The human body might be more complex than a plant and a computer but its internal behaviour is still causally influenced by external stimulation. The human body is not an isolated system.

It’s not an isolated system but it is a different system. Humans don’t use photosynthesis, for example.

If you want to argue against determinism (whether compatibilist or incompatibilist) and in favour of libertarian free will, then you must reject eliminative materialism, because eliminative materialism entails that human behaviour is a deterministic response to prior physical causes, both internal and external to the body.

I still don’t know how eliminative materialism entails that human behavior is a deterministic response to prior physical causes. Further, even if you assume determinism, many of the “prior physical causes” are prior states of the brain and body, which is still the person in question except at an earlier time.

What is an example of prior physical causes external to the body? What else besides yourself causes you to listen?

The soundwaves cause transduction to happen which causes neurons to fire which causes the muscles to contract and relax which causes the ball to be kicked which causes the window to break.

The sensory receptor causes the conversion of the energy in a stimulus into an electrical signal. That is what it does. Only this thing can cause that change. From then on every cause, effect, change, or whatever is under the complete control and influence of the body, which uses a different form of energy to make these conversions, and not any outside kinetic stimulus.

As I said before, your claim that one causal chain ends at this point and that a second causal chain starts immediately after, and that there's no causal connection between the two, is both inconsistent with physics and an arbitrary delineation.

I completely reject that formulation.

It’s not inconsistent nor arbitrary because only one system in the universe is converting that energy into another, and using that energy as it does. The body uses sound waves and other aspects of the environment to extract that information. Soundwaves don’t cause us to listen, to differentiate between one sound and another, to turn our heads or cover our ears, to understand the language spoken or to disregard it entirely.

If you want to employ causal chains to explain it then the causal chain occurring in one environment is taken over, used and controlled by another system, operating its own movements and providing its own conditions, and utilizing its own energy to do so. Your efforts to paint it as a kinetic Rube Goldberg device is inconsistent with physics, biology, and is completely arbitrary.

They are false analogies. Human beings are unfathomably different than venus fly traps, sunflowers, and computers. Different physical systems means different behavior. Why can't you stick to the one under discussion?

I still don't require non-physical minds to explain any human behavior, so don't need to bite any bullets. I'm not sure what you're on about.

While it's true that the environment can influence behavior, the genesis of all behavior occurs in the one behaving. The mechanical energy of a sound wave, for instance, is converted into electrochemical energy in a process called "transduction". That behavior, that act—transduction—is an act of the human being and not the sound wave. Do you disagree?

It's not like saying that. Venus fly-traps, sunflowers and computers. See if you can stick to human beings for once instead of evading the arguments with false analogies.

All physical events are a response to prior physical events. Matter doesn't move apropos of nothing. The human body and brain are material, and behave according to the same principles as all matter. If my arm moves it's because it was caused to move by something else, often electrochemical signals from the brain, and if these electrochemical signals are sent then it's because they were caused to send by something else – and oftentimes they were caused to send by stimulation of the sense organs. That's just how biology works.

It's not clear to me what you mean by "a human being is the source of his own actions". I think you're equivocating. If you mean by this something similar to "a Venus flytrap is the source of its own actions (e.g. closing its jaws)" then it does not contradict what I am saying, because it is also correct to say that a Venus flytrap's jaws are caused to close by a fly's movements. But if you mean by this to argue that humans (unlike Venus flytraps) have something like libertarian free will then this requires either that physics as we understand it or eliminative materialism are false such that the electrochemical signals sent by my brain to my arm are not a causal response to sensory stimulation but a response to some mental "will".

What I mean is nothing else in the universe is source of a human being's actions. The electrochemical signals sent by your brain to your arm, for example, are not foreign to you. A response to foreign stimulus is still such an act, and caused by the only thing that can perform it: you.

“Ambush”? Clearly you’ve been following the corporate press like a little lapdog. To me it was a much-needed exposure. Though the crosses were not graves, like Trump assumed, they in fact represented actual victims, and the exposure highlighted an issue that until now most have ignored, or actively dismissed. The man who put them there, his family brutally murdered, is happy people are learning about it. You’re the one who is not happy about it, perhaps because you’re a monster who doesn’t care about racial violence and terrorism; that’s all.

Yes. Determinism is the inevitable consequence of eliminative materialism.

How is that the case?

