I think that the definition of the term philosophy is a philosophical question. The literature even terms it a "metaphilosophical" question. — Tarskian

I agree with you here, and one of my favourite philosophy books is an exhaustive and exhausting treatment of the varied definitions of the word "meaning" which is obviously crucial to an understanding of 'definition'.

But I see a further difficulty in your definition of philosophy, which is hinted at by my comment on your treatment of Wittgenstein's statement below.

"The world is all that is the case". It is a statement about the world, which is a physical fact. — Tarskian

One can take this as definitive, in which case it is philosophical, and likewise Moore's "This is a hand".

But at the same time, one can hardly deny that they are statements about the world. And this means that the separation between statements about the world and statements about statements cannot be so sharply made as to answer the question what is and is not philosophy. And We should be glad of that, because if philosophy was merely talk about talk, and had no connection with the world, it would be an entirely trivial pursuit.

But Wittgenstein also said, "Meaning is use." and one does not have to establish exact boundaries to the meaning of a a word, but rather the boundaries are established by the ways in which the word is used in the community. "Ways" plural, because a word can be used with different meaning and scope in different contexts. Thus language is part of the world, and has real causal function in the world, and philosophy 'matters'.

"The world is all that is the case". It is a statement about the world, which is a physical fact. — Tarskian

Or is it a statement about the meaning of words? Like a definition is about the meaning of words.
Oh dear - it looks like your topic is not philosophical according to your own definition. Does that trouble you at all?

I thought some might find this interesting. A non-mathematical wander through black holes, white holes, simplified solutions to Einsteins equations, multiverses etc. Rather good I thought - better than the opening graphic suggests at any rate.

Even the Dead are Harris supporters.



Laugh! They cannot tolerate not being taken seriously.

In case there are still any waverers out there; here is the spokesperson for Fictional Serial Killer Cannibals for Harris giving you the straight dope on Trump. And That's a shark worse than electrocution for sure.

Do you think we will be able to adapt to climate change, tectonic plate shift, areas of famine and poverty in the current geopolitical situation? — isomorph

We have changed the climate without intention, but almost certainly not in all regions beyond our ability to adapt to. However, human population is in overshoot. This is an ecological term for what happens when for some reason the normal checks on population growth of a species are absent or circumvented and the population increases beyond the limit of the ecosystem to sustain it in the long term. So, for example if predators are removed from the environment, herbivores will reproduce until they are too numerous for the grassland to sustain; they eat the grass down to the roots, so that it cannot regenerate fast enough, and then they starve and the population crashes.

That is going to happen to humans. So when you ask if "we" will survive, if you mean the current Western consumer society, then the answer is no. But if you mean the human species in some form somewhere, then probably yes is my best guess. But there will be no shortage of famine, forced migration, conflict, and suffering. Tectonic movement is slow enough for even genetic evolution to adapt to apart from localised eruptions, tidal waves, etc.

The anthropocene extinction event, of which the climate change we have instigated by the industrial revolution is a small part, is what our intelligence has allowed our stupidity to achieve. It is very sad, but there is no chance I can see, of geopolitics stopping representing our stupidity, and starting to represent our intelligent adaptability. War, famine, and disease will solve the problem. In the meantime, "Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools"

We have tech that is able to solve more problems than we are. Why aren't we? I think the failure is due to (in the past ethnocentricity has hurt people and benefited a few) technocentricity. If we discover the method of success for the several hundred thousand years before civilization, we may be able to deal with climate change, tectonic plate shift, vulcanism, etc. — isomorph

"... success for the several hundred thousand years before civilization". Can you say what you have in mind in this phrase?

The way I tell the story, there was some climate instability in Africa leading to rather rapid environmental changes between forest and savannah. This favoured a species with more rapid adaptability than can be afforded by genetic variation. Big brain intelligence provided that adaptability to such an extent, that by means of tools, created shelter, and clothes, intelligent apes were able to survive, and become the top predator in almost any environment, and began to spread across the world.

