He was disillusioned with the forum because we weren't all praising his work and calling him the second coming of Russell or Wittgenstein, which he believed himself to be. — BitconnectCarlos

Nah, you are exaggerating. He was perhaps self-centered, but not uncommonly so. (You should see what a really self-obsessed flake looks like. There's at least one that is active right now.)

Oh...

Odd, I have a pretty keen eye for flakes, and he didn't seem too flaky.

Unless he persisted with flaming after warnings and deletions, banning over one meltdown seems like an overreaction. And it's not like this sort of thing doesn't happen to other members, without any repercussions. I don't have any particular attachment to Pfhorrest, but objectively he had a decent posting record.

Well, I’m not looking for a definition. I agree that there is no generally accepted meaning of these words. The formulations are meant to challenge three commonly held notions of ‘objective truth’. — Possibility

I doubt that we can even talk about commonly held notions here. Most people have rather hazy notions of objectivity and of truth, and 'objective truth' is doubly hazy. But most of all, I just don't see what would motivate such a discussion. So far it seems to be meandering in the haze, just as one would expect.

Also, I don't think Sweden has done as well as Ireland. Ireland has had half the number of deaths over the same period (March 12 - May 2). They have about the same confirmed cases count but that's because Ireland have done more testing than Sweden. — Andrew M

Sweden has more than twice the number of people than Ireland, so per capita they are about even. (It's arguable though whether per capita numbers are more indicative than absolute in this case. Per capita metrics make sense in a uniform, pseudo-static setup, which is not a good match for an infectious disease that is not already endemic in a population.)

Exactly, which precludes objectivity. I’m not after a definition as such - which assumes only one definition is the ‘correct’ one - just a discussion that relates to it from alternative perspectives, with a view to a more accurate understanding. — Possibility

I don't really understand what you are trying to do here. You give us three choices for 'objective truth', but there is no generally accepted meaning of these words, and you don't supply any apart from those three formulations. So are we to take these formulations as candidate definitions? But what would motivate our choice? Why are you looking for a definition? There is no value in defining words per se.

Perhaps this SEP article will be of some help: Reductionism in Biology

Epistemic reduction is the idea that the knowledge about one scientific domain (typically about higher level processes) can be reduced to another body of scientific knowledge (typically concerning a lower or more fundamental level). — Reductionism in Biology

I think @Isaac's examples are clear. The thing is that information is not a thing - it is different things. Different disciplines approach the concept of information differently, but more to the point of the present discussion, in the context of Boltzmann/Shannon approach the question of what constitutes information and how much of it there is depends not just on the thing that is being passed around - the sequence of bits or words or squiggles on a page - but on how this thing is being used.

It is the same with Boltzmann entropy. Like Shannon information, Boltzmann entropy has to do with uncertainty - uncertainty about the physical state. But which state? If we are measuring temperature with a thermometer, then the states that we are interested in are defined by thermal degrees of freedom. But if we are interested in magnetization, for example, then the states of interest are the orientations of magnetic dipoles (and the associated "temperature" in that case can actually become negative!)

Turning back to information, semantics doesn't matter for the mathematical theory of information, but it is what motivates its applications. Without meaning - physical meaning, as in the case of physical entropy, or symbolic meaning, as in the case of written communication - there would not be such a thing (things) as information. What constitutes information in each particular case depends on what it means for us.

So what's the deal with Sweden? By all accounts, the shit should've hit the fan by now, but that doesn't seem to be happening. In terms of overall infection and death rate, they are doing worse than some (their immediate neighbors), much better than others (Italy, Spain, France, NY), and about as well as Ireland, which has been praised for its active measures to suppress the epidemic, while Sweden has done almost nothing. Its elderly have been hit hard, but that is also happening elsewhere. On the other hand its health system hasn't been overwhelmed.

Yeah, because there hasn't been enough Christ myth stuff on the internets, we had to have some of our own. Actually I was wondering why it took so long.

