I'm glad you brought up the golden rule. I've spent some time thinking about how it fits into my formulation. I'm not sure of the answer. — T Clark

You follow your nature. Your nature changes when you learn how much pain others are in and how much they're just like you. It's the nature of a child vs the nature of the seasoned, right?

There is no thinking here, no conversation, no reflection, no philosophy. Ethical thinking, I suppose I mean, is more open than all that. — Moliere

But to finally act requires judgment, an end to discussion. Isn't that what it's all about?

Particularly in relationships, I've had the opportunity to be on both sides: the asshole and the wronged party. I know what the crime feels like from both sides. That's helpful for understanding the golden rule.

If Assange is not entitled to those rights on account of not being a citizen of the US, then it would seem to be inconsistent to claim that he should be subject to US law. — Janus

Life isn't fair.

:grin: The NYT is protected by the first amendment. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court ruled that this extends to embarrassing military secrets. We all know that has limits. We expect the NYT to restrain itself in cases where American lives or national security is at risk.

Assange is not a beneficiary of any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It would have been cool if he had stood up for the idea of a global free press. In doing so, he might have inspired his own country to make that right official. I guess he had personal issues that made that impossible?

That's interesting. I've never had it (knock on wood) in spite of being exposed to it quite a few times. Maybe I have that gene!

Is it the case that media outlets have never published leaked government documents? If it is not the case and leaked dicuments have been published, were the publishers prosecuted? — Janus

Yes, the NY Times published leaked documents. No, they weren't prosecuted.

from wh.gov:
"DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
The mission of the Department of Justice (DOJ) is to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

"The DOJ is made up of 40 component organizations, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Attorney General is the head of the DOJ and chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters, advises the President and the heads of the executive departments of the government, and occasionally appears in person before the Supreme Court.

"With a budget of approximately $25 billion, the DOJ is the world’s largest law office and the central agency for the enforcement of federal laws."

Nobody in the US takes the DOJ lightly. No one should.

The corpuscular view has many difficulties here. For one, in an a deterministic universe of little balls of stuff bouncing around, where the little balls define everything, information theory becomes difficult to conceptualize. There is no real "range of possible variables" for any interaction. The outcome of any "measurement" (interaction) is always just the one you get, there is no "potential." The distribution relevant for any system is just that very distribution measured for all the relevant interactions. You need some conception of relationality, potency, and perspective to make sense of it (Jaynes arguments for why entropy is, in some way, always subjective I think are relevant here). Arguably, you need perspective to explain even mindless physical interactions, but the legacy of the "view from nowhere/anywhere" is strong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you dumb this down a little for dummies like me? :grin:

I totally agree, and also with what you said about the universe becoming monolithic by virtue of the imperative of relationship. That shows up in Schopenhauer as well.

It's kind of curious then, when you consider what our most accurate physics says what an atom is, has nothing to do with the intuition that leads us to believe that atoms are these visible concrete things, that make the world up.

And atom is far from that, and perhaps should be considered more of a kind of "cloud" of activity, which is so far removed from anything we can visualize it starts to look like an idea of sort, which is NOT to say that the atom itself is an idea. — Manuel

I think physics is prompting a shift in worldview. Whether it catches on, I don't know.

It's in there. Otherwise, when kids point at things and ask "what is this?" we should have little idea what they are referring to, since it could be any arbitrary ensemble of sense data. But when a toddler points towards a pumpkin and asks what it is, you know they mean the pumpkin, not "half the pumpkin plus some random parts of the particular background it is set against." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand what you're saying. But if you tell me what things in the toddler's visual field she's pointing to, each one of those elements is a universal. Each one is an idea: orange, round, bumpy, etc. She's pointing to ideas. Yes, there's a visceral aspect to experience with the world, but the whatness of it isn't physical. It's ideas.

Yet if there were no objects (pumpkins, etc.) given in sensation, kids should pretty much be asking about ensembles in their visual field at random, and language acquisition would be hopelessly complex. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unless the kid comes equipped with a smorgasbord of ideas ready to deploy? Are you familiar with Meno's paradox? I'm not saying the ideas are deployed at random. What I'm pointing to is that the world is a duck-rabbit picture. Whether it's duck or rabbit is not present in the picture.

Aren't they two sides of the same coin? We have evidence to tell us that a plant is different from an animal (universal ) — Count Timothy von Icarus

There isn't a scientific definition of life according to Robert Rosen. If pressed to come up with one, we'd have to say it has something to do with a final cause, but this isn't something we find in the physical realm. Plants have chlorophyl, but so do euglenas, which aren't plants or animals. We can't say plants don't eat, because Venus flytraps do. It's fuzzy boundaries.

