Maybe it's easier to differentiate with examples.

Gravity, rubble in the driveway, and many other things we encounter daily, we label physical.
I'm guessing things like telepathy, psychokinesis, and sorcery would be outside of physicalism.

Sorcery, magic, enchantment, witchcraft; the use of supposed supernatural powers by the agency of evil spirits called forth by spells, incantations, &c., on the part of the magician, sorcerer or witch. The word meant originally divination by means of the casting or drawing of lots, and is derived from the O. Fr. sorcerie, sorcier, a sorcerer, Med. Lat. sortiarius, one who practises divination by lots, sortes (see Magic, Divination and Witchcraft). — 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sorcery

For some reason the mere existence of "physicalities" (as exemplified) is usually not in doubt, but what exactly they are usually is.
When it comes to examples of "non-physicalities", it seems more like we define them first, and then try to figure out if they actually exist (as defined).

I don't think it's possible for any individual to fully self-comprehend, and wherever the blinds spots are, we patch with fluff.

Why not generalize the different kinds of stances/attitudes, or absence thereof, towards any proposition?
In this case the proposition would then come from theism.

• proposition is unknown
• no particular stance either way (e.g. 50/50, irrelevant, of no further interest)
• belief that proposition holds (e.g. sufficient confidence)
• disbelief in proposition (e.g. insufficient justification)

How are beliefs formed anyway?

If something can possess existence, then does that mean there can be something that possesses non-existence?
What was the something then? Something that be, would have to exist (implicitly), which is contrary to non-existence.
Predicate ontologization is bad language, existence is not a properly proper property, whereas, conversely, predicates/properties do exist, for what they are.

Formally, the proper expression is

• ∃x∈S [ φx ] (Y)

where φ is a predicate, x is a variable, and S is a set.
If the ∃ and φ symbols were interchangeable, then you might end up with strange expressions like

• ¬∃x∈S [ ∃x ], ∃x∈S [ ¬∃x ], ∃x∈S [ ∃x ], ¬∃x∈S [ ¬∃x ] (N)

I guess I side with Kant on that one, in part at least.

One thing is eternally true, that nothing is eternally true. — Samuel Lacrampe

Nifty reasoning, @Samuel Lacrampe.
Well, of course Platonism implies Platonism.
It looks like the term "eternal" is hitching a ride with propositional consistency here, though.
The most ontological import you can derive, is that anything that exists is self-identical, or so it seems to me anyway.
Does (abstract propositional) consistency itself exist apart from all else, is it a constraint on our thinking, or something else...?

@Samuel Lacrampe, doesn't that make the kalam/cosmological argument into an argument for Platonism instead, sort of...?

It's commonly said that Platonics are inert:

• an object is abstract (if and) only if it is causally inefficacious

Suppose x is (defined as) atemporal, "outside of time". Then there can be no time at which x exists. And x cannot change, or be subject to change, but would be inert. Interaction with x could not occur.

If we suppose otherwise for a moment, then there's the question of sufficient reason (of which Craig's 1^st premise seems a special case). Is there a sufficient reason then, that the universe is exactly 14 billion years old, and not some other age, any other age...?

It's all rather odd.

There's also a bit of oddness when speaking of time in tensed language, or at least that's how it seems to me. I guess we might suppose that we can speak of time (itself), where we implicitly mean (all of) time untensed. This suggests a block-universe, something like that. Regardless, you'd derive that "time had a cause of its existence", thus having "causation" be atemporal (in part at least).

Can we exemplify atemporal causation, in a way that matters?

- laws of logic: if p is true, then not p is false,
- laws of mathematics: 2+2=4 — Samuel Lacrampe

I'd narrow them down in this context:

• identity, x=x, p⇔p
• additive identity, 1+0=1

Anyway, for this sort of thing to have much ontological import, I'd say more (or something else) is needed.

For one, I think the "Whatever" part needs to be delineated.
Otherwise we might just replace it with, well, whatever.
What about causation then, all causes and effects, or just some past causal chains?
The kalam/cosmological argument alleges to prove one unique 1^st cause, which hence was supposedly how it all began, including causation (in fact, all causal chains, and time too).
Therefore causation has a cause of its existence?

Anyway, going by contemporary cosmology, spacetime is an aspect of the universe.
And causation is temporal, causation is another aspect of the universe, not somehow "not of the universe" (which, again, would require it's own justification).
Did "time begin to exist" as well?
I don't think it makes much sense that "time has a cause of its existence", unless "causation" is somehow extended to mean something more, something invented for the occasion.
Phrases like "a cause of causation" and "before time" seems incoherent.



