One challenge to Nagel's approach is that it basically reduces scientific theories to arrangements of words. Intuitively, a theory is more than a grammatical entity.

But if they're more, what is this "more"?

I’m sure of it in my own case. — NOS4A2

Do you feel like throwing hand grenades into the Haymarket?

I'm not familiar with Nagel, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It seems like his position on reductionism relates mostly to it's presentation of consciousness as a physical process. His objection, if I understand it correctly, is that the reductionist approach ignores the experience of qualia. — T Clark

That's Thomas Nagel. The bridge-laws guy is Ernest Nagel.

Reductionism can be simplified even further. Science never asserts that its underlying premises are true, only that they have not been able to be disproven at this time. While scientists must rely on what has been scientifically ascertained up to that point, nothing is sacred.

Thus, in the first case, someone may discover some new information that finally negates an earlier accepted conclusion in science. The only reasonable thing to do at that point is re-evaluate the now questionable underlying theory until that can once again pass scientific rigor. This may then extend out to other theories that rely on this building block. Only then can science continue upward.

With this, we see the second case cannot be a viable reductionism argument for science. To conclude that everything must end in physics is the negation of the scientific ideal that nothing which has been learned can be questioned. Physics has no special place in scientific theories in this regard. — Philosophim

Yes, well said.

The Nagel approach says we will eventually reduce a baseball game to quantum theory by way of bridge laws which connect the dots. This is expected to be a matter of vocabulary.

So we will derive the baseball game from quantum theory with the bridge laws as a crutch.

Is this really true? We don't know. We may at some point discover that Yahweh has actually been pulling the strings the whole time.

It's more just the attitude that what scientists should be aiming for is this Nagel approach. If you agree with that, you're a kind of scientific reductionist.

But hey, look at how many "rights" we have while the government forces me to pay taxes just because I hold a basic ownership. — javi2541997

Death and taxes, man. :smile:

Bentham believed a belief in natural rights would lead to anarchy because they contradict the very idea of government. I think he’s right on that. — NOS4A2

Do you know of any cases of that?

think civil rights would fall under legal rights — NOS4A2

Civil rights require a government that is divided against itself so that one portion of the government can defend citizens from mistreatment by the other part.

Natural rights are believed to transcend any government:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Declaring their rights to be natural was a strike against the idea that all God given rights flow through a monarch. "God given" and 'natural' mean pretty much the same thing.

believe in natural rights and natural law. I just don’t think we’re born with them. The opposite is the case. They must first be granted and defended. — NOS4A2

You're thinking of civil rights.

Why are you telling me about flushing toilets in Psycho? — BC

Because I figured you'd post a picture of a chair made with human skin. :up:

The idea of natural rights goes back to the Roman Stoics. It's that nature rewards those who adhere to its ways. Those who pit themselves against nature diminish themselves. The same is true of a society. It's in the nature of a society to protect and nurture its members. If it doesn't do that, it will become sick and potentially pass away.

For the Romans, evil and disease were similar. Health and goodness were the same thing. So it's not that you possess some magical entity, it's just that in order to thrive, you and your society must grow toward the light, so to speak.

Whatever you may think of the idea, it has served humanity well and has become part of the contemporary global worldview. It doesn't appear to be going anywhere, so get used to it?

Did you know that when Psycho first came out there was great consternation because it presented the sound of a toilet flushing in one scene?

I have to say, the only alternative to the JTB that I've come across is the "knowledge first" idea. That might have something so recommend it, but I haven't caught up with it yet. — Ludwig V

JTB is knowledge internalism, which asserts that in order to count as having knowledge, a subject must have access to some justification.

Knowledge externalism just denies that.

JTB is the appendix of the philosophical world. Appendix as in that small, useless organ that is attached to our intestines. It keeps hanging around for no particular purpose and just pops up every now to cause trouble. — T Clark

Not at all. It's very intuitive and would probably only be denied by certain externalists who believe knowledge reduces to behavior.

Al knows where he parked his car. He doesn't know whether it was stolen.

doubt it. They know full well that Americans would not agree to that. And those systems don't have the range to strike deep in the interior anyway. More likely the Americans are second-guessing the Ukrainians, trying to conserve their expensive munitions. — SophistiCat

I figured the Ukrainians are consulting with American strategists though. The run toward Kharkiv was supposedly a strategy the US military has used before.

What's more, while Ukrainians identify and select their targets for precision rocket strikes on their own, their NATO partners basically have a veto power. — SophistiCat

So NATO is monitoring their targeting systems and won't allow them to strike the Russian interior?

The week it happened, I was thinking the US did it.

It doesn't. The studies involved are summarised for you in tables 1, 2, and 3. None of them measured the outcome of the course of the ARI, they only measured contraction. — Isaac

Isaac. Read the sentence:

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks

The outcome mentioned there is not whether they contracted it. We already know they did by laboratory confirmation. "Outcome" in this case means the same thing it always does in research about healthcare.

