Were you present at old PF?

Well you would have to make that argument then. So far you have only told me about your own map of the territory. And that turned out to have separated togethernesses. — apokrisis

Well, I will make an argument once you explain to me how you go from the vagueness in the map to vagueness in the territory. I'm looking to see how you derive your ontological vagueness at this point. We've arrived at there being some vagueness in the map. How do we go from this epistemological vagueness to the ontological one? This may be a more productive route given the way none of the other routes have worked with you so far.

As for the argument you want - I've already made the argument you're looking for, namely that vagueness in the territory is contradictory and impossible. That is because any sort of potentiality always presupposes an actuality which is prior to it. You've gone over this with MU in this thread, and with me in another older thread a few weeks ago. There cannot be any primordial chaos, infinite potential, vagueness and the like - some minimal degree of order and act are always required.

Now, what problems do you have with that argument (and with how it was expressed starting with Aristotle)? By means of what would an infinite potential, in the absence of act, actualise itself? In concrete terms, why would there be any sort of fluctuation in the first place if there is a necessarily inert vagueness in the first place? If there is a fluctuation it seems to me like there is some act already. A fluctuation isn't a potency. And please don't answer me with "Why wouldn't there be a fluctuation, what's there to stop it?" -_- . Because if you answer that way, I will ask why a fluctuation and not something else, what's there to stop it?

To clarify this, as I said before, I hold no issue with you if you want to tell us that vagueness exists at the level of the model or the map. But I do have an issue if you want to claim that vagueness is ontological, and exists at the level of the terrain, not just of the map.

The bit where I said "I don't think [transsexualism] has anything to do with metaphysics" — Michael

Right transsexualism itself isn't metaphysical - I never meant to imply that. So no, it doesn't have anything to do with metaphysics. When something - in this case the sexual object - is treated as a metaphysical object, that doesn't have to do with metaphysics either. We're not discussing metaphysics when we say that.

Furthermore, you say that the nature of the self is metaphysics - which is precisely what transsexualism is in the end. It treats one's sex as a metaphysical object, exactly as I've described it - thus it can divorce physical sex from the real and desired sex which is the metaphysical. This operation can only be performed when the object of desire is transferred from the empirical to the metaphysical.

Someone born with the male genitals and wanting to be a woman isn't [metaphysical] — Michael

This is what you said that underlines your misunderstanding. I never implied that someone born with male genitals and wanting to be a woman is metaphysical itself.

Transsexualism is a form of pathology, much like some forms of homosexuality are, which emerge due to the intensification of desire which leads to treating either the object or the rival as metaphysical. Insofar as it rejects the empirical for the metaphysical it treats the real as illusory and the illusory as real. In this sense, it is a self-rejection, as LW said.

"I think the phenomenon of transsexualism involves such a degree of infatuation of desire with its object that the object is transformed from an empirical one into a metaphysical one. This leads to a metaphysical vision of the other sex."

How am I supposed to understand this? — Michael

Well how do you understand it? Translate the corresponding words.

"I think the phenomenon of transsexualism (ie, what the transexual experiences) involves such a degree of infatuation of desire with its object (ie, the object is the opposite sex) that the object is transformed from an empirical one into a metaphysical one (ie, the other sex becomes a source of metaphysical fascination - it becomes a metaphysical object that can then be desired). This leads to a metaphysical vision of the other sex."

What's unclear there?

Someone born with the male genitals and wanting to be a woman isn't. — Michael

Oh and I said it is? :s You're having a hard time today it seems to me.

I don't think it has anything to do with metaphysics. — Michael

Not everybody equates their self with their body. — Michael

So that's not metaphysics? :-} :-d

Which is self-rejection... — Lone Wolf

I think the phenomenon of transexualism involves such a degree of infatuation of desire with its object that the object is transformed from an empirical one into a metaphysical one. This leads to a metaphysical vision of the other sex, where they are perceived to have self-sufficiency and full being, while you (and your sex) experience, by comparison, a profound lack. Of course, it is the very impossibility of being another sex which makes this desirable - only in this way can desire avoid being disappointed in obtaining its object - only in this way is desire capable to fool itself.

I'm stifling a yawn. How could your replies become so anodyne so fast?
2 — apokrisis

Oh? So my remarks regarding your philosophy's incapacity to reach the level of ontology isn't something you disagree with? Fine. I never knew you had such small ambitions ;)

It is about logic - reasoning itself. — apokrisis

Mathematics, logic, and reasoning are not the same thing. Mathematics is a set of tools, based on logic and intuition that allows us to create, in some limited circumstances and for special purposes, models of the world. Logic is a different branch of study than mathematics.

