The mechanism is the stipulation. — Banno

If by stipulation you simply mean convention, then I think we are kind of saying the same thing. The convention is itself part of the causal-historical events. The dubbing is how it started, the convention is how it is used and ongoing part of the the name being carried on.

I'm not seeing this as a problem for Quine, or for Kripke. It could as well be settled by saying "Ok, We'll call this one "Fred", and that one "Harry". Nothing to do with modality. — Banno

It's not a problem for Quine if you think we are just labeling stuff and it's just convention. For Kripke, I would think there needs to be a mechanism for which the same word is necessarily that referent in all possible worlds. That mechanism is the causal-historical events that goes back to its dubbing (or in this case its possible "redubbing"). Even if we say Harry was Bob was Sam, we can have a world in which Harry and Bob and Sam refer to the same thing, but they didn't know the previous iterations. At some point in the history the name was dubbed, and the name was used by stipulation, and in this case, that name was changed, and then used by stipulation. And then again. In fact, what if the original name was lost to time, but then someone remembered that this was the original name of that person? Well, the causal theory allows it to be a rigid designator that will always rigidly designate that person. Sam was the initial dubbing, Bob and Harry were subsequent dubbing, and by convention others have used it, and all these convoluted namings of that same person would hold as that person and not another because of its stipulation in causal-historical events.

I don't see a problem here. "Sam" refers to Sam, "Washington" to Washington, that's just what we do with those words. If there is a problem as to which Sam or which Washington is being named, that may be sorted to our mutual satisfaction by having a chat. — Banno

If I said "Sam is X", and you say "No no, Bob is X". How do we sort this out? Well, someone misremembered or mislabeled something here. Maybe I thought Sam was Bob this whole time. What resolves this is the causal set of events that leads Sam to have been referred to Sam and not something else like Bob. I think we are kind of saying the same thing, but I am giving the mechanism for the stipulation. If I said, "No no, I know Sam is Bob, but I am not calling Sam Sam but Bob from now on", well, that would just be another causal-historical event that connects Bob with Sam.

Sorry, lets' try to be clear here - the rigid designation comes about as a result of the stipulation. That the name refers to the object might well be the result of a baptism and causal chain, btu that plays no part in the name being treated as a rigid designator.

So you can say Sam := X; then ask "In some possible world, what if Sam were not X?" And still be referring to Sam. — Banno

I guess what I mean then is how is it that the stipulation is constrained to "Sam" and not something else? Which seems to be the question there. Causal-historical chain of events seems to be Kripke's answer.

Rigid designators are not discovered, they are stipulated. When one asks what the world might be like if Thatcher had lost her first election, one is stipulating a world in which, if anything, Thatcher exists in order to lose the election. The stipulation is what makes it a rigid designation. — Banno

Definition of Stipulation:
a condition or requirement that is specified or demanded as part of an agreement.

This is choosing amongst a set of grammars - semantics - that we might make use of. — Banno

So it looks like your theory here is that we agree (i.e. follow a convention), that such-and-such is picked out across all possible worlds. However, the convention doesn't convey where the rigid designation comes about. If I say X = Sam, Sam is referring to X because of the causal chain that dubbed it so somewhere in the history. This gives it the rigid designation in the first place. Otherwise, X = Sam is just a hollow analytic statement.

Once it's "picked out", it is designated rigidly. I'm not sure if this is what you are saying, of if it disagrees with what you are saying. So Theseus' ship may change completely, and yet it continues to make sense to refer to it as the Ship of Theseus, using that name as a rigid designator. — Banno

It is the "once picked out, it is designated rigidly" that I am trying to go back to. "What" is causing this rigidity of the designator? And thus I brought up what I think is integral to Kripke- the causal theory of reference. Thus the foundation seems to me, to be causality that is the root of this rigidity.

They need not be. Anything that can be given a proper name can be rigidly designated. Kinds, such as gold or H₂O, can also be rigidly designated. But again, while causality may be the answer to how it is that a name refers to an individual, once that link is established, the causal chain becomes unnecessary. So Hesperus = Phosphorus even though the casual chains to their baptism differ. — Banno

Ok, so if the causal chain becomes unnecessary, what makes it still a rigid designator? Because if you use anything other than causality, I would be at a loss to how it is so. If a proper name refers to the same thing in all possible worlds, there needs to be a reason for why it does. The reason is the causal chain. One may not be able to actually trace it, but that's what creates the referent to be rigidly designated. Ship of Theseus has a causal link that goes back to X dubbing. Now, it gets tricky as to when THE Ship of Theseus as a philosophical concept is actually designated versus some ship of Theseus, but that's just the application of the concept.

Well, you could follow Quine and try to get rid of proper names and say that: "there is some X that gandalfizes." Spade's article, which is quite good, points out some of the ways in which Quine's approach is more similar to Platonism. The variable, being a sort of bare particular (substratum, bearer of haecceity) sort of takes on the role of matter (the chora), with properties fulfilling the role of forms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But then the problem of contingency as far as what properties makes a Gandalf.

Sheer "dubbing" runs into the absurdities of the "very same Socrates" who is alternatively Socrates, a fish, a coffee mug, Plato, a patch on my tire, or Donald Trump, in which case we might be perplexed as to how these can ever be "the very same" individual. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not so much if it the "dubbing" entails a chain of causal events that lead back to the dubbing. Of course you can ask all sorts of things like, "Can the dubbing be mistaken?" Can there be a faux dubbing that never really happened and all are mistaken in a contingent world?

