Like we describe how gravity works but not understand why it is like that. — The0warrior

To describe gravity is to make it more intelligible - to understand it. In describing it we acquire an understanding of some of the whys and the hows.

It is a mistake to think of understanding as some unique final state of knowledge, so that we will understand the world only when we attain that state of knowledge, and until then we "do not have understand it at all," as @javi2541997 put it. There are many valid degrees and ways of understanding. It depends not only on what we can, but on what we want to know.

Speaking of physics, there are many subjects within this discipline, and each can have a number of theories and approaches and techniques, and each of those brings its own understanding of its subject. Again, it is a mistake to think that only a hypothetical "theory of everything" (TOE) can bring true understanding of the workings of the universe. We already understand a lot from all the descriptions/theories that we have. A TOE, if such is even possible in principle (and that is an open question), would add another layer of understanding, but it wouldn't subsume the understanding brought to us by other theories. (Note that I said a TOE, not the TOE, because it doesn't even have to be unique.)

Is there a difference between understanding and describing? We describe something in order to make it intelligible.

Yes. I've made your argument many times. Usually I am ineffective in getting the point across. It comes up a lot in discussions about the multiverse. — T Clark

It's a bad argument, because it blithely presumes probabilities in the absence of any context. It's cargo cult math.

I don't agree with the idea that nothing exists is non-sensical or meaningless for the following reason.
If we're to ever give a satisfying answer (satisfying, at least in my opinion) to the question, we have to accept the idea that there might have been nothing and then figure out how there can be something now. — Roger

So, we must presume that the question makes sense, because otherwise we couldn't find a satisfactory answer to the question. Well, yeah. One can't find a satisfying answer to a nonsensical question. But what would be more satisfying? Massaging the terms until the question becomes trivial? For example, let's just say that "nothing" is the same as "everything" - Boom! Done! Is this really a satisfying exercise? Even if you stretch it over two paragraphs?

The very premise of this exercise is utterly clueless. Physics equations don't prove, much less disprove the assumptions that were built into them.

Wavelength equals Planck's constant divided by mass and velocity, which can be written as w=dmt/mv.

If we cancel mass, then translate the remaining variables into meters and seconds for the sake of demonstration, we get w=meters*second/(meters/second). This translates into seconds squared, which I'll call time (t) squared. — Enrique

LOL. So you got the wrong units for length, right in step 2. This is where one would go back to look for the mistake, but no, you forge ahead...

Everyone thinks their beliefs are reasonable and everyone has differing beliefs (on this site and elsewhere). So by definition some of these beliefs would be unreasonable. — khaled

One quibble here: What is reasonable for one to believe depends (uncontroversially) on one's epistemic situation. For example, it is reasonable for you to believe that you know where you are right now, whereas for me it is not.

This is one of those bad old philosophical questions that should be dissolved with analysis. There is neither right nor wrong answer, because the question makes little sense and answering it makes not a wit of difference to anything.

(By the way, if you put an extra space between paragraphs, your posts will look less like an unappealing wall of text.)

In cold water?

Yeah, people ought to tag their responses with tags like "derail," "derail, but worth reading," "crap post in every respect, don't bother reading," etc. so that we can quickly filter out what we don't want to read :D

I actually agree with you about the intuition. If we're not moving, how do we start moving? It's a bit of a mystery actually, I'm not sure what physicists say about this. Well I guess I do know. If we're a steel ball in Newton's cradle, or we're a ball on a pool table, we start moving when we get smacked by another ball that transfers its momentum to us. But how does our velocity go instantaneously from zero to nonzero? The Newtonian physics works out, but not the intuition. — fishfry

Collision is a notoriously messy scenario - both physically and mathematically. Better to think of a ball in Newton's cradle at its highest point: at that point it is instantaneously at rest, then it starts moving again. Voila, motion from rest. Or easier still, just pick up that ball, gently release your grip and let it fall to the ground. Same deal, and we even know pretty exactly what its acceleration is when it starts moving. This doesn't seem so unintuitive to me.

