Dawkings is honest, surmising a one in a quadrillion chance for there to be 'God'; he goes by probability,
— PoeticUniverse

He may be honest about the fact that he believes that, but it's a ludicrous claim. I can only assume he meant to mean something like, extremely unlikely. — Coben

When we say 'The existence of God is unlikely' what does that mean?

I can interpret this a reflection of the subjective state of speaker's knowledge or belief and feel some appreciation for it (Bayesian?). Compare it to a statement about a roll of a die. 'Rolling six sixes (with fair die) in a row is unlikely', is for me a statement of 'objective' or classical probability.

Feel free to educate me if both statements can be appreciated with a comparable use of the word 'probability'.

Other statements that fall into the latter category include the probability of stars with planets around them (given the surveys of our skies and evidence of extra-solar planets).

Another statement that falls into the former category would be the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

How can statements of the former be conveyed with any conviction, persuading from a rational, rather than an emotional, spiritual or moral perspective? I can believe that you believe that God is likely/unlikely, but I'm not sure why I ought to believe it as well.

Again, my confidence on these matters is low. So feel free to provide references that I can use to educate myself.

1. Prohibition: Practicing torture by United States Citizens is illegal, and is considered to be immoral and below the dignity of a person who is a free and dignified citizen of the US of A.

2. Permission: the US must show to those bastardly Arabs who it is really that calls the shots; so a select bunch of sadistical US citizens have been recruited to perpetually torture a number of Arab detainees in some island location outside the United States' own lands.

3. Prohibition: a US president made a promise to end this unconscionable sadistical practice by dignified US citizens.

4. Permission: the US president did not follow through with this promise, for some to me unknown reason. — god must be atheist

This one is more along the lines of what I've been considering, in that I posed it as a tension in the (human generated) system for and against human action.

I interpret (1) in that any action of torture by person x, a representative of the US, is illegal in its jurisdiction.

(2) then draws an exception for acts committed outside of the jurisdiction covered by non-military application of law (e.g. Guantanamo Bay). When a military officers commits an otherwise illegal offense here, it is permissible.

(3) then draws a subset via a temporal line of distinction. Acts in 2 are reflective of acts prior to T-sub-0. Acts in 3 are those after T-sub-0.

If more substance can be drawn around 4, perhaps a suit or some other situation (an imminent threat of nuclear attack where we have the guy who knows and Jack Bauer has to apply torture to get the info out of him) would work. In absence of that, it's simply a retraction of 3. Broken promises are a reflection of how the tension works in us, more than how it works in the system.

You could make it 5 by wrapping it an outer shell of actions committable by the government against lawlessness defined by a principle of permission (e.g. sovereignty).

Thanks.

[Edit: I wonder if you could make it to 7 consider the general principles of the limitation on government power]

[Edit2: On further reflection, could 4, along with 3, be posed as typical of idealism during campaigns that gives rise to pragmatism when in office, political reality, domestic realpolitik or some other common social rule of elections and politicians? 3 is never actually realized, so I may just be spitballing]

1. Outer shell: God makes everything happen.
2. Except in the case of Free Will given to man.
3. Except free will was given to man by god.
4. Except god can't create a problem he can't solve
4.1. and the free will problem can't be solved.
5. Except the free will problem can be solved by god, because he is all-powerful.
6. Except the notion of being all-powerful can be shown to be self-contradictory. — god must be atheist

My interpretation of this argument is that it deals with the question whether man ever has free will. As such, it deals in an existential question. Is there ever an act, x, committed by a person y, that can be said to be free.

We have a series of concentric circles, [expressing a universe of 'committable actions'] from outermost in, reflecting the principles at issue — JosephS

So 'a rock falls' will be in 1 but not in 2. 'A person kills a different person' falls into 2. I'm afraid it breaks down for me at that point. After 2, the form of argument regards all points in the subset covered by 2.

"Acknowledged, except that..." is reflective of the expectation that any set of "committable actions" will be cleaved by the subsequent rule, leaving some outside of rule 3 and some inside rule 3.

Let me know if I'm missing something here.

