Epistemological is just a way we try to order things — Shwah

Epistemology is the study of how we know things. I'm confused by the way you're using the word.

There's a particular order where the ontological nature of an object informs what epistemic standards can be used to understand it (such as what eyes or hands will "know" about a blade of grass under a running river). This order is asymmetric where the "belief, degree of knowledge, hunger-inducement the idea may make you etc" have no impact on the ontological position in question (say quantum mechanics or theism etc). — Shwah

Sorry, I'm lost.

So for emergent computing they try to develop a valid structure for dealing with objects they propose exist (such as birds and them turning into flocks) and formally this fails because the game of life deals with completely different units (just dots in general I suppose). — Shwah

What flocking birds and the cells of cellular automata have in common is that changes in the behavior of cells or birds are based on simple rules about how they react to the behavior of adjacent cells or birds.

I endorse arguments based on knowledge and reason rather than prejudice.
— T Clark

That's setting the bar too high in my opinion and your "website" will get fewer, even though high quality, hits if you catch my drift. Also you'll miss out on what a fresh pair of eyes can provide in terms of novel insights into a problem, old and new. Just a thought, that's all. — Agent Smith

Just to make sure I've got this right. Requiring arguments based on knowledge and reason rather than prejudice is setting the bar too high. Is that correct? Your directness is refreshing. I can't think of anything else of value to add in response.

Yeah that's fair. I think for me causation doesn't inherently need time in order to speak about cause. To me cause is solely the "why" something "is" so the basis is a type of predication of the is. This definition and generalization allows an inclusion of math/logical problems such as 1+1=2. If we include time then we can't include universals and then we have no means to speak about "what caused math" which is important for the "foundations of mathematics" etc. — Shwah

I think you've broadened the definition of the words "causation" and "creation" to the point where they've lost their meaning. If you look at definitions of causation, they almost always focus on the temporal sequence of two events. To me, a temporal sequence and a logical sequence are completely different things. You are comparing one spherical, brightly colored fruit that is used to make juice that children like to drink with another, completely different, brightly colored fruit that is used to make juice that children like to drink.

What are some good conceptions of causation in principles or full narratives that you prefer? — Shwah

As I said, I don't think the idea of causation is a very useful one for any but the simplest situations. From my reading, It seems that the idea of cause really arose in relation to actions initiated by people and that the use of the term for events that don't involve people is a relatively more recent affair. Please don't ask me to defend that idea right now, but I think it's important.

game of life — Shwah

I find the Game of Life, cellular automata, fascinating.

It creates multiple shapes etc and people have tried to map what shapes are created (when birds appear and what happens after) and it seems impossible but the issue is they're establishing an epistemological fraking of the code ("birds") then trying to create patterns off that when the code doesn't compute by that so epistemologically emergentism seems to appear but ontologically this isn't the case. — Shwah

Sorry. I don't understand, especially the underlined part.

The first is creatio ex nihilo and I find issues with that when you apply it as a full causation narrative as we can trace objects back (say where an apple just came from) without any reference to nothing. — Shwah

But that's really the problem for me. Except in the very simplest situations we can't trace events back very far. When we can, we find that there are multiple causes for almost everything. There's a word for it - overdetermination. I'm working, slowly, on a thread to discuss whether causation is a useful way of understanding how things work.

Emergentism is a causation narrative that means the new object in succession has traits distinct from the prior object(s) which it emerges from. It is usually justified by statistical mechanics, among other probability-based fields. I've never seen an ontological example of emergentism just epistemological configurations. — Shwah

Emergentism isn't really about causation, is it? It's not that chemistry causes biology, it's that what we call biological phenomena are consistent with chemical principles. Please explain what you mean by an epistemological configuration of emergentism.

Emanationism is where objects have all their meaning and ontology from an object they are a "part of". For instance apples emanate from a tree where so long as a tree exists, apples will be made according to the tree and the tree according to the environment etc. — Shwah

This doesn't really seem to have much to do with causation or creation either. It's about how what already exists, has already been caused, can be described.

