Consider the simple disquotational account of truth:

"God exists" is true iff God exists. — Michael

There are two sides to that expression. One is currently a proposition, but we're assuming that it is a proposition representing the belief of the solipsist. The other is what? Another belief of the solipsist?

Even if we abandon the assumption, we could say one is a proposition, the other is about what is the case. But even in this restricted definition, all you've demonstrated is that the solipsist could lie (say "God exists" when in fact God doesn't exist). That's not the same as being wrong.

Just fight implies just conscription, why and why here? — fdrake

My argument has been that the value of the outcome in any war is necessarily disputed. Argue against this first point we'd have to divide all the world into the 'bad' countries and the 'good' countries, such that if a 'bad' one invaded a 'good' one we'd know the outcome would be universally disapproved of. Despite the media's best efforts, we can't reasonably do that, so the idea must be rejected.

As such a government, in conscripting, is taking away a meaningful choice over what outcomes a person wants to contribute toward and imposing a very severe burden in doing so. I don't think there's any precedent for that.

As to Ukraine. I've given the data (uncontested, as things stand) showing that Ukraine is not that dissimilar to Russia or Belarus (as an example of a Russian puppet state), by almost any measure of human well-being.

Ukraine is in a very difficult situation. It's a very useful country (large, agriculturally very productive, oil access, trade access...) but no real military power. So it's going to get used, and abused, by one of it's more powerful neighbours. The only choice it has is which.

Russia has forced it's hand by invading, and NATO have restricted its options by not seriously defending it. So really now, in terms of who they get abused by, it's Russia or Russia. Conscription in this particular case is therefore even less justified because it's very likely that the outcome of the severe imposition will be negligible either way. If Ukraine win, there'll still be all the corruption and fascism, plus decades of indebtedness and 'modernisation' to endure. If Russia win, there'll be further restrictions on political freedom, but maybe more investment (as there was in Crimea), and less 'modernisation'. If they surrender, there'll be all that plus less war, but perhaps more boldness in Russian future dealings. Their choices are all shit. It's nothing short of adolescent role-playing for a government to force it's citizens to risk their lives pursuing one of the three shit options.

Believing that the Reimann hypothesis is correct, but it isn't. Or believing that God exists, but he doesn't. Or believing that there are other people with private thoughts or sensations, but there aren't. Or believing that the world will end in 10,000 years, but it won't. — Michael

I'm asking about the "...it isn't", "...he doesn't", "...it won't" parts. What do any of those propositions mean for a solipsist? How are they any different to the belief in the first place?

If it's not about knowing then why are you asking about measures? — Michael

Because a difference in measure is a plausible account of what it means to be wrong. No one need check, or know that such a difference is the case. It's just that if there were such a difference, you'd be wrong. I'm asking for such an account for the solipsist.

I am talking about the considerations of someone in the future that isn't born yet. Lava pit baby and humans being born in general are all "real considerations". The actual person doesn't have to be born for these considerations to be "about" what could be an actual person born. — schopenhauer1

Yep I agree. I'm quite happy with your claims that one can take into consideration the well-being of a future person and act accordingly. That has no bearing on the fact that one is limited by the laws of physics in that an entity must resist entropy to exist.

imposing one's will on another and burdening them with impositions is wrong 100% of the time. — schopenhauer1

There is no other. Caring for the well-being of future people makes sense. talking about 'imposing' burdens on them makes sense (where those burdens are not necessary). We agree on all that so there's no need to review it.

Talking about imposing the necessary conditions of existence is absolute nonsense on stilts. One cannot impose that which is a necessary condition.

Once a person, it now "matters" in the way that suffering/negative experiences/values matters to a sentient and self-aware being. — schopenhauer1

It may matter. That's not the same as imposition. You keep arguing that future people care about their situation and we ought care about their feeling prior to their birth and act accordingly. I agree. None of this has any bearing on the notion of the imposition of necessary conditions.

The means by which they can be wrong is just being wrong. If they believe that the Reimann hypothesis is correct, but it isn't, then they're wrong. If they believe that the Reimann hypothesis is incorrect, but it is, then they're wrong. — Michael

But you've not given an account of what it would mean to be wrong for a solipsist. It's not about them knowing.

