Being over 40 isn't an act. Incest is. — Kenosha Kid

Lame come-back, as usual. Having sex after 40 is an act, like having sex with your cousin is an act. :roll:

Like I said, having children is irrelevant to this topic. Just as gay and heterosexual couples aren't expected or forced to have children, neither should incestuous couples. Like gay couples, incestuous couples could adopt or find a surrogate.

There's nothing special about it, it's a general rule: that which you didn't cause is not your fault. If your child has a genetic deficiency due to a fluke mutation, no one is to blame. If they have it due to inbreeding, the inbreds are the cause. — Kenosha Kid

Women over 40 stand an increased chance of having children with birth defects. Does this mean that we should prevent women over 40 from having children? What about women with AIDS, or some genetic defect that could be passed down to the child?

None of this even matters anyway as having children isn't necessary component of having a relationship and getting married. Nothing says that married couples must have children. An incestuous couple could adopt, just like gay parents. And since the basic argument for gay marriage was that consensual adults that love each other should be able to marry, that argument would include incestuous couples.

There are as many definitions of information as there are of intentionality , so in order for each of us to know what the other is talking about we would need to clarify these terms. I would just offer that u less you are willing to reduce information to ‘sense’ , the only place for information I see in Husserl’s model of consciousness is as a derived, second order construction. — Joshs

I defined information earlier in the thread as the relationship between cause and effect. Sensation is a causal relationship between the sense and what is sensed, therefore sensation is a type of information.

Intentionality is the causal process of goal-directed behavior, so intentionality is also information. Is everything information? I think so.

This may not make much sense but maybe you can see how it deviates from the logic of natural cause-effect. — Joshs

You're right. It seems like an obfuscation. I think it can be explained in a much simpler manner. The simple idea of cause and effect is that some existing condition determines subsequent conditions. The fact that each effect is determined by its cause means that each effect carries information about the cause, or is about the cause. Effects are also causes of other effects further down the timeline. Designating any particular condition as a cause or effect is dependent upon the goal in mind, or intentionality. An example would be making hammer vs. using a hammer. The hammer is both the effect our building it, and part of the cause of the nail being driven.

The question I was considering was whether the unlived life is worth examining. Of course animals live their lives; consider the question I asked earlier: What could it mean to say that an animal doesn't live its life? — Janus

They're silly questions. I interpret "unlived" to mean non-existent, as in to examine a life that doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense to say that one can not live one's life as you are always living your life, even when examining it.

Animals probably don't examine their lives, either, so that begs the question; are their lives worth living? That question seems irrelevant to the life of an animal, since to ask that question would be to examine their life, which we assume they cannot do. — Janus

The question assumes that a unexamined life isn't worth living. All you have to do it point to the billions of organisms that don't examine their lives and each continues to strive to live. From there, you should be asking to who, or what, is any particular life worth living. I don't see why any life's worth should be determined by some other life's examination, as if that was their life instead of the one that they have. Should you be determining whether some life, other than your own, is worth living or not, examined or not?

Now we seem to have arrived back at the first question: is an unexamined human life worth living?, What if the examination interferes with the living? Then the life is not even lived, much less worth living. What if a life is both lived and examined? That would seem to be the richest possibility. — Janus

I would have to ask, what qualifies as a proper examination?

The second question is another silly question as I pointed out before, you are always living your life, even when examining it. Human beings are inquisitive and examining nature to figure out how it works is as much human behavior as rolling around in mud is a pig's behavior.

Inevitably! Go ahead. Maybe we should also have a theory of definition and theory as well. — bert1

A definition describes what something is. A theory describes why something is.

A definition is used for identification while a theory is used for prediction.

Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so? — Shawn

Define "ethics". If ethics encompasses how you treat others besides just yourself wouldn't that mean that you'd need to examine everyone else's life to know if their life is worth living? And for those whose life that you determine aren't worth living, what do you do with the results of that examination?

How would an animal or domesticated pig examine their unlived life? What could it even mean to say that an animal was not living its life? — Janus

Domesticated pigs don't examine their lives. Does that make the pigs' life not worth living? The pig doesn't think so as it keeps on striving to live and avoid harm and stress instinctively.

Examine one's life is only something humans do, but as shown by the pig, has no bearing on whether or not a life is worth living or not.

Hmmmphh! Don't we need to define "defintion" and "theory" first? :smirk:

It seems that most of the "is" statements are definitions. The theories are more vague and require definitions to make them less so.

