hypericin: Bubbles and Styx (I noted some particularly adept descriptive language that I think is characteristic of his work.) — Baden

You're on to me, I can't slip by you anymore. And thanks!

No, I meant hypericin. I'm annoyed with myself. It happens every time. Apologies to hypericin.
Will you ever forgive me? I should have recognised the brilliance but you blinded me with ice-cream. — Amity

Oh, pshaw!

But it's always appropriate for a philosopher to suggest that some example of language use could be ameliorated. — J

I guess when it comes to language I'm in the "describe, don't prescribe" camp. Which is not to say that ordinary language use doesn't conceal a raft of errors.

I would go further and say there is nothing whatsoever included in the notion of belief that it be consciously considered at the moment:

"Are you currently considering that the earth is round?" No.
"Do you believe the earth is round"? Yes.

You might ask the same person these two questions in a row, and they are likely to give these answers. This is not bad language at all, rather it is bad philosophy to confuse the one for the other, or to insist that the second mean the first.

don't know what “does no good” means. Maybe you mean that because they are not quantifiable, they are not objective? — Jamal

Meaning it doesn't help to answer the question. Not only are these not objectively quantifiable, they are not objectively evaluable at all.

but the former involves shared standards. — Jamal

Except the standards are likely not shared at all, hence such arguments are interminable.

Disagreement doesn’t disprove objectivity; it presupposes it. — Jamal

It might presume it. But that presumption can easily be a mistake, precisely the kind of mistake philosophy should aim to correct.

I think the best you can do is consensus of experts. Or, consensus of the general population. This is not quite objective, but not subjective either, they are social realities which share properties of both.

If moles generally prefer to mate with big eared moles, this is an objective fact of mole behavior. Big ears are objectively attractive: to moles. Yet, there is nothing intrinsically attractive about big ears.

A good novel often has the following:

Diversity of interpretations
Distinctiveness and mastery of style and structure
Powerful, unique, and effective narrative voice
Technical skill (prose, description, pace, plot)
Depth of characterization
Moral complexity
Emotional depth, power, or maturity
Staying power
Formal innovation
Where there is symbolism, it is thematically important — Jamal

This does no good when not one of these itself can be objectively measured.

If it is a p-zombie of you, then presumably it wouldn't snort fentanyl either, just get shitfaced.

So can we always seperate out the affective and cognitive aspects of a belief? Is there a method, rule or algorithm that does this for us? I'm thinking not. — Banno

Maybe not a failsafe rule. But I think we can reasonably analyze many cases.

Anna cognitively believes her husband is an impostor, in a way that is inflexible to evidence. But affectively she does not, since she does not behave accordingly.

Balthazar cognitively believes the skywalk is safe. But affectively, at least when he is on it, he does not.

Charu cognitively and affectively believes their lover, despite evidence.

David cognitively and affectively believes in his god, despite evidence.


But generally, no. That is why we pay therapists for years to try (and usually fail) to figure out this kind of stuff.

Would a rational AI, one with a programmed “drive” for self-preservation, ever choose to do something totally reckless—like snort fentanyl—knowing it could likely die from it? No. Not unless it was explicitly programmed with some bizarre override to ignore its self-preservation "instinct". But if that’s the case, you’ve stopped modeling a rational agent and started writing sci-fi code. That’s not a human—it’s a toy robot with bad instructions. — RogueAI

AIs simulate, they aren't rational agents outside their ability to simulate of agents who may, sometimes, be rational. If we made AIs that modeled the range of human behavior, there would absolutely be AIs that snort fentanyl.

unrelated — Banno

That is too strong. Nothing in the same brain is unrelated. Affective and propositional attitudes inform one another, and they coincide with one another more often than not. Rather than"unrelated" I would say "distinct".

