This seems to be the salient issue: there is a world that is a mess of wave-particles; and there is a world that is eggs on a beach. They are the same world. — Banno

I don't know what you mean by saying that they're the "same world." All I'm saying is:

1. Some object is red₁ if it causes most humans to see red₂, although some humans and some animals might instead see orange₂
2. Red₁ isn't red₂
3. Red₁ is external to experience
4. Red₂ isn't external to experience
5. We see red₂, not red₁

So the expression "the post box is red" wouldn't make sense to most people? They'd say "the post box causes me to see red"? — Isaac

No, because as I have also said, it is wrong to say that the external world causes of experience is the postbox.

I seriously don't know anyone who speaks that way in normal conversation. People might say "I see the dress as green, you see it as blue". They're still talking about the colour of the dress (the hidden state we're modelling), they're not talking about the content of their minds. — Isaac

The "as green" and "as blue" is very much about the content of their minds. They are having different experiences despite the same external world cause. What differs between their experiences is the colour seen. If the colour seen is what differs in their experiences and if the external world cause is the same, then colour isn't some hidden state in the external world cause.

I've answered that already. The label we apply to hidden states is based on the response those states normally produce in most contexts. The process doesn't require that such states always produce that response in all contexts. — Isaac

This isn't addressing the issue. Your eyes and my eyes are stimulated by the same light, reflected by the same external world source. Yet I see red and you see green. If "red" and "green" refer to some hidden state in the external world cause then what does it mean for me to "see red" and you to "see green" in this situation? The "red" and "green" are referring to some quality of our experiences.

OK, so you agree that there exists some external world thing which causes most humans to have the response we call 'seeing a cup'.

What should we call that?

I propose we should call it 'a cup'. — Isaac

You can call it anything you like. But that external world cup isn't the cup that I see, just as a configuration of electrons that absorbs light of a certain wavelength, scattering light with a wavelength of 650nm isn't the red that I see.

X causes Y. X isn't Y. But you want to use the label "Z" to refer to both X and Y. That leads to equivocation. Saying "I see Z and Z is an external world thing" is misleading because of this. It's two different meanings of "Z". All you're really saying is "I see Y and X is an external world thing".

I don't see how. I'm saying that 'green' is a property of a hidden state which cause most humans in most situations to respond in the way we describe as 'seeing green'. It doesn't require that these hidden states have this effect on everyone, nor does it require that they have this effect at all times in all contexts. — Isaac

The "green" in "seeing green" doesn't mean the same thing as your suggested "green" as a property of a hidden state. The former is what most people understand colour to be. When I say "the colour that I see isn't the colour that you see" I'm not saying "the property of a hidden state that I see isn't the property of a hidden state that you see."

If colour was the property of a hidden state then how do you make sense of two people seeing different colours when looking at the same thing? What does "colours" refer to here?

This is the problem when you try to use the same labels that we use to refer to features of experience to also refer to the external world causes of those experiences. It leads us susceptible to equivocation. There's a very big difference between saying that the green that I see (in the context of "seeing green") is some external world thing (a naive view of perception) and saying that some external world things cause most humans to see green. And by the same token, there's a very big difference between saying that the cup that I see (in the context of "seeing a cup") is some external world thing and saying that some external world things cause most humans to see a cup.

It would be absurd to conclude that therefore there are no eggs and there is no dress. — Banno

I don’t conclude that. See above.

If there's no bird, but just a collection of wave/particles responding to another collection of wave/particles and imagining it's a bird. then how do we know how bird's see things? — Janus

I’m not saying that there isn’t a bird. I’m saying that birds aren’t the external world causes of experience. Waves/particles are the external world causes of experience. It’s a mistake to reduce the everyday objects of perception to being these waves/particles.

I don't see it. I don't know of anyone who seriously talks about the redness of their experiences. Post boxes are red, roses are red, traffic lights are red. Experiences aren't coloured, they're mental events. — Isaac

Do you remember the dress that some people see as black and blue and others as white and gold? Same stimulus, different colours experienced.