Reasoning itself is much larger than logic and mathematics and includes elements of noetic intuition (as per Aristotle and Plato).

So it is mathematical in that maths is our most rigorous language of reasoning. — apokrisis

No, mathematics is just a tool of reasoning. It's not the only tool in our toolbox, and probably not even the most important one. What Spinoza called intuition, what Plato called noesis, what Einstein referred to as imagination - that is more important than mathematics, since it is what sees into the very first principles themselves.

And then it is ontology, because equipped with the right reasoning, the right logical framework, we can hope to make the best sense of what reality actually is. — apokrisis

No it isn't ontology, that's a non-sequitur. At most, it would provide you with tools that would enable you to do ontology. However, "right reasoning" is much more than the correct logical framework.

This understanding of what is required just confirms you are a naive realist. Peirce established the proper pragmatic basis for a logico-scientific understanding of reality. — apokrisis

Yeah, I wasn't aware that Peirce is a god who cannot be challenged. Please. Put up some argument, don't tell me the historical antecedents of your view.

So the map isn't the territory of course. But more than that, it doesn't aim to re-present the world. It aims to ignore that world as much as possible. So the map comes to be a map of our own interpretive interests as much as a map of the external reality. It is a picture of ourselves as much as it is a picture of the thing in itself. — apokrisis

Exactly. That's why you cannot use the map to do ontology. You must go back to the things themselves.

So the Peircean argument is internalist. All we can know of the world is the beliefs that we are prepared to hold about it, the beliefs we are prepared to act by. — apokrisis

Wait, how do you jump from the nature of maps and models, to how we can know about the world? Do you mean that we can only know about the world through models? And if so, what justifies that?

This doesn't deny the thing in itself. But it should also alert us to the fact we don't really care about the world in some disembodied fashion. The maps we make are as much a self-portrait - indeed, the very act of creating that "interpretive self" - as they are a re-presentation of the world as it might be said to be in terms of its own set of interests. — apokrisis

Okay, but as you can see this cuts your own branch. If this is the case, then you cannot be doing ontology with your philosophy. You can at most be creating narratives that are useful for particular purposes, such as advancing scientific discoveries, while, as per your own statements, leaving you blind to others, which don't interest you. In this case ontology, theology, etc.

Nice try at boxing me in. But that pragmatic intersection between theory and practice is exactly what I have a good meta-theoretic understanding of. — apokrisis

Yeah, you understand it at a meta-THEORETIC level ;)

So your version is that we have two lines that are touching but separate? Seems a little self-contradictory given the definition of a line is that it has zero width. — apokrisis

Well if you want your vagueness to apply only to mathematics and epistemology that is fine, but I thought we were talking about ontology. I've already told you that in mathematics space is infinitely divisible, hence where the paradoxes arise from. You were asked in the conversation with MU to provide an example of vagueness which showed that vagueness was ontological, not epistemological. In other words, that it belonged to the terrain, not to the map that we have.

I'm an engineer (by degree anyway), and so it's been very well-ingrained into my blood to be sceptical of mathematics and mathematical models and to be aware that they are very limited in describing reality. You seem - coming from a background of theoretical physics/science - not to have this awareness of the limitations of mathematical modelling. In engineering you are trained to think about the result you obtain through maths, and if it doesn't make sense, you are to reject it - that should be the impulse. You should definitely not accept an absurdity just because it emerges from the calculations. And by no means should you ontologise mathematics. Engineering is very concrete in that sense - it always goes back to reality, and discards mathematical models when they're no longer useful. Physics seems - in its version as theoretical physics - to, unfortunately, have the opposite tendency.

For example, some of the equations we use in hydraulics break in certain conditions. That means that they give results which involve infinity. We know that in reality there is no infinity, what happens is that a chaotic pattern of flow emerges that can no longer be handled by the equations. So, in that case, we don't ontologise the mathematical results and claim that there is some vagueness or anything of that sort. Our mathematical models simply cannot predict accurately beyond that point. But that's a fault with the models not with reality.

It seems that you have ontologised mathematical models of the Universe and have developed your entire philosophy out of that. The problem is of course that you've just confused the map with the territory.

I'll look at the resource you provided, it will be interesting, but mathematics is not reality or ontology. You are either looking to discuss a mathematical paradox, or you are looking for the underlying reality involving real - not mathematical - space.

