Hadn't thought of that. :up: — bert1

I wouldn't've thought of it if last week's work wasn't ball deep in dealing with operationalised scales.

The Glasgow Coma Scale of consciousness (4 votes) — bert1

This was the only one I wasn't torn over when I voted.

But I'm torn over it now.

The association of numbers with different states of consciousness seems definitional, but the ordering of them seems theoretical.

Amazing work. :up:

"...the objects which sit on the end of those symbols' interpretations..." It seems to me erroneous to think of numbers as things; rather, they are ways of doing things with words. A number is not an object so much as what we do when we count; a way of using words. — Banno

Thing is about as clear as you can get for a generic end point that a string gets mapped to. You put the objects in the background then map the symbols to them (see definition of interpretation here). I know you know this, if you could suggest a better word for the background object that an element of a theory is mapped to, I'm all ears.

Might be a mathematician's bias, I'm quite happy referring to abstracta as thingies. Infinity is a thingy.

Why should we assume that there is only one true way to talk about truth - what it really means? — Banno

That's rather the point I'm trying to make: if logics aren't designed for the same use case, if they have different actionable concepts of truth, believing any formal notion is unique or basic or fundamental doesn't seem to reflect the variation between concepts of truth in use and how competing logics might be compared.

I believed it would be easier to connote the idea that the heuristic concept of truth varies between logics with the "really means" phrase, the alternative seemed to me to engender a discussion about the individuation/contextual genesis of heuristic truth concepts.

If we get rid of Ex Falso Quadlibet and Modus Ponens, what insight do we gain into logic, maths and language? — Banno

That truth means something very different to logicians than it means to philosophers in general. That's without speaking of the general public.

At the very base of it then, truth and falsehood are labels you apply to words by combining them with some stipulated object. "2+2=4" is true, why, because the objects which sit on the end of those symbols' interpretations all satisfy the equation. Change the meaning of the symbols and "2+2=4" is false. With the freedom to vary, and even explicitly construct much of, the frame of interpretation; the use case of a logic; all bets are off regarding a global interpretation of truth and falsity that works over all logics.

In that regard, what truth really means or how one ought to think about it won't be settled in formal logic alone - there can be no theorem of a logic that that logic is "right" or "apt" or "fit for purpose" as those terms are evaluations of it as a whole system. Generalities over systems; like languages/logics capable of arithmetic not being able to contain their own truth predicate on pain of inconsistency; hold over a broad swathe of logical systems. At its base, then, insofar as truth is a notion in formal logic; a notion of truth's aptness in any use case emerges as a frothing sea - of norms and heuristic - may shape and wash up smoothed wood - chunks of formalism-.

I gather that is the general point that fdrake has been making about the domain change and the problem of how to formally capture the informal argument. — Andrew M

:up:

Let's see if I can make you see (how I see) the problem. How I see the problem isn't that the op is a counter example to modus ponens (I think modus ponens is valid), I see the problem as that the argument as stated can't be interpreted as a modus ponens, even though it looks like one in terms of the letters that constitute it - how it's written.

I have a box, it contains an apple, an orange, or a banana, you don't know which. But you do know it can only be one of those three. It can't be more than one of those three either. It contains exactly one fruit item.

One of {apple, orange, banana} will be picked out.
Analogously:
One of {Reagan, Carter, Anderson} will win.

Let's say you believe that (assume that, posit, assume as a premise) you will pick out round-ish fruit (apple or orange). In that space of assumptions, (apple, orange), if it's not an orange it must be an apple. not(apple) implies orange holds in that domain, because it consists only of an apple and an orange.

Similarly, Republican consists only of Anderson and Reagan.

If you wanted to conclude that you will receive an apple if you don't receive an orange, you would need to eliminate the possibility of receiving a banana. You can't do that.

What you can do is eliminate the possibility of receiving a banana if you have already assumed, or it is true that you will have received, a roundish fruit. That follows from the assumption. But they can't exclude the banana, so they have no reason to believe (in the OP's terms) that they wouldn't receive a banana (analogously, a democrat, Carter, would win).