Intentionality has to do with the directedness or of-ness or aboutness of consciousness — Joshs

This is just another way of saying consciousness is composed of information.

I imagine your description of intentionality is accurate for certain approaches in philosophy. In phenomenology, however, intentionality and aboutness are quite different from a cause-effect structure. — Joshs

Then it should be simple enough for you to provide an example of aboutness and intentionality that does not include a causal relationship. In talking about intentionality or aboutness you are basically talking about causes and their effects.

Intentions always precede the action that is intended.

To say that something is about aomething else is to say that something was caused by something else, or else how would it be about it? How would it contain information about something else?

'In philosophy, intentionality is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents.' It develops from there into a major topic in phenomenology and philosophy generally. — Wayfarer

Mental states are not the only things that represent things. All effects represent their causes, of which mental states are just one type of cause and effect relationship. As such, aboutness is everywhere causes leave effects.


Aboutness is the same thing as information. Information is the realtionship between cause and effect.

Intentionality is the aspect of the mind that causes other mental states and body states. The will to remember something brings that memory into consciousness. The intent to move your arm moves your arm. Intentionality seems to be something different than aboutness except for the fact that intentionality is a cause for other mental and body states. As such, you moving your arm is about your intent to move it just as your words on this screen are about your idea and your intent to communicate it.

'A physicist', said Neils Bohr, 'is just an atom's way of looking at itself'. — Wayfarer

Can one atom look at itself, or can only a group of atoms look at themselves?

From one view we are people. From another we are atoms. Is the varying size scale something real that exists independent of perception, or is it a product of different types of perceptions? If the latter, is it perceptions all the way down? If the former, then is there really a fundamental size, like atoms, or does it depend on one's perception?

If there is no fundamental size and fundamental is in the eye of the beholder, then we are just as much people as we are atoms looking at itself.

No. Burning your fingers is a sensation. Two plus two is not a sensation. The most elementary steps of linguistic reasoning are not sensations. This doesn't mean that reason and sensable impressions are entirely separate. But as said previously many animals have far greater sensory abilities than humans, but they don't reason. (I know this is not a fashionable opinion.) — Wayfarer

But what is it like for you to add two plus two? How do you know you are adding two plus two? Do you see numbers in your head, or hear sounds, "two plus two equals four"? Again, what form does your reasoning take, and isn't your reasoning always about things?

Linguistic reasoning involves the manipulation of words or numbers, but words and numbers are visual scribbles on a page, or sounds you hear from your professor. So I don't see how any steps of linguistic reasoning does not involve the manipulation of memorized sensations.

You are asserting that animals can't reason without properly defining reason. Are animals conscious? Well, we'd need a definition of consciousness, too. Definitions, please.

Very simple. Senses are for info gathering, reasoning is for info processing. — Olivier5

What use is the brain without senses and what use are senses without a brain? What use is reasoning without anything to reason with or about?

The entire issue simply makes conservative men uncomfortable and is being leveraged politically to divide society. No one cared until they legalized gay marriage and needed a new point of leverage. The whole matter is under false context of causing anyone confusion or the sudden importance of women's sports. You know what they make in the WNBA? — Cheshire

This is exaclty the type of comment one would expect from those that see this issue through the prism of politics and not metaphysics. The metaphysics of this issue needs to be resolved and asking questions about how a man can claim to be a woman, and vice versa, and what that really means, etc. is how we go about that. Most people here just want to treat transgenders like the prophets of a new religion and simply accept whatever they say at face value. I thought part of practicing philosophy is asking valid questions and not simply accepting claims because it would offend the claimant if you did question their claim.

Again, comparing this to proper names is comparing apples to oranges. Its more like you're white but tell people you're black and you get annoyed that they keep calling you white. — Harry Hindu

Actually it's closer to proper names considering they often carry an implied gender. You might be right , but not for this reason. — Cheshire

You have no idea what you're talking about. Names are given at birth, or even before, when the sex of the baby is known. Only after the sex of the baby is known is when it is genderized (ways of expecting and enforcing certain behaviors) - based on the sex.

So, is gender something that is chosen and arbitrary, like a name, or something that is inherent, like your race, or species? I thought it was a sexist social construction. This is part of the problem. You have to define what you mean by "gender" and how it is different from "sex" for others to have clear idea of what pronouns to use and in which context.

