• James Riley
    2.9k
    By A, I meant any object. So any object must be limited to what it is.litewave

    That was what I was thinking before I remembered that A, to me, means All. I should have re-stated for you what I said earlier in this thread about A. But X would have worked with my understanding of what logic provides.

    But if A stands for all objects, what else is there in addition to all objects?litewave

    As I stated earlier in this thread, I try to steer away from the word "things", singularly, or as a suffix. My reasoning is set forth in that post and I'll not repeat it here. However, the same analysis applies to the word "objects." All stands for All, whether object or non-object. Otherwise, it could not be All, now could it? It covers things and not things, or nothing, if you will. It covers presence and absence. It is and is not.

    So not-A is nothing (no object) and it can't be identical to A because A is something (objects)litewave

    That would be true for X, for a logician, but All is not so constrained (and it is constrained; both, at the same time).

    I'm not a God fan, in the traditional sense, but it can be illustrative. When talking to a "believer" I ask, if god is all powerful, can he not be not all powerful if he wants? It's the same for All. It's not All if it's missing the absence of itself. Compare: Everything can be everything without being nothing. Whereas nothing can be nothing without being anything. Therein lies the distinction between All and everything and nothing. So, logic, by so constraining itself to either/or, is akin to a God that is incapable of being anything other than a God. That's some weak tea and no real God. Like All would be if it did not account for the absence of itself: not really All.

    I'm tired and cede the floor for the evening.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    It's the other way round, there would not be any matter to make a gentleman from if the gentleman agreements would represent reality. The atom would collapse if the electron would not be in a propability cloud. But propability cloud means that the electron is not in one position but in several positions at a time. So this is a violation of the law of the excluded middle: the electron is there and there and somewhere in between all at the same time.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I think the desire to make logic our god has something to do with the human value system. Statistically the majority of people think that they are subaveragely good in logic (which is not possible it's another example of the Dunning Kruger Effect). Furthermore logic is necessary to survival and survival is hold by many to be the highest value in life (not me). So the majority of people think they are overaverage performers in the most valuable skill there is and this secretly justifies to them why they feel more valuable than others as a person. They are simply "better". If you attack logic the majority of people hence will attack back. It attacks the basis of their self value, or what they believe makes them special. I guess hence that something is wrong with logic will always remain a minority position.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    I'd come across Hoffman before and thought it would be an interesting topic.SophistiCat

    Yeah, as you may know, the degree of inference in perception is a topic of interest to me and Hoffman is kind of the bogeyman of it. He's the place we're trying to avoid ending up when talking about active inference.

    Isn't making good predictions (and thus minimizing surprise, i.e. failed predictions) the real test of correspondence?SophistiCat

    Well, yes and no. That's the difficulty which gives Hoffman the space in which he can introduce this theoretical 'veil' without abandoning all credibility. The problem is that the result of our prediction (the response of the hidden states) is just going to be another perception, the cause of which we have to infer. No if we use, as priors for this second inference, the model which produced the first inference (the one whose surprise reduction is being tested), then there's going to be a suppresive action against possible inferences which conflict with the first model. String enough of these together, says Hoffman, and you can accumulate sufficient small biases in favour of model 1, that the constraints set by the actual properties of the hidden causal states pale into insignificance behind the constraints set by model 1's assumptions.

    The counter arguments are either that the constraints set by the hidden causal states are too narrow to allow for any significant diversity (Seth), or that there's never a sufficiently long chain of inference models without too much regression to means (which can only be mean values of hidden states). I subscribe to a combination of both.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    James Riley could take the position of absolute scepticism. Whatever he argues for could have the nature of a thought experiment in a gentleman's club doing thought experiments. However I guess where he is mistaken is that there are any gentleman's in this club here... Consciously you and me might think that we argue for finding and defending truth. But subconciously it's more likely that we are just doing it to regulate hormones. When you win an argument this changes your hormone levels in a way that makes you feel better and more valuable:
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21756446/#:~:text=Results%3A%20Winning%20is%20consistently%20shown,to%20continue%20their%20competitive%20efforts . When you loose arguments again and again this can make you depressed (in evolutionary psychology depression is involuntarily submission). Sophisticat for example tried everything to make me depressed even using personal insults such as that I am lazy and that he doesn't respect me. A depressed opponet is no strong competitor for food or sex. So all of this argument - IF evolution is true - is again not about any higher truth but about food and sex. That we are not able to notice that nature of our motivatiion during the argument is already a support for Hoffmanns theory. For evolution it's aboslutely ok if you win a fight through a trick, only the outcome counts. So if this fight leads to any deeper insight into the nature of logic it must do so by accident only.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    Nice idea but not falsifiable. It could be an evolved intuition and a dopamine shot but it could as well be something else. Furthermore you get dopamine too when you do a logical thinking effort. In fact I would say that the distinction between a logical thinking person and an emotional/intuitively thinking person is completely arbitrary, no one can think well without dopamine/happiness/feelings. You can test that by taking a strong dopamin antagonist, your concentration will go to that of a sneeker. The believe that the world is seperated into logical and emotional persons very likely derives from the Dunning Kruger Effect as I explained in my previous comment.

