Wikipedia as propaganda. It's a testament to its success that people are trying to use it that way.

And no, you can't fight inflation by injecting more money into the economy. That's also propaganda.

What this indicates is that a very slight, unforeseen change, in the very near future will render any long term model which does not account for it, completely useless. — Metaphysician Undercover

True. I want to review some articles on long-range forecasting. It's fascinating stuff. I was hinting earlier about why the latest models are better, because they include previous research into how to weight factors.

Then I want to discuss one article on the 100,000 year problem and a startling implication of its proposed solution. If the 100,000 year cycle is a result of a change in ocean currents that further cooled the surface of the earth, this means reglaciation is now being triggered by a shutdown of the oceanic heat conveyor, the very same oceanic current that is slowing now due to global warming. No scientist is predicting a shutdown, but if it did, reglaciation would be triggered.

If nothing else, it's a cautionary tale about being certain of the future of the climate.

From my POV, it's on you to distinguish this 'limit' from a mere nothingness, a mere 'I think' tag that's added to every fact. — Pie

Do you have a point of view? Or is it just the bewitchment of language that makes it seem so?

English is unusual in that it requires specifying pronouns. It's common for first, second, and third person identification to be embedded in verb usage, like "cogito."

The "I" is part of the very structure of human language. Just note what's going on when you try to say the "I" isn't necessary. You can't actually say that, as Witt would point out.

I agree with him that speaking of the subject, which I think is subtly different from the ego( maybe more primitive), is beyond the capacity of language. That doesn't make it nothing.

And through all that, the subject remains the subject: the limit of your world.

This is another problem with Descartes. Why is it 'I' think rather than 'we' think or 'it' thinks ? — Pie

Sounds like you've got some identity issues.

Yep. Well put.

To me, he destroys the theory that meaning is private (to name just one result.) I just happen to be interested in clarifying what it means to mean something, how we do and how we ought to settle beliefs, etc. The 'big' insight for me was something like the intrinsic publicity of meaning, what it means to be 'in' a language with others, the way that very notion of the 'I' is a token caught up in a public, worldly 'game.' I think the realization starts around Hegel, and its enemy or the superstition it opposes is the ghost story criticized by Ryle (and the later Wittgenstein.) — Pie

The subject and the ego (the "I") aren't the same. I take his use of "subject" to be Schopenhauerian. It's not a doctrine that it's the limit of the world. It obviously is. The point of that statement in the Tractacus was to point out why there is no theory of the subject.

Privacy isn't really an issue there either.

I think it's probably a mistake to take Wittgenstein as advocating any particular metaphysics. I've been taking him as just exploring the mechanics of climbing the ladder.

I've been reading about climate models. There are hundreds of short term models. This is the basis of IPCC statements.

Long range models are problematic because of the proportionally larger amount of data and the challenges of testing them.

Since the 1990s, long range modeling has progressed by an accumulation of contributions by scientists. The size of ice sheets is considered to be one of the most important factors, if not the most important.

When reglaciation starts, the first step is an increase in northern ice accumulation. Likewise, deglaciation starts with a decrease in their size.

I've been surprised that it's hard to find good books on long range modeling.

As Witt said, Everything is circumscribed by the subject.
— Tate

Respectfully, that's just about antithetical to the way I understand Wittgenstein. — Pie

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.

--Tractacus

The next few remarks show the poverty of the subject/object distinction. — Banno

Ha! I came to add a quote from the Tractacus.

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.

Does this mean anything to you?

Consider also that my primary target is epistemological solipsism, so this is a bit of tangent (not without its fun, to be sure.) — Pie

:up:

It's also seemingly incoherent for a self without a world (typically with others) to be able to be right or wrong in the first place. What can that even mean ?) — Pie

Solipsism isn't a self without a world. It's that the world is the Self.

Which is your point, that solipsists are inappropriately searching for certainty? Or that solipsism is incoherent due to a lack of "real" social interaction?

This 'one' is implicitly universal. A rational person ought to recognize that the existence of something other than the mind (like other minds) cannot be certainty established.

In other words, the epistemological solipsist claims that it's wrong to assume that there's something one can be wrong about. — Pie

That's a substantial step back from 'solipsism is wrong because the self needs the Other for the sake of rationality and language.'

Plus it's an all-purpose caution for skeptics of all stripes, including those who are skeptical of solipsism.

You keep mentioning externalism, but that's not quite it (and not my word.) — Pie

What do you want to call it?

I contend that the epistemological solipsist makes a claim about community norms, invoking that which transcends him in order to deny it. — Pie

The community is made of fragments of one entity, like a stage where all the characters are products of one playwright.

