Cheers. And thanks for the thread - far and away the most interesting in a few weeks.

I'm thinking that in order to interpret charitably, the domain must be held constant - we presume that we share the same beliefs. I don't understand how we could have a conversation if we were each talking about a different domain.

But that might be contentious, and needs work. And it has profound implications - relativism and antirealism are waiting in the wings...

:up: — 180 Proof

I'll need more than that, if I'm to stay in the air conditioning!

I'm having a bit of difficulty in bringing out the validity of the OP. Three assumptions and a conclusion - something is usually missing, or superfluous.

I had a go at parsing the argument in to something that was valid, but I can't see it.

Anyone?

Of course it is incomplete. Gödel.

Here it's high summer. But heat instead of cold might drive folk inside. Or if not heat, smoke.

But I have far more demanding issues to contend with - Wife wants me to put gherkins in the potato salad! 'Oh, the humanity!"

Philosophical problems are more often than not, just confusions of language. But folk do not want to be show this, or genuinely can't see it.

Metaphysics without logic too. — 180 Proof

I think the OP logical, but it doesn't connect to anything. Spinning wheels.

...how can logic work if we don't know the physics to begin with — Mark Nyquist

I might have supposed that the logic is the structure given to our statements in physics. Rather than one of logic or physics having precedence over the other, there is an interplay, such that each changes along with the other.

But at the least, we try to make physics consistent, even if that implies that it must be incomplete.

And in addition, in order to do physics (amongst other things) we supose there to be something to talk about, so that there is not nothing is taken as granted.

In a sense the OP takes what is presumed and tries to render it instead as a conclusion.

The result is an odd sort of circularity.

There has been a series of threads of this sort recently.

Interesting. But

Quantifier Variance Dissolved

(i) quantifiers cannot vary their meaning extensionally by changing the domain of quantification; (ii) quantifiers cannot vary their meaning intensionally without collapsing into logical pluralism; (iii) quantifier variance is not an ontological doctrine; (iv) quantifier variance is not compatible with charitable translation and as such is internally inconsistent.

In your example, it is difficult to see how folk could come to agree that they are both nominalists in such circumstances...

That is, I think the fourth objection is the most telling.

Folk trying to do physics without the maths, again.

It never works out well.

Trouble is, folk don't want the problem to go away. They want to compound it.

Well, the page changes from left to right. But also I have had nothing in my pocket for a few days now.

That's P1 and P3 out.

:meh:

In Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory the axiom of regularity rules out a set being a member of itself.

Problems occur if you consider the elements of a set to not be themselves sets. Set theory only talks about sets. It does not, for example, talk about individuals.

The lists only list other lists...

dx/dy.

QED.

In theistic systems — baker

Part of why theistic systems are muddled.

But, I was just pointing out that it was just that: an opinion, not a fact. — Beverley

Hm...

How do you go about telling these two apart? What is fact, what is opinion?

Maybe there is some hope for this thread.

Who's opinion ought I express, if not my own?

There was a bit more than mere expression of an opinion involved. I brought both Wittgenstein and Austin in to play - mostly unrecognised; pointed out that 'nothing" is not inconceivable; corrected some misunderstandings to do with Newton and Einstein; critiqued some misconceived Platonism; explained a lost joke and apparently pissed off a Kiwi.

Not a bad result.

Is there something of substance we could discuss here? Or is it to remain puerile?

I'll go over the key point again: the OP and the bulk of responses reify a piece of grammar. Prefixing "absolute" compounds the error.

Edit: I'll add a bit of nice: behind the OP is a bit of wisdom - "nothing" only makes sense against a background of "something".

None of which changes the fact that the posts here are mostly rubbish.

For reasons given.

It's called a counter-example. If you don't understand that, I don't think I can help you, . Cheers.

:wink: Nice.

Thanks for attempting an account. I don't see it as anywhere near adequate. Indeed, it looks muddled. In the first paragraph it talks of "existence" being caused - I take that as meaning "existents", things that exist - then slips sideways to constituents - "neutrons, electrons...", but constituents are different to causes; It talks of time as a dimension but enigmatically adds "...of detail"; then it slides to causes being relations between points. Quite unclear.

But to your main point. You have a sequence, A is caused by B, B is caused by C, C is caused by D, and so on, and you supose it to be valid to ask what causes the entire sequence.

It is not clear that this is a fair question. Further, supposing it to be a fair question assumes your conclusion.

Consider a different sequence, that of mothers: A was born from B; B was born from C, C was born from D. For any person, it is legitimate to ask from whom they were born. It is not legitimate to ask that of the sequence of births - it is not a person and so does not have a mother.

Because you have left the notion of cause unclear, it is as legitimate simple to deny that the sequence has a cause as it is to demand the cause be presented.

That is more or less what @jgill and others have been pointing out: that your conclusion does not follow without a leap in your logic.

Pedagogically, what is needed is to step outside of the argument you have presented here and to consider the broader situation in which it takes place - the nature of cause and of necessity, for starters.