    I as well do not suscribe to the believe that you can beat your subconcious by making a hart thinking "effort". This assumes that you have controll over your subconcious while it is the other way round: the subconciousness is your master and under certain conditions it generously allows you to think consciously. No joke!

    If you hence are undertaking a hard thinking effort "against your intuition" as you feel you are doing it's very likely your subconscious who is pushing you to do that hard effort. I can explain this to you with an example: When your amygdala detects a primary death treat it shortcircuits your consciousness completely and enacts an evasive movement without you understanding what you are doing and why you are doing it (the understanding of the situation will come later when your amygdala allows you to think again). This is a stark example that in theory you do not need to be conscious (read: have any logical knowledge) to execute survival tasks. It's as well an example that evolution values speed and survival higher than knowlegde. This mechanism is active all day long. Your subconciousness can switch of your consciousness at free will at any moment. The only thing that you might feel in that moment is fear, but fear alone is not logic. The question is now, when the subconcious has such as trong controll over you why your consciousness give you the opportunity to think at all in other times. It must derive some benefit from letting its "slave" aka you work but it must not necessarily be the benefit you assume conciously. If a lie to you about what your conscious "mental work" is good for for your unconscious is more energy efficient than explaining the truth - according to the theory of evolution your subconciously will always lie to you about the reason why it let's you be concious at all. Furthermore if it can switch of all intelectual faculties like in the primary survival reflex it is likely that it can switch of part of your conciousness during all your thought process when it finds them unhelpfull. You have as much power to prevent that thorugh "effort" than you have the power to stop other subconscious tasks like breathing.

    In my opinion the true reason/motivation why your subconscious allows you to think in some situations and not in others could be key to understand if logic is of any value at all.
  • James Riley
    2.9k


    I see logic as a simple tool that can be used to accomplish certain things. Like a gun. But, like a gun, it can give a false sense of security, and it can become a fetish.

    I see no harm in a disciple continuing his work. He need not go back to the beginning and recheck the fundamental principles that got him where he is.

    But somebody should.

    And he should remain humble and remember that he dangles upon a flimsy reed. Otherwise, something may arise and he might not see it because he can't see. Or, even worse, it will be what he sees simply because he saw it when and where he saw it, excluding what and where and when it could have been had he not seen it, or had he seen it with different eyes.

    The person who goes back to check the work should go with the goal of refuting it. Otherwise, we have another disciple confirming bias. I went back to refute and, interestingly, I used principles of logic. I found the king has no cloths. He's still king, but he ain't all that. And he can be dethroned unless we believe him when he says he can't.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    How did you gain this insight into the dark side of logic and why are you trying to prove it? Is logic like the legendary ouroboros, consuming itself, slowly it seems, until we reach a point in time when the serpent of reason has devoured itself? Poof! Nirvana!
  • dclements
    498
    You are in the moment the closest to actually changing my mind at least when it comes to using the term 'evil' :) I can see how the philosophy of Jainism could actually lead to a much more peacefull world and it as well resounds with other metaphysical believes I hold. However it was sort of a blow to my ego when I finally understood that logic originally was ment for predation and only for that. I guess that is what makes the man blind in your example. So emotionally seen I still have to recover from the insight about the predatory nature of logic. Sometimes one can repurpose stuff a bit for things it was not ment for but one has to be lucky for this to work. I think that logic is very akin to your microscope perception of reality. What good predators really do is they focus hard but only on very small aspects of reality. You can even see this from the outside if you watch how the eyes of predators are build (they point to the front, prey animals can not focus well to the front but they have a wider field of vision). What a predator does is hence the opposite of holism.FalseIdentity

    The truth is that you partially correct in saying that predatory logic that people use to today is used for "evil" at least when used in Western society and/our viewpoint. It can be said that this predatory view comes from a a notion that the individual can only be certain that THEY exist (René Descartes's I think therefore I am) and the world around them (including people) are merely objects to be used and discarded much like a hostess twinkie is consumed and the wrapper throw away after it is used. If you have a chance I suggest you read a book called "Heidegger For Beginners" as it should help explain some of the issue better than I might be able to.