If gender and sex are different things then how do you know if others are referring to your sex or gender when using pronouns?
— Harry Hindu
Context. If you are trying to stack people neatly then it's sex. — Cheshire

So why should a transgender get annoyed if someone uses pronouns referring to their sex and not their gender?

Philosophy is ultimately a way of socializing and impressing others with the artful use of big words, hence most of the problems of philosophy are derived from the use of language in this way.

The traditional distinction in philosophy is between reason and sensation - both central to knowledge, but separate faculties. Many animals have far superior sensory abilities to humans, but none of them can speak, or reason, as far as we can tell (leaving aside Caledonian crows and Paul the Octopus). — Wayfarer

I don't see how reasoning could be separate from sensation. Reasoning is a sensation, no? How do you know when you're reasoning and when you're not, if not by sensation?

Not only that, but what are you reasoning with, or about? What form does your reasoning take? And what is reasoning if not processing sensory information to achieve some goal?

As someone who identifies as non-binary, and understands that Gender is separate to Sex, — Bradaction

If gender and sex are different things then how do you know if others are referring to your sex or gender when using pronouns?

They tell you, just like they tell you their name. The post you were responding to was responding to the OP saying "the issue comes from when Person B is consistently informed of the correct pronouns and continues making the same error."

If you keep telling me that your name is Olivier and I keep calling you Oliver or Amy then it won't surprise me if you get annoyed by it. — Michael

Again, comparing this to proper names is comparing apples to oranges. Its more like you're white but tell people you're black and you get annoyed that they keep calling you white.

You know fine well, that to check some complicated conditions, the statements needs many lines of coding to check for all the possible conditions. The use of the variables are essential in the programmings. — Corvus

You can always use coding to restrict users to certain conditions and choices, thereby limiting the amount of coding you have to write that checks for "all possible" conditions.

Yeah, that was what I have been saying all along. If you get your staring definitions and also any of t he premises wrong, then you can end up with some crazy conclusions as Truth. Dangerous things for sure. — Corvus

Dangerous is not the word I would use. Strict and uncompromising are terms that I think of when reflecting on logic.

It was a demonstration OP for showing that logical arguments in philosophical debates do need solid sufficient definitions and premises so that they will arrive at infallible True conclusions.
Truth tables and Venn diagrams are great tools too. But more for the educational purpose, I feel. — Corvus

As usual, it comes down to what the scribbles point to, or how they are defined. — Harry Hindu

I like to solve these types of problems using a computer programming language. In every language, the variables need to be defined in order to use them. In every logical process the variables used refer to something in the world. They are pre-defined and their definition needs to be taken into account as part of the logical process. So for every logical proposition you need to remember that each scribble needs to be defined prior to the proposition like a=1, b=2, x=a+b, y=(a,b,x) (this is an array and is similar to a category in ordinary language) etc.

Also, if you find that some logical proposition produces a false conclusion, its because some other logical fallacy was made. All logical rules have to be followed - no cherry-picking.

Sure, but are a, c and d categories?

If you re-wrote the first example as

All c's are letters . (true)
All d's are letters. (true)
Therefore d's are c's (false)

Then it would be a fair comparison to your second example. In other words, you're comparing different types of entities in each example, so what works for one fails to work with the other.

The problem is that you're comparing apples and oranges. You're comparing letters in the first example and comparing categories (animals) to elements of categories (cats and dogs) in the latter.

If a in the first example were a category, like animals, and c and d were elements of that category then c = d would be false too. Essentially, a, c and d are not being defined in the same way as animals and dogs and cats, so the relationship between the letters vs animals and dogs and cats are completely different.

As usual, it comes down to what the scribbles point to, or how they are defined.

Not all words are nouns. — Banno

True but trivial. Adjectives and verbs would be useless without nouns. To think that verbs and adjectives can exist on their own, without a reference to the nouns they are associated with is a mistake. Don't let the spaces between words fool you into thinking that each word could have a meaningful existence on its own. Spaces between words mark the ending and beginning of words, not necessarily the thing being talked about.

Do abstract objects exist? If abstract objects exist, are propositions abstract objects? If not, what are there dimensions? If abstract objects exist, can they be physically contained within space, or must we then concede to the existence of a non-spatial realm which is transcendent of space? — TheGreatArcanum

Do abstract objects have causal power? If so, they exist. To measure the dimensions, compare the size of the object to other objects. That is how we measure the size of anything - by comparing it to other objects with similar properties (like length, weight and duration). Are words any more abstract than the ink and paper they are composed of?

