I'm quite interested in what the root arguments are about stopping trans people doing their thing. Historically, when we victimise or disenfranchise a group of people, we do so either on the basis of what we perceive them to be or on the basis of what they do. Suffrage and civil rights concerns the former, gay and trans rights the latter.

What surprises me about TEFs and transphobes generally is that we seemed to be over both. The notion that a dominant group of people can prescribe how a minority can live their own lives seems old fashioned and wrong. A homophobe might not consider a gay man to be his idea of a man, but he is obliged to accept the latter's rights. Likewise a TEF might not accept that a trans woman is her idea of a woman, but so what? What happened to live and let live?

TEFs particularly surprise me because they are very aware of the battle for their own autonomy. No feminist would agree to have womanhood dictated to them by men, no black feminist would agree to having womanhood dictated to them by a white woman, no gay feminist would agree to having womanhood dictated to them by a straight feminist and no working class feminist would agree to having womanhood dictated to them by a middle class feminist.

Feminists appear to understand context and the primacy of their own rights to self-definition, and yet TEFs are united by the theory that they do have a right to dictate a notion of womanhood to trans women, based on a clearly debunked (by them) idea of uniformity of women's experiences.

I've heard some pretty far-out arguments... Trans people want to make children trans (okay, criminalise THAT), trans women want to rape cis women in ladies toilets (already as illegal as a cis man raping a cis woman in ladies toilets) and, of course, that how someone lives their life undermine's one's own sense of self, debunked not least by feminists as per the above, but also with regards to atheism or minority religious groups and homosexuals.

What's interesting is that it's almost always trans women who are the targets. There seems to be much less of a problem with trans men (much like gay men had a much harder time of it than gay women). I suspect the answer is that trans women are a perfect storm: they inspire the hatred of radical (now mainstream) feminists for being male, the hatred of misogynists for being female, and the hatred of homophobes for being, in some sense, queer.

Transphobic comments don't seem qualitatively better than misogynistic or homophobic ones, but they appear to inherit respectability from the misandry of untouchable feminists. Claiming that trans women will rape cis women sounds a lot like people who historically claimed that emancipated black men would rape white girls, or that gay men would always be trying to bum us in the showers, i.e. stupid. And certainly not tantamount to an argument against tolerating trans people generally. Again, it seems shockingly backward. Is it? Or is there a legitimate argument that has to be considered by a modern person?

Even random things have reasons. What would make a randomly selected value for c change to another randomly selected value of c?

For instance, the quantum vacuum is random, but we know why: it is a property of 4D waves that they are only well-defined on large timescales. There are an infinity of possible modes and therefore at any given time some of those modes must briefly exist (because 0 is well-defined).

Teaching people ideas is probably not very problematic. It's when you teach people to be afraid of questioning, doubting, entertaining alternatives... Whether it's coercive control, wrangling slaves, ostracizing someone for having different political views or being gay or reading books, violent apostasy or good ol' Stockholm syndrome, it's always all downside. Occasionally atheists convert after consideration. It's odd, it's rare, but it's fair because they're adults using their experience, feelings and reason. But mostly theists are raised in their religion: it's chosen for them, and contains astonishing threats, even if conveyed with love.

Do you think Nature was created by some sort of high intelligence? — Thinking

Nope!

So how can nature be this complex? Is there a fined tuned system that keeps it that way? — Thinking

Yes. It's called optimisation and requires no comprehension. As pre-genetics Darwin put it:
1. Characteristics are heritable
2. Mutation occurs
3. There exists a struggle for survival
4. Some characteristics benefit an individual in that struggle for survival.

This describes a naturally arising optimisation problem and a natural means of finding the best possible solution for it. Could it also be solved by an intelligent creator? Of course. Was it? It seems not.

When humans solve difficult optimisation problems, they do so typically without comprehension of how a particular solution was obtained, even if they understand the principles of the optimisation algorithm. One example of this is finding the minimum of some function, for instance the ground-state energy of a complicated, usually non-living system such as a novel semiconductor with defects.

