His concern is more political. If it considered acceptable to show the naked body in media, if such displays are considered to be wonderful, then the publicly naked body is no longer to be something to be morally feared.

Worse, the naked body of women becomes protected in public display.

In this instance, the concern isn't so much about sex, but the celebration of public nudity is politically associated with people who advocate for permissive sexuality.

If we respect the publicly naked body, for example, he won't be able to attack women Slutwalk march for going topless. Instead, will be celebrating (in a non-sexual sense) the beauty of a bodily display. His political options become more limited. He can't just denigrate everyone he wants for being publicly naked.

Laplace's Demon should be able to see all our reasons as well as the physical causes that they are rigidly correlated with. — John

For the compatibilist, there is no Laplace's Demon. Sure, one can suggest someone who knows all causes (including dress choices) ever to be, and so know which events will occur, but this does not eliminate possibility.

Prior and without those causes, including choices, the known future cannot occur. Consider the future of my creating this post. I had a choice whether to make this post or not. Faced with your post, I had a choice to make: I possibly could have ignored it or possibly could have responded. Without this choice, the one future which occurs (me making the post) cannot be defined.

Determinism is not predeterminism. Laplace's Demon, which knows what will happen by what happened in the past, is incoherent. Only by knowing each event in terms of itself can someone know what will happen. So called "perfect knowledge" is not achievable by looking at some other state and deriving from it what must necessarily happen. One can only know by each event itself-- God knows the free choices everyone makes and so knows what will happen, without the elimination of either freedom or possibility.

Under compatibilism choice is not a "reason" someone acts. It is an event of the world itself-- I exist making a free choice and so determine myself to respond to you post rather than not.

The mistake of the libertarian will/(pre)determinism dichotomy is to envision choice as a "reason" for action, as if we were "influenced" to act either by free will or mindless matter, rather than recognise our choices are states/actions in themselves.

The point is human choice is part of the usual order of nature itself. Compatibilists point out the traditional dichotomy between free choice and causality (determinism) is incoherent. It lacks awareness of our own nature as choosing beings within causality.

Free will is does not fight causality/determinism but that partakes in it, allowing us to determine our future one way or another.

More than that: our free choice is a determining part of causality. It is born of causality, we are caused to exist with the ability to make free choices, and partakes in causality, our choices are deterministic events that result in certain states occurring rather than others, such that we have the ability to control determined outcomes in our future.

OK, suppose we remove this distinction then, between what is internal and what is external, because it is ambiguous. How would anyone justify any claims, if they cannot demonstrate external correspondence with what they are claiming that they know within themselves?

With ghosts and such, the claim is that the ghost is out there, so to justify the claim the individual must demonstrate where that ghost is. If God comes to an individual from within, and , makes His presence known to that individual from within, how can we ask that individual to demonstrate God's existence by referring to what is external to the individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're are just repeating the distinction. Since all knowledge is internal, nothing can be justified by external correspondence. Any account of correspondence relies on the presence of an experience which intuits states of the world. It's still trapped within the internal. All our knowledge, including empirical states, is given within the internal space of our experience. We cannot get outside to derive knowledge.

In the sense you are asking, there is no justification to give.

So how do we justify our claims? We do so internally. Our experience is compared to our experience. With empirical states, for example, we compare our internal notion of some state with out internal experience at a particular moment, demonstrating to ourselves whether some state is present--e.g. if I don't experience the sugar jar after looking through the cupboard, then it's not there. Insofar as the claim carries, that the sugar jar I experience is present in the cupboard goes, it is falsified.

With regards to God, the question is at first logical. We need to define the experienced state which constitutes the existence of God. If we do not, the question of justifying the existence of God is meaningless, for no possible state of existence is defined. In such a case, we do not even have a concept of the existing God with which to check internally against our experiences.

The question is, therefore, what does it mean to say "God comes to an individual from within?"

In the context of the external/internal knowledge, it doesn't make sense because the dichotomy is incoherent.-- all knowledge comes from within.

One can, as you do, draw a distinction between betwene claims which need to be demonstrated in experience (e.g. ghosts) and ones which do not (e.g. God), but what does this mean?

