This demonstrates the impact that empirical biological information could have on metaphysical thought. — Barry Z

This rather demonstrates a poor understanding of natural sciences. And that in turn underlines the point that I made earlier: before you can understand an organism qua organism, you need to have some understanding of the world around you. Lacking such an understanding, you are apt to come up with the sort of silliness that you wrote above about the origin of life.

Organisms are a starting point for any exploration of reality because we know with certainty they exist and what they are. — Barry Z

I would disagree with that. You are taking the Cartesian route here, correct? In that case, granting the soundness of this strategy for the sake of an argument, what you can know with certainty is the existence of some "self", which "self" is some pre-theoretic, folk concept of your mental being. But in order to conceive of yourself as an "organism" (as distinct from "ordinary physical matter"), you will need to grant a lot more than that. You will need to conceptualize the world at large; then you will need to conceptualize yourself and certain other entities as belonging to a distinct class of entities within that world. Of course, we also have some pre-theoretic intuitions about people and organisms in general, but even if you extend your warrant of certain knowledge to those folk concepts as well, they won't get you very far in your philosophical exploration. In order to come up with the more sophisticated concepts that you have hinted at here, you will first need all that knowledge about the world and its functioning,

If you are not an expert, then it is generally reasonable to defer to the opinions of experts, plural. When there is no general agreement among experts about some question, then the reasonable thing to do is to withhold judgement. You shouldn't latch on to a contested or contrarian expert opinion, just because it appeals to you (as some do). If you are talking to one expert, you can trust her to the extent to which you believe her to be representing the prevailing opinion. Of course, you can't be completely sure on that score.

When someone is using expertise in one field to help them reach a conclusion in a different field, where they lack expertise, more skepticism is warranted - especially when you are dealing with a singular opinion, rather than a consensus of multiple experts. They may well be going out on a limb and talking shit - it is pretty common actually.

In any case, expertise is not easily transferable: even if you accept an expert answer, you can never be as confident about it as someone who has worked through the solution. And you'll just have to live with that - or do the necessary learning and training, and check the reasoning yourself.

So what do you do when you are at an impasse? Well, when I see that a conversation is not working out, for whatever reason, I usually just leave. I like to think that am not here to "win" arguments.

I honestly never made it that far till now. Interesting. I need more listens. The first listen feels weird because it doesn't feel as existential and spiritually disturbed as the Messiaen I'm familiar with. — Noble Dust

It's almost a throwback to The Rite of Spring, isn't it? Messiaen was an original. I am not familiar with a lot of his work, but even from what I have heard it seems that like Stravinsky, he went his own way and did not give a crap about anyone's expectations - or such petty things as "taste" and "style." He can throw in some banality straight out of a Hollywood score - and it just works!

Yes, very ornamental, like Scriabin. I find this guy less indulgent than Scriabin though. I literally stumbled upon this guy on youtube; he apparently died at 23. If anything, I'm so curious how he could potentially have been connected with the French and Russian schools at this time, and at such a young age. Considering that ideas didn't exactly move at an internet pace at the time. But the harmonic structure feels related. — Noble Dust

It probably helped that Scriabin spent a lot of time in Europe, which was not unusual for a metropolitan Russian musician. He was very influential at that time, particularly back in Russia, which may not be obvious now, since he seems to have considerably diminished in stature. If Beethoven's shadow lay over the entire century, reaching all the way to Brahms and Dvorak, in the 20th century styles and influences began to fragment and succeed each other much more rapidly.

I am not such a big fan of Scriabin - I often find his music too busy for my taste. Indeed, it was more the harmonics that made me think of him.

Btw, word to the wise, the Medtnaculus user on youtube has a great collection of solo piano music from this era; idk if you were familiar with the legendary Hexameron youtube page a few years ago, but Medtnaculus is sort of the heir apparent (the same person, maybe?). — Noble Dust

Thanks, I am not yet used to listening to music on Youtube, but I'll check him out.

:death: Brutal. — Noble Dust

The finale is a riot of excess!

Just discovered this early modern guy yesterday: — Noble Dust

Interesting, never heard of him. Reminds me of Scriabin. Thanks!

whaaaaat — Noble Dust

Huh, another from the Scriabin/Medtner school, and also new to me. Very nice.

"21/16! Because why the fuck not?"

