I present for discussion, a supervenience relationship with what follows to the right of "->" (an attempt at an arrow) supervening on what's to it's left

Math -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Brain/Mind.

If math doesn't exist in some kind of Platonic realm and is all in the head as it were, we have a problem:

Math -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Brain/Mind -> Math. It's circular! All of reality is, in a sense, mind-generated. :chin:

TBD — 180 Proof

?

I assume that if biology can produce thinking organisms, then nature does not constrain a sufficiently advanced thinking organism from, at least in principle, engineering a 'synthetic thinker'. — 180 Proof

Indeed! So, the thought/thinking is like travelling. It can be done by foot (brain), by car, by plane, by ship, teleportation, etc i.e. the brain is just many ways thinking can be achieved. In other words, thinking isn't exclusively brain and that, in a sense, liberates thinking from biology onto other substrates. You are not your brain.

the best of companions
— TheMadFool
... for what? Misery? — baker

Maybe...

Science has not and cannot explain how they are produced and what is their source
— Alkis Piskas
Explain how you know this. — 180 Proof

It appears that what science has established is that the brain is necessary for thinking - no brain, no thinking. However, is the brain sufficient for thinking? Can AI think? Can silicon-based life-forms think?

To be a law of logic, a principle must hold in complete generality
No principle holds in complete generality
____________________
There are no laws of logic.
— Gillian Russell

There are two ways to deal with this argument.

A logical monist will take the option of rejecting the conclusion, and also the second premise. For them the laws of logic hold with complete generality.

A logical pluralist will reject the conclusion and the first premise. For them laws of logic apply to discreet languages within logic, not to the whole of language. Classical logic, for example, is that part of language in which propositions have only two values, true or false. Other paraconsistent and paracomplete logics might be applied elsewhere.

A few counter-examples of logical principles that might be thought to apply everywhere. — Banno

Gillian Russell, I'm sure, has many counter-examples for every logical law there is but all of them seem rather contrived. She reminds me of contortionists assuming odd positions - some funny, others painful - just so that fae can fit inside the box of logical nihilism.



The end result is both amazing - flexibility par excellence - and repugnant - the contortionist looks like fae's been in a horrible accident!

I don't know whether to congratulate Gillian Russell or offer her my condolences.

And the best philosopher is a dead philosopher, eh? — baker

Well, experience tells me that those who have to face death on a daily basis make the best of companions.

The "pont" is that there IS no such point. — Prishon

:ok:

Thanks! :up:

So, what you're saying is the backwards extrapolation of matter and energy in the universe approaches a single point but never really reaches it (asymptote). :ok:

how time impacts the factual/ belief or truth/ falsity status of statements/ information — Benj96

The only constant in life is change. — Heraclitus

What is meant by change? It's basically the truth value of propositions switching from true to false or vice versa with the passage of time. The universe is in dynamic flux as Heraclitus observed thousands of years ago and truth/falsity too is part of this continuous metamorphosis the cosmos, all in it, undergoes moment to moment. For instance, I was an infant, now no more and I'm alive as I write this but I won't be at some point.

The note consisting of the words, "Your husband is cheating on you They were at the park today" becomes true precisely because of change.

It bears mentioning that some ideas/names seem to ignore transformations e.g. New York city in 1800's is vastly different from today's New York city but this isn't reflected in the name which remains the same. Similarly, adult people are called by the same name given to them when they were infants i.e. people's identity are thought to be constant throughout their life despite the obvious ways in which they alter, physically and mentally. Souls? A topic for another discussion.

This (transitory nature of truths about our world) is why people have been in search of eternal truths. Some such can be found in mathematics: given the same axioms, 2 + 2 = 4 is an eternal truth; the sum of all the angles in a triangle in Euclidean space will forever be equal to 2 right angles.

Parmenides disagrees,

Change is an illusion. — Parmenides

As per Parmenides, the note was a lie, is a lie, will always be a lie. Odd that!

Rather clever them Romans, weren't they? :grin: — Apollodorus

Indeed!