If God is meant to be a state of existence, independent from other states, which makes some sort of difference in the experienced world, then it's a claim to be demonstrated-- like the sugar jar, God is another state of the world which makes a difference to how we experience it. To say God is that without demonstration is to render God incoherent in terms of existence.

All our knowledge of anything is shown from within. It takes our experience.

The distinction made between "within" thoughts and feelings and "external" thoughts and felling doesn't make sense. Awareness of anything comes from us. In this respect, to be aware of God is no different than being aware of the computer screen in front of you-- one has an an experience, which comes form "within" (i.e. it is your existence) which shows a particular state or distinction.

That's the neurosis though, for if a case is not a stake, neither is my being. The possibility I "might not be" isn't present. In nothing, I have no cause or danger to fear, no possible absence for which to thank another for saving me from.

Rather than "grateful," I should just be "joyful."

I think that misses the point: in conceptual art, the conceptual is melded into the aesthetic. It never just about commenting on a subject matter. There is a representation with an aesthetic, in the exploration of the concept.

The value in conceptual art isn't really in that it's conceptualisable-- if it were, there would be no dissection between conceptual art and just talking about a concept-- it's in an outside exploration of a concept within a representation and aesthetic.

It's for that very reason I say you use of "luck" is meaningless. The ones to have gratitude towards are others whom act to provide for one's own circumstances: other people, the environment, social institutions, etc., without which one's life and the world would be a worse place.

Gratitude outside causality, that is gratitude to no-one, is meaningless. It just the nihilistic neurosis-- that world and ourselves are meaningless in themselves, such that we would have to thank nothing for allowing us to exist.

You're missing the point though. If in a discussion someone refuses to support a claim, then, for the purposes of that discussion, they are conceding the point. This is a necessary part of those rules which are presupposed in a discussion, otherwise we could not have serious discussions in the first place. People would just claim they're right, without actually showing it. — Agustino

You're missing mine: in suggesting a claim is wrong or worth rejecting, a person is taking on a responsibility themselves, to know and speak what is true. If we are intellectually responsible, "conceding the point" or "rules of debate" are irrelevant-- we are not concerned with "winning" but understanding.

In this context, which is turn of any instance where a claim of knowledge is of concern, it doesn't matter if someone leaves only an assertion of a sentence. If we are going to reject their claim outright, we need to know they are wrong. We must have some underlying logical or empirical understanding which shows the claim false or suspect.

From here, we actually get better serious discussions because the topic is lifted away from hierarchal rhetoric ( "PROVE IT") to its substance. When faced with, for example, an erroneous single sentence claim, the discussion moves not into pointless "Prove it" stonewalling, but into descriptions of the error.

Only the intellectually lazy presuppose the rules of discussion you suggest, for they are only interested in the rhetorical victory, rather than understanding the truth.

I don't think the question makes sense. It strikes me, at it's heart, based upon a nihilistic supposition: that someone how our existence doesn't make sense because we are particular type of state amongst the many which could have been.

I would say it's ignorance of ourselves and world to think in such terms-- we might be one possibility amongst many, but given the nature of ourselves and what does exist, these are the only the which would come to exist. In this sense, our absence was never a risk we would have to deal with, despite us being one of many possible states.

"Luck" really only makes sense if you are talking about causality, in the significance of how someone exists in one position rather than another, by circumstance and themselves, such they one way rather than another (e.g. a rich person is who "lucky" to be born into wealth, person belonging to a plentiful environment, etc.).

Conceptual art is more about what is understood to be art than a change in the "mystery" of how anything is art. One of the striking aspects of response to conceptual art is just how "mysterious" it appears to many. Many times an artist will have taken some simple form, a found object, a clear white canvas, given some detailed personal account of their work, only to have half the audience respond with, in all this knowledge, "How can this be art?..." The "mystery" remains no matter how much is known about an artwork.

The "mystical" quality of art taking the soul to a world more profound then the everyday cannot be destroyed by any amount of explanation or knowledge. It operates on a different axis.

Life and statements about it extend beyond whether anyone defends them. Indeed, whether someone choses to defend a statement or not has nothing to do with its truth.

The idea we can measure truth by someone's willingness to defend a statement or engage in conflict is only rehtorical posturing. Even is someone drives by and drops the statement "X is true", it cannot be dismissed.

