Well, in block universe, there is no motion, just worldlines, straight (inertial) or otherwise. The dimensions of those worldlines can be different depending on the choice of coordinates, but that change (the separation (interval) of any two events, say the event of some twin's departure and the event of his return) is a fixed value, and not frame dependent.

I think it's strange to say that there's no motion in special relativity, considering the theory's topic is about what changes in motions that have speed close to the speed of light. In many respects it's what falls out of 'motion's speed cannot exceed c' and relative motions as equivalent to coordinate transforms. Further, if lengths contract and time dilates with respect to the movement of particles - which is an assumption of the OP, these are real effects that should inform the view of space and time.

A 3D model of the universe works, despite the 4D Minkowski spacetime model that SR suggests.

I really doubt this, since this trivialises space-time curvature. The Einstein and Riemann tensors are 4-tensors, and the metric derivatives and Christoffel Symbols they consist of interact to give 4 tensors., They need to maintain the number of indices they have so that they can be contracted through identification or multiplication by another tensor to derive the Einstein field equations. 4D space-time can't be removed from SR or GR without drastically changing their character.

But, if you have a reference or previous post on this, I'd be happy to read it.

But isn't "proper time" simply an arbitrary designation, dependent on some pragmatic principles? Wouldn't it be contradictory to the special theory of relativity to assume that "proper time" was something other than imaginary?

See rule 2.

It's hypocritical of you to say that you want to discuss the ontological consequences of the truth of relativity theory, then when I bring some up you act like "I don't want to discuss 'those' consequences"

Complete mischaracterisation, 'what does relativity do to the ontology of space and time if it's true?' is the point of the thread. I'm not going to engage with you in this thread any more unless you adopt the scenario. Find someone else to argue with. If you want to think of this thread as a facile children's playground with no import because SR is fundamentally flawed, be my guest, just go somewhere else, or engage with someone else, to do it.

Expansion of the universe shows up when the metric tensor has components which are an increasing function of proper time or proper distance depending on the formalisation. Duration and length may still expand and contract with respect to high speed motions, and the effects of curvature changes/expansion can still be relativised to the motion of a particle.

The trick to quantifying expansion is by looking at differential neighbourhoods of a point and relating differential changes to the metric tensor - when it is an increasing function of time, interpoint distances within differential neighbourhoods increase in time.

Rather than interpreting it as the physicists have no idea what they're doing and that 'the expansion of the universe' is indexed to a universal time then using that idea to derive contradictions in relativity: I'd prefer to keep the thread on the track of analysing the real ontological consequences of assuming its truth.

I know you're skeptical of relativity because you dislike how the relativisation of simultaneity interacts with your Aristotelian metaphysics (specifically the law of non-contradiction and its metaphysical background)- but why not take this thread as an opportunity to see what the assumption of it entails for thinking about space and time?

I'm really not interested in discussing whether it's true or not.

It's a pretty interesting discussion piece. I don't particularly like the last two bits - essentially a rejection of the reality of time as described in special relativity, then qualia alongside some bollocks physics philosofiction. If you've not seen a paper distinguishing physical and experiential time before, I think you'd find that part interesting since you're a trained engineer. One thing the paper does interestingly with regard to the distinction between experiential and physical time is that it allows both to be mathematised - that is, considered in terms that are inspired or compatible with mathematical abstractions. That angle's rarely taken.

If you have two truth functions T1(x) and T2(x) such that T2(x)=NOT(T1(x)), then [T1(x) AND T2(x)] is a contradiction. This says nothing about other values of x. It's possible to have T1(y)=T2(x), like 'not hungry' after lunch=y with 'hungry' before lunch=x.

With more detail, as you said, with 'hungry now' and 'not hungry now', these truth functions are negations of each other and functions of 'now'. However, you can still construct contradictions without reference to a variable - where you have constant symbols mapped to their truth values. Not everything can be considered as a function of an indexical like time, so contradictions don't 'evaporate' from the constant symbols.

If you're dealing with a set of truth functions which are propositional functions of an indexical, of course it only makes sense to think of the conjunction of two truth functions, [T1(x) AND T2(x)], as contrary if T2 is the negation of T1 at x. This is part of why contradiction is a rather sterile notion for dealing with events and other situational oppositions or other notions of contrariety.