So when the words go into your eyeballs, despite the literal characters tracing out a clear instance of modus ponens, as Banno wrote:

Modus ponens:
If p then q
p
therefore, q

p: A Republican wins the election,
q: If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson

So:

If A Republican wins the election, then If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson

and

A Republican wins the election

which, by MP, gives

If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson.

But if it is not Reagan who wins, it will be Jimmy Carter. So there is a prima facie case that MP reaches a false conclusion from true premises. — Banno

The overall interpretation is different from what you would expect - writing it like:

If A Republican wins the election, then If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson

and

A Republican wins the election

which, by MP, gives

(C) If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson.

Has (C) talking about all the candidates, it's evaluated over the candidates - it could be Carter.

But when you read:

If A Republican wins the election, then If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson

The context of "it's" in the "then" part of the if-then references only Republicans. A context, current Republican candidates, in which the disjunction between Reagan and Anderson (Reagan or Anderson will win) holds.

5 Sc v Wc from 2,3,4 — TonesInDeepFreeze

I don't see a problem. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I don't think the problem is that ~Jc entails (Sc v Wc) given (Jc v Sc v Wc), it's that it reads as if when one asserts ~Jc, one has established (Sc v Wc) assuming the argument is valid. Whereas in fact all that can be established is (Jc v Sc v Wc).

It couldn't've been a juicy apple!

If modus ponens is valid, then if we believe the premises, then we believe the conclusion (not always in fact - people err - but in principle). And the premises are believed but the conclusion is not. So, still, there's a puzzle. — TonesInDeepFreeze

When you believe the premises, you interpret to the string which is used to express them.

(1) If you're an apple, then you're sour or sweet or juicy.
(2) If you're not juicy, then you're sour or sweet.
(3) You're not juicy.
(4) You're either sour or sweet.

Exactly the same thing. You end up transitioning to a space of interpretations that excludes juiciness.

Still valid. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Depends on the symbol interpretation. I think it's more of a problem about how the informal argument codifies into the formal logic.

In the same manner that from "You're fine" you wouldn't be able to conclude "You're pretty" or "You're okay" without knowing the context, you also wouldn't be able to assert "You're fine" is true if and only if you're fine if the quoted thing and the "disquoted" thing were from different speech events. The strings in the statement are like that, "then" in line 1 begins considering only republicans, you don't get that same subsetting effect if you assert it without "then".

The propositions don't involve quantifiers. There's no issue of domains. — TonesInDeepFreeze

There's a set of candidates C:

{Carter, Reagan, Anderson}

[1] If a Republican wins the election, then if it's not Reagan who wins it will be Anderson.

Maps {Carter, Reagan, Anderson} to {Reagan, Anderson}, the latter set of candidates is where the disjunction is understood and evaluates to true.

[2] A Republican will win the election.

Asserts that of {Carter, Reagan, Anderson}, the winner will be a member of {Reagan, Anderson}

[3] If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson

Asserts that of {Reagan, Anderson}, if Reagan doesn't win, it will be Anderson.

There are domains in the sense that the disjunctions are implicitly quantifying over those sets. That is what I meant - in the same sense that existential quantification is iterated disjunction on a finite domain.

Keep track of domains.

[1] If a Republican wins the election, then if it's not Reagan who wins it will be Anderson.

(A) If republican (x) and wins (x), then (B) (not (Reagan(x) implies Anderson (x).
(A=>B) has people in general talked about in (A), contextually only republicans are talked about in (B).

[2]A Republican will win the election.

Has a different domain - it's talking about the set of presidential candidates - a republican - a republican candidate.

If it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson

Is false in the overall domain {Anderson, Reagan, Carter}, but true in the domain {Anderson, Reagan}.

So while you can string match "A Republican will win the election" with making A true, it doesn't follow that string matching preserves truth condition when the strings have different implicatures . Specifically, when you move from "If" to "then" in (A), it's coming along with a domain change (from candidates to republicans).

"A republican will win the election"

Has an implicit domain of presidential candidates.

