I do insist on such a definition. A loner voluntarily prefers solitude, for reasons you might consider healthy, unhealthy, and every gradation between. Where involuntary, "outcast" is more apt.

This is the denotation. Alongside this, there is a negative connotation of disapproval, distrust, and contempt. To call someone a loner is not to make a psychological diagnosis as you seem to believe. Rather, the word, beyond its denotation, is an act of social judgement. So far from understanding this distinction, you uncritically accept the social attitude as a given, reifying it as merely a reflection of the loner's failure and unhealth.

It is one of the roles of philosophy to disentangle these false "givens" from what is neutrally there. It is the role of junk philosophy to accept and bolster social consensus with half assed references to Aristotle and "Rogerian self actualization"

No.

And the distinction is moot, since I was clearly talking about loners, not merely the state of being alone.

A loner, by choice or otherwise, spends less time with other people than the norm. You, the self appointed arbiter of human merit, deems them to be failures. Good on you. I think you are a self important blowhard, but we each have our opinions.

A loner is someone who prefers being alone. Do you have a more substantive point?

Great OP.

To "true" in "false" I would not add "unknown", but rather the entire spectrum of degrees of truth and falsity in between. Not one of the oppositions you cite sits exactly on one end of that spectrum or the other. Every domain posses independent reality of some sort or another, and every one is apprehended by a subjective being that necessarily perceives, and/or constructs, everything from its own perspective. Objectivity is a concept that cannot be instantiated in a mind.

It is simply too easy to dress up ideas that are at best half baked with difficult language. Much easier than actually coming up with novel ideas and expressing them in language. It would therefore be surprising if it didn't happen in philosophy.

And it obviously, obviously does. Not every difficult work is dishonest, obviously. Ideas can be very difficult, and so can expressing them clearly. But the rampant abuse of difficult language, in contemporary writing especially, has caused a suspicion of all difficult writing.

That Irigary quote... The fact that it can exist at all, and the author not laughed out of academia, but rather be taught and celebrated, speaks to a deep corruption and dishonesty in academic humanities.. Which ruins the discipline for everyone, and deserves all the hate it gets.

also plausible. Then the minimum claim is, "Mary learns a way to experience red".

that's fine, I have no problem accepting that. Maybe perception is uniform across people, maybe spectrum s can be inverted or swapped around, maybe humanity is split into dozens of gene lines, each with color perceptions incomparable and inconceivable to the others.

But at minimum, Mary learns what it's like for her to experience red.

I do not think there is any such thing as a "successful" loner. To be a loner is already to have failed at life in perhaps the most significant ways - — tim wood

So is a loner who finds deep meaning and pleasure in creation, in nature, in their own thoughts, inherently a failure, compared to one who spends all their time around others, buffeted by this and that person's moods and needs, who feels their own emptiness keenly when alone, and had no identity outside their reflection in the mirror of another's eyes?

Whether or not you accept that red is 750nm light (I think it is true, in a sense), Mary learns what it is like to experience red. Just as you can learn different words that mean 0.

Is it not that simple?

Both perspectives are absurd on their own, only a synthesis of the two can arrive at a humane ethics.

Consequentialism is absurd because consequences are in principle unknowable before action. And, terrible actions may fortuitously have good consequences.

Deontology is absurd because it attempts a moral bureaucracy, subordinating human ends to arbitrary rules.

The best you can do is a consequentialist deontology: what are the consequences of these moral rules, versus those? You cannot know this at the outset, so you need to adjust with observation, and with changing circumstances.

This is what legal systems in their best form attempt.

There are high level aspects of brains and computer that are analogus. For instance they might be the only general information processing machines in the universe. But to pretend that the brain is running Java is just nonsense.

My point is that it is not inexplicable for a being to create something lesser than itself.

"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" C.S Lewis

But aside from parents, anyone who creates, creates things that are less perfect, or at least lesser, than themselves.

There actually is an answer to this: Gaiasm. The one true, real life, utterly neglected religion. The only one where there is no need to resort to pernicious anthropomorphism, reification and false mythology.

Gaism fulfills everything a religion needs to.

Gaia created us as a species, and individually gave each of us life. We all live our lives under Her purview. When we die we return to Her.

