Far better just to do political philosophy properly, which involves developing a philosophical system by reasoning your way up from first principles. — Virgo Avalytikh

And yet when pressed on the matter of...

if one is opposed the initiation of force and the invasion of private property, as the libertarian is, then one is committed to all of the positions just mentioned. — Virgo Avalytikh

... in an earlier thread, you just walk away.

The issue here with many of these ideologies is that suspicion falls when supposedly ideologically motivated policies all 'coincidentally' result in outcomes which match some far more common motivation.

Libertarianism, of the kind you endorse here, is of this nature. All its proscriptions just 'happen' to support the lifestyle of the currently wealthy and as soon as any fundamental principle (such as property rights) seem to undermine that position, the principles are hastily adjusted accordingly (or the issue is ignored entirely).

It makes it very difficult to believe the ideology is not just post hoc justification for the pre-determined conclusions.

Are you really appalled by the idea of equality of height? Imagine if you could wave a magic wand and from here on out all the men would be 5'10 and all the women 5'4. I understand that the actual real life means to achieving this could be objectionable, but the goal itself is hardly something that makes someone recoil.

It would level the playing field if all men were the same height. That's where equality of opportunity comes in. — BitconnectCarlos

Exactly as @ZhouBoTong has already said really. The trouble with thought experiments like this is that they presume our rational thinking methods are un-embodied, something we can employ unconnected from the world we grew up in, and we can't. I think it is quite literally impossible to investigate, by way of thought experiment, how we would feel if we could wave a magic wand to make everyone the same height because we just don't live in a world where any such actions are possible without consequences. Deep in our psyche we expect consequences and recoil from such drastic intervention despite our efforts to restrict our thoughts to the data the thought experiment has provided. We're just not in that much control over what data gets input into our calculation.

Notwithstanding that, I think any push for equality has to be weighed against the consequent loss of diversity, which is something we also find appealing (within parameters). Money doesn't really make people behave in any particular way - rich people are not all of one kind - so wealth equality doesn't seem to reduce diversity at all. Likewise for equality of opportunity (the key being it is only the opportunities which are made equal, not what you do with them). Equality of height, intelligence etc. brings with it an incumbent loss of diversity which has to be weighed heavily against the gains. I think most people find that that loss so massively outweighs any gains the idea becomes repulsive.

For which collections of objects does a unified now make sense?

What exactly does (relative) speed change?

Is anything worse (like there being more than one time, for example)?

And finally, where does time flow more slowly?


Edit - forget it, I see you've already answered all my questions prior to me posting them. Teach me to post from the bottom of the Mariana trench. Your answers show up before my questions!

My main question is why does the discussion have to stop here. — BitconnectCarlos

It doesn't. People also strive for equality of opportunity, that people should not be denied some opportunity they might otherwise autonomously take by virtue of some property not related to that particular liberty.

You never really hear major social inequality of height, intelligence, or charisma in the world. — BitconnectCarlos

That's because equality itself isn't a goal, human welfare is. It is considered (with no small amount of empirical support) that wealth equality leads to better welfare. Likewise equality of opportunity in the manner I described above.

The reason we're all appalled at the idea of equality of height or equality of intelligence is that we have no intuitive notion that such a project might further human welfare, nor is there any compelling empirical evidence that would encourage us to reject our intuition on the matter.

'Equality' as a rhetorical cry is just a convenient shorthand, you shouldn't read too much into it.

Its the implication for thise living in that binary choice... — schopenhauer1

There's no implication beyond the simple fact that one option must be chosen. Being born requires you to chose to continue to live or not. If you prefer life, then continue, if you don't, don't.

Again, I'm not seeing the philosophical question. One chooses the most preferable out of the options available. Isn't that obvious? I know you'd rather have not been put in this position, but that's not one of the choices, so that's not relevant. It's like me saying I'd rather have been a wolf. What's the philosophical investigation attached to 'things we'd rather were the case'?

Well, if you like. I don't think you don't understand Quine, I'm not even sure yet what your understanding of Quine is. You said he rejects analycity which I agree with, I haven't really had much else to go on. But since this thread is supposed to be about what non-philosohers think of philosophy, perhaps a full blown exposition of each other's understanding of Quine is not appropriate.