The trouble we have in doing this is in knowing whether we've found the *global* minimum, or just a local one. Methods for finding global minima are typically of the brute force type and are only useful when the search space is compact.

If the problem could be solved with comprehension, one would expect to find the global minimum, rather than iteratively work toward a local minimum. A creationist God who is omniscient, omnipotent and inclined ought to find the best solution for whatever problem they're trying to solve. There is nothing to tell us that humans are such a solution, and pointing at our complexity is invalid: we are the most complex systems living on the planet; it does not follow that we are the most complex living system possible, or the optimal solution for living on this planet.

In addition, we would not expect an iterative solution at all. Why would a comprehending creator tie himself to his previous effort? Why do we resemble apes so much, rather than being a very different design?

Humans, as all lifeforms, bear all the hallmarks of iterative improvements achieved via an uncomprehending optimisation problem.

Could God have used natural law deliberately to create us specifically (as some IDers have it), in much the same way we use algorithms to find solutions to problems? Maybe, but then our complexity is still a product of natural law, and unless there's no natural means for the search to have taken place at all, a comprehending creator is a redundancy. Either way, the complexity is a sign of nothing at all, unless there is a) some reason to suggest that this complexity was unattainable or b) some reason to expect that this complexity was unconnected to simpler efforts. In both cases, we have no evidence for and much evidence against.

he says that you can't trust that there are reliable casual relationships in the world and therefor you have no JTB — AndreasJ

Why would this be more compelling than "witness testimony isn't worth a damn"?

But the anthropic principle doesn't seem to explain why we should expect that the laws of physics will continue to be stable in the future. In fact, it may seem that such a stability is very unlikely because there are many ways our world could be in the future but only one way in which it would be a deterministic extension of the world it has been until now. — litewave

It's a genuine field of research: are physical constants really constant or just slow? can other universes have different constants, qualitatively and quantitatively?

To build structures like atoms places extreme limits on what physical constants can be, but there's no reason why a universe ought to have atom-like structures. The maximum speed of light was perhaps different in the brief period when we had no structures of charges (this difference might even allow that this period was not so brief).

This is where the Solomonoff induction comes in, which seems to imply the opposite: it is more likely that laws of physics will continue to hold. — litewave

A change in a law would raise the question, what changed it? In all other things, inertia is a sign of being left the hell alone: change suggests something driving that change.

True, physical laws are manmade. But colloquially we use the term to describe the thing that our physical laws approach in their representations (if indeed they are approaching anything).

This question, like asking every other, presupposes it. Reality is ineluctable and, therefore, subject / pov / language / experience / consensus–invariant. Thus, it's the ur-standard, or fundamental ruler, against which all ideas and concepts, knowledge and lives are measured (i.e. enables-constrained, tested). — 180 Proof

:up:

We keep talking about this being a secular age, which it is to some extent, but I suspect the age is more secular than the people in it... I am not convinced the average person has an intellectual commitment to the ideas of secularism or an understanding of the principles their view of reality is founded upon. — Tom Storm

And this is the (necessary) fallacy of the theist: that we must approach atheism and secularism rationally, with care and effort, or approach it badly, when all it really entails is not brainwashing and scaring your child into defending unjustifiable beliefs. No theist can agree, I get that, which is why these sorts of debates tend to be fruitless for both sides: people raised in religion tend to lack the imagination of what not being raised in religion, of being free, is like. And I'll be open in having no comprehension of what being brainwashed like that as a child is like, although I am at least privy to other forms of brainwashing (nationalism, advertising, partisan media) enough to get an idea.

