I know. — Michael

It would just be that "this world has objects in it" isn't true when you deprive a world of of language. But if you can somehow speak "about" the world, like "at" the world, I have honestly no idea what the point of this discussion is. If we were trying to avoid speaking about worlds when they have no truthbearers why are we suddenly allowed to have an entire new modality associated with the ability to speak about worlds that have no truthbearers in them? The "true at" concept is free floating - interworldly, doesn't care about whether speakers exist in this or that world - in precisely the same manner as the one being criticised.

The conceptualist may claim that propositions can be true at worlds without being true in them, by analogy with the examples from Pollock and Buridan. A proposition like <there are no propositions> is true at certain possible worlds but true in none. — Michael

The world isn't empty without language in it though. There'll still be rocks and gold. Which will mean statements like "this is gold" evaluates to true in that world, not just at it.

A world absent propositions in such a logic would be quite different again, since propositions aren't world objects. As in, "there is gold in this world or there is not gold in this world" is a statement true even of an empty world (with an appropriate logic) since it's a tautology of that logic, but there is no gold.

Treating propositions as world objects also commits an odd kind of syntax error. An example, saying "there is gold", would mean that world has gold as an element in it. The presence of the propositional symbol "{the sentence "there is gold}" doesn't entail anything about whether gold is in that world. So in that world "there is gold" is true even though {the sentence "there is gold"} isn't a domain element.

In effect you've stipulated a flavour of logic by specifying an interpretation mechanism for worlds - every interpretation of worlds which interprets "there is gold" as true must have a domain element {the sentence "there is gold"}.

This isn't to say that the distinction you've used between truth in and truth at a world is a bad one, it's just that it behaves more like a stipulation about modality which should be defended on its own terms. How you're using it would have to defend that a world which has a set of entities T but no corresponding "there is..." sentences would have the same theorems about it as an empty world - even though gold could be an element of the first world and not in the second.

In terms of the metalogic, that makes the truth of the matter whether there is gold in the world depend upon whether there is a person there to see it. But in a vacuous sense, since there are no descriptions to be true or false.

Irrelevant, for reasons I already mentioned. There is no real need to be concerned over what happens to others if one is dead. All that stuff vanishes so why should it matter if other people hurt? — Darkneos

One is not dead when one is deciding whether one should be dead. What you just wrote frames the debate as if someone who is already dead is trying to decide if they should kill themselves. Usually someone is in the former case and not the latter.

To make a case against it you'd have to engage with why living would be preferable when it's not a requirement to be alive. — Darkneos

I suppose if you contrast a life which stops now, and a life which stops in the future, if you believed the life which stops now accumulates less net suffering (what's good - what's bad) than the life which stops later, that would be a "good reason" to end it.

Where other people come in is that there's a presumption in your posts so far that the person considering suicide's suffering is more important than the suffering of those they leave behind. It's a big gamble there, as a sudden death is the kind of thing that can ruin loved ones' lives. NB it does not matter if the person who wants to commit suicide loves them back, those who loves' wounds matter equally. Well not necessarily, but it's a good principle to believe that every person's suffering is of equal note all else held equal. Though perhaps that is obviated if our hypothetical person who wishes to die has people who love them.

Yes, I am saying it can be more moral to trap yourself in a cage of others' love than to end it. Even if your life is so worthless that it might as well not have been, for you, that does not mean others share that valuation. A person ending themselves in that instance deprives others of something they cherish: them.

Oh I know this doesn’t work because I’ve done this most of my life and it’s just as hollow and empty as the pleasure of the self you seem to place less importance on. — Darkneos

Is there a way you'd prefer people to respond to you in the thread?

@Darkneos The following is your post:

___

I didn't appreciate the last thread being closed as I asked a serious question about the worth of life and was proven right about what I said about the value of said life and the bias that we have towards it. Society won't ever really advice if people are too scared to talk about why one should persist instead of end it when there isn't any compulsion to keep going.