I remember struggling with the concept of acceleration when it was first introduced - in middle school, I guess. It started making sense after a while. But some people just can't come to grips with such abstract concepts. Most of them have the good sense to leave it alone and apply themselves to something they are better at. Those who can't leave it alone become lifetime cranks, like MU. Or philosophers :)

I was just trying to answer the first thing you were saying, is that bad? — Franz Liszt

Replying to one sentence taken out of context (only to repeat what you already said several times) is pointless and misleading. If you are not interested in a conversation, then don't bother responding.

The argument, which is very badly put by the OP, is that if you seek to *explain* reason in terms of naturalism or evolutionary development, then this devalues the sovereignty of reason. Reason is sovereign because it is capable of revealing truths, not on account of it being the outcome of physical causation or evolutionary adaptation, which is a near-universal assumption. — Wayfarer

No, that's not the OP argument, that's just one of your favorite refrains. The OP denies that reason can be explained in terms of naturalism. He says that if naturalism is true, then we can't have confidence in our ability to reason, which in turn undermines all our beliefs, including beliefs about science and logic. Therefore, our ability to reason has to be put into the explanation "by hand" - God's hand.

This is a species of a skeptical argument, articulated among others (though without the non sequitur conclusion) by Darwin himself. A more elaborate version was later put forward by Plantinga (EAAN).

You can’t conclude anything from a paradox

This is quite literally my entire point. The person who says that we are just a bunch of chemicals is making a claim that leads to a paradox. — Franz Liszt

I guess you didn't read anything after this sentence.

How do we know that our logical thoughts would actually show any truth in this universe? The answer, if we are just a bunch of chemicals, is that we can’t. — Franz Liszt

That's not at all obvious.

If you say ‘science and logic are illusions’ then you’ve come to that conclusion using logic (and likely science as well) which is absurd!
I feel the only way to escape this paradox is to say that we are designed by some higher truth in the universe. — Franz Liszt

You can't conclude anything from a paradox. As you yourself just acknowledged, you have undermined your own reasoning. Any further conclusion that you make on the basis of invalid reasoning will be invalid.

I feel the only way to escape this paradox is to say that we are designed by some higher truth in the universe.
This goes against my instincts, but from a philosophical standpoint, science and logic are kind of dependent on this to be true — Franz Liszt

You want to say that science and logic depend on the reliability of our cognitive abilities. I would object that you implicitly assume said reliability whenever you embark on any cognitive task, such as putting together this argument. You can't withhold this assumption without undermining your argument.

But let's grant your requirement for the sake of an argument. Why is supernatural design the only answer to this requirement? If you are a product of design, it is still an open question whether you were designed with reliable cognitive abilities or not. So you have to assume that you are a product of design, and that you were designed for reliable cognitive abilities. But as long as you are helping yourself to assumptions, wouldn't it be more parsimonious to assume just that our cognitive abilities are reliable?

I can point you to a comprehensive SEP survey of compatibilism. There was so much to cover there that a supplement was made just for the most recent developments.

I don't agree that freedom is compatible with determinism; I've heard plenty of people claim it is so and yet they are never able to explain how it could be. — Janus

Why not learn more about compatibilist arguments then? Your position is what is sometimes referred to as classical incompatibilism - classical because of its long history, going back to antiquity, but especially vigorously debated over the last century or so, when compatibilism rose in prominence.

These random factoids are quite irrelevant to what I said.

Are there any parallels between the scientific method and coherentism? — Curious Layman

Sure.

When we are looking for a scientific explanation of an observation, we try to fit it within established theories, preferring more secure theories over less secure ones. If the best fit is not exact, we can supplement is with an auxiliary hypothesis (measurement error, etc.). If the disparity cannot be convincingly patched over with auxiliary hypotheses, only then we will consider modifying a theory. Throwing out an established theory is the very last thing we will consider.

When we develop a new theory, we prefer theories that fit better with other established theories.

