To the OP...

Would Occam's razor be considered "atheist dogma"?

:brow:

Faith is hope accompanied by delusional optimism that good things will come to those who believe with all their heart, do not doubt regardless of the way things seem to be, and do what one should do... no matter what happens. "Walk by faith, not by sight" is a common characterization of such a mindset. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, one who has faith is absolutely certain that good things will happen when they do what's right. That mindset is glorified in Christianity. It is something for everyone to aspire towards. It most often transforms into giving all glory to God. When something good does happen after all sorts of bad stuff, or anything at all deemed good or fortunate happens - regardless of the recent patterns of 'good and bad' stuff 'happening', the automated response is...

"Thank God!"

This sort of thinking completely neglects or completely misunderstands causality, and completely neglects to focus upon and consider the active everyday efficacious primary role that one plays in one's own life.

One silver lining of hope accompanied by unwavering optimism is that hopeful people do tend to be happier and more positive, generally speaking(whether delusional or not). Positive mindsets and positive thinking can be the crucial difference between recognizing potential opportunities or not. One drawback, is that when one does take advantage of an opportunity that presents itself, if they "walk by faith", that person will give all the glory to God and take no credit, thereby reducing their own ability to recognize how important their own role was in making it happen. It also further reinforces both, a misattribution of causality, and the tendency towards seeing oneself as an extra in their own life(God is in control after-all, and when unexpected bad stuff happens, it's all somehow a part of God's plan).

Understanding one's own role helps one to be more positive, hopeful(well-grounded), and most importantly... prepared. The last bit is the key often neglected by those who 'walk by faith', particularly if they do not have a decent grasp upon how the world works(causality).

Good luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

If knowing all the physical facts includes knowing the meaning of all the terms that refer to different ranges in the visible spectrum, then it is impossible to know all the physical facts about seeing color without seeing color. Without seeing color there is no way for Mary to know which part of the spectrum "red" refers to.

Need a link...

I'm not entirely sure what the precise wording is. It matters though. Seems to me that Mary's room aims at the wrong target.

Yeah... :joke:

Probably a direct result of growing up so poor... much easier to satisfy!

A social overhaul would be necessary for that to be meaningful to anyone. In other words, you're stepping out of your time in history to make that observation. It gets lonely analyzing the earth from a vantage point on the moon, so it's a rare insight. — frank

Yeah, I've been accused of looking at things differently than most people. I could always increase production as well and keep the same margin. I'm certainly at far less than capacity. However, I want to keep the scarcity and work less.

The neoliberal era has resulted in the tremendous wealth gap and discontent of the average blue collar, retail worker, and many public service providers. Typically non college educated, but plenty of college educated folk have paid for education that basically provided nothing in terms of ROI.

The interest of shareholders is in direct conflict with the interest of employees, assuming there are any American employees in the business chain efforts. When corporations stopped making employees a priority things began to go downhill for workers.

For whatever it's worth, I like the little short guy economist who worked in the Clinton administration as Secretary of Labor for the first two years(if I remember correctly)... Cannot remember his name at the moment...

Oh yeah... Robert Reich

Well, his response to Mary's room doesn't support that explanation/characterization. It's similar to my own thinking, or at least seems to dovetail nicely with it...

Dennett claims that if we grant the premiss that Mary knew everything there was to know about seeing color, then the conclusion that she would gain new knowledge upon being allowed to see color does not follow.

Knowing everything about seeing color includes seeing color. So either she did not know everything about seeing color and she gained new knowledge upon first seeing color, or she knew everything there was to know about seeing color, and hence could gain no new knowledge upon being allowed to see color, for she already knew everything there was to know...

There are greedy sellers... that's not a fiction.

Likely someone wanting a Ferrari would try to give him more than the asking price. Because why not? — ssu

Sure, that's exactly what was happening in the housing market, and perhaps still is.

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.
— creativesoul

That is the whole point of the thought-experiment. It's an argument against reductive physicalism. Compare it to this statement:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’
— Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

So Dennett is arguing that it is possible, presumably, to know everything there is to know about the seeing of color, without the first-person experience. That is what the Mary's Room experiment is directed against. — Wayfarer

Well, I'd question whether or not Dennett holds that one can know everything there is to know about seeing color without seeing color. In fairness, I do not know whether or not he does.

For me, I reject the very idea for reasons already given.

...you can know about color vision in a theoretical sense - rods, cones, optical nerves, wavelengths, absorption, and so on - without having seen colours... — Wayfarer

I understand that that's what some believe. I do not share that belief. I do not believe that one can know about color vision without ever having seen colors. The terms that refer would have no referent for Mary. She could not know the meaning of those terms, for it would be impossible for her to draw the meaningful correlation(s) between the terms and their referents if the terms referred to a range in bandwidth of the visible spectrum that she could not pick out to the exclusion of all else.

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.

That doesn't make sense. — ssu

Exactly. It was a fantastical hypothetical. It's not going to happen either way. However, for the sake of mind experiments I was simply pointing out that if - in this impossible scenario - no sellers knew how much money the buyers had, then there would be no increase in consumer cost.

