Not a bachelor is not nothing because a bachelor is something. So, yes, not a bachelor is a married man. And...? — TheMadFool

What you said here is incorrect:

However not something is nothing. — TheMadFool

Then not something isn't necessarily nothing.

Explain yourself. Why "silly"? — TheMadFool

I did explain myself. I said, that I don't see how you could set out answering such a question. Why something as opposed to what - nothing? Didn't I already point out that "nothing" is just an idea, which is something, so "nothing" doesn't exist except as a thought in your mind.

Even if you were to somehow prove that nothing exists, you'd have to show how one is more likely than the other, which would require knowledge of what makes one more likely than the other, which can only be something, not nothing. It's a question whose concepts twist back upon itself, creating a paradox.

The probabilistic answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics I provided doesn't have as its conclusion that "something exists". As you rightly pointed out, we already know that. What it does or what I want it to do is provide an explanation as to why "something exists". — TheMadFool

Seems like a silly question to me. I don't see how you could even set out answering such a question.

However not something is nothing. — TheMadFool

Is not a bachelor a married man or nothing?

However, it does prove that the probability of something existing is greater than the probability of nothing. — TheMadFool

Probabilities are just ideas stemming from our ignorance. Reality just is a certain way. It's not more probable to be a certain way than another. It already is a certain way. How it is, is what we are ignorant of, therfore how it is is probabilistic in our eyes.

Your probabilistic answer doesn't provide anything that we didn't already know - that something exists.

And nothing is an idea, therefore nothing is something. Is a vacuum something or nothing?

You are right that there are far more configurations of things than of nothing, making something more likely over time. — Kenosha Kid

I don't see how this follows. How does the number of configurations of things make something more likely than nothing?

But time began, as far as we can tell, with things. — Kenosha Kid

Exactly. What came before determines what comes after. How does nothing begat something?

Not everything can't be nothing because not nothing isn't necessarily everything. Not nothing and not everything can both be in something. — TheMadFool

NOT some thing isnt necessarily nothing either, but can be some other thing. Prove that nothing is anything other than a thought - which is something.

Not everything isn't nothing, it's something. However not something is nothing. — TheMadFool

Not everything is not necessarily something. It could possibly be nothing as well.

I think the soundest concept of 'nothing' we can have is precisely this 0-dimensional Hilbert space of the inflaton field: this is not a nothing in which 'no thing' happens to exist, but the nothing in which the very possibility of a thing cannot exist, since there are precisely zero allowed states, not even static, empty ground states. — Kenosha Kid

Contradiction.

It is more accurate to say that there is always something. Even when thinking about the opposite of something, you are still thinking of something, even though that thought is about "nothing".

Do either of you dispute my claim that the logic of propositions is not the same as the logic of commands? — unenlightened

What are you trying to accomplish when using the logic of propositions vs. the logic of commands? Do both not express some sort if belief?

The assumption that he meant A to have some numerical value appears reasonable. Null pointer errors aren't very relevant to the discussion. — Kenosha Kid

but then it wouldn't be a contradiction, like they claimed.

There's a difference between everything and something and this becomes clear when we realize that something doesn't entail everything. — TheMadFool

Everything encompasses something.

Everything = All (some)things.

as if he never published. — Banno

The question was, "Was Galileo doing science before he published?"

I learned a long time ago, in a philosophy forum far, far away that you are more interested in hearing yourself talk than in actually trying to solve problems. That's why your threads are so long.

Equipossible =/= equiprobable — 180 Proof

The distinction is meaningless in regards to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. To say whether it is more or less likely that there is something rather than nothing requires you to know the likelihood of something, rather than nothing, being the case given a set of prior circumstances. Is the prior set of circumstances something or nothing? Is it something all the way down? If not, then how does something come from nothing? Is that possible or probable?

What's the opposite of nothing? Is it everything or something? — TheMadFool

Everything entails something.

1a. is about the nonexistence of things and 1b. is about the existence of nothing — TheMadFool

The latter is a contradiction. Nothing is not something that exists. One might say that existence is the opposite of nothing.

1. Nothing can exist can be interpreted in two ways:

1a. It's impossible for things to exist

1b. Nothing, itself, can exist — TheMadFool

Looks like both are saying the same thing.

The fundamental question of metaphysics is about interpretation 1a. it's impossible for things to exist, it's falsity specifically which is "it's possible for things to exist". Why? — TheMadFool

Not sure I'm really understanding your question. The absence of one thing doesn't mean nothing. It means something else. In other words, when you imagine something not existing, you don't imagine nothing existing, you imagine something else in its place (space and air, or maybe a bachelor if you were imagining a married man).