The secret of this success is that the Inuit can divest herself of a few layers of seal-skin and learn to live in the Amazon from the local experts, whereas the polar bear cannot possibly make that adaptation. It is the ability to learn and adopt adaptive behaviour that is the significant advantage of human intelligence that constitutes "human nature" and explains Confucius' observation that we are alike in our nature, but unalike in our practice (which might be better translated in this context as 'nurture').

Thus human nature is a radical incompleteness that has to be completed by a cultural adaptation to a particular environment, which becomes the essence of humanity such that for us "existence precedes essence", because our essence is now learned.

in my thought experiment, we have everything: there is no noise, all the information is relevant because it's an isolated system and the particles are the most fundamental.

In my opinion, that's an impossible situation, but I thought about this because I think even then, we still might not be able to find a solution because our logic is limited. — Skalidris

That is easily answered. We have all the information we need to find the value of the nth digit of pi, and it can be discovered with complete certainty. But since it is an infinite series, there is no limit to the information we can extract from the running of the algorithm and tomorrow we will find more than we have today.

Even such a simple digital program can produce an output that cannot be predicted more easily than by running the program. This exactly exemplifies your isolated system... We have deliberately created a machine that we can treat as an isolated system about which we have complete knowledge, and we still cannot compute the results because it is a computer itself.

When anxiety appears for no apparent reason, and has no specific direction, this is a completely different situation. Then it feeds on itself, unnerving the individual, making that person a victim. This I believe is the nature of a panic attack, anxiety without an object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Just so. I would suggest that OCD sufferers have such undirected anxiety, and they try to allay it with ritualised behaviour which they become addicted to. The feeding on itself seems to be the major feature of this, and also of panic attacks. If the sufferer gets out of breath, she thinks she is suffocating, if her heartbeat increases, she thinks she is having a heart attack.

Thinking itself is like a non-emotional, but similar relationship with the world — Fire Ologist

Unfortunately, this is not the case. For the anxious person, the great difficulty is that every thought about their anxiety increases their anxiety, and every attempt to allay it directs thought back to it and increases it.

As Peter Pan said, 'All you have to do is think happy thoughts'. And the anxious person's response is always, 'But I don't know how to think happy thoughts.' That is an unhappy, anxiety inducing thought, that they then try to get rid of by thinking happy thoughts, and the circle is complete, and goes round and round for a whole lifetime.

The best response to any internal event is passive acceptance. Feel the fear, notice the circular thinking, the murderous anger, or whatever comes to one's attention of one's own condition, and let it be. The mind is a playground of nonsense, like a bucket of muddy water. Stop stirring and wait; the mud will settle of its own accord, and anything you do will only stir it up again. This is the stoicism of mind.

How do I know whether or not I am anxious? Is it even one thing? It sometimes looks as if people are talking about different things - Does anxiety have an object, real or imagined, towards which it is necessarily directed - final exams, getting cancer, or whatever - or can one just be suffused with a feeling of anxiety about everything and nothing?

a person in distress — MorningStar

How can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that my thoughts, those unruly hounds, will crawl to my feet? How can I ever hope ... So that I can hear your voice loudly and see your face clearly..." — Jung

This is so clear and smart. I need to quieten my thinking before I can attend to you. Anxiety is unruly thinking that keeps dragging one's attention away from the world, and towards itself.

"How can I order my thinking to be quiet?" my thought demands over and over again.

Here is a Zen koan, half remembered:

Disciple— What shall I do if I have a persistent thought in my head?
Master — Throw it out.
Disciple— But if it is too powerful and I cannot throw it out?
Master — Then carry it out.

Myself is the most persistent thought; I am the anxiety I am anxious to be rid of.

Is there some metaphysical substantiality that 12 has? — Mp202020

12 is the lowest abundant number. An abundant number, A, is one whose divisors (including 1 but excluding A itself) add up to more than A. Factors of 12 are 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 =16

Here is an article that might be of interest:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mysterious-math-of-perfect-numbers-20210315/

Anything that is base-10 can always be divided into halves (1/2) however it can never be divided into thirds evenly. Base-12 always can be divided into halves, quarters, and thirds. — Mp202020

Hmm. It's quite tricky to talk about, and with this way of expression you are misleading yourself a bit. First off, there is nothing you can do in base 12, that you cannot do in base ten, and vice versa. The amounts don't change, only the notation. Either a number can be divided by 3 without remainder, or it cannot, and the notation makes no difference to that.

