• Ontology of Time
    ↪J
    Does the question "Which is the real value of A?" make sense?
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    The bulk of part three places Quine's position in a few historical arguments involving Church, Carnap, Lewis and particularly, Barcan.

    (37) is curious. "An object, of itself and by whatever name or none, must be seen as having some of its traits necessarily and others contingently, despite the fact that the latter traits follow just as analytically from some ways of specifying the object as the former traits do from other ways of specifying it." But after Barcan, and then Kripke, we might permit an object to have necessary yet contingent traits. That gold has a certain atomic number is contingent, yet necessary. Some properties (like being H₂O for water or having 79 protons for gold) are essential to the object, despite having been discovered empirically rather than analytically derived.

    There's that words, "essential".

    If anyone is following this, they might well be interested in the section from the SEP article on Quine's misunderstanding of Barcan, and related topics. In particular, Barcan argues that Quine is mistaken to think that modal logic is committed to Aristotelian essentialism.

    And so we arrive at the Barcan Formula, ◊(∃α)A⇒(∃α)◊A.

    There's a lot here to work through.
  • Ontology of Time
    Argumentum ad youtube...
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    ↪Fire Ologist
    , What?
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    @DifferentiatingEgg, from where I sit the argument owes more to David Lewis, mentioned in one of my earlier threads.

    But you will see it through your own window.
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    Cunning reversal, they are the faithful that overcome themselves in their opposite? To inciting to higher and higher... Nietzsche would be very proud of this from YOU of all people Banno. — DifferentiatingEgg

    So much the worse for Nietzsche, then.
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    The best in the thread imo. — DifferentiatingEgg
    Unfortunately, that wasn't hard.
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    If you like. You were born with some of that irrational faith. You can't live without it. — frank

    You have to take something as granted, yes. That's a long way from what is involved in faith. One can review what one takes as granted, but to review what one takes on faith is to breech that faith.
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    ↪DifferentiatingEgg
    Or faith is the antithesis of rationality.
  • Ontology of Time
    So is living — substantivalism
    Only if you choose to view it as such.

    But if you have a choice, better not to spend your time here.

    I'm off to plant some flowers.
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    ↪DifferentiatingEgg


    SO let's check out the consequences of this view.

    Belief is holding that something is true. One can believe that something is true for all sorts of reasons, or for no reason at all. Rational folk will try to believe stuff that is true, and so will use arguments and evidence and such, and ground their beliefs.

    Faith is more that just holding that something is true. Faith requires that one believe even in the face of adversity. Greater faith is had by those who believe despite the arguments and the evidence.

    So those with the greatest faith would be the ones convinced by logical arguments that god does not exist, and yet who believe despite this.

    The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists.

    Make of this what you will.
  • Ontology of Time
    Fuck them then! — substantivalism

    Philosophy is a pointless endeavour.
  • Ontology of Time
    There is nothing called "pitch" that can move yet be self-identical. — J
    The sound changed in pitch. What changed? The sound. What was self-identical (a phrase that only a philosopher would use)? The sound, the tone, the note - it moved from low to high.

    I firmly hold out for the position that, literally, acoustically, a pitch cannot move. In what (conceptual?) space is it moving? — J
    The pitch of the note moved.

    I talk about pitches and melodies "moving" all the time; it's standard English. — J
    Yep. Let that be your guide, rather than an esoteric rant. At some point, one can only laugh and walk away.
  • Ontology of Time
    instantaneous velocity — Metaphysician Undercover
    Sounds like an irrelevant word dug up from ChatGpt. — Corvus
    :roll:
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪frank
    Wouldn't it be wonderful to hear the sounds the workers made building the classical structures of Egypt?
  • Ontology of Time
    2) A slide moves from D to E. — J

    The pitch moved from D to E.
  • Autonomous Government + Voluntary Taxation
    Since I am so displeased with democracy as it exists in the USA — Brendan Golledge

    There's your first mistake - thinking the USA is democratic...
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Wayfarer
    Yep.
  • Ontology of Time
    ...what is heard is a changing sound which is not a physical thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

    So sound is not a physical thing. I give up.
  • Ontology of Time
    ...you really are producing a series of notes that can be discretely specified, — J
    I don't see what to make of this. In your own words,
    it's still a specific, determinate pitch that could, in theory, be further subdivided. — J
    and
    ...not, as I said, by the human ear — J
    Measurements might well be discrete. The sound is not.

    The same question, in the former case, can't be answered at all. — J
    Volume or pitch move.

    ...we do hear a series of tones, we just can't recognize them. A software program can. — J
    Well, if you do not recognise them, in what sense are they discrete? As you said above, a better program with more memory could add more data points...

    That you could think this is somewhat astonishing. Did you not study calculus?
  • Ontology of Time
    That is sort of the reason I'm trying to be better about being too dissuasive about esoteric philosophies because they may be implying something that, when properly translated into my language, is not all that peculiar or useless. — substantivalism
    "May be...'. We make maximum sense of the words of others when optimise agreement. It remains that sometimes what folk believe is different to how things are. Sometimes we are wrong.