Your account of colour would make this, and things like Locke's inverted spectrum hypothesis, incomprehensible.

The 14th Amendment specifically states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

That indicates that if a "person" is within the jurisdiction of a state, that state cannot deny him equal protection under the laws. If a fetus is a "person," then that person would be afforded the same rights as any other person, meaning if it's illegal to kill you, it's illegal to kill that fetus. That Amendment, especially in light of when and why it was passed, cannot be read to mean anything other than every person must be equally protected under the law. — Hanover

Yes, so as I have been saying, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide what counts as a person as the Constitution doesn't spell it out.

And apparently it was ensuring the right to abort a fetus in the 1st and 2nd trimesters from 1973 to 2022. — Hanover

It protects against laws that would limit liberty and privacy and unenumerated rights. It is up to the Supreme Court to decide what counts as a "liberty", what matters are "private". and what those unenumerated rights are, as the Constitution doesn't spell it out. In Roe and Casey they decided that medical procedures like abortion are covered by this, but that the ambiguity regarding personhood warranted some restriction, and that the point of viability is a reasonable time to consider the rights of prenatal life to take precedence over the mother's.

Your phrasing of it seems like a strawman appeal to ridicule.

Yes. And that's what a cup is. — Isaac

Seems like you’re falling victim to the exact equivocation I warned against.

Why not?

Why can it not be that 'red' just is a category of wave particles which cause humans, in normal light conditions with normal eyesight to have the response we call 'seeing red'. What's wrong with categorising collections of external world particles by the effect they tend to have on humans? — Isaac

Because of what I said next in that comment.

In a Cartesian theatre? — bongo fury

No, in my bedroom on my computer. I don't go to the theatre.

It stands to reason that if the fetus is a person, it cannot be deprived of liberty either. — Hanover

By the State. But like with the First Amendment it might not apply to non-Government institutions. Whereas the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment might imply that a woman has the right to an abortion.

So perhaps it is unconstitutional for a State to outlaw abortion and for a State to provide/fund abortion services, meaning it must be left to individuals and private health care providers.

What to do though with the phrase "nor shall any State deprive any person of life"? Why does that avoid the same tortured interpretation? — Hanover

It doesn't. The Constitution doesn't explicitly state what counts as a person at all and that's precisely why a judge needs to look beyond just what is explicitly stated.

So perhaps a case can be made that a foetus is a person and so State-supported abortion is unconstitutional.

Yes, but where's the error in labelling the set which (when they interact with a certain kind of light) cause the "human vision" experience of a red cup, a 'red cup'? — Isaac

Taking colour as an example, the colour that I see isn't the colour that the bird sees, even though the external world objects are the same. The colour that I see and the colour that the bird sees aren't part of the external world; they're part of our respective conscious experiences.

Deciding to then label the external world objects as "having" the colour that we see is a naive projection.

But if you want to say that something is red if it causes most humans to see red then we have two different meanings for "red" (red as the colour in the experience and red as reflecting light at a certain wavelength) leaving us susceptible to equivocation. And the same for if you want to say that something is a cup if it causes most humans to see a cup. But if that were the case then when you say that there is an external world red cup you're just saying that there's some external world stuff that causes most humans to see a red cup. If that's all you want to say then fine, although it doesn't say much and can be accepted by the indirect realist/transcendental idealist.

Why do those wave particles there cause us to see a red cup filled with water, and not, say, a bus, or a circus clown?

They have some properties which cause us to see red cups filled with water.

What is in error in labelling those wave particles with those particular properties a 'red cup'? — Isaac

I saw this image recently:



Under an "ordinary" explanation I would say that we see the things we do because that's just how our eyes and brain respond to stimulation, and organisms with very different eyes and brains will see things differently, as the picture above shows. Presumably there's some kind of deterministic explanation as to why particular kinds of eyes and brains respond the way they do to stimulation, and that there's some kind of deterministic explanation as to why particular kinds of brain activity elicit particular kinds of conscious experience, but that's all beyond my understanding.

