You are obsessed with rules. — Banno

You are obsessed with contradicting me. My first point:

1. Forum culture. A thoughtful and contemplative culture will presumably perpetuate itself and mitigate against short, unthoughtful posting. — Leontiskos

I had considered writing a slightly longer post as a separate thread, entitled, "On the Promotion of a Philosophical Culture." The point is in large part to get people to think about the effect their actions have on the culture and purpose of TPF (and I am not exempt). This is a topic that end-users do not often think about if they have not worked in the backend of a forum. Ideally such users should be invited to sincerely consider how to improve or at least maintain the philosophical culture, lest it devolve. It primarily depends on the way they post, not on rules.

Bah. You are obsessed with rules. Looks to be an attempt to avoid the sort of spotlight TonesInDeepFreeze shines on your logical misunderstandings and errors, an extension on your bitching about him posting too much... :rofl: — Banno

Have you found that your trolling has become better or worse as you approach your 90's?

In any case, I am flattered that you spend so much time reading my exchanges.

Edit: Since you invited Tones to join in your trolling, I should point out that the posts of his in question are neither overly short nor overly unthoughtful, but that to successively respond to someone a dozen times in a single thread without any intervening response is not conducive to philosophical dialogue. I have only rarely seen this sort of thing.

an arbitrary word limit — Banno

It is a case in point that you and Clark were both too busy disagreeing with me to even notice that I gave a character limit, not a word limit. Your failure to read what I wrote would perhaps be remedied if you were not allowed to spit out posts one after another in quick succession. :wink:

You made a clear and reasonable presentation of your position in 264 words. — T Clark

There is a difference between characters and words. My post was 1,785 characters. I am only suggesting 500 characters for OPs, which at a minimum is about 70 words. Even your short reply was 597 characters.

Short is good. — Banno

Not according to the Site Guidelines and How to Write an OP.

I've looked around the web and I've never found any philosophy forum as good as this one. — T Clark

I agree.

Good enough is good enough. — T Clark

I disagree. I don't even know how this is supposed to be a real argument.

I think your suggestions will lead to a reduction in participation. — T Clark

If "participation" is defined as unthoughtful contributions, then that is precisely what my suggestions aim to do. Philosophy is more than random thought-sharing, and there are ways to make an environment more conducive to philosophical contributions.

I had to look up discourse, and I find that discourse can refer to a back-and-forth, a discussion, which a book cannot do, or itself a fixed text. — tim wood

Discourse can be dialogical, but it need not be. Still, a book can be a page in a discussion. Not infrequently in history have books been written in response to other books.

You mean unlike books, yes? — tim wood

No, what I mean is that a book is a linguistic work of art(ifice). Other linguistic works of art include things like pamphlets, speeches, a spoken sentence, a magazine article, etc. Limiting ourselves to naturalism for the moment, we can say that all linguistic works of art are "fixed," to use your term. So again: does your critique of books also apply to the posts you write on TPF? It seems that your critique will apply to every (completed) linguistic work of art.

I do not think books do this: people - readers - do this. — tim wood

But do you admit that some books more than others consistently cause people to do this? If so, then one book's meaning need not be as static or fixed as another's.

Agreed. And just this arguably why the admonition to study them. I reckon my break is to question the ultimate worth of the study-in-itself. Perhaps a thousand years ago it might have been felt to be the way to heaven, and no doubt some people think so today. But most of us - and I think you're an example - are so accustomed to the sense of entitlement and freedom to question and test a text that we begin to think of reading as a kind of interaction, forgetting, if we ever knew, that such freedom is relatively new. — tim wood

It is relatively new only in the medium of written language. The same dynamics have always attended oral traditions, including things like pedagogy and subversion.

If discussion is like a game of tennis, reading a book is like hitting the ball against a wall. — tim wood

Last week I remarked to my cousin that some of the best tennis players to come out of our school spent the most time with the wall.

But the problem with the analogy is that a book is a reflection or projection of an author, and because the author is dynamic so too is the book. Of course, static authors will produce static books, and we should not deny that, but someone who approaches Plato's Republic the same way they approach Galen's anatomy has placed all books on a level in an undue manner. Plato's wall is often more productive and fruitful than the players available for play.

