Comments

  • The fact-hood of certain entities like "Santa" and "Pegasus"?
    You want "exists" to have one true meaning, — Banno

    I don't want to evade the puzzles that it poses by pretending that its usual meaning is other than it is: which is that certain words are or aren't succeeding in referring to certain objects.
  • The fact-hood of certain entities like "Santa" and "Pegasus"?
    ↪Banno


    And the challenge is to allow meaning in the myth (or fiction) while respecting the usual implication.

    The cop-out is to allow the meaning by disrespecting the usual implication, and instead multiplying allowable senses of "exist". E.g. "exists mythically", "exists in the fictional domain", etc.
  • The fact-hood of certain entities like "Santa" and "Pegasus"?
    "Pegasus is a myth" implies that there is a Pegasus. — Banno

    Spoken by certain philosophers, maybe. Usually, it implies the opposite.



    and by true I mean true at the moment of being said, whenever said. — tim wood

    The only tenable attitude toward quantifiers and other notations of modern logic is to construe them always, in all contexts, as timeless. — Quine: Mr Strawson
  • Changing Sex
    ↪Benkei


    Yes, it's true, your mind is essentially male or female, or somewhere in between.
  • Changing Sex
    What part is a lie? — Benkei

    There are two kinds of sex - mental and physical. — TheMadFool
  • Changing Sex
    ↪Benkei


    So, lies to children? Or, pinned up only in the comparative religion class, along with pictures of spirits and souls and angel/devil psychology?
  • What if the universe is pure math (or at least a vacuum/empty space is)
    @fishfry — Ben Ngai

    Actually doesn't work without (invisible) quotes around the name, after the @. The @ button does it for you.
  • Changing Sex
    gender-related brain factors — Joshs

    Shirley, philosophers should be dismantling cultural myths, not mantling them, or encouraging psychiatrists to mantle them.
  • Changing Sex
    their gender identity or expression — Michael

    Shirley, philosophers should be dismantling cultural myths, not mantling them, or encouraging psychiatrists to mantle them.
  • What is your understanding of philosophy?
    it's a decent syllogism. — TheMadFool

    Oh, come on.



    your independent view — Tiberiusmoon

    D'oh. But Russell's.

    The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it — Russell, 1918
  • I'm trying to figure out if a logical error was committed here or not. Can a logician help me out?
    I guess that we need to know exactly what argument Matt was presenting. Right? — Need Logic Help

    And there may be no incontrovertible fact about this matter. But you'd have to be disingenuous or mad to think that P1 was best formulated as,

    P1: All things X cares about are things that are logically objective — TheMadFool

    rather than the other way round. That way, of course the whole argument is invalid. And you wouldn't need any medievalisms (about distributed middles) to show it. Just use a Venn diagram.

    Whereas actually,

    C follows, unless you want to get bogged down in a bigger and more controversial logic (one of belief). — bongo fury

    Or unless you have chosen a bizarre and foolish presentation of P1. Then you are bogged down in a spurious and inexplicable representation of what was said. Which is no better than a spurious injection of modal logic.



    If it is true that Tom cares about all objective truths, and also true that Tom does not care about Y, then we can conclude that Y is not an objective truth. — Bartricks

    Yes.

    If - if - Dilahunty made this argument:

    1. If P then Q
    2. Not Q
    3. Therefore not P

    Then his argument was valid.     — Bartricks

    Yes, and he probably did. See above.



    The superman example is different. — Bartricks

    Please not. You're inviting the enthusiasts for modal logic to show off, and end up perpetuating the silly libel of a logical error.



    thinking in the same way as Aristotle (roughly 2 millennia ago) and Gottlob Frege (approximately a century ago). That's like going to a modern pharmacy with a prescription made out by none other than Hippocrates — TheMadFool

    No, it's like knowing what you're talking about.
  • I'm trying to figure out if a logical error was committed here or not. Can a logician help me out?
    So does P1 fail or does it not? If it fails, why? — Need Logic Help

    Because,

    "There are more objective logics in heaven and earth than are cared about in X's philosophy." — bongo fury

    If not, why not? — Need Logic Help

    Because all of them are cared about by X.