We also have plenty of empirical evidence to support the idea that this pumpkin right here is different from the one "over there on the shelf," namely their different, observable histories, variance in accidental properties, and obviously their appearing to be in two different spaces (concrete). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's true that pumpkin distinctions seem to be the sort of thing we discover. I don't recall deciding to divide the pumpkin off from the rest of the world, for instance. The distinction is there whether I'm looking at it or not. But look again. Look at the visual field that includes the pumpkin. Feel of the pumpkin with your hand. Smell the pumpkin. Where in any of this data is pumpkin?

f there was absolutely no physical evidence to demarcate particulars then decisions about them would be completely arbitrarily, and it should random whether I consider my car today to be the same car I drove last month. But our consideration of particulars isn't arbitrary, nor do they vary wildly across cultures, even if they can't be neatly defined. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The object is a fusion of idea and matter. We can hardly reject physicality. It's definitely there. It's just that the way we divide up the universe is conventional. It could be divided up differently.

I think the problem here is the same problem I referenced before, wanting to try to define objects, delineation, continuity, etc. completely without reference to things' relationships with Mind ("Mind" in the global sense since this is where concept evolve). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. If an object is a fusion of idea and matter, then subtracting out idea, gives us something we can't imagine.

If physical basis means something else, then I would like to know. Until someone can present a convincing argument as to what "physical" must contrast with (and why is this so) we may do away with "physical" and speak about "objective basis" of objects. — Manuel

The cultural background of this discussion is the image of God as a clockmaker, who sets the world in motion, then leaves it to itself. Subtract out the God, and you have a mechanistic universe, which is part of our present worldview. Things like universals, ideas, abstract objects, etc. become ill-fitting phantoms . They aren't addressed by physics because they don't count as real in the sense an atom is supposed to be. So this worldview says the real is physical. It's contrasted to unreal ideas.

This is why it can be startling to realize that when I look around, I'm seeing ideas. It's just Plato back again, right?

There's no physical evidence behind the way we divide the world up.
I pretty much said that in my OP, yes. — noAxioms

You're correct.

None at all? It seems there is plenty of physical evidence behind the distinction between plant and animal, living and non-living, physical squares and physical triangles, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're talking about universals, there, so you're starting with a time-honored way of dividing things up. I was talking about particulars. For particulars, it's like this:

Then you've communicated the convention to it. The question is if 'object' is defined in the absence of that communication. — noAxioms

I don't think so. There's no physical evidence behind the way we divide the world up.

It could do that with AI directed actuation. Just tell the AI what you want to shoot
— frank
Again, that evades the question by using language to convey the demarcation to the device. — noAxioms

Still, an inanimate object can make distinctions you program it to recognize. You don't have to be a magic human to do that. I think the rest is just a matter of purpose. The phaser doesn't have any motives that aren't given to it.

If the question was whether our common worldview assures us that distinctions don't need conscious input, then dinosaurs would be on point. But dinosaurs are part of a worldview that is itself underdetermined by physical evidence (see here). As Quine would say, we believe there was a time when there were no humans because of psychological reasons, not physical ones.

So the question is whether our worldview should limit our questioning or not. I think we all agree it shouldn't, but in this case, that just leaves us where we started.

This presumes that the physical device (which artificially made to serve a pragmatic purpose) will be able to glean the pragmatic intent when being used — noAxioms

It could do that with AI directed actuation. Just tell the AI what you want to shoot.

. I'm personally pretty confident, for instance, that the measurement of the gravitational constant doesn't reflect our biases — mcdoodle

More controversially, it might be possible to extend this inherit relationality into an argument for an inherit "perspectiveness" to all physical interactions— relevant perspective (or something like it) without experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is an SEP article on underdetermination of knowledge. It's like a relative of the problem of induction. With regard to gravity, it means this: any attempts to explain gravity will run into issues with underdetermination, which are:

1. Any hypothesis makes sense as part of a web of already held beliefs. If a hypothesis fails, we have a choice between saying that the hypothesis is wrong, or saying that one of the background beliefs (part of the web of beliefs) is wrong. There's no way to make this choice beyond pragmatism.

2. For any theory that gains approval in the scientific community, there are alternatives that will also explain the available data. Again, it's a matter of pragmatism.

So tying this back to the OP @noAxioms, it means that if we question the makeup of a human (does it include the clothes or bugs on the sleeve), we'll find that however we approach the question, the conclusion will be an exercise in pragmatism. Any revision to our web of beliefs comes down to psychology (see in the above article where Quine says epistemology is basically psychology.)

