Nobody gets to define what is acceptable, but everyone gets to judge what is acceptable. — Michael

Its the same thing.

No I don't. I think that it's acceptable to criticize people for being racist or sexist or homophobic but not acceptable to criticize people for being black or a woman or gay. — Michael

What about criticizing people for being white, as in "white privilege"?

You seem to think that your judgements of what is acceptable, is more acceptable than what others judge as acceptable.

Politics is just another word for hypocrisy.

The difference is that it's acceptable to be black but not acceptable to be a racist, and so therefore it's acceptable to say bad things about racists being racists but not acceptable to say bad things about black people being black. — Michael

Acceptable by who? You only get to speak for yourself. Look who gets to define what is acceptable and label others actions as racists when they are simply disagreeing with you, and not being racist. Demonizing others and calling them racists just because the don't believe in the "white privilege" myth isn't acceptable either.

My point was, is it wrong to verbally abuse anyone at all? You seem to think blacks and homosexuals are free to say what they want without being challenged, because to challenge them means that the challenger is a racist or homophobe. This is the left's political discourse in a nutshell.

It's not supposed to be an argument. It's supposed to highlight the topic. Bilogoists study sex, sociologists study bioloigists studying sex and as such many of them assume that sex is gendered, because they're part of soiciety (as they are themselves, which many of them are aware of). — Dawnstorm

And sociologists understand that in order for a species to procreate and continue to exist, its members need to distinguish males from females. Sociologists need to be able to do that to.

I'm not sure if the "Using...alone" construction suggests that if you add more stuff in (like, say, hormones) things would get more clear. My own hunch is that the more details you add the more useful classes you could get. The key word here is "useful". A sociologist (of a certain kind) reads such a word and automatically asks "for whom" and "how". — Dawnstorm

The same way that female peacocks use male peacock traits to select the best mate and father of its offspring.
I already stated that how it is used is to distinguish males from females in a society where it is the law to cover your body. Gender as a social construction is sexual selection - the preferences we have for specific traits in a mate.

Sociology is just one characteristic of biology and stems from our physiology. Searching for mates and mating is a biological process.

This forum contains plenty of pro-capitalists, who are part of the right. There are lots of religious social conservatives too, who are also part of the right. What it doesn't generally contain are vocally active racists, misogynists, and so on, because hate like that isn't actually philosophy and thankfully is against the rules here. — Pfhorrest

Hate was the primary reason you voted against Trump. You "progressives" like to believe that you are all open-minded and accepting of others differences, but your actions speak louder than your words. You people are are so filled with hate its insane.

But then that's part if the problem. You think its ok to verbally abuse others you disagree with, but racism is a big, "No-No"? Whats the fucking difference?

And yet people do it all the time. People "create" sense. Whether you think it's silly or not, it's part of social reality in some way or another. It's hard to get out of the mindset, a bit like being stuck in a metaphorical spiderweb. — Dawnstorm

"People do it all the time" is not a good argument. People used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe. Did that make it right? There is such a thing as mass delusions.

Another way of looking at it is that in a society where you are imprisoned for not wearing clothes, hetero and homo sexuals will need ways of identifying mates, and it is predictable that the society would develop a means of identifying the sexes. That is what a gender as a social construction is - rules for the sexes to abide by so that they be easily identified in a society where there are rules for covering your body. In a society where there are no clothes, what would gender be, or what use would gender have? As a matter of fact, these preferences that humans have and expect of the sexes is what biologists call sexual selection, not gender.

I definitely agree that the biological factors are more conclusive, but to get a precise picture I'd need to describe a body as completely as possible before making the categorisation. That's not what we usually do, and once we have that wealth of details, who knows whether man/woman would still feel like a sufficent set of categories. — Dawnstorm

The biological factors are more conclusive because they are the constant across all societies, while the social constructions (the rules for he sexes to abide by) can vary from society to society. If the rules are arbitrary, does that mean trans-people feelings about their "bearing" is arbitrary? In a society where there are no rules about what sex wears which clothes, or a society where clothes don't exist, what would the "bearing" of a trans-person be like?