If you believe that the wavefunction is epistemic, sure.

what I'm not seeing is how this ties into the materialism vs. idealism debate in this discussion — EricH

The debate isn't of interest, but your belief does make a difference. Knowing about ourselves, rather than simply adopting attractive beliefs about ourselves, can teach us how to better live our lives and how to understand the actions of others.

so I understand (correct me if I am wrong here) that Darwin lost his own image of who his own god was?
Or are you saying that Darwin actually knew God directly and better than those that do believe in God (learned jews and Jesus) who said: no one knows God? — Iris0

I didn't quite follow your question. Darwin lost his faith in the God he believed in, that he was brought up the believe in.

You mention Darwin and how he lost his faith in God. This is a good example of someone losing faith in a demigod (whom he previously mistook for God). — baker

Yes, that is along the lines of what I was thinking. Darwin could have simply changed his god to be ambivalent about suffering.

I imagine you could guess them...

Going into a bit more detail:

1. Human morality is partly objective because humans share biological traits that underlie their sense of moral necessity. It is not objective in the sense of being independent of humans, but is in the sense of being common to all humans (barring edge cases) and humanity being objectively distinguishable from non-humanity.
2. Morality is also relative insofar as much of it is also mediated by inherited socialisations which differ across time and space. Historically, those socialisations have been optimised to maximise our ability to apply our social hardware to daily living, which is why there is so much similarity between the cultures of immediate-return hunter-gatherer groups. More recently, those socialisations have evolved to counteract that innate behaviour (serfdom, slavery, individualism), and even more recently they're evolving to reassert that innate morality on a global scale (equality, diversity, tolerance).
3. Morality is subjective insofar as it is still us as individuals who inherit that biology and culture, and us ultimately that have to make moral decisions, gain experience based on those decisions and their outcomes, and grapple with moral problems specifically for us.

Fuck! Don't say things I agree with, it makes me doubt them.

It is a simple fact that Galilean science dispensed with the notion of final and formal cause and that the notion of teleology was banished from the biological sciences. — Wayfarer

It is an irrational belief that a theory of a non-teleological universe is inherently irrational.

On the flip side, reason in its current incarnation hasn't been able to make headway on many issues - the long list of unsolved problems in various disciplines is proof. — TheMadFool

No it isn't. To not "make headway", the long list should stay the same size. If it's getting shorter, it's making headway. You can't discern a trajectory from a single position.

No. I have never needed to know about someone's chromosomes to know whether they are male or female. — Andrew4Handel

I've never met a Hungarian. I guess there aren't any Hungarians.

In fact, scientific rationalism is irrational, in that it disposes with any notion of purpose, telos, the why of existence. — Wayfarer

That is, itself, an irrational belief.

I skimmed this discussion but didn't spot anything relevant to my question. Could you point me to a specific post? — EricH

The OP. "How should I live my life" is a question about ethics. The OP argues a) why such questions occur now, b) that they would have been rare for most of our history, c) that we evolved biological apparatus to bypass asking these questions in our natural state, d) this social apparatus is part of what makes us uniquely human, e) that we still inherit apparatus from more distant, pre-social ancestors that does not make us uniquely human, f) that meeting the impossibility of acting on our social instincts in the modern world with antisocial behaviour is therefore subhuman, g) that moral existentialism is the state of humans in the modern world, and h) to be human, that existentialism must be constrained by that which makes us human: in this context, social behaviour.

If I’m misunderstanding what they’ve said please explain it better. — Wayfarer

Sure thing. These recent experiments are laser interferometer experiments aimed at simulating Wigner's friend experiment* in which Wigner's friend makes a quantum measurement inside the laboratory but Wigner is outside.

In the original formulation of the Schroedinger cat experiment, Schroedinger assumed that when the experimenter opened the box, the wave of the cat would collapse from a superposition of |alive cat> + |dead cat> to one pure state (|alive> or |dead>) absolutely. For instance, if the experimenter closed the box, left the room, and another one came in to check, not knowing the first's result, the cat would still be in a pure state of one or the other. This is universal collapse.

Wigner argued that if he were to observe the laboratory his friend was in, it would remain in a superposition of live+dead cat even after his friend had made a measurement, so long as Wigner didn't know what the actual measurement outcome was, i.e. Wigner had made no measurement that should resolve the state of the cat.

