I don't need to demonstrate there is an OG to someone who already believes there is one. — Relativist

Ok. I do not.

Truth and Predication. Donald Davidson 's last book.

I don't see what's at stake here. Why would it make any difference? — frank

He has presented a few bits and pieces as if he had presented an argument.

, have you a conclusion for us? A page later?

Can you show that there is no OG? — Relativist

I don't know. What's an OG? An ontological grounding...?

And wouldn't it be incumbent on those positing an OG to demonstrate the need for one?

I gather it's some form of foundation on which things are, in some fashion. ut as I said in my first post in this thread,

Perhaps some things just are the case, unexplained and unexplainable. — Banno

All propositional, predicate, or classical logic can be expressed as modal logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, that's not at all what I said.

It really would help if you were to read about and try to understand logic rather than just dispensing your wisdom.

Plenty of good and reasonable outcomes follow many acts of faith. — Fire Ologist

I have not said otherwise. I've just pointed out that the opposite is also true, that obscenities also can be acts of faith.

I see your general point — Fire Ologist

Appreciated. Would that we could have started here.

I never do anything based on insufficient evidence. — Fire Ologist

Really? I do. I've found we often must act despite not knowing the consequences. Seems to be part of the human condition. But such leaps of faith need to be mitigated by other considerations.

That's pretty much the whole of what I had to say on the issue, pages back.

you can’t just conclude that because you don’t see the evidence doesn’t mean it is not there. — Fire Ologist

Sure. And there is also the other option, that we can withhold consent. We can say "I don't know".

what I am saying is that modal logic is not consistent with classical logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Trouble is that modal logic includes propositional logic and predicate logic. Every valid proposition in propositional logic and in predicate logic is valid in modal logic. And for every valid syllogism in classical logic there is an equivalent valid formulation in propositional or predicate logic.

So again, you are just mistaken about this.

And your other errors follow on from this.

Ah, so you want to find out the implications of a mistaken idea. Cool.

@Tom Storm, Leon is talking about you behind your back, again. Seems he wants everyone to agree with him. Except you.

Not sure why he singled you out.

Carlos is playing at Socratic Argument.

It's tedious. And we all know the game plan.

Just spit it out.

Presumably, on other evidence. Or we withhold judgement.

Do you have a point? Otherwise, I'm out.

Added: the graph appears to show that Boomers have a disproportionate share of whatever the vertical axis is... "national wealth".

What if there were a group of folk, who are a subset of the Boomers, and who indeed have a vastly disproportionate share of "national wealth". The richest 1% control a substantial share of national wealth, sometimes exceeding 40%. And they tend to be older. More of them are counted as Boomers then as millennials.

The graph hides the fact that "national wealth" is disproportionally had by the ultra rich, peddling the distortion that blames Boomers.

The top 1% own about a third of the nation's wealth. If most of the top 5% are Boomers, that explains much of the disparity. It's not boomers per se, but the ultra wealthy, who have the disproportionate wealth.

, , before you get carried away, give some consideration to your terminology

Terms like "Gen Z", "Boomer" and "Millennial" are popular, but they have no basis in science. Demographers and social scientists are now pushing back. — ABC Future Tense

In particular, 's graph needs some critical appraisal. Where is the data for boomers when they were twenty? What year is taken as the median for each "generation" - if it is 1960 for boomers, that would be odd; most boomers are considered to be older than that. And the difference between 1960 for boomers and 1992 for gen x is thirty two years, while that between 1992 and 2008 is half that.

Be more sceptical.

That koan you refer to, incidentally, is extracted from the voluminous corpus of Sōtō Zen literature, and taken out of context, can easily be misinterpreted. — Wayfarer

The way I used it, it does just what I wanted it to do.

Curiously, I just wrote:

Does "are-ness" or "being" admit of degrees?
— @Moliere
If an answer is given, be on the look out for a crossing of the floor here, from ontology to morality. "are-ness" and "being" (?) are ontological terms. Degree usually involves some form of evaluation. Now we probably can't say outright that such a move is a mistake, but it will be worth keeping an eye on how the evaluation is done. — Banno

Same applies here. Both god, and the devil, will be in the detail.

That sentence isn't meant to be a definition of essential properties. It's a response to representationalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ok. Good.

So, what is an essence, if not a property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists?

I think I've asked you that before.

Does "are-ness" or "being" admit of degrees? — Moliere

If an answer is given, be on the look out for a crossing of the floor here, from ontology to morality. "are-ness" and "being" (?) are ontological terms. Degree usually involves some form of evaluation. Now we probably can't say outright that such a move is a mistake, but it will be worth keeping an eye on how the evaluation is done.

