Even more cumbersome to classify become intersubjectively held fictions, like unicorns, which are not intersubjective realities in the same sense that moneys and cultures are - yet are still actual/real as culturally present fictions: unicorns then being a real, rather than an untrue, fictional notion within the cultures we partake of — javra

I would still classify unicorns as imaginary. It is just that they are intersubjectively imaginary. But they are not forces in the world, in the same sense that money nations and religions are. The latter is what interests me: things which are imaginary in their nature, but take on a kind of reality as quasi objective entities.

It will be a historical curiosity, and interesting, not because it is a piece of paper but because it was money. What significance would it have then, or would it have had in the past, as a piece of paper? Imagine the museum exhibit: "Piece of paper." — Ciceronianus

The point is, it was money, but no longer is, despite being physically identical at both times. The money is not the paper.

Right, but why not revise what we understand of the real, rather than create new categories because they do not fit tradition? — StreetlightX

is there something at stake is excluding money from the real? — StreetlightX

I am not excluding them from the real. I am refining the overbroad category of real: things that are ontologically real, vs. things that are ontologically imaginary but manifest as real. If categories are useful, it is because they pick apart relevant qualitative differences. If we lump these differences under the same term, these differences become obscured, and our thinking becomes muddled as a result, and you get money as simultaneously real and imaginary. In my opinion, there are few things that have muddled philosophy more than the real vs. imaginary divide.

Plato — bongo fury

This seems to be your favorite rhetorical gun, too bad you can't seem to hit anything with it.

it seems as if our existence occurs fundamentally in the encounter between the two. Everything else becomes objectification of that universal reality. — Melanie

Even if this were so, the components of this synthesis seem worthy of discussion.

If a ten dollar note (money) isn't a ten dollar note (money), what is it? Something else, which we merely treat as if it were a ten dollar note (money)? — Ciceronianus

The fact that a ten dollar note is money is not a property of the physical paper. In 5000 years whatever nation backs it will have long since collapsed, the piece of paper will only have the historical curiosity of once having been money. No matter how well preserved it is.

What do you think about this framework? — Hermeticus

Everyone is simultaneously mental and physical subject. Your personal identity is simultaneously mental subject and object, when you reflect on it. Money is simultaneously mental and physical object.


They don't seem to neatly cut across reality.

Hence the ontology of money requires one to step outside the ontological categories of real or imaginary or physical or mental, and to recognises that there is a wider social world that transcends these limited categories. — Banno

Yes, but this is my point. The categories of "real" and "imaginary" are inadequate to describe social realities. I am attempting to amend them by expanding upon them.

It seems funny to me that what is at stake in the OP is that money fails the expectation of what reality somehow ought to be — StreetlightX

No ought. I was starting from the commonplace dichotomy of real/imaginary, where what is real exists "in the world", and what is imaginary is "in the head" (note, both are part of reality). And showed that that money, for instance, is neither: while its origin and nature is in the head, it is a force in the world.

I'm simply saying that the idea that there are abstract reals is not a novel idea. — Wayfarer

Not abstract reals. Imaginary reals. Would numbers, qualities, logical principles, scientific laws, and so on, disappear if we collectively stopped believing in them, or if humanity was annihilated? Probably not. Would money, religions, institutions, ideologies, nations? Absolutely they would.

Is that a novel idea? Probably not. Is this way dividing the world into 4 categories the definitive way to conceptually cleave the world? Probably not, I don't think there is any such way. But it is probably useful.

Rather than seeing the world as 'things projected into our imaginations" our experiences can be seen as our imaginations projected into or onto things. — Melanie

Either way you see it, my point remains the same. Things live in the world, but cross over into the mental world in the form of sensations, and appraisals, as you point out. In the same way, a category of mental things, money among them, cross over into the physical world. .

So hate to dissappoint you, but it's not a new category, rather you've discovered or re-discovered the basic idea behind universals. — Wayfarer

Hate to disappoint you, but you can't give a meaningful reply after randomly half-reading a few sentences. Does money or any of the other examples I cited (and you quoted) sound anything like universals?

But if you consider the experience of the world to comprise sensations and ideas (as idealist philosophy claims) then the division is by no means neat. — Wayfarer

Again if you had bothered to read you would have seen this is exactly my point.

This sounds awfully close to Lacan's conception on the subject. You'd only be missing what he calls "the symbolic", the other two are as stated. — Manuel

I'm not familiar, his division is into the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic?

We could call money a useful fiction. Something which is considered valuable solely by our considering pieces of paper to be of worth. — Manuel

But since money is a collective fiction, it is resistant to our individual thoughts about them. It has properties of both mental and physical objects.

I think that your distinction between real imaginary and imaginary real is not needed. You can use one term to encompass both ideas. — Manuel

They are opposites. Mental objects which cast a shadow into the physical world, vs physical objects which cast a shadow into the mental world.

Odd here: You speak of innate moral intuitions, then deride ethical Realism with a capital R — Astrophel

For me this is as real as it gets. But capital R types usually want more, as you did in the previous post. You want to justify these intuitions, not realizing that any possible justification must take place within the framework of these intuitions.

