Does this apply to judges who refer to statute, convention, constitution, case law, etc? — unenlightened

When judges defer to law, they are not exercising their human ethical judgment (at least in theory, which I take to be the context of your hypothetical question).

No, it's not just a semi-infinite number line, because that omits the temporal context. Time does not exist all at once, as does an abstract number line.

Consider the future: it doesn't exist. — Relativist

Neither does the past, whether finite or infinite, according to the A theory of time, which you brought up for no apparent reason. The A theory of time is a red herring; this metaphysical position is irrelevant to the argument that you are trying to make, which is:

The present is the END of a journey of all prior days. That would be the mirror image of reaching a day infinitely far into the future, which cannot happen. A temporal process cannot reach TO infinity, and neither can a temporal process reach FROM an infinity. — Relativist

We've been over this already: this is the same question-begging argument that you made at the beginning of the discussion. The reason a temporal process will never reach infinitely far into the future is that there is nothing for it to reach: a process can start at point A and reach point B, but if there is no point B, then talk about reaching something doesn't make sense. Turn this around, and you get the same thing: you can talk about reaching the present from some point in the past, but if there is no starting point (ex hypothesi), the talk about reaching from somewhere doesn't make sense, unless you implicitly assume your conclusion (that time has a starting point in the past).

Look, you don't have an argument here; you are just stating and restating your conclusion in slightly different ways. You aren't the first to fight this hopeless fight, of course: the a priori denial of actual infinities is as old as Aristotle; Kant tried to make an argument very similar to yours, and others have followed in his step, including most recently theologian W. L. Craig, who employs a raft of such arguments as part of his Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. But nowadays these arguments do not enjoy much support among philosophers (see for instance Popper's critique, if you can get it, or any number of more recent articles).

As for physicists and cosmologists, to whom you have appealed as well, most don't even take such a priori arguments seriously, though a few have condescended to offer a critique (such as the late great John Bell, back in 1979, responding to the same article as Popper above). As far as cosmologists are concerned, the question is undeniably empirical, and at this point entirely open-ended; see, for example, this brief survey and the following comments from Luke Barnes (who is somewhat sympathetic to your conclusion).

No, I outlined a mapping of a possible finite past, and pointed out there are cosmological models based on a finite past (Hawking, Carroll, and Vilenkin to name 3). I am aware of no such conceptual mapping for an infinite past. — Relativist

Your "conceptual mapping" of a finite past was a semi-infinite number line. You say you cannot think of a corresponding "conceptual mapping" for an infinite past? Really?

I am sorry, but this isn't worth my time.

Yes, conceivability is subjective, but conceptions can be intersubjectively shared, analyzed, and discussed. — Relativist

Conceivability, the way you are using the word, is nothing more than an attitude, an intuition, a gut feeling. While different individuals can hold such attitudes in common, it is not the sort of concept that can be described and transmitted by a rational argument. I, for instance, do not find the beginning of time to be any easier to conceive than an infinite past, and I doubt that you could do much to change my attitude.

But then I do not make much of such attitudes. If one holds time to be an objective feature of the physical world, rather than a subjective attitude, then what does it matter if an infinite or a finite past does not sit well with one's intuitions? We are animals with a lifespan of a few tens of years; we can hardly get to grips with timespans of thousands, let alone billions of years. If we were to trust our intuitions on this, most of us would have had to be Young-Earth creationists, right? But then what are we to do with the powerful intuition that at any moment there must always be before? Or, for those having trouble conceiving of an infinite space, what are they to do with Lucretius and his spear? Intuitions just aren't a good guide to the truth in this case.

Yes, we are. On one message board that I once frequented (now defunct), which wasn't even specifically for philosophy, a subsection within its only philosophy section was created just for free will discussions.

Unlike, say, Kierkegaard's esthetics or structural realism, "free will" is the sort of subject where most people feel they can jump in without any learning or reflection. Most free will discussions are therefore trivial and confused, with people talking past each other, without even stopping to think about what free will is, or why they think of it the way they do. And I am speaking as someone whose attitude towards this subject has changed - an all too rare occurrence - from learning more about it.

