Moreover, all of Wittgenstein's complaints about "philosophers using language wrong," can be waved away by simply claiming that Wittgenstein is not privy to the language game used by these philosophers. Perhaps being a metaphysician, a Thomist, etc. are all discrete "forms of life?" I — Count Timothy von Icarus

Broad agreement. Wittgenstein, much like Heidegger, ends up not being particularly radical or different from commonplace positions when you force yourself not to think using their specialised terms as a privileged vantage point upon philosophy, language and the world.

If you think Wittgenstein has "dissolved" a philosophical problem, there will be some premise that links what Wittgenstein (or their interlocutor) has said and what another philosopher has said. Sharing such a premise means that what Big W or their interlocutor is doing is much the same as what they're trying to avoid. And worse than that, the dissolution attempt will always already be part of the same game as the target problem's enabling conditions.

His arguments are sufficiently enigmatic that none of them are logically valid as stated, they rely on unarticulated but perpetually unfolding and changing concepts. Honestly he's just like Heidegger.

Is this intended to be more of a textual analysis thread or a give your own perspective thread @Count Timothy von Icarus?

Most believe it's true. — fishfry

I'm still antsy about assigning a random variable to the truth of a theorem. How do you sample from mathematical theorems? What would it even mean for a mathematical theorem to be expected to be true 9 times out of 10? How do you put a sigma algebra on mathematics itself...

Put this in the Trump thread if you want to discuss it. I'm going to close the thread.

Unless, say, we could poll a bunch of mathematicians and ask them to assign a probability to the Riemann hypothesis being true. — fishfry

Yeah no I ain't assigning random variables to generic mathematical expressions.

I've never seen probabilities assigned to mathematical facts like that. Not sure what it means. — fishfry

P(X=1|X+1=2). Where X is a random variable. That'll give you probability 1.

A=>B & A => !B

A true and B true means... The thing's false
A true and B false means... The thing's false
A false and B true means... The thing's true.
A false and B false means... The thing's true.

So no, it's not contradictory. As if A is false the statement is true, since both implications are true.

A & A=>B & A=> !B

That's, however, a contradiction.

A true and B true means... The thing's false.
A true and B false means... The thing's false.
A false and B true means... the thing's false.
A false and B false means... the thing's false.

I think where you're getting the contradiction from is the thought that stipulating A lets you derive B and !B, if you also stipulated A=>B and A=>!B. But in fact that's stipulating A and A=>B and A=>!B together.

I don't know how you relate that to truth. — fishfry

Just an aside. You probably know this stuff. But others might not. This is not a rigorous presentation.

When you talk about the probability of something, that needs to be defined as an event. Which is a particular kind of mathematical object. It does not tend to be the kind of mathematical object that a formula in a mathematical argument is. Eg the probability that it will be raining in 2 hours given that it is raining now makes sense. The probability that 2+2=4 doesn't make too much sense.

However. If a statement A is provable from a statement B and concerns a quantity , the probability of A given B is 1. As an example, what's the probability of X+1=4 given that X=3? Probability 1.

Another fact like this is that if A and B are mutually contradictory, the probability that A occurs and B occurs is 0. That also works with entailment. Like the probability that X=3 given that X+1=2 is 0, since X+1=2 implies X=1, and there's "no way" for X to be 3 given that assumption.

The same holds for statements you can derive from B using classical logic and algebra and set operations. eg if the probability that X=3 is 0.3, what's the probability that (X=3 or X!=3)? 1, since those are exhaustive possibilities. The latter does have a connection to truth, as if you end up asking for the probability of something which must be true, its probability is 1.

For folks like Fishfry, I'm sure you can make the amenable sense I've not specified precise. Logical, algebra and set operations which can be represented as measurable functions on the sample space work like the above. "no way" corresponds to the phrase "excepting sets of measure zero". Which is the same principle that stops you from asking "What's the probability that clouds fly given that x=2?", as there's no way of unifying both of those types of things into a cromulent category of event.

The latter also blocks a more expansive connection to truth. Since the kind of things that humans do while reasoning from premises typically aren't representable as measurable functions. Maths objects themselves also have plenty of construction rules that behave nothing like a probability - like the ability to conjure up an object by defining it and derive a theorem about it, there's just nothing underneath all maths that would take take a probability concept which would usefully reflect its structures I believe.

