There are only two parties in American democracy for the simple reason that those who created it realized, much to our benefit, that given any issue, only two voices matter - those for and those against. Vote abstention is possible and practiced even in a 2-party system. In short, we have all the advantages of a democracy with none of the downsides of a multi-party democracy which, to my reckoning, adds another layer of complexity confusion to politics. :grin: — TheMadFool

Do you really think that?

What Oliver5 said. It's a mechanical result of the first part the post system. You vote for the people who have the best chance of defeating who you don't like, because who you do like is too small ever to win. The result is two parties. UK is basically the same.

People vote republican because they don't want the democrats. People for democrat because they don't want the republicans. Each party then just criticises the other, as that is the best tactic. Horrible system.

Interestingly, there is no 7th dimension. It skips straight from 6 to 8.

I think this thread is a creative variable thing. Does that work?

I have a soft spot for new ways to carve up the world. This is an interesting one. Are the 'things' you have in mind physical objects? Activities? Goals, purposes? People? Living things? Any and all of these?

A few examples might be interesting.

I remained awake and I'm glad I did. I remember when I lived in the North West of England where it was customary to accost neighbours on the way to the shops and tell them, in great detail, all of the personal events that have been exercising their minds since one saw them last and before, repetition being no bar. I had thought this merely boring and incredibly rude. However I now see clearly that these neighbours were actively destructive variable things.

I mean, seriously. Have you ever interacted with, say, the better arguers in Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc? These discussions generally strike me as so facile. Go out and find the better proponents of what gets called a conspiracy theory and argue your case that you present here. IOW tell them that really it is based on ad hoc, cherry picking and other fallacies. Point out to them where, see how it goes. — Bylaw

Yep. I'd be interested as well. I'm baffled as to how anyone can look at the collapse of WTC7 and think it was office fires. None of the NIST stuff is convincing.

Bylaw, yeah, team reason gets on my tits. Don't like the other teams much either.

I don't see how any approach to the study of consciousness which is not rooted in a phenomenological approach can actually be a study of consciousness at all, as a matter of definition.

1. If God exists, then he would not suffer innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists
3. Therefore, God has not suffered innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world — Bartricks

Valid but unsound I reckon. At least #1 is false, to my mind. Omnibenevolence only entails that from God's POV everything is good. That's perfectly consistent with human suffering. I'm a meta-ethical relativist. So you always have to specify a POV from which something is good or evil to avoid gibbering.

That's interesting (I hate to say). Looks like the term goes back longer than I thought. According to Wikipedia there may have been a time that it wasn't implicitly derogatory.

I'm going to kill myself from boredom, but to buy myself a bit of time I'll make another post. I think the issue here is that the meaning of 'conspiracy theory' can no longer be deduced from the meaning of 'conspiracy' and 'theory', both of which are totally respectable concepts. What has happened, at some point, maybe in the last thirty years or so (I don't know, don't really care) is that the combination 'conspiracy theory' has had falsity and irrationality imported into its definition. That's the way 180 is using the word-combo, I guess, and I am sick to say, consistently with current usage. I'm objecting to that usage, because I'm an old cunt. I hate it when people hijack words. Happens all the time. It's perfectly clear to me that 180 does believe some conspiracy theories, because he thinks plots happen. Plots are conspiracies by definition. And theories are theories by definition. Therefore plot theories, some of which he believes, are also conspiracy theories, if we take the meanings of those words separately.

It'd be interesting (not) to find out the earliest use of the 'conspiracy theory' combo implying falsity. Any ideas? I'm not interested by the way. I don't give a fuck.

this is boring me stupid

There was a plot to knocked down the WTC and it succeeded. — 180 Proof

Was it a conspiracy as well as a plot? A secret plot just is a conspiracy isn't it?

There is no single truther conspiracy. I don't believe any particular one.

An example of a "true conspiracy theory" please. — 180 Proof

The only very specific conspiracy theories I know for sure are true are regarding conspiracies I've been personally involved in, featuring me as a manager conspiring with other managers.

It's harder with large public events, like 9/11. The more specific the conspiracy theory, the less likely it is to be true. I know with a high degree of certainty that building 7 did not collapse from office fires (just from watching the footage), and I can infer that there was some kind of conspiracy involved there, but exactly what it was I have no idea. So that's a true but very vague theory.

This is just a matter of meanings. A conspiracy theory is when someone speculates, with or without good evidence, that the correct explanation for some social/political/physical phenomenon or event is the intended result of a group of people who arranged it in secret.

Some conspiracy theories will turn out to be true, others false. Somehow it has come to be identified as applicable to only irrational theories.

There is no common sense in philosophy. The writer has to be clear and unambiguous, and not blame the reader for not understanding it. Common sense is shared assumptions (or is it?). Philosophy is the examination of assumptions, among other things.

EDIT: What Tim said

Democratic world government, not first past the post, publicly funded party campaigns, I'd vote for: government administered by an AI, managed reduction in population, rationing (especially meat), rewilding, sailing ships, heave ho, bicycles, no packaging, everything loose in boxes, baskets reusable bags etc, compost toilets, everybody sleep a lot more.

A first clarification would be that brains work not on stored memories but active anticipations. They are designed not to remember the past but predict the future. So the comparison is between what is expected to be the case, and what turns out to be the case. — apokrisis

I slag you off a lot Apo but I like this bit. Not that I'm qualified to judge, merely being an armchair philosopher. :) If the human brain is really supposed to remember stuff, it's fucking shit at it. It can do it a bit, but if a computer had my memory it wouldn't even boot.

Where did I say that? Again, you put the words into my thread. — GraveItty

I think T Clark plausibly inferred that from what you did say.