This is to do with how things entangle. If the cat is in state |alive> + |dead> and Wigner's friend interacts with it (performs a measurement that should yield a single measurement outcome), Wigner's friend will be in superposition (until collapse):

|friend> X ( |alive cat> + |dead cat> ) = |friend>|alive cat> + |friend>|dead cat> = |friend measured alive cat> + |friend measured dead cat>

In MWI, things would even evolve from there without collapse, the two terms being parallel worlds that would never interact again. If collapse occurs, it is assumed to be at measurement, so as soon as the friend is consciously aware of the contents of the box, one of the two terms vanishes.

When Wigner's friend sends him a message to say that measurement is complete, there's nothing about that message that can resolve Wigner's view of the lab as still being in superposition. He is also an observer and, in his observations, his friend is another physical component of the experimental setup.

If his friend told him which measurement outcome was achieved, this wouldn't make much difference. Either collapse has occurred universally and the state of the message would be |friend measured alive cat> or |friend measured dead cat>, or collapse did not occur until Wigner received the message |friend measured alive cat> + |friend measured dead cat>, at which point collapse occurs and Wigner arrives at a single measurement outcome.

By only telling Wigner _that_ measurement has occurred, i.e. by sending exactly the same signal irrespective of measurement outcome, any superposition of the lab* remains unresolved. Wigner cannot collapse the signal because it's not in superposition. Wigner's paradox was that Wigner could be sure that he had not collapsed the lab while also being sure that his friend had collapsed the cat.

These recent experiments show that a measurement can be made by part of the experimental apparatus but still demonstrate superposition to a separate part of the experimental apparatus.

* Oh yeah...
4. You can simulate humans and labs with a laser.
5. Laboratories can be in quantum superposition.

There's a huge difference between disagreement about what the single objective reality is, given the constraints of limited and imperfect phenomenology, and there not being a single objective reality.
— Kenosha Kid

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality, MIT Technology Review, March 2019. — Wayfarer

I have already referred to this a couple of times. I have a feeling you might be the kinder if reader that magazines have in mind when they keep running covers that say WAS EINSTEIN WRONG?

The Wigner's friend experiments are interesting. What they suggest is that you could measure the alive/dead cat, even tell me you have done so such that I know collapse has occurred for you, but I could still in principle verify that collapse has not occurred for me.

There are a number of assumptions:
1. The wavefunction is an ontological one
2. Collapse occurs
3. Non-destructive measurement (a disputed technique) is reliable.

But even if it all holds up (and part of me wants it to, because it's precisely the kind of interpretation-selecting measurement I spoke of), there's still no issue for a single universal wavefunction. There's nothing objectionable about me being in a superposed entangled state and you being in a pure state in the same universal wavefunction (what would be problematic is if this were true and we were entangled, which is precisely why you can only tell me _that_ you've made a measurement and not _what_ measurement outcome you obtained in Wigner's friend).

Hyperbolic click-bait titles aren't the answer here. Your subjective reality may be different to mine, but no one is disputing this. But nor is anyone saying the cat might have been a dog, it depends on the observer. Ultimately, after I've made my measurement, you and I have to agree.

Quantum mechanics is a physical theory, but the nature of theory is never a matter for physics. It's the true nature of the wavefunction which is at issue - if it were cut-and-dried, there would be no competing interpretations. — Wayfarer

The interpretation of the wavefunction is not the issue. That already assumes primacy of our conceptions, rather than demonstrating it. However we think about it, the maths comes out the same, the predictions come out the same, therefore the regularity and physicality of what we're describing is the same. This is why, at least at present, the interpretation of the wavefunction is not a scientific problem, because all interpretations are currently indistinguishable. (This doesn't mean we'll never have physical grounds for whittling it down in future, e.g. the recent glut of Wigner's friend experiments.)

