So I don't understand which kind of causal power I have over the subconscious mind. Do you mind elaborating? — MoK

I think I explained this already. The conscious part of your mind must have the ability to cause the subconscious part to present things to it in a sensible, rational way, or else the subconscious would be doing it in a random way like when we dream. So it is the ability to think rationally, and in a more general sense the ability to stay awake, which is the conscious mind exercising causal power over the subconscious.

For instance, you say that what is learned is registered in the subconscious. Let's call this a memory, and we'll say that the subconscious has a whole lot of memories. When the conscious mind thinks in a rational way, it needs to recall memories from the subconscious which it uses in that activity. Therefore it must have causal power over the subconscious, to cause the subconscious to present these memories to it in a way which makes sense. If the conscious did not have causal power over the subconscious, the subconscious would be presenting things in a random way, like in a dream.

We cannot remember everything that we experienced in the past since that information is huge. When it comes to memorizing the subconscious mind is very selective and just memorizes things that are necessary for the future. Anyhow, regarding remembering past life, I am arguing that this memory should be registered in another substance since people who report such memories do not have the same body. — MoK

I consider "memorizing" to be an activity of the conscious mind, not the subconscious. It is a repetitive practise of recollection.

Not really true. If you take psychedelics you will be aware of the hallucinations being fake until a point you start to believe in it. It's similar to what happens when we dream. — Christoffer

I've taken a lot of psychedelics, and I don't think it's at all similar to dreaming.

The closest we are to define what dreams are is that the mind, in the wake state, operates on a prediction process in which every perception we have of reality around us is a construct in our brain based on it predicting the next instance of time. Through out senses our brain "ground" our experience as a form of anchor by constantly verifying our predictions with reality around us. — Christoffer

I can agree that this prediction process, is an important aspect of consciousness, but I do not really agree with the verification aspect you are suggesting.

What happens when we dream or take psychedelics? It's basically cutting off or disrupting the sensory ability to verify predictions. Psychedelic visual hallucinations disturbs the verification process so much that the prediction process cannot get accurate verification, and so its scrambled. — Christoffer

I think you have this reversed, the predictions require sense perception as the basis of the prediction, what the prediction is derived from. To know what comes next requires sensing what just happened. Therefore, when sense perception is not there, in the dream, predictions simply cannot be made. This implies that what is produced in the dream state is something other than predictions.

It basically makes your brain trying to predict something based on the new conditions its in, and the new conditions are scrambled. This is why we soon start to believe in them, because its not our brain generating it directly, its that our verification of them tells our brain that yes, this is true. — Christoffer

In a dream, all of the so-called "conditions" are created by the dreaming mind. Therefore it is the brain generating the conditions directly, and the person dreaming believes them regardless of how scrambled they are. Verification is irrelevant, unless perhaps the person is lucid dreaming and has purposedly forced the desire for verification to become part of the dream.

So, when we sleep, the main thing that happens is that the brain shuts off the stream of sensory input that is used to verify what the brain is predicting. — Christoffer

You are neglecting the fact that a stream of sensory data is required to produce a prediction in the first place. And this is not available to the dreamer. Therefore the dream does not consist of predictions.

So the logical reason for why we dream and why we believe the dream we have when we experience it, is because we don't have a verification process during this phase. — Christoffer

As explained above, dreams are not predictions, and verification is irrelevant. So I think the rest of your post is derived from false premises.

I don't think that the conscious mind has such a causal power. I experience hallucinations all the time. I see things and hear things that other people cannot see or hear. — MoK

Have you ever considered that perhaps your mind might be somewhat lacking in this causal power which other people have with their minds, and this is why they say that you have schizophrenia?

People say that I have schizophrenia but they cannot explain the phenomenon at all. — MoK

Isn't what I said, 'a deficiency in that causal power', actually an explanation of the phenomenon? You do not accept that explanation, for whatever reason, but that doesn't negate it as an explanation. It just means that you do not believe it as an explanation.

If that is true then the memory should be registered in a substance that is not physical because we are aware of the shortage of physical memory and problems related to memory loss due to brain damage. — MoK

If I understand correctly, a specific memory consists of a specific pattern of neural activity. To remember something exactly as it was experienced, requires an exact recreation of that specific neural activity. Theoretically, therefore, we could remember everything experienced, by reproducing the necessary neural activity.

