US Navy deploys warships east of Taiwan ahead of Pelosi ‘trip’

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/2/us-navy-deploys-warships-east-of-taiwan-ahead-of-pelosi-visit

Chinese fighter jets fly close to Taiwan ahead of Nancy Pelosi’s visit

https://www.ft.com/content/50f56242-2bd7-44c6-8878-a755ad1e3043

All solipsism is a form of idealism, idealism need not be solipsist at all.

Solipsism posits that only I exist and that everything else - crucially - other people, are a product of my mind. When I die, everything vanishes: history, politics, art, etc.

Idealism is often presented as a phrase that should be obvious, and one should have strong opinions about it as soon as once hears the word.

Nevertheless, there's are many types of idealisms: some claim that only perceptions exist (Hoffman) , other claims that we can only see appearances, but that a world absent these exists (Kant), yet others posit that we are all part of one mind (Kastrup), or that something remains in the world which is not mental (Schopenhauer). And so on.

It often means that only ideas exist, or that the only thing we can know are ideas (Locke, Hume) or that mental stuff is fundamental, or that the only thing that counts as "real" are those things which trigger our innate dispositions (Descartes, Chomsky).

But idealism is much broader, and arguably richer, than solipsism, which varies mostly (if not exclusively) on intensity: only my life exists, only the past day exists, only the present moment exists, etc.

EDIT: I should mention, the philosophers listed may be argued to belong in other characterizations, this is a unsophisticated form of presenting versions of idealism.

I just finished my first Krasznahorkai. Satantango.

Wow.

I look forward to his other novels now.

It's terminological by now. Descartes discovered things (Cartesian coordinate system) as did Kant with the nebular hypothesis.

Locke based important parts of his Essay in direct reaction to Newton, so did Hume.

Do you consider Hume's arguments concerning causality to be explanatory or descriptive? A bit of both?

Did Plato not anticipate certain aspects of cognitive science in his Meno? This can be argued endlessly.

Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy dealing, in part, with descriptions. Epistemology attempts to develop theories of knowledge, etc.

I'm quite skeptical of forming such far reaching connections between math and "real life", not because we don't use it, most of us do in some form of another, but I don't think geometry, say, can tell us much about complex things like human relations or governments - they are as far apart as possible, concerning the difficulty involved in understanding such things.

Which is not to say that, for example, thinking about triangles has no use in philosophy. Descartes showed, convincingly I think, that we impose the image of a triangle on top of very imperfect data. It's an example of an innate idea. Plato did a similar thing back in his day.

But triangles are among the simplest things we can conceive. Comparing that to a government is like comparing an microbe to a blue whale.

Nevertheless, again, I am limited in what I can say here, it's not my area of expertise at all. These are very general comments.

How frequently will James Webb be releasing images? I know that a new one came out, concerning some purple-ish looking galaxy.

But since the initial release of these batches of images, I haven't seen many more. I can't seem to find a date for such image releases. Anybody know about this?

When Carrol asked about physical laws, Azzouni stated that just because we can generalize some of the world in science doesn't mean there has to be an explanation for why the generalization works. It may be brute, and we have to live with the problem of induction. — Marchesk

I don't think this type of reasoning is persuasive. Even if we admit brute facts, they have to be brute because of something - a property, a law, a feature - of the universe causes this to be brute.

We may lack the cognitive capacities to figure out why such generalizations work, that can be granted without much problem. But I think there has to be a reason, otherwise, anything goes - because there are no reasons why this should be a brute fact as opposed to something else. It's a brute fact in virtue of the reason it is the way it is.

His argument against the necessary consistency of arithmetic is that this is only necessary as syntax, and going beyond that is to import meaning into the formalism. — Marchesk

When I speak of math, I'm out of my league. But it is misleading to say that the consistency of arithmetic is a "syntax". Natural language has quite different properties than a good deal of math. In fact, we may have derived out ability to do math through language. Or maybe not. To say it is a "syntax" is to use a metaphor that doesn't help.