There's a huge difference between disagreement about what the single objective reality is, given the constraints of limited and imperfect phenomenology, and there not being a single objective reality.

Yes I know it’s not the only interpretation. But I don’t understand epistemological interpretations. And I thought they were the minority with ontological being more popular. — khaled

I'm not sure any more tbh. But Copenhagen is the original, and that has an epistemic wavefunction, i.e. it represents our knowledge about a system, not the real system itself. You're probably right that this isn't the default position it once was. MWI seems very popular, and recent Wigner's friend experiments suggest a more observer-dependent collapse.

I don't agree with a lot of that, but I appreciate the time you put into those responses! — RogueAI

Yeah, enjoyed talking to you, Rogue.

OK, so instead of a dream, let's pretend this is a simulation, and you notice a cup in the simulation. Why am I seeing a cup? you ask. Because the simulation is programmed that way. Do you accept that as an explanation? — RogueAI

The simulation hypothesis leads to a lot of other questions about our experiences. If we are living in a simulation, it does appear that it has been programmed according to what physicalists call physical law: a simulated moon will always orbit a simulated planet orbiting a simulated star according to Einstein's equations. Why? Because it must do so? Or because it is one of many possible simulations? Why do electrons have the same charge and mass and magnitude of spin?

These are the same questions physicalists ask of the single objective reality too. I don't think there'd be any significant difference if the simulated universe always obeyed physical laws.

However if I am the only player, or if the simulation glitched or was patched, we'd end up with the kind of seemingly uncaused and/or irregular behaviour I was talking about earlier. If we ever saw such a thing, something else other than physicalism might have to be entertained.

This is unclear. Let's look at the following conversation:
"I went skydiving."
"What was it like?"
"It was scary and fun."

What part of that conversation is unclear or "not a thing"? — RogueAI

I didn't say it was unclear; in fact I specifically worked through how I'd interpret such a question.

I think I'd be typical in interpreting that as "what was it like the last time you went skydiving," not "what is skydiving like" generally. But skydiving isn't a single experience. There's the nervousness in the build-up, the overcoming of one's fears to jump out of the plane, the sense of falling, the rush of air in your face, perhaps disorientation, exhilaration, more fear that your parachute might not open or will open twisted, the jolt of the parachute opening, the view you have from the air, the feeling of hitting the ground, the awkwardness of getting clear of the chute, the happiness of having done it, the memory of all of the above.

The next time I go, I'm a different me, having a different parachuting experience, perhaps in a different place. The nervousness beforehand, the fear of jumping, etc. will all be different. The thought of the parachute not opening might not occur to me. I might hurt myself as I land, end up a sprained ankle. I might be in a bad mood that day.

I can have different kinds of memories of different parts of one skydiving "experience" because it's not one experience, and I might have very different individual experiences the next time.

I can summarise this. "Skydiving is great if everything goes okay," but packed behind all of that are a bunch of different, sometimes conflicting experiences.

there are lots of things we do assume exist but cannot be defined nor describe completely - our consciences is one of these things - and we have several of those within theoretical physics - but you would not say they do not exist (take black holes - they are only recently "seen" or said to actually exist) - and within physics they keep on looking for them because they believed - so if an atheist does not look how are they going to find? — Iris0

You'll find lots of conversations about consciousness on here and people frequently have to define what they mean: a panpsychist, a solipsist, a dualist and a neuroscientist aren't likely to agree much on what it is, but they know why they mean. Or some of them do, anyway. There are ample philosophical and scientific papers in journals that rely on a common understanding of what consciousness is.

You experience no cup on the table because you're dreaming there's no cup on the table, and you're experiencing what you're dreaming. That's an explanation. — RogueAI

That's not an explanation. It explains absolutely nothing about why I'm having that experience and not some other.

So if you go and do x and someone asks you "what was it like to do x?" do you understand what they're asking? Do you think it's just a language game going on? — RogueAI

I'd infer they're asking me what it was like to do x on that occasion. If I frequently do x, they're asking for a summary of my impressions when doing x, each of which might be quite different.

