Saw this image a couple weeks ago, thought it summed the matter up extremely well-

So encouraging you consider it on par with standard vaccines, I guess. I certainly hope you have a responsible person helping you with your own medications, with an attitude like this.

Also, you should probably actually read the study.

Absolutely delicious irony, thanks for the laugh. Not much self-awareness on this one, I see.

They also want to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”

Which are also self-evidently good things no less than the proposition that black lives should matter.

But sure, something something Marxism bad mmkay? :lol:

at least until you actually read the study anyway

I mean, I get it- boo materialism! But if that's all you've got to say, why bother?

Oh brother. Obviously at no point have I even given the appearance of arguing against the proposition that "cognitive science is deficient or invalid or broken"- a proposition which had not appeared til you typed it just now. I understand quite well what you're saying and feel like my own remarks have been pretty clear.. and so I've said all I mean to say on the idea that 400 years of philosophy of mind + an incredibly productive last few decades in neuroscience has amounted to "no actual progress on how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness since Descartes" (a statement of dogma if ever there was one).

Not literally, sure, but I think the upshot is the same: if the events at/beneath the event horizon do not ever occur from the perspective of the outside universe, any timeline including those events will be inconsistent with that of the outside universe. But any timeline not including those events will be inconsistent with that of e.g. the infalling astronaut- from their perspective, they most definitely cross the event horizon, and go on to meet whatever unpleasant fate awaits them within the black hole (probably being turned into a human spaghetti-noodle).

But so this is why- from my admittedly extremely limited/rough understanding of this debate- its hard to see how this isn't fatal for any "absolutist" notion of spacetime: what is absolute here, if there are collections of events (black holes) that do not ever occur from the perspective of the outside universe, and no self-consistent timeline that includes them both?

And I pointed out that modern cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach that includes the philosophy of mind and so this distinction doesn't do what you apparently think it does.

And in any case if any scientific results since Descartes have any philosophical relevance (they do), and anyone's bothered to write about it in that connection (they have, at great length), then we've made progress in that discussion in virtue of that alone. So, again, not a serious assertion, and I honestly feel a little silly having engaged with it even this much.

I'm not assuming historical progress- I've read and studied a non-negligible amount of the philosophy we're talking about (i.e. philosophy of mind post-Descartes), and regard some of it as quite important and valuable (and certainly as having contributed positively to the discussion- i.e. progress). And again this is even granting the wildly implausible notion that no scientific results since then have any philosophical relevance either. Just not a serious or credible assertion, looks closer to trolling (or just a statement of ignorance) to me.

I agree that its a judgment call, but the idea that we've been running in circles (i.e. in philosophy) for 400 years since Descartes and that literally everything written since then has no value or has contributed nothing to the philosophical discussion strikes me as completely ludicrous... not least because of the fact that some of that work includes credible critiques of Descartes himself- Descartes own account of the mind is far from perfect or unassailable, that would be quite depressing if we have made no progress from that. I mean really, Descartes of all people is where you identify our philosophical accounts of the mind as having plateaued? And this is all granting the highly implausible notion that none of the results of the scientific study of the brain (and especially its relation to the mind) have any philosophical significance at all. If that's what you sincerely believe, okay, but good luck actually defending or supporting any of that.

Modern cognitive science is an interdisciplinary paradigm that includes philosophy (of mind) as a crucial contributor. And in any case, both the scientific study of the brain (and its relation to mental states/processes) and philosophical accounts of mind are obviously far advanced from Descartes time, such that RogueAI's assertion was... not particularly credible, shall we say.

Indeed; that someone can make such a statement in light of e.g. modern cognitive neuroscience is... pretty bizarre. Pretty incredible how far these fields have come just in the past few decades alone.

Yeah I would assume that the extreme time dilation in the vicinity of a black hole- culminating in the infinite time dilation at the event horizon itself (and the absolutely off-the-wall implications that carries)- would be very problematic for any form of absolutist wrt spacetime... but then I'm not familiar with this debate (absolutism vs. relationism) outside of Smolin's discussion in the context of his cosmological natural selection (which was largely historical in nature), and I would have assumed that relativity in general made any sort of absolutism about spacetime a non-starter and more or less settled the matter..

but as that is evidently not the case (if the philosophical debate persists to this day), I think I must be missing quite a few of the relevant issues. I'm actually reading the Stanford entry on this right now, to get a bit more background on this particular dispute.

probably also worth noting e.g. "the private language argument" (from Wittgenstein's PI), which some interpretations take to show that solipsism is internally inconsistent or at least severely self-undermining. Its a contentious interpretation (as is whether that form of the argument works), but still probably worth noting in this context nonetheless. See the section on "the incoherence of solipsism" in the IEP entry on Solipsism for a brief (but fairly representative, imo) explication of this view.

