the horrible antinatalists — universeness

I don't mind. They are always jolly company.

Why is that? If we're not bothered with how the window broke? — EugeneW

If we are not bothered whether our theory is true or not......

I prefer my theories to be true. So I'm giving necessetarianism a miss, despite its undoubted attractions.

So two different causal chains can lead to the same outcome? — EugeneW

Yes. The ball could have broken the window. Hailstones could have broken the window.

Necessitarianism says..... — EugeneW

OK, but it seems to be false and there seem to be knock-down counterexamples. I could be wrong. But I could not be writing this from the moon. If I'm wrong, then I could have written something else that was not wrong. But I could not have written it - wrong or right - if I did not have lungs.

Necessitarianism would be simple and straightforward. All counterfactuals would be false. There would be no modality. Contingency entails all kinds of woulds, coulds and shoulds.

If parsimony is our only criterion, necessitarianism wins by a mile.

If we are not bothered whether our theory is true or not, let's go with necessitarianism.

It's like brain popcorn — SatmBopd

irrespective of the constitution of the universe, as human beings we still need to address the question of how to interact with it — SatmBopd

I don't know which particular set of train tracks has bored you so quickly but there is a famous set of tracks that was designed to test our intuition about this problem -

Is letting a person die as bad as killing them?

Which is part of a wider problem:

Can we be credited or blamed as much for omissions as for actions?

That is again part of a wider problem:

How should we interact with the universe?

So the 'stale philosophical tradition' may have something to say. You need to get into the detail and give it thought.

It's like cooking. All recipes are about getting the ingredients, combining them in appropriate ways using the best equipment and presenting the result with pride. Ta-da! Now I'm a chef! No, I'm not. I can make sweeping statements about how I ought to interact with the kitchen and its contents. But I have yet to produce a meal.

Sometimes I think - in this world, if a person is not dejected, helpless and furious then they must be crazy. Other times I think - in any world, it's not healthy to be always dejected, etc.

Then I think - maybe the first is true and health is how I deal with the dejection, helplessness, rage, rebellion, fury etc.

Turn it inwards - it's suicide. Turn it outwards - it's murder and destruction. Turn it into something else - music, art, drinking water and patting the dog as has been mentioned.

Necessitarianism is a lot neater and simper. Unfortunately, it seems to be false. It's partly due to a scope fallacy:

Necessarily: what is, is; what was, was; and what will be, will be That's ok. However:
What is, necessarily is etc. That will take some establishing.

Counterexamples:
I could have made this post longer. I could not have made it a million words long.
The ball could have broken a window. The ball could not have destroyed the whole house.
Hence: contingentarianism.

better than asking disconnected questions about people tied to train tracks — SatmBopd

Go back to the text you found so irritating and try it again. Ask yourself : "Why is this person - apparently intelligent and articulate - a well-regarded philosopher - a brain of some weight - in good standing amongst other very bright people - talking disconnectedly about people tied to train tracks? What could that possibly have to do with ethics?"

I don't want to just pick some random bs. — SatmBopd

Then use the library. Leave the internet till later.

My investigation has been limited to this point — SatmBopd

:up: Good diagnosis.

aimlessly going after the Art/ Science questions that just happen to interest you.....disconnected questions about people tied to train tracks....
Who addresses the above issues better than Neitzsche? — SatmBopd

What establishes him as a benchmark against which to judge others?

to see if there is anything/ anyone else I should be investigating instead — SatmBopd

... or 'in addition'? I suggest reading more widely, more carefully and with less prejudice.

Assuming that knowledge does not exist, then we can not know about anything, which also means we can not know about whether or not knowledge exists. — Carlikoff

Unfortunately, this is a third problem. From the premiss that knowledge does not exist it does not follow that we can not know about anything. That is because from the premiss that nothing phi's it does not follow that we cannot phi. Counterexample. Nobody is going into the restaurant. It does not follow that we cannot go into this restaurant.