Rocks also might be the wrong sort of thing to look at for a paradigmatic example of discrete objects. Rocks don't have much of a definite form. A rock broken in half becomes two rocks, generally speaking, and many rocks fused together become one rock, whereas "half a dog" is clearly a half. Rocks are largely bundles of causes external to them. They don't do much to determine themselves. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Any discrete object is discrete by virtue of standing out against a background. Think of this thesis:

The realm of the senses is all rabbit-duck and it's divided up into discrete-object-background complexes according to the organizing ability of your mind.

Is it possible to disprove this thesis?

edit: I think the main problem with it is that I'll need a higher power to separate me out from the the rest of the world. Plus, I might run afoul of the private language argument.

Aren't all scientific theories underdetermined? Does that mean science, in general, reflects our biases, our worldviews, our pet perspectives?

What if the phaser hits a bug on the guy's shirt? Does just the bug disappear or does the guy (the intended target) go as well? — noAxioms

This would be a violation of the prime directive, so the phaser has to have AI directed activation. The AI doesn't know anything about physicality. That's a philosophical category that's completely useless to a robot.

The same sentence can be presented by any number of utterances, whether sounds or marks on a screen. Sentences are commonly accepted as abstract objects.

The question of inalienable rights is an interesting one, which I believe will become more pressing as secularization continues. — Leontiskos

Inalienable rights are guaranteed by Nature. It's basically stoicism.

Supposedly you can let things take their course and the results will speak for themselves. If we screw up, society will become diseased. If we get it right, happiness will ring from the mountaintops and whatnot.

The world doesn't talk, people talk. — Banno

I know that. By the way, you haven't escaped abstract objects. A sentence is also abstract.

In the first, an abstract entity is invoked, and immediately followed by all sorts of philosophical investigations - what is the nature of this abstract entity, the proposition? Is it real, is it a Platonic form, is it an eternal statement, and so on. — Banno

Not at all. I said a proposition is what we imagine the world would say. If you notice, my account of propositions is very similar to Russell's. He believed a true proposition is simply a state of the world. But that left him confused as to how propositions can be false. My solution: we're descendants of people who thought the world could talk. That heritage is the origin of the concept of propositions.

I won't derail the thread further. I don't think you're likely to get what I'm saying. :wink:

To each his own

:grin: Read more Emerson. He'll show how to think for yourself.

Start with thinking for yourself. Then all the philosopher does is broaden your horizons.

This is philosophy, not theology. Feel free to engage the ideas in play rather than becoming caught up in interpretation of the text.

I would count "I have a laptop" as a proposition in the first person, — Banno

The thing is, that the same P can be expressed by a lot of different methods: verbal sequence, marks on page, interpretive dance, sculpture, etc. Maybe I should say a P can be expressed in a first person account, but the P itself is denoted by what philosophers call "eternal sentences." Those sentences are from the narrator's POV. It's the world talking, so to speak.

And yes, you can't use any particular proposition to prove that there is a world, since there being a world is presupposed by there being propositions. — Banno

Right. You can't express a proposition without presupposing a world.

I think your account is missing this: that propositions are not first or second person accounts. They're in third person. They aren't necessarily spoken by any human at any time. I think this is where Austin's usefulness ends.

It's a tricky point, but it's this: when you repeat a proposition, you're essentially repeating what you think the world would say. Expressing a proposition implies a world who (in our imaginations) can speak.

So you can't use any particular proposition to prove that there is a world. It doesn't work that way.

This is a hand is a proposition. I was giving you my handy dandy explanation of what a proposition is: that it comes from interaction with the world, framed as a conversation.

"Maybe I died. Maybe these are just the last thoughts of a dying man”
-- Shikishima

The buffet at the Hilbert hotel! — fishfry

So you take a break, poop out the pasta, and go back for more.

This is my theory:

We think of our interaction with the world as if it's a conversation we're having with it. When you look for your sunglasses, you're asking the world a question: where are my glasses? Then you listen for the world's responses. Those responses are what we call propositions. You hear the world say: They're on the kitchen table. If it turns out that it is your glasses there, it's a true proposition. True propositions are where you understood the world correctly. But if those are your friend's glasses, and you were mistaken, then it was a false proposition. You didn't hear the world correctly.

So when you see your hand and say this is a hand, you're repeating what world said. You're expressing a proposition. Then you ask yourself, is there any way I could have misheard the world's voice in this case? I guess some people say you couldn't have. But this line of thought is searching for cases where you can't mishear the world.

If we bring up the brain in vat scenario and attest that we may not be having a conversation with a world, but rather our own thoughts or some such, that's a tangential issue. It doesn't undermine the fact that having discussions with the world is primal.

The knowledge problem is from Hayek, yes, but is by now routine economics. — NOS4A2

For now, yea.