I'm at my wit's end in trying to publish something in an academic journal. I gave myself one more chance. If it does not work out, then I'll present it here.

So please note, that on January 3 or thereabouts, of 2022, if I live to see that day, I'll submit an article here.

I shall leave it to you to determine if this a is threat or a promise. (Haha, so to speak.)

Joining late, and I'll prove it to you. (That I'm joining late.)

I always answer the OP. Not the issue of the side-track.

Calling physical laws and human-created laws (be they legal, traditional, spiritual) is an equivocation in the Aristotelian sense of the fallacy.

Physical laws don't exist purely in nature outside of the human sphere. They are human-created solidified opinions how the world works. The physical world does not operate on laws of the physical world. We don't know what the physical world operates on, most likely it's a deterministic effort.

So physical laws exist inasmuch as human opinions exist.

Other laws that made BY humans FOR humans, are guides. That's why it's no surprize they are basically crowd-control devices, set up by the ruling class to keep the non-ruling class in their control.

Human-created laws (not human-discovered laws) and their effected behaviour in humans only look stupid and crazy, and they do, because the practice was a solidly good idea at one point, which they therefore implemented, it became a tradition, and the tradition still lives, with or without conviction that it helps anyone in anything. They look ridiculous because knowledge proved they are futile. Some believe still that traditional rituals are not futile. But then why do they look ridiculous.

I wonder if those molecules with some sort of consciousness have philosophical discussions on to what part of them, and how their consciousness connects to their physical existence.

If only someone could document the discourse between conscious molecules, then the argument would be over.

1. Things that have consciousness know that they have consciousness.
2. As conscious beings, they probably ponder the origin of their physical as well as their spiritual existences.
3. Because they ponder their existence's origins, they have consciousness.
Q.E.D. They have consciousness.

Leona, what about the person who has never thought of his life in terms of "what is the meaning of my life", or even more basically, he never thought of his or her own life in any terms? A person who regards his or her own self just at face value, and not extrapolating from there?

If this scenario is hard to imagine to be a case at all, think of it this way: how do you regard the meaning of your life (general you, not Leona herself in particular) at times when you are not thinking of it? that is, when you are distracted, or busy otherwise, and you are not actively thinking about the meaning of your life, then that is the situation you must imbue the person in the first paragraph, and while that scene may be temporary in your life, in the person's life it is a permanent occurrence.

Again, the question is: do you think your hypothesis applies to people who are void of the parameters (temporarily or permanently) necessary to build the hypotheses?

I've forgotten the feeling of missing the lack of lacking something.

Some ideas that REALLY ought not to be tolerated:
- eating babies
- performing scientific experimental surgery on unwilling living people without anesthetics
- inciting insurrection, riots, and revolutions
- effectively hiring others to kill a particular person
- exchanging recipes of untraceable deadly poisons
- grabbing Poossys
- poisoning the water supply of a city
- polluting the environment
- non-zero carbon emission
- global warming
- smoking (but vaping Cannaboids is okay)
- vaccing and waning

Nothing is a very clear concept. Is the lack of something.
— Helder Afonso

A lack of anything. Everything lacks something. My dog lacks a tail. — Kenosha Kid

Sometimes it's the lack of lacking something.

Thanks for making sense of the OP.

I see the script describe facts in a believable fashion. My only objection is that (1) nepotism is renamed neo-feudalism. And that (2) detaching the capital from production is called the end of capitalism.

In (1), nepotism: familial, or else nationalistic, and also poliltical alliancism, has played a role in all political systems. Feudalism does not own nepotism.

In (2), the point's validity very much depends on the definition of capitalism. In a Marxian sense, yes, and in a John Stuart Mill-type of sense, yes: the system's change is seen, because the wealth of a nation no longer depends on the goods it produces and distributes and uses, while using the monetary basis of society.

But other aspects of capitalism still are intact and in place: a competitive economy, the survival of the fittest, and greed; and most importantly, the oppression and exploitation of the have-nots by the haves continues. Of course I had to sub "have-not" for the ploretariat, because if nobody works, or very few, the meaning of proletarian disappears from the fabric of society.

Image a world without time.

You have five minutes to get it done.

I'd like us to consider that solipsism is not valid. Without that assumption the following will be meaningless.

Belief is a probability knowledge. You don't know if the king has a beard; but if you believe that it does, then your bets are on the king having a beard.

