No doubt about that. "Mass extinction event" has a particular scientific usage. I was focusing on scientific language. — frank

:up:

If you want to say we're in a mass extinction, you don't.
— frank

According to one article. The suggested consensus I posted from the Smithsonian website is that it is at least an open question
— Pantagruel

In the face of the openness of the question, would you back down from claiming that we're in an extinction event? — frank

I read a lot of statistical documentation a couple of years ago (which is at least as new as the article you cited) that in and of itself is equivalent to a "mass die-off". So call it what you like, numerically, statistically, species are dying off at an unprecedented rate.

If you want to say we're in a mass extinction, you don't. — frank

According to one article. The suggested consensus I posted from the Smithsonian website is that it is at least an open question. So maybe try to keep your perspective a little more open. At best, you may be right.

I read the article. He seems to be splitting hairs and is not saying that a "mass die-off" isn't happening. Only that it doesn't fit the classical pattern of a "mass extinction".

Statistically, the number of species lost fits the profile of a mass-extinction. If it doesn't follow the usual "pattern", that's likely because the human contribution is a novel element.

The conclusions in those articles are, essentially, that we are not currently seeing a mass extinction event, but that there may be one over the next few hundred years. — Punshhh

Since extinction is a global-scale event, on a global timescale, if there is a mass extinction in the next few hundred years, then it seems reasonable to conclude we are in fact in a mass extinction already.

"Regardless, scientists agree that today’s extinction rate is hundreds, or even thousands, of times higher than the natural baseline rate. Judging from the fossil record, the baseline extinction rate is about one species per every one million species per year."

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/paleontology/extinction-over-time

:wink:

Great! Yes, I thought it was such a great thing I even donated $20 when I discovered it.

Enjoy the forum and the MIT courses!

Yes, it takes some getting used to.

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy by Jurgen Habermas

Error is how we learn. It is unavoidable and productive. But I can't see how a systemic illusion about the whole shebang would be necessary or useful. — Olivier5

But if there is no freedom then learning would also be an illusion.

Right. And yet there is error.

Maybe not required, but sufficient? — Mww

Yes, I wasn't being precise, that's correct. But if the whole point is, even if it is just the "idea of freedom", even if that is just an illusion, is it a "free illusion"? i.e. there is still a freedom there.

Is there a difference between thinking one has free will because the system is so complex we cannot perceive the factors that contribute to determinism; and actually having free will? — Roy Davies

Is actual freedom a necessary condition for the thought of freedom, in other words. Descartes thinks so. However Kant believes only the "idea of freedom" is required. I think Kant's position may involve a vicious regress, however....

False or erronous learning is still a type of learning, and I mean to include that. — dussias

Is it? Can you qualify that? Because as just that general statement I would have to disagree vigorously.

Finally something positive about Trump. — Benkei

touche

being demonstrably well-informed
— Pantagruel

What about "fake news"? We're actively questioning sources whose purpose is akin to being well-informed. — dussias

What about it? Being well-informed implies being aware of the quality of your information sources. Anyone who is naive enough to believe that they are getting accurate information from a meme doesn't even know the meaning of the term well-informed.

making the other learn something.

Making someone say to itself:

This is important and will help me survive.

is the expressway into agreement and engagement.

What do you think? — dussias

A fortiori, I would say that the ultimate technique in persuasion is being demonstrably well-informed. Which (theoretically) should allow one to convey the exigency you describe.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
— Pantagruel

Could not finish it. :( — Olivier5

Not your cup of tea?

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

It seems to me you are asking "Is meaning meaningful?"

To me, this sentence makes sense (is meaningful) independent of the status of the existence of God. So to me, that some things are meaningful is self-evident. So meaning exists. If meaning exists, then life is meaningful.

The nice thing about being assigned to life on the supreme court is you don't have to think politically anymore. You are free to judge as the philosopher's do.
— Philosophim

Nice thought, but built on a fiction. Read a bit about John Marshall, chief justice 1801-1835.
"McCulloch v. Maryland, “we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.” — tim wood

Perhaps it isn't necessarily an idealized "philosophical freedom", but it is an extraordinary freedom to create a considerable persona for yourself, and to realize all the potential of that persona. And to me, RBG did that, she exemplified what a Supreme Court Justice ought to be. I only had a general awareness of her iconic status, but when I heard of her passing I felt a monumental sense of the great loss to society.

I'm certainly not a Habermas scholar but I just read both volumes of Communicative Action. I also have two books of his political theory next on my reading plan. Do you have any specific questions? I found the works pretty clear.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

What is an example of a naturally occurring metaphysical phenomenon?
— tim wood

Any and all distinguishable features from self-awareness beyond exclusive, physically objective phenomena. Of course, one of many examples from one's own stream of consciousness would be the metaphysical Will. — 3017amen

According to Popper, metaphysics is essentially our intuition of where science is headed. This can explain things like the epistemological problem of how we can ever come up with new theories without running into an infinite evidential regress....