    If P1/P2 are correct in what you laid out, — Need Logic Help

    Assuming you mean, if they are a fair presentation of the premises actually being asserted,

    then does C follow? — Need Logic Help

    Sure.

    If not, — Need Logic Help

    I take it you mean, if they are the actual premises being asserted, but C doesn't follow,

    doesn't there need to be some error of logic? — Need Logic Help

    Yes. But there isn't. C follows, unless you want to get bogged down in a bigger and more controversial logic (one of belief). I've presented the premises in such a way that you can dispute them, rather than the logic.

    And if P3/P4 are correct in what you laid out, then does C follow? If not, doesn't there need to be some error of logic? — Need Logic Help

    Likewise.
  • I'm trying to figure out if a logical error was committed here or not. Can a logician help me out?
    ↪Need Logic Help


    A lot will depend on whether you think it beneficial to involve a logic of belief. If not, or else at least to help decide, let's make the parallel as clear as possible:

    P1: All logics that are objective are cared about by X
    P2: Logic Y is not cared about by X
    C: Logic Y is not objective

    P3: All men that are Supermen are believed by Lois Lane to fly
    P4: Man Clark Kent is not believed by Lois Lane to fly
    C: Man Clark Kent is not a Superman

    In both cases, there's no logical error except perhaps a choice-of-logic error: you might decide you must affirm both premises yet reject the conclusion. Because for example you are too polite to question P1/P3. Then you're gonna need a bigger (and more controversial) logic. But questioning P1/P3 is simpler.

    the issue is that maybe Y really is part of objective logic but X doesn’t know it. — Need Logic Help

    And the simplest way to make that point is just to say that P1 fails. "There are more objective logics in heaven and earth than are cared about in X's philosophy." No need to get modal on his ass, and call it a (necessarily exotic) logical error, rather than a (simple) factual one.
  • Logical proof the universe cannot be infinite
    ↪fishfry
    :up: cheers
  • Logical proof the universe cannot be infinite
    Not to lower the tone at all, but,

    (900×900)^900 — fishfry

    You prefer that to mine? How so?

    My reasoning was, the first pixel can be any of 900 distinct (picture-distinguishing) colours, and for each of those (900 mutually exclusive classes of possible picture types) there are 900 choices of colour for the second pixel, so 900 to power 2 is the number, so far, of distinct picture types. Raise the power by one for each of the remainder of the 900 × 900 pixels.

    Perhaps you were concerned with something other than the number of possible picture types?
  • Logical proof the universe cannot be infinite
    what scenes are not included within the total number of all the pictures — Zelebg

    The question is only, what scenes are not assigned their exclusively own personal picture (type). Some at least will have to share.
  • Logical proof the universe cannot be infinite
    and yet the number of those pictures is not infinite. — Zelebg

    The number of picture tokens is (presumably, but it's your rules) equal to the number of pictured scenes.

    But the number of picture types is 900^810000, and therefore eventually less than the number of scenes.

    It's like, the natural numbers are infinite, but modulo 12 they are 12. And modulo 900^810000 they are 900^810000.

    Funny how so much information woo rests on confusing tokens and types; seeing as they were invented by its patron saint.

    No offence, @Zelebg, I always enjoy quoting your last word on panpsychism.
  • How google used Wittgenstein to redefine meaning?
    Searle used the Chinese room to argue that there was more to meaning than could be captured by mere semantics. — Banno

    If by "mere" you mean fake.

    I wish I could locate the youtube footage of Searle's wry account of early replies to his vivid demonstration (the chinese room) that so-called "cognitive scripts" mistook syntax for semantics. Something like, "so they said, ok we'll program the semantics into it too, but of course what they came back with was just more syntax". — bongo fury

    Never found the clip, but I don't think I badly mis-quote.