Also, the government in America mandated masks for children against the advice of the WHO. Since when did it become OK to mandate an un-trialled intervention, on children, on the basis of "no evidence that it's not effective"? — Isaac

The vast majority of healthcare decisions are not research based. There just isn't enough research to do that.

Occasionally we all find out that a hard rule, based on good logic, isn't actually the best course. I've seen that a couple of times. It's weird.

No, Isaac
— Isaac

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks

Here outcome means whether you lived or died.

you would know if you had even a modicum of humility, — Isaac

What I need for you to understand is that nobody cares about your well crafted insults. This forum has practically no audience. It's just a few posters. There are more moderators on this forum than posters on any given day. Nobody is hurt by your acidic tone. Nobody cares.

Isaac, the portion you quoted was about outcomes. Pay attention to what you're quoting.

Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu‐like illness/COVID‐like illness

It might not, but it may. I think most people get the flu from close contact indoors. It's spread by droplets. COVID-19 is airborne.

For vulnerable people like the elderly and chronically ill, it makes sense to keep wearing them. For everyone else, probably not.

@Isaac

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence. Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low‐certainty evidence).

This is about outcomes for those who contracted the disease. It's saying that if you contracted the disease, your outcome is not changed by whether you wore a mask in public or not.

It's not examining whether requiring mask wearing impacts the spread of the disease.

To that extent, it would be presumptuous to say the opposite was happening; That the pursuit of understanding had no resistance from received ideas. — Paine

Sure. I agree.

Without sorting all that out, the article shows a critical element: Rational consideration of phenomena as what we are able to observe and the attempt to find out why events happened predates subsequent methods for doing that. — Paine

And the preceding Greek religion was likewise an attempt to explain why things happen. The first priests were caretakers of all the science that existed at the time. This makes it hard to draw a line between science and religion in these cultures. The battle between these entities that shaped our worldview couldn't have happened then for lack of the social structures necessary to carry it out.

The presocratic philosophers discussed the relationship between phusis (nature, from the root to grow) and nomos (law, custom). [Added: What is by nature vs what is by convention.] — Fooloso4

This is the Eleatic philosophy.

"Eleaticism, one of the principal schools of ancient pre-Socratic philosophy, so called from its seat in the Greek colony of Elea (or Velia) in southern Italy. This school, which flourished in the 5th century BCE, was distinguished by its radical monism—i.e., its doctrine of the One, according to which all that exists (or is really true) is a static plenum of Being as such, and nothing exists that stands either in contrast or in contradiction to Being. Thus, all differentiation, motion, and change must be illusory. This monism is also reflected in its view that existence, thought, and expression coalesce into one."

Anaxagoras belonged to this school. In identifying mind as the prime motive force in the world, he was in keeping with the a worldview that goes back to the end of the Bronze Age. What's missing from this view to make it what we would think of as science, is the "clockwork" conception of the universe that first starts with Aquinas and progresses to Newton. They wouldn't have understood our distinction between religion and science, and so it's a mistake to project that into what Plato says.

Socrates criticizes those who cite the authority of the poets because they are unable to give an account. Mythos without logos. Since the poets, most notably Homer and Hesiod, are the source of the teachings about the gods, there is seen in Plato a conflict between religion and science. In the Apology, Anaxagoras' claim that the sun is a stone and not a god, is falsely attributed to Socrates and is used as the basis of the charge of atheism against him. It is at its heart a conflict between religion and science. — Fooloso4

You're confusing the Athenian state for a religious authority. It wasn't. The law Socrates broke was created by Solon and was simply an admonishment against failing to show respect for the gods. The grudge the Athenians had against Socrates was not based on a science/religion controversy. It was that they thought his style of teaching produced derangement among the young. There were no religious institutions of the kind we know today. There were only various temples and the Oracle. Opposition to mystery religions can be thought of as an impetus for more rational consideration, but that's far from, again, what we would think of as a war between science and religion.

Does human nature change over time? — Fooloso4

In some ways, yes. But I'm not suggesting that residents of the iron age were from a different species. I'm simply pointing out that the worldview of people 2400 years ago was missing elements critical to a mechanistic outlook which underpins our conception of physicality and science.

So a person living at one time, looking back hundreds of years toward the source, trying to understand the true meaning of the myth, would have to make an attempt to account for all the intermediate changes. This would require determining the cultural conditions of that intermediary time which influenced the interpretations. For Plato this was to determine how the myth was transported from its origins to its current position. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's exactly what I'm saying. We are the recipients of a worldview in which mental and physical appear to be in different dimensions. This conflict pervades the philosophy of our time. The emotional generator at its heart is a conflict between religion and science. There is no evidence that this conflict existed during the iron age, and there is persuasive evidence from historian Moses Finley that the opposite was the case.

