So if we stop burning fossil fuels now, and stop increasing livestock now, the climate is going to go on getting warmer, at a gradually slowing rate for a long time, in human lifetime terms. As has been seen on the global temperature graph, the heating effect on land is much greater than that in the oceans. We are also seeing more than one positive feedback effect. First, the melting of sea and land ice darkens and thereby increases the absorption of the sun's radiation. Second, the disruption of ecosystems reduces their ability to absorb CO2. Third, wildfires. Fourth, desertification already in progress from human overexploitation of ecosystems. Fifth, the increasing surface temperature of the sea reduces its ability to absorb CO2.

So far, all the climate models pronounced realistic and likely have under-estimated the effects seen already We have seen in Venus, that extreme, runaway global warming is not impossible to the point of being inimical to life and unsurvivable by humans.

But no worries chaps, carry on eating beef and flying round the world on holiday, all our politicians are very stable geniarses, and will solve the problem before anything bad happens, global oil and global meat are on the case.

If biogenic methane stays constant over the next decade, then that by itself is going to increase global temp by 0.0224° F ( 0.012° C) per decade - because that's what it is doing today and it's going to continue to do that (the laws of physics are not changing).
— EricH

This statement is incorrect and I am not saying that the laws of physics are changing. If biogenic methane stays constant over the next decade then that by itself will not increase the amount of global warming. Your calculation of 0.0224° F ( 0.012° C) per decade is NOT based on constant emissions of biogenic methane. — Agree to Disagree

It is closer to being correct than it is to being incorrect. Greenhouse gases act like insulation. So global temperatures start to increase when the insulation effect increases, and will eventually reach a stable temperature for any stable increase. The time it will take to stabilise, and the temperature it will eventually stabilise at, are extremely difficult to model but the time-frame will be decades, if not centuries. So the assumption that warming will continue due to a steady state of greenhouse gases is very much closer to the truth, than that the planet will stop warming immediately when greenhouse gases stop increasing.

But as it happens, CO2 and CH4 levels are still increasing.

T9.

$\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, pr \,}}\! \right|\left. {\overline {\, qr \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|$ = $\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, p \,}}\! \right|\left. {\overline {\, q \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right| r$

Using my circuit analogy, on the left, p & r are parallel paths, and so are q & r. So if r = $\left. {\overline {\, * \,}}\! \right|$ then p & q are redundant, and 'light is on'. On the other hand if r is empty, it can disappear, leaving the expression on the right. So we have the parallel circuits on the right, of the p&q expression and a solitary r to cover both possibilities.

Not as complicated as it looks.

Chapter 3 feels like a set up for chapter 4, which is what I said about 1 and 2 so I may just be in that habit. But I felt like it was all a set up for the final paragraph to make sense -- we have the initials of number and order for the calculus of indications, and Chapter 4 begins to actually write out some proofs from what has been written thus far. — Moliere

Yes. somewhere in the introduction/preface he says that this all developed backwards to the way it was written as a way of trying to understand why what they were already doing in practice worked. It's quite usual in philosophy: you build your castle in the air, and then go back afterwards to grub around for some foundations for it.

So we should kind of do the same; pass lightly for now over chapter 3, and I am going to pass lightly over the first 4 theorems too, as GSB satisfying himself that the rules and notation does what he wants and doesn't do what he doesn't want.

We have now shown that the two values which the forms of the calculus are intended to indicate are not confused by any
step allowed in the calculus and that, therefore, the calculus does in fact carry out its intention.

Again, I find it helpful to think of the left margin as a power source, and the right side as a light that will be either on or off. Thus an empty cross is a switch that is on, and...
$\left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right|$ is a switch that is on if 'a' is not on, and off if 'a 'is on.

T5, T6 and T7 are more housekeeping; necessary but boring.

For T8, I am going to start with...
$\left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right| a$ which we can think of as two circuits in parallel on one circuit 'a' operates a switch, and on the other it is the circuit. So if 'a' is on, it turns the switch off and connects via the direct route, and if 'a' is off it connects via the switch.

