Nothing to worry.
It's a hoax. Fake news.

In short, a philosopher trying to analyse truth is sawing the branch on which he sits. — Olivier5

An Analytic philosopher, like Tarski, Davidson, or JerseyFlight, trying to analyse truth within analytic philosopy is sawing the branch on which he sits. However, most other peritrope arguments are fallacious.

You're beating a dead horse. Analytic philosophy has been done for a while now. What remains are teaching jobs to train throngs of paying students for other activities, a mountain of superfluous books and articles, and interested fools like us.

Great posts ! Sounds like you're enjoying Plato as much as I do.

Plato is as deep as the ocean, and one can fish for insights at all depths. Translation of key terms and interpretation, the mindset of both the translator and the reader can turn our reading in a number of directions. I find that reading Plato is very different than arguing with and against him on each point. Neither is right or wrong, just different. What is clearly wrong is to read Plato as spouting a Socratic or Platonic dogma.

I agree with you that Plato is not and has not been understood, especially not by the brain of the Academy. Throughout the dialogues many of Plato's predecessors are both philosophically incorporated and unfairly excoriated. Aristotle followed this practice but now against his master.

By today, misrepresenting Plato has become a well-established habit. Even the superb Platonic analytic writings of the past 50 years have not had a measurable effect on the classroom or on the majority of philosophers. Plato is often seen as a misguided predecessor of Aristotle just waiting to be set right.

I think that the reason why psychic matters are not funded by universities is that many academics do not take such matters seriously. — Jack Cummins

Psychic research can be easily and inexpensively conducted even by middle schoolers. Funding is not the problem. Academics value their research time and don't want to waste it in unproductive areas. If there was even a glimmer of hope that psychic research would be publishable it would happen.

So what's wrong? Nothing.

The underlying issue is the weakness of statistics for small samples. Even when telepathy might seem obvious to a casual bystander, the statistics will prove insignificant and the research a waste of time.

There might be a difference between psychic telepathy and demonstrable scientific telepathy.

Ordinary language is a superposition upon a vague cultural complex of words and rules that are codified as formal language. In order to speak, we must infer subjective agency and context to any utterance before we can adequately effectively communicate with another person. With and especially without language a degree of irrational empathy is required.

This empathy is noticeably different from person to person and is sometimes labeled as or attributed to EQ, Emotional Quotient . I assume some loose scientific studies exist that gave this phenomenon its name.

Telepathy is different. Reading minds without cultural, circumstantial, or verbal clues ought to be more difficult to do and harder to assess scientifically from a researcher's perspective.

Analytic philosophy, I think, hasn't really been a thing for some time now. — Srap Tasmaner

This insight is right on target. It is not the case that analytic philosophy is vacuous or useless or fruitless. Rather, the charge should be that it is finished as it is constructed. It is done. The real questions are What is next? Which way should 21st century philosophy turn?

America, I weep for you.

If there are objects and there is space then isn't space just a complementary object that we know less about? Isn't it just a matter of assigning some attributes to make space complete?

In what way is dark matter an object?

Plotinus, ... his philosophy was focused on a group of people who would understand what Plotinus was trying to explain - his students -. — Gus Lamarch

An excellent point. This is also the most effective way to interpret professor Plato. Something like the Theaetetus was written to fly over the heads of casual or unsympathetic readers.

Plotinus uses "the One" and "the Good" interchangeably. — Gus Lamarch

This is one reason why people have trouble understanding Plotinus. Metaphysical concepts which have contrary incompatible underlying assumptions cannot be used interchangeably without introducing equivocation and logical incoherence.

Plato mostly got these right whereas Platonists uniformly get them wrong. It is amazing how a fundamentally simple closed static One can be confused with an open transcendent interactive Good, or how either can be thought of as an active creative Agent.

Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency." — Plotinus

Isn't there a difference between the Good and the One?

Usually the One is associated with Parmenides and the Good with Plato with the metaphysical distinction that the One is bounded whereas the Good is indeterminate. The Good is generative of all other Forms in an unspecified or yet to be specified manner. This way the One was complete but the Good remained a metaphysical puzzler.

Biden only says that the health care system, as well as the rights of marginalized groups are at stake and that should he win he will nominate a black woman. This seems like a very proper stance for his political climate.

A deeper concern can be raised that following the November election the losing side will ask the Supreme Court to strike down the legality of the voting process for key states. Trump has already signaled this intent in challenging mail-in voting. It is for this reason that Trump and McConnell have already expressed their desire to force an early appointment of a Trump ally to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court nominees used to need 60 votes in the Senate to be approved. In 2017, McConnell pushed through a vote to change the rules, so that nominees now only need a simple majority of 51 votes. In fact, 50 votes are enough for confirmation since Vice-President Mike Pence can cast the tie-breaking vote.

The two philosophers had different agendas. Plato wasn't the one who argued his way to the hemlock.

Plato says that philosophy is a preparation for death — bccampello

Did Plato say that or was it the character Socrates in a dramatic dialogue.
Shakespeare says "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" or was it said by the title character in a play?

[@Moderator, please remove this, thank you.]

Any serious metaphysics would start from the physics of today. — apokrisis

:up: very much
At the least, a 21st Century metaphysics should not be in ignorance or violation of recent science.

What is reality? Everything that exists, that has a being. Everything that can be grasped by reason and somehow perceived. — Eremit

What is reality? Reality is the totality of everything that surrounds me, everything that has the capacity to be sensed or to be thought about by me, everything that I can change by my thoughts or actions.

