Yes - note the semi-colon. It’s (quote=Sourcename; url including https). That will put (sourcename) under your quote hyperlinked to the source. — Wayfarer

Thanks. I'll try it next time I quote something from an outside source.

Took me years to work that out! Here’s a hint: select an instance and click QUOTE and you will see how it’s done. — Wayfarer

Here's what I got:

[ quote="Richard Lewontin;https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/)"]Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.[/quote]

Note - I put a space between [ and q at the beginning so our webpage wouldn't interpret the quote symbols.

Do I have to put in the person and link by hand?

Well the theory that all our theories are wrong, must be wrong, because if it were right then not all our theories would be wrong. Therefore fairy dust necessarily exists. — unenlightened

QED

It's a question about how fairy dust works.

So that's a 'no'. — unenlightened

Fairy dust is like dark matter. The only evidence that it exists is that all our theories will be wrong unless it does.

I've recently experienced counter-productive dialogues with posters who seem to have an anti-metaphysics agenda. — Gnomon

Metaphysics discussions are always contentious. The word "metaphysics" means many things to many people. As you've noted, there are many who mistake it for religion or the occult and dismiss it out of hand. On the other hand, metaphysics is at the heart of how I understand our, people's, relationship with the world.

This confusing mix is made even more complicated by your idiosyncratic understanding of what metaphysics; or as you put it, meta-physics; is. Even I, who am sympathetic to discussions of the subject, find your approach difficult to defend.

How did he know to stretch out his hand just at that moment? — unenlightened

Is that question intended as rhetorical?

it is exactly what would happen. — EugeneW

I'm pretty sure the only way that could happen is if fairy dust were involved.

Second law of TD in time-reversed universe:

All closed physical systems evolve towards lower entropy (with local patches evolving to higher entropy, but these don't constitute time reversion). — EugeneW

It seems like you are saying that, in a time-reversed universe, the system evolves from a more probable state to a less probable one. That...doesn't make any sense.

Did he die? — EugeneW

Alas.

The jealous God dies hard. — Wayfarer

I'm generally sympathetic to non-scientific ways of seeing the world and criticize scientific rigidity, but I don't find the Lewontin quote very convincing.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs — Richard Lewontin

For me, the main power of science is the absurdity of some of its constructs. That's the point, if it was all common sense, we wouldn't need science at all. Well... maybe.

its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life — Richard Lewontin

That is a great straw man argument. I'm going to keep it around in case I ever need a good example.

Hey!! How do you get quotes that have a direct link to a source outside the forum? I've never noticed that before.

I think 180 Proof is referring to the ongoing Enlightenment project of human knowledge which has incrementally dismantled the notion of god/s and the usefulness of religious models as a foundation for all human thought - also the unravelling of Greek models of absolute reality such as Platonism. — Tom Storm

Thanks. I still don't see what that has to do with my point. No, no... Please don't explain.

Yes yes and yes again. The state of gas corpuscules being together in one corner of a container can be realized in way much less ways than them being all over it. That's no issue. The issue is why all motions of particles have the direction they have (which turns out to be compatible with the chances). Why don't they have the opposite velocities, so they meat in a corner? — EugeneW

I took my best shot. Nuff said.

I've decided to write "nuff said" from now on when I think the conversation is over in honor of Stanley Martin Lieber.

Emptiness is the only spiritual concept that I think, or feel, gives me clearer understanding of the universe. True that it’s a religious concept, even though I’m anti-religious. It makes rational sense while at the same time relieves existential anxiety. I can’t imagine it not being true and yet I don’t know if it is true. Perhaps somehow things can have an essential and independent existence. — praxis

I think there are many ways to describe the experience of God or spirituality I'm talking about. As usual, my approach comes from an intellectual direction. Someday I'll start a thread "T Clark Finally Puts an End to All This Philosophy Bullshit" and explain it.

Again, probability has nothing to do with it. It explains why time goes forward given initial conditions. If a flipped coin lands 10 000 000 times on the floor with heads up, and 2 times on tails, is the reason it lands on heads so often that it has a higher chance? No. The reason is the die itself. Likewise for time. The basic question is why the begin state of the universe is not situated at its end with all motion reversed. — EugeneW

From Wikipedia:

The interpretation of entropy in statistical mechanics is the measure of uncertainty, disorder, or mixedupness in the phrase of Gibbs, which remains about a system after its observable macroscopic properties, such as temperature, pressure and volume, have been taken into account. For a given set of macroscopic variables, the entropy measures the degree to which the probability of the system is spread out over different possible microstates. In contrast to the macrostate, which characterizes plainly observable average quantities, a microstate specifies all molecular details about the system including the position and velocity of every molecule. The more such states are available to the system with appreciable probability, the greater the entropy. In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways a system can be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder" (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder). This definition describes the entropy as being proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of possible microscopic configurations of the individual atoms and molecules of the system (microstates) that could cause the observed macroscopic state (macrostate) of the system. The constant of proportionality is the Boltzmann constant.