    I don't see that physics does adopt "the cinematographic view of time as 'frames of a universal movie'". Certainly classical and relativistic physics assumes continuity. Some recent theories may use discrete mathematics - Lattice Quantum Field Theory, Cellular Automata, or Loop Quantum Gravity, for example. Not central and not accepted.

    And it may be worth considering what is going on here. The physical world does not care whether we choose continuous or discrete mathematics to best describe it. It is what it is, regardless of whether we describe it one way of the other. The choice between discrete and continuous mathematics is not a choice between how things are, but about what we say about how things are.


    ↪Fire Ologist bear in mind, any series or collections of tones is only a tune when somebody recognises it as such. ‘It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure’ said Einstein. — Wayfarer
    That is, melody is a cultural, not a physical, item.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪J
    What is to count as a part and what as a whole here?

    Here's a bit of tab for a slide...
    guitar-tab-slides-technique.png

    It marks the beginning and end of the slide, the D, and the end, the E; however the slide does not consist in these two notes, but the movement between them. The tone of slide blues is very different to that of, say, a straight folk pick, and a portamento is distinct from a glissando. Notice that the move can be counted as a unit, and that it is distinct to the individual notes. We do not hear a series of distinct notes - unless the artist is incompetent.

    Is the slide or the portamento a physical entity? If not, then I am not sure what else it might be... Calling it a perception is wrong.

    Denying continuity here is mistaken.

    I'm not sure that you disagree. But I am pretty confident Meta disagrees. Corvus on past experience probably agrees and disagrees and thinks that's fine.
  • Ontology of Time
    That's why Banno's conception of "instantaneous velocity" is self-contradicting nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover
    Not Banno. Physics and mathematics.

    Meta is unable to understand basic calculus. He and Corvus should have fun together.

    Looks like equivocation to me. — Metaphysician Undercover
    Yes, Meta, I was pointing out that
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    was an equivocation.
  • Ontology of Time
    If a tone changes, up or down, it becomes a different tone. The same thing happens to colour. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Yep. Or almost. The tone moved up, or down. Which tone moved up? That one. Then it moved down. The tone of that tone changed... The first "tone" is an individual, the second an attribute. The attribute of that individual changed - perhaps in pitch, perhaps in timbre, perhaps in volume.

    It's the same tone, with a different tone.

    The colour of that wall changed - did you paint it? The colour of that wall is still the colour of that wall, even if it moves from red to green. The more things change the more they stay the same.

    :lol:
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪J
    Maybe listen to more slide?

    Why shouldn't a tone move? Why restrict movement to physical objects alone, or to changes in place. The PIE root is *meuə-, to push away; found in emotion, and momentous, and mob, and mutiny...

    And I don't see any reason to suppose that a pitch "moving up and down" is metaphorical - high roads are of more import, not altitude; is that too high handed? Is it high time I got off my high horse?

    Continuity is a pretty clear notion. Instantaneous velocity makes sense. That such things confuse some when considered in fine detail does not detract from the fact of their practicality. It's what can be done with such language that counts.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪substantivalism
    ok.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪substantivalism
    It seems you are far to clever to be understood.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪substantivalism
    ,
    ↪substantivalism



    So... you have a personal preference for a complete answer that is wrong over an incomplete answer that is right?

    Why should I care.
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    Good to see the local Christians all getting on so well.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪substantivalism
    I've no idea what that post says.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪schopenhauer1
    OK.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    For Kripke, I would think there needs to be a mechanism for which the same word is necessarily that referent in all possible worlds. — schopenhauer1
    The mechanism is the stipulation.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    ↪schopenhauer1
    I'm not seeing this as a problem for Quine, or for Kripke. It could as well be settled by saying "Ok, We'll call this one "Fred", and that one "Harry". Nothing to do with modality.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    I guess what I mean then is how is it that the stipulation is constrained to "Sam" and not something else? — schopenhauer1

    Well, "In some possible world, what if Sam were not X?" is a question about Sam...

    Keep in mind that the casual theory of reference was a quick explanation for a possible alternative tot he descriptive theory of reference, and never filled out by Kripke.

    I don't see a problem here. "Sam" refers to Sam, "Washington" to Washington, that's just what we do with those words. If there is a problem as to which Sam or which Washington is being named, that may be sorted to our mutual satisfaction by having a chat.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    However, the convention doesn't convey where the rigid designation comes about. — schopenhauer1

    Sorry, lets' try to be clear here - the rigid designation comes about as a result of the stipulation. That the name refers to the object might well be the result of a baptism and causal chain, but that plays no part in the name being treated as a rigid designator.

