted the former they would fail the reality check and remain non-lucid.

Name and Sam is not part of the backdrop of non-linguistic reality, but a hand is part of the backdrop. — Sam26

The problem of course, is that natural language is it's own meta-language; it is therefore incapable of expressing a distinction between the publicly linguistic and the privately non-linguistic. This is why, contra-Wittgenstein, I think natural language is inappropriate for discussing philosophy. What you need is a special notation for signifying your pretheoretic and private sense of "hand".

What is it about realism that you think commits it to believing these "mysteriously lie elsewhere"? — Isaac

By realism I mean the idea that the meaning or truth-makers of a proposition are fully transcendent of the process of it's verification. For instance, take Hooke's Law.

The realist is the person who thinks "The elastic deformation of this spring is governed by Hooke's Law"

The anti-realist is the person who thinks "The elastic deformation of this spring is part of the definition of Hooke's Law"

Consider all that happens when teaching a physical law:

i) We write a statement which expresses a physical law.
ii) We demonstrate the meaning of the written statement by performing an experiment.
iii) We summarize the result of our demonstration: "Performing action U in state A resulted in state B, in accordance with the law"

According to realism, we've demonstrated the truth or coherence of the law as well as the meaning of the written statement, but the meaning, agency and whereabouts of the law itself mysteriously lie elsewhere.

In contrast, according to anti-realism our demonstration is part of the very meaning of the physical law. That is to say, the physical law is in part an anthropological description of what physicists do in certain situations to achieve a sense of coherence.

Of course, the anti-realist shouldn't forget the role and responsibility of the environment in the truth of experimental outcomes, that is to say the construction of such outcomes. The difference is, the anti-realist includes the very actions, perceptions and mentation of the physicist as part of the very definition of the physical law he is verifying.

All you have is an intuition that you call your "future self", an intuition which you currently experience and which is therefore a part of your immediate present. So planning to avoid opiate withdrawal is rational in the present in order to satisfy your present intuition called "future self".

Conversely, suppose that you are presently benefiting from a sense of well-being that you attribute to giving up opiates many months ago. All you have is a present intuition called "my past self giving up opiates", an intuition which is again part of your immediate present.

I think of myself this way:

Yesterday, any notion I had of 'tomorrow', including of my "tomorrow's self", in fact referred to yesterday and only to yesterday, since today didn't exist yesterday.

Compare the following statements

A: "Such and such is consciousness"
B: "I can relate to such and such".

Notice that nobody disagrees with you whenever you use B in a situation, because they tend to view B as an assertion you are making about yourself, rather than an assertion you are making about 'such and such' in itself.

On the other hand, whenever you say A in a situation, people normally interpret it to be an objective assertion you are making about 'such and such' in itself, regardless of whatever personal feelings and intuitions you harbor towards such and such.

In my opinion, this common realist belief that A and B refer to different things, which is itself a consequence of assuming an ontological distinction between subject and object, is the root cause of philosophical skepticism about the existence of other minds.

What if a buyer of the bottle believed 100% in the curse, but had a 'non-standard' understanding of "eternity", whereby eternal hell was understood to eventually end?

The natural concept of depression isn't descriptive of the state of the individual per-se, but of the individual's behavioral relationship to society. That is to say, the natural concept of depression is holistically irreducible to the individuals themselves.

On the other hand, the medical concept of depression is merely a description of the neuro-anatomical correlates of individuals who tend to be judged by society as being depressed in the natural sense. Consequently, a medical diagnosis of medical depression is neither necessary nor sufficient for establishing a diagnosis of natural depression.

The natural concept of depression should be compared to the legal concept of guilt. In both cases, judgements are sought for political reasons, and hence both concepts are inherently political. In being political, the outcome of such judgements often refer more to the state and needs of society than to the state and needs of the individual.

When a Christian or a person of another theistic religion says that their God exists, the truth is that they are saying this because they believe that God(s) exists. Regardless of how sure they claim to be or what "evidence" they give, the fact is that is simply what they believe, because no one knows if any God(s) exist, which is the exact reason why no evidence has been provided for the existence of any God(s). I personally do not have an opinion either way regarding God(s) or their presence, so I guess you could call me agnostic, but I am simply pointing out that no one knows if God(s) exists. If Christians actually knew that their God exists, then they could easily provide irrefutable evidence and there would not constantly be disputes by atheists asking for said evidence. I'm not arguing for atheists or theists, I'm simply saying that theists don't actually know if God does or does not exist, and therefore they should not claim to know this or try to give atheists reasons why God(s) does exists as opposed to simply accepting that they don't know if God exists. — Maureen

It isn't as simple as that, because the debate isn't purely an epistemic dispute over the possibility of theological knowledge. Rather, the debate between atheists and Christians is to a large extent a debate over the very meaning of evidence, god, and their interrelation.

There will be theists, the immanentists, who will say that one's immediate experience is all the proof one needs of gods existence, effectively eliminating the concept of evidence by identifying experience itself with divine presence. And on the other extreme there will be atheists who insist that the evidence for god is zero in every possible world, effectively eliminating the relevance of experience to the concept of god, leaving the idea of god empty. Both of these positions constitute 100% certainty in their respective beliefs.

The key is to recognize that their definitions of god are incompatible and that they are talking past each other in incommensurable dialects.

I suggest that to understand what a person means by "god", you must ask them to describe the experiences they are prepared to accept as constituting "god's" existence. After hearing the person's answers, is there anything more to discuss?

Californian houses can in fact metamorphose into flowers; by digesting themselves with fire to produce a large quantity of heat that can germinate flower-seeds within the house, which are then fertilized by the ash.

In the mathematical subject of topology, it is joked that donuts are coffee mugs and cows are footballs; because their shapes can be morphed into one another without the cutting or gluing of substance.

Likewise there is a similar geometric sense, albeit involving cutting and gluing, in which a "house" could morph into "flowers" or even be regarded as equivalent.

The author is possibly conflating natural language semantics with formal semantics. Any formal definition of transforming type A into type B requires a notion of similarity, which in turn requires that A and B can be projected into a common conceptual space.

As i see it, the notions of linguistic reference, causation and rigid-designation are part of an irreducible triad, in that each of these concepts cannot be understood without understanding the other two concepts. Therefore, whilst the concepts of linguistic reference, causation and rigid designation have practical validity in real-world application, they cannot be meaningfully used by philosophers to explicate one another, nor can they be used to justify epistemological foundations, due to vicious circularity.

Going back to the discussion, note that the two situations you described are not symmetrical. We have a reasonable well-developed semantic theory for declarative sentences (say, Montague grammar and extensions thereof). But we don't have a well-developed semantic theory for questions (and other "moods") that is independent of truth condition semantics, or of declaratives more generally. So we may hope to extend our analyses of declarative sentences to other types of sentences, but there is little hope of going in the reverse direction, since we don't even know where to start in that case. That's why we try to understand questions in terms of "answerhood" conditions, whereas no one (that I know of!) has tried to formulate a semantics for declarative sentences in terms of "questionhood" conditions. — Nagase

To my way of thinking, the meaning of a question is trivial by way of causation; a question refers to whatever answer the questioner finds acceptable. And if the questioner comes to later reject the answer he previously accepted, this is a situation in which the semantics of the questioner's question has changed - to referring to whatever new answer the questioner is now prepared to accept.

By this trivial cause-and-effect account, I don't see a hard distinction between questions and answers.