In short, before applying these premises, the applicability have to be delineated.

Well, how do we get to know about anything that isn't already part of ourselves, one way or other?
Perception is interaction.
Dreams are not (at least not with anything extra-self).
Qualia (as particular formats of experiences) are the personal part of interaction, the part on our own end.

When tautology is another expression of identity, it doesn't seem like a tautology as such.
As per Gassendi, really all that's determined (deductively), is that there's cognitive activity.
That is, while thinking you can conclude thoughts exist (with certainty).
I'm still fairly confident that I exist, though. :D

Couldn't a similar argument (to Mary's Room) be made for roughly any new phenomenological experience (qualia)?
Self-reference warning: mind comprehending mind. ⚠
I don't have Mary's color experiences, just my own, when they occur, and we agree what to call them by pointing them out.
Doesn't seem anti-physicalist as such, more like a variety of Levine's explanatory gap.

My 2 cents on this fine Sunday.

1) Empiricism. Is it true that if we have not apprehended X with our senses, then X does not exist? Look for counterexamples.
2) Experience. If we can experience an unappehended (with our senses) X, what is the ontological status of X?
3) Evidence. What is evidence? Is an experience (even if unapprehended by our senses, or communicable to others) evidence? — Mariner

1) I assume there are plenty things I've never perceived, many more than what I have perceived for sure. Novelties. I sure am not omniscient, since otherwise I'd know that I were.

2) Phenomenological. If I day/dream hallucinate fantasize feel love remember imagine, then whatever those are, they're part of me (when conscious). Referring back to (1), qualia is my personal end of perceiving something extra-self. Paraphrasing Searle, if anything significant differentiates perception⁽¹⁾ and hallucination⁽²⁾, then it must be the perceived.

3) Evidence could be anything. It's not pre-defined, it's shown.

In general, knowledge is only partially dependent on would-be knowers. While going by the traditional definition, the "justified" "belief" part is our part.

For propositions these differ: absence, indifference, belief, knowledge, certainty, ...

Supposing that to know p, you must also know that you know p, is the first step in a diverging regress. Which, incidentally, might be an argument against certainty (in most cases).

Suppose I was to claim "there was snow on the peak of Mount Everest last Wednesday local time". What, then, would it take for my statement to hold? Well, that would be existence/presence of snow up there back then, regardless of what anyone may or may not believe. And that's the "true" part of knowledge, an ontological condition.

So, we can do our part, justify our claims, and do away with errors.

Right @TimeLine, to you the bare existence of those experiences is certain, albeit perhaps not quite what they are (quiddity).
I guess that's not far off the Cartesian cogito ergo sum.

Descartes is in dangerous waters at this point, for if indeed the only claim that is indubitable here is the agent-independent claim that there is cognitive activity present, then he can be fairly associated with Averroist panpsychism, and its considerable taint. At a minimum, the argument requires a significant leap of reasoning, and for Gassendi, this is further evidence that Descartes places altogether too much faith in his criterion and the work he thinks it can do.

_{Source: Pierre Gassendi, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy} — Saul Fisher

In short, if we're to stick with error-free deductive certainty, then Descartes took one step too many by injecting "I" (self).
The deduction derives mere existence of some experiences and awareness, which gets us roughly to some radical solipsism (as if not all solipsism is radical :)), and no further.

Well, the scriptural gods have meddled plenty in human affairs.
On that account it's not like they don't interfere.
Actually, some of the interference has been quite severe.

In Defence of Post-Truth
Steve Fuller
Mar 2017

Name-drops: Aquinas, Bacon, King James I, Newton, Kant, Nietzsche, Hans Vaihinger, Popper, Frank Ramsey, Sellars, Hawking
Can't help but wonder if all Fuller's historical snippets are "post-truth", "pre-truth", not really anything in particular, or something else.
I'll just quickly classify as "roughly nonsense", "maybe entertainment", or just some words (partially strung together incoherently), like a theme, a genre, of language reduction, a kind of literature that's never about anything other than literature, sort of self-trapped. :)

, no, a black hole tends towards a spheroid when using the Schwarzschild radius.
If it's not a "perfect sphere", then it's just some other shape, that can be modeled sufficiently accurately with the Schwarzschild radius for these purposes.

Life is not a means to some other end.

Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you. — Doc Brown, Back to the Future 3

That they're consistent with GR doesn't make them a prediction of GR. We invented them so that they'd be consistent with GR, otherwise we'd need to retool our gravitational theory. — Terrapin Station

Not so.
Relativity was/is falsifiable, but has since been verified on several occasions.
It is used in GPS today.
Black holes are predictions of relativity, and has not been falsified per se.
That said, relativity's domain of applicability doesn't quite include the micro-domain of quantum mechanics, so there's not really any telling what may happen in a super-dense super-high-temperature black hole, where relativity suggests a singularity.

Tests of special relativity (Wikipedia article)
Tests of general relativity (Wikipedia article)

I was enjoying this conversation until I got to Colbert being quoted as authority, at which point I couldnt take it seriously any more. — ernestm

That seems to be how people feel about Trump these days.

I think Trump genuinely believes the things he says, some of which may not in fact be true — Thorongil

He speaks untruth he genuinely believes in. — Thorongil

Maybe, maybe not.
(Maybe Trump is just biased towards confirming whatever suits him, maybe he has high-up staff feeding him information confirming whatever suits them, ...)
What would that say about what he bases decisions on? We're not talking just deciding what to have for supper.
Either way, wouldn't you normally expect leaders in high places to be reliable, well-informed and honest?
That would be my normal expectation anyway, but doesn't seem to be the case for Trump.
Everyone makes mistakes, yet public leaders are supposed to learn from them, to lead by example, perhaps like a role model or something.

I posted the above elsewhere, and now here for your target practise and/or bananas as per Baloo.
Should perhaps have been posted in the Logic & Philosophy of Mathematics section, but the inquiry here is more ontological.

The overall impact of such pollution is hard to say [...] — Rich

Yep. Given the potential stakes, it's probably a good idea to not just dismiss it then.

I incidentally came across this recent conversation where politics and science met:

Bill Nye And Bernie Sanders Discuss Climate Change (Full) (youtube, 33m:4s)

Nye sure pleas for everyone to take the science serious.

Ignoring scientific findings is kind of like burying the head in the sand. Incredulity?
Can we afford simply claiming that climate changes aren't due to human activities (going against consensus among subject matter experts), or that we can't do anything anyway (not particularly substantiated, anti-proactive)?
It seems the potential stakes are too high, for future generations in particular (not just humans), to simply dismiss.
Besides, what bad might come of limiting everyone using the ecosphere as their own sewer?

If the politics doesn't follow up on the science, then it's kind of useless in this case.

Well, in that case, I'd answer "No".

(And most likely in other cases as well.)

GMT. — Sapientia

(y)
So, 1930 hours GMT, presumably 2017-03-03.
Unless you've tricked us by "next Friday" always being from the present here-now (indexical)?
Just making sure.

God will exist at precisely 7:30pm next Friday. — Sapientia

Hang on, what timezone is that?

Someone suggested that my original formulation may imply both real and fictional, which (in the use here) contradicts.

So, I tried this alternative:

1. define Ariel as a maximally grrreat mermaid
2. a real mermaid is grrreater than a fictional mermaid
3. therefore Ariel must be real, since otherwise 1 is contradicted

Here 2 gives a partial metric on grrreatness, where a real mermaid is independent, self-aware, sentient, alive, which a fictional mermaid is not.

Antinatalists not included; they'll just say that independent self-aware sentient alive is bad. :)

a hypothetical 100 pound weight is actually weightless because it isn't real — Wosret

2 Quixflooper would be more zanquacious if not just gonksploosh — VagabondSpectre

:D You guys crack me up. Love these posts (whether intended as funny or not).

There's no criterion for what 'maximally great grrreat' means in respect of fictitious creatures. There's no way of adjudicating what 'maximally great grrreat' might be. (Mermaid beauty contest? Who would be called on to judge?) — Wayfarer

The intent here was a metric on grrreatness that spans fictional and real.
Moreover, so that grrreatness(real) > grrreatness(fictional).

So, no such thing as a fallacy then? — TheMadFool

There is. (See @aletheist's response, or look up examples, or I could post some I suppose, once time permits.)

Whatever we/you think and echo-chambers postulate, has little bearing on the comets/asteroids.

The Internet age has created a false democracy, where people say, ‘That’s my opinion,’ as if all opinions were equal.

In age of misinformation, Denial exposes dangers of a false democracy (The Globe and Mail)
Johanna Schneller
Oct 2016

Conspiracy theories are considered to belong to false beliefs overlooking the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action. Social media fostered the production of an impressive amount of rumors, mistrust, and conspiracy-like narratives aimed at explaining (and oversimplifying) reality and its phenomena.

