This isn't the place for philosophy — Michael

I disagree with that common saying!

don't, and the reason why is because I view morality as a way of people being able to flourish and how we can get along with one another to do so. — LD Saunders

And I happen to agree with you, but then that's the version of morality that's generally accepted today. We were born into cultures that tend to value equality and tolerance. But if we had been born into Sparta or Rome, we might not think so.

The problem is locating that objective moral view point which can be the arbiter between different cultural views on morality.

Setting up a society along the lines of Nazism is objectively worse than establishing a society along the lines of the current US Constitution. The Nazi society will crumble and kill many millions in the process of doing so. — LD Saunders

I don't know what makes it objectively worse. Many people agree that it's a lot worse, and the bloodiest war in history was partly fought over that. But where outside of human opinion can we locate that?

The difference with physics is that the world determines how right or wrong we are. But it doesn't do that for morality, because the world isn't moral. Biology isn't moral either.

Any problems? — Purple Pond

I disagree with your notion of truth.

Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. — Posty McPostface

My temptation is to say that only things have ontological existence. Facts are generated by minds. Facts are a product of language, and language is dependent on the evolution of social animals like us.

The reasons for this are quite simple --- everyone could be wrong, or one person could be wrong, and the others right, or more than one person could be objectively right. — LD Saunders

Alright, but I don't know what it would mean for everyone to be wrong about morality. What would the right morality consist of independent of human beings, or some other social animal with moral views?

My argument would be that morality is whatever rules we adopt in order to cooperate as social animals. We can and do argue over which rules to uphold, which to change, and which to get rid of over time, but there isn't anything beyond those rules, our biological needs and desires, and our social existence.

Objects are simple, they are the simplest constituent part of a fact that occupy space, but nowhere does Wittgenstein give an example of an object. They are simply requirements of his logical analysis. They are not things like, apples, trees, cars, mountains, numbers, properties, etc. — Sam26

So early Wittgenstein actually thought reality consisted of atomic facts and not things like apples, trees, people, etc?

Because people disagree over moral issues, then morality must be subjective. — LD Saunders

Right, but I think it's more that because different cultures disagree on moral issues, and there is no confirmed commandments from on high, therefore morality is culturally determined, instead of some external objective reality.

What does not kill me makes me stronger. — Michael

Like aging after 25, which I guess does eventually kill you, if nothing else does it first.

As Thomas Paine pointed out, a past generation has no right to rule over the present generation. Why would they? — LD Saunders

But what's the alternative to this? Each generation gets to form a new government and make their own laws?

And in a world where knowledge increases from one generation to the next, — LD Saunders

Which hasn't necessarily demonstrated that humans are wiser.

simply means we should try to discern what the intent was among a handful of people in an earlier generation who knew far less than we do now. — LD Saunders

Knew less about what, though? How best to balance power in government? What sort of democracy is workable? Do we know better now? Yes, we know a lot more about science and technology than they did. But do we know better how to govern? I suppose the grand experiment has played itself out for a couple centuries in multiple countries now, so maybe there are some better examples to take from?

Sure, but we're talking about the structure of the government, not who gets to be a citizen and vote.

If today we find the Electoral College and Senate to be too undemocratic, they can be done away with via constitutional amendments, if the states agreed to go along with that. Problem being that states are still a fundamental unit of organization in the US.

What I can say is that the process we have in the US appears terribly flawed, where the Court is placed in the center of the political process, supposedly representing a wisdom beyond the grasp of the democracy. — Hanover

The US government wasn't setup to be a simple democracy. It is a constitutional republic of states where the Senate represents the states, and POTUS is elected by the electoral college.

A lot of people are unhappy with that arrangement now, wishing for a more representative form of the actual population. But that's not what was intended by the framers of the constitution.

I think you should consider greed to be the reason for this? :chin: — Pattern-chaser

I don't. I consider our level of technology as the reason for it.

And if thinking of hands is existentially dependent upon and external world? — creativesoul

Then there has to be an external world. But that leaves several radical skeptical scenarios as possibilities.