It would go a long way towards making such discussions more worthwhile if participants were at least somewhat aware of the history of the subject; its relation to freedom, voluntary action, agency, autonomy, responsibility, control, determination; the role it plays in law, ethics, psychology, sociology. There is, of course, massive literature on free will in philosophy, including experimental philosophy (yes, that's a thing).

My mistake, your point is well taken. It should be said (somewhat contradicting what I said before) that even in something as seemingly dry and precise and abstract as mathematics, the actual process of coming up with a mathematical theory may start with somewhat vague, intuitive idea of what it is that you want to see, and then you evaluate your formal construction against that idea. Thus, we have intuitive, pretheoretical, or just pragmatic ideas of what a set should be, what an arithmetic should be, and then we axiomatize those ideas, giving them definite, precise form (and there can be more than one way to do that, some better, some worse, some just offering different possibilities).

But an infinite past still entails an infinite series that has been completed; that is the dilemma. Consider how we conceive an infinite future: it is an unending process of one day moving to the next: it is the incomplete process that is the potential infinity. The past entails a completed process, and it's inconceivable how an infinity can be completed. — Relativist

Well, inconceivable is a subjective assessment, it's a far cry from being provably impossible. If you just want to say that you don't believe the past can be infinite because an infinity of elapsed time seems inconceivable to you, you are welcome to it. Does an absolute beginning of time, such that right at the beginning there is no before, seem more conceivable to you?

Mathematical entities are abstractions, they have only hypothetical existence. — Relativist

That's neither here nor there, because this is true for all our thoughts, concepts, imaginings. When you think of a dog, even when the thought is prompted by looking at one, your thought is not the dog - it's an idea in your head, an abstraction of a dog.

How is this different from the infinity of mathematical operation of dividing 3 into 1? Just because it equates to an infinity of 3's after the decimal doesn't imply infinity exists in the world. — Relativist

You mean dividing 1 into 3, right? Exactly, very good example. You don't say that for there to be thirds we need to be able to write out all the decimal digits of 1/3, right? That would be an arbitrary, unjustified requirement. So why do you maintain that for there to be a "completed" infinite sequence we need to be able count out each individual element of the sequence? Does its existence somehow depend on us speaking or thinking it into existence, one element at a time? Bottom line, you can't just throw out such arbitrary requirements, you need to justify them.

Is there a theory of Absolute infinity? Please tell me if there is!!! — ssu

OK, so you make a distinction between something you call "Absolute" infinity and any other sort of infinity. I don't know what that difference is, and it doesn't look like you have a very definite idea either. When you want to find out whether something exists, you don't start by giving it a name, you start by giving it an operational definition, laying down requirements that need to be satisfied for anything to be recognized as that thing. It's no use just saying: "Well, it's Absolute, you know..."

I don't see how an instantiated infinity could ever be established empirically since we can't count to infinity. — Relativist

The same way we can empirically establish anything at all. We don't necessarily need to count to infinity for that, just as we don't need to write out all the digits of pi in order to empirically establish the harmonic oscillator solution. If a model that makes use of infinities provides a good fit for many observations, is parsimonious, productive, fits in with other successful models, etc. then we consider it to be empirically established, infinities and all.

On the other hand, I think in some cases, infinity can be ruled out. For example: the past cannot be infinite. Here's my argument:

1. It is not possible for a series formed by successive addition to be both infinite and completed.
2. The temporal series of (past) events is formed by successive addition.
3. The temporal series of past events is completed (by the present).
4. (Hence) It is not possible for the temporal series of past events to be infinite.
5. (Hence) The temporal series of past events is finite. — Relativist

"Successive addition" implies a starting point, which obviously precludes an infinite past. Your argument simply begs the question. An infinite past is a past that does not have a starting point.

