Comments

  • What is metaphysics?
    Sure.Jackson

    For example?
  • What is metaphysics?
    I do not say mind is physical or non-physical.Jackson

    Do you say that any things are non-physical?
  • An Argument Against Sider’s Hell and Vagueness
    Hi there, aka @TheMadFool.

    a net ethical point of +1 and I get my ticket to paradise. Someone else who has [...] a net ethical point of -6 and goes to jahanam.Agent Smith

    Your suggestion is described by this fourth graph,

    3w3i9odi3iwq04qq.jpg

    from here, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/560730

    (putting net ethical score horizontal and resulting degree of heaven vertical).

    Whereas the OP appears to favour the second graph:

    7e18c9yni183cb7c.jpg

    (with the same re-labelling).

    I wonder what happens to a person with a net ethical point of cipher/zero?Agent Smith

    Are you switching to grades of hell/heaven after all? You might want some composite of the two graphs. Gradual increase interrupted by a sudden step change.

    yavrvhjmzziizppg.png
  • An Argument Against Sider’s Hell and Vagueness
    While this is a small bullet to bite,lish

    It is? Then one wants to ask, is the location of the consequently fine line between least best heaven and least worst hell anywhere special? Or is it arbitrary?

    Might you not as well say, hellishness and heavenliness are reciprocal terms ordering all individual afterlives into a line? All afterlives would be in heaven as well as hell in some degree: the most heavenly is simply the least hellish? "Everything is relative, and on a spectrum"? As in line [2] here:

    [1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
    [2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

    Game over. People often finish up claiming 2 had been their position all along. Perhaps it should have been, and the puzzle is a fraud.
    bongo fury



    Or would needing to place the very worst person into even the least grade of heaven be unacceptable, so that you would need to reserve some small corner of hell as heavenly in zero degree? Then your problem, potentially, is to identify a tipping point (e.g. between zero degree heavenly and non-zero degree heavenly) as I say. And then at least the game gets started...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/562851

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/355842
  • What is metaphysics?
    Briefly this is Russell's way of saying that science does not even define what physicality is:Jackson

    Sure. A physicalist has no objection to that. Metaphysics as the philosophy of physics.

    But your example was

    If all my thoughts are physical,Jackson

    Which appears to argue for the non-physics of mind.
  • What is metaphysics?
    Even Bertrand Russell admitted that the very definition of matter was incoherent.Jackson

    I don't think he meant to posit the existence of non-physical stuff. Do you?
  • What is metaphysics?
    I know there is a physical world. I hardly think that explains reality.Jackson

    But do you think positing non-physical stuff will help?
  • Can morality be absolute?
    without defining the aspect the spatial designations you use.Nickolasgaspar

    The dot dot dot meant "please read on for clarification".

    Now if one asks Is sex without consent immoral (rape) then the answer is yes for that specific situation.Nickolasgaspar

    Well yes, that was my starting point.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    Can morality be absolute?PhilosophyRunner

    Sure, in two ways: internally and externally...

    If rape is wrong because we have agreed it is wrong, it is good when we change our mind.Hanover

    But rape is something that moral language has made an obvious example of "not good". So no, the language doesn't have to allow disagreement on the issue. Anyone changing their mind to the extent of wanting to call such a behaviour "good" will not be credited with having contributed to the system of usage. They are deemed simply not to speak the language. They don't know the meaning of "good".

    This doesn't mean that a system exhibiting such internal absolutism can't allow internal relativism as well. It will rely on at least one buffer zone between obviously good and obviously wrong, which creates disputed borders, representing differing or changing minds, or differing contexts. (Lying surely lies on such a border.) But this may well serve to keep obviously good absolutely apart from obviously wrong. As explained here.

    If you mean, rape is good when we change our system, or moral language... well, could we, just like that?