2. How do you know that "something can come from nothing" is wrong? — TheMadFool

Because its impossible. Its impossible to even think about how something could come from nothing, much less provide a coherent and useful explanation of how that would happen.

My reply to unenlightened showed that A needs to be defined prior to A = A + 1, or else the statement is false (it returns an error). You can't use a variable that wasn't previously defined to define a variable. Its like defining a word with using another word that hasn't been defined.

This errs in failing to notice that science is social. One individual making their own observations is not science. A group actively engaging in a conversation aimed at explaining what they see, and willing to adjust their view to account for what others claim, is at least a start. — Banno

So Galileo wasn't doing science when he devised the modern scientific method and performed his experiments in private, away from the watchful eyes of the theocracy?

If philosophy is social, then we have both made the same point - that philosophy IS a science.

Besides, other peoples claims are are not evidence. That is where you err. You still have to personally verify their claims. Other peoples' claims is just another personal observation anyway.

It assumes nothing can exist, or that something can come from nothing, but we know that to be wrong, therefore I don't see how asking such a question is useful. Something exists. There is no why.

Thats a different question that your formula doesn't address. It also seems like a useless non-sensical question. How useful do you expect the answer to be?

Falsification fails to demarcate science from non-science both because scientists make use of non-falsifiable theories (as Watkins shows) and because falsification fails to solve the problem of induction. — Banno

The key to understanding the relationship between philosophy (metaphysics) and science (physics) is to realize that philosophy is a science. And the conclusions of one branch of the investigation of reality must not contradict those of another. All knowledge must be integrated

At root, science identifies and integrates sensory evidence (which is the nature of reason). Science is essentially based, not on experiment, but on observation and logic; the act of looking under a rock or into a telescope is a scientific act. So is the act of observing and thinking about your own mental processes (proof of one's conclusions to others comes later, but that is argumentative, not inquisitive.) Science is willing to accept and integrate information from any observational source, without concern about persuading other people.

They are both the same in that they both gather knowledge through observation and then classify this knowledge, and through classification, elaborate general principles or ideas. Science is simply organized knowledge.

if that weren't the case, we would either have the answer to the question or would be claiming knowledge we don't possess. — TheMadFool

We do have the answer. Something exists. Therfore, this whole endeavor is unnecessary.

Yeah, I’m fine with that brief. Personally, I would then ask, if science solves the hard problem by relating the physical mechanisms of brain to the metaphysical mechanisms of subjectivism......what has really been accomplished? I rather think no one will care, except the scientists. — Mww

So you are no longer interested in the subject if it no longer resides in the domain of philisophy and becomes part of the domain of science. I can understand this. Unsolved mysteries are interesting to philosophers. Solved mysteries are no longer interesting to philosophers but are interesting to scientists. :cool:

However, we should be careful not to allow our interest in keeping it a mystery prevent us from solving the problem. The answers were never guaranteed to be interesting to everyone for every goal that they may have.

I guess I don't really know how to think about a proposition if it's not associated with a statement, or a class of statements, that sets out a state of affairs. How do you think about it? — fdrake

Start off with the basics. When you have a thought of red, is the thought a color or a word? But then words can be colored scribbles. So is red a color with no shape or a colored scribble?

Statements are sounds and colored scribbles. So to say that you don't know how to think of red apples without sounds and colored scribbles doesn't seem consistent, when you think of words as words, but not apples as apples?

Words are just different types of sensory impressions. You see apples on tables like you see words on screens. You don't need statements to distinguish between words and apples or to have the belief that words and apples are different things. The distinction is obvious in the mind. You only need statements to communicate beliefs, not to actually have beliefs.

There are 2 equiprobable possibilities: — TheMadFool

That's an unfounded assumption. How did you come to the certain conclusion that something existing and nothing existing are equiprobable outcomes?

They only appear as "unfalsifiable" because you have not defined your terms, "God", "exist". Once you provide clear definitions you'll see what I mean. That "unfalsifiable" could mean something other than true is only the case when terms are ambiguous. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which is akin to what I've been saying. The more specific we are with our definitions, the more falsifiable those definitions are. To assert the existence of some thing that contradicts the category you are defining the thing as (ie there are planets smaller than mercury that exist) either means that we adjust the definition of the category, or put the thing in a whole new category. The latter occurred when we categorized Pluto as a dwarf planet, instead of a planet.

Consider statements of the form "there exists an x such that p(x)", those are verifiable but not falsifiable. Why? To verify it, all you need to do is find an example, to falsify it, you need to go out and look at everything ever and evaluate whether there's an x in it such that p(x). "There exists a non-white swan" - go out and find it. You think there isn't one? Have you looked everywhere? — fdrake

I wouldnt need to look everywhere, only where swans live, or in its genetic code where there would be the potential for non- white feathers to be expressed, just as one might have the code for brown eyes in their genes even though they have blue eyes.