    Can Google Translate play the human (and genuinely semantic) game of agreeing which words are (pretended to be) pointed at which objects? (Or even more abstruse pretences about speech acts?) One doubts it, as yet.
  • The cultural climate in the contemporary West - Thoughts?
    I'll put my money on those who read the paper. — Banno

    Or, there's my plumbing diagram. 500 days and no blowback :grimace: (what's that sound...)
  • Is Humean Causal Skepticism Self-Refuting and or Unsound?
    What is daft is to claim that Hume needs to justify his habits when he's just said there is no justification for them. — unenlightened

    ... the awkward conclusion that the greatest of modern philosophers completely missed the point of his own problem... — Goodman: Fact Fiction and Forecast, p61
  • Consciousness: a hallucination of an illusion
    Neither would it carry any Imputation of Falshood to our simple Ideas, if by the different Structure of our Organs, it were so ordered, That the same Object should produce in several Men’s Minds different Ideas at the same time; v.g. if the Idea, that a Violet produced in one Man’s Mind by his Eyes, were the same that a Marigold produces in another Man’s, and vice versâ. — Locke: Of True and False Ideas
  • Mental States from Matter but no Matter from Mental States?
    so no, it's [not, Shirley?] a problem for physicalists — Kenosha Kid



    Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws. — Howard Pattee

    Woo, Shirley?
  • How to save materialism
    ↪hypericin


    Ok, so being isomorphic with a natural number means being in a system capable of distinguishing at least that specified whole number of different items? I'd be cool with that.

    Then, you are information if you are such an item? Perhaps there is an additional requirement that you and the rest must be symbols?
  • Feature requests
    :wink: :ok:
  • Feature requests
    ↪Jack Cummins


    You are adorable. Is it an act?
  • How to save materialism
    That which is isomorphic with a natural number. — hypericin

    Please explain?
  • The Role of Narration
    Are we declaiming on our Cartesian theatre stage, or are we Mike Leigh... or some such improvisational director?

    I know I often encourage my cast to become dark and potentially offensive characters. E.g. when I'm in busy traffic. Of course, there is always a clear moral perspective to the resulting drama. Not.
  • What counts as unacceptable stereotyping? (Or when does stereotyping become prejudice?)


    Why won't it start at 54?

    Why does the devil have all the best tunes?...



    Phew. False alarm...

  • How to save materialism
    ↪hypericin


    So your admirable (for me) nominalism, as embraced in paragraphs one thru five (of eight), depends on grammar? Isn't that a tenuous criterion? Couldn't it easily have happened that we referred to apples as "apple" (with no article) even while only ever accepting a (any) whole one as answering to the name? (cf. Quine in Word and Object, "Divided reference".) Would some version of your "informational" exception then not apply?

    Perhaps you might refuse the exception on the grounds that apples aren't identified digitally? But notice that what impresses about digital reproduction (in particular) isn't the fidelity of one copy from the last, but the feasibility of an endless chain of true copies. That aspect is achieved as well by an atomic digital symbol as by a composite one. Treat an apple as a character in a discrete alphabet (e.g. of fruits) and the analogy is complete. (cf. Goodman in Languages of Art, "Notations".) Digital reproduction is no grounds for Platonism, under any flag.

    your copy is one of 5 million extant in the world, each qualitatively (at least microscopically) and numerically distinct from all the others. — hypericin

    Absolutely.

    We are not referring to the physical mediums when speaking of informational objects. — hypericin

    Why on earth not?

    We are referring to the information itself. — hypericin

    But what is that?

    Confusing the music with the score would be absurd enough. Confusing it with any kind of recording, even more so.

    So, if you watched a copy of the movie dubbed in Spanish, or maybe even a stage production, you might say you watched "A Wizard of Oz". — hypericin

    Sure. But not if you merely studied, however carefully, the digital or analog recordings themselves (literally, as opposed to the sound-and-light events produced from them).