People always bring up Banach-Tarski, and I say, "B-T is at heart a simply syntactic phenomenon that I could describe in a page of exposition if anyone was interested," and they invariably have no interest. One of these days someone's going to say, "I'd like to see that" and I'll do it. — fishfry

I'd like to see that!

(But you may want to make a new thread for that. I suspect that few folks are looking at Gregory threads. I only looked because I saw your response.)

The Planck length is a fundamental aspect of modern physics. And by modern I mean since 1899, when Planck came up with the idea. He noted that it's defined only in terms of the speed of light, Newton's gravitational constant, and Planck's constant. His idea was that the Planck length was universal, in the sense that aliens would come up with it.

Here's Sabine Hossenfelder discussing the Planck length.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/02/does-nature-have-minimal-length.html — fishfry

This isn't really relevant to the topic, but just to get one common misconception out of the way: Sabine Hossenfelder talks about the smallest structure that can be resolved in space. This doesn't mean that space is discrete, made up of Planck-length cells or anything like that. Space and time in standard fundamental theories of physics are continua, just as in classical physics. This you can readily see from any dynamical equation, such as Schrodinger equation.

When scientists work out the implications (predictions) of a theory, this is akin to foundationalism in that they are taking the theory's postulates as given and making logical deductions from them. But this is only one element of the scientific method, not the whole of it.

Tiny elephants are not very optimal to represent the various configurations of atoms. Nested platonic solids are but I'm open to your projection and preference for tiny elephants — Paul S

I thought you were talking about the structure of space (whatever you think that means). But if you don't mind, I would like to change my vote from elephants to turtles. Turtles all the way down!

Original and significant female philosophers?
Are There Female Philosophers?

These past topics should have popped up when you were typing in the title.

Seeing the cup broken causes me to swear is more problematic. No greater number of missing factors in the causal chain. In fact nothing logically different at all between the two scenarios. Except that in the latter, a human mind is in the causal chain, and we just don't like determinism when it comes to humans. — Isaac

Uses of causation are varied and messy. People have proposed theories of causation, but at most they succeed in some special domains, or capture some aspects of use. And yes, some uses - and corresponding theories - are more mentalist than others. The disparity that you point out makes more sense if you think of causation as manipulation than if you think of it as contribution. In this example causation also gets mixed up with responsibility, which confounds the issue even more.

I am not saying that someone will point dogs to a child until it is coerced to learn the concept dogmatically. — simeonz

I see what you did here

There are different ways to understand and talk about causation in ordinary language, specialist language and philosophy. Janus leans more on ordinary language, while Isaac insists on certain specialist and philosophical uses.

Crystallographic dihedral groups is how I see the structure of space and perhaps spacetime at an intuitive level. — Paul S

Why? Why not tiny elephants instead? What feeds your intuition? Is it anything to warrant a second thought?

There is no paper I can direct you that carries any more weight than what I present as it's entirely theoretical. — Paul S

I don't think you and I understand "theoretical" in the same sense. Loop quantum gravity is theoretical. A random, uninformed guess is... a random, uninformed guess.

The argument essentially boils down to the idea that nested sequences made up of one or multiple platonic solids embody the structure or fabric of space. Maybe the fabric of space is flexible and these sacred platonic solids can be flexed or bent out of shape to respond high energy physics experiments for example. Dr. Robert Moon and Laurence Hecht are behind the proposal. — Paul S

https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1987/eirv14n43-19871030/eirv14n43-19871030_026-new_hypothesis_shows_geometry_of.pdf
Issue of EIR Volume 14, Number 43, October 30, 1987 — Paul S

The linked article is about a "geometrical model of the atomic nucleus for the periodic table and the arrangement of extranuclear electrons." It doesn't talk about the structure of space.

What do you think of this theory? Do you think space has structure or is simply a void?

Well, what is there to think about? There is no theory, at least none in what you wrote. Yes, some theorists are working on theories of quantized space, but in order to discuss those one would need to actually understand them. And that understanding won't come from a few trippy pictures.