I gave the example of comparing one's own belief to the state of the world as measure of being wrong (or one's own answer in maths to the right answer of the mathematicians). One needn't carry out the comparison. One could remain entirely in the dark about it. The fact remains that I've given an account of what it would mean to be wrong (that your answer doesn't match the right answer). What is the equivalent account for solipsism?

I have never seen a brain, only models, and possibly a piece of meat on a butcher's slab that I failed to recognise. I see your posts, and I assume you speak your mind as I do. I converse with other embodied minds and interact with animal embodied minds. — unenlightened

But you've never seen a mind either, yet you infer their existence quite happily. I'd have thought even the butcher's slab was better evidence for the existence of brains than my post is for the existence of minds.

The point is that if you want 'minds', then have at them, but if they're this spooky stuff which cannot be seen, touched or otherwise amenable to empirical investigation, then they're not constrained by the world of objects (bodies, skulls, space-time). If they are that way constrained, then they're constrained by all of the empirical world, not just the biology you learned in college.

There are plenty of unsolved problems in maths, e.g the Reimann hypothesIs. Are you saying that the Reimann hypothesis isn’t truth-apt because it hasn’t been solved? Or does its truth (or falsity) depend on mathematical realism? Or perhaps it’s true (or false) despite mathematicians not having solved it and despite mathematical realism not being the case? — Michael

It's true if enough mathematicians agree that's the way things will be. Otherwise they might say (of the proof) "Ah if 1+1=2, the the Reimann hypothesis is true...we'd rather 1+1 no longer =2 and the Reimann hypothesis be false" If they all (or mostly) agreed, then that's what maths would be. A person on their own could not possibly be wrong because they could just decide which it was to be (having discovered the proof for the Reimann hypothesis) and make either the hypothesis true, or the axioms on which the proof is based false. How would they decide which?

How we can know that we’re wrong? Maybe we can’t (a point in favour of skeptical positions like solipsism). But we don’t need to know that we’re wrong to be wrong. — Michael

No, but you need to show that it's possible, to support a hypothesis that a solipsist can be wrong. You can't just declare they can and then when asked how say "don't know". If there's no plausible means by which they can be wrong, the rational conclusion is that they can't be wrong.

The Russians are helping Ukrainians survive longer, if we follow your reasoning. — Olivier5

Eh?

6 deaths per thousand from profiteering.
0.25 deaths per thousand from war.

War + profiteering = 6.25

Just profiteering = 6

I don't know what kind of crazy maths your Facebook feed now wants you to use but us old fashioned types still see 6.25 as more than 6.

But you crack on with your 'newspeak' maths. I'm sure it'll be fine.

How do you know which belief is right so which to use as a comparison? — Michael

The one used by mathematicians is right. We just ask.

Not a course open to the solipsist.

being wrong doesn’t depend on the existence of mind-independent entities. We can get maths wrong even if mathematical realism is false. — Michael

I'm enquiring as to how. If not by some sort of comparison to the right answer, then by what means?

Well if we're 'fessing up to our plagiarism, mine's basically a paraphrasing of active inference accounts of self-organising systems.

I didn't even know that Hegel had so much as an opinion on groups and norms... You learn something new every day...

There is no measure. It’s just either right or wrong. — Michael

OK, so how do we know if not by comparing the wrong belief to the right one and finding it not to match?

Do you understand the difference between mathematical realism and mathematical formalism? — Michael

I believe so, yes, though I'm far from expert on the matter. But I don't see how formalism rescues the solipsist.

I can manipulate the symbols assuming the square root of four is one. I can find some outcome from going so. How does that outcome show I'm wrong? Maybe it's the outcome I'm supposed to get from that operation.

It’s not anywhere. I reject mathematical Platonism. — Michael

So against what measure am I comparing my belief that the square root of four is one, in order that it is wrong?

Yeah, I think your version works socially. It also explains ideas like belonging (I have responsibility for this item), offenses against the person (it's not your responsibility to put my body in some location), etc...

There's a lot going for it.

And one can be wrong about the square root of two even if one cannot know that other minds and mind-independent objects exist. — Michael

I believe the square root of four is one. But it isn't, it's really two.

The belief is in my mind.

Where's the real fact?

I suggest that we understand the self primarily in normative terms, as a locus of responsibility. I ought to keep my story straight (maintain a coherent set of beliefs), report simple facts reliably, keep my promises... — Pie

Interesting. My personal view is that the self is a modeling assumption used to delineate non-entropic forces from entropic ones. It locates the boundary between the system which is to be retained and the forces which would reduce its improbable structure to a nice even Gaussian distribution of variables.