Knowledge preempts belief. If you see the king, and he has a beard, your belief assumes a probability of one, which is knowledge.

Do either of them need to be propositional? In a sense that all beliefs have the feature of not defying description, whether the description exists, is thought of, or written down in some way or form... all beliefs are propostional.

You don't need to propose them to know they can be expressed as a proposition.

Instead, you wish to disprove this by describing a belief that is indescribable. That would be a valid way of destroying the argument that all thoughts, including beliefs, are propositional.

I stand corrected as charged. I am functionally illiterate, not blind. For your information.

I lived in a country where the proletarian revolution was the order of the day, every day. There was one big, huge flaw in the proletar revolution. After the old overlords were chased away or killed, the factory productions resumed. People manned the same machines as before. They WERE CONSTANTLY TOLD AFTER THE REVOLUTION, JUST LIKE BEFORE IT, what to do and how.

This is a fundamental function of society: hierarchical chain of command. Without it we just can't function.

This ended the 60 yearsof communist rule. People were dying of hunger before the revolution started. They literally worked themselves to death. After the revolution there was enough to eat, clothes to wear, gadgets to buy. But people are never satisfied with their collections of material possessions. So, the full stomach was taken for granted, and the workers still were pissed off about somebody breathing down their necks and adjusting their behaviour constantly.

"Meet the new boss!!
Same as the old boss!!"

These two lines sum it up best for me what it was that caused the failure of the glorious proletarian revolution.

I'd like to hear the argument in no more than seven sentences for each point. I don't have patience to read an entire book that has only two or three points. Not your fault, please don't take it personally. It is my fault, and I take full blame for it that I have no patience for long stuff that can be said on a single page... and most things that have only a point or two can be said on a single page.

Sorry, I forgot racism and Frankfurt Schoolism in the list.

Right. The new left ruined everything, by way of showing and advocating the ending of the complete oppression the ruling class had on the not-so-ruling class by pointing out that wealth inequities, guns, fundamental religionism, and working non-stop are not actual things that this society needs to perpetuate and hone to greater heights.

There is no name like "new left" left. It left with the one thing or person that took it as you say. We're here, left behind, not knowing which way to turn, since we can only turn right.

How do we know these women on the photo are social democrats? To me they seem the exact same bunch that was the spill-over from the last wife-swapping extravaganza at the White House.

As to the OP: Marxism stands in its own way half true. It got the concept of overproduction crisis bang dead on. It got the end of the political dialectic materialism wrong bang dead on. It got the idea that capitalism socks, dead bang on. It got it wrong that communism is better, dead bang on.

A .500 batting average is superb, in my books, in those of my books that keep statistics on prophets and their predictions vis-a-vis reality.

Never read a post from him that wasn't a complaint. — Wayfarer

In a way all counter-arguments are complaints. In a way.

In fact, if anyone says anything, they want to make a point; which point is different how they think others see the situation; which is a criticism of the status quo; which means all utterances are complaints.

Thus: "I like ice cream" is a complant against those, who may believe, with or without evidence, that I don't like ice cream.

ETC.

Re: Boobs. I told my friend Paul how I used to be active on this site. He said, "So you discuss that if the Earth was a breast, where its nipple would be?"

In America... facts are just a fantasy. Numbers are a mystery. Reason is a miracle. Logic is the devil himself.

Trump was popular with the masses. It's the rich that wanted him out. Hence the leftist-sounding mainstream media. The MSM are in the pocket of the rich.

The people LOVED Trump because he was one of their own. "Drink Lysol". They said to themselves, "I would have said the same thing," and voted for him. Trump lies? so do I. And they voted for him. He grabs poossys? Well, I wish I could, they said, and voted for him.

It took a real and concerted effort to turn the election around. It was done with cunning, with fraud, and with brute-force cheating. But it was worth it. I am glad to see him out of the office, even in jail, if he manages to live just two months into the future. But it is sad, almost tragic, that the American democratic process needed to take a big hit for this goal to be realized.

Inter arma enim silent leges. — TheMadFool

Between my arms, silent legs.

What does this have to do with chess?

My chess program laughs at me and calls me a ninny when I lose. If I beat him three times in a row, it asks my wife to come over and hit me over the head with the board.

Little does the little kaka know that I preempted his queen's gambit by very cleverly having got a divorce seven years ago. Hahaha!

I am sorry, but I like to eat meat. And I can't afford expensive meat.

I figure the meat I buy is factory raised.