If it is true that we can't know if knowledge exists, then it must be possible for knowledge to exist. — Carlikoff

From the premiss that we cannot know if knowledge exists it does not follow that it must be possible for knowledge to exist. Here are the two propositions:

(A) We cannot know if knowledge exists
(B) It must be possible for knowledge to exist

The reason (B) does not follow from (A) can be seen when you generalise the propositions and think of an absurd counterexample. You can do that, now, I don't want to do all the heavy lifting.

I hope that clarified things. — Carlikoff

I think it has been quite clear from the start. It's an invalid argument and you have presented it with clarity and consistency.

The whole point of my argument was: From the assumption "Knowledge doesn't exist" follows "It is possible that knowledge exist". That is a logical contradiction and so the axiom must be wrong, knowledge must exist. — Carlikoff

I see two problems:

(1) From "X does not exist" it does not follow that "It is possible that X exists." Counterexample: A square circle does not exist. It does not follow that "it is possible that a square circle exists."

(2) "X does not exist" is not contradictory to "It is possible that X exists". From "It is possible that X exists" it does not follow that X exists and it also does not follow that X does not exist. Therefore neither "X exists" nor "X does not exist" contradicts "It is possible that X exists".

Point (2) is an example of a modal scope fallacy.

It is not possible that, if X does not exist, then X exists. True.
If X does not exist, then it not possible for X to exist. Not necessarily true.

now famous words of butimfeeling2022: "over and over again" — EugeneW

OK player. Nah, you ain't funny yet.

And I DON'T mean as in "my eyes see colours differently from most people" — GLEN willows

Rather than insisting what you don't mean, can you explain what you do mean? It may turn out that you can't explain - not because of any lack of articulacy but because you are trying to say something that cannot be coherently thought and said.

Wittgenstein's notion that there is NO WAY of knowing what colour different minds are seeing. — GLEN willows

I think this is the notion that Wittgenstein challenges and rejects. It is the idea that our minds have incommunicable private contents. If I cannot know what goes on inside your head then I can't know even what happens inside mine. That is because I could never learn the sense of any descriptions that might be applied in either case.

, "We do not want to find a theory of color...but rather the logic of color concepts" (§188)

Love the quote! — lll

Thank you! I remembered another one -

Chin, chin! And of course all chimed din width the eatmost boviality. — JJ

(Every online edition I can find has "chimed" but I remember it as "chined", after the chine of an animal) [... and I remember wrong, apparently....]

"Ah, what? Oh, an American, yes. They all seem to be millionaires in America. Wish I knew how they managed it. Honestly, I hope. Mr. Peters is an honest man, but his digestion is bad. He used to bolt his food. You don't bolt your food, I hope, Crouchback?"
"No; I am most careful."
"The late Mr. Gladstone used to chew each mouthful thirty-three times. Deuced good notion if you aren't in a hurry" — P G Wodehouse

"You are old," said the youth, " and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak-
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life." — Lewis Carroll

That's my entire stock of knowledge about chewing.

Another example

The matrilineal principle in Judaism does not mean Judaism is matriarchal, let alone feminist. Judaism is as patriarchal as all other monotheistic religions.

https://verfassungsblog.de/the-stubborn-subversiveness-of-judaisms-matrilineal-principle/

Let me point out first that the arguments of 180booze should not be taken to seriously. — EugeneW

Let it be that time is constituted by collective motions of particles. Let is also be that time can be understood in terms of before-and-after processes but that time itself is not one of those processes. And let it be that time is an affect of motion - that motion is what makes time what we understand it to be. It seems to me that EugeneW, 180 Proof and Aristotle are not so far apart after all.

We can't blame him though. — EugeneW

True enough. You can't patronise a person for being alcoholically incompetent and at the same time hold them responsible for their actions. But that's another thread.

I got almost the same as RussellA

time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end

The first claim is:

1. For any point in time t, there exists a time t1 such that t1 is before t and there exists a time t2 such that t2 is after t.

....it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it.

The second claim is:

2. If time began, then 1. is false.

Why should we accept 1? If 1 is true it follows that time did not have a beginning. Conversely, if time did have a beginning, then 1 is false. But since the question at issue is whether time did have a beginning, then the argument begs the question.