    Heidegger For Beginners
    https://www.amazon.com/Heidegger-Beginners-Eric-Lemay/dp/1934389137

    (Here are some articles relating to the US economy that show how this attitude and current political
    conditions hurt the US and people that work here)
    Mother Jones -It’s the Inequality, Stupid
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph/
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/look-numbers-how-rich-get-richer/
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline/
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/michael-dell-outsourcing-jobs-timeline/
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/how-oligarchs-took-america/

    So more or less you are correct in saying that today (and in a lot of Western history) people have used logic as a weapon to control and/or harm their fellow man as well as the world around them. But that is not to say that logic has to be used that way. Logic can almost as easily be used by us to help each other (and perhaps the world itself) as it is to use it against each other; it is just perhaps easier by those in power to use their knowledge, power, and other resources to gain leverage on those that don't have it than it is to improve the lives of every one that is less privileged then them.

    I don't know know if I can explain why logic itself isn't "bad" or "evil" if you can't visualize it in the same way that one might visualize a coin where side is "good" or helpful and the other side seems harmful or "evil", but the coin only exist if both sides exist. This concept is more or less similar to the Chinese idea of the Yin and yang.

    Yin and yang
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

    I guess what I'm trying to get at is that you don't have to give up your viewpoint why logic (or technology, human nature, Dukkha, or anything else) is "evil", but it might be useful to augment your existing viewpoint with other ways of looking at the world that suggest that things are not always what we believe them to be when we judge them with emotions (which is what often happens when we label something as being "good" or "evil") and try to understand the world in a way where things exist the way they independent whether they are helpful or harmful to either you or the human existence in general.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I am ill, my heart could stop at any moment. This somehow changes my perception of what is important in life. See it this way: the need to survive has conditioned my thinking from the point of birth to think only into certain directions. If I will not survive anyway my mind is finally free. I don't need to care for example anymore if I make myself enemies with an unpopular opinion. But I wonder: Should an evolved mind have the capability to reject the evolution that allegedly created it? I don't think so, my rejection must come from somewhere else.
  • Varde
    326

    I have went through the effort of diagnosing you.

    It is not logic that is evil in your mind. By the jist of your most recent post, it is the logic behind reality, that you imply is evil(co and co thinking about reality).

    You have used and subserved with logic in all of your posts without a problem.

    Hopefully this answers your question, sorry to hear that.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I think that social inequality is more than just hurting people, it creates an evolutionary pressure that outselects people with high empathy. Or in other words: if we don't change the current political system we will over the long run create a species of psychopaths. The biological reasons are complex and this is the wrong threat to discuss them. (There is a week relation with the current subject however in the sense that beeing "emotional" instead of logical is today framed as beeing inferior. A psychopath is very logical, and indeed mainly relying on the left brain so this represents a shift towards a psychopathic value system.) Since you are interested in the subject of social justice I want to share with you just for joy that I am discussing with a major charity on how to donate money (over my last will) into researching exactly this subject. It's a very famous charity and the discussion was very very friendly after it became clear how much that donation is... I might have lost the battle (in the sense that I am dying, and that there is a relation with the strong bullying I experienced during m life) but that does not mean I have lost the war :)
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    Or in other words: if we don't change the current political system we will over the long run create a species of psychopaths.FalseIdentity

    :up:

    246657868_1253860391785665_1464698760455239081_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=C7qYFyhHcUQAX_5EAqy&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh=1a51db7acf11e9abf19fd0dd69446897&oe=61745B27
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    It is true that reality is conditioning us to be predators. In a certain sense you could even say that all the evil things human ever do come from beeing tricked by their environment. I consider for example my brain to belong to my physical environment and it can trick me hard into doing evil things especially if it is hurt into the wrong place (brain injuries can turn you into a psychopath). However if dualism is right one might say that my soul is not exactly evil but very flawed if it can be tricked into doing any type of bullshit by such outside forces.
  • Varde
    326


    Perhaps evil is the wrong word, maybe young and restless. Similar to prey; so gather in packs, socialize, stay away from predators and enjoy the life cliche.

