Certainly a certain amount of certainty is useful for pragmatic purposes, indeed daily life would be impossible without it. But a philosopher needs also to be aware that those certainties are based upon personal subjective judgements and may need re-visiting should it become apparent that they need upgrading.

Most words and terms in legal documents have specific meanings, in fact many words in specialised disciplines, such as physics, have a specific meaning. However this does not mean that those words have no meaning outside of those disciplines.

Ownership can certainly have meaning outside of the legal domain.

If a pride of lions kills a wildebeest they will have ownership of that carcass until they are done with it and will defend it against jackals, hyenas and vultures.

I don't know how long ago the story in the link was posted, but Peterson admitted in a video ages ago that he took a daily dose of anti-depressants. He said that it worked for him, but also said that they don't work for everyone. Personally I would steer well clear of any psycho active drugs, but as a wise man once said (well sang actually) " whatever gets you through the night/your life it's all right'.

But I was surprised that such an articulate person as Peterson could take anti depressant drugs yet also be so clear thinking.

It must also be extremely stressful to put oneself out there with original ideas that are refuted with such opprobrium.

Interesting that you mention freedom. I have this theory that the more freedom you give away to others the more you get to keep for yourself.

There are many words that defy a clear definition, eg species, yet this does not mean that they are not useful terms.

Certainty is a state of mind. It is an indulgence, people like to think that what they know is certain. However, it is not conducive for a philosopher to take such a dogmatic view, hence it is best forgotten.

Yes, but only up to a point. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

If I am eating a banana in the jungle and a wild elephant intimates that he wants the banana, I might yell at him to back off but if he persists I would let him have the banana, it would not be worth getting physical with an elephant over a banana.

Yes I agree with you.If I am conscious and others exhibit similar behaviours to me then it would be churlish to deny that they have consciousness too. Particularly if they claim to be conscious as it would be nigh impossible for a non-conscious person to grasp the concept of consciousness.

Self awareness would seem to be closely linked to consciousness. Perhaps awareness of one's own existence generates consciousness or at least is a pre-requisite for consciousness.

But self awareness is different as it can be scientifically detected as when animals are presented with a mirror to see if they can identify the image in the mirror as being themselves or merely another of the same species.

It would certainly seem that most 'higher' mammals have some degree of self awareness and by inference consciousness.

It may be interesting to speculate on which animals have consciousness and which do not. Certainly chimpanzees do but what about lobsters? Perhaps not.

Causality is a construct based upon a subjective judgement, or if an experiment is repeated it is statistical. There may well be a temporal association of events - one event can precede another, but the assertion that one causes the other can never be proven.

Ownership is what you are prepared to fight for; whether physically, verbally or through the legal system.

Every one of your premises 1 to 9 is false, hence your conclusion (10) is unproven.

The best definition of time that I know of..and I think it is Einstein's is:
Time is what a clock measures.

Probably the best model for time is that it is quantised.

The shortest unit of time perhaps being the 'Planck time' .. some 10**-43 seconds if I recall correctly.

That is a 'straw man' argument. Ownership does not require that the item can be sold or whatever.

Mathematical proofs are only 'true' within the system of mathematics. For they rely upon the axioms, symbols and rules of the system. Hence they cannot be said to be 'objectively true'. I am talking about pure mathematics here, which is where mathematical proofs are found. Applied maths is a different story.

Consciousness is hard to be treated scientifically, not because it is hard to explain but because it is hard, if not impossible to detect. There is no objective test or measurement that can be applied to consciousness; it is exclusively subjective.

You might believe that you have evidence that you are conscious, but I have absolutely none.

I know that I exist because when I kick someone in the teeth it is my foot that hurts and not my mouth.

What does: "My mind is absolutely unreliable" even mean?
Presumably you are capable of tying your own shoelaces, typing a post to a forum and walking in a straight line (most days anyway)... so what more do you want?

The notion that everything one perceives or believes or knows is somehow perfectly 'true' is naive.