In T8, this identical arrangement which is always on, turns the switch it controls off. Light goes off!

T9 is also important. T8 and T9 together form the basis of everything that follows, so I'm going to give T9 a post of its own post, later.

Wouldn't it be better to spend your time learning a more widely used version of predicate calculus? — Banno

Of course it would, if application is what you are looking for. My sister used to work for the electricity board on their very early computer that ran their pay-roll and bill producing accounts system, as a programmer in machine language. Not much call for that these days. But it's still how the machines operate. This book ends at the point where it links up with all the familiar systems of boolean algebra and predicate logic and set theory. If your philosophy is "shut up and calculate", a perfectly reasonable position, this book and this thread are not for you.

Don't waste your time telling us we're wasting our time with it.

Mutiny feint? Russian aircraft shot down feint? The mutineer then killed feint? :roll: — ssu

It's all part of Baldrick's Putin's Cunning Plan.



to make us misunderestimate him.

My hope, in the long run, is to offer strings which people can simply copy-paste with clear delineations for plug-and-play. — Moliere

That would be really useful. I had a little go at getting an empty cross and failed miserably, but that sort of confirms the thesis that the world has fallen in love with symbolising the unmarked state and naming the nameless. 0 And thanks @Jgill for your assistance.

This is the difference between GS-B and Boole, there is no 1:— here, everything takes place in The Hole in the Zero a largely irrelevant but excellent science fiction story from the same era.

(It inflates my petty smugness a wee bit that the implementation of the crosses utilises a series of brackets in roughly the same way I suggested we might do, but thought better of because the result was unreadable, even if the structure was right.)

Reading Chapter 1-2 (for some reason I'm finding them linked as I read this the first time -- like I can't talk about chapter 1 without chapter 2, and vice versa) again I can see the opening of 2 as a re-expression of Chapter 1, like The Form needed to be explicated before talking about forms out of the form, and the form takes as given distinction and indication which it also folds together as complementary to one another. — Moliere

Yes, I deliberately started at chapter 2, because that's the point at which something happens. I could liken it to a new game we have to unpack - fun for all the family, and you're trying to understand the rules while I'm looking at the pieces. It's a construction set of nesting boxes, and the rules set out what you can do and what you can't do. Some of what is going on is making sure that you don't have a box half in and half out of another box, or a box that is inside a box it is also outside. That's continence - like brackets, you can have any number of them inside another brackets and any number of brackets within brackets, but they mustn't overlap { [ ] [ ] [ {} ] } is ok, but { [ } ] is incontinent - the inner square bracket is leaking out of the curly bracket.

Forget about the 'a' for the moment, that comes later when we do algebra. For now, its computation/arithmetic we have the mark that we are also reading as a boundary between a marked and unmarked state and also calling a cross (c) and interpreting as an instruction to cross the border. It's no more confusing than switching a switch to switch things around. :wink:

But this is where I really got lost entirely: What is going on from "Depth" to "Pervasive space", or are these concepts that, like the first chapter, will become elucidated by reading chapter 3? Like a puzzle unfolding? — Moliere

Depth is easy, It's how many boxes within boxes we're at. count the lines you have to cross to get out. Each line is a c for cross, each space is an s. this is just housekeeping - labelling the shelves in the cupboard.

but perhaps the way to understand is to read through first, and then go back and worry at the terms when you have a grasp of the 'idea of the game'. and all this 's' and 'c' is just a way of talking about


The idea of the game, at first, anyway, is that the stop light is on when the train is in the tunnel and off when the train is not in the tunnel. Mark, or no mark. And that game is what comes next.

Something I'm stuck on, from a first reading of the first two chapters, is the distinction between letting and calling. I think I have to read "Let" as "Call a function" or something like that. It's naming an instruction rather than naming a distinction. — Moliere

'Let' is a command from on High. This how it shall be henceforth. 'Let x be the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. 'Let' happens outside the formal system to create it. 'Call' is an action that happens inside the the system. You can call the distinction into being by making the distinction, that is by writing the sign. and If you write it twice in a row you call and recall.

and the distinction is:

I get a different shape? — bongo fury

Assertion and negation, basically? — bongo fury

It's completely abstract. It is cross (the boundary) and cross back, assertion and negation, on and off, 0 and 1, but what is important is that there is but one sign, that is the crossing of the boundary, the boundary itself and the mark of distinction that names the difference between the two sides of the boundary.