The last one I know is successionism which is similar to emergentism except no new variables or traits are created, there's just an advancement from the preceding object in the same way as preceding that. An example is cantor's different sets of numbers. — Shwah

This seems like a traditional approach to causation. As I noted, for me it fails because the whole idea of causation is difficult to justify in most situations. This is not a radical idea. It's been on the table for more than a hundred years and is supported by established and respected philosophers and scientists.

So, how do we deal with the issue of the relationship between events and succeeding events? How do we use the past and present to predict the future? As I said, I'm working on that for myself right now.

Do you still wish to endorse religion? — Agent Smith

I don't endorse religion, I endorse arguments based on knowledge and reason rather than prejudice.

T Clark, since you seem to have gone through Angelo Cannata's link, mind sharing your insights on the matter. — Agent Smith

I don't see what more needs to be said. Your question about how and why polytheism evolved into monotheism in some, but not all, cultures has been asked by many people before. A lot of thought, research, and study has been put into it. The answers they came up with are plausible and documented.

The primary religions of the most populous countries, India and China, are still polytheistic.

Regardless— the term is fairly meaningless anyway. What most people signify with “philosopher” is, in my view, already worthless. So there’s little to “devalue” — unless you accept the common usage. — Xtrix

I don't agree. "Philosopher" is a good name for what Aristotle, Plato, Russell, Wittgenstein, and all those other guys are. It's a useful term.

Why is my argument "pitiful", "lame", and "dumbass"? Justify your statement, if you can that is — Agent Smith

@Angelo Cannata provided clear, plausible, documented evidence that your interpretation of the change from polytheism to monotheism is not correct. Your response? "That's just opinion." Then you went on with your half-baked theory that, coincidentally, just happens to work well with your knee-jerk atheism.

I'm curious, what's your argument for/against monotheism? — Agent Smith

I don't have an argument for or against monotheism. It's not something I have an opinion about. I do have an opinion about irrational arguments for religious bigotry.

Come on AS, Angelo has presented convincing documentation for his position. You are being willfully argumentative and providing no evidence. As Stephen Hawking once said "Fax iz fax."
— T Clark

@Angelo Cannata

Please read my reply to Shwah (vide supra). — Agent Smith

This is just about the most pitiful, lame argument I've seen since being on the forum, and that's saying a lot. You should be ashamed. You're lucky they don't ban people for dumbass arguments.

It is an opinion based on research, studies, archaelogy, criticism, done by scholars all over the world.. As such, it helps for further research. What historical elements is your hypothesis based on? — Angelo Cannata

Your explanation seems like a plausible one. I did check, and you're right. There the consensus seems to be that it was a social and cultural movement that took place over hundreds of years.

That's an opinion. What isn't, oui? — Agent Smith

It's not, as you suppose, a hypothesis. It's a mathematical pattern: from many to one to...zilch/nada/zip/sifr/zero/cipher! — Agent Smith

Come on AS, Angelo has presented convincing documentation for his position. You are being willfully argumentative and providing no evidence. As Stephen Hawking once said "Fax iz fax."

you're "doing" philosophy. For that moment, you're a philosopher. — Xtrix

If that were true, it would completely devalue what calling someone a philosopher signifies. It would become meaningless. If you and I are philosophers, then no one is.

Can one buy their way in? — EugeneW

Sure. There are lots of bad engineers, but they're still engineers. Ditto doctors, butchers, elephant trainers, Presidents of the United States.

So for example, when one says "I see that violence is bad", "I see your comments are fair". — KantDane21

I don't think it's a figure of speech at all. It's just one of the usages allowed by the definition of the word "see." From Merriam Webster:

transitive verb
1a: to perceive by the eye
b: to perceive or detect as if by sight
2a: to be aware of : RECOGNIZE
sees only our faults
b: to imagine as a possibility : SUPPOSE
couldn't see him as a crook
c: to form a mental picture of : VISUALIZE
can still see her as she was years ago
d: to perceive the meaning or importance of : UNDERSTAND — Merriam-Webster

Some though, by clever tactics and strategies, try to ride along for free or are way overdue. — EugeneW

I was only talking about what I thought you needed to do to call yourself a philosopher, not necessarily what you need to do in order to be a good philosopher.