Trend of Narratives in the Age of Misinformation. (US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health)
Trend of Narratives in the Age of Misinformation (Public Library of Science)
Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Michela Del Vicario, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, Walter Quattrociocchi
Aug 2015

Forgot:
I'm using "fictional" and "real" as contrasts here.
And fictions also exist, they're just not real.
Sorry for any confuzzlement.

Right, it's just another ontological argument.

1 defines and names Ariel — what's meant by Ariel here — quiddity (definitions are often demanded in arguments).
2 gives a partial metric on grrreater, so that Ariel also can assert (her grrreatness) herself, independently of human fiction writers, self-aware sentient alive, perhaps even has "free will" (though a bit circular here).
3 then follows from 1 and 2 by reductio ad absurdum.

Roughly the usual format of ontological arguments.
Would proponents of Anselm also have to accept Ariel (or vice versa)?

That Ruth is stranger than Richard is itself a happy fantasy. No! Fiction wins every time, and on every measure. It is more potent, more satisfying, more congenial, more complete and more consistent. You have been deceived by fake news. And there is the proof of it. — unenlightened

Hrmph. Ariel might slap you for reducing her to animated fiction if she weren't so grrreat.

I would suggest the obvious, that "greatest" "grrreatest" here has to just be an evaluation, and can't be a quantifiable difference in affectiveness or potency, or ability, as the capabilities of a thing are implied in its very essence. — Wosret

Just pointing out the subtle difference here. :)

Existence isn't a predicate. — Wosret

OK OK, I concede. (Logicing, reification, predicate ontologization, ...)
Unless there are any defenders?

Ariel is still grrreat though. And you can meet her, too.

What's the basis for this? Is a real detective greater than Sherlock Holmes? I think not! Is existence not more so a limitation and an impediment? — unenlightened

She does exist, though, at least. (Check link in opening post.)

Venture into a seaside grotto, where you’ll find Ariel amongst some of her treasures. She has gadgets and gizmos aplenty, and she’s always happy to make new friends – especially human ones!

^{Source: Meet Ariel at Her Grotto}

Surely real is grrreater than fictional. For example, it means she can also assert her grrreatness herself, independently of human fiction writers.

_{(PS, should this have been posted elsewhere?)} :D

Challenging anti-Ariellean sentiments, pending refutation.
Goes way back, to 1078 I think, hence why I posted it in this group.
Take it with a smile. ;) Or not.

Do we ever identify or hypothesize that something exists regardless of what? — jkop

I think multiverse hypotheses categorize roughly as

• defining what something is → now let’s found out that it is (or not)

though the hypotheses may have come about from established theories.

And dark matter more like

• showing that something is → now let’s find out what it is (and/or what it is not)

At least in the sense that we already know there's something "missing" to account for.

Say, for The Black Death, the that was the malady/suffering, or what we'd call symptoms (regardless of any micro-organisms per se).
The Flagellants had their own ideas of what the malady was, much different from later medicine.
I suppose the history here is an example of

• showing that something is → now let’s find out what it is (and/or what it is not)

eventually giving means (or an understanding) of how to relieve the malady/suffering/symptoms.

But, does there really need to be a ‘versus’ between ontology and taxonomy? — TimeLine

The two are definitely related (maybe "co-dependent" or something), yet propositions sometimes fall into one and not the other.

This was a note I'd typed in elsewhere, but wanted to run it by the grumpy forum'ers (yes you) for trial-by-fire. :D
Perhaps not so much for the history of the words (e.g. Scholastic use of quiddity or whatever, though that's cool too), but for more contemporary use.

Is that versus what a valid, legit or useful vehicle for analysis of claims, statements, propositions?
If yes, then what might be good examples (excluding the Sun, aliens, round apples, and running elephants)?
Or is it all just humbug and feeble nonsense?

Deductive, Inductive and Abductive Reasoning (TIP Sheet; Butte College)

Our natural modus operandi involves lots of "unsafe" reasoning (induction, abduction).
In fact, we wouldn't get far if we insisted on "safe" reasoning (deduction) only.
Yet another reason that justification (like evidence) is important in knowledge claims.

↪Metaphysician Undercover
No; because history shows you cannot understand mathematics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1/2_%2B_1/4_%2B_1/8_%2B_1/16_%2B_⋯ — Banno

(Y) Though the proof is a bit short. :D