But... Each to their own...

I observe, as a matter of fact, everywhere but the internet and the phone, that minds are always embodied. — unenlightened

You observe minds? This is the empiricism creeping in. Once you let it in, any talk of 'mind seas' has to go.

You can observe brains are embodied. But then there's no brain sea.

my mind pours out here and drips onto your screen, to be absorbed by your mind, and vice versa. They call it 'social being'. — unenlightened

That's more like it. Out go private minds!

If war is safer than peace, what's your problem with conscription ? — Olivier5

The Russian offensive is less harmful than the Holocaust, so what's your problem with it?

Of the list of stupid things you've said to avoid conceding a point, this is definitely getting a runner up prize.

"One ought not oppose anything for which something else is worse". Brilliant.

Now all we need to do is find the activity with the worst outcome in the world do that we can at least oppose something.

I didn't know that your memory was so poor that introspection could not help you with those issues. A psychologist, or perhaps even a physician, might be the better route for you. — Metaphysician Undercover

But I can't see how I'd even get past the preliminary consultation.

"Doctor, I can't remember what my beliefs were"

"What makes you think that?"

"Er..."

We could class reference to memory as an act of using one's creative power, but then how would we distinguish between fact and fiction? — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. I can't even remember why I came into the kitchen, and you're trying to sell it as a route of access to the truths of the universe?

Oh, and to answer your question directly... we distinguish by checking with others.

There seems to be this sense that because we can imagine a horse, the concept of a horse must be private (I needn't tell anyone what colour it is...shhh!)

But we cannot simply derive the concept of a horse. All we're doing in imagining one is rehearsing the various mental events which took place when we had a horse pointed out to us, and then experimentally changing abstracted properties (which we also had pointed out to us) like the colour or the shape.

But the point is, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, if we kept on, in isolation, repeating that rehearsal, making small errors each time, until our imagined horse looks remarkably like a hippopotamus, then we'd all agree that we'd got the concept wrong. What we're imagining is not a horse, it's a hippopotamus. So my imagination cannot be the concept 'horse', otherwise it couldn't be wrong. Something else has to actually be the concept. My imagination seeks to practice it, correcting its errors by reference to the actual concept in all its dynamic, ever-changing, public, glory.

Another issue probably in the background here is cultural relativism. — Pie

Yes, I think people are, wary of relativism ("the Nazis were right, from their perspective"), but it's never something I've found in the least worrying. I'm embedded in a culture (and I'm probably wired with several moral-like beliefs from birth, like any other human). So the idea of some Nazi thinking they're right seems to hold no concern. They weren't right, there's no doubt about that, and the fact that they thought they were doesn't seem to have any bearing on the matter.

Do I only imagine that murder is proscribed ? — Pie

Perhaps one also imagines the cell in which one would be placed after being convicted of this imaginary social proscription?

A life, a brain, I suppose. — unenlightened

Mmm. I asked because I happened to be reading this thread in the middle of a conversation I was having with @Janus about mental events. It struck me that it's odd to assume mental events are different to brain activity in one sense (in the sense that phenomenology can give us true statements about mental events without being constrained by neuroscience), but then have one's concept of the mental constrained again by science in it's 'en-cuppedness' (to use your analogy).

Why the cup? Why not just the great sea of minds? As I said on the other thread, it sometimes seems to me that my wife knows what I'm thinking. It's only science that tells me she can't. So if science doesn't restrict what mind is (only brain), then why not ditch the idea that minds are private at all, or singular, or anything.

Maybe it's a colander?

A newly minted category must have created by an individual initially, no? — Janus

I don't think so, no. It can be created collaboratively by process of trial and error. I can merely live my life, including using words to get others to do things, and then observe the categories which emerge from those interactions.

it doesn't affect the argument that the judgement that constitutes the category was initially private — Janus

Insofar as any given moment in time, I'll grant this, but judgements are also not things which float about neatly packaged in the brain, they are moment to moment inferences updated, often as frequently as every few milliseconds. If asked, if engaged in, say, philosophy, a social practice, you'll try to construct a meaningful report of those judgements that your other community will understand. You'll use social meanings to do that. Prior to this exercise, you had no unified 'judgement' only a continually changing flow of updating inferences.