Since I remember you like Austin:

Maybe the difficulty in finding the constitutive or implicated beliefs in an argument is that arguments consist of far more varied forms of interaction in terms of perlocution and illocutionary act-force composites than simply sequences of assertion-belief composites and their formal logical relations.

On the sentential level, there are elucidatory questions in demanding and providing forms, refutational questions as well assertions of belief. Further, in states of belief and unbelief of the writer; the writer also need not hold any specific belief in the negation of a particular statement even if they disbelieve the statement. There are evincing sentences with the illocutionary force of justification to the whole of a unit of debate, refutational ones which serve as counter-examples. Sentences may also be interpreted non-exclusively as expanding on previous points or introducing new ones; particularly good writers can move on and reinforce at the same time. Also, poetic summaries and quips with many possible perlocutionary forces are commonplace...

On the level of chains of sentences, there are elucidatory analogies which are requests for clarification, elucidatory analogies in support of a previously made point, refutational analogies which attempt to reframe a contrary position to absurdity, refutational analogies which attempt to reframe a contrary position towards irrelevance; there are conceptual bridges to transform a subunit of debate into an equivalent form (such as an analogy) - the bridges themselves can take on elucidatory, complementary or refutational perlocutionary forces. Edit: of course, there are accounts of phenomena indicating their place in the argument in relation to the theme of the debate and some constitutive particulars on the level of sentence chains too... I focussed a lot on analogies, but to give an account of a position isn't necessarily to analogise towards/against it.

On the level of whole arguments, subunits of the arguments can be arranged in a complementary position to a theme, a repudiative position to a theme - they can reframe, parody, mock... Suffice to say, there is a lot of variation and a lot of nuance.

To reduce belief to 'X believes that P' and logical relations between beliefs and contained propositions will tell you what to do with, at most, already formed beliefs from engaging with (a narrowly circumscribed set of) phenomena. This is a tiny part of an account of belief.

It doesn't take into account the 'hows' of belief formation when writing or interpreting, or how belief interacts with questions, arguments and evidence. Being unable to ascertain the exact beliefs of a speaker expressed in their words, or a close approximation to a subset thereof, isn't solely explainable by a failure of interpretation - it's also that much is lost when projecting the space of reasoning (rationalised belief formation, in some senses) down to its subspace of propositions and their relations. Much like the difference between formal logic and rhetorical strategy.

This would be like saying written language is reducible to words. Stories reducible to their constituent sentences. Mathematics does more than that. The entities of mathematics may be abstract objects - conceived in a Platonic or formalistic sense -, but what they are concerned with are not necessarily abstract objects.

It's often forgotten that people do mathematics, they make it through a series of creative leaps in a space of rational connections. The space itself is conditioned by its history through its internalisation of previous creations as rules and topics of study. Further, these rules and topics are always avenues of further expression and coalescing forms of expanding (phenomenally demarcated, formalised, symbolically mediated) sense. Mathematics is an interplay of its history with the creative, interpretive and synergistic acts of its current practitioners, especially researchers. In this regard, it resembles any form of rational inquiry.

There is a relevant question whether the function of mathematical objects is reducible to the instantiation/conditioning of its objects of concern within some stratum of being. Be the concerns of mathematics real (modelling, interface with the actual and its potentials, the domain of applied mathematics) or ideal (imaginative, interface with its own objects and their potentials, the domain of pure mathematics); mathematical objects function in mathematised forms of inquiry. They don't sit around doing nothing in a pre-individuated realm distinct from mathematical history or the patterns in things. This suggests that mathematical objects function to the concerns of their imaginative background (constrained by the historicality of mathematics manifesting as given rational structures), and insofar as that imaginative background reflects the unfolding of material components, mathematical objects are as real as the mathematised reality they partake in.

This is to say: mathematical objects aren't purely ideal abstractions, in the same way that ideation in general can produce patterns (behavioural, material=actual/potential) acting as the embodiment of ideas. Like "I'm going for lunch now', and I'm off to lunch.

I think is safe to assert that you believe yourself to be writing English..

I'm not sure I believed myself to be writing English, I was simply writing a response in English. The belief never 'entered my head' as it were. Where is it being derived from?

Is it so hard to find beliefs amongst words? Perhaps not.

Well, it isn't hard to find beliefs amongst words like 'X believes that Y' and pre-formed statements containing 'believes' as the verb. But that isn't all there is to belief, surely. Belief cannot be summoned in this way.