I watched Fight Club a couple of nights ago and I enjoyed it a lot less than I did 20 years ago. I'd interpret the question "What is Fight Club like?" as meaning my current view on it, which isn't what it was like to me 20 years ago. "What it is like to watch Fight Club" isn't a thing; "What it is like for me to watch Fight Club" isn't even a thing. In fact, "What it was like for me to watch Fight Club the last time" isn't even *a* thing, it's lots and lots of events.

Because as far as I know the judo-christian stand is, has always been: no one knows God or can define him absolutely... so what part in that sort of statement does an atheist reject? — Iris0

That he can be said to exist when he can't even be described. Things do exist. If God is one of those things, say an apple, then he does exist. But I don't believe that an apple created the universe.

You're claiming that whatever a photon hits is a conscious observer? — RogueAI

No, not me, panpsychists. I think consciousness is a capability of brains (and maybe other, similarly complex and malleable information processing systems). Panpsychists believe that consciousness is a property of _everything_. (I don't know if that includes photons and spacetime. I've never gone into it that deeply with one.)

Solipsism can explain the behavior of the cup by positing that you're creating the reality you're experiencing (i.e., you're dreaming all this). — RogueAI

Well no, it can't. Physicalism can explain why I don't see the cup on the table: there is a me-independent cup on the me-independent table knocked off by a me-independent cat. This explanation tells us that experiencing no cup on the table was the only possible experience I could have. Solipsism has no explanation for why I experience no cup on the table rather than any of the infinite other experiences I might have.

I am just asking - because if no-one - not believers nor atheists who refute the same "undefined god" discuss a matter where no-one knows who or what we are actually talking about - what is the point?
I mean if a believer does not know who he/she believes in - and the atheist does not know either who or what they refute - what is going on? — Iris0

But that's already a good reason to reject the proposition: if it is too badly defined. Also, you don't need a complete description. I can reject the proposition that a magical man in the sky made the world and the stars and the animals and us by conscious design just based on what I know about the sky, the world, the stars, animals and us. I don't need to know the nature or extent or origin of the magic, or what sort of skyhouse the man lives in, or what his favourite colour is.

Is the existence of the cup dependent on mind(s) in any way? — RogueAI

A property isn't for a particular event. The single-objective-universe hypothesis has it that the cup has the capacity to emit light without the evolution of conscious observers, and, if provided with energy, will emit light whether it's seen or not.

But... putting aside minds for the moment, my view is that no photon is created that is not destroyed, that is: a photon's final destination is a boundary condition of its existence. From a panpsychist point of view, whatever that destination is, that is a conscious observer. So there's that.

Of course, I personally have no direct evidence of any cup that I am not seeing. If I look away, I cannot see it. The opposite of objectivism (in the above sense, not the Randian sense) is solipsism: the belief that only my conscious experiences are real. Solipsism cannot explain why the cup appears the same when I go back to it, or why it disappeared after I heard a meow and a crash. This is why the single objective universe is the best explanation for our conscious experiences. Science is the test of that: the hunt for exotic phenomena that puts that hypothesis through its paces (falsification, null-hypothesis).

What about reading a novel, don't you observe images in your head? Or when you are lost in thought? — Manuel

Yes, of course. I think that's evidence in favour of physicalism, not against. Physicalism can explain why we see things that aren't there, because physicalism casts experience as information processes by hardware (the brain).

Dennett talks about this. You read about, say, the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List (or was it yellow?) and you *see* that red coat, right? Where is it? It's not on the screen, you're not watching any screen, you're reading a book. It's not in the book, that's all black ink on white paper. If we cut open your skull and tear apart your brains, we won't find a little red coat, not before we're arrested anyway. So where is it? In your mind, but what does that mean?