My father told me when I was young about a news item regarding a delusional man who claimed he was Superman. This man insisted he could stop trains. His attempt ended up killing him.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

Even if there aren't any philosophers who would tell this individual that he might actually be able to stop trains, couldn't a philosopher object in as much as the news account or even their own first hand account isn't enough to confirm an objective reality?

In response to Locke’s line of thinking, Immanuel Kant used the expression “Ding an sich” (the “thing-in-itself”) to designate pure objectivity. The Ding an sich is the object as it is in itself, independent of the features of any subjective perception of it. While Locke was optimistic about scientific knowledge of the true objective (primary) characteristics of things, Kant, influenced by skeptical arguments from David Hume, asserted that we can know nothing regarding the true nature of the Ding an sich, other than that it exists. Scientific knowledge, according to Kant, is systematic knowledge of the nature of things as they appear to us subjects rather than as they are in themselves.

My sense in this passage is that the dispute doesn't stop the philosophers from avoiding moving trains.

No, you aren't. My response to your pathological tendentiousness is rather simpler, it follows thus:

A and D are neither provable nor disprovable by the premises. B is disprovable. But you're labeling all three the same way. That is how misunderstandings intrude. — NKBJ

You have an issue with the expectations of logical form, not with me.

Also, look up the term precision and then compare it with accuracy.

There are a number of diagrammatic representations of how ethical values relate - supposedly. Any such, or a new version or description, would be useful. I am not finished yet!!! — RW Standing

That'd be cool to get a cite on. I'm looking for that kind of stuff.

I did mention it ("B is false based on the contrary case from P2").

You may have missed it in as much as there are many different ways of expressing the same thing in natural language. Nuance in natural language is one of the issues that logic was developed to deal with. Nuance can give rise to misinterpretation (inferring what was not implied).

Logic constrains our language, exchanging the power of expression in natural language for the logical validity of inference.
It was asked whether the propositions do or do not follow.

Nuance, in that respect, is not a good thing when communicating formally.

It allows misunderstanding to intrude.

I wonder if timeless matter could be matter which exists in all possible configurations simultaneously (in the 'eternal now'). So maybe a little like a quantum superposition. — Devans99

The cool thing about this conjecture is that we engage the possibility that discrete states are reflected as a set (a or maybe a bag, cf Java) without order. And the reason for the lack of, or even the potential for, an order is that 'the bulk' in which the states reside, exist distinct from the laws of thermodynamics which give rise to the ordering (time as we know it). Each state is reversible with respect to the next and so no glass whole/glass broken conundrum. The quantum is fundamental to the universe whereas the 4 fundamental forces (or maybe 3 + gravity) that we are familiar with exist as a result of the symmetry-breaking in the early universe.

The only aspect of what we recognize as time that exists in the universe in the absence of the Big Bang is the various states of existence that exist within the potential.

How do the field lines of potentiality cross to give rise to actuality?

Conceptually, I have no clue how that can make sense. Can it mirror the process by which matter and anti-matter pairs can spontaneously arise in a vacuum (a process I have not internalized conceptually)?

When we use the phrase "does not follow", it means it cannot be justified logically from the antecedents.

While "undetermined" is fine colloquially, we need to be careful to use rigorous patterns in language to assure that we are precise in what we are communicating.

When we use 3 valued logic (e.g. SQL), undetermined might translate accurately to null. If we limit ourselves to 2 value logic, our syllogisms may only admit of follows and does not follow, in which case undetermined gives way to does not follow.

In the near term people who don't want kids not having kids might create a strain on the social security system. Not nearly enough concern or potential for impact to me to care. I'm not going to try to persuade those who don't want kids to have kids.

In the longer term, as has happened on this planet for the last 4.5 Byrs, those life forms and groups within species that reproduce persist. Those that don't perish. It is the foundation of life.

Not 'necessarily', of course. In contemplating it, I don't even get to the point of considering it seriously. It is unnecessary to bother with. It is self-limiting.

