I won't give specific responses to your specific comments, I'll just lay out my general philosophy of government.

A society where a significant portion of it's citizens live unhappy lives of poverty, hardship, and despair; especially while another significant portion lives lives of luxury and overindulgence; is not a good society. When other institutions can't or don't work to overcome these conditions, a good government will step in and do what's needed and what's right.

I like this. It made me think a bit of a poet I like, Carl Dennis. A lot of his poetry has that same feeling of an ironic place between success and failure, of things not being what one might have hoped for, but still of value. Small victories in a life of gentle disappointment. Here's one:

Before dawn, while you’re still sleeping,
Playing the part of a dreamer whose house is an ark
Tossed about by a flood that will never subside,
Its dove doomed to return with no twig,
Your neighbor’s already up, pulling his boots on,
Playing the part of a fisherman,
Gathering gear and loading his truck
And driving to the river and wading in
As if fishing is all he’s ever wanted.

Three trout by the time you get up and wash
And come to breakfast served by a woman who smiles
As if you’re first on her short list of wonders,
And you greet her as if she’s first on yours.
Then you’re off to school to fulfill your promise
To lose yourself for once in your teaching
And forget the clock facing your desk. Time to behave
As if the sun’s standing still in a painted sky
And the day isn’t a page in a one-page notebook
To be filled by sundown or never filled,
First the lines and then the margins,
The words jammed in till no white shows.

And while you’re speaking as if everyone’s listening,
A mile from school, at the city hall,
The mayor is behaving as if it matters
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he’s budgeted,
That the architects don’t transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.

And when lunch interrupts him, it’s a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare. The strollers out on the street today
Don’t have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he’s budgeted,
That the architects don’t transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.
And when lunch interrupts him, it’s a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare.

The strollers out on the street today
Don’t have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
As if it’s wondering what the man is thinking,
Its gray eyes glinting like tin or glass.

Sorry, I won't be much help. The only current poet I read is Carl Dennis, and he definitely doesn't look like your cup of tea. If you find anything you do like, post it one one of the two poetry threads here in the Lounge - "Philosophical Poetry" and "Just Poems."

I don't really like this poem that much, but I love the way it feels in my mouth when I read it out loud.

Laughing Song - William Blake

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing "Ha, ha he!"
When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of "Ha, ha, he!"

One funny association for me. The line "When painted birds laugh in the shade" made me think of "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosiński, one of the bleakest novels I've ever read.

Also it is ironic that with the "Hitler doctrine" a super power doesn't necessarily win all or even most of the wars they fight. A super power just keep enough countries that "might" go to war or engage in aggressive behavior to think twice about doing it and/or not do as much of it as if they they were unopposed. The tactic is basically to keep any country or Axis of countries from getting too big for us to handle and the hope is by stalling them while trying to get bigger, it will buy us enough time for us to do something before they get to bigger -sort of like in WWII we were able to ramp up military manufacturing before Japan and Germany could become too much of a threat. — dclements

I agree with much of what you say, although not with the doctrine you describe above. The world has changed. We're not the only big fish in the pond anymore. There are more and more of them and there will continue to be more and more and more.

Back to the beginning. China is not acting like Germany in the 1930s. It is acting like the US has since the Monroe Doctrine. Throwing it's weight around. Interfering with other country's legitimate national interests.

World War II was worth what it cost, I guess. I suspect the Korean War was not, although I don't know enough to to say definitely. As for Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, the Bay of Pigs - I was alive for those. They were definitely not worth it. They were not in the US national interest. They hurt us more than helped.

Also, there are nuclear weapons now. That changes everything.

Unless their manner of pursuing happiness causes more suffering than happiness. — Hello Human

No. Unless their pursuit of happiness conflicts with someone else's life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. If it does, something will have to be worked out. The Declaration goes on to say "... that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.." According to our values, the government should be set up to deal with the conflicts that will always arise.

I know that I have the subjective experience of colours. I believe that you also have the subjective experience of colours.

I can never know that you have, and I can never demonstrate that you have, but for me, the possibility that you have a subjective experience of colours has both a truth value and meaning.