The significance of my little example is that it is close to home. This is a philosophy forum, and so we ought to have a very clear idea of what philosophy is, and therefore what it is not. But that turns out to be intractable and interminably controversial. But applying the idea of 'nesting' as 'negation' allows me to say very simply what philosophy is not, and why it is so difficult to be clear about in normal discourse.

The usual problem, and the problem with your picture, is that we tend to give already an equal meaning to the negative and positive. Here, there is no symbol for zero, and the nearest we can get is the something of something, or a blank space.

The other sense that is important in all this is the distinction between the observer and the observed. This give a sense of the inequality of meaning and meaninglessness that is fundamental. This formal system is all about self-reference, and thus to make a distinction is to put oneself on the map. The mark in this sense is like graffiti on the toilet wall. "Kilroy was here." Significantly, Kilroy never indicates where he was not.

It’s worth thinking about the ‘dictums’ in terms of Laws of Form – for they put the ineffable at the heart of the operation. ‘You can’t have a blue universe,’ I can hear him say. Of course you can’t. If you’re proposing a blue universe, then you’re also, by definition, expressing the contradictory of a ‘non-blue universe’ at the same time. Since there can only be one universe, the whole idea is preposterous.

Leon-Konrad---Roots%252C-Shoots%252C-Fruits-%2528paper%2529.pdf

It’s a key difference that applies to logic – with Boole committing a logical fallacy by indicating ‘the universe’, as 1 and nothing as 0, as Boole does, when introducing his binary approach to algebraic logic. 1 and 0 are both marks on the page, but he does not acknowledge the space in which they stand. In Boole’s thought – and, I would argue, in Luhmann’s, 1 and 0 are both marks. They’re contradictory terms, but the underlying unity isn’t acknowledged. Both Luhmann and Boole mark the unmarked state. Thus, in Boole’s work, and in Luhmann’s, it appears as a mere sign: [*]

Spencer-Brown never makes this error. He symbolises it the unmarked state by making it equivalent to the piece of paper it is written on: [*]

ibid.

[* The original presents here the equations denoted the form of condensation and cancellation respectively that can be found on page 5 of the Laws of Form, that I cannot reproduce here.]

Because fossil fuels have been locked away from the "living" world for a very long time they are normally considered to be non-biogenic. — Agree to Disagree

Yeah arbitrary limits to your terms to allow your mantra to be true. One tries to engage, but eventually one reaches the outer limits of denialism. 12 years too short, 12 million years too long, but if you look at it just so - no worries. Have a great death!

Gentlemen, ladies!

in another place, we are having some dialogue about a book that is concerned with foundations, which I suspect is part of what philosophy is concerned with. I quote below the two axioms on which the formal system of the book is constructed.

Axiom 1. The law of calling
The value of a call made again si the value of the call.
That is to say, if a name is called and then is called again, the value indicated by the two calls taken together is the value indicated by one of them.
That is to say, for any name, to recall is to call.
ThE FORM
Equally, if the content is of value, a motive or an intention or instruction to cross the boundary into the content can be taken to indicate this value.
Thus, also, the crossing of the boundary can be identified with the value of the content.
Axiom 2. The law of crossing
The value of a crossing made again is not the value of the crossing.
That is to say, fi it is intended to cross a boundary and then it is intended to cross it again, the value indicated by the two intentions taken together isthe value indicated by none of them.
That si to say, for any boundary, to recross is not to cross.

George Spencer-Brown, The Laws of Form.

I make an illustrative implementation of these axioms in the following form, which is particularly relevant to your discussion.

Axiom 1. Philosophy[of science] and philosophy[of religion] are philosophy.
Axiom 2. Philosophy of philosophy is not philosophy.

