The point being made is that a mind must separate these seven things from the rest of reality, such that there actually is just seven things — Metaphysician Undercover

How is it that minds cause things to exist as they do, why should there not be 6 when we count at one time, and 8 when we count the next?
If there is no consistency in reality, as this is what you seem to be claiming?

So any time that we individuate an individual object in existence, we arbitrarily separate out a period of time which is proper to that object, allowing for its existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Except it is not arbitrary, it is necessary to navigate reality.
Why should that be if reality is nothing like the models we form?

I am glad you understand that it is not reasonable to insist that some one must agree with you first, before what you claim can be understood.

However...
It is not my duty to paraphrase you such that your arguments are not claiming something which is contradictory.
That is your duty.
I understand, from what you have posted so far, that your claims have logical issues and I have pointed those issues out already.

Either address the issues I have raised and/or provide further information to clarify your position.
If you fail to do this in the next post I will consider our discussion to be stagnant and will pursue it no further.

lol
I just reread this.
You are basically saying that unless I agree with you, I don't understand and can't critique your view.

lol
That is not very reasonable.
How old are you?

Ok.
I believe you.
In your mind your view is not contradictory.

The idea that there is a world in which no minds are present, is also a mental construction. — Wayfarer

This is circular.

We know the quantity 7 depends on minds, because we have minds therefor the quantity 7 depends on those minds?

That image might be realistic, but it still depends on a viewpoint or perspective. — Wayfarer

This amounts to saying our physical models be might wrong/biased, they might be, but they might also be accurate and unbiased.
If we can't know the right perspective we can't know ours is wrong either.

What I am interested in is how you can be so sure our models are wrong?

An implicit perspective must be introduced to make sense of any kind of universe, even one supposedly without minds. But you're supplying the perspective without realising you're doing it by projecting into the Universe that which is actually in the mind. — Wayfarer

I regard the principle of relativity as dealing with this issue.
Perhaps you have some insight into why it must fail?

This is not just idealist blather, either...
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271) — Wayfarer

Well I am not interested in debating the role of the observer in quantum mechanics.
Suffice it to say there are many interpretations of quantum mechanics and some are less controversial than others when it comes to observer role.
The point being that quantum mechanics does not disprove realism.

7 is a number, and a number can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting; it is the ability of a rational intelligence to count that is one of its defining qualities. — Wayfarer

7 is a real quantity without minds.
Understanding that there is 7 of something requires minds sure, but that there can be 7 things requires no minds.

What kind of realist? I think the idea of 'scientific laws' is actually a bone of contention nowadays. In any case, objective idealists, such as Peirce, believe that such laws are emblematic of the fact that nature seems to have something resembling grammar. — Wayfarer

I think all realist agree that natural laws and reality do not depend upon minds.

It is nominalism that denies the reality of universals. — Wayfarer

It is very real that universals are useful.

How is nominalism useful, what are the practical results of applying nominalism?
Help me understand why I should care that universals are not real.

I would not say you are passionate about a subject if you become deterred from pursuing it because you can not achieve the same mastery as a great genius.

A person that is passionate about a subject will find joy in pursuing that subject no matter their level of skill.

I agree with you because I feel this is more of social site than it is anything else.
But it is my understanding that the mods take the site more seriously and are trying to be an academic site.

Sorry I don't have a link to the post.

They did have a thumbs up apparently, but scrapped it in a vote.

The fact that an animal gives birth to a litter of 7 is not in itself an abstraction. It is an event. It is only when someone comes along and says 'aha, seven pups' that it becomes an abstraction. — Wayfarer

7 is a naturally occurring quantity whether there is some mind to count it or not.

All the natural symmetries such as golden ratio, fibonacci sequence, and the like, are attributes of nature that rational reflection has discovered. — Wayfarer

This is an important point.
The realist claims that we can model nature and reproduce results in nature by exploring rules of formal systems.
The implication is that nature has some set of rules itself, which we can discover, if this is true the realist insists that those laws exist independently and do not necessitate the existence of minds.

It was that kind of thinking that became fundamental to the origins of science. It was the abilitiy to count, compare (via ratio), understand laws (logos, logic) that enabled the birth of science. According to the Greeks, only man, 'the rational animal', was capable of this, it set man apart from beast. — Wayfarer

The rational animal only reproduces natural laws with models, it does not cause them to exist in the first place.

.