I myself believe Absolute Infinity as an mathematical entity exists. It's just a personal hunch that it is so. — ssu

You don't need any hunches in order to believe that a mathematical entity exists: all you need is a mathematical theory that says that such and such entity is infinite - and such mathematics exists, there is no question about that.

It's discrete and not a continuum at all. — LD Saunders

What is?

There's no "constructing" here, space is just infinitely divisible. There's no such thing as a smallest possible distance. — MindForged

Well, actually in physics, space does not seem to be infinitely divisible. — LD Saunders

In today's physics space and time are usually modeled as a continuum. This is true for classical mechanics and quantum mechanics and for many other theories. This does not mean that we can say something definitively about the ultimate nature of space and time, or that it even makes sense to talk about such ultimate nature, as if it were uniquely defined. Conservatively, the most we can say is that current physical theories are very effective, and that gives us a good reason for thinking of space and time as a continuum and no good reason for thinking otherwise.

This doesn't mean that future physical theories will not quantize space and time. Some think that quantum physics points in that direction, although to repeat, current theory makes space and time a continuum. And an unbounded (infinite) one at that in all but some cosmological models. Speaking of which, those cosmological models with a finite or semi-infinite spacetime are so violently counterintuitive that I very much doubt that most "infinity skeptics" would be more satisfied with them than with the traditional Euclidean infinite space and time.

Dennis, if you really believe that philosophical theories are uniquely derived from experience with unassailable reasoning, and that this can be done for Aristotelian philosophy in just a couple of paragraphs, then you are very naive. Anyway, I do not wish to detail this discussion any further.

That's paradoxical. — frank

Not paradoxical, just undefined. Let's tweak the story:

- Imagine Donald Trump
- You notice he’s counting (you can tell because he is muttering and holding up his fingers). You ask how long and he says ‘I’ve been counting for ten minutes’
- What number is he on?

So put this way, this is a pretty dumb counterexample, but there are actually many puzzles involving infinities where you might think there ought to be a definite answer, but there isn't, such as Thomson's Lamp for example. There are also genuine paradoxes, where an imaginary setup that seems like it ought to be possible, in principle, leads to contradictions. But in each of these cases you have an option to reconsider your starting assumptions: Are you sure that there must be a unique answer? How do you know? Are you sure the setup itself is coherent? How do you know?

It is amazing how taste can trump analysis. — Dfpolis

Well, when it comes to philosophy, at the end of the day it does come down to "taste;" there's no getting around it, unless you believe that you can derive an entire philosophy completely a priori, without any extrarational commitments (which would be an exceptionally crankish thing to believe).

But that's not really why I don't accept your argumentation in this instance. When making an argument one must start from some common ground, and Aristotelian or Scholastic metaphysics isn't such a common ground between us. If you absolutely have to use that framework, then you would have to start by justifying that entire framework to me, or at least its relevant parts. And that is just too unwieldy a task for a forum discussion on an unrelated topic.

The resolution of singularities is in part due to the precedence of them turning out to be the result of mistakes in our models. — MindForged

Singularities are nasty beasts, and there's a better reason for eschewing them than past experience: singularities blow up your model in the same way that division by zero does (division by zero is one instance of singularity); they produce logical contradictions.

Of course, singularities are not the only sort of infinities that we deal with. As you said, if we use modern mathematical apparatus, then it is exceptionally hard to get rid of all infinities. A few have tried and keep trying, but it's a quixotic battle.

As for the objection "it's just math, it's not real," then my next question is: what is real? Where and why do you draw the boundary between your conceptual mapping of the world and what you think the world really is? Is there even any sense in drawing such a distinction? Are three apples really three, or just mathematically three? If they are not really three, then what are they really?

OK, I see now that your position is deeply embedded in Aristotelian metaphysics, which holds no attraction for me. Thanks for taking the trouble to explain it though.

