You said they were talking about galaxies moving farther apart. Now it's equations? Nevertheless, neither talk about equations nor the relation between galaxies is talk about the nature of the universe, whether it is finite or infinite. It's not physics but philosoohy.

The squiggles and lines are constituitive for written words, but insufficient for being words. What written, spoken, or otherwise signed words have in common, and which makes them into words, is their causal history, not their design.

i'm referring to is the existence/inexistence of any sort of objective doctrine — Albert Keirkenhaur

Many objective doctrines are assumed in our talk. For example, that we exist, talk, occupy space, share a network of things to talk about that have properties, behave according to laws of nature and so on. These are objective in the sense that anyone can check their truths: e.g. that we exist, talk, occupy space, share things to talk about etc..

So what makes you think that the existence of objective doctrines would be an issue even?

Should Mother Teresa have been tortured for being a sadistic religious fanatic? Allegedly she talked those who suffer into thinking that suffering is something positive.

The physicist is then not talking about the universe but galaxies in it. The distance between galaxies may expand or shrink regardless of whether the universe is finite or infinite. But an expanding (or shrinking) universe can only be finite, for physicists and lay people alike.

An expanding universe is finite, or else it would not be expanding.

The lack of good reasons won't stop some people and corporations from opposing fair use. Some lawyers specialize in protecting old monopolies by suing kids for sharing records or films with eachother, and there is illegitimate monitoring of use and sabotage of user's equipment such as in the Sony-scandal. Opposition to fair use is also present in the legally binding agreements that one is typically required to accept in order to be able to use software, online services etc.. These typically prohibit "unauthorized use", and their source code is typically closed, which makes it impossible to legitimately change, repair, or improve their functionality. Granted that there exists non-constructive or destructive forms of hacking, and businesses which thrive on the threat, but all hacking is not destructive.

It sounds reasonable to me. I take 'inherent meaning' to suggest some sort of 'global meaning'. If there is no global meaning there can still be local meaning, which is just what we mean by 'meaning'. There are plenty of other things that work locally but not globally. — andrewk

I take 'inherent meaning' to suggest some sort of presence of meaning, for example, in the use of words. To use words for rejecting the presence of meaning seems just stupid or fake (as in posturing or trolling by making seemingly hopeless, paradoxical, or perplexing claims).

There is a sense of 'hacking' which refers to the activity of accessing relevant mechanisms and source code in technical devices so that the user can fully control them or improve them even instead of having the devices control the user by being defect by design or sabotaging fair use.

Accepting that there is no inherent meaning. . . — Albert Keirkenhaur

Accepting that "..there is no inherent meaning..." with words assumed to mean something seems kind of stupid or fake.

Some art likes to challenge our habits of interpreting the meanings of things, for when something appears ambiguous, obscure, or meaningless we will unsurprisingly assign it more or less arbitrary meanings.

But things do not need to be assigned meanings to have meanings. Meanings are found as we interact with things, and what we assign them are names or descriptions which refer to the meanings we found.

The use of an unconventional or more inexact way of expressing a statement does not make its truth into a different kind of truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salva_veritate

Values relate to people's beliefs. For example, the belief that being charitable is more desirable than being greedy. A belief is personal, hence others can believe the converse: that being greedy is more desirable.

What can be socially constructed, however, is environmental pressure which pushes more persons to comply to a belief which might increase their social fitness, evade persecution and so on.

Did anyone bring up insufficient blood flow to the heart muscle? It'll break your heart.

There was an interesting article about the history of creativity a couple of years ago in The New Yorker. Here's a quote from it:

In the ancient world, good ideas were thought to come from the gods, or, at any rate, from outside of the self. During the Enlightenment, rationality was the guiding principle, and philosophers sought out procedures for thinking, such as the scientific method, that might result in new knowledge. People back then talked about “imagination,” but their idea of it was less exalted than ours. They saw imagination as a kind of mental scratch pad: a system for calling facts and images to the mind’s eye and for comparing and making connections between them. They didn’t think of the imagination as “creative.” In fact, they saw it as a poor substitute for reality; Hobbes called it “decayed sense.”