So called "burden of proof" is is a fallacy .

If we are interested in what is true, an absence of an argument or further argumentation is not enough to dismiss any claim. Who knows what reasoning or evidence might be unsaid? To reject a claim, we must actually know it's wrong . It's never enough to just say: "They didn't argue enough."

The sexist positions displayed in this thread are still harmful. If someone rejects engaging a position they disagree with in argument, it doesn't mean they cannot object to it. Nor does it mean their objection is wrong or unjustified. Fighting is not a measure or truth.

The problem with the Standard and Non-Standard dichotomy is it doesn't address particular questions of motivation and production. It's correct about the relationship of the worker to a job, within the context of them participating in that job. When profit is put before the well-being of a worker, the worker suffers. In the wider context though, that is too the livelihoods of people outside of the treatment of a worker, the concepts break down.

In a world with excess people, that is more people than production jobs, the organisation, production and distribution of resources can no longer be tracked by "need." People without a place in the production system need economic means, they need to be able to access food, housing and recreational activities. In the era of mass production and population, it's inevitable that many people outside the system of production are going to have to use it. So what are the idle masses going to do? How are we going to define what they are interested in doing or the particular products they need?

At this point, the "non-productive jobs" come roaring back. If the idle masses are going to enjoy media/art, society is going to need advertising and marketing to generate interest (else you'll just be making expensive films for empty theatres). Various non-essential service industries will spring up again, offering a place for the idle to spend their time. In any case, the deadlines and pressure come back in because this sort of production and service takes people to make and perform it. Many who are idle by basic production must cease to be, to produce the variety of products and services idle masses like to enjoy.

No doubt the remove of the profit motive takes away certain pressures. People aren't under the constant pump to produce for profit maximisation, but it doesn't remove the pressures to keep "doing." Even if basic survival is guaranteed by an effective combination of basic income and resource distribution system, there still many organisations, services and productions which demand the action of it's workers. Many of the excess people won't need to work to survive, but to one degree or another they will have to, to produce the variety of products and services we enjoy. The work cycle doesn't get eliminated till all production and distribution is automated, so no-one has to do anything to produce, organise or distribute what people want.

There's nothing inconsistent about scientific principles being provisional. If I'm right, then all scientific principles are open to challenge. No scientist makes claims to absolute truths. I think they call it falsifiability. However, until such events that disconfirms a principle it is assumed to be true. The same for PSR. — TheMadFool

Science does not assume that some event is true just becasue it has not been falsified. If I claim there are mermen living at the bottom of some unexplored sea trench, science does not say: "Yes, of course. We haven't explored down there. Those mermen must exist." You would have us asserting unicorns existed just because we haven't explored a certain forest yet, a veritable confusion of imagination (i.e. what someone might think exists in an as yet unobserved area) for the world itself. Us realising something might exist in an unexplored or unobserved area does not mean that it does.

Furthermore, this line of argument makes no sense with respect to the PSR. The PSR is posited as a logical necessity. It's the force we supposedly need to make logical distinctions coherent. It doesn't have an empirical form to confirm or falsify through observation.

If someone is arguing for the PSR, it's a point about a logical reason which does not manifest empirically. It's thought to be a necessary force of order which allows things to be themselves rather than any other thing. By your arguments here, I would say you don't even know what you are trying to support.

You can't. However I can give you evidence for PSR e.g. 6 million jews were killed in ww2 because of Nazi Germany's race philosophy. The WTC was attacked because of radical Islam. Water turns to ice because the temperature falls to or below 0 degree celsius — TheMadFool

All of those are wrong. 6 million Jews were killed because the Nazis killed them; a race philosophy isn't the many actions and people involved in genocide. The WTC wasn't attacked by "radical Islam." It was hijacked planes which flew into the buildings. Radical Islam was just the ideology of the people who did it. Water doesn't turn to ice becasue the water falls below 0 degrees celsius ( Seawater isn't frozen at 0C ). It does so because, at 0C, some instances of water become solid.

and the proposition (which is the PSR, which is not widely believed outside the Rationalist camp)

2. All things have explanations. — andrewk

There is quite a bit of irony in that. Some rationalists (e.g. Spinoza) reject PSR precisely because it amounts to doubting the logical structure of reality.