Are you here to ask about Marxist theory you've read or be taught Marxism? The former is reasonable, the latter is not. — MindForged

More to argue against abolishing private ownership, but what you posted brought up questions as to what Marx meant by a post scarcity society.

In context of the OP and your response, to argue against abolishing private ownership as a means to achieving post scarcity.

I think it's pretty clear he wasn't talking about a society that had then-presently existed. It's part of his theory, that in a communist society scarcity is eliminated from the economic system. — MindForged

And that's an inspiring sentiment, but did he give any compelling reason for why communism would eliminate scarcity? Maybe a better question would be, what did Marx mean by that? Because industrialized societies since his day have shown that human wants expand with the possibility of new goods and services.

Private property has been eliminated at this point — MindForged

Private ownership, or just ownership of capital?

What he's saying is that under socialism there will be an abundance since the economy isn't operating under scarcity. There's more than enough for everyone, basically. — MindForged

Was Marx envisioning a fully automated society? Because a post-scarcity society has never existed.

I'm sympathetic to that view. Constrained math has a relationship with reality. Aristotle's view was more correct than Plato's. The in-between position seems more reasonable.

I like this:

hat we are getting at with mathematical physics at least is the objective point of view - the one from the perspective which would be the Cosmos contemplating its own rational structure. — apokrisis

What reason is there to believe that one can dream of hands prior to thinking about them? — creativesoul

None, but it opens to door to having experiences of hands that are not external in other scenarios that could possibly be the case, as far as we know.

As such, Moore's argument isn't an argument to trot out against Bostrom's ancestor simulation argument, or a Boltzman brain.

That's a convincing response.

So the statement is not self-contradictory because it requires additional axioms to reach a contradiction. — andrewk

Okay, but those additional axioms aren't based on facts about the world. They're just further steps in logical reasoning based on the definition given.

This bachelor is married' would not be self-contradictory, even though the statement 'No bachelor is married' is used as a canonical example of an analytic truth. — andrewk

I don't understand this. Saying the bachelor is married contradicts the definition. I took the point of contradiction to mean analytical statements have their truth contained in the definition or rules of the respective concept or statement. So we can derive all sorts of mathematical or logical truths that don't rely on facts about the world being added to the mix.

Such doubt is belief based. All belief consists of meaningful correlations drawn between different things. — creativesoul

Right, and there's your argument in the other thread which I said I agreed with. But, what the dream argument shows is that it's possible to have an experience of my hands without them being external. We can differentiate between dreaming and being awake, but that possibility of having non-external hand experience still remains. Which means there could be radical scenarios in which it's actually the case.

As such, Moore waving his hands about doesn't defeat the skeptic, it just reinforces that such doubt is radical. But the skeptic can just reply, "Yeah and so what? I already knew that skepticism was radical to common, everyday sense."

Or I suffer an inner ear infection that makes balance impossible, and so cannot demonstrate my skill; do I still know how to ride? — Banno

Yes, if your neuromuscular system is capable of doing so. All you need to demonstrate it is to have you ear infection cured. Do you doubt it's in principle possible for a medical examination to reveal the capacity?

It must be the case that you store that capability somehow, or you would not be able to ride again, without going through a relearning process?

I think that Moore is separating the fools of the audience. Who - in that situation - would deny that Moore's hand is external to them? — creativesoul

Someone after watching the Matrix or Inception movies. We can agree that in an everyday sense it's foolish, but philosophical doubt raises the possibility that we could be wrong. Thus the simulation, BIV, demon arguments.

Also, I can dream about my hands, but those might not be my external hands. Moore's proof isn't a proof, it's an appeal to common sense.

I think it would be better to think something like, that having a hand and believing one has a hand are much the same thing - "inseparable", as you say. After all, to believe on has a hand, one has to understand ownership in some way, and what hands are in some other. — Banno

A potential problem here is that there are disorders in which people believe parts of their body don't belong to them. There are also disorders in which they completely ignore the left or right side of their body.

That means the belief is separable from the having a hand under special circumstances, and this is due to a brain injury or disorder, which places the belief in the brain.