So in the philosophy of science one asks 'what is science' and tries to answer, and in the philosophy of religion, one asks , what is religion, and tries to answer, but in the philosophy of philosophy, if one asks what is philosophy, one has put into question the process of putting things into question, and silence is the best one can hope for. — unenlightened

I have to suggest that silence might at least be as good as declarations of not needing to convince, and so on, back and forth, and that this application might go some way to explaining the frustration that is commonly the result of enquiries into the nature and definition of philosophy.

In the long run — Agree to Disagree

The long run includes all the already captured carbon in the Earth, and human exploitation of it too as part of the biogenic cycle. the question is whether humans are going to be in it for the long run or are going to be a temporary disruption. the whole cycle of life on Earth can stop and still be in balance. So no worries eh?

Ok, I'm just going to say a few things by way of my own 'introduction' and then start.

First, we have the text, and we have the videos from Wayfarer above, and I at least am not going to very much attempt to further expound or teach as such, nor to actually use the system - I am not competent to.

The meat of the book is a formal system. Spencer-Brown might have claimed,"The" formal system. The reason for saying that is that he starts from as near to nothing as possible, and from this almost nothing, manages to 'prove' many of the axioms of other formal systems in common use. And this is one of the difficulties of the book, that a laborious effort is undertaken to show the very simplest most obvious things that we have taken for granted since forever. One tends to read along thinking one has understood, and then one reaches a blank incomprehension at some point...

Formal systems always begin like the voice of God, commanding the world into existence: "Let there be light!" So the text intends you to create a universe in your mind of a particular form, and although it necessarily does so through an already shared language, it intends you to keep all the distinctions of your experience and language that you use to read the text separate and outside the new universe that you create according to the text. First prepare a blank space in the mind, with no thought in it: and begin.

Construction
Draw a distinction.
Content
Call it the first distinction.

But this is already Chapter 2! There is no way it can be the first distinction, because already in chapter 1 we have distinguished what a distinction is, and produced a pair of axioms.

Of course, it has to be confessed that we are not gods, and that our minds are not blank; so we have already made a distinction in the mind between the ordinary mind full of thoughts and distinctions and the blank space of the mind in which we are going to construct this formal system. We insist on the 'continence' of that distinction, that we will keep out all our everyday thoughts, and we maintain that continence by calling our new distinction 'the first'. And that distinction is mentioned again as the unwritten mark under which all this formality subsists.

What appears on the blankness of the paper, or in the emptiness of the mind is a mark, that is a name, a boundary, and an instruction all at once because those things cannot be distinguished. And all we have to help us is our axioms.

Axiom 1. Philosophy[of science] and philosophy[of religion] are philosophy.
Axiom 2. Philosophy of philosophy is not philosophy.

So in the philosophy of science one asks 'what is science' and tries to answer, and in the philosophy of religion, one asks , what is religion, and tries to answer, but in the philosophy of philosophy, if one asks what is philosophy, one has put into question the process of putting things into question, and silence is the best one can hope for. (you don't have to agree, I'm just giving shape to the way the axioms work with a familiar example.)

"And the evening and the morning was the first post."

Yes, but plants and animals (and fungi) are all part of a cycle (the biogenic carbon cycle). So in the long-run the negatives from the animals have the same magnitude as the positives from the plants. It is a zero sum game. — Agree to Disagree

Indeed. A desert is carbon neutral - the environment is balanced. But for a farm, that balance has to extend beyond the farm to the community of humans it feeds. Therefore the farm itself, excluding its dependent customers, has to be carbon negative. Humans in cities are part of the biogenic cycle too, but they course do not feature in the calculations of the livestock industry.

Note that the claim that I just made does not include fossil fuels used to produce plants and animals. It also doesn't include things like nitrogen fertilizers. Fossil fuels and nitrogen fertilizers are not part of the biogenic carbon cycle. — Agree to Disagree

Indeed. You don't actually have to teach anyone here the basic science. It is indeed the burning of stored carbon that is the maincause of the problem, and that includes not only the obvious fossil fuels, but notably the limestone and chalk used to make concrete and to neutralise acidity in the soil of farms.