Nobody expects Quentin Tarantino or Ryan Gosling to have anything particularly interesting to say about the world, but they do expect that of JM Coetzee and Hilary Mantel. — andrewk

The age of the serious writer as a public intellectual carrying wisdom and moral authority is even shorter than the age of print - that started roughly in the middle 19th century in the Western world, and is on the vane now. I think you are wrong about Tarantino and Gosling, given our celebrity culture.

19th century was the golden age of print (or more precisely, from late 18th century to early 20th), and, coincidentally or not, that is also when the novel became "serious literature." By print I mean not so much the physical medium, but what has come to be associated with it: the relatively long, sequential read, which includes "literature," as well as non-fiction books and magazine and newspaper articles of nontrivial size. It is contrasted with audio-visual and multimedia entertainment, reference, social media, Internet browsing, forums like this, etc. (The latter two are on the way out, by the way.)

So literature, or print, as we conceive of it now, is actually a relatively recent and brief phase in the history of human civilization. Already, if we group together all the new forms that came to prominence in the 20th-21st centuries, this new age is comparable in length to the age of print.

How can something essentially inadequate to a task perform the task? — Dfpolis

Explain, please.

Now, my question is the following : how would you attack this argument, in a way other than denying (P2), i.e. that there exists a series of all grounded facts ? — Philarete

Would you consider just dropping the PSR? It's difficult for me to see what the attraction of an unrestricted PSR is, Della Rocca's arguments notwithstanding.

Why do athiests have Morals and Ethics? — AwonderingSoul

Have you tried Google? I just highlighted "Why do athiests have Morals" in your title, right-clicked, and selected the option to search Google. (You misspelled "atheists," of course, but Google is clever enough to correct the misspelling.) The very first page of results contains several responses from card-carrying (literally!) Atheists.

My understanding is along the lines of what @Snakes Alive said (I think). For a modal realist like Lewis possible worlds serve as a reductive explanation of (one type of) modality, but that is a minority view. For the rest, possible worlds talk is just that - talk. It's a metaphorical interpretation of (some) modalities. It neither explains (in the way Lewis's realism does) nor replaces modality - it's just an informal and intuitive language. Whenever possible worlds language is used, you can replace it with the appropriate formalism.

Well, that is excellent news. Tell me, do you believe JTB is the best description for knowledge in a non-general sense? I know you can justify it, but I'm curious as to whether you believe it. — Cheshire

I am ambivalent about it. The advice that I gave you about seeing how it works in a philosophical context is the advice I would take myself. I haven't read enough, haven't burrowed deep enough into surrounding issues (partly because I didn't find them interesting) to make a competent judgement.

.

I'm not so much interested as how its used 'in language', but rather how it's used in reality. — Cheshire

Knowledge is a word, language use is its reality. It's not like there is some celestial dictionary in which the "real" meanings of words are inscribed once and for all. Knowledge is what we say it is. So one way to approach the question is to do as linguists do when they compile a dictionary: see how the word is used "in the wild." Philosophers and other specialists extent the natural language in coining their own terms, which they can do in ways that narrow the colloquial meaning or diverge from it. However, it is considered to be a bad and misleading practice to diverge too far, in effect creating homonyms.

While @javra attempted a conceptual justification of the JTB knowledge, I'll stick to natural language for a moment. How much does the JTB knowledge differ from common sense knowledge? One thing you can say about the JTB definition is that, at first glance, it does not appear to be an operational definition (this parallels both your critique and @javra's notes above). If you wanted to sort various propositions into knowledge and not knowledge, you could plausibly use the first two of the JTB criteria (setting aside for a moment legitimate concerns about those two), but you cannot apply the criterion of Truth, over and above the criterion of Justification. For how do you decide whether a proposition is true, if not by coming up with a good justification for holding it true?

But think about what happens when we evaluate beliefs that we held in the past, or beliefs that are held by other people. They are Beliefs, and they could be Justified as well as they possibly could be, given the agent's circumstances at the time. And yet, when you consider those beliefs from your present perspective, you could judge the Truth of those beliefs differently. And since it would not be in keeping with the common sense to call false beliefs "knowledge," it seems that there is, after all, a place for the Truth criterion.