Why don't gas molecules behave like steel balls, settle at the bottom of their containers? — Agent Smith

Gas molecules are bound together much more weakly than solid molecules. They bounce quickly around inside any container - off the walls and each other. Temperature is a measure of the molecules' average kinetic energy. The warmer it is, the faster they move. Molecules are also affected by the force of gravity, but I guess the energy associated with gravity is much smaller than the heat energy.

Try this experiment: put a bunch of steel ball bearings (representing particles) in a box, shake the box and record a video of the balls moving randomly in all directions. Now, call two friends to your house. Play the video you recorded normally (forwards) to one friend and play the video in reverse (backwards) to the other friend. Ask both of them this question: Was the video played forwards/backwards? They won't be able to answer this question. — Agent Smith

There is a clear direction of time in a box full of moving steel balls. Perhaps you can hide it by continuing to add energy to the box, but the minute you stop the balls will all fall to the bottom.

I believe that one of the key reasons why a man will hate women is because of the power they seem to hold over him as sexual objects of desire. A woman can make a man want (to possess) her and yet also deny him access to her, thereby frustrating his desire. Women are perceived to be intentionally taunting men with their bodies, like a carrot on a stick, and men resent this. Hence why men often see sex as a form of conquest, in which a woman is finally dominated and put in her place. Sex is a form of revenge for these men. However, this very thing that men hate women for doing to them (manipulating their sexual desires) is itself often a form of revenge on men by women, who resent men for objectifying them. — _db

This gets my vote as the creepiest post of the year.

Probabilities have nothing to do with this. — EugeneW

You're wrong. Please don't go spreading your ignorance.

But you could just as well argue the other way round. If entropy only decreased, it would be very unlikely for time to go forwards. — EugeneW

I've given it my best shot, but I'll take one more swing. You're making this much more complicated than it really is. Entropy is the simplest thing in the world. Entropy isn't a force that directs events in a particular direction. It is just an expression of the fact that some events are more likely than others. Events that we identify as being in what we call the future are just more likely than those in what we call the past. Entropy is just another word for probability.

That's all I've got. Good luck.

I understand the arrow of time, but I don't understand why the arrow doesn't point from future to past. — EugeneW

But why doesn't it and all around it move backwards. Why isn't the law that entropy decreases? — EugeneW

For the same reason I'm more likely to be dealt a pair of twos than a royal straight flush. There's no reason time couldn't "flow backwards." It's just very, very, very, very....very, very, very....very unlikely.

So using the second law of thermodynamics to explain why this won't happen is of no use. — EugeneW

You can't write off the second law in so cavalier a fashion, not legitimately at least. Entropy just reflects probability. Higher entropy is just more likely than lower entropy because there are so many more high entropy events than low entropy ones. There is no physical reason all the air in a room could not gather all at once into one corner. It doesn't happen because there are just so many more ways the atoms could be distributed evenly through the room. Time moves the direction it does because there is just one way an egg broken on the floor could regather into an egg but there are a billion gazillion trumpillion ways it could just sit there in a yellow puddle.

There are other ways of looking at it. Wikipedia has a good writeup of the Arrow of Time.

Three types of paradox — EugeneW

Thanks.

Fortunately, in fact, Western "culture and philosophy" has been predominantly anti-foundationalist since the late 1500s CE (re: nominalism Copernicus/Galilleo, secularism, empiricism, Wallace/Darwin, pragmatism ...) — 180 Proof

I don't know what that means.

Read my last post, the post before you lost your mind. — Agent Smith

I went back and reread your posts. I don't think there is any misunderstanding between us about the issue on the table. We just disagree on the implications. I have four answers to the question "What difference does it make that language paradoxes seem to undermine the value of logic?" Those answers are, in no particular order, none, zero, zilch, and nada.

Oh! Sorry, my bad. You didn't read my post thoroughly. I explain why paradoxes are a big deal. — Agent Smith

I did read your post thoroughly, Mr. Snooty. Agent Snooty. The explanation doesn't make sense to me. What difference does it make other than providing a bit of agita to some philosophers and mathematicians?

It's not that complicated. — Agent Smith

I didn't say that the idea of paradoxes goes over my head, I said the excitement about them does. I just don't see why it's a big deal. They're not that hard to recognize. It's not like they can sneak up on you.

