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.

Well this is likely the ultimate metaphysical question, the biggest of them all. Many perspectives can be given.

The best I can do is, we are not equipped with the correct apparatus to clearly understand why something is less problematic than nothing - at least for nature.

So here we make the usual mistake of attributing issues that arise in the mind to nature, that are not a problem for nature.

I'd like to add here, though I maybe already said it: what is gained by saying "material" in between "external world"?

Does it add anything that is not a distraction from a more problematic issue? Because we are now discussing some version of materialism, instead of the world.

Russia and Ukraine near to grain export deal: UN, Turkey

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/13/russia-and-ukraine-near-to-grain-export-agreement-un-turkey

That's a bit of good news, given the horrors here. When this will end, who knows. But it's still on going, it's been way too long and way too dangerous.

I went down that rabbit hole for about two to three years, and could salvage very little information of value. But, I do have a tendency to really dislike willful obscurantism, which Lacan recognized. Having said this, I can tell you what I could salvage:

He's not clear on any topic. Some Lacanian psychoanalysts even go as far as arguing that a person with a drinking problem may do well to continue drinking or that "anxiety" is the one emotion that does not lie. Why? It's not argued for.

The best sources I found on Lacan were Using Lacanian Clinical Technique by Phillip Hill and the various books on Lacan from Bruce Fink, especially A Clinical Introduction of Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

I hear that Lacan's published seminars are easier to understand than his Ecrits (his main work), but have not read them. Many were not published when I was into his thought back in 2011 or so.

Finally, the best Lacanian, by far - and even he has problems in his scholarship (bad sources, makes up information, etc. This is documented) - is Žižek. He is entertaining and sometimes says interesting things. His lectures (of which almost all) can be found on YouTube, and are superior to his books.

His documentaries on films are interesting. Take them with grains of salt.

I know that doesn't answer your question and I would recommend you listen to a few of Žižek's lectures and call it a day, as I've seen people go down the Lacanian rabbit-hole and never come back.

I hope your experience on this end up being more useful than mine.

Thanks for sharing!

What an amazing, amazing achievement. One can only be in awe of these images.

There's a lot of territory covered in your post, much of it of high quality. But I'm unclear on the main question being asked.

These answers obviously will vary depending on which school of philosophy you believe is on the right track, phenomenology will differ from analytic philosophy which will differ from strands of continental philosophy and so on.

An even bigger problem is that we have to assume the apparatus that allows us to have knowledge (modes of understanding, realized in the brain, stimulated by the environment) is itself not explainable. We have to assume that our mode of understanding must be right in different circumstances, without giving it a foundation which we are able to account for.

Many of these questions seem to me to be well argued for by Hume, who says, that despite our ability to cast very serious doubts on the most evident things, we have no choice but to postulate them. What nature causes us distress through reason, nature too relaxes our doubts.

It's insane. Finally we are getting the images after several months, I think they are going to share 4(3?) pics tomorrow.

Can't wait to see what new things they discover.

The interaction problem boils down to defending monism or pluralism.

The monist can ask "what is gained in saying that there are multiple properties that are so different such that they are incompatible? Would we say that the "hearing capacity" is ontologically distinct from the "seeing capacity"? This isn't an ontological matter, but an epistemic one.

The pluralist can ask "what's the point in trying to categorize all these different properties under one heading, when so many properties are obviously different from each other?" The hearing capacity is radically different from the seeing capacity: there is an unexplainable interaction happening here.

However, to single out mind over, say, gravity or electromagnetism, is anthropomorphic. While it is true that without experience we wouldn't be able to discover anything about nature, the same would be true if the world lacked gravity: we would not exist.

Having said this, I prefer monism. We simply do not understand how experience and matter (and much else) could be compatible with one another, yet they are.

The Mental Life of Modernism by Samuel Jay Keyser

The Patient's Secret by Lorenth Anne White

Keyser's book is extremely interesting, very provocative and suggestive of our mental makeup, would definitely recommend for people interested in how the arts and innatist philosophy of mind interact.

