So which discussion is not finite in that case? Does any discussion under the sun goes on forever? it doesn't make sense. — Corvus

You are descending into incoherence. No discussion is not finite. A double negative that you deserve. Yes, no discussion goes on forever.

With the possible exception of attempting to have you admit an error.

Wasn't he saying clearly mathematician's infinite are finite? — Corvus

What? No.

Yup, that was my interpretation of Wittgenstein. What is your ground for saying it error? — Corvus

My ground involves reading what Wittgenstein says: "mathematician's discussions of the infinite are clearly finite discussions. By which I mean, they come to an end." He is not saying that infinity is finite, but that the discussions of mathematicians are finite.

As I said above, you will double down. You will also seek to obfuscate and change topic. But here, your error is clear. The subject of the quote is not the infinite, but mathematician's discussions of the infinite.

Edit: here it is, posted while I was writing the above - the attemtp to change topic:

Describe "infinity" in clear and actual way in understandable language, and I will tell you about your modus operandi. — Corvus

When one definition simultaneously addresses every possible objection... — PL Olcott

...one should proceed with extreme scepticism.

You have not understood Quine. I don't think you have understood the analytic/synthetic distinction. And I don't think that on this topic you are "open to learning", as teachers sometimes say. You have produced the answer without first making sense of the question - something you already did in your previous threads.

Hmm. You misattributed a position to Wittgenstein. He did not say that "infinite" means "finite".

Now go back to this:

You said, "Problem with Set Theory is that their concept "infinite" means "finite""

What set theory textbook, or any reference in set theory or mathematics, says that 'infinite' means 'finite'? — TonesInDeepFreeze

You misunderstood. — Corvus

No, Tones took up what you said, asking you to justify it. You are in error, both in claiming "Problem with Set Theory is that their concept "infinite" means "finite" and in attributing anything like that to Wittgenstein.

This is your modus operandi.

It is indistinguishable from the locutionary act. — NOS4A2

Well, no, it isn't. Making marks and asking a question are very different acts. Here are the same marks: "Any advice?". I am not using them here in order to asking a question. So there is a difference between making the marks and asking the question; which is to distinguish between the locution and the illocution. And neither is "invisible", what ever that might mean in this context.

Your response is no act of mine. — NOS4A2

No, but your eliciting a response is an act of yours. Just as your post elicited this reply. I would not have written this were it not for your post, and hence this post is an act resulting from your act.

You spoke them or wrote them. No others acts have occurred or are apparent or can be measured. — NOS4A2

You also made statements and asked questions. Are these not acts you performed? Why not?

...the theory ought to be reworked to include “listening acts”, the acts of a listener. — NOS4A2

Speech act theory is embedded in social discourse, implicitly and explicitly addressing the place of utterances in social activity. Perlocutions include the acts of the listener.

From recollection, you maintain a form of hyper-individualism, which it seems makes it difficult for you to see the social aspects inherent in speech acts. I remain unable to see what your objection is.

Looks a bit like he has 1+1=2 mixed up with somethign like "1+1" ="2"?

I have already quoted from Wittgenstein from his writings "infinite" in math means "finite", — Corvus

I can't find anything of the sort in this thread. You quoted him, in another thread, as saying

"Let us not forget: mathematician's discussions of the infinite are clearly finite discussions. By which I mean, they come to an end." - Philosophical grammar, p483. Wittgenstein. — Corvus

Which is very far from what you attribute to him here.

But you will double down, again.

yeah, that must be it.

...and the longer you spend on this topic, the less likely it is that you are one of them.

And around and around. Language on idle.

And also, potentially, in terms of simple probability. A large volume at a high temperature may well be more likely than a small volume with a high level of order. Regular physics explains the rise of regular observes vers in the large hot volume.

And again, again, it remains that there are no tight grounds for accepting the calculations involved. It is "cognitively unstable" - or if folk prefer simple language, there are no observations that settle the issue, and hence it remains mere speculation.

Your reasoning (or Vilenkin's) seems to beg the question. — Michael

Hmm. The point is that the reasoning here is unstable - it remains equivocal, even for you, and downright dubious for others.

And what is the rational response in such circumstances? I don't think it is to conclude that you are a Boltzmann brain.

Also, I am pleased that you did not disappear in a puff of probability, as i had feared - both because it makes my view more likely, and because this discourse has some amusement value.

Cool. There's also the argument that Boltzmann brains count as a marker for absurdity: Any method for calculating probabilities ought come to the conclusion that the most likely observer is the one we know exists - us. So if the calculation shows a Boltzmann brain to be more likely than a regular observer, the calculation probably has a methodological error. Also from Vilenkin.

Published by the Journal of High Energy Physics - what's the problem?