Not to be morbid or anything, but this is gorgeous:

Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) @Noble Dust

If you are into that kind of stuff, Rupert "eyebeams" Sheldrake has done a lot of "research" on this - his "The Sense of Being Stared At" is a classic of the genre.

More, to do with the Getty challenge — Fluke

I somehow missed that one, I just saw an article about the Russian group and didn't realize that it had a predecessor. I love these - if I wasn't fortunate to keep my job while in quarantine, I could browse them for hours.

The painting of the pile of skulls is called "The Apotheosis of War" by Vasily Vereshchagin, sarcastically dedicated "to all great conquerors, past, present and to come". Recreating it with frozen dumplings for skulls is either sick or brilliant, or perhaps both. — jamalrob

Ah, I see you've done your homework while in Russia :) It's an iconic image, but somehow perhaps due to the historic remoteness or to its fastidious realist execution, it doesn't seem to have the same emotional impact as, say, the Guernica.

I'm not sure if I'm just unfamiliar with this area of ontology somehow or if it just seems so transparently confused to me, but either way I don't really see what problem is remaining. If we can study how (ordinary multicellular) living things work, what makes them alive or not, in terms of the operations of their bodies made of tissues made of living cells, and we can study how those cells work in terms of non-living molecules, and we can study how those molecules work in terms of ordinary particle physics... then what questions are really left? Clearly then life is reducible to physics in that way, so what is still unanswered? — Pfhorrest

If you only say that different levels or scales loosely supervene on or ground or compose each other, and aren't too particular about what that means and how that comes about, then you won't get much argument from anyone. The devil, as always, is in the details. There is extensive literature on reduction, emergence and supervenience. The more traditional take on these issues was skewed towards the philosophy of mind, but in parallel with that a more general discussion of inter-theory relations has emerged (), which I personally find more interesting. The SEP article Scientific Reduction gives some idea of the problematics.

lol So, Kurt Godel who was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century didn't know propositional calculus existed? — h060tu

Godel proved that first order logic was consistent and complete, you dummy. This discussion has nothing to do with Godel's theorems.

What about chemistry is supposedly not reducible in this way? — Pfhorrest

There is a bewildering variety of notions concerning reduction and emergence in the philosophical literature, but I think that the sort of hand-wavy weak emergence that you outline is not very controversial. However, anything stronger or more rigorous than that - such as ontological reduction that the OP brings up - is rife with problems, starting with just setting out the precise meanings of these terms.

I intentionally slipped in chemistry in the list of examples, because it is often pointed at as a reductionism success story. But this is at best partially true (as with some of the other examples, e.g. reduction of continuum to statistical thermodynamics and molecular dynamics). When you dig below the surface you find that the challenges in the quest of reduction are daunting even in this case - see for instance Reduction and Emergence in Chemistry article in IEP.

More to the point of the OP, @Yuting Liu singles out the problem of ontological reduction: "the biological distinction of life forms from lifeless forms." But ontological reduction is generally problematic in inter-theoretic relations, and even chemistry-to-QM is no exception (as some works referenced in the above linked article argue). So my point remains that there is nothing special about biology in this regard. The inter-theoretic reduction program is difficult and contentious at just about every level.

It seems to me that you are rather arbitrarily drawing your partition at biology. Why not chemistry, for example? Or meteorology? Or just different areas of physics, such as quantum mechanics vs. hydrodynamics? Just like biology, all of those other sciences have distinctive ontological or nomological commitments that are not shared by other sciences. In a few cases a reduction can more-or-less be achieved for some special cases, but by and large these sciences are, for all intents and purposes, autonomous.

Perhaps more precisely it means that all we know of reality comes in the form of measurement, and so if we cannot measure anything as being infinite, then the infinite does not occur in our knowledge of the world. — A Seagull

And what qualifies as 'measurement'? Can we measure our way to having a good idea of what the inside of the Moon consists of, for example (without having to hollow it out to find out)?