The problem with the broadly "Platonic" strategy is that it does indeed have difficulty explaining how particulars exist and if the substratum lying beneath them to which properties attach is either one or many. This is complicated even more by certain empiricist commitments that would seem to make proposing an unobservable, propertyless substratum untenable. Without this substratum though, you often end up with an ontology that supposes a sort of "soup" prior to cognition, with the existence of all "things" being the contingent, accidental creation of the mind (e.g. The Problem of the Many, the problems of ordinary objects, etc.). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep, how does an object not simply decay into only its properties. However, we can say the patterns present themselves in forms, and these forms are delineated and made into technologies and testable experiments. That seems to indicate that the world is presenting something beyond mere convention or habit of thought. But this can of course go into Kantian Idealism, and how the mind by necessity structures the world vs. various realisms, etc. Either way, both would be contra mere conventionalism, I would think.

Hence, the Aristotelian idea of particulars as more than bundles of properties, as possessing an internal principle of intelligibility, self-determination, and unity (although they are not wholly self-subsistent). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed, but what is this internal coherence? It's asserted but not explained other than its needed to say this object is this and not that.

The problems of broadly Platonist approaches are perhaps less acute in philosophies with a notion of "vertical reality" (described quite well in Robert M. Wallace's books on Plato and Hegel). They seem particularly acute in physicalist ontologies that want to be "flat." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, are there principles behind the physical aspects at work, etc. Some people propose a mathematical one, etc.

One solution is essentially hyper voluntarist theology with man swapped in for God. So, instead of "a deer is whatever God says it is," we get "a deer is whatever man says it is." — Count Timothy von Icarus

One might retort that realism is shown through outcomes that are out of our control but lead to technologies and repeatable testable results. Interesting enough, I wonder if this kind of response can even work for Gandalf or Bilbo. Bilbo is a hobbit, hobbits are this but not that. One cannot make a hobbit to X if he cannot do X, thus if a TV series takes the stories and breaks them, they are panned as inauthentic.

You might capture this in terms of accessibility, yes. The question then is if we might want some notion of physical necessity (i.e., related to changing, mobile being) as an explanatory notion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can Gandalf also have a necessity of Gandalf like Water is H20? If so, what is the thing that makes both point to the referent and rigidly designate to it? It isn't physicality. Is it causality? The initial "dubbing" of referent to the name? Why must physical things be the only things to be rigidly designated?

And then of course, if causality is the key, can this be questioned? What if in all possible worlds, causality does not hold or some such?

But if Venus were not the brightest star in the western evening, it would still be Venus.

"The brightest star in the western evening sky" is not a rigid designator, but "The Evening Star" is. — Banno

This can be tied into the Ship of Theseus as a way to explain how rigid designators get their designation. That is to say, why is "Venus" or "The Evening Star" a rigid designation to begin with? What makes it rigidly designated? In every possible world Venus is X. But what is X? That "essentialness" of Venus? It is the causal conditions for which the term "Venus" is picked out amongst other things in the world. Thus causality seems to play the foundational role in all of this designation. There is a chain of events leading back to the baptism of the object that leads it to be rigidly designated to that object. Ok, well that works for proper names. How about scientific kinds like H20? I guess it can be the same causal foundation that links the name by necessity.

The tie in with the Ship of Theseus is, that if Venus was to miss X component or Y component or Z component is it still Venus? Well, according to Kripke, that would be a contingent circumstance, and thus not what makes designator pick out that object. So what is it? Again, it seems to be causality in a chain of events starting from its initial baptism or naming.

I think there is an ambiguity regarding human action. Some of our ways are in accord with but others contrary to the Way. Naming is something humans do. To be human is to be part of rather than apart from the Way. The authors of the Tao Te Ching uses names. But — Fooloso4

If we need to read poems and philosophy to “get back to Nature” or “the Way”, perhaps we can never truly be “in it”, contrary to the “ways of life” of other animals.

This is the problem that I personally call "The Hard Problem of Identity". Think of it like the "Hard problem of consciousness", but in metaphysics instead of philosophy of mind. One possible candidate for identity, is spatiotemporal continuity of form under a sortal. That solution, however, crashes into the problem of Material Constitution, particularly with the case of the Ship of Theseus (I think that the Ship of Theseus paradox should be classified as a problem of indeterminate identity, not as a problem of material constitution, but that's beside the point). — Arcane Sandwich

I'd agree that indeterminate identity does become a problem when delimiting where "objects" begin and end. I don't think this is as much a problem with other forms of metaphysics like process philosophy. But I get the reasons for wanting an object-oriented metaphysics, giving objects-proper ultimate priority, and irreducible to simples.

The word "scientism" originally had a negative connotation, and then some people (like Mario Bunge) started using it in a positive sense. For example, take a look at the title of one of his articles: In Defense of Realism and Scientism — Arcane Sandwich

Cool, I'll check it out. As a lark, @Wayfarer should take a look.

So, I would say that nothing "becomes" an object in the strict sense for OOO, I would say that objects instead emerge according to OOO. — Arcane Sandwich

This just seems to open up more problems, no? For example, is Gandalf not Gandalf at time 1, but is at time 2? What is the proto-object that "emerges" in the transition stage between non-object and object? Is that proto-object an object? This suggests to negate essentialism as a continuum, more a non-discrete field or spectrum.

