:up:

Fixed. There is no reason to confine causality to certain "physical" events and not others. This is the essence of compatibilism. Reason is a type of cause. — Olivier5

For a hard determinist there are no non-physical events, and that's why it is logically incompatible with any notion of self-actuated freedom. The other point here is that reason (apart from deductive logic where conclusions follow inexorably from premises) is not understood to be strictly determined or determining.

Regarding the ninth of November, on the other hand, I think the physical evidence for controlled demolition is completely overwhelming. — bert1

What qualifies you to judge in this matter? Are you a structural engineer? If the evidence were so overwhelming it would be obvious to all structural engineers, and the cat would be out of the bag.

(I would say unnecessarily) vaccinating the world multiple times. — AJJ

You, who know nothing about virology, immunology or epidemiology would say "unnecesarily"? On the basis of anecdotes that may or may not be accurate? Are you serious?

So your argument is based on supposed information that is not available? Sounds sensible!

Your argument is based on just one case then, not even confirmed to have been caused by the vaccine?

They occur in about 1 in a hundred thousand with Astra Zeneca. I haven't heard of blood-clotting occurring with other vaccines.In contrast I have read estimates of 8 to 10 times greater likelihood of blood-clotting for the unvaccinated covid infected compared with the vaccinated.

What death and debilitation?

It might be *about* the community, but whether they’re overall good for a community is debatable. — AJJ

What would be the grounds for such a debate?

This is not the hypothesis I was raising, though. The idea was rather that reason could be fully determined by reason herself, by prior thoughts, goals and collected data, not by non-rational physical events. — Olivier5

OK, perhaps I have misunderstood you: I had thought you were claiming that the belief in the freely determining capacity of reason is compatible with the "hard determinist" dictum that all events, including thoughts and decisions, are wholly and inexorably determined by antecedent physical events.

I'm not following your argument at all here. None of us are experts sufficiently to judge the various facts of the case, yes? I'm with you so far. You then jump to saying that in such cases we're morally obliged to follow government policy? I don't see the link. — Isaac

I'm not saying we are morally obliged to follow government policy in view of our ignorance; I'm saying we are epistemically obliged to follow it since as far as we know it follows the expert consensus, which is the only guide we, in view of our lack of expert knowledge, have to rely upon.The moral argument is that in an emergency everyone should do their bit to implement the chosen strategy designed to combat the threat. In the present situation getting vaccinated would be playing your part, and you should do it unless you have a good reason not to, as far as I can tell. Do you have a good reason not to be vaccinated?

If the pharmaceutical companies are predominately motivated by profit, that would nonetheless be irrelevant to the question as to whether the vaccines are safe and effective and whether mass vaccination is the only or at least the best strategy available to us. — Janus


Really, how so? Surely it speaks quite strongly to the question at (a). Does the fact that a profit-making enterprise are making an enormous profit out of a strategy not factor into that question at all? — Isaac

The vaccines are either safe and effective or they are not. The expert advice is that they are safe and effective, and that is the only information we non-experts have to judge by. So until and unless evidence to the contrary arises we should assume, out of epistemic modesty, that the vaccines are safe and effective. I can't see how the fact that the pharmaceutical companies might be making an obscene profit out of their safe and effective product has any bearing on the question of the safety and effectiveness of their product.

Excellent!

Sometimes it just happens sort of organically. Giles the Goat Boy has a vision of the Virgin Mary giving him a hand job in heaven, and the next thing you know the whole town is naked and burning down the Jewish quarter. — James Riley

:rofl:

I see no evidence of that. I've provided more citations from properly qualified experts than any other poster and most contrary responses have been half-arsed clichés of reactionary defensiveness or outright spittle-flecked invective. How is that representative of a community in search of truth? — Isaac

I think this is irrelevant, since none of us here are experts qualified to judge the merits of whatever significant controversies over the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines might be going on in the virological, immunological and epidemiological domains.

Since taking a covid vaccine is not mandatory, the only argument, assuming that the vaccines are effective and safe enough to provide the only foreseeable way out of. or at least the only practicable way of ameliorating, this dire situation we find ourselves in, is the usual moral one that every member of the community ought to do their bit in contributing towards the most thorough implementation of the strategy designed to that end, that has been adopted by our governments under the advice representing expert consensus.