Although, of course, any such talk of "eyes" and "brains" is more of the same kind of useful fiction as talking about "red cups". Rather there are two sets of wave-particle collections, and when one set interacts with a certain kind of light the "human vision" experience above is elicited, and when the other set interacts with that same kind of light the "bird vision" experience above is elicited.

Those wave particles have exactly the properties we expect of red cups. They reflect the right wavelengths, they hold liquids (other wave particles we call 'liquids'). There's no made up properties. — Isaac

Wave-particles holding wave-particles? That's a category error and is the exact kind of naive projection that I mentioned earlier.

The external world is just a mass of wave-particles all interacting with each other. This then causes us to see a red cup filled with water.

How so? Our current understanding of physics doesn't seem to be incompatible with the notion that some particular collection of those wave-particles are arranged in a stable, mind-independant manner to which we can apply the label 'red cup'. — Isaac

I think that it would be like saying that there's a person on the TV, when really it's just a bunch of pixels on the screen being lit up a certain way. It might be a useful fiction to talk that way, but in terms of the underlying (meta-)physics it would be wrong.

We see the object as red, we do not see the radiation as red. — Metaphysician Undercover

And that's precisely why it is wrong to reduce the object of perception to the external world causes of the experience.

In terms of the external world there is just a bunch of photons and electrons and quarks and so on which interact in a variety of ways, and when electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of 650nm interacts with certain other particles it elicits the experience of seeing a red cup.

The red cup isn't any of that external world stuff. We might naively project the red cup we see onto the external world but that's a mistake.

Jan. 6 committee notifies DOJ that Trump tried tampering with one of its witnesses, Cheney says

The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 revealed that it told the Department of Justice that former President Donald Trump contacted one of its witnesses who hasn’t publicly testified yet.

“After our last hearing. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said on Tuesday.

“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” she added.

I wonder if he left a voicemail. Otherwise how could just calling someone count as witness tampering. :chin:

The best explanation for the consistency of my expectations and your expectations about the cup is that there's an external cup. — Isaac

I don't think that follows at all. Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of ~650nm consistently triggers the experience of the colour red. The experience is nothing like the cause and it would be wrong to say that electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of ~650nm is "an external red".

I don't see why the same principle doesn't apply to the experience of a cup and whatever causes the experience. I would say that our current understanding of physics, e.g. the Standard Model, would show that it is a mistake to reduce the objects of perception to the external world causes of experience.

The external world is just a mess of wave-particles. The macroscopic world is a product of consciousness. It's naive to then project this macroscopic world onto the external world.

This discussion was merged into A universe without anything conscious or aware

What is a definition if not the suggested, or commonly understood way of using the term? What you're saying is that you don't know how to use the term, proposition, so it doesn't follow that you can know how they relate using formal logic. — Harry Hindu

Read Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

What is life? I know that I’m alive and that a rock isn’t. But there’s no proper understanding of what life is, with over a hundred proposed definitions.

Likewise, it isn't possible to eat a chicken and to have it remain uneaten, even though there are some chicken that remain uneaten. Therefore, some chicken cannot be eaten. — Olivier5

That doesn't follow at all.

There are five chickens in a cage. They haven't been eaten but they can all be eaten.

How can you tell the difference between a proposition and a chicken if you don't know what a proposition is? — Harry Hindu

I said I can't give you a definition of "proposition", just as I can't give you a definition of "number". But I know which things are numbers, which things are propositions, and which things are neither.

And I know that 2 + 2 = 4.

And I know that modus tollens is a valid rule of inference.

And I know that chickens are animals.

That's all that matters for this discussion.

You've already shown that you have no idea what you're talking about — Harry Hindu

I know exactly what I'm talking about, thanks.