Again, your argument is not with me then, but with Harman himself. My theory of fictional characters is mostly inspired by Bunge, not Harman. There are other parts of my personal philosophy that are more inspired by Harman than Bunge, but this is not one of them. — Arcane Sandwich

I am not arguing with your theory but Harman, and am seeing if you also agree with my objections, nothing more. The problem with essentialist theories is where the delimiters are for certain objects. You can get away with it perhaps if you are a materialist because then you can delimit where the boundaries are by some sort of material composition. However, if you give all potential things status of objects, it can be stretched out to a continuum, and thus not an object so much as a continuous monism of indefinite beginning or end, as is the problem with something like Gandalf.

My sentiments on Harman's philosophy (and he knows this himself, since we've been exchanging emails for almost 10 years now) are mixed, precisely because I'm a materialist and he is not, and because I endorse scientism and he does not. He values science, but he places no stock in scientism. I, on the other hand, place stock in both. Despite these differences, Harman and I are realists. So there is important common ground there. And there are many more similarities and differences, but those that I just mentioned would be the core differences between us. — Arcane Sandwich

Interesting. I rarely see people "embrace" the label "scientism". What is that definition for you? There was a thread about this not too long ago:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15525/the-empty-suitcase-physicalism-vs-methodological-naturalism/p1

But as far as what I brought up, do you know of his answers, or would you have a defense? Specifically I am talking about how and when something becomes an object. It seems like a Deus ex machina to say Gandalf is thus an object. Is Gandalf an object at the first thought of a Gandalf-like character? The name Gandalf? The writing of pen to paper about Gandalf? The neural connections? It just seems oddly misplaced to call it an object even with the appellate "sensual". It also has to me, obvious connections to the essentialism of Kripke in Naming and Necessity, and Putnam with ideas of scientific kinds. Does Gandalf obtain in all possible worlds? Etc.

So what's your point here? It went over my head, if there was indeed a point to be made here. To me it sounds like you're just describing a state of affairs, and you're doing so in a neutral way. — Arcane Sandwich

Yep.

I have published a paper where I say that for Harman, all ideas are sensual objects, but not all sensual objects are ideas. He doesn't say that himself, but in one of the emails that he sent me, he seemed to agree with what I said about him on that specific point. — Arcane Sandwich

:up:

You'd be wrong. A real object can have sensual qualities, just as a sensual object can have real qualities. There's an article that Harman himself published in response to one of my own articles. In my article, I press him on the topic of hobbitsvis a vis the topic of matter, and he explicitly says, in print, that hobbits are sensual objects that have real qualities, and that the same is true of matter, in his view. — Arcane Sandwich

Fair enough, but then:

Then you're argument is with Harman himself, not with my interpretation of his philosophy. — Arcane Sandwich

And that would be true, but are you defending Harman with these objections or do you see them as well?

Not really. Good ol' fashioned relationism poses a greater philosophical problem for speculative realism. — Arcane Sandwich

It doesn't seem to be as much a problem except for Harman who focuses on objects contra process/qualities-only.

Besides, Meillassoux and Harman criticize correlationism for different reasons. They don't agree as to what it is that correlationism gets wrong. Meillassoux sees flaws where Harman sees virtues, and Harman sees flaws where Meillassoux sees virtues. — Arcane Sandwich

Meillassoux focused more on correlationism, and found that it kept people in an epistemic circle and thus "speculative realism" is an attempt to break it, philosophically. Harman agrees partly that correlationism has some truth to it as far as how humans relate to objects, but he democratizes it such that all objects have the ability, via vicarious causation to perceive to sense the object (i.e. sensual object), via the object's translated, sensual qualities (i.e. the qualities of an object as sensed by another object). A tree and wind have an interaction that is different than a tree and a human, for example. For Harman, relations are what matters. However, it is not all relations. It may even transform its appearance, but retains its essence (like the burned log). Each object, has an essence that is withdrawn or hidden, and thus retains its independence from complete reduction to its qualities, causal factors, or behaviors.

Not sure if this is correct, but if that's your theory, OK. — Arcane Sandwich

I am interpreting Harman, so not my own theory per se.

Qualities. For Harman, qualities are not objects, though he suggests that under certain conditions, a quality can become an object. But that's beside the point here, — Arcane Sandwich

It's actually quite the point. If Gandalf is purely from human imagination, that would seem to undermine his attempt at saying objects have independence. Also, what is the mechanism that makes the object an object at that point? Why is it not then something else- an idea, an abstraction, etc. This then becomes a slippery slope whereby objects are so ill-defined as to not matter in any useful sense.

Sensual Qualities - Real Qualities
Sensual Objects - Real Objects

These can be combined in many different ways. For example, a fictional character is a sensual object that has a real quality. Éowyn and Aragorn exists as sensual objects, not as real objects. However, they have real qualities, since, for example, they are copyrighted characters, you cannot use them in your own novel. That is in fact why the Tolkien foundation sued TSR (the old Dungeons & Dragons company) way back in the day. IIRC, a judge ruled that the word "hobbit" was copyrighted. So, instead of using the word "hobbit", TSR used "halfling". — Arcane Sandwich

I think you are misapplying Harman's notion of sensual object/qualities here. Sensual qualities, as far as I see, are only tied with sensual objects. Sensual objects are "tree-for-x" (human let's say). The sensual qualities would be the appearance of the tree-for-x (rough, brown, tall, etc.). The real object is the tree's essence which is withdrawn, independent of relations with other objects, and not fully comprehensible. The real qualities, might be things selected out as what composes the real object (but apparently never exhaustive), like the molecular structure let's say. Whatever form that particular tree takes in its relations with others, the essence always holds, though not fully knowable, though some real qualities can be picked out.