Is it going to pit language against philosophy, à la Wittgenstein? — Agent Smith

You'll just have to wait to see.

I think he's saying if you have to "pay your dues" to be a philosopher then how does he know if he's paid his dues? The example was studying over a line in Plato that you may consider mystic for decades and come out with the idea of objective justice after all that? In this sense they're using time and effort in established philisophy to see if that's paying dues. He was hoping for a very specific answer and finish line. — Shwah

I'm kind of lost. Tired Thinker asked "What is a philosopher?" I gave my answer. It seems a pretty straightforward answer to a straightforward question. I thought the answer was clear. If it doesn't work for you, that's fine. Happens all the time.

But there is no relationship between the philosopher and the history of philosophical problems. How do you not spend your life devoted to problems long resolved? How do you avoid reinventing the wheel? What if you spend years contemplating what it is we can know with any certainty only to end up with a variation of 'I think therefore I am'? — Tom Storm

The question is "What is a philosopher?" That's the question I intended to answer. Seems like you want to know how to do philosophy. Not a bad question, but not the one I was answering.

I agree, but I am wondering what those dues would look like. — Tom Storm

Given that the career path for a philosopher is much less well defined than that for an engineer, I thought I spelled it out fairly clearly.

So in your view to be called a philosopher you probably have to be a professional? — Tom Storm

I don't mean professional as in academic and I don't think you necessarily would need to have any specific education. I committed my life to being an engineer. I went to school, found a job as a junior engineer, worked with more senior people, gained more seniority and responsibility, became certified, and tried to do my work in accordance with the standards of my profession, especially my responsibilities to my clients and the public. I paid my engineering dues. A philosopher should pay their philosophy dues.

What does more on the line look like? — Tom Storm

More time, attention, effort, discipline. More risk associated with failure; e.g. loss of money, status, reputation. Just like any other profession.

Is a philosopher only a person with at least a master's in philosophy or who has certain published words, or who has created a whole logic system for world order? What is necessary for someone to call themselves a philosopher? — TiredThinker

Let's think of philosophy as a profession. What do other professions require? I was an engineer for 30 years. What standard did I meet?

• Appropriate education
• Experience as part of a professional community
• Competence with specific skills
• A sense of the responsibilities and ethics of the profession.
• Certification.

That doesn't really work for a philosopher, but it gets at some principles. Let's try this:

• Commitment of your life to practicing philosophy to the exclusion of other important aspects
• Ability to express your thoughts so other people can understand them
• Submittal of your ideas to other philosophers and competent laymen for evaluation
• Ability to competently defend your ideas

Generally, doing what we do here on the forum does not make you a philosopher. You have to put more on the line than we do. Again, that's a generality.

While consulting the latest Wyylde / Ifop survey published yesterday, I came across this data: — Olivier5

Ah, yes. Wyylde. Motto - Join the Pleasure Party. "Wyylde is the first social network where you can express your sexuality freely." Here, take a look at the source of your data:

https://www.wyylde.com/en-us/

Do you think Aristotle's argument is sound or valid? Why or why not? — Kuro

You can tell this is a good topic by all the thoughtful answers you got. Not a smarty pants in the bunch. I like quoted text a lot. Is it convincing? Yes, actually it is. Does it convince me? Well.... I'm with @Bob Ross "To be completely honest, I am not sure if I agree or disagree." So, I agree that I can't decide if I agree or not.

I have never assumed that time was anything much more than a human construct to help us make sense of and order our version of 'reality'. Notions of cause and eternity similarly are ideas we use to explain things and to some extent map onto terrestrial events as we view them. — Tom Storm

I agree with this, but I also find the argument convincing. Does that mean that I've violated the Law of Noncontradiction? So..what are you going to do about it?