Setting out a logic of belief in terms of propositions is not providing a theory of how beliefs are expressed or implicated in language use. For example, it's difficult to ascertain what you believe belief is from your responses.

As it stands, I have a working hypothesis that you believe beliefs are propositional necessary conditions for doing things, especially with language use practices. Is this the case? I'll assume it's so. Another way of putting it: propositional attitudes without the coalescence of their propositional correlates.

It could be set out that to understand belief is to understand statements of the form 'X believes that P' and the logical relationships between statements of that sort. Can I ask you to carry out the translation exercise for my first post in this thread in terms of its implicated/constitutive beliefs? Or this one?

I don't think how beliefs are implicated in language use is a particularly trivial matter, why would there be so much philosophical scholarship on interpreting great thinkers if it were so cut and dry?

Well, Protestantism had a particular perspective on it, based on 'sola scriptura' and the relationship of the believer and Jesus Christ as Saviour. But I can't see how anything to do with religion and spirituality can be divorced from the idea of aspiration - the sense that there is a higher or better or more complete way of life, which is what the religion in question is said to codify. What else could it be? I mean, the OP typically sells it short, but then in a secular world, very few have any grasp of what it is they're purportedly trying to explain away.

As soon as faith takes on a personal character, aspirations take the form of divine grace. The particularity of the relationship with the divine imbues the believer with an orientation towards their own relationship with divinity - which is realised through a person's actions. In the grace of God or in contravariance to it. Personal failures can then be interpreted through the relationship as not just impediments to aspiration in the secular sense - obstacles, square pegs forcing themselves through round holes - but within a mythopoetic narrative of cosmic significance. What is cosmic is also instantiated into the believer as a work in progress - personalised relationships with the divine allow reclaiming the etymology of kosmos as worldly order. In this sense, the meaning of all decisions is enriched in the same manner as secular self-transcendence as returning to what is fundamentally yours.

It's interesting to see religious faith as motivating the same sort of acts as secular authenticity. The deficiency of life in terms of its current state is interpreted either towards the potential for a higher relationship with oneself or a higher relationship towards the divine. Strange that the two meet. Very Protestant.

Been reading through Jared Diamond's anthropological work, following it up with Debt by David Graeber. I think this is completing my late teenage Marxist deprogramming - better follow it up by finishing 'Society of the Spectacle' and making a thread about it.

Do you think beliefs are shown in philosophical discourse in the same way(s) they are shown in non-philosophical activity? In other words, do the actions that constitute doing philosophy show/evince belief in a different way from non-philosophical ones?

It seems strange to say that a belief can be found by dissecting sentences, in the same manner they will not be found amongst neurons. Something goes missing in the, at face value, sense of belief when it is distributed relationally over constitutive components. Regardless, philosophy can be characterised in some way by looking at connections between beliefs, philosophers, and philosophical language, and to act philosophically (in terms of debate/essay) is to exhibit those connections through language use - probably with regard to a chosen theme (question/problem) which highlights appropriate connections.

It may still be that to believe is to exhibit a psychological-neuronal-motor pattern, but this does not speak as to how beliefs are to be found in the use of language. Is it really true that beliefs take the crystalline form of attitudes towards propositional content when it is so hard to find a belief amongst words? What uses of language are sufficient to show a belief in play? And how, in turn, do they implicate a particular belief?

Besides X believes that P.

You'd have a lot to talk about with @Hachem! Scientifically minded scientific skepticism, only he was obsessed with optics.

If they had any kind of awareness, I think it's likely that they would be dreaming, or something like dreaming. Being aware in the usual way we are requires sensorimotor constraints - doing/feeling stuff, in the absence of those we dream.

I'm not sure that the presence of awareness makes sense without having had any of the constitutive experiences of awareness ever. I think it's likely that the thoughts of such a person would be much different from a typical person, if they did have thoughts. They couldn't have learned any language, they probably wouldn't have memories...

I'm in a dark room with two light switches which will be activated by one switch. I also have a torch. The torch, as well as firing photons out, has a little massless mad scientist taped to the beam of light - he sees things from the perspective of the light beam. The two lights are the same distance from the floor, and how I am holding the torch would point directly to the filament of each torch when shone on them; the lightbulb filaments are on the same elevation and the same elevation as the torch. I shine the torch at one of the lightbulbs and turn them both off using the switches at the same time.

(A) In my, the torch holder's reference frame, the two lightbulbs go off at the same time.
(B) In the mad scientist's reference frame, the lightbulb he's heading towards turns off first.