There is also the problem 180 pointed out. We can talk about processes having a beginning and an end in time. But it's doubtful whether it is coherent to talk about time itself having or not having a beginning or end in time.

However, Aristotle was not liable to make simple mistakes in reasoning. His writings are condensed, sometimes almost lecture notes. There may be more to this. For example:

3. If 1 is false, then we cannot think or speak coherently about time. ("unthinkable")

4. We are now communicating with each other coherently about time.

So 1 is necessarily true.

The necessity in question is that our idea of time falls apart if we try to think of a time before which there was no time. Aristotle may be closer to 180's objection than it seems.

Zeno made one big mistake. He thought the spacetime continuum could be broken up in parts. Just try break up time in pieces. Or space. It's hard — EugeneW

He assumed time and space were discrete and have minimal 'parts' which cannot be broken up any smaller. He also assumed they are continuous and are infinitely divisible. Further, he assumed that time might be discrete and space might be continuous - and vice-versa. That is why he needed four different paradoxes, not just one.

Secondly, if it is cultural: where does machismo come from? It is a cultural trait perpetuated in a patriarchal society, but as the advantage men have over women due to superior physical strength (in terms of 'bursts' of strength, not tenacity or fitness in general as women love long than men and if the sport emphasizes durability fmelae bodies tend to outplay men's at some point) dwindles, so too should the advantage in terms of societal power. It would make the authoritarian male a species on the verge of extinction. — Tobias

I used to think exactly that but I have gradually become less convinced that extinction or even dwindling are anywhere near.

We’re scared. We don’t want to mention it, because it’s kind of a bummer, chat-wise and we’d really like to talk about stuff that makes us happy, like look at our daughters – and we can’t help but think, “Which one of us? And When?” We walk down the street at night with out keys clutched between our fingers, as a weapon. — Caitlin Moran, What Men Need To Know About Women, 2016

That was 2016 - then Me Too, then Sarah Everard. The expression of fear is getting more confident but I don't see the fear getting any less, because of the 'subterranean norms' and everyday sexism.

Is there a female leader you admire? And why? — Amity

There are many, but I would also say 'leadership' includes a lot of roles that do not include political power. There was (perhaps still is) a view that Thatcher was a token woman who acted as a stooge in a prevailing patriarchy and who internalised the surrounding culture of male aggression. Well, OK, I can see that. But there is a danger in this view of denying womanhood to any woman who transgresses stereotypical expectations of the feminine. At least, that was how the debate went in English pubs in 1983 and I suppose that is not the end of the matter.

It's about maintenance of perpetual power by a certain kind of regressive, repressive male, no? — Amity

Yes. I wonder which way round the explanation goes. I mean, do men get the opportunity to be nasty because they have power or do they maintain power on account of being already nasty? Well, both, probably. In a matriarchal society would women end up being the nasty ones on account of having power or would the world be kinder on account of women being in charge?

up-so-late we-solute — lll

A worthy tribloom to shame's choice which must even diddle us.

Planck dispelled Zeno's "infinite divisibility" assumption once and for all. — 180 Proof

Zeno proposed four different paradoxes, permuting the possibilities: Time / Space vs Continuous / Discrete. He showed that he can create a paradox for each of the four cases.

https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2011-12/20229/handouts/3%20Zeno.pdf

If explanations must always move in the direction from the complex to the simple, there'll come a point when we'll have hit a wall, the simplest, which would need no explanation at all. — Agent Smith

Axioms in arithmetic. 'Hinge propositions' in some versions of philosophical logic / metaphysics.

I think we need more focus on what constitutes an explanation in the terms of the OP. I can explain why I was leaving the shop with goods in my bag having made no payment. I can promise you that it will not be a simple explanation, let alone the simplest. But it may, despite being complicated and implausible, be true.

Here is an explanation why heavy things fall to the ground. It's because they are made of an earthy substance and earth by nature attracts earth. Now isn't that simpler than what we are told nowadays? And can't you see and feel the earthy mass of such things for yourself? It's self-explanatory. But, alas, that's not good enough. Still, it's an explanation. We have found greater insight and more beautiful explanations in dropping all talk of earthy natures. But at no point did anybody discover the non-existence of earthiness.