Thus Gandalf and Eowyn and Aragorn are always sensual objects with sensual qualities, as they are objects only ever relational to humans.

Coupling Heidegger's tool analysis with the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introduces two types of objects: real objects and sensual objects. Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experience, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only in experience.[30] Additionally, Harman suggests two kinds of qualities: sensual qualities, or those found in experience, and real qualities, which are accessed through intellectual probing.[30] Pairing sensual and real objects and qualities yields the following four "tensions":

Real Object/Real Qualities (RO-RQ): This pairing grounds the capacity of real objects to differ from one another, without collapsing into indefinite substrata.[31] This tension thus refers to "a real or indescribable object" encrusted with "real properties" that cannot be experientially understood.[32] Harman refers to this as "essence".[33]
Real Object/Sensual Qualities (RO-SQ): As in the tool-analysis, a withdrawn object is translated into sensual apprehension via a "surface" accessed by thought and/or action.[31] This tension thus refers to "the multiple facets [an object] displays to the outer world, and whatever [real, withdrawn] organizing principle is able to hold together [those] features."[34] Harman identifies this as "space".[35]
Sensual Object/Real Qualities (SO-RQ): The structure of conscious phenomena are forged from eidetic, or experientially interpretive, qualities intuited intellectually.[31] This tension thus refers to "a perfectly accessible [object] whose features are withdrawn from [total] scrutiny",[34] Harman dubs "eidos"[36]
Sensual Object/Sensual Qualities (SO-SQ): Sensual objects are present, but enmeshed within a "mist of accidental features and profiles".[37] This tension thus refers to "an enduring sensual object and its shifting parade of qualities from one moment to the next", which Harman identifies as "time".[38]
To explain how withdrawn objects make contact with and relate to one another, Harman submits the theory of vicarious causation, whereby two hypothetical entities meet in the interior of a third entity, existing side-by-side until something occurs to prompt interaction.[39] Harman compares this idea to the classical notion of formal causation, in which forms do not directly touch, but influence one another in a common space "from which all are partly absent". Causation, says Harman, is always vicarious, asymmetrical, and buffered:
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

The so-called linguistic turn is still the dominant model for the philosophy of access, but there are plenty of others — Graham Harman (2005)

I think this is significant. For the speculative realists, "correlationism" or the idea that the world cannot be accessed outside a human/animal perspective, is the enemy.

By contrast, object-oriented philosophy holds that the relation of humans to pollen, oxygen, eagles, or windmills is no different in kind from the interaction of these objects with each other. For this reason, the philosophy of objects is sometimes lazily viewed as a form of scientific naturalism, since it plunges directly into the world and considers every object imaginable, avoiding any prior technical critique of the workings of human knowledge. But quite unlike naturalism, object-oriented philosophy adopts a bluntly metaphysical approach to the relations between objects rather than a familiar physical one. — Graham Harman (2005)

This is also important in understanding this metaphysics. In his particular flavor of speculative realism, it seems objects have ways of either translating or not translating their being to each other. I don't get though, how something fictional can be anything outside of a human interaction. How can Gandalf be anything but human-based? According to this theory, it would seem that even if humans were necessary for Gandalf to exist, once created, Gandalf is its own object, with its own withdrawn and mysterious essence that can only be translated with other objects, including humans.

Another oddity in the theory would be, if anything can be an object, what then would not count as an object? If Gandalf, the number 3, the type "dog", a particular dog named Rex, Narnia, Middle Earth, a subatomic particle, and a brown hat are all their own individual, essentialized, independent objects, what is not an object?

I've only read one of Whitehead's books, but this does seem to be a problem for process philosophy in general. Of course, simply positing objects and essences does very little to fix the issue either. If the question: "why do some sorts of processes just happen to occur?" is problematic (which I'd agree it is), it seems the same sort of question would be problematic for objects, which was Srap's point earlier. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Harman is "democratic" with his objects- what he calls "flat ontology". All objects are of equal weight as far as how relations are concerned. That is to say, all objects present a "vicarious/sensational causation" whereby one object is "translated" with another. That is to say, everything cannot reducible to simples, or overmined as parts of an anthropic-only perspective, or composed simply of their parts. Even if a log is burned, the log's essence is still withdrawn and ever-present in this theory. This notion of objects even applies to non-physical objects like abstract concepts, fictional characters, and the like. They all have a unity, irreducibility, and can enter into relations with other objects. This allows for objects to persist beyond simply their reduced parts, or simply their relations/processes. He is even "democratic" about objects being of equal existence whether real or fictional. As for the question, "Why these objects?", I am not sure his take other than it's a brute fact of his metaphysics.

I think the issues you raise here regarding assemblages—defined loosely as groupings or networks of interconnected elements—should be tied into one of the pioneers of "systems" type theories—Alfred North Whitehead. In the quote below, there are three views going on here (two that agree about metaphysics of process—Whitehead and his defender, the quote's author Shaviro—and Harmon, an essentialist).

Whitehead - Reality is process, but there are endurances of patterns, meaning recurring structures or configurations that maintain coherence over time and can often be seen as persistent objects. Whitehead preserves these endurances by viewing each moment of becoming as an "actual occasion," which integrates prior patterns into a unified experience. These occasions form a sequence, inheriting qualities from their predecessors, allowing stable patterns to persist even as the underlying processes continually shift.