Ferrari is not bound by physics to raise their prices, even in your scenario. They could increase production.

Inflation IS an increase in retail price/consumer cost. The cause of inflation is the desire to maximize/increase profit. I personally like for the demand to be higher than I can meet. I do not raise my prices. I have people waiting in line. I could raise the prices. I don't. Does that make me a bad business owner? Some may say so. I'm content and satisfied with what I can make at the prices I have.

The point is that if supply shortages caused prices to go up, then it would happen in every case. I'm prima facie evidence to the contrary, and I'm not the only one.

Supply shortages can be used by those who want to maximize profit as a 'reason' to increase consumer cost. It does not have to be that way. An increase in demand does not cause a price increase.

I've never denied that printing money is a factor. I've basically set out how it is. I'm denying that printing money causes inflation. That line of thinking completely neglects the only cause of inflation and blames it on something else.

Printing money to provide stimulus in 2009 did not result in inflation(that's not the only counterexample either). Printing money in 2020 to provide stimulus purportedly did.

Here's a striking and the key difference... the stimulus in 09 overwhelmingly went to financial institutions and huge corporations, whereas the stimulus in 2020 overwhelmingly went to small businesses and individuals under 150k annual income.

It makes no financial sense to raise prices beyond the affordability of the consumer base. That would result in losses. In 09, people did not have money. So, even though all sorts of money was printed, there were no consumer cost increases to speak of. In 2020, lower wage earners were given stimulus money to offset losses in regular earnings. 'Regular' people were given money and tax advantages. Consumer costs went through the roof.

It's not a coincidence that inflation immediately followed the latter but there was none whatsoever following the former.

Whatever the market will bear. Or as ssu just put it... boil the frog on low... so it won't jump out of the pot.

Let's do...

Add to the hypothetical one caveat... it's all done in secret. Sellers have no idea.

Do you really think that the addition of the money alone is the cause of inflation?

Ah... so ad homs supplant argument, valid objection, or adequate explanation.

For whatever it's worth, your assumptions about me are as wrong as your attribution of cause concerning inflation.

My analogy assumed that rattlesnake does indeed taste like chicken. If that is the case, I know quite a bit of what eating rattlesnake will be like: like eating chicken. Escargo tastes nothing like venison. Furthermore, one is a mollusk, the other is a deer. — RogueAI

If the experience of eating rattlesnake only includes the taste, then sure, you'll know quite a bit of what eating a rattlesnake will be like, if you already know what chicken tastes like.

I'm pointing out that the experience of eating a rattlesnake includes so much more than just the taste, and that all those other elements are not like eating chicken. Furthermore, there are all sorts of completely different experiences, all of which include eating chicken. Those are not like one another either, despite the fact that they could all be labeled as "eating chicken".

I think it targets certain positions that share that presupposition...

They're both putting meat in your mouth and chewing...

Is it your contention that the experience will be similar to Mary seeing color for the first time? — RogueAI

Mary's room is based upon the all too common inadequate academic notions of thought, belief, knowledge, and perception. It presupposes that it is possible to know everything there is to know about seeing color without ever having seen it. That is a false presupposition.

There will be some differences, but it's still just putting chunks of meat in your mouth and chewing. — RogueAI

Eating venison is like eating escargo... by that standard of "what it's like"...

Some of us think inflation happens when you print too much money, or simply create from nothing new debt to pay back the old debt. — ssu

Those of us who believe that would be mistaken. Recent history shows otherwise. The financial crash at the beginning of the Obama administration proves that. All sorts of money printed. No inflation to speak of. What more does one need to prove that printing money does not cause inflation, than a time when it was printed and no inflation resulted?

The reductive physicalist can identify and thoroughly explain how all sorts of 'the parts' commonly associated with conscious subjective experience work physically(See Dennett's Quining Qualia). The opponent will simply state that the hard problem hasn't been solved, or say "that's the easy(soft) problems"... Yada, yada, yada.

It's akin to the physicalist pouring hundreds of thousands of grains of sand onto the floor and pointing at the result, while the opponent says... that's not enough to count as a pile of sand. — creativesoul

This was my first reply here. The reader can read through the thread and judge for themselves how true it rings...

Oh... and you're equivocating terms to an extent I've not witnessed in quite some time. Particularly the term "perception(s)". In addition, it seems there's a fair amount of anthropomorphism going on as well.

I'm afraid I simply do not have the time to make all this explicit. So, I'll just have to leave it all as bare assertion, but not for the lack of empirical evidence throughout the thread. Rather, due to the lack of time and personal priorities...

:meh:

Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???

I understand that prima facie it seems hypocritical, but let me clarify. I am fine with soft problems having obscurities in their explanations but not hard problems. That is the difference. — Bob Ross

Is that the acceptable standard for all accounting practices, or just some of them?

Are you claiming that the position you're arguing in favor of successfully accounts for the hard problem without obscurities?

Fair enough, let me try to elaborate on those terms.