I'm just asking for a simple definition of "proposition". What do you know, if anything, of what a proposition is? You have to have some understanding of the nature of numbers to do maths. — Harry Hindu

I can't give you any meaningful definition of "proposition", just as I can't give you any meaningful definition of "number". I can give you examples of things which are either numbers or not numbers, and examples of things which are either propositions or not propositions.

But, again, this has nothing to do with Fitch's paradox. If you want to talk about what propositions are then start another discussion.

You keep using this term, "proposition" that you've you admitted to not knowing what they are. If you don't know what propositions are, then how can you even know what kind of relationship exists between them? — Harry Hindu

I don't need to have some kind of in-depth metaphysical understanding of the nature of language and reasoning to make use of formal logic, just as I don't need to have some kind of in-depth metaphysical understanding of the nature of numbers to do maths.

I don't know what numbers are, but I know that 2 is a number, that a chicken isn't a number, and that 2 + 2 = 4.

I don't know what propositions are, but I know that "it is raining" is a proposition, that a chicken isn't a proposition, and that modus tollens is a valid rule of inference.

If you want an in-depth metaphysical discussion on the nature of numbers and logic and whatever then that's a topic for another discussion. It's not relevant to this one.

I mean the second interpretation of course, in both cases. — Olivier5

And that's precisely why the knowability principle fails, as Fitch's paradox shows. It isn't possible to know that p is true and that p is not known to be true, even though there is some p that is true and not known to be true. Therefore, some truths are unknowable.

The original version says one cannot know an unknown truth. — Olivier5

No it doesn't. It says that if you accept the knowability principle and the non-omniscience principle then it follows that all truths are known.

As I said here, you're equivocating. The phrase "one cannot know an unknown truth" is ambiguous and you're using the wrong interpretation. It can mean one of these:

1. If some p is not known to be true then it is not possible to (ever) know p
2. It is not possible to know that p is true and that p is not known to be true

The first is false, the second is true.

The chicken version of Fitch says one cannot eat an uneaten chicken. — Olivier5

And your logic is flawed, as I have explained. You don't understand formal logic. You're also trading on the ambiguity as explained above. There is a difference between these:

1. If some chicken has not been eaten then it is not possible to (ever) eat it
2. It is not possible to eat a chicken and for that chicken to remain uneaten

The first is false, the second is true.

Sorry, not sure if I was clear, but that quote was from the article you posted. Capra explicitly sets out the argument as:

Premise 1: Goats eat everything.
Premise 2: Eating is asymmetric. That is, if A eats B, then B does not eat A.
Therefore:
Conclusion: There is at least one non-goat.

Not sure where you got the "can eat" from?

That doesn't address what I was saying about your argument. Formal logic is concerned with the relationship between propositions. In the case of a → b, both a and b are propositions. In your argument you want a to "stand in" for a chicken, which doesn't make sense. Chickens aren't truth apt and can't be the antecedent of a material implication.

Or perhaps you meant for a to be the proposition "the chicken exists"? In which case the consequent of your material implication, ◇Ea, says that it is possible to eat the proposition that the chicken exists, which is of course absurd; you can't eat a proposition.

Fitch's argument, however, correctly utilises formal logic. p → ◇Kp: if the chicken exists then it is possible to know that the chicken exists.

As I suggested to another earlier, if you don't understand formal logic then address the argument in natural language. The reasoning is the same. If you accept the knowability principle and the non-omniscience principle then it follows that all truths are known. Therefore, you must either reject the non-omniscience principle or the knowability principle.

The exact same critique can be made about Fitch, but for some reason you fail to see it. — Olivier5

It can't be made about Fitch because his premises work. You just don't seem to understand propositional logic.

The first premise should be "Goats eat everything":

The principle that ‘goats eat everything’ says that they actually do this, not just that they can or might do this. Everything can and everything does go down a goat’s throat. Everything is eaten by a goat. Goats are not just omnivorous, but omnivoracious.