Graham (contra Whitehead) - Reality is objectile, and each object possesses a "hidden essence" that cannot be fully accessed by other objects. For example, a stone might be perceived differently depending on its relation to a human observer, a riverbed, or geological forces, but its core essence—the quality that makes it a stone rather than something else—remains inaccessible and unaltered by these interactions.

Shaviro (agreeing with Whitehead, contra Graham) - Reality is process, and Whitehead accounted for persistence through the recognition of persistent patterns.

Here is the quote:

Harman rejects Whitehead’s relationalism for two reasons: 1) he worries it reduces ontology to “a house of mirrors” wherein, because a thing just is a unification of its prehensions of other things, there is never finally any there there beneath its internal reflections of others; and 2) he claims that an ontology based exclusively on internal relations, wherein entities are said to hold nothing in reserve beyond their present prehensional relation to the universe, cannot account for change or novelty. In such a universe, there would be “no external point of purchase from which structure could be transformed,” as Levi Bryant puts it (The Democracy of Objects, 209). As Shaviro is quick to point out, however, Whitehead was well aware of this potential objection (see page 35 of PR, for example), which is exactly why he amended his ontology sometime between his final editing of Science and the Modern World (1925) and Process and Reality (1929) so that becoming was understood to be atomic rather than continuous. A fair reading of Whitehead’s mature metaphysical scheme should acknowledge (despite a few inconsistent statements here and there) that his goal was to strike some balance between internal and external relations, precisely for the reasons put forward by Harman and Bryant.

In response to Harman’s first worry regarding an infinite regress of prehensions, I’d call his bluff and say that a truly aesthetic ontology (which he also claims to be seeking) would leave us with just such an infinite regress of appearances. A thing’s “style” or “allure” doesn’t need to be understood as emanating from some substantial core or fixed essence; we can also understand a thing’s “style” as Whitehead does in terms of the “enduring characteristic” realized by a historical route of actual occasions. There is nothing hidden from view by such outward qualities other than the occasion in question’s moment-to-moment subjective enjoyment of these characteristics. Which brings us to Harman’s second (I believe unfounded) worry about relational reductionism. Whitehead’s dipolar account of the process of experiential realization includes both a public moment of display and a private moment of withdrawal. Every drop of experience begins by taking up the “objectively immortal” data of its past. It then unifies this data into its own singular and private perspective on the world. It is this moment of privacy that most closely resembles Harman’s doctrine of withdrawal. The occasion in question is in this moment entirely independent of its relations. But as soon as this private, never before experienced perspective on reality is realized, it perishes into objective immortality, becoming publicly available for the next occasion of experience to inherit as it moves toward its own novel concrescent realization. “The many become one, and are increased by one.” Whitehead is able to make sense of change and novelty while at the same time preserving a non-reductive account of internal relations. It seems to me that Harman’s insistence on the irrelevance of evolutionary time for ontology is part of the reason he is unable to make sense of Whitehead’s attempted compromise (“The ontological structure of the world does not evolve…which is precisely what makes it an ontological structure” [GM, 24]). In effect, Whitehead’s entire process ontology can be understood as an imaginative generalization of evolutionary theory. — Shaviro

It's a great example of what happens when you have no structure to your philosophy and end up putting philosophy of language prior to metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. Also the tendency of philosophers (particularly in the Anglo-American tradition) to start by analyzing human language as a sort of sui generis phenomena, rather than a special case of communication/signification and act. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I like the cut of your jib here. Good observation.

Real objects withdraw for OOO, but sensual objects don't. Sensual objects, unlike real objects, have direct access to each other.

... and with that, I'm out of this Thread. — Arcane Sandwich

As I interpreted it, "real objects" always retain something "withdrawn" that sort of makes it its "essence" (though that word is a bit tricky in various contexts). If it was all sensual objects, everything would be indeed just a "bundle of properties". There is something of the object qua object, that doesn't get translated in this theory. This theory seems to directly oppose "bundle theories" and "process theories", as both would be the translation part, but not the object part.

The idea is that, contrary to "behaviorism," nouns are not dispensable. — Leontiskos

Reminds me of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology#Withdrawal

And that's why I'm posting. Much as I've enjoyed building models over the years, I'm a little uncomfortable that the approach I'm describing has a sort of blindness. Whenever a question is raised about what something is, it is immediately rewritten as a question about how that thing behaves, so that we can get started modelling that bundle of behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

This is basically the argument I have been making regarding Philosophy of Mind for years. Others on here have similarly pointed out this "blind spot"- it's the Hard Problem. It's metaphysics par excellence. Talks of maps overtake talks of terrain. The terrain is discarded as "non-sense" and thus "cannot be spoken". The continentals don't seem to care about this self-imposed rule. It tends to lead to neologisms, mystical flights of fancy, solipsism, and all the other epithets that more analytic-types would throw at it.

Is there just one example of good evidence amongst the thousands of claims and tall tales that the UFO brigade have generated? I notice you haven't gone down the Bob Lazar rabbit hole as yet. :wink: — Tom Storm

It's more telling those tall tales under oath to a major government authority. What's the point in:
a) Allowing the hearings
b) Lying under oath

Are there even consequences? It's not matter of free speech when it is under oath, no? Is perjury under the legislative branch seen as different than perjury in the judicial branch? In other words, what incentive is there to lie to a Congressional hearing under oath, if in theory, there are consequences if caught lying? Why be a "whistleblower" when there is nothing to blow a whistle on? Are they just schizophrenic? Another psychological disorder? Grandiose narcissism? Bob Lazar didn't actually go through with a Congressional hearing, nor was he the head of an intelligence program in the Pentagon. He's a dude who is interviewed by other UFO aficionados.