The following examples point to states which are difficult to characterize given the standard view: Anna, who suffers from Capgras syndrome, believes her husband is an impostor even though she has no evidence for it and much against it; she also fails to take the kind of actions one would expect with such a belief such as running away or calling the authorities. Balthasar believes the glass skywalk is safe and yet trembles as he tries to walk on it. Charu believes that their lover will keep their promise to not betray them again even though past evidence indicates that they will, and David believes that the God as described in the Bible exists, though he is aware of the evidence suggesting that such a God does not exist and claims his reasons for believing are not based in evidence.

To me the natural conclusion from examples like these is that we have propositional attitudes and we have affective attitudes, and these do not always coincide. To say that beliefs are emotions just muddies the water. We just don't always feel the way they think, humans are built such that these are autonomous enough to disagree sometimes.

"Belief" sometimes refers to propositional attitudes, and sometimes propositional and affective attitudes together. But that's is nothing essential, it's just how we use language. Beyond mere language use, affective attitudes are not propositional attitudes, as these examples clearly indicate.

I keep trying to picture my pzombie equivalent getting shitfaced after a stressful day and not being able to. I get wasted because it feels good. — RogueAI

Think of an AI simulating human behavior. This ai would get shitfaced, because humans get shitfaced and it's been trained to do what humans do. Somewhere internally to the AI there is a decision being made, the neutral network takes in all data and internal states, and this time "get shitfaced" comes on top with the highest weight. So the AI goes to the liquor cabinet and starts doing whisky shots. All without the slightest affective state.

we are driven by affective states, but why is this necessary? It's not for AI, it's not for amoeba, and presumably it's not for p zombies.

:up:

My quote is taken out of context. It was in reply to Jamal:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/991864 — Amity

Ah, I didn't notice we were supposed to be doing full anonymity with this one.

We just don't know if that's the case, right? — Baden

Since @Moliere did not make this explicit in the rules of entry there is no reason to suspect anyone would have this expectation. The private thing for the symposium is far from common knowledge.

what is unfair about making the essays public? That is just the basic expectation of posting in a forum. I think few if any of the posters were even aware of the public private thing. I knew just because we ran into the same issue during one of the writing contests, and I had long forgotten it.

I would say, unless one of the entrants actually wants their entry private (for some reason I can't even fathom now) let's make them public as @Jamal suggests

@Amity The discussion group is all back-and-forth, no time for reading. I was wanting to give interested people a chance to read before we began the discussion. It is too long for me to post on the group page. The history of @Jamal making this private was so he could try publish one of his own stories. I don't think anyone minds at this point if this content is available to non-members of TPF. If someone truly wants to publish in the future and its availablility is actually an obstacle (I think less common for academic papers than fiction?), I guess we can make it private again.

Authors are supposed to be kept anonymous until 16th June. — Amity

Nothing to do with author anonymity. The only difference is that non-members of TPF can view the essays as we can.

@Moliere Could you make the essays public? I have an IRL philosophy group that I attend on Friday evenings, and the topic this week is actually the topic of my entry. I'd like to share it with them. Thanks!

The problem I have with the essay is that it fails to distinguish between a notion of necessary truth as a relative, contingently stable structure of meaning (Wittgenstein’s hinges, forms of life and language games) and a notion of necessary truth as a platonic transcendental, which is how Godel views the necessary ground of mathematical axioms. — Joshs

I think I had a similar thought. But the essay works in spite of that distinction. Functionally, there is a parallel. On both sides, you have the objects of discourse, and you have the unquestioned background. Both linguistic and mathematical discourses need both. And, what counts as object and background is relative in both cases: relative to the language game, and relative to the mathematical domain.

I like this one a lot, very readable and compelling. Not a dry survey, we take a brief and personal trip with the author on a search for meaning.

One strength the author may not realize: these little summations made me more sympathetic to these thinkers than I might have otherwise been. Even if the author found their answers to the question of human meaning wanting, the author succinctly made it clear to me that they all capture something significant. All answers are different, all are worthy, and all are incomplete.