Therefore, such a memory must be registered in another substance other than physical. Perhaps soul! Who knows? — MoK

The issue of memory then, is not a matter of substance, but a matter of repeating neuronal activity. But this produces the further question of what it is that is performing this repetition, on demand, as remembering. Is it the soul which does this?

They don't care because they don't understand anything. That's how he got there in the first place. The majority of people who got him into office are uneducated and totally unaware of anything outside their small community bubble they live in. — Christoffer

This is the problem of democracy which Plato described in The Republic, and the reason why he designated democracy as the worst, or most corrupt form of government, to be surpassed in corruption only by tyranny which doesn't even qualify as a form of government. The average citizen is not inclined to educate oneself, concerning what constitutes good leadership, and ends up voting for whoever promises to please them.

In theory, democracy looks like the greatest form of government. In practise though, politics is an extremely difficult, and time consuming field of study. If a person doesn't engage oneself in this study it is likely that one will not make a good choice in the vote. To avoid the guilt of whimsy, the voter succumbs to populism or "mob rule".

If I understand correctly, what you are saying is that lucid dreaming doesn't really solve the issue of inconsistency between dreaming and awake realities, but it removes the "distinct" aspect by blurring the boundary. When the boundary is blurred by lucidity, we can't really say whether the lucid dreamer is partly awake, or there is an awake person who is dreaming. Therefore lucid dreaming doesn't resolve the absurd self-deception I referred to in the op, it just increases the absurdity by allowing the conscious mind to take part in the self-deception.

So when says "I remember testing the state by knocking on a table while strolling by", this "test" is an act which confirms that the conscious mind has allowed itself to partake of the self-deceptive dream state. Instead of the conscious mind intentionally staying out of the deceptive dream state, because it cannot make any sense of what is going on, so it just stays out and lets the inconsistency and deception proceed in its own way, the conscious mind willfully allows itself to be drawn into the self-deception, ignoring the deceptive nature, and the absurdities involved.

The conscious mind just experiences a simulation created by the subconscious mind. It takes the experience granted to be real in the dream since it cannot analyze whether the dream represents something real or not. We can however have lucid dreams in which we are aware that what we experiencing is a dream. We can even have control over our actions in lucid dreams. I have lucid dreams from time to time. — MoK

From considering the evidence, I don't think it's possible for this to be a one way causation, of the subconscious causing, or granting, what is experienced by the conscious. As demonstrated by the randomness of dreams, the subconscious could present the conscious with almost any possible experience. However, the consciousness normally rejects the inconsistent absurd presentations, allowing them only in times of sleep. This means that in times of being awake, the conscious mind must be actively suppressing the subconscious, and exercising causal control over it, to ensure that it provides only presentations which make sense to it.

This cannot be merely a filtering of the subconscious presentations, the conscious part must be actively controlling the way that the subconscious formulates its presentations, to ensure that whatever is "granted" from the subconscious is coherent and consistent with the way that the conscious understands things. Otherwise the subconscious would be continually slipping into incoherent, and inconsistent presentations, like it does in dreaming. So this effort which the conscious part of the mind must make, in order to exercise control over what the subconscious is presenting it with, manifests as the effort of staying awake when a person gets sleepy. In general, this would be the essence of tiredness, weakening of the capacity to exercise that control.

The conscious mind has very limited memory. This memory is also temporary. Anything that the conscious mind experiences therefore must be registered in the subconscious mind to recall it later. So, either the subconscious mind playing a game with the conscious mind, or the dream is a supernatural phenomenon in which we, the conscious and subconscious minds, are immersed within. — MoK

I've heard speculations, that actually everything anyone ever experiences is put into one's memory. And, all the problems we have with memory are due to our ability to retrieve what is there in the memory. Have you ever heard of "Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory" or hyperthymesia?

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

he perceptual functions of brain might be dormant during sleep.

But some brain functions such as imagination could still be active, — Corvus

Aren't the perceptual functions and imaginative functions pretty much the same though?

It's because your ability to track your own beliefs, and to detect inconsistencies between them, is greatly diminished when you are asleep and dreaming. — Pierre-Normand

Are you saying that when a person is asleep one cannot think rationally yet they are still thinking? I don't know if that type of brain activity, dreaming, can qualify as thinking. But then what is it?