Its not asking for improvement plans, its giving the scenario. — schopenhauer1

Then, yes. That is the scenario, you're correct. You have two choices; don't play the game, or change the way you feel about the game (which you could see as taking the first move). I mean what did you expect? For us to change predicate logic? If you've only got two choices you have to take one of them, that's what only having two choices means, is that what you wanted people here to confirm?

The millionare analogy is not apt as in that case someone wants to be a millionaire. — schopenhauer1

Right, which is why I asked why you're writing posts. You want something, some result which is not the one you currently have. If you're satisfied with what you currently feel, then there's no need to do anything. If you're not satisfied with how you currently feel then you are, by definition, wanting of some other state of mind. So you 'want' something (some other state of mind) but you're not prepared to take any action at all to get it.

We don't need to invoke the 'premises of life' to explain how that doesn't make sense. That just doesn't make any sense simply according to the laws of cause and effect,

all I want to know is how he understood me when I asked him to. — Mww

Crikey, is that all! You know entire textbooks have been written just on the subject of how language is processed? Just distinguishing speech from non-speech involves a complicated feedback mechanism between areas in the auditory cortex. At least five other regions are involved in distinguishing phonemes and breaking out tonal variation. This is all before the message even gets out of the auditory cortex for the first time (yes - the first time, the message gets checked and modified by other feedback mechanisms before it even gets to the temporal cortex where the first stage of syntactic processing takes place)....

The point is, there is a complicated process, it's probably a Bayesian inference model. It's almost certainly not deterministic and it definitely changes depending on the state other areas of the brain are in.

"Point to foot" is definitely not "unencumbered by manufactured conditionals". The words don't even get to the point of being recognised as such without passing through several predictive models, each of which alters the message about what is heard so that it reaches the temporal cortex as the best estimate of what was said, given the context, and that's only if the filtering algorithm from the vorbis even determines that any of it is going to get any of the temporal cortex's precious bandwidth.


If you want to call the whole thing 'rational' thinking without distinguishing any finer category, be my guest, but I'm not sure I see the advantage.

there are people that simply don't like the premises of life, no matter what. It's not that they don't think they can't "improve" some goals in this or that (by simply living, one has to do that in some way, so that's not really in question), but the OVERALL game itself- the fact that this improvement is or has to even taking place. All of it is not liked. — schopenhauer1

You might assert as much, but the evidence is against you. What evidence we have (and it's reasonably compelling) is that what you like and dislike, your dispositions, are models your brain creates to suit your circumstances. You can fly in the face of evidence all you like, make up your own little fantasy world, but it simply is not the case that a person has dispositions that are not malleable by behaviour.

It's like you're arguing "what can you do if you're born too heavy to move?". You're just not. It's factually incorrect that any newborn is too heavy to move so the problem doesn't exist. It's factually incorrect that anyone is unchanging disposed to dislike the very idea of life. People's dispositions can, and regularly are, changed by behaviour.

If don't even want to make those changes, then what on earth are you asking for advice about? What kind of response do you think I'd get if I wrote a dozen threads whining about how I wasn't yet a millionaire but refused any and all advice about how to become one on the grounds that it would entail me actually having to do something?

How does correspondence survive Quine's Word and Object? — frank

That's a very big topic. Have you read The Web of Belief? It has a really good section on how Quine treats observations as observations sentences and so brings them into his behaviourist stance on beliefs. The full text might answer your question better than my one sentence, but I don't want to get into if you have read the essay but just don't find it to be an answer.

You're taking my argument as an argument (and not a good one) supporting the existence of those things. — Coben

I didn't mean to. I intended to treat it as an argument supporting the reasonableness of positing their existence. That's why I talked about liklihoods, not possibilities.

