Is it worth mentioning that the mind conundrum (Levine, Chalmers) does not derive a contradiction?

Physicalism (or maybe speculative realism or whatever) and qualia do not contradict, rather neither entails the other, hence the explanatory gap.

More like a sort of partition than a paradox as such, and sometimes a source of substance dualism. The gap is also related to solipsism.

Simply situating qualia (or whatever aspects of mind) as basic/fundamental/irreducible does not explain mind, but rather avoids explanation, thereby disregarding some things we already do know about mind.

The use of "value" in the first statement is extremely ambiguous because it is not related (grounded) to anything. — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? And yet you understood it fine? And well enough that you could, say, go look up annual carbon footprints and such...? (I could start listing examples ... maybe another day)

, in the interest of avoiding equivocation and ambiguity, can you differentiate the uses of the word "value" in these two sentences? :)

"We calculated the value of the national carbon footprint for last year to so-and-so."

"I greatly value a cold beer on a hot summer night."

I'm guessing the use here is like the former. Contextual reading matters.

if time always existed in some way, shape or form sort-a-speak, then [...] — 3017amen

Isn't that already presupposed in your sentence (regardless of whatever span of time)?
Also, there couldn't have been a time when there wasn't anything, since there would at least have been time (check B Rundle).
Anyway, I'm guessing that whatever spans of time all lead to apparent absurdities because of our intuitive sense of sufficient reason which seems violated. As pointed out by @Banno (I think), J W N Watkins showed that "all-and-some" statements, of which the principle of sufficient reason is one, are both nonfalsifiable and nonverifiable. Might not be unconditionally applicable. In some post somewhere (that I couldn't quickly find), @180 Proof took the consequence of this (without any contradictions).

Don't think so, Jorn. — Frank Apisa

Are you telling me what I was on about with my own comment...? Odd.

what determines the allowed values for such factors? — Daniel

Who knows; not exactly a trivial question, certainly not something that can be answered in a couple comments on an Internet forum. :)
We're not omniscient, nor do we have exhaustive self-knowledge (which are questionable notions in the first place).
Some science fiction writers tell stories about uploading a person's mind to digital devices, yet, such particular consciousness and experiences may have inherent dependencies on the (biological) body, who knows.

This line of thinking reads (to me) a bit like the perceiver was somehow apart from it all.
Self and other aren't identical, yet both are parts of the same inter-mingling world.

We can escape the evil dictionary by pointing at what we're on about.
In some cases anyway, like, say, there aren't any running elephants in the dictionary, but we can show evidence of a stampede.
I guess this would then be a use of "running elephants".
Exemplification teaches use.
In logic/mathematics, axioms are definitions, though; they do have some use.
Then what about non-axiomatic cases when there isn't anything to point at?
For unicorns we can at least point at childrens books and cartoons, which give us uses of the word "unicorn".
Is something like this always the case, though?

You're now confusing quantity, predication, measurement, property, ...

To me, your use of [ standard notation that does away with confusion ] is what is making a "wicked mess". — Metaphysician Undercover

Confuzzlement has roughly gotten worse with each comment. :confused: Start over?

There is no such thing as quantity, without it being a quantity of something ... — Metaphysician Undercover

... or of anything/whatever, hence the utility of a calculator.
Say, a set of my left ear, that soccer match, the Moon, and the experience of vanilla taste I had the other day when eating icecream, comes to 4 in quantity; kind of trivial to count.

Quantity is a predication. There is no such thing as quantity, without it being a quantity of something. I think that's half the problem here, some people seem to think that quantity is a thing in itself, rather than a predication, as all measurements are. That way, instead of looking at what "2+2" really represents, they just assume that it represents "a quantity". — Metaphysician Undercover

You're now confusing quantity, predication, measurement, ...
Say, a set of you and I comes to a quantity of 2, $|\{you, I\}| = 2$; kind of trivial to count.
Say, where $\phi$ = is human (predicate), it so happens that $\phi(you) \wedge \phi(I)$, I assume.
You're making a wicked mess of things. :confused:

, I'm vaguely familiar.
Hoffman is just re-casting age-old idealism (mental monism) in the image of a couple odd theses of his.
I suppose, if you really think this holds water, then you could put together a concise and short argument in a new opening post. (y)
Keep in mind, if Hoffman wants to raise this stuff to science, then the requisite falsifiability criteria and such applies.
(Can't promise ahead that I can participate much personally, but it seems a relevant topic for the forum.)

