Comments

  • The Everett Solution to Paradoxes
    Careful. Everett does not posit multiple universes, despite that imagery made popular by DeWitt. Superposition is different than p & ~p... — noAxioms
    :100:
  • Philosophy of Science
    The non-materialist's impossible burden is to explain ... the difference betwixt the immaterial and nothing. Mayhaps that is what non-materialism is all about - a study of nothing!
    3hReplyOptions     — Agent Smith
    :fire:

    Fool me, fool me all you want for a time will come when a false friend becomes a true friend.
    "Whatever you want ..." :cool:
  • Philosophy of Science
    Isn't the result a different meaning of real that...is essentially meaningless? — GLEN willows
    Yes.

    An old sko0l scientific realist (via methodological naturalism), model-dependent realism seems to me more grounded (i.e. adaptive) than "social constructionism" or any other flavor of fashionable "anti-realism".
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    @Jack Cummins et al –

    IMHO, Spinoza's dual-aspect ontology¹ =/= "cosmology" ... Nietzsche's dionysian naturalism² =/= "monism" ... as aptly stated
    To the degree they [philosophies] can be encapsulated into a simple thesis, they [philosophers] do not ask anything of us. — Paine
    :up:



    ¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acosmism

    ²
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrealism_(philosophy)
  • What are you, if not a philosopher?
    ↪Yohan
    Instead of "philosopher" I call myself a

    freethinker (offline) &

    dialectical rodeo clown (online).
  • We are the only animal with reasons
    My metaphysics is constraints-based. And a constraint is inherently permissive. What is not prevented is free to happen. 

    Reality is a system of relations. Reality becomes stabilised at the point where it’s contraries - as in its global constraints and local freedoms - come into a steady dynamical balance ...

    Existence is irreducibly complex in its hierarchical organisation. 

    A dynamical balance is only normative in the sense that it underlines the fact that a system must dissipate to persist.     — apokrisis
    :100: :fire:

    You can invoke balance and thermodynamics until you are blue in the face, but that will get you no more closer to a reason for doing any thing. And hence here we are with reasons. — schopenhauer1
    :sweat: Poor schop1, "blue in the face" in denial ...

    It seems "balance and thermodynamics", however, is the reason for "a reason for doing any thing" insofar as anything can be done at all. Besides, our "reasons" seem to be (mostly) ex post facto rationalizations.
  • Mythopoeic Thought: The root of Greek philosophy.
    ↪Agent Smith
    "Superheroes" and celebrities.
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    ... guided by natural laws and initial conditions toward some ultimate Ontological State. If we could do the math, we might even be able to compute that Final State. — Gnomon
    What a reductionist thing to say? :smirk:
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    The most protective measure philosophy has is probably the average person's fairly sensible lack of interest in the subject. — Tom Storm
    :up:

    I overthink but it may be better than too little thinking ... — Jack Cummins
    :up:
  • The Torture Paradox
    ↪Agent Smith
    Stop torturing yourself. :sweat:
  • Infinite Progress
    ↪Agent Smith
    Every judgment has a cause. However, (according to our best, more precise, completely unfalsified physical theory QFT) the vast vast majority of events in nature do not have causes. "PSR" may be about us, but it's not about entities more-fundamental-than-us (e.g. the universe).
  • Mythopoeic Thought: The root of Greek philosophy.
    I am afraid we are not rid of [Myths] because we still have faith in grammar. — Twilight of the Idols
    :fire:
  • Currently Reading
    ↪Jamal
    :cool:
  • Infinite Progress
    Causal component of the PSR: Everything has a cause — Agent Smith
    Two problems: (1) quantum fluctuations, which are the most abundannt entities / events in nature are a-casual (re: uncertainty principle) and (2) "the PSR" must lack "a cause", otherwise it's an infinite regress / vicious circe.
  • Ignorance, Knowledge, Wisdom
    I gave it a go last year with this proposal ...
    SQ (stupidity quotient) tests taken at the end of primary school, again at the end of secondary school and then lastly at the end of professional school (e.g. law, medicine, finance, a research science) would be, IMO, far more useful to society as a criterion for disqualifying idiots from being allowed to squat in high places since, apparently, it is the well above average level of stupidity endemic in the intellectual (bureaucratic) & decision-making classes that is chiefly responsible for the persistently deplorable state of many developed societies (re: climate change, WMD proliferation, human trafficking, neoliberalization, etc). :mask: — 180 Proof
    AFAIK no takers yet here or abroad.
  • The Torture Paradox
    ↪Agent Smith
    Murder tortures the survivors (i.e. family, friends & lovers of the murder-victim) with open-ended, sudden bereavement. Also, murder undermines / threatens social stability. The deterrent penalty must (attempt to) be stronger because the down-stream adverse, public effects tend to be greater in scope. No "paradox", Smith.
  • What is the simplest example of entropy?
    ↪TiredThinker
    No.
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    You're giving philosoohical ideas much more agency than they possess or deserve, Jack. I don't see the point of worrying about them (tools) being misused or abused by charlatans, criminals and cretins (tools) – that way leads to censorship, etc.
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    Your interest is psychological. You're worried that knowledge might hurt you? Make you sad? Yes, probably.