[1] If a Republican wins the election, then if it's not Reagan who wins it will be Anderson.

then if it's not Reagan who wins it will be Anderson.

Has an implicit domain of republicans.

You know, like in the movie trailer when the voiceover guy says, "In a world [he says the word 'world' in that overly dramatic way] where salamanders are smarter than humans ...", the world is not just the humans and salamanders and all the other objects, but also the facts about them. — TonesInDeepFreeze

:up:

in discussions about existence in worlds, I think there could be a lot riding on which of those two contexts we are in, so we should be clear as to which of the two we mean. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Thank you, I see. Let me see if I can rephrase the issue.

Imagine a world at which God exists, this world has a domain, and one of the entities in that domain is God. The phrase "God exists" is true in this world, but what set is that existential quantifier quantifying over?

"There exists at least one God" could be quantifying over the domain of the world in particular, in which case "There exists" is a perhaps a merely possible proposition - in a world where there wasn't a God, it would be false.

But it could be that "There exists" is quantifying over the union of the domain of all worlds, in which case if something exists in one world, it exists in all of them - since "exists" is only looking at the shared domain of entities which are distributed over all the worlds. That would make existence necessary existence for everything (not just God).

I think that's a separate issue from the issue with my equivocating between worlds and world domains? The appropriate scope of the existential quantifier "within world" so to speak is distinct from what a world is "made of" - my construal of it as a domain of objects missed out that it's actually a formal language structure within the world as well as there being a domain in the world which the formal language structure takes its (at least actual) truth-value cues from.

So {e b} and {e} are domains. So W1 and W2 are domains. But you say that W1 and W2 are worlds. As far as I can tell, that is conflating 'world' with 'domain for a world'. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Could you explain the difference so it is very clear to me please?

Would you please tell me in what book or article I can read the stipulation of semantics for quantified modal logic you use? — TonesInDeepFreeze

I can't because I'm mostly making it up from SEP and university memories. It is quite possible that what I said was entirely wrong!

I was envisioning the set of worlds:

{W1, W2}

With W1={egg}, and W2={bacon, egg}. The accessibility relation was just R = { (W1,W2), (W2,W1) }. I suppose more formally each of these has a hierarchy of statements regarding eggs, bacon, and the whole underlying logic thrown into them.

As someone who used to support Sanders and is now much more of a Socialist libertarian, what do you think of this? Tons of leftists advocated for guys like Sanders to fix the deep-seated issues and wealth inequality in the United States as a form of "harm reduction" but would this really mean anything? Is taxing the rich just as bad as not taxing them when we could just be removing the billionaires all together? — Albero

I don't think you have to cancel the (hypothetical) trade off between societal volatility and welfare of its workers. It can still be the case that social reforms would be good even if they, in the long run, make it more difficult to affect systemic changes.

Don't have to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good (enough). It's hard enough to know what's good (enough), never mind what's perfect.

I imagine that equality works on worlds too. I'd say that two worlds are equal when they consist of (all and only) the same elements / when they evaluate the same for all stuff/statements within 'em.

If you have a clock, the set of seconds in a minute form a set of worlds, and the ticking of one second to another forms an accessibility relation - t -> t+1 for all seconds t.

In that situation, two worlds would be equal if they were the same time instant.

So worlds are not in general to be identified by their domain? — bongo fury

I don't see how I suggested that? Explain it to me please.

So, W1 = some world (among others) whose domain is {egg, bacon}? — bongo fury

Yes.

Set of all possible worlds there is:

{W1, W2}

W1 is {egg, bacon}
W2 is {egg}

A world = a sub-domain? — bongo fury

Of the set of possible worlds under consideration, I think so.

Within worlds, you still have the base logic and whatever domain of discourse is in that world.

I visualise possible worlds and accessibility relations as a graph whose nodes are sets (worlds) and whose links are the accessibility relation.

Possibility of X in a world is having a neighbour world (which can include itself) in which X evaluates as true.
Necessity of X in a world means having all neighbour worlds of that world evaluate X as true.