That’s because the photon doesn’t go through A1 OR A2, it goes through A1 AND A2. — Pfhorrest

Or perhaps in the sense that the photon goes through neither A1 nor A2 because there is never any particle photon at any instant. A wave version follows all paths but can only be realized as a photon particle hit in one of the patterns seen on the detector?

Guess we're in for another round of mismanagement and downplaying. — fdrake

To see the future, compare the GB chart to France which is perhaps a month ahead in development.

covid [...] there are hints that it may do permanent damage to the lungs and other organs in significant numbers of survivors.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-53356593 — unenlightened

Most early deaths of the elderly were probably due to COVID followed by a secondary bacterial infection which drew strong immune response from the patients' system which killed damaged and too many undamaged lung cells. Younger, much more active people have greater lung capacity to work with, helping to outlast the infection.

In general what is the value behind saying that something was proved? — TiredThinker

Proof can be positive or negative. In science, as @aporiap already said above, no positive proof is possible but it can be proven that something is logically false or shown that something does not work.

The statistics for COVID coming from various countries are not directly comparable because collection and reporting of data depend on the cooperation of the population, the facilities, and the politicians.

However, charts coming from Western Europe a coarser indicator of mostly reliable data suggest that COVID is here to stay for generations, just as many other viruses that regularly afflict mankind.

One can hope that some protective measures can be discovered but that has not worked for other corona viruses like SARS. Then again, we've never had a president before who could will prevention and cure to any disease just prior to election.

Minimally, the potential of evolving time space and some initial laws of physics had to be possible, even if only with an infinitesimal probability. Nothing else can be said.

In all ways, I am always absolutely here now.

These are just word games — Banno

That's philosophy in a nutshell

We have heard the philosophy that everything flows [eg, Heraclitus]. But, when 'this' becomes 'that,' it traverses something in between, such as when the color yellow becomes red it traverses orange — SaugB

Everything flows sounds like a metaphor for denying stasis in a dynamic world. All is change would probably be a more useful modern catch phrase. Change encompasses movement and avoids being tied to a continuous model of the world.

In what you say, the colors are fixed point objects with names. There is really no logical way to go from yellow to orange to red. If you go with physical wavelengths instead, then you can move up and down well beyond what can be seen and the color labels become obviously arbitrary.

Thank you. Being a newbie I did not want to bust into your conversation.

Sorry, I should not have addressed you. Now we have to look at haystack.

My point was purely philosophical:
The scientific noumenal world of the noted theoretical physicist Kant is to be distinguished from noumenal objects or things-in-themselves.

Kantian noumenal objects are not real in an Aristotelian sense of being discrete. Noumenal objects are indeterminate sources of complex personal sense-perception possibly leading to logical judgment.

As is typical for him, Kant plants himself in the middle as the arbitrator, drawing on the strengths of the extreme points of view. There is something out there, but it is not real until judgment says so.

Kant was a phenomenologist? — Gregory
Yes. It's been quoted by other philosophers that he was considered one of the first from his particular era... — 3017amen

Sort of, maybe? Wasn't Kant recruited by both camps?

Isn't the heart of the issue is that while some noumenal world is indisputable, noumenal objects fade in and out of existence depending on the reader? Are those objects fully out there, somewhat out there, or only in the public eye?

The idea of coherency only exists if there are prior observations of the phenomena — Pinprick

In science or in philosophy?

Kant argues that ... We apply metaphysical concepts to the world in order to make experience possible at all. In other words, synthetic a priori metaphysical concepts are the pre-conditions of all experience. Hence, Kant distinguishes between the world as [we] experience it (the world as it is experienced given the application of said concepts) and the world as it is independent of our experience. — philosophy

As Kant well understood, there is personal private experience and then there is public instrumental scientific experience. For science, it can be taken for granted that the whole purpose is to investigate a noumenal world that otherwise is a complete mystery.

The preconditions and mechanics of personal experience are a complex, as a glass seen through darkly. We cannot easily tell whether the world we recreate in our imagination when awake, or dreaming, is even close to overcoming biological and psychological limitations.

In either case, there is no reasonable alternative to some form of independent noumenal world that's out there around us.

However, we tend to believe that there is a reality, beyond the propositions, which is represented by them — Metaphysician Undercover

Propositions are merely a formality of dictionary words bundled through a simple manageable logic. They are a useful tool for the practice of formal philosophy. In and of themselves propositions represent nothing whatsoever just as mathematical symbols represent nothing beyond their own formalism.

To also add that philosophical formalisms correspond to a matching real, even material world is quite a stretch, when you think about it. It could be so, maybe or maybe not. But philosophy is in no position to then circularly derive its own primitive premises.

To justify such theories and many more speculations of its own is what science is for. Science has over the past millennium shown that nature is quite different than what the naive imagination suggests. If it wasn't so, there would be no need for science at all -- we could just ask each other how the world is and get true answers.

An antirealist is "a person who denies the existence of an objective reality". It sees "no access to a mind-independent reality, even if it exists". — Michael McMahon

Given those two choices, I can't even imagine anyone actually being an antirealist.

Realism is a useful but unnecessary philosophical fantasy. A non-philosopher can just ignore all philosophical theories and go on with their life. A philosopher can work on their own ideas without concern for such a logically restricting possible universe. There are plenty of others waiting for an unfettered fertile imagination to explore.

I've got plenty of nothing.

I've just checked and there's nothing in my pocket. Now, I have nothing to say, nothing to show, nothing to think about, nothing to do. Good thing it's a holiday here.