Are (A) and (B) contradictory? Nah. What would make (A) and (B) contradictory?

If (A) was 'The two lightbulbs go off at the same time' and (B) was 'One lightbulb turns off before the other'. That's a contradiction. But is it what special relativity says? No. Special relativity emphasises that space and time - distances and durations of events - are indexed to a reference frame. Each consequence of special relativity (insofar as it relates to the relativity of simultaneity) has a set of indexicals - labels of reference frames - which dodge contradictions like this.

Saying they're contradictory is equivalent to imagining two guys in suits, John and James, applying the predicate 'x,y are currently in a meeting together' to both, and noting that it's currently false when they aren't in a meeting, and true when they are in a meeting. Contradictory? No. Why? Indexicals and a binary predicate. There's no inference you could do to extract 'are currently in a meeting together' as a stand-alone thing, a single element in the domain of discourse, since it is a mapping from pairs of objects in the domain of discourse to true/false. Doing so is the same procedure as trying to bring out a 'time' from the domain of discourse regarding special relativity whose quantities are not derived from relations between reference frames (relation being Lorentz transform).

In exactly the same sense, you can't extract 'are happening in the same time' or 'are not happening at the same time' as unary predicates (simple properties) from the logic of special relativity, since 'are happening at the same time' and 'are not happening at the same time' are ternary (3-valued) predicates here. Specifically, there are events x and y and an indexical reference frame p, and 'x and y happen at the same time in reference frame p' can be predicate H(x,y,p). 'At the same time' now means 'a mapping from 3-tuples of (x,y,p) to true or false'. You don't get to form a binary predicate H'(x,y) which says for all x and ys whether they happen at the same time, since using special relativity means to assume that this relation is ternary rather than binary. IE, equality in time when considered in a specific reference frame vs equality in time for all.

Edit: is it surprising that nonsense and contradictions arise if H' is set equal to H? No. That's precisely the manoeuvre which allows you to derive a contradiction from (A) and (B).

I think it's a Sorites paradox thing really. If I had to choose I'd say >0.5 is likely and <0.5 is unlikely. Really all this shows is what's expected: it's hard to map probability - something you could think of as an uncountably infinite valued logic - onto one with finitely many values.

That's what I meant, partly. If 1000 events that are 99% likely happen, and they're independent, the probability that they all happen (iterated conjunction) is about 0.00004 - very unlikely. This shows that A and B can be likely individually but not together.

Consider 100 events with 10% chance to happen, and they're independent and disjoint, then the probability that at least one happens (iterated disjunction) is 1-0.1^100 = 0.9999... 99 times...9, very likely. This shows that A or B can be unlikely individually but that at least one happens is likely.

Disjunctions require one of their events to happen in order for the disjunction to happen. It's the 'at least 1' where the magic lies, since that's the same as 'not 0 times', if that makes it clearer. Saying A happens or B happens is always more likely than saying A happens alone.

Conjunctions require all of their events to happen in order for the conjunction to happen. So they're always less likely than their individual items and their disjunction.

First one of these is A and B, second one of these is A or B. The sizes of the shaded areas are a direct representation of their probability.

Iterated conjunction of 'likely' should produce 'unlikely' in some cases. Iterated disjunction of 'unlikely' should produce likely in some cases. I don't think it fits so neatly while representing how likely and unlikely events work together.

Spell it out, how do you formally reason with true, false, likely and unlikely?

Typically probabilities are ascribed to events. Can the statement be seen as an event? Maybe not. So in this sense it could be a category error.

There are attempts to ascribe probabilities to statements in general, like one by Carnap. In these contradictions are given probability 0 and tautologies are given probability 1. Assume the statement is false, then the statement is unlikely, then the statement is true - a contradiction. Assume the statement is true, then the statement is unlikely and likely, but that's a contradiction. Assuming it's true or false allows you to derive a contradiction, so this is essentially a mapping of the statement onto the liar statement. Whether you dismiss it as 'just another contradiction' at this point also depends on your philosophical taste (see Arthur Prior).

But with probability there are more than just true or false (seen as 1 and 0), so the logic need not derive a contradiction from the principle of excluded middle and analysis of the statement. It seems plausible that 'This statement is unlikely' could be ascribed a probability which isn't 0 or 1 without contradiction, but I don't know how to ascribe a probability to it.

