:cool:

Wow. Tough crowd. — Tate

That's 'entertainer' talk. Are you just here to entertain?

Eh? It's not about fear. If Tom - who has no fear of dying for he's just watching a bird eat a fly - is shot in the back of the head, he's harmed by that. — Bartricks

Yes, we know he's harmed by being shot, by dying, but we don't know that he is harmed by being dead.

Epicurus assumed that when we are dead we are nothing, and he was correct in concluding that is that is so, then we are not harmed by being dead.

I don't believe that most philosophers "think that's nuts" since most philosophers as far as I know ( according to some polls I've seen), don't believe in an afterlife. If you believe in an afterlife, then whether or not you believe you will be harmed by death depends on what you believe that afterlife is like. No one knows whether there is an afterlife, or whether, if there is one, it will be better or worse than this life, so no one knows whether being dead (being dead understood relative to this life) is harmful or not.

I don't have any idea why you question the obvious fact that being harmed requires existence: how could you be harmed, or anything else, if you don't exist?

The whole thing should become much clearer to you if talk, not in terms of the question of death being harmful, but in terms of the questions of dying being harmful and being dead being harmful.

Yes Hugh. There's a vast literature on the topic. Books and books and books.

It's all to do with a puzzle presented to us by Epicurus.

He thought death could not be a harm to us, for we do not exist and yet we would need to exist in order to be harmed by it. As he put, where death is, we are not, and where we are, death is not. — Bartricks

I'm familiar with Epicurus' idea that we cannot be harmed by death if we are nothing when dead. We can certainly be harmed by dying though, which alone is enough to explain peoples' fears. Perhaps you could cite some works from that "vast literature" which agrees with your wacky, unreasonable views on the subject, Turdricks.

Cheers; apologies for not being around much. I should change that. — Noble Dust

I often wonder whether being around here is worthwhile; it's certainly made more worthwhile by interlocutors who are serious, open-minded and of good faith such as yourself.

Cheers, thanks for the kind words, ND...

Is there a big literature on the harmfulness of death, Hugh? — Bartricks

I don't know, is there? You tell me...

No fucking way :point: — 180 Proof

It's true — Tate

Yep, it's true; no fucking way.

Our faculties of reason represent death to be a great harm. That's why rational people do virtually all they can to avoid it.

It would not be a great harm if it ended one's existence as one can't be harmed if one does not exist.

Thus we continue to exist after death, else our deaths could not harm us. And the plane of existence our deaths take us to be must be considerably worse than this one, else it would not be harmful to die, but beneficial.

That's another reason to view NDEs with suspicion - they tend to represent the afterlife to be a nice place to be. Our reason tells us it will be worse than here. — Bartricks

'Our faculties of reason" don't represent death to be anything at all, because we have no knowledge of it. We are afraid of death because we are afraid of the unknown, People are also afraid of annihilation which covers the two imaginable possibilities; we are either annihilated or we continue to exist in some unknown way.

People are also afraid of the suffering that may be involved in dying; pain, loss of control, loss of faculties, indignities and having to let go of what we are so attached to: life. How could we possibly know whether there is any "plane of existence" after this one, let alone that it is worse than this one?

Apparently it's only your "reason" that "tells" you all these things; I've never heard any such nonsense from anyone else. And all this from one who believes in a benevolent creator: if the creator was benevolent why would it send us to a worse plane of existence after death?

C'mon, man. My sources are all books and articles. You're looking for an internet blurb. Be a human, why don't you? — Tate

It has nothing to do with "an internet blurb" or "being human"..You linked the source. If you have others, then quote them to back up your claims, Otherwise you cannot show your opinions to be anything of greater authority than those of just one more opinionated dude on the internet.

The conventional wisdom for sometime has been 500-3000 years. The trigger is cold winters in the northern hemisphere. — Tate

What "conventional wisdom" is that? Do you have a source? The information from the source you did cite seems to have been cherry-picked by you:


"How long can we expect the present Interglacial period to last?

No one knows for sure. In the Devils Hole, Nevada paleoclimate record, the last four interglacials lasted over ~20,000 years with the warmest portion being a relatively stable period of 10,000 to 15,000 years duration. This is consistent with what is seen in the Vostok ice core from Antarctica and several records of sea level high stands. These data suggest that an equally long duration should be inferred for the current interglacial period as well. Work in progress on Devils Hole data for the period 60,000 to 5,000 years ago indicates that current interglacial temperature conditions may have already persisted for 17,000 years. Other workers have suggested that the current interglacial might last tens of thousands of years."