Also, the set of the beliefs (or apparent perceptual experiences) that you acquire when dreaming, many of which are ephemeral and transient, aren't just inconsistent with the stable beliefs that you hold and are able to express or entertain when awake. They are internally inconsistent as well. So, if you would identify selves, or persons, with owners of sets of mutually consistent beliefs, then there would be either no person when you sleep, or as many transient persons as there are new inconsistent beliefs that occur unnoticed. — Pierre-Normand

OK, so then a "self" has no inherent consistency within one's mind, always drifting off into sleep where things get really confused.

What about the self-deception though? Why do things appear to be consistent and believable to the self in the dream state, when they are so far out of synch with what would be necessary for being consistent to the rational awake self? How can it do this to itself, to disconnect itself from all those rational capacities, and leave itself completely vulnerable to be so easily and completely deceived?

In the sort of lucid dream I described, one realizes exactly what is happening. I remember testing the state by knocking on a table while strolling by, feeling the fibers of the carpet beneath my feet. — jgill

But is this really a dream though? It doesn't sound like you were even asleep, if you noticed yourself strolling by a table, and you could even knock on the table to confirm that you were not asleep.

I have a knack for imagining situations through models but have a poor memory of my chronology. I know people who can recall small details of their early life and the order in which events occurred. For me, it is all a shuffled deck of flash cards with few names attached. — Paine

I guess I am sort of the opposite to you then. From a young age I would put effort into putting my memories into chronological order. It's not something that really comes naturally, reflecting on what happened and putting the memories in order, more like a skill to be developed. I believe the ambition to do that was derived from the desire to explain it to someone else. There's a similarity here, to waking up after a dream, and trying to remember what happened in the dream, to explain it to yourself. The big difference is that the order of events in the dream doesn't need to make any sense, whereas in establishing chronological order to past memories, making sense out of it all, facilitates putting them in order.

Rilke uses the gap to uncover what escapes perception without guidance: — Paine

I would assume that there is two sides to this, two directions to be looking across the gap. If perception must be guided by some kind of rationality, the rationality is also guided by perception. So for instance, when I try to order my past memories, perception gives me guidance by telling me what makes sense. However, the strangeness of my dreams indicates that perception itself must be guided in order for it to make sense.

Maybe this type of guidance is what @jgill is getting at with lucid dreaming.

My view is that you are the same person when asleep or awake, but your mental abilities and cognitive processes are very much different. — Pierre-Normand

How can the two be the same person, when the things believed by the sleeping person are completely inconsistent with the things believed by the awake person.

Imagine that the nucleus of the dream is some emotion, which surrounds itself with an event to explain the emotion. — frank

I find that my dreams start out as essentially emotionless, then certain emotions are stirred. So the emotion is caused by the event, which is the dream, not vise versa. When I was young I'd have a recurring dream of falling. The fear intensified until the emotion was so intense that it would wake me up. The dreams would start emotionless, then the emotion intensified to the point of being so intense that it actually woke me.

The subconscious mind creates what the conscious mind perceives whether what is perceived by the conscious mind is a dream or a simulation of reality. — MoK

This is on the right track of where the op is pointing. But the question is, how can the subconscious so thoroughly deceive the conscious, so that the conscious doesn't even know that it's not awake when the subconscious is producing dreams. Maybe there is no conscious mind when a person is dreaming, maybe it's all subconscious, and that's why the conscious doesn't know that it's just a dream, because the consciousness is completely absent. But then where is the consciousness at this time, and how can we account for the discontinuity?

Yes. But, in my personal philosophical thesis, Enformationism, Energy is a property/qualia of generic Information (the power to transform, or to cause change). Again, Information (or EnFormAction as I call it) is not a material Thing, but a Process and a relationship : cause/effect. The primary property of Whitehead's Process is Causation*1. — Gnomon

I don't see how this could solve the problem. Isn't it the case that information, or "EnFormAction", is itself a property of something, a system or something like that. So it doesn't really solve the problem, it defers it. You simply replace one property (energy) with another (information). This is similar to replacing the property of motion with the property of energy. In one context we would say that the thing has motion, but in another context we'd replace "motion" with "energy", and say that the thing has energy. Likewise, you now replace "the thing has energy" with "the thing has information". But you do not solve the problem of there needing to be a thing which has the said property.

A scientific resolution of such "problems" is over my untrained head. — Gnomon

The problem is ontological, I really don't think there even could be a scientific solution to it.