And why is Sean Carrol so on board with this kind of radical nominalism if he thinks the wave function is real and describes many worlds? — Marchesk

It's a good question, I should listen to the entire podcast sometime. In general it seems to me that many modern day philosophers are not sympathetic to universalist arguments. I think they should be evident, otherwise, science doesn't make sense, nor would we share virtually identical manifest images of the world.

Great post.

Well, the point of an election is to see which candidate ends up with the most votes. That takes into consideration those who do not vote. If, in effect, one does not see a practical difference in voting, then I do not see why it shouldn't be considered a political position.

Although I understand the sentiment behind, I do not agree that voting should be made compulsory. It should be something people would want to do.

Sure. Though liking math is something that few people are intuitively attracted to.

One interesting question that arises as a follow-up to yours is, what is math? What does it study? Some structures. It's nebulous territory, hence the appeal of Platonism, which at least tries to give some coherence to the existence of math.

But, you should ask one of the mathematicians here, like jgill or others, who could help you out much more than I ever could.

Sure. We are typing on a keyboard and looking at a screen, you can touch it after all, your fingers don't go through it.

We should keep in mind that we are speaking about different levels of existence. When we hear that there is a lot of "empty space" in atoms, we are talking about nature observed from a very particular point of view.

What's a good description in one view, will not always be so on another view. Perhaps the one exception that looks to me to apply to all aspects of reality is temporality.

That is, we might be better off in thinking about objects as particular phases of events, than anything else. But, people have different views on the issue.

like a result of mine from 1991 that was recently used in a paper on decision making in group environments. — jgill

Very cool. Congrats man, well deserved! :clap:

Not at all, thank you for the correction.

Quick question, for my benefit: does this applied math give us insight into the nature of the world?

I mean, Pi and mathematical formulas belong to mathematics. Applied math, the kind the gives us theories, usually belong to physics.

Single celled organisms are still with us, in some form or another, for 3.7 billion years. We have been around as is, roughly 100,000 years. Most creatures more complicated than simple organisms die off completely.

The more complex the creature, in terms of biological complexity, organs, never mind self-consciousness, the less likely it will be around to pass on its genes. Intelligence may be a mistake, meaning, not good for survival in general - we may happened to have lucked out of extinction.

I think that's entirely plausible given the evidence we currently have of life on Earth.

Given infinite time, sapience will happen countless of times, — Tobias

If it is infinite, which is not yet clear.

One thing to mention here is that intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation: the vast majority of life shows not signs of it at all. The more sophisticated the creature is, the less likely they manage to survive.

We don't know if this generalizes to other places.

Mathematics once had a direct and unambiguous relationship with philosophy, Pythagoras, Euclid, Plato (Let No One Ignorant of Geometry Enter Here). Back then, there was not much of a distinction between philosophy and anything else that could be studied rationally.

Today, the relationship is much more strained. Perhaps there are things of interest in the philosophy of math. But, outside of extremely broad and general questions, which are of little interest to most mathematicians I'd imagine, I think this topic won't lead to much.

I did mine in Spain, which likely differs quite a bit in many respects from the US.

Was it hard? If you like the subject - really like it - then the effort very much pays off. There were times in which it can get quite tough, in terms of getting stuck on an idea, or misunderstanding some points and the like, but, you get over these and move on.

But, as stated, the experience in the US may be very different in terms of workload and everything else.

Yes. This happens a lot, but then the individual arguing for or against this position should merely state what they mean by the debated term.

If it's not defined, confusions will arise much more frequently.

:rofl:

Waaaay too much man reading man, that I leave for books or exchanges with people here, a simple definition shouldn't be hard to give. ;)

What the heck is meant by realism here?

Kastrup's arguments are interesting and sometimes useful. He does seem to me to vastly exaggerate issues pertaining to "alternative" personalities or selves, attributing these to the objects of experience.

We do not know enough about the self to say whether the extra-mental world is or is not compatible with things like selves, whatever they are.