The reality of the 'intelligible domain' was central to classical Greek philosophy, and was inherited by the Scholastics, who tended towards realism regarding universals (such as number, ratio, etc.) It was the early nominalists, William of Ockham, Francis Bacon, and others, who challenged that understanding and said that 'only particulars exist'. Conceptualists are like a middle position, saying that numbers (etc) are real but solely as concepts. — Wayfarer

It could be that only particulars exist, and our models only approximate particularism.
But it seems to me there is no way to prove conclusively that this is the case.
Let us ignore that though, even should it be the case that in nature there are only particulars, how does this diminish the practical benefits of universals in the course of human endeavor?

Surely you can't deny that universals are particularly useful?

Yeah sorry I don't follow here.

There are plenty of examples in nature where abstractions occur.

Golden ratio, fibonacci sequence, and an animal gives birth to a litter of 7.

All these things are real, the only difference I see here is you seem to claim there must be some mind for abstractions to exist, and the realist says these things occur in objective reality without any dependence upon minds.

I fail to see the issue here?

Why can't mental objects be real, or physical?

How would I be sure I was not?

I would answer 4?

I am surprised you scored dead center, it seemed to me you are particularly right leaning.

You could never be sure you were not comparing like with like either.

.http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/results/


https://www.politicalcompass.org/yourpoliticalcompass?ec=-4.5&soc=-2.67

That's what I'd be interested in us doing. I can explain my view so that you'd understand it, but you'd have to play along and answer questions when I ask them and so on--I'd be going slow, one step at a time. It wouldn't work if you just keep impatiently going back to why you're right and I'm wrong. — Terrapin Station

From what you describe here, you don't need me at all, you need someone to follow along and take cues from you and answer how you want when you want.
You can do that for yourself.

Also I never said you were wrong or that I was right, I said that there are logical issues with your claims.

What I know, so far, is that you have not put forth a view that does not lead to contradiction.

Let me simplify further.

Your position is basically if there are no minds then there are no truths.
I pointed out this leads to a contradiction because we can imagine the case where there are no minds, and then point out if it is true that there are no truths, then there is at least one truth, which contradicts that there are no truths.

You rebut saying, yes but right now literally there are minds that is why we have truths.
But it isn't so that this proves truth is dependent upon the mind, it proves rather that there are minds at this time.
These two are not one in the same thing.
However let's assume, by some feat of mental gymnastics, you have decided that because there are minds this proves that truth is mind dependent
Well then the problem now becomes that you are left with a circular argument.
A circular argument is not valid reasoning.

Note this point because it is critical.

You still don't get to claim that if there were no minds there would be no truths, that still leads to contradiction or amounts to circular argumentation.
Well I suppose you can claim that if you like, but that claim has no logical force that compels me to accept it as valid.

What you could claim instead is that if there were no minds we could not know if there were truths or not.
That is not a contradictory or circular position and I will not challenge that claim.

To be honest I am getting kind of tired of repeating myself here.
I was hoping you had something new to contribute?


Again I pointed out, that if there is no truth value in world x, then the claim "truth is mind dependent" is refuted because truth value still depends on world x and not a minds in world y..
Which means there is a truth value in world y, and that truth value is false.

But I also conceded this point, you can claim it cannot be known what is the truth value in world x, in which case the truth value of the claim "truth is mind dependent" cannot be known either.

Which is not a contradiction, it simply means we can't (for some unnamed reason) know what whether or not truth is mind dependent or not.

I conceded this point because I understand how you are trying to justify your views.
Your view is that if ever there is a mind we can simply say that truth depends on that mind regardless of what world that mind inhabits.

But we can imagine that there was some state such that there are no minds in any worlds.
In such a state is it true that there are no mind?

If it is true then truth does not depend on minds.
You might argue that it is not true or false in that example.

So that is why I conceded your point.
But again you don't get to claim that you know it is true that truth depends on minds.

You claim that truth is exclusively mind dependent and you stated that in your view that truth value is logically equivalent to Judgments.
.
Is there something I am missing?

I would say that it is not that I don't understand the point view you have expressed here, it is more that I don't agree that it is logically valid.
I pointed out the reason why, namely your position leads to contradictions.

We are discussing a topic.
Simple questions like whether or not my screen name is m-theoryrules or not are not related to the thread topic and I regard them as irrelevant.
If I do not see your point in asking this simple question this is not my fault, you failed to do anything to illustrate that it was in fact related to the topic of the thread.

The other question you asked is not as simple as you would have liked it to be and I pointed that out.

If you insist that I can only explore the logical consequences of the answer in one of two ways, then that is an example of a false dichotomy.