If you follow that internal voice, you cannot go wrong. — unenlightened

Definitionally so.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. — Emerson - Self-Reliance

But the Magician knows that the pure Will of every man and every woman is already in perfect harmony with the divine Will; in fact they are one and the same. — Crowley

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. — Crowley

What can be concluded from Emerson and Thelema is that there's no distinction between a right life and one lived without worry. Thus successful rationalisation is the core moral principle. Forgetting the distinction between who you are and the lies you may make yourself believe.

Simply hope you are a good liar. And have others join in.

What does this mean? It turnsout how intuitive 1 is in the second vs how intuitive 1 is in the first is what? It doesn't feel like you finished your sentence. — flannel jesus

I elaborated, thank you for your comment.

Someone could construct a logically valid to conclude that they should off themselves. But the premises might not be believed.

1 ) I should kill myself if I did not eat 50 grams of vanilla ice cream today.
2 ) I did not eat 50 grams of vanilla ice cream today.
Therefore 3 ) I should kill myself. (modus ponens)

As for soundness, I doubt many people would agree that 1 ) is true. So that brings moral and ethical norms regarding suicide into the question.

What about:

1 ) I will end my life if I end up in a position of unendurable permanent suffering.
2 ) I am in a position of unendurable permanent suffering.
3 ) I will end my life.

That seems a bit more reasonable, as it's effectively euthanising yourself. But the claim that one could rationally commit to suicide, in terms of those arguments, turns on how intuitive 1 ) is in the second argument vs how intuitive 1 ) is in the first argument. The latter being more intuitive than the former. Due to norms.

Are there frivolous and silly ones that nevertheless compel people to do it? If so, why do they?
Are there reasons that seem to make sense from one POV, but not from another?
Should other people intervene?
What is your opinion? — Vera Mont

In terms of IRL relevance your first question misses a means of compulsion, things that behave more like causes than reasons. Someone can readily become overwhelmed by their life at a moment in time and try to kill themselves in a barely cognitive frenzy (see here). You might want to construe the antecedent life circumstances as an explanation for their behaviour, but it isn't necessarily the reason why they did it. Just like gravity might not be the reason a bin tips over.

Reasons that seem to make sense from one POV but not from another - I mean yes. Trivially so. All that requires is that one person believes that a reason to off themselves makes sense, and another doesn't understand it.

Should other people intervene? In some circumstances definitely yes. In some circumstances I think probably not (like Pratchett's euthanasia).

What is my opinion? People are wonderful enough to regularly value some things in life higher than their own life. Children. Duty. What is just. The absence of pain. So long as people will value some things more than their own life they're going to be people who die by their own choosing. I think suicide is a paradoxical life affirming urge to have already lived another life.

To quote Cioran, "I would always kill myself too late". (from The Trouble With Being Born).

Did they have feet? — noAxioms

Yes. Dinosaurs had feet. They're in the fossils. You can see the bones. You can see footprints.

Sort of. The momentum transfer there is almost the same whether the truck is empty, or loaded with double its unladen mass. — noAxioms

Yes. Almost the same. But not quite. Sum of masses blah blah.

Yes. There's purpose to that activity, making it normative. — noAxioms

Aye. One of those truck objects is normatively demarcated, one isn't. There's still underlying properties that need to be in place and individuated for both to make sense - like mass and spatial extent of the relevant particulars/placeholder terms. Like it really does behave like an object which is heavier for the collision, and it really does behave like a truck with another object inside of it for the unloading.

What I mean with the latter is that normative doesn't directly imply relative, 'cos it can be true that the truck was unloaded. You see what I mean?

Do you think that discovery, had it been made at the time, would have discredited Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’? — Wayfarer

I doubt it. I'm sure the argument is sufficiently arcane that no one cares about it. Also the move to make something which is seen as transcendental an event, or locate it within a body, probably wouldn't parse for him. The arche fossil is very much targeted against combining embodiment and materiality with reciprocal co-constitution. You can even read it as a constructive dilemma - reciprocal co constitution implies idealism about what is interacted with, or what is interacted with has independent properties, choose. I imagine you'd go with the former.

I don't understand this comment. If these things are prior to our purposes and conceptualisations, then how is this relationship 'for humans'? — noAxioms

Two senses of priority - you might think of them as temporal and transcendental. The one you're talking about is transcendental. Norms condition perceptions/interactions/actions and make particulars count as objects within them.

Dinosaurs are temporally prior to human existence - they happened before. Thus however they behaved is prior to human faculties of reason - we developed later. Thus there existed a time in which dinosaurs were not judged by human intellects. Thus there was a time dinosaurs weren't conditioned by the human understanding. But they still had properties and stuff. Like they had teeth and bowel movements. They had feet.