What are books for? Certainly not for talking to someone in a short back-and-forth dialogue. If the author is living I may read his book and write a book, in response to which he then writes another book. But if the author is dead then even this is not possible. I suppose I would just say that if you want to speak, then you don't read a book. Reading a book requires listening, not speaking.

But I am doing the opposite. Social construction is what language allowed. (The paleoanthropology of language evolution is one of my special areas.) — apokrisis

Ah, good. I see what you were saying, now.

Two sides of the same coin. Deduce the particulars. Induce the generalities. — apokrisis

Yep.

But that is the syntax, or the rules of argument construction and transmission. The geometry of relations to complement the algebra of the relatables. — apokrisis

It is that, but I think the philologists would object if we were to reduce language to a social construction, or if we were to reduce it to the matter for argument or science. Language is all these things, but it is other things, too.

As appears from the classification, the remarkable novelty of Peirce’s logical critics is that it embraces three essentially distinct though not entirely unrelated types of inferences: deduction, induction, and abduction.

This is interesting. So too for Aristotle and many Aristotelians, the division between deductive and inductive logic is not so clear-cut.

So that suggests it all comes back to "number" — apokrisis

For the Quadrivium, but not for the Trivium. The Trivium pertains to communication, generally speaking.

I would agree with all this. The point of an education is to lift us above the socio-cultural constraints of an oral world order – socially constructed in words – to a technocratic or rational world order. And that is socially constructed in numbers as signs that connect semantics and syntax into some pragmatic business of utterances and locutions. — apokrisis

Yes, but one must begin with communication in the Trivium: Grammar (understanding language), Logic (the ability to analyze thought, and to progress in thinking), and Rhetoric (the ability to use grammar and logic in the service of persuasion). One must understand "social constructions" before moving beyond them.

So that would make the maths more clearly the handmaiden to the physics? — apokrisis

That seems like a good way of putting it.

By static and archival, I meant fixed; — tim wood

I think books are the highest form of discourse, and to criticize books is a fortiori to criticize every other form of discourse. Hence my point about posts on TPF. Like the words written in books, the words we say and write are also fixed. Like books, we can say new things as we grow and change our minds.

When you say many are not, what do you mean? — tim wood

By static I think of that which is not dynamic, and by archival I think of that which catalogues existing things, especially the past. I don't think books like the Bhagavad Gita or Dostoevsky's The Idiot are static or archival. I don't even think Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics are static and archival, and the proof of this is that they generate new insights and new interpretations with each passing decade.

The thoughts most worth thinking will generally be written in books. Books have displaced oral tradition as the normative form of passing on wisdom. Those who ignore books ignore the thoughts most worth thinking. The alternative to books is your own mind, or the words of those you know, or the internet, none of which surpass books insofar as intellectual achievement is concerned. One disparages books at their own risk.

And there is the physical view that is essentially geometric – as spacetime rather matters – or the algebraic view where even geometry can apparently be reduced beyond spacetime ... but then that little tussle re-emerges again when we move up the next level of abstraction, as in topological order? — apokrisis

Classically after studying the Trivium (of grammar, logic, and rhetoric), one would study the Quadrivium:

The quadrivium was the upper division of medieval educational provision in the liberal arts, which comprised arithmetic (number in the abstract), geometry (number in space), music (number in time), and astronomy (number in space and time). — Quadrivium | Wikipedia

Astronomy, the study of number in space and time, is more or less what we now think of as physics.

* Disclaimer: I realize PlushForums is in maintenance mode, and will not be adding any new features. This post is future-oriented.

I just wanted to jot out a quick note. I have noticed a trend towards very short and unthoughtful OPs and very short and unthoughtful replies. Some ideas I have to mitigate against such a thing are:

1. Forum culture. A thoughtful and contemplative culture will presumably perpetuate itself and mitigate against short, unthoughtful posting.

2. Character thresholds. Perhaps in the future it would be helpful to add character thresholds, at least to OPs. For example, OPs must be more than 500 characters.