Escher's paradoxical ever up or down going stairs is about the angle of vision (that resolved the seeming contradiction). The twin paradox is about everyday experience and gravity, resolved by general relativity. "Contra-diction" is not always about diction. — EugeneW

You're right. After I wrote that about language, I thought of Zeno's paradox. Now I'm trying to figure out how Zeno's and Russell's paradoxes are different from the liar's paradox, if they are. I think the twin paradox is only a paradox if you don't understand general relativity, which, of course, I don't. As for Escher, I would call the things he drew optical illusions. Is that the same thing as a paradox, just in a visual rather than a verbal medium? I'm not sure.

I don't think that changes my impression that the strain paradoxes supposedly put on philosophy is illusory. It seems pretty unlikely that I've got it right while some of the smartest people in history have it wrong, so I'm hoping to be enlightened.

Perhaps my mixed metaphor confused you. Judaism and Greece are the foundations of the west not Christianity. Christianity is built on those foundations. — Fooloso4

For almost 1,000 years, the only philosophers in Europe were in the church. The church was the main thing that unified the west between the end of the Roman Empire and the Treaty of Westphalia. The church brought the philosophy of Greece to the west. The church transmitted a form of Judaism to the west. Did you think I meant that 2,000 years ago, St. Paul created the entire structure of western civilization without reference to what came before. I didn't.

I did not ask or address that question. What I said was, religious people often do not see eye to eye and so it cannot be said they understand the universe more clearly. How can they both understand the universe more clearly and yet understand it so differently? — Fooloso4

You're right, I did misinterpret your comment.

In philosophy, nobody agrees with anybody. Why would you expect religious/spiritual people to be any different? If you only allow philosophies with no confusion or disagreement... well, there's nothing left. Scientology I guess. Branch Davidianism.

there is no basis for this claim. The roots on which Christianity is founded are in the Greeks and Judaism. Plato's influence on Augustine and Aristotle's influence on Aquinas is evident. — Fooloso4

I don't see how your statement and mine are in conflict.

Collingwood claims that western science would not be possible without a belief in a God like the Christian's.

What about the mild mannered atheism of those who simply do not believe in gods? — Fooloso4

I was not talking about them.

First of all, one need not be a theist to be "spiritual". — Fooloso4

True.

it cannot be said they understand the universe more clearly — Fooloso4

I believe it can.

throughout history their disagreement has often been deadly. — Fooloso4

The question of whether religious institutions are more warlike than secular ones has been argued here many times before without resolution.

Why are paradoxes/contradictions (so) important?

Their significance to all (real) thinkers is that renders trivial the logical systems in which they arise. — Agent Smith

Perhaps I am not a (real) thinker, but all the excitement about paradoxes goes over my head. I just can't see how they have any practical meaning.

Not sure this is relevant but I generally accept that humans are clever animals who use language to help manage their environment. As a consequence, meanings and worldviews are riddled with inconstancies and subversions, some of them more striking than others. When I encounter a paradox it tends to remind me of the poetic, imprecise nature of language and the manufactured character of human understanding. — Tom Storm

It strikes me that many (most? all?) so-called paradoxes are really just playing with language. There was a discussion a month or so ago on the forum about whether the Liar's sentence/Russell's paradox undermine the validity of mathematics. Apparently Alan Turing actually believed that, because of those paradoxes, bridges designed with mathematics might fall down. I find that hard to grasp. [irony]Turing was somewhat smarter than I am.[/irony] I don't understand how he could believe that.

My main concern is the existence/nonexistence of (true) paradoxes. If they exist then, classical logic is trivial unless it excludes some rule of natural deduction that prevents ex falso quodlibet. The rule that most logicians choose to exclude from natural deduction in order to prevent explosion is disjunction introduction/addition. Should we do that? It seems the right course of action assuming there are (true/real) paradoxes. — Agent Smith

I wasn't familiar with the idea of logical explosion, so I opened my trusty Wikipedia. Here's the example used in that article:

As a demonstration of the principle, consider two contradictory statements—"All lemons are yellow" and "Not all lemons are yellow"—and suppose that both are true. If that is the case, anything can be proven, e.g., the assertion that "unicorns exist", by using the following argument:

[1] We know that "Not all lemons are yellow", as it has been assumed to be true.

[2] We know that "All lemons are yellow", as it has been assumed to be true.

[3] Therefore, the two-part statement "All lemons are yellow or unicorns exist" must also be true, since the first part "All lemons are yellow" of the two-part statement is true (as this has been assumed).