The truth value is that the proposition "T Clark has the subjective experience of colours" is either true or false. — RussellA

Comparing the multiverse to the experience of color is not a good analogy. There is strong evidence that I experience the color red. When you hold up a card colored red, ask me what color it is, and then I say red. When my brain lights up in a red way on the MRI. That's all evidence, whether or not you want to say it is not absolute proof.

When I see someone cry out when they've been injured, crying and holding their arm, do you doubt they feel pain? They'll tell you they are. They'll act like they are. They act like I do when I experience pain. If you were to put someone in pain in an MRI, I think their brain would light up the same way mine does when I am in pain. We're built the same, mechanically, anatomically, physiologically, neurologically, psychologically.

Then you'll want to talk about P-zombies which... Well, no we won't go there.

I was watching a television news show a few years ago. They were showing how MRI technology was starting to be used to read minds. They would show someone pictures while in the device. After they had built up an MRI "vocabulary," they would show the same pictures to someone else. Based on their vocabulary, they could tell when they were looking at the same pictures as the previous subject.

I understand that, but my point is that you cannot make any progress in answering the question if you are not clear on the criteria that the answer should satisfy. Without that the question is effectively meaningless (as you like to say). — SophistiCat

Meaningless for you, because of the particular epistemic criteria that you set out for yourself in this case: if you can't put a proposition to an empirical test, then it is meaningless. (Not so for others, so they must be applying different criteria.) — SophistiCat

I think you are really saying the same thing I am, just using different language. I say "metaphysics" you say "different epistemic criteria." The epistemic criteria you use is what Collingwood would call an absolute presupposition. Different people in different times doing different work use different absolute presuppositions. I never claimed that my particular way of seeing things has some priority. I've said the opposite in fact.

Now, in the OP you want to turn the question onto that epistemic criterion itself. But that's clearly inapt: an epistemic criterion is not the sort of thing that you can test by the methods of science. — SophistiCat

Exactly. As I've said over and over, it's not science, it's metaphysics. It has no truth value. It's something we choose, usually unconsciously.

It doesn't matter anyway because either is imaginable as a possibility, but both would seem to be impossible to confirm or dis-confirm. — Janus

I was reading somewhere recently that some astronomers think it may be possible to look for evidence of multiverses associated with cosmic inflation by looking at anomalies in the cosmic microwave background. Can't remember where I saw that.

...pointing out that whether one assigns true or false to this sentence, it must be undecided, and hence it is a candidate for an example fo the sort of sentence you asked for. — Banno

If something's truth value is undecided that doesn't mean it isn't true or false, only that I don't know. On the other hand, if it's truth value is undecidable, I consider it either as having no truth value or as being meaningless.

I think we've gone far enough with this. I don't see that any more back and forth will bring us any closer to agreement.

But that makes no sense. — Banno

You wrote:

Seems to me we can assign "true" or "false" to the above sentence without contradiction, so the answer is "yes, there can be sentences that are true or false but undecidable". — Banno

I say - Whether or not you want to assign truth value to the referenced sentence is a matter of your choice, taste, value, preference. It's not a matter of fact. I, when I'm wearing my pragmatist boots, would say no. That would be a matter of my choice, taste, value, preference.

Whether or not you agree with that, it shouldn't be hard to understand.

Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. And no bluff. If I'm president, I share with the Chinese that if they invade Taiwan, then we're all in. And naturally there are lots of reason not to fight that can be appealed to.

Maybe more interesting is what happens if the Russians try to annex the rest of Ukraine. — tim wood

This is the kind of thinking that lead to Vietnam, Iraq, and all sorts of other disastrous American military actions. Who says we gotta do anything militarily in Taiwan or Ukraine? You and John Bolton I guess. Sometimes you shouldn't do what ya don't gotta do.

You could consider that a disputable meta-metaphysical claim. I would be quite happy to defend it. — apokrisis

I think you and I are in agreement.

Can human things be described by having a cause that is neither nature nor nurture? If so, what? — TiredThinker

I'm not sure what you mean by a person having a cause. I think it is clear to say, though, there is a human nature that is independent of our experience in the world. We are not born as blank slates. We have inborn capacities, tendencies, instincts, temperament. There is plenty of science to show this. One of my favorite refrains, not based on science but on my experience with my own children - Babies come out of their mothers fully the people they will always be.

That still leaves plenty of room for experience in the real world, nurture, to have it's effect on our lives and our minds.