But in my own amateur thesis, the commonality between Processes (energy ; causation) and Objects (matter ; substance) is generic Information (the power to enform). I won't go off-topic on that notion in this thread, but my thesis and blog go into some detail, if you're interested in such unorthodox speculations. Basically, the post-Shannon understanding of "Information" is both Noun (objects) and Verb (processes). It's both causal Energy and sensable Concrescence. — Gnomon

"Energy" is a property, it is not something independent. We can speak about energy as if it is causal but we still have to account for the thing which the energy is a property of. That's why the problem is ontological.

Even if I admit that Trump and Musk may have ulterior motives they would do some things right yes? The coverage is ridiculous. — philosch

The problem with this approach is that when things are done right, it's not newsworthy, it's just the way things are expected to be done, so there is no news there, therefore no coverage. When things are done wrongly, there is news there, and so there is coverage.

The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. This problem forces Whitehead to employ mysterious concepts like concrescence, and prehension, which generally imply a form of panpsychism.

..."beings" sub specie durationis are atoms of "becoming" sub specie aeternitatis void... — 180 Proof

This is the problem, right here, in a nutshell. It's easy for a philosopher to simply assert that what appears to us as a substantial "being", is actually a conglomeration of distinct yet somehow united, activities, processes. However, to explain how such a reality is logically possible requires consistent principles which can be taken as true premises.

The fundamental issue which makes process philosophy counterintuitive, is that we cannot properly conceptualize a process, or activity without something which is active. This is a feature of our mode of conception, it's an epistemological issue. The conception of an activity itself, is something general, but when we apply that conception to the physical world, we need something particular which it is applied to.

In application therefore, there are boundaries required, and this commonly results in the use of systems theory. Now the problem is twofold. The boundaries of the system are quite arbitrary, designed for the purpose of the the people employing the theory, so the entity represented as "the system", being the assumed particular, is not a real entity. It's simply boundaries imposed for the purpose of study, experimentation, or prediction. Secondly, the activity within the system is always represented as an activity of objects, particles or whatever, so we do not have a true process premise here. Even electromagnetic waves become photons. This leaves systems theory as substance based, and inadequate for understanding process philosophy.

Also as another poster mentioned we don't want to draw Russia any closer to China. — BitconnectCarlos

Distance from Moscow to Beijing: 5,793.80 km

Reality itself cannot be known.
...
And if it just so happens that intellectual intuition is a real faculty of the human mind, if not the brain itself, then it follows that we can know Reality Itself. — Arcane Sandwich

What kind of logic takes you to a conclusion which contradicts your premise?

How else will they pay back their loans? — NOS4A2

Step into the twentieth century NOS, there's no need to payback loans. Just do what we all do, and pay interest on it forever.

Look:

2024 spending was $6.9 Trillion; revenues: $4.9 Trillion (deficit: $2 Trillion)

Spending breakdown:

24% Health Insurance (Medicare,Medicaid, CHIP, ACA)
21% Social Security
13% Defense
13% Interest on national debt
... — Relativist

It’s called diplomacy, a skill European’s seemed to have misplaced. Look how well all the silly war-mongering and war-profiteering has worked out until now. — NOS4A2

The war will work out great for Putin and Trump if they manage to divvy Ukraine's assets and leave the locals with nothing. That, is a lack of diplomacy.

Trump has no interest in the governing of Ukraine, the welfare of the people, or anything like that. He has no interest in people in general. To him, people are either cheering for him to do whatever he pleases, or they are annoying obstacles. He eyes Ukraine merely as assets to be divided, spoils of war. So he'll send armed forces in an attempt to make casualties out of any annoying obstacles. For him, there is no such thing as "Ukraine".

Because Trump isn't dividing anything to himself. What is he dividing for himself? — ssu

Trump has proposed American ownership of some of Ukraine's rare earth mineral deposits, and wants to send American troops to stake these claims.

mv is momentum, something reasonably intuitive. — noAxioms

If you think about it, the principle of momentum is really not at all intuitive. It's based in an assumption of constant velocity, which is not at all real, due to the influence of a multitude of factors. The constant velocity assumption is provided by Newton's first law, but this is just an ideal which is not at all representative of reality, due to that fact, that there is always an influence of a multitude of factors, constantly altering a body's velocity. In reality, velocity is always changing.