I am with Zizek on this heart and soul: — TimeLine

The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other

Desire is always fascinated with the obstacle, the rival. What is hardest to attain, what rejects it the most, what humiliates it, that is its attraction. The beloved which insults - the true mirage of desire, the imagination of the contradiction of rejection and acceptance.

Indeed, desire cannot love except the lover who is unattainable. Desire fails in love not because of any failure of the world, but because it sets the rules of the game itself, and then forgets its own role. It is its pursuit of the impossible that guarantees it will fail. And so it goes on through repetition - the whole scenario repeats through its whole life - in the past it was another man, now it's yet another, and so on - its failure is guaranteed, because what it seeks is precisely what is unattainable, and once the unattainable has been attained it can no longer be sought and is thus worthless and must be sacrificed. Onto the next. And on it goes repeating itself, unto its own destruction. From the outside, it looks like a death instinct - indeed, there can be no other end to desire except death. And from the inside it's about pleasure. It's always waiting for the right man, waiting for the right baby, waiting for the right job - on it goes projecting its sought-after self-sufficiency, its narcissism unto each and every object - the harder it is to attain, the more appealing it looks, the greater pleasure it holds in store, the more it must be pursued, the more violent and unrelenting it is justified to be in its pursuit... The attachment to the impossibility to attain is required in order for desire to remain blind to its own vanity and emptiness.

You can add people to PMs. — Michael

Oh? And they will see past messages?

Haha, not as far as I know. — Baden

Getting back to you on this @Baden. If according to you no one can see PMs, what happens if someone sends a very nasty PM to me, for example? I can't ask you to do anything about it, because there is no proof that I can offer. Even a screenshot of the message can very easily be faked with photoshop. So what would happen in that scenario?

Don't worry, I suppose if this guy posts here, his posts would be deleted as unscientific:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson

And he's a Nobel Prize winner. But believing in ESP is apparently pseudo-science for materialists :P

No, you're right of course. I've just signed up for my doctorate. I should be able to post something on this forum in about 5 years. I'm so excited - cant wait! — MikeL

Yeah, that piece of paper makes a big difference in some people's minds :-}

Haha, not as far as I know. Thanks for the idea though. I'm pretty sure it's impossible not to mention unethical. — Baden

It's not impossible for sure. I know it can be done. The information is stored in a database, whoever has access to it could, in theory, read it. As for unethical, it would obviously be.

Release the private messages! — Sapientia

>:)

You can repost it here if you like as long as it is exactly as it was when removed. (We also have a version). — Baden

Can moderators or administrators see our PMs?

You said there was a boundary in-between. — apokrisis

No, I never said there was anything in-between. There is no in-between. There is no empty space between the white line and the green line, the two are touching.

Furthermore you keep changing between transition, boundary, etc. and the discourse is becoming confusing. They are not the same. The boundary of the green surface is a green line. The boundary of the white surface is a white line. The two boundaries are touching. The transition is seen simply by the eye jumping from one line to the other.

It all seems to make some weird kind of sense as an example of the PNC failing to apply. — apokrisis

The PNC does not fail to apply. You have not shown this at all. All that you have demonstrated is that you have a wrong conception of the problem. You conceive of a real problem as a mathematical problem, but the two aren't the same.

You mean there is A nothing in-between the white line and the green line — apokrisis

No, I mean there is nothing between them, exactly as it sounds. There is no line between them.

Ah. I see. The problem is now that the maths is "approximate". And when the reason for that is pointed out - the logical vagueness where the PNC fails - you missed the point. — apokrisis

No, that is exactly the problem. That you confuse the math with reality - the map with the territory - and then go backwards from the infinite divisibility of mathematical space and postulate a necessary vagueness in real space. The vagueness only exists in the map, not in the territory. You have been fooled by the map and are unable to see its limitations.

It is somehow a third line inbetween that executes "a transition" — apokrisis

No. I denied that there is any in-between. A transition is a process - your eye goes from green line to white line. It's not a thing. There is NOTHING between the white line and the green line. What have I been telling you for the whole time? Are you so heavy headed that you cannot read a simple sentence?

You are thinking mathematically, but I'm telling you how things are in reality. Mathematics is just an approximation, that's why you can infinitely divide in mathematics, but obviously can't do that in reality.

So now you are saying the boundary is both not a thing and also a thing. — apokrisis

Where did I say that?

That's why the PNC fails to apply. — apokrisis

No, that doesn't mean PNC fails to apply. It only means that the boundary cannot have the property of color because it is not a thing, and therefore such a property cannot apply to it. But the PNC still applies - the boundary is a boundary and not - not a boundary.