If you postulate that time must have a starting point, then you trivially get the conclusion that the past cannot be infinite. — SophistiCat

The idea of time, I believe, presupposes a starting point from which to measure its passing. So I doubt that the past is infinite. — Sir2u

Whether it is trivial or not is only a matter of your personal beliefs, because you have no evidence of it being either the correct or incorrect conclusion. — Sir2u

This is puzzling. Are you now doubting your own conclusion? The way you originally stated it gave me the impression that you yourself thought it to be straightforward.

You could say that beer is just what we postulate 'beer' to be, and you could then postulate it to have an origin. But a more honest and satisfying approach would be to take 'beer' as referring to something beyond mere postulation, something empirically known and do the bloody research to find out where it came from. — Sir2u

Your mocking misses the mark. Indeed, we don't presuppose beer to have an origin - we know this from experience, inference or reliable report. Not so with time. I feel silly even having to explain this to you.

Ok, from there lets define an infinite past. An infinite past is all the events that have occured from the present. Present is defined as simply the event that is. Event is a complete description of reality.An example being the first instant of today and all statements that are true along with it. Time is simply all events ordered from the present. A past event is an the present that longer is. Any problems so far with my defintions? — BB100

Yes. If an event is a "complete description of reality," full stop, then what is left to describe? You probably want to say that an event is a "complete description of reality at a point of time," but that would make your definition of time circular, since you want to define time in terms of events. And even if we allow that, then by defining the whole of time as the sum of all events, you end up defining time as a "complete description of reality" that was, is and will be, and that doesn't seem right.

Anyway, I don't think it's worth yours or my time for you to frog-march me through your proof, because believe me, I am thoroughly familiar with such proofs.

When I were lad... (spoken in best Yorkshire brogue)

We all had a copy of Being and Nothingness on our shelf, and went to see No Exit every second month. — Banno

I saw Nausea, and the book is on my short(ish)list. I doubt I'll ever read any of his philosophical writings though, his is not the sort of philosophy that captures my interest.

Yeah, apparently during his lifetime he was far more influential than Einstein, then he quickly went out of favor and nowadays is mostly remembered by academics who make a career of him, and a few cult followers.

Jimena Canales' s article can be found here: Einstein's Bergson Problem

If I I have one then name the first one you find and we can start from there for me to clarify. — BB100

Don't have to go far. Take this, for instance:

If have an infinite past, then there exists an event in the past that is an infinite events away from the present — BB100

Nope. Doesn't follow and doesn't even make sense. But to understand why you need to have basic mastery of the mathematical concepts at play (a couple of weeks of freshman calculus should do, if you are diligent).

Other problems are not so much technical as philosophical, like when you take it for granted that time is granular, being composed of moments of finite duration, even though this is not something that is immediately evident to the senses or well-established by science.

Don't worry, it's not just you - these are very common mistakes. At a guess, someone somewhere attempts an argument along these lines once every few months or weeks even.

I wasn't replying to you. You have other problems, but they are too many to sort through. You have a non sequitur at just about every step.

No measurement can ever be infinite, ergo there is no infinity in the real world. — A Seagull

There seem to be some steps missing before "ergo..."

If you postulate that time must have a starting point ("The idea of time, I believe, presupposes a starting point from which to measure its passing"), then you trivially get the conclusion that the past cannot be infinite. Of course, no one who does not already believe the conclusion would be satisfied with that postulation, and even those who do ought to be leery about getting their prize without honest toil.

You could say that time is just what we postulate 'time' to be, and you could then postulate it to have a beginning. But a more honest and satisfying approach would be to take 'time' as referring to something beyond mere postulation, something empirically known.

(The original quote was in the context of Russell's work on Principia, where he objected to defining mathematical entities as already possessing all the desired properties, as opposed to constructing them from more primitive elements. But the sentiment behind that quip applies just as well here.)

Well, no. "I believe the probability is 50/50." This statement is not a probability — Pneumenon

I give up. Either you are trolling me or you really are that dense - either way, there is no sense in going on.

The idea of time, I believe, presupposes a starting point from which to measure its passing. So I doubt that the past is infinite. — Sir2u

The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. — Bertrand Russell

This isn't a "koan." Insisting that this is somehow cryptic or hard to grasp is disingenuous in the extreme. — Pneumenon

It's not cryptic, it's banal.

