I don't know about the one per se, but your OP reminded me of Schopenhauer's porcupines:

"One cold winter's day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another..."

What we want, think we want, is for the scent of just cut grass to be to smell what the look of just cut grass is to our vision. — Srap Tasmaner

That's a good direction to go in. We'd want objects to be coherent, as we take them to be in manifest reality.

The point here would be that we would have the opportunity to catalog new unfamiliar scents by their relations to ones we already know, and we could describe scents we have smelled to others who haven't relying on systematic similarities and differences. — Srap Tasmaner

Then when we bump into a new-ish smell, we would not be surprised by it, because we have a catalogue of similarly smelling things. We might except to predict such smell from sight or touch.

I'm not concerned with whether the underlying psychology here is accurate; what I want is a sort of model of how we think about familiar and unfamiliar sense impressions, how we talk about them with other people, how we might link such behaviors to our actual sensory experiences. Something like what I've described seems good enough for a start. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. This is a thought experiment which can provide a heuristic of sorts to get people into sharpening the ideas they may have of particular sensations. If this can inform a science in any way, good. If not, well we've attempted to highlight sense impressions more clearly.

And now we can flesh out what it would mean for the scent of just cut grass to be to smell what the look of just cut grass is to vision: the idea is that they would occupy similar positions in our respective sensory catalogs, near the same sorts of things and distant from the same sorts of things, showing the same pattern of similarities and differences, and describable using the same comparisons — Srap Tasmaner

Correct. That would be our "folk psychological" picture.

Is this at all close, you think? — Srap Tasmaner

I like your intuition and the way you caught on to the gist of my problem.

What you point out is true, it would be impossible to catalogue every sensation. Yet these very different senses appear to give us a coherent whole. It's very strange, but taken as a given.

And there's the whole problem of your "red" being my "green", but with smells and sounds. I don't know if when you smell cut grass or when you hear a drum you get the same sensations I do.

I suspect that we do share similar sensory qualities, but each person accentuates one property over another one.

It's also interesting to see what senses are relevant for our scientific theories. I think Russell was correct when he points out that vision is our most acute sensation. Then we go to tactile sensations. Then probably sounds. Our sense of smell is quite poor compared to many other mammals.

Yet while sight gives us good evidence for scientific phenomenon, we paradoxically don't have a science for qualitative colours. Which is strange considering how acquainted we are with colours in our day to day life.

This is meant to be open ended, and your approach looks useful to me. So quite good in my eyes.

Thanks for the reminder.

:cry:

*positive thinking*

I used to think that. And I agree the prospects do not look that great. But the future is unknown, and the more positive the general attitude is towards dealing with an existential threat is, the better the outcome will be. And better remains better even if the outcome might be bad from our present standpoint. If everyone just gave up and said "we're fucked", then we would be truly fucked. — Janus

:lol:

Is a distressed laughter, not mocking.

Clearly, there's no real alternative. The future is unknown and we can only hope that efforts will make the world better. In fact, there are people working on this from many perspectives, decent people, but I don't think they understand the consequences fully. But it's probably best that they don't, cause that could lead to inaction or paralysis.

Your analysis is accurate. You are preaching to the choir in my case, or close to it.

The work is far from easy and change won't come without struggle. The concern for me is mostly one of timeframe, not any of the other aspects which you correctly point out. This wouldn't be such a mental mess if we have, say, 30-40 years to build things slowly. We don't have that luxury anymore, the relevant companies involved hid it under the rug, as you know.

Not attempting to be defeatist, but one must at least be somewhat strategic here. It's fine to argue with people if one wants that, it's good to listen to other ideas even if you despise them. But changing minds on polar opposite people is less effective than getting those who are already on the fence on these issues.

After one manages to get most of the people on the fence to see and act on the problem, can we focus efforts on trying to get others to see what the issues are, assuming we ourselves don't get some things wrong, which we will inevitably do in cases as complex as these. But the large picture is clear enough, either change this system suitably, or our future will be hell on Earth, almost literally.

Yes, the silver lining must be there, otherwise it would be a waste of time.

I don't know if this is pessimism or simple objectivity, but the scary thing is that even if we continue (or begin) to act on these things, odds do not look good at all. Granted, we'll have a shot only if we try. But prospects are not good.