You are just playing with words. The talk here is of the boundary that marks the position where the transition happens. It's a well traversed debate in the philosophy of maths. — apokrisis

There is no boundary as a thing. You've done nothing to show that there is such a boundary.

Sure, the Apeiron would absorb all differences of any category. But the categories that matter at a metaphysical level are all the product of dialectical reasoning. They are dichotomies. — apokrisis

Oh, so how are these different dichotomies related one to another? And why is it that this vagueness apparently contains unrelated dichotomies inside of it?

I'll just say I thought you were smarter than this. Looks like you can't in fact rise above glibness. At least MU is passionate about ideas. You don't sound like you believe your own argument for a minute. — apokrisis

:-} Next time try a different strategy.

I'm trying to root out your emotional investment in the word "God." — t0m

Some have an emotional investment in the word "God" and others have an emotional investment in the word "No God".

And Sam Harris. — Baden

Yes, that's true. Although Sam Harris did have a few fans such as Emptyheady or right now praxis. I think he's the most open-minded out of the four big atheists - Hitchens, Dawkins and Dennett being the other three, who are much less open-minded than Harris.

Which is very weird because Harris is actually a philosopher by profession - so it's strange he's viewed as he is.

I think him and Rand may have such a reputation because they don't really engage with the philosophical tradition that much. Rand probably has no clue about much of it, but Harris, given he's a philosophy graduate, I would expect him to have read a few of the big names in philosophy.

I will look for them later as I'm going to exercise now. One of them was an interview where Musk discussed books that influenced him, and I remember that Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead was one of the titles. However from memory his biggest influence was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well read, he read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer too.

The other source was a recent article saying that him and his girlfriend (ex?) Amber both share an interest in Ayn Rand.

I think Musk is much like one of my cousins. The type of guy who superficially knows a lot of things and is up to date with the latest trends in tech, etc.

From what I know about him, I think his character isn't very great. I always remember the scene with Peter Thiel when he crashed his new Mercedes car while trying to impress Thiel. This was back in the Paypal and X. com days. I've always looked at it as Thiel being the more level-headed one and detailed person, while Musk being the brash but more daring of the two.

It always striked me as peculiar the amount of hatred Ayn Rand got on PF and TPF - it seems to be a peculiarity of this community for some reason, that all of us hate Rand.

I'm less adamant about getting you guys to understand the inherent suspiciousness of unanimity as much as I was to illustrate that there are communities of people who are not necessarily dumb who highly value Ayn Rand's thought. This isn't to say that Ayn Rand is a great philosopher, just that you cannot ignore her just by hand waving.

I, by the way, do not agree with Rand's philosophy at all for the most part (but I should specify that I have never studied it in great depth).

Now this one is more interesting:

Your justification for this beginning point is nothing more than the contradiction, that .99999 repeating is the same as 1

1/9 = 0.1111111111 repeating, agreed?

So if I multiply both sides by 9, I get 9/9 = 0.99999999 correct? So how are the two not equal? I think the idea behind this is rather that decimal notation cannot capture the value of a number to the same precision as fractions can.

If you want to say they are not equal, then what number is there between them? Two numbers that are not equal are after-all separated by another number. The problem of mathematics is that continuity cannot really be broken into discreteness without creating such paradoxes.

So does the PNC apply to this "transition"? — apokrisis

Yes.

Can we say whether it is white or green? — apokrisis

Does this have anything to do with the previous question? I certainly hope it doesn't.

Or do we want to say the question of which colour it is seems vague? — apokrisis

No, the question of what colour it is isn't vague, it's incoherent, a pseudo-question. A transition is not in the same category of things as a line or an object. A transition is a process of passing from one thing to another - in this case from a green line to white line (in vision). As such, a process does not have the property of colour the way things (such as the lines) have the property of colour. The transition has no color. There's absolutely nothing vague here.

Your question is much like asking me "can we say running [a process] is white or green? Or do we want to say that the question of which colour it is seems vague?" - The apparent vagueness you detect there is the result of the category error that the question presupposes.

In fact, your whole philosophy is a bunch of category errors stuck one upon each other, precisely because you want to reach the point where mind and matter, time and space, etc. collapse into a unity and become indistinguishable. That means that you are not willing to recognise the categorical difference in kind between these phenomena. Your philosophy implies that envy can be white because there is some limit after which the two become indistinguishable in the supreme vagueness of the apeiron :s

Say what you will, but logically this is the status of your thought. It is built on a foundational incoherence which is bound to propagate throughout - and that is the category error. You refuse to admit that some things are categorically different than others, meaning that they are different in kind, not in degree.