How large would the group have to be to be considered significant, do you think? — Janus

From birth, I think two. Just another person, but obviously, for ethical reasons no-one's been able to test that.

After a while though, one is sufficient because we can engage the social imagination and use the public concepts we imagine are available, even if they aren't.

Interesting. What's the cup, in this analogy?

I've been arguing that categories are initially created by individuals who first imagine them, and that they are , in that sense, private until communicated publicly. — Janus

And the evidence you have for this is?

Why not? — Olivier5

Apart from the total lack of evidence that it's anything like that?

Also, do add the maimed, the traumatized, the tortured, the raped, and then those suffering from hunger, poverty, or forced migration. — Olivier5

OK, so shall we add those consequences to the tally for capitalism too. What kind of figures do you think that will yield? How many are hungry because of profiteering agricultural companies?

People who have never seen a war speak of it easily, — Olivier5

People who've never been on the brink of starvation or worked in a chemical plant for starvation wages speak of it easily too. So what?

in that case, that precise thought, formulated in precisely the way it is in that sentence would be private. — Janus

We don't formulate sentences that way. We can actually see sentence formation and have a pretty good idea of the way it works from various cases of patients with damages to the language processing areas of the brain. You don't form a sentence first, then say it. It doesn't exist in your mind prior to being spoken (or going through the motions). It's created as it's being said. The idea that it pre-exists is a post hoc construction of you memory.

The point being that the privacy of mental events is hinging on a preliminary scientific understanding (no ESP, no thought-sharing spookiness, mental events take place in brains, etc). So having gone that far, it's incoherent to then deny further scientific understanding about how those brain actually process thoughts.

What you think is happening in your mental events is not what's actually happening. It's a post hoc construction made up after the event. That's a scientific fact (insofar as such facts are obtainable). If you're going to ignore it and say that phenomenologically, mental vents just are how they seem to you to be, then you cannot simultaneously say that they are private. It sometimes 'seems to me' as if my wife knows what I'm thinking. It sometimes 'seems to me' as if a crowd are of one mind on a matter. It's only my scientific understanding of how brains work which tells me that cannot actually be the case.

So it seems either mental events are private because of the way brains work (in which case we don't have private 'concepts' floating about in there), or we say that mental events are only loosely correlated with brains, in which case there's no reason at all to think they're private.

OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher,

Over 30 times higher? Don't be absurd.

The point is not to claim that war zones are no worse than peacetime communities under capitalism. The point is that overall suffering is caused in greater degrees by profiteering and corruption than it is by war, whole orders of magnitude greater. OHCHR estimation error has no bearing whatsoever on that fact.

I have my own understanding of what it means and you won't know what that is unless I tell you. Of course in telling you my understanding will be made public, even if only to a limited audience — Janus

Do you? How would you know?

I haven't said that categorization is necessarily private — Janus

OK, but you said that we have a private understanding of the concept 'exists' and your argument seems to be that mental activity is private. That's insufficient. To show that we have a private concept of 'exists' you need to show not only that mental activity is private, but that the grouping of some of that mental activity into a clear concept called 'existence' is also private.

For those who think war is much better than capitalism, air pollution or one's neighbours, I recommend a little vacation in Dombass. — Olivier5

Which figure do you dispute?

On what grounds do you claims a private understanding of 'exists'?

I get the distinction you're making between our mental activity (which is private) and our language use (which is not), but then you make this jump to saying that some of that private mental activity is privately packaged and delineated as being the private mental activity which constitutes the private concept 'exists'.

How would you know that? Or even suspect that? I can't see any link at all from saying that mental activity is private to saying that the categorisation of mental activity is private.

From 24 February 2022, when the Russian Federation’s armed attack against Ukraine started, to 7 August 2022, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 12,867 civilian casualties in the country: 5,401 killed and 7,466 injured. — https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/08/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-8-august-2022

Out of a population of 41 million, that's a death rate of 0.243/1000 (assuming a full year of war)

Rates of avoidable mortality in Ukraine (due to lack of investment in healthcare, corporate irresponsibly, and lack of regulation) is 6/1000. One of the highest in the world. (According to WHO mortality database).

So which figure do you dispute?