Why must we understand language to understanding being? If language points to meaning, and being has meaning (in itself), is not language reducible to meaning and therefore being and not to words? What is meaning and how does it relate to the mind and world? — TheGreatArcanum

Words don't denote/refer. People do. — Manuel

Meaning is the relationship between causes and their effects. Mind is as much a cause of things in the world as it is an effect of prior causes in the world. Words are scribbles on a page that were caused by some mind's intent to communicate. By reading words on a page (the effect) you can get at the cause - the idea that the writer intended to communicate. But humans are not necessary to establish this relationship between causes and their effects, or to point to causes with effects. Causes and effects do this as part of their very nature. The tree rings in a tree stump were not made by humans, but point to the age of the tree because of how the tree grows throughout the year. No humans are necessary for tree rings to point at the age of the tree, but humans are necessary to know that tree rings point at the age of the tree to be able to use tree rings to know the age of some tree.

This is best illustrated by and explained with examples, but for this, all the participants need to be fluent enough in the languages compared. It's a phenomenon that multilingual people can easily understand, but otherwise, it's tedious to explain.

But the point is that word X in one language translates as word Y in.. — baker

It's actually much simpler than this. Words in different languages can be translated only because they point to the same thing. If they don't point to the same thing, then they are not translatable. The fact is that most, of not all, words in any language are translatable in another. It just may be that one word in one language translates to many words in a another language, but this is no different than defining the single word in the first language, as the act of defining is translating one word into many in the same language, or at least pointing at the object or event you are defining.

Think of how you would translate/define "Christmas Tree" to an alien from another planet that doesn't have trees or Christmas, but has religions, holidays and bushes, and words in their own language that point to these things. What if you just pointed at a Christmas Tree?

If your article is correct, which it probably is (and brain plasticity in general is well established), it follows that ideas exist in some 'mental space', and that they are written down on neurons but not written forever, only they are written and rewritten and rewritten, always slightly differently, and (maybe) our ideas evolve as a result of this constant rewriting. — Olivier5

It's not just the act of "writing", but also recalling. From where do we recall our ideas/memories? Our memories are not composed of neurons, but colors, shapes, sounds and feelings. When you recall the visual of a neuron, is not the neuron composed of shapes and colors? So which is more fundamental - neurons or shapes and colors? And are not shapes and colors a type of information?

Physical things have different properties than other physical things, but they’re still all physical properties — Pfhorrest

Then what use is the term, "physical" if it doesn't distinguish from something else?

so pointing out properties that some things have and others don’t doesn’t establish the need for ontologically different kinds of properties. — Pfhorrest

Well, that all depends on how we define, "property".

I just find your use of the words "existence" vs "being" to mean about the same as "object" vs "subject" to be idiosyncratic and not in keeping with the usual way those words are used in philosophy. — Pfhorrest

If philosophy uses words differently than the every-day use of the words, is philosophy talking about a different world than everyone else when they use those words? If philosphy is an attempt to explain the world and our relationship in it, you would think that we would all be using the same words in the same way - philosophically or not.

That is, a proposition is just a static bunch of symbols on a page. Wittgenstein is incorrect in the Tractatus to say "I understand the proposition without having its sense explained to me" (4.021). This reminds me of the moral of the story of PI's opening quote. Obviously, we must be taught how to use and understand language, including propositions. — Luke

If a proposition is static symbols on a page, then how is that different than a picture on a page? Observing someone use the word is also remembered visually and reproduced from the visual memory. So I don't get this distinction between use and pictures, or between having and showing. The fact is that if the thing/event you want to talk about is right in front of you, then there is no need for words. Think about watching a ball game and the sports announcer is telling the play-by-play. Is the announcer showing you anything that you can't see with your eyes? Maybe it's useful for first time viewers that don't know the rules if the game, but for veterans, it's just redundant information.

I could ask the same thing about being and showing. In being a certain way, shows others your state of body/mind. Eating shows that you are hungry, or like the food you are eating. Scratching your self shows that you are itchy. How would I be able to interpret these behaiviors if I didn't have the same feelings of being hungry and itchy, the same morphology, and the eyes to observe others react to their states of being hungry and itchy?

Sex/gender is not a spectrum any more than being born with more or less than ten fingers, or with or without a tail is part of a spectrum. Being born with more or less than ten fingers, or with a tail is considered abnormal, or uncommon/rare. Rare events are not considered to be part of a spectrum, rather outliers of the spectrum. A spectrum would be differences that occur commonly, or at a similar rate as the other items in the spectrum.