In fact, the idea is so obvious than I cannot even imagine seriously dismissing — Astrophel

What follows is so far from obvious as to be incomprehensible.

This doesn't just tell us what the subject of ethics is, but states a thesis about what ethics is (emphasis in the original). — SophistiCat

But the question, unless I misunderstood, is not "what is ethics definitionally", but rather "what is ethics ontologically?".

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. — TheMadFool

:rofl:

Gun ownership, like the right to be unvaccinated/unmasked, is of the family of purported rights, favored by right wingers, which come at the expense of the rights of everyone else.

The gun owner may feel more safe with their gun, but this safety comes at the expense of everyone else's, as they now must contend with one additional rando running around with a gun.

We aren't as clever as we think we are. But we can talk. This is what separates us from the other animals. No other animal can communicate with remotely the same power and flexibility as we can. This is why we can sidestep evolution and progress over generations, overrun the planet, and remake it in our image.

But those inborn concepts and feelings, how inborn are they? — Astrophel

To the extent that we see them expressed in even 'unintelligent' and very nonhuman species, such as fish, we can guess: quite.

what is the separation between what is acculturated and what is "natural"? — Astrophel

The innate ethical tendencies are shaped and directed by culture in very varied ways. The same as with our innate linguistic tendencies, sexual tendencies, etc.

That is, if I have a feeling, a pang of conscience, isn't this to be brought up under review to see if it's right? — Astrophel

Except, our innate moral intuitions already underlie any such review. Reason here can only rationalize what we already feel to be true.

I think ethics is Real, not just a construct. All constructs are constructs OF something. All meaningful affairs are meaningful only to the extent that there is a material basis for them. — Astrophel

You are one of many who feels compelled to believe that ethics is Real with a capital R. I don't sympathize. Do you seriously think there is a material basis for ethics? This is
philosophically naive.

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

And this specific position is?

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.

Consider, after all, the first moral utterance of every child: "It's not fair!" This is an untaught appeal to fairness and justice.

The winner takes all system is the fatal flaw of American democracy, we are observing it's resultant collapse in real time.

It creates the perverse outcome that ideologically allied parties are each other's GREATEST ENEMIES, simply because they will steal votes from each other. Which means the entrenched party will do everything it can to crush the upstart. While the voting public understand the risk of choosing the less powerful of the two ideologically aligned parties.

This inevitably leads to two entrenched and increasingly dysfunctional zombie parties. Because no matter how toxic and diseased they become, there is no redress, they cannot be killed.

Interestingly, the Trump era, culminating in Jan 6, gave the Democrats the perfect opportunity to destroy their nominal enemy once and for all. But they chose not to, and as a result they and America has a real monster on its hands. The decent of America into outright fascism is now very much on the table.

I'm not an expert on these matters. That is why I wrote my post as I did. So you say the information content of the universe is not equal to the information required to reproduce it? That makes intuitive sense. But you have to wonder, if two non-identical universes were informationally identical, in what sense their differences would matter. In the scope of the op, I would say they are irrelevant.

But anyway, this is not relevant to the larger point. I was saying, even if the universe could be represented merely by an integer, the op still would not hold . I have zero stake in the interesting but here irrelevant question of whether the universe can actually be represented by an integer, real, or whatnot.

You are assuming another possible universe is simply an extension of the one we are in, adding features here and there. — jgill

I don't even know who you are arguing with anymore. Again, where am I assuming this?

I made an argument that the number of possible universes is infinite, that if U is possible then there is U` with an additional particle somewhere. But this in no way limits the scope of possible universes.


Not sensitive, its just amusing that you expect your mere declaration that something is "nonsense" to carry even a scintilla of weight.

Which is nonsense. — Raymond

Raymond has declared it to be nonsense. The matter is settled then, nothing more need be said.

Exactly how do you do this encoding? Is it arbitrary? — jgill

Of course its arbitrary, its an encoding. The only requirement is that it be reversible.

Hence, you assert the "number" of possible universes is countable. That's a big "if". — jgill

I am asserting:

*if* the information content of the universe is finite, *then* the number of possible universes is countable.

Alexandre made that assumption also.

If there are other universes the principles of probability we have assembled may not be the same. — jgill

Exactly what am I assuming? And exactly where am I relying on probability?

Let me try again.

By the state of the universe, I mean a snapshot of the types, positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe. I'm no physicist, so add onto this whatever else is necessary for a complete and precise description of everything.

Given a description, we can encode it. How? First question is, is this description finite or infinite?

If it is finite, we can encode it as a (very, very, *very* large) integer. Think of binary data as a universal medium of information. All binary data, no matter how large, is just a base 2 integer.

So now, how many possible universes are there? Intuitively, if would seem that U is a possible universe, there is a U' with an extra hydrogen atom here or an extra neutrino there, due to the most minute perturbation in the early universe. So I think we want to say there are infinite possible universes.

