If we give up, it guarantees nothing gets done. — Xtrix

Hey look, it’s the founding principle of my entire philosophical system.

I honestly can't tell if you all are joking or actually serious. I'm hoping for the former. — Tzeentch

I for one can separate my feelings from my rational decision-making. I enjoy hearing about Trump getting sick the way I enjoy a villain in fiction being hoisted by their own petard. It makes me smile and laugh. Those are my feelings and I didn’t choose them, though neither do I feel guilty for them.

But I don’t actually think he ought to suffer or die, because nobody ought to. If I were in a position to be caring for him medically I would do everything I could to help him recover. I do hope that his illness will somehow have a positive impact on the election and so consequentially be a good thing, but his suffering in and of itself is not a good thing even in that scenario.

This is a common confusion with regard to quantum theory. Quantum theory sees all unobserved processes as fully deterministic. It's only when we stick our finger into a quantum system and perturb it in some unknown way that probability is invoked. — Dfpolis

Wavefunctions evolve deterministically, but which classical state of that superposition we become entangled with is random from our perspectives. You only save determinism in quantum theory if you look at the superposition of all timelines of the universe: within any given timeline, inherently unpredictable things happen every time anything interacts with anything else.

It is rather that the acts we, as moral agents determine, are not determined prior to our choices. — Dfpolis

The particulars of the process by which we end up choosing how to act is what makes us morally responsible agents or not. Whether the outcome of that process is in principle predictable from the prior state of the universe or not is irrelevant.

That's a nice way of saying prison. — Mr Bee

I wasn’t thinking specifically of that, but yeah, that would do.

I don't want anyone to suffer or die.

Minimizing that is why I want Trump and those like him out of office.

If Trump getting sick gets him out of office, that's great. Otherwise, it's pointless suffering for no good.

I hope he recovers fully and lives a long comfortable life in some private capacity where he can't create problems for anyone else ever again.

It's the incompatibilist notion of "free will" that makes no sense as far as moral responsibility goes.

If free will is just not being determined, then every electron has free will. Are electrons morally responsible?

No, of course not.

It's something about the particular way that our choices are determined that makes us morally responsible for them or not.

Appetite v desire. — unenlightened

:up: :100:

Not necessarily. Say things were objectively fine -- you had all your basic needs met as satisfactorily as any human being could want them -- but for some reason (social conditioning, say) you still want more than that. Then you will suffer needlessly, as you could be completely free from suffering if only you didn't want for more than you needed.

I think it's sort of a chicken and egg effect. Suffering causes a desire for things to be different than they are, and a desire for things to be different than they are causes suffering.

This lends some truth to Buddhist methodology as a means of suffering-reduction, but also runs contrary to their hopes of ever completely eliminating all suffering by giving up all desires, because some suffering just thrusts itself upon us causing us to desire its absence, not vice versa.

Would it not be easier to find fellow philosophy students among your classmates than hoping some are on here?

As I recall from a poll I posted a while back, hardly anybody here is a current philosophy student.

“Hmph, I’m not going to vote for you, so turn more Left-wing if you want my vote” says a tiny handful of people voting Green, and somehow the Democratic party elite care enough to listen and change their strategy. — Saphsin

If it’s a tiny handful, no, but if enough people do it, of course.

The alternative for someone in a safe station is to have zero impact at all. I’ll take negligible impact over zero impact.

Voting third party is entirely about sending a message to the main two parties. Until we abolish FPTP third parties mathematically cannot be significant.

If you live in a swing state (which @Harry Hindu just means a closely contested state, where it's not a near-certainty that any particular party is going to win), you can't afford to send that message; in that situation voting third party only helps the other of the two main parties besides the one you would have preferred.

If you live in a non-swing state -- a state where one party or another is nearly certain to win -- then regardless of which of the two main parties you would prefer, the biggest impact you can have is to vote third party. Because you're not going to change who wins your state, but you will add to the numbers that the parties look at to make sure they're getting/staying ahead. If e.g. Democrats see a lot of their votes went to Greens this election, they'll get the message that they need to appeal more to Green-leaning voters. And then those voters might actually have a Democrat they would honestly prefer to vote for.

And thus on that day the Lord created aman
a
m
a
n
. And he said, Let n=d, and thus He named him adam
a
d
a
m
. — Kenosha Kid

(quotes butcher mathjax but you know what I mean)

:rofl: :clap: :up: :fire:

:up: :clap: :ok:

So (the FBI says that) Russia says that the allegations of Russian meddling in the election were all a ploy by Hillary?

I guess that settles it then!

Then there's the Kanye option that was pointed out. If I have my facts straight on him, he's kind of bipolarish and he sings songs I've never heard, but he gets props for fucking a Kardashian. Maybe I'll vote for him. What's his position on the KKK? — Hanover

Kanye/Kim Kardashian 2020?