    But, there are not as many "Wizard of Oz"es as there are copies of the movie floating around. — hypericin

    More to the point, there are not as many of the Hollywood artwork "The Wizard of Oz" as there are of the screenings and plays (sound-and-light events) which collectively constitute said artwork.

    If you accept this, then it logically follows that two copies of the dvd contain the same, numerically identical, information. — hypericin

    Nope. Consider the apple. And the numeral.

    This is not some esoteric, woo belief, — hypericin

    Sorry. Seems like Platonism to me.
  • How to save materialism
    ↪hypericin


    But the context here was as specific as any of those, so I'm not sure why you say "any", here, but not with those.

    The question about

    the numbers "13, 13" as they appear on your screen — hypericin

    isn't any clearer, but let's see if answering it helps.

    Are they two different numbers, both classifed as "13"? Or the same number? — hypericin

    They are two different tokens of the single numeral-string "13". They both of them "are" that string in the sense better clarified as "belonging to" or "instantiating" or "exemplifying" or "being classified as" that string. Better at least if we risk misunderstanding each other on questions of numerical identity. The string is a type, which is to say, a class or aggregate of its member tokens. The member tokens are numerically distinct. The type or class or aggregate is singular.

    The distinct tokens might well be interchangeable in the role of referring to a single number (the numeral's referent, however construed), and I wonder whether you are in danger of confusing equivalence with identity for that reason. It might explain the use of the term "information" to refer to a syntactic object, such as a token. (Not saying there is a rule about that.)

    I claim that with information qualitative identity *is* numeric identity. As in the example of "13, 13". — hypericin

    So what do you really mean? Are the asterisks scare quotes? Or are you trying to claim that the two numerically distinct (and even physically contrasting, as you rightly say) tokens of "13" are somehow numerically one, as you do indeed keep seeming to say?
  • How to save materialism
    Just consider the numbers "13, 13" as they appear on your screen. Are they two different numbers, both classifed as "13"? Or the same number? — hypericin

    Are we talking about tokens of a numeral (or numeral string)? Or are we talking about some abstract number or concrete collection, but either way something (or some things) referred to by such a numeral? Or would that be a pedantic question? — bongo fury
  • How to save materialism
    No more "woo" [than] to say that two numbers, i.e. "13, 13", are the same number. Two different things, classified as "13"? Sounds woo to me. — hypericin

    I don't quite understand the choice of example, here. Are we talking about tokens of a numeral (or numeral string)? Or are we talking about some abstract number or concrete collection, but either way something (or some things) referred to by such a numeral? Or would that be a pedantic question? *

    And consider that, in binary form, the movie is a single (beyond-cosmically large) number. — hypericin

    I'm lost here. Please help.

    Two spatially distinct objects cannot be numerically identical, — hypericin

    Good...

    only qualitatively similar (even qualitative identity cannot be established). — hypericin

    Hopefully we can at least agree where we disagree, here: for me, qualitative in this context would mean non-numerical, merely. Non-numerical identity would be equivalence, and only distinct from similarity in the formal respect of being transitive. So qualitative identity of distinct physical objects is as I see it perfectly easily established, as in the example of distinct tokens of a digital signal, or of a notational text.

    words [...] do not and cannot point to the true nature of things. Rather they carve the world into sets. — hypericin

    Sets such as the reliably mutually exclusive ones that are distinct digital signals; or, equally well, notational texts. Ok. But now,

    Two spatially distinct informational "objects" may be numerically the same object. — hypericin

    ... So, numerically distinct but themselves numerically identical??

    my woo claim — hypericin

    Sense of fun appreciated, but please clarify if/how tokens of a type (a text or signal) are numerically both distinct and identical?

