It sounds rather absurd, I know, but that’s what the many-worlders are saying.

how is it that he can make claims about other languages' deficit in meaning possibilities if such a thing can only be understood by native speakers, and he is NOT a native speaker of French or English or Swahili anything else? — Constance

At worse he was just expressing a prejudice, at best a joke. The French too think highly of their own language, supposed to be more logical than some other languages... which most French don’t happen to speak! It’s just a self-congratulatory cliché circulating in the culture.

But Being and Time carries none of this resentment itself. Was it in the background? You know, it is speculated that B&T does open this door, after all, dasein is an historical construct, so this invites a competition between cultures and their languages. But I still say, who cares. His phenomenology is an extraordinary reinterpretation the world. Powerful and compelling. F*** the rest of it. — Constance

I cannot comment, as I’ve never read B&T. I happen to think that ‘being’ cannot be understood, and that ontology is a waste of time. I’ve read Husserl though, and Merleau Ponty who said that B&T was a mere expansion on one of Husserl’s late intuitions.

So my question is: does B&T pay its debt to Husserl, or does it not? Does it recognise that it is entirely based on the brilliant, revolutionary thoughts of a JEW? Or is it an attempt to arianize phenomenology?

You have to see that Heidegger believed that language is an integral part of the construction of Being, — Constance

That is fine, and not what my disagreement is about. My point is about the idea that he "attributes to the Germans a special task" via the German language. Which strikes me as nationalo-centric.

To illustrate my disagreement, IF language is an integral part of the construction of Being, in my interpretation of this sentence, it would imply that a human being speaking several languages is a more complete being than one who speaks only one language. But this is not the conclusion Heidegger draws. Rather for him, who to my knowledge spoke only German, perhaps with a smattering of greek, learning another language such as English or French would have been closer to a compromission with lower forms of thought than those possible in German. There is a striking parallel with the idea that racial diversity is a problem rather than an asset.

His philosophy, his world-view, was consistent with nazism, which he adhered to voluntarily. The Dasein is Hitler-compatible. THAT is the problem.

One aspect of this whole game -- and a reason why I think his Spiegel interview remark about French philosophers speaking German was a kind of joke but a telling one -- is that a great deal of 19th century German philosophy can be seen as a response to 18th century French philosophy, the time when Voltaire was advising Frederick the Great in Prussia. Followed by the revolution and napoleonic empire which swept over Prussia. By the 1950s though, the relation was reversed and many French philosophers spoke of Dasein, Umwelt and Gestalt... Here too I see a parallel between Hitler's revenge after the humiliation of WW1.

When they begin to think, they speak German.

This guy was so naïve, so simplistic sometimes... It really makes one wonder about the lack of street wisdom of some overly theoretical philosophers, who don't have much patience for empirical facts, nor any awareness of their own cultural biases apparently. Also there is this "manifest destiny" of the German volk here, as the "thinking volk"... Ja ja. My grandfather really liked their metaphysics in the camps.

You already agreed that multiverse theory is sci-fi, yet you claim to be able to make predictions about it. How do you square those two things? — fishfry

Actually, I'm talking of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. You were fiscal enough to point at the difference with the multiverse, so now you're stuck with it.

I just apply the definition of the oh-so-many-worlds scenario. It is a scenario that exhausts all quantum possibilities, by definition. So, assuming for the sake of the argument that tossing a coin is quantic, in the many-worlds interpretation there is one world where you get "head" and another world where you get "tail". If you toss the coin one million times, one of the world "created" by your tossing will have you get 1 million times "head" in a row, and in another world, another version of yourself got 1 million times "tail" in a row. And all the possible combinations in between those two extremes would also see the light of day in their own world.

between me and Wikipedia. — fishfry

Okay, the many-worlds interpretation. Multiverse is another sci-fi scenario, fair enough.

How do you know? And who decides what "can" happen in order to make your claim true? — fishfry

The Schrödinger equation ?

you (and probably others, I haven't read the entire thread) are confusing the multiverse with the many-worlds interpretation. They're two entirely separate things. — fishfry

Okay so, are you going to tell us the difference between the many-worlds and the multiverse, or are you going to keep it for yourself?

there are things that might not happen even in the multiverse

I never said otherwise. I said "in the multiverse, everything that can happen does happen".

the idea of there being an infinite number of parallel realms is naturally intriguing to us. Kriss makes that point very well. — Wayfarer

This has been the stuff of science fiction for decades. Read The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold for a sample.

If we come across one flying unicorn (that we can confirm definitely is a flying unicorn — Pfhorrest

Oh no need for that. You see, in the multiverse, everything that can happen does happen, LITERALLY.

At every single nano second, gazillions of worlds are created for each possible outcome of each quantum event in the multiverse. So everything that can happen does happen. Now who's to say that flying unicorns are impossible, and that a world where the skies of planet earth are dominated by winged unicorns cannot possibly happen?

