Comments

  • What are you listening to right now?
    Geoffroy and Chet Faker are my default baby-making music providers.

    I guess I'm in a certain kind of mood >:)
  • Cut the crap already
    and apparently should both be bannable offences. :-}
  • Cut the crap already


    Thank you!
    Ah chucks. I'm no closer to the dark hallways of power. :’(
  • Cut the crap already
    Anyways, on a much more serious and important subject. totally related to the great title of the OP... Where did you learn that TL got a promotion? Is there some backroom room where all the backroom deals are made, so to speak, in the back of everyone else? If so, I can I spy this node of power and influence?
  • Cut the crap already
    So, you're saying that you want the right wingers to flirt with you so they can become mods too? :oBuxtebuddha

    Well, I can neither deny or lend credence to the belief that flirting with me will help you getting on the modding team. So I guess it's kinda like Pascal's wager. Do you really want to take the chance that flirting with me won't be the way to get on the modding team?
  • Cut the crap already


    Well, he doesn't spend his days flirting with me in the Shoutbox, so...
  • Cut the crap already
    You know a significant segment of the shoutbox is about constant flirting and we all know the dynamics of that.Meta

    So.
    We went from justifying TL as a mod to simply stating she flirted her way into the role.
    I mean.
    Beyond the fact that this just expresses so well how little you know about flirting. :P
  • Cut the crap already
    I don't mind that either. But the ability to make the right call is my concern here. After her vile accusations directed toward me in a recent discussion, I don't have much faith in said ability.Thorongil

    TPF politics are riveting. It's like being thrown back in an end-of-19th-century US Election.
    "A vote for TL is a vote for moral degeneracy! She wants beastiality to be taught in highschool!"
  • Objectivity of subjectivity


    There is more than one problem with subjectivity, and one of them is the one you refer to. It depends on what conception of subjectivity you aim with your question. Related to consciousness, for example, the problem of subjectivity extends up to the Hard Problem. Another, related to truth and epistemology, is what potential value objectivity could be attributed to first-person account of third-persons observations, and vice-versa. One one hand, it is almost a trope nowadays to state that one's account of one's mental life is not to be taken to be a proper representation of one's mental life. On the other hand, even if we did have a workable mind-scanner, would you trust it more than the subject who state that he is experiencing x, when the scanner is telling you he is experiencing y?

    Subjectivity is a minefield, there isn't one single problem.
  • Kundalini
    Truer words have never been typed.Buxtebuddha

    So I am wise!
    Yeah!
    :-#
  • Kundalini
    I have this creeping feeling that I just ain't wise. :s
  • What are facts?
    Why are fact's things that are valid only in view of the correspondence theory of truth?Posty McPostface

    I wouldn't say it's only valid in this view, but its probably the view in which the term insert itself the most easily. It's also likely the most common view that is consistent with a naive interpretation of the world.
  • What are facts?
    It's a nice example of how simple words that are seconded into philosophy become enormous problems. In its natural home it has various uses, but when philosophers try to pin them down they start to mix them up.Banno

    I'm not sure what about facts is supposed to be simple. Wouldn't you think from the start that pinning down facts is going to be a contentious issue.
  • Mermaids aren't falsifiable
    I have a hunch that comes from hypothesis testing and the practice of rejecting a null hypothesis. That isn't to say the process is wrong, merely that it's poorly expressed to students who then take it as a challenge to present that which cannot be argued against.AngleWyrm

    Wasn't it Garreth Evans who said that we could never find a unicorn's remains? Even if we did find parts of a one-horned horse, the origins of unicorn's existence are entirely within fiction, and therefore, no one could scientifically say that "we have found a unicorn" or that "unicorns existed all along", because that's putting a fictive object in a domain where it doesn't belong.
  • What are facts?
    3) A fact is just a sui generis type of entity in which objects exemplify properties or stand in relations.Posty McPostface

    I guess I don't see how facts constitute entities (aside from the fact that they are intelligible in themselves) or how they are unique in regards to exemplifying relations or properties. That seems to me to be the case of all objects. Basically, it comes down to saying that facts are epistemological entities, which I guess to me just refers to a primitive.
  • What are facts?
    False is a truth-value. Facts cannot be false(I mean if you're working from a framework where facts are either true statements or propositions). Facts aren't the sort of things that can be true/false on my view, but that's another matter altogether.creativesoul

    I'm not going so far in my definition, but you are correct that it would be hard to see any other truth-value obtained from a state-of-affairs as 'fact'.