Why don't y'all just cut straight to the chase?
Commit suicide. — Amity

Because we love life and love each other. Despite...[insert everything]

So, you give one reason for 'a man hating women'. I haven't read all the discussion, so what are the other key reasons as to why women might be seen as posing some kind of a threat to the power of men? — Amity

I complained that the OP was uncritical of the 'reasons' (scare quotes because the reasoning is false) for men's hate and violence against women. The author _db explained that they were not subscribing to the 'reasoning' but describing it. The concepts of rationalisation - 'handy excuse' as you say - and victim-blaming were used to criticise the 'reasoning'.

Or are women generally less violent than men? — Amity

I would say - quite obviously 'yes'. But it doesn't follow that any given man will be more or less violent than any given woman. Take a violent man and you will likely find a history of being somewhat a loser. Take a non-violent man and you will quite likely find the same. That's because there are more losers than winners in the world . Take a man with lots of money and high social status and you won't be any less likely to have found someone who is violent towards women than if you picked just any old average loser. Women are generally less violent than men. But the step from there to 'incels are a threat' is a big and uncertain logical move.

Alung whiff the senescent theophagy of grammar mistaken for the Obsolute ? — lll

Are you James Joyce?

And Gemellus then said to Camellus: Yes, your brother. Obsolutely. — J J FW

I think you have hit upon a problem for Christian theology in particular. If God became human (the "Word made Flesh") how can He also be eternal unchanging spirit? Arius in 4th Cent AD argued along the same lines as you. You can't have a physical God because God is spirit. Flesh and spirit are distinct - dualism, as you say. Arius's views on the incarnation were rejected. On the contrary, God can be completely physical and completely spirit at the same time, the human incarnation being eternally begotten of the Father and Of The Same Substance as the Father. It gets very tricky. Of The Same Substance (homoousias) - that means flesh and blood like us, right? So no dualism. But hang on - God is eternal Spirit and distinct from Creation - so dualism. Don't trust this post for complete accuracy but I think there's a connection with Arius's thinking.

Because that's the way a wheel rolls. — EugeneW

Indeed. But knowing this tells us nothing about wheels. It tells us that the question I asked is not a sensible question.

But it can roll in two directions. So can time. Why isn't the begin situation of the universe situated at the end? With all motion reversed? — EugeneW

Why can't the top and bottom of the wheel roll in the same direction simultaneously? You said it, but you said nothing interesting about wheels because the question is not about wheels - despite appearances.

Why doesn't time run backwards? That's the analogy. The wheel question is not sensible and can only be answered with 'Because that's what a wheel is!'. I am raising the possibility that the time question is also not sensible - but less obviously nonsensical.

The question of the thread may appear to be about time but may actually be about meanings. For example: "Why does the top of a revolving wheel always go in the opposite direction to the bottom?" Well, why? Why can't you make a wheel go round so that top and bottom are both rolling in the same direction at once? What is about the physics of wheels and motion that make it impossible for it to happen in any other way? We think we are thinking about physics and geometry. But we are thinking about something else.

Why does time always move forward? A happened before B. In such circumstances we never find that B happened before A. Also, when I have painted the wall red I never find that I have painted it blue. That is an odd fact about colours. But it is not a fact about colours at all. That is clearly not a fact about colours. It is less clear that the thread question is not a question about time. But it may be so.

Just change the Op to "I hate men". Saves time. and you don't need to justify your position with all the bullshit. — Book273

I skim-read recipes and think "That just means chuck it all in, heat it up and stir a bit." The results are less than impressive. That's another example where careful reading can not only help but is even necessary to understanding.

How can you tell whether some reasoning is false.......... — baker

By considering the premisses stated or implied and the conclusions purportedly derived from them.

......and some behavior is bad? — baker

I can tell that it's wrong to rape a woman either because she refuses sex or indeed for any other supposed reason. You can do this too. You don't need to ask me how. You're already there.

I can give you deontology and utilitarianism and intuitionism if you need the philosophical bases. But for this thread topic it really is not necessary.