To whom ? Himself ? For what else is there ? To what norms could he refer ? About what world could he be wrong or right ? You basically put a world in a vat, pretend a community shares a language, but make that community a mirage at the end. — Pie

Imagine a snake that turns around and meets its own tail. It thinks it's met the Other, and it has for all practical purposes, but all it's met is Rumi's grand illusion.

Yes, solipsism says the other is an illusion. Externalism says the self is. It's just a game.

Consider the difference between 'I'm not sure if I'm dreaming right now' and 'we ought not assume that we're not dreaming.' The second is a claim about norms that apply to all rational agents. — Pie

The solipsist tries to reason with his fictional friends. It's fun.

Privacy' is a public concept, else you could not make a point about it (could not be right or wrong.) I don't claim that privacy is illusion, just to be clear. It has a use in our language ('don't make private phone calls on company time.') — Pie

For some reason you're evading my point.

The solipsist says, "The word 'public' has a use in my language. It's related to my exchanges with my fictional friends, which give rise to so much in terms of rationality: logic, language, my concept of self, and of course, my fictional friends are hilarious, so it's fun talking to them."

None of this is new, by the way. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The idea of the Great Solipsist in the sky has been around for a long time now, inspiring all sorts of questions about evil and so forth. It's very well explored territory.

On the 'I' or 'me' issue, do you not recall our previous conversation ? The self does indeed play an important role. You and I as individuals are 'tracked' and evaluated for logical consistency, for instance. I am responsible for defending the implications of my claims but not yours. We both ought to keep our story straight, not call the same thing white and black, public and private, etc. — Pie

You aren't following me. Just stop and evaluate the meaning of "social." What is its opposite?

So 'private' would get its meaning from the inferences involving it that we (in an ideal sense, a community making its own new rules in terms of the old) license and forbid — Pie

Of course. You don't seem to want to believe that I understand externalism. I do. I really do. It just doesn't give you any leverage against solipsism for the reasons I gave you. In the same way, solipsism can't attack externalism. The externalist can just say, "Yes, I use the word 'private', it's such a great word, but nothing beyond that."

This is from the first paper:
"These results demonstrate the possibility that rapid and unstoppable sea-level rise from Antarctica will be triggered if Paris Agreement targets are exceeded."

This is fascinating. They aren't saying Antarctica will give up all its ice, it will just be smaller by 2300. There's little reason to doubt that by 2300, a lot of presently inhabited coastline will be abandoned (unless there's a significant policy change). This was just looking at a 3 degree rise in mean temperature. A high projection is 8 degrees (assuming all available fuel is burned.)

But consider, sir, you are reasoning with me. Am I bound to regard your logic ? If so, why ? And do I not (mostly) understand your words ? I agree that 'sociality' is caught in a network of differences. Is this not a claim about norms for concept application that apply to both of us ? Was it not inferred implicitly through the examples you offered of North and South ? — Pie

Of course. Externalism is great. Let's say it demolishes solipsism. By that same method, solipsism will slay externalism.

There is no sociality without privacy. There is no 'we' without 'me'. You're doing the same thing solipsism is doing: you're saying yes to the two-sided coin, but then declaring one side to be illusive.

Fair enough, but I'd argue that it's incoherent to deny the sociality of reason. To be sure, the details are endlessly debatable, but it's absurd to deny the debate within the debate, no? — Pie

It's not a matter of details.

Note the meaning of "sociality". Like left and right, north and south, it only means something relative to it's opposite. You tried to used that trick against solipsism. Now use it against externalism.

It'll help me if you spell out your general view. — Pie

I agree with Witt about metaphysics, it's fun to play with (speaking of toys :razz: ), but it's beyond the limits of informative language use.

My position is that we are radically primordially social, that 'I' is a token in a game that transcends the meat it's applied to. — Pie

I get that. For me, this is one of many views. I understand it, but I also know it's 'language on holiday'.

Wait a minute. Are we on the same page ?

Anyone who makes claims about our world-in-common (such as what's in it or claiming 'it's all water' ) presumably aims at getting something right about it. — Pie

I'm sure they do. Care to do a reading of the Tractacus?

I confess that it's a toy issue, but I maintain that solipsism, asserted philosophical/rationally, is incoherent. — Pie

Again, you're trying to deploy externalism against it. That's only satisfying until you realize you are your world, as Witt states.

The solipsist claims that it's wrong to think there's something we can be wrong about. — Pie

But this goes for realism and every other type of ontology.

You can't use externalism as a weapon against solipsism. Externalism and realism are forms of nonsense as well. If you're going to embrace any kind of ontology, you'll have to give solipsism it's due.