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.

But some would separate the physical universe from its mental counterpart and suggest "universe" is only the physical universe. Same with "objects": physical and mental. — jgill

They would need a good reason to do that. What would be the reason when we know that the physical and mental causally interact? Seems to me that the physical and mental are all part if the same causal universe.

Yes a nothing cannot be anything more than a conceptual fiction, otherwise it would not be a nothing, but a something. — Janus

A conceptual is a something that points to nothing, except for the causal process that created the concept, like I already showed:
<Something> + <Opposite> = <Nothing>

And gender expectations aren't generally strict. In fact, if a male person only has masculine traits, people tend to think of him as hyper-masculine rather than as the norm, and when it occurs in adolescents we tend to think of it as "a phase". There may be strict elements, though, depending on where and when. — Dawnstorm

What are all of the masculine traits? What are all the feminine traits? Once you have them listed, you will see that some traits stem from biology and others from society. You will then notice that the ones that stem from society are actually not masculine or feminine, rather they are human traits. It makes no sense to attribute those traits as masculine or feminine. Actually doing so is engaging in stereotyping precisely because they are human traits and not masculine or feminine traits.

Is 80 million votes against Trump really that hard to believe? He worked very hard for over 4 years to demonize half the country, after all. — praxis

:rofl:
Demonizing half the country is what politicians on both sides have been doing for decades, and your just now noticing? I guess you're right because Hillary lost after demonizing half the country. But then that is why people vote for their political party - because they have been indoctrinated to think that the other party are demons.

Couldn't have stated it any better myself. It IS absolutely insane to believe that Biden got more votes than Hillary and Obama even though he came in last place when he ran against them in the primary back in 2008? And we're suppose to believe that Americans wanted Kamala even though she quit the race because she was in last place in the primary? Obama chose the loser as his VP and Biden chose the loser as his VP. The Democrats are in the habit of choosing losers for their presidential candidates and we're suppose to believe that they actually won?

I don't think anyone has argued that a nothing could "exist ontologically" (not sure what the 'ontologically' is doing here); to argue that would be absurd since anything that exists is something, not nothing. I think you might be attacking a strawman of your own devising. — Janus

Then you haven't read the OP, or the back and forth between us?

In other words, the probability of something is greater than the probability of nothing, and that's why there's something rather than nothing. — TheMadFool

Seems to me that the MadFool is implying that nothing is as real as something, but is the opposite of something and that something can come from nothing.

Seems to me that if nothing is only a concept then nothing, as a concept, came from something as a concept. There is also the concept of opposite, combined with the concept something begats the concept of nothing.

And here you seem to be saying that there is nothing that exists as a concept (epistemological) and as something else (ontological) like a vacuum:

Nothing is nothing, absolutely nothing. <Nothing> is the concept of nothing — Janus

I'd say that a possibility or potential is not until it is; when it ceases to be a possibility or potential and becomes an actuality — Janus

How do you know it wasn't an actuality all along and only appears to be a potentiality because we are simply ignorant of the actuality in the future. Isnt it strange that actuality only exist in past evenrs and potentiality exists in future events that corresponds to our knowledge of such events?

We all heard it: gender is a social construct. — ninoszka

Yeah, but what is a social construct? Aren't "social constructs" a nice way of saying "stereotypes"? It's a term used by the socialist left that enables them to enforce the use of stereotypes without appearing to be stereotyping.

When a man says that they feel like a woman when they wear a dress, they are reinforcing the stereotype that to be defined as a woman, you need to wear a dress. You can wear a dress and still be a man, or wear pants and still be a woman, because what clothes you wear isn't what defines a man or a woman.