And as you imply, intensive farming is problematic. In order for a farm to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, it needs to be carbon negative after the consumption of all its edible produce. It needs to be storing carbon in the soil, or else producing non-consumable wood products or the like.

Farming practice needs to move in two directions at once. Frstly towards a true hydroponic factory farm, of multi-layered artificially lit growth powered by electricity. A sterile controlled environment to maximise the production of food; and similar bacterial and fungal production units. Secondly, to a lower intensity farming of the land that prioritises environmental concerns for biodiversity, resilience, and carbon capture over maximising human food production. In either direction, there is going to be less meat.

it's all about reducing the methane emissions from cattle farming. This in of itself is a good thing — EricH

But not as good a thing as getting rid of the cattle.

I looked at the video. At the portion you marked, the guy is suggesting that if we limit methane emissions from cattle (apparently California has already dropped it by 25%), then we can reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere.

He's saying that in cattle production there's an opportunity to go beyond net zero to net negative. — frank

Every plant (bar a very few and rare parasitic ones) is carbon negative. Every animal and fungus, by contrast, is carbon positive. If a cattle farm is not net zero or negative, it is depleting the soil, or the soil of the farm from which it sources its feed. A cattle farm can be turned carbon negative most easily by killing the cattle and planting trees. Fruit trees, if you also want to feed some naked apes. But we like dairy and beef. Ok, then let's have some dairy and beef, but let's not pretend that it will help to stop climate change. That's ahem, bullshit! Try not to consume bullshit.

Every farm needs to be substantially carbon negative simply to offset the carbon positive human life that it exists to support.

The above is a very simple example of how to insert environmental costs into an economy that does not account for them, and thereby incentivise the minimising of environmental damage and maximising of restoration.

The same can be done on a global scale by building a carbon tax system into world trade agreements. Since we can get detailed emission data from satellites, the rules can be readily enforced and countries trying to cheat can be penalised with export duties. If there were a will, it is not difficult to do. But cheating is profiteering at the expense of the planet, and we are letting the cheats prosper because they fill the ranks of all governments and all political parties able to seriously contend for government.

Steps need to be taken toward this happening. — Changeling

Yes, 2 steps, to be precise. A subsidy on the equipment required to collect the gas, and a tax on allowing its release. Bish bash bosh. Farmers cannot run and hide.

Here is a slightly more reliable source than the meat industry, with links to scientific papers and consideration of all the various routes of entry and exit of methane to and from the atmosphere, in case anyone is actually interested in anything other than their own opinion.

Worldwide emissions of methane have hit the “highest levels on record”, according to an international team of scientists.

The finding comes from the latest update to the Global Methane Budget, an international collaboration that estimates sources and sinks of methane around the world.

Their estimates for 2017 – the most recent year for which a full budget has been produced – show that annual global emissions hit almost 600m tonnes. That is around 9% higher than the 2000-06 average.

By the end of 2019, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere reached around 1875 parts per billion (ppb), the researchers say – more than two-and-a-half times pre-industrial levels.

Breaking down the different sources, the budget shows that rising emissions from “both the agriculture and waste sector and the fossil fuel sector are likely the dominant cause of this global increase”. This highlights the “need for stronger mitigation in both areas”, the researchers say.

The work also shows “no evidence to date for increasing methane release from the Arctic”. This “crucial” finding means “we are not yet being confounded by substantial feedbacks” that could make meeting the 1.5C and 2C warming limits even harder, another scientist tells Carbon Brief.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-concerned-by-record-high-global-methane-emissions/

Apologies if you haven't had your breakfast yet, but not only do the burps consist of methane, but a whole lot more is produced by the anaerobic breakdown of the waste products, typically in slurry ponds.