Gaia is so far beyond our ability to understand that She is, relative to our puny minds (which are after all merely tiny, gnarled bits of Her), effectively transcendent, and infinite

We are blaspheming terribly against this living god, by desecrating her body. In consequence, we are literally descending into hell.

The only way we can escape this fate is to regain our relationship and respect of the real deity.

If there is anything that can still save us, it is mass adoption of the actual, non fairy tale religion.

What I say is a reframing of a materialist worldview, rather than woo. I have little interest in woo.

"reasonable people presenting well-supported dissenting opinion"

Never mistake what is doing as a reasonable exchange of ideas in search of the truth. His role is to be an apologist for the indefensible, giving it the veneer of legitimacy. This is an easy distinction to miss, and it deserves much more attention than it gets.

His arguments are paper thin, but that is beside the point. Tear one down, the goalposts shift, and two more take their place. Argue with a flat earther, a 9/11 truther, a holocaust denier, a climate skeptic, and you will have the same experience.

Find any atrocity in history, any massacre, any genocide, and you will find "intellectuals" fulfilling this function of providing "reasonable, intelligent" cover for the indefensible.

And make no mistake, this is an atrocity: thanks in large part to the grotesque and intentional mishandling of the pandemic, and the outrageous politicization of masks and now the vaccine, the number of dead in the US will in a few days exceed that from the Civil War. The Issacs of the country provided cover for Trump's death cult then, and over 300 9/11's worth of casualties later, they continue to do so now.

This kind of rhetoric is seriously at risk of killing thousands more and prolonging the crisis, by making remaining unvaccinated into a moral proscription. — Isaac

Oh really, Issac? Its my kind of rhetoric that is doing this?

The suspicion is now going to fall more heavily on things like polio, MMR, hepatitis... All of which save millions of lives. — Isaac

After spending untold hours manning the forums sowing doubt about the vaccines, he piously bemoans the public's declining trust in vaccines.

Amazing.

It's an unbelievable misjudgment of human nature to think you can persuade anyone to take a vaccine by saying "shut up — Isaac

I don't care if you take it or not. Just shut up.

And so long as they are anti-wherever-I'm-at-at-any-given-moment

Yes. So vaccination is one way of reducing transmission. I'm not sure who you think is denying that. — Isaac

As for transmission - as I've said, we've no evidence yet for a reduction in transmission compared to other strategies so it's unknown. — Isaac

And pray tell, what are these other strategies? Endless lockdowns? Wearing masks the rest of our lives? Keep in mind that the same mouth breathers screaming about their "freedom" to infect others via not vaccinating are the ones screaming about their "freedom" to infect others via not wearing masks and fully reopening no matter what.

Or is your idea to let the virus run its course and infect everyone? Sorry, I absolutely do not accept this reckless endangerment of my or my loved ones well being in service of politically motivated pseudoscience.

True again. So the vaccine is one way to reduce ICU admission too. Again I can't see where you might be getting the impression that anyone's denying that. — Isaac

I'm not seeing any relevance to the claim that the unvaccinated infectious are clogging up hospitals.... — Isaac

Of course you completely ignored the actual argument.. — Isaac

Is this ignorant "argument" really worth addressing? Obesity and skydiving are not transmissible diseases. Nor are they pushing hospitals to the brink of collapse.

Yes. Not everyone needs to be vaccinated to avoid that — Isaac

Says who? Because Martin "herd immunity" Kulldorff does not. Rather, for him letting the virus run rampant, causing unknowable lives lost, or ruined by long covid, is somehow acceptable. Preventing this does not rise to the level of "need".

So rather than have everyone vaccinated, you must prefer the current state of affairs. Where, driven by massive disinformation (an effort you seem eager to make your little contribution to), people are refusing the vaccine in droves, making us suffer through yet another nightmare surge.

I've just quoted a professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (one of the top medical schools in the world). I've previously cited papers from immunologists and epidemiologists from the world's top medical journals in support of my position. — Isaac

Please. Who cares? You can cherry pick fringe "experts" all day. This is mere appeal to second-rate authority. Who will you cite next, Scott Atlas?

So your contention is that by having a voice in a democratically managed company, you somehow achieve *less* autonomy than you would in a traditional, top-down, hierarchical corporation.