I am an asshole if you ask any chicken, cow, or pig.

So are you for making me feel bad.

I remember this scene from an animated movie (or tv show) made for adults.

Two robots (resembling humans in appearance) sit down to play chess. They both look at the board in its initial set-up for a long time. Then the taller one, playing white declares without moving a piece: "Mate in 243 moves." The other one exclaims: "Aw! You always win!"

I somehow can't but think that the authors (Berkeley and Hume) used English words not only in different meaning from how we understand them because the meaning changed over time, but also in a different meaning because they gave their, the authors', own version of meaning.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then it is only worth reading scholarly interpretations, but they are exactly that, interpretations, which potentially is wrong and subjective.

So I safely conclude that the works of Berkeley and Hume have been forever lost to our generation and the ones to come after ours. We either interpret their words, or accept others' interpretations, and interpretations are a very weak link between the writing and the understanding of the original text.

What about the anti-nihilists, or rather, the reverse-nihilists? "Out of nothing came I." Sort of reverse-engineering nihilism. Transcoping decadence of matter, refurcating the third law of thermodynamics. Explaining abiogenesis so that a fundamentalist preacher in the Deep South can be converted to preach it to his or her congregation. The Grand Remaking of America. The Great Restart, or Unstart. Uncreating the sun. Inventing the wheel, backward. Extinguishing fire, getting back up on the tree.

It is not nice to beat defenseless creatures. It is horrible. But why would it be unethical? Is there an ethics book that says "this type of behaviour is ethical, and that type of behaviour is unethical"? And under whose authority can it be decided whether something is ethical or not?

I certainly don't condone the torturing or beating of anyone. That includes animals, too. But I also don't condone calling something "unethical" by anyone who does not like that something happening.

"Ethical" has a ring of authority, moral authority. Whereas that is a myth. Say what you think: animals should not be beaten, and one should not buy products made of tortured animals. Fine, I can support that.

But why do you call it "unethical"? It boggles the mind. It's the buzzword of the late twentieth, early twenty first century. I hate this empty, illogical, yet emotionally forceful reference to any wrong-doing.

any number can be conceived — RogueAI

But not all integers can be conceived by a single brain. By conceiving I mean just simply naming them. Integers are simple numbers. But you (or any other human) can not name more than a finite number of integers, all different from all others,
in their lifetime.

But if math is just a rules game, how did we come up with innovations like imaginary numbers, which have real-world applications? Doesn't that require understanding of math on a conceptual level, rather than something that's just rules-based? — RogueAI

Thisi is a diversion from the original topic. It diverges from the claim that the mind can contain more data elements than what the brain can hold.

However, math is infinite, and any number can be conceived, so there are an infinite number of possible thoughts. is this a problem for reductionism? — RogueAI

Not all numbers can be conceived distinctly and discretely. Any number can be conceived, but not any number of numbers can be conceived. There is a limit to the number of numbers a human can think of, name, and conceive.

If DNA acquired this ability through evolution, — Metaphysician Undercover

Listen, you person: chemical compounds don't acquire knowledge. I am running out of patience with you. If you only listened to your grade 11 chemistry teacher, you wouldn't ask increibly stupid questions like this.

Please leave me alone, I beg you. While the going is bad, but not horrible.

May I say something unpopular?

The nations, states, countries, governments, are a superstructure, capable of making decisions by their servants, the top officials and executive personnel.

The nation has no mind on its own, and its only need is power. It will go after securing power because that is its only motivational force.

Obviously it must subdue the will of the executives, and promote its own powerful will.

How does it do that? By creating a common (perhaps false but maybe true) belief among the executives, that to not gain more power will lead to their demise. The belief is created by humans, and those societies that buy into beleiving the above by its members, are the ones with better survival chances, because they succumbed to totalitarian rule.

Ayayyayayyay. zNajd, you got the philosophers' blues. Many people don't realize it, but philosophy is more dangeruos than airplane wing walking or lion taming or crocodile wrestling.

You gotta know what you are doing, and you can't just jump in without proper training.

Remember, fight a clean fight, always protect yourself, and obey the referees commands.

No standing 8 count, bell saves the count only in the last round, only the referee can stop the fight.

God bless, and may the best person win.

Don't you think that the DNA must have acquired it somehow? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is the sort of statement because of which I have a strong suspicion you don't understand evolutionary theory.

But you're right, there are more than one of those. I can make five such right now in front of your nose, to prove your point.