A small point of jargon. But important where folk are mostly arguing rhetorically.
— apokrisis

I'm not sure "rhetoric" is the right word. They're not just trying to convince you of their position, they actually believe in the truth of what they say and are trying to present their position.

Anyway, the difference can be summed up that by saying the principle of bivalence is the logical claim that propositions are to be judged either true or false - true or not true. And a dialectical or dichotomous logic says that any "bivalent" division of metaphysical possibility has to obey the rule of being "mutually exclusive/jointly exhaustive". So to be "true", each has to stand as the logical negatation the other. Or to be more accurate, each has to be the formal inverse of reciprocal of the other.
— apokrisis — T Clark

I posted this before I was finished by accident. Let's try again:

Although I agree with your point about how bivalence works, I think there is a place for it as long as you recognize that it is just a point of view, a choice, and not the fundamental basis of reality. I guess that's what you mean when you say:

Reductionism is fine too. It works really well if you want to build machinery or even mechanise human society and the human mind. Simple cause and effect thinking is neat little everyday tool of thought. — apokrisis

What do you think metaphysics ought to deliver as its social good? Does it have a purpose? I can't see any other reason to "do metaphysics" except to attempt to deduce the truth of reality from first principles ... and so set yourself up with clear hypotheses worth the effort of empirical test. — apokrisis

For me, there is no "truth of reality." There are lots of ways of seeing reality. You can choose the one that's most useful in a particular situation, then switch to a different one when the situation changes. I see philosophy, metaphysics, as a tool box. Pull out the right tool for the job.

A small point of jargon. But important where folk are mostly arguing rhetorically. — apokrisis

I'm not sure "rhetoric" is the right word. They're not just trying to convince you of their position, they actually believe in the truth of what they say and are trying to present their position.

Anyway, the difference can be summed up that by saying the principle of bivalence is the logical claim that propositions are to be judged either true or false - true or not true. And a dialectical or dichotomous logic says that any "bivalent" division of metaphysical possibility has to obey the rule of being "mutually exclusive/jointly exhaustive". So to be "true", each has to stand as the logical negatation the other. Or to be more accurate, each has to be the formal inverse of reciprocal of the other. — apokrisis

I think it's a question of values.
— T Clark
I don't see how. — Banno

Would it make more sense to you if I changed "values" to "preference" or "taste?"

It is the same problem that goes back to Kant's phenomenon and noumenon. Kant proposed that a phenomenon is a perceptive representation of an object existing in the mind of a perceiver, rather than the object in itself, the noumenon. Kant did not argue that the world of the noumenon does not exist, for there to be an appearance, there must be something for there to be an appearance of. It is just that human knowledge of the true nature of the noumenon is impossible, as the true nature of the noumenon is always mediated by the senses. In that, for example, we perceive the colour red, we don't perceive a wavelength of 700nm. — RussellA

I was going to say your analogy, comparing the multiverse to noumena, is not applicable, but I thought about it more. I think it is a good analogy. I started this thread to discuss things like the multiverse and my belief that, if I can't know, demonstrate, whether or not it exists, it's existence has no truth value or is meaningless.

I don't think you will find my solution to the issue satisfying - in my view, noumena don't exist either. They are just one way of looking at reality, similar to Lao Tzu's Tao and in contrast to the idea of objective reality.

I assume you mean armed conflict. I do worry. The obvious place where it could happen is in Taiwan. I don't think we should have a commitment to intervene militarily in any conflict there. It's not worth it. That's how World War 1 started. And Korea and Vietnam and maybe Iraq.

On the other hand, I see China's behavior as pretty similar to what the US does and has done. We like to throw our weight around, even to the extent of undermining legitimate governments and starting wars on flimsy pretexts. China is surrounded by potential conflicts much more than the US is. The US has to figure out how to get along in a world with more than just one big boy. More than just two. Lots of countries are starting to grow up economically. I think that's a good thing, but the US will have to learn some humility.

Let's say John has some life goal, becoming a famous singer. Now he uses his time in this world (his life), to achieve that goal, which means his life is an efficient cause towards a final end. — Hello Human

As I noted, I never said no one has life goals or that people shouldn't have them, only that I don't.

Which is why my views on morality are based on respect for others' happiness. — Hello Human

I see two parts to morality as we are discussing it 1) Respect for, not other people's happiness, but their right to pursue happiness in their own manner and 2) Compassion.