Ok. So what.

Because there are truths that only the wise can grasp - grasping them is the hallmark of wisdom. — Wayfarer

:wink:

The obvious retort is to ask how you could know this. If you cannot know these truths unless you are wise, how can you know that someone else knows these truths? How can you know someone knows "p is true" unless you also know that p?

And the answer must be in what the wise do. But before enlightenment, gather wood, cary water. After enlightenment, gather wood, carry water.

In my observation the main change in behaviour after enlightenment seems to be having sex with noviciates.

The problem with Plato's line is that it renders differences in kind as if they were differences in degree. Another thread, maybe.

More Socratic gameplay.

Ok, so if there are stronger and weaker forms of evidence.... what?

Can we agree there's a first cause and an irreducible bottom layer of reality? — Relativist

Why?

At the risk of sounding condescending, you've a good understanding of the issues

Lewis was a somewhat eccentric chap. From what I can work out he thought that possible worlds were no different to the actual world, but to the extreme that he concluded that they must therefore also be actual. It's an interesting idea, but I don't agree with it.

Instead I think there are a multitude of possible worlds, but that there is one possible world amongst them that is actual. I take this to be the most common view, almost to the point of a consensus.

In this possible world we can discover things - like that the table is red. We get to talk about other possible worlds by stipulation. So "what if this blue table had been red" stipulates a possible world in which this very table - the blue on - is instead red. The possible world comes about in virtue of the stipulation. That's how I think of them.

An alternative is to think of a logical space containing all the possible worlds, and understanding "what if this blue table had been red" as picking out some world in which this table, which is blue in this world, is red. This is probably the way most logicians think of possible worlds.

My reason for preferring stipulation is simple parsimony. Where the logical space folk list uncountably many possible worlds, I list only those that are explicitly stipulated.

You may be right that Lewis would have a problem with counterpossibel worlds - an interesting point. A counterpossible world cannot be actual. Good argument. The world in which you wear a green hat and not a green hat cannot be this world.

The fun here is in taking "hopelessly confusing notions" and un-confusing them. Something I take as central to the whole enterprise of doing philosophy.

There's a renewed interest in odd versions of essentialism, which I've tried to discuss here - see Essence and Modality: Kit Fine

My cynical self says that, having been unable to provide a suitable account of essences in ontological terms using modal language, Fine moved essentialists over to epistemology and now seek to give an account of essences as how we know (understand, conceive, etc.) that something is what it is. It pictures essence as a lost soul looking for a home; or as a misguided picture of how things are, looking for a way to fit in. — Banno

The motivation seems to be at least in part a desire to make use of essences in ontological arguments for god.

, Ok, so you both will ignore the limits of Aristotelian modal logic becasue understanding the wider formal modal logic would require some effort.

It might be worth pointing out that modal logic is not speculative, but an accepted part of formal logic and of mathematics. It's as accepted as studying topology.

So be it.

Very few folk agree with Lewis. But explaining why he is mistaken is what is so interesting. We do not need to say that possible worlds are also actual.

I won't know if you have understood until you tell me what it is you have concluded. So out with it.

Cool. It was a favourite of my father's, and I also love it, but it takes that step too far that I so often accuse you of also taking.

There are similar things in Midgley.

And here we have "the leap of faith".

It's the standard rendering from modal logic, after Kripke. To be compared to

...it is in the relationship of being known by a rational agent that things most fully "are what they are." — Count Timothy von Icarus

...which for my money says very little.

We can confirm the list dating back 500 years, but the evidence starts to become less reliable after that. Does the record in the book count for anything, or would we consider the claims in the books to be baseless beyond 500 years? — BitconnectCarlos

How do you know that it "becomes less reliable" unless you have some other evidence with which to compare it, and that is more reliable?

There's a sense in which we can entertain the idea that matter itself changed, but I think it's an erroneous inference — Moliere

:up:

Note, though, that none of this is scientific. — Moliere

:up:

For myself I'd say that Aristotle is not a scientist in the modern sense — Moliere

:up:

And I'm not sure how the methods of metaphysics in Aristotle are somehow better than latter methods of metaphysics — Moliere

:up:

...that philosophy is not using science to give itself credibility, and it has no need to do so. — Moliere

Yep. Philosophy is not science without the maths.

Both seem to handle inferences about existence better than positing an essence — Moliere

Yep. And there is the additional problem of their never quite explaining what an essence is, at least not in a way that is anywhere near as clear as "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists".

Funnily enough I kind of welcome the resurgence, as long as we take the historical approach. — Moliere

I also welcome exegesis, but when Aristotelian ideas are toted as better than more recent stuff, together with an apparent misunderstanding of that more recent stuff, then it's worthy of comment.