    If you mean, rape is good when we or some alien culture develops or evolves a totally different moral language... well, maybe, but only until the different cultures meet. External absolutism happens because language systems are unbridled in their ambition. They presume to refer universally. So when they discover each other they have to merge, and contradictions have to be ironed out. Statements previously shown true are now shown false. Things that were acceptable in the 80's are now seen to have been wrong. (I guess the song has examples? lol. But obviously history has plenty of serious ones.)
  • Belief
    ...as to the residual character of propositions we have that full latitude of choice that attends the development of gratuitous fictions.Quine, Ontological Remarks on the Propositional Calculus

    :rofl:
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    why does panpsychism want to put consciousness everywhere?Daemon

    To praise dualism while pretending to bury it.

    Why does emergentism want to put consciousness in self-organising systems?
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    What is the colour of a proposition?Banno

    Statement, or state of affairs?

    The prose is purple, the weather black.
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    I would say the utterance of a sentence expresses a proposition.frank

    Which you glossed as a state of affairs, I got that.

    I don't know what the second question means exactly.frank

    I don't know what the title of this thread means exactly, hence my first question.

    Do you know anything about the data/information idea?frank

    I know what I think: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/585599

    Plus, if you want to talk to a reliable source,frank

    No, I wanted folk here to explain and clarify what they mean by "content".
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    Russell wanted to picture it as: a proposition is a state of affairs. The snag there is that there are false propositions.frank

    So if I gloss my question as,

    What is the content of a sentential utterance? And is it sentential?bongo fury

    ... you will say, a state of affairs, and yes?
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    It is content.frank

    That's fair enough. It's the end of the road, and doesn't itself refer to anything and isn't about anything?
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    It's an abstract object. It's the primary truth bearer.frank

    Ok, and does it have content? If so, back to my first question.
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    Ok then, what is it? (Genuinely curious.) And is it sentential?
  • Plato's missing 'philosopher king', why?
    Allen: I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher-king.

    Simmias: Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.
    — Woody Allen, 'My Apology'
  • Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
    What is the content of a proposition? And is it propositional?
  • Money and categories of reality
    Hey Plato, nice beard!
  • Chomsky's Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden? Reading Group
    people who sleepwalk,Manuel

    Aren't they dreaming?
  • Chomsky's Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden? Reading Group
    Chomsky's not very hidden agenda: innate ideas.

    The innate part is no trouble to his philosophical conscience, but the ideas part does seem to have been keeping him up. Innate brain shivers, no problem. I presume.
  • Is consciousness, or the mind, merely an ‘illusion’?
    nowadays, with the benefit of modern science and an understanding that the source ancient ‘thinking’ that led to dualism was relatively uninformed, we can dispense with the illusionBrock Harding

    If only... but the ancient thinking is our thinking. It says pictures in the head, echoing like words. And sentences in the head, representing like pictures.
  • Is consciousness, or the mind, merely an ‘illusion’?
    Thinking is not an illusion, the concept that you need a non-physical entity to think is.Brock Harding

    Are you saying that consciousness is not an illusion, the concept that you need a non-physical entity to have consciousness is?
  • Is consciousness, or the mind, merely an ‘illusion’?
    Oh, come on, if consciousness, thinking, etc. were an illusion, then this discussion would be also an illusion!Alkis Piskas

    Are you saying that if we were all merely the fabled philosophical zombies, then this discussion would be an illusion?
  • What is the semantic difference between "not" vs "other than" and/or "is not" vs "is other than"?
    Does it follow that B is not-A and that C is not-A?

    I don't think so.
    Millard J Melnyk

    Interesting theory. Plausible if the "is" and "is not" are those of similarity not full identity:

    We say "the son resembles the father" rather than
    "the father resembles the son." We say "an ellipse is like a circle," not "a circle is like an ellipse,"
    Tversky, Features of Similarity

    I can not find any case where "A is not B" is not equally well conveyed by "A is other than B".Millard J Melnyk

    What are you getting at?
  • Are Minds Confined to Brains?
    The ghosts are what's real?
  • Are Minds Confined to Brains?
    Machines are confined to ghosts?
  • Are Minds Confined to Brains?
    Are ghosts confined to machines?