So Newton's first law is stated as a principle from which we can address the multitude of factors which are always causing velocity to change, as forces. It doesn't provide a truth about anything, but it provides a principle of utility, from which we can establish a perspective on changing velocity. However, since it negates the observed reality, that velocity is constantly changing due to the influence of a multitude of factors, which is the truth, and replaces it with an ideal fiction, designed with some specific purpose in mind. it is very counterintuitive. It is a denial of intuition for the sake of purpose.

KE is half mv², which is also intuitive to some, and is the same units as the mc² thingy. But those two formulas (momentum, KE) are newtonian concepts that work only at low v. — noAxioms

Kinetic energy is not a Newtonian concept, it is derived from Leibniz' "vis viva". Newton and Leibniz were at odds as to what was the best way to express an ideal (law) representing the conservation of motion. Leibniz insisted that his vis viva (kinetic energy) provided a better (more accurate) representation than Newton's momentum. Application demonstrated Leibniz to be correct. However, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that energy is never really conserved, and such principles are just fictional ideals anyway.

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

Biden was your successor and predecessor, but he planted the US flag in downtown Kyiv and declared on behalf of the United States that the US will be with Ukraine as long as it takes until Ukraine secures it's independence.

Now we might need to take another look at Ukraine's independence. Trump and Putin are in the midst of dividing it between themselves. We'll see how that works out.

No, it wouldn't be the cause for the trial. X being in court with prosecutors accusing, is the cause of the trial.

The debt spiral might not be able to be stopped. — NOS4A2

The politician's classic move. Promise the moon, to get elected, then admit it's not possible.

Past events exist in the past as causes... — Corvus

How can anything act as a cause, from the past? Isn't it the case that the only way something can be a cause, is to act at the present?

By invoking "magic," you seem to be saying that the requirement for the observer somehow violates causality—perhaps that consciousness somehow directly affects physical systems. But this doesn't require consciousness to be a causal agent in that sense; it is simply that measurement, as a concept, only exists within an interpretative framework, and that framework is necessarily provided by observers. If no observer sets the terms of measurement, then the notion of measurement is meaningless —whatever object is being considered is simply undergoing change. — Wayfarer

I think the consciousness does act causally, with the measured physical system, necessarily so. This is done through the measuring tool. The tool is created with intent. As you see, others like to argue that the tool measures without any interaction with the conscious mind. But as you argue, that is not actually a measurement at all. So we need to accept that "the measurement" includes the intent put into the tool, as well as the observations of the tool.

Conversely, the thing measured must have an effect on the mind which measures, or else there would be no information from the thing, to be interpreted by the measurer. So a measurement is truly an "interaction", with causation on both sides. Measurement is essentially a strictly bounded experiment, complete with intention and interpretation, where the interaction is constrained within well-defined parameters which enable the prediction based interpretation .

He’s saying in plain English, the passage of time always depends on there being a change in one physical system relative to another. — Wayfarer

That is the case according to the precepts of relativity theory, as a result of Einstein's principle known as the relativity of simultaneity. If we reject that principle, in preference of "absolute time", by which the passing of time is absolute, and not frame dependent, then for us who do reject that principle, the passage of time does not depend on there being a change in one physical system relative to another. Instead, time is absolute, and relative change of position (motion) is dependent on the passing of time, rather than vise versa.

The observer is intrinsic to that. That is all that is being said, but it’s significant. — Wayfarer

It's significant, as the consequence of special relativity. It's not necessarily true though, as special relativity is not necessarily true. And, it's the sign of an untrue premise, that it produces conclusions which are extremely counterintuitive.

And what does that mean? It blurs the boundary between objective and subjective. This is the basic issue. — Wayfarer

Again, this is the consequence of adhering to relativity theory as if it is truth. Galileo proposed relativity after it was realized that the motions of the sun and planets could be modeled by either the geocentric or the heliocentric model. He realized that in modeling and predicting motions, "truth" was irrelevant, so long as the necessary predictions could be made. So "relativity" is fundamentally a useful disregard for truth. But if we adhere to relativity as if it is itself "the truth", instead of simply a useful way of predicting motions, then we lose the grounds for realism in favour of some sort of model dependent realism or something like that.

As I said in the last post, the boundary between subjective and objective is blurred because of the need to choose a frame of reference. A physicist will designate a rest frame, or inertial frame, but that's a choice, likewise, a cosmologist will choose a world line, or something like that. These principles provide the basis for a "real time" within their models and experiments, but it's chosen based on factors relevant to the project at hand, not on truth.