Do we have to conclude with the author that

perhaps no existence has a meaning beyond its simple, stark reality. — Moliere

? Not necessarily. What does 'meaning' mean, anyway? My take: properly speaking, 'meaning' is the significance in a sign-significance relationship. So properly speaking, it is a category error to ask of some thing that is not a sign, 'what is your meaning?'. But it is the most productive kind of error, the kind that makes thought rich and endless. "If human life as a whole were a sign, what would be it's significance?" There is no answer out there waiting to be discovered to such a question, any answer must be constructed by the asker. Hence the rich diversity of answers, and that no one answer can be wholly satisfactory.

These are my thoughts, not the author's. But that's what a good essay should do, stimulate your own thinking. Thanks, and well done!

I feel attacked!

I might be a few hours late. I assume nobody minds, since this is not a contest. I'll definitely be done by midnight my time (UTC -7)

Ah, my real concern was that the essays were going to be hidden from the main forum. I see that is not the case.

I will submit something. I suggest we post them to the main forum, maybe with a prefix like [PF Essay]. They are topical, after all!

No argument. Would you go so far as to say that there is no correspondence at all between the notation and the actuality of the situation? — noAxioms

I think that goes too far. Minds are adept at formulating concepts, and matching instances to these concepts. For something to be notated a member instance of a concept biases toward the fact that the thing does indeed match the concept. And while the relationship between concept and reality is not simple, it similarly goes too far to say there is no relationship at all.

I think there is a subtle conflation here between an attribute and it's notation.

That we notate something as existing depends on a mind to do the notation. With the weak anthropic principle, this means that worlds conducive to minds are liable to be notated, and worlds not conducive will not be notated. This absolutely biases the notation towards only those worlds that can support it.

But this doesn't have a logical connection to mind independent reality, itself. Both types of worlds may exist independently of minds, regardless of the fact that only one may be so notated.

So, in one short week, the Moron has:

* Crashed the stock market
* Crashed the bond market
* Crashed the dollar
* Alienated all of our allies (except Russia)
* United the entire world against us (except Russia)

And these are just the immediate effects of his malignant imbecility. Longer term, we can expect surging inflation, factory closures, exploding debt, recession at minumum.

I hope all the Trumpies are happy!

You see, the interest on the debt is already a higher spending issue on the budget than defense spending. At that, no DOGE or whoever can touch (even if they tried), because not meeting the interest payments is default.

The interest on the debt is on the average now 3,3% which is over 1% higher than five years ago. Just an additional 1% of interest and the whole debt thing is worse. Think if it would be double, 6,6% which is on the long run quite normal. That would basically double the expenses. And let's remember that we have come from literally from the lowest historical interest rates of all time and now the cycle is going up. — ssu

Believe me I am aware of this. You might be under the misapprehension that the Republicans in this country are actual public servants working for the public good. Maybe from outside the country, despite Trump, it is hard to perceive how bad it really is. Not only do they not give a shit about the debt (despite endless bloviation to the contrary), they thrive off it. The goal is to redirect as much of the non-military budget to their wealthy donors as tax cuts. That is all. The debt is a tool to that end. Even before Trump the debt was likely to fall into a death spiral. Studies have shown that, without the Bush and Trump I tax cuts, revenue would have been better than neutral. THEY DO NOT CARE.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primarily-responsible-for-the-increasing-debt-ratio/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

And no they will likely never default. Instead, they will debase the currency to meet the debt. In fact they have been floating this idea for years now.

I can't wait to hear the first Trumpy laud the market rebound as a great victory for Trump.

The Trump administration might not care about the stock market, but the government does care a lot of the interest on the US debt! — ssu

I'm not so sure they care about that either. The debt has worked wonderfully for the republicans, by playing the Two Santas game. Historically they use it as a cudgel during debt ceiling negotiations, and to deny any legislative win to the dems that actually costs anything. Now they have gone into overdrive, gutting all programs they don't like in the name of reducing "waste and fraud", with the crisis of the debt as the pretext for this urgency. Then, they gut taxes to the wealthy, in total disregard to the debt, while throwing a few breadcrumbs to the masses. They will keep playing this until the system collapses, and likely after.