    It's a good idea, as implied above, not to be susceptible to bad ideas. And not to be susceptible to bullshit.     — Srap Tasmaner
    :fire: :up:

    ↪Jack Cummins

    ... "The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy." ~G. Deleuze — 180 Proof
  • What matters
    Life, some say, is a cruel joke :lol: (weep + laugh)

    Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher :cry: . Anicca or panta rhei (life is cruel).

    Democritus, the laughing philosopher :grin: (life is a joke).     — Agent Smith
    Wings of the absurd (Zapffe-Camus-Rosset).
  • What is the simplest example of entropy?
    Heat.

    There are countlessly many more ways to break an egg than to make an egg (which, by implication, breaks more eggs). There are many more ways to fall down than to stand up ... many more ways to fall than to fly ... many more ways to die than to be born ...

    After all, signals (sounds, lights) are merely interruptions of noise (silence, darkness).

    In sum: order (i.e. dissipative structure)
    is a phase-state of disorder – disorder's way of generating more disorder.
  • What matters
    ↪Agent Smith
    Only in profundity.
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    ↪Agent Smith
    Peircean-Deweyan fallibilism rather than Jamesian 'expedience' (or Rortyan 'relativism').
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    ↪Agent Smith
    For the 'ontology of information' I suggest, to start, D. Deutsch's work on quantum computing (re: constructor theory) and S. Wolfram's work on computational irreducibility (e.g. pancomputationalism) and G. t'Hooft & L. Susskind's holographic principle (re: black hole information paradox).
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    I'm drawn to anti-foundationalism because I can't make up my mind about anything. — Tom Storm
    :smirk:

    ↪Agent Smith
    :pray: :mask:
    Thus,
    Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth. — Freddy Z
  • Siddhartha Gautama & Euthyphro
    Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation. — The Antichrist
    Re: "The Euthyphro" – God is irrelevant (vide Epicuus). :fire:

    ↪Agent Smith
    If it's a profoundly good or funny book, then I'll need to read it again ... and again ... and again ....
  • Should Philosophies Be Evaluated on the Basis of Accuracy of Knowledge or on Potential Effects?
    :death: :flower:

    ↪Jack Cummins
    I "judge" a philosophy, as CS Peirce taught, by the habits – particularly, ethical and psychological habits – its reflective inquiries and dialectic practices cultivate in the thinker. As Pierre Hadot points out, philosophy (should be) a way of life.

    Most of my thinking life I have defined myself (i) in the broadest sense a 'freethinking fallibilist absurdist' and (ii) in particular, the last couple of decades or so, as an 'Epicurean-Spinozist', (iii) which in practice (applied to life, the universe & everything, so to speak) consistently frames, or interprets, (my) existence in terms of 'philosophical ¹realism and methodological ²naturalism'.