Red is a physical property. It tells you lots about the material that's emitting it. But even when we see it, there's no red in our retina, in the optic nerve carrying the signal to our brains, in the imaging centres in our brains or in the distributed memory of that red coat. What we have there is _representations_ of red things. 'The little girl's red coat' is a representation of a red thing, as is the network of neurons that encodes our memory of it and the particular electrical signal that carries information about it (obtained from the projection of photons from the screen onto the retina) to our brains. And what neuroscience is starting to figure out is how the red coat is represented in our consciousness.

In effect, we are never apprehending a red coat, only representations of a red coat, specifically that limited subset of representations of a red coat that is available to the part of the brain that's responsible for conscious knowledge (the hippocampus): knowledge about representations.

God. Who is he: definition?

In short: a definition of who we are supposed to discuss about here?
Someone? — Iris0

The proposition was that atheism is illogical, so it's any normal-use definition of a deity, not just a particular one. I personally define God as 180proof, which is how I'd have kicked his ass. I ain't listenin to anyone who says they don't exist.

Our observation ontologically "creates" reality. That's just QM (at least the versions with collapse, MWI disagrees). — khaled

Copenhagen also disagrees, in its original guise anyway. The wavefunction in Copenhagen is epistemological, not ontological. It contains the factual and counterfactual information about a system. Once a measurement is made, we can identify the factual term and discard the rest. This was called "wavefunction reduction" at the time, now it's known as "wavefunction collapse".

Even wavefunction ontologists who believe in collapse are still usually describing "universal collapse", i.e. the collapse is true for all observers. Observation may cause the collapse, but it is not a subjective collapse. If you spill the coffee, yes, it's you that did it and in effect you "realised" the coffee spillage, but it's still a universal fact with a physical explanation.

Bohm would also disagree, as is the case in any QM interpretation with no collapse mechanism (MWI, like you say).

Isn't your experience observable to you? — Manuel

My experience is not observable, no: it is the process, not the object, of observing. — Kenosha Kid

Actually, I'll correct myself here. Yes, my experience is observable. For instance, you can watch me experiencing a film (in principle, not a weird invitation). Obviously I can't watch me experiencing a film.

Isn't your experience observable to you? — Manuel

My experience is not observable, no: it is the process, not the object, of observing.

But you have to say something about what kind of stuff physical stuff is. It has properties, I assume. — RogueAI

I have already mentioned several. I could cite the standard model as a starting point, but that is just a model. The above covers whatever exists, not just whatever we think exists. Counterfactual physical things are constrained also to be observable and regular, however there's an interpretive layer. For instance, the gravitational force field was thought to be physical: we could indirectly observed it through it supervening on more directly observable stuff, and it was regular-seeming. But it didn't exist, that is: the model was only a (very good) approximation.

Physical properties (from my above definition) are necessarily properties that dictate what a physical object does. So observing something is the same as seeing it's properties. We see that the boulder takes ten men to shift a little, we see that it has the property of mass, high-valued compared to the cup that a cat alone can knock off the table.

We see the cup, so it has the property of being seeable, which we now know means that it is a configuration of bound charged particles. Further, now we know about the visible range of light, we can also see that that configuration is made up of smaller configurations of bound charged particles (we call those atoms). The physical property of charge is, in part, the capacity to be seen, i.e. to emit light.

Generally, if A supervenes on B, then A has the property of being able to supervene on B, and B has the property of being subject to B. If, in this process, B also supervenes on A, then:
a) B has the property of being able to supervene on A;
b) A has the property of being supervened upon by B;
c) if A or B are directly or indirectly observable, A and B are physical.

Relativistic mass is a fiction, like the solar system model of the atom. But these are convenient fictions. Here the point is to distinguish between the fiction and the the more current and correct model. — tim wood

It isn't a fiction: that is the gravitational and inertial mass of the object. It's just that its identically the energy of that object divided by a physical constant so it isn't useful.

The first answer you got (from Pfhorrest) is correct. No time would pass for the object, and there would be no space in its direction of travel. You also wouldn't be able to slow it down again, since it will have infinite inertia.