What's "crass" is the almost total media whiteout over the war compared to the almost complete and negligent silence on the corruption and profiteering killing 30 times as many people.

And we haven't even touched on the victims of air pollution, low wages, industrial diseases, poor nutrition...

You may think that all the world's evil is perpetrated by Russia. Others are not so childishly naive.

I think conspiratorial rationalizations are never "sufficient ... to justify suffering" and mass murder. :brow: — 180 Proof

Exactly. @Cartesian trigger-puppets has misunderstood what the term 'justify' means. One does not justify to one's self (other than perhaps to rehearse a justification to one's community). The Nazi was wrong and the Second World War proved as much. They attempted to justify their actions to their larger community, and failed so monumentally that it is now illegal to even deny they tried.

These questions are answered through introspection invention. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, that works now, I must have missed your typo.

If you can’t reproduce your interlocutors question, then it is foolish to think that you have answered it. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I didn't say I couldn't. I said I wouldn't. I'm not taking part is some condescending test.

These questions are answered through introspection. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nope. Tried it. I got nothing.

are you going to argue that we cannot consider the baby's well-being before the baby was born because there was no baby yet to be born into the lava pit? — schopenhauer1

I haven't even mentioned well-being.

Yep and do not make those X (gametes, embryo, disembodied soul) a person. What's your point? — schopenhauer1

That they'd still have necessary conditions of existence.

I don't care much what happens to rocks, galaxies, and other non-sentient things. I wonder why that is? — schopenhauer1

You don't care much about babies born on the other side of the world either. I don't see what the size of your circle of compassion has to do with causality.

If what you're saying is that human care about their necessary conditions of existence (whereas rocks don't), then I agree, but that doesn't constitute an argument against procreation. Most humans find those conditions acceptable costs and so it's a reasonable gamble to take for the benefit to society.

Having lost that argument, you now want to make the problem one of unjust imposition, but you can't because the necessary conditions of existence are not imposed by anyone, they are a fact of the world. No one forced that on me, so no injustice has taken place. All that procreation has done is change the necessary conditions of existence from those of a gamete, to those of an embryo, to those of person. At no point has the mere fact that entities must resist entropic decay been imposed.

is meant that there is a counterfactual that COULD have happened (Someone could NOT bring about Y state of affairs for someone else, which entails X). — schopenhauer1

It couldn't have happened. It's impossible.

One could (or could not) have created a person.

One could not do (or not do) anything to a person or on behalf of a person at all because there was no person to act upon until the act of creation was over. Ergo, the act of creation cannot be done to, or for, the person thereby created. It breaks normal causality.

A "person" at some point X becomes a person (though this is often debated as "when"). You disagree? — schopenhauer1

Yes. Obviously. A person cannot become a person. They already are one. An embryo becomes a person, or a gamete does, or a 'disembodied soul' does, depending on your beliefs.

But...this is the important bit...no one imposes the necessary conditions of existence even on those. An embryo has necessary conditions of existence. A gamete cell has necessary conditions of existence. A disembodied soul has necessary conditions of existence.

For anything which exists it is necessary that it resist entropic decay otherwise it will cease to exist.

This is a necessary condition even of computer code, galaxies, sandcastles...

No one imposes this.

Someone brought about Y state of affairs for someone else, which entails X.

Someone could NOT bring about Y state of affairs for someone else, which entails X. — schopenhauer1

None of that makes sense. The state of affairs you're talking about are a necessity for the 'someone else'. So your second statement is absolutely, unarguably false.

One doesn't just "come into existence" without someone else making this happen. — schopenhauer1

One doesn't 'come into existence' at all. It's not a thing that 'one' can do because 'one' has to exist first. Before.

We'd have to venture into a more "exotic cosmogony" in order to be able to coherently claim that the injustice of birth is done _to_ someone.

An "exotic cosmogony" like the one where living beings happily exist as "disembodied souls", but who can be embodied against their will by the act of someone else. — baker

Yeah. The interesting question then is whether (and why) those 'disembodied souls' have any criteria necessary to their existence. I mean, it seems pretty implausible to me that even 'disembodied souls' could exist without any necessary properties.

I fear even if such entities existed, then @schopenhauer1 would still be whining to the other 'disembodied souls' about being 'forced' to maintain those properties.

Any system at all requires that it works against entropy to exist. So disembodied souls would be subject to no less a requirement.