And before you object, I mean to say especially philosophers, when I say people. My primary reason for making JTB a target is just because it's so well guarded from criticism and taught as if were a law of thought; when as Gettier showed in nearly satirical fashion the emperor has no cloths. — Cheshire

Well, how familiar are you with contemporary epistemology? Even from a very superficial look, it is hard to see where you got this idea - see for instance SEP article The Analysis of Knowledge.

I greatly appreciate the charitable read and I agree. So long as JTB isn't meant to actually describe the real world and is only maintained for the purpose of an exercise I suppose I no longer object. Thank you for the reference to Gettier; I'm aware my arguments or causal assertions must appear quite naive.

Do you think you could produce an example of these two different types of knowledge? The general and the technical?

I suppose I'm agreeing with Gettier in a sense, but avoiding his objection. He's saying hey your system doesn't work because it can produce mistaken knowledge. I'm saying some knowledge is mistaken. — Cheshire

Yes, Gettier's counterexamples are where all three of the JTB criteria seem to be satisfied, and yet the result doesn't meet our intuitive, pre-analytical notion of knowledge. Your examples are where our intuitive notion of knowledge does not meet the JTB criteria. How damaging are such attacks? That totally depends on the context.

Like I said, if the goal was to just give an accurate account of how the word "knowledge" is used in the language, you probably can't do better than a good dictionary, together with an acknowledgement that such informal usage is imprecise and will almost inevitably run into difficulties with edge cases like Gettier's.

But philosophers define their terms in order to put them to use in their investigations, so I think the best way to approach the issue is not to latch onto one bit taken out of context, but see what work that JTB idea does in actual philosophical works. Maybe the JTB scheme is flawed because it doesn't capture something essential about knowledge, or maybe the examples that you give just aren't relevant to what philosophers are trying to do. I haven't done much reading in this area myself - I am just giving what I hope is sensible general advice on how to proceed.

The theory of knowledge that serves as the foundation of philosophy is flawed. — Cheshire

This reminds me of Russel's famous conundrum: "The present king of France is bald."

Anyway, the most charitable reading of your post suggests that you are dissatisfied with the JTB theory of knowledge because it does not fully reflect the way the word "knowledge" is used in the natural language (English language, at least). This would have been a valid objection if an English language dictionary gave "justified true belief" as the only definition of the word "knowledge." Like many words, the meaning of "knowledge" as exemplified by actual use is heterogeneous and will not be captured by a single, compact definition. But JTB was not meant to serve as a general definition - it was to be a technical definition for use in analytical epistemology. So we can talk about whether it is a useful definition (and many have challenged it before you, most famously, Gettier).

God states that killing is wrong, Gob states that it is not. — Joe Salem

I think that this controversy should be resolved in the traditional way: single combat.

You are confusing terms of language, or written symbols, with entities that are designated by them. You have essentially reproduced the confused argument of the OP.

I was specifically addressing OP's understanding and presentation of the argument, and contrasting it with Aquinas's. I agree with you and others that Scholastic philosophy carries with it a load of metaphysical baggage that makes it a non-starter for many. And that, if we want to address that philosophy - whether to uphold it or to dispute it - we need to take it on its own terms (as best as we can make out those terms).

The explanandum of a cosmological argument is not the sum of the physical features of the first cause. For that, cosmological arguments are usually content to defer to science. If anything, some of these arguments present an overly confident view of science. For example, proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument, such as W. L. Craig, insist that cosmologists have already settled the scientific question of whether the universe has a beginning in time (which he identifies with the "Big Bang"), whereas in reality the question remains open.

Nothing that future science could add to its picture of the early universe could address the problem that cosmological arguments claim to raise and resolve. The only resolution that could satisfy proponents of a cosmological argument is one that proves the first cause to be necessary in the appropriate sense (depending on the type of the argument). But such a resolution could hardly be expected from science. Science tells us what is (the brute fact), not what must be. Only logic or metaphysics can claim to do the latter.

