Here you are confusing "something that is logically contradictory" with the concept of being logically contradictory. I am referring to a directly perceivable thing that is logically contradictory, not the notion itself.

About the concern over definitions, I'm only assuming some default stance with respect to coneceivability. I am asking answerers to assume that what I mean by 'x is conceivable' is 'x can be thought of/x is perceivable'. It is a definition to be assumed in answering the question. Whether or not one thinks this is a definition that accurately models what conceivability is or not does not matter to me. If you prefer, simply eliminate all trace of conceivability from my original question and replace it with 'x can be thought of/x is perceivable'. It may be an issue that there may be no precise consensus as to what it means to be thought of or to be perceivable, but that would be a separate issue.
You'll notice I didn't define what it means to be possible anywhere, so I am open for some room to interpretation. However, I have already explained that simply positing a definition of possibility in which it is assumed that things exist independent of our thoughts begs the question, so at least this interpretation is not permissible. Why does it beg the question? Because I defined conceivability in terms of what can be thought of. Hence it is obvious to say that if something is possible 'independent of whatever we think about it' assumes that there is a world in which there is no one around to conceive (think of) yet we can still say that things are possible (or not).

Again, I'm still waiting on your response to my point #2 from 3 posts ago (I think) in our conversation.

It doesn't matter how many people can conceive of a thing or how smart they must be. All that matters is that some mind, somewhere, sometime, and somehow can conceive of that thing.

Yep. This seems to be tripping a few people up.

ok, this simply answers my original question directly. this is sufficient to me and similar to my own thoughts.

What's wrong with saying other creatures can have conceptions or judgements of consent? Either way, it really doesn't matter if you think it's a good definition or not. I am requesting that definition be used for the sake of my question. If you want, simply don't answer the question. Alternatively, answer my original question as 'Does there exist something that is possible but cannot be thought of/perceived?'

I do appreciate the humor though :D

The issue is that Metaphysician Undercover claimed that a square circle possibly exists: Depending on how one defines 'square' and 'circle', this concept need not be impossible. In other words, it would be possible. And he claims that a square circle is not conceivable. Of course, one might rightly wonder whether or not if the definitions changed that this change could also make a square circle now be conceivable. So yeah, I am inclined to agree with you that this looks like a moot point.

OK, you are being very fair. I respect your definitions and simply therefore request that you proceed to answer my question using the following definition for conception:

x is conceivable=x can be thought of/is percievable

On this definition, I maintain that something logically contradictory is conceivable, and while I do not expect you to accept this assertion, I would request any proof if you continue to maintain that "if x is contradictory, then x cannot be thought of"

If I wanted to anger other people, there are much more efficient ways to do that than by providing reasoned responses, irrespective of whether or not these responses turn out to be persuasive.

Good explanation, but I don't see anything fundamental or forceful about that principle. How can you prove to me that I can't have a conception of something contradictory?
Personally, I can convince myself of this, since I have had such a conception before. Of course, I cannot reasonably persuade you this, but this is still irrelevant; how can you prove that no one can conceive of something contradictory?

If this isn't a troll answer, it's a very poor one.

If what possibility and conceivability turn out to be is something that indeed something that requires minds to be separate from what appears in the world, then this is a matter to be shown. It is not permissible to assert such a conclusion from defining them in the beginning. So no, I'm not asking for definitions that work under any ontological interpretation. Specifically, I don't want question begging definitions that assume an ontology in which there are facts independent of people (and hence, are not conceivable). Such as what you claimed:

"The former (at least when we're talking about metaphysical possibility) is limited by facts in the world independent of persons."

What would be acceptable example is if you claimed that
1. 'what is possible is the set of what can manifest in the world' matches our ordinary conceptions of 'possibility' / is a good candidate for a definition of 'possibility'
and
2. this understanding of possibility requires that there are facts that manifest in the world that are independent of people.


Btw, I'm still waiting for your reply to my second point from 2 posts ago

Whether it is wrong or not is not in fact my prerogative. So long as idealism is even possible, it shows that your misinterpretations of conceivability and possibility are unwarranted.