Turangalîla!

@Noble Dust

What about bouldering?

Even though there are rules of logic taught in academia, general human interpretation and application of negation has an aliveness to it, where it evolves and influences. — Mapping the Medium

Academia teaches more than just Aristotelian or Classical logic. More to the point, for the "general human interpretation" I would look towards linguistic and social studies more than logic and mathematics.

It would be nice if you could put some substance into your posts - more than just "here are a couple of random references, tell me what you think." Have you read these works? Can you at least write a few words about what they say and how it is relevant to the topic?

I’m trying to understand how exactly under a b-theory of time, causality still exists either in the Aristotelian sense of actualizing potential or in any other theory of change and causality. — jimmyjohns

First, I am not sure whether you are actually talking about the so-called B theory of time or about eternalism - these are not the same. According to the B theory of time, there is no objective matter of fact about the status of any particular moment of time as being past, present or future; objectively, there exist only relations between moments: prior to, simultaneous with and posterior to (setting aside relativistic complications for the time being...) According to eternalism, all things exist at all times (in some sense) - including things that are in our past or future at some given moment. These two claims are not convertible into each other, at least not without some additional assumptions. An A theorist (one who believes that past, present and future are objective properties of time) can very well be an eternalist, assuming they can make sense of things existing in the past or the future. It should be noted though that neither B theory nor eternalism are clearly defined with the glosses given above (nor would everyone agree that any clear definitions exist).

Second, I think that this potentiality vs. actuality business is peculiar to Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy; you won't find much talk about "actualization of potential" in more modern accounts of causality (but I would welcome a correction). There may be tension between some modern theories of causality and eternalism and/or B theory, but I would hesitate to name one off hand.

How can something exist “ simpliciter” in space time if all time past present future is already actual? How is anything simpler and then not simple if time is not objectively present and potentials aren’t actualized? — jimmyjohns

I think you are misreading "simpliciter": here it just means "as is, without additional qualifications." In the context of the quoted text it means that B exists, but we are not saying that it specifically exists at time t1. For a presentist existence always implies existence in the present moment. An eternalist has to additionally index existence to a particular time. So for an eternalist saying "Socratest exists" (exists simpliciter) does not commit her to saying that Socrates exists now.

I think your thesis "stick to finitism when teaching basic math" misses the obvious point of how incredibly messy and complex finitism is, both as a mathematical approach and as a practical application. The overwhelming majority of mathematical applications are based on the continuum - physics, engineering, etc. And as someone with your background knows perfectly well, and as you in fact emphasize in your post, when doing practical calculations, at some point you have to discretize those continuum models - which is not simple at all, especially if you want to do it robustly and accurately! In fact, you always want to keep them nice and continuous for as long as you can, and only discretize when all your analytical resources are exhausted, because once you do that, there's no going back.

I thought this was intended as a philosophical post, seeing as it was posted on a philosophy board. My mistake, thanks for setting me straight in such a non-insulting and mature way.

/sarcasm Welcome to my ignore list.

I would like to get a sense of what most people on here believe is the most important problem facing humanity today. — Xtrix

It is not clear what this question is asking. One way to read the question might be "What produces the most suffering for the most people now and in perpetuity?" Poverty would be a good answer, but so would death and disease, which are absent from the list. Moreover, it is not clear how granular and how proximate the answer ought to be. Poverty, for example, is a very general condition and a sink for most of the other listed issues. For example, corruption in the end produces poverty (as well as death and disease) by way of suboptimal governance.

The point of this question, which lists a hodgepodge of enduring conditions and potential threats, is also unclear. So let's say we pick one more or less general problem and wish it away. Then what?

I was torn between either climate change, poverty, or inequality, but ultimately chose poverty because the problem with inequality is that it leaves many people in poverty and the problem with climate change is that it threatens to plunge most if not all of humanity into poverty (because all wealth ultimately comes from the bounty of nature). — Pfhorrest

I am afraid the "poverty" here stands in for the opposite of thriving or happiness, making the choice rather trivial and non-specific.

I voted political corruption, because without the ability of humanity to act in its own best interests, none of the merely practical problems can even be addressed properly. Physical problems are trivial, it is psychological problems that are intractable. — unenlightened

I think you rather idealize "humanity," much in the way romantics idealized "the people" (as if there was such a thing).