You have to be careful distinguishing different types of multiverses, since what is true of one isn't necessarily true of the other- they are posited in different contexts and for different motivations (i.e. to address different types of problems/concerns, or to explain different kinds of observations) and can be structured entirely differently from one another (i.e. how the different universes relate or exist relative to one another- do they just precede one another in time? Do they exist alongside one another but are causally disconnected? etc.). Cyclical cosmologies (at least a few of which can be characterized as "multiverses")- where the expansionary phase of the universe is follow by a contracting phase which is in turn follow by an expansionary phase and so on- can and do speak to a pre-Big Bang epoch- and the removal of the hypothetical t=0 singularity is considered a feature of loop quantum cosmology (and hopefully other candidates for a successful quantum theory of gravity).

Its also not the case that multiverse theories are generically untestable or unfalsifiable. Some of them certainly seem to be, others not, and this differs from case to case in the same way multiverse theories themselves differ (i.e. as mentioned above). So its difficult to talk about "multiverse theories" in general with any accuracy, since they don't have all that much in common once you get into the details. Have to be sure to specify what flavor of multiverse you have in mind.

As No Axioms already explained, relativity tells us that extreme gravitational wells like black holes will severely dilate time (if you've ever seen the movie Interstellar, they cover this reasonably well with the extreme time dilation experienced on the "water world" planet they first visit, close to the black hole Gargantua)- we can and have even measured this in less extreme cases, like in Earth orbit, and indeed GPS satellites would quickly cease to operate effectively if this was not accounted + corrected for. So time "runs slower" in such a gravitational field. To an outside observer, an astronaut falling into a black hole moves increasingly slowly... until they appear to freeze entirely at the event horizon.

Worse, at the event horizon, time dilation becomes so extremely that, from the perspective of the outside observer, events there do not ever occur- not even after an infinite amount of time has passed. They are dilated infinitely far into the future. So from the perspective of the outside observer the infalling astronaut never actually crossed the event horizon (although from the astronaut's perspective they certainly do- though they don't necessarily notice anything special when they cross the point of no return), and events inside the black hole cannot be consistently assigned a spot on any outside observers timeline: those events are dilated infinitely distant into the future- they never occur, from the perspective of those outside of it, even after an infinite amount of time has elapsed. But of course to those inside, these events are very real: including/especially the astronauts inevitable demise inside the black hole!

And I'm not sure that black holes directly imply any multiverse theories, the way that e.g. a geometrically flat, infinitely extended (spatially) universe implies a cosmological multiverse, or some interpretations of QM imply a quantum multiverse. But black holes do figure prominently into at least some "multiverse(ish)" hypotheses, like Smolin's cosmological natural selection hypothesis where "baby" universes are spawned within black holes (and so you get this nested hierarchy of universes within universes and so on). It is at least highly intriguing that the only place where conditions approach those of the early (Big Bang) universe are the interiors of black holes, and maybe even moreso the fact that a time-reversed black hole (i.e. a white hole) looks eerily similar to the Big Bang itself.

No, center would be undefined here. Of course, we are all the center of our own observable universe- i.e. the section of the universe defined by where light would have had time to reach us from by now.

Indeed!

"like" a saddle, not a literal, actual saddle- a hyperbolic surface, an infinite saddle: a universe with negative curvature doesn't curve back on itself like one with positive curvature- its "curving" in the wrong direction, and so is open, unbounded, infinite in extent.

And as always, the best we can say is that the current state of the evidence supports this- science is fallible and we are not psychics or soothsayers, so its always possible future evidence contradicts or even overturns our current understanding. But I would submit that rejecting something on the mere possibility that it may, someday, turn out to be false, is not rational.