I don't think sad and mad are bad emotions — Coben

I didn’t mean to say that they were, but that “feeling sad” and “feeling mad” are sub-types of “feeling bad”: they are both unpleasant emotions.

Part of me wants to attribute that comment as Trump flubbing his lines again and not knowing the difference between “stand back” and “stand by” (he frequently does that thing of saying the wrong word then correcting himself and acting like it didn’t happen) or not realizing the implications of what he’s saying (like his “there won’t be a transferral” comments that maybe plausibly just mean he wants to sound confident that he will win).

Another part of me thinks that plausible deniability is just too convenient.

I’m reminded of a thought I had about Boris Johnson a while back, when it seemed to me that Boris was pretending to be a Trump-like idiot as a manipulative strategy, which makes him seem smarter than Trump since he’s only pretending to be an idiot. But then I thought: I can tell Boris is pretending. If he was a better manipulator, I wouldn’t be able to tell. He would just seem like a genuine idiot... like Trump does.

Where does that picture come from? It's an interesting way of looking at it. — Benkei

I created a predecessor of it for the purpose of explaining my own psychology as I perceive it to a therapist years ago, then realized the parallels to the classical Four Temperaments and the relationship between all of that and the feelings of existential dread and mystical elation (which I called "ontophobia" and "ontophilia"), and so polished it all up for an illustration in the last chapter of my book that’s largely about that kind of stuff.

Emotions are great. People should try having them and learn there's more besides mad, happy, sad and bad. — Benkei

Sad and mad are both kinds of bad (negative affect), and people always forget the second kind of good (positive affect):

FWIW I just updated the image to hopefully make things a little more obvious for the likes of schop.

That's unfortunate. I liked his defense of socialism early on but could see the potential for things to get too heated. I'm sorry to see the latter ended up dominating his time here.

I thought he was defining the integers x and y as (equivalence classes of) ordered pairs of naturals (with the equivalence class part implied by saying that when the ordered pairs of naturals return the same value under subtraction then the “two” integers thus defined are the same integer).

Um no, just looking at that, there needs to be explanation. The opposite of non-existence isn't necessarily a roller coaster. So maybe something like inactivity/activity, or something like that. I don't know. I could easily have non-existence/constant struggle. It is not obvious what should be opposite other than non-existence/existence. That one makes more sense as an obvious symmetry. Calm/chaotic might work better. — schopenhauer1

The chart is of suffering and enjoyment. You seem to be ignoring those axes entirely and focusing entirely on the labels inside the chart. The horizontal row you’re focusing on is the row of equal mixes of enjoyment and suffering, from none of either to lots of either. That’s the underlying structure there; the labels you’re fixating on are states of being that are at those respective places on the chart of enjoyment vs suffering, they’re not labels defining the structure of the chart.

Indexicals are words like “now” and “here”. There isn’t anything ontologically special about “here” compared to other places, it’s just the place where I am. Likewise, “now” is not an ontologically special time, it’s just the time where I am.

David Lewis has proposed that “actual” is a word like that, that there’s not anything ontologically special about the actual world compared to other possible worlds, they are all ontologically the same kind of thing, equally real, and the actual world is just the one of them where we are.

I am proposing that there is nothing ontologically special about the concrete universe, that it is just the same kind of thing as any abstract object, with the only thing making it “concrete” to us being that it’s the abstract object that we are a part of.

Nonexistence is a case of zero suffering and zero enjoyment.

"Rollercoaster" is a life of severe ups and downs: lots of enjoyment but also lots of suffering.

It's a simple graph. I don't see how you don't understand it, or think there "could be anything" in those quadrants.

The axis from lower left to upper right is enjoyment. The axis from upper left to lower right is suffering. On the far left is none of either, like from nonexistence, or total numbness. The top is maximum enjoyment, no suffering. The bottom is maximum suffering, no enjoyment. Obviously, no suffering, no enjoyment is better than maximum suffering, no enjoyment. But there is better than that still: no suffering, and some enjoyment. And a whole multidimensional spectrum of combinations of suffering and enjoyment. Just focusing on the quantity of suffering reduces that entire spectrum to the lower left edge of it, and so depicts nonexistence as the best thing possible, when in the wider picture it's not.

That sounds like it's only considering the edge of the chart between "worst" and "nonexistence". Highlighting the other dimension besides that is the point of this diagram; there is better than just non-suffering.

Even in relativistic spacetime, two spatiotemporal coordinates (two events) are still clearly distinguishable as two events.

This begins to raise very thorny questions about identity over time. In an extremely literal sense, by the time I finish typing this sentence I won't be the same person as I was when I began typing it; the me at the end time is a different event than the me at the beginning time. Also, me now is physically different in many different ways than me 20 years ago, so being discernible, we can't literally be identical to each other. Diachronic (trans-temporal) identity as we usually use it in day-to-day life thus has to be a different thing than the literal logic identity we're discussing.