People there said this isn't the place for it or to seek professional help, which just highlights the problem. That this can't be talked about without suggesting something is wrong with the person, so long as people have that "sweeping it under the rug" mentality we aren't ever going to get an answer to the question. The fear of talking about life being worth living implies a fear of the answers.

It's easier to label such people sick or mentally unwell because that way we don't have to deal with the discussion. I mean...they have to be sick or something to not want to live anymore right? There can't be good reasons for it right? To me that just sounds like people are afraid of the answers and how someone can be lucid and still want it.

The answers in the last thread that I got like love don't really answer the question and I explained why with my first post. Such things only carry weight if one must live or is not able to die.

Stuff like this:

This is the first and last question that philosophy must answer - 'What's the point?' The answer is "love". If you wonder what love is, I can only tell you that it is what you lack, whenever you ask this question. Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. We are not here to be satisfied, but to become satisfactory.

Just dodges the question. Therapists can't help with the question because their assumption is that something is wrong with the person for questioning the notion of going further, which assumes the conclusion. They are biased like everyone else and don't have answers to the question. People just assume it's self evident because of survival drive but if that was the case a lot of people likely wouldn't consider it an option.

And this:

Sure, it's a good question. The average person, no matter if they "came" from wealth or poverty, sometimes wonders, if they died right now, who would miss them? Why and for what? At the end of the day every person that lives and walks was brought into their circumstance outside of their will and simply tumbled out of a womb. Why do we value one over another? Because of the perceived power they have. That's all. Your depression is an absolute lie. And I could prove it, easily. If I haven't had my eye set on much higher sights. Perhaps you should just refocus your own. Given the fact you've been given everything.

Is an utter non answer. Never mind that depression isn't a lie, but that's not what's happening here and I think that also just sweeps it under the rug to avoid a serious talk on the question. Though it does beg the question that if someone is "Given everything" and still wants to opt out then why?

I also find hind sight bias plays a big role in people saying life is worth it. Just because your life worked out doesn't mean others would and wanting them to stick around for your sake and sanity in the rightness of your choice is selfish. People have to stop being so scared to talk about death and the value of life.

So yeah, I'll restate my last argument in the previous thread I made, please don't close this one. I feel like it does a disservice to philosophy to dodge difficult questions.

__

If you feel like rewriting it as a response in this thread, do so.

(Bolds added. Moderator: I am cognizant of the prohibition against using ChatGPT to generate posts, but here the point is rhetorical and the usage openly acknowledged.) — Wayfarer

You've made two responses in a single post, the top seems to be your original work and the bottom is entirely chatGPT. I believe this is against the spirit of the prohibition while satisfying its letter.

Holy necro batman, I'm closing it.

Folks in this thread see mind as accidental to truth. They seem to think that the world is a database of Platonic truths, and when a mind comes on the scene it can begin to download those truths. — Leontiskos

I see what you mean. The world is seen as a database of propositional forms, if you'll pardon the pun. But criticising that is another thread.

That's just a matter of tense. — Michael

I'll make one more remark on the matter. Just to highlight the possibility of the debate, rather than to actually have it with you - I've no interest in that. If you assert "there are dinosaurs at t", where t is a time when there are dinosaurs... It's true. But "there are dinosaurs at t" cannot be true at t, since there were no truthbearers at t.

I don't see why that's a complication? — Michael

Because it quantifies into a context in which there are no truthbearers. In that condition no one could assert that there were dinosaurs, so "there are dinosaurs" isn't true at that point in time. Even though there were dinosaurs at that point in time... now.

Which I thought I made very clear here, but I guess not. — Michael

It's complicated by the fact that any theory of truth worth its salt should evaluate "There were rocks before the advent of humans" as true. Since there were. But the context of evaluation is somehow here and now - which allows some conditioning operation by a mind or language, and somehow back then - which means thinking about evaluation as inherently counterfactual.

24 pages on we've got people arguing over which flavour of language dependence dinosaurs had when they existed, I mean when "dinosaurs existed" was true, through the medium of the equivalence between the latter and the former which a successful theory of truth must provide.