It's this from the Tractacus:

5.63 I am my world.

This is more thoroughly explained by Schopenhauer, but Wittgenstein shows how it's nonsense (not to be confused with false, it's not false).

So here we are in agreement? — Banno

Probably. :grin:

A 'self' (to put it playfully) is something like a set of claims that ought to cohere. — Pie

If there's a claim, there's a claimant. Any psychological position you take, whether it's transcending society, transcending time, transcending Everything, it's all the self. You never get beyond it. Ego, maybe you can have a kind of vantage point on it, but that's apt to be a twin of the ego as opposed to a true transcendence, in other words, you see yourself by pretending to be someone else.

This same theme is there in the thread about solipsism. You're too easily laying out your externalism as an answer, as if you're critiquing a problem with internalism.

I say no, internalism and externalism are left and right, north and south, and they're both tools of the mind and self.

As Witt said, Everything is circumscribed by the subject.

To me the point is roughly that the self and the other are comanufactured — Pie

I believe that too. It seems logical. I need the Other because without it, I'll lose definition and fade into everything.

If you recall, I brought this up earlier. It doesn't disprove solipsism, though. It just explains why I would call the universe "mine".

I think the challenge is to disprove it to oneself.
— Tate

As Pie pointed out earlier, a proof is supposed to bind everyone, not just oneself. A proof that only you accept is perhaps a faith... — Banno

You're free to share your proof with others once you prove it to yourself. Point is, if you proved to your own satisfaction that the world goes beyond your mind, you didn't understand the challenge.

Yes, the other is constructed, by juxtaposing it to the self; As the old song goes, This I tell you, brother...

If all there is, is self, then there is no other, and hence no self. — Banno

They might have been born at the same time, or maybe they were eternal; the truth (the self) and the lie (the Other). All it takes is a little imagination.

Insofar as "self" is a binary concept: if there are not any others for the solipsist, then there isn't even a/the/"him" self to talk to. — 180 Proof

The Other can be manufactured. Happens all the time.

This assumes he doesn't talk to himself. Why would you think that?
— Tate

Then all he has done is to decide by fiat that I am a part of his self; such a solipsism loses any differentiation. — Banno

I think the challenge is to disprove it to oneself. There's no way to do that. I can easily disprove your solipsism, though. I'm here.

The idea is to understand the meaning of concepts primarily through the way we offer and demand reasons, — Pie

Again, I think this is more hypothesis than conclusion of an argument, isn't it?

your responding to my posts, for example, shows your rejection of solipsism. — Banno

This assumes he doesn't talk to himself. Why would you think that?

Instead of the content of a concept providing an independent guide or rule that governs which inferences are appropriate, it is the actual practices of inferring carried out in a community of agents who assess themselves and each other for the propriety of their inferences that explains the content of the concepts.

:cool:
Maybe. How would we know this is what's happening? This is what irritates me about realism. It builds castles in the sky and hands them to you, so proud to have arrived at something possible, as if the mechanistic character of our present age ought to do the rest of the work.

Just venting.

still can't see how that can be proven. Solipsism is like a funnel we're sliding down, grasping at ropes (theories) that might pull us out of it. But they always break. Without a really good argument, solipsism wins by default. Sad. — GLEN willows

I don't find solipsism to be sad. I'm not sure why I haven't won the lottery yet, but I guess I have my reasons.

I'm also not sure how I can exist without an Other for contrast. It seems I need the Other for my own existence, so it doesn't matter if I call it real or not.

Chomsky said "real" is just an honorific anyway, like: "real potatoes" as opposed to fake ones. In other words, we're in 'language on holiday' territory.

That just sounds like indirect realism with a little skepticism sprinkled on top.

That's a limited view of idealism.

The short, rough answer is that both solipsists and idealists hold that mind alone exists; idealists claim there is more than one mind, solipsists don't — Banno

Yes. They both posit that the universe is alive and conscious. Solipsism denies anything beyond the content of a single mind. In other words, there is nothing but "me" and the Other is an illusion.

There are many types of idealism, but generally the universe is made up of more than just the content of my consciousness.

I wonder if the tipping point they're talking about is where the loss of Antarctica's albedo effect causes positive feedback on warming. Once that starts, there's no easy way to go backward. It would cause a gigantic global refugee crisis and crop failures at the same time.

I'll dig into it. Thank you!

Courts aren't always necessary:Holocaust reparations

Sometimes it helps: Native American settlement

The question was about whether the state, the guarantor if property rights, can be guilty of theft (as NOS4A2 accused).

The answer is: yes.