Let's construct a base 12 notation using the familiar digits 0-9 and use 'a' and 'b' to represent the two extra fingers. Then our three times table will ru like this in the number line:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1a 1b 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ...

You can see that in base twelve, any number ending with a 3, 6, 9, or 0 is divisible by 3. (This is confusing us who are used to base ten, because "10" in this notation represents "a dozen" and "26" represents "thirty" , or better, "twodoz-six" and so on.)

Extending very briefly to fractions and "dozimals", 1/3 would become "0.4" - no longer a recurring endless expression. But 1/5 on the other hand would become recurring "0.2497..."

And at that point, my old brain protests and refuses to go further, except to mention that the ancient Egyptians used a base of sixty, and that is where we get our measures of time and angles from. And don't expect any calculations from me in base sixty.

What you don't care about the russian lives it would safe? — Echarmion

Then don't vote for Trump?

You have so many; I'm jealous.

To start, if determinism is true, it makes no difference what we believe as what we believe is preordained. — I like sushi

Surely this is not true. If determinism is true then what we believe is preordained along with what we decide and what we do, but all these things still make a difference in the sense that they are determining causes of what happens. My belief that you have gone wrong here determines my act of writing this particular response. If I happened to believe you were right, I would not write this.

When I do my accounts, the result is predetermined on any view of determinism v freedom, because all the transactions have already happened. Nevertheless, I still have to do the sums, and doing or not doing the sums is necessary and makes a difference. In the same way, I have to actually tell the waiter the predetermined order that I will make from the predetermined menu that he has to show me, because that is how these things get determined, by my choosing act, that has to be primed with the menu information.

What is true is that determinism makes no difference to the decision making process that one is constantly going through, as that process is the determining of our actions; unless one falls into fatalism, which is false. "Waiter, don't bother me with the menu, bring me whatever my predetermined choice will be." The waiter cannot oblige.

Notice that the resignation letter isn’t on official Whitehouse letterhead, — NOS4A2

I believe he did not resign. I believe he dropped out of the running for nomination for reelection. A party matter, not an official presidential matter.

Singer's point seems obviously correct, but then, Western culture is entirely predicated on production and consumption of material goods. — Wayfarer

It is obvious indeed, and it does not involve making a virtue of poverty or dependence as some have suggested. But it makes the individual responsible for rebalancing an economic system built on exploitation and radical injustice. This rebalancing needs to be done through the monetary system itself; demonising those who are hypnotised by the ideology of greed that has dominated the West for centuries produces much resistance.

We live, in the West, in an architecture of isolation, of private consumption and production, and our connectedness and interdependence is hidden from us. One's status is defined by how much one extracts from this system, not by how much one contributes to it (though the pretence is that these are the same). Singer has the right criticism but it is directed at the individual when it needs to be directed at the way of life that is imposed on the individual, of being morally responsible for social inequalities that they are entirely isolated from. We are pawns in a rigged game we did not invent and have no choice about playing.

But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
’Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game — Bob Dylan

It isn't clear to me, at this point, what a "balance" between our species and "nature" would look like. — BC

It's not all that hard to understand the principle of the thing. If herbivores have no control on their population, then they will breed until their numbers exceed the ability of the grassland to sustain them. Then they are in overshoot. They eat the grass down to the bare earth and then starve. Then the population crashes and eventually the grassland recovers, or else some other vegetation is established that supports a new population of consumers. I can hear the buffalo on their philosophy forms saying " Well I like grass, what you want me to eat?" as the desert encroaches.

One of the things that happened with the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone is that certain areas around the rivers became more dangerous because the view is limited and wolves can get close. So these areas were less grazed and the vegetation became more diverse allowing another habitat and expansion of other species. [More diversity equates to more resilience of the ecosystem.]

Imagine that human intelligence could replace the predator, such that we could agree to keep, say, half the land, and half the ocean free from human exploitation. That would be a smart move for a dominant species that knew it needed to have a sustainable relationship to its environment. If only we were a bit more smart!

