nobody really cares on describing this rift further. — Shawn

Wrong, there is actually a lot written on this subject. Good starting points: Lee Braver - "A thing of this world" and Simon Critchley - "very short intro to continental philosophy".

Does it have, say, "metadata," a data structure attached to it that says, "Go due east at 5mph?" You can see that this is problematic. — fishfry

Isn't this just confusing a snapshot of a thing with the thing itself? The movement is not divided into discrete moments until we try to model it using mathematics. Yet mathematics is distinct from the event, as it is merely a way to model the event (albeit, an extremely useful and accurate enough model). We necessarily measure momentum in retrospect, so when we analyse a things momentum at a particular instant it is already a passed instant. However, just because we apply delineation through our act of retrograde analysis, and create a mathematical notion of temporality, that doesn't mean that the thing did not have a momentum at a particular instant. It's only a question of accuracy.

Or pehaps one day scientists will discover some kind of 'instance particles'. Now that would be interesting.

Edit - I guess I lean towards the (Bergsonian) idea of an essential indivisibilty of time/movement.

His comment about French thinkers was probably aimed at Foucault. — Joshs

Lacan iirc. Who, of all French thinkers, might possibly deserve the title of obscurantist.

Your Catholic mother should've been more worried about the content of the book than the cover. Lest ye be corrupted.

Is this thread intended to find something akin to the p vs np problem (related to complexity in computing)?

https://encyclopediaofmath.org/wiki/Complexity_theory

I don't think that's quite right. A "belief" is a thing, the word used in this way is a noun. That thing is a memory which has been subjected to the process of believing. Believing is an activity and it is produced by the attitude of confidence. The belief is the result of this activity. So the belief is the memory which has been subjected to that process, of believing. It is not the attitude of confidence, nor is it the process (believing) which is produced by that attitude, it is the result of that process. — Metaphysician Undercover

What about people who hold irrational beliefs - say paranoid psychotic delusions - that couldn't possibly derive from some type of memory process (because such belief content lies outside of previous experience)?

Is this the fiction section of the forum?

Dunno, never tried it.

I had no idea that orange trees are so easy to grow

yes I come back to this from time to time. In my (subjective) opinion it is one of the greatest works of fiction.

Homework?

The last man by Mary Shelley

Consider how worse it would be without that section. At least that section serves the purpose of containing the religious garbage in one place.

It could be a scientific certification that ontologically reality is undetermined. — Raul

The natural sciences would have to have reached omniscience to ascertain that assertion. Until then we can assume that any undetermined reality is merely a result of the state of being confined to finitude.

What question isn't ridiculous? The nature of thinking in and of itself is pretty absurd in that reality stares us right in the face yet we refuse to accept it, instead substituting our own version so as to satisfy previous misconceptions. — synthesis

Yeah if you ever find a cure for philosophy please let me know.

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. — Deleuze and Guattari, APT

I still think you have failed to see the distinction between premises themselves and their relations.

Can you explain what you mean by "favoring relation"?

"you can fail to follow a law of logic" is also nonsense statement. Can you reword it?

It seems to me that your confusion is a result of conflating premises with the logical relation between premises. But its hard to make sense of your post.

Sigh. Logic as the analysis of the structure of arguments is centered around the notion of logical entailment. Logical entailment is the valid movement from premise to premise. .. to conclusion. Premises are propositions. They have truth value. I really don't feel like explaining basic propositional calculus.

No, they're instructions.
Can you fail to follow a law of logic? Yes, of course one can - this is what happens when one reasons fallaciously — Bartricks

You have made it clear that you have not understood the subject and that you are unwilling to listen to others. I'll leave you to it.

Here's an instruction: if they have any butter, but me a pad of butter. That's an instruction and you can follow it. There's no necessity invoked. I am just telling you to do something under certain conditions.

What if I said "if they have any butter, you must buy me some"? Well, that 'must' doesn't indicate the presence of necessity, but rather just serves to emphasize how much I want you to buy me butter.

That's how things are with logic. We are indeed told that if the premises of a valid argument are true, then we 'must' believe the conclusion is true. But this does not indicate that necessity exists. — Bartricks

Logic deals with propositions. "buy me some butter", isn't a proposition. It's an imperative statement. Perhaps you should read up on what a proposition is, but for simplicity, it can be considered as the bearer of a truth/falsity value.