He's handing us an economic revolution. If you're a leftist, you're like: go Trump! Get those tariffs! — frank

Absolute blithering nonsense. There is nothing remotely "leftist" about completely upending the economic order in order to institute a massively regressive tax on everyone. Which in turn will be used as a pretext for massive tax cuts for the rich. You seem to have the ignorant idea that being leftist merely for change of any sort. And that conservative means resisting change.

As long as his followers suffer economically — Christoffer

That is completely guaranteed. A lot of these people are truly living precariously. Trump simultaneously, by imperial decree:
* Threw a wrecking ball at the US and global economy
* Instituted severe austerity onto what little safety net we have
* Guaranteed a dramatic resurgence of inflation.
* Threw hundreds of thousands of workers out on their asses.

A lot of them are on the margins, with a poor paying job, or not job at all. A lot of them are small business owners that struggle even during "good" times. Any one of these three events would push many over the edge. All four, at the same time? They will suffer enormously for this.

It is beyond obvious that Trump found the ultimate grift and power trip. He is the greatest market manipulator of all time. There is a 0% chance that he is not profiting enormously from these massive market moves that he is engineering. 0%.

It is all a grift and power trip. Hilarious that Trumpys are falling over themselves trying to rationalize his absurd "plans".

I'm inclined to think that faith in institutions or people is trusting that they are doing the right or appropriate institutions thing. — Ludwig V

I don't think this is quite right. Our faith in institutions and privileged people is in the belief that their powers are legitimate. "Doing the wrong thing" might call that legitimacy into question. But the faith is in legitimacy, and moreover in how that legitimacy was granted.

If we believe in the legitimate authority of a king or president, the fact that this individual is the legitimate king or president may or may not be a matter of faith. But the fact that royal succession or winning a fair election bestows kingly or presidential powers must be an article of faith.

Believing that putting the ball in the net counts as a goal is not an act of faith but simply to understand how to play football.

Consenting to our social institutions is not an act of faith. — Banno

The act of faith here is not believing in specific rules, but belief in the relevant institution's (IFAB here) authority to will rules in and out of being, and for their intercessors, ritually outfitted with uniform, cards and whistle, to arbitrate them.

Similarly, faith is not in a rule that stomping babies is bad, but in the belief that underpins that rule, be it God/Gods, religions institutions, or the sanctity of human life.

You put a lot of emphasis on change. I'm wondering if you are under emphasizing a more fundamental epistemic problem.

As I see it, the core problem of knowledge is that we don't perceive reality itself, but rather we experience sensations which are something like signals emanating from reality, much like Plato's shadows. Based on these signals, we construct models of the reality that produced them. The problem is, there are always multiple models that fit the signals we receive. Some seem more likely, some less, some seem absurd, yet for any set of observations there is never just one possible model. This is true both of everyday life and of science.

This directly leads to the Gettier problem. The businessman saw the clock , and saw the train arrive at the proper time. Naturally he assumed that the clock was functioning, and had told him the correct time. He probably never considered the alternate model which also equally fit his observations: that the clock was broken, but by chance was stopped at the correct time. With imagination you can construct still less likely, yet consistent, models (i.e. the clock was painted on the wall, or a hallucination sent to him by a benevolent train spirit).

Notably, this problem would obtain even in a static, unchanging universe.

What do you think? How does this jibe with JTC?

Faith is the attitude of consent toward social/institutional realities. Without evidence, these are treated as if they were objective realities, not anthropological realities. Faith sustains these entities, as these social realities can only exist through collective human consent. As faith goes, so goes the reality.