You seemed to be suggesting (and confirmed in your last comment), that dismissing the concept of 'souls' on the grounds of physicalism was unreasonable because new things gain physical existence from time to time. I disagree. New things which were previously unknown are afforded physical existence from time to time. Things which have been posited for thousands of years have shown absolutely no precedent whatsoever of suddenly being afforded physical existence as a consequence of some new scientific theory. So a person dismissing such notions on the grounds of physicalism (as you say "ruling things out that have been considered non-material") would be entirely justified in doing so by induction.

(if I ask every rational English-speaking body in NYC to point to his foot, they will all point to the same place) — Mww

I doubt that. Some would disobey on principle, some would absentmindedly point elsewhere because they weren't paying attention (not weren't listening, just reacting on instinct), some would point to their hand (thinking they're making a joke), etc...

The more complex you make the instruction, the more challenging the environment you make it in the more varied the results.

Try telling a soldier on active duty to point to his foot, he'll tell you to shut up without even registering what you said. Try telling a person to point to their foot after they've been primed to respond to all commands by pointing to their hand (behavioural priming), they'll point to their hand. I mean, all these experiments have been done, there's tonnes in the literature. People do not consistently respond in a 'rational' manner and the manner in which they do respond differs from 'rational' in predictable ways. You might not like that, maybe it makes us a bit more 'mere primate-like' than you'd prefer, but that's the empirical data. Ignore it if you like, but that would be irrational, wouldn't it?

Perhaps 'souls' or other 'things' are on a spectrum within what will be considered physical. — Coben

That seems monumentally unlikely on the face of it. If you look at the other items on your list of recent additions to the set of {things that physically exist}, they're all things whose existence has seemed necessary to meet the needs of otherwise good predictive models. The idea of 'souls' has been abandoned by many for hundreds of years with absolutely no effect on the predictive power of their models, plus, the concept was derived to fit a religious narrative, not to explain any phenomena.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it'd be like someone having just thought of the exact notion of quantum foam 500 years ago, for entirely religious reasons, without any foundation of quantum mechanics to base it on and purely by chance it happening to fit within a model with good explanatory power.

An analogy might be something like a game. If you were on a game that you can't get out of except through death, well there are a couple options. Some people "accept" the game (what many people including you suggest), and then offer ways to get better at certain aspects of it. But then there are some people who simply don't like the premises, the very game itself. Yes, they know there are people with ways to "improve" how to play it, but they don't like the fact that they are dealing with the game, whether improving it or not, in the first place. — schopenhauer1

This is a statement though, not a question. The request for clarity was (or should be) over what the question means "What if you don't like the premises of life?". What does the 'what' mean?

What [is the case] if you don't like the premises of life? - Well that's simple, the case is that you're going to either have a miserable life, or you're going to change your mind about the premises.

What [should one do] if you don't like the premises of life? - This depends entirely on one's objective, you cannot derive an ought from an is without objective. The 'is' is the way the world is, the premises of life as you put it, but we cannot derive an 'ought' from that alone, you need to provide an objective - "how to I get from A to B?" is an answerable question, "where should I go from A?" is not.

My advice - just lie down where you are. If that displeases you, think of something which would please you more and do that. If the thought of doing something distasteful simply because it displeases you less than some other thing displeases you, then think something else, something which displeases you less. Your thoughts do not arrive out of the ether fully formed that you have to just accept them by default. They are constructed by your brain to suit the behaviour you put them to. Your feelings of displeasure with the premises of life are not a rational judgement which you must treat as sacrosanct. They're just the story your brain thinks best explains your behaviour and sensory inputs. Change your behaviour and sensory input and your brain will change the story.

I said that Quine makes no room for degrees in his dismissal of the analytic/synthetic divide. You seemed to disagree and treat my statement as a claim that needed backing. — frank

Ahh, I see. I'm sorry if this confusion was caused by any lack of clarity on my part. You're talking about Quine's rejection of analycity whilst I'm talking about the way in which a difference between philosophy and science remains despite that rejection. I'm saying that without the analytic/synthetic divide, the difference between posits of philosophy and posits of science is the inter-subjectivity of measures of veracity. Science deals with correspondence with observation (something we largely agree upon, especially when done by machine), whereas philosophy's veracity (for Quine) is measured by the degree to which posits satisfactorily fit within the web of beliefs (something on which we do not all generally agree - opinion).