    A more precise way : 'Fact' is an unbound variable, a pure demonstrative which use is to refer a proposition obtaining a positive truth-value from a state-of-affairs.
  • What are facts?
    It is important to treat this as an epistemological question, not an ontological one.Banno

    I think this is the golden nugget of the thread. If 'fact' is a primitive, as I argued, then you can only demonstrate it's use, or refer to it in purely formal terms. As such, I'd say that 'fact' is epistemologically an unbound variable, where its use is to refer to a proposition obtaining a truth-value from a state-of-affairs.
  • Culture Is Not Genetic
    One side borders on segregationist racialism from "race realism" while the other side offers a full blown denial of race and racial differences by insisting it's a "social construct"... It's all uneducated bologna...VagabondSpectre

    I offered a way out of this full blown denial. The fact that this way out is not a path we are capable of walking down the whole way is completely out of my hands. I've looked up my ancestry, and I derive a great pride from their accomplishments and struggles both in America and Europe. But I'm proud of things that I know, that I can attribute to real people, not to some conjured common ancestry that never existed in the first place. Frenchmen two centuries ago would have started a war at the suggestion that they were the same race as Bulgarians!

    Genetic populations would have the advantage of being more factually accurate than common categorization of 'races', but then they would lose all the political meaningfulness left in the term from the ancestral use of 'race' as 'people'.

    And, in the end, it's just creepy. Just talk about cultures. Common habits and goals shared by people, that's what has always been more important. For example, it was easier (although not really easy either sadly) for a Catholic African man who spoke French well to integrate and prosper in Renaissance France than for many Jewish families who maintained their own seperate practices.
  • Culture Is Not Genetic
    And why does it undermine everything else for you? What is your problem?

    And what is the matter with using "white"? The last time I checked, "white" was a racial group, like American Indians. You didn't object to black, asian, or aboriginal. I think of myself as white. I grew up in a Minnesota county that is still 98% white--German, Scandinavian, a few Brits, and some Hmong,
    Bitter Crank

    As I discussed in a previous thread, 'race' as a scientific category only makes sense in relation to subjects of breeding. It doesn't apply to species of beings that have not been subjected to controled and arbitrary reproductive selection. Because of this, it is perfectly appropriate to speak scientifically of races of dogs, cats, horses, hogs, bovines and probably a lot others.

    Now, this can be put to debate, but I think that it is not meaningful to frame the selective pressure that act upon humans for sexual partnership as breeding. We don't look to maintain or select traits, and while we can sometimes reduce our criterion to materialistic conditions, they are often external, like income and prestige, which cannot mean anything racially.

    For 'race' to be useful, we would have to work out categories derived from population mouvements over the last 2000 years. which pretty much none of us can do. I've got French, English and Métis blood in me, in absolutely impossible percentages to work out. I can trace back my French ancestry back to the 1500s, and deduce some stuff about them back to the Crusades, but nothing relevant about their genetic makeup. I can get back about 200 years for the two others. And yet, I am "white". Everyone who sees me and thinks in common 'racial' categories will think either "white" or "caucasian". It means absolutely nothing relevant whatsoever.
  • Culture Is Not Genetic
    Race is generally (not always) recognizable at a glance. Blacks, whites, Asians, and aboriginals tend to have certain common visual features: skin color; hair shape (flat, oval, or round hair); a higher, narrower, flatter, or broader nose structure; thinner or fuller lips, a slight difference in eye lidBitter Crank

    This is so wrong this is good. It shows why "race" should be done away with. The simple fact that you are tempted to use "white" as a racial category just undermine everything else.
  • Is 'information' physical?
    That's precisely what Epp means.
    — Akanthinos

    And what precisely does 'Epp' mean?
    Wayfarer

    "In logic, the law of identity states that each thing is identical with itself. By this it is meant that each thing (be it a universal or a particular) is composed of its own unique set of characteristic qualities or features, which the ancient Greeks called its essence. It is the first of the three classical laws of thought.

    In its symbolic representation, "a=a", "Epp", or "For all x: x = x"."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity
  • Is 'information' physical?


    That's precisely what Epp means.
    That's what Leibniz underscored with his principle of the identity of indiscernables.
    You guys are refering to relative identity, "x is the same A as y".
  • What are facts?
    It seems to me that 2+2=4 is best regarded as a hypothetical fact that's the "then" conclusion of an inevitable abstract if-then fact:Michael Ossipoff

    This. '2+2=4' doesn't seem to be anymore a fact in itself than '2+2' or '2=2'. It is a mathematical proposition, which means that it is dependant on mathematical forms of assertion. A proof is probably is good way.
  • What are facts?
    Not true. A claim that something is a fact is already assuming that the proposition is true, through verifying it via different means, depending on the context of the proposition.Posty McPostface

    No, because 'the snow is white' is not ' "the snow is white" '. both 1) and 2) state the proposition as a fact, only 2) makes it explicit. We could distinguish :

    1) The snow is white = assertion
    2) It is a fact that the snow is white = explicit assertion
    3) It is that the snow is white = assertion
    4) "The snow is white" = non-assertion
  • What are facts?
    The point is that nothing else is added by stating that a proposition is a fact. Stating the proposition is already stating something as a fact.
  • What are facts?
    What is the difference between :

    1) The snow is white
    2) It is a fact that the snow is white
    ... Could even go further and say
    3) It is that the snow is white.
    ?
  • What are facts?
    Couldn't "fact" simply be a sort of ontological/epistemological primitive?