That's relevant because stuff individuates without us being there. So if you want to talk about individuation, it should be in a manner that doesn't depend on "us" being there. For a very broad sense of "us". Like a conditioning perception or set of norms, that's an "us".

Or alternatively, you want a sense in which one process can treat something as an object, and thus that thing counts as an object for that process. Like your dinosaurs example. In which case you can make the same move as I did above with the human intellect and dinosaurs as you can for a process which makes something else count as an object for it. Find some greater embedding context for the process and start asking about the process' interactive capacities with the particular it makes count as an object for some purpose. You then locate the object and the conditioning process in the same embedding context and ask how the object properties could only come to be in terms of the conditioning process interactions when conditioning process properties and object properties emerge from the same context.

So with the amylase/starch example. The process that makes a starch molecule - and other molecules - count as an object for the amylase enzyme is the binding site. A great embedding context there is the evolutionary development of metabolism and digestion. It'd be very difficult to think of the starch as only an object for the enzyme because the starch has highly exploitable bonds which the amylase enzyme developed to break down as fuel.

In my book you end up needing to think about how a process distinguishes itself from a background. Like a subprocess. Like a tree growing a distinct leaf. With that leaf's relatively autonomous being.

Or I suppose you bite the bullet and make all of natures' processes effectively arbitrarily demarcated from each other. Even when they have different laws and levels.

So with your trucks - a collision of a car with the truck+load will behave as if its the truck+load has the mass of the truck+load. The process there is a collision, and in terms of momentum transfer the truck+load is the relevant object. The same would be true for how the truck+load balances.

But for the process of unloading the truck, the truck+load behaves as a truck with a load in it. Since that process distinguishes the truck from the load and doesn't care that adding the load to the truck would make it behave like a heavier point mass.

In terms of my point above, you end up conditioning the individuating properties of those two scenarios in terms of the load's mass's relevance to individuation. So asking about the conditioning mechanism which allows you to distinguish them leads you to mass. Which gives you a bizarre dependence of the allegedly arbitrary distinction on a subsuming context, upon which the distinction makes sense.

And that distinction isn't necessarily just normative - like the momentum transfer isn't word stuff.

To say that we know things only as they appear ‘to us’ is indeed to fall into scepticism and relativism. — Wayfarer

"to us" is a placeholder for "as conditioned by the categories of understanding" or "as encountered as as an object in the world with an understanding always already there" or "within an episteme" or "as articulated in collective discourse" or "in this culture"...

I don’t know if Meillassoux addresses that idea — Wayfarer

He does. You're rehearsing one of the arguments he anticipates and responds to in the text. Which isn't to say he's right (I have some reservations), but it's to say you'd benefit from reading it!

I think the price of entry is a little steep :yikes: . — Wayfarer

The Badiou stuff appears past the arche fossil argument. That's in the first bit. It's Locke, Descartes and the post Kantians. His vocabulary kinda of lets you treat dependence upon discourse, dependence upon a conditioning subject, dependence upon a dialectical mediation, dependence upon an intellect etc as the same phenomenon. The sights are on reciprocal co-constitution in all its forms.

Meaning that our understanding of existence, including the existence of dinosaurs, is implicitly dependent on the human conceptual framework. — Wayfarer

Sapiens, the statement that ‘dinosaurs existed’ is only meaningful within the conceptual framework provided by an observing mind - with 'prior to' being part of that framework. — Wayfarer

I generally skip the details of the arche fossil because it's technical. But its fundamental target is what you've said. You'd get something out of reading it I think.

Dinosaurs have intent. Predator and prey both need to recognize each other as distinct objects/threats/kin etc. Their convention is sufficiently pragmatic for their needs. — noAxioms

I meant in the sense that for humans, there existed objects - stuff, placeholders, particulars, whatevs you wanna call it - prior to our purposes and conceptualisations. Thus it can't all be us. I could make the same remark about plants, for dinosaurs.

Hope that helps.

Regardless I think you're making a distinction between purposive/normative and physical, whereas there's other graduations - like you might think of chemical, biological, systemic, ecological, intentional etc strata as other strata of existence in which nonarbitrarily individuated objects may exist. IE there could very well be an organic, but non-normative or mental, basis for the existence of objects. Or a social one. There's a tendency to go from physics to language without thinking about it.

Though you might want to say that such things still have a physical basis, because they relate to distinctions in physical processes. Bodies stuff is still star stuff. But then the ascription of a physical basis to a distinction means nothing other than a distinction. If you think everything's physical anyway. In other words, if there is a distinction drawable between two terms, in that analysis, it must be done in terms of physical properties since all properties would be stipulated to be physical.