Still, one must grab onto what one can or slip into insanity or something.

Sorry if this comes a bit off left field, but related to the title of your thread, one problem with Climate Denialism or whatever one wants to call it, is that the conclusions reached are so dire and overwhelming, that it's just easier to shut off one's brain.

I mean, saying that we won't really have land to live in and that many of us will die miserably and that most intelligent life on Earth will perish, is some Biblical level shit. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but that from looking outside one's window know and seeing say a nice sunny day to looking at the same window in some short timespan and seeing dead birds on the floor and not being able to go out is just a massive leap.

It also doesn't help that "end of the world" scenarios pop up time and time again. But this time, the reasons are quite legitimate. So there's some cognitive resistance at play too.

It is fascinating. It's as if we have several voices in our head saying contradictory things, often at the same time. We can actually see real life cases with people who have multiple personality disorder. Some people can have more than 6 personalities. Sometimes they don't even know what each other is thinking. But sometimes they do.

As for the general topic, I don't know but, I used to be able to handle obscure prose much better back when I was finishing my studies. But now I go back to Kant and Peirce, for example, and I often don't have much to go on. Conversely, if I read Schopenhauer, James or Russell, I think I can follow what they say quite well. But it's as @jamalrob says, it's a matter of taste.

There's also the problem that we often have ideas which we cannot express adequately into words, to convey the impressions we have. We may hint at it, use examples to try and isolate this X feeling, but we fall short.

Then again, maybe contradicting myself, it's better to say something even if a bit messy, than to say precisely nothing. Within limits.

Yes and I think Galen Strawson offers a good alternative (as good as any other) in his Real Materialism essay.

Everything that concretely exists is physical. This includes consciousness. But that everything is physical should not be confused with the view that everything is physicSal. There's no reason to suppose physics will tell us much about experience, just as physics says very little about music or painting.

Experience arises from brains, we don't know how. We may find out some day, or we may not. As for idealism, we are adopting a choice in terminology: what is incoherent in saying that what I'm most acquainted with my mind and its percepts and that the world is a mental construction on the occasion of sense data with the idea that mental phenomena are physical phenomena?

Just like gravity is a physical phenomena and sound is too. This does not imply his panpsychism at all. Only monism.

So I see no inherent reason for tension in word use.

There's the common usage of words, in which "will" is taken to mean volition or power to do something on purpose, or some similar association.

If you have in mind a technical word which you will pronounce "will", then it can be whatever you like. Your own definition is fine, but do you connect it with a broader view?

If not, the technical meaning is not helpful.

Now that you mention it, the definition of knowledge might need revision to accommodate this fact. — TheMadFool

I think so in the case of animals. For knowledge to be knowledge proper and not just a very broad word implying ordered information or something, it should be explicit knowledge, as in I know that so and so. Raymond Tallis speaks of this quite well.

It implies you had an expectation, a preconception if you will of how a certain object/phenomenon should look/smell/taste/sound/feel like. — TheMadFool

It's a problem. Again, suppose your senses come back and you see and hear a tree in your garden or park. You might expect that the object is closer that it is, given that much of our information is visual, perhaps more important than tactile sensation.

But when you reach out to try to touch the tree, it doesn't match what you perceive, as sight and sound suggest the object is, say 5 feet away, when it is actually 8 feet.

Something like that.

The thing is, our senses often don't match this way. You can't match music to many things, maybe math. The sensation of warmth isn't really matched by sight.

So it's curious that they sometimes they do happen to match, as when we accustom ourselves to distances coordinating our vision and tactile sensations.

It seems to mean: the smell of grass does not resemble the sight of grass. But why the privileging of sight? After all, it doesn't seem like the reverse operation is admissable - why not say, 'the sight of grass does not resemble the smell of grass?'. — StreetlightX

Yeah, you are right. I'm aware of privileging sight. You could ask the reverse question you are positing. And the answer might be that depending on what you've smelled before, maybe a certain perfume or rolling in mud or whatever, is similar to grass, so when you turn around and see it you are surprised that the smell produced by grass is due to that object, as opposed to mud.

is judged to fail to 'live up to' the 'resemblance' understood as 'what it looks like'. But what kind of problem is this? — StreetlightX

I think the problem is that of arbitrariness. We could imagine we describe to a blind person how a tree looks like: it's taller than me, hard like a table is bright green at the top, etc. I would assume such a person would form some kind of association with "tall", "bright" and so on. So when the time comes that they recover sight, they could say I expected it to be this tall, but not this colour.