Sure man, it's something that took me (and continues to take) time to figure out. One may disagree with a lot of what the positivists believed in, but clarity in language use, ends up being important, otherwise one starts to say things one doesn't clearly believe.

I have nothing against science, it is the greatest intellectual achievement of human beings. But with that, you get a lot of things masquerading as science or exaggerating the expertise of certain professions.

I think one should be on guard in these situations.

:victory:

I suppose we could, but, if the tree isn't placed in dirt it cannot grow.

It's merely a matter of emphasis: I would add that picking out a TREE by the features we pick out it by, is very curious. We don't, for instance, consider the dirt the tree is on to be part of the tree, but nothing in nature should prevent us from doing this.

Having said that, yes, you are right. It is an interesting fact about the way we do science, that we do manage to extract very particular information about specific configurations of matter, and discover all kinds of stable relationships between members of the same group of thing. So I think your point is a better illustration than mine.

I know it sounds like stoner talk, but it's nonetheless intriguing.

Yes, and this is quite an interesting case you point out. I'd even argue that this is even slightly more philosophy than science, in so far as we are using concepts to stipulate a class of objects in nature as being different from each other, which we then categorize as TREES, ROCKS, FLOWERS, and so on.

After we do that (and it's done virtually automatically), we can begin to do the more refined empirical work which science deals with such as, what is this rock composed of or what biological phenomena interacts with this tree such that the tree has X and Y property, and so forth.

I am not evading anything here, I'm replying to what I think you're asking, by giving you answers that approximate what happens in my experience, that and trying to be as clear as I am capable of being, is all I can do in these conversations.

We may differ in our experiences and our intuitions and that's fine.

In your interpretation of the above examples, "good" or "useful" are not sufficiently specific, and I think you know that. — ucarr

Which is why I said the word "science" can be used in various ways - as it is in fact used.

The emphasis is upon logical, focused efficiency in getting to the goal. This definition is much closer to the scientific method, and thus the examples are not loosey-goosey applications of what "science" denotes. — ucarr

If that is what you take the scientific method to be, OK. I wouldn't disagree that it has those components, but clearly the results and depth achieved in physics are very different from the results achieved in sociology.

You give no reactions to two important words I used. "Claims," formally speaking = proposition. "Inquiry," formally speaking = experimentation. The formal versions of the two words, as you know, are firmly rooted within science. — ucarr

No, I did not know that the "formal versions of the two words... are firmly rooted in science". I don't know what this means.

So if I claim that Putin is a war criminal, I am making a scientific proposition? It seems to me I'm giving a moral opinion, to which, I'm sure many people would agree, and other would not.

If I inquire into the causes of the invasion of Ukraine or the invasion of Iraq, I am doing experimentation? That's sounds strange to me.

My hunch is that you wish to avoid committing to a position that says humans conduct inquiries culminating in claims that are emphatically non-scientific.

I make the above conjecture in relation to. . . — ucarr

If you read what you quoted, I never said that the work done in international relations (IR) is "non-scientific".

It can be good research or bad research, and you may call it "scientific" if you wish.

I hesitate to call work done in IR as "scientific", not because there isn't good work done in the field, I think there is, but because most of it, especially the "theory" division or IR, is pretty awful and has virtually no relation to what happens in the world.

So if I say that IR is "scientific", I think that lowers the achievements of physics and biology. But it does not follow that if something isn't science it's bad or irrational.

If you think elementary particles & their interrelationships are simple, it must be the case you've merely glanced at studies of these phenomena. — ucarr

What phenomena is simpler than physics? It studies (for instance) what happens to a particle as it goes through a slit. That is much easier to study than a human being, which is composed of trillions of particles.

Physicists can ask hard questions about simple things, using complex mathematical formulations. In human affairs, we are mostly guessing: just read the news.