Biological sex is based on a combination of traits:

- chromosomes (in humans, XY is male, XX female)
- genitals (penis vs. vagina)
- gonads (testes vs. ovaries)
- hormones (males have higher relative levels of testosterone than women, while women have higher levels of estrogen)
- secondary sex characteristics that aren’t connected with the reproductive system but distinguish the sexes, and usually appear at puberty (breasts, facial hair, size of larynx, subcutaneous fat, etc.)

Using genitals and gonads alone, more than 99.9% of people fall into two non-overlapping classes—male and female—and the other traits almost always occur with these. If you did a principal components analysis using the combination of all five traits, you’d find two widely separated clusters with very few people in between. Those clusters are biological realities, just as horses and donkeys are biological realities, even though they can produce hybrids (sterile mules) that fall morphologically in between.

Two widely separated clusters is not the same as a spectrum.

For example the English idiom bread and butter ('a person's livelihood or main source of income'; or
used in reference to something everyday or ordinary) doesn't automatically translate into the German Brot und Butter, for German has no such idiom with this meaning. — baker

Then it would be inaccurate to translate the literal meaning of the idiom to another language. It would be more accurate to translate the meaning of the idiom to another language. Just because there isn't another way to say the same thing in another language doesn't mean that the meaning can't be translated to another language. After all what the scribbles point to is more important than the scribbles used.

Just because we can be artful with language doesn't mean that we translate the art itself. We translate the meaning of the art. Only words that have the same meaning can be translated. If a word means another word rather than something that isn't another word, then we translate the other words until the words no longer point to other words but things and actions that are not other words.

Seems like just a different way of expressing the simple fact that effects mean their causes, of which words are just one type of effect of some cause. Rings in a tree stump mean the age of the tree as much a words can mean the idea some speaker intends to convey.

Last point, to return to the relation between meaning and words. If words don't have meaning, but can nonetheless express meaning, this puts us very close to the Wittgenstein of the TLP. For Wittgenstein, what he calls 'propositions' do not so much as have meaning, as they show it: "A proposition shows its sense" (TLP 4.022). — StreetlightX

What's the difference between "having" and "showing"? How can you show something you don't have?

True, I suppose it could be argued that the mind and brain are distinct but that both are physical, so it would be neither substance nor property dualism. — Michael

Or that the mind and brain are the same thing but from different views. In this case, we can dispense with the term, "substance", and talk about dualistic views. How is a view different than the thing being viewed? Can a view be viewed? In other words, can the mind view itself? Can a brain view itself? Can an apple?

Has "substance" and "property" been defined for this thread and an explanation provided as to why there would be specifically two substances/properties, as opposed to one or a thousand?

The large array of superposition forms results in the wide variety of perceptual types: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, interoceptive and introspective. — Enrique

I thought the large array of senses results in the wide variety of perceptuall types. What purpose do the senses have if perception doesn't require senses? Why is it if I cover my eyes, not my form of superposition,, that I loose my sense of sight?

Ok, we can agree on that much that wanting others to suffer is morally wrong.

Do you acknowledge that transgender folk alleviate their own suffering by their actions? — Cheshire

In the same way that a person with anorexia alleviates their suffering. They may alleviate some mental suffering at the expense of their body suffering. Having a hole created between your legs to imitate a vagina and having to keep a stent inside to prevent the wound from closing isn't my idea of alleviating one's suffering. The body knows better than the mind what it is as it attempts to heal the damage done to the body by the mind.

Sometimes (often), the insulting party expects that the insultee will infer the intended argument, based on the discussion thus far. People usually don't speak in concise syllogisms, but use other forms of discourse, often skipping some steps (under the assumption that the reader will be able to correctly infer them themselves). When a discussion begins to contain insults, this can be taken as a clue to infer what argument is actually being made prior to that, it tends to be possible to (re)construct it. — baker

Not sure what you mean. Examples?

An ad hominem argument does not have to be an insult. Here's one of my favorite ad hominem arguments. "But you're a cashier." Fairly long ( minute 30 seconds), so you might want to skip it. — T Clark

This could be a genetic fallacy - where the argument is rejected purely based on the source from which the argument is made. Some fallacies seem to overlap - the point being attack the argument, not the person making the argument.