On the other hand, imagine the kind of sobriety that would be introduced to scientific discourse if, for some reason, such ideas were suddenly declared off limits. Popular science would be obliged to be circumspect — Wayfarer

:gasp:

if nothing exists, it can't be a world — TheMadFool

:up:

Our universe is not special in its actuality. It’s just the one we happen to be in, and there’s lots more just like it. — Pfhorrest

Right. And many flying unicorns too.

Have a read of The Multiverse Idea is Rotting Culture — Wayfarer

Couldn't agree more. The multiverse is obscenely anti-ockhamist, it assumes a awful lot and for no good reason. The hypothesis of God is indeed far less costly... and that's an atheist talking.

Lot’s of western folks have drunk the materialist cool aid: they don’t even think that human freedom is theoretically possible.

If we talk of Africa, we got to let the Africans talk, no?


Ahmadou, K'naan
The original East Coast-West Coast collaboration
Rock in

Oh! Mes amis, on ne choisit pas son destin
Les jours se ressemblent mais ne sont pas les mêmes
Les doigts de la main ne sont pas tous égaux
Dans ce monde, on est complémentaire

Now you can show me everything that you know
I wanna travel, let me into your curves

En Afrique, il y a la canicule
Il y a le soleil. Il y a la chaleur humaine
Il y a le soleil, la joie de vivre
Il y a le soleil, on est tous ensemble

I'm going up and down
Oh baby round and round

Africa! Africa! Africa!
Solidarité !
Africa! Africa! Africa!
C'est la joie de vivre

Tell them again
Here we go...

Il y a des pays où, c'est la neige
Il y a des pays, c'est la canicule
Il y a des pays où, c'est les tempêtes
Il y a des pays où, c'est des îles
Dans ce monde, on est complémentaire

It's just jealousy
Everything for you and me
You ready? Here we go.

I got my feet, I'm jumping high off the wall
I got my heart, I aint afraid of the fall
I got my duffel bag that daddy packed for me
I got my ear so I hear when you call
I don't need eyes just to see you look good
You always did, but they misunderstood

I'm goin' up and down
And baby round and round
I wanna touch you down the river below
And then I'll kiss you from your head to your toe
You take me so high up, and then you let me down

Africa! Africa! Africa!
Solidarité !
Africa! Africa! Africa!
C'est la joie de vivre

En Afrique, il n'y a pas que la guerre
En Afrique, il n'y a pas que la famine
En Afrique, il y a la solidarité
Il y a les parents, il y a aussi les frères
Il y a les soeurs, il y a aussi les cousins
Il y a les amis, il y a aussi la famille
La communauté, on est tous ensemble
En Afrique, il y a la joie de vivre

Africa! etc.

I'm pretty sure Nelson, Lefty & Charlie passed the audition. :clap: — 180 Proof

They can play, as jazz cats used to say.

You’re right that for Merleau-Ponty what counts in perception is differences and relationships between colors , but he would also argue that colors , and all other perceptions, only emerge as as expressions of the body’s actions in the world. — Joshs

That's where I think he needlessly complicates the matter. One cannot spot a difference between two colors without having a sense of each individual color. So perception (of similitudes and differences) builds upon sensation rather than compete with it as a rival paradigm.

Bnbb nnbb blnnbmb n bb bbnb bnbbbbbnnnb bb vnbbbnnnnmbnnnnnbbbnnbbbnbn. Nbjnnnnnnnnnnncnnnvbv vvv a n.bbnn . Jnnb nb can nb nbm. Nbbmnnbnnnvn. V nj nn n

The issue is more about how useful the notion is — Banno

What's useless to Paul may be useful to Peter.

All this talk about privacy is just one big distraction. Just so you know, telepathy is an illusion, a real one. Nobody can read other people's minds. Our sensations are private, like our memories are, until one shares some of them. People share only what they want to share, when they want to, and with whom they want to. And even the most loquacious among us can't tell it all. That one cannot verbalize all of one's thoughts and sensations is due to their almost infinite nuances and complexity. Words fail us.

My hypothesis is that qualia are the biological, memorisable "tags" or identifiers that allow you to recognize a taste or a color, to identify it correctly and consistently over time. One can usually recognize a taste, or a color. Logically, there must be some system of identifiers supporting this capacity.

If you search for tenderness
It isn't hard to find
You can have the love you need to live
But if you look for truthfulness
You might just as well be blind
It always seems to be so hard to give

Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you

I can always find someone
To say they sympathize
If I wear my heart out on my sleeve
But I don't want some pretty face
To tell me pretty lies
All I want is someone to believe

Honesty etc.