If instead there are other flavours of properties - which are distinct from but not necessarily opposed to what you might call physical - then asking whether a flavour of distinction has a physical basis makes sense. But if other flavours of properties which could serve as a basis for distinctions are in play you're in @Banno's and @SophistiCat's comments' territory. In which the distinctions you make are informed by the use context, and you may need to clarify what you would pre-theoretically count as an object. Since in the OP it's an unexamined term and its relationship to generic physical properties isn't spelled out.

My pet theory is that what counts as an object depends upon the context. And a process can count as a context. Like sucrose counts as an object for amylase, and populations of amylase enzymes count as an object for the evolution of digestive systems. You might want to call those physical, I'd suspect they aren't best described as physical 'cos the standard model doesn't care if I've got candy in my mouth.

And yes @Wayfarer it's an arche-fossil argument. With some assemblage nonsense to taste. The usual fdrake breakfast.

since I am trying to find object in the absence of language. — noAxioms

Dinosaurs.

Beauty in people seems to have an added dimension. With people we find physically attractive we seem to accociate positive qualities to, such as goodness. I guess this is called the "halo effect", which is a positive impression of someone, or thing, based on how they/it look. — Rob J Kennedy

The word inherent doesn't appear in the OP. The terms that predicate beauty of people in it are "associate" and "impression". Those are circumstantial and perspectival. Neither of those imply anything about the inherency of predicates ascribed to the beautiful on the basis of their beauty; as if those properties were essential rather than relational properties of the person. Though maybe I missed something.

Do you believe beautiful people are inherently good people compared to less beautiful/deformed people? — Philosophim

I certainly seem to treat them as such. Why'd you introduce the word inherent?

My intellect tries not to but my body has disagreeable thoughts of its own. I'm not sure my intellect matters much. Only the behaviour.

And I certainly behave more favourably to those I deem beautiful.

Is there an equivalent to going afk from existence? Can I do that for a few years?

If you revise a post edit the original post you made in thread. I merged both discussions as one was redundant.

@TonesInDeepFreeze

Tones was doing a good job refuting all the crankery in a highly educational manner. That can make for a good thread. Albeit a frustrating one for whoever is doing the hard teaching work.

It's quite difficult to draw a principled line between someone who misunderstands something repeatedly in a rude manner and an incorrigible, disruptive crank.

Anyway they're banned now, thanks @TonesInDeepFreeze for persistently unraveling the cranking.

I said that I cannot have an imaginary number of apples in my fridge. — Michael

Eh. You have a collection of apples in your fridge whose count is referable to by the symbol of a natural number. You also have an apple in your fridge, which if rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, could have its current orientation referred to as i multiplied by its previous one. It's not like either number is somehow more physical than the other one, people just intuit the naturals (and positive computable reals) to really "be there" whereas the other numbers aren't.

Whereas they live in rotations and waves and the columns and rows of accounting books. None of those concepts have, to my knowledge, a baked in proclivity in our wetware. Whereas natural numbers, counting, cardinality, size comparisons etc and their symbolic representations do.

At the very least you've got work to do in "dephysicalising" or "physicalising" the intuitions regarding number and processes you have.

know about what they believe (in any substantive sense) — Bob Ross

People in general don't enjoy the kind of thinking that inclines you toward philosophy. My impression is that it usually feels some combination of pedantic, combative, frustrating and destabilising. None of which are pleasant feelings.

Thinking philosophically isn't full of pleasant feelings anyway is it? Even when you get something out of it. It's work.

I'm not making modding decisions based on exegesis of Feyerabend. But discussing it would make a good thread elsewhere. Make it? I'm locking this again now.

Being very rude about the pseudoscience you're peddling.

Banned @PL Olcott for a lot of threads with aggressive cranking in them. Their posts also kept getting stuck in the spam filter due to poor formatting.

Sure they do, — unenlightened

I was exaggerating.

The norms changed into a massive clusterfuck. Over the past few years I've talked about it with straight woman friends and acquaintances my age-ish quite a lot. I'd say about 30 people. There were two broad camps.

The first camp believed that being approached by a man (first) in public at all is creepy or predatory in principle - the overwhelming preference for them was not to have it happen at all ever. This was about 25% of the women I talked with. NB, this wasn't framed as a strong personal taste, it was framed as a moral wrong on the approacher's part.