In North America and Western Europe around 40% of livestock manure is handled in liquid form [1]. Liquid manure (slurry) represents a mainly anaerobic environment and is a significant source of atmospheric methane (CH4), which is the second-largest anthropogenic source of radiative forcing next to carbon dioxide (CO2) [2]. Volumes of liquid manure increase in many parts of the world due to intensification of livestock production [3], and thus it becomes increasingly important to determine effects of manure treatment and management on emissions of CH4.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4986936/

This is an entirely tractable problem, that requires mere money to be thrown at it. Cover the slurry, and collect the gas for domestic use. Pre-industrial farming would use straw bedding that mixed with the effluent and would be mainly aerobically composted in a heap and then spread as fertiliser on the arable fields. And of course the peasants ate little meat, so a win win.

cattle farming is net-zero. — frank

It can be net zero in terms of carbon, but if you double the number of animals, you double the methane released. in 12 years time all the first year's methane will have degraded through lightening and radiation aided oxidation, but meanwhile the overall amount of methane of bovine origin will have doubled and that will be the new 'stable amount' in the atmosphere.

But google is your friend.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas contributor to climate change following carbon dioxide. On a 100-year timescale, methane has 28 times greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide and is 84 times more potent on a 20-year timescale.

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/oil-gas-and-coal/methane-emissions_en#:~:text=Methane%20is%20the%20second%20most,on%20a%2020%2Dyear%20timescale.

3. If I want to determine a particular color of a swatch, I may send it out to a company who has sensitive device that can provide a very nuance color determination. So I put it in an envelop and mail it in and in a few days get a report on its color. I am not sending a color that exists in my mind in the mail. — Richard B

I can take a swatch to my local hardware shop and they will mix me a can of paint to match my sample in about 10 minutes. This is because they are mind-readers swatch-readers.

With stable livestock numbers the total amount of methane in the atmosphere from cows remains at the same level. This is because the amount of methane added to the atmosphere each year equals the amount of methane removed from the atmosphere each year (by breaking down into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water). — Agree to Disagree

This is true. But what is not mentioned is that the more cows there are, the higher the stable amount of methane in the atmosphere is. And the amount that it increases as we increase meat production has to be added to other sources of methane from leaky pipes, oil wells, melting permafrost, etc.

So it's not "the answer" because no one thing is the answer, but eating less red meat in particular is a very good way to buy more time to take other measures if enough people start doing it. In the UK, this is happening to the extent that vegetarian and vegan options have become ubiquitous in supermarkets, restaurants and fast food outlets. And it helps a bit. It also helps to reduce the pressure on the rainforest of the Amazon basin, for example, which is being cut down and burned to make room for more cattle and more soya and maize cattle feed. I'm not an expert on the Australian ecosystem, but the introduction of non-native species has not been without problems.

No other rural industry impacts more of Australia than our beef industry. More than 63,000 farming businesses are producing beef from 43% of the country's landmass. We are also the world's second largest beef exporter, which injects an estimated $8.4 billion into the Australian economy.

More than any other livestock industry, the beef industry relies on healthy natural ecosystems. Fodder and clean water are essential. But cattle production is costly to the environment. Clearing native vegetation for pasture has sacrificed wildlife habitat, and poor grazing practices have seen excess sediments enter waterways and damage places like the . Cattle are also significant greenhouse gas producers, which contributes to climate change. — WWF

https://wwf.org.au/what-we-do/food/beef/#

Of course. If I have my keys in my pocket, it follows that my wallet is also in my pocket. Either i see everything entire, or I see nothing.

Thanks guys. I'm going to be watching those videos with the nice clear soothing voice. A couple of practical problems I have:

1. The pdf I linked won't allow quotes.
2. My keyboard does not have the cross symbol.

Not fatal, but annoying.

For 2 I think we could use brackets, thus:

[ ], [[ ]], [[ ] [ ]], [a], [[[a] [[b] [c]] [ ]] Not very clear, and it might be better to alternate square and curly by depth, thus:

[{ } { }], [{[a] [{b} {c}] { }]

I still don't like it much, any better ideas? Does mathjax or whatever it is have the solution?

Ok, I'm seeing a re-work of Boolean logic with a sort of pseudo-Hegelian dialectic thing going on.