The error here is to suppose that uniqueness is an inherent property of every particular. It's not. There's nothing in 'grass-green' that says anything about uniqueness. The uniqueness-as-a-universal that you are thinking of is simply a consequent, and the uniqueness of this consequent is a further different consequent from the original consequent.

Sure, but this still doesn't answer my overall question. It is merely the consequent of one of the possible answers to my question.

1. I agree that your '1' is a legitimate possibility, with the important edit that 'hasn't been conceived' be changed to 'can't be conceived'
2. I agree that your '2a' is also a legitimate possibility, with no changes.
3. I agree that your '2b' is also a legitimate possibility, with the important edit that 'We haven't conceived of it' be changed to 'We can't conceive of it'. More importantly, I'd like you to note that 2b is the same as 2a, as it is the contrapositive of 2a. In other words, 2b is redundant.
4. Most importantly of all, I'd like you to give me some sort of justification for thinking "1 makes more sense to me."

It's not obvious at all to me that possibility is different than conceivability, and your comments on the matter are presently insufficient to show this.

1. Your definition of 'possibility' begs the question to say it is independent of persons. I see no reason to believe why the 'possibility' should be concerned with anything more than simply ways in which the world might exist. It also assumes a very objective sense of the term 'world'. But all I can assume is that the world is simply all of my perceptions. I have no evidence of anything independent of my perceptions. So it is possible to say that the ways in which the world might exist are simply which ways my perceptions are limited.

"The latter is limited by an individual's mental abilities."-Sure, but what if my mental abilities are equivalent to how the world can behave (akin to what I just said a moment ago)

So, it's certainly not obvious to me that they are both different.

2.

"Obviously one can't list something that one believes is possible but not conceivable, because by imagining it, one can conceive of it. It's simply asking someone to do something they are not capable of doing."

This misses the overall point. At best, if your conclusion here follows, all it shows is that one cannot generate a concrete counterexample. However, this does nothing to preclude the possibility of a proof of mere existence, that has no concrete referent. It also does nothing to preclude a proof by contradiction. However, at least you note later that " it could be provable that something isn't conceivable on purely logical grounds somehow,"

However, your justification for this is not nearly so inscrutable as you suggest. This is mainly because a mere claim of the person who disputes such a logical argument is insufficient to rebut that argument (because such a claim would require actual evidence in order to shift back the burden of proof; a claim alone won't rebut that argument). So we don't have to worry about potentially not knowing whether or not that particular person truly could "conceive of it". The keyword here is 'it', which betrays your error of supposing a logical argument would have to provide some concrete possibility, the 'it'.

This is an answer typical of someone who has never take a class on ZFC or basics of set theory. You are using "undecideable" in the sense of computability theory. I am using it in the traditional Godelian sense. It's quite easy to show how your statement

"If something is undecidable in one system it will also be undecidable in any other system."

is incorrect: Simply make a new system in which said statement is added as an additional axiom to this system. It is therefore (obviously) true in a very trivial manner.

Also, it's also quite clear that undecideability (in either sense of the term) is an unsuitable basis for determining conceivability, as I've already demonstated.

No, but you at least have a much better understanding of my problem now.

To say that something is (formally) undecidable in an axiomatic system is to say it is true in a certain system and false in another. This is a much different meaning from incomprehensibility, which has a much more cognitive aspect.

No, I don't think these paradoxes show anything in the world like this. For example, we have never found "the set of all sets that does not contain itself as a set" anywhere out there in the world. Or at least, I certainly haven't perceived it. But I think it certainly is possible to perceive it, just that these paradoxes themselves don't actually point out any of this stuff in the world.

Non sequitor. The truth of m-theory's definitional observation does not contradict my statement that

Q-->(P AND Q) (by definition of Q and entailment)

That is simply the combination of omnipotence and entailment. If you are omnipotent, you can be mae and female, simply because you can stop entailment.