There is in fact a third option, the one I choose, which is to explore the logical consequences of BOTH answers.

Is there some issue you have related to the topic?

We are derailing the thread at this point.

I can place value on non-existence, it is more futile than existence.
I say this because I definitely cannot imagine any pursuit with a more futile goal than non-existence.

Also, for me, the default is existence, I can not remember any time that I did not exist, I can imagine such times, but I have never experienced non-existence...as far as I can tell.

The reason it does not matter if I answer yes or no is because your claims are contradicted either way.

Happy now?

asked you a simple yes or no question. — Terrapin Station

It was not as simple a question as you would have liked it would seem.

How can the default (existing) be more futile than not existing?

I already gave examples of when some things are not as futile as other things.

Everything is not equally futile.

I did explain.
It does not matter what answer I give, both answer contradict claims you have made.

I don't really care what the answer should be, I care about the logical consequences of each answer.

Are you saying it is equally likely that should not exist?

I did exactly that, I gave an example to measure futility, we can compare the futility of different goals to get an objective measure of the objective futility saturation.

Again it becomes very obvious that everything is not futile in equal measures.

I read that a truly operational Blockchain system is very difficult to hack, that if it had been in place, the 80 million dollar Bangladesh hack would not have been possible. — Cavacava

Bitcoin was hacked, I am sure it was difficult but really the person cannot spend what they stole without exposing themselves, so basically the stole money that they can spend without fear of being traced.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-bitcoin-hack-know-dont-know/

The speed, safety, and the cost of doing transaction will determine whether all the money currently being thrown at this system will pay off. The issues you bring up about size and anonymity are real issues but I get the impression that it is just a matter of time, and apparently a lot of money thinks it is worth their investment to overcome these issues. — Cavacava

If you used a digital currency like bitcoin does, then this means as you mine the currency the system demands increase more and more until only people with extremely powerful computers can mine for the coin in a reasonable amount of time.
But I watched one of your vids and he suggested just using the blockcahin for transactions only.
That would be more reasonable but it would still cost a lot of memory to maintain the ledger.
Imagine billions of people generating multipul transactions a day.
That is a lot of information that would have to be stored and it would continue to grow, you would have to remember all the old transactions, and each new one.
It could quickly become more of a demand than personal computers could handle in terms of memory.
Which would mean you would have to create centralization to store that information in server farms like we do now.
This would then begin to eliminate the benefits of the blockchain.

So when someone says to me "everything is futile really isn't it?" I am meant to say "futile to whom?" because no one can speak for anyone else. — intrapersona

That is what I did when I encountered the question, but do as you like.

Seems valid but when you think of it, we haven't actually proved that it all is actually NOT futile. All we have said is that saying it is all futile is not a valid claim because worth is determined subjectively be each individual. And who is to say one person's valuation of existent things are worthless in totality wouldn't be justified. — intrapersona

So let us assume, objectively, that everything is futile.
Why should I care subjectively?
And what does mean if it is an objective fact that I don't care that everything is futile because I am content?

So we are all just sniffing our butts thinking "this smells lovely" and no one can prove otherwise. Because the moment someone tries to tell you that your butt stinks then you get a hoard of replies saying — intrapersona

No one has proven that objectively everything is futile either.
Just because you or friend think this is some pressing dilemma I should be concerned in the offhand chance that it might be true?

You expressed an opinion, "everything is futile" I gave you mine.
You asked a question "have you ever considered the possibility that everything actually is futile" yes I have.
I pointed out that some things are decidedly less futile than other things.

What I intended for you to ask yourself is how futile is it for you to pursue the goal of trying to prove everything is futile?
How important is it for you to realize that goal?
Are there other goals that you have that are equally or more important that are less futile that you can pursue?

I have asked myself these things already.

We are not conversing about simple yes or no questions.
We were debating a very particular yes or no question that is not so simple as you would like it to be, as I pointed out to you.

So you want to derail the thread in hopes of making some point?

Why not just make the point and stay on topic?

?
Why?

If that answer is yes, your position is contradicted, if the answer is no, your position has been contradicted.
I pointed this out, and that was my only concern.

We can demonstrate that if the answer is no, this contradicts the claim that truth value is equal to judgments and that this truth value of yes is dependent on world x not minds.
If the answer is yes we can demonstrate that judgments depend also on world x, which contradicts the claim that judgments are exclusively mind dependent.

If there are then that means that judgments are not dependent upon minds.
If there are not then that means judgments are not equal to truth values.