Now, laughing friends deride
Tears, I cannot hide
Oh-oh-oh-oh
So, I smile and say
"When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes"

Because to recognise a pattern is to simplify, — unenlightened

This short 10min video is a great primer in systems thinking, — Pop

and it answers why entropy is not enough. — Pop

As well as being a term that strictly speaking says all sorts of interesting things that - in the present context which is physics - can and should be stated perfectly well in terms of entropy. — bongo fury

The black hole information paradox is where my interest in it started. — frank

As you have probably noticed, I didn’t say anything about information. That’s because really the reference to information in “black hole information loss” is entirely unnecessary and just causes confusion. The problem of black hole “information loss” really has nothing to do with just exactly what you mean by information. It’s just a term that loosely speaking says you can’t tell from the final state what was the exact initial state. — Sabine Hossenfelder

entropy is the _number_ of microstates available to explore. — Kenosha Kid

The actual microstate occupied by a system would be the totality of its information, — Kenosha Kid

and is not specified by the system's entropy. — Kenosha Kid

in physics — bongo fury

Not something I've heard said, — Kenosha Kid

but I guess any microstate is a unique collection of information. — Kenosha Kid

What is information? — Pop

A common failing in scientific philosophical writing is to blur the line between nouns and verbs. Through a process called nominalization, we morph verbs (and sometimes adjectives) into abstract nouns. This process robs our writing of energy and clarity. — Crystal Herron, blog

horses for courses — bongo fury

• All polyhedra are Eulerian
• x is a polyhedron
• x isn't Eulerian

To be a law of logic, a principle must hold in complete generality — G Russell

• All natural discourse makes conjunction introduction intuitive
• SOLO is convincing as natural discourse
• SOLO makes conjunction introduction unintuitive

If you think that properties are collections then reality consists only of collections, which are concrete things, because properties as abstract things that have instances don't exist. — litewave

The nominalist cancels out the property and treats the predicate as bearing a one-many relation directly to the several things it applies to or denotes. — Goodman, p49

If what matters most according to the correspondence theory of truth, is the accurate portrayal of a particular or general 'state of affairs' - through language - of reality, — Shawn

and therefore what can be platonically described as the mind's eye — Shawn

From a retired mathematician who still dabbles with it, — jgill

That sequence of electronic dots has a kind of "physical" existence but is still in a way non-physical. How does this fit into the current discussion? — jgill

But what all those people (Quine, Williamson, Preist, Kleene...) have in common is they think there's one logic, and, the one they like, that's the one. — 2:10

[1] Tell me, do you think that a language game that assumes no logical law whatsoever deserves to be called a logic?

[2] Perhaps not, but it's moot, because either it or a game with precisely one such law will definitely be a very weakest logic. Granted, 'weak logic' has the flavour of an oxymoron, but its instances clearly have at least mathematical interest, and might include also certain poetry, music, mime etc. What's the big deal?

[1] Ah, but the trouble is, I'm assuming that: to be a law of logic, a principle must hold in complete generality. You say 'horses for courses' so you probably don't agree?

[2] Relative to the totality of courses, guilty as charged. Only an absolutist, who didn't appreciate that truth is relative to a discourse, would agree. But on a course, in a discourse, which is good enough, a principle will indeed hold in complete generality if I call it logical. That's what I mean by logical: completely general (within the discourse) in governing inference from one statement to another.

reminiscences, — Fine Doubter

Meaning the experience is an event taking place in the perceiver, while the tomato is an object with potentially some property related to the perceiver seeing red. — Marchesk

the red we see, — Marchesk

to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate.

When someone looks at a tomato in good light, she undergoes a visual experience. This experience is an event, like an explosion or a thunderstorm: it begins at one time and ends at a later time. The object of the experience is the tomato, which is not an event (tomatoes don't occur).

I think Chomsky avers (somewhere on youtube) that Hume and Heraclitus were privy to the same insight [the inscrutability of reference]. Of course he draws a different lesson from it than Quine. But he doesn't say the doctrine itself is mistaken, or even that it is behaviouristic. And it isn't. It points out that you can't objectively ground reference in behaviour. — bongo fury

In psychology one may or may not be a behaviourist, but in linguistics one has no choice … There is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behaviour in observable circumstances. — Quine, Pursuit of Truth

Given Quine's own formulation of his theses, it appears open to a non-behaviorist to regard his arguments, if he accepts them, as demonstrations that any behavioristic account of meaning must be inadequate - it cannot even distinguish between a word meaning rabbit and one meaning rabbit-stage. — Kripke p57

But if Wittgenstein is right, and no amount of access to my mind can reveal whether I mean plus or quus, may the same not hold for rabbit and rabbit-stage? So perhaps Quine's problem arises for non-behaviorists. This is not the place to explore the matter. — Kripke p57

• of composition,

• of views.

later perhaps — Isaac

the sign is modelled by the brain so as to be attached to a referent. — Isaac

The mid-stage is there — Isaac

But to be fair, I've never fully understood externalism,
— Isaac

There are several versions of it, linguistic, perceptual, etc. — Manuel

what this individual means by a sign on any given occasion depends, at least in part, on this external practice. — SEP

You brought him up — frank

and now ditch the effort. — frank

indeterminate for all practical purposes for me with my poor 21st technology. I don't therefore rule out those things. — frank

I think we're done? — frank

Brains might sync as people interact. — frank

I've actually always assumed he did rule out subjectivity, but I'm rethinking it, actually based on what you said. — frank

Why should I take Quine as saying the latter? — frank

that we can't know whether we're thinking of the same thing — frank

If we're planning to do some scientific research on what's in our heads, I think he would say we shouldn't do that due to the unavailability of facts. — frank

That doesn't mean he ruled out subjectivity, though, right? — frank

In our off hours away from the lab, we could say that we might be thinking about the same thing? — frank

in the sense that we're consciously referencing — frank

referencing the same stuff, we just don't
know for sure — frank

We can't use observed behaviour to justify any particular fantasy.
— bongo fury

But the kind of behaviorism I'm thinking of doesn't allow that there is any kind of referencing involved in communication.
— frank

I'm looking for a reason to say it doesn't. — frank

Why doesn't hard content externalism lead to behaviourism? — frank

I think Chomsky avers (somewhere on youtube) that Hume and Heraclitus were privy to the same insight [the inscrutability of reference]. Of course he draws a different lesson from it than Quine. But he doesn't say the doctrine itself is mistaken, or even that it is behaviouristic. And it isn't. It points out that you can't objectively ground reference in behaviour. — bongo fury

I believe that is a rule of logic, but, yes, I'm thinking more of addition. — Antony Nickles

What distinguishes a genuine notation is not how easily correct judgements can be made, but what their consequences are. [...] Marks [= tokens] correctly judged to be joint members of a character [= type] will always be true copies of one another. — Languages of Art, p134