[4] However, since we know that "Not all lemons are yellow" (as this has been assumed), the first part is false, and hence the second part must be true to ensure the two-part statement to be true, i.e., unicorns exist.

To me, that example is based on a case of philosophical bait and switch. The two propositions in question "Not all lemons are yellow" and "All lemons are yellow," are concrete examples from the real world. Please show me a "paradox" like that. I can't think of any. The contradictory examples that tangle philosopher's and mathematician's shorts are all language paradoxes, e.g. "This sentence is false."

On an unrelated, or at least only semi-related subject, does the fact that light has both a wave and particle nature constitute a valid example of a real-life, concrete paradox, which I just denied the existence of?

I would suggest that a large part of it originated from Christian social philosophy and their doctrine of universal salvation, even acknowledging the undeniable horrors that the Church has sometimes visited on the world. — Wayfarer

My knowledge about the history of philosophy is limited, so I can't provide a very good defense of this position, but it always strikes me that people fail to understand the extent to which Christianity provides the foundation for western culture and philosophy.

I understand that a lot of people are atheist or anti-religious and I generally don't try and persuade them otherwise, but in my view, the religious or spiritual dimension of life is real, and its denial amounts to a lack. It also subtly conditions what are and are not considered viable philosophical ideas. — Wayfarer

This is one of my primary arguments against rabid atheism. Whatever you believe about the existence of God or the effects of religion on society, there is an important sense in which religious people understand the universe more clearly than those who reject the spiritual dimension you're talking about.

I'm always surprised by how similar many of my ideas are to yours given that we come to them from such different perspectives.

Is it that the focus given to physicalism is due because it is truly central to philosophical discourse, or is it just an accident that occurred by coincidence due to the interests of the forum's userbase? — Kuro

Also - welcome to the forum. I've looked through some of your other posts. You write well.

Is it that the focus given to physicalism is due because it is truly central to philosophical discourse, or is it just an accident that occurred by coincidence due to the interests of the forum's userbase? — Kuro

Physicalism of various stripes is the default in modern secular culture. Its assumptions are widely embedded even in many people who don’t know what the word means. So it’s a natural subject of debate. — Wayfarer

I think what Wayfarer says makes sense. For many, physicalism/materialism is the philosophy of science, reason, and common sense.

'Who can blame people for angry atheism when the church has done so many evil abusive things and God seems completely absent from much church activity?' — Tom Storm

I blame them when they doll their arguments all up in the couture of reason and philosophy. For me, philosophy is all about self-awareness.

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable – uncorroborated it's only an opinion. Anyway, the context here is epistemological and neither forensic nor psychological, so try not to shift the goal posts again. — 180 Proof

Now you're just playing games. What a shoddy argument. Nuff said.

A responsible atheist would not make an argument that there is no god - why would they need to? — Tom Storm

And yet many do, loudly and dogmatically, including here on the forum. I got no problem with atheists if they would just shut up and get on with their lives. Problem is, many of them hate religion and feel contempt for those who believe. That's not atheism, it's... I don't know, what is it? It's not reason.

You don't discern, or accept, there is a significant difference between evidence (i.e. fact) and anecdote (i.e. opinion)? The latter is subjective and the former is, at minimum, intersubjective. In what way, TC, is your wife's or my mother's "experience God's presence" intersubjective (i.e. publicly accessible)? — 180 Proof

I'm on the witness stand, you're on the jury. I say "I saw the defendant shoot Joe Smith. No one else was there, so no one else saw it." Is that evidence? Of course. Is it good evidence? That depends. Is my testimony convincing? Do I have any reason to lie? Do I have good eyesight? Am I trustworthy?

So do I, members of my family included; and yet ...
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
— Freddy Zarathustra — 180 Proof

You asked for evidence, I gave you evidence. Now, if we wanted, we could discuss the quality of that evidence. That's not what I'm interested in. As far as I'm concerned, just establishing that there is evidence is all I need to do. You indicated that is what you required. You wrote "I can't consider something "good evidence" (or not good) when there isn't any evidence given (by you et al) to consider."

You claim "there is evidence of God" and then call my request for you to present it "anti-religious bigotry". Typical apologetics. Evidence-free claims = woo-of-the-gaps = Humpty Dumpty's "it is what I say it is" blah blah blah. Sophistry (bs) replies with word salad when confronted with How do you know that? or Show me your evidence. That's pathetic gassing, not dialectic. — 180 Proof

I know people who have experienced God's presence in their lives. My wife has. I have heard of many others.

I only "smash" dogmatic, irrational, fideistic apologists — 180 Proof

Thank you for the new word:

Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths.