• Nothing to do with Dennett's "Quining Qualia"
    Qualia are bundles of properties without a distinct object.
    The issue is that since the PNC is inapplicable saying things about qualia becomes difficult but not impossible.
  • The definition of knowledge under critical rationalism
    I am missing something.
    Are we talking about my own personal belief or something that is believed by everyone because all humans by necessity believe or perhaps because science believes ? Inductive belief can be either one and personal justification is quite different from what is innate or a law of physics.
  • Thinking a (partial) function of age?
    My own thinking has evolved, ... due to learning and a willingness to learn, and humility got the hard way. That is, school, experience, hard knocks, time. Wisdom, imo, something else and also not the subject of this thread, ... does our several thinking evolve, and more-or-less in the same way? Is any of it a function of age and appreciation of mortality, of what is important in the face of no-longer-being?tim wood

    Let's think about death later, much later.
    According to people in the know the brain evolves from infancy to old age in quantity and quality. Others say that the mind also evolves in style in stages suggesting periodic reorganization of whatever resources it has to work with. Most of this reorganization goes on unnoticed except that others can see it. For example, some topics, like philosophy and physics need to be taught in gradually more sophisticated versions several times years apart because most abstract conceptual and logical facilities require an adult mind. The historically annoyingly noticeable distinction between knowledge and wisdom breaks down to a gradual decline in ability to learn and know and to a corresponding increasing ability to judge. But not always.
  • Should philosophy be structurated?

    Philosophy needs to be logical but it need not be a single logical system. Quite likely, anything classified as philosophy will not match other, or even any other philosophy. Chances are that even the terminology employed is inconsistent.
  • Philosophy and jigsaw puzzles...
    Like many other games and puzzles, jigsaw puzzles have the peculiarity that a unique solution only comes easily when the pieces are few and large with obvious clues of fit neighboring pieces and the overall structure of the completed image.

    Growing complexity requires a second, higher type of meta-reasoning called strategy. Developing a strategy in solving puzzles becomes gradually more and more salient as complexity grows. As noted in a previous topic, chess is one of the best examples of this characteristic of puzzles.
  • Consciousness
    consciousness cannot be understood except by studying it, and this is not what Penrose does. He just thinks about it. . . .FrancisRay

    Can't do one without the other. To study the unknown, some bounds and rules, definitions for discourse, must be hypothesized first then see how it goes. Usually it won't.

    If Penrose thinks consciousness is emergent from the physical that isn't saying much. Even if quantum mechanisms and logic are invoked. It's only a fancier version of older suggestions. But he wants say it now to be ahead of the wave, just in case it turns out to be correct.
  • Daniel Garber on Descartes

    Garber said --
    Descartes’ thought must be understood in the context of the attempt to reject Aristotelian physics, and replace it with a different kind of physics, one grounded in a mechanistic conception of nature.
    For an Aristotelian physicist, ... bodies have to behave one way or another, as embodied in their substantial forms. Some bodies naturally fall, and others naturally rise; some are naturally cold, and others are naturally hot; some are naturally dry, and others are naturally wet.
    For the mechanist ... the world is a machine, all the way down.
    But the foundations of Aristotelian philosophy, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and theology are another matter.
  • Making Right Decisions.

    Thank you for raising facts for attention. Are facts rational? Do we use facts to rationalize or are we better off appealing to emotional leanings? What facts could possibly have lead people to decide to buy the endless variety of models and colors of automobiles that we see on the roads, why not just a few well chosen models in practical brownish shades of grey?

    Although most people think of facts as certain or true statements, I prefer to limit fact to established past events and to scientific propositions as reported by reputable sources. Perhaps simply just scientifically objective facts as opposed to subjective personal opinions.

    What is clear is that although price, safety, and maintenance history may have had a role in deciding which automobile people buy, personal preferences are likely to have weighed more. How much more? I suppose that depends on the buyer. I know I have been looking for something to buy in just the right shade of green for a few years now without success.
  • Making Right Decisions.
    if we have, let's say 70% of the right information decision making becomes easier.Konkai

    Perhaps. But most decisions are based on gut feelings, necessity, sentiment, or habit, and then the facts are carefully marshaled afterwards to rationalize the decision to ourselves and for others.
  • Hume's sceptical argument: valid and sound?
    Hume himself admits that his theory would be as sceptical as Pyrrho of Elis, the model of all scepticism, if it were not for the fact that nature comes to the rescue of knowledge. How?
    Because when you have a rational and universally shared belief it would be absurd to do without it. This is a very simple principle, but it seems to be quite solid. At heart, all science is based on it.
    David Mo
    But not Hume. Hume's philosophy is an understanding and lack of appreciation for Galilean-Newtonian science. Instead, he starts with modern Aristotle and winds up with Platonic skepticism even of well-justified opinion.
  • Is Weakness Necessary?
    if a predator is so strong a hunter it proliferates and the prey population declineskudos

    As @Olivier5 pointed out, strong hunters do not proliferate at the expense of their prey in nature, rather, there is a dynamic balance between the two groups that ebbs and flows. Where strength does become important is on a Darwinian stage of eliminating weaker rivals that would otherwise claim the same territory in the food chain. I am thinking of foxes, coyotes, and wolves that cannot survive in the same terrain and territory together. But this competition among peers is just as intense and at times just as deadly in human affairs, especially at the international level of the hierarchy.

    If we were to formalize this relationship by setting up a dichotomy of strong/weak predator/prey, we would need to look at something that takes the dynamical aspects of either experiential or real-world relationships into account. Which is why I attempted a Heraclitean peer-to-peer and another one-to-many parent-to-children model for your first phrase. I think these relationships would stay static for a time but not forever, not as would be expected for any dialectic originating with Plato.
  • Is Weakness Necessary?
    natural predator-prey relationshipskudos

    In nature, the predator is also prey, and the prey predator. And if nature sneezes they're all dead.
  • Hume's sceptical argument: valid and sound?
    5. You can't get knowledge of things that are empirical unobservedHumelover

    I wonder how much Plato's Theaetetus had to do with this powerful argument. The key to understanding seems to be recognize equivocation in both arguments on which kind of knowledge we are talking about.
  • Platonism
    deterministic machines without human free will cannot cope with semantic indeterminism.RussellA

    Human free will is from a different unrelated language. In theory, machines can be made at least as semantically intelligent as a standard dumb human. Semantic indeterminacy, as vagueness and ambiguity unresolved, is a necessary feature of natural languages to allow specific in-context applicability of a limited formal vocabulary to a boundlessly unpredictable real world.
  • Anti-Realism

    I recommend that you take a look at the entry on "Relativism" at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) and especially at the three related articles by Westacott,
    Moral, Cognitive, and Aesthetic relativism.

    Edit - You're in a foreign land, the sights and sounds are bewildering. Learn the language of the natives.
  • The meaningfulness item on math probability
    Probability arose from gamblingReluctantMathematician

    So probabilities would be meaningful as applied to gambling, for example, or are they meaningful just as numbers?
  • The meaningfulness item on math probability
    there should be a boundary probability number that is " meaningfulness " just for that specified case and out of that boundary is not meaningfulboby

    I'm not sure what meaningful means in a probabilities context. I think of probabilities as arising from the analysis of purely hypothetical mathematical possibilities.

    When I think of meaningfulness I look at the application of the numbers to experience in an ordinarily setting. Perhaps a personal or social phenomenon is looked at to see if numbers can be fitted to repeated occurrences or chain of events. Then meaningfulness can be thought of as a measurable degree of fitness of the two models, one for the world and one from math.
  • Is old age a desirable condition?
    I could come up with a strong argument that the greatest problems in the world are a consequence of having sex and children. The entire environmental crisis and the dying of Earth's ecosystems can be strongly attributed to unregulated human over-population.
  • Is old age a desirable condition?
    I don't believe that old age is the age of wisdom, but a progressive advance towards stupidity. This is was Socrates' feeling -despite Plato's version- according Xenophon. This is why he provoked is own death in his famous trial. It is an heterodox consistent version.David Mo

    On what basis can you accept Xenophon's word over Plato's? Most likely they were both just stories to create opposing Socrates portraits that suited each writer, pro and ad hominem. Think a bit, if Soc was a decrepit old buzzard, then what was the attraction that he had for the majority of philosophers of his time and at least for some of the common citizens of Athens? He was convicted for crimes against the state not for being old.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Oh, I think the Russians or the Chinese will have a say about that. It's only reasonable that they should hop aboard that train.
  • On Learning That You Were Wrong and Almost Believing It
    That's one problem with a dialog. Two points of view may each be true, but neither need be right, either singly or in any combination.
  • The greatest arguer alive
    The ability exists irrespective of actual truth or fact, that is to say the person can argue a lie or untruth as incontrovertible fact and thus convince people to adopt their views /perspectives with relative ease.Benj96

    Although we live in a physical world that is chaotic, that is a combination of lawful, random, and willful events, we have a genetic psychological imperative to imagine and then to believe that we are in fact living in an orderly, predictable world. The womb, so to speak. Towards this goal we imagine our social leaders to be godlike superior beings, or at least loco parentis, to see and foresee the good for us. We are thus natural marks for brazen loud gurus to play a confidence game on us, to tell us how things really are. Today, we hear jarring examples of its use in each morning's news.
  • Should philosophy be about highest aspirations and ideals?
    Should philosophy be telling people how to live or what the ideals of life lived to the fullest should be? Is philosophy capable of doing that?
  • Who are You?
    You is not just a Mind, but it is purely a SELECTION or DETERMINATION of a point of view or frame of reference. While there can be many Minds, the point of view is single. It makes no sense to talk about multiple selections, because when the world is observed, it exists from a single frame of reference. If there are many frames of reference, then what tells you which one You are seeing right now?bizso09

    You are squeezing three relevant philosophies into two buckets. The consequence is platonic nonsense.

    There is the philosophy of the subjective private One called I, and of the subjective public others with many of you. Third, we have the many but countable scientifically public arbitrary observer~observation complexes, called sciences, with designated scientific objects and scientific relations that have nothing whatsoever to do with experience.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    As for his little ride and wave, I just do not possess the same anxiety towards his actions, and I actually liked what he did. The response sounds like grasping at straws to me. I could care less if they translate to votes.NOS4A2

    He was pumped up with oxygen until erect. It appears that this campaign stunt against all medical advice may have finally backfired. The polls now give Biden a 14-16 point lead.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump's aggressive course of treatment included the steroid dexamethasone and the single dose he was given Friday of an experimental drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. that supplies antibodies to help the immune system fight the virus. Trump on Friday also began a five-day course of remdesivir, a Gilead Sciences drug currently used for moderately and severely ill patients. The drugs work in different ways - the antibodies help the immune system rid the body of virus, and remdesivir curbs the virus' ability to multiply
    -- AP via abc7ny
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    it's another stunt to distract usEcharmion

    A giant paper machet Trump will be waving to adoring crowds from the roof of the White House
  • Are we on the verge of a cultural collapse?
    An argument could be made that philosophy and the Arts have been dead for quite a while now, and that we are in a cultural dark age.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    How can this stunt possibly be given a pro-Trump spin?Relativist

    He is waving thank you to loyal supporters.
  • On Misunderstanding
    No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. — Henry AdamsTheMadFool
    For example,
    No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. — Henry Adams

    and
    Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him. — Cardinal RichilieuTheMadFool
    For example,
    The man
    who speaks,
    doesn't know.
    The man
    who knows,
    doesn't speak — Lao Tze
  • On Misunderstanding
    Words and meaning have either a tenuous or a forced hypothetical connection?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I don't think Pence would be much of an improvementtim wood

    Pence is also a stable genius but from another stable.
  • Coronavirus
    Two reasons:
    2)I never call out...ever. and
    1)I go into work every day, no matter what
    Merkwurdichliebe

    This is logical when you get paid by the day or have hard deadlines for your projects, for example if you're an accountant working for yourself.
    You might as well be paid for being sick, and besides, taking a day off is so much more rewarding on a fine sunny day when you're feeling happy. :cool: :beer:
  • David Stove's argument against radical social change
    All these proposals ignore the elements of time, change, and the people involved. There were differences between emerging industrial and laggard medieval agrarian states. Distribution of wealth is always something to be looked at before making grand universal pronouncements.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The lines in the sand in the US have been drawn a while ago.Benkei

    If I were a democrat I would advise Harris to insistently point out that Trump is the devil incarnate.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That all said it would still be good if Trump choked to death on his own spittle.StreetlightX

    What exactly would the consequences be if that happened? Let's try to do the calculus.
    1. Pence becomes Pres.
    2. The Republicans nominate a younger more dynamic stand-in for the trumpees
    3. Republicans sweep the elections
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I hate to wish pain or death on anyoneRelativist

    A long prison term would be more humane.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Biden needs to win over Trump
    Biden might not be able to win over Trump
    darthbarracuda

    I don't think Biden people had such high expectations. It is quite enough that he out-lasted the personal pressure of lies and insults that melted Trump's republican rivals in 2016. If Biden is old, Trump looks about as old.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Besides, Trump is well insured against all contingencies.
    @VPOTUS goes to church every Sunday.