Not forever, though. It will be remembered that he attempted a coup.

Like I said, word crimes. He spoke and I felt some way, therefor it’s a crime. — NOS4A2

Word crimes were as far as it could go because the Joint Chiefs of Staff were determined that his coup wasn't going to succeed. Don't really need a deep state to explain your failure when the US Military is against you.

But you could triangulate the height of the walkers with some distance data. I think that would qualify as direct.

The greatest argument for indirect realism is anatomy and physiology. Plain and simple. Whatever flaws it may have, that hurdle is insurmountable.

Trump's punishment will probably be a small fine that he won't even notice.

Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false. — Michael

Exactly!

Okey dokey.

:rofl: at this conversation. — Mikie

I also think it's funny. But then, I'm a raging nihilist.

Yeah. That's a common condensation. The approach he is advocating is rather than trying to do philosophy by finding the meaning of terms, to look at the use that they take on in the language game and the broader form of life. — Banno

Oh, by "meaning" you mean an all purpose definition.

We can't do gun control, and you can't have an abortion. :100:

Then he cut to the chase: Stop looking for meaning, and instead look at use. — Banno

I thought he meant you find meaning by looking at use.

If that is conceded, then you have to ask yourself with Trump whether forebearance makes sense in terms of causing outrage among his supporters and an empowering of his position. — Hanover

Turning assholes into martyrs is counter productive. But who decides to push forward or pull back?

With our annual summer riots, that decision is actually coming from mayors and chiefs of police. They don't want a massacre on their hands.

Who would decide not to prosecute Trump because of unfortunate side effects? The DA?

The basis was politics, not justice. Maybe it was the right call, but the point is that politics is a valid consideration too — Hanover

People were mainly thinking about justice for the black guy who was brutally murdered by the white cop. Public safety was the concern that prompted forbearance on the part of riot police.

Did Democrat politicians play it for all it was worth? Probably. I don't see how you'd identity that as the basis for anything. That's just what smart politicians do.

Cities burned in lawlessness as politicians offered tempered politically motivated responses the past few years. — Hanover

That wasn't due to a lack of interest in law enforcement. They were trying to avoid making the protesters more violent.

Of course a gun can be used for defense, provided you are prepared for an attack and in a defendable position. Outside of that, successful defense is unlikely. A motivated shooter will generally have the advantage, and bullets flying around from random shots might find you anywhere. — BC

I guess if you find that trench warfare has broken out in your living room, it's hard to say who'll have the advantage. You'll probably have to Jackie Chan the situation.

As to owning a gun to defend myself and my family against criminals, it is not as if they are going to wait until I get my gun, load it, and point it at them before they point their loaded gun at me or a family member. Perhaps you sleep cuddling a loaded gun, but I think it far more likely that a gun in the house will do me or my family harm than good. — Fooloso4

You can defend yourself with an unloaded shotgun. Just cock it and that sound will generally cause invaders to flee. Unless they're on drugs, in which case you probably want it loaded.

Guns can definitely be used for defense. If you choose to go without, just know that your final victory was that you didn't live in fear.

Or something along those lines. :grin:

They don't want this issue addressed because it would reduce demand for their products even if they were legal. You're aiding that agenda by sweeping the issue aside. — Isaac

The view from the ground here is that in some parts of the US, people are fiercely protective of their ability to own fire arms. Gun sales always spike when legislation for limiting gun ownership is considered. People are afraid that they won't be able to get that hand gun in the future, so they go ahead and buy it now. So that demand is high and not manufactured by anyone in particular. It's just part of the culture.

Mass shootings get a lot of media coverage. I think that actually perpetuates it, oddly enough. But gun violence goes on all day everyday in the form of gang violence, drive-by shootings, and red-neck family members shooting at each other. I mean, lives are destroyed and families are left in despair pretty frequently. We don't really need mass shootings for that. Mass shootings just get the coverage because they're so bizarre. Prevalent, but bizarre.

:up:

Well, I wouldn't count that as a fact... — Banno

Why not?

Well, since the unobserved tree is "unknowable" and all that, and given that we can still talk about it when our backs are turned to it, why not just keep talking of the "tree"?

Not for pragmatic reasons, but because there is no reason to talk otherwise.

(I'm not reaching for pragmatism here, so much as for parsimony). — Banno

Yes. But we can stop and gape at the fact that the unobserved tree is unknowable. We'll all agree to never speak of it again after that.

That 'something that has caused me to perceive a "tree'?

It's a tree.

That's what a tree is. — Banno

Good point. It's just that we wanted to know what it looks like when... you know.. nobody's looking at it. We'll have to let it be that we don't have any way to describe that.

The beginning of time had to be an entropy minimum, since entropy can only increase — SophistiCat

That's not true. Watch the video.