I can find a lover
I can find a friend
I can have security until the bitter end
Anyone can comfort me
With promises again
I know, I know
When I'm deep inside of me
Don't be too concerned
I won't ask for nothin' while I'm gone
But when I want sincerity
Tell me where else can I turn
'Cause you're the one I depend upon

Denying concepts is not a sound business model for a philosopher. Crafting new concepts is legit, using old words for new ideas is legit, refusing to use words that one deems unclear is legit. But telling other folks what words they should use and what words not to use, that is not legitimate philosophical work. It's more for the Gestapo.

If one doesn't like the concept of qualia, one can create another one, or just not use the word.

Merleau-Ponty had a problem with the concept of individual quale, which was that for him, the quale defined as the elementary unit of sensation is not really what perception is made of. One because perception is holistic, it goes from the general to the particular, two because what really matters in perception is not the positive, objective, elementary color 'red' here or there in the picture but the differences and relationships between colors. The elementary unit of visual perception is therefore (according to him) better defined as the differences we spot between two colors. If you paint a canvas with only one color, you can't really represent or perceive anything in it.

Because I accept this reasoning, I don't use the singular "quale". Like my data, my qualia are always plural and relative.

When I was young, I travelled far. I listened to a lot of bizarre music, ragas with 13 beats per measure, love songs with much violins and tablas... I also got to share some Western music with people who had never heard anything like it before.

Once, on a high mountain, I met with a Gujur tribe. They are dark-skinned pastoralists situated at the lowest level in the tribal hierarchies of the Hindu Kuch, which means they live in the highest habitable region, in or above the pine forest. Over there, the poorer you are, the higher you live.

Their malek was most welcoming. We stayed in his camp for a couple of nights. At the time I was carrying around a Sony walkman as my escapist link to modernity. I would listen to it at night before sleep, specifically to Prince's Sign of the Times album. I had this cassette and Beggars' Banquet.

At some point the malek asked me if he could have the headphones. I handed them to him, a bit nervous due to his probably limited prior exposure to metrosexual electrofunk... He put the thing on his ears and I pressed Play. He listened to Prince for about twenty minutes, his dreamy eyes lost somewhere beyond the forest, shaking his heads once in a while.

At the end he took the headphones off and handing them to me he said: "It's interesting!"

I still wonder how he heard it.

because they have been used successfully to express sadness. — bongo fury

As language therefore: the phonetics of words are in an arbitrary, culturally-constructed relationship with their meaning.

Yet music is often seen as jumping through linguistic barriers. As universal in this sense.

Is metaphor illusionary? — bongo fury

Metaphors are us, the way I see it. I let you decide if we are illusions or not.

The chord expresses sadness in that it is a sample of metaphorically-sad things in general.

It still does not explain why minor chords tend to be heard as more subdued and less assertive than major chords.

Where is the numberline located? — emancipate

I seem to have one on top of my keyboard. :-)

Yes, we've been there.

Interested in a non-illusionary theory of the correspondences between chords and emotions.

Where is the number 7 located? — Wayfarer

It's usually placed between 6 and 8. :razz:

Just because things have more than one aspect or dimension or even structure, doesn't mean that talking of their structure(s) is always specious. Otherwise, by the same token, Goodman's owns ideas of the whole shebang are specious...

People keep tripping on the same contradiction all the time. Eager to burn the fields they have once toiled in vain, they proclaim that all talk of X (metaphysics, structure, lolipops, whatever) is rubbish, not noticing the reflexivity entailed by such sweeping statements.

The correct conclusion is usually that SOME talk about X may well be rubbish, but NOT ALL talk about X is necessarily rubbish.

Haha, but is it disappointing if the connection isn't natural? — bongo fury

Not really. It makes it more interesting.

Creating the illusion of a natural connection. — bongo fury

Yeah but then, isn't illusion your default explanation for pretty much everything?

One classic example of how music connects to emotions is the contrast between the minor and major chords: major chords ( ie C, E, G) are said to be upbeat and active while minor chords (ie C, E flat, G) are more melancholic. I have no idea why.

Problem is if mediation is a general problem for our understanding, then our understanding of the mediation is no less mediated, and hence no less problematic, than any other understanding. — Janus

In this context, mediation should not be seen as a problem but as a solution: perception would be impossible (or magical) without some sort of mediation. Mediation is precisely what makes perception possible.

overrated — 180 Proof

I don't know Dylan enough to comment. I mean, I did listen to other albums but never "clicked". Rolling Stone is a good text.

Thanks for Paul Simon's Slip Slidin' Away. Ain't that the truth.


One day my father came home with a new LP by this guy called Bob Dylan. This wouldn't happen often, so we all listened to it. There was this song in it which spoke to me, more than the others, and since the lyrics were in the LP, I tried to understand them, putting my very poor English to use.

