boss i asked a mosquito about its quiet placid enjoyment of the present moment and its tranquillity of mind as celebrated by schopenhauer but he could not stop to chat for some animals its constant worry and i include cockroaches yours archy

Here is a quote, I found.

“If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished. The harder work of inquiry, proof, and demonstration is infinitely more rewarding, and has confronted us with findings far more "miraculous" and "transcendent" than any theology. Actually, the "leap of faith"—to give it the memorable name that Soren Kierkegaard bestowed upon it—is an imposture. As he himself pointed out, it is not a "leap" that can be made once and for all. It is a leap that has to go on and on being performed, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. This effort is actually too much for the human mind, and leads to delusions and manias. Religion understands perfectly well that the "leap" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, which is why it often doesn't in fact rely on "faith" at all but instead corrupts faith and insults reason by offering evidence and pointing to confected "proofs." This evidence and these proofs include arguments from design, revelations, punishments, and miracles. Now that religion's monopoly has been broken, it is within the compass of any human being to see these evidences and proofs as the feeble-minded inventions that they are.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything — Corvus

This must be very persuasive to anyone to whom it seems there is no God. But I don't come to believe in God by a leap of faith. I do not need to construct proofs. It already seems to me there is a God. I do not need to leap to a place where I already find myself. Of course, if there is no God, then I am deluded.

I would take issue with the first sentence of the quote. I must have faith in the Covid vaccine to allow it to be administered. Lots of people have this faith. People who lack faith do not take the vaccine. There are people for whom no amount of evidence will instill faith and they will still refuse. So faith is necessary. But I am sure that this need for faith does not prove the vaccine's inefficacy.

Though I suppose we can see what happens if Euclid's 5th postulate is treated as false and then discover a whole new area of maths. But.... Well, I don't know.

We can stipulate negative interest rates or announce a jubilee cancellation of all mortgage debt or cancel the validity of a currency at will. But we can't make the sum of a negative and an equal positive number come to anything but zero. There seems to be a tough, brutish, inflexible factishness about arithmetic that is not there in property or money or similar constructions.

I think where philosophy comes in is asking 'does it make sense to suppose these things?' Suppose I get the sack this month - how am I going to pay the rent? That's a supposition. 'Suppose nobody ever knows if they are dreaming or not?' That sounds like a supposition but it may just be a form of words that has a poetic and emotional force and only appears to have a sense. It may be like the meaning of the second word 'red' in the phrase 'my love is like a red, red rose.'

Let's suppose these things are actually so. Suppose we don't know anything and also we cannot tell the difference between sleeping and waking or between existing and not existing.

Now what? Our lives have not changed. Still got to pay the rent. Still don't know if Riemann hypothesis is true. Still might catch a nasty flu-like bug that's been going round.

Wittgenstein used an image of 'language going on holiday' and another one of a cog in a machine that does not connect to any other part of the machine so we can just whirr it around for fun. These suppositions are pastimes for the mind. Are they philosophy? Are they worth-while? Well... that's another debate.

In AnCapistan, can something that is property also be something that has interests (i.e. it can experience harm or benefit)? If so, then the good people of AnCapistan may justify the State coming between a person and their property in a case where the property might suffer cruelty. For example, when a man beats his donkey then the AnCapistan Association For The Protection Of Donkeys may be given powers to remove the donkey to a sanctuary. If AnCapistan has no such association then they really need to set one up.

Question 1. I've always known. Question 2. I don't. It's a matter of faith.

If it's a delusion, more fool me!

The biggest problem with climate change that we have yet to find a way to generate virtue from hand-wringing.

Good idea; and like a number of good ideas in philosophy Aristotle had it:

....we must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed,
on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are.... — Aristotle

I said you might find Venn diagrams useful because it looked in the OP as if you initially believed 'All dogs are animals' and 'All cats are animals' entail the conclusion 'All dogs are cats', which they do not. I thought the diagrams might help with that, if it was a problem. Truth tables are another useful tool.

Yes. You do not need extra definitions. The original definitions are quite sufficient. Dogs are animals. Cats are animals. Cats are not dogs. Those last three statements are consistent. You need the diagram and the truth table.

So, it demonstrates how insufficient premises render wrong conclusions in the argument, even if they look valid.

But the conclusion does not follow from the premisses. d->a and c->a does not entail d<->c. All dogs are animals; and all cats are animals; however, no dogs are cats.

The problem is not in the definitions. The problem is that you say a conclusion follows when it does not follow.

To see that it does not follow you need to draw the diagram or write out the truth table: those are the tools we need for this job.

In late-boomer-speak, it's bad manners. I'm called Cuthbert. You can call me Georgie-porgie if you like but it's not respectful.

A good tool is the Venn diagram. Represent animals by a big circle. Dogs is a smaller circle inside the big circle. Cats is another smaller circle inside the big circle, not intersecting with Dogs. You now have four possibilities. The area outside the circle is non-animals. The area inside the big circle and outside the other two is all the animals that are not dogs and not cats. The dogs are in the dogs circle and the cats are in the cats circle.