The interval of real numbers (1,2) has 'no number on the right', as it does not contain its least upper bound ( 2 ), you'd need to look 'outside of it' (in the real numbers themselves) to get that. — fdrake

Aristotle says that time must be eternal, not that sequences of numbers must be. Numbers are ideas. while time is real. Except that it isn't. See above.

Time count begins when something changes. A void with no space-time has no time. Time starts at the mark of a change. "Universe and no-time" don't go together. — L'éléphant

Agree.

I also challenge the claim that motion defines time. It does not. Motion makes time measurable, but it does not define it. Time exists outside of motion. — god must be atheist

Disagree, although I might say "change" instead of "motion."

Time cannot exist without change. — Harry Hindu

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time. — Harry Hindu

Agree.

This is fun.

I wish this were more widely recognized. A succinct formulation of a key idea. — Tom Storm

In a sense, I think it is a summary of all the things I've written about on the forum. At bottom, they all have this in common.

I don't have any particular point to make by posting this graph, but I think it's interesting.

Donut holes exist. — 180 Proof

As it says in the Tao Te Ching:

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move. — Lao Tzu

The Principle of Universal Explanation (PE): everything must have some explanation (in terms of something else). — lish

I'm not sure, but it seems that you might be making a distinction between everything having an explanation and everything having a cause. Is that true? Please believe I'm not being ironic when I say this - can you please explain why that would be true. I can't see any difference between the two. As for causation, it is has been a commonplace for more than 100 years that it is not true that everything has a cause. I don't mean that it is fully established or not controversial. I just mean it has been proposed seriously by eminent philosophers, e.g. Bertrand Russell.

Within his argument, Rasmussen defends PE by saying everything we are exposed to in this world has an explanation. — lish

I'm not even certain what this statement means. To me it is self-evidently false. The world is full of things for which we don't have explanations. Explanations are human things. Reality is not human.

The Principle of Unexplained Existence (PU): reality in total cannot have an explanation (in terms of anything beyond itself). — lish

It is not clear to me that "reality in total" is even a thing. Seems a lot like objective reality. Is it the same thing? There are good arguments that the idea of objective reality is not a very useful one.

There is no science that it doesn't either. In fact, the very theory advocated here says it does. — EugeneW

As I noted, the theory advocated here is not science.

Now, if you'll just let this go and don't respond, I'll go away and won't come back to this discussion.

An inquiry for any of you who are familiar with quantum entanglement and relativity: has progress been made on identifying mechanisms of entanglement and contrasting them with the theoretical dynamics of an extremely fast-moving object within a relativistic reference frame? — Enrique

As usual for your threads, I'll say this once and then go away. There is no science that says there is any connection between quantum entanglement and relativistic behavior. There is no science that says either of these have anything to do with consciousness. The suggestion that these kinds of connections do exist is pseudo-science. Pseudo-science does not belong on this forum. You should take it to a science forum where it will get the reception is deserves.

Where can you see the suicides in the graphic? — EugeneW

The graph represents rates of suicide in the US. Here's a link:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6909a7.htm

You know, folks do do that... Rates of youth suicide and attempted youth suicide in Western societies are quite high. — Olivier5

Correction - Rates of male suicide are very high:

OK, perhaps. But will one of them speak up? — lll

There's an entire thread about this currently active:

The Unequivocal Triumph Of Neuroscience - On Consciousness — Deleted User

Although I did not pay close attention to this thread, I did notice that you participated in it.

Also, I guess you might put me in as "one of them." As I see it, the mechanisms that produce mental phenomena are purely biological/neurological. That's not the same as saying that mental processes are nothing but biological/neurological phenomena. There are metaphysical and scientific reasons to recognize that mental processes are different from biological processes. This is discussed in another recent thread:

Reductionism and the Hierarchy of Scale — T Clark

deleted

There is no good evidence that humans will understand ultimate truth
— Tom Storm

There is very good evidence, I might say. We understand most parts of the universe, so why not the fundaments? What we will never understand is where the fundaments themselves come from. And that's where God comes walking in. — EugeneW

There is no good evidence that humans will understand ultimate truth or that ultimate truth is even a thing. — Tom Storm

I think Tom Storm's second possibility, that there is no ultimate truth, is probably correct.