I always forget that even among physicalists the reducibility of everything to fundamental physics in contentious. So I suppose that’s another presumption of this thread, and the thread itself can serve as the debate on that, as players put forward constructions of higher levels from lower ones and others challenge the accuracy of those. — Pfhorrest

To be clear, the contention isn't necessarily metaphysical. The prospects for Nagelian inter-theory reduction - the derivability of "phenomenological" theories from more "fundamental" ones - has been robustly challenged on mathematical grounds. See for instance Robert Batterman's Emergence, Singularities, and Symmetry Breaking (2010)

IIRC the mammoth Principia didn't get quite that far, although @Pfhorrest probably wouldn't want to start as far back and proceed as rigorously as W & R.

Max Tegmark in one of his mathematical universe papers sketches a hierarchical roadmap of this type (leading to fundamental physics, natch).

What's the end game - something like Quantum Field Theory? Quantum gravity? Anyway, even if we accept the premise of the "mathematical universe," there are still a couple of issues here:

1. If you are aiming at some fundamental physics, such as QFT, that still leaves out every non-fundamental theory that is not reducible to fundamental physics - which means pretty much everything, from solid state physics to derivative trading. Now, it is plausible, though still controversial, that, to the extent that they are accurate, those "special sciences" supervene on fundamental physics. However, it looks ever more certain that they cannot be built from the ground up, the way you suggest - there will be a discontinuity where you have to jump from one level to another, with no analytical bridge between the two.

2. You realize that there isn't a unique construction, even for something as basic as the integers, right? Even with set theory there's more than one way to do it.

Much to my surprise, no duplication of the experiment has been reported. — god must be atheist

Why would you find that surprising? Few experimental studies are duplicated.

Anyway, epigenetics in general is not controversial, and hasn't been for a long time (even if the OP is trying to evangelize it as if it was the latest miracle cure). But popular media and various cranks have sensationalized and distorted it to the point that honest biologists cringe when they are asked about it.

I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way ["The Notion of Subject/Object"] or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes. — Xtrix

This seems to be too thin for a philosophical basis. Can you elaborate? Not the specific meaning of "subject/object" (I think we have clarified that part), but how you think that forms the philosophical basis. A philosophical basis would have to be something substantive, non-trivial, something that is both consequential, and that could plausibly be constituted differently and have different consequences.

This sounds plausible if we don't get into details, but that doesn't amount to inevitability. Staying at the same level, unencumbered with expertise, here is an alternative scenario that may sound just as plausible: All genes that can affect sexual attraction are specific to the sex chromosomes. This, if true, would neutralize your argument.

's is the most plausible hypothesis that I have heard. It's quite possible that there is more than one pathway, including perhaps the classic site mutation, aka the "gay gene." But that couldn't be the dominant mechanism, for a number of reasons. Yes, it is not wholly impossible for gay people to reproduce, and yes, gay people may have benefited their community, and thus indirectly their gene pool. But the negative selection on the specific gene would be too strong to overcome those mitigating factors. The rest of the genome may benefit, but not the "benevolent uncle" gene, which will be selected against. However, if part of the gene pool conspires to sabotage another part, as in the scenario described by @Bitter Crank, that could be a viable strategy for evolution to pursue.

Your OP was pretty empty of substance, and you haven't added much to it in the follow-up, instead directing us to your website and podcast for details. This is the problem, not the fact that you have links in your profile.

If you want to engage with other members, then don't count on them listening to your podcast or reading your off-site posts. You are not my guru - you are some random stranger from the 'net. If you don't post anything of substance, then I am not going to chase after your teachings elsewhere.

(From what little you have revealed here, it looks like you are of those... impressionable individuals who got too enthusiastic about the ever-fashionable epigenetics. That's not as original as you might think. Geneticists who give popular talks dread the inevitable questions about epigenetics that they always receive, no matter the actual topic of their presentation.)

All I can do is invite you, and I have.

I no longer debate these things. I don't have to, or need to. — Mapping the Medium

Then why are you here? Just to plug your podcast? This is a place for discussion. If you are not interested in discussion, then go away before you are banned for spamming.