So if the universe had positive curvature, it would be like a sphere- spatially finite/bounded, if you traveled far enough you'd eventually end up back where you started. But if the universe has either zero curvature (flat) or negative curvature (hyperbolic, so like a saddle), it would be spatially infinite- you could travel indefinitely far and would never return to where you started. So far as our best measurements go, the universe appears to be geometrically flat- so spatially infinite.

Here's a blog post on Smolin's relationism that looks pretty reasonable/serious at first blush (haven't read it yet myself, am in the process now but figured I'd post it)-

Lee Smolin's Relationist (Meta)Physics

Wasn't Lee Smolin one of the more prominent/visible proponents of relationism? I seem to remember him citing it as a significant philosophical consideration/foundational principle for his cosmological natural selection hypothesis, in whatever popular work where he discusses it at length (the title escapes me, I read it some time ago). In any case I remember being a fan of his writing style, and being sympathetic to his remarks/arguments on that issue specifically- may be worth a look (if I remember the title I'll post it, but I imagine he covers similar territory in his other works, papers, lectures, etc.)

nor the admins help you

We'll see. Your refusal to acknowledge that using homophobic slurs is not acceptable is not going to help your case, that's for certain.

uses a homophobic slur = "you're accusing people left and right they are being homophobes!"

nice try

And if we're talking infinities, it is also consistent with a good body of empirical evidence that the universe is geometrically flat and thus (spatially) infinite. Once again, nature/reality not overly interested in our metaphysical prejudices- if it wants to be infinite, that's what its going to be and we can either get hip with it or gtfo.

Heh, yeah, that's about it too.. although I suppose it would be even more appropriate if he was attempting to insert his head into his own hind-end.

You used it at as a pejorative- as a smear or insult, to imply something negative/derogatory- and even if you hadn't, it wouldn't really have been any less offensive or over the line. Same for any other racial/sexist/homophobic slur. They're extremely offensive and harmful, you shouldn't use them, full stop.

And people shouldn't need to actively ignore or avoid threads with no philosophical content or that contain extremely offensive bigoted language- those threads ought not exist in the first place, and in the event that they do, they should be deleted and their authors moderated appropriately (warned, restricted, banned, whatever is deemed warranted by the situation).

I would genuinely love to watch the spectacle of someone trying to "moving past the illusion of truth entirely" with complete consistency. I'm extremely skeptical that its even possible, but would be quite curious to see what it would look like in practice, even just the attempt.

Despite having edited the post, you've explicitly admitted you used the word "fag" as a slur/insult. So, a homophobe. Again, the mods really should consider acting on this clown-show. Not only low philosophical quality (or, more precisely, no philosophical content at all), but I imagine homophobic/racist/sexist/otherwise bigoted smears are explicitly disallowed by the posting guidelines and you not only broke that, but continued to make excuses for having done so. This forum (or any other for that matter) is well rid of such as yourself.

Ok so not just willfully ignorant and unserious, but a homophobe to boot. Yikes. Mods could probably go ahead and trash this one...

Since you're not familiar with Dennett's views or the arguments for them, you're not in a position to be making a post like this. Go acquaint yourself with what Dennett or eliminativists actually hold, then report back and tell us what you've learned.

Nobody is claiming anything in science says the past is definitely infinite, just that it's not definitely finite (which, NB, is not the same thing as "definitely not finite").

Yep. Despite poor Mr. Fishfry's dogmatic (and largely baseless) insistence to the contrary, the question of the past duration of the universe is an open one, with "serious" models of both varieties. On the eternal side, it sounds like someone has mentioned Penrose's cyclical cosmology in addition to eternal inflation, and loop quantum cosmology also posits a cyclical universe that is past-eternal/infinite as well. Its a shame neither science nor reality is especially obliged to honor our metaphysical prejudices, but it seems some handle this fact better than others.

That's not what I said.

And yet, that this person was being sarcastic is not something that is clear from the clip of the brief interaction so that interpretation is apparently just as ideological as the converse.

Yeah and weren't Devan99's threads about infinity pretty active too? Relative to actually serious/substantive threads? Makes me have a sad face.

Obviously this is explicitly question-begging.

Is Karen Bass considered a serious contender now (I haven't really been following the VP speculation very closely)? She's the best one I've heard floated yet, by a pretty wide margin. Get out of here with this Amy Klobuchar bullshit... but Karen Bass? Hell yes. She's the real deal, at least so far as I can tell.