At this point I recommend that you actually take a closer look at these arguments, because I get an impression that you have a very vague idea of what they are saying. The SEP has an extensive introduction: Cosmological Argument.

The "existence" is based on scholastic realism's belief in the extra-mental existence of universals. Once that is made explicit, the significance of the "proof" as a proof evaporates. It remains, however, as an artifact of a certain kind of thinking. The presentation of the "proof" as a proof without making its realist underpinnings clear (if known - a material qualification), is simply fraud. — tim wood

It's unfair to the original argument, because presented in the way @Samuel Lacrampe did, it fails miserably. His version of the argument simply says that there must be an maximum of actually realized goodness, and that is what we call God, which is wrong for several quite obvious reasons.

Every time I hear the cosmological argument or, in recent years gaining popularity, the kalām argument, it's generally based around a fundamental flaw in which it assumes properties of the first cause in order to call it god or gods without there ever being any support through the premisses about the properties of that first cause. If that first cause is, let's say an "anti-universe", a negative mass and energy that reach a fulcrum point that balance over into a burst that we would then call big bang, then the first cause is just a pile of negative energy and mass, not a god. But those arguments are used as arguments for god, which is by any standards around, a pure fallacy. — Christoffer

I don't know which examples of cosmological arguments you have in mind, but the ones I am familiar with mainly trade on the one feature of the first cause that cannot be denied (short of denying the existence of the first cause): it's being first, uncaused cause. This is what's supposed to make it metaphysically special, elevating it above any natural cause that we know or can hypothesize. Everything else that is said about that first cause more-or-less flows from that.

I should also clarify that modern formal logic is not quite the same thing as traditional Aristotelian logic - not just because it can have different laws (axioms), but because it is a different thing conceptually. Although it is possible to reconceptualize traditional logic in the modern paradigm, it wouldn't be what people used to think of as "Aristotelian logic."

Has Aristotelian logic been subjected to the same critiques as Euclid's geometry. In other words is there a non Aristotelian logic to be derived by a critical examination of it's axioms? — jlrinc

Yes and no. "Yes" in the sense that, just as with geometry, we now know of more than one logic. "No" in the sense that we did not find other geometries by proving that some Euclidean axioms are wrong, and neither did we find other logics by proving that some axioms of the Aristotelian logic are wrong.

Nothing is wrong with Euclidean geometry, and nothing is wrong Aristotelian logic. It's just that at some point we decided that the concept of "logic" doesn't have to be limited to Aristotelian logic, and just as there is now a generalized concept of "geometry" that covers any number of geometries (including both familiar, practical geometries, and completely abstract, made-up ones), there is a generalized concept of "logic" that covers any number of logics. We have also found that the same logic can be axiomatized differently, i.e. two different axiomatic systems can have all the same implications.

Regarding the Law of identity "a is a" is it wrong to argue that a is not a because one a is on the left side of the copula and the other a is on the right side, and having different properties they are clearly not identical — jlrinc

Being on the RHS or the LHS is not a property of a, but a property of the sentence "a is a".

This is absolutely necessary for the evolution of human like intelligence. — yatagarasu

Again, you are only considering a narrow neighborhood of Homo sapiens when judging what is necessary to fulfill a broad requirement. This is a myopic view, as demonstrated by the great variety of adaptations and numerous convergencies that can be seen in life on Earth. Besides, as I said, you are underestimating the potential for variety within a lineage; this is why I brought up birds, some of whom, by the way, move about over much wider ranges than humans ever did for most of their existence - without the benefit of sweat glands. Fish didn't have sweat glands either, and yet here we are.

Maybe not if the tape was rewound, or another planet. — Marchesk

Yeah, I have no definite opinion on this myself. Was there always a potential niche for a land-dwelling, mid-size generalist with highly developed cognitive faculties, just waiting to be filled? I am no Gould or Conway Morris, but I think that even coming from the best theoreticians, any conjecture on alternative evolutionary history would be very speculative.