You appear to be confusing "I can always ask about probability" with "every belief has a probability," which I never said. — Pneumenon

Of course you did. Reread your OP. The only out that you leave is not knowing the probability, while presumably accepting the question as legitimate (and even that you appear to regard as dubious). Now a thoroughgoing Bayesian in Isaak's vein would insist that you do know, even if you are not conscious of your knowledge at every instance. But like I said, these controversies are still located within the broad epistemological framework (sometimes informally referred to as Bayesianism) that associates probabilities with beliefs more or less tightly.

I don't see what these koans have to do with what is being discussed, unless you insist on interpreting my words super-literally.

I think you can always ask a person what they believe a probability to be — Pneumenon

No, that is not a given. Outside of a limited colloquial usage, insisting that any belief can be associated with a probability is characteristic of a particular philosophical position: an epistemic interpretation of probability, and conversely, characterizing confidence with probabilities. (This I earlier labelled as Bayesianism, although this is not entirely accurate.) This is a popular enough view, but it is not universally shared. Some will say that talking about "degree of belief" or characterizing it with a scalar metric is incorrect some or all of the time, or that probability specifically is ill-suited for the task. Some (e.g. likelihoodists) will say that probability is fine for e.g. evaluating the support that beliefs derive from a particular piece of evidence, but not for expressing one's total confidence in a proposition.

Did I? I think you can always ask a person what they believe a probability to be, but that doesn't make their belief a probability. — Pneumenon

If you did not, then what is this question supposed to mean?

What is the probability of the invisible miniature dolphin's existence? — Pneumenon

You already channeled the discussion towards Bayesianism when you identified beliefs with probabilities. If you want to have a broader, less theory-laden first approach, you might want to step back from that. Do you want to talk about a specific theory or family of theories, or about phenomenology, or word usage? (I realize that these subjects are not entirely separate.)

Bayesianism though has many varieties, including austere ones that eschew prior probabilities. @Isaac is appealing to a thoroughgoing, Dutch book subjective Bayesianism, in which there is no such thing as being uncommitted: you can't decline a bet. His identification of beliefs with dispositions makes this position more plausible, but I suppose such an identification is itself contentious. In any event, if we are considering the way we actually think, then it is fair to caution that we are not perfect Bayesian computers.

yes please and thank you

We evidently have different definitions of "brute fact." For what it might be worth, Wikipedia states, "In contemporary philosophy, a brute fact is a fact that has no explanation. More narrowly, brute facts may instead be defined as those facts which cannot be explained (as opposed to simply having no explanation)." The whole point of formulating scientific and metaphysical hypotheses is to explain the facts. — aletheist

I don't think that we have different definitions of "brute fact." It is just that by its nature, science is pluralistic and dynamic. There isn't a single coherent and unchanging scientific picture of the world; instead, there is a patchwork of theories that are only partly compatible with each other, and those theories keep evolving. What that means for brute facts is that they exist within the context of a particular theory, and that they are not carved in stone. Philosophy is not any different in that regard.

In any case, whether we are talking about science or philosophy, it is a truism that nothing of any substance can be explained away without residue. Any explanation takes some things as given, the explanation essentially consisting in reducing everything else to those things.

In religious explanations the brute facts are the dogmas of theology and sacred history. That God made the universe just so is a brute fact.

On the contrary, a brute fact is something that is deemed to be inexplicable in principle, thus closing off further inquiry as allegedly pointless. — aletheist

No, this is just completely divorced from reality. In every scientific theory there are brute facts: they are the assumptions and postulates of the theory, be they laws, constants or whatever. That doesn't mean that scientists, the scientific community are committed to treating them as eternal, unchanging truths. For one thing, there are many theories, and their postulates are not entirely compatible with each other, or else a postulate in one theory may actually be obtainable as a result in another theory (e.g. the 2nd law of continuum thermodynamics is more-or-less reducible to statistical mechanics).

