• Shwah
    259

    I like getting past that dichotomy too but in my experience we can only perceive objects (whether they're hallucinations/simulations/etc or not). Darkness for instance has no material object but it's clearly an object and we can see whether we predicate out to it well enough to see if the predications rightfully describe that object. I treat everything as an object. How would you try to go past the dichotomy?
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    I like getting past that dichotomy too but in my experience we can only perceive objects (whether they're hallucinations/simulations/etc or not). Darkness for instance has no material object but it's clearly an object and we can see whether we predicate out to it well enough to see if the predications rightfully describe that object. I treat everything as an object. How would you try to go past the dichotomy?Shwah

    Darkness is a quality, and even attributed to an object, it is relative both to our perspective, and to the dimensional structure of the object. A room you might consider to be dark doesn’t appear as dark to someone wearing night-vision goggles. Also darkness as attributed to a room is not identical to darkness attributed to an action, which is not identical to darkness attributed to a person.
  • Shwah
    259

    Sure but that never accounts for the object. Your perception can miss a carriage going across the road and you may still get hit by it (the objection to berkeleyan idealism until he posited that we're all in God's mind to solve the issue). If you conflate them all to subjective then you can't account for these things.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    Sure but that never accounts for the object. Your perception can miss a carriage going across the road and you may still get hit by it (the objection to berkeleyan idealism until he posited that we're all in God's mind to solve the issue). If you conflate them all to subjective then you can't account for these things.Shwah

    Again - what object? We’re not talking about a carriage going across the road, but about the quality of darkness. If you notice a relative darkness in your field of vision, it could be the shadow of a carriage about to hit you - or it could just be a cloud obscuring the sunlight. Darkness isn’t expected to account for the difference here that determines the object of your perception.
  • Shwah
    259

    Darkness is an object as well and "qualify of" it is a predicate of darkness. If "quality of" is determined by the subject then darkness itself is still unreferencible solely from the subject.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    Darkness is an object as well and "qualify of" it is a predicate of darkness. If "quality of" is determined by the subject then darkness itself is still unreferencible solely from the subject.Shwah

    You’re still limiting any possible relation with darkness to what can be asserted within language structure. Stop trying to describe or define darkness from a subject. Instead, imagine what aspect of darkness would be common to ALL possible subject-object iterations. Then test this theory by simulating or experiencing alternative logical perspectives of this vague, qualitative idea of darkness, until you’re confident with the applicable accuracy of your understanding, regardless of any subjective perspective, let alone any particular linguistic or logical assertion.
  • Gregory A
    96
    A melody is not made up of a random series of notes. Instead, a defined sequence. I'd had it pointed out to me quite a few decades back that consequently there could only be a limited number of melodies left to write. This has been proven to be true (and enacts what would be a rule of diminishing possibilities). True randomness probably doesn't even exist everything structured to a degree. Apparent randomness would still need to represent a structure for us to define it as such.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    A melody is not made up of a random series of notes. Instead, a defined sequence. I'd had it pointed out to me quite a few decades back that consequently there could only be a limited number of melodies left to write. This has been proven to be true (and evokes what would be a rule of diminishing possibilities). True randomness probably doesn't even exist everything structured to a degree. Apparent randomness would still need to represent a structure for us to define it as such.Gregory A

    Randomness is the variability of any structure. Structure is, by its very nature, a limitation. Music quality is not just about melody.
  • Shwah
    259

    I thought you were being serious lol
    If you have antipathy to philosophy then pick up a logic book or a math proofs one.
    In any case, you were defining it from the subject and the predicate is a stand-in for what's ontologically grasped next (e.g. I have no interest in how you understand darkness itself but whatever you do it may follow that "subject observes light in the negation that comes off as darkness" and you have an accurate path of predication that allows the subject but treats the object as separate).
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    I thought you were being serious lol
    If you have antipathy to philosophy then pick up a logic book or a math proofs one.
    In any case, you were defining it from the subject and the predicate is a stand-in for what's ontologically grasped next (e.g. I have no interest in how you understand darkness itself but whatever you do it may follow that "subject observes light in the negation that comes off as darkness" and you have an accurate path of predication that allows the subject but treats the object as separate).
    Shwah

    If you’re unwilling to understand beyond your own perspective, let alone beyond language’s structure of subject-predicate-object, then why bother asking? Philosophy is not limited by logic. Understanding logical structure enables philosophers to relate accurately to what lies beyond its limits.