This is a visual representation of propositions and implications. E.g. 'If x is a cat, then x is an animal', 'If x is not an animal, then x is not a dog' are shown as a picture. You can see that 'If x is a cat, then x is a dog' is false under all possibilities: there is no intersection of the two circles.

____________________

Truth tables will do the same job but for the question you have in mind they may be a bit unwieldy.

Global wars. Metaphysics — Lil

If metaphysics is causing society's collapse, then things are worse than I thought. Best get busy on those other threads to sort the problems out. Or do you mean that too much time is being wasted on metaphysics that could be spent on stopping wars? I could believe that.

So if I'm right then it's a case of a premiss being smuggled out of an argument rather than smuggled in. Very neat.

I think voters have reason to believe [3] if they rely solely on the two premisses [1] and [2]. But these two premisses do not contain all the relevant background information. Consider:

[1] ... as above
[2]..... as above
[3] If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson
[4] Anderson will not win [additional background information from the scenario]
[5] Reagan will win [by modus tollens [3] and [4]]

The trick is that [1] and [2] are selected parts of information. Crucially, [4] is not mentioned. If we did not know from the scenario that Anderson was a hopeless case, we would be quite happy to accept [3] following from [1] and [2] as indeed (I submit) it does follow - by modus ponens. So modus ponens is not threatened as a logical form. Phew.

Ha ha ha! well said

Bartricks, I'm referring omniscient subject S rather than 'God' because the aspect I'm addressing is about the concepts of omniscience, belief, knowledge, mistake etc rather than the nature of 'the most high all creator'.

OK, I get your point about acknowledging our own false beliefs. Yes, we do have false beliefs. But crucially, we don't know which ones are false. There is no belief which we hold such that we can say 'I believe that p; and ~p.' This is Moore's paradox. It can be true that it's raining and that I don't believe it's raining. But for me to say 'It is raining and I do not believe it is raining' is, whilst not a logical contradiction, still a behavioural contradiction, both expressing and denying a belief. The case with S (or G) is different. He would know which of his beliefs would be false if he held them - he knows everything that can be known together with all the justifications for believing it.

As for G not knowing that he is G, that must be because it's not a knowable proposition (since he knows everything knowable) and if it's not knowable then we can't know it either.

Clearly, the object did not go through all that in between space to get to the new position.

Perhaps the object did go through all that in between space to get to the new position. The dog comes into your room having previously been in the living room. Perhaps he was present at every point in between the two places. At any rate, I would not say it is clear that he wasn't present throughout the journey.

Zeno's paradoxes work on different assumptions about the infinite or finite divisibility of space and time.

Suppose your conclusion follows - that ominiscient subject S can hold false beliefs. You have given a justification of your conclusion in the OP and you believe your conclusion and (if it is true and your argument is sound) you have knowledge of your conclusion. In that case, S, being omniscient, also has knowledge of your conclusion. So the omniscient S is in a position of being able to believe a false proposition whilst knowing (in the same way that you know) that some belief would be a false one if he held it. But (according to the additional claim to the conclusion) he goes ahead and believes it anyway. S may be omniscient but he seems to have some confused ideas about belief and knowledge. Which suggests - perhaps - that the original argument was not quite so sound after all.

Perhaps the best we can get is that if S can make mistakes, then we can never know that S can or does make them - because if we could know it then S could know it and then there would no longer be a mistake to know.

This can be a complicated subject to fully define as it applies to beings but the basic idea is: You can do any thing you want as long as you do not interfere with someone else's freedom.

Unfortunately there are people who interfere with my freedom by undermining the authority of the party on whose stable and firm government all our freedoms depend. Eliminating opponents of the governing party will be good for civilisation and promote true freedom. Special camps could be introduced for this purpose. Ta-da!

"Austin sketches a distinction amongst speech act types, between locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts—broadly, the distinction between saying anything at all, saying something with a specific force (e.g., making a statement, asking a question, making a request), and the further effects of saying something with a specific force (e.g., getting an audience to believe something, getting them to tell you something, or getting them to do what you request). The need to draw such a distinction is now very widely accepted and probably amounts to Austin’s central contribution to more recent work (1962b: 83–164)" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/austin-jl/

Truth of a proposition is not sufficient for knowledge, as you say. But lack of knowledge of a true proposition is sufficient for non-omniscience. Some proposition is true. But the guy who knows everything doesn't know it. So he's not omniscient.

But what about propositions that are true, but not knowable? (Like your example.) Sure, that's a problem. But it doesn't follow that an omniscient being can have false beliefs. It follows only that omniscience is knowing everything that can be known. Things that can't be known (or can't be believed) are not within the competence and capacity of a merely omniscient being. Similarly an omnipotent being can do everything that can be done. But he can't do the things that can't be done. Like, for example, knowing something that is false.