It's already been demonstrated in this very thread, that there is a scientific argument for the indispensability of the observer in cosmological physics. — Wayfarer

The problem though is that cosmological physics uses a conception of time based in relativity theory, i.e. relative time. This means that there must be a choice of reference frame in order that the flow of time is something real rather than having the flow of time lost in the infinite ambiguity of infinite possibilities.

If we assume that the principle known as the relativity of simultaneity is just a useful tool, and that in reality time is absolute, then there is no need for an observer to make time real.

What do you think he means by that? — Wayfarer

He is assuming time is relative rather than absolute. Notice he says: "The passage of time is not absolute".

But seeing things were changing is not time itself, is it? You are just seeing changes of things. Where is time, if you didn't measure the duration or intervals of time taken for the changes? — Corvus

That's right, it's exactly what I said. We don't see time flowing, nor do we sense it in any way, we infer it logically. Then from visible evidence we can conclude that X amount of time flowed past, even though we never saw any time flow past. That's what makes time so mysterious, and allows people like you to ask "where is time?". Some will even conclude that since we can't sense it in any way, it's not real. But that position is very problematic, and difficult to defend in front of the evidence.

I am not sure if time flows is logically correct way of saying it. — Corvus

I prefer to say that time passes.

It looks like time is a concept to me. It is like a general concept "human". We say "human" often in the arguments and daily conversations. But actually when you try find out who human is, there is no one called human in the world. — Corvus

Time is not like this though, because there is actually something in the world which is referred to with "time". It is something we measure, as the passing of time, and we talk about measured quantities of time, an hour, a day etc..

There is no general will, and thus no Sovereign. In practice the “general will” always turns out to be the will of some individual or faction or other (a particular will), namely, the rule of those who claim to know and represent the “general will”. — NOS4A2

The will of a "faction" is a "general will". It is not a "particular will". So in one sentence after the other, you have granted what you explicitly denied.

By “people” I mean those who voted for him. Not everyone voted, and not everyone voted for Trump. I figured that would be obvious. — NOS4A2

Let's get this straight. By your own words, there is no general will. He is carrying out what is wanted by the president, not what is wanted by the people. By your principles, there is no such thing as "what is wanted by the people". (Incidentally, those are the principles commonly exploited by the strategy known as "divide and conquer".)

How would it flow? If time is a general concept which covers all the temporality in general, how would time flow without human mind perceiving, measuring, asking, and telling? — Corvus

We know that time 'flows' absent of human awareness, because we see evidence of it. We see evidence that things were changing (therefore time was flowing) before we were here, and this allows us to extrapolate, and talk about the flow of time, without the human mind being there, at that time, to perceive the resulting changes. This allows us to use things like geological formations to do chronological dating. These forms of dating rely on the assumption of a necessary relation between change and the flow of time.

However, it's very interesting to note that we study the flow of time from its effects, and we do not directly experience the flow of time through sense observation. We infer logically, that the flow of time is real and independent, from the evidence of sense observation. We see evidence that things were changing prior to our presence. This makes the flow of time very mysterious to us. We only understand it only as a "general concept", but we also commonly assume that it exists (or occurs) independently from us. Further, we commonly claim to experience it, but in no way do we sense it. The reality of time remains a deep mystery.

I'm not interested in knowing the author, only in reading the material. However, if it was someone recruited through The Philosophy Forum, who has been influential, it might be appropriate to send a further commission to support the forum.

He only signed for it, as he often did with his money. Big crime, I guess. — NOS4A2

I guess so too, because I know that if I did something like that I'd be considered a criminal. I mean, you sign for something criminal, then later claim that you didn't know anything about what you signed for. I'm sure the judge would just laugh at my excuse, and say, you know, the reason you sign for it is to acknowledge that you know what you are paying for, sorry buddy you're guilty. Shit like that just doesn't ever hold up in court.

How is the endless list of grave moral transgressions of the US not relevant in a thread which consists almost exclusively of whinging about the moral fibre of its current president? — Tzeentch

Obviously, the latter is the subject of the thread, the former is not.

That is also problematic. You say that an Unrelated thing is a thing to which time does not pass nor does it occupy space? — JuanZu

I didn't say anything about an "Unrelated thing". I find that idea incomprehensible.