By what strange alchemy does this happen?

Infection is morally irrelevant without transmission (which you already account for in the second term). The two morally relevant factors are need for health services (not the same as infection, clearly) and transmission — Isaac

Yes, but without infection transmission is impossible. If the vaccine reduced infection and transmission each by 50%, overall likelihood of the subject transmitting the virus is reduced to 25% versus baseline. Even if the protective effect was merely 30% in each of these, this would equate to roughly 50% less transmission, which given its exponential can vastly change outcomes of a pandemic. Even given some of the somewhat disheartening recent data, this condition is met:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-study-moderna-vaccine-far-better-than-pfizer-at-preventing-delta-infection/

This does not even touch on transmission rates.

Protection against ICU admission is a separate issue, and demonstrably robust with the vaccine:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-breakthrough-infections-vaccines.html


Do you really believe that a tremendous amount of death, suffering, and economic loss would not be prevented if everyone was vaccinated?

If you do, you can only be cherry picking data to satisfy some ulterior agenda.

If you don't, then how is that an insufficient moral imperative? What exactly is your aim?

So people keep saying. No one has yet explained how that gem of statistical understanding everyone is so proud of is relevant to a claim about the rarity of the vaccinated infectious. — Isaac

Well if the whole country was vaccinated, 100% of those infected would be vaccinated. Further, children, who are ineligible, and young adults, who get vaccinated in lower numbers, make up a significant part of the unvaccinated population. Their natural immunity partially removes them from the pool of potential viral hosts. Whereas the older demographic groups, with the weakest immune systems, also have the highest vaccination rates. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/811B/production/_119915033_934ed1dc-65ea-4439-9d4c-b82dd0fe28e0.png

ndeed. So evidence of a significant difference in transmission rate between strategies (vaccination vs other non-pharmaceutical methods vs both) is what we'd need to establish a moral imperative for a person to choose one over another. Do you have such evidence? — Isaac

Delta makes this complicated, especially since published numbers are all over the place. But I was wrong, what really matters is (difference in infection rate) x (difference in transmission rate). So even modest protection in both factors can multiply to make a significant difference.

I was quoting @Fishfry here. This is from a country with a high vaccination rate. What really matters though is the transmission rate.

This point is easily refuted. The fact that the average vaxxed person is statistically unlikely to infect you means nothing. After all, the average person is not a serial killer, but we endeavor to take serial killers out of society to protect the public. The argument that a random individual is unlikely to cause harm is no argument against separating that indvidual from society. — fishfry

Wow I'm really not following this "logic". The argument that a random individual is unlikely to cause harm is generally an excellent argument against separating that individual from society. Infection, unvaxxed status, serial killerhood are all reasons for separation of that person from society.

Since contagious vaxxed people and drunk drivers alike are statistically rare, they should both be free to travel — fishfry

The vaccinated and infected are rare. If they are identified as such, they should be restricted.
Drunk drivers are rare. If they are identified, they should be restricted.

Perhaps you and Wayfarer would like to say, specifically, how you think the restriction of free movement in the US (or your country, whatever it may be) should be implemented. — fishfry

Vaccination should be a requirement for entry to high risk areas such as transportation, supermarket, bars, restaurants, movie theaters, etc.

The rest of your post is slippery slope hysteria and race baiting.

This doesn't address the larger harm the unvaccinated, and the scumbag public figures that encourage them, do to society. If everyone was vaccinated, and diligently performed basic social distancing and hygiene during local outbreaks, we might be done with the pandemic, at least in the US. Instead, hospitals and morgues are filling up again, and actual freedom, the freedom to enjoy life without risk of death or mutilation, has slipped away.

Really, from that perspective the restriction of freedom of movement is too mild. Vaccination should be mandatory, full stop.

But then what is your model of where these perceptions come from? Do you simply not have one?

Even in the last two, does it not really go; — Isaac

Well you can analyze any number of ways. But these are models of a single perceptual event of a single object. Yours seems to mix this with a history of that object. Once the software is programmed and installed on the computer, the system is an independent object like any other.

The 'external state' is just now an electrode — Isaac

Here I think 'external state' means light waves in BIS, electrode in BIV. But our analysis usually extends further than the immediate carrier of sensory information.