Sounds like a recipe for bloody disaster. The more obvious you make your crime, the more likely you are to get away with it. :s — Baden

Of course, murderers will always see their victim as obviously guilty. You're just illustrating the very phenomenology of it.

There are hundreds (thousands?) of billionaires out there. — Baden

Roughly 1000.

Give me ten more and the comment might be justified. — Baden

Okay.

Donald Trump.
Peter Thiel.
Steve Jobs.
Monroe Trout.
Elon Musk.
Ray Dalio.
Gina Rinehart.
Travis Kalanick.
Evan Spiegel.
Koch Brothers.

Now give me back 10 minutes of my time.

But yes, being selfish and uncaring can be an advantage in terms of making money. That's hardly news. — Baden

No, you've got causation the other way around.

Academia would also unanimously reject Carrot Top as a great philosopher, so I guess he must be a genius. — Baden

No, just that unanimity is inherently suspect.

Geez, I didn't realise the mods had authority to conduct capital punishment — TimeLine

Yes they do, it's called banning >:)

And, by the way, the sanhedrin' primary aim is to prove innocence so the person is not acquitted from the charges if there is a unanimous guilty verdict, but rather deferring it until there is a majority rule. — TimeLine

It does result in acquittal of the defendant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/02/08/the-paradox-of-unanimity/?utm_term=.d5aecbbbb1ae

In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious. — Agustino

Perhaps you should implement this as a rule for the mods in decision making >:)

Mark Cuban? Don't know much about him to be honest. Well done on the billionaire thing but reading list needs work. — Baden

Atlas Shrugged and the like are common as favorite books amongst American billionaires I think. I speculate that it must have something to do with a justification to oneself of their own success, such that the success can contribute to sustaining self-esteem. You can't really "feel good" about yourself if your success is largely a matter of luck, can you?

And the opposite would hold for the Academia. The academia largely rejects Rand because she makes them feel bad about themselves.

Not that I think she's a great philosopher, but just that belief systems that are rejected with such unanimity tend to speak more about those who reject it than about the rejected belief system. In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious.

It's "philosophy" for stupid selfish people who wish to justify their character failings and usually don't know anything about actual philosophy. She's basically irrelevant in academia. — Baden

Yes, but not to the Maverick! She's his favorite philosopher.



That's what happens when the dotcom bubble makes you a billionaire ;) - it becomes attributed to your skill, genius and superiority over others, the same as in Rand's books. You start deserving it.

“Let part of a surface be painted green while the rest remains white. What is the color of the dividing line; is it green or not? I should say that it is both green and not. ‘ But that violates the principle of contradiction, without which there can be no sense in anything’. Not at all; the principle of contradiction does not apply to possibilities”. — apokrisis

So does the edge of one surface touch the edge of the other at every point? Or are you imagining a faint gap in-between? If touching, then what makes that not continuous. If a gap, let's talk about the colour in-between. — apokrisis

I also did not follow this example. If a part of a surface is painted green, then there is no "dividing line" as such - the division does not constitute in a substantive, in a noun, in an object. The division is therefore not a line.

The division constitutes in a transition from a white line, to a green line and vice-versa. It is a becoming. This is an interruption in the continuity of whiteness (or greenness). In order to perceive the boundary (which again is not a thing, but a process, a transition) one must perceive both the white surface and the green surface juxtaposed. Indeed, it is this perception of a rupture in the continuity that constitutes the perception of the boundary - it is this very act of seeing both as juxtaposed. This rupture in the continuity is not a thing once again, so don't reify it. It's the very process of seeing the one, and then the other.

The edge of the green surface is green, and the edge of the white surface is white. The two edges are touching - it is not spatial separation in-between that makes them discontinuous, but rather the change in color.

Okay, let's talk proper existential issues, enough anti-natalism.

"Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended.... Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored" - Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard in the above quote seems to signal that the view you hold - that idleness is the root of all evil - is a particularly modern view, one that "we" as a society are accustomed to hold. This is because we associate and cannot differentiate idleness from boredom. So, much like you, we feel that we need to work - to do something, by work I don't mean necessarily earn a living - because otherwise we get bored. Is it possible to escape from boredom completely?

Would anyone care if there was no anyone there? — schopenhauer1

A question that allows for self-delusion. There is no one not to care or to care if there isn't anyone around in the first place. All caring (and not caring) takes place within life.