This is true not just of religions, but of nations, currencies, laws, companies, and ethics. There is no objective evidence of any of these, beyond the actual practice itself. Because they consist in the practice, and the faith that engenders and sustains it

Not withstanding some everyday uses, i.e. "I have faith the bus will come in time".

I agree with pretty much every thing you say. The one part we may differ is that I question the validity of the Gettier problem. In the sense that it attacks JTB. If the businessman was not justified in his belief, then it is not a counterexample of JTB. It's just that, to truly know whether something is a JTB, we need to adopt the omniscient perspective implicitly taken in the thought experiment. In the real world, empirical knowledge is always provisional.

Hmmm, remind me why Gettier is even a problem.

The businessman believed himself to be justified that the time was correct. However, in retrospect, after learning that the clock was broken, he would realize that his belief wasn't justified. The clock was right only twice a day, and just by chance he picked one of those. His belief wasn't justified, it was only apparently justified, and it was true merely by luck.

Truth, as @flannel jesus points out, is always uncertain. Perhaps the same holds for justification as well. What counts as justification is always subject to revision in the light of new information. We only ever think something is true, and we only ever think its truth is justified. Therefore, we only ever think we know something, and that belief needs to always be held in proper suspicion. At least for what @DasGegenmittel calls dynamic knowledge.

Could that be all there is to it?

This hoary false paradox certainly says nothing about the actual nature of space or anything.

In this exercise you are imagining the state of the tortoise/hare at a time closer and closer to the time that the hare catches up. But never reaching that time.

You can use this method to approximate this meeting time. No one does, since obviously it can be exactly solved. But if you perform enough iterations of the hare catching up and the tortoise moving on, you will arrive at the effectively exact time and distance that they meet.

The hare never reaches the tortoise, because time, in the thought experiment, never reaches the moment that the hare does pass. As soon as you imagine time proceeding beyond this meeting time, you must imagine the hare passing, for your thought experiment to tension consistent.

Furthermore, he is a professional philosopher in Argentina and has written interesting books. — javi2541997

I'm curious, what books?

When you pour coffee into a cup, is it cup or space in the cup which holds coffee? If there were no space in the cup, coffee won't be contained in the cup. — Corvus

It seems clear it is held in the cup. The shape of the cup is such that it can hold coffee. No need for a separate entity, "space".

Consider this: You are a school principal. Every classroom can hold no more than 25 students, by law. You are given X students this year. As a manager, you develop an accounting trick: instead of thinking in terms of students, you think of slots, that is, empty places in a classroom. After all, that is the limiting resource, you have plenty of students. After juggling the slots around on your spreadsheet, you conclude to the school board "I'm sorry, I can't fit that many students, there aren't enough slots!"

"Slot" is a noun, and your statement is true: you don't have enough slots. If you had more, you truly could fit all the students. Yet, "slots" don't actually refer to anything in the world. They refer to an idea, specifically an absence of a student, turned mentally into a thing.

This is what I mean as placeholder, and this is what I am suggesting space is. An idea you mentally frame, nounify, and pin onto your mental map of the world. But it doesn't actually refer to any entity in the world, it is a (very useful) idea, absence formalized into a mental thing of its own, and thoroughly reified by constant use.

Now do I actually believe all of this? Not necessarily, but I think it is valid idea, worth pushing until it breaks.

On the other hand, you can make the same sort of arguments for time you make for space. When you watch a clock, or any physical process evolve, you are experiencing time. You experience it every time you say to yourself, "this is happening right now", and that present utterance and moment transforms irreversibly into a memory, pointing to the past.

Time functions as a real constraint on what is possible. It is likely possible for you to arrive in Paris from wherever you are, within a day, if you really had to. And it is likely completely impossible for you to arrive in Paris in an hour. The only difference between these two requirements is one of them has an inadequate amount of time. How could time function as a physical constraint on what is possible and what is not, if it didn't exist?

My overall point is, if time falls, so does space. Since they really are the same sorts of things.