The rationalists who don't reject PSR are actually thinking like empiricists. To them logical structure (e.g. the meaning of tree) is treated like a contingent state which may or may not be. Supposedly, PSR must be there to make every logical distinction, else something else might be true in place of that logical distinction-- "We must find the (efficient) cause of logical structure. It must be PSR."

To advocate PSR is to reject the logical structure of reality.

3)For every proposition P, if P is true, then there is a sufficient explanation for why P is true." — TheMadFool

Even this one displays the rejection of logical distinction I'm calling out.

If P (the meaning of tree} is true, then there must be a sufficient explanation (what is this? PSR supposedly) which is distinct and allows P (the meaning of tree to be true).

But the very question this asks in the first instance is incoherent. The meaning of tree is a logical truth. It is necessary. There is no instance where the meaning of tree is not the meaning of tree-- it cannot be false.

The supposition of PSR is being used to ground a truth when it isn't required. P is a logical discintion and so is not contingent. There are no other possibilities we need to justify the elimination of with PSR.

No doubt there is a "explanation" or description of these logical truths; I am giving it right now, but it doesn't make use of or have dependence on PSR.

I didn't appeal to PSR at all. My point was logical discintion are given in-themsleves, so need no force of PSR to make them so. The question: "What makes a tree a tree and not a rock?" is just a red-herring. There is no such force. The logical distinction of tree is just itself. To suggest we need PSR acting to make the logical distinction of tree is only to ignore the distinction itself.

PSR is incoherent.

The idea is built out of ignoring logical distinctions. PSR posed as the glue which logically distinguishes one thing from another, which allows us to say "why" a tree is tree rather than a rock (or anything else). Without PSR, supposedly, nothing can make sense.

In this suggestion, though, people are ignoring how things have already been defined as distinct in themselves. We are asking how the tree is defined in the first instance. We've already accounted for the logical distinction which we supposedly have to explain. The meaning and logical distinction are already there in the first instance. PSR is doing no work at all.

The point is it's all a status play. In these arguments, people are using images of the "nature of" a particular group to, to ground a system of status hierarchy and excuse its abuses.

In these sort of arguments, the stereotypes, the so called "explanations" of men and women, there is no conception of the people involved. It's all a seperate image which supposely justifies who someone gets and where they belong in a social hierarchy.

All of which is says nothing about God, the coherency of any notion of God or the existence of any God. I mean are our feelings we might talk about God?

Critical thinking shows us is appeals to emotion do not work because all that is at stake is our feelings, not an existing state or point of logic. All your "argument (if we could call it that; really it's mindless rehtoric)" does is talk about how someone cares about something. Reason, thought and even emotion have a wider scope. One is not arguing or following God just because they "feel" something is true.

One can certainly have critical thinking about emotions; in this discussion, you do not.

She's right. Her point is the finite expresses infinite significance (i.e. "...people are not mere things and therefore can transcend the material." ), which we may choose to recognise or not. In recognising our own freedom, but more importantly, the freedom of others, we move beyond the hedonic/status treadmill, on which we view others (and ourselves) as means to obtain status.

Setting aside this self-interests we may finally empathise, to recognise others as significance of themselves, to recognise authentic love driven by significance of the other, rather than the ego stroking "love" which is really about one's own status or possession.

It's the opposite of the the religious persuasion. For the religious, the infinite significance expressed by the finite world is rejected, in favour of a force which can turn the insignificant finite (e.g. ourselves) into the infinite (e.g. an afterlife, worthwhile action done through God), as if people were nothing more than meaningless specks of matter. With respect to metaphysics, the religious are too busy loving God to love people.

For sure, but notice the question you are leaving out: if there is a particular state in the future, how does it occur?

Can the sun rise tomorrow without a sun that rises? Hume's point is a causal relationships cannot be defined merely in an idea of what will happen. In causality, nothing can be guaranteed because states must do there respective work. A respective state is required, not just an idea in our mind. "Necessity" is just our fantasy our ideas cannot possibility be wrong.