Clearly they couldn't compare colour to anything else prior to sight, but they had idea of resemblance of height. So the shock is partial.

Or in yet other words: all sensing is synesthetic from the get-go, and the parcelling out of senses into discrete modalities is an artificial, analytic operation undertaken after the fact, on the basis of a rationalist confusion. — StreetlightX

Sure I agree that objects are synthetic from the get go, in this sense "the given" is already created by us.

But the distinction between primary and secondary qualities was made by Locke and the idea of "bundles" was Hume's, so it was also an empiricist account. Again, I could be asking a confused question, as you point out, it could be that it's like asking why "fish can't climb a tree".

Or it may be a very particular puzzle of mine that may dissolve in a bit of time.

Innate knowledge? The horseness of a neigh - a neigh is part of the (Platonic) form of horses. Someone who hears a neigh a for the first time might immediately recognize it as horse's vocalization. :chin: — TheMadFool

Knowledge can be a problematic word when applied to animals. Innate dispositions might be better. The have a nature such that when an object induces in the animals the relevant sensory organ, they recognize the object as food or predator or mate, etc.

As I tried to point out, the chemical and physical structure of objects determine their properties. Does this answer your question or does it not? if it does then there are reasons why objects appear to us as they do - the way they look, smell, taste, sound and feel are functions of their, how shall I put it?, essence. — TheMadFool

Yeah. So far as we know it's the chemical properties that cause us to smell objects the way we do. At least we have to include chemicals as an important part of the explanation.

I think @Srap Tasmaner was on to an important point, which is the similarity of our reports based on different senses. We often see that sight and touch seem to agree with each other, as when we crumple up a piece of paper and aim for the garbage bin.

But sometimes the reports don't match, a piece of Tupperware may look normal to us and we would expect we could lift up with no problem. Until we touch it and feel an intense burn.

A property-less object? How does one distinguish that from nothing? Is this too off-topic? — TheMadFool

Depends on how you think of objects. Something lacking all sensible properties could be called nothing.

Yeah, I'm calling it a night too.

I certainly agree with what you say. It seems our model should be a better liar, and we shouldn't be confused or surprised by sounds or smells.

I'm glad you like the question. It's nice to find someone who thinks of this too.

Talk to you soon.

I would like to say "separately" but this is known to be false, for instance, when it comes to taste and smell -- we think there ought to be some analogy, or even homology, between the different impressions. That is, the look of cut grass should be to vision as the scent of cut grass is to smell as the texture of cut grass is to feel, something like that. — Srap Tasmaner

YES. Reid was reacting to Locke - I think - and replying to Locke that primary qualities do not resemble anything in the object. We feel the effects of the object, but not in a resemblance manner.

It feels as if there should be a consistency between our separate impressions, but there isn't.

Reid actually wrote much of his works as an attack on Hume, he was Hume's fiercest critic at the time. But they got along well, no bad blood between them.

We know the connection can be explained, grass being what it is means it looks a certain way and smells a certain way when it's just been cut, and we can associate those impressions, but that association can't help but seem somewhat arbitrary. — Srap Tasmaner

Again yes. Great. It doesn't seem arbitrary, but in some sense they are.

The look and feel and taste of that object to this person are supposed to be abstractions, in a sense, aspects of an interaction between that single object and this single subject. But it doesn't feel like that; it feels like a particular look arbitrarily associated with a particular texture and a particular scent, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

You explain this better than me. We imbue object with permanence that they don't need to have. One minute we see a lawn, we close our eyes for a second, and we say it's the same lawn. But it isn't actually, things are changing all the time. So this uniformity is quite interesting.

But perhaps our notion of "single object" is extremely misleading, which seems to be the case.