Possibility of X is "can I transition in one step to a world where this is true?"
Necessity of X is "if I step one world away, is X true no matter where I step?"

That means you can flesh out statements about possibility and necessity in terms of graph connections.

So a claim like "X is possible at world W" means "W has at least one neighbour where X evaluates as true". If W is a neighbour of a world where X is true, then X is possible at W. If all of W's neighbours have X as true, then X is necessary at W.

For @Banno, what S5 does is make the graph a partition/equivalence relation. It means that for all worlds:

(1) Every world is its own neighbour - that means if X is true in all worlds connected to W (X is necessary), then since W is connected to W (reflexivity), X is true in W. Necessarily A implies A.

(2) If W1 has another world W2 as its neighbour, then W2 has W1 as its neighbour. That means if X is true in W1, X must be possible in W2, so X is necessarily possible in W1 - every time X is true at W1, it will force all of W1's neighbours to have X as a possibility, which means possibly X is true in all of W1's neighbours, which means X => necessarily possibly X.

(3) If W1 is a neighbour of W2, and W2 is a neighbour of W3, then W1 is a neighbour of W3 (transitivity). That means that if X is true at W1, and W3 is a neighbour of W2, and W2 is a neighbour of W1, then X is true at W3 through the chain of links . This is a "walking" condition, it makes being a neighbour the same idea as being connected. In terms of modality, what this means is that if X is necessary at W1, and W1 is a neighbour of W2, then X is necessary at W2. Why? Well in order to be a neighbour of W2, it would also have to be a neighbour of W1, and we know all of W1's neighbours have X evaluate to true since X is necessary.

You can see that this is a fertile ground for ontological arguments - if god is possible and god is possibly necessary, then god is necessary, then god exists...

The next question is, must there be an individual which exists in every possible world? — Banno

In which set of possible worlds?

{egg}, {egg, bacon}

Has "egg must exist" as true, where "eggs must exist" is treated as "necessarily there is at least one egg in every possible world".

But as you noticed:

{egg}, {bacon}

doesn't have this property, so the divine mandate for egg's existence disappears.

Does an entity necessarily exist in all possible worlds? Set out a set of possible worlds and an accessibility relation and we'll talk.

If you don't set out an accessibility relation and set of possible worlds, it looks like quantifying over sets of worlds rather than worlds - ie does there exist a set of worlds in which eggs necessarily exist - yes , I just summoned it vs do eggs necessarily exist in each possible world in all sets of possible worlds - no, I just summoned one where eggs don't -.

In S4 or S5, or a derivative therefrom, can an individual exist in every possible world without contradiction? — Banno

I don't think you even need S5 for it? Given that you can choose world elements.

W1={egg, bacon}

W2={egg}

The statement E: "At least one entity in this world is an egg"

E's w1 valuation, true.
E's w2 valuation, true.
E is true in all possible worlds, so it's necessary.

If you'd like, call the relation between W1 and W2 the breakfastibility relation. Two worlds are connected iff they consist of only breakfast goods. That accessibility relation is an equivalence relation on the set of possible worlds.

So yes, with that world set and that accessibility relation, I believe the existence of eggs is necessary.

#modal logic isn't metaphysics

Hmm.. aren't greenhouses good for the environment? It is a "green" gas. That's good for nature. Having a hot climate like a the dinosaurs did sounds great! Maybe our climate can change to a more dino-like biosphere. — Kasperanza

Illuminati confirmed, Exxonmobil lobbying against climate science to terraform dinosaurs back to life.

Zizek's comments on disavowal.

without grounds to doubt, tacit belief suffices — 180 Proof

Second this general attitude sticking with me.

Similar to your example, I get frustrated when people ask for a definitive yes or no answer to something I’m not sufficiently confident about, and won’t just take a statement of the reasons I’m aware of for and against it. I don’t want to have to say to someone else that something definitely is or isn’t the case when I don’t even think to myself that it is. — Pfhorrest

:up:

"Don't collapse the tradeoff!"