, I won't object to such refinements. Differentiating requests from questions might be worthwhile. That would be an exercise within speech act theory.

So far as this thread goes, it remains unclear what 's objection to speech act theory per se is.

An argument that regular observers are more common than Boltzmann observers:
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0611271

What is clear is that the physics is incomplete. Hence there remains good reason for Boltzmann scepticism.

Such a scenario is cognitively unstable...

An excellent phrase.

I think the difference you are trying to draw is between a voluntary and an involuntary construct. — Lionino

I don't think so. There is for me a clear difference to be made between the apple on the table and an imagined apple. That is, after all, why we have the language around imagination. Same goes for dreaming - if we could not tell whether or not we are dreaming, we would not have the word "dream".

There are lots of things of which we are certain.

It seems you use "perceive" were you might better use "interact".

That might be all that is problematic with this thread.

...invisible acts... — NOS4A2

Invisible?

Any advice? — NOS4A2

Here you made some marks on the screen - a physical act.

Those marks are letters and words - you have written something in a language. You performed a locutionary act.

In performing that locution you asked a question - an illocutionary act.

By performing that illocution you elicited this response - a perlocution.

Nothing in this is "invisible".

"Any advice?" is a question, not a statement. It is not the sort of thing that is either true or false. It does not have a truth value.

In the right circumstances, one names a ship by saying "I name this vessel the SS Incomprehensible"; One marries a hetro couple by announcing "I now pronounce you husband and wife"; One opens a bridge by pronouncing "I declare this bridge officially open". One makes a promise by saying "I promise to read your posts with care". We do things with words.

my problem is that speech act theory proposes multiple phenomena where only one is apparent. — NOS4A2

The key insight in speech acts may be that the content and the force of the illocution are distinct.

For those interested in the topic - and it has many uses, in and outside of philosophy - see Speech Acts and John Langshaw Austin

Time, inclination and patience permitting, I hope to get caught up at some time to responding to the recent various misconceptions, non sequiturs, strawmen, etc. posted in this thread. — TonesInDeepFreeze

What's worse than people trying to do physics without the mathematics?

Apparently, people will also try to do mathematics without the mathematics.

Pointing out their errors simply makes them double down. Sometimes all you can do is laugh and walk away.

@Michael?

You still there?

Damn.

:yikes:

...since it cannot be proven to not be the case, I cannot be absolutely certain. — Janus

Drop the requirement of proof and take it as a "hinge" proposition, not to be subject to doubt.

That's all I want, and since it seems incoherent to want something unimaginable, you might also say it's all I could want. — Janus

Yep. It's not as if, that the description is only as it appears to ordinary humans implies that the description is wrong... But that seems to be what some folk think.

I don't recall anyone I've read taking up the question of "how many acts is it?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Anscombe. Was the man making shadows? Moving his arms? Pumping water? Poisoning the well? Killing the villagers?

Each a different description of the same event. How many, and which, acts are involved depends on what one is doing with the description...

It pays to remember that scientific theories, and science generally, only tell us how to make sense of how things appear to be to ordinary humans. — Janus

I wonder what more Janus wants? What more could he want?

I think its impossible to view the world outside of some particular perspective and so in that sense I would say that our notion of objective truth is an idealization. — Apustimelogist

I'll not disagree with you about "objective" truth. I don't think the notion of much use. By talking to each other we can remove biases of perspective. There are true sentences about how things are. And overwhelmingly, we agree as to what is true and what false. The places we disagree tend to be either misunderstandings or differences in what one should to do about how things are.

Consider how much agreement was involved in your simply reading that paragraph.

Your point isn’t clear from the letters you put on the screen. — NOS4A2

Odd.

You made marks. That was an act on your part. You made sentences. That was an act on your part. You asked questions. That was an act on your part.

Whether you want to count this as one act with three different descriptions, or as three different acts, these remain acts attributable to you, and acts performed in virtue of your speech.

Speech acts.

Things you did with words.

I'm not seeing anything problematic so far.

But still more likely than not being a Boltzmann brain. — Michael

Are you still here?

Good.

In the case that I think there is no world, it follows that I believe that everything around me is merely a projection of my mind (or simply is my mind). If I also believe that I am here discussing for a purpose, it could very well be that I believe that I am interacting with the very contents of my mind — Lionino

That whole thing radically changes what is usually meant by "mind' and "my".

I understand what it is to dream - the world around me is no dream. I understand what it is to imagine or fantasise - the world around me is no such phantasm. So if the world around me is somehow a construct of my mind, it is very different to other mental constructs.

So different that one might be tempted to call it "real"?

Yep.

And given that there is a brain, the longer it persists the less likely it is to be merely a quantum fluctuation.

You are nothing if not persistent.