The second camp believed that being approached by a man (first) in public is okay so long as they're not creepy, predatory or intrusive about it. Those situations differed. Some people saw it as creepy, predatory or intrusive if men approached them in public when they were with friends. Some would need friends there for it to be ok. The norms were also very different regarding approach strategies - some people found it creepy/predatory if the guy didn't declare their intent almost immediately (eg trying to make it fully explicit that they're attracted), some people found it creepy if the guy declared his prior to socialising for quite some time. This broad group was 75% of the women I talked with. Broadly speaking they distinguished personal preference from morality, unlike the first group. Some things just gave them the ick which others would require. Such is compatibility.

Both of groups on average would not approach men even if interested (one person I talked with would and has). And both saw the kind of situation you described as a male entitlement to assume it means you can approach them for a conversation at all, never mind an amorous one! Different people have different "clear signals" of their interest, which aren't clarified beforehand.

Of all the guy friends I have, I only know one other bloke who actually talks with women they don't already know (when they have any amorous or sexual intent) in public regularly. The remainder have seen the above and opt out of the clusterfuck, either because they fear the peculiar rejection of being seen as a creep in an unpredictable fashion, or because they don't want to ruin the first camp's day.

People in Camp 1 still engage in the Camp 2 social invitation graces, but they do so as social graces and nothing more.

The overall shift I've seen with these norms over time is the emergence of the first group and those norms getting absorbed by blokes I speak with.

Camp 2 is kind of business as usual for me, what I grew up with, and the norm you're expressing in your post. The default assumption being that if someone meets your eyes, smiles at you, or otherwise engages you in niceties in public that means trying to start talking with that person can be assumed (in principle) to be ok. It's also overwhelmingly what I see when I talk with older people (like 35+) about romantic norms. The Camp 1 people were younger.

It's also very much class coded. Working class dive bars have the camp 2 social norms among the young 'uns. And straight coded - I go to a gay bar and any bloke who behaves like camp 2 is an absolute prude.

This one is the area that I need to work the most on. I usually avoid women in public places (: It is time to get thrown to the wolves. — Bob Ross

Good luck! Try going out with your friends and approaching women who have other friends there. You get moral support and so do they. Rejection is the default. It always stings a bit but you get used to it.

If you are unusual but not creepy you will attract the interest of those who might be interested. — unenlightened

These days people don't approach others in public I'm afraid. Despite most people desiring to be approached more.

Thank @Moliere .

German: https://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/53/german-discussion
Spanish: https://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/52/spanish-discussion

Does anyone know of any dating apps or places to be, where people seeking a deep, long-term relationship with an intellectually substantive partner go? — Bob Ross

Dating as a philosophy enthusiast:

Principle A) Your candidate partners, matches and dates will almost certainly not care about philosophy. At least as much as you. People are good to talk to regardless. You're picking one of your most extremely exemplified traits and filtering on it, just raw statistics filters out most of the people you could get on well with. It's the same principle as the fact that someone who's 190cm tall looking for someone taller will not find many.

Principle B) Asking philosophical questions can count as asking intrusive questions. Be careful.

Principle C) This place of enlightened intellectual hook up culture and romance doesn't exist, never has and never will. It would be a special sort of hell. If you want to do philosophical dating, go and think about the experiences and norms you encounter. But don't talk about them on dates as it's a horrible faux pas.

Principle D) people still want to be approached and talked to. Even though maybe 1-10% of women (depending on your age) might think approaching them in public means you're a sex offender (only a mild exaggeration). If you're looking for women, default to the idea that people you approach will look at you like a threatening wild animal. Would you want a wild animal to corner you in a night club? No. Or approach while you're walking home through a side street? No. But in a public place, especially if they're with others? That's more ok.

Principle E) If you make an advance on someone, be direct with your intentions but tell them that it's okay if they refuse. When in doubt, imagine what an English stereotype would do then do the opposite.

Good luck!

Oh it's not an insult at you. I read the NY article. My post was just exasperation with how much of a clusterfuck reality is.

We truly live in the most stupid timeline.

This isn't a particularly productive discussion.

@PL Olcott - if it helps, @TonesInDeepFreeze is giving you answers that you could find in logic courses at uni. To the best of my ability - which is more limited than Tones' - I think they are accurately portraying the canon to you.

Also to the best of my ability, it doesn't look as if you understand what Tones is writing. "Epistemological antimony" isn't a technical term in any of the proofs you've criticised.

It would be worth reading SEP's articles on the various diagonalisation results. Godel's and Tarski's and Turing's. Moreover, even something like first order logic isn't decidable.

It looks very much like a case where how you're using the words, PL, is not how the literature is using them. And in that regard your ideas - as criticisms of the literature - are off target.

I'm sorry this is just quackery.