His "modal context" workaround is apparently to say that it is not true that gold exists, but it would be true were there a mind. And there's no dinking around with the incoherent, "Gold exists but it's not true that gold exists." Such is a classical answer. — Leontiskos

Yeah. Can there be truth without a truthbearer? Seems to me a different question to whether there can be rocks on earth without humans. People treating language as a required interface between mind and world, as if they were apart from each other.

So the claim is that when all life dies out there will be gold in Boorara but no truths or falsehoods because there will be no propositions. — Michael

Question asked out of curiosity. In your view, if you imagined a hypothetical completely fictional observer of Boorara, and you imagined them as having a fully formed grasp of the English language and the cultural contexts required for its use... If they then said, "There is gold in Boorara", it would be true?

So I'm asking:
1 ) Take the world without humans.
2 ) Imagine that nevertheless one human existed.
3 ) Get that human to look at Boorara.
4 ) Imagine that human asserts "There is gold in Boorara".

The assertion in ( 4 ) would then be a true assertion, right? But there were no asserters in ( 1 ), so no assertions, so no true assertions. But that process still gives you a roundabout way of mapping a state of affairs (the gold being in Boorara) to an assertion ("There is gold in Boorara"), albeit now through modal contexts.

Not defending "mind independent" truth here. just asking.

:up:

You can leave the posts you've made so far. Almost the entire post is LLM content. Don't make more like that.

@Sam26 - please see the new rules regarding LLM use.

AI

AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban.

AI LLMs may be used to proofread pre-written posts, but if this results in you being suspected of using them to write posts, that is a risk you run. We recommend that you do not use them at all

Failure to comply will result in a warning.

But since I'm not an accepted member of that tribe (alas, being cuntless), I can only observe their artistic expression from afar. I couldn't actually interact with those gentle souls because I'd be likely be struck by the grenades their military wing would toss at me. — Hanover

I am under the impression that the modern cunt doesn't need to have a cunt, so perhaps you can still be a cunt in the future cunt.

@Hanover - I think this is a radical feminism you can get behind.

we are the modern cunt
positive anti reason
unbounded unleashed unforgiving
we see art with our cunt we make art with our cunt
we believe in jouissance madness holiness and poetry
we are the virus of the new world disorder
rupturing the symbolic from within
saboteurs of big daddy mainframe
the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix
VNS MATRIX
terminators of the moral code
mercenaries of slime
go down on the altar of abjection
probing the visceral temple we speak in tongues
infiltrating disrupting disseminating
corrupting the discourse
we are the future cunt — VNS, A Cyberfeminist Manifesto For The 21st Century

If anyone is out there who has same taste with me i will be glad to know :) — Burcu

I've seen Intermezzo recommended in three separate places I frequent now, I should really get to it.

Well, I never read something like this. I think the way he approaches solitude is unique and original. — javi2541997

Maybe in print. This was what turned me off the book though. He wrote in a narrative voice like every Norwegian man with social difficulties I'd met. This perpetual fleeing from the prickliness of the world into an unfulfilled solitude that he convinces himself he's fine with.

Something I'll remember from it though is that his schooling in the 1950s was similar to mine in the 1990s, and it's still quite similar to kids now in 2020s I think. 70 years, slow progress on not emotionally devastating people from birth.

Academic background, I presume. :cool: — Outlander

In a former life. I work with young kids that need additional support.

He has an occupational advantage from what I've gathered. :eyes: — Outlander

What advantage is this? :eyes:

That's a lot to chew on, thank you.

Aye. Which the OP implicitly stipulates as irrelevant (in its case).

At the very least I would say that is impermissible on account of societal example and norms, but I'm not looking to have that conversation. It would at least require a more nuanced thread. — Leontiskos

That's what I said, yes. — Vera Mont

"Legal != immoral != socially acceptable" looks like a whole other thread.

Okay yes. And why does that make incest impermissible when there's no chance of procreation? Say with our 60 year old sterile separated at birth story?

Why dont you build a giant paddock, and collect all the furniture of the universe inside of it. Then you can determine degrees of reality among the objects — Joshs

They were all real!

I'm afraid I don't understand. Are you saying eugenics is never immoral?