The problem with us people is that we see problems where others don't and fail to see problems where others do. Which make you one of us people, I suppose - it's the risk of debating anything.

Yes, if God falsely believes that p, then the proposition 'not p' is true. Does that mean God believes 'not p'. Er, no.

If God does not believe 'not p' then he does not know 'not-p'. However, not-p. Therefore he is not omniscient.

My favourite is Latin 'negotium' - roughly, 'business', from which 'negotiation' etc - is 'neg..', not, and '...otium', leisure. Work is viewed as the absence of leisure. A useful counterpoint to regarding leisure as the spaces in between work.

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What's wrong with you people?! Focus!

Perhaps it's not them. They may have a better grasp of the problem than you. But by 'you peopling' them you'll never find out. What is it with you people who you people people!

Possibly. When we've all gone I'll let you know. Oh, hang on....

A world without humanity would be somewhat like the kind of world we live in because the world was already here when we subsequently arrived to live in it.

There are three kinds of midwife. The realist announces the baby's sex according to what it is. The anti-realist announces the sex the way she sees it. The constructivist makes its sex what it is by her announcement of it. [Apologies to Sidney Morgenbesser, Judith Butler and a whole lot of others.]

Good idea for a survey. Can we divide the results between those who actually are brains in vats and those who are not?

Why are we tolerating conspiracy nuts on this forum?

I would say it is because what we find intolerable, but nevertheless have to tolerate, is our inability to persuade others about matters that are so obvious to us that no persuasion should be necessary. What we are being invited to suppose is that something obviously true in our view may be clearly false in somebody else's. Further, they may not be insincere, stupid or mad. It's a big challenge but worth taking on.

Too much dialogue of the deaf signalled in that article. Analytic philosophy: "You must think like us because that is what 'thinking' is". Critical race theory, feminism: "You must think like us because otherwise you are silencing us." How about - "We could listen to you and learn something and who knows even vice versa." I don't know what life is like on the battleground of universities but if it's as described in the article I am glad I only sell sea shells on the sea shore for a living.

But it occurs to me that's not what you are asking. You are not asking how our mathematical intutions relate to experience. You are asking how all our experience can be interpreted as mathematics - is that right? But to me that just seems false. I feel outraged when I hear about some of the injustices in the world. No maths involved, as far as I know. But have I understood the question?

I thought it was just me pacing out the central circle of a football pitch toe to heel, circumference then diameter, then spending the rest of the walk caculating pi. Great to hear it is a thing, even if a primary school thing. 'Geometry' is 'measurement of earth'. I expect you know this:

"Scholars of embodiment seek to evaluate the intriguing hypothesis that thought—even thinking about would-be abstract ideas—is inherently modal activity that shares much neural, sensorimotor, phenomenological, and cognitive wherewithal with actual dynamical corporeal being in the world. By this token, higher-order reasoning, such as solving an algebra equation, analyzing a chemical compound, editing a journal manuscript, or engineering a spacecraft, transpires not in some disembodied cerebral space and not as computational procedures processing symbolic propositions but, rather, by operating on, with, and through actual or imagined objects." https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.00147/full

Two historical roots - Kant and Plato:

Definitions as well as fundamental mathematical propositions, for example, that space can only have three dimensions, must be “examined in concreto so that they come to be cognized intuitively”, but such propositions can never be proved since they are not inferred from other propositions
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mathematics/

Socrates demonstrates his method of questioning and recollection by questioning a slave boy who works in Meno's house. This house slave is ignorant of geometry. The subsequent discussion shows the slave capable of learning a complicated geometry problem. Socrates, however, argues that the slave could not have learned it from Socrates, since Socrates did nothing but ask him questions...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meno%27s_slave

Plato has the wild idea that we know maths from a previous life and only need to unforget what we have already learned. The answer is dubious but the question is great: where do our mathematical intuitions come from?

'If the Bible isn't a magical book, Christianity evaporates. If the Qur'an isn't a magic, Islam evaporates. And when you look at the books and ask yourself, "Is there the slightest shred of evidence that this is a product of omniscience?

Paul would have been astonished to hear that Christianity evaporates without a magical book that would not come into existence for a couple of centuries after his own time. If he had heard that he was writing some of it, he might have lost faith altogether. Luckily, the Bible wasn't ever intended to be magical and Christianity didn't evaporate.

I always worry that the anthropic principle explains nothing by explaining too much. The reason the world is just-so is because, if it weren't, then we wouldn't exist. We would not be here to ask the question. That's ok. But it also explains why my liver works and why there is gravity. A working liver and gravity are necessary conditions of my being here to ask questions. But that tells me nothing about either. It's an explanation that can be invoked to explain anything at all and so explains nothing.

According to my parents, it was the only book that would get me to sleep. The profound impact was that I was not put up for adoption, I suppose.