Then there is the possibility of defining swans as all being white, and non-white "swans" aren't actually swans at all.

A statement is verifiable if it can be shown to be true.
A statement is falsifiable if it can be shown to be false. — fdrake

And if it's neither, then the statement is verifiable and falsifiably shown to be nothing other than an unjustified belief, which is to say that it is neither true or false, which is to say that the statement is useless.

The whole point of the claimant omitting "I believe..." at the beginning of the statement is to get the reader to believe, and possibly to fool themselves into thinking that it is more than a just an unjustified belief. But if there is no evidence either way then the lack of evidence is verifiable evidence that the statement is nothing more than an unjustified belief.

Did anyone actually read the article? — Banno

Did anyone understand the article? I'm responding to your examples. If you're examples aren't good representations of what was said in the article, it makes me wonder if you understand what you read, or if you have critically examined what you read in the article.

Any claim made without empirical evidence, which is the same as saying without justification, is a claim about the ontological status of a belief, not the ontological status of real UFOs in real secret military garages.

Any claim made without evidence can be safely understood to actually be saying, "I believe...[the claim]". The claim is about a metaphysical belief, not a metaphysical state of affairs independent of your belief.

The difference between Level 1 and Level 3 is in the degree of verifiability. The car is in my garage today - take a look; but the metal that doesn't expand when heated - I don't have a sample as yet, but it's out there, somewhere... prove me wrong!

Uncircumscribed existential statements are the stuff of conspiracy theories. There's a flying saucer in a US military base. I know we've looked in all the military bases we know of, but this base is secret...

Anyhow, the key point here is that Level 2 statements are unfalsifiable, Level 3 statements are unverifiable, and their conjugate, Level 4 statements, are neither verifiable nor falsifiable. — Banno

We could just say that one of the characteristics of metal is that it expands when heated. Anything else would be, at best, semi-metal. We can simply redefine words or make up new words to resolve the first example. It's a language issue.

Religious claims are just as conspiratorial as many political claims. Some claims are more useful than others, depending on your goals and more fundamental beliefs. Those that already assume there are aliens, gods, or Republicans/Democrats out to oppress you, will see these types of claims as more proof of their assumptions. Not very useful to those without those assumptions, and require the same empirical evidence as you provided for your car being in the garage to believe in UFOs being secret military garages.

Determinism: Every event has a cause. This has the form given for Level 4 statements, an existential statement nestled in a universal. Hence, if Watkins is correct, it can not be proved - doing so would require the impossibility that we examine every possible event and determine its cause; nor can it be falsified; that we have not so far found the cause of some given event does not imply that there is no such cause. — Banno

Again, here we could just define effects as having causes. Any event without a cause would be classified as being a non-effect. It seems that many metaphysical problems can be resolved by changing the way we use words.

Depending on the context, they can be interchangeable. Alice (the subject) is kicking the ball (the object). Or the ball (the subject) is being kicked by Alice (the object). In the first, it is Alice that is being described. In the second, it is the ball that is being described (i.e., in subject-predicate form). — Andrew M

It seems to me that both sentences are describing both things, because both sentences say the same thing, just from different views.

As far as I understand, your point is that our mental states are ultimately independent of the corresponding verbal expressions. This position fails to take account of the complex social and collective character of our beliefs. They are developed, shaped, and exercised within the networks of our interpersonal interactions. Can we reduce them to simple rituals and behavioural patterns, deprived of the signifying symbolic mechanisms? — Number2018

Correspondence is a mental activity. When you use words, you have a belief about how words are used. But what about when you need to use a screwdriver? Do you need words to use a screwdriver, or just the visual of someone using a screwdriver?

Social environments are just a type of natural environment. Sure, being raised by wolves as opposed to apes can have a drastic impact on how you interpret your environment, but we are actually talking about the various environmental niches that certain species fill in the environment. Different rules are required to accomplish different goals. Apes and wolves have different goals, but also similar goals. They both require food and mates, but different food and different mates. A wolf does not interpret an ape of the opposite sex as a thing to mate with. It interprets it as food, or a trespasser in its territory.

Right, that's why I said what "information" refers to in information theory is something completely different from what "information" refers to in much common usage. So for example, if we distinguish between symbols and what the symbols represent (meaning), in information theory the symbols are called information, but in common usage information usually refers to what is represented by the symbols, the meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

How can you call them symbols if they don't already represent something? Meaning is inherent in symbols. Effects are symbolic of their causes.