I haven't done anything like that. I have simply pointed out that – if eliminative materialism is correct – the physics is clear; the wider environment causally influences human behaviour, just as it causally influences animal and plant behaviour, and so your suggestion that another person's speech cannot causally influence my actions is wrong.

You somehow seem to want something like libertarian free will whilst also denying anything like a non-physical mind. These positions are incompatible. So, once again, you need to pick your poison and abandon one of these two positions.

You’ve simply made that assertion, sure. I am not a determinist, however. Unlike you I need neither non-physical minds nor distant events to believe that a human being is the source of his own actions.

You can demonstrate it on your own by moving a part of your body, perhaps your arm. After this you should have all the evidence required to answer the question “who or what moved my arm”. If you can find anything else in the universe that did so, let me know.

Uh oh the Trump family is getting rich off of crypto? How dare they!

The Biden family hasn’t produced a goddamn thing in their lives but a bunch of shell companies and empty promises. But where were you?

And I don’t care because you’ve been crying wolf for almost 10 years now, and then everything goes on just fine. Hilarious how that works.

Right, and we can create a causal chain back to the Big Bang and say the Big Bang causally affects my behavior. I’m not interested.

Subject is a philosophical and grammatical distinction. You put words and soundwaves in the subject position and listeners in the object position. “Agent” is another one, a being with the capacity to act and influence the environment. You reserve agency for words and the environment but not for human listeners. It is these little tricks that are the misleading aspects of your arguments.

Sorry I missed it.

This seems to me like saying that if I kick a football through a window then I didn’t cause the window to break, as if I’m causally responsible only for kicking the ball and not also for what the ball does to the window after being kicked.

Your suggestion that this sequence of events is one causal chain, that this subsequent sequence of events is a second causal chain, and that there's no causal connection between the two is both incompatible with physics and a seemingly arbitrary delineation.

We ought not to treat listeners as passive objects, like a window. You have to switch the position of the subject, with him at the end of the causal chain. A more accurate analogy would be like saying that a football flying at your head can’t cause you to catch it, or kick it, or whatever.

The point is: listeners are subjects and agents too. Any and all responses of the body to outside stimulus are self-caused. You are causally responsible for transducing soundwaves into electrical signals, for example. Nothing can cause transduction but the biology. Nothing can send those signals to the brain but the biology. Nothing can cause you to understand the signals but the biology.

It appears that you treat human bodies as passive receptacles of outside stimulus, and Rube Goldberg devices when it comes to how they operate, and not active agents themselves. That's mainly what I'm objecting to.

A brain state is just the state of the brain, i.e its composition and the behaviour of its neurons. It is the way it is because of a long chain of causal events, both internal to the body and external. Our brains are not isolated systems.

I know what they are I just believe there is no such thing as a brain state. States are imaginary pictures of any given object at any given time. I understand their use in discourse but don’t see how a state of a brain factors into this discussion. The world does not have a frame rate, for one, but living brains are never disembodied. The closest thing we can come to a brain state is a brain floating in formaldehyde in a jar. So perhaps a "body state" would be more useful. That's all I'm saying.

Also of relevance is causality and the science of human behaviour. Unfortunately I don't have access to the full paper, but as a summary:

The general point is that your claim that speech can't influence behaviour is incompatible with eliminative materialism, which you seem to endorse.

So either speech can influence behaviour or eliminative materialism is false. Pick your poison.

I don't see it from your summary. Are you able to explain why one is incompatible with the other?

Are you saying I should approach the issue like Joyce?

I’m not so interested in how Joyce would approach the issue. What I am interested in is how Pierce approaches the issue. Pierce is dismissive of nominalism and treats those who agree with it as tools of the devil, men who espouse a demonic doctrine.

Still, it is not obvious why Peirce should view the question of the ontological status of laws and universals as fundamental to philosophy. Nor is it obvious what there is in so abstract a question to elicit the contempt he directs towards his nominalist adversaries. Peirce insists that a pragmatist ‘will be the most open-minded of all men’ (5.499, c. 1905), yet this does not stop him from denouncing nominalism as ‘the most ­ blinding of all systems’ (5.499, c. 1905), a ‘disgraceful habitude’ (6.175, 1906) and a ‘philistine line of thought’ (1.383, c. 1890). He declares nominalism ‘a protest against the only kind of thinking that has ever advanced human culture’ (3.509, 1897) and ‘deadly poison to any ­ living reasoning’ (NEM 3: 201, 1911). He takes it to involve ‘monstrous’ ­ doctrines (1.422, c. 1896) defended by ‘mostly superficial men’ (W2: 239, 1868) who ‘do not reason logically about anything’ (1.165, c. 1897). Nominalism, he says, is ‘of all the philosophies the most inadequate, and perhaps the most superficial, one is tempted to say the silliest possible’ (NEM 4: 295, 1905). It ‘and all its ways are devices of the Devil, if devil there be’ (SS: 118, 1909).

- Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism

Can I ask why you dedicate so much energy into arguing a point that is illogical? What is the point of this if there is no effort to find common ground?

I enjoy arguing about it. What is illogical about it?

I wonder if when Queen Victoria gifted President Hayes the Resolute Desk the anti-Hayes crowd were chirping about it. Probably. But history has proven no one really cares in the long run.

I suppose your words couldn’t move much, then. Tells me all I need.

It seems palatable to me.

But there are many positions in regards to nominalism. It’s an ancient argument. Hobbes was a “bonafide nominalist”, or Hume, or Locke for example, so I just assumed we had an idea of what nominalism is.

No such evidence was put in front of me. I’m not surprised when people evade simple arguments, especially when they have none of their own.

Principles are indeed important. But are principles mental constructs of our mind or something else? That's the metaphysical question, yet it doesn't matter to the importance of principles themselves.

Think about that you love some person, be it your parent or child or a loved one. Surely there is that subjective part of you loving somebody. Is that then different if you believe in metaphysical question in nominalism or realism? In my opinion it doesn't matter.

It does matter, in my opinion, because I know I’m not loving the concept of someone, or my own feelings, but the person. So one intuitively has its own value.

And a concept is an abstract idea, so you are going in circles. Yet people do live in more or less organized communities that we call societies. And there's many words or names for this.

I don’t begrudge anyone using general terms. We all use them. It’s when you start sacrificing those individuals for the sake of those terms, breaking a few eggs to make an omelette, for example.

Something is a human being because it looks like what?

It looks like those other human beings we've come across our whole lives. Could I be wrong? Sure, it could be an android, but that can only be discovered with further examination and experience.

How does one collocation of sense data "look like a human being?" in any definitive sense? It seems we are just attaching names to regularities in sense data, right? By what criteria do we attach such names? Supposing I'm a racist and I do not find it "useful" to attach the name "human" to Asians, why am I wrong about what a human being is? It's just an ensemble of sense data after all.

And what about any particular ensemble of sense data makes it worthy of dignity?

I don't believe in sense data and am a direct realist, so I would be attaching names to things out there, not in my head. If I were beside you I'd point to myself, or you, or anyone else nearby and say "we are human beings". You would be wrong to not attach the name "human" to Asians because we can look at any particular asian person, notice the similar features, and see that they are indeed human beings. So advanced are we at doing this that we could examine their DNA if need be.

In my opinion, the fact that one exists makes him worthy of dignity. He's particular, unique, is in possession of his own position in time and space. However, he gains or loses dignity according to his acts and how he treats others. That's how I approach it at any rate.

I rephrased it as I did because what you're saying is straightforwardly question begging. The realist claims we see humanity every time we see a man. To expect to "see" (sense) a universal as one would a particular isn't a critique of realism, it's just failing to understand it.

Fair enough, then help me understand. You're looking at a particular man, correct? What else are you seeing?

I disagree.

Politics and ethics as other moral issues are very important irrelevant of them being either our mental constructs or them being something independent of us. What we do, the actions, are important. The reasons why we do something only explain our actions, but the actions themselves are the important issue here.

Actions are important. But do you not act according to any principle?

Now I don't follow your logic at all. Society is a word and we give words / names for complex things like society.

Society is not a thing, though, complex or otherwise. It's just a name for a concept.

Nominalism and individualism aren't synonyms. And here individualism or collectivism aren't metaphysical questions.

One informs the other. Again, if one doesn't believe in groups he's not going to advocate for this or that group's interests, or at least he ought not to.

If something "looks like a human being" we should treat it with dignity because...?

No, the fact that something looks like a human being makes something a "human being". It means that everything we know about human beings is derived from the senses and experience.

"Nominalism is true because realism is certainly false." Good one.

Good one. I never said that so the quotes are a little unnecessary.

It's more like "realism is false because no one can find universal or abstract object". One of the common objections from nominalism against realism is that forms and universals and abstract objects cannot be found.