    When made simple it seems worse than it is. Perhaps you have the upper hand over-complexifying things.

    Like prey in the bush, waiting for the predator to pass by; no trolls under bridges, please.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    In retrospect the heading was a bit click bait: I did not have a good idea of how to pack my problems with logic into a short heading.
  • dclements
    498
    I might have lost the battle (in the sense that I am dying, and that there is a relation with the strong bullying I experienced during m life) but that does not mean I have lost the war :)FalseIdentity
    I'm sorry to hear that. This may be a stupid question but if you have enough money to donate to charity then you might have enough money to pay for cryogenics. I don't know if you know about it but it might be an option if you are not against the idea of it.
  • FalseIdentity
    62
    I start to have a bad consciouness to bring up my health. One must say too that it is still not certain that I die but several health problems combine in an unfunny way. I am very happy that so many people here give me empathy but it completely crashes the subject of the conversation :) I am very interested in evolution (especially the evolution of primates) but I am actually a believer. I am open in how I imagine god, I consider both classical theist and pantheist options possible. However in both cases death itself is nothing I fear. As you see I am unhappy with my predature nature and death is the only option to finally exchange it against something truly new.
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    ↪Gnomon
    Nice idea but not falsifiable. It could be an evolved intuition and a dopamine shot but it could as well be something else.
    FalseIdentity
    Of course it's not that simple. But, the dopamine reward may allow Dunning-Kruger types to feel good about their hobbled rationality, even while they restrict the rational method to defending their prior beliefs. As David Hume asserted "reason is . . . a slave to the passions". And dopamine is essential to passion.

    However, Pinker notes that Reasoning is not an end in itself, but merely the means to an end. And people have a variety of non-rational methods for achieving their goals, which are defined by their "passions". For example, a self-confident D-K person may choose to convince you of their belief by force. That's how the medieval church dealt with infidels, not with Reason, but with Fire. So, I still think that a confidence-inspiring dopamine boost could be one mechanism for making sure that certain intuitive beliefs are protected from the weeding-out chopping block of natural selection, by marking then as "good for you", if not "true for everybody".. :smile:
  • Varde
    326

    To me serotonin' is the reward neuro-chemical and dopamine is the worker-neurotransmitter who's reward is much like blood dope if to be considered reward.

    Dopamine works to create refreshment, calibration, etc. To appease the side effect of calibration as a reward is criminal-ish, no(petty)?
  • tim wood
    9.2k
    A good laugh to be sure, but tell me on more sober reflection that the proof by necessity is not as good or better than any other. In short, that it's a good proof, as well as being to date the only decent proof. Yes? No? Most folks not grokking it.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k

    ...a logic developed through evolution will never seek to understand the truthFalseIdentity
    Logic --actually the human beings using it-- basically does exactly that! Logic, combined with data (evidence) and experiment is how science comes up with new discoveries, how the truth of hypotheses is proven, how persons are found guilty or innocent in courts, and how knowledge is created in humans in general.

    I started watching the video with a real interest to find out something new and valuable, but unfortunately I heard the guy talking about "interacting with reality"! What reality? Whose reality? He most probably means the "physical universe"! I stopped watching the video after that. If he doesn't know what reality is, which is the subject itself of that discussion, well, he doesn't seem quite wise ...
    (BTW, yourself are talking about "interacting with the universe". Indeed, physical universe and reality are two totally different things.)

    So my first complaint is that logic pretends to be something that it is not.FalseIdentity
    In what way can logic do that? Some example(s)?
    In fact, I don't think that logic --even figuritavely speaking-- can pretend anything. Logic is general a system of thought, of reasoning in particular. It is people who pretend things, and in fact, usually at the expense of logic!

    My second complaint relates to the discovery that logic is developed mainly for hunting and is hence predatory in natureFalseIdentity
    I tried to figure out what do you mean by "hunting". What I read is too theoretical and I cannot be sure I got it right. Can you give any example(s)?

    An evolved predatory logic must be by its nature remain incapable to:
    1. Understand truths that cannot be chased and exploited in a physical sense (which come to mind?)
    2. Understand things that are not relevant to survival such as what is "the good".
    FalseIdentity
    1. Logic is not used by humans to understand truths. It is itself used to establish truths, with the help of data (evidence).
    2. I'm not sure what do you mean by "the good", so I assume just "good", and I wonder how can good be irrelevant to survival? Doesn't good health, doing good to someone, etc. help survival?