Nothing is nothing, absolutely nothing. <Nothing> is the concept of nothing. It is a real concept, not imaginary. The idea of nothing, as idea, is indeed something, but it is the idea of the opposite of something: namely nothing. — Janus

I didn't mean that concept itself isn't real. Concepts have causal power. Concepts are real and they are something - that I think we can agree. My point is that the concept doesn't correspond to anything real in the world. It's just a concept. We can imagine things that have no corresponding ontological reality to them. I challenge you to point to nothing in the world, like you can point to something. Are you talking about a vacuum?

Impossibility is not something existing, but the condition that some particular thing cannot be. If nothing at all existed then there would be neither possibility, impossibility nor probability; that is the point. — Janus

It's the same point I made on page 2 of this thread - the concept of nothing is something. I'm still waiting on someone to show me that nothing is more than just something as a concept, but as something that exists ontologically as opposed to just epistemologically.

Every time we predict or anticipate events, we posit a perspective outside the ‘flow of time’. And every time we test those predictions, we edit and refine a relational structure that perceives the block universe in potentiality. Time isn’t an illusion - it’s just structured differently in the block universe. — Possibility

I don't understand what this means. It takes time to make predictions and they are all happening in your brain, not "outside" the flow of time. At best, you are talking about imagining that you are outside the flow of time, not some ontologically real view somewhere outside of your own head, and "outside of time".

Potential is just another type of imagining, akin to predictions (they may just be the same thing). To say that something that hasn't happened has the potential to happen just means that you predict it could happen, but there would have to be some other pre-existing conditions. A ball on the table has the potential to fall off of it, but only if it's pushed, pulled, or acted on in some way, and until it is acted on in some way, it will stay on the table and the potential remains an imaginary construct.

You can regard a brain as a lump of grayish, convoluted tissue. This is the third person perspective of the brain.
Or, you can experience it as a rich internal universe. This is the first person perspective. — hypericin

Are you saying that the rich internal universe IS the brain, just from a different vantage point? Where is this (first-person) vantage point relative to the other vantage point (third-person)? Are you a realist or solipsist? Is there a "rich external universe" that corresponds to this "rich internal universe"? Using these terms, "internal" vs "external", presupposes dualism.

The hard problem is to reconcile these two perspectives. In particular, it seems that no matter how much you elaborate the working of the brain scientifically, from the third person, there is no conceivable way to make the leap to explaining the first person experience.

The answer may somehow involve substance dualism. But posing the problem certainly does not presuppose it. — hypericin

The problem is in thinking that the way the brain/mind appears in the third person is how the brain/mind really is.

You are right that there are far more configurations of things than of nothing, making something more likely over time. — Kenosha Kid

Using this example, there are far more configurations of god than of not-god, making the existence of god more likely over time.

It's not the possible number of configurations that exist that make something more likely than not. The possible configurations are all just manifestations of our ignorance of the actual configuration. It is pre-existing conditions that make something more likely than not, like the actual number of balls in a jar, which hand you used to choose a ball, how deep you push your hand into the jar, whether or not you had your eyes closed, etc.

We're discussing statistics, not epistemology. That is, we are discussing probabilities as they might still apply even in the absence of holders of beliefs, the sorts of probabilities applicable in discussing the early universe, for instance. — Kenosha Kid

Then probabilities are tools for discussing the early universe? Are probabilities useful for discussing how the early universe actually was, or how we believe it was? How do you tell the difference?

Why are probabilties applicable for discussing things that we don't know, or can't observe, and not applicable to things that we know or do observe? Seems to me that this distinction shows that probabilities are epistimelogical. What is the probability that the sun rose this morning? What is the probability that it will rise tomorrow?

If you are able to eliminate all doubt, would you still have probabilities? It seems to me that doubt/ignorance and probabilities go hand in hand. If you eliminated your doubt and there still exist probabilities, then did you really eliminate all of your doubt? It seems to me that doubt/ignorance and probabilities are inherently linked, or even one and the same, as probabilities are degrees of doubt/belief. If the probability of something occurring is 99%, then the probability of it not occurring is 1%. The 99% represents your belief, and the 1% represents your doubt.