Irrespective of its qualities of legitimacy, validity or reasonableness, anti-Natalism, held firmly, has a distinct reproductive disadvantage against the contrary position. Just as I would not argue with a Shaker on their convictions, I see no reason to try to dissuade or critically assess the position anyone who holds the anti-Natalist position. A movement born to die speaks to its relevance and how much time it bears contemplating.

I might talk with them about how they arrived at their conviction because people are interesting and an interesting life means talking to interesting people.

"matters" is transitive in as much as if it has any sense whatsoever, it requires something or some person to attach to. Matters to whom? While stars shine and planets revolve and rotate irrespective of our existence, if there is no life there is no mattering. It matters to trees if there is water because without it they die. I'm unable to ascribe mattering to the brook itself. When we talk about the mattering of a reservoir's fill level, the mattering relates to the people served, not the water or boundary that composes the reservoir.

Given this, what matters to me and the mattering of things that matter to me, is relevant as long as I live.

It's not so much as it doesn't matter whether life exists or not. It is that mattering makes sense in the presence of life. Otherwise, the concept is incoherent.

If this is accepted, constructions such as '...matters...exist or not', resolves to the coherence of the concept in the presence of life and incoherence otherwise.

For me, "We don't matter", rather than depressing, expresses the rather straight forward appreciation of the nature of mattering. It gets its 'emotional baggage' not from the mattering going away as the reason why mattering is no longer coherent.

I'm skeptical with how the principle is posed:
"If you think about it, everything we do in our lives has as ultimate purpose to bring us personal happiness. "

Take the father of 7 who recently drowned trying to save his children from a riptide. His reported last words were to 'forget me, save my kids'.

Did drowning bring him personal happiness? As he struggled to survive, did he experience some sense of transcendent joy which overrode the agony of succumbing to the water? He may not even have been aware of his children's state of safety or whether his sacrifice would lead to their rescue.

Or perhaps he was a fool for his sacrifice?

If we take the principle from a grand perspective that this man, irrespective of the agony or suffering that he experienced lived his last moment to a standard which, if he could review it outside the moment, would bring him happiness, I guess it may be considered true. Requires some mental gymnastics to get there.

Personally, I find the construction rather fatuous. Closer might be 'peace' rather than 'personal happiness'. Even peace has it problems as a righteous life involves struggle. Struggle brings stress, heartache and pain. At this point, I don't find comfort with any single principle which adequately and neatly encapsulates our purpose here.

The following statement is NOT true: No people are not dinosaurs

Translation to second-order logic:
P1: It is not the case that there exists an x, such that x is a person and x is not a dinosaur
Informally, no person you find will not also be a dinosaur
P1': Equivalently, All people are dinosaurs
Negate this.
P2: There exists an x, such that x is a person and x is not a dinosaur

C follows immediately.

A does not follow as P2 does not bind us to this. All we know is that the set of people, {P} is not a subset of the set of dinosaurs {D}. {P} and {D} could be disjoint. We don't even know if {D} has any members. The claim does not follow because we don't have support for the claim.

B is false based on the contrary case from P2. B does not follow.

D equivalent to All dinosaurs are people, does not follow as we cannot support its claim from P2. {D} maybe null, and this claim would be trivially true, but we don't have support for the claim.

A) Some dinosaurs are people (does not follow)
B) All people are dinosaurs (does not follow)
C) Some people are not dinosaurs (follows)
D) No dinosaurs are not people (does not follow)

Speaking of potential, my mind goes to the tendency of creation myths to express the concept of the 'void', that in which creation was exhibited. I'm most familiar with the biblical creation myth, but I've seen the void mentioned elsewhere in translations of other creation myths.

I found its complement, the concept of 'the bulk', a long time ago when considering the age-old conundrum of where did all this stuff come from. In searching for it, I was looking for an alternative to the void, literally nothing, from which its hard to contemplate anything originating.

It felt comfortable to consider that all potential simply exists without constraints in time or space and the universe as we know it started as an actualization of a potential found (as are all things possible) within the bulk. Feel free to correct my misconceptions if I'm off-base here.

What I found most notable at the time is why did this event (the BB) occur at a specific time? Why 13.8Byrs ago and not another time? I wonder if the fact that we have a universal clock isn't a tell as to whether this universe is a simulation. It could simply be a facet of a cosmic cycle, but it remains that the cycle found its 'zero' at one appreciable instant.