Surely if that's the threat then people's treatment of each other must have improved markedly after 1500, when nominalism became ascendent. More nominalist Protestant nations like the US must have treated minorities better, and the Soviet Union and communist China must have been particular exemplars of upright behavior. In terms of the volanturism that tends to accompany nominalism, I am aware of a society called "the Third Reich" that vastly prioritized the will, which should have resolved the problems of intellectualism in ethics. Let me just flip to my history book to confirm this...

There has never been a nominalist, or rather, individualist country. America is close, I suppose, and has advanced beyond its collectivist ways in the treatments of groups and their memberships, but it still has a long way to go.

Senate passes one of a Trump’s promises, a No Tax On Tips bill!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/senate-passes-no-tax-on-tips-bill

The stance of there existing universals and abstract entities doesn't create anything more to the issue. Metaphysics doesn't answer moral or social questions.

Sure it does. One’s metaphysics ought to inform how he approaches the other branches of philosophy, including politics and ethics. If one believes the word “society” is just a general name he’s not going to spend a serious amount of time trying to change it.

Simply that he looks like other human beings. We’ve come across enough individual human beings, including ourselves, to develop a general idea of what one is and what one is not. One thing is for certain, we are not developing these general ideas by looking at forms and essences.

The notion that one attaches and removes dignity to terms and definitions in order to dignify a human being is precisely the threat that I’m talking about. When one dehumanizes, like calling people rats for example, nothing at all changes in any individual human being outside the realist skull, but his treatment of them certainly does.

Lovecraft’s mistake was to develop stereotypes from the cognitive process sociologists call “social categorization” and to apply them to flesh-and-blood individuals he has never yet met and could know nothing about.

Kills another what exactly?

Another human being.

Interesting OP, but I don't follow this sentence at all. Peirce is not saying that figment is all that can be loved...? (Edit: So is it the idea that realists are interested in abstractions apart from particulars? That seems a strange construal.)

I’m wondering if that is the case. Why else would a nominalist outlook lead him to view it as a “dreary outlook”? Or “the most blinding of all systems”? Further, he say it as fundamental to the modern mind.

This may tell you something about your argument, then. If all and sundry are rejecting it for being both impractical, and logically weird (not a knock-down, to be sure) you might want to rethink it. Either you think crimes constituted by speech are not crimes (fraud, perjury, incitement, contract evasion and several other kinds besides) should never been curtailed by law.....

.... or you think they should.

They dodged it. You’ve dodged it. But it’s simple. One cannot control another’s motor cortex with words. What’s impractical and logically weird about that?

Thank you, that’s a good analysis.

According to Pierce, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Leibniz were all nominalist as well. Despite all these proponents I cannot see it being a dominant view, or having shaped any future, simply because regular folk or those in power appeal to more realist sentiment.

Thanks for all the writing, it was a good and interesting read.

So...you're saying fraud and defamation are perfectly fine, because the freedom of speech trumps them.

No, they’re completely immoral and unethical acts.

The “fire in a crowded theater” analogy was used by Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes to jail those who were protesting the draft of American soldiers into world war 1. The analogy was used to describe a scenario in which speech created “a clear and present danger”. He too believed speech could cause them losing the war, and any censor will use such claims as they always have (corrupting the youth, for example). At any rate, there was nothing legally binding in that analogy, never described any actual crime, and his “clear and present danger” principle was eventually overturned in the 1960’s. So if American first amendment jurisprudence is your governing principle, you’re a little out of date. Defamation is a civil wrong, or otherwise a state issue, not a federal crime. If there is a certain state standard which we ought to apply, it would be nice to hear which one.

That being said the American standard is the only standard that has any argument worth defending, and for that you hold a higher more enlightened ground than anyone else here. Thank you for that.

If the pen is mightier than the sword then let’s watch a duel, one man with a sword, one man with a pen. But as we know it’s all metaphorical. As philosophers I believe we ought to approach the actual. My only contention is that if speech is a fundamental rights, which I believe it is, it ought not be blamed for things it is incapable of doing.

Never?

You and your five sprinting friends are at the track at the starting line. Someone says, “On your marks…Get set….”

What act would follow someone yelling “Go!” at that moment? Nothing? Because acts are not the consequences of speech? Or would running and racing be the consequence of that little speech?

Have you never seen anyone “jump the gun”? If someone leaves before “go” is yelled, is that a consequence of that little speech? No. Running is the consequence of the runner, not the speech.