But if you can get through the day without banging into walls or babbling nonsense.. (actually skip that bit about babbling nonsense) then that is all the reliability that is required of a mind. Or do you expect something more?

As a wise man once said: " The world is is not only queerer than we suppose it is queerer than we can suppose.

To try to impose one's pre-supposed ideas and assumptions about the way the world 'should' be is naive.

If you still have a problem with probability and tumbling dice, I suggest you re-visit your assumptions regarding the way you think the world should be.

Democratic countries also compete against each other, so if one country raises taxes past those of other countries, their wealth and expertise might well emigrate to other countries, with disastrous effect.

This is what happened in Venezuela recently. A socialist government voted into power by a populist platform raised taxes and gave the money to the poor. The result was a collapse of the economy with runaway inflation, despite the country having huge oil reserves.

It is not probability that is an illusion; it is certainty.

There is no justification for certainty in our perception of the real world. Any claims for certainty are either a subjective convenience or an illusion.

Ok that one has died. I'll start a new one:


She opened the door

The claim that you can't get something from nothing cannot be a starting point as that idea is a conclusion only reached after a long and somewhat tenuous line of inferences, some of which are not at all rigorous. The existence of causality is also highly questionable.
Far more fundamental and simpler are the choices made by a simple organism. Whether those choices are 'free' or 'determined' is irrelevant.

There are many many mysteries in the world, and I agree with you that the origins of DNA is one worthy of further investigation.

Yes, but the difference is subtle. Physicists might well consider that they are predicting future events, philosophers predict descriptions of future events.

How about 'stupidity'? It seems very real to me.

We can say that the laws of physics can be used to predict a description of the future.

I am not too sure what you mean by 'meaning', but for me the 'meaning' of an idea comes through being able to incorporate that idea into one's model of the world.

The only 'justification' required for a distinction is that it proves useful for the understanding of the world.. such as the difference between mammals and fish so that dolphins belong to one but not the other.

As for Hume's distinctions.. I was referring to his famous quote regarding 'matters of fact' and 'relations of ideas' and that if a book in a library said nothing about either it should be burnt.

I am just extrapolating, or perhaps bringing up to date this distinction, so that it differentiates between ideas or statements that refer to the real world or those that refer to an abstract world.

All too often in philosophy people conflate the two and arrive at false conclusions about the real world.

The so called 'laws of physics' are not really 'laws' in that physical entities are compelled to follow those laws. What you actually have in the 'laws of physics' are a description, and often a very accurate description, of the way that physical entities behave.

Most of what passes for philosophy is best described as BS.

A wise man once said : "To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble!'

Good advice I reckon.

The philosopher cat shall be on the roof.

Can you prove that or are you just guessing?

Meaning what?

Hume clearly differentiated between what he called 'matters of fact', ie facts about the real world, and what he called 'relations of ideas' ie abstract logical systems such as mathematics.
This differentiation separates induction from deduction, the real from the abstract.

Yes consciousness is a mystery, I would only suggest it is a fundamental of our universe like space, time and quarks.

As for why pain needs to be unpleasant rather than just a signal to the brain, I suggest that if it were merely a signal it could be ignored, like spam in one's inbox, to the detriment of the survival of the organism.

Logic without information from the real world is entirely abstract.
Logic with information from the real world is real.
They are two entirely distinct domains.

As for logic without information, one can construct pretty Mandelbrot pictures, which are entirely abstract.

What I mean is that:

Philosophy requires assumptions, otherwise it goes nowhere.

An assumption does not need justification, indeed justification itself requires assumptions.

An assumption is like an axiom, it is true within the system for which it is an axiom/assumption. hence each assumption creates a different system or paradigm. Though this is not to say that one system cannot have many assumptions or axioms.
One can then explore that system to see what implications it has and whether they tally with one's experience of the world.

Too much of what passes for philosophy makes implicit, as opposed to explicit, assumptions. It then proceeds to explore that system in the mistaken belief that that system is objectively 'true' rather than merely a paradigm that is founded on assumptions.

Said what?