But that leaves me doubting whether the sun might rise tomorrow. In fact, it leaves me doubting everything about the future. — Marchesk

You know why? You've not been looking at the future in the first place. Deep down, you are actually entirely sceptical of it, to a point where you think it depends on your idea about it. Instead of taking the future and the world on it's own terms, you are looking to outside, to your ideas, ideas to define it.

What difference does it make if you doubt everything in the future? Does it somehow mean the future does happen? Has the sun stopped raising because you encountered Humean causation and are now doubting whether you can trust some idea about the future?

Not at all. The world has continued to do, the sun rising many times (and the many predications about it rising being right) many times since Hume gave his account to causality. Absence of necessity simply doesn't pose any problem to future events or our ability to predict or describe them. We do that perfectly world in which we might be wrong.

Your doubt is merely you boxing shadows of your own mine, cast by your misunderstanding that knowledge of the world is defined by getting beyond the possibly of being mistaken.

]One can state that constant conjunction of events is brute. It just so happens to be the case then when A & B then C. But nothing makes that be the case tomorrow. Then again, nothing keeps it from being the case a billion years from now. Humean causation it is.

But then someone else can't accept that events are conjoined for no reason, and that conjunction might not hold at any time in the future. So they propose that there are laws of nature necessitating the conjunction. And those are brute.

So how do we decide between the two? Is it a matter of aesthetics? I'm repelled by radical contingency while you're appalled at some mysterious, non-empirical laws making things happen? — Marchesk

I would point out "laws of nature" are functioning no differently to the "god of gaps." Like when anyone takes an observation of the world then says: "Ahhh, but that doesn't make sense of itself. It must really be God behind the curtain, a miracle of their will."

We accept Humean causation or we fall into retroactive accounts of "what must be" that doesn't take into account evidence and observation-- instead of understanding states interact to cause, we reject them in favour of the miracle working God that is the laws of nature.

You're also mistaken about Humean causation too. There is not "no reason" any given event occur. The presence of particular states which case other is present defines Humean causation. Why did the sun rise? Because states, causes and effects, were such that a rising sun came to be. That's "why" some alternative outcome hasn't occurred.

My point wasn't that people think about others the same way. It was anytime someone is attracted, desires or intentionally acts towards a person, they are thinking about them. The argument from a porn watcher they are only looking at and thinking about a hot image is first order bullshit. They're thinking about someone else and, in some way, how they are significant.

The same applies to watching women in the media. If someone is watching women in the media and, for example, reducing them just to "hot legs," there is a thought about the significance of a woman and how she is valuable-- not for her policies, her skills, her personhood, but simply that she's legs that got someone aroused.

Objectively, to focus only on someones's in the context of a political and public discourse, is to think about them not as competent or incompetent people who have some significance to politics, but to consider they are only their as hot legs for someone to enjoy.

Problems of objectification have nothing to do with whether someone happens to have one particular trait or not. Nor does it have anything to do with which traits are "more a part" of a person than others. It's always to what someone else thinks of a person. The question isn't about whether polices or hot legs are a more "valid" aspect of a person, it about how someone thinks and relates to a person who has policies and hot legs. Do they recognise her a person who makes legitimate (whether it be good or terrible) policy and has a role governing the country? Or is she dismissed as only legs to get someone off? Or in the case of porn, is an actress recognised as a person who is entertaining a viewer or is she seen as only an object the viewer is entitled to?

People are always thinking about other in the context of sex and porn. The activity involves the direction of thoughts, desires and actions towards other people.

To want to have sex with someone is to think of them. Watching someone on screen is to consider an image of their body. In any case, their is the significance of another person on someone's mind, even when someone is thinking "Wow, that's a hot body I'm attracted to."

Desire, attraction and pleasure towards others always involves thinking about someone else. That's what makes it different from just looking at an image (e.g. a picture of a fictional person) or merely involving yourself (e.g. just masturbating on your own, with no tights about anyone in particular).

I'm not saying a handful of people are thinking about others in this context. My point that *everyone* is doing so in this context. It's entailed in thinking, desiring or acting in a way that involves another person-- this doesn't change just because someone insists "I'm only looking at an image" or "It's just about my own pleasure." In either case, said person is still thinking about someone else.