I don't see how that's relevant. Since you and I are both human beings, we're interchangeable when someone says bring me a human being. It really means very little. — Metaphysician Undercover

Confusing quantity and predication (as well)? Try differentiating, see what happens.

, regarding Davies, I meant a tad over the top, immoderate, a bit much, on occasion (but certainly not throughout).
Regarding the Information thing (paraphrasing Gamez), by wholesale I meant thorough all-embracing hypostatization, but that wasn't about Davies.
Everyone already know these pitfalls, but, hey, I'm all for speculation as much as the next person over. (y) (not that it's about me)

You zoomed in on the wrong word, . :)

Not on the question "Are there any gods or are there no gods." — Frank Apisa

And hence, by your line of thinking, neither on ...

The Matrix (or Bostrom's thing perhaps)
Solipsism
Dream thought experiments
Intangible hobs that can control the weather
Applewhite's trans-dimensional super-beings
...

But that's fine I guess.

But for those who think it's a hoax, we should be worried about them, because they could be asymptomatic carriers. — Gnomon

This.... — Anaxagoras

(y)


Conspiracy theorist died of coronavirus after trying to catch it at Covid party to prove it was a hoax (Jimmy McCloskey, Metro News, Jul 2020)

Darwin Award material?

The different expressions represent different things with the same value. "2+2" says something different, it represents something different from what "4" represents, though we say that the two distinct things represented have the same value within the arithmetical system.' I don't really know what you would mean by "different expressions of the same value". That sounds like you are assigning value to the expressions themselves, rather than to the things represented by the expressions. — Metaphysician Undercover

:D

Since 4=2+2, 2+2 and 4 are interchangeable.
Doesn't matter if you write y=3x+2+2 or y=3x+4, though the latter is a bit shorter.
Which, by the way, google plots like so:



Hopefully it's not too much for you; from memory, it's something like late elementary school / early high-school material.

Paul Davies goes a wee bit overboard on occasion, . Jus'sayin. :)
Besides, whereas the Information thing (capitalized) is interesting enough to pursue as such of course, to paraphrase Gamez, it's just another sample "all-embracing monstrous metaphysical vision" when taken wholesale.

Nothingness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Over 12,000 words. Much ado about nutn' it would seem.

Nothing (Wikipedia)
Just under 2,000 words.

An Essay on Nothing (Sophia Gottfried, Philosophy Now)
Just over 1,000 words. You'd think there wasn't much to talk about, but I guess there is.

, in analogy, driving ≠ the car, walking ≠ the legs, ...
Sure, the car and the legs are involved, but there's a category difference.
Mentioned observations (coherently) suggest similar categories where mind and body are concerned.

So it's everything all the way down? — Punshhh

There's something other than everything...? Odd. :)

No known phenomenon has ever been best explained by the gods or supernatural magic — could literally be raised to explain anything and therefore explains nothing, not itself explicable, cannot readily be exemplified (verified), does not derive anything differentiable in particular, has consistently been falsified in the past — literally a non-explanation.
The gods are similar to things we know aren't real and unlike things we know are real; no gods are unambiguously detected by unbiased observers; gods take idealized forms that the person can conceive and hold attitudes and values the believer projects into them.
Every posited god that has things of utmost importance to tell all mankind (perhaps like worship, perhaps the importance of whichever religious scriptures) has failed (not almighty) or is deceptive (not omnibenevolent).
But, hey, ...

Do we always strand on "the unknowable", "the ineffable" or some such (by way of Sagan's procedure)?

:D

There is no question that 2+2=4 — Metaphysician Undercover

"2+2=4" ⇔ 2+2=4

∎

, I'm going by observations, the rest are just suggestions.
Without the head (or body), no mind occurs, mind seems localized to head/body.
Yet, mind is not (identical to) the head, which you still have while unconsciousness; say, mind isn't like an object with mass and width and height.
So, perhaps mind is something body can sometimes do, if you will, and you (as a person) are the synthesis, what you do and what you do it with?
This, at least, is fairly consistent/coherent/cogent, and I wouldn't conflate spatial objects and temporal processes (mentioned category mistake).
"Some lose their mind, without losing their head." ;)

Maybe, ?