"Lasted over ~20,000 years": how long is that 20,000 years, 23.000 tears, 25,000 years? "May have persisted for 17.000 years" May it have persisted for 15,000 years then? Also, it is widely accepted that the durations of past phenomena are not reliable indicators for the duration of subsequent phenomena. At best they are all we have to go on. Hardly good grounds for "between 500-3.000 years, or for claiming that we are at the end of an interglacial period.

You seem to be reverting to your "fool" status.

We're in an interglacial period of a large scale ice age. Specifically, we're at the end of an interglacial awaiting reglaciation. — Tate

Not according to the WIKI entry on Ice Ages:

"Earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for around 11,700 years,[47] and an article in Nature in 2004 argues that it might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years.[48]"

This suggests that we are around the middle of an interglacial period, not at the end of one. Can you cite a reference for your claim that we are at the end of an interglacial period?

It's not supposed to. The counterfactual theory of causation just explains what it means for A to cause B. We need something else to explain why A causes B. — Michael

If so, it is not a theory or explanation of causation, but a definition.

Was the moderator Jordan B Peterson? — Tom Storm

:lol:

In ideal conditions, the human intellect can explain anything, with one exception: it can't explain Everything. — Tate

Any explanation will be a part of "everything", and can thus only be an explanation of some other part. To explain everything it would have to be able to (per impossible) incorporate an explanation of itself. Since that is impossible another explanation would be required, and so on ad infinitum. It is not a coherent question.

In the complete absence of light and leaves there cannot be any experience of seeing them. In the complete absence of the biological machinery, there cannot be any experience of seeing them. Thus, the experience consists of both internal and external things. It most certainly follows that the experience is neither internal nor external for it consists of elements that are both. — creativesoul

If the experience is considered to be an affect of the biological machinery insofar as it is the biological machinery that experiences red and not the leaves or the light, then it follows that we are thinking of the experience, by your own definitions, as internal. Of course it needs the stimulus of external elements (light and leaves) but it does not follow that the experience is both internal and external on that account, Of course if you define experience as the whole process, then of course it, tautologically, is both internal and external, so these are just different ways of speaking, different ways of conceptually dividing and/ or sorting things. — Janus

Following on from what I said, and to clarify why I said there was nothing in what you said to respond to; what you say above is just an expression of defining "experience as the whole process (of external and internal elements)" in which case "of course it, tautologically, is both internal and external", which is the same as to say it is neither in the sense that it cannot, on that interpretation, be rightly classified as either. So, to repeat myself, "these are just different ways of speaking, different ways of conceptually dividing and/ or sorting things".

Yet you speak as though there is some context-independent "fact of the matter" that I am somehow disagreeing with or missing, when I have already acknowledged that "experience" can be defined in those different ways, although the more common conception is the one which logically leads to it being thought of as internal in relation to the external world it is of.

The problem with 'hard' materialism is nicely set out there. As to correspondence between signs and the things they refer to, I suppose the physicalist could say that neural pathways that encode associations between words and things or activities are "laid down" and activated when we hear or read words, leading us to understand the words as referring to the associated things, and conceiving this as reference. Can the eliminative physicalist also consistently say this? Not sure...more thought required.

I just call it the ineffable. But I generally agree with you. For some believers I suspect there is a recognition of transcendence that sits above and beyond emotion and is more in keeping with apophenic traditions. — Tom Storm

Did you mean apophatic? I looked up apophenic and it relates to apophenia, which is "the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)".

There is a distinction in philosophy between transcendental and transcendent, where the former is understood to signify the "meta-empirical" conditions for experience (phenomenology) or the possibility of experience (Kant), and the latter signifies a postulated metaphysical or supernatural reality. Kant said we have very good (practical, not pure) reasons to believe in God, freedom and immortality, but not to reify those by believing that they are transcendent realities.

The former (transcendental) perspective seems to have more in common with apophatic stances, and the latter (transcendent) with the cataphatic, but I must admit that the more I try to think about this distinction the more it seems to dissolve into a kind of fog, and it starts to look like a fudge.