A poor idealist's Tractatus? — Banno

Boolean logic is developed from the very simplest foundations, and then extended with imaginary values. But I don't think anyone ever solved an actual problem using Tractatus...


Come along for the ride. Maybe you can help us get as far as you did, Maybe we can help each other get a bit further...

Fossils don't burn, Sparky. They're made out of rock. — frank

They don't burn, Sparky, because they ain't got no carbon left in them. Fossilised carbon deposits is coal and oil and tar, and they burns pretty good.

some objects in the world have the propensity to preferentially reflect light of wavelength 550nm. — RussellA

Green things.

The colour green exists in the mind, not the world, — RussellA

There's none so blind as them that will not see.

Not so. The colour green is the propensity of an object to preferentially reflect light of wavelength 550nm approx.

With such great encouragement, how could I not start a thread? Here it is:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14599/reading-the-laws-of-form-by-george-spencer-brown

Tell all your friends.

This is why I wrote "The problem is that the light emitted from the object happened at a time before entering the eye, and the philosophical question for the Direct Realist is how is it possible for an observer to directly see a past event?" — RussellA

I passed it by, because you have just explained perfectly precisely how an observer sees a past event, which any astronomer can confirm as perfectly normal and universal..

Another problem for the Direct Realist is, if it is true that the object has an the intrinsic colour of green, how does the information that the object is green get to the observer, if the means of getting the information to the observer, the wavelength of 550nm, carries no information about colour. — RussellA

Again, the explanation creates the mystery. The eye detects light and distinguishes the wavelength and this is how the information is 'conveyed'. The "intrinsic colour of green" is nothing other than the propensity to preferentially reflect radiation of wavelength 550nm and that is the property that the eye is configured to remotely detect. It's called "seeing green stuff".

I’ve noticed ‘Laws of Form’ but when I tried reading it, found it quite daunting. Maybe we should start a discussion group on it. — Quixodian

I'd love to have a go at it, but I too find it daunting. A logician, a mathematician, and an electrical engineer would be useful contributors. @Anyone?

BBC: "Everything we can see is because of how our eyes detect the light around us." — RussellA

This one is correct. Our eyes detect 'visible' light. And that's why we call it "visible light" Seeing IS the detection of light by the eyes, but the light that enters the eyes is not seen but absorbed so that it is no more, in the process of seeing.

What you have produced above is not "the general opinion" but "the general way of talking". which is generally understood by anyone but a philosopher, who cannot see for looking.

We use the same word for the radiation and its source; perhaps that observation might help folk see the light?

The observer sees green light ( — RussellA

The observer directly sees the green light as it enters the eye, — RussellA

Maybe stop trying to teach me schoolboy optics, and think about the philosophy, and particularly the language with which you are confusing yourself. No one sees light, it is not visible. Rather, when light enters the eye, one sees the source of the light. There is no such thing as green light because light is not visible; there are green sources of light and green reflectors of light. Just as there is no green in the mind, there is no green in the light, One speaks of a green light when one sees a green source, and out of that misunderstanding a whole metaphysics is developed. And Wittgenstein has carefully undone that knot for you, and you insist on retying it.

Consider for a moment, that you have sent me an image of seeing in order to show me that I cannot see what you have just put in front of me. Rather ambitious, I'd say.

As a rule, I have coffee in the morning, but if there is no coffee I'll have tea, just as the peasants will eat cake if there is no bread. I used to have a cigarette with the coffee, but that rule has lapsed. Likewise, the rules of planting times for gardeners are changing because the climate is changing.

It seems to me that mathematics is the study of form in the abstract. Existence must have some form or other, even if it is entirely random, and therefore some mathematics will always apply to it, in the sense of describing its form.

But the notion of change, of succession, of time itself can only arise in the context of stability. A stable self has a cigarette, and then does not have a cigarette. A stable Earth has a change of climate. Without the stable background there would be nothing to make the 'order of succession' — I cannot have coffee in the morning if there is never again a recognisable morning, and a recognisable me. Time and cause depend on that stability. If tomorrow, everything were different, there would be nothing to say it is tomorrow and not a billion years hence, or a billion years ago, or another timeline altogether.