(See what I did there? )

That still does not defeat solipsism — Lionino

No, it doesn't, but it might reduce the solipsist to the status of a mere object of ridicule.

That is, in both these cases, as in the case of the existence of the world, there may be a point at which one's credulity is strained a bit too far. That point will be different for different folk, some of whom never participate in philosophy fora, some who treat it as an amusement and a very few who take it seriously enough to find themselves in an asylum.

So perhaps all up it is not unreasonable to take things at face value?

At the least, it makes it easier to buy coffee.

IF you are a Boltzmann brain, all bets are off. The coffee container might contain a lion. The cup will have fallen down a black hole inside the cupboard.

But this is not the world we experience.

I'm happy to treat this as a reductio; the persistence and predictability of the world shows that the Boltzmann brain argument is in error, even if it is not clear exactly what that error is.

And that is not a disproof of Boltzmann brain theory, so much as a rejection of mere quibbling.

Something like that.

But it's a faith, not something supported by empirical evidence. — Michael

As if basing one's beliefs on empirical evidence were not an act of faith... If you are a Boltzmann brain, what are the chances of your having just happened to have imagined into being a world that exactly corresponds to the actual world? You happened to drop into existence in a way that allows you to realise you are a Boltzmann brain...

Pretty suspicious. Perhaps a good argument for solipsism...

Are you still there?

And it's always the case that the probability that I am a Boltzmann brain is greater than the probability that I am not a Boltzmann brain. — Michael

If.

And each time you reply, that chance shrinks, and not just a little bit, but by a truely extraordinary quantity.

All is grist to my previous contention:

There's plenty of insuperable philosophical issues, and it's easy to make up even more. — Banno

I will continue to take the world as being pretty much as it appears.

1. There are far more long-lived Boltzmann brains than long-lived humans — Michael

There are an awful lot of "if"'s in the argument.

But we are not talking about whether there are any Boltzmann brains, so much as whether you are a Boltzmann brain.

And the chances of that continue to shrink.

So please, continue.

Keep it up.

Maybe some time you will get lucky, and dissipate before the next reply...

Or maybe we will reach agreement that there is something quite specious about this argument...

t only follows that the probability that I am a Boltzmann brain gets smaller as the time increases. — Michael

Yep.

it is always the case that the probability that I am a Boltzmann brain is greater than the probability that I am not a Boltzmann brain. — Michael

In an infinite space of infinite possibilities, there are presumably an infinity of non-Boltzmann brains, so I don't see that you have grounds for asserting that they are less common than Boltzmann brains...

But keep going. Again, the longer you persist, the more likely that you are an ordinary brain.

Solipsism is the denial that the human mind has any valid ground for believing in the existence of anything but itself, anything but itself is the (outside) world. — Lionino

Sure. It's based in a very odd notion of "valid". And, for that matter, of "human mind".

Nuh. I'm arguing that since you picked out a ball with a green stripe, chances are it was red, and will disappear momentarily. But it hasn't disappeared yet, and the longer it doesn't disappear the less likely that it is a quantum fluctuation.

This is fun, since the longer this discussion continues, the less likely it is that you are a quantum fluctuation...

Your argument is that because most red balls have no green stripe then if my ball has a green stripe then it is most likely not a red ball. That is wrong. If my ball has a green stripe then it is most likely a red ball. — Michael

No, it isn't.

And your reply renders it even less likely that you are a quantum fluctuation.

Perhaps I can put it like this: I don't really need to write a reply to your post, because if you are a Boltzmann brain, then the overwhelming probability is that you will phizzle out in a puff of probability before you read it.

So if you are reading this, you are probably not a Boltzmann brain.

Yeah, I know. there will be one Boltzmann brain somewhere that persists until it reads this sentence. But what were the chances of it being you?

You still there?

The more your read this, the less likely it is your are a Boltzmann brain...

Still there?

Best stop while you are ahead...

Hey, don't get upset with me - I'm just a statistical aberration....

Or the world is as it seems, and you needn't worry about it ceasing in the near future, and I really am being a bit of a dick.

Now what do you think? :wink:

Well, the thread is about the world, not about solipsism, so the argument used did nto directly address sophisms. probably for another thread.

Yep.

Solipsism requires a particular picture of how things are, in particular of a "self" very different to the self that I have. It's a self that hides things from itself... somewhat mad.

It's just simpler to supose things to be pretty much as they appear, with other people and objects that persist over time when unobserved and surprises and occasional true statements and hopefully rarer errors.

Most Boltzmann brains are short-lived, but most long-lived brains are Boltzmann brains. — Michael

Most long-lived brains are batty brains. That yours is not a batty brain shows that on the balance of probability it is not a Boltzmann brain.

That the world persists shows that it is very unlikely to be a mere statistical aberration.