Besides, it would be absurd to deny that theories have evolved and continue to evolve in response to new findings and new thinking, and that certainly goes for fundamental physics. The so-called fine tuned constants of the standard particle physics and Big Bang cosmology, which are seen as unsatisfactory by some theoretical physicists, have prompted a search for better accounts that would replace these constants with something more 'natural'. Of course, whatever theories come next will have their own unexplained postulates - it is only a question of which postulates are more epistemologically or metaphysically satisfactory.

On the contrary, modern science largely has its roots in cultures that affirmed divine creation and were motivated by this belief to study nature more carefully. — aletheist

That is a questionable interpretation of the history. One could instead make a case that natural philosophy has always had to struggle against religious dogma and conservatism. In any case, this is irrelevant. The fact is that, as I explained above, scientific postulates are not on the whole treated as dogmas. The entire process of scientific research is set up expressly in order to promote change. One can hardly publish a paper or obtain a grant without the promise of finding something new or at variance with what is already known. But a religious dogma is, well, a dogma. If a thing is postulated to be a divine creation as a matter of faith, that isn't going to change in a hurry.

But my first sentence is talking about the idea that if there is a pattern or constant then it is either eternal or does not change in whatever finite time we have. — Coben

Well, I already explained why "changing laws" are an oxymoron. Laws are revised or retied if evidence calls for it, and not otherwise. Anyway, I won't pursue this further, since this has little to do with the OP.

The spirit of scientific inquiry should preclude us from ever simply accepting something as a brute fact. Like anything else that we observe in the universe, the particular values of the constants call for an explanation, and the FTA poses the hypothesis of divine creation. — aletheist

You have it exactly backwards. Leaving something unexplained (which is what "brute fact" means) leaves the matter open for further inquiry. Contriving a pseudo-explanation such as "divine creation" prematurely forecloses the inquiry.

I don't think that's parsimony. It's just an assumption. There is no need to make the assumption that laws are eternal. We can work with what seem like rules now, and black box whether these rules may have changed or may change. You do not have to commit to something you don't know. Further there is evidence that constants and laws have changed. — Coben

Your last sentence contradicts what comes before it. If we can have evidence that constants and laws have changed, then we can have evidence for the contrary. And the balance of evidence for the known laws and constants is so far on the latter, although as I said, every once in a while someone proposes that some constant is actually non-constant (e.g. the cosmological constant). Such proposals are settled by evidence, because as Faulkner famously said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

The role of "surprisingness" has been discussed in the context of fine tuning, drawing on more general epistemological considerations (e.g. in the work of Paul Horwich). White, whose discussion of the inverse gamble's fallacy I think you have mentioned, comments on it. I'll see if I can dig up more.

Not only that, but scientists generally assume that the laws of nature as we observe them operating today have always operated that way; or at least, that they have operated that way ever since very soon after the alleged Big Bang. What justifies this assumption? — aletheist

Parsimony, obviously. If an explanation works well enough, why complicate it without reason? More importantly, if a law is changing over time, then as long the change is itself regular, it simply becomes a dynamic component of the same law.

Why not consider the alternative that the laws of nature have evolved over time, and perhaps are still (very slowly) evolving? What would count as evidence either way?

They are being considered. At various times changes in fundamental constants have been hypothesized. For example, Dirac, in an attempt to explain the enormous disparity in coupling strengths in the present-day universe, proposed as part of his Large Number Hypothesis that the gravitational constant has changed dramatically over time. But such changes (and even much subtler changes) leave their marks in the universe, which is why Dirac's hypothesis was quickly falsified with data. But other such hypotheses are considered even today, so it's not true that this is some kind of taboo.

By the way, I brought up Dirac for a reason, because, unlike the theistic argument, scientific discussion of fine-tuning is framed not so much in terms of "gee, how lucky we are to live in such a special universe," but in terms of the so-called naturalness of physical laws - which is what bothered Dirac so much. Already back then the seeds of the problem of fine tuning were planted, well before Carter et al.