    ---

    I have used the term "logic" as a system of reasoning based on strict principles of validity. Based on this, and all the things I said above, I can't imagine "logic being evil"! Do you have something totally different in mind about what logic is?
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    A good laugh to be sure, but tell me on more sober reflection that the proof by necessity is not as good or better than any other.tim wood

    That which is, was not always, before it came to be. Was it necessity that it came to be, or just easy, lazy or chosen? Was there another way? I'm not sure. I wasn't there. But by it's own tenets, it seems to me, the burden should be upon it, not me, to prove it is as good or better than any other. Indeed, if it's so great, it might show me any other. So far all I'm seeing is it. If it were to assume that burden, we can hope that it won't choose straw men, or weak proofs that it would easily defeat. I would hope it would find an alternative to defeat itself. If it fails in that, then it would be a despot.

    A sharp knife needs a hard stone upon which to hone itself. So far all I see is a knife that is getting duller by the day. Tell me, necessity, what have you lifted and overcome to be what you are, capable of carrying us? Show me the heavy lifting you have done. Show me what you have done to bring us closer to, and not further from what it is that we seek: truth.

    In short, that it's a good proof, as well as being to date the only decent proof.tim wood

    I've lost my train of thought. Is the "good proof" necessity? And if so, is that the necessity of 200k years of community, or the "necessity" of the recent aberration of greed? I'm confusing "logic" with "necessary proofs", and "necessity" and "what is" and "they way things are." Different things in my mind.

    I suppose I should have started with questions. But I'm trying to fix a broken hot tub (1st world problem), I'm doing what's easy, lazy, and chosen. :lol:
  • litewave
    827
    As I stated earlier in this thread, I try to steer away from the word "things", singularly, or as a suffix. My reasoning is set forth in that post and I'll not repeat it here. However, the same analysis applies to the word "objects." All stands for All, whether object or non-object. Otherwise, it could not be All, now could it? It covers things and not things, or nothing, if you will. It covers presence and absence. It is and is not.James Riley

    By "object" I just mean something, or not-nothing. And every something has an identity: it is what it is, it is identical to itself. There is not anything more in addition to all somethings. Still, in a sense there is nothingness inside each empty set and between any two sets that don't overlap (their overlap is an empty set too). Empty sets are not nothing; they are somethings whose identity is that they are sets (collections/combinations) with no members (parts). So in a sense, somethings "cover" or "contain" nothingness or absence but they are not nothingness or absence; identifying something with nothing would be mistaking a set with its content (in the case of empty sets, they have no content).
  • litewave
    827
    So this is a violation of the law of the excluded middle: the electron is there and there and somewhere in between all at the same time.FalseIdentity

    Not necessarily. There doesn't have to be anything contradictory about an object being in several places at the same time. For example, my desk is in several places at the same time: one leg here, another leg there... Where's the contradiction? An electron being in several places at the same time means that it is a spatially extended object (although not exactly in the same way as a desk), not a pinpoint object as we used to imagine (although it can change into a pinpoint object under certain circumstances, namely when it comes into contact with a macroscopic object, for example with a measurement instrument).
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    It is true that reality is conditioning us to be predators. In a certain sense you could even say that all the evil things human ever do come from beeing tricked by their environment. I consider for example my brain to belong to my physical environment and it can trick me hard into doing evil things especially if it is hurt into the wrong place (brain injuries can turn you into a psychopath). However if dualism is right one might say that my soul is not exactly evil but very flawed if it can be tricked into doing any type of bullshit by such outside forces.FalseIdentity

    You throw around a lot of terms and ideas that suggest a systematic view of reality and a pecking order of ideas. How do you determine what is evil and what is good? How do you decide what is harm and what fosters flourishing? What is your foundation for using such ideas - apart from emotion?
  • litewave
    827
    Consciously you and me might think that we argue for finding and defending truth. But subconciously it's more likely that we are just doing it to regulate hormones.FalseIdentity

    Logic is surely useful for survival - it is useful to know that a tiger is not a sheep. It is also useful for helping your fellow man - for example by knowing that giving him food is not the same as bludgeoning him to death; a person who couldn't tell the difference would be pretty evil.
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    So in a sense, somethings "cover" or "contain" nothingness or absence but they are not nothingness or absence;litewave

    I know what you mean by "object". And, while you may include non-objects within the category of objects, I try to refrain from using object" or "thing" precisely to avoid that understanding. I don't want you thinking I might be arguing that nothing or absence is a category for reference to what is.