"If you are without power, then by definition, you cannot also have all the powers."-Of course. You are saying

P-->not Q (by definition of P)

I am simply pointing out that also,

Q-->(P AND Q) (by definition of Q and entailment)

Well yes, hence my original question. I am looking for a proof or serious argument that would give me a good reason to believe that "the universe is more strange than we are even able to comprehend".

Yup, and I agree with this part of your comment. I just disagreed with the "at which point you would no longer be all powerful." part.

I can accept this quote. Just because something is unimaginable to someone now, does not mean it is unimaginable in general.

Not quite, something that is not all-powerful could still be all-powerful, because if it were all-powerful in addition to not being all-powerful, this alone guarantees that it could stop the conclusion of having the law of identity violated from obtaining that such a being did not exist. Hence, such a being is possible.

1. What is a square circle, and what is Godelian space? 2. More importantly, how can you prove that one cannot have a conception of a square circle?

But I don't need to conceive of every single property of the universe in order to have a conception of the universe. My mind can simply grasp the idea of the universe as "all of existence", and this means the universe would be conceivable.

I don't see anything wrong about being uncertain about uncertainty. Keep in mind I don't see anything necessarily wrong with something being self-refuting, either (for the reasons I described in my post). But even if one does not accept that, I don't yet see anything self-refuting about being uncertain about uncertainty.

I think you have a conception of the term 'belief' that many people do not share. I interpret it to mean 'something I accept as true', so use that meaning here.

Perhaps a more clear way of saying what I said earlier is something like this:
Prior to these experiences, I thought that it was accurate to say something does not exist (is not to be found in the world) if it is self-contradictory. I no longer believe that being self-contradictory excludes something from being found in the world.

Yeah, of course regular anticholinergic use is bad. But it is very good for certain types of experiences that cannot easily be replicated by other drugs. It is hard to find a better full blown deliriant. At any rate, I haven't used them for quite some time because I'm aware of the effects of long term use. Also, I would rather not be high for several days from a single dosage, which is a common theme with them.

I guess I'm unclear on a lot of things you find important or relevant here. For the sake of this question, all I care about is whether or not there is something that can't be thought of. Is it trivially true to you that everything can be thought of? Ok, that's great. That's sufficient to me.

For the record, I don't think it's necessarily true, much less trivial at that, that all the typewriter-monkey-brains would eventually think up anything possible. Just like even if you have the infinite set of even numbers you won't find an odd number among that infinite set. Or equivalently, just because we can mash together all the words in the world in any sort of combination doesn't mean that there is something possible out there that is unexpressable in any sort of string of words (something that analogously is not conceivable).

Physics is either inaccurate, or is just a few specific types of perceptions. I dislike it on a whole as an enterprise, because it is often used to conclude far more than the actual perceptions it is based off could conclude themselves.

A decent candidate, but many people would claim that God can conceive of Himself

Definitely not in agreement with the notion of physics determining what is possible or with the notion of self-consistency determining what exists either, but you touched on a lot of classic points. To give you a better idea of what I take conceivability to mean, I interpret 'x is conceivable' to be more or less equivalent to 'x can be thought of' (even if for reasons of practicality, no one ever actually DOES think of it)

The point though is that conceivability does not preclude the possibility of someone else or myself having a conception of it at any time prior to its scientific discovery. I easily could have conceived of it. Hence it is conceivable.

Alternatively, I would almost bet money that some science fiction writer in the past conceived of such a notion, but I am too lazy to look.

Edit: I suppose I should have just said that even the scientists that made this discovery thought of this exact sort of planet, so it was conceivable to them.

This too is my gut reaction, but I'm still curious if anyone has to say anything against this or its relevancy

What sort of answer is this? Of course a planet so hot that it rains gemstones is conceivable, I have a mental image of it right now. And I could easily have a mental image/conception of a planet so hot that is rains gemstones any time before it was every noted by scientists.

You've answered your own question. On a very basic level, remind your self that "wanted" is literally using the past tense. Did you want that thing in the past? Great, then it is wanted at any future time, including after there is no you.

However, OP clearly showed why the concept of another person is inconsistent.