In BIS our mental model might be:
Tree -> reflected light -> eye -> brain signal -> perception of tree

But then supposed we imagine, or are convinced by, BIV. Then the analysis of looking at a tree might be:
Computer -> simulation software -> software state of tree -> electrode -> brain signal -> perception of
tree

But this is analogous to our model of say playing a video game with a tree in it:
Computer -> simulation software -> software state of tree -> screen emission -> eye -> brain signal -> perception of tree

In both the latter two cases our model of the object of our perception is that of a software construct, which is an aspect of software hosted on a physical computer. So in both cases it is linguistically meaningful and useful to designate the objects of perception as "simulations", as opposed to the rest of the physical world which hosts these simulations.

I agree with your analysis of language in general.

From our perspective imagining we are the BIVs, 'simulation' would be a silly choice of word, it doesn't distinguish anything useful yet. — Isaac

If we are participating in the thought experiment and imagining we are BIVs, then we must be imagining the world outside the vats. So then 'simulation' distinguishes our imagined vat world from the imagined world outside the imagined vats.

In view of that, shouldn't the vaccinated be prohibited from free movement as well? — fishfry

Whether or not they are as contagious once infected, they are infected at lesser rates. As continual testing of everyone is impractical, they therefore present less danger to the public than the unvaccinated.

The unvaccinated are making this choice to (in their mind) improve their well being, at the expense of the public well being. It is therefore rational public policy to restrict their freedom of movement, to both protect the public well being, and to discourage this selfish choice.

The situation is rather similar to driving. Everyone on the road presents some danger. But drunk drivers, as a result of their selfish decision to be drunk drivers, present a greater danger. Therefore their freedom of movement is restricted, to protect the public and to discourage drunk driving.

There is my cat, and I know it, but how does, and this is the question of all questions, this opaque brain thing internalize epistemically that over there that is not a brain thing or any of its interior manifestations? — Constance

I strongly suspect this is not an epistemic act at all, but rather a distinction brains are hardwired to make. Witness organic brain disorders like schizophrenia where this distinction breaks down.

Instead of discarding as "bad metaphysics" what is called naïve realism here, why not instead bracket it with the disclaimer that this is not absolutely certain, but rather our best guess at the state of affairs. And describe why this qualifies as the best available guess (i.e. why brain in a vat can be cut away with Occam's Razor).

After all, whether or not we are envatted (love this coinage) is an empirical fact of the world, and empirical facts cannot, in principle, be proven with absolute certainty. All we can ever do is construct models which explain what we experience at the phenomenological level.

Absolute certainty is one of the great chimeras of philosophy.

If vat-world concepts correspond with trans-vat concepts, then the name 'Paris' in both vat-world and trans-world refers to Paris. [True? or not?] — Cuthbert

But 'Paris' is a proper noun, and here there are two of them.

If I can successfully refer to Paris even in a scenario in which I'm a brain in a vat then we seem to have a way out of scepticism. — Cuthbert

How? We can just as readily imagine a scenario where no vat-concept corresponds in any way with a trans-concept.

So? Computer simulations are real things, you can buy them in the shops. Why would they present some problem for what to call them? — Isaac

Yes but there is a distinction between the world they present and the real world. This distinction is what the word "reality" delineates, without it the word has no meaning.

But if my brain is a brain in a vat it would not be a brain as I understand brains because what I now understand to be a brain is (I'm imagining) an illusory brain. — Cuthbert

I'm not sure I buy this. Since we are making up the vat scenario anyway, why not make it up such that vat world concepts correspond with trans vat concepts?

If Boston is all of a person's reality, what do you call the world outside it? — Isaac

Great point, except for the fact that Boston is not a computer simulation for the benefit of a brain in a vat.

if the vat world is reality, what do we call the would outside of it?

I don't see how that is relevant to what we're discussing. — T Clark

The argument that the simulation is the reality for the brain in the vat cannot accommodate the situation where the brain is housd in a body again

Do you find that unsatisfactory? I don't. — T Clark

I do. In this view, how would you account for what happens when the brain is unplugged, housed in a new body, and "wakes up"?

But...but.... Oh, wait, you resolved this conflict yourself? — T Clark

Not sure what you're getting at?