    Such events of the first sort [plays or screenings] are where information interacts with, and drives, the physical, material world. — hypericin

    This is beginning to sound like bio-semiotics? So, likely mystical about information. And you did warn me. Oh well.

    But consider that the light and sound is the same information as that in the reel or disc, just in another physical medium, and spread across time. — hypericin

    But this is confusing symbol and object. So my first question (*) was pedantic after all?

    An authentic copy of "the wizard of oz" is the very same "wizard of oz". — hypericin

    Not numerically the same: rather, it is a link in some dependably and safely transitive chain of copying, such as the kind of copying known as "digital"; whereby the set of authentic copies is kept reliably separate from the fakes.
  • How to save materialism
    Using my own words against me? — hypericin

    The wise ones.

    the information content of the movie on dvd, and on hard disc, is identical, bit by bit, in spite of the total dissimilarity of the physical medium. — hypericin

    Only in the same way that a page of text is identical from one print or manuscript to the next. With or without a coding and subsequent decoding in between.

    In a sense, the information is not just the same, but it is the same informational "thing" residing in two places simultaneously. — hypericin

    Why the woo? Why not, here are two different things both classified as "apple"; here are two things both classified as "Wizard of Oz file"?

    This is in contrast to physical objects, — hypericin

    How?

    where this assertion of identity simply cannot happen. At best you can say that two things are very similar. — hypericin

    But you just pointed out that digital identity of symbols isn't affected by their physical diversity, so...

    Incidentally, let's distinguish between The Wizard of Oz the set of its plays or screenings (sound-and-light-events) from The Wizard of Oz the set of its recordings on reel or disk etc. The first set is defined by the second: whether what you saw was actually the film depends on whether it was produced from one of the set of authentic reels or files. But only members of the first set are subjected to aesthetic comparisons, with each other and with other films, etc.

    Also, none of the first set are "residing in" any of the second.

    In order to reconcile mind and brain, one must first reconcile information and matter. — hypericin

    I did.

    ...
  • How to save materialism
    Between the non-living and the living there also seems to be an infinite gap. Panpsychism is a modern vitalism. — hypericin

    Why should I favor "the physical world is mental, and only appears physical" over "the mental world is physical, and only appears mental"? — hypericin

    This misunderstands words, they do not and cannot point to the true nature of things. Rather they carve the world into sets. — hypericin

    Everything that can be explained about life can be explained without reference to "elan vital". The same will likely prove true of consciousness. — hypericin

    :clap: :strong: :fire:

    Matter/information is the real dualism, — hypericin

    Yikes

    "The wizard of Oz" is the same movie, whether it is stored on a film reel, a dvd, a magnetic tape, a hard drive, or an eidetic brain's memory: all completely different physical media. — hypericin

    Only because we

    carve [those (or adjacent) bits of the] world into [the same] set[...]. — hypericin
  • How to save materialism
    it's hard to make sense of the idea of experience arising out of a combination of non-conscious stuff. — Manuel

    Or, to put it some other ways,

    it's hard to make sense of the idea of consciousness arising out of a combination of non-experiential stuff.

    it's hard to make sense of the idea of experience arising out of a combination of non-experiential stuff.

    it's hard to make sense of the idea of consciousness arising out of a combination of non-conscious stuff.

    Although it isn't. (See liquidity.)
  • The Unfortunate Prevalence of Nothing-But-ism
    Reductionism good.

  • A Question about Consciousness
    Define it or use it.

    Just...

    Don't hypostatise it.
  • A Question about Consciousness
    does consciousness always only occur, — charles ferraro

    Yes, just as redness only occurs. As red things.

    or exist, — charles ferraro

    Indeed not. Not being, "itself", a thing.
  • At what quantity does water become a fluid?
    the whole is equal to the sum of the parts plus the interaction between these parts - a separate “additive” meta-physical process. — Benj96

    Why the meta?
  • Towards solving the mind/body problem
    ↪Marchesk


    That's fine, as poetry.
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