What with option that infinity is kind of being, like any others being, or other name for God? — Eiwar

I don't think he was wondering about that sense of "infinity." He seemed to be thinking of the mathematical sense.

I don't agree with a lot of your premises, and I'm one of many people who wouldn't. So, things like "Sexual betrayal seems ethically worse than financial betrayal," "Sellling sex seems wrong," or "Treating sex as just a fun pasttime seems wrong" shouldn't be presented as near-universal notions.

That's known possibilities of retrospect.
That's what Conceptualism focuses on - missing links via rearrangement. Hence it views Past and Present.

Whereas Nominalism focuses entirely on the Present, disregarding not experienced rearrangements.

In simple terms:
Nominalism is merely an accounting. Present
Conceptualism mixes and matches. Dealing with present and past. — Shamshir

Where are you getting that from?

That wouldn’t fit my understanding of each view in this context. Nominalism denies possible worlds exist apart from the world, conceptualism denies they exist independently of contingent minds and realism claims they exist objectively in the abstract. Beyond thinking about them it seems possible worlds that remain only potential are inaccessible on each view. — AJJ

Again, this seems a bit misleading. I'm an example of a conceptualist nominalist (so that's a type of nominalism), and while I'd say that counterfactual possible worlds talk is simply a way of thinking and talking about possibilities that could have been the case, I'd not at all say that the possibilities in question were only mental.

Moral theory began with religion. — TheMadFool

No. Morals stem from humans having innate/instinctual dispositions about interpersonal behavior, and the reason we have that is that it was evolutionarily selected for, because feeling that some things aren't kosher made it more likely to survive to be able to reproduce.

Religion gets morality from that fact that we have those innate/instinctual dispositions. Not the other way around.

beep

The article explains how Reagan made use of neoliberal thought. But, you say, neoliberalism is often characterized as essentially libertarian. Reagan wasn't a libertarian. He was conservative. Conservatives aren't libertarian. So if neoliberals are often characterized as essentially libertarian, and reagan is a conservative, and so not libertarian, how could he be neoliberal?

hmmmm :chin:

If only there were a weak link or two here, the removal of which would make everything fall into place! — csalisbury

lol okay. Great conversation like usual.

Why is the article confusing? — csalisbury

Wasn't that what my first post was about? :-\ :-/

Are you relaying koans?

We are talking about possibilities, not particles. — Janus

Do you think it's possible to talk about a particle where we're talking about a concrete fact?

Again, by the way, I'm in no way appealing to any conventional (or unconventional for that matter) view in the sciences. So forget about what the sciences say.

Well, so there's no absence of free will and no need for a devil in that scenario. And yeah, I think it would be the most ethical choice.

(Personally I'm an atheist, by the way, but it's worth talking about this stuff in terms of possibilities.)

hmmm. the plot thickens. — csalisbury

Yeah, but the plot sucks.

No, I would not say that counts as a 'concrete fact", — Janus

:-/ :-\

Do you think that particle A is a concrete fact?

Yes there is - the person who is created. You're falsely assuming that to be affected by something you need to exist prior to the affect occurring.
Imagine you know that any child you have will live a life of total agony from the instant it comes into existence until the end. Well, are you seriously maintaining that the child is not affected by the agony it suffers because it did not exist previously? That's just silly. — Bartricks

If you've procreated, so that you've made a child come into existence, something can happen to that child at a later time. That's fine.

The point is that procreation isn't doing anything to anyone (other than the people who are procreating). You can't thus argue that procreation is doing anything to anyone nonconsensually.

Antinatalists want to argue against procreation. You can't do that by claiming that we're doing something to someone nonconsensually.

Antinatalists are trying to appeal to completely ignorant metaphysics--namely, the notion that there's someone that something can be done to prior to procreation. As if there are souls floating around waiting to be captured or some such.

Reagan didn't really do anything in the vein of libertarianism.

You said particles could interact and there could be several different possible outcomes of any actual interaction. Firstly if you are talking about anything more than merely logically possible outcomes then I have no idea what you mean. Secondly I still have no idea what it could mean for you to say that your purported possibilities are non-actual and yet are concrete facts. So, no I dont think what you have said is coherent, because it doesn't make sense as far as I can tell and also because it is not coherent with scientific theory as I understand it. — Janus

Think of it simply as a logical possibility at the moment. So whether it's consistent with what's commonly accepted in the sciences is irrelevant for that.

Do you agree that the following would be a concrete fact? A particle, A that interacts with particle B, so that B can have immediately consequent states, with nothing else involved, of either C or D.

I don't really understand the article. "Neoliberalism" is often characterized as essentially libertarianism, but libertarians aren't conservatives, and by no means was Reagan a libertarian.

In the case of our relation to God or to The Good, maybe there is no risk of us doing serious harm there. One obvious objection is that we harm one another. — petrichor

Right. I don't see how it's better to allow murder, violent rape, wars, genocide, etc.