Here is Elizando in his own channel:


Daily Show interview (before hearing)


From hearing:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/g9eN11DQITg

More from hearing

Above all, if you believe, you're important. You're not in the mass of the "sheeple", as the conspiracy theorists view other people. — ssu

It reminds me a bit of Gnosticism. Gnostics had secret knowledge only the initiated can understand fully.

These two blend in perfectly. Or at least, before Congressional testimonies and US fighter pilot interviews that made the discourse a lot more different. (Or before conspiracy theories of the deep State wasn't official as it is now in the Trump administration)

Yet before that... it was just like the belief in the paranormal something on the fringe. — ssu

It is this exact thing that has piqued my interest- the Congressional hearings. What does that mean for the status of UFOs? Are they something to be taken legitimately? The discourse around it is no longer fringe as you say, so what is it? UFO literally means "Unidentified Flying Object". The new term, UAP, means "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena". So as far as first hand evidence from videos and pilots, this would seem in the realm of acceptability. That is to say, it could be anything from natural phenomena to adversarial technology. However, people like Grusch and Elizando are attributing it to NHI (non-human intelligence), and that we have retrieved air craft and "biologics" (bodies?). So you see how the claims of possible quickly become suspect to claims of the extraordinary. Yet Congress doesn't seem to dismiss it out of hand. Is that because the US Congress is increasingly populated by conspiracy theorists or because they know of some confidential information related to this that they are trying to reveal to the public slowly? The UFO guys are saying that there is stuff we have and it just needs to be revealed. Why would Elizando and Grusch testify under oath if it was found to be lacking in evidence at some point? Why would the government allow them to say this stuff if they wanted it secret? Notice, the story can write itself. All you have to say is the government wants us to know slowly over time so when the big reveal happens, we are not so shocked, and talk of UAP and NHI is normalized. I am not saying I necessarily believe that, but you see why all of this is bizarre.

Americans have this perplexed emotions towards their government: on the one hand it is as inefficient and bureacratic as any large government is, on the other hand it's this nearly uncanny giant octopus capable of hiding the most elaborate secrets. In any way, the real threat is somehow the US government.
— ssu

Americans have this perplexed emotions towards their government: on the one hand it is as inefficient and bureacratic as any large government is, on the other hand it's this nearly uncanny giant octopus capable of hiding the most elaborate secrets. In any way, the real threat is somehow the US government. — ssu

Right, the biggest blow to this theory is that a secret of this magnitude could be kept secret for this long. But, then because of the nature of this type of conspiracy thinking, you can always say that it hasn't been kept secret really, that some people have known and their stories are true all along. Of course, most of them end up being charlatans. This new batch though seems a bit more sophisticated. They were part of counter-intelligence, they were researching UAP, and they do have at least some videos already de-classified to refer back to.

This then brings me back to truth and epistemology. At what point is something a lie? If Elizando truly believes they are NHI, that there are retrieval programs he has knowledge of, and biologics, but he says he cannot give details because he has signed a confidentiality agreement, what do we make of this?

Agree. There's a religious element to this wherein people see a kind of transcendence from everyday humanity, a way of re-enchanting the world via a kind of techno-spiritual movement. — Tom Storm

If it's harmless, let them have it. Although philosophically, is there something morally relevant in being a few degrees divorced from reality, living in your own fanfiction? I think the theories are fun to read about if you do it from a purely skeptical standpoint. But some people think the disclosure will prove all the skeptics wrong. It'll happen soon by X date, with X person.

And I've noticed that once committed to this thinking, it is almost impossible to shake people, even with evidence. It becomes a faith-based system that is impervious to outsiders, who are either 'idiots' or part of the system's duplicity. — Tom Storm

I suppose people who have read/watched too much sci-fi would be suspectable to this. However, I can see why it would be harder to shake than other things. There are hearings on it from government officials, this gives it a "sheen" of legitimacy.

That being said, the US government created more distrust for its own citizens when they had NSC spokesman Kirby and Homeland Security secretary Mayorkas say it's nothing to worry about, but we don't know what it is. That did sound suspicious, to be fair.

I think the UFO/alien folks are looking for meaning beyond the mundane. It also gives a sort of hope- that something bigger than humans is out there and that their beliefs would be vindicated all along.

As others were saying, it also belies a mistrust in government, and actual psy-ops during the Cold War. Better for people to attribute things in the air to aliens than to new technology. Drones are just the newest version.

My guess is New Jersey is congested with air traffic because it's so close to so many population centers, airports, and military facilities. Combine all this and you have a fairly crowded skies. Has there been an uptick in drone usage since November? Probably. Some people were saying that people were testing them before Christmas and things like this.

I think Steven Greenstreet pretty much hit the nail that there is a group of UFO aficionados who essentially cross-reference each other. I don't think all of them are necessarily lying, but rather embellishing or falsely attributing unknowingly. That is to say, yes there might be really fast moving "tic tac" UAP, or even weird orbs, or other anomalous sightings, but not much more than the footage we have. And "crash retrievals" might just be weird materials being studied in a lab that are falsely attributed to crashed UAP. So it's actually a bit more nuanced than outright lies.

