I distinguish epistemics from epistemology. — Millard J Melnyk

And?

I don't "distinguish epistemics from epistemology", so you are wrong?

You want your cake and to eat it, by supposing that belief and thought are both the same and yet different.

A belief is usually considered to be an attitude towards a sentence such that the sentence is held to be true.

A thought is something else entirely.

The objection I presented is that we can think something without believing it. It follows that belief and thought are not identical.

I don't see that you addressed this objection.

And again, more broadly, your conclusion is itself a belief: that belief is irrational. It follows that your argument is irrelevant to your conclusion, since your conclusion is irrational.

Believing all belief is irrational, is irrational.

So there seems to be something irrational about your conclusion.

Goodness, some logic.

Bet it doesn't help.

There'd be a naive objection along the lines that all Russell had done is avoid the issue by re-defining "future"; that the sentence "In the future, p will be in the past" is about the future - it's right there in the syntax.

Trouble is, this is just to give an alternate formal definition of "future" and "past", as if a sentence were "future" when the outermost tense operator is F. Russell's semantic definition gives us a general case that applies also to the Prior dichotomy, while also giving logical support to the intuition that what was true int he past need not be true in the future.

the syntactic version does not generalise, and does not explain why certain inferences do not work. And it is no surprise ot find that the surface syntax can mislead us as to the logical character of a sentence.

Existential crises as a reaction to trauma? A bit tangential, perhaps. While that might explain the motive, it doesn't resolve the incoherence.

Indeed.

Sounds strained.

This post exists.

We might proceed from that, without the constipation.

My apologies, Dogbert. There is a rash of really poor idealist tending OPs at the moment, and yours is one that caught my ire. It starts out wrong and goes astray from there.

Come on, ; if we can have the highest mountain, we can have the beingest being...

The next section shows the structural similarity between Prior's objection and Pp ⊨ FPp

That some sentence was true in past implies that in the future it that sentence will be true in the past. Prima facie, a derivation about the future from a premise about the past. But FPp is on Russell's account neither past nor future, and so Pp ⊨ FPp does not derive a sentence about the future from a sentence about the past.

The logic sets out the incoherence of the intuition.

Smoke doesn't repeatedly and insistently answer back with the same mistake.

:meh:

Downunder, our agrarian National Party just dropped its net zero emissions policy, while record-breaking storms dropped 9cm hail on some of the richest farmland in the country.

And so it goes.

Fragile masculinity, on some accounts. The need for control overwhelms rationality. In all truth some perhaps cannot see what is problematic in this view. The world simply must be ordered in the way he sees, no other option is available. Hence the faith in essences ordained by god, permitting him to divvy things up to suit his own self image.

Unnecessary psychologising on my part, of course. But it helps me make sense of such threads.

And yes, that is intended to be ironic.

[1] Epistemically, belief and thought are identical. — Millard J Melnyk

They are?

A believe is, one way or another, held to be true. But not all thoughts are held to be true. We can certainly entertain thoughts that are not true - that's were things like modality and error come from.

if your point is that we ought perhaps treat our beliefs with scepticism, that's not a bad view. But care needs to be taken - can you, for example, maintain scepticism as to the meaning of the words your post is written with, while you write it? Doin so would seem to undermine the very grounding of your scepticism.

Is your belief that you are now reading this sentence irrational?

All this by way of pointing to something a bit broader than just that your belief that "All belief is irrational" would thereby be irrational.

But further, we do construct social institutions, not by "I think..." so much as by "We will act in this way...". No individual can construct such a social institution by thinking it; but that is why they are social.

SO not seeing it.

There's clearly more going on with these people than mental illness. — ProtagoranSocratist

With the trans folk or the ones doing the anti-trans posting?

As @Tom Storm pointed out, Bob Ross is clearly here to justify his authoritarian, conservative politics in the best way he can, which is, not very well.

His motivation is political, and religious, not philosophical. He has a parochial, patriarchal, patriotic view of humanity, such that everyone everywhere ought fit some fantasy about 1950's middle class 'Merca.

It's mainly interesting because it is so sad, so limited.

In the end there's not much we can do for poor old Bob.

Existence is a brute fact and does not require "justification". — 180 Proof

Yep.
Existence is taken as granted, not demonstrated.

There's something extraordinarily compromised about a view that seeks to demonstrate "existence". There's even this:

Thus, to avoid circularity, it is necessary to posit a transcendent ground of being. — Dogbert

We can't begin with the existence of the chair you are sitting on, but we can necessarily "posit a transcendental ground of being".