Yeah, "not a robot" is better, but wouldn't you rather have both (a) not a robot, and (b) a guarantee that the not-a-robot won't murder you in your sleep?

Or would you say that it's important, and more ethical, for some reason, that not-a-robots can, and sometimes do, murder their spouses/s.o.'s in their sleep?

Yes, you're referring to the first universe — Anonymys

No, your first universe has no free will. I'm saying you could have a universe that has free will, but where evil is not possible because god sets up what are essentially physical or metaphysical barriers to it.

So in other words, a world where you choose all sorts of things, including what interests to pursue, what career to have, your mate, whether to have children, where to go to dinner ("small" choices are still free will choices), etc., but where it's either not physically or metaphysically possible to choose to murder someone, rape someone, start wars, initiate genocide, etc. It would be just as impossible to choose to do those things as it is presently, in our world, to choose to be literally invisible, to fly via your own power simply by flapping your arms, to outrun your shadow, etc.

:up:

There are things you simply can't choose to do. For example, you can't choose to be invisible. You can't choose to be massless.

God could have made a world where there is free will but no evil, because he could have made evil impossible to choose, a la trying to choose to be invisible or massless.

It seems undeniable that in procreating one significantly affects another person, — Bartricks

It seems anything BUT undeniable. There is no other person that the people procreating are doing anything to.

I sometimes wonder if people in other forums--like say antinatalist forums, or particular apologetics forums, don't tell each other to head over here and start threads about their pet topics.

Either that I sometimes I wonder if it's not a one or two housebound, over-the-top OCD folks with numerous accounts here.

Yes, I'm not a scientist but the Wikipedia article clearly states that particles follow Newtonian physics. I'll quote wikipedia article on Newton's laws of motion below: — TheMadFool

https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae392.cfm <---that's the standard view in physics. That's not to say that it's correct, but it's the conventional view.

lol

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

There are 'real possibilities'. That a banana can turn brown is a real possibility, that it can turn into a fish is not. So that 'domain of possibilities' is real but doesn't refer to existents. — Wayfarer

Non-actual possibilities are existents in AJJ's view. He was who I was going back and forth with.

Can you give an example from science that deomstrates that particles could behave non-detremistically? — Janus

Now who is changing the topic?

You said that the idea is incoherent in your view.

I explained it. The explanation had nothing whatsoever to do with what anyone else believes is the case.

Was the explanation coherent in your view? If not, why not?

So you're telling a falsehood then? These particles are not of this universe?

More to the point, this move engaging in a special pleading. How it is that our language about the electron and proton means something, but our language about the universe does not? If it were all just a thought experiment that said nothing, our language of proton and electron would not refer. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Do you really not get the thought experiment or are you trying to be an idiot?

Clearly not, we are talking about something. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Don't confuse our talking about it with what the thought experiment is proposing. We simply have one thing, and then something else.

I never said otherwise, — TheWillowOfDarkness

So that's not something that's staying the same because it's not even something.

But something has stayed the same: the universe. — TheWillowOfDarkness

No. Again, the universe isn't an existent aside from the particles in question.

The salient point of our disagreement is that I don't believe you are capable of offering a coherent account of what it could mean to say that possibilities are non-actual and yet are concrete facts. — Janus

Possibilities are simply the fact that the world isn't strongly deterministic.

So we have a particle, A that interacts with particle B, so that B can have immediately consequent states, with nothing else involved, of either C or D. Prior to A's interaction with B, neither C nor D are actual. They're possibilities--namely, the concrete fact of that A will interact with B non-deterministically. After A interacts with B, one possibility will be actualized, the other is no longer possible, but we sometimes talk about it in terms of counterfactual possible worlds.

Agreed. That's how it is the same universe.

If we had another universe, then we would have two things and there would not be the one undergoing change. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'm saying that all that exists, period, is a single electron. Then all that exists, period, is a single proton. Was there a change? It wouldn't make any sense to say there wasn't. But there's nothing that stayed the same.

The universe stayed the same. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The universe isn't an existent aside from the particle in question. We don't have two things at a time--the particle and the universe. We just have one thing at a time.

So, if we had a universe with a single particle, say one electron, and then that were replaced by a single proton, would it be the case that the contents of that universe changed? What stayed the same?

Some combo of weird/quirky, jokey/goofy, geeky/dorky, perpetually horny/an insatiable lothario, and really mellow/easygoing, happy-go-lucky, etc., at least when I'm not around people who are complainers, naggers, perpetual critics, or who are usually hyper, in which case I just want to get away from them.

What I've yet to figure out is why so many (a) religious believers, (b) idealists, and (c) continental philosophy fans are drawn to the board. Those three categories seem to cover about 95% of the people who post here. (And they're all like the Joker to my Batman)

I'll take a big government with respect to helping everyone, making sure that everyone has housing, food, health care, education, employment, transportation, etc.

But I'll take very, very small government when it comes to controlling what people can choose to do, controlling their behavior, etc.

Did you want to get into a huge Aristotle discussion? Maybe we could go line-by-line and argue about every assertion?