English, on the other hand, has nothing to do with Latin. It's more similar to German. — Arcane Sandwich

That's not really true. English is technically Germanic, as being rooted that way historically, but the Latin influence over time is so significant that it's false to say that English has nothing to do with Latin.

One thing indeed can be that not only it's a "revolt of the judges" that happens, it can be also a "revolt of the states" that will happen. At least the 23 that are lead by Democrats. — ssu

The revolt of the states has already been underway for quite some time. The capacity for individual states to decide their own laws on most issues, is potentially very divisive. And this will eventually erode the Fed's central power, if there is no top-down goal of unity, with corresponding internal diplomacy. Divisive economic policies from the Fed, will rapidly amplify pushback from individual states. Replace USA, with SA, as the outcome of MAGA.

Five percent, that must have been a minor influence.

Are you publishing the solution, so the rest of us can see where we were barking up the wrong tree?

It is difficult for me to think that time is not something proper to external objects. — JuanZu

This idea is easily refuted, therefore you ought to be able to reject it without difficulty. Through observation, the reality of time manifests as motion. And motion is not proper to objects, but is a relation between objects. This is why relativity theory is so useful. So "time" as a concept is similar to "space", as a concept, in the sense that they are both concepts which refer to the relations between external objects, not the objects themselves. As such, we cannot say that time and space are "proper to external objects", because they are external to external objects.

Incidentally, this is actually the most basic way that naive materialism is also refuted. If all objects consist of one common element, "matter", then we still need to assume something else to account for all the observed differences in the world. If we claim that differences are the result of different configurations of matter, then we need to assume something else, something immaterial (space, or something like that) to account for the reality of "different configurations". This is why monism, as an ontological principle is fundamentally flawed.

well, it's not difficult to translate left and right into north and south. For the rest, I'll leave you to it. — Banno

I'm afraid it doesn't really work that way, there's too many glitches. At the north pole for example, every direction is south. Adding dimensions into your representation is not a simple translation.

I believe the problem is that there is no difference between future and the past in the B-series, while the A-series presupposes a difference between future and past. Taking a point called "the present", and inserting it arbitrarily into a random position in the B-series, to artificially produce a future and past, doesn't do what is required to create that difference.

What is required is that the present is real, thereby making the difference between future and past real. But if we grant this, we rule out the possibility of the B-series. Therefore the nature of "the present" would need to be severely compromised, so as to be no longer consistent with the A-series, to make it compatible with the B-series. In other words, the A-series has a real present, and the B-series does not, and that's why they are incompatible.

I think that what says in this post, is that the truth of the B-series would render the A-series impossible, and vise versa. This means that the two are incompatible. That's why McTaggart proposed the C-series which might take some aspects of each.

So what I am offering is not too far from the Wittgensteinian suggestion that A-series and B-series are different language games. — Banno

Sure, but the question is which of the two is used to speak the truth. And if it's neither the A-series nor the B-series, then it's time for a new language game, the C-series.

Then what should he have written? — NOS4A2

Nothing, because it was not an allowable expense. That's why it's fraud, he recorded it as "legal expenses", when it was a personal payment. For example, have you ever tried claiming money you paid to a prostitute as "legal expenses" on your tax return?

There must be something that makes a table what it is, and this we will call tableness, and we will generalise this to other stuff, and say that what makes something what it is, is its essence. — Banno

I think you need to differentiate between primary substance and secondary substance.

A particular, individual thing, as a material object, is an instance of primary substance. As such, it has an "essence" within itself, as its identity, which accounts for it being the thing which it is, and not something else.

Secondary substance is the type, or species, which we assign to a thing, such as "table". This sort of 'identity' which we assign to a thing, is a tool which we use for communication, and logic. If we say that "table" as secondary substance, has an essence, then we may name the essence of a table and this may provide us with a type of necessity, logical necessity, which we can use as a tool.

So we need to be careful not to equivocate between the two types of contingency involved here. "A thing's' essence" in the sense of secondary substance, is contingent on the condition we place on being that type (what we say about the thing). From that contingency we create a logical necessity. But "a thing's essence" in the sense of primary substance, is contingent on the thing's material existence. The thing's material existence is a different sense of "necessity". Recognizing the difference between the necessity produced by what we say, and the necessity produced by material existence, allows for the reality of human fallibility.

To apply this to the quoted passage, "what makes something what it is", refers to "essence" in the sense of primary substance. "Tableness" refers to "essence" in the sense of secondary substance.