Thoughts? — Purple Pond

Statement: A necessitates B

1. A priori analytic? No, it's not deductive according to Hume.
2. A posterori synthetic? No, experience only gives us constant conjunction.
3. A posterori analytic. No, unlike water is H20, causation is not shown to be a necessary relation by experience.

However, doesn't that mean the truth of A necessitating B being a priori synthetic is itself a posterori analytic? After finding that experience doesn't not show it to the be case, we conclude that it must be apriori.

There's nothing like what there would be if all the mathematical forms instantiated in the same way. — fdrake

So Rovelli's argument summarized in the OP is that Platonism would be full of useless math instead of just the math we're interested in.

But what is the argument justifying this claim? Are there examples of useless math of interest to no one? What makes the case that Platonism would lead to this? Because other creatures would develop maths we wouldn't care about? Is that actually true? I'm thinking human mathematicians would actually quite interested in how much farther than us the Jovians had developed their geometry, and I'm guessing Jovian mathematicians would be quite curious about arithmetic.

Which brings about a second question. Why is utility an important criterion for math? Certainly applied math is important for various fields, but mathematicians also are interested in math for it's own sake.

If the platonic realists are right, the name of that junkyard is the Platonic realm of forms. — fdrake

Right, but I'm asking if there is a human junkyard of abandoned math, whether constructed or discovered. Because the argument turns on most of math being a junkyard. I'm asking whether this is a hypothetical, or actually historical.

th. The main thrust is simply that most mathematical objects aren't worthy of study, — fdrake

But do these mathematical objects exist, or is this based on the hypothetical that they could be created if we were Jovians?

Is there a bunch of abandoned junky math that was of no value to Mathematicians but still qualifies as math? Is there a Math junkyard?

My point was there are reasons to think the structures and relations we use math to model exist in the world independent of us, since they led to us existing.

but the recognition that the world is a certain way for us to reason about — Pierre-Normand

Why would it only be a certain way for us? Do we really think that evolution or general relativity is a certain way for us, as opposed to being a certain way for the universe?

Or you could take the Aristotelian approach and say the structures and relations exist in the world. After all, neither the Jovians nor humans create the environments they find themselves in.

Arguably, we reason the way we do because the world is certain way for us to reason about it.

If you think science exhausts the claim to explanation, then this strikes me as a reductive reading, unwarranted imposed from without, of what the sciences do. — StreetlightX

So your response might be that the full explanation is both our phenomenal experience and the corresponding scientific explanations. Both of which make up the real.

I agree with your argument, but how do you justify #4? Couldn't an idealist just deny it?

he smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Werner Heisenberg

That is an interesting quote. I don't know what to make of the physical some days. I'm sure it's real in that it doesn't depend on us.

But anyway, isn't that what Tegmark and Meillassoux basically claim the world is?

It is the phenomenal which is the real and if we desire to understand it we cannot subsume it under some abstract system. — StreetlightX

Oh, in context of the entire sentence I took that to mean that how the world appears to us is what's real, and not some abstraction from it. But then what is science doing when it uses mathematical language to form it's explanations of the world?

The question is about subsumption under abstraction. — StreetlightX

I have no idea what that means.

I think the existence of atoms is questionable, in the sense of them being anything like the fundamental constituents of things. And I'm in pretty good company: — Wayfarer

Well, for chemistry they are. But yeah, they're not fundamental they way they were initially thought to be.

In addition, it doesn't get much more obvious than when we learned that solid objects are made of mostly empty space despite appearance, and the light we see is but a tiny bit of the EM spectrum, some of which can travel between those empty spaces in solid things.

How do they? You made the claim. — StreetlightX

Ordinary matter is made up of atoms to small for us to see, mathematical equations are heavily used to explain physical and chemical interactions, there are aspects of QM which cannot be visualized or explained in ordinary language without invoking metaphysical interpretations, GR has counterintuitive implications for space and time, and so on.

But more than anything, our sensory modalities are left off as perceiver dependent properties. The scientific image is devoid of smell, sound, color, etc.