It seems like you are asking if empiricism is eliminable, which it obviously isn't. And that you may also be conflating two sense of the word empiricism. The general sense in which observations are empirical, and the strict epistemological usage which claims knowledge is exclusively of this type.

Lots of aspects of reality as we know it conform to empirical descriptions and respond to empirical methods. Which explains its persistence. So the ubiquity of the former, general sense possibly explains the persistence of the strict epistemological dogma.

Fake news.

Seriously, how do you argue with a comeback like that? Very succinct yet complete catalog of our impending doom. This is what comes of cultivating a culture of the individual. What is wanted is social consciousness.

:up:

My main question is for those that do not fear death or dying. What comes with the peace? Is there anything to follow? — Cobra

If you cease to identify with the little ego then you are free to explore the full extent of life. Worrying about the shortness of one lifetime just takes energy away from the appreciation of the expanse of the collective life. You are part of a process. The material bits change, but the symbolic elements continue to grow and evolve.

Of course not but it's a general principle of discourse. — TheMadFool

True, but you were making a logical declaration. Discourse doesn't have to be logical. It can be rhetorical, descriptive, expostulatory. If you want to strip it to its logical bare-bones, then you have to let go everything but what is directly contained in the statements. So the identical thing "X" remains, because it is an element of the statements. But the differing perspectives A(X is beautiful) B(X is ugly), A and B disappear because they are part of the organic context which pure logical abstraction removes.

:up:

I suppose the question remains, what means or method should be used to uncover or discover its truth value? — 3017amen

When mixing subjective and objective perspectives like this do you think you can even assign truth values? It seems like a metaphysical issue?

Well, in the case of a thing being both beautiful and ugly, that beauty and ugliness are not contradictory properties, in the context of the OP. This whole example kind of ran away with itself I think....

Is there such a thing as beautifully ugly? Does the logic of language limit us here? — 3017amen

I don't think there is objectively such a thing as beauty. Even instrumental properties are relevant to specific ends. So TMF is right that these are viewpoint relative, but not, for that very reason, that they are mutually exclusive. If the same thing has different properties from different perspectives, it is still the same thing. Why would the unity of the thing not be as important as the unity of the viewpoint?

How can this be? Every statement must be from a point of view — TheMadFool

I don't think this is a general principle of logic.......statements are statements.

For a contradiction to occur, the point of view must be identical. — TheMadFool

X is black. X is white. These two statements are in contradiction, there is no reference, either implicit or explicit, to a point of view. The identical element X is the basis of the contradiction.

Yes change is possible, from beauitful to ugly and vice versa but a contradiction as when you claim something is both beautiful and ugly is impossible. Are you, for instance, when you contradict me, as you are as of this moment, saying that you're both right and wrong? :chin: — TheMadFool

Hmm. But as I said, if it is beautiful for you and ugly for me, the the thing is simultaneously beautiful and ugly. What does "for a single individual" have to do with it if it is being ascribed to the thing as a property? In physics experiments things can have different properties when viewed from an internal versus an external perspective. They remain the properties of things.

Yes, but both can't be the case for a single individual. — TheMadFool

But as I pointed out in my comment about artificial dialectic, they can. You can encounter something which sets a new standard of beauty, whereupon what was formerly beautiful can become ugly.

It's an outright contradiction to say it's both beautiful and ugly. Ergo, to avoid a contradiction, it must be that it's neither beautiful nor ugly. — TheMadFool

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the same thing can literally be beautiful to me and ugly to you.

RG Collingwood had an interesting notion about how we think in terms of "artificial" dialectics. So the most ugly thing you have ever seen becomes one pole of the antagonistic concept, the most beautiful the other. But eventually, you will encounter something more beautiful, then your idea of what constitutes beauty will evolve. But both really are on the same spectrum.

But this tells us something. What does it mean that knowledge is really a product of cultural access and privilege? One thing it means is that humans are not consciously promoting an advanced species because they do not understand that individual quality is the result of social quality, most specifically universal access and opportunity to a comprehensive education. — JerseyFlight

Yes, these are precisely the sentiments of John Dewey. He believes that the true role and function of education is the perpetuation and gradual perfection of culture. That all genuine social life is educative. And that formal education should create a simplified, idealized and balanced environment to that end.

"As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society."

~Dewey, Democracy and Education

The French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle

Democracy and Education by John Dewey. I'm shifting into a politics, democracy and legal theory mode for the next few books.

edit: a few tidbits from the first couple of chapters...

"Manners are but minor morals."

"The things we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking."

"A modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected."

"As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society."