3. Posting limits. Asynchronous forum software has led to instant messaging-style interactions, which are usually less than philosophical. Thread or post limits could be helpful, at a general level or applied in special cases (e.g. categories, threads, users, etc.). For example, maybe users start with one thread per week and one post per 15 minutes.

4. Limited editing. An unlimited ability to edit posts correlates to lower quality posts and lower quality submissions. Perhaps edits should only be allowed for a certain amount of time.

5. I am of the mind that things like <site layouts> and phone accessibility have an impact on post quality. Users accessing an instant message-style website through smartphones will produce lower quality content than users accessing a publication-style website through keyboards and screens with enough real estate for comfortable reading.

6. The ability to disincentivize users short of permanently banning them seems important. This could be done with things like temporary bans or posting limits.

Deductive logic does not produce anything not in the assumptions. — Banno

Except that without such logic one will not be able to draw inferences, and this will limit their knowledge. The question of how the conclusion relates to the premises is age-old, but the fact remains that one person can draw valid inferences and another cannot, even when they have access to the same set of evidence. The difference between the two is that one possesses the art of logic and the other does not. To understand why logic was invented in the first place is to understand this.

Today logic has been reduced by some to pure formalisms, divorced from the art of reasoning well, but historically speaking this is a very recent phenomenon.

...It is also worth noting that the study of the logic of logic is still logic. Godel's proofs provide us with conclusions and theorems that we were previously ignorant of. We can say that his theorems were already present before he proved them, but they simply would not have been known without Godel's proficiency in logic. It would be odd to claim that there is no significant difference between an entailment that is known and an entailment that is unknown.

Logic is just how to talk with some sort of consistency. — Banno

Or is it how to draw new conclusions from what is currently known?

in your opinion do you think physics describes logic? — Shawn

No.

And we may want to work towards OPs that are more than a single sentence long.

It's interesting how people can read a work and yet somehow avoid making contact with the author's ideas. — Tom Storm

The skill of grammar allows us to understand what others are saying, and this skill is going by the wayside. Those who read well tend to be good at understanding verbal or written communication, and therefore they will be good at understanding the linguistic parts of the world. Does someone who is skilled in grammar lack non-linguistic skills? Possibly, but not necessarily. I don't think literacy necessarily involves a neglect of the non-linguistic, but those who spend all their time in the realm of language probably do lack non-linguistic skills.

• If the Barber shaves them, then they don't shave themselves
• If they don't shave themselves, then the Barber shaves them

An absurdity arises when "they/them" includes the Barber. The commonsensical reading would say that the Barber is not included in the set "they/them."

If we include the Barber in the set and then replace they/them with "the Barber," we get:

• If the Barber shaves the Barber, then the Barber doesn't shave himself
• If the Barber doesn't shave himself, then the Barber shaves the Barber

The proposition, from Seneca and Theophrastus and through St. Jerome, being that the would-be philosopher – or theologian – must devote himself to meditation and the study of books. — tim wood

To be something is to do something, and to be a philosopher is to do philosophy. If philosophy requires the study of books, then that which prevents one from studying books prevents one from doing philosophy.

But book themselves may have a share of culpability, in that they’re static, archives of what was. — tim wood

I think that's a very one-dimensional and reductive view of books. Books are as variable as people and thoughts. Some are static, some are archival, and many are not.

I wonder if someone who thinks that books are necessarily static and archival must also hold that the posts that are written on a philosophy forum are necessarily static and archival?

Something is not according to the plan, their idea, and one is anxious about it.
It's just that the lust to have it all under control is so loud that we are faced with great anxiety. — MorningStar

It seems to me that anxiety is a generalized or disseminated form of fear, and fear is aversion to an undesirable future possibility. Like fears, some anxiety is good and some is bad. The physiological problem with anxiety is that it's not sustainable or healthy, and so to expose oneself to anxiety for prolonged periods of time is problematic.

It is impossible to definitively define what a lie is. — Treatid

It is true that a lie cannot be represented by formal logic, as it pertains to intention. Still, Augustine defined a lie 1500 years ago, "Locutio contra mentem."