Really? It's an obscure bit of truth theorizing. — frank

Maybe it just comes up in a lot of my discussions.

A statement/proposition is a sentence that's either true or false. — TheMadFool

I told you yesterday that this is not true, but I was wrong, at least according to Collingwood. Yes - a proposition has to be true or false. An absolute supposition has no truth value.

You need to go over what you said above carefully, specifically the parts underlined. — TheMadFool

I think I've gone through this enough for now.

I edited it. — Wheatley

Thanks.

I understand her philosophy is quite controversial so lets stick to defining her objective claims and avoid critiquing it.
— OscarTheGrouch
FYI: There are no rules about obeying the wishes of the OP. — Wheatley

Re you response to @OscarTheGrouch

I strongly disagree with your statement about the requirement to follow the OP. For that reason, I copied it to the Shoutbox and asked the moderators to respond.

Rand is not a popular philosopher here on the forum. You may have trouble getting a helpful response, for example:

I read one once, but I have almost completely recovered. There is still hope for you, but try not to talk about it so much. — unenlightened

I have read three of her books, all fiction - "Atlas Shrugged," "The Fountainhead," and "Anthem." All are badly written. I find the philosophy woven into the story distasteful, unconvincing. I have also read a bit about her philosophy and life. For me, a little bit of illogical reasoning is the least of her problems. I think her complete misunderstanding of and contempt for human values is hard to get past.

Sorry I can't help. Welcome to the forum.

My explanations transcend words and intellect. You will only understand them when you are ready. — Miller

[joke]If I may translate "Because I said so."[/joke] Not a very convincing response.

Welcome to the forum.

I believe a large part of philosophy is figuring out what we should spend our efforts on pursuing in reality. — Philosophim

I agree strongly. Turns out you're a pragmatist too. Welcome.

Technically I would say "It may be true or false, but it is extremely likely that it is unknowable." It may just happen that the first planet you look at contains the penny. Extremely unlikely, but not implausible. But that is the way I see truth and falsity. They are independent of our knowledge. — Philosophim

Keeping in mind that I vastly underestimated how long it would take to find the rock/penny. Even in our solar system there are probably hundreds of rocky entities two kilometers in diameter or greater. Even if it's on earth, how long would it take to check. If it's in another star system, it would take decades at least to reach it. Unless someone invents faster than light travel, we couldn't ever reach most systems.

I say, at some point, when something becomes too difficult to verify, it loses it's truth value. That's the pragmatic view - If the truth of a statement has no possible impact on the world, it 1) has no truth value or 2) it is meaningless. Maybe those two are the same.

Sure. Truth is independent of knowledge. The statement "The capital of Botswana is Georgetown," certainly has truth value, even though you don't know if it's true. From a pragmatic point of view, who gives a s**t, and if no one gives a s**t, it ain't true.

I recognize many people disagree with this view. As Aristotle said, or was it Kant, "Hoo boy, metaphysics is a bitch."

We have the concept multiverse, but if we can never know even in principle whether multiverses exist or not, our concept of multiverse must remain fictional, as a unicorn or Conan Doyle. — RussellA

I agree with this. Many people, including some in this discussion, do not.

A statement/proposition is a sentence that's either true or false. — TheMadFool

Merriam Webster says a proposition is "A statement to be proved, explained, or discussed."

MW says a statement is "Something that you say or write in a formal or official way : something that is stated."

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, "Propositions, we shall say, are the sharable objects of the attitudes and the primary bearers of truth and falsity."

So, whether or not a proposition has to be true or false is an ambiguous question. Still, it's clear from the context that, for the purposes of this discussion, propositions do not have to be true or false. You're the one playing with language here.

I guess your point is truth is not the only game in town. — TheMadFool

I think truth is over-rated, but I can talk truth when it's called for. It can be a useful concept. Hey, wait... I think that's metaphysics.

In this particular discussion, I'm trying to use "truth" as it is normally used in philosophical discourse.

But history has shown that dialectical and trialectic reasoning - a move towards holism - actually deliver the better results when it comes to the forming of general intuitions. Reductionist predicate logic is what you use more in the next step of forming deductive statements that are then suitable for a process of inductive confirmation, or the experimental test of a bivalently-framed prediction. — apokrisis

What is the difference between "dialectical" and "bivalently-framed?" Is it that with the dialectic, the goal is to reach consensus, while with bivalently-framed, we have to make a choice?