Should we infer that everything about the interaction of that object and this subject is assembled somehow, maybe that the object is just a sort of bundle of impressions, a bundle we assemble? Maybe we also conclude that we are such a bundle. That's Hume's word, I guess, but I'm not trying to insist that there is no structure here, only that there is some assembly required to get a subject and an object. — Srap Tasmaner

It's a good question. I think that an object just is an instantiation of properties, but I also believe that something in nature holds these properties together. We do that to objects too. But it would be really weird if nothing but us binded objects together. I mean, what's to stop us from thinking a river dry?

As for us, it's much harder to say. In a sense yes, we are instantiations of properties, but without an innate structure we could not be able to discern anything. So I suspect there is a rigid inner nature that orders ourselves and parts of the world.

Most people, I'd guess, will think there's something terribly foolish about expecting any kind of similarity between the "reports" of our various senses, but I'd much rather ask this very strange question and get an actual answer for why we shouldn't expect it. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure. This is quite speculative stuff.

The only reason I can offer off the top of my head, is that we tend to like patterns and ordering stuff, we do this all the time, practically involuntarily. But once we begin to isolate what seems to be a coherent picture, obvious things become problematic. Our common sense picture of the world turns out to be an extremely elaborate construction, which we take for granted.

You understand the problem rather well and it's puzzling for some.

It seems arbitrary, lacking a rationale and this I suppose is what bothers you. Is it that the matter is more about rationality (expecting reasons, good ones I guess, for why things are the way they are) than about reality? — TheMadFool

Yes, I think you raised an important point, the arbitrary aspect. What would be rational to expect of something to smell like? We begin (almost) already in it, we grow up to an age in which we just assume meat smells this way and no some other way, and that flowers smell like this.

But as to what they should smell like, based on how they appear, is a good question which I don't have an answer for.

You seem to flip-flop between discussing things and how their properties aren't necessary to those things and properties themselves. What's up with that? — TheMadFool

Working my way through my confusion. I mean, sure, objects don't need too many properties by necessity. If you are blind and deaf and lack a sense of tactile sensations, there aren't many properties to uncover.

Properties being, properties for us: induced by objects so that we feel that way we do when we encounter them.

But to expect a property-less object is perhaps going too far.

Sure, the point of this specific thread is just for that, whatever one wants to make of it.

I think its innate, it's something they are born with, they have the disposition to recognize grass as a type of food. Similarly, baby turtles race to the ocean as soon as they hatch. There's no other explanation that an innate mechanism that makes them go to the ocean.

It probably took several deaths for creatures to sharpen whatever they do as habit.

Say you lack the sense of smell and look at grass. They could say it smells fresh or earthy and you may form a mental image these words. But obviously no smell.

Some modern technology comes along and fixes your sense of smell. Now you smell wet grass. It's quite a peculiar smell. Would you've imagined grass would possibly smell that way?

Blind people have said that they are aware that "being in the red", means losing money. Or "feeling blue" means feeling down or depressed. If they could see, would the sensation of seeing an apple or seeing the ocean resemble anything associated with the word?

I suspect not, or maybe in some cases they would not be totally shocked by the association. But don't know, obviously.

I'm not too confident on this topic. It hit a nerve when I read it. I could be relying too much on visuals, because as I mentioned, if I look at a fire hydrant the issue doesn't arise, it produces a "red" sensation in me, which doesn't make me question how this object induces this sensation in me.

The natural objection is, what sound do you expect a horse cart to make or what smell would you suppose grass (not marijuana, which actually is an interesting illustration) smells like? Fair point.

When we speak of resemblances, we already have sophisticated association in mind. If I ask you, what resembles water? You can point to all kinds of liquids, including fruit juices, milkshakes and even blood, though this latter case is further removed.

But if you ask the question, what resembles the sound of a horse carrying a cart? I'd have to think quite a bit, because, not many things produce that sound. Maybe a rusty wheel or a donkey sound like a cart and a horse respectively.

My puzzle is that, based on my experience with horses carrying carts, it isn't obvious to me what sound they'd make. It's only when I become more familiarized with these things, that I can say " that is probably the sound of a horse carrying a cart". Why? Because that's what I've heard before most of the times I hear this noise.

But it isn't evident prior to being habituated. Same with smells. It's strange to me that wet grass smells like it does, it doesn't seem like grass could smell like that.