But I should make clear that talking about 'philosophy' in general here is a very broad definition necessitated by the topic of the thread (and Artemis's comment about it, to which I responded). I wouldn't personally paint the whole subject with the same brush, as it were, because some aspects clearly play different roles in the web than others.

Hope that's clearer.

So you point to the word "blurring" and mention of a knowledge spectrum from particular to abstract. And further, you note that Quine seemed to understand some difference between science and philosophy, and therefore you conclude that Two Dogmas is about matters of degree of difference between analytic and synthetic statements. — frank

Since when were we determining what Two Dogmas is "about"? I merely made the claim that Quine makes a distinction betweenpphilosophy and science and that he does so as a matter of degree. I never claimed it was the core message of his whole thesis. In fact I made specific note of the fact that this was not the main thrust of his work....

I realise the main importance of Quine is the extent to which he declares no difference (no difference in type), but here I'm referring to the difference he does acknowledge, the difference in degree. — Isaac

... so why you would now think I'm making the exact opposite claim (that this is what Two Dogmas is all about) is beyond me.

You used system in regard to a strict, singular, deterministic; I used method. The method is the rules, the system is the use of the rules. No matter the particulars, the brain (the system) obeys the laws attributed to natural forces (the method). — Mww

Maybe, but if the deterministic natural forces are expressed through a stochastic system then there's no reason at all to suppose a deterministic method will result.

should would be destructive, insofar as if the conditions under which the method is used determine the method, the method is no longer rule-based, therefore not a proper method. — Mww

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here, but at a guess, you seem to be hinting at the idea that rules determine which set of rules to use. That may be (although see above as to the underlying uncertainty in the system), but again, you're defining away rational thought. If rational thought is not a type of thought then the word 'rational' is pointless.

If we can suffice with just “thought”, which I advocate as being the case, why do we need more than one method for it? — Mww

We don't have more than one method because we need to. We simply observe thinking strategies and decide we're going to gives different names to some of the differences we see. We could not do that, and just call it all 'thought'. We could divide it into a hundred different types based on every tiny difference we observe. It's just a matter of utility.

You're putting a lot of weight on the meaning of "blurring." — frank

I don't think so. There's numerous other places, some of which I've given above, where Quine talks about differences between science and philosophy. At each of which he talks about matters of degree, not identicalness. You've not said what your textual support is for your view that there's no matter of degree in Quine's taxonomy of disciplines.

If the brain operates under a strict, singular, mechanically deterministic method, however complex it may be, why wouldn’t the merely philosophical operate under some method as singular, strict and logically deterministic, with some arbitrary corresponding complexity? — Mww

The brain almost certainly isn't a strict singular mechanically deterministic system. Neural signals are rapid stocatto outputs and trace complex routes, they are inhibited by incoming signals which are also rapidly intermittent. This creates a stochastic, probabilistic system because small changes in the route taken by the outgoing signal determines whether it comes before or after the suppressing one. I won't go on, I'm not a neuroscientist myself so this is second hand knowledge, suffice to say the brain is probabilistic... Probably.

the conditions under which a method operates, shouldn’t determine the rules of the method. — Mww

'Shouldn't' in what sense? As in you don't think it ought to, or as in there's some law of thought preventing it? If the former, then tough, it does. So you'll just have to live with that. If the latter (and you're not denying the evidence I've alluded to) then you're simply extending the definition of rational thought to cover all thought. Not only is this contrary to most use, but it renders the term useless. We can suffice with just 'thought'.

There's no "matter of degree" to it. — frank

But its right there in the introduction "One effect of abandoning them is, as we: shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science"

Blurring... not removing entirely. It's practically the definition of 'a matter of degree' as opposed to either 'strictly divided' on the one hand, or 'identical in every way' on the other.

I’m reluctant to admit we have methods of thinking corresponding to the plethora of subjects being thought about. — Mww

Why? A soldier at war demonstrably thinks differently to a mathematician working on a problem. People even think differently depending on whether or not they're too hot or cold. We can see the different areas of the brain involved, we can judge by the results of problem solving exercises and confirm by subjective self-reporting. The evidence is quite compelling that both sensory inputs and recalled data are processed differently given different contexts. I just wonder why you'd have some reluctance to this idea, does it conflict with some other, equally compelling view?

