Why don't we understand everything? — Srap Tasmaner

One concern perhaps relevant to this discussion is to remember that this is what we're doing: it's all too easy to think that by naming what we don't yet understand, we do understand it. Thus we use words like "energy" and "matter" and "force" as if they mean something. We can show how we use those terms in our theories, and thus how they connect up to things we consider explained and understood, but there's some lingering suspicion that we don't really understand our explanations. (If some of our variables are still unbound, the logician might remind us, we don't yet have a proposition -- only something like a proposition generator.) — Srap Tasmaner

we have no way of establishing that our research tools (our own minds) are in good working order (there's no standard we could possibly reach for) — Srap Tasmaner

This I've read now from many various references. When Russia occupied the Crimea in 2014, the lack of a logistics tail fooled Western observers (and they were then focused hunting terrorists anyway). Now the arrival of that logistical tail, field hospitals, ammo depots etc. sends a message. — ssu

I also happen to think the Crimea annexation was a reaction to Western meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine when it refused to bend over and get anally shafted by the IMF. — Benkei

Kazuo Ishiguro – The Buried Knight — Snakes Alive

Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy — Pantagruel

It’s from “There’s are No Such Things as Ordinary Objects” in the bookThe Nature of Ordinary Objects — Ignoredreddituser

Waving an invasion banner visible to spy satellites is a flamboyant message of some kind, especially when your real opponent knows you have logistical challenges wrt your target. — frank

And costly. Put into the field over 100 000+ troops and then have them there for months is expensive. Usually armed forces don't do it. — ssu

I’ve been teaching myself metaphysics, it’s been pretty challenging since I don’t really have anyway to get feedback. I was wondering if you guys have an ideas how to reply to an argument Steven French makes below. It seems like a combination of the grounding problem and overdetermination to me, but I’m not sure if I’m on the right track or how to reply to it. Everything below is an excerpt from his paper. — Ignoredreddituser

[quote] ... [/quote]

SophistiCat, I read a lot of what you post and generally find it both well-informed and level-headed, but as long as I’ve been reading you, you have remained, shall we say, unimpressed by such expressions of wonder and bafflement. For you, if there’s a theory that works, all strangeness of the phenomena accounted for is banished, and no strangeness attaches to a theory that is successful. I’m exaggerating, I suppose, but have I mistaken your attitude? — Srap Tasmaner

It's studying what the classics - up till Newton - and a bit beyond him, took to be a fact about the world, that we could understand it. We can't. — Manuel

It's the simple view that there are things we can know and things we cannot, given that we are natural creatures. Not in this essay, but in a different one, he distinguishes between "problems" and "mysteries", problems are those questions we can ask and (hopefully) answer. "Mysteries" are those we can ask and not answer, such as say, free will or how is it possible for matter to think? Then there are questions we can't even ask, because we don't know how to phrase them.

This would give an "updated" view on the intuitive aspect:

https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf

Particularly "naive physics" p.6. — Manuel

The 17th century scientific revolution was a reaction to Aristotelean physics, which postulated occult forces that no longer made sense. But of course, Aristotle was taken very seriously and was considered by many to be among the greatest of thinkers, no doubt about that. Aristotle was likely highlighting other aspects of our innate "folk psychology", putting emphasis on different aspects of the world, which were not satisfactory for many of the 17th century figures. — Manuel

I'd only quibble that I don't think physicists have intuitions about how gravity works, they have intuitions about how theories about gravity work and how they can relate to other phenomena in the world. The intuition would be on the theory side. — Manuel

The main topic of the essay, as I read it, is that we've lowered the standards of science, we no longer seek to understand the world, but seek theories about aspects of the world. That's a big lowering of standards of explanation. — Manuel

As for your last question, I think, in the end, the point is going to be person dependent. For me, it's quite crazy that we understand so little and that the world exists at all, it's baffling to me. There's no reason to expect any species to evolve having a capacity to ask and answer questions about the world at all, there's no obvious benefit to doing these things. — Manuel

Russia could have prevented NATO far more successfully by simply NOT DOING ANYTHING AGGRESSIVE. — ssu

What's quite ironic in all of this - these so called "naturalists" and "empiricists" - who look at say, Hume, with much admiration, is that they don't read him, or they read him badly, not only with regard to mysteries, but regarding "innate ideas". — Manuel

I mean, it’s not interesting to me, insofar as I agree with this approach to philosophy and see people who disagree with the main points to be very mistaken. However, if I had to attack it, I don’t see any alternative to people who currently ridicule “mysteriansim”, like Dennett or the Churchlands. — Manuel

You certainly are welcome to keep posting here — T Clark

This thread illuminates what it is to be a philosopher in modern times — jgill

This article in Foreign Policy from a few days ago makes the same points:

Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis — jamalrob

The two main candidates were neck and neck in the first-round vote held on 31 October 2004

The Ukraine is a nation split right down the middle in terms of the views and cultural make up of the people. Crimea is/was basically made up of Russian speaking pro Russian people and the eastern half of Ukraine is basically the same.