This is such poor thinking it beggars belief.

I and others have tried to show that you have adopted a muddled approach to the topic. You appear not to have been able to see the problem with your approach.

Sex concerns biology, gender concerns social roles. But because of your religious beliefs, you wish there not to be such a distinction, so that you can maintain that biology necessarily determines ones sexual roles. You wrap all that up in a pretence of misunderstood neo- Aristotelian metaphysics in order to to kid yourself that ist has some merit.

It's all pretty tendentious. And after 15 pages, tedious.

I'm not very happy with your account. But if you will not explain, so be it.

Then my conclusion is that I've show that your argument is invalid.

Yes.

It's how you seem to have set up your argument.

Have you a valid variant?

So it was all to do with a lack of imagination in regard to sex acts.

Hopefully we can translate the structure of the proof into knitting, line by line.

"Suppose Γ is a satisfiable set of R-preserved sentences and $\delta$ is R-fragile."
Γ is the rows of some scarf that have already been knitted, while $\delta$ tells us about some arbitrary set of any rows at all.

"Let M be a model which satisfies Γ"
Let M be any scarf with the rows Γ already knitted.

"Either $\delta$ is true in M or it isn’t."
Either the rows described by $\delta$ will be added to M, or they won't.

"If it isn’t, then M is a counterexample showing that Γ⊭ $\delta$"
If the rows $\delta$ are not added to M, the the rows Γ could not have led us to conclude that they would be added.

"But if $\delta$ is true in M, then since $\delta$ is R-fragile there is some M' such that R(M,M') and $\delta$ is not true in M'."
But if the rows $\delta$ are added to the scarf, then since they might not have been added (they are fragile), there is some other scarf M' such that the rows $\delta$ were not added.

"Since each member of Γ was particular, each member of Γ is also true in M'."
Since the rows Γ have already been knitted, they are the same in both scarves. M' also has the rows Γ

"Hence M' is our counterexample, and Γ⊭ $\delta$."
In which case, the other scarf M' has the rows Γ but not the rows $\delta$, and so again, the rows Γ could not have led us to conclude that the rows described by $\delta$ would be added.


Clear as mud? There was a bit of trouble with the parsing, such that I had to use mathjax for the delta but not the Gamma. Odd. Let me know if it doesn't parse well.

Russell moves from the specific cases so far examined to the general case.

Start with a formal language L, containing a sentence Φ. All the language consist of are symbols and rules for stringing them together. For it to be of use, we give it an interpretation by assigning things to the variables. Each assignment is a model, and there are lots of different ways to make the assignments, so lots of different models - the set U.

And we can have relations between these models - R. The reaction might be having the same individuals up to a certain point, or having the same true sentences up to a certain time, or having the same rows of knitting up to a given row, and so on.

Definition 10 just defines a sentence as being R-preserved if for all models, if it is true in one then it is true in all the others that are related by R. Definition 11 just defines a sentence as R-fragile if whenever there are models in which it is true, there is an R-related model in which it is false.

Note again the lack of symmetry.

The General Barrier Theorem (Theorem 12) says that no R-fragile sentence is entailed by some satisfiable (true in some model) sentences that are all R-preserved.

Both the particular/universal barrier and the past/future barrier are special cases of this general result.

Cheers, Bob.

What is your definition of a chair? If you can't give one because you think it requires essentialism, then I think we need to hash that out first and come back to this. — Bob Ross

It's not that we can't "give a definition" so much as that definitions do not do what you think they do.

Others have carried the point. I'm sorry you can't see it. Read Austin or Wittgenstein some time.

So you seem to have something like

'You cannot skip eating, or you will die.'
Fundamental Purpose = Service Target (One's Own Group) × Final State
therefore, you ought not skip eating.

??

The Axiom of Purpose — panwei

What's that, then? I don't see other mention of it.

But statement A does not tell us what we ought do. It only sets out the consequence of a certain action.

In order to reach the conclusion "You ought not skip eating", one needs an additional premise. Perhaps "You ought seek not to die".

So your argument remains incomplete.

...your gender theory is very much in line with how aristotle may have responded in his time period to more modern and flexible ideas of gender... — ProtagoranSocratist

I'm not so sure. For instance, Martha Nussbaum's response to rigid Aristotelian essentialism would be critical, despite her drawing heavily on Aristotle herself. That cosmic teleology would be dropped. For Aristotle, teleology is immanent in nature itself. It's more Aquinas who would have it enforced by god. But we can do without either.