Observations suggest that your head is more clearly spatial, and mind more clearly temporal.

• spatial object-like body: left to right, top to bottom, front to back, locatable, inertial/movable (conservation)
• temporal process-like mind: comes and goes, starts and ends, interruptible, occurs, un/consciousness, anesthetic, dementia, coma (obviously there aren't anyone describing what unconsciousness is like)

Objectifying mind could be a category mistake.
(None of which suggests "supernatural magic" or whatever of course.)

Of course not. — Frank Apisa

What about, say, The Matrix (or Bostrom's thing perhaps)? Solipsism? Dream thought experiments? Intangible hobs that can control the weather? (Heck, Applewhite's trans-dimensional super-beings?)

With the garage dragon, Sagan alluded to a simple back-pedal-procedure by which existential claims can be (counter)evidence-immunized. Seems rife in religious apologetics, reducing their epistemics to being on par with the above, despite their continuous insistence on existential claims.

It takes ... something to unabatedly continue declaring such claims true. (And thoroughly declaring agnosticism in such matters doesn't seem quite right.)

Howcome, ?
If someone wants to talk, only to refuse to tell about what, then what are they wanting to talk about anyway? Be it Shiva, "the greatest", The Triune, the universe (or a supposed sentient creator thereof), their feelings, that over there (showing), "the great unknown" (or "unknowable" perhaps), ghosts of imagined entities, ..., whatever.
Might as well predicate sufficiently, or all bets are off, everyone might head off in whatever directions. Before someone starts talking about their gods, these discussions don't come up in the first place.
Granted, sometimes the subject is contextually implicit in the situation, like during a prayer session over at the mosque.
(Incidentally, a Shaivist mystic once scorned me for using the word "God" when referring to the Biblical Yahweh; so I learned to be a bit more respectful with word-use.)
My suggestion earlier round up three possibilities: define, show, go by common usage (coinciding somewhat/partially with your comment). Maybe there are others?

Is this comment directed to the word "define" or to the word "god?" It started as though to the former...but ended as though to the latter — Frank Apisa

Both. And...

dictionaries truly do not "define" words (my sense of "define") but rather tell us how the word is most often used — Frank Apisa

I'm interested in what you mean by "define." — Frank Apisa

I suppose, defining x could be predicating x that x is (uniquely) identifiable?
Otherwise, the only option may be to show x (which would be existential proof at least).
In the case here, x is used in so many ways as to become contradictory, unidentifiable, unshowable or just anything/whatever.

The modern day observation from Einstein I could not agree more with. He correctly concluded that the atheist's "fanaticism"was alive and well. Again just something worth noting and/or being aware of... . — 3017amen

Einstein's sentiment was roughly that a- and theist fanatics alike weren't his cup of tea.
(And, if anything, he personally preferred the label religious nonbeliever or agnostic about himself, possibly aligned with Spinoza, and with a poetic-mystic reverence for a variety of religious texts.)
Hijacking cherry-picked quotes is misrepresenting him for the occasion, moreso if you're dishing out accusations left-and-right here.

Or maybe one can simply refrain from spitting on others. — NOS4A2

Won't do. Nothing new.

public health officials need to weigh the pros and cons — NOS4A2

Sure, we already know, including your re-response to Banno. And, say, it's not like some to whom wearing such head gear would be detrimental are both being forced to go out in public and wear detrimental head gear, rather protecting them is of importance here. Get real. Don't be such a childish contrarian. :) Why wouldn't you want to protect when it's so simple and cheap, and we've already had people preventably suffering and dying?

Incidentally, we just a worker come by, that respectfully/considerately was wearing head gear (per public recommendation). (y)

So, ? Don't stop there, as if that's the be-all-end-all conclusion.

As posted by :

• There is no shortage of mechanistic evidence and observational studies that affirmed the benefits of wearing a face mask in the community, which should drive urgent public health policy while we await the results of further research. — Universal masking for COVID-19: evidence, ethics and recommendations

Inconsistent messages from the experts and policy makers about the rationale for the recommendation has led to confusion in the community. — Universal masking for COVID-19: evidence, ethics and recommendations

Notice the ethics part as well.

, I wouldn't call 180 Proof clueless.

not very friendly — Athena

I'll just suggest that 3017amen's passive-aggressive comments and general tone sets an attitude in the thread.