I don't think nature uses Pi either, except as part of our constructions. There's something in Pi being part of a bridge between our constructions and nature.

Edit: it's a long article, I've skim-read and it seemed quite good.

The only explanation I can see for your behaviour is that you think an appropriate response to the ontological argument is immediate dismissal through ridicule with the purpose of derailing the thread into a flame war.

Belief does not make things real. Imagination does not make things real.

Aaaaaaand you interpreted me as disagreeing with this? Or worthy of scorn because I put more effort and nuance in defending the position, or a position close to, the one you're advocating?

I'm surprised you think criticisms of ontological arguments in general are bollocks. You actually read me as someone who believed they could summon a God into actuality through an operation of thought; surprising, to say the least.

Read the rest of the freakin' post you trigger happy wing-nut.

Can you stay your anti-theist murderboner for one second and realise that I've spent most of the thread comparing the ontological argument to chaos magic's idea of summoning rituals, then criticising the 'greater than which' and modal forms for equivocating ideality and actually - spelling out why they're similar to chaos magic and how they function in analogous ways.

After that I wrote that I literally summoned a God through the power of my imagination... I mean my understanding of God as an infinite being with no un-actualised potentials...

Apparently some mod deleted my post detailing how chaos magicians think of summoning rituals for being off topic, but didn't delete the posts where I made the analogy explicit (which don't make as much sense without the original post), ah well. I'll make it less interesting more conceptually rigorous.

Basically the idea behind chaos magic summoning rituals is that the being they're trying to summon is given actuality through the actuality of their representative symbols, the representation is treated as an embodiment in a symbolically appropriate form. Then this embodiment is equated with the creative act of imagination, and since the being is already actual (in the symbols) they're brought into actuality.

It's a real equivocation between an ideal being and an actual one. The way I was analogising it is as follows: an ontological argument is a collection of symbols which becomes a literal sufficient condition for the existence of a being.

For modal forms of the argument, this is done by making imagined necessary entities possibly necessary entities, then possibly necessary entities necessary entities, and of course necessary entities are actual entities. For 'greater than which cannot be conceived' versions, ideal and actual entities are opposed to each-other in a premise (like 'God exists in the imagination'), then ideal and actual entities are joined as the domain of quantification in the argument, then demonstrating that something belongs to this domain of quantification is re-interpreted as being actual.

For the Aristotelian versions, the conceptualised version of the entity is imbued with actuality by an operation of the understanding - as if imbuing something with the concept of actuality was the same as it being actual. This is legitimised since the concept and the entity are thought of as equivalent in a manner of actual operation, not through mere ideation. To put it another way, ideation about the being with no unactualised potentials renders them (through philosophical demonstration) as actual. Really though, they are already posited as actual through the equivocation of map and territory in this case; in Agustino's terms there's no difference between the infinite idea of God and the infinite actuality of it.

The Aristotelian will say that they're disclosing things about an already existent entity, not bringing about their existence through ideation. It's just an operation of understanding after all, not imagination. The latter of which, imbuing something with the concept of the actuality through ideation being the same as something's actualisation, is the way chaos magic summoning is purported to work. Only the terms for chaos magic are magical sigils, the 'magical sigils' for philosophers here are argument forms. It's still not going to allow non-ideal things to be brought forth through ideation alone.

Nah. God's infinite, obviously. That's how I understand him. That's why God is real.

I have an idea of being with some ideality and actuality in it - as all beings -, brought about by the gaps of unfulfilled potentials. In my head, I imagine the rotation of a button on my oven, turning the heat down from 9 to 0, thus the unfulfilled potentials vanish and a being is born. The most real of all beings. I shall call this being God.

And you read me as supportive of ontological arguments and the idea that concepts alone can vouchsafe a being's actuality?

I don't understand the context of the response. Do you think you're debunking a theist?

I wanted to respond to this, from your posts and Deleuze studies I believe you think of existence univocally. How do you deal with different strata like ideal and actual?

I think of it disjunctively, like there's a list of distinct modes of being. Each mode has a bunch of different and possibly overlapping generating conditions. Eg we make ideas through ideation but we can't say that bricks are products of ideation alone.

I view it like: bricks are a composite of physical processes of individuation to make their constituents, coupled actual/ideational ones to take the constituents and turn them into a brick. Then its derived/imagined function ('being part of a wall') is ideal but the functioning itself plays out in actuality: its prescriptive ideal function ('what is to be done with the brick') and the virtual regularities that allow it are tightly linked in a manner that allows some kind of co-realisation, a tandem movement in actuality and ideality where its path is its potential carving itself out. The mechanism of this movement itself is the virtual form of existence.