All of nature hunts, kills, consumes, devours; vines strangle, weeds crowd out and take over, each animals draws oxygen from the air leaving waste in its path. — Fire Ologist

Just so, and well farmed animals will suffer less stress, be better fed, and protected from disease and parasites than their wild cousins. Even the most organic and vegan farmer has to control their plot and slaughter the pests that will seek to exploit her industry - slugs, caterpillars, aphids, wire-worms, etc. Suffering is part of life, as is consumption of other life. Not to mention the starving rabbits and feral goats that gather along the fence-line looking longingly at the lush vegetation they are being deprived of.

Like, , I don't eat meat because I don't like killing it, but do eat eggs and cheese. And I feed my vegetables with sheep and goat droppings and dead seaweed. Real experience of the natural world encourages a more realistic attitude to life; the problem with humans is not their cruelty but their proliferation.

We are in overshoot. This is a natural phenomenon that can happen to any species when it becomes out of balance with its environment. Dutch Elm disease, for instance, rampaged through Europe some years ago and killed off most of the elm trees. And now it is not rampaging much any more because it has killed off most of the elm trees that it used to live on. Humans are likewise destroying the ecosystem that they depend on, and the population is about to crash. Unfortunately, that crash is worldwide and will take many many species and whole eco-systems with it. And the human suffering along with it is already growing and will be huge.

Don't measure your success by my presence; I am a notorious shoveler of shit.

If the King is in check then the other player can swipe away the peices, — Moliere

That might be (but actually isn't) an interesting game, but it is no longer chess. Allegedly, rugby was invented when some idiot was supposedly playing football and picked the ball up and ran with it. A few other things had to change before it became a game worth playing.

There is a card game called "52 card pick up", in which the dealer throws all the cards up in the air, and leaves their opponent to pick them up. It's faintly amusing. Once.

And yet it lives, five years on. — Banno

As does 52 card pick up. But if you want to do something interesting in mathematics, or the philosophy of mathematics, this is not the way to go about it.

It's the 'many worlds' interpretation of mathematics.

Always "and", and never "or", but also "or"... Etc.

Banno's thesis is that maths is invented, not discovered, just as games like chess are. Well then it is very easy to invent some rules for a game or some rules for a mathematics, and there are lots of them. But most are dull or unplayable.
So the thread itself is badly set up as a game that doesn't have much interest or significance, because posters can, and nearly always do, take the nuclear option and pretend they have "won". A better win might be if we could come up with a new form that was consistent and incomplete, but not isomorphic with arithmetic or something like that. I don't have a better set up that would encourage that, unfortunately.

Interested puzzlers are recommended to search out the books of Raymond Smullyan.

Every contradiction shall be resolved both ways.

Nominalism to me is the claim that language is made up by folks for their convenience, and the rules are likewise made up for convenience. It is convenient to distinguish tables from chairs so that one can tell the children not to sit on the table or they won't get any dinner.

Contrariwise, if everyone sat on tables, they would be chairs.

If implications were horses, then logicians would ride.
If implications were coaches, then logicians would still ride.

Let A = "Unenlightened's testimony is unreliable"
Let B = "Unenlightened tells the truth"
not B ="Unenlightened does not tell the truth"

Hush, children!

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. — Wittgenstein

I see a re-accession to the European Union on the horizon. — javi2541997

Now that is funny. The UK population would vote for it of course with the benefit of hindsight, but the EU, perhaps, would not be so keen to welcome home the prodigal Isles, and break out the fatted calf again.

Most people are amenable. If you say, "Excuse me." they will get out of your way; if the traffic light shows red, they will stop; if people around them are upset about fox-hunting, they will stop fox-hunting. They need no leader to conduct their lives beyond custom and decency.

We only need a leader if we are going somewhere new. The future is always somewhat new, and mainly the same, so the leader is mostly unimportant, and occasionally vital. Occasionally, circumstance requires a great change in society to be made rapidly (climate change comes to mind for some reason). When we as a society come to recognise this need, we turn to face it and find that someone is already there out in front making the change. A leader has miraculously appeared.