I'm retired now, but I worked as an engineer for 30 years. In that job, the most important decisions I had to make hinged on what I knew, how I knew it, how certain I was, and what would be the consequences if I were wrong. So, I take epistemology very seriously. It's hard to tell which came first, my interest in knowledge or my decision to become an engineer. — T Clark

:up:

I'd add making sure a quantity or measurement means what you think it means is also something ever present, for me at least. Did you have that concern too?

Being worth the time is a relationship that's non-reflexive. — TheMadFool

That's either very depressed and self deprecating or you meant symmetric?

Books have a 'flavour' which is more than just the logical form of the contents of the ideas. The introduction to a book tries to (and does) capture this, giving you a sense of the overall ideas, a sense of the manner in which they are presented, a sense of the author's life and the world he inhabited. But for obtaining the entirety of the information that is available, there is no substitute for basking in the original texts, as completely as possible, to obtain a sense of the full meaning of the presented ideas. — Pantagruel

:up:

In terms of cultivating intellectual virtues, I agree that the more thorough the study the better someone understands a domain (obv), and there's no better way of doing that than practicing with the ideas - studying them, writing about them, coming up with examples etc. Though I wonder (only half joking) if the virtue of temperance also applies to the pursuit of knowledge...

Looking at books in shops and libraries seems to me to be part of the research process. But, I think that we can blend all the possibilities, but, hopefully, with a view to gaining meaningful knowledge. I believe that we all come from slightly different perspectives on this. Personally, I only use Wikipedia as a basic overview, and find it useful as a starting point. However, I prefer to go off and find books because they feel more intimate and more meaningful in a deeper sense. — Jack Cummins

While a book is a centralised unit of analysis of a topic, it isn't necessarily articulated in terms of the research question you're pursuing - and may perturb or redirection that pursuit depending on what you find in the book.

To me studying a book is a much different flavour of inquiry, and generates a different kind of understanding, than pursuing a particular question. In a sense, questions use texts as well as writing them.

Insert ideas about intertextuality here.

You can be pro-transsexual in every way possible and still be against transition surgeries. — Hanover

Meta-analysis suggests general hesitation about gender-reassignment is misinformed - there's evidence it's on average effective for those who elect to take it.

There's also comprehensive screening for reassignment/gender affirmative surgery - it includes mental health screening. It aims to assess if the person would benefit from the surgery and could cope with it! It's very hard to get the surgery without having sufficient evidence that it's worth the risk. Similarly for hormone therapy.

The risk assessment and screening for these is comparatively higher than the reversible and non-intrusive puberty blockers which can be given to consenting transgender or gender non-conforming youths without many expected side effects AFAIK.

To be sure, someone can be blanket against gender reassignment surgery and pro-trains rights, but I believe only if they don't know how comprehensive the screening is for receiving gender reassignment or puberty blocking treatment. People act like the T Stasi (T-minators?) are going around cutting off children's dicks and sticking them on other children, it's absolutely nothing like that.

:blush:

:up:

That series will change how you see the world.

Women lose their virginity when they have sex.
Whenever women lose their virginity, their hymen breaks.
Anal sex makes women lose their virginity.
Only vaginas have hymens.
Therefore bums are vaginas.

"The asshole [is] a universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed" Andrea Long Chu — Andrew4Handel

Isn't that what you actually believe though? That secretly wanting to be fucked in the ass is a way of wanting to be a woman?

(1) Trans women are women. (Assumption for reductio)
(2) All women have vaginas. (Premise)
(3) Trans women's bums are vaginas OR trans women do not have vaginas (Premise)
(4) Trans women's bums are vaginas (3, disjunctive syllogism, from 2 on pain of contradiction)
(5) Bums are not vaginas (Premise)
(6) Not (Trans women's bums are vaginas) (from 4,5 and Modus Tollens)
(7) Trans women don't have vaginas. (discharging the disjunction in 3)
(8) Trans women aren't women. (2, 7, allegedly modus tollens)

Fallacy though, all you can conclude is the negation of the conjunction of the other premises.

Either that (trans women are women) is false, that (all women have vaginas) is false or that Bums really are vaginas.