    Take another look at what you’ve written. You’ve narrowly defined darkness relative to an observation event, simply shifting to ‘light’ as the object. So you’re still bound by the subject-object distinction.
  • Shwah
    259

    Lol anyways you were the one saying we could find it from the subject as a foundation. Keep in mind that was just an epistemological track not an ontological one (clearly you have to start with yourself for the epistemological track).
    Once found, we can only relate to this objectivity in our own way. Doesn’t mean we can’t find it in the first place. It is our interpretation that is not objective.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Whatever is random (e.g. noise, quantum fluctuations, radioactive decay, evolutionary genetic mutations, Kolmogorov randomness) is, in fact, universally unpredictable.180 Proof

    Evolutionary genetic mutations are only random for human understanding. The chemical changes that are mutations are predictable (since they are chemical changes) and can be explained after the fact. Their effect on the changes of the structure or functioning of the superstructure, or of the organism, is also predictable, inasmuch as it is repeatable and accurately reflecting the same superstructure changes in the offspring of two similar organism pairs when the same DNA change occurs in both.

    Radioactive decay is not random inasmuch as its rate is highly accurately predictable. I understand that the individual decaying elements can't be pointed out before they undergo the change.
    ---
    I claim ignorance, and validly so, about noise, quantum fluctuations, and Kolmogorov randomness. I would like to think that there are probably causational, theoretically explicable functionalities to these movements, and there are completely non-predictable ones, such as picking the atoms whose nuclei will undergo change in radioactivity. In our macrophysical world everything is causational; it seems in the microphysical (quantum) world that is not true. I can't address that issue, as my knowledge is insufficient to have proper insight on that part of your argument.

    Naturally I capitulate to your reasoning now, because I can't know whether what I am rejecting is true or not. Just remember, that, for instance, in an electron cloud around the nucleus we don't know where the electron is at any given instant (if electrons exist in the first place), but we know that all electron clouds in separate instances of a given element are identical in a given state of excitement.

    One must be careful claiming randomness; when we say "where is the electron", we ask the wrong question, and claim randomness illogically, because the electron is distributed in the entire cloud, according to some probability function, and the electron as a unit never exists in a corporation anywhere in the cloud.
  • 180 Proof
    14.3k
    I capitulate to your reasoning now, because I can't know whether what I am rejecting is true or not.god must be atheist
    You're welcome to your dogmatic stance, gmba! I won't trouble you trying to discuss this topic with you any further, and I appreciate the (time-saving) honesty
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Yes, thanks. I hid behind the veil of ignorance, but I think it's out of the ordinary that I confessed to doing that without any prodding to confess.

    Not to say that I am heroically stupid. Dogma is for the ignorant, always has been. But there are hardly any dogmatists who view themselves as dogmatists.

    My dogma is determinism, inasmuch as I believe every change is caused, and there is no change uncaused. If this is true, then true or absolute unpredictability is impossible. Theoretically speaking. I had to make a choice where to stand, I took the dogmatist stand on believing that our world is deterministic.
  • 180 Proof
    14.3k
    Understood. As an Epicurean-Spinozist I should be a strict determinist but I cannot ignore the fact of quantum uncertainty, vacuum fluctuations (re: virtual particles), radioactive decay, noise / static, etc. This leaves physical "space" for (emergent) compatibilism in my ontology – thanks to (e.g.) Lucretius' "swerve", Peirce's "tyche" & modal "contingency" (e.g. Meillassoux's "hyperchaos"), etc.
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