We have to assume that the strategy does represent expert consensus, because we have no way of judging whether it does beyond the fact that it is the official line. If it doesn't represent expert consensus then our experts are failing us and we are being deceived, but we would have no way of determining if that were the case.

If the pharmaceutical companies are predominately motivated by profit, that would nonetheless be irrelevant to the question as to whether the vaccines are safe and effective and whether mass vaccination is the only or at least the best strategy available to us.

If reason is merely a part of the determinant nexus of events, that is if it is fully determined by other non-rational physical events, then it is not uniquely self-determining in the way we intuitively think it is.

On the other hand, I have a whole different compatibility approach that acknowledges two different frameworks for describing our thoughts, — Srap Tasmaner

I am sympathetic to this kind of "compatibilism" it seems you are referring to. It starts with Spinoza; with the idea that explanations in terms of extensa and explanations in terms of cogitans are different kinds of perspectives on the one thing. Or again think of Sellar's "space of reasons" and "space of causes".

I think that's nonsense for the simple reason that beliefs are not strictly determined by logic.Logic alone tells us nothing about the world. There is far more to rationality than mere logic.

. OK, that seems fair enough.

Whatever that means, if anything. — Srap Tasmaner

So I'm inclined to pass by the whole question as ill-formed, and I'm not at all inclined to throw in with either side. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree and wasn't making any claim for the truth of determinism. I've always thought that compatibilism is a fudge, though, because the logics of determinism and freedom just don't mesh with one another.

So this

That is, our justifications are mere self preservation rationalizations. — Hanover


What's the problem with saying this is often, pre-reflectively, the case, but that with sufficient self examination the tendency may be overcome, and you might actually change your mind? — Janus

was just to say that change of mind is not inconsistent with determinism, leaving aside the question of freedom.

.

but can't I believe that my beliefs are fully determined by my state and my environment, rather than a matter of free choice — Srap Tasmaner

If course you can believe that. If determinism is true then you will either be determined to believe that or not. And the determination could of course change.

I think @Hanover is pointing to the problem that, if determinism is true, then beliefs are not rationally, but causally, determined. Of course the two determinants might appear to coincide, but if determinism is true then there is no necessity that they must or that we must be correct in thinking that our beliefs are rationally determined.

It's not clear what point you are trying to make with this.

That is, our justifications are mere self preservation rationalizations. — Hanover

What's the problem with saying this is often, pre-reflectively, the case, but that with sufficient self examination the tendency may be overcome, and you might actually change your mind?

:100:

This matches the thoughts I had when I read the OP. Not to get into an infinite loop, but is the claim that metaphysics is not applicable to music and other art a metaphysical statement. — T Clark

I don't think the statement that the arts, and the various kinds of aesthetic experiences associated with them do not support any particular metaphysical viewpoint is a metaphysical statement. I think it is merely an expression of the understanding that no metaphysical position is entailed by the human experience of the arts. It seems to be more of a phenomenological statement than a metaphysical.

The arts might be more likely to lead to an intuition that there is something greater, a sublime or higher being or order, than they would be to lead to an intuition that there is nothing but the movements of atoms in the void, but there is no logical entailment there such that we could say that a higher or divine order is a rational inference from the arts.

I think the idealist/ materialist polarity is very naively stereotyped, and there is room for an infinite range of nuance with no need to commit to any propositionally determinate metaphysic.To me the arts are suggestive of the ineliminability of mystery, and the advantage of learning to live with uncertainty. Metaphysical ideas are to be played with, and inspired by, not to be clung to as Absolute Truths. That's my take anyway.

If you think there is a danger that poetry will "lead you down the garden Path" then I think I'll leave you to it.

Well none of those, in contrast to logic, are discursive phenomena. They are phenomenological phenomena in that to speak about them is to speak about, or more aptly evoke, what the affective side of the mind is like. But phenomenology, like the arts, is not necessarily related to any particular metaphysics (you know the epoche; "bracket the world" and all that). And neither is logic for that matter.

If you don't like poetry if you see it as merely "spin" then that's your right. But if you don't like it, why talk about it? Surely if it is all spin for you, then it should have no interest for you?