On the other hand, what Kastrup mean by "materialism" is essentially a form of scientism, it seems to me. It need not mean that.

It seems to me that these metaphysical stances could be helpful, but also abused as can be seen with people who fall into Deekpak Chopra's nonsense.

It's half the story. While it is undoubtedly true that we "only" perceive our own ideas - something that was taken for granted during the Golden Age of philosophy (from Descartes to Kant, with some minor exceptions like Thomas Reid.), "the way of ideas" is now somehow controversial.

Nevertheless, I think one needs to add either a "substance" of some kind, as articulated specifically by Locke, or "things in themselves" as developed by Kant, and anticipated by others.

We cannot prove that substances in Locke's sense exist, neither Cudworth or Kant's "thing in themselves", it is a posit which gives coherence to the world. It may not exist, but it's problematic if it didn't.

Physics, for instance, has to postulate 95% of the universe as being composed of stuff we cannot detect, or the 5% we do know won't work.

If we don't do this and make such postulates, we are left with the argument that there are appearances, and nothing else. But this would render modern science obsolete: we have this scientific picture which is about appearances, instead of it being about the world.

The last issue here is that, it seems to me to be incoherent to say that there isn't something in the objects that makes us recognize them as objects - other animals seem to treat the world is a similar-ish manner.

The general outline, however, is sound, all it needs is some supplementation.

Very well said Joshs. :up:

It's not an issue of naming, it's a conceptual issue, no small thing. To argue otherwise is to confuse an ontology for what are in fact epistemological matters.

I like to argue for the view that whatever we believe to exist (even things existing unobserved) exists in a determinate manner - meaning that if we encounter a previously-unseen celestial object, we will know what kind of thing it is. — Wayfarer

I think your general gist in accurate, but would quibble with the quoted portion here. If we assume that some of the celestial bodies shown by James Webb are a galaxy or a star, they could well be a galaxy or a star - after all, they seem to have the properties attributed to these things.

Nevertheless, we could be mistaken. What we take to be a galaxy in a picture could turn out to be a new system or phenomena previously unknown in astronomy. So in these cases, we would not know what thing it is, outside of the very general comment of "being something seen by the James Webb telescope."

As for the "presumptive existence", yeah, I agree. Something is there absent us, but many (I don't think all of them) of its determinations would be meaningless absent creatures with a capacity for rational thought.

F**king lunatics.

We will need a transition, of course we cannot one month to another, or a year, stop all consumption of fossil fuels. Agreed.

But to say we need *more* fossil fuels, not less, is a recipe for certain destruction.

Essentially, because of the energy crisis, the West should basically keep drilling and forget about green technology.

Only doing more digging and drilling will make the economy better.

Bone-chilling headline from the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

The West’s Climate Policy Debacle
Utopian energy dreams are doing great economic and security damage.

"These are some of the unfolding results in the last year caused by the West’s utopian dream to punish fossil fuels and sprint to a world driven solely by renewable energy. It’s time for political leaders to recognize this manifest debacle and admit that, short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of carbon fuel for decades to remain prosperous and free."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wests-climate-policy-debacle-global-warming-energy-putin-russia-fossil-fuel-power-summer-heat-11658084481?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

One has no words.

Talk about religious fanaticism...

I don't get to put someone in harms way because I'm bored nor put them in harms way because I think that they should like it (even if they don't). YOU should not be making those assumptions for others. — schopenhauer1

I am being slightly silly, because I'm in that mood, but, let me be a bit more serious:

We must begin with one assumption, at the very least, or we cannot do anything. Heck, we have to assume math is true, because how can we justify it?

In morals, you assume that others either want life or do not. Most people want life, some do not. You can call these people deluded if you wish, those that want life, but, I don't see the point of "making them see", that life is worthless. Most don't see it, maybe because it isn't true for them.