Is OLP still alive and kicking? I have read that Searle is the last proponent of OLP. I admittedly don't know much about OLP or ILP

Well sure, you can do that if you don't care about maintaining logical validity.

Take this argument:

1. if P, then Q
2. P
3. therefore Q — Bartricks

1. If Bob is a bachelor, then he is unmarried
2. Bob is a bachelor
3. Therefore: Bob is unmarried

The conclusion necessarily follows. You can't have true premises and a false conclusion.

i appreciate the fact that someone who knows how to use a computer would go the route of calling it magic. In my opinion all matter and energy is haunted. Thank you Sir! — turkeyMan

It is almost always the case that a webdeveloper has zero understanding of the logic of a computer at the hardware level. Moving from hardware to software is a path of many different layers of abstraction and as a result the lower levels are 'hidden' from the higher levels. In the industry this is even termed as magic.

But it's not really magic of course. It's a well-established domain, computer science.

read back through the posts and you will see that I am the one who said it was overkill.

perhaps you meant to highlight

In any case, you can cover most of the modern Western Canon (Descartes onwards) with English, French and German. Bonne courage.

It takes years to learn a language to the level needed to read philosophical texts. At this rate the poor guy will never get started.

Link a paper you have authored

Pretty sure it wasn't merely a quote and that Rafaella attempted to pass off others work as his own.

Is this sociological or addressed to me? — Brett

Asking this question means that you're implicitly aware of the difference between the social and the individual - yet you are stuck on the question of the usefulness of philosophy, precisely because it might not reveal a universal morality.

No I hadn't read the Persson quote.

On the surface that seems like a wonderful thing. But what is the benefit? If we can’t use philosophy to hone in on something, slowly reducing it to the kernel of truth, then as I said it creates more doubt than truth, as if there’s some wonder to an eternity of questions. That’s interesting for those who like to bend their minds around things and wrestle with meanings, but what does it do for the man in the street who, having been told God is dead, then asks are morals real? — Brett

What it does for the man on the street is provide authenticity; it provides him a way of making sense of his existence from his own explorations, not from a tradition or preconceived idea that was merely handed to him. Anyway, what is behind this will to absolute epistemological certainty? Is it anxiety? A reluctance to accept that we are Finite beings? A desire to omniscience?

It throws up more questions than answers and creates doubt about all possibilities. — Brett

Yes and this is one of the great qualities of philosophical enquiry! You commence a path that appears to be singular and linear (due to ignorance and presuppositions) and continue along as the path transforms into an increasingly rhizomatic, multiplicity of directions. Slightly lost, you see that you know less than when you started but there is an heightened sense of awe and wonder. Little by little ignorance is chipped away in the realisation that there are no easy answers, no closed circles. Philosophy proliferates difference. Enjoy the journey.

Is philosophy good? Depends what good is. Depends what philosophy is. The answers are, of course, diverse.

There is this excellent history of philosophy lecture series by Arthur Holmes

Glad I am not the only one who feels this way. We might as well argue how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

To say that it can't be completely eliminated would imply that we know what ambiguity being completely removed looks like to say that it hasn't been completely removed. — Harry Hindu

The fact that you can even play these language games displays the inherant ambiguity

Hope I'm getting the quoting and mentioning right — Rae

One quick way: When you highlight text a quote button will appear.

Started on The picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. I'm sure some of you have read it? — Rae

Yes. A couple of times. I wish Wilde had written more books!

I'm reading Powers of Time: Versions of Bergson by David Lapoujade

Programming is about automating the solution to a problem. — Harry Hindu

And there are many different ways to solve a problem in programming depending on the programmer, paradigm or programming language. Object orientated is only one paradigm. Functional programming, for example, will have a very different approach - function composition rather than classes and property inheritance. Even the way a problem is framed is arbitrary.

What I find strange is the assertion that ambiguities can't be eliminated which seems to imply no ambiguity of me being wrong in claiming that they can, and should be for proper thinking. — Harry Hindu

Is it easier to comprehend if I say that ambiguity cannot be completely eliminated? The best we can do is a good enough approximation. Good enough to work with, we can have a discussion and understand each other to a certain extant, not completely but enough. This is the problem with language as transmission of thought: lack. Logic doesn't solve this because it necessarily omits what it considers to be the excess of thought, in an attempt to remove ambiguity.

I dispute the notion that 'proper thinking' and philosophy should aim towards logical reduction.