So are: Is it immoral? and Should it be illegal? — Vera Mont

Think those are separate too. There are plenty of moral things which are illegal (responsible consumption of harmless drugs), and plenty of legal things which are immoral (taking advantage of someone's kindness).

I would apply the principle that it is never immoral to abstain from copulation in view of the extreme hardship that would result on the part of the person conceived. Rare diseases and the deformities that can result from incest certainly fall under this umbrella. — Leontiskos

"Never being immoral" isn't the same thing as "being required not to". It's never immoral to eat ice cream, but you are not required not to. Separate ideas.

Would you go further to say that people who would have rare diseases and deformities are committing a moral evil if they have kids?

You can thank my students.

The prohibition on incest is a form of eugenics. — Leontiskos

Alright, which forms are eugenics are good and which are bad?

It's willful engagement in behavior that is likely to produce an unsafe condition of elevated likelihood for birth defects. — Outlander

You have to be really careful using principles like that, because as written they provide support for eugenics. IE, people who have heritable conditions having a child together is just definitionally "wilful engagement in behaviour that is likely to produce an unsafe condition of elevated likelihood for birth defects". If having a child is wrong on that basis, you've got a conclusive argument for people with genetic diseases having kids committing an evil act. Moreover, your reason doesn't touch people shagging who're both sterilised.

The irritating thing with taboo subjects like this is articulating why they're wrong without modus tollens impacting all of your other moral principles. As @Hyper noted, this is just lazy reasoning and dogpiling.

↪Leontiskos. What a strawman. Bearing any children would be better than bearing no children, or would you be in support of eugenics for the disabled? — Hyper

A better reason for claiming that incest should not be considered as permissible is that the conditions for consent to it don't make that much sense, the hypothetical scenario in the OP is not representative of the scenarios where incest occurs. It's a bit like saying that murder is permissible since there are conditions in which killing is permissible.

If hypothetically you had two sterile 60 year olds who were separated at birth, fell in love, married and shagged...what's wrong there? But simultaneously that's not what people are imagining when talking about incest.

There really is no deciding between the world being one or being many, and some of this overlaps that. I think. — Srap Tasmaner

The oneness of the many is the manyness of the one, or something like that.

If your intent is to make shit up, it's an excellent scale, imposing minimal constraint on your creativity. "Like our Heavenly Father, Everest is great ..." — Srap Tasmaner

I do really like the idea of trying to come up with a continuous graduation reality concept, which isn't an accuracy of a representation, or a way of counting things that already apply, or a way of saying how individuated an entity is. But I don't think it's possible, honestly.

I think the latter idea, parametrising individuation, is about as close as you get. But you still need a background of individuating processes for it. The origin point is an analytical posit rather than an ontological ground.

One predicate to rule them all, one scale with which to measure being — Srap Tasmaner

It isn't a very good scale. It jettisons the distinctions between all properties. It's exactly the same scale which would let you answer "What's a bloody mary made of?" with "7" and be totally accurate.

I think, in discussing why we say mortality is a property of Socrates rather than saying Socrates is an exemplar of Mortality.) — Srap Tasmaner

Exemplification's got the same kind of weirdness with existential import as the application of predicate to subject does, right? Socrates is mortal either takes a already individuated object with the name "Socrates" and predicates "is mortal" of it. Or alternatively you take the property "Mortality" as primary and somehow zip up a chunk of it into Socrates. Though such a property also does not admit of degree, surely, as beings are either mortal or they are not.

Spinoza in Ethics has a claim that the more real an entity is, the more attributes it partakes in. Which are like essential parameters of all that is.

The more reality or being a thing has, the greater the number of its attributes (Def. iv.). — Spinoza, Ethics Book 1,Prop IX

: for nothing in nature is more clear than that each and every entity must be conceived under some attribute, and that its reality or being is in proportion to the number of its attributes expressing necessity or eternity and infinity — Spinoza, Ethics Book 1, Prop X, note

The degree of reality there seems to be a bit like a volume switch between 0 and infinity, where 0 is those entities which partake in no attributes, and infinity is substance, God or nature. We're stuck on 2, thought and extension, rocks are at 1, just extension.