If there is a flaw in my chicken paradox -- as I strongly suspect is the case :razz: --, then the exact same thing is wrong with Fitch. — Olivier5

The first flaw in your proposed paradox is what I explained here. Your symbols are wrong. It should be:

∀x(Cx → ◊Ex)
For all things, if that thing is a chicken then it is possible to eat that thing.

∃x(Cx → ¬Ex)
There is at least one thing that is a chicken and hasn't been eaten.

Fitch's paradox, however, uses the correct symbols.

You pointed yourself to that flaw here, as I and many others have done before you, about the non-chicken version of Fitch. — Olivier5

That's not a flaw with Fitch's paradox. That's me explaining to you how you're misinterpreting/misrepresenting Fitch's paradox by using ambiguous wording that leads to equivocation.

◇K(p &~Kp) → K(p & ~Kp). None of the rules used by Fitch in the SEP article allow this move. Also, intuitively, it looks/feels wrong. — Agent Smith

Compare with:

1. If God is omnipotent then it is possible for God to create a rock that he cannot lift
2. If God creates a rock that he cannot lift then ...

Fitch is using the same reasoning:

1. If p is true and not known to be true then it is possible to know that p is true and not known to be true
2. If it is known that p is true and not known to be true then ...

Like in Fitch, one of two things follows from the Olivier5 chicken paradox: either not all chicken can be eaten, or all chicken have already been eaten (omnigallinavorousism). — Olivier5

You haven't explained the logic behind your "chicken paradox". And as I mentioned here your symbols were wrong anyway.

Fitch says that one cannot know an unknown truth, because as soon as one knows it, it cease to be an unknown truth. — Olivier5

And as I said here, you're equivocating. There's a difference between saying that we cannot come to know something that wasn't known before and saying that something cannot be both known and known to be unknown. Fitch is saying the latter.

this would seem to contradict Michael’s claim that a proposition can be known to be true at one time and then known to be false at a later time — Luke

The proposition "Joe Biden is President of the United States" was known to be false in 2016 and is known to be true now.

Which ones? Write them out.

We then apply the accepted rules of inference to derive the conclusion:

∀c(Ec → Ec) ∧ ∀c(¬Ec → ¬◊Ec)
(all eaten chicken have already been eaten and all uneaten chicken cannot be eaten, otherwise they wouldn't be uneaten chicken anymore) — Olivier5

What rules of inference get you there?

Chicken-edibility principle
∀c(c → ◊Ec)
(if a chicken exists, it can be eaten)

Non-omnivorous principle
∃c(c ∧ ¬Ec)
(there exist chicken that are not eaten) — Olivier5

Also the symbols here make no sense. I think you need something like:

∀x(Cx → ◊Ex)
For all things, if that thing is a chicken then it is possible to eat that thing.

∃x(Cx → ¬Ex)
There is at least one thing that is a chicken and hasn't been eaten.

Specifically, it says that an uneaten chicken cannot be eaten without ceasing to be an uneaten chicken, so we cannot logically speaking eat an uneaten chicken.

Note that we also cannot eat a chicken that has already been eaten. And since a chicken is either eaten or not eaten, it follows that logically speaking, we cannot eat any chicken. — Olivier5

You're equivocating. It is possible for us to later eat something that is currently uneaten, or for something that we have eaten to have before that time been uneaten. It isn't possible for us to eat something and for it to remain uneaten.

Personally, I don’t think it makes sense to only allow abortions when rape is involved, and this is because people may falsely accuse others of rape in order to get an abortion. I realize this is a more pragmatic argument. Does this mean rape needs to be asserted, proved in court, etc? — Paulm12

I didn't mean to suggest that abortions should only be allowed for rape. Because we can't wait for a rape to be proved in court and because we can't police the use of contraceptives, abortions should be available for everyone.