@Wayfarer is right, in natural language "A is B" can mean different things, depending on context. It can indicate class membership (people are animals), it serve as a reduction (people are [nothing other than] animals), and so on. In the case of this Spir fellow, what he has in mind would be more precisely called permanence, or more generally, invariance. That is not the same as the simple equality/identity used in logic and math. Such sloppy use of language has occasioned a lot of miserable sophistry (cf. Ayn Rand's abuse of the "principle of identity").

There is some sense in what @Mac is saying. You are right that when we assimilate the concept of equality/identity (whenever and however that happens), self-identity is assumed as part of its meaning - it doesn't have to be learned as a principle that comes in addition to the concept. If x wasn't equal to x, then "equal" would not mean what it does. Also, there isn't really a stand-alone "principle of identity" in logic - it comes as part of the package in the definition of equality (identity). However, when we formally define equality, we do have to explicitly postulate self-identity - it doesn't fall out of other postulates.

tldr: While self-identity does not have any meaning as a stand-alone principle, if we need to formalize the concept of equality, we have to state self-identity explicitly as part of its definition.

Oh boy, you are one of those 0.999... =/= 1 people. Never mind then.

And it has been agreed for the most part, that moral experience with the appearance of objectivity (which are universally shared in a deep principled sense rather than apparently inconsistent shallow comparisons) is properly basic, in the evidentialist sense — Shushi

Agreed by whom? Reformed epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga? ("Properly basic belief" is Plantinga's term that makes sense only in a very specific externalist foundationalist ("proper functionalist") epistemology that he developed, and not widely used outside of his circle, as far as I know. Reformed epistemology derives its name from Reformed theology, aka Calvinism, which tells you just how niche this thing is.) Outside this narrow context, the landscape of epistemology and moral philosophy is much more diverse than you imply.

Personally, I might agree that some of our moral beliefs are basic in the foundationalist sense, in that they are infallible, or incorrigible. We do not require justification for holding them, nor can we reject them at will. But that, of course, pulls the rug from under your challenge, because such beliefs do not require a grounding: they are the grounding.

"0.333~" represents the infinite sum 3 x 1 / 10^1 + 3 x 1 / 10^2 + 3 x 1 / 10^3 + ... + 3 x 1 / 10^inf. It does not represent its limit. — Magnus Anderson

What do you think an "infinite sum" is then if not the limit (if it exists) of the partial sums?

The standard view of the positional notation is that it is a representation of a number as a series, with digits serving as coefficients in front of the base, and their position designating the power of the base (positive before the dot, negative after the dot). But I still have no idea what you think "most people" think of it.

I can't even hazard a guess as to how you think "most people" define "0.333~" (I am more accustomed to the ... notation, but I assume you mean the same thing).

Apple=Banana is true, if the properties of apple and banana are completely identical. Certainly, they are not. So Apple≠Banana. It would explain why an apple couldn't be not an apple. But this logic is only true, if the properties of apple are identical to themselves. — Monist

You just pushed this back from X to properties of X, but that doesn't really change anything. Just do a variable substitution: let Y designate what used to be called X, and let X now be a property of Y. Everything that was said of X would still apply, since it does not actually depend on the meaning of X - it's a purely syntactical exercise. Metaphysics doesn't come into this.

Question: on a ruler one can mark units, then divide the units in half, thirds ( I think), quarters, & etc. But there is no way to mark an exact irrational length on the ruler - unless a line representing an irrational distance is constructed (like the square root of two) and marked on the ruler by direct measurement. Correct? — tim wood

Depends on what you mean by marking off distance on a ruler. If you mean real rulers and real markings, then it's kind of hard to even talk about exact distances. If you have an idealized model in mind - putting a point somewhere on a segment of a straight line, then why can't we mark off an irrational distance? If you make a mark somewhere at random, the distance it marks off is pretty much guaranteed to be an irrational number.

I think you are not giving due attention to the language angle that was proposed in some of the answers. The very meaning of equality and identity in ordinary language already implies self-identity. To question self-identity is not even a metaphysical move - it is meaningless, like questioning the marital status of bachelors. (In math and logic this has to be set out explicitly though - and indeed it is.)

Ulysses I found a bit of a mountain to climb. — Pantagruel

Yeah, that's why I am looking for a helping hand :) I might just end up plowing through it unassisted, but from what I have heard about this book, I fear I'll miss too much this way.