Also, can't a body with mass travel at the same speed in all frames of reference (except light speed) providing it is provided with sufficient energy to produce the momentum. — RolandTyme

No, it cannot. For any massive body, there exists a reference frame in which it isn't moving. You can always have another reference frame moving with respect to the first in which the object is necessarily moving with the opposite velocity. Since that second frame can have any direction and subluminal speed, there are an infinity of reference frames in which the object is moving with different velocities.

You might be thinking of massless bodies, like photons of light. These necessarily move at the same speed in every inertial reference frame.

What is "physical stuff"? — RogueAI

Stuff that is observable, directly or indirectly, to the senses to behave in a regular, predictable way. Basically something is physical if it can be measured and modelled, hence the name for what does exactly that: the physical sciences.

I guess in competitive debates like in high school, they actually judge them and declare winners. In other debates, like presidential ones, each side gets to argue they won. In this one, 3017 is arguing he got a draw, so I guess ask him how he scored it. — Hanover

I concede. I'm not mentally or emotionally prepared for asking 3017 anything today, I suspect it will end in my tears (rocking a hangover Hanover).

It means a tie, like if the final score is 1 to 1. — Hanover

My question was what this means in the context of the debate. I know what it means in the context of soccer because that has an established scoring system. The result of the debate seems like it should be binary: the proposition is supported, or it is not.

I think this is enough arguments to start a discussion. I would say that the arguments against ads are stronger. — TheHedoMinimalist

I'm not sure I'd agree, but then the strongest argument against advertising that I can see is not enumerated: it's impact on health, both physical (junk food cues) and mental (anxious materialism).

What's non-mathematical about science, to me, is what it has in common with philosophy - clear language, logical rigor, to name a few. We could focus on this non-mathematical side to science too you know. — TheMadFool

I'm interested. What did you have in mind? Because much of that logical rigour is logical precisely because it is mathematical. And clear language seems to be about communicating, not doing, science.

I think this actually the problem. There are multiple ways to define physicalism. I've seen physicists refer to their own experiments on non-local causality as "experimental metaphysics," but perhaps others would say the term doesn't fit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Never heard of it and sounds like a contradiction, but assuming someone can and does do experimental metaphysics, what impact can that have on the definition of physical? Would you doubt your own steak if someone else ordered pasta?

My beef with some of the definitions of either physicalism or materialism (they get used somewhat interchangeably in many places) are those theories that expand their definition to mean essentially "whatever is shown as true fits the definition." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is the problem with "materialism" and the reason I do not self-identity as a materialist. I think it's also the reason why anti-physicalists insist on keeping the word current.

No such issue with "physical": either it regularly interacts with other physical stuff such that it can be indirectly observed, or it doesn't. If it does, it's also physical. If it doesn't, there's no way of verifying whether it does or does not exist, and can therefore be discarded as an idea.

Mass tells spacetime how to curve; the curvature of spacetime tells mass where to go. If mass is physical, then spacetime is physical. Atoms de-excite and release photons which then excite other atoms. If atoms are physical, then photons are physical. Everything observable is physical (Popper). Follow that along and everything is physical.

What would destroy this definition is finding something observable (directly or indirectly) that was genuinely inexplicable, for instance an uncaused effect or genesis. That would be a dualism: we'd have physical observables that interacted in a regular way, and non-physical observables that did not.

The reason I bring this up is this is effectively a schema for generating of-the-gaps arguments. Creationists, for instance, rarely debate the laws of gravity; they are interested in the big bang and the origins of life because they see the potential for an uncaused, irregular effects there. Likewise dualists like the first/third person gap because they see the potential for non-physical causes and effects.

Now it seems likely it will have to do a paradigm shift into something new again. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why?

The question posed by the debate was whether 3017 had a sustainable position. Did I not see to it that that question was answered? — Hanover

Obviously my lack of experience, but what does a draw even mean? Not upheld but not rejected?