Such a leader is not to be confused with those power seekers who only follow the crowd, but try to push their way to the front. Following such we will go nowhere pleasant.

Although, it is not in the same context, be careful with those small parties. We have independent parties in our Congress, and they persuade the main party (PSOE, that is the Labour Party), but just for personal benefits, forgetting the common and national goals. — javi2541997

Yes, it is not particularly good news, but a sign of the fragmentation of society. It would be nice if one could campaign for Palestine recognition, or the environment or immigration control or whatever without having to form a party but have influence on the existing parties. There is no principle any more, only "interests" and "opinion"; for want of moral consensus we are prey to ideologues.

It cannot be stable to have a minority of 34% of a turnout of 60% which I think comes out to a government with just 20% of the electorate supporting, and some of that a reluctant "they can't be worse than the last lot" support. With a little help from a hostile and scandal-hungry press, that support can vanish almost overnight.

I think my first reaction to the result is not to emphasise the victory of the labour party, but more the quite astonishing rise of the small parties. If you are not familiar with the electoral system of the UK, we have a 'first past the post system', and this massively favours there being 2 parties. So, for example, in my local constituency, labour won the seat comfortably with just over 33% of the vote. I think the figure nationwide is about 34%. So labour have won two thirds of the seats with only one third of the votes.

Given this situation, the fact that there are over 100 third, fourth, fifth party and independents is highly significant. I hope this will persuade Labour towards some electoral reform. but I doubt they will see that it is in their interests, as one of the big two.

I voted for Biden today. No wait, wrong country, wrong thread; I voted green.

like Rome, the Pax Americana has finally explicitly devolved from republic to dictatorship — 180 Proof

It couldn't happen to a nicer country. :cry:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair



Written words unfortunately formatted for phone users, or spoken, take your pick.

We are naturally social and rape violates the nature of humans to be social? — Hanover

No, that's not what i said. Chickens are social, and their society generally consists of a dominant cock who kills or chases off other males, and a harem of hens that he pretty much rapes on a daily basis. The hens in turn have a pecking order of dominance and submission. Societies, even human societies are not necessarily "nice". Hence I distinguish social relations based on power and violence from those based on cooperation.
This is not to say that cooperation can survive without any coercion to defend it against exploitation. The subjugation of women, slavery, warfare, and rape, are all social arrangements possible to humans. To resist them we have religion, morals, government, justice systems etc.

'No sequence of words or of logical symbols, however cunningly arranged, can oblige the world to be thus and not so.'

Thus saith the unenlightened.

This is simply a sad fact of life for me, though God can famously speak, and it is so. God's words are infinitely more puissant than mine. He can speak me into existence, allegedly, but I cannot return the favour, and nor can Gödel.

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why? — Hanover

The intrinsic nature of a human is to be a social animal. Bob's experience has taught him that there is only one form of sociality which is hierarchy based dominance/submission relations imposed by coercion and violence. He does not understand voluntary cooperation and believes it to be a variant form of manipulation.

It is probably going to be impossible to explain all this to Bob in ten minutes, and you will have to deal with him in the only way he can understand, with physical restraint. Once he is not in a position to dominate and control, then you can perhaps start to model a cooperative and respectful relationship to him. I believe this is called in legal circles "reform". It may not work, because old habits die hard.

I still feel the guilt, but that doesn't mean I'm really sorry or think of myself as not-good or needing-to-be-good. — Moliere

I don't understand, unless you are describing the internal conflict?

"Guilt" becomes a category I can assign to others — Moliere

Yes, Mummy only says "be good for Mummy" when she has assigned 'badness'. In fact you have it backwards; one is told to be good, and thereby learns to assign guilt to oneself. Because if one was good, one would not need to be told. Children are helpless and dependent on people who assign them to be ...

- egocentric predators - until puberty, they will be ostracized by their peers, imprisoned or killed by law enforcement agents. You can't have a society of toddlers in adult bodies - that's a purposeless mob. — Vera Mont

So they have to internalise that identity and fight against themselves to placate those upon whom their life depends.

. Moral certainty is the death of ethical thinking. — Moliere

Tell me more...