Well what would it smell like? Obviously the smell we end having. It involves some chemistry I'm not familiar with.

tl,dr: It isn't obvious to me, visual sensations aside, that any object would produce the effects in us that we end up feeling.

That's an excellent illustration of the general idea. Thanks for sharing.

Not quite, but it's an approximation. Assume that for some reason, you recover all your senses. Before you lacked all of them.

Before you become habituated to the world, things like the distance of objects, what sound is related to which object, how surfaces feel, would likely be completely foreign. One would have to spend some time to associate the sound of footsteps with people stepping on the floor, as opposed to someone knocking on the door, which sounds kind of similar, depending on certain conditions.

But you may be right, I may be puzzling over nothing. I just found it interesting, but am not quite able to express it well enough, maybe because I'm wrong.

Yes. But what about chemical composition is it that should lead it to produce the experiences that we do? When I look at a chemical, say a sleeping pill or a hallucinogenic, it isn't obvious to me that these things would cause me to feel the way I end up feeling.

We find these things natural because we are habituated to them by now.

It's the difference between the felt quality and configurations of particles which lack any apparent qualities associated with our everyday life.

I tend to favor a type of rationalism in the philosophy of mind, which includes sensation as a important factor. I believe I can "think away" all properties of objects, except solidity. I may lack all senses, but objects will still be solid.

But when Reid (and others) point out that the pain in my finger does not resemble, does not look like, the tip of the sword that caused it. Then extension is also a quality the mind is induced to create given certain stimulus. What object would resemble the pain in my finger, assuming a cut? Something that itself is painful, maybe red, etc. But that's not how it works.

The example of the horse cart rings true. If we are walking in a street and hear a very specific configuration of sound, we are alerted that something is causing this.

If we had not seen a horse carrying a cart before, I don't think we would associate the sound the object produces in us with the object. It's only once we become habituated to hearing this specific sound, that we say it was caused by a horse carrying a cart.

The point for me is that such things we take so utterly for granted, are created by us. We take poor stimulus and create rich meanings associated with sounds, etc.

So these two worlds have the same physical laws, but they're still different from each other. What is that supposed difference? It's consciousness. Therefore, does that mean consciousness is not physical by merit of me being able to imagine said two worlds? — Yun Jae Jung

I think the problem lies in thinking that what you mean by "physical" automatically excludes consciousness. Why? Why can't consciousness be a wholly physical phenomenon? It presumably comes out of certain configurations of matter, i.e. brains.

So what if the laws of physics don't say anything directly about consciousness? We need consciousness to access the laws of physics, so in a certain sense, they cannot be of a fundamentally different nature as experience. This does not mean that atoms think, or that panpsychism is true.

This should be taken as meaning that "physical stuff" is much, much more than what we initially take it to be, as it includes experience.

Matter which lacks the potential for consciousness in any possible configuration is not the physical stuff we actually deal with in this world, or maybe any.

So the point in what you quote, as I take it, would be to avoid building bridges that fall. A system with a paradox is a kind of faulty logic system.

But there's many reasons why they could fall not limited to paradox. I mean, why do paradoxes arise at all? :chin:

I'm interested in seeing more in detail what Turing said, not so much Wittgenstein himself. Mathematics, much less foundations of mathematics, is beyond me.

But some paradoxes are interesting. It may be due to mathematical considerations, or linguistic ambiguity or lack of comprehension, so looking at Turing's reply might be instructive.

Yep. Pretty much.

That's why we say "it sounds like X, Y or Z".

Ah, thanks. :up:

I still don't know what you mean when you say "sound completely different from what they appear." What does a sound appear like? — T Clark

Suppose you hear a particular sound, perhaps one reminding you of a glass jar breaking. You've heard glass break before, so you associate a particular sound to this phenomena. One of two things can happen here:

You check the source of the sound and find out that indeed, it was a glass jar that broke because the window was open and the breeze toppled it over.

You check the source, but find out that the sound was produced by a metal wind chime. Apparently wind chimes can sound like glass breaking in certain circumstances.

Or the very example you used, you associated a sound with thunder. Only that it wasn't thunder, it was a truck. The sound appeared to you as belonging to thunder. Sounds appear or are represented (if you prefer this word) by us as belonging to certain objects automatically, but they need not produce these specific effects in us.