_{(Then there's tactically shifting the burden of proof; implicitly (i.e. in a hidden fashion) challenge others with the diallelus (or similar, other philosophical conundrums may also take the role), then go "Aha, God"; go for lengthy complex (occasionally obscure) metaphysicalizing, then go "Aha" when others don't take the bait; a bit of intimidation and loaded/exaggerated/condescending verbiage here and there can also help to give an impression of a secure position; ...)}

Sometimes commenters call for angry responses. *shrug* Nothing new I guess, just check some of the threads touching on contemporary politics for example. :)

"mathematical object", or "Platonic ideal" — Metaphysician Undercover

Abstract quantities (is the phrase)

You guys still chatting about whether 2 + 2 = 4 or 2 + 2 ≠ 4 ? :D
Maybe putting it to a vote could be interesting — in The Lounge, though.
Typing 2+2 and 4-2 into a pocket calculator could be an accompanying exercise.

Not entirely. God can be known as a person. That is not total knowledge of God, it is an aspect of God that God wants the individual to understand. — EnPassant

Not quite what I meant, apologies for being unclear. You're apparently referring to whatever you (claim to) know, i.e. epistemic, whereas (I think) was referring to the truth of the matter, so more ontological. In other words, by your claim, the mere existence of this God of yours is entirely independent of any/all of us and our beliefs, interpretations, daily lives, etc, right? Whatever we may or may not believe has no bearing on the mere existence of your God (according to your claim)?

I know a few persons, presumably you do as well. You also claim to know a person you label God. Would this be Knowing by Acquaintance?
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article also lists Knowledge-That, Knowledge-Wh, and Knowing-How, by the way.
Offhand, I'll venture to guess "no", at least not in any way that lends itself to answer ...

how might we differentiate whether (fictional) characters, (imaginary) beings, (hallucinatory) claims are real or not?

... like most other acquaintance. (Also check here and here.)

This was a question, not an assertion, or an assumption. Care to answer it? — Punshhh

Yet there is an assertion implicit in the question, "God", which I've inquired about for a bit now.

Here are some more word tricks, FYI:
• Have you stopped beating your spouse? (either way suggests you've been beating them)
• Is the king of France bald or not? (either way suggests there is a king of France)
Implicit presuppositional failure. ⚡

(You could at least have posted "God is the all-creator, hence the answer to my question follows.") ;)

Anyways, what exactly are you asking, then, if not about "life, the universe, and everything"? (I'll assume responding "my parents" will trigger a number of other questions, diallelus style.)

You miss a relevant point — it's not about whatever I don't know, it's about the claims of those that pretend they do, without which a good lot such discussions wouldn't have come about in the first place.

how might we differentiate whether (fictional) characters, (imaginary) beings, (hallucinatory) claims are real or not?

"Evidence for" is subjective. It is how we interpret the evidence. — EnPassant

Yet the claim is that this God of yours exists entirely independently of us and our interpretations, yes?
Incidentally, also mentioned something about this (reality and such).
Our interpretations are the adjustable parts.
Mentioned something about how we typically differentiate a few times by now. How might we differentiate?

If you cannot differentiate whether, say, Shiva or Yahweh are fictional or real, then why insist (and preach indoctrinate proselytize) that they're real in the first place? (If pressed, I might take this a step further, and say that some such activities converge on fraud or deception.)

Regarding the evidence, how does one distinguish evidence from that which is not evidence? — Punshhh

Evidence could be anything. You show, we take a look. (And we may also try to differentiate.)

As I said to Enai De A Lucil, the fact that I exist is evidence of the existence of God. — Punshhh

Evidence of ... what exactly?

How could I possibly exist without God bringing me into existence? — Punshhh

http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/lo/Logical_fallacy___Lack_of_imagination

(y)

The CDC (US) concurs.

About Cloth Face Coverings
CDC; June 28, 2020

Poll: Who always wears a mask in public—and who doesn't?
National Geographic; July 10, 2020

This is the US only.

Seems the most pronounced differences correlate with political sentiments.
The Community part could be explained by "density" of people.

As an aside, my personal take is that it's respectful/considerate to wear such head gear in public to protect others (well, depending on the situation I suppose). After all, people have preventably suffered and died; it's not like it's difficult or detrimental to do or anything. Actually, it's moral.