I am simply saying that you are simply refusing to play ball.

That is all. — Michael

You're a philosopher, you can't say just what you've said. That's not how it works. You say all the things you might be committed to under some utterly insane interpretation, which also happens to be your own when held up to the light in the court of reason.

I don't think there's anything absurd or counterintuitive about us using the English language to describe possible (non-actual) or counterfactuals worlds. — Michael

The absurd and counterintuitive things occur because you have a contestable interpretation of how that works, just like your debate partners do!

If you're referring to C2 and C3 here, I do explain how we avoid them. The issue isn't with anything I have been saying but with the T-schema being imprecise (or misinterpreted). — Michael

I'm not. Nothing in what you've written seems relevant to the T-schema at all, you've got two different senses of interpretation, both of which could be analysed in terms of a T schema. "X" is true iff X. Your use of "true at" is making a different kind of model of the system of possible worlds the "right" kind of model for this scenario than "true in" would, and both senses of "true" could be T-schema'd.

I don't think there's anything absurd or counterintuitive about us using the English language to describe possible (non-actual) or counterfactuals worlds. — Michael

Which is what makes the above a bit tendentious. Because this discussion is bottoming out in the appropriate way to think of modelling networks of possible worlds. Which, honestly, is not the kind of thing everyday language settles at all.

You've shifted the debate terrain to a distinction between "true at" and "true in", but "true at" behaves exactly the same as your opponents' "true". If you call your opponents truth concept T_R, True at T_@ and true in T_I. Pick an element w of a world W, and call the sentence "there is w" S( w ) then the following have been stipulated to hold of existence claims:

A) S( w ) is T_R at W iff S( w ) is T_@ at W.
B) S( w ) is T_R at W iff w is in W.
C) S( w ) is T_I at W iff {w is in W & S ( w ) is in W}
D) S( w ) is T_R at W iff w is in W

T-sentences could be constructed for any sense of truth. The work they're doing is just by saying there's one sense of "true" without arguing about how the interpretation function should work with possible worlds - as if that interpretation function is innate in language. What you wrote above commits the same "appeal to intuition" which has been the unproductive engine of this entire thread.

My reading of what's gone on so far is the following clusterfuck:

A) S( w ) Is T_R at W iff S( w ) is T_@ at W
+
C) S( w ) is T_I at W iff {w is in W & S ( w ) is in W}

Gives you:
D) S( w ) is T_I at W iff {S( w ) is T_R at W & S ( w ) is in W)
which gives you:
E) S( w ) is T_I at W implies S( w ) is T_R at W
by taking one conjunct of the biconditonal then taking a conjunct of its right hand side through conditional proof.

In effect the conjunction doesn't save T_I and T_R from equivocating at W, you need an implication or another contraption. As in you somehow need T_I to only evaluate S ( w ) as true in worlds where S( w ) is and w is - a restriction on appropriate interpretations of possible worlds, rather than of their domains. Or alternatively something like {w in W implies S( w ) is T_I}, which is what it was supposed to inhibit, and its contrapositive makes existence depend upon the existence of sentences.

It could be that you pick something not bivalent for the assignment function, or make it a partial function somehow, which would mean that worlds which have w in them but not an S( w ) simply don't assign any truth value for S( w ), or assign S( w ) a third truth value "mu" in a world where w is but S( w ) is not.

You'll probably claim that it's your opponents who are equivocating T_I with T_R, your opponents will claim you're equivocating T_R with T_I, and IMO everyone's right, but no one's actually arguing about what they disagree about.

Which is this:

In effect the conjunction doesn't save T_I and T_R from equivocating at W, you need an implication or another contraption. As in you somehow need T_I to only evaluate S ( w ) as true in worlds where S( w ) is and w is - a restriction on appropriate interpretations of possible worlds, rather than of their domains. Or alternatively something like {w in W implies S( w ) is T_@}, which is what it was supposed to inhibit.

Equivocating between the two can take the form "regardless of the status of language in the world, S ( w ) is true or false based on the entities in it" - which as I understand it is what you're picking a fight with, and are interpreting your opponents as saying. Or it can take the form "regardless of the status of language in the world, w in W implies S( w ) is true", in the latter case that true is a T_R... but it implies a T_I and a T_@, and it isn't T_I if there's no S( w )!

In terms of this:

A) S( w ) is T_R at W iff S( w ) is T_@ at W.
B) S( w ) is T_R at W iff w is in W.
C) S( w ) is T_I at W iff {w is in W & S ( w ) is in W}
D) S( w ) is T_R at W iff w is in W

Your opponents are hesitant to allow S( w ) to be a domain element, which means they might doubt C. You're not going to accept B, since you don't have a T_R, you have a T_I and a T_@. Your opponents and you believe in D, but you parse D as a definition of T_@ and they parse it as the definition of T_R - and you're both right.

and so therefore nothing that exists in a world without language has the property of being either true or false. — Michael

Entities aren't true or false though? Unless they're sentences. "there is a rock" is true or false. The rock isn't true or false. This might be a pedantic point but I don't know.

I don't think that this is anything controversial (unless you agree with platonism) or substantial, and so I don't understand the resistance I'm facing. I can only assume that people are thinking I'm saying something I'm not. — Michael

It's presumably because the things you're saying appear to entail lots of absurd and counterintuitive things. Much like the idea that propositions are somehow trans-world and nevertheless language items, which you're criticising.

Mostly as @Srap Tasmaner said earlier. It's quite silly to have a discussion where everyone's appealing to uncontroversial common sense.

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.