Finley's analysis of the works of Homer indicate that the iron age Greek and eastern mediterranean view would seem to us to be like the psyche turned inside out, with motivations being generated by external forces instead of within individual minds and hearts. So Plato inherited a worldview in which (what we call) ideas were cast about the world around and within us. This is the setting of his works. The fact that he nods in the direction of near eastern thought strengthens this view.

The perspective of "history" does none of this, looking only at material artifacts, to make some general conclusions about people and cultures. So it provides a very much inferior way of looking at the ideas of ancient people — Metaphysician Undercover

The works of Homer are the most important source for understanding the iron age outlook because it was held in such high esteem down through the time of Plato and beyond. We know that copies of Plato's works are extremely rare. Apparently not even a rich, educated person would own a single dialog, but that same rich man would more than likely own the works of Homer. So as opposed to imagining that Plato is talking directly to you (which is easy and enjoyable to do), if we want to understand how it would have been taken at the time, we should imagine Plato speaking to an iron age resident. And that's where Finley comes in. His analysis of Greek thought has become the standard for historians of thought.

A resident of the iron age would not have understood what we mean by "physical." Missing the battle between church and science that shapes our understanding, our meaning wouldn't translate.

No, I do not see that as a mistake. This is because truths are timeless, eternal as some say, and comprehensible to all subjects. So, what was relevant 2400 years ago is relevant today. That's what really impressed me when I first picked up Plato years ago, because I had to for school. I thought, what's the relevance of this ancient stuff, until I read it. And it blew me away because it all seemed so relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you found it relevant because to some extent, you created it. There's nothing wrong with that, though. I did the same thing until I studied the history of the time in which it was written.

Do you agree that it's a mistake to project our own mental/physical division on the dialogs? That distinction, so embedded in our own worldview, didn't exist around 2400 years ago. If they thought of the realm of the gods or Hades, they thought of concrete places. Likewise, the forms weren't thought of as vaporous categories. They're actually part of the makeup of the world around us.

The process for qualifying a person for donation takes time. Tests have to be run, a pulmonologist needs to do a bronchoscopy if the lungs are candidates, probably an echocardiogram for the heart, and so on.

If a victim of a motor vehicle accident comes into an emergency department and there's no time to get consent before the patient dies, there's no time to test the organs to make sure they're not going to make life worse for the recipient.

In other words, if you have time to qualify them, you have time to get consent, usually. It would be rare that you don't.

Ultimately, morality is a matter of public opinion and it doesn't have to be logical.

What bothers me about this discussion is that it sounds characteristic of the arrogance of the NIH. They have a history of ignoring morality, as when large numbers of women were denied epidurals for childbirth based on some idiot's opinion that it's not necessary, or the case where they denied transport of a child to the US for heart surgery because some idiot thought the patient was too sick to travel. The patient subsequently died.

For all it's faults, that's one good thing about the American system. Between competition between hospitals and the courts, providers are very attuned to what society thinks is right.

A popular theory is they were looking for a drug dealer and mistook Nichols for that person. Otherwise, you're right that cops don't usually randomly stop people, turn off their body cams and kill them for no reason.

If these cops had been white, that's what people would have said, that it was just racism. The fact that they're all black highlights the dire need we have for police reform and the weight of the federal government to make it happen. House Democrats are going to try again to do something about it, we'll see if Republicans block it, again

I was saying that we should exchange views on what the dependent nature of oppositions says about the theory of forms. I'm no longer interested in doing that, though.

Peace out. :smile:

Your turn — Fooloso4

I don't know what you're asking. You said the Cyclic Argument is about physical things, but since it's about the Soul, that would mean you think Plato's Soul is a physical thing.

I don't think we have any common ground from which to proceed, so vaya con dios!

The word "physical" is in the dialogues?

What is bigger comes from what is smaller. — Fooloso4

That's not what the Cyclic Argument is saying.

The argument refers to things not Forms. What is bigger comes from what is smaller. — Fooloso4

And a "thing" is what?

. That's why destroying the unions was so high on Reagan's priorites. With the unions demonized and decimated, and the labor party out of the way, here begins the era of the Washington consensus — Mikie

Partly. But Reagan was the real deal. He read Hayek's Road to Serfdom, and Hayek was one of his favorite thinkers. I don't think you can really understand what Reagan did and said without knowing that he really believed this shit.

Yes. And then there's my all time favorite Platonic argument: the Cyclic Argument, which shows that there can be no "bigger" without the preceding "smaller".

So tell me how you resolve this, and I'll tell you how I've always done it.

The problem is that if each Form is one, singular and distinct, then we must confront the problem of dyads. Bigger is unintelligible without smaller, same is not intelligible without different. So too, equal cannot be separated from unequal. — Fooloso4

Big and small are two sides of one coin. So the forms could be Size, Equality, and so forth.

There is nothing in empirical existence which directly corresponds with '='. — Wayfarer

"Empirical" is a kind of knowledge. There is no "empirical existence." But you can certainly learn empirically that two things are equal.