I think of this virtual dimension of any individuating process (ideation or cement mixing/baking/shaping) as constraining immanence to that process; a developmental trajectory generated through other constitutive (cement mixing) or limiting (cement needs hardening to be a brick) individuating processes which simultaneously constrains the trajectory and pushes along it. In a more prosaic form, existence has a good analogy to water filling a cup. The water being the instigating developmental trajectories, the cup being the immanent limitation/demarcation of them, and the cup-filling as their constitutive (of the cup-filling) dynamical union.

So to be is to be involved in these processes in general. On topic, I'd say that God does indeed exist but is formed through ideational and discursive processes constrained by their own histories, and can act as an instigator and constraint in other processes; a myth that nevertheless has moved mountains.

Doing something with an ideal object in a manner which treats it as ideal, like imagining a snark, is a lot different from doing something that treats the same object as real, like going outside for a snark hunt. Another example, coming up with a fictional character and telling a story about them is a lot different from having an imaginary friend you believe is real.

If the distinction between actions which treat some their involved objects as ideal entities - products of ideation in its broadest sense - and actions which treat all of their involved objects as actual entities - products of more than ideation in its broadest sense - is removed; that can land you in an asylum, for real. It removes the distinction between fantasy and reality, along with thoughts of things and things.

Or maybe you're a chaos magician!

Had the same feeling, think we've covered everything interesting. :)

I don't know if skeptical hypotheses as a treatment for pernicious intuitions actually pans out. The thread title is literally "BIV was meant undermine realism' by attacking semantic externalism. I find it more likely that skeptical hypotheses are co-morbid with faulty intuitions. Externalism being the thesis that internal linguistic stuff is related to external linguistic stuff, internalism being the thesis that this is false in some way.

If it's true that semantic externalism allows its believers to wrestle themselves out of the vat, or the vat undermines semantic externalism, it still implicates the kind of treatment as compatible with the disease - they meet as contraries in the same context of presuppositions.

It seems to me that by changing our intuitions and questioning our initial beliefs about knowledge that the skeptical scenario is avoided before it gets off the ground. But if we have such intuitions about knowledge, etc., then the skeptical scenario's philosophical point is that it puts those very intuitions into question.

So you view the skeptic as a kind of philosophical barometer for bullshit? If a position allows radical skeptical arguments to be applied to it - or are a result of that position - you think 'this is bullshit' and move on?

The distinction between actual and ideal things is usually subordinated in the argument through a relation with undetermined scope. In the 'greater than which cannot be conceived' formulation, it's the 'greater than' which ranges over ideal and actual, which means an existential proposition containing the 'greater than' relation ranges over a partitioned set of ideal and actual entities (which is typically set up explicitly in a premise). It makes sense that the more similar someone posits ideal and actual - or the more similar they set it up in the argument - the stronger the argument will seem. Possibly why the belief that things are more real the more they actualise their potentials and turning it up to 11 for the idea of God goes along with ontological arguments so well.

Modal arguments have the distinction dissolved in the background, hidden in the accessibility relation.
It's essentially a forgotten or usually unrepeated premise that all possible worlds and this world are in an equivalence relation. So the modal arguments take the form 'imagine that X is the case, by the nature of X X is possibly necessarily the case, so it's necessarily the case, so it's the case'. Equivalence accessibility relations conjure possibilities into actuality through necessity. If what can be imagined is all possible, then every imagined entity necessary to its associated narrative comes into being.

A highly rationalised form of black magic.

Ontological arguments are examples of summoning magic.They work in the same way as a chaos magic summoning ritual, an array of symbols (premises and their entailment relations) are given the power to transform something from an ideal existence (something thought) to a real one (something actual). They do this with no imposition or restriction from the already actual. The mechanism is by taking the distinction between the actual and the ideal and dissolving it; which works by recognising it (assuming it) as already dissolved.