A necessitates B — Marchesk


How is this any different to saying “if A happens then B happens”? — Michael

How is this any different to saying “if A happens then B happens”? — Michael


You don't understand the notion of causality? If it could be shown that A causes B, then it will always be the case that B follows A. But if it's just A happens then B happens, it doesn't have to continue being that way, since nothing necessitates it. That's where the problem of induction comes from. — Marchesk

I think to say that A necessitates B is exactly the same as to say "If A happens then B happens". And that is not affected by additions like "if C happens then B happens" because A is not specified as the sole cause of B. That latter could be formulated as "If B happens then A must have happened". And you can always add: " And C and or D and or E, and so on, must have happened". The idea of necessary and/or sufficient causes or conditions.

But these formal definitions seem to be lacking the essential element of our conception of causation; which is some kind of energetic forcing, not mere correlation.

You make 'the spiritual' sound like 'the emotional'. (that's not intended as an adverse criticism, just an observation). — Tom Storm

I wouldn't take it as a criticism.Wittgenstein thought that nothing (propositional, that is inter-subjectively corroborable) could be said about mystical (religious, spiritual), aesthetic or ethical experience or judgement. I'm not sure about the ethical category, but the others have that in common as far as I have been able to tell.

Say you have an experience where you think you have encountered God. Since God is not a visible, audible or tactile entity, what could that experience consist in? I'd say it consists in the sense (feeling) of a presence one imagines or even feels one knows, to be God. Note the "feels one knows"; this is the realm of affect: I don't see what else it could be. Can you think of an alternative?

That is to say that I regard anything experienced and anything known to be aspects of the physical and thus not spiritual. This is not to deny the reality of the spiritual, because such would be a gnostic claim to know the unreality of the spiritual. Rather I would place the spiritual in that place 'whereof one cannot speak'. — unenlightened

I agree with you if we are considering discursive speech. The spiritual has to do, not with observation of particulars, logical relations or propositional discourse, but with affect; the sense of being illuminated.The arts, and poetry particularly, can speak to the spiritual, by way of evocation. If those who find themselves illuminated, or those who would be illuminants mistake their altered states of feeling and sense of understanding for determinate knowledge, all kinds of problems follow.

These are absolutely spot on. It's how the problem is solved in active inference, it's the active part.

Inference (perception in this case) is an active process. We do not passively receive data from the external world, we actively sample it. From saccades in perception, all the way up to the construction of a skyscraper (which matches our image of the skyscraper we intended to be there). There's no active inference without interaction. If you can't sample your image, can't move you eyes around it, reach out to it, give part of it to someone else, drink from the cup in it and feel that in your stomach... then you're not perceiving it, you're hallucinating it, or dreaming it. — Isaac

I'm getting the impression now that I misunderstood you before when you said perception is inferential; I had thought that you were talking about the bare sensory fact of what is immediately perceived, but now it seems you were talking about the whole process of learning to perceive the world as this and that. Now it seems you meant 'inferential' to signify the exploratory nature of that process of learning, and that makes sense to me; it's a somewhat difference usage of "inferential" than I am used to, but it makes sense now in the context.

You're making my argument for me. The wealthy generally produce more emissions than the poor, and since they are wealthy and live the extravagant lives they do by choice, that makes them all the more responsible.

Relevant to assessing degree of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, what do you think?

It's much more relevant than per country.

No, people don’t know what they ought to do to help, because they think it’s a hoax. — Xtrix

I think a huge part of the issue is that people want governments to solve the problem as long as it doesn't inconvenience them or impact their accustomed lifestyles. Any governments that propose measures such as taxes, restrictions on international travel, restrictions on fuel and power usage and so on, will not be voted in come next election. Maybe democracies are inadequate to solve the problem because there are too many competing interests. But then autocracies are generally corrupt.

The climate doesn't really care. — Tate

Is there any point to that statement of the obvious?

Sickening indeed! What will it take to halt business as usual, or even slow it down?

I think I shall remain content that a complex thought doesn’t need words any more than does a simple thought. I affirm that complex thoughts are indeed possible, but deny the necessity of language as the ground of their possibility. — Mww

Fair enough, I suppose. I remain unconvinced that complex abstract thinking is possible without symbolic language. And I don't think this conclusion has anything to do with OLP. I don't at all deny the human imagination's capacity to create complex metaphysical systems, and I don't, like the positivists, count such systems as meaningless or incoherent as such, but I do believe that there is a human propensity to take such systems as presenting literal truths, which I think is the Wittgensteinian point about "language on holiday".