Those both relate to his metaphysics. Hume breaks with (religious) metaphysical tradition to basically deny necessity. He splits the existing world (finite, empirical) from the necessary (infinite, logical, meaning), such that representations of the world no longer show events which are necessary. The world is no longer governed by eternal (and transcendent) rules or traditions. It might do anything, even if its unethical or breaks completely with what humans might expect. We simply can't look at the world in front of us, or one an idea we've thought, and conclude it is what must be going forward.

In terms of transcendent (and religious) metaphysical traditions, Hume is one of the few ultimate atheists in the history of philosophy. Looking at his metaphysics, we might actually call him a 17th century Nietzsche, blowing apart the basis of every transcendent (and religious) tradition before modernists thought it was edgy and cool, though Hume perhaps wasn't completely aware of it.

Systemic oppression isn't about what's "keeping someone down." It's about how a particular group of people is "down" in society, a description boat a relationships of a society to people, an account of our society which starts a a beginning point to approach cases in relation to issues which affect particular people.

The point is not how any particular black family is kept down (in each case, there would be one and a thousand different events which cause that outcome), it's *that the are*, a beginning point which allows us to grasp particular issues and aspects about our society, which we would otherwise miss if were only to talk about some other issue.

So no, I don't need to explain "how" systematic oppression keeps anyone down. You're merely delivering a category error and strawman, confusing a description of our society in relationship to a particular group of people for a casual event or action.

What if the many and major factors keeping poor families poor applies to all races (keeping white families poor too)? If we try to fix statistical disparities but presume the causal factors must pertain to race, we risk missing the genuine causative factors entirely. — VagabondSpectre

Many of the factors keeping families poor apply to all races (e.g. cycles of poverty, poor economic conditions, etc.) and are keeping white families down too. No-one's presuming the causative factor pertains to race. They are describing that a particular race is affected in a way another is not (an analysis of groups rather than individuals).

When people shout out: "Bring down the white supremacy," they aren't talking about a causative factor, but rather calling for an end to a society in which black people are on a lower rung, whatever the cases might be. It saying: "It's important to, in a descriptive sense, recognise racial inequalities that exist in our society (rather than just dismissing them), so they register to us when we are considering how we build and run society.

We risk missing genuine causative factors if we don't do this, for we will consider our social system as separate what amounts to racial inequality-- e.g. we will just say "the US police and justice system are just fighting criminals," rather than recognise particular policies, especially regarding sentencing, play a large role in how black communities are affected and rail inequality.

It's not a question of "blame" though, in the sense that any individual person caused it, but rather one of recognition that all these systematic elements not only constitute "concrete" oppression in racial terms (what's the material difference between pushing black people into their own improvised community, away from opportunities, etc. and just excluding them by law? ) which is ignored in how our society is generally understood.

We can certainly "blame" the system, the symbolic understanding of white people in relation to society and the white people who ignore these issues when thinking about society for not recognising the issues. When someone, for example, dismisses police action as just cops taking on criminals, they ignore this significance about society.

They dismiss the oppression which is occurring just to say there is no problem with relation to our social systems and how black people are affected. It doesn't allow us to register its not just those who want to lynch black people which constitute inequality, but a system which doesn't recognise how it is excluding a particular group in, blindly doing it again and again (e.g. denying black people home ownership, quasi segregation by shutting them out of affluent communities, etc.).

This is a key concern of BLM: a shift away from an understanding of society which just assumes it's not harming back people, which excuses the inequality of black communities as something that somehow defined separately to the systems of our society, to one that views how the are affected within the system of our society.

It's more that they are picking about a significance that's the same across both intergenerational and contemporary forces: that a society is formed in which black people are on a lower social rung. Rather than a question of any particular cause(e.g. poverty, people intentionally excluding them, etc.), it a description about the status of a group within society. The point is not about any particular casual problem, but rather recognising someone is disadvantaged.

In many ways, it's similar to Marxist analysis of economic interactions. Just because someone has a job and is being paid, it doesn't mean an absence of disadvantage or power. Or just because a person chooses to commit crimes as answer economic problems, it doesn't mean they are not subject to capitalist oppression.