No, it looks the same. All I can see is you quoting a passage that affirms a couple of things and then a question as to why I think all of "this" is false. Surely you can't be referring to what the passage affirms? But if not, then what?

It's not a "spin" though, it is an aesthethic response.

So why begin with the assumption that all of this is false? — Noble Dust

Why all of what is false?

At the risk of disagreeing with myself, I would suggest that those feelings are what constitute a musical metaphysic. This is something that bothers me a lot; why assume that emotions are inferior? The emotions you feel when listening to music are the real deal; those feelings constitute the metaphysic. — Noble Dust

I agree that metaphysical perspectives are not rationally, but affectively motivated. I also understand that it is pretty normal for people to entertain some metaphysics or other on account of their intuitions; and intuitions are certainly fed by aesthetic experience(s).

I guess I'm just saying I don't think there is any necessary connection between music and any particular metaphysical conjectures.

Poems about the dark side of reality are oxymorons: they're good poems about bad stuff that happen to life. The question is, if poetry doesn't do what I said it does - beautify the ugly - why are poems good even though their contents may be explicit on the horrors of life? — TheMadFool

I'm not saying there are no dark poems; would anyone read them, though if there were no beauty in them? My point was that they do not conceal, by glossing over or sugar-coating, the ugly side of life; instead they reveal the beauty that hides in the darkness.

I'm just not even sure it's the right question to be asking. I don't get it. As a composer of music, I think I have a personal, private musical metaphysic. But I think it would be hubristic to project that unto other artists and other musics. I'm not sure how, if at all, there can be any bridge from a personal to a universal musical metaphysic. — Noble Dust

I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot.

I'd call it a good poem if not a great one. I wouldn't say it romanticizes death; I'd say it describes the death of the young man and the indifference of the living dispassionately.

How about this poem by Robinson Jeffers:

SALMON-FISHING
The days shorten, the south blows wide for showers now,
The south wind shouts to the rivers,
The rivers open their mouths and the salt salmon
Race up into the freshet.
In Christmas month against the smoulder and menace
Of a long angry sundown,
Red ash of the dark solstice, you see the anglers,
Pitiful, cruel, primeval,
Like the priests of the people that built Stonehenge,
Dark silent forms, performing
Remote solemnities in the red shallows
Of the river’s mouth at the year’s turn,
Drawing landward their live bullion, the bloody mouths
And scales full of the sunset
Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will
The wild Pacific pasture nor wanton and spawning
Race up into fresh water.

I would say there is no particular metaphysics of poetry, although poetry may have its metaphysical musings and allusions no doubt.

Give me an example of "life is [both] ugly...good poets tell it like it is" — TheMadFool

Out Out by Robert Frost

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

You wouldn't be asking for examples if you had read much good poetry.

Can you give me an instance of poetry on the ugliness of life? — TheMadFool

I didn't say good poets focus on the ugliness of life; that would be to enhance ugliness and conceal beauty. Good poets neither enhance nor conceal either beauty or ugliness, they reveal both and allow both to stand.

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness.
— TheMadFool

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate. — Janus


Why? Show me a right poet and a wrong poet and maybe there's something worth discussing. — TheMadFool

The best poets do not "conceal ugliness" or 'enhance beauty". Life is both ugly and beautiful, both heaven and hell and the good poets tell it like it is.

Original paper: Risk of thrombocytopenia and thromboembolism after covid-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 positive testing: self-controlled case series study (Aug 27, 2021) — jorndoe

That paper seems to be saying that the risk is greater after vaccination and a positive test for covid than it is with vaccination alone. In other words it seems the subjects were all vaccinated individuals. Am I missing or misunderstanding something?

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness. — TheMadFool

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate.

Whether certain paradigms are consistent with reality, or not. — Pop

I'd say all valid paradigms are consistent with (what we know of) reality, until they're not. If they're not it means they've been falsified by some new observation or experimental result.

And we thus interact with that physical informing, rather than an external world. — Pop

Wouldn't the process of the physical informing be in part at least the action of an external (to my body) world? How else could we understand it?

I don't have a problem with the enactivist paradigm, providing it is acknowledged that it is not just we humans who are doing the enacting, The appearance to us of the external (to our bodies) world is a collaborative enactment between our bodies and the external world in which they are embedded, and latter provides the medium within which our enactments can occur.