Nothing itself is not actually held in the mind like an apple is. — TheMadFool

An apple is not held in the mind either. The concept of an apple is held in the mind. You can hold an apple in your hand, but when you aren't holding an apple in your hand, are you necessarily holding nothing in your hand?

When you think of an apple, and then don't think of an apple, are you thinking of nothing when not thinking of an apple, or simply thinking about something else?

Let's say that there is a probability that the sun rises tomorrow. What is that probability? How is it determined? Let's say that you assigned the probability 99%. When the sun rises tomorrow, is the probability still 99%? If not, what changed and why? What are we actually talking about when we talk about the probabilty of the sun rising tomorrow - our knowledge, or some objective feature of the sun?

Why do we only assign probabilities to future events, and not past ones or present ones, if probabilities were objective?

Problem is if there were nothing there'd be no probability, and once there is probability there is already something. — Janus

It's not just that. Nothing is an imaginary concept. Nothing is actually something - an idea.

What about zero probability (ie. impossibility)? Is impossibility something? Like nothing, impossibility is a concept, not something that exists ontologically, as what is impossible, by definition, cannot exist.

The brain, uniquely, is an object that can be experienced from either perspective. — hypericin

So I'm experiencing my brain? Here I thought I was experiencing the world the whole time. Is your post in my brain or in the world that my brain accesses?

No, there is no presupposition of dualism.
There are two perspectives, first person, and third person. — hypericin

Sounds like dualism is presupposed to me.

The first person experience is a manifestation of the way in which sensory information is presented. Sensory information includes information about location relative to the body. A perspective, or view, IS information about location relative to something else.

Third-person information does not include information about location relative to something else, which is why we call it a view from nowhere. Which view we talk about depends on what our present goal is - knowing about location relative to the body, or not.

Yes, that's an important point I'm grappling with at the moment. The concept is different to the thing the concept is about. For instance the concept human is not itself a human. — TheMadFool

Right. You can point to humans. Can you point to god or nothing? Try doing the same thing with the concepts of god and nothing. There are conceptions that are about the world and conceptions that are not (like imaginings). Which one is god and nothing - imaginary or real?

The concept of human stems from the actual experiece of the existence of humans. You probably would not have the concept of human without having first experienced humans.

God and nothing are never experienced. So the concept of god and nothing do not stem from the experience of the existence of such things. They are manifestations in the mind to account for what you do experience (in the case of god), or simply a misuse of language (in the case of nothing). As you have already shown in the other thread, nothing is not necessarily the opposite of something. As a matter of fact, you have yet to show that nothing is the opposite of anything, much less that it exists ontologically.

That's not right. For someone inside the block universe, time does flow. — Banno

Because they are part of the flow, or one of the things that flows (changes), relative to the flow of the other things inside the block. It's not time that flows, rather it is the objects inside the block that flows. Time flowing isn't the illusion. Time itself is the illusion.

Does it even make sense to ponder the existence of an observer outside the "flow of time"? Observing itself is a "flow" (change). It's "flow" all the way down.

I've just learned from experience how to spot a patented HH derailment and don't think this thread is an appropriate place to explain why thought experiments don't need exhaustive blueprints. If you're interested in learning about probability theory, go and do so. — Kenosha Kid

This is typical KK. Are you and Banno long lost twins?

Why don't you learn about epistemological probability. Probabilities are simply degrees of belief.

You got there in the end, well done! — Kenosha Kid

I was already there in my first reply to unenlightened. It just took you a while to realize it.

And I'm telling you: the mechanics of a thought experiment are irrelevant to the thought experiment. That's what makes it a thought experiment. — Kenosha Kid

Except when the mechanics of probability and randomness are what are being questioned.

Domain of discourse. — TheMadFool

I should also add that discourse in one domain should not contradict the discourse in another domain. All knowledge must be integrated.

Right. So, computational logic and propositional logic only differ in the rules they use to refer to, or express, beliefs. You can still make commands with propositional logic and make propositions with computational logic, just using different symbols, like you do when using other languages. Proposition also means a program or plan about how to go about doing something.