    If I am experiencing the bird, not the activity in my brain, why does my dog see a different image than the image I see?Qwertyportne

    Isn't that question-begging? Do you have to assume that either of you sees an image? Couldn't it be that you are reminded of images, and start preparing to compare them; while the dog is reminded of chasing routines, and starts preparing to execute them?
  • Mental Fossils
    ... this is software archeology, and software doesn’t leave much of a fossil record. Software, after all, is just
    concepts. It is abstract and yet, of course, once it is embodied it has very real effects. So if you
    want to find a record of major “software” changes in archeological history, what are you going to
    have to look at? You are going to have to look at the “printouts,” but they are very indirect. You
    are going to have to look at texts, and you are going to have to look at the pottery shards and
    figurines as Jaynes does, because that is the only [...]
    of course, maybe the traces are just gone, maybe
    the “fossil record” is simply not good enough.

    Jaynes’ idea is that for us to be the way we are now, there has to have been a revolution—
    almost certainly not an organic revolution, but a software revolution—in the organization of our
    information processing system, and that has to have come after language. That, I think, is an
    absolutely wonderful idea, and if Jaynes is completely wrong in the details, that is a darn shame,
    but something like what he proposes has to be right; and we can start looking around for better
    modules to put in the place of the modules that he has already given us.
    Daniel Dennett, Julian Jaynes's software archeology
  • How Useful is the Concept of 'Qualia'?
    The question is, how do qualia improve the analysis in a way that is not just as clear from a discussion of colour scales and pitch and tone and time scales etc...Banno

    That's all they were, for Goodman at least. Classes of stimuli. Sound events and illumination events. But classified through human aesthetic judgement and culture, rather than physics. And hence free from all the spurious distractions of "red-as-a-wavelength" etc. And thus answering your question.
  • Can a Metaphor be a single word?
    Recently I heard a philosopher speaking about a certain term Heidegger used as being a "description" or "predication"...yet, is not a description or predication a comparison between a minimum of 2 terms, concepts, etc?
    For example, a description is "she has a heart of gold".....we have here the adjective or predicate ("Gold") and the tenor or subject of the description... ("heart"). But neither "heart" nor "gold", when taken alone, constitute a description. (Literal or metaphorical.)
  • How Useful is the Concept of 'Qualia'?
    some seem to relate to the idea easily and the concept seems to make more sense to some than others. I am inclined to think that the idea of qualia is useful to some extent,Jack Cummins

    There was a lot of interesting analysis of art and music based on qualia as colour scales and pitch and tone and time scales etc. Prall, Goodman, Boretz. But there, there was no philosophical bias, no claim of epistemological priority. It was just a matter of starting the analysis with those elements.

    I think Dennett was possibly reacting more against the epistemological claim. Maybe that is a later usage of "qualia". I'm not sure. (Not entirely later. CI Lewis, who coined the term, is earlier, of course. I gather his bias was the strong and epistemological kind. @Manuel has mentioned having recently read his book. In this thread, I think.)
  • How Useful is the Concept of 'Qualia'?
    What question?

    You habitually fail to make your point,
    Banno

    Said the murderer, before Columbo's gotcha. Was my poorly signposted allusion. Anyway... as usual, I'll be happy to clarify.

    I'm mystified how "qualia" is any more lazy or obfuscating than "consciousness" or "subjective experience"; and why Dennett and Banno continually want to let the others off the hook.bongo fury

    I've explicitly argued that both consciousness and subjectivity are overused by philosophers.Banno

    Fair enough. Except you missed out "experience" there, so I held up the quote. For if you had the time. You're often in a hurry. That's fine.
  • How Useful is the Concept of 'Qualia'?
    Ok, fair enough, Mr Banno, sorry to have taken up your time.

    Oh, one more question...

    Neither Dennett nor I have argued that there is no need to talk about experiences; rather that replacing talk of experiences with talk of qualia is unhelpful.

    Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. I grant moreover that each person's states of consciousness have properties in virtue of which those states have the experiential content that they do. That is to say, whenever someone experiences something as being one way rather than another, this is true in virtue of some property of something happening in them at the time, but these properties are so unlike the properties traditionally imputed to consciousness that it would be grossly misleading to call any of them the long-sought qualia. Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way. My claim--which can only come into focus as we proceed--is that conscious experience has no properties that are special in any of the ways qualia have been supposed to be special.
    — Dennett, Quining Qualia
    Banno