The first quote is:

"Science is a continuum extending from History and Engineering at one end, to the more abstract pursuits like mathematics and philosophy at the other" - W.V.O. Quine — Isaac


This is saying that knowledge pertains to particulars, abstractions, and combinations of the two. — frank

I can see how you might have that interpretation in isolation, but in the context of Two Dogmas and Epistemology Naturalised, I think it's clear he's not talking only about the degree of abstraction. He talks about the analytic/synthetic divide, for example, just prior to distinguishing philosophy and science my matter of degree. The analytic/synthetic divide is about empiricism, not abstraction. I think Quine is more focused on this distinction than abstractness , but having said that, the message in Epistemology Naturalised is more holistic than that. It's not that there's one scale that constitutes the 'matter of degree' it's a multiplicity of differences.

Quine is rejecting that special room. We posit stuff via our theories. — frank

Agreed. But in this particular debate, the relevant fact is that he nonetheless maintains that there exists a difference. I realise the main importance of Quine is the extent to which he declares no difference (no difference in type), but here I'm referring to the difference he does acknowledge, the difference in degree.

Elsewhere you asserted logic is simply a method of thinking.

Are there more? — Mww

Well, yes. Depends on the purpose of the categorisation. Some psychologists distinguish between intuitive and reasoned thinking, others between emotive and rational. Some consider reflex a kind of thinking. It's not like there's a laid out taxonomy or anything, it depends on the field of enquiry as to what categorisation might be most useful.

I think you're smushing the two quotes together to get a spectrum. The quotes don't actually fit together in that way. — frank

What makes you think that? They obviously seem quite clear to me, so I'd be interested to hear how you're reading them differently.

But what was the point you were originally making? That science and philosophy are kindred? Of course they are. — frank

No, the point I was originally making was that it is possible for someone to be of the view that philosophy is constituted of opinions simply by being aprised of its methodology, without having to know or understand the full modalities of its propositions.

That lead on to me saying that I did not hold to the fact/opinion dichotomy but rather used the terms to denote two ends of a spectrum of proposition taxonomy, based largely on the intersubjective agreement about measures of veracity. This I likened to Quine's 'difference in degree'.

Emojis are fine with me at this point, considering you just keep moving the target and pretending you didn't say what you did say. — Artemis

What were my original goal posts, and what have I said which I later denied saying?

The quote you provided doesn't indicate that Quine put physics on one end of a spectrum and philosophy on the other. — frank

Nor did I make that claim. Only that physics would be at one end (although I think Quine uses engineering as his example, which is better really in terms of intersubjectively verifiable results. The bridge either stays up or it doesn't. Quine doesn't put 'philosophy' anywhere on it because it's made up too much of sub-disciplines which themselves show these differences of kind. He does at one point mention mathematics and logic as being uniquely of the non-empirical kind and yet so widely agreed upon as to be unshakeable in most people's belief structures.

Do you have another quote? — frank

Well, the first dogma in 'Two dogmas' is that there is a sharp distinction of type between analytic and synthetic facts. Unless you're thinking philosophy deals with propositions of synthetic fact then it's pretty clear that philosophy is at one end of the "difference in degree" he talks about. I don't know that anything would spell it out much clearer than that I'm afraid.

I suppose you could have... "The boundary between naturalistic philosophy and the rest of science is just a vague matter of degree". Here he's quite clear that the matter of degree is between philosophy at one end and science at the other, not between {philosophy and science} at one end and something else at the other.

Where in either of those quotes does he say anything whatsoever about opinions??? — Artemis

The position I attributed to Quine was "there's a scale, based on intersubjectivity, and physics is at one end of it (or near the end)".

The position you attributed to Quine which I asked for a citation to support was

"

Quine doesn't put them [the fields of physics and philosophy] on a spectrum. — Artemis

I'm still waiting for your citation.