It just doesn't smell transcendent. It smells of artifice. Not God, but of a clock keeper.

You could well be correct. We are fundamentally sequentially ordered creatures of time and sequentially ordered time appears insufficient to explain the origin of things. Other possible types of existence may explain the origin of the universe but be beyond our sequentially ordered comprehension. So it is perhaps an unsolvable puzzle. I enjoy trying to solve puzzles even if they are beyond me or impossible. I personally think that we can understand and discount actual infinity on purely logical grounds. — Devans99

For me, reading this thread and contributions by you and others stoke my imagination and curiosity. Without evidence, what we have is conjecture. But conjecture, as long as it coheres, can be as aesthetic as poetry.

So it may be that time is circular or that the universe exhibits some other yet to be discovered facets that will allow us to get beyond the singularity of the BB. For me, as it was when I was a child (in as much as I'm a layman), the interest in speculation is more for what it tells us about ourselves and the spark of wonder it brings, the thought of resolving the unknown.

I ruminate that the actual is to the possible as the countably infinite is to the uncountably infinite. That when we consider travel to the outer reaches and time before the BB, when Erdos spoke of proofs from the book, when we talk about what actually matters to us, we live in the realm of the possible. The actual intrudes when we have to work to pay the rent.

I remain at the point where we have assumed the fundamental nature of the universe needs to be comprehensible to the human mind. Isn't it possible that our sensory systems and limits of abstract thinking are incapable of modeling the universe at its most fundamental level, even in a grotesquely simplistic way?

I'm not saying it is incomprehensible, only that before the claim is made that it can't be infinite you have to be able to support the claim that our concept of logic (any possible human logic) is applicable to the totality of its investigation. The best we can say is that our survey of the universe we can see (and as far back as 13.8Byrs) is amenable to human comprehension.

What says we aren't the drunk looking for his keys at the lamp post because that is where the light is?

Here's a link to a news item regarding a dataset currently under construction.
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/business-law-blog/blog/2018/05/law-and-autonomous-systems-series-paving-way-legal-artificial

The content (100k cases) and structure it promises would be a boon to my effort. I've looked for similar public datasets but haven't come across any.

Yeah, I'm still playing with what the operational analysis would look like. Depends on the size of the dataset and how it is structured. tf/idf is something I've used in the past, but I suspect that my strategy on ELT vs ETL and the ML algorithms used will have to be torn up and redrawn several times, if my past experience is any guide.

In the mind of 'fast fail', I'm trying to figure out if I need to be committed for even contemplating this.

I've never worked in the legal field. My experience is supply chain, finance and cust sat. I'm starting at ground zero, so I'm looking at trying to understand the subject matter of legal actions from a philosophical/analytical base. My hope is that understanding how actions are parsed will enlighten me on how best to appreciate the landscape of legally permitted/prohibited actions.

The is/ought is intended as a much longer-term project (steps 5 or 6, if not 105).

The immediate interest is understanding the analysis of action as it applies to law.

The way I've expressed it in my naive fashion is:
X Does A With C - X is a living human being who commits A, an Action, and C is a the set of Conditions under which A is done. If it is a fact that “Professor Plum murdered Miss Scarlet with the wrench in the conservatory”, then X is “Professor Plum”, A is “hit Miss Scarlet with the wrench” and C includes “Miss Scarlet died as the direct result of A by X” and “A occurred in the conservatory”. C could also include related actions indicative of intent or any other conditions relevant to the determination of whether the principal action is permitted/prohibited.

Rather than continuing to dwell in the confines of my ignorance, I'm looking to understand how researchers in the philosophy of law and action break this topic of analysis down.

The nice part, I would think, of this analysis is that the corpus of legal case dispositions provides concrete material to play with. I haven't yet found that public dataset but have communicated with individuals working on them.

Bringing it up to the level of general ethical principles (rather than specific to US legal principles) will only occur after the portion which analyzes actions of those tried and the justifications for legal action, extracted from a corpus of case results.