So, unenlightened hasn't shown us any meaningful distinction when talking about what symbols and rules can be used to refer to, or express beliefs. It seems that symbol use and beliefs may be inherently related. After all, you need to have beliefs about how some symbol is to be used when using them.

The thought experiment sought to prove nothing. It was meant as an illustration. Ill-advisedly, perhaps, given that it is generally impossible to determine from your responses whether you've understood anything or not. Alternatively, I could just response: go and read some basic probability theory, but you'd probably question your text book's existence :D — Kenosha Kid

I just dont see whats so difficult in explaining your use of terms . Random is a term that assumes that your choices are probable, so you didnt really do much thinking in your thought experiment. Just saying.

Domain of discourse. — TheMadFool

Discourse and ideas are still about something, even when talking and thinking about nothing. Zero is just another concept about the quantity of something. 0 what? 0 is meaningless unless you are talking about the number of something.

Uh huh. Well if you want to demonstrate rather than insist on it, be my guest. But since it's not relevant, don't expect a rapt audience. — Kenosha Kid

Its your thought experiment with words that already assume what your thought experiment is trying to prove.

Something is at least ONE. Mathematically Something >= 1. If that's true not something < 1 and that's ZERO and ZERO's nothing. It appears that something has a quantitative definition and so, I suppose, should everything and nothing. — TheMadFool

If you have five pigs in a pen and I steal all of your pigs, you don't have nothing. Air now fills the space where the pigs were. You have yet to show that not something necessarily means nothing. You have yet to show that nothing is anything more than an idea. What does the scribble, "nothing" refer to?

But unfortunately for Einstein, and Harry, there’s no way in which ‘things truly are’ — Wayfarer

That's odd, because you seem to be saying that the way things truly are is that Einstein and I are wrong.

Something is at least ONE. Mathematically Something >= 1. If that's true not something < 1 and that's ZERO and ZERO's nothing. It appears that something has a quantitative definition and so, I suppose, should everything and nothing. — TheMadFool

But you just showed that NOT one bachelor does not equal nothing, but one of something else. You're moving the goal posts.

That out of the way, it needs to be pointed out that nothing in the metaphysical sense refers to the absence of physical stuff, — TheMadFool

Does this mean that your imagination is nothing?


And I'm telling you that you are wrong.

I'm asking, how is something randomly chosen?

So what? Different languages have different rules for the same symbols. We can still translate the meaning and end up saying the same thing in different ways. Computational logic can be translated to propositional logic and vice versa. The point is that the rules for using symbols to refer to beliefs is arbitrary.

It's basic probability theory. Imagine 10 differently coloured balls in a bag, You select one at random. — Kenosha Kid

How does one select one at random? If we knew all the pre-existing conditions, like the position of the balls vs. your hand. If you knew all the pre-existing conditions, you'd know which ball you'd pick. It only seems random because you're ignorant if all the pre-existing conditions.

This all assumes that nothing is a possible option and MadFool has yet to show evidence that it is anything other than an idea.

An error is a fallacy.

Are you saying probability has more to do with us, specifically our ignorance rather than being a real feature of reality itself? — TheMadFool

Yes. Probabilities are just concepts related to our ignorance of the causal relationships of which we are talking about.

An example the book gives is radioactivity - there's no way of knowing, says the book, which particle will decay and when and that's just another way of saying chance is a feature of reality itself and not necessarily a matter of human ignorance as you seem to be suggesting. Then there's quantum physics which too, to my knowledge, exhibits probabilistic behavior and according to some sources this isn't because we're lacking the information that would make quantum physics non-probabilistic but because quantum physics is inherently probabilistic.

What say you? — TheMadFool

To say that there is no way of knowing indicates that we are definitely talking about ourselves and not some objective feature of reality. I guess the question is, how do we determine if probabilities are objective or subjective?

Probabilities are the chances some effect will occur given some pre-existing conditions (causes). So, you seem to be asking how likely something exists given some pre-existing conditions. What are those pre-existing conditions - something, or nothing?