I can't imagine how such complex metaphysical systems of thought would be possible without symbolic language; in other words I don't see how they could be rendered in concrete purely imagistic terms, but I grant that maybe that's a failure of imagination on my part. If someone can explain to me how such a thing could be possible, I'd be very interested to hear it, because I'd love to think that it is possible. It would be a much more interesting world if it was possible.

I think all divisions are contextual; their logic derives from different perspectives we can take due to language and imagination; the different ways we are able to picture things.

I wasn't able to discern any point of disagreement on your part with anything I'd said, so nothing to respond to.

I see what you mean, although China is presently the largest producer of CO2. — Tate

Not per capita, by a long shot

The issue I pointed to earlier in the thread, is the nature of the assumed "mind-independent world". This world is not necessarily external, it might be internal, and we simply model it as being external. — Metaphysician Undercover

The mind-independent world is necessarily thought as being external to the mind (and body). Of course, there can be no mind-independent thought of the mind-independent world; that goes without saying

The experience consists of all the necessary elements. If some of it is internal and some is external, then the experience can rightly be called neither, for it is not the sort of thing that has such spatiotemporal location. — creativesoul

If there is no meaningful distinction between internal and external, then how can we determine that some is external (or internal)? Usually the idea of something external is the idea of something that can be perceived as being external to the body by the bodily senses and that is what you have relied on to determine that

They are being emitted/reflected by something other than our own biological structures. Thus, the meaningful experience of seeing red leaves requires leaves that reflect/emit those wavelengths. Leaves are external to the individual host of biological machinery. — creativesoul

So, the leaves and light are external, and the biological machinery is internal. It takes both(and more) to have a meaningful experience of seeing red. — creativesoul

The experience consists of all the necessary elements. If some of it is internal and some is external, then the experience can rightly be called neither, for it is not the sort of thing that has such spatiotemporal location. — creativesoul

If the experience is considered to be an affect of the biological machinery insofar as it is the biological machinery that experiences red and not the leaves or the light, then it follows that we are thinking of the experience, by your own definitions, as internal. Of course it needs the stimulus of external elements (light and leaves) but it does not follow that the experience is both internal and external on that account, Of course if you define experience as the whole process, then of course it, tautologically, is both internal and external, so these are just different ways of speaking, different ways of conceptually dividing and/ or sorting things.

Ok, maybe. What is a complex thought, such that that kind of thought is impossible without words, but carries the implication that simple thoughts are possible without words? — Mww

As an initial attempt I would say that simple thoughts involve images of concrete objects and actions, whereas complex thoughts involve logical relations between generalized abstract notions such as "logical", "involve", "thought", "relations", "between","generalized", "abstract" and ideas like "being", "time", "space", "number".

Niches are constantly changing and being rebuilt , and as a result what is at stake and at issue in a scientific practice changes along with it. — Joshs

I'm not convinced that it generally changes that much. I find Kuhn's idea of radical paradigm shifts to be somewhat overblown.

:ok: I'll try to find time to take a look at it...

If you think that what is apparent to us constitutes evidence either way, then it is the case that the vast bulk of observational evidence suggests the existence of a mind-independent world. If what is apparent to us does not constitute evidence one way or the other regarding the existence of a mind-independent world, then QM like the rest of science and empirical observation and investigation, is neither here not there in that connection. You can't have it both ways.

And, anyway, as I said it is not the mere findings of QM that could have bearing on the question, but the various interpretations of their relevance.

What kind of hierarchy are you positing? Intelligibility is apparent and not in question; even animals find their environments intelligible, a fact which is made obvious by their ability to function and act purposively.

Why should there be any superiority of one value judgement over another, other than in the practical sense that some judgements are productive of social harmony, or at least not productive of disharmony, and are therefore adaptive, and others are antisocial and hence maladaptive?

When the observational evidence does not support a particular metaphysical perspective, isn't this a case of undermining that metaphysics? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not necessarily; it depends on whether the observational evidence is relevant to the metaphysical perspective in question and it is never the bare observation that is relevant in any case, but some interpretation of it, which rather begs the question.

For my money, it is not quantum physics that clearly begs for a non-realist metaphysics , but certain approaches within cognitive science billing themselves as postmodern. — Joshs

It seems to me that any science relies on there being some inter-subjectively determinable reality to warrant the veracity of its observations. I have no argument against the free-flowing associations and insights of postmodern thought; they may indeed be illuminating and open new avenues for contemplation and research, but they can never command the kind of inter-subjective corroborability that science or everyday empirical observation can, as far as I can see.