    So you can say Sam := X; then ask "In some possible world, what if Sam were not X?" And still be referring to Sam.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    "What" is causing this rigidity of the designator? And thus I brought up what I think is integral to Kripke- the causal theory of reference. Thus the foundation seems to me, to be causality that is the root of this rigidity. — schopenhauer1

    Ok, so if the causal chain becomes unnecessary, what makes it still a rigid designator? — schopenhauer1

    Rigid designators are not discovered, they are stipulated. When one asks what the world might be like if Thatcher had lost her first election, one is stipulating a world in which, if anything, Thatcher exists in order to lose the election. The stipulation is what makes it a rigid designation.

    This is choosing amongst a set of grammars - semantics - that we might make use of. In other approaches, such as David Lewis' proposal, there is no rigid designation. Using rigid designation keeps stuff consistent and fairly intuitive. That's not to say that it doesn't have a few issues, but very few in comaprison to other approaches.
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    Yet watering your beans seems to be a necessary prerequisite for their growing in reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Yes - accessibility again. Beans are such that if we would be successful bean famers we ought consider only those possible worlds in which beans need water. This is an issue of practicality rather than ontology. Think of physical necessity as pruning the tree of logically possible worlds...
  • Ontology of Time
    Technically, those are mathematical definitions which are not the same thing as the 'ontological' connecting tissue of the universe they refer to. — substantivalism

    That there is an "ontological connective tissue" to be referred to remains undecided. What we have is an accurate description of what happens. What more could you want?
  • Quine: Reference and Modality
    What makes it rigidly designated? In every possible world Venus is X. But what is X? That "essentialness" of Venus? It is the causal conditions for which the term "Venus" is picked out amongst other things in the world. — schopenhauer1
    "Venus" rigidly designates Venus becasue we choose it to work in that way; nothing more. We are using the word "Venus" to mean that exact same thing in every possible world in which Venus exists. There may be a causal chain leading to a baptism in the actual world, but there need not be any such causal chain in every world in which Venus exists. Once it's "picked out", it is designated rigidly. I'm not sure if this is what you are saying, of if it disagrees with what you are saying. So Theseus' ship may change completely, and yet it continues to make sense to refer to it as the Ship of Theseus, using that name as a rigid designator.

    ↪J
    is correct. I should have avoided the rock/window example, as it has lead to folk confusing physical and logical necessity. Quine is concerned here with logical necessity.
    The question then is if we might want some notion of physical necessity (i.e., related to changing, mobile being) as an explanatory notion. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Not so much. Causation is a whole other topic.
    You could consider "George Washington was the first President of the United States." Is it possible for this to become false? If not, then it seems it is in some sense necessary, although it also seems to be something that was contingent in the past. A way this might be explained is to say that it is not possible for any potency to have both come into act and not come into act. So if Washington was the first president (and he was) this is necessary de dicto (although not de re, since president is not predicated of Washington per se). — Count Timothy von Icarus
    This mixes a few different notions of necessity. First, it is not a necessary fact that George Washington was your first president (Assuming you are 'Mercan?). We can stipulate a possible worlds in which he just sold apples. But you add "become", and here we can use accessibility. We can stipulate that from any world in which Washington became your first president, only those worlds in which he was the first president are accessible - we stipulate a rule of accessibility. If we do this then it follows that from that world, all accessible worlds have Washington as your first president - for those worlds, necessarily, Washington was your first president. Doing this puts limitations on the worlds that are under consideration - as it should. One of those is that in no world in which he was your first president, could he not be your first president. This should be obvious from considerations of consistency... And it is not true in every possible world, since that would be a different stipulation.

    All this by way of showing how possible world semantics sets out what is problematic with
    If "George Washington was the first US President" is true, and it is not possible for it to become false, it is in a sense necessary. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    It's down to accessibility.

    Nothing here so far involves essences.

    Why must physical things be the only things to be rigidly designated? — schopenhauer1
    They need not be. Anything that can be given a proper name can be rigidly designated. Kinds, such as gold or H₂O, can also be rigidly designated. But again, while causality may be the answer to how it is that a name refers to an individual, once that link is established, the causal chain becomes unnecessary. So Hesperus = Phosphorus even though the casual chains to their baptism differ.

    Well, you could follow Quine and try to get rid of proper names... — Count Timothy von Icarus
    But the problem then is that you have thrown the babe of rigid designation out with the bathwater of explaining reference.

    Sheer "dubbing" runs into the absurdities of the "very same Socrates" who is alternatively Socrates, a fish, a coffee mug, Plato, a patch on my tire, or Donald Trump, in which case we might be perplexed as to how these can ever be "the very same" individual. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    If someone were to misuse a term in this way, wouldn't that be apparent? Sure, someone could use "Socrates" to refer to some fish, but it would quickly become apparent that they were talking about something other than the philosopher. Doesn't "Deer" man whatever we choose it to? Note the collective "we".

    Indeed, but what is this internal coherence? — schopenhauer1
    Very much, yep. Essence remains unexplained, apart from the occasional hand wave to "x=x". So the best explanation we have is still from Kripke.
  • The Boom in Classical Education in the US
    Odd, that folk might think one form of education, one type of schooling, one way of learning, will work for everyone.
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