Americans are from outer space. I don't think you're taking that into consideration. We evolved in a different galaxy, so you have no frame of reference for understanding us.

Though by that measure, we might have to judge NOS4A2 as being sarcastic too as I honestly don't believe he'd disagree with anything I've said. — Baden

It's hard to say. Over time, I've come to realize that he holds his views sincerely. I have to respect that.

If the universe did not expand after the Big Bang, it would have stayed as it was shortly after the Big Bang: a hot, dense, uniform plasma — SophistiCat

Dr O'Dowd explained that the Big Bang was an entropy minimum that may have been an aspect of an entropy fluctuation. It may be that entropy was higher both "before" and "after" the Big Bang just because of the ongoing fluctuation. It would appear to us that time was going backward prior to the Big Bang.

I would settle under protest for mere submachine guns though grenades and bazookas never killed anyone on their own and are no more dangerous than cars in that respect. As long as the government continues to give in to such irrational arguments we will continue to be punished for the crimes of others and our utopia must wait. — Baden

This is why I have a nuclear submarine off the coast of Europe: to deal with the rampant sarcasm over there.

I think murderers and criminals will think twice about harming others if they know everyone is packing. — NOS4A2

Or they might think: "I'll kill you before you can kill me."

What about the tree that you climb? Is that a representation? — unenlightened

Not in the context of the standard narrative. I guess people will divide off according to what they think of the stories we tell: are they metaphors as Nietzsche suggested? Or would you agree with Sartre that you are the situation? Or perhaps a non-philosophical, folkways rendition is better?

I don't think any of these questions are directly related to how we perceive the world and ourselves. Maybe indirectly?

Yeah, I had a look, but as one might expect from such a vid, it has just a short soundbite concerning the topic under discussion here. — SophistiCat

Ok. It explained what entropy has to do with what happened before the Big Bang. That part was cool.

Where else are you going to turn to get principles for understanding the reasons for these flaws? — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you tell me the reasons for the flaws?

They're just different ways of talking that make no real difference to the underlying philosophical consideration. — Michael

:up:

Most people are 98% dead.... — Tom Storm

:razz:

Hence fear of being dead is irrational. — Banno

Maybe. Most people are about 98% irrational.

So, an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? Does that resonate? — Tom Storm

Life is an arc. If you're on the climbing side of it, I think you're supposed to have an aversion to death, because you're headed in the other direction: into life, discovering who you are, making plans, exploding forth your potential on the poor unsuspecting.

If your roller coaster car as past the zero slope zone and you're headed downward, I don't know if aversion is still part of it. Maybe if a person has unfinished business? If they never learned to live? So they're still looking for a chance at authenticity (as if they would take it if you handed it to them.)

I see a lot of people die. Even old people are sometimes afraid if their minds are still there. I figure some people have so much love for life that they cling to it till the very end. That's kind of cool.

It's that what we see causes us to realize that what we're seeing is a construction.

There's no escape hatch on that situation, try as we might to find one.

Oh. I see what you're saying.

I think this whole debate is better thought of in terms of "mediated" vs. "unmediated" perception. We run the risk of saying funny things like I indirectly see a tree outside my window. — Manuel

I don't think we need to saddle the average person with having to phrase everything the way a cognitive scientist or physicist would. I don't need for you to tell me that a reflex arc actually kicked the chair. It's ok if you tell me you did it.

Once we start doing a little more analysis on how stuff actually happens, we should be past the point of causing confusion to anyone about who did what. Right?

So there's quite a bit more to cognitive function than just a piece of glass. We don't know all the details, but we have this thing as the processor, and it doesn't touch the world around it, ever. It's safe inside a blood/brain barrier.

Yes, which has nothing to do with perception. — Michael

Right. The point I was making earlier was that since indirect realism is the view of science, an advocate of direct realism needs to address in some way how direct realism is supposed to work.

The semantic realist argument related to intentionality doesn't address this issue at all. In response to the indirect realist arguing that when I talk to my parents on the phone, I don't hear their actual voices, I only hear the sounds made by the phone's speaker, the semantic realist argues that I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone. — Michael

I thought SDR was saying that one would acknowledge that "I was talking to my parents" is true. With a deflationary account of truth, this acknowledgement is just a social convention. It says nothing about whether you actually talked to your parents or not, which the SDR advocate thinks is a meaningless question?

It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. It’s either direct realism or scientific realism, but not both — Michael

Correct.

When you understand that indirect realism undermines itself, as proposed in the op, and the problems of direct realism persist, the door to idealism will open within you. I'll be waiting for you at that door, which opens inward rather than outward. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do see that they're both flawed. Do you mean that this leads to idealism?