From an analytic idealist’s perspective, one’s organs that correspond to those senses you listed (e.g., auditory, gustatory, olfactory, etc.) are extrinsic representations of those senses of the immaterial mind within your perception (and other’s perceptions). I am not saying that your senses exist only within your subjective experience, because subjective experience is synonymous, in the case of humans, with perception and your senses are not contingent on your perception to exist (however their extrinsic, physical representations do depend on perceptions). — Bob Ross

So, according to the position you're putting forth...

Organs are extrinsic representations of senses within one's perception. Senses are not existentially contingent on perception. However, the organs are existentially contingent upon one's perception.

Yeah...

I'm sorry, but that just looks like a word salad, to put it mildly.

As if one's organs do not exist without subjective qualitative experience. Seems to me to be the wrong way around. The experience, particularly the depth and breadth of human experience, is existentially dependent upon the biological machinery.

Yup. That article points to some of the results of all the deregulation over the last five or six decades...

The lack of antitrust laws...

Uh, but the price will rise because of the higher demand. It's the fundamentals of demand and supply. I mean, if a hundred people would desperately want something that costs 10$ and there's only one item left, you think that nobody of them would buy it for 11$ or even 20$? — ssu

Ah... whatever the market will bear...

What someone would be willing to pay(what the product is worth) is irrelevant to the point. Completely. The cause of the price increase is what's in question.

The price increases because the seller wants to increase it. The price does not go up because more people want the product. The cause of the increase is the desire of the seller to maximize profit. The short supply helps create/foster the high demand. Neither causes the price increase. Only the seller's desire to increase profit does.

An increase in consumer cost of good and services is inflation. The amount of money printed does not increase cost. Supply shortage does not increase cost. High demand does not increase cost.

The desire to increase profit margin is the only cause of inflation.

Wage increases are post hoc corrections for inflation. When the same goods and services cost far more than they used to, people cannot afford them any longer when and if they have the same earnings. To blame wage increases for inflation is to blame the bandaid for the bleeding cut.

Can I not be said to know that without knowing what the tree is as it is in its unperceived status? — Janus

Sure, you can draw a distinction between your perception of the tree and the tree. I'm just saying that that distinction is notably different than the one between Noumena and phenomena, and you do not need Noumena to do that.

But that line of reasoning is untenable. There is no way to compare noumena and phenomena in order to determine that the one is not the other.
— creativesoul

But I know that my perception of the tree is not the tree, right? My perceptions are constituted by phenomena: sights, sounds, tactile sensations and so on, but the tree is not merely a sight, or a sound (say wind in the leaves) or a tactile sensation (say the feel of its bark) or the sum of those. Can I not be said to know that without knowing what the tree is as it is in its unperceived status? — Janus

This is comparing the tree and your 'perception' of the tree. I thought we were discussing Noumena and phenomena. If the tree is a proxy for Noumena, and your perception of the tree is a proxy for phenomena, then you've just conflated Noumena and phenomena.

The tree appears to you, and as such is part of the phenomenal realm. The tree - in and of itself - is the noumenal.

You've added the notion of your perception into the mix equating it to phenomena, while equating the tree to Noumena.

If someone says that eating rattlesnake is like eating chicken, I know what the experience of eating a rattlesnake will be like. — RogueAI

Feathers and all...

If rattlesnake tastes like chicken, then you may know what one tastes like. The experience of eating the rattlesnake is more than just the gustatory aspect... is it not?

I'm struggling to make much sense of your taxonomy. It seems you're lumping thought, belief, perception, imagination, olfactory, visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and all sorts of things into the category of subjective experience. Then using more than one name or label to reference the set of things as well as individual elements within the group...

"Perception", "qualia", and "experience" are all terms you've employed at times as synonymous with each other, and other times as something else... something more specific and different...

My point was that the hard problem can only be accounted for by an obscurity, — Bob Ross

Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???

:yikes:

I still have no idea what point you are attempting to make. — Janus

Hey Janus!

I think, and I could be wrong, that Srap was attempting to help you experience the untenability of the thing in itself.

I don't think of the ideas of noumena and in-itself as add-ons, but as qualifications marking the limits of knowledge. — Janus

Yup. It is my understanding that Kant posits the Noumena precisely as a negative limit for human knowledge. I take the general gist of it to be something like... we can know that we cannot know anything about noumena aside from that they are not equivalent to phenomena.

But that line of reasoning is untenable. There is no way to compare noumena and phenomena in order to determine that the one is not the other.

So, as you said earlier, it's purely a conceptual or logical distinction. I think "conceptual" fits better, but that's just me being pedantic about what counts as being logical. Hence, the earlier scare-quotes around the term...

Personally I have no idea what it's like to be me let alone you, or a fucking bat! — Tom Storm

Exactly. It's not 'like' anything else... which is the point.

There is no sensible meaningful answer to it.
— creativesoul

Which I think overstates the case, for reasons I have spelt out. — Tom Storm

Yeah, you're right. On its face, it's false. I second guessed the wording when writing that, but wrote it anyway.