Or you can just exchange emojis, your choice.

it's how people are motivated or not. They are motivated to clickbait in their timeline and that's a reality that doesn't care about your moral judgment. — Benkei

Exactly. That's the point I'm making. If people are not even sufficiently motivated about the accumulation of wealth in a minority of of companies to do something as simple as switch supplier, then it seems a stretch at the least to suggest that those same people are sufficiently motivated by the exact same concern that they'd be prepared to alter the structure of the economy.

All I'm looking for is a relatively consistent model of motivation. People act in a fairly greedy and selfish manner in their consumer choices, so it seem prima facae reasonable to assume the same motivation behind their choice of preferred taxation regime.

Why would you suggest that people are suddenly motivated by a strong sense of fairness in the economic structures when it comes to taxation preferences when they can't even be bothered to pick an ethical supplier?

The companies' financial statements you mention beg to differ about the ownership of the means of production. Apart from Facebook, none of them have a intangibles-to-total asset ratio above 10%. Facebook's 15%. Alphabet has about 2% total intangible assets, .5% is patents. Amazon's is 7%. etc.

Plenty of ownership of production then. — Benkei

No. Their assets are not the means of production of their services (at least not in the sense in which they can be monopolised). The services they provide are facilitated by the Internet, which they do not, and cannot, own.

Somone wanting to produce their own car must first purchase a factory and all the machinery. Only capital can do this, so only those with capital can do this. Anyone can set up Facebook. It just requires some Internet space. The entire reason why Mark Zuckerberg is as rich as he is is consumers knowingly and preferentially making him rich. Anyone who didn't want him to become that rich could have used one of the other social media services, or set up their own.

The point about Internet services, most software, entertainment (sport, film etc) is that they present a different model to traditional manufacturing. Manipulation of the client is the main goal, rather than ownership of the means of production. Recognising this is, I think, important, and treating the consumer as a well meaning but downtrodden class doesn't do that.

people are usually too busy with (their own personal) problems that are at hand and directly affected by their actions rather than abstract problems that are not noticeably influenced by personal choices. — Benkei

I don't accept that excuse for one minute. People spend on average nearly an hour a day just on Facebook. The idea that they haven't time to check out other suppliers than Amazon is just not feasible.

The productivity-pay-gap has increased largely because policy choices were made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth and power. — Benkei

Yes, but these changes have not been homogeneous across companies. I buy my Internet services from a cooperative, for example. They don't have an increasing gap between wages and productivity because they're worker-owned. It's not hard to switch supplier. It takes about half an hour to set up (half the average Facebook time) and it costs about £2 more a month (less money than the average spend on junk food, for example). What, on your list of concerns of the average person, is preventing them from switching?

The same can be said for Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google... These are not the traditional issues where capitalists own the means of production and can effectively monopolise supply of essential goods. These are luxury items or services where the company does not have any ownership over the means of production.

I think the real issue isn't revenge or vindictiveness but the realization the exorbitant wages some managers make is out of proportion (talk about the entitlement generation). — Benkei

As I said earlier, if it were about this realisation, then why wouldn't those doing the realising do what was within their power to curb such excessive wealth accumulation? I presume we're talking about the same population right? You don't see the dissonance in people suggesting that governments should restructure their entire taxation system (with all the potentially unforseen consequences) to curb the super-rich, but they themselves aren't even prepared to enter a different Web address to find their next Disney-themed plastic toast extractor and toothpick 2-in-1 landfill-destined piece of crap.

The only 'woo' involved was his observation that the subject was always aware of the distinction between being manipulated by the surgeon and his or her own volitional actions. — Wayfarer

Any scientist worth their salt would have followed established principles of scientific investigation and looked for the simplest explanation provided within theories which already have good foundational support. If a subject is aware of something, that awareness is most likely provided by a region of the brain. We know this because thus far we've been able to correlate awareness with brain activity in every case we've tested.

So if a patient is aware of some distinction (between externally and internally invoked sensation), then the simplest explanation is that some region of the brain is providing this awareness. It's no surprise at all then, that this turned out to be the case.