The perception of a lie doesn't exist in written words - it exists in your mind. — Treatid

I would point out that a written word is not merely a set of squiggles.

However, understanding exactly why the paradox is not very paradoxical illuminates the nature of understanding and has direct implications in our pursuit of knowledge. — Treatid

I'm not convinced that it does.

Godel's incompleteness theorems use the same basic structure as The Liar's paradox. As such, it is worth understanding the principles of contradiction/paradox. — Treatid

I think it is worth understanding the concepts of contradiction and paradox, but I don't think the "Liar's paradox" is either one.

Some have argued that, <Godel's Incompleteness theorems are important, therefore the "Liar's paradox" is important>. I am not convinced of this either, and I'm not sure what "basic structure" they are both supposed to conform to. Granted, I have only formally worked through Godel's Completeness theorem.

Edit: Why do I think that the "Liar's paradox" is silly? Primarily because it is not a paradox, and it is silly to call a non-paradox a paradox. In particular I have run into individuals on TPF who think the "Liar's paradox" is so impressive that it justifies them in rejecting the principle of non-contradiction. Apparently such people call themselves "dialetheists." This is what I see as silly, and I don't think it has much to do with Godel. Studying someone else's mistake can always lead to insight, but I don't see this mistake as particularly helpful or important.

Trying to overcome the principle of non-contradiction with the "Liar's paradox" is a bit like throwing a broken toothpick at the Bull of Wall Street and expecting it to fall over. :grin:

To us, when he says "i always lie", we must understand the language "game" involved. Either he HAS always lied and he is owning up to it or he is lying that he always lies, wherein he must have at least once spoken the truth.. The latter seems to be where the trouble is — Gregory

Right, but is it possible that his self-same statement is both the truth and a lie? I say that it is not possible.

Someone may be telling the truth or lying, and this is not a paradox. The paradox requires something more. If I am right then it requires that there be no speaker at all, even implicit or hypothetical.

The paradox depends on the idea that there is a sentence with two different senses, and both senses are true at the same time. What the proponent of the "Liar's paradox" fails to understand is that the two senses they attribute to the same sentence are mutually exclusive, and it is impossible for a speaker to intend or mean them both. If someone is lying then they are not telling the truth. If someone is telling the truth then they are not lying. To say, "Wow, but what if he is lying and telling the truth at the same time!?," is to fall into incoherence while pretending to be sophisticated.

I answer sincere and coherent questions as best I can. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Then why do I have 13 new replies from you today, 11 of which are in a single thread? You're a spammer and I don't have time for this stupid shit. Get someone else to teach you how a reductio works. Maybe they can also teach you how to interact without spamming. Consider it a rule of life that when you spam people they ignore you. Adios!

That's not "e.g." since it is not what you said - it is clearly weaker. — TonesInDeepFreeze

It seems that you have no clear idea what I am supposed to have said:

In the other thread, I think about three times, you claimed [...], or [...], or that [...]. Something to that effect. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Which is wonderful: you run around accusing people of lying and you have no idea what they are even supposed to have said. :roll:

That is a stupid analogy. — TonesInDeepFreeze

It's not.

If you could say what more there is to science than honest bookkeeping then I'd be happy — Moliere

Does bookkeeping involve wonder and investigation? I'm not sure science is bookkeeping at all. It seems more basically to be an investigation of the unknown in nature.

I believe scientists are very much still in that pursuit. — Moliere

Some are, but Shapin's article is very good at illustrating why they are becoming so rare.

Surely what Fauci said and did is not the same as what scientists do? — Moliere

It is what scientists increasingly do. There are many causes, but they combine to result in something like what Ioannidis argued in his famous paper, “Why Most Published Research Findings are False.”

Which is to say: Some scientists say outright lies to use the mantle of science for their cause, but in the long run scientists will criticize them and point out the truth because that's what we do: be annoying nerds about technical truths. lol — Moliere

Shapin's article is in large part addressing the idea that science will win in the long run. I should reread it, even though it is a bit long. He gets at the curious truth that speculative sciences are paradoxical insofar as their success leads to their failure.