In other words, if I remove spatial properties from the equation, identity of indiscernibles is false — TheMadFool

So if you don’t count some properties, then two objects with all the same properties (besides the ones you’re ignoring) can’t be told apart. That’s not surprising.

The indiscernibility in question though is of a type that accounts for all properties.

If you look at a red car of a certain model and then a blue car of the same model, but both of them through black and white video screens, you won’t be able to discern them either.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :rofl: :party: :fire: :100: :sparkle:

That's the kind of post I was hoping this whole thread would be. I didn't want to complain since fdrake was producing such good informative content, but it was the combination of that content with Biblical style that I was really hoping for in this thread, and you nailed it!

I'm having trouble following you on this. I took your mention of how "the distinction between ideal and concrete vanishes" to be talking about the same thing as I've been calling abstract and concrete, so in your scenario 2, the distinction between abstract and concrete vanishes. With that distinction gone, then "There is no concrete, just the appearance of physical law arises from mathematical axioms" seems to trivially follow, if I take that use of "concrete" there to be the usual sense that is distinct from "abstract" as used by nominalists and platonists.

For an analogy, when talking about ordinary possible worlds, not necessarily mathematical-objects-as-worlds like we are, the usual modal anti-realist takes other possible worlds to be an ontologically different kind of thing than the actual world. On their account, only the actual world is real and other possible worlds are ontologically different kind of things than that actual reality. Modal realists like David Lewis, on the other hand, say there is only one kind of thing when it comes to types of worlds: possible worlds. The actual world is just one instance of that type of thing, not different or special except inasmuch as it is the one that we are in. Other possible worlds are also actual, to the people who are in them.

I'm saying basically the same thing about concrete vs abstract as Lewis says about actual vs possible. I'm not saying it's the same distinction, but the relationship between the two sides of each distinction is the same -- it's analogous:

- Lewis says the actual world is just a possible world like any other possible world, and there is no special ontological status of "actuality", just the relationship this possible world has to us, namely that we're in it. Actuality is indexical, so any possible world is actual to anyone who's in it, and merely possible to anyone else who is not.

- 'm saying, analogously, that the concrete universe is just an abstract object like any other abstract object, and there is no special ontological status of "concreteness", just the relationship this abstract object has to us, namely that we're part of it. Concreteness is indexical, so any abstract object is concrete to anyone who is part of it, and merely abstract to anyone who is not.

I drew a picture to help:

The different cars are discernible in that there are properties of them that they do not have in common: for example, one is here while another is there. If even those positional properties were made the same, then you would have truly only one car, because otherwise you would be in the strange situation of saying that right here in front of us right now at the same time are two (or more) indiscernible cars coexisting at the exact same place and time, even though of course in that situation it would to all appearances seem to be only one car.

2) All possible universes are real: In a multiverse theory, all such groups might be realised in one universe or another, in which case the distinction between ideal and concrete vanishes. — Kenosha Kid

This is essentially what I am proposing. But...

There is no concrete, just the appearance of physical law arises from mathematical axioms. — Kenosha Kid

This sounds like the same thing to me. There is nothing more to being a “real thing” than being an abstract possibility, except for “concreteness” which is just being a part of the same abstract possible structure as we are.

Usually a physicalist, asked to choose between platonism and nominalism, would choose nominalism, because platonism is obviously anti-physicalist.

OTOH I consider my kind of mathematicism to be a kind of physicalism, because it agrees that all concrete stuff is physical, inasmuch as that means empirical— the kind of stuff we can do physical sciences too — and then says that abstract stuff is the same kind of stuff as the concrete universe our physical sciences investigate, differing only in that we are not a part of those structures while we are a part of this one. To any observers in other structures, they will find them as physical as we find ours.

But why stop at mathematical universe's? Why not consider a much larger infinity of amathematical universes we cannot comprehend, of which a subset us regular and describable, of which one is ours? — Kenosha Kid

Because it’s not clear that such things are possible. See the passage from the OP:

There necessarily must be some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system or another that would be a perfect description of reality. The alternative to reality being describable by a formal language would be either that some phenomenon occurs, and we are somehow unable to even speak about it; or that we can speak about it, but only in vague poetic language using words and grammar that are not well-defined. I struggle to imagine any possible phenomenon that could cause either of those problems. In fact, it seems to me that such a phenomenon is, in principle, literally unimaginable: I cannot picture in my head some definite image of something happening, yet at the same time not be able to describe it, as rigorously as I should feel like, not even by inventing new terminology if I need to. At best, I can just kind of... not really definitely imagine anything in particular. — Pfhorrest

Well that's what Yozhura did.

"Is [being afraid of humanity] [weird]?" --> "Is it [weird] [being afraid of humanity]?"

Thought you also might like this related picture:

Does Noam Chomsky count as an analytic philosopher? Or as politically active?

Is it weird being afraid of humanity?

It's weird to use a gerund after an adjective — Professor Death

It's not weird to rephrase "Is [doing something] [adjective]?" as "Is it [adjective] [doing something]?"