So then the set of all possible universes is representable as an infinite array of integers. Now the set of all universes in the multiverse would also be representable as an infinite array of integers. But there is no guarantee whatsoever that one infinite array of integers contains even a single member of another, let alone all of them. So, the op fails here.

Now, if the amount of information in the universe is infinite, then the op is doubly screwed. Then, at best the state can be encoded as an irrational number, and the argument fails for similar reasons.

The only way I can see the op succeeding is if the information content of the universe is finite, there are only a finite number of possible universes, and by some law universes cannot repeat in the multiverse.

nullum sensum facit — jgill

No? It's true that I struggled to express myself here.

Either the state of the universe can be represented by a real or it cannot.

If it can: an infinite set of reals does not exhaust all possible reals. Therefore op is invalid.

If it cannot: universes are presumably too complex to be depicted by a single real. But then, even simpler objects than the universe, reals, do not meet the requirements of the op. Then, it would seem to hold that the universe (representable only by a set of reals?) would also not meet the requirement.

The only way I can see the op is true is if the states of the universe are merely countably infinite, and if they cannot repeat.

I'm not staking my claim on whether you can or cannot. (Reals are continuous. Reals comprise of potentially infinite information, so I don't see why you cannot).

Either the universe can be so represented, or it cannot, because the universe is too complex. But if the latter, then my argument is only strengthened. If the op is not true of reals, then it is doubly untrue of the universe.

This is an old and tired fallacy.

Consider the state of the universe to be represented by a real number: say 1.12365...

Given an infinite set of real numbers, there is no guarantee whatsoever that any specific real number is a member of that set. There are infinite numbers to choose from, so for instance the entire set may consist of numbers between 0.6 and 0.61. And moreover, numbers may be duplicated.

With that expressed, I'm curious what the threshold is for "enough people" to perceive something/somewhere as sacred, for it to then become so? — Bret Bernhoft

If there is a threshold I imagine it would vary among individuals and cultures. There is no formula. This touches upon a tension in philosophy, between the real and the imaginary, that some day I will create a post on.

The imaginary may manifest in the world, it's just that it's ultimate substrate is mental. The sacred, nations, money are examples. You don't expect imaginary things to have rigid regularities that can be expressed in an equation. When you ask "what is..." of an imaginary thing, the question is definitional, psychological, and/or sociological. As opposed to asking of a physical thing. This boundary gets blurred constantly, both in philosophy and in reality. After all, nothing seems more real than national borders, money can literally move mountains, and yet every point of contact we have with a pebble is mediated by imaginary, virtual qualities.

Just saying thoughts.

That's an excellent question, and I'd assume not. But I could be mistaken. — Bret Bernhoft

I would also assume not. Therefore, the requirement that something be sacred must be that some, not all, people regard it so. Therefore, my example answers your op in the affirmative.

The alternative perspective is that of the true believer, whereby some intrinsic property of a space makes it sacred.

Despite the crude sophistry of the OP, the possibility does seem real that that time is an illusion.

Suppose it was, that every moment was contemporaneous, that the universe evolved from big bang to big crunch in an instant, and we experience every moment of our very brief lives simultaneously.

If this were true, we would still experience the world as we do now. Every moment would have a prior moment, established by memory. Due to the constancy of the laws of the universe, we would still anticipate a succeeding moment. And due to these laws, some processes would evolve at rates relative to others, such as clocks.

All that is required is the laws of the universe, and memory. Time as a real thing seems inessential to explaining what we experience.

Certainly it would, to some. — Bret Bernhoft

Is any, to all?

Happiness has intrinsic value. The positive valence of happiness is hardwired. That is what intrinsic value looks like.

"Do viruses have will?" is analogous to "are viruses alive?". In both cases the virus meets some of the criteria of the word in question, but not all. It is missing metabolism in the one case, awareness in the other.

Do we grant the virus will and life? In both cases, the question is ultimately definitional.

We can imagine a case where we believe we raised our arm: we have the intention, and receive the sensory motor feedback of raising out arm, but in fact, our arm stays at rest. This is enough to establish that the knowledge of our actions is not "unconditional".

The fallacy would simply be invalid premise. The full premise is implied, not explicit: We know that we always act directly/unconditionally. This according to Atwell is incorrect.

Change can be thought of as a meta property, a property of properties. My weight, a property, has the property of being in constant flux. My age has the meta property of linear change. My species, on the other hand, has the meta property of fixedness.

Suppose Jesus returned to earth for a few months and kept a blog of his slumming vacation. The Christians who knew of this momentous event took possession of the holy servers, adorned them with crucifi, candles, incense and other bric-a-brac, reproduced them endlessly, recited blog posts every Sunday. Would this not be a sacred digital space?

Decisions originating in the brain propagate to the peripheral nervous system which contracts muscles and applies forces to the system. The system is not violating any physical principle, when these forces are taken into account.

In general when thinking about free will it is helpful to consider robots. You can program a robot to always move up hill. Does this constitute a proof of free will of the robot?