Personally, I side with bums really being vaginas because diversity is important to me.

but what if sexuality was a different thing than having a dong or not

-"Conjectures and Refutations" by Karl Popper — Ying

That one is delicious.

The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis

(Screwtape is a devil instructing his nephew Wormwood on how best to turn humans away from God)

It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very “spiritual”, that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother—the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment’s notice from impassioned prayer for a wife’s or son’s “soul” to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.

I suspect the answer is that trans women are a perfect storm: they inspire the hatred of radical (now mainstream) feminists for being male, the hatred of misogynists for being female, and the hatred of homophobes for being, in some sense, queer. — Kenosha Kid

:up:

If you take the square root of women with dongs, subtract What Happens In Thailand Stays In Thailand, divide by wanking to t-thots on Pornhub, you get an old fashioned poofter, which if you multiply with a bloke you get poofter again.

Simple as.

You'd benefit from reading the UN primer on sex/gender and transgenderism. The concepts are a bit nuanced, but since you're a philosopher you're up to the task of understanding them.

@3017amen @180 Proof:

To be quite honest, it's entirely pointless to try and score it by formal criteria because @3017amen did not stick to the agreed topic from their opening post and offered no on topic counterpoints even after 180 engaged the distorted topic.

Ideally if you want to have a formal debate, at least agree to the topic and a strict format beforehand and stick to it. If you are unable or unwilling to even try and do that don't waste our time by getting us to set up a formal debate.

#irrationally angry because I've not seen a long form 180proof post in years and wanted to see one again.

On a mac, hold down cmd and press +.
On a PC, hold down ctrl and press +.

The site takes care of formatting, your zoom in is preserved during site navigation (eg clicking onto new threads).

This is my first time taking an Indigenous Studies course (I'm a final year Philosophy major) but I've studied intersectional feminist theory and related historical disciplines, so I'm likely going to be writing it on something to do with the role of colonization supplanting matriarchal Indigenous systems/beliefs and the devaluation of Indigenous women overall (very vague still, but I've only started the course this week). — Grre

I can't give you anything with that level of specificity (the Indigenous * gender) intersection, nor am I first nations. I'm also unlikely to throw you any bones you've not already chewed.

-I recall there being some interesting research at the intersection of Frantz Fanon's work and gender studies on a Google roam I went on, those keywords might get you something relevant.
-If you want to drop the "colonial mind prison" kind of perspective ("fighting colonialism with a colonised tongue" as Lowkey puts it), third world/Maoist Marxist Feminist perspectives might provide a relief, eg here.

I bring those up because to my mind there's a decent contrast between the study of Indigenous struggle in the wake of colonialism and the study of indigenous feminist praxis. Subordination from outside vs subordination within and both happening at once.

- Origins of the Family by Engels I guess would be a useful reference.

- Debt, the First 5000 Years has some amazing discussions of the mechanics of the colonial transition into patriarchy and its coupling to capitalist development from an anthropological perspective. I recall it ousting my previous, very wrong, impression that matrilineaity and patriarchy are inherently opposed...

I don't think it's fair to equate any country with their far right. I don't do it with the UK and I hope you wouldn't do that with America. — BitconnectCarlos

I absolutely do do it with the UK and America insofar as I believe it relevant, and would do it more for the UK if the UK's government gave me strong EDL vibes like Israel's government does.

It's fair if it's right.

hat is how I understand anti-Zionism. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't think you understand it in the same way as it's used, then. Either that or you're pivoting between this restricted understanding and the more general one which equates Zionism with Israel's military expansion rather than with its existence.

When people say Zionism nowadays, what do they mean? Is the contemporary support of Zionism really about the boring uncontroversial point that Israel should continue to exist - a fact even Hamas supports, or is it more saucy and about the expansion? The emotive core of the belief is clearly closer the latter - security through control, expansion through disproportionate retaliation... Securing a homeland for the Jewish people - a destined people's lebensraum under the constant terrorist threat.

If it smells like a duck, quacks like a duck, and happily sings in praise of sectarian warcrimes...