But from the perspective of someone like John Henry Newman in his Idea of a University, science and the liberal arts have been degrading for a long time now. Today science is associated with power more than truth, and this has been a long time coming.

Let me jump in somewhere: if a liar says he is lying, the foundation is shaky enough to allow either that he is telling the truth or that is he not (telling the truth). What exactly is he lying or not lying about? That's unclear. He is the premise, the substance, that is relative in the equation, so anything he says can either be true or false and we can't know because he, a priori, is an unreliable being. From his own perspective he may have some dialectic that tells him when and where he lies, but in our eyes we can assume nothing about what he says except that he lies most of the time. — Gregory

Yes, but it seems to me that in this case we are considering the assertion, "I am a liar," or, "I always tell lies," rather than, "I am lying." To lie requires a statement about which to lie, whereas to be a liar does not (at least in the same proximate way). The OP tends to pivot on a statement that is supposed to simultaneously be a lie and a non-lie. Nevertheless...

If we know that someone is a liar then, as you say, their utterances are thrown into question. These utterances wouldn't be both true and false; they would merely be questionable.

Another basic thing to note is that knowledge of a lie or a falsehood is composite, not simple. There must be both the utterance that is false or a lie, and also the claim that it is false or a lie. Thus for such a thing to obtain there must be two things, or at least two aspects of the same thing. "This is a lie," or, "This is a falsehood," provides only one thing, not two. There can be no lie or falsehood without some claim that is apt to be lied about or to be understood as false.

- I've addressed this before.

• "You habitually do such-and-such." (e.g. "you are under the spell of material implication")
• "No I don't!"
• "I think you do."
• "I've told you I don't, so now you're lying."

This is the same conflation of falsehoods with lies that I brought up. You can have a habit without realizing it, and I can believe this to be true without lying. You may as well accuse a doctor of lying when he tells you that you have a tumor and you tell him that you do not.

Indeed, a reply to your argument should not have overlooked your qualification 'in their right mind', so when you noted that, I immediately recognized that you did qualify that way. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Okay, I appreciate that.

Again, trying to get to the point:

• If no one in their right mind would say or mean X, then X is nonsensical
• No one in their right mind would say or mean what the liar of the "Liar's paradox" is supposed to say
• Therefore, the utterances attached to the "Liar's paradox" are nonsensical

(I am understating this given that a contradiction is more than merely nonsensical in the way of these other statements.)

Now, if you would only recognize that you were wrong to continue to claim I took a position, when I had posted at least a few times that I take the opposite of that position, and hopefully to desist from misrepresenting me that way. — TonesInDeepFreeze

What position is that?

However, I grant that would be qualified by your earlier "in their right mind". — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes, good.

My initial reply is that whether in right mind or not, it can be said. — TonesInDeepFreeze

You were replying to my argument about speakers, and to disregard "whether in right mind or not" is to misrepresent my argument. It does little to help your case to note that someone who is not in their right mind might agree with you, and might say something that someone who is sane would not say.

Of course "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" can be spoken.

One could go out tomorrow with a bullhorn on the Spanish Steps to say a hundred times

"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously! Do you hear me people, colourless green ideas sleep furiously!" — TonesInDeepFreeze

Still playing dumb, then. I've yet to find anyone online who intentionally misrepresents their interlocutor as often as you.

The objection to such a consideration is always something like, "No one in their right mind would ever speak such a thing." To consider an utterance that has no possible speaker is to consider a nonsensical utterance. — Leontiskos

- And I of course replied to your reply. :roll:

Again:

1. Phil is a fool.
2. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

What is the difference between (1) and (2)? The relevant difference is simply that (1) has a possible (implicit or hypothetical) speaker whereas (2) does not. To merely assert that (1) has no hypothetical speaker is to ignore this difference between (1) and (2). The things that the OP is considering are like (2), not (1), ergo, "There is no possible speaker in such cases, and hence the "sentences" are nonsensical." — Leontiskos

I did not assert the sentence "Phil is a fool". There is no implied actual speaker of the sentence. And there is no implied hypothetical speaker of the sentence. Merely, I mentioned the sentence for consideration. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I already addressed this in some detail:

Sure you do. When someone considers the claim, "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously," you will inform them that the statement they are considering is nonsensical. We could say that to consider a possible utterance is to speak it secundum quid, and what is not able to be spoken is not able to be considered. The objection to such a consideration is always something like, "No one in their right mind would ever speak such a thing." To consider an utterance that has no possible speaker is to consider a nonsensical utterance.