    Thus defying proper definition, or at least non-circular ones.
    Like a pure demonstrative, but for "that which is true".
  • The biggest problem with women's sports


    This is a political philosophy subforum. This is not a political philosophy issue. This is something that belongs in a blog. It does not invite philosophical discussion of political matters.
  • The biggest problem with women's sports


    Get over yourself. You aren't a mod.
    This has exactly nothing to do with political philosophy.
  • The biggest problem with women's sports
    I don't know you and haven't read your other posts, but this doesn't seem like an honest question to me.T Clark

    4 out of the 10 last threads started by WisdomfromPOMO are about gender politics. Women also commit gun rampages. How women's sport is boring because of gender. So on and so on.

    Clearly there's an angle here, I'm just wondering how it all relates to philosophy...?
  • The biggest problem with women's sports


    Honest question here : why the obsession with gender politics? The last 3 threads I've seen you start was clearly and specifically about it. This is a philosophy forum. Obviously any gender politic issue can be thematized as a political philosophy problem, or a philosophy of sociology issue, but there's little of that at play in your posts.

    I'm not trying to shame you, just wondering what is the motivation here.
  • Most human behavior/interaction is choreographed
    Huh, distilled bullshit? What is produced when bullshit is distilled?Metaphysician Undercover

    Wasn't that the first way of making gunpowder?
  • Is 'information' physical?
    The information gets transformed into work, and work is physical.MountainDwarf

    Can you distinguish meaningfully between the "work" of interpreting the information and the "work" of the information taken as instruction? I don't think it's possible. Information is already and always work, which would support the claim that its already and always physical.
  • Is 'information' physical?
    Sure, information has potential to be physical as I said.MountainDwarf

    I feel a better way of putting that would be that the physical has potential to be informational.

    I guess I can't see much of a point in pursuing this line of inquiry through Plato's or Aristotle's lenses.
  • Who do you still admire?
    Getting back to the OP. I was looking into metaphysics, and Heidegger's name came up. He is controversial because he joined the Nazi party, was an anti-Semite (he made anti-Semitic comments in his Black Notebooks written in 1931-1941 , first published in 2014), and never apologized for his affiliation with the Nazis.
    — anonymous66
    You forget:
    Heidegger had a long and highly problematic romantic relationship with Hannah Arendt and a steamy affair (over many decades) with Elisabeth Blochmann, both students of his. Arendt was Jewish, and Blochmann had one Jewish parent, making them subject to severe persecution by the Nazi authorities. He helped Blochmann emigrate from Germany before the start of World War II and resumed contact with both of them after the war.[38] Heidegger's letters to his wife contain information about several other affairs of his.
    — Wikipedia
    Agustino

    Study of the Black Notebooks as of 2014 shows that not only Heidegger held anti-semitic views, but that his views were fairly non-sophisticated (as far as you can have sophisticated racism). It wasn't demonic racism, but it surely informed his interactions.

    And his relations to Arendt and Blochmann aren't indicative of anything, except that he was a leech. Arendt herself later called him a " likely psychopath", "who I would not be surprised to learn that he had murdered someone".
  • Is 'information' physical?
    I don't see why temporal and spatial properties would be relational though. Relational to what?Samuel Lacrampe

    To each other object. Space is, in such a metaphysic, composed entirely of relations between objects. Therefore, it could be argued that the objectual properties refering to space are not "of the object", but "of the world". Time could be seen in a similar way, replacing objects with events.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_space

    I also don't agree with the negative property concept. Instead of saying "an object has the property of non-x", it seems more correct to say "an object does not have the property x".Samuel Lacrampe

    But that's not the same thing. "A triangle doesn't have the property of compatibility with circularity" states nothing about the potential compatibility of triangularity and circularity, which is exactly what we are trying to get at here. "A triangle has the property of not being compatible with circularity" is already closer to the mark. The first one doesn't have the causal relevance necessary the full phenomena.

    I think understanding happens in a time, but not in a space. Here is why: Consider time t1 before I understand an info, and time t2 after I understand it. If we could go back to t1 (somehow), then I would not understand the info. But I understand the info at places p1 and p2, provided it is at time t2. In other words, the existence of understanding seems to be a function of time but not of place.Samuel Lacrampe

    One could argue that there are at least two spaces for each act of understanding : the space occupied by the information itself, and the space occupied by the information necessary to interpret the object of understanding. As such, understanding, as a stand-in for information processing, would be distributed.
  • Welcome to The Philosophy Forum - an introduction thread
    To declare it as a loss, my guess would be.
  • Atheists are a clue that God exists


    I wanted to give Henri a chance to redeem the OP.
    Once that ship sailed, I did flag quite a few troll posts. The rest is up to the mods to decide what is a low-value post/thread.
  • Atheists are a clue that God exists
    Just provide one single reasonable argument in favor of the non-existence of God. Not a single one has been provided here yet, and not only that, I don't think I have ever heard or read such a thing.Henri

    Again : can you provide a few examples of such arguments, and on what universal basis rationality can be said to be missing in these.

    Because, again, if you don't, then this is a troll thread.