This is exactly what chaos magic does when summoning beings; interpretation and thought are fundamentally believed as a creative act embodied in a symbolic ritual (an argument here), and the target being: the one that's considered creatively through and with the symbols; is imbued with actuality by its embodiment in the symbols used in the ritual. It is as if actuality is contagious. This is a physical form of the modal collapse step in modal versions of the argument from 'possibly necessary => necessary'. Its analogue is 'ideal in actual (thought in symbol mark) => actual (full properties of the being are actualised exactly as imagined)'. It's also very similar to a theological insistence that the transubstantiation is literally Jesus' body and blood being consumed; the bread and the wine are actual versions of their mythological functions.

In essence, ontological arguments are attempts to summon God into actuality through the play of symbols. The God summoned is the one that passes through the words' meanings as their interpretation in the ritual (argument), being equal to their referent and (posited as, this is magic) already actual ground. Structurally, they are bundles of words which are (purported) literal sufficient conditions for an entity's existence, they are summoning magic.

'actually understanding what the terms mean' still implicates contextualised learning. There's the classic example of 'all bachelors are unmarried men' which is true by virtue of the definition of bachelor and unmarried man. But, if you showed it to someone who didn't know any of the surrounding terms of marriage, they wouldn't instantly arrive at the truth of the claim because they don't know the meaning of terms, true by definition.

Apparently these language learners are insufficiently cultured savages who won't know self-evident truth when they see it. Truth by virtue of definition is still truth due to X, definition is a somewhat emergent act taken by a community of language users, not a free-floating equivalence in the realm of enlightened English speakers.

In what contexts does self evidence arise? Taken literally, it would mean a claim is evidence of itself. Examples of this are 'This sentence is in English' and 'This sentence is grammatically correct in English.' There is also an imagined opponent who might attempt to doubt the alleged self evident claim, and this marks the phrase as occurring only in debate; otherwise the justificatory nature of 'self evidence' would be irrelevant. But by what means do the claims evince themselves?

I think a sufficient condition for "X is self evident" is "X cannot be doubted without performative contradiction". Considering that self evidence arises only in reference to concepts in debate, it's worthwhile to note that the space for 'performative contradictions' is confined to the actions which constitute philosophical debate; various forms of argument, descriptions, and introduction of axioms or already given premises. I imagine 'performative contradiction' has to be meant in a very strong sense here, something like 'by the very way you have made claim X, this necessitates not-X as a matter of logic'.

There is always a context in which a claim is made, and presumably self evidence of a claim is derived from a privileged kind of relation a claim has to its underlying context. If the problems of debate are always questions of some form, then self evidence comes from the framing of a question and the way that framing relates to the underlying context of the debate/questioning procedure. I think this means the analysis should begin from a description of different philosophical constructs self evidence may apply to. I think a reasonably typology might be; axioms and already-given premises | and argument strategies.

The notions of 'axioms' and 'already given premises' are probably the chief sites of claims of self-evidence. But argument forms can operate by being self evident too - like the logical movement of transcendental deduction, which travels from premise to conclusion upon the basis of the impossibility of conceiving otherwise. Derivatives of that such as revealing implicit structures in phenomenology probably have a similar structure - moving from premise to conclusion through some 'expansive rephrasing' of the premise in a manner that exhibits the premise's 'ground'. (to the extent that phenomenological descriptions can be said to have premises anyway)

For axioms - they aren't used by philosophers very often I believe, I can think of Descartes, Spinoza, Ayn Rand, Badiou and Laruelle as people who make use of axioms in some manner in their arguments. Certainty of God, a bunch of stuff about God and substance, a bunch of stuff about ZFC set theory and as a complicated discursive construction antithetical to philosophical thought respectively. However axiomatic systems don't necessarily need the axioms to be self evident - all that matters is that they are posited and operations are done within the rules demarcated by the axiomatic system. More poetic and less formalistic treatments of axioms, like in Rand and Badiou, treat axioms as necessary descriptors capturing the underlying features of some domain of study (all objects for Rand, the nature of the Real for Badiou), but 'self evidence' doesn't have to be used to justify them (like Rand does for A=A).

For already given premises and argument forms - I think these are more slippery to analyse. I believe that already given premises arise out of the questions asked and the argument forms sought to answer them - so these two regimes of self evidence have a large degree of overlap in their targets; they are both correct on pain of the arguer unravelling their own arguments in the making. As if nascent errors unfolded diachronically in the exposition of their negation; rather as if they couldn't. ;)

The premises could be supplied either by a person making an argument or an opponent - or an imagined opponent within the same discursive context. I imagine already given premises to function as purportedly necessary consequences or assumptions of the logical procedures that are operative within in the argument. By this I mean whatever means a debater uses to move from one point to another - like from premise to conclusion. As an example of a logical procedure, I have in mind something like 'rule-following' in Wittgenstein, and as a specific example: during an argument we don't assume there's a possibility of an evil demon destroying all of our knowledge and making all our inferences invalid. Or modus ponens if an argument was set out like a logical proof.