Bringing this back, then, to the OP, we should ask whether the "sentences" in question—along with their attributed meaning—have any possible speaker. For example, is it possible for someone to speak, "I am lying," while simultaneously meaning that they are lying and that they are not-lying? No, it is not. There is no possible speaker in such cases, and hence the "sentences" are nonsensical (even in the additional cases where they are thought to have an extrinsic object). — Leontiskos

1. Phil is a fool.
2. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

What is the difference between (1) and (2)? The relevant difference is simply that (1) has a possible (implicit or hypothetical) speaker whereas (2) does not. To merely assert that (1) has no hypothetical speaker is to ignore this difference between (1) and (2). The things that the OP is considering are like (2), not (1), ergo, "There is no possible speaker in such cases, and hence the "sentences" are nonsensical."

What are you, The Philosophy Forum interrogation officer? — TonesInDeepFreeze

No, I'm just a guy wondering why I forgot to put you back on my ignore list when I reinstalled my browser. This has now been remedied.

I look forward to reading the posts of those who are interested in engaging the OP:

The proponent of the "Liar's paradox" wants to say that something like, "This sentence is false,"* represents something that is simultaneously true and false in the way that constitutes a formal contradiction. I have no idea what they purport to mean by this. I think they are confused. I challenge them to give a coherent explanation for their thesis.

* Or that, "I am lying," represents an utterance that is simultaneously a lie and a non-lie. — Leontiskos

- Yes, I understand what you were saying. It is a form of argumentum ad populum.

Aristotle thought that what is 'good' is a thing fulfilling its end (i.e., purpose: final cause); and, so, a 'good' human is a human which is properly fulfilling their Telos. It seems like Aristotle thinks that the nature of the human species is such that we should care about each other and seek to be just, but what about a devil species? Since Aristotle is attaching the 'goodness' or 'badness' of a thing relative to its nature, wouldn't it follow that a rational species, S, which had a nature completely anti-thetical to justice and altruism be a 'good' S IFF it was unjust and egoistic?

I am having a hard time fathoming how Aristotle is avoiding this glaring issue, even after reading his Eudemian and Nichomachean Ethics. Does anyone understand how Aristotle avoids or deals with this issue? Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?

At first I thought maybe tying the nature of rationality, in the case of a rational species, would dictate one should be just (to fulfill that nature); but I am failing at coming up with a good argument for that. — Bob Ross

I see three basic answers, and at least the first two have already been given:

1. Aristotle was writing about humans. If he had known of a devil species, perhaps he would have written about it. (Cf. @Fooloso4)

2. Humans are social animals, and require cooperation and social virtue for their flourishing. (Cf. @Janus)

3. Departing a bit from Aristotelianism per se, presumably any rational species would be interested in optimizing flourishing via cooperation, and this would involve moral/social virtues.

What are your thoughts? — Igitur

That seems reasonable and uncontroversial.

Long-lived religious traditions are perhaps the most pronounced form of collective wisdom available to humans. I would not recommend ignoring such a potential storehouse of wisdom, and I think you are eminently reasonable in your desire to investigate further.

Again, you are prosecuting the fact that I don't presume to have a full explanation of, and resolute position on, the liar paradox. — TonesInDeepFreeze

You have made it abundantly clear that you will continue to refuse to answer the question of the OP. :ok:

Modern affairs and lived experience are telling me that people are broadly still sheep that need herding. — Lionino

Yes. Given how quickly the Aufklärer recognized this, it surprises me how few see it today.

- So still nothing contentful, about the topic of the thread? Still just talking about yourself? Do you often get stuck in front of mirrors?