Is not remembering that we are conscious simply to repeat to ourselves "I am conscious"? — Janus

Yes, although if, say, Banno said that, he would likely just mean that he was awake. If I say that when I'm in a philosophical mood, I would mean "I am a centre of experience" or something like that. But Banno rejects these other definitions. It's baffling to me, but one explanation is that he hasn't noticed he is conscious in that sense. I struggle to believe that though.

It's obvious to everyone, — Wayfarer

Ah, would that it were, would that it were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npvQ3M3WaPA

Would the question "how does it feel to be a seagull" have any meaning beyond these specific inquiries? — Janus

Probably not. I wouldn't really expect any answer to that query. Yet one may still idly wonder what it would feel like to be a seagull, even though the question is impossible to answer. One could guess at approximations, as you say, based on comparisons with human experience. So yeah, I agree with you.

The whole comparison thing comes up every time the phrase 'what it is like' is discussed, and it's a total red herring, but an understandable one. I think it's revealing though, as it is an indicator of whether or not the concept of consciousness has actually been grasped. Stephen Priest has often said "Some philosophers have not noticed they are conscious." I always used to think that this was an uncharitable and ridiculous. But now I think he might have been right.

It's nothing to do with comparison. "I wonder what it is like to be a seagull" just means "I wonder how it feels to be a seagull"

"Is there something it is like to be a snail?" just means "Are snails conscious?"

I'm more of the opinion that consciousness in this scenario constitutes a nescio quid, such that for a zombie to make a true qualia-claim it would be referring to something to which it in principle does not have access. — Pantagruel

Indeed. Any claim to having an experience must be false if expressed by a zombie, very much a nescio quid for the zombie. But for the human, who has noticed he is conscious, it's more of a, er, conscio quid, or something.

Person and zombie-clone don't violate the identity of indiscernibles law. They are conceptually discernable - one is conscious and the other one isn't. You just can't tell which is which from the outside. The whole point is that they are conceptually discernible, but physically indiscernible (whatever 'physically' means in this context). And they are actually discernible by the one which is conscious. He knows which one he is.

If zombie-consciousness is devoid of phenomenality, what possible set of conditions could give rise to the zombie asserting phenomenality? Isn't this a petitio principii? — Pantagruel

If the zombie is the clone of a liar, ill educated, or mad person.

For a number of reasons, I do think that consciousness is continuous and spatially extended. I don't see how it could not be and still be affected by spatial events. That would make consciousness a property of space, and therefore ubiquitous, and spatial. I'm not sure if fields can be conceived as separate from one another, and separate from space, I rather think that if you have two fields which are co-extensive, they are ontologically inseparable and only separable in aspect, by focusing on its/their various modes of influence. But I'm not a physicist.

One formulation I've come across a few times:

Lily believes X iff Lily lives as if X were true.

Not sure that works but I think it does capture something important about belief. In that it informs our actions and decisions, and that is critical to what it is to believe something.

If it rains, I'll get wet
If I take an umbrella, I won't get wet
If I take an umbrella, it won't rain

...

As it famously says in Acts 17:28 "For in the quantum field we live, and move, and have our being"

Is this only because non-animals are so different than us? Isn't that almost a kind of prejudice? You don't act like us, so you must be a mere object or a mechanical undirected process? — Yohan

Yes, I think the unwillingness to carry the inference further is sometimes due to anthropocentrism, but it depends on the philosopher.

It's produced by highly specific and exceptionally complex mechanisms and processes in the brain (and body). — Daemon

The content of consciousness in a human is indeed determined by the structure and function of that human body. Just as the content of the consciousness of a rock is determined by its structure and function.

If you are knocked out or if you are given a general anaesthetic, you lose consciousness. — Daemon

You lose identity. No consciousness (in the relevant sense of the word) is lost.

My my,posters are awfully dogmatic about life ending at material death.
One wonders at the "scientific" evidence for such "certainty" — Ambrosia

Life ending at death is less of a scientific matter and more of a semantic matter. At least initially.

By inference. We presume that others are just like ourselves. I think it’s a perfectly valid presumption. ‘I know how you must feel…’ ‘I can’t imagine how you must feel…’ and other such statements are intelligible statements. — Wayfarer

I've been wanting to make a tread about inferences to other minds for ages.

Even so, I have never considered the preposterous notion that I did not exist during those hours of sleep. — Michael Zwingli

I'm curious, what strikes you as preposterous about that?

You're already on the side of saving the planet from climate change or it hurts people, so from now on in order to not hurt people with CO2 gas you can't travel anywhere in powered transportation except work and the grocery store. You can't visit your parents or friends or go on vacation unless you can walk or bicycle there. Since water usage has an effect on the environment, in both treatment and sourcing, and uses energy to heat when you shower, the government should now impose limits on your shower, you can only use a few gallons to wash yourself. And heating/cooling houses uses a lot of energy, and the wood to build them cuts down trees, so that all hurts the environment which hurts people so 1 person is only allowed to have a 400sqft home, and each additional person in your family allows for 200sqft, all to save energy, and the government will handle moving you if your family size changes. So a family of 4 gets 1000sqft, plenty, no more retired individuals living comfortably in a 2000sqft home they've been paying 30 years for, that hurts people! — Derrick Huestis

I'm liking this manifesto.

Why speak obliquely instead of using the date and building number conventionally used? Am I out of the loop on something? — James Riley

Oh, I don't know. I got the impression that discussing this openly on the forum is not welcome, not totally sure why. If some nutcase was doing a search for discussions to troll, maybe they would miss this thread. Just thought I'd disguise it a bit. I'm probably being silly.