But just because we cannot verify it, it does not mean that it is not the case that one philosophy is superior to another. — Merkwurdichliebe

I know what it means to think one philosophy is superior to another. I agree that one philosophy cannot be proven or demonstrated, to be superior to another. I don't know what it could mean for one philosophy to be superior to another in any absolute sense, since it could not be verified, and superiority is nothing more than a value judgement, which is always going to remain subjective or at best, if much agreement exists, inter-subjective. I don't see how there could be any objective fact of the matter about it.

All awareness of things just is the stream of thought. — Mww

I can be aware of the bare visual character of the visual field in a state of suspension of thought. Of course to tell you or myself what I see then thought, language, must be engaged.

Fine, no problem. One metaphysical doctrine may be more logically sufficient than another, but it can never be proved as more the fact. — Mww

I agree; we go with what seems the more plausible to us.

My experience is:
Since I was a kid, when reading something, I never saw the words, but pictured what the words say. Skim right over the words, like they weren’t even there. — Mww

That's my experience too. Words are tools and as Heidegger says when using a tool skillfully the tool "disappears". Hammering nails is like this. My point is only that complex thought is impossible without language. Could you think all the thoughts (or any) in the CPR without language, for example?

Thus, a veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experience, all alike in being experiences (as) of a churchyard covered in white snow, are not merely superficially similar, they are fundamentally the same: these experiences have the same nature, fundamentally the same kind of experiential event is occurring in each case.

I don't think this is justified. If I dream of a churchyard covered in snow I cannot decide to move around it, walk up to and touch its cold wet stones, turn my back on it and see the surrounding landscape, look up and see the grey dismal skies and then turn back and see the church looking just as it did when I first looked at it. In any case that has been my experience at least, with dream imagery and drug experiences where I have been able to tell the difference when moved to do so, which is the closest I have ever come to having such a realistic hallucination. So, in my experience at least, it is certainly not the same kind of experiential event occurring in each case.

If you were on Ketamine you wouldn't be able to tell that you were hallucinating and if someone tried to tell you, you wouldn't believe them. — Tate

I have had extensive experience with psilocybin, LSD, DMT. mescaline and salvinorin, although not with ketamine. What you claim has not been my experience, however powerful the hallucinatory experience has been, if I have had the presence of mind to test it in the way I outlined with the 'churchyard' example I have always been able to tell the difference. On the other hand if one becomes absorbed by, lost in, the hallucination there is no thought of doing such testing which makes the claim moot.

Do you have personal experience to back up your claims about ketamine or are you relying on hearsay? If it is personal experience, did you have the presence of mind to test whether you were hallucinating in the kind of way I outlined?

The only definite fact in all of this is that quantum physics undermines realism. — Wayfarer

But again this is not a fact, since it is only that QM doesn't offer a realistic picture of what seems to be going on, and that is not the same thing as "undermining realism". — Janus

But if it didn’t challenge scientific realism — Wayfarer

I note that you've downgraded your claim from "undermining" to "challenging". I'm not sure QM even challenges realism, although I think it's fair to say that some interpretations don't offer a realistic picture of what is going on at the "fundamental" level. I guess you could count that as a challenge for realism if you accept an anti-realist interpretation.

OK, I had thought I had read that claim somewhere, but looks like it may not be true. That poll was only of 33 physicists at a particular conference in any case, and may well not be representative of the whole QM community.

The only definite fact in all of this is that quantum physics undermines realism. — Wayfarer

But again this is not a fact, since it is only that QM doesn't offer a realistic picture of what seems to be going on, and that is not the same thing as "undermining realism".

Apparently several interpretations qualify as realist; it would be interesting to find out overall percentages of support for realist vs anti-realist interpretations.

I should qualify what I said: I don't refrain from having opinions about some subjects, even though I am not officially qualified therein. If I have read a lot in some area I may feel I am sufficiently qualified to hold an opinion. That definitely doesn't apply to QM, because it is not merely a matter of reading; it is arguable that you are not qualified unless you understand the math.

What I'm arguing in all of those is that quantum physics has a tendency to undermine scientific realism. — Wayfarer

I think it's more the case that quantum physics does not seem to offer a realistic picture of what is going on at the "fundamental" level; but that does not equate to "undermining scientific realism", it' seems more that it just doesn't appear to support it.

Also, if it is true, as has been claimed, that the MWI is the interpretation that enjoys majority consensus, then that would mean that a realist interpretation is the one most favored among physicists.