So one thing that is clear to any logical holist is that yes/no thinking lacks sufficient sophistication. You need further categories - a third option as an answer, such as yes, no, or vague. — apokrisis

If I understand you correctly, I think I agree. I'm not a big fan of the idea of truth, but for most people interested in philosophy, it is one of the central questions. In this discussion, I'm trying to argue in terms of how the word is commonly used.

Pragmatism builds that answer in. The theory makes some kind of reductively bivalent claim about reality. It is a good thing to be clear in this way. But then the theory is only ever deemed verified or falsified provisionally. The evidence might lean heavily on way or the other. But always, the fact is that there remains something ambiguous or indeterminate about its truth status. — apokrisis

That's why I'm so attracted to pragmatism as a way of approaching the world. I am self-aware enough to see that has as much, or more, to do with temperament as it does with reason.

Then when it comes to quantum theory, we find ourselves bumping up against the fact that nature itself must have this same kind of logical holism. The vagueness that we need to include in our epistemic methodology becomes also a useful third category when we speak of nature “in itself”. — apokrisis

I am skeptical of bringing physics into metaphysical arguments. It's often a symptom of wrong-headed thinking. Is that there one of them "category errors.?" Quantum mechanics seems to be a prime candidate for this mistake. I don't think that's the case with you, but I don't get it.

Your purpose is to be — Miller

Sorry, just like I responded to @Hello Human above, you're just trying to jam additional meanings into the definitions of words.

Seems to me we can assign "true" or "false" to the above sentence without contradiction, so the answer is "yes, there can be sentences that are true or false but undecidable". — Banno

I don't agree, but I don't think we can resolve our differences. I think it's a question of values. I keep ducking into phone booths (What's a phone booth?) and slipping into my Pragmatism Man costume. Yes, it's true, I am a superhero. Motto - "If I can't use it, who gives a fuck if it's true? If I don't give a fuck if it's true, it's not true." Long motto. Lousy, foul-mouthed superhero.

Very little. There are, after all, other things which we not only don't know, but can't know. But we muddle on. — Banno

Australian Pain-in-the-Ass Man's motto may be "Muddle on," but we Amurcan superheros are made of stronger, non-metric stuff.

We can't determine if Caesar stepped into the Rubicon with his left foot. But undoubtedly he either did or din't. — Banno

Little known fact - the phrase "jumping in with both feet" was coined based on Caesar doing just that at the Rubicon according to Roman historian Quintus Fabius Pictor's account.

Living life as you think is best implies living as you want to as long as it does not harm others. You have some ideal and you try to achieve it. That seems very much like a goal. — Hello Human

Seems like every time I disagree with your point, you just go around trying to streeeetch the meaning of "goal" and "purpose" to fit. I may have goals in my life, but that doesn't mean my life has a goal. Actually, the older I get, I find I don't really have any goals in my life either, but my point stands.

I have no objections to you having a goal for your life, but what's true for you isn't necessarily true for others. People are different.

I'm not sure why anyone would define metaphysics in any other way. — TheGreatArcanum

And yet they do.

Discuss as in determine who's right? Or just to understand the diverging narratives? — frank

I don't think there's a right or wrong here. I'm just trying to get my head around the issue. It's something that comes up a lot in discussions.

I’m saying that the term ‘metaphysics’ has a scope, defined originally against Aristotle, developed by the subsequent tradition. Tao Te Ching falls outside the scope. As does Vedanta and Buddhism. Which is not to say that those texts and traditions don’t deal with some of the same subjects, but they do so in very different terms, different languages and different cultural tropes. When you try and combine them all into some grand meta-subject called ‘metaphysics’ then you loose a great deal of specificity which is why you can’t find any criteria for deciding their truth or falsehood. — Wayfarer

I don't think your understanding of the meaning of "metaphysics" is consistent with how the word is generally used in philosophical discussions. It certainly isn't consistent with how I use the word.

Ok, I'll leave off that - seems the thread is headed off into pragmatics anyway. Let me know what you decide about the undecidable sentence in my first post. — Banno

I just posted my response, which was basically just me giving up.