Criticized on the grounds of what? With what justification? — baker

The men's reasoning that is expounded in the OP and not concurred with by the author can be criticised thus (to save repetition):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/666354

If the type of behavior as described in the OP is found to be statistically average, then it is normative, normal, and thus not to be criticized. — baker

False reasoning and bad behaviour may be common and even sometimes the norm. I guess that it is so. But it may still be criticised.

For example, many environmentalists will use fear-based tactics in order to cause many people to panic. This causes a wave of people using metal straws and buying reusable water bottles.....They have been feared to make desperate and not logical decisions. — stressyandmessy

Once waves of people start using metal straws and reusable water bottles, who knows where it could lead? They might begin frantically recycling paper or growing vegetables. Calming the situation down could take many years.

But they do not understand that this action will not truly help the environmental situation. — stressyandmessy

Thanks for the heads-up. I will chuck out my metal straws and reusable bottles and go back to single-use plastic. But I want to truly help. What should I do?

Why do we still quote Latin? I sometimes do it myself by why do we think this adds more force to our words? — universeness

We should give up Latin tags. After all, cui bono?

...to do things without offending/harming a single soul? — Agent Smith

I would say 'no', because every action has a cost either to ourselves or others. When I buy a pint of milk I reduce the supply of milk to others and funds for myself. The harm here is not unjust. And the benefit outweighs the harm. But there is still harm. That is because every action involves a trade-off between cost and benefit. The example is given in economists' terms but it could be applied to actions with consequences less obviously 'economic'.

The standard philosophical agreement is that it's impossible to say that the colour red that I see isn't the colour blue to you. — GLEN willows

Only if you ignore Wittgenstein's private language arguments. The picture he challenges is that each of us has a mind full of perceptions that are infallibly known to the perceiver, inaccessible to others and incomparable between perceivers. His arguments set out show that, if this were the case, then we would not be able to describe our perceptions even to ourselves. We are not able coherently even to describe the project of trying and failing to compare incomparable perceptions. The claim "...the colour red that I see isn't the colour blue to you" may (in the way intended) have no sense at all, despite a superficial appearance of sense.

There are sensible ways in which we can check whether colour perceptions vary and by how much. There are colour-blindness charts, for example. We can tell that some people cannot distinguish red from green. We can say for sure that they are seeing differently from non-colour-blind people.

In what way do I seem uncritical of it? — _db

Thank you for clarifying. It was because in the OP you expound the men's reasoning ("key reasons", "Hence why..") without pointing out any faults in it. In the OP you don't seem to concur with the reasoning and you don't seem to reject it. So it's uncritical. It's worryingly uncritical because it leaves open the possibility that you concur. Clearly (now) you do not. Which is a relief.

I believe that one of the key reasons why a man will hate women is because of the power they seem to hold over him as sexual objects of desire. — _db

Sometimes, in order to commit or threaten violence against someone a perpetrator needs to first be persuaded that the victim deserves it. They are said to have "asked for it", as the saying goes, as if a violent act against another person is a kind of polite concession. The instinct for justice is so strong that the perpetrator cannot live with himself having committed such a wrong. So women in general, or one woman in particular, are first given the blame to carry. When she has learned to shoulder that with patience she is given the punishment, either in terms of continual resentment and implied aggression or in actual violence. The roots of violence in the psyche of the perpetrator are thereby ignored, all attention now focussing on the victim and what she "must have done" to provoke the response. This is all neatly summed up in the expression 'victim-blaming'.

this very thing that men hate women for doing to them (manipulating their sexual desires) is itself often a form of revenge on men by women.....women take revenge on men by frustrating the sexual desires of men -> — _db

"Being sexually attractive and unavailable" is here framed as a wrong perpetrated by a woman against a man, as if failing to make ourselves sexually available to all who desire us is a dereliction of duty. The implied duty is to make one's body available on demand. The consequence of failure to comply is that

-> men take revenge on women by raping them — _db

I think the OP accurately tracks the thought process of victim-blaming and justification of rape but seems worryingly uncritical of it.