1. Evolution: the animals get bigger and bigger until they become man.

2. Evoluiton: god gives changes to animals to become bigger and better.

3. Evolution: the environment changes to accommodate the changes in animals.

4. Evolution: the strong protect the weak, thus the weak will survive.

5. Evolution: all offspring are the mathematical middle in every aspect between the parents that brought the individual to life.

There you have it.

I don't think we should discuss this any further, MetaUnder. It's not going to end happily. Let's pull out while we can.

There is a strong chance that we are both right. Because humans have not been made in each other's image. We are diverse, in looks, preferences, and it seems in thinking modes as well. Fundamentally different. I am fully aware that I am different from those who think in words. The difference I found was that people are verbal, can speak without any flaws, fluently, in nice, round, well-constructed sentences. And they have an advantage over me in job interviews. However, I think my translation speed really suits my writing speed. So I make fewer mistakes in writing than in my speech.

To make judgement who is right and who is wrong would be similar to decide who is more ethical: a horse or a bumblebee. Or who is more intelligent: a table or a large avalanche falling down a mountain side.

What is a modern conception of substance? — bert1

Drugs. As in "substance abuse".

Hence, it is matter, in gaseous, liquid or solid form, which comprises atoms, and/or molecules, either in homogenous or in mixed forms.

Salt is a substance.

Wood is a substance.

Air is a substance.

I may have infinite differences with you, becasue I beleive in the evolutionary theory.

level one (this is the main thrust of your questioning, as I see it) is not a worked-out or acquired or experiencially-learned or a priori learned process. It is simply a biochemically driven reaction that was precipitated by DNA functionality.

One dog happened to be born with wagging its tail when it felt good. The other dogs did not get it.

Until another dog dog got born who but for a DNA change understood the signal.

And a third dog got born who both acted and understood the significance of tail wagging. It was not taught to him; he just did it because his DNA was so shaped that within his system this became the modus operandi.

The offspring of this third dog had a much better chance of survival for several reason. So those dogs that wagged but not understood, or understood but not wagged, or did neither, all lost the future generations (eventually) to the dog that was the third kind in this description / tale.

You are a very smart person, so I shan't go farther in this explanation. You just have to put yourself in my shoes, sort of pretend-wise, and this will become obvious to you.

I don't mean to convince you; I just mean to make you see how I see the whole thing unfold to Level 1.

And if yes, is there any other way of saying this, other than "I have to trust past experience because past experience tells me that"? — znajd

Past experiences don't lie. Past experiences vouch for that. You can trust past experiences therefore.

Unknown future experiences are not going to impact your decisions.

If you live in the present, but your thoughs are built on your life in the past.

Circular reasoning works, except (... the Bible, if you are an atheist) (the evolutionary method of nature, if you listen to an ultra-right religious Southern Baptist gun-slinger bigot supremacist.)

The child is father to the man. -- WS

Sons will be punished for the sins of their fathers.

The sheer weight of millions of years of evolutons justifies the idiocy of man's thinking.

If you try to experimentally get different results than what the past told you, and you manipulate the variables, then you don't understand the philosophy on STEM.

If you trust the past, it will richly reward you with happy events.

substances are elementary things? I doubt that that definition holds. Maybe in the middle ages.

I don't deny that the origin of the concepts, of at least some of them, have been planted by societal influence, such as by language. In school in grade school they taught us that a car accident is when two cars collide. I am sure the concept of accident never would have occurred to me without any prior knowledge or connection.

You represent and store concepts, that are not visible or in any way sensory, but the outcome of complex computations in the brain, in your mind in forms of words. I represent and store these things in my mind without words... I simply conceptualize the concept.

When you think of it: words are mere identifiers attached to the concepts. There is no longer a logical connection to call the concept "accident" than to call it anything else as long as it is unique.

I store concepts without an identifier, I store them in their essential forms (as I understand them).

Some people asked me how I verbalize my thoughts. There is a lot of translation going on, constantly. My reading speed, my comprehension speed is slower than those of those people who think in words. I also get exhausted listening to lectures, literally mentally drained. And I believe this is the real reason why I can't read. The reading speed is not in sync with the comprehension speed, due to the translation I constantly need to perform.

I am not szitting you, guys. This is real, I am not making this up, although I do admit that my insights about my own way of thinking do get perfected, and therefore changed over the time as I mature and am more aware of feature of it.