But I doubt that this will happen in the context of this thread.

I'll probably leave you to it.

Bye.

Fair.

OK. Turns out the rules don't need to be re-written.

So the rules need re-writing. Why is this not in the lounge?

Yep.

Anyone out there afraid to try and objectively view Fox News? — Steven P Clum

Well you, it seems, for starters.


Ever read Al Jazeera?

Well, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can make shite up, I supose.

But I prefer admitting our limits to such pretence.

What remains is that something, negation and nothing are the results from the application of grammar rather than things in the world. Not sure what the Hegel comment you refer to was.

Which is fine, but how does that apply to the argument? — Philosophim

@jgill is quite right that the topic is complex. In particular, what it is to be a cause has remained fraught throughout this thread, and the logic of necessity in use has never been made clear.

So rather than jumping directly to this argument, much background work on the nature of causation and of necessity is needed.

I expected clear logic: Either all things have a prior cause for their existence, or there is at least one thing that does not. — jgill

I gather it's intended to be something like

∀x∃yCyx ∨ ∃x¬∃yCyx

'For all x there is some y such that y caused x, or there is an x such that there is no y that caused x'.

it is valid.

...what I am wondering is why do you feel the need? — Beverley

Because I care about philosophy, and would like to see it done well.

had expressed some disillusionment with Philosophy as compared to Maths. it was simply to remind him that what is happening here is atypical of philosophy generally. It's no more exemplary than say supposing that mathematicians spend their time multiplying very big numbers.

Yes, the tone was grumpy, but most of the posts on this thread are rubbish.

Grammar is the one thing that Platonism has nothing to do with. — Gregory

But

Grammar, usually taken to consist of the rules of correct syntactic and semantic usage, becomes, in Wittgenstein’s hands, the wider—and more elusive—notion which captures the essence of language as a special rule-governed activity. — SEP

The problem wan't clear in my joke, it seems, so I'll add a bit of explanation. So "I have sand in my pocket" implies that there is a thing - the sand - in my pocket. "I have nothing in my pocket" has the same grammar. Does it imply that I have a thing - the nothing - in my pocket?

No, because the deeper grammatical structure of each is very different. "I have sand in my pocket" sets out a first-order relation between being in a pocket and sand - "There is a something such that it is sand and it is in my pocket". But "I have nothing in my pocket" has the structure "it is not the case that there is something and it is in my pocket" or "for all things, none are in my pocket". In logical terms, the former is a first order predication, the latter a negative existential quantification.

This is the sort of grammatical frippery to which I was alluding.

How is my position objectionable? — Gregory

I don't think it objectionable so much as incoherent.

All you've succeeded in doing is making the grammatical point that if there is something then there is not nothing. — Banno

Platonism is the error of reifying grammar. I have nothing in my pocket - you can have it for a reasonable remittance.

Cheers.

I feel the need to point out that the folk here are not philosophers, and that the rubbish on this thread is no more philosophy than the random unfounded speculation found elsewhere on the internet is physics or maths.

It's hard enough to track paradigms in the sciences, where they are supposedly at home. Philosophy and art are usually, and perhaps better traced in terms of traditions. Where paradigms are supposedly incommensurate, traditions trade items.

...finding the right balance between one's own needs and another person's, — Bob Ross

Isn't that the very nature of ethics? How we ought treat others?

Yep. Mere wordplay.

Concepts are actual experiences... — Ø implies everything

Think about that. So the concept seven, the concept money, the concept chalk, the concept galaxy - these are all and each, experiences?

And the concept experience - that's also an experience?

Maybe take a look at the alternatives to such an obtuse notion - see the Stanford entry. There's quite a bit to the notion of "concept" - certainly more than just "mental representations".

Doing philosophy might be a bit harder than you supose.

In making the division between mind and body, one renders the two incommensurate.

So it is disingenuous to then complain that you can't put them back together again.

It's a common misapprehension. Many folk think Gettier "broke" a central idea in philosophy, but as so often, the situation was much more complicated. :wink:

...The Gettier Problem... — Philosophim

Few folk have ever held justified true belief to be both sufficient and necessary conditions for knowledge. Not even Socrates thought it adequate, and he is the fellow who developed it - describing it as a "wind-egg". Gettier just presented examples that undergraduates could understand.

The hard part, for those who need such things, has been working out what an "essence" of knowledge might be.

Perhaps; at least it would be if we were to consider philosophy as subject to Kuhnian development. The "linguistic turn" is a post-hoc compilation of various, divergent approaches to philosophy, arguably including much of the ethics points to.

But philosophy is not a science, and not necessarily subject to the sorts of historical analysis common to the sciences. Would you happily call pointillism a paradigm? Or Shinto? Seems a stretch.

Banno would be proud. — frank

:blush:

A glimmer of clarity in the gloom...

what are concepts, apart from the words you use? If I string words together, do I thereby make a new concept? Ostracised nothingness? Absolute parricide?

Writing "absolute" in front of "nothing" only serves to obfuscate. — Banno