    = = = = =
    (e.g immanentism)¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_of_immanence

    (e.g. actualism)¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualism

    (e.g. disutilitarianism)¹
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_utilitarianism

    (e.g. physicalism)² https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/physicalism-and-its-discontents/methodological-role-of-physicalism-a-minimal-skepticism/ADFEE2705BA45CB7C5C83C4966B72FBB
    = = = = =

    I've always practiced philosophy like a martial art and hygienic discipline (for maintaining ethical fitness-flexibility) rather than as a scientistic, religious/mystical or ideological endeavor. Unlearning self-immiserating habits (i.e. reducing foolery ~ maladsptive fixations / attachments) rather than seeking "knowledge" (i.e. "ultimate truths") is how I love that which 'the wise' must love, what Socrates ... Spinoza ... Peirce ... Wittgenstein ... call understanding (or lucidity à la Camus) – recognizing what we do not know about whatever (we think) we know – reasoning about yet within the limits of reason – reflectively aligning one's expectations with reality. Ergo: suppositions without dogmas.

    Also :point:
    ↪180 Proof


    Caveat – From the 'history of ideas' this recurring tragedy-farce (which Plato warns of): only when Suppositions are reduced to Dogmas (re: sophistry) can philosophical ideas be abused by ideologues, theocrats & occultists.
  • Infinite Progress
    I found in this book a persuave argument for 'open-ended development': The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_Infinity

    Whether or not that is "progress" is, perhaps, debatable. Consider also John Gray's contrarian polemic The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths.
  • Truly new and original ideas?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Theorizing "consciousness" is scientific problem and not only, even principally, a philosophical question because philosophy lacks means for empirically investigating and explaining phenomena and thereby only examines – interprets – ideas. I don't see neuroscience as "a form of replacement for philosophy" but rather as a transformation of speculative ideas about "consciousness" into an experimental research program about the neurological substrate of phenomenal metacognitions. Philosophy remains both the midwife and critical interpreter as well as beneficiary of the sciences, IMO
  • Truly new and original ideas?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Philosophy concerns ideas. Neuroscience concerns ideation. I see how the latter might inform the former but not the other way around.
  • Agrippa's Trilemma
    I'm just exploring the possibility of escaping from the clutches of skepticism. — Agent Smith
    Pyrrhonian? Academic? Cartesian? Humean? ... Rortyan?
  • Truly new and original ideas?
    what is the relationship between neuroscience and ideas. — Jack Cummins
    Same as "the relationship between" particle physics and chocolate frosting. It's a category mistake to (causally) relate them. :roll:
  • Truly new and original ideas?
    Freddy's "madness" drove his idiosyncratic philosophical genius rather than the other way around. Don't believe the pop psych hype! :smirk:
  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    ↪Agent Smith
    You've lost me.
  • Agrippa's Trilemma
    ↪Agent Smith
    :eyes: Neurath's Boat.
  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    ↪Agent Smith
    IME, reason works better than any of the alternatives tried so far. Better for what? At least for (1) producing, using, correcting and transmitting (algorithmic) knowledge and, via reflective equilibrium, (2) forming normative beliefs in indeterminate situations or intractably complex domains.
  • Errorology
    ↪Yohan
    :100:
  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    ↪Agent Smith
    Nonsense. "Reason" is not a claim; it's a discursive practice that is "justified" only insofar as it works. "Faith?" Well, nothing fails like prayer ... (Btw, there isn't any "paradox" in Pyrrhonian skepticism (re: undecidable ideas) in contrast to the unwarranted assumption of Academic / global skeptics that "knowledge must be certain, therefore uncertain knowledge is not knowledge.")
  • Jesus as a great moral teacher?
    [T]he further we get from Jesus, the less apparent the Jewish roots of his teaching and the more it comes to resemble the pagan beliefs of Greece and Rome. This is not at all surprising given that following Paul's preaching to the gentiles the distinction between Jew and Gentile grew and became more and more acrimonious and Christianity came more and more to resemble the gentile world. — Fooloso4
    :fire:
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    An anthropic principle is an anthropocentric bias, or illusion; nature is not fine-tuned for us, rather we fine-tune our concepts and models to nature. — 180 Proof
    I.e. map =/= territory.

    ↪Agent Smith
    Given enough rope, Gnomon might hang you both ...
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