One interesting perspective on this question comes from the field of thermodynamics, of all things. Our universe (or at least the part of it that we inhabit), on average, has a rather low entropy. It is a far-from equilibrium thermodynamic system. A system that is at thermodynamic equilibrium is static; nothing interesting happens there. A system that is only slightly disturbed will evolve towards equilibrium in a fairly orderly fashion - this is what we learn in high school and undergraduate physics. But in far-from-equilibrium systems more interesting things can happen, such as spontaneous formation of persistent energy-dissipating structures. (This goes against the common stereotype that equates entropy with disorder!)

It is said that, looking from the global thermodynamic perspective, things like stars and planets and complex chemistry - and life - play the role of energy-dissipating, entropy-producing subsystems that spontaneously form as part of the dynamics of a far-from-equilibrium system that is our universe. As one might expect, some of these subsystems are more efficient at producing entropy than others. According to some approximate calculations, it turns out that the more complex things, such as living organisms, are more thermodynamically wasteful, producing more entropy per unit mass than, for example, star cores. And human brains are right there near the top of the hierarchy as super-efficient entropy generators. So perhaps there is something to the infamous "great chain of being," after all! Or, more seriously, perhaps it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics that pushes the universe at this point of its evolution to form more and more complex structures, up to and perhaps beyond intelligent life (all to hasten its eventual heat death...)

I think the meaning of the dinosaurs going extinct where the big ones occupying all the niches that kept mammals to a small size. — Marchesk

An alternative history could have dinosaurs diminished (to more than just the bird lineage), but not extinct, sharing space with mammals; think, for example, of how marsupials now coexist with placental mammals. Or perhaps dinosaurs could eventually produce a highly intelligent species. If they could produce something as un-dinosaur-like as birds (and some birds are pretty intelligent!), why not?

I find it very unlikely something like Humans would have evolved without the extinctions of the dinosaurs. What type of reptilians do they even suggest would have led to humans evolving? Two of the biggest adaptations that led humans to evolving the way they did was the brain and the stamina humans have. (our ability to generate a thin layer of sweat) I don't see how these would develop in a world dominated by massive reptiles. — yatagarasu

Also that our ancestors came out of the trees. I don't know that the Velociraptor line would have gone to the trees for long enough to develop the kind of hands we have. — Marchesk

Two things. First, your mistake here is that you are considering a tiny counterfactual neighborhood of human evolutionary history. It is unreasonable to suggest that sweat glands or arboreal habitat are a sine qua non for evolving human-like intelligence in any species, just because these factors (allegedly) played an important role the evolution of human intelligence.

Second, dinosaurs are not extinct. Look out the window and you'll likely see some. When you think of dinosaurs, you might have a picture of comic-book giant reptiles in your imagination; if so, you are seriously underestimating the potential for variety in that lineage. Also, what @Bitter Crank said: if you didn't know better, would you expect fish to evolve into something like us?

Somehow, for the 3rd or 4th time, you have skipped over the core of the answer: Thinking about reality is correct when it preserves the truth of what we know of reality (is salve veritate) -- and preserves that truth, not accidentally, but in virtue of the processed followed (i.e. essentially). This is an operational, goal-oriented definition.

It is amazing that, while noting that I said, "essentially, not accidentally," you seem unable to grasp what essential note is required. Just so you do not miss it again the essential note is truth preserving (salve veritate),

I am not discussing any "them" such as rules, but the definition of correct thinking. — Dfpolis

I am sorry, I haven't been closely following this entire exchange, but this just sounds like a wordy way of saying that the correct way of thinking is the way of thinking that is correct ("preserves the truth of what we know of reality," etc.) Not terribly illuminating.

Removing the lounge from the front page is fine, I think. This way the forum appears less chatty.

Incidentally, this is just the sort of thread that belongs in the lounge (if it belongs anywhere), and not on the front page.