Proust has been on my to do list forever, but I fear it will be even steeper than Ulysses... — Pantagruel

Proust may be a stretch in terms of shear length (of everything, down to individual sentences that can run for pages), but in form and style the books are not a long stretch from the classic 19th century Bildungsroman. It is the subject, which alternates minutely detailed observations of the outside and the inner world, and ruminations on the nature of memory and (at long last) art, that may present a challenge if you are not receptive to it. (It does not help that his self-absorbed alter ego is not all that sympathetic.)

Just to elaborate on one aspect of the question, in mathematics and logic equality is introduced axiomatically, and self-identity is (usually) part of the definition. See for instance equality in first order logic.

As others have noted, you need to first make clear to yourself what question you are actually asking. Once you do that, the answer may become apparent.

Imagine your consciousness disassociating with your body, so that you can observe your body from a distance. — Yohan

This is too convoluted.

Imagine that your consciousness is eternal. Done!

The thing is, you can imagine many things, including things that are counterfactual and even incoherent. There are ways to deploy the mere fact that we can imagine something in a philosophical argument, but they usually hinge on self-reference: the ability to imagine itself must be of some inferential significance (as in Anselm's Ontological argument, for example). In your case this is not obvious. Just because you can imagine your consciousness being separate from your body doesn't mean that this really can be the case.

The sum of any two integers is zero. — John Gill

What are 'integers' in your game? The way integers are usually defined/constructed, they come with addition already baked in.

All I said that what one could easily see even from this forum is that we do not understand infinity yet. — ssu

You said more than that; this is just your go-to defense: to invoke the mysteriousness of infinity, like some invoke the mysteriousness of God. And yet even this seemingly innocuous banality says more than you think it does. It implies that there is some extra-mathematical Infinity that mathematics is trying to grapple with. But mathematics as such doesn't contain anything extra-mathematical. Everything in mathematics exists only to the extent to which it is defined. The Axiom of Infinity is just a name for an axiom (a family of axioms in various systems); it plays by the same rules as every other axiom and doesn't purport to refer to something extra-mathematical - unless you want it to; but that would be an extra-mathematical choice on your part, as would be any use of mathematics to model something extra-mathematical. "Infinity" in mathematics is just a name, a symbol that could be replaced with any other symbol salva veritate. There is nothing inherently pathological about it.

Capping off the year with Time Regained. Took me most of the year to get through all of A la recherche... (though I read other things in between).

Thinking of tackling Ulysses at last. I've read Dubliners and Portrait, but for this one I'd like to find a good annotated edition. Problem is that the text is in the public domain, which means that the ebook market is flooded by cheap crappy editions that often can't even get typesetting right, let alone supporting material. One of Amazon's pricier offerings (among dozens) boasts a "functioning table of contents!" and "annotations" in the form of a short New York Times review (from the same year, and presumably also in the public domain). One proudly lists the title in all caps as "ULYSSES - BY JANE AUSTEN."

But what are we going to do, just sit back and enjoy the ride? — Punshhh

In the first precedent of its kind, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands (where, as our reliable sources tell us, no one takes global warming seriously) mandated that the country cut emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by the end of 2020. (The first ruling was actually passed in 2015, and now the Supreme Court made it final.)

Sorry, I was rude. Let me give it another try.

An axiom is a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. — ssu

This is an antiquated definition, suitable perhaps as an informal introduction to the topic, but not suitable for today's mathematics. And it's not about formalism vs. intuitionism or whatnot. For one thing, this formulation just isn't accurate and doesn't capture the role of axioms, even in Euclid's original books. For example, the fact that a square with the side equal to 1 cannot be inscribed inside a circle with the radius equal to 1 may be self-evidently true, but Euclid did not make it an axiom. Axioms are those propositions that are specifically chosen as the primitive building blocks of a mathematical theory.

More importantly, if axioms were a matter of self-evident truths, then there would be just the one mathematics, because there is only one truth (at least that's how most people see it). But this hasn't been the case with mathematics since long before people even started contemplating foundational philosophical questions like formalism, logicism, etc. The notion that mathematical axioms are some extra-mathematical truths (truths about what?) has been abandoned.

Seems like then you have your your own definition — ssu

No, seems like you are only interested in playing dictionary games. You can join the other idiot then, I am not interested.