I thought I'd throw in something about why they don't bother to think about it, why it's not only a matter of instinct but a perfectly reasonable default view. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, it's difficult. I suspect that, despite claims to the contrary, AN is connected with personal disposition. They happen to be the kinds of people who feel the negatives of life more than the positives.

I believe most people don't like to think much, it can set one off in a series of endless, often unsettling questions.

But if I had to guess, it might simply boil down to the fact that experience is almost infinitely rich, whereas in non-being (what before birth and after death presumably are) there is nothing at all. The differences couldn't be higher.

Is there a transcript for this discussion between Wittgenstein and Turing? It would be interesting to see the entire conversation.

What would it mean for the sound of a horse pulling a wagon to resemble a horse pulling a wagon? — T Clark

That it would be the kind of object of which one would expect that specific sound it produces. If we have not heard something sufficiently well, we won't know what object caused that sound. We take it for granted that horses pulling a wagon sound like they do, or fans, etc.

You've run a bait and switch. It's not a question of the red sensation resembling red. It's a question of the sight of an apple resembling an apple. In what sense does the sight of an apple resemble an apple that is different from the sound of a horse pulling a wagon resembling a horse pulling a wagon. — T Clark

Good. This is the part which confuses me, so I'm trying to work this out, no bait and switch is intended.

I am trying to point out sensations, the way ice feels to our fingers, the way thunder sound to our ears, etc. A horse pulling a carriage produces a sound which I would not initially associate with such objects, that these objects could sound this way. They could sound completely different from what they appear to me.

But when I experience a colour of any kind, I personally don't expect an object to produce any other colour effects than the one it currently has. Of course, apples can be yellow or green.

But it could be my personal quirk.

I saw a black dog on the sidewalk, lying down but trying to move get up. It was disturbing. On closer examination it turned out to be a black plastic back being moved by a breeze. It was a strong resemblance until once examined, it was not. — Bitter Crank

These types of phenomena are rather eerie. But on hindsight, really highlight how wonderful our minds can be. How could it be possible for a plastic bag to resemble a dog or pavement on hot day resemble water? It's pretty cool.

Semblances add to the interesting features of experience. — Bitter Crank

Absolutely.

They made a good starting point, but reified the issue in terms of objective causation. The phenomenologists made much ore headway here — Joshs

Sure. I mean, starting off is often the hardest thing to do. We just take it as a given that fans produce such a sound or rocks feel such a way. Until you reflect that, it's me that is creating the effects off of relatively poor stimulus. In this respect, the classical figures of the 17th and 18th centuries were geniuses.

Most of what we see is not there in front of us but filled in by us. Resemblance plays a crucial
role all along the way here. What is closely similar becomes unified for us — Joshs

I agree. Also that the phenomenologists do plenty. And there's a lot more to analyze.

One would have to explain how the fan induces the model to work in the first place. If that can be established somehow, then progress could be made.

At the outset, it looks as if someone is taking one set of terms "sound" from a "fan", to another set of terms, "models" in the "brain". The problem has been re-phrased, in this case. With more detail, maybe I could understand what they're getting at.

I'm not suggesting this problem has a solution. I'm looking to see how people think about this, is all.

Well, you've expanded on the usual notion of "family" that tends to come to mind automatically. It is legitimate to do so, because in a certain sense, we are brothers and sisters. But family's have problems, as everyone knows.

It's as Robert Fisk once pointed out, the biggest, nastiest fights we have in life are with family, not with friends or strangers. If applied to the whole of society, then some of our family members believe things that kill other family members and are odious. So it's still a problem, though this way of thinking can be useful.

The religious depictions can be argued for a long time. But you could also take the idea that aspects of society can be used for familial improvement. That's the impulse for things like social security, health care and the like. The word "state" is subject to fierce controversy these days.

So we have a definition of "democracy", which is good, it works for me.

I also agree that large portions of the population are confused by ideological propaganda. Of course, I am not free myself of my own ideology, but I try to look at the evidence and arrive at conclusions on this merit alone. But I could be wrong.