By "any amount" I do not mean zero, of course - I thought that would be obvious.

To move infinite amount of spaces, infinite amount of time is required. — elucid

Not if you are moving infinitely fast. If your speed is infinite over any amount of time, then you will have moved an infinite distance.

Which is allowed in Newtonian mechanics, for example. You can "always already" move at an infinite speed, or you can accelerate discontinuously, or you can start at rest and continuously accelerate to infinity (in infinite time, of course). The math can bear it, the physics - not so much. By the way, the time-reverse of the latter scenario is one of the ways in which determinism can be violated in a Newtonian universe.

Coherentism

Frankly, the only reason I responded is that I saw your posts before and you didn't strike me as a fool. So I wonder what's going on. Is this thread some kind of social experiment? Are you not feeling well?

No, thanks. I have my share of unpleasantness in my own life, as do we all. Get over yourself.

Given this state of facts, the only conclusion is that morality is overrated and evolutionarily disadvantageous.
Why bother about other people, their lives and their property, when you can get away with endangering and damaging it.

I dare you to prove this wrong. — baker

Frankly, this is such a dumb non sequitur, I wonder why anyone would bother. You make a sweeping, simplistic statement about a complex issue that has been a subject of research for more than a century in several scientific fields - all on the basis of one anecdote of some petty neighbor squabble? Really?

It seems to suppose that the preexisting aspect is represented in words and matched up against another preexisting aspect in another subjective consciousness.

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being, as it where - the child learns the aspect in the process of learning to talk in a certain way. A child does not have a notion of "four" in its mind that it learns to match up with the word "four"; it learns what four is by moving beads, colouring squares and using the word.

My supposition, following Wittgenstein, is that what we call "concepts" are not things in the mind to which we attach words, but learned ways of manipulating the world, including using words. — Banno

If you only care about that which can be put into words, then of course you have no place for anything else. This is a rather facile conclusion though, already implied by the linguistic framing. But what is left outside the frame?

I recently read an article about taste and smell - the neglected senses that suddenly came into prominence during the pandemic. In most "civilized" cultures we have frustratingly limited ways of describing what something tastes or smells like. Once we have exhausted primary tastes - sweet, sour, bitter - and a few vague adjectives for odors, the best we can do is compare to a known example ("tastes like chicken"). Specialists and enthusiasts, such as sommeliers, develop their own vocabularies for describing tastes and smells that are specific to their interests. And it has been noted that there is a causal connection between an expanded vocabulary and an enhanced awareness. That is to say, having a word for something makes you more attentive to that thing. But this linguistic connection only goes so far. No one would deny that we can resolve more than the few smells and tastes that we can more-or-less awkwardly name; in fact, experiments that capitalize on detecting small differences show that our sense of smell is far more acute than we usually give it credit for.

"Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent" is a truism. But what about all those things that we can't or won't talk about?

where people fall in their views on the relationship between these two domains. — Pfhorrest

Facts are what prompts and couches our moral responses. In my experience, most people don't care about the alleged gap between the two, because in their minds they are linked by firmly held intuitions and moral theories. So things - events, situations, people, anything towards which we can have a moral attitude - may as well have inherent moral properties. I am not sure where that would fit in your classification, but it's considered to be a form of moral realism.

The character of William in Eco's novel is said to be based on or inspired by William of Occam, "the father of nominalism," so it makes sense that he would take a dim view of universals as a deficient, degraded knowledge of the singular.

That's what you think you were doing? OK.

Uh, maybe try this again when you are sober? Otherwise I think we are done here.

For Kelly, sense making is inherently in the direction of the greater good in that it entails our acting not only in our own best interest in situations but also in the best interest of other as far as we understand their intent , motive, point of view and needs. — Joshs

Can you explain? The way it sounds to me is that every individual always seeks to accommodate everyone else around them to the best of their understanding and ability. But that can't be true.