Or in other words:

All members of a given group are either oppressed or oppressors under this view. Any statistical disparities must be the result of prejudice from the dominant group. — VagabondSpectre

It is the very presence disparity which amounts to "oppression" and the presence of a "dominant group." Neither are second order events caused by prejudice. They are the significance of the system/action/ prejudice itself.

180 Proof was here briefly (they're still in the members list), sometime ago, only made a few comments though. I think it was before PF collapsed. Perhaps we were just not interesting enough at the time (or even now). We did/do have less variety than PF did.

The thing about causality is it is really outside observation and NOT about prediction at all. We can see this in how a caused event is indistinguishable from a random one in observation.

Consider an instance where letters appearing on a screen is merely a coincidence with pressing keys on a keyboard. It produces the same outcome as if pressing the keys caused the letters to appear.

The difference between causality and coincidence is instead defined in logic, between objects in the context of possible world. To say something is a cause, rather than just coincidence, is specify a logical significance of responsibility of an event.

In the case of typing on a keyboard, to say we cause letters to appear on the screen, is to specify our existence is responsible for the existence of those letters on screen. We are distinguishing if we did not type, those letters would not come to be. Rather than just about what happened, causality itself is about what didn't happen and how that relates to states.

This is why we can only test theories about causal states through falsification. Merely taking any present state following another can't distinguish between causality and coincidence.

I don't think so. The system seems to be treating the it-in-itself not as a ground in the sense of PSR, but rather as just as something, beyond representation, which is necessarily given with Will and phenomena. A sort of metaphysic of immanent presence, where the point is not how the thing-in-itself justified everything else (i.e.PSR), but that's mutually present with anything.

If the thing-in-itself is a necessary side of the reality coin (Will being the other), how does it make sense to speak of the thing-in-itself like a realm which has no significance in relation to Will or phenomena?

While we may not be able to say exactly what the thing-in-itself is, we do know it is a necessary presence given with Will and phenomena. Though not Will or phenomena, we know the thing-in-itself is given with any instance of Will and phenomena.

Timeline's argument seems to be going the other way to me. Not that Will is the thing-in-itself per se, but rather that Will is mediated through the thing-in-itself.

Something like: without the thing-in-itself, there would be no Will, without​ Will, there would be no phenomena. As such, any instance of phenomena and the Will may be considered of the thing-in-itself, as the thing-in-itself is ground of both (in the sense of "with"; neither Will nor phenomena can be given without the thing-in-itself).

I think the point is the guide of the intellect is also the Will itself in action. Intellect cannot guide the Will, that is define a direction of the Will, because intellect is already movement of the Will.

That's a different causal relationship. If we are talking about the letters which appear on the screen as someone types, we aren't just talking about an appearance of any text. We are asking if specific writing will occur.

So, for example, will the writing of Pheumenon's post still appear if he doesn't touch the keyboard? Or does the appearance of those specific letters depend upon him pressing the keys?

Simple question: what do you think happens when Pneumenon doesn't press the keys? Will letters still appear on the screen? The question of causality depends on this relationship. Does the world depend on Pneumenon pressing keys to have words appear on the screen?

I like to think about it is: who or what is doing the causing? Is it just "fundamental particles?"

Nothing in life is merely fundamental particles in action. Such particles are always part of something or interacting with other states which are more than just elementary particles. Causal relationships don't happen without this wider significance. It's the difference between the sun causing a temperature on Earth and someone opening their hand relating in an object falling.

"Just fundamental particles" is just a failed description, a reduction of everything in casualty to one idea, for use as an easy shorthand (usually to a political purpose). Another in a long line of human heuristics that mistake metaphysical significance for describing what's going on in the world-- "God (fundamental particles) did it."

To the dogmatic religious believer, no doubt. In cultural and human terms, absolutely not. It means justice and worth of life are given without following one particular tradition. It means a culture where people aren't killed for not following a particular religious belief. It means an understanding of the self and fulfilment not tied making others hold your specific religious beliefs.

Contentless? Only to religious zealots for whom their religion is the only content that counts.

To repudiate the idea justice, worth or an afterlife is dependent upon following one belief, culture or deity. Not contentless, just a rejection of most religion's hierarchal self-absorption.