I was not criticizing you, but the "claim" that you were noting. — Gnomon

I understood that.

There are many here who will defend the claim that ideas are merely neurological states.
— T Clark
For the purposes of objective scientists, that claim may be acceptable. But philosophers are more interested in the subjective meaningful aspect of Ideas. — Gnomon

I don't want to get into this again. You and I've beaten it back and forth enough. I was responding to @lll and all I said was that there are many people who believe that ideas are merely neurological states, e.g. our late lamented friend @Garrett Travers.

I’ve been searching for theist arguments that seem to hold the most promise. Recently, I was presented with the following argument — tryhard

I'll go line by line:

1. For any possible limit, there’s a possible external explanation - I'm not exactly sure what this means, but...ok.
2. Explanations aren’t entirely included in that which they explain - I'm not exactly sure what this means, but... ok.
3. Having limits is a limit - I'm not exactly sure what this means, but...ok.
4. Therefore, there is a possible explanation of having limits - Again... ok.
5. The only possible explanation of having limits must be in terms of something without limits - I don't see why this is true. If you come to my house for dinner and I tell you that you can go anywhere in the house except the living room because it is being painted, I have set limits in terms of something with limits, i.e. my house.
6. Therefore, it’s possible that something has no limits - I don't see how this follows logically, but I do believe that it is possible that something has no limits, e.g. it is my understanding that the most accepted model of the universe is that it is finite but unbounded.
7. Whatever has no limits is of supreme nature - I'm not sure what you mean by "supreme" in this case. Be that as it may, I don't think this follows from anything that has been postulated previously.
8. Therefore, it is possible that there’s a supreme being - I think it is possible that there is a supreme being, but I don't think it follows logically from anything that has been postulated previously.
9. A supreme being is either impossible or necessary - I don't see why this would be true. Do you think it's self-evident? It's not.
10. A supreme being is not impossible. - Yes, I've agreed to that.
11. Therefore, a supreme being is necessary - No.

These types of so-called "rational" arguments for God seem wrong-headed to me. I haven't ever read one that I found even slightly convincing.

I find it fascinating that something that feels like obvious nonsense to me can be believed by so many people. I think to get to bottom of it, you'd have to peel back your world-view, but the more you peel back the less is left to do the peeling. It's not really just about God, it's just the most prominent and most frequent topic. I feel similarly about topics like "free will", for example, but the topic doesn't have as much real life relevance. — Dawnstorm

I find the idea of God interesting also. Although I don't follow any religion, I find that the idea, the experience, of having a personal relationship with the world a natural one. On the other hand, I have no trouble seeing why people reject the idea. I'm not sure how free will fits into that mix.

All those proofs of God? I think they're incomplete if you only consider the logic of the argument. There's always something behind this; something you either live or don't, some sort of intuition. — Dawnstorm

Whatever God is, I don't think there's any rational way to show it exists. You say "some sort of intuition," I say God is an experience. I think we're probably talking about the same thing.

But they just don't see anything non-physical about Reality. For them, Ideas are merely neurological states. That's like saying the Function of an automobile is a steel structure.
— Gnomon

But where are such rascals hiding ? Will anyone here defend that claim? It's so loopy to see nothing 'non-physical' in reality that misunderstanding is far more likely than your straw man with a vacuum tube for as hole. — lll

There are many here who will defend the claim that ideas are merely neurological states.

you go to a lot of trouble to try and included definitions, references, glossary entries and links. You try and define your terms. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree this is a good thing about @Gnomon's posts. I should have mentioned it.

Just arrived - a nice set, although I wish it didn't have the Apple Tv logo on the covers. It's been forty years since I read the original trilogy. — Pantagruel

Like you, I've only read the original three books, but for me it was about 55 years ago. They meant a lot to me. I think the realization that there could be really, really big ideas was what fascinated me.