If reasons "just are" causes, we'd need to revise a lot of our way of talking about them. — J

I don't agree, but saying why would be extending the topic...

Do we want to do that, or start another PM conversation including @Janus, or a new thread, or leave it?

I'll leave it unless something else happens.

:wink: Thanks. Nice. Not so much rock 'n roll though.

Check out this doco

Yeah. Sad, really, that you have bought in to Platonism. Oh well. Cheers.

Edit: A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher, author of Small is beautiful - I think we talked about him previously - has a pleasing and more modern account of such things. You might enjoy it.

Yep. Just noting that this is a bid area. We say things like "She picked the Pumpkin because she wanted to make soup"and talk of beliefs causing revolutions.

Misinterpreting again. — Wayfarer

Then write more clearly. You said "But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person", then that it might be "genuine insight", now it's levels of reality, and levels of being, whatever they are. And how do you share your "self abnegation" without getting arrested for assault?

~~

I'm wondering when you say that we understand things in the human sciences you mean that we understand human behaviour in terms of reasons not causes. — Janus

If I may, there's good arguments that reasons just are causes, from both Davidson and Anscombe, of all people. This might give pause to reconsider what sort of thing a "cause" is. It's a fraught topic.

Come on Way. That first person might still be convinced, and become a True Believer, and spend the rest of their life chanting, but they can't bring out their private experience so that it can be challenged, revised, discussed and all that other stuff we do to decide if a proposal is true or not.

And as for ‘Cartesian anxiety’—it’s not anxiety to ask for public reasons, so much as intellectual hygiene. Assertions grounded solely in subjective conviction can't demand assent from others.

So it's not evidence, it's opinion.

And note that "Perfect statement of modern moral relativism" does not address the actual argument, but instead labels it. Defensive reasoning on your part - "That's just what a heathen would say".

You're better that that.

But the evidence, in this case, is by its nature first-person. — Wayfarer

Then by that alone, it ain't evidence. It's opinion.

I seem to recall Bill Haley and the Comets 'Rock Around the Clock' is often said to be the first bona fide world-wide rock'n'roll hit song... — Wayfarer

Nuh.

Here's the start:



a queer black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

I'll go back to what I said here:

Were I writing in opposition to myself here, I might be pointing out that faith is one amongst at least a trinity, and that when set in the context of hope and love it shines, and my arguments fall away. — Banno

Were I in your shoes, oh devout one, I'd be agreeing with Banno that faith might by itself be corrupted, and so it must not be left on it's own, but kept as a part of the whole lived experience of... whatever your pet religion is this week.

Jesus, now I'm arguing both sides. :roll:

Treating faith as a part of a "form of life", lived fully and freely, may be enough to prevent the faithful from crashing into crowds, wearing bombs in public or praying over children while denying them the medicine they need to live.

Maybe.

incidentally, about this dogma that 'faith is belief without evidence'. The believer will say that the world itself evidences divine providence. There may not be evidence in the sense of double-blind experimental data across sample populations of X thousand persons. But the testimony of sages, the proper interpretation of religious texts, and the varieties of religious experience all constitute evidence, although of course all of that may equally be disregarded. The will not to believe is just as strong as the will to believe. — Wayfarer

I don't disagree. Except that what is to count as evidence ought to be available for public scrutiny. If anything - or indeed, as some suggest, everything - can count as evidence, then evidence loses any capacity to inform our decisions, becoming irrelevant. We must differentiate conviction from justification. The testimony of sages, private interpretations of scripture, or subjective religious experience may be meaningful to the believer but fails as evidence in a public or epistemically shared sense.

So those who believe in divine providence will see it everywhere. Is that evidence, or is it projection, wishful thinking, and confirmation bias?

Resisting an unjustified belief is not "The will not to believe", it's accepting epistemic responsibility - as is believing when there is justification.

And seeing faith as involving belief without evidence is not a dogma, but a description of how faith functions in many religious contexts, where The Faithful are encouraged - indeed, extolled - to maintain their belief in the face of doubt, uncertainty, or counter-evidence.

And this last is the clincher here. It would be extraordinary to see the faithful deny this.

I'm not going for the technical explanations.

Rock is the child of blues and jazz, and these in turn needed slavery and poverty. There were plenty of both in Ancient Egypt.

So back to this: How do you know that there wasn't Rock in Thebes? Perhaps it was played in the back streets. Very little of the music from way back survives - you can hear recreations of it on line, but these are somewhat dubious.

Perhaps what was missing was the equivalent of Elvis and Bill Haley - white men to rip of the traditional music of the Nubians and turn a profit.