But would I want there to be some secret program this whole time that would be revealed to the public in a crazy disclosure? Sure, why not. I think like most people, such an astonishing revelation would be a nice diversion and keep us entertained for a long while.

But then life would go along. Just as it has to. You have to go to work, pay the bills, walk the dog. And so on... — ssu

Yeah for sure, existential dread and mundanity doesn't go away :wink:. Like any new revelation, it would be at first shocking, and then we would just learn that it is part of the way things are, and people would go about their daily lives. However, I think it would become part of regular briefings and updates, etc.. if it were actually true that is.

But haven't had the ability to understand it. Otherwise it would be already our technology. And this is the real harm that has been done with the secrecy, assuming there would be the technology. It's been in the hands of some specifically picked scientist who have sworn to secrecy. And that's the worst that can happen with tech. — ssu

Funnily enough, bureaucratic red tape and secrecy would actually hamper more advancement. Assuming this exists (big if), it would be in the highest levels of confidentiality. That being said, intelligence officers at the highest levels would probably make sure that each department that studied these artifacts of technology would be separated as much as possible from each other on a "need to know" basis. Thus, if they need consulting from a materials engineer they will only be revealed aspects dealing with that. If they need propulsion experts, they only deal with mechanical engineers and physicists that deal with those fields. They would never allow any one scientist/expert/officer to know the full details. Only a very few would have the big picture. Thus, being that collaboration might be at a minimum, progress might be slower than it would take if there was a larger project akin to a Manhattan Project. Then again, this is all just fun speculation on my part. I'm just giving possible scenarios.

Just think how little the Soviet Space program helped ordinary Soviet technology compared to how NASA's achievements and programs have spurred useful technology for the US household. Tech held secret won't help anybody. And tech that we don't understand and know will help even less when it's kept secret.

Make a global effort to understand the technology... would be also likely what advanced space travelling species would see as something positive from us. — ssu

Well, I would tend to agree, and thus, if it was secret, I can imagine many efforts to reengineer any technology or to study it in the greatest detail might be encumbered without more people looking at it. However, if you think about it, the technology might be treated like military technology and thus, if there is a way to have an advantage over other countries, the confidential nature becomes paramount. However, I find the notion funny the NHI space craft are making themselves known more and more to the point where it forces the government's hand.

I think you give governments more credit than they are due when it comes to their ability to cover their tracks…after all there would be leaks somewhere down the line. — kindred

I'm more on the skeptic side until provided any sufficient evidence from reliable sources. When I propose these fringe theories, I am doing it for the sake of argument.

It would be cool if aliens have or had visited us but I just don’t believe it has happened. Plus with everyone having a camera at their fingertips these days we would have evidence for it but we hardly have any credible ones. — kindred

The UFO theorists might say that many people have photographed sightings and many pilots have reported it to FAA and AARO:
https://www.aaro.mil/
https://www.aaro.mil/UAP-Cases/Official-UAP-Imagery/

And of course ex-intelligence officials like Luis Elizando and investigative journalists like Michael Shellenberger who claim that there are other programs, and there is more evidence that is kept hidden such as high resolution pictures and videos etc.

The issue is that of technological advancement and capability of traveling to other worlds and overcoming the light speed barrier to do so. In this regard we have no conclusive proof or evidence that this has happened but are left with conspiracy theories that they have in fact visited earth but are covered up by government. The question is why?

One of the reasons it could have been covered up is that we’re a war mongering species so any technological advantage we may develop because of this tech would be best kept under wraps in order to maintain such an advantage. — kindred

I don't know but that might be what they might say. A "believer" might say that the government does not want a panic and perhaps are worried about the public's unpredictable reaction to such news.

Some of the ideas floating right now (no pun intended), is that the "real" UAP are these "orbs" that some people see, and the drones are actually there to investigate the orbs.

Perhaps it's institutional inertia. They hid it for so long, that to reveal it would be also to reveal the government hid their knowledge, and distrust would be even greater so they don't want to increase that.

Again, I am just giving speculations based on fringe theories.

The fact that the government is willing to have these public hearings tells me that the government doesn't actually have a whole lot to hide. If they had something to hide, they'd be trying much harder to hide it.

Then again, maybe that's exactly what the government wants me to think... — flannel jesus

The disclosure people would say that it is a slow drip so they get ahead of it before the big reveal :D.

1) One global media frenzy. — ssu

It would certainly be a frenzy. I think there would be more than that. There would be an economic crisis, the stock market might crash, people would start re-evaluating their place in the universe as beings with greater intelligence or extraordinary powers would put us in a status as not "alone". It would be akin to something religious perhaps.

2) Likely other countries, perhaps even the Catholic Church, will come forward with "new that, old stuff" comments. Perhaps the Pope says something about the greatness of God etc. — ssu

Certainly religions would try to accommodate this and even speak of it in terms of religious phenomena perhaps.

3) The US will have a boondoggle of Congressional hearings about a secret program that in the end will look a complete farce. How could this happen? Where was Congressional oversight? — ssu

This certainly, but this would be the least hectic thing. I don't think you would have anything else being discussed for a solid year.

Likely we won't see a fleet of UFO's hovering around the UN Building to make the official contact with the official global authority, UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), for formalizing the already seems to be so ordinary connections to Earth's governments. I think they would likely wait and see. — ssu

It depends on the nature of what was "disclosed". I would say it would simply be that we know of alien technology, and that they fly around, so close encounters of the 1st and 2nd kind, but not really 3rd kind. That is to say, there are some form of anomalous life forms that seem to have intelligence that we cannot account for and seem to be watching us, but no communication is established or understanding yet of what they are or what they are doing.