People who, for example, believe in the Q conspiracy theory or think vaccines are modes in which we will be controlled by microchips have a distorted apprehension of the evidence. Likewise with people who think Trump is amazing. This is a big problem in political discourse.

We can quibble about the causes of bureaucratic problems, no problem. But I've yet to understand what is meant by family values. I won't be a nuisance and ask again, I'm curious by what you mean here.

Yep, in fascist societies one indeed has to tow the party line or you're in trouble.

What does loyalty to democracy mean? Belief that it should be the way that a nation is governed? If it means that, OK, I don't see a problem. But the word "loyalty" has connotations of subservience.

I still don't know what family values are supposed to mean.

I'd like to know what "family values" are. It's often thrown around as a warning, but its meaning is quite elusive.

Or, it could simply be a phrase used as an excuse for sensible policy.

When it comes to the case of monistic idealism in particular, I’m pretty much agnostic on it at this point. I’ve read some very interesting and convincing arguments for it and against materialism/physicalism, but we just don’t really know for sure. — Paul Michael

I think it's a semantic issue at this point. I don't want to go over my spiel for the 100th time, it will bore others. So let me put it in a different way:

What difference is there between "materialism/physicalism" and "idealism"?

Assuming this distinction holds up for the sake of discussion, then either the universe is made of the stuff physics describes - at least in part - and we too are part of the world physics describes. The mind and the quantum world are both quite strange and "insubstantial".

Or, if the world is not made of the stuff physics describes, then it is made of the stuff of mind. But this does not imply that the most accurate knowledge we have - which, again, is physics - is incompatible with the mind. There is nothing in physics which says anything against the mind.

But we can "compromise": we know the world as it is presented to us given our cognitive architecture and the world is made up of the same type of stuff as our minds are - at least at the very bottom.

So we then emphasize a semantic preference.

I am explicitly not dealing with "materialist eliminitavism" here, I don't think this view merits much attention or discussion. But even if it were true, by some miracle, we are still left with a monist view.

Does this not necessitate the use of language towards the descriptions of these fictions or literary figures in apparent reality?

Of course... — Shawn

It is closely connected with the issue of language and thought. The question would be to what extent is thought exclusively connected with language? I don't know. But I don't think all thought is expressible in language.

Where is Santa Claus?'
'At the North Pole, of course, my child!'

, then, nothing further can be said, than what was told was a lie. So, there's an ontological commitment once treated as a statement or proposition, that can be elucidated when treating these fictitious entities as non-existent or truth apt. — Shawn

In the fiction that is Santa Claus - to my knowledge, which is very limited here - Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, just like Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street. This is a fiction. A lie would be to say that Santa Claus lives in Mars or that Sherlock Holmes is a woman.

We are keeping to the fiction of these characters' universes and we can speak about fictitious entities with no problem if we drop an ontological commitments.

If we include these commitments, then it is a problem to say that Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, because Santa Claus does not live in this world of facts.

If we really want to take this seriously, then we simply state the ontological "area"/"region"/"place" where they exist as fictitious entities or literary figures, no? I see this as a necessary condition when talking about things such as Pegasus or Santa Claus, no? — Shawn

Yes, I agree we need to speak of "area" or "place" or "realm" for fiction. But I don't see this as an ontological problem, if by "ontology" you are speaking about mind-independent things.

He is emphasising an underlying thought about a potential end as understood as a cultural idea. He argued that it was bound up with a linear conception of history and assumptions about history as something which may finish. How does this connect with real threats in the world. But, to what extent is it the end of history, as the end of civilisation. Or, is the idea of the 'end' a myth? — Jack Cummins

Sure. History will finish eventually. Even if climate change, nuclear weapons or pandemics don't end us all in a few decades (at best), we have the solar system to consider, specifically the sun, which will eventually bloat to a red supergiant and burn the whole planet to dust. That's just a fact of the universe.

Unless there are some radically super-extreme discoveries in physics, that allow us to move to another habitable planet very, very, very far away, we are finished. And while I don't think physics is close to being finished, I suspect that such radical technology just won't happen, given time constraints and capabilities.

It's true that the end of the world has been proclaimed many times. But only once does it suffice for the wolf to appear for all of us to perish (or most of us, anyway). The wolf will come someday. We cannot control nature as much as we think we do.