Well, I don't want to be engaged in True Scotsman fallacy. But at any rate, he did not advocate promortalism, and nor is this argument about that. — schopenhauer1

This is why I avoid talking much about ethics, I think the standards are too high, thus I keep to politics. I like True Scotsman, I accept no substitutes. If I want an Irishman or a Ethiopian, I'll ask for one. ;)

I'm here to suffer, I love it, everybody else does too.

If not, things would be very boring, very quickly. Well, Schopenhauer pointed out, not an exact quote, that even if we did manage to create a utopia for a while, we would soon be bored and begin acting improperly.

Yet he lived his life, unlike, say Mainländer. He was a real anti-natalist.

So, blame Putin — Jamal

I thought we had a tacit agreement on this... Of course it's him, always.

Anyway:

The Logos by Mark de Silva

Re-reading:

A Treatise of Human Nature Volume I by David Hume

It's an interesting phenomenon. Lots of people love the beginning at the ending (remember it best), then they forget what happened in the middle. That happened to me.

So your case is not too strange. It's very curious that it happens with that book.

Ah, you never said if you enjoyed Mason & Dixon, did you finish it?

I'll have to go back to re-reading someday, it's been several years...

It's not one specific idea, although one could mention differance or hauntology or whatever else he argued, it's several factors.

I won't go into details here, for one thing, people do find him useful and two, I have not read too much of him, though a bit from his followers. The thing is, if I'm not liking or finding persuasive what I'm reading, why bother going on?

There are plenty of others to read.

In short, willfully obscure writing, no regard for proper arguments, constantly saying people misunderstand him, then proceed to make fun of others, etc.

This has not been good for philosophy, in my opinion. For literature, paradoxically, the results are not too bad.

I agree those philosophers were pivotal to the development of modern philosophy. But then what about Spinoza, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Peirce, James, Dewey and others I haven't mentioned. — Janus

These awards should be given relative to the time some of these figures lived in. Spinoza's arguments are somewhat difficult to re-articulate now, though it can be done.

Hegel.... I think won several awards in his time. But, let me avoid talking about him.

As for the others, sure. There are good arguments for the pragmatists, I think. The others are more difficult to pin down for an award. Most of these are debatable, or will find partisans.

Bartrick's — Janus

Hah. Well, with someone like him, one does not debate. One merely bows in astonishment...

Derrida was a good philosopher. Again, I don't agree with some of his arguments, but his influence is valid. — Jackson

Influence is difficult to argue with, but the effects of influence can be good or bad. I don't think he's good at all, but others here swear by him.

Derrida was also influential and Lacan. Not a good metric.



Oops. I misunderstood, my bad.

It wasn't meant as a jab at Janus at all. It's was an comment that immediately came to mind.

And he is correct that we lack this award in "philosophy" as we now understand the field. Probably a good thing too. How can the judges possibly know which theory is correct on matters of metaphysics?

Epistemology may be a bit different, but it would be a hard award to justify.

Yeah well, Newton was not awarded the Nobel Prize, for several reasons, but he might have deserved one.

Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Kant surely deserved on too, as do Plato and Aristotle.

The problem, then, is finding a suitable candidate after the middle of the 19th century. Russell did win one, as merited, but not for his intellectual contributions.

So, it's not that simple.

Yeah, sure, you'll get directed to several sites with lots of information, sometimes conflicting, sometimes not. I'm not saying there's nothing to it, but it is of dubious quality to me.

Honestly, your best bet would be rod the Lacan for Beginners comic book book. The series is quite good and can be read rather quickly.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JGE4BNS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

If that doesn't provide clues to an answer, I can't think of anything else.

The point is that he is so obscure, that it is assumed that people who read him, must be smart. Add to that the "Dr." label, and you can get a lot of unquestioned dogma or nonsense.

Anyway, I'll stop here.

Then it won't matter much. It's a bit like Leninists, there can be left wing or right wing Leninists.

Zizek claims to be a left Lacanian and categorizes Miller (Lacan's official editor and translator) as a right wing Lacanian.

In short, I don't think you'll find much, despite the references.