Language, (mathematics is an abstract language) presumes and requires a context of stability and change. Names are given to things that persist, and stand out from the background. And then to processes that recur. To name something is to make a distinction between what is named and 'the rest'.

And that distinction, of 1 from 0, or observer from observed, gives rise to a logical language that can describe all the forms of the world, and all possible worlds.

http://www.siese.org/modulos/biblioteca/b/G-Spencer-Brown-Laws-of-Form.pdf

Science tells us that a wavelength of 550nm travels from the runner beans to our eyes, where an electromagnetic wave is an oscillation of electric and magnetic fields and its wavelength is the distance between two adjacent crests.

How can a wavelength of 550nm have an intrinsic colour, and if wavelengths have an intrinsic colour, what would be the intrinsic colour of a radio wave having a wavelength of 3 metres ? — RussellA

Yes scientists have explained in some detail how we see colour. And then philosophers persist in suggesting that something else has colour than the things we see. First the mind, and now wavelengths.

If ever I see a wavelength, I will be sure to let folks know what colour it is. In the meantime, I will stick with the runner beans that are green, and maintain that they and their greenness are in the garden and not in my eyes which are greyish blue, nor in my mind which is quite clear. And if I imagine runner beans in the winter time, and someone asks where the green is in my dreams and imagination, I will tell them "in the summer, in the garden, of course" because I have a realistic imagination.

Heresy of the day.

Climate change is already killing people faster than covid ever did. We should be in carbon lockdown.

I'd like to point out that "spirituality" is also usually and advisedly a social practice, done in monasteries.
One can explore inner space alone, but one can get very badly and irrevocably lost. Better to have a companion on the outside holding the end of a thread that one unwinds as one goes, thus enabling one to retrace ones path. One needs solitary homework, and one needs tutorials in an education, spiritual or philosophical.

Yesterday the idiot box had a discussion. "Is a degree worth it these days?" There was much talk about how much they cost, and whether or not work experience, was worth more to employers. No one was able to step outside the confines of the economic value-system to even wonder whether education might have intrinsic value. That's the value of philosophy - to see things invisible to the merely clever.

If a sensation is colourless, then how do we know that objects in the world, such as leaves and flowers, have colours at all. — RussellA

I use my eyes, personally. The runner beans I can see through the window here are green with orange-red flowers. The runner beans are in the garden. What I cannot see, because my eyes do not point the right way, is into my mind. So I confess I do not know how my mind distinguishes things. I distinguish colours using my eyes, though; I'm fairly sure of that.

I'm also pretty sure I do not look at my sensations to see what colour they are, because I would need special eyes in my my mind that I do not think I have. And even supposing I did, they would surely require eyes in the mind's eye to examine the sensations produced, and those eyes would also need eyes to look at their sensations etc, ad infinitum.

I spent a few braincells wondering why the global temperature seemed to mimic the N. hemisphere seasons. Then i realised that the extremes of the seasonal temperature variation take place on land, and most of the land is in the N.

*Puts the tinfoil hat down again, gently.*

Yet this cannot be the case, as "I" am no more than the set of my sensations. My sensations are what comprise "me". — RussellA

Well speak for yourself; I am a good deal more than the set of my sensations.

But do you see the difficulty of your diagram, that recreates colours 'in the mind'; it would require someone to be looking at the mind, to see what colour things were in there. That is the recursion we really need to avoid. And the way to do it is to leave colours where they are, in leaves and flowers and stuff, and let all the 'mind-stuff' including sensations be colourless and featureless electrochemical shenanigans, or moving spirit, or some such.

I prefer to say that sensations are not the kind of thing that has colour. The sensation of green is no more green than the sensation of big is big, or the sensation of having made a mistake is a mistake.

Therefore, the sensation of green is green. — RussellA

Then what Is anyone supposed to understand by this, and the accompanying diagram?

In the world are two objects. One has been named "red" and the other has been named "blue". No-one knows the true colours of these two objects. However, let them be green and orange for the sake of argument. — RussellA