Harry Hindu is speaking of this as a matter of following rules, but I don't see any evidence of any such rules. And the idea of "rules" does not deliver us from the ambiguity. We generally understand "rules" to exist as an expression of symbols. But these rules would need to be interpreted for meaning. So we'd be stuck in a vicious circle here, of requiring rules to interpret rules. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe "rule" isn't the most appropriate term. Does natural selection "select rules" by which some organism interprets the information it receives via its senses? Is "selecting rules" an adequate phrase to refer to how certain characteristics are favored by natural selection for the organism to be more in tune with their environment? What is selected is better interpretations of sensory information. These ways of interpreting sensory information are what become instincts, or habits.

I really do not believe that there are any such rules, just habits, so I think we're on a different page here Harry. — Metaphysician Undercover

Habits are memorized rules, or rules that have been engrained in the genetic code thanks to natural selection.

Re: Noise

Noise is information that isn't being attended to, or not applicable to the present goal in working memory.

When listening to someone across a crowded and noisy room, you are focusing your attention on one particular voice. All the other voices are noise because your attention isn't focused on that information. But switch your attention to another voice and that voice becomes information. Its not that the noise wasn't information. It is. The difference arises from attending to bits of information vs. not attending to the bits of information. So, the distinction between noise and information is epistemological.

subject:
1. A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with. — Andrew M

So subjects are nouns? Looks like objects and subjects are synonyms, unless you're saying that objects can't be discussed, described, or dealt with. :chin:

It describes how what is foundational, or basic to communication is uncertainty. — Metaphysician Undercover

This can be said about any experience - visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory or tactile. We use past experience, knowledge, and rules, to eliminate the uncertainty of what we experience.

Interpretting words and behaviors entails discovering the rules (beliefs) that the sender used to encode the message. Only by discovering the rule (belief) can you then decode the message.

Yet, would my mental state be identifiable and recognizable if I could not understand and articulate it in a sentence “It is raining”? — Number2018

Again, communicating beliefs is a seperate issue than having beliefs. Making sounds with your mouth is a behaviour that expresses your belief just as covering your head and running inside does.

As an observer of others, your only have access to their beliefs via their actions. Do you need to observe your own actions to know you have beliefs? Do you need to say, "it is raining." to have a belief that it is raining, or do you simply need to experience water falling from the sky to have the belief that it is raining? If simply stating it is raining means you have a belief that it is raining, then who needs water falling from the sky to believe that it is raining?

“If I were to say that belief is always about states of affairs, would you agree? Then it only remains to point out that a state of affairs can always be put in propositional form for us to see that beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form” — Number2018

Beliefs are not about what can be put in propositional form. How beliefs are communicated is a seperate problem than what beliefs are. Seems like you have to solve the latter problem first before solving the prior problem.

Putting beliefs in propositional form is just another state of affairs that is not the state of affairs that the proposition is about. We can talk about talking, just as we can talk about anything.

What on Earth are all of these scribbles in this thread is about? Is it about a debate? What is the debate about? Is it about something being the case - the ontological nature of propositions and beliefs? Does a debate not assume that one side is closer to the truth than the other side, and that each side tries to show how their scribbles are more of an accurate representation of the ontological relationship between propositions and beliefs? Are you not trying to show something with your use of scribbles? I'm inclined to believe that many people here are more interested in hearing themselves talk than in actually solving problems.

Depends I guess. — frank

On what? What if the speaker was referring to a dream or a fictional story? There are many instances where the present king of France is bald would be true. So it would appear that it depends on what is being talked about. Propositions are always ontological in the sense that they are about how things are or are not. They are epistemological in the sense that the symbols and rules we agree to use to refer how things are or are not, are arbitrary. We could just as well use barks and tail wags to represent some state of affairs as we could use scribbles and utterances.

What if the proposition was, "The present king of France is imaginary." Does that not change what we are talking about, even though we are still talking about the present king of France?

Does this not show that some propositions have terms that are not clearly defined, or have multiple definitions, and which one is being used isnt clear? Thats why I demand definitions for these nebulous terms.

Just like a computer program, variables need to be defined before you can perform functions with them. Scribbles need to be defined before they can be used.

Plus the sentence could become truth apt (if we grant that sentences can be) if you named your dog 'The present king of France' — frank

What if the statement was made by a person that is hallucinating or delusional, or a habitual liar?

I'm making a comment about failure of reference. If that example doesn't work for you, then see the earlier "the present king of France is bald" example. — Andrew M

Like I said, its a matter of some string of scribbles being useful or useless. Scribbles that fail to refer are useless scribbles, just as a dog's bark or the wagging of its tail must refer to something that isn't another bark or tail wag, or else the bark or wag of the tail wouldn't be very useful behaviors. Drawing scribbles that don't refer to anything isn't a useful behaviour. What else could Banno mean by saying that meaning is use? Words are used to refer. If you didn't use scribbles to refer, then you didn't use words. It is what distinguishes scribbles from words.