It was a long story, like a novel, but it was not a novel.



Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees a bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out my God, they killed them all

Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin' that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

Three bodies lyin' there does Patty see
And another man named Bello, movin' around mysteriously
I didn't do it, he says, and he throws up his hands
I was only robbin' the register, I hope you understand
I saw them leavin', he says, and he stops
One of us had better call up the cops
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashin'
In the hot New Jersey night

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin' around
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Paterson that's just the way things go
If you're black you might as well not show up on the street
'Less you want to draw the heat

Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the cops
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowlin' around
He said, I saw two men runnin' out, they looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates
And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head
Cop said, wait a minute, boys, this one's not dead
So they took him to the infirmary
And though this man could hardly see
They told him that he could identify the guilty men
Four in the mornin' and they haul Rubin in
They took him to the hospital and they brought him upstairs
The wounded man looks up through his one dyin' eye
Says, wha'd you bring him in here for? He ain't the guy!

Here's the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin' that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

Four months later, the ghettos are in flame
Rubin's in South America, fightin' for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley's still in the robbery game
And the cops are puttin' the screws to him, lookin' for somebody to blame
Remember that murder that happened in a bar
Remember you said you saw the getaway car
You think you'd like to play ball with the law
Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw runnin' that night
Don't forget that you are white

Arthur Dexter Bradley said I'm really not sure
The cops said a poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job and we're talkin' to your friend Bello
You don't wanta have to go back to jail, be a nice fellow
You'll be doin' society a favor
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim

Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
It's my work, he'd say, and I do it for pay
And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse
All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed

Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder one, guess who testified
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell

That's the story of the Hurricane
But it won't be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he's done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[ Olivier5 - hope this is OK and not too much off topic ? ] — Amity

No problem, death is a philosophical topic.

I have thought about it but haven"t found a good idea yet.

. But since it says we never see the world unmediated, it just invites us to ask how close the world is to our models — frank

It also invites us to examine the mediation itself and try to understand how it works, which is literally what Isaac is working on.

Right. Bare assumptions are unwarranted. That's not to say you shouldn't have them. it just means you can't account for your confidence. — frank

Right, in the non-pejorative meaning of 'unwarranred' (without evidence).

Isaac appeared to be starting from ID and concluding that we shouldn't trust introspection. That's why I brought it up. — frank

Ahah. True that in an ID perspective, any attentive perception involves some introspection, in at least two ways: 1) passively, the mechanics of perception in an ID model involve a "mental picture" that one looks at; 2) actively, the ID observer must guard against possible errors or biases by checking things from different angles, and with different senses (a plastic replica of an apple may looks very much like an apple but if I hold it and smell it, not so much), so the ID observer actively directs her senses and to do that effectively she needs to "looks at herself looking", which involves active introspection.

That we rely on so-called representations to learn about evidence of ID (indirect realism) when the theory itself implies that doing this is unwarranted. — frank

The theory does not say that our trust in our observations is unwarranted, only that it has to be assumed. We have to trust our senses, at least until proven otherwise.

So we all make assumptions. But that doesn't imply that what we're talking about - water molecules, say - have a dependency on our assumptions - or even on our existence. — Andrew M

I agree, but still, the number of elements in a set depends on how the set is defined: what are its boundaries. I see countable sets as conceptual. In my view the world has no set. Everything is in everything and vice versa. So when we think of an object, the object may exist objectively. I can think of the Empire State Building for instance, a real, gigantic thing in real steel and concrete. But by doing so I also INDIVIDUATED this building as a THING. One could say that the skyscraper is in fact but a collection of steel beams and other elements, connected with each other but also connected to other structures eg the bedrock, other nearby structures and utility pipes. So where does the Empire State Building starts and ends? Well, one can make decisions about that, but these ARE decisions. We are setting the boundaries of things, often a bit artificially. We need to do so, we cannot embrace in our mind the full complexity of reality, so we simplify.

Reality is one. We conceptually cut the cake of reality into "things", but there's always several ways to cut a cake.

Our language, and consequently logic, emerges as a result of our interactions with things in the world. — Andrew M

I can agree with that, as a broad brush sketch.

The essence of things is elusive. But the female sex is defined biologically as explained: the folks who get pregnant and give birth to new folks. The males are the ones not doing that.

This has consequences, for instance that males are relatively freer to do other things, including risky things.

Another is that in mammals, each individual male is of far lesser reproductive value than each individual female. Males are more 'expandable' than females, females are more precious than males. In social species, when the tribe is threatened it tends to sacrifice its males first, in order to protect the females. Hence the tendency to save "women and children first" in the case of a sinking boat, or to send men at war. Men are expandable. Their most fundamental biological role (as male mammals) is to protect women and children. This of course does not mean that men or women should always and only stick to their biological role.