It also opened up some incredibly useful avenues of treatment for paranoid schizophrenia (whose sufferers seem to have diminished paracingulate suculi). What use has your dualistic answer been?

I would be interested to know how that subjectively-observed difference could be validated with respect to neural data. — Wayfarer

It's complicated, obviously, but a simple summary is that the brain has suppressive, backward acting neural signals which suppress output from neural collections on the basis of higher brain activity. The network makes a prediction about the source of stimulation, updates that prediction on the basis of other forward-acting signals, and then suppresses contrary signals to yield a consistent model.

Reason is simply a method of thinking. One which has proven remarkably successful for understanding the world. One key tenet in this method is not inventing new structures until it is clear existing ones do not suffice. To see such a difference as Penfield did and formulate a hypothesis not that some other part of the brain he's looking at must perform this function (as it turned out was the case) but to instead invent an entirely fabricated realm of existence for which we have no empirical evidence at all, is not 'reason'.

It's the equivalent of me inventing an invisible race of key-eating aliens every time I lose my keys rather than the simpler explanation that I've simply forgotten where I put them.

I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but isn't SETI listening out for radio signals and the like? Presumably other civilisations would be doing similar things? So we'd have to image some incredibly specific technology that would allow an alien force to invade and colonise another planet thousands of light years away without producing a single communication wave detectable by the superior technology of more advanced races.

Basically, if we're best off keeping quiet rather than attracting aliens and defeating them with the weapons we've got, then any alien is in the same position. No one can know that they are the most advanced civilisation around, can they?

the point which intrigued him is that the subjects always knew when it was something that was being done from them, and could distinguish it from something they themselves were doing. — Wayfarer

The paracingulate sulcus differentially marks reports of sensory stimulation from the specific brain regions responsible for sensory processing depending on their correspondence with other somatic input. It's just science, we don't have to invoke some magical woo every time we don't know how something works.

(5) contradicts the conclusion. Civilisations can't be both aggressively looking to expand and remaining silent only pre-emptively striking targets who make themselves known. They must be doing either one or the other.

Accepting the principle that advanced civilisations are looking to expand, you'd not expect the universe to be silent, you'd expect it to be full of the colonisation attempts of advanced civilisations. Given that the universe is silent, there's no reason at all to maintain the premise that it's full of advanced civilisations aggressively looking to expand.

Not only that, but we only have experience of one civilisation...ours. That one civilisation is not looking to aggressively expand into space (yet) it's looking to make contact with aliens largely out of interest. When a theory is falsified by 100% of the available evidence, I think it's time to discard the theory, no?

Quine doesn't put them on a spectrum. It doesn't make any sense to put them on a spectrum. They are not the same category of thing. — Artemis

"Science is a continuum extending from History and Engineering at one end, to the more abstract pursuits like mathematics and philosophy at the other" - W.V.O. Quine

"Quine denies that there is a fundamental difference between the existence questions debated in the special sciences...and the existence questions posed by philosophers ... The difference between the scientific and the philosophical problems is one of degree, not of kind." - Hans Glock

What's your source for your conviction that Quine does not put them on a spectrum?

Without getting into your misinterpretation of Quine — Artemis

Let's have the correct interpretation of Quine then...

If there was a spectrum (which I would debate) then anything at the far end with physics would no longer be "just opinion" now would it? — Artemis

Yes. Which is most certainlynnot the location of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, ontology, theology...

You're trying to tie a whole field, philosophy, to the merits of one small sub-field, logic.

This. Also even within the same field but different subfield. "What you're doing isn't history/anthropology/linguistics/psychology..." — fdrake

Yes, and, just in my personal experience, it's not been a random trend, sub-fields seem to want to work up the Quinean scale. Clinical psychologists look down on social psychologists because they consider their field more rigorous. Physicists look down on material scientists for much the same reason.

Mathematicians, of course cannot even see any of us to look down on without the aid of ocular technology of some sort, which is entirely as it should be!

You cannot maintain both things at once. — Artemis

Not following you. What prevents maintaining both these positions? I'm saying there's a scale, based on intersubjectivity, and physics is at one end of it (or near the end). It's quite a standard position after Quine.