I understand that we are constantly construing the world in order to make sense of it. And since our world includes other people, we include them into our construals. This is indeed where ethics comes into play.

So from Kelly’s vantage , the other can’t do wrong morally. Every situation is like that of the bear mauling. Our blaming the other is just our failure to understand his actions from his own point of view. — Joshs

Kelly wouldn’t label the act as ‘wrong’, ‘criminal’ because he would believe that from the robbers’ perspective the act WAS sufffused with a sense of ethical primacy. — Joshs

This doesn't make sense to me. The preposterous notion that everyone at all times is "suffused with a sense of ethical primacy" isn't even the worst of it - let's grant that for the sake of an argument. The most confusing part is what I pointed out earlier: an attempt to construe moral valuation as an objective, deperspectivized view from nowhere. One is supposed to evaluate a situation from everyone's perspective, not just their own. If you disapprove of someone's actions, but that person (being "suffused with a sense of ethical primacy") takes the opposite stance, then your two positions cancel out and no one is either right or wrong! Whose construct is this? What does it have to do with how people actually think?

"The damned thing about life is that everybody has their reasons," said a character in Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game." True enough, and understanding other people's reasons certainly affects our judgement of their actions. But understanding, when it happens, doesn't displace moral valuation, much less replace one's valuation with someone else's.

You say that in a moral act , “whether the act was objectively, universally wrong is simply beside the point”. But objectivity, and universality do come into play in our very definition of wrongdoing and blamefulness. For instance, in your example of the robbers, your assessment that what they did was wrong pre-supposed not only that the robbers did the act , but that they intentionally meant to cause harm and to steal what wasn’t theirs. So your definition of wrong implies intent. Many older tribal cultures did not include intent in their definition of moral wrong because their psychological understanding did not grasp the concept of intent. It is a more recent empirical discovery . So a certain culturally and scientifically informed notion of wrong as requiring psychological intent is not beside the point in your example, but an important part of your definition of blameworthiness. — Joshs

Let's take this in parts. How much does intent matter in assessing culpability? I am rather skeptical of your claim that some cultures don't grasp the concept of intent; or rather, I am skeptical of the relevance of this claim. Attributing intent is such a basic cognitive skill that it is not even specific to the human species. Whether one can articulate a concept of intent doesn't matter; what matters is being able to read it and act on it. But I take your point that the role of intent in assigning blame can vary, and that culture has a part in this.

Now, how does this observation relate to what I said?

I hold the perpetrators morally responsible for what they did, because (a) they did it, and (b) what they did was wrong. Whether the act was objectively, universally wrong is simply beside the point; all that matters, as far as me holding people morally responsible, is how I relate to the incident. — SophistiCat

There is a fact of the matter that I am holding someone responsible for an action. How I came to this conclusion is no longer relevant - it already happened. Whether someone else in my place would have come to the same conclusion doesn't matter either. I am me, not someone else. I don't need to integrate over every mind in the history of the world before I conclude anything.

So there is a wide range of viewpoints on what constitutes moral wrong — Joshs

This isn't remotely controversial. So what? A modest conclusion that such diversity of opinion may suggest, in the absence of any generally recognized moral truthmakers, is that there are no objective moral facts - only facts about moral attitudes. But that isn't an argument against anyone's moral attitude.

Given the fact that in an important sense, Gergen , Foucault and a host of other postmodern thinkers do believe that all acts of criminality are performed by actors with a sense of ethical primacy, and you clearly disagree with that position — Joshs

Well, yes, it's a ridiculous position. But even in an imaginary world in which this was true, I don't see what difference this would make to the matter of assigning blame.

How don’t we save a little time here and you just tell me as succinctly as possible what philosophical position on morality you hold. — Joshs

You are kidding, right?

To simplify , let’s just say that you reject postmodern philosophies in general , to the extent that they all claim to go beyond morality — Joshs

No, let's not. I see you aren't really interested in the conversation. That's fine, the thread has been derailed anyway.