It was Romanticism, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which took the imagination and elevated it, giving us the “creative imagination.” — Joshua Rothman

So, it seems that throughout the modern era "being creative" basically meant being imaginative, and a person could thus use his/her imagination to be considered creative regardless of whether it resulted in the production of stuff, such as books, pictures, or other objects.

Nowadays a person is "creative" when s/he produces stuff (e.g. decorates, knits, draws, paints, photographs, writes etc.), or has a "creative job" (e.g. design, communication, entertainment, producing fine arts and so on).

So, perhaps the meaning of creativity has simply been redefined again? Furthermore, it seems to be referred to as a means for the production of stuff, or the accumulation of certain capacities, and as such it seems unsurprising to me that it could be automated.

But it ain't the romantic/modern version of creativity.

Does what you read, and your interest in philosophy in general carry over to your "everyday life"? — anonymous66

Consider what Bertrand Russell says on the nature of thought:

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.

My everyday life consists of comfortable habits, relations to people and established institutions etc.. So perhaps I should not carry over my interest in philosophy to my everyday life....

"They only show a small part, and call that "the world."" Link

The alleged benefits of listening to Mozart, for instance, is a popular belief. But the music of Mozart is often or always considered good; we might as well include a good night's sleep, or a good tour in the mountains, for anything good tends to have beneficial effects. Children who often experience good tours in the mountains probably develop different brains too.

The claim that music, or certain structures in music, has beneficial effects on the mind seems self-fulfilling if it is assumed that the music is good (and simply false when the music is bad).

Music interacts with the body and causes an experience in the mind. The experience connects the music with the mind. Anything becomes connected with the mind by experience, and any experience may shape the mind.

Hi, what's an example of an interconnection between a musical structure and psychological development?

To believe that everyone in heaven is white undermines the relevance of skin-colour (including white); for then we're basically all the same. It seem fairly compatible with being against racism.

When we achieve an elevation in understanding, there is great satisfaction, no? The same could be said about achieving mastery in the arts, or even athletic pursuits. . . . — John

Right. A cliff-diver who learns a new dive may find the height and the risks involved unpleasant, but overcoming the fear and mastering the dive very pleasant. These experiences tend to dwindle, however, as the dive becomes a habit. But then there is typically a new, more difficult dive, to learn. :)

But the ability to overcome unpleasant experiences becomes controversial in cases such as medical experiments on animals, or uses of violence or torture on humans. Humans have many ways to psychologically rationalize the most horrific acts, to make them seem tolerable, or admirable, which in turn may evoke pleasure even. :(

The market is the exchange of goods and services for money, which includes the process of establishing their prices.

But often in comments and interviews on economy on the news, for instance, 'the market' seems comparable to a medieval use of 'God'. Instead of priests telling us about 'God's will' there are economists or the like telling us what 'the market' demands, or else we will perish. The market is referred to as if it would be an omnipresent creature with its own inscrutable logic.

Interesting stuff, but I don't get how pleasure and pain could be attitudes towards experiences. How could one possibly identify an experience at all, as an experience, if the pain or pleasure is not the experience but an attitude towards it?

For example, a painful pinch in my arm may evoke conscious awareness of the fact that my body behaves as it should, which in turn may evoke pleasure. The pinch being the cause of the pain, awareness of a working body being the cause of the pleasure.

Promises of the internet:
1) liberating technology provide decentralized networks, community-developed software and services.
2) cosmopolitanism, education accessible for all, fair competition based on merit and not heritage.
3) the possibility to publish and discuss topics incognito, or to critique power without risking punishment.
4) an alternative or parallel "world" open for exploration, inspiring creativity in a variety of fields.

Disappointments of the internet:
1) Private corporations provide centralized social networks, and exploit users' privacy as a product.
2) Marketing and bigotry thrive on easy and fast online distribution more than anything with content.
3) Unmoderated fora enable bullies to get away with persecution.
4) A world replete with creative works, freely available by file-sharing, might demotivate creativity.

Most sea urchins have no brains, nor eyes, yet they behave as if they would be somehow aware of themselves, their environment, and of ways to hide from predators. The entire body seems to function as a "compound eye".

The physical nature of the material or medium is nowadays typically a domain for structural engineers, not architects. In a lot of contemporary architecture imagery (e.g. printed textures, patterns, pictures) seems to have a lot more significance than the nature of the material or medium.