We're being sold a pup, an Aristotle crafted to suit religious ideology.

2. Humanity is constituted according to a paradigmatic form - a likeness or image that grounds its dignity and capacity for relation to that transcendent source. — Colo Millz

Here again is that presumptive pseudo-Aristotelianism, rife in the forums at present. It smuggles in a theological conclusion under the guise of metaphysics.

You began this discussion by giving your conclusion.

There's the bad faith that continues in your new posts. There's the misapplication of Gadamer. Entering into such a discussion by presuming the human dignity of Genesis is bad faith.

I think you and I are done here. That bit about not providing you with the walls to your self-serving echo chamber.

Look up the definition of a word in the dictionary.

Then look up the definition of each of the words in that definition.

Iterate.

Given that there are a finite number of words in the dictionary, the process will eventually lead to repetition.

If one's goal were to understand a word, one might suppose that one must first understand the words in its definition. But this process is circular.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

Notice that the dictionary definition, as a description of use, is post hoc? The use precedes the definition.

The question to hand is "which is to be the master?"; and my answer is, the use is the master of the definition. — Banno

There will be amongst us those who hold that there is such a thing as the meaning of a word; and that any worthwhile theory of language must set out, preferably in an algorithmic fashion, how that meaning is to be determined.

There will be others, amongst whom I count myself, who think otherwise, and will go along with quine:

Success in communication is judged by smoothness of conversation, by frequent predictability of verbal and nonverbal reactions, and by coherence and plausibility of native testimony.

If there is a philosophically interesting topic here it may be to compare and contrast Quine's critique of pointing as the source of meaning, with Wittgenstein's. It will not easily be found in a defence of pointing. — Banno

Here's what can be done by way of answering your demand for a definition:

An example of a biological appraisal: This body has two X chromosomes. A biological fact, normatively neutral.

An example of a gendered appraisal: Having two X chromosomes counts as being a woman. A social fact, and normatively loaded. — Banno

Here's why it's relevant to the thread:

The failure of your essentialism is that it mistakes having two X chromosomes for taking on the feminine role. It tries to introduce the normative stuff at the level of biology. — Banno

This is not a chair. — Bob Ross

You have to say that. You have to re-assert your arbitrarily chosen essence, your self- reinforcing monologue.

You do the same thing here:

That is not what bigotry refers to. — Bob Ross

points to the same problem.

You provide the evidence:

From within Caputo’s horizon we learn humility: the human is revealed to be creaturely and continuous with nature. From within the horizon of the Genesis story we learn dignity: the human becomes the bearer of meaning and responsibility. — Colo Millz

In this, you presume the consequence of the dialogue. My point is that your ‘fusion of horizons’ isn’t faithful to Gadamer’s method. Gadamer emphasises openness and vulnerability in dialogue; no horizon should be treated as immune or pre-determining.

But that's how you started.

You've doubled down on the invulnerability of theology. That response reinforces my fear that you are dealing in bad faith.

Show that your faith in Christianity is vulnerable, and you might gain some credibility.

That others have misused Gadamer is no excuse.

It's not AI; but these days, your conclusion is justified. It's "Arm", steam-bent oak, by Clark Bardsley Design, from Auckland, New Zealand.

Nice work, ain't it?

A chair on which one cannot sit. A certain approach to definitions and essences, displaced by a piece of nonsense. For those who can see it.

The barriers to entailment here concern logical implication. →, ⊃, ⊨, ⊢ and that sort of thing.

We can make use of Bayesian methods.

But tomorrow might well resemble today in ways other than the sun rising.

You are actively playing in to the role of victim.

Definitions

Cheers. Don't credit me; it's Wittgenstein, via Anscombe.

In my view, this makes ethics not the negation of science but its completion. — Truth Seeker

Compliment would be better.

To be clear, you are implying that traditional Christianity (viz., roman and orthodox catholicism) are ratshit. — Bob Ross

No. I've said that the arguments for your variant are ratshit.

We can stipulate whatever definitions we want. And provided we keep in mind that they are stipulations, that's fine.

But what I would do is set out for you examples of how the use of "sex" and "gender" differ. That's were your error sits.

...you don't have a chance of persuading others... — Philosophim

No one should be under the illusion that Bob or Leon will change their minds as a result of the discussion here. Our posts are a performance, to an audience. Eventually, as the ineptitude of the response becomes unavoidable, a thread like this becomes too much like kicking a pup. Then it's time to go back to expounding Gillian Russell's text.