There is no evidence because the conspiracy covers everything up.
Therefore not believing the conspiracy is compliant with the conspiracy.
If the committee cannot get to any real evidence, it is either because the committee is being duped by the conspiracy, or because the committee is part of the cover up.
There can never be a resolution, because the absence of evidence is evidence of the conspiracy. — unenlightened

Yep, this seems to be how this works. As I stated above:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/954602

The intelligence industry is the natural home of the paranoid, just as philosophy is the home of the gullible. And yes there is an overlap. And just because I'm paranoid, that doesn't mean there's no conspiracy; on the contrary, the paranoid are always conspiring, so nothing to see here.

The question I have for the aliens, not knowing if they are benevolent or malevolent, is why they are cooperating with opposed and secretive governments to hide their presence from folks that would be willing to cooperate with anyone who wasn't the current government of whichever country? It makes them look weak; and surely they are not weak? — unenlightened

Right? I can only speculate, but some answers from the NHI community would be:
1) They prefer to work with the heads of government or have an agreement with them.
2) There is no live "they". Rather, we only have evidence of NHI from crafts and/or dead alien bodies. There's never been actual communication. However, somehow they agreed to not disclose themselves until they deemed humans are ready for it?

My guess is it would have to be the fringe of the fringe to even entertain 1. But 2 probably represents the standard view.

:lol:

That said, this would a massive story if true and I would imagine there would be a risk of unrestrained anger, panic and scapegoating. Not sure there would be a good or entirely safe way to reveal this. — Tom Storm

But you see, this is how the "disclosure" conspiracy works. For reasons like the ones you list, these conspiracy theorists claim that unlike previous years, starting last year with the congressional hearing, and this new one, and the drones, and the increased UAP sightings and activity, the US government is trying to slowly get the public used to this secret and that it is going to be fully disclosed soon, maybe by someone like Trump. Again, this has the whiff of old school hopes for End of Times prophecies. It's going to come any day now.. It's getting closer and closer... You watch...

Now, some in this group believe that the aliens (or "non-human intelligence) are actually trying to make themselves known more and more, and the government cannot prevent it, so is trying to either obfuscate it either with their own drones or by denying anything is going on, or slowly getting people used to the idea of weird phenomena in the sky that is really NHI. Again, I'm just conveying some current views to show how creative it can get.

Of course the situation is probably something more like this:
- There is just generally more drone activity globally because more people are flying drones. People think this is a sign of something more.
- People are paying attention to the skies more because of media about UAP, and this combined with more drones means people are now just noticing the new "norm" of increased drone activity
- There may be an increase in certain areas around military installations because Ockham's Razor- military are testing their large drones! This is the current state and future of warfare.
-The government does act shady around military technology but that is obvious because it's generally the MO of the military to keep things confidential in general

The issue for me is the term "the Government" what does that really mean? Does this suggest a single, monolithic, united and coherent group who has consistently acted in unison to maintain such a secret? Or are we saying a secret body which keeps secrets - attached to government, but not really part of governing? The mind boggles.

To me it is like the term 'they'. It's always 'they' who lie to us or do bad things to us. 'They' don't want us to know the truth. 'They' are making money out of it. 'They' are responsibly for disinformation, etc, etc. — Tom Storm

Haha, it's always some shadowy smoke filled backroom somewhere with anonymous men in suits under hazy light. I guess in this case "they" is supposed to be some "secret" super top secret arm of a military or intelligence community. This one is allegedly known as "Immanent Constellation" or something like that. Usually it's alleged to be somewhere in the Pentagon.

Same as other thread in Lounge. It looks like a very similar conversation from the previous round. I guess I didn't pay much attention to the first one, and this one caught my attention for some reason, but being that this is a continuation of that first "hearing", it is good to keep the conversation of this weird social phenomenon going.

Cool thanks for sharing the old thread. I guess I just shrugged off that as background news previously and was more taken aback by it this second round. It looks like you are right, the exact same conversation is taking place, with all the questions and skepticism. I this post had some good remarks:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/813411

And what about this:

For fun's sake, let's say it's all true. The government has aliens and alien technology and have for years. If they were to disclose this, what would be the best way to do this understanding social psychology? — schopenhauer1

@BC

I have no idea whether the Koreans or Iranians or Australians might be hiding a nuclear bomb or two, smuggled into the country. It's not a far-fetched idea. What better way to stage a decapitation event as part of a war? — BC

Why only looking at night? Clearly that isn't much of a cover :lol:.

Perhaps Santa Claus is testing out drones as a humane alternative to forcing reindeer to fly thousands and thousands of miles in one night. Or maybe Santa is looking for gains in delivery efficiency. This business of landing on roofs, slithering down a narrow dirty (and possibly hot) chimney (if there even is one) with a bag has to be a nightmare of wasted time and motion. If they capture a drone, it is likely to be "manned" by elves. Or, maybe Santa needs more data about who's been bad or good, and the old Christmas surveillance methods just aren't sufficient any more. — BC

Well, that NORAD Santa Claus tracker seems to get more attention than this New Jersey case. As you noted:

One of the things I find annoying about the drone business in New Jersey is the dismissal of observations reported by ordinary people. — BC

Seems the government is either majorly gaslighting or the drones are nothing more than the new norm of many companies and citizens flying their new flying machines.