Though, exactly what rules philosophers must play by to be doing philosophy (or to correctly reason from point to point), if there are any universal or broadly applicable rules to begin with, are up for debate. Laruelle has some interesting points on this (see Ray Brassier's summary article 'Axiomatic Heresy' for a slightly more readable form of his arguments). I think Habermas has some ethical conclusions to draw from the purported structure of philosophical operations in discourse. Regardless, there is a supposition of the 'givenness' of a primordial and perhaps unarticulated philosophical structure in order to relate to the claims which are derived from it on pain of performative (that is, philosophical-logical here) contradiction. Which is something Derrida criticises in transcendental idealist and phenomenological traditions by attacking the givenness of experience and its metaphysics of presence.

I think theres's quite a lot of evidence for the ability of philosophers to disagree with each other on everything, every viewpoint has an inverse, every argument a counter point. What is likely is that 'self-evidencing' claims are justified by nothing more than a framing effect of their assumed relation to whatever context of debate they arise in. Self-evidence of a claim has a dark mirror in the questions it seeks to silence.

I'm opposed to transcendent Gods on logical grounds and the supernatural on methodological ones. I'm not that sympathetic to theism or theology in general - especially Gods emptied of content through theology. If someone's faith is less about having the correct divine or philosophical meta-narrative and more about the valorisation of humanity I find it respectable. If someone is just a theist, lives an entirely secular lifestyle but hedges their bets with a hollow belief in God without worship or appreciation of God's works, I find it difficult to respect.

What made you peg me as an anti-theist?

Actually I'm dying to ask how you came to be living with a nun for a year, at what stage of your life and so on...

I had to leave university for a year since I couldn't walk even short distances, especially with all the hills in the town where I studied. When I had to take leave from my studies, I had to find a place to live for the year after so I could resume them. The only place I found that I could afford was the house of a radical Franciscan nun whose duties to her church were, essentially, as a PR agent to the student population of the town for the faith.

We talked a lot about God and theology, and we did a trade, she taught me about the faith and we debated it, and I taught her things from mathematics and science and we debated them too. If it's good enough for Feynman it's good enough for a pleb like me.

Her faith was quite beautiful - mystic, sophisticated, reflexive and self critical, but fundamentally concerned with amplifying the goodness in humanity rather than the power of her religion. We did things like trying to analyse why and how the prayers of some agents of God had a habit of coming true; attempting to discover mechanical truth in the old addage that 'God helps those that help themselves'.

Her excellence as a person was not mirrored by her excellence as a landlady. The heating was broken, my room's window was cracked and it got into negative temperatures on winter nights, and the bed and carpets were ridden with parasites. I was fed on so much in my sleep I developed an allergy to bug bites in general, and have a smattering of recurrent, painful but small cysts in my legs. I couldn't complain to any housing authority as she wasn't a registered landlady, nor was the property registered, so it was either live there, be homeless and study, or terminate my studies entirely.

While her faith was sophisticated and largely consistent with the way she lived her life, the sanctity of life can be inconvenient for a tenant of a property; largely when the corpse of her dead cat is left near a radiator wrapped in a blanket for several days so it (poor Foursocks) can receive a dignified funeral. At least she only kept the dead bird the cat killed on the kitchen table for a day and a half, eh?

Another amusing way this interposed was that I volunteered to help her rearrange her attic, I might've had trouble with my legs but she was elderly and becoming infirm - there was a large wasps' nest in the attic which you could hear buzzing in the summer I moved there. Because she didn't want to disturb their peace, they were left in the attic with no food and with the skylight constantly closed; they all starved to death. Some of the attic rearrangement was removing dead wasps from old, rotting keepsakes and irrelevant tat she had accumulated through her life.

Her faith was a barrier between her ex-husband and her, and lead to a messy breakup; with her son angry at the God who denied him the love of both parents. The most tragic thing I found in the attic was a young boy's cuddly toy, one eyed and loved until the stuffing half fell out, covered in spider webs and dead insects, alongside train-sets and homework books.

The attic rearrangement was making this vault of rotting memories accessible to her again.