That isn't an entirely bad question. And, of course, we could call the Good, the One, or God a "Quale" if we really wanted to. :smile:

However, my point is that what matters is not to name the object of experience but to experience it. And if we choose to name it, we may equally go for one of the names used by Plato himself (or by later Platonists). "The One" seems fairly neutral (as opposed to "God", for example) and would fit an object of experience of this nature IMO. — Apollodorus

In Rome Total War, a recommended formation for infantry is to keep veteran men on the right flank of your army - the experience making up for the fact that shields offer no protection, being as they are held in the left hand.

↪TheMadFool in the case of Craig, I think its quite clearly deliberate, not a good faith misunderstanding. He goes to great lengths to misconstrue contemporary science, despite having received responses from the very scientists he's misquoting/misrepresenting asking him to stop mischaracterizing their work (this happened with his misuse of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem).

But I don't think this is generally true. Many people just hear the popular science TV shows or Youtube channels refer to the Big Bang as the "beginning of the universe" and so just assume that must be true. But Craig knows better, and does it anyway — Seppo

What bothers me is why did cosmologists stop the extrapolation at, to quote Wikipedia, "...hot dense state..." They could've simply drawn the trajectories of all the galaxies back to a point just as William Lane Craig and I thought. It's not that there was a law against it, right?

I think that "God", if he exists at all, could be anything.

The point is not to decide in advance what ultimate reality is. The point is to have an experience of it.

In the meantime, there can be nothing wrong with referring to it as "the unfathomable, ineffable, One". — Apollodorus

What Mary Didn't Know.

There are experiences we can't put into words: Qualia, allegedly.

There are words we can't experience: Engage the warp drive Lt. Worf. Definitely.

The knife, it seems, cuts both ways. My question is if the reach of language exceeds experience (2nd case above), doesn't this mean experience, all manners of experience, is, for that simple reason, always effable?

99% — khaled

I guess I don't fall in that category. Thanks though. Your point is worth noting.

Coronavirus-breathing dilemma.

1. Either you inhale or you exhale.

2. If you exhale, you infect.

3. If you inhale, you're infected.

4. You infect or you're infected. (1, 2, 3 CD)

The snake biting its tail. — Prishon

Ouroboros

The ouroboros is destructive - the snake consumes itself. I couldn't find a constructive analog. Do you know of one?

Unrelated but I never understood how statements like this are paradoxical. Just add a “except this one” at the end and the paradox is resolved. — khaled

But I didn't!

Bad Bugs Bunny yuks aside, carrots are a rich source of beta-carotene, an antioxidant carotenoid that your body converts to vitamin A, which is essential for good vision. Vitamin A helps with the production of both rod and cone cells in the eyes, which help you see in low light conditions and see colors. — Random webpage

choosing logical pluralism over logical monism leads to more fruitful discussions. — Banno

:up: I second that if only because it frees us from being tied down to one normative system of thinking. Never realized that there could be more than one way to think purposively towards the truth. I guess the old adage - there's more than one way to skin a cat - has to be taken seriously.

The whole idea of rejecting classical logic provides a fresh perspective on madness/idiocy - they're simply different schemes of logic neither better nor worse than what has been shoved down our throats as logical orthodoxa.

I'm just wondering though how such variants of classical logic or even completely novel systems thereof look like if applied in everyday life - I recall Gillian Russell cautioning that logicians are extremely reluctant to make their systems weak; unfortunately, she doesn't clarify the term in the lecture.

Logical nihilism reminds me of the law paradox: There is one law and that law is there are no laws.

I want to put logical nihilism into practice but not just for the heck of it; I want to blur the line between sense and nonsense, between sanity and insanity, between wisdom and foolery, between affirmation and negation, :lol:

I guess what I really mean is I want to be myself - TheMadFool :lol:

A = {B}, B = {C}, and this is where it gets interesting, C = {A}

World A simulates world B, world B simulates world C, and world C simulates world A. All worlds are simulations.

I'm objecting to the idea of reducing the faculty of reason to pattern recognition. I've seen people hawking that idea on philosophy forums and I think it is simplistic nonsense. For instance, the sequence of prime numbers is not a pattern. (There is a news story out there that some mathematicians have apparently found a kind of pattern in the sequence of primes, but it's disputed, and the fact that it's a story says something, because until now, it's always been understood to NOT be a pattern.) — Wayfarer

:ok:

From the link you provided:

Sensible Form and Intelligible Form

“EVERYTHING in the cosmic universe is composed of matter and form.  Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.

“Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

“The separation of form from matter requires two stages if the idea is to be elaborated: first, the sensitive stage, wherein the external and internal senses operate upon the material object, accepting its form without matter, but not without the appendages of matter; second the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and indentifies it as a particular something.

“Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order. Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.”

So, the form (universals) individuates in objects (particulars). The senses, it seems, can't see past the particulars but the mind grasps the essences, another name for universals. :up:

Read that post I linked to on Aquinas, it says something extremely important and completely forgotten. — Wayfarer

:ok: Much obliged.

No. Numbers are not patterns. Bad idea. — Wayfarer

Not to contradict you but the number 1 is defined as the pattern (abstraction) in the following sets: {ghost}, {&}, {R}, {9}, {John}, you get the idea. What's common (the repeating pattern) is the one-ness.

:up: Thanks a ton. I don't know if you'll recall a brief conversation we had a long while ago about whether the mind is a sensory organ or not. You were of the view that it is not but I insisted that the mind is a sensory organ just as the eyes, ears, etc. are, patterns being the mind's area of expertise. Since we seem to give what can be seen and hear the status of existence, if the mind were considered a sensory organ like eyes an ears, we would have to say that patterns, numbers being one of them, too exist. Interesting, no?

Just LISTEN to tbem and you'll realize. — Prishon

Sorry, I'm not in the mood for games. G'day.

If something is beyond space and time, then where could it be? — Corvus

That's nothing. Try this on for size.

1 X is within space & time. No!

2. X is beyond space & time. No!

3. X is within space & time AND X is beyond space & time. No!

4. Neither X is within space & time nor X is beyond space & time. No!

Where could X be?

Great! So, I've been wrong all this time
— TheMadFool

Strangely enough you didnt accept that when I told you that — Prishon

Apologies. My life isn't perfect! G'day!

Sounds ARE ideas. — Prishon

What's the idea in the sound of pots and pans banging?

Could make for some awkward juxtapositions depending on the kid; "Look, Spartacus got picked last for kickball again." — Cheshire

Hmmm. Never say never, Never say always but Spartacus wasn't Greek was he? He was Thracian. No need to answer that question.

I need your opinion on something. Let's say Platonism is true. That would mean math exists, because they're mental objects, in a mind, God's mind. Grant the materialist that minds are brains, physical. That would mean God too has a brain in which math exists i.e. God could be physical. Does God being physical/material affect theism in any significant sense? Speaking for myself, I'm totally ok with God being physical.

Indeed, the word "fact" seems to be an endorsement of the correspondence theory of truth.
— TheMadFool

And seemingly, this is what Banno has been professing as the way to determine an utterance being a fact from a proposition... — Shawn

Any theory/definition of truth in which the correspondence between what's truth-apt (propositions) and what we call reality is weakened or nonexistent is what some might call a make-believe world (the mind calling the shots instead of reality). Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

What would the alternative be? We make shit up? :chin:
— TheMadFool

No, I mean that if we assume that truth is something up for debate, then are there possibly differing senses of facts? — Shawn

Indeed, the word "fact" seems to be an endorsement of the correspondence theory of truth.

Relativity.

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night. — Web Resource

You can't tell where science ends and poetry begins!

Ancient works on proto-science used to be written in verse I believe.

As a follow up Popper credited Xenophanes as the origin of his position. The fellow went around criticizing his teachers work; so I recall. — Cheshire

Why couldn't my parents name me Xenophanes? Greek names give one the impression that whoever the name belongs to is going to either say/do something awesome!

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. — Shakespeare

Naaah!

So, facts exist, as in, independently, out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered? — Shawn

What would the alternative be? We make shit up? :chin:

Facts are truths about something, an event, an object, people, so on. When they're discovered, they become knowledge. Facts are independent of a knower, knowledge, on the other hand, is not.

Buddhist Bin Laden" who is a raging Islamophobe — Seppo

:rofl: I remember an argument made by one atheist, I think it was Sam Harris, about how a Jain terrorist is a contradictio in terminis, an oxymoron, an impossible object as it were. According to Harris, a true Jain can't ever be a terrorist.

All I can say is if philosophy is rounded off as it were, it would become Buddhism rather than Christianity.

Not really. I'm not saying it's the case, it's just a model that explains the forms and how they could arise from material processes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I get that.