    If they are not nothingness or absence then they fail to convey the nothingness or absence that I mean by A = -A. To say that nothing is something simply because it is an idea or concept that must be categorized for reference/contrast to that which exists, is like referencing a book that contains both concepts (something and nothing) but which is still a thing (book).

    I'm talking about the book itself not being itself.

    I know perfectly well the contradiction and illogical position that you perceive in my argument. But simply repeating the A = A and that A cannot = -A is repetitive and, quite honestly, beneath us. You know perfectly well that I am wrong, but you can't prove it by continuing to show me how A = A, or expressing curiosity about how I could possibly believe that it could also be -A. Rather, you must come up with more. More than anecdote (I could drop a ball a billion times and each time it will all does not mean it will on a billion + 1), or "self-evidence" (because logic says so) or because "I can't prove a negative" (how can I show you what I don't know?).

    There is a gentlemen's agreement precisely so you can be relieved of a burden of proof that you can't meet, and we can then proceed on our merry way, inventing widgets and whatnot. All I'm saying is that, at the end of the day, someone might try looking outside the box of logic if they are looking to close in on truth instead of continually moving further from it. It's possible that this has already be done, but those who have done so aren't talking, for whatever reason. Maybe they are just being, and not being, at the same time.

    Think of a singularity. If we were in one, right now, and not (heat death) or somewhere in between the two, that would explain a lot, at least to me.
  • litewave
    827
    If they are not nothingness or absence then they fail to convey the nothingness or absence that I mean by A = -A.James Riley

    But they cannot be nothingness or absence because nothingness or absence mean not-being. If you want to convey that nothingness is "covered" by somethings, the coherent way of doing it could be by pointing out that nothingness is "contained" in somethings as the "content" of empty sets, and not by identifying nothingness with somethings.

    To say that nothing is something simply because it is an idea or concept that must be categorized for reference/contrast to that which exists, is like referencing a book that contains both concepts (something and nothing) but which is still a thing (book).

    I'm talking about the book itself not being itself.
    James Riley

    The book is still itself and is not nothing, even when it contains references to nothing. Informally we use the word "nothing" not in the sense of exact nothingness but to express absence of objects that are important to us, for example you see an empty room and say there is "nothing" in it, although there is obviously space there (which is something that has mathematical properties) and teeming with air molecules and whatnot. And if the book happened to contain a reference to exact nothingness, I would interpret it as the "content" of an empty set.
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    But they cannot be nothingness or absence because nothingness or absence mean not-being. If you want to convey that nothingness is "covered" by somethings, the coherent way of doing it could be by pointing out that nothingness is "contained" in somethings as the "content" of empty sets, and not by identifying nothingness with somethings.litewave

    You just made my point. But the better way would be to avoid, altogether, use of the word "things", singularly or as suffix. Likewise, "object." So I'll not get pulled down into that, regardless of how much logic would try. Logic has some work to do in it's own house, before handing out grades to the likes of me.

    My concept of All covers every "thing" and every "non-thing" and more; so I just say All. And, unless I make the mistake I made earlier, where I should have used X, my concept of A, or All, is "big" enough to account for the absence of itself. Everyone else's "all" is merely a "thing" or a "non-thing".

    It's the same reason I went for universal pantheism over universal panentheism. If there was a "one" over all the others, it would deprive all the others of what they were purported to be. I'll not do that. I'm big enough to allow them to be themselves, but they will have to share my stage whether they want to or not. Likewise, my All is bigger than your all; and that is, in part, because it is not. I can live with that. Logic, apparently, cannot.

    The book is still itself and is not nothing, even when it contains references to nothing.litewave

    There you go again, with the tautology. I just stipulated that it is "like referencing a book that contains both concepts (something and nothing) but which is still a thing (book)." That is logic. But, as I said, "I'm talking about the book itself not being itself."

    Informally we use . . .litewave

    I'm quite familiar with what "we" use. While "we" are entirely comfortable with the fact that "we" are right, "we" simply can't fathom the fact that "we" are wrong. I'm comfortable with both. Logic is not.

    P.S. I understand "logic" is not a person, and it is not the thing it purports to explain. But I use it as the foil, and as shorthand, to avoid a personalization of the argument as I try to avoid offending the disciples of logic. So, logic can argue on it's own two feet when it pretends to engage me. Using logic, I asked logic some questions back in the 80s but so far, crickets.
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