Oddly enough Berkeley is considered a nominalist.

For nominalism abstract terms and generalities are useful fictions, namely, “names” (hence the word nominalism). In that respect they serve a useful purpose.

But if someone kills another for some the sake of some name like “country” or “God”, then we have an instance of destroying what is boundlessly more valuable for the sake of an idea or figment. This, I fear, is the threat of realism.

I brought the issue of fraud and libel to NOS4A2 in another thread, and he never responded to those points. I'm curious in any free-speech absolutist will try and rebut anything you said.

Easily. Acts are not the consequences of speech. I’ve argued this point numerous times, to no avail.

Does it? They certainly exist as ideas.

Ideas are often considered abstract objects.

And this of course exactly not Ockham's idea (as I understand it).

Interesting topic, but could you clarify just what the - your - question is?

People sometimes lay the blame for the state of the world at the feet of some philosopher and his philosophy, as I tried to show. Though I think this is erroneous, metaphysics ought to inform one’s politics, ethics, and so on. If nominalism or realism informs the way one treats others and the world, which is the greater threat to others and the world?

I'm not sure if this makes much sense as a critique. A lot of realism is extremely person centered and sees a strong telos at work in history (the history of particulars). Valuing particulars is not really what is at stake.

Actually, I think some realists attack nominalists precisely for destroying particulars and turning them into a formless "will soup." Note that personalism and phenomenology seems to be biggest in traditional Christian philosophy, which tends to be unrelentingly realist.

Then why in your opinion would Pierce describe nominalism as “the dreary outlook upon a world in which all that can be loved, or admired, or understood is figment”, when the figments in question are universals and abstractions? What is it about the world that changes for the realist without universals and abstractions and forms?

Axios has leaked the Robert Hur audio, the interview tapes of Biden trying to explain away how he had stolen classified documents over the course of his political career. Hur went on to say that they wouldn't prosecute him because a jury would see him as "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory".

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/16/biden-hur-tape-special-counsel-audio

But the fact that one can steal classified documents and get away with it for being too stupid isn't the whole of the scandal. A battery of propagandists set out to deceive the public.

The former president’s halting responses to questions by a special counsel show him exactly as a majority of Americans believed him to be — and as Democrats repeatedly insisted he was not.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/us/politics/biden-hur-audio-interview.html

A recent prostate cancer diagnosis raises further questions. Was his clean bill of health a coverup? Why did Garland refuse to release the tape even though Congress subpoenaed it? Perhaps the Big Lie was just a smoke screen for a bigger concern: who the hell was running the country? Congress should act before Biden passes. I wager the answers would lead to treason territory and one of the greatest scandals in American history.

There appears to be some headway. Who will pooh-pooh it first?

More business in the Middle East confirmed.

-An agreement for Qatar Airways’ purchase of Boeing aircraft. Trump said the agreement is for more than 160 jets worth over $200bn.

- A range of defence agreements, including a letter of intent on defence cooperation and a letter of offer and acceptance for MQ-9B unmanned aerial vehicles.

- A joint declaration of cooperation between the two states.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/liveblog/2025/5/14/donald-trump-live-president-to-lift-syria-sanctions-heads-to-qatar-next

And I can’t wait to see the flying palace gifted to the United States from Qatar. The meltdowns and peace in the Middle East is worth it.

Meanwhile, what are Euro leaders doing?

“Joe Biden's physical deterioration was so severe in 2023 and 2024 that advisers privately discussed the possibility he'd need to use a wheelchair if he won re-election, CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson write in their new book, "Original Sin," out May 20”.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/13/biden-book-wheelchair-2024-campaign-original-sin

It’s pretty wild how Biden supporters were routinely lied to, and his health deterioration was covered up by the captured press for half of Biden’s presidency. The lies only fell apart just last June. Why did everyone believe it for so long?

Big, consequential stories last week that the anti-Trump refuse to mention. Trump brokered cease-fire in India/Pakistan. Last known American hostage in Gaza released. Trump brokered peace’s talks between Ukraine and Russia. Executive order to slash prices of prescription drugs. China trade agreement. Big trip to Middle East, championing peace and prosperity. He’s done more in a week than most presidents and leaders do in 4 years.

Stagflation, eh? Inflation hit the lowest levels in 4 years last month. Is that a consequence of Whitehouse policies?