Another being-ish degree concept I'm familiar with is from Manuel De Landa, he conceives of individuation in a parametrised way. How diffuse or crisp are the borders between entities, how distributed is it in space or over a concept? Like a nation state with an open border vs a patrolled one, or who is granted a what type of keycard to buildings in a industrial estate respectively. Though an entity with little to no internal boundaries would still exist, like the components of a single element gas. (eg here for DeLanda using the concept).

The degree of reality concept thus seems to require a measure, an origin point, from which discrepancies are marked, and special graduations on that scale. For Spinoza this seems to be nature or God as the most real, at infinity, and entities are more real if they partake in more of God's attributes. 0 attributes being the origin point, and attribute participation counting being the measure.

The subject/predicate way of construing it doesn't seem to require a privilege regime of properties, like attributes, nor does it have an origin point by which all entities have their predications' realities measured.

To contrast the two, DeLanda's approach has degree properties that express the configuration of a given being, as does the subject-predicate approach. Whereas the Spinoza one has degree properties that just count how many attributes an entity partakes in.

Yes, I'm talking about Forms. Why not say Mortality is manifested in, among others, this little temporal object called "Socrates", but Mortality is itself more enduring, more perfect, more real than such objects? — Srap Tasmaner

I think what Srap's done as quoted is blend those two ideas together, in which a Greater Exemplification of a single Property (which properties?) makes The Exemplar more real. Spinoza had a good answer for which properties (predicates) make an entity more real, when you can say they partake in more attributes. So if X participates in attribute X1 and X2, but Y only participates in attribute Y1, Y is less real than X since it's only got one attribute. What's the answer when you've got one property and you're measuring how well something exemplifies it? How do you relate different strengths of exemplification of different properties? Is Everest more real than a dust mote on the count of Everest's largeness and mass?

Another, tangential thought about exemplification, is that if X is a maximal exemplar of P, then it will be minimal exemplar of P's antonym Q. Eg, the dust mote might be "maximally real" for smallness, and Everest might be "maximally real" for largeness, but that gives us no means to distinguish degrees of realty between entities measured on the same axis, without another theory that links properties together and tells you how their combination induces the degree of reality of the entity they apply to.


.

I am little surprised that so far no one has suggested another approach ― maybe again because it tends to be treated as a binary. That would be claims that there is a hidden reality, a deeper reality than the one we know. I suppose people don't usually say that makes this one less real, but simply illusion. Always the binary. But if there's a reality behind or beyond this one, couldn't there be another behind that? Why assume there are exactly two, rather than admit that if there's more than one, there may be any number? In which case, it seems to me more natural to assume such realities are on a spectrum. (Even scientists sometimes seem to talk this way, if not in terms of reality then in terms of "what's going on": it seems to us one thing, but it's really something else; and behind that there's something even stranger; and we don't know what's behind that, but maybe the universe is a simulation, or a calculation, or something else quite different from what we expected a hundred years ago.) — Srap Tasmaner

Doesn't that construe degrees of reality like degrees of accuracy of its representation? The scientists aren't going to think that tables are less real than the compounds that make them up. Whenever people with science backgrounds say stuff like "People can't really touch each other because our atoms can't be in the same place" they're just zooted.

But as noted at the outset, one of the characteristics of modern culture is the 'flattening' of ontology. — Wayfarer

I think you can have hierarchical organisation of predicates without being committed to reality degrees. Like everything which is red is coloured - the former is on a "lower rung", or "higher rung" on a ladder of predicates, than the latter. Much like plant is on a lower or higher rung than the mineral. Why equate the concepts?

That's certainly a perspective.

"wall" = w
"beige wall" = wall + beige

Walls have a higher degree of reality when painted beige? I suppose that just means some properties are privileged, because no one wants to believe that.

I don't understand why anyone would want to say "higher degree of reality" when they mean "has more characteristic predicates applying to it", could you spell that out for me? What makes a predicate make something it applies to more real?