If they just let people vote maybe the war would finally end. Instead it has been another ongoing proxy war between Russia and US. — I like sushi

There is plenty of sense in Russia’s view that the US has been steadily encroaching on Russian territory. — I like sushi

The time-clock relation: There is a logical (or conceptually necessary) relation between ‘time’ and ‘a physical process which can function as a clock (or a core of a clock)’ in the sense that we cannot – in a well-defined way – use either of these concepts without referring to (or presupposing) the other. — On the physical basis of cosmic time

Here is another example. You want to skate on a lake and inquire if the ice is thick enough. Other skaters tell you that the ice becomes thinner towards the center of the lake. What this means is that the part of the frozen surface of the lake that is in the immediate vicinity of whoever is skating on it (and hence affords support to that person) is thinner when the skater is nearer to the center of the lake. — Pierre-Normand

I thought I would butt in here to clarify some things. Would you agree with the following? Our ability to act ethically with others evolves as a function of cultural development. To use an analogy, not too long ago it was assumed that animals had no emotions or cognition and did not feel pain. It s hard to act ‘ethically’ toward a creature when you dont see them as having any of these capabilities. Another example : we used to think that infants were a blooming, buzzing confusion. Now we know that they have all sorts of perceptual and recognition skills, including being able to empathize with others. Again, without such an appreciation of the infant’s perspective, ethical treatment of them is limited. I would argue the entire history of culture involves the growth of insights into how others unlike ourselves think and feel. — Joshs

One could call a percept a "quale", but Chomsky doesn't. A percept means a moment of experience, such as you reading this sentence as you currently are. Or looking at the window and seeing green grass, or hearing a car zoom by, etc.

I'm unclear why this is confusing, outside of the terminology itself. It's been overwhelmingly taken for granted up until the 20th century, when it suddenly became a problem to a small group of people. — Manuel

I thought the whole argument was meant to show that experience isn't necessary for a human being to exist as they do. But I also do not see the force to this argument, nor understand the attention given to it. — Manuel

Sure. No problem. I don't agree with Strawson's panpsychism either, though he's pretty clear with the terms "experiential" and "non-experiential". — Manuel

The zombie argument isn't particularly convincing, I don't think, I mean, we essentially have very similar examples in people who sleepwalk, or so it seems to me. — Manuel

Yes, Stoljar is interesting, but I've mainly focused on Strawson. So I can say less about him than others. — Manuel

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter — SophistiCat

And this specific position is? — hypericin

What it is is a codification, elaboration, ossification, (and in some cases, perversion),of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species. — hypericin

No, it isn't. That's not were Keen went. — Banno

This is because economists made their own predictions of damages, using three spurious methods: assuming that about 90% of GDP will be unaffected by climate change, because it happens indoors; using the relationship between temperature and GDP today as a proxy for the impact of global warming over time; and using surveys that diluted extreme warnings from scientists with optimistic expectations from economists. — Keen

The first few minutes of the video show how standard economic theory fails to take thermodynamics into account. — Banno

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. — Creationist who almost discovers the sun

No. The sun provides almost 10,000 times as much energy to the Earth’s surface per time unit and unit area, namely 342 Wm-2, as we emit into the atmosphere or waters through industry, transport, housing, agriculture and other activities by using fossil fuels and the nuclear fuel uranium (0.03 Wm-2). — Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie

What it is is a codification (and in some cases, perversion) of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species. — hypericin

It is not the definition of moral theory I am after. Note how this "definition" puts the burden of analysis on the "target", then proceeds to defer to psychologists, anthropologists and the rest. — Astrophel

The topic of this entry is not—at least directly—moral theory; rather, it is the definition of morality. Moral theories are large and complex things; definitions are not. The question of the definition of morality is the question of identifying the target of moral theorizing. Identifying this target enables us to see different moral theories as attempting to capture the very same thing. And it enables psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and other more empirically-oriented theorists to design their experiments or formulate their hypotheses without prejudicing matters too much in terms of the specific content a code, judgment, or norm must have in order to count as distinctively moral. — The Definition of Morality

I've only ugly-cried twice so far this listen through: — Noble Dust