So, basically, I can't see how dividing all statements into either analytic or synthetic is correct. — Hallucinogen

It is a distinction that seemed to made sense at the time it was hotly discussed, which was the 16th-17th centuries. That was before a modern understanding of logic was developed, which arose in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. That understanding has revealed that the distinction is an illusion - for instance that the statement '7+5=12', which Kant thought was synthetic, is not different in kind from 'all bachelors are unmarried', which Kant thought was analytic. I presume that is one of the reasons why hardly any professional philosophers discuss it any more, other than as a historical phenomenon.

However the distinction is very important historically. It is important because the controversy about it awakened Immanuel Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber' and goaded him to write the Critique of Pure Reason, which is still very relevant, meaningful, and much discussed today. Many see it as one of the most important philosophical works ever written. The bits of CPR about the analytic/synthetic distinction are obsolete and can be skimmed over in favour of those that give real insights, like the Transcendental Aesthetic, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories and the Synthetic Unity of Apperception. These give difficult, but highly significant, insights into how we think, how we approach the world.

Don't you find that to be unreasonable though? To accept something is to willingly consent to something. I think it's unreasonable to willingly consent to something for no reason. Don't you? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think it makes sense to talk about willingly consenting to one's death. One can only consent to something from which one has the power to withhold to consent. I can neither consent to, nor withhold my consent from, the law of gravity. The same goes for my death.

I think the common meaning of 'accepting' something, where that something is not a contract between agents, is to not be emotionally disturbed by it. Think of the stages of grief, of which the last one is Acceptance. That doesn't mean consent, as consent has no meaning in that context. It means to no longer be significantly emotionally disturbed by the loss.

we oppose life with death ... So to consent to one is to deny that the other is important. — Metaphysician Undercover

That 'we' applies to Christian philosophy, and to some extent to Western philosophy more generally, but not to humans in general. I find the Taoist perspective much more natural, in which life and death are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other. To deny one is to deny the other. Isn't it interesting that this is almost the opposite of the Christian view which may, as you seem to suggest, assert that to deny one is to uphold the other.

Is Mozart the example here? Because I would argue that he doesn't astonish us as such. — Noble Dust

I am not very knowledgeable about visual art, which is why I chose an example from music. Perhaps the reason Mozart does not astonish you is because you have the mirror image limitation wrt music. I am certainly astonished by him.

Salieri's fictional, bitter description of the opening of the Adagio from Mozart's 'Gran Partita':

Extraordinary! On the page it looked nothing! The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons, basset horns - like a rusty squeezebox. And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took it over, sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I had never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God. — Salieri

Performance of the Adagio

There's a line I like from Woody Allen in the movie 'Paris Manhattan', when he's listing some of what he sees as the very few reasons to go on living. One of them is 'the slow movement of the Jupiter Symphony' (by Mozart).

I suppose where we differ is that whereas I see 'challenging the boundaries' as an important feature of many works of art, I don't regard it as essential to works of art. Beethoven was much more of a boundary-challenger than Mozart, yet Mozart is currently revered more than Beethoven (he said, wistfully thinking of the seventies, when it was the other way around).

Some of Mozart's most beautiful works are completely in conformity with the conventions of his day. Some artists astonish us by breaking boundaries. Others astonish us by showing just how expressive one can be without having to stray outside the boundaries.

OK, I was answering the second part of your question, about how I avoid my acceptance of death making me want to end life now. The answer to the first part is easier - for me. I didn't find a way of making death acceptable to myself. I simply found that it was. Something inside me had changed. Like many aspects of my feelings that change over time, I am unable to pinpoint a specific reason for it.

I can see the artist's point of view. If he sees the juxtaposition of the additional sculpture as detracting from his art work, it is reasonable for him to be upset about that. Whether the additional sculpture improves or degrades the artwork is subjective and can certainly be debated. But I think it reasonable for the artist to complain, and to make use of whatever laws may be available to assist him in that regard.

BTW I did not know of the existence of those laws, but I can understand their motivation. Imagine how da Vinci might feel if the Mona Lisa were permanently displayed with a moustache attached to it, even if the moustache were removable without damaging the painting.

I wonder whether the law would prevent (or render vulnerable to litigation) somebody making copies of the Mona Lisa with moustaches on them though. Or - in the case of the bull, a similar bull sculpture being installed somewhere else accompanied by the girl.

What if their excess over the average is smaller than can be measured by any human instrument? You could say the difference in tallness is not perceivable. But perception does not change truth, and thus the tallness of a thing is not dependant on our perception of it. — Samuel Lacrampe

Quantum Mechanics tells us that all position measurements, which includes tallness, are probability distributions rather than exact numbers. Under most interpretations of QM there is no such thing as the exact measurement. It would seem to follow that if one wishes to believe in exact boundaries of the 'tall' category, one must adopt an interpretation of QM that assumes the existence of unknown, exact measurements. Does one, for instance, have to be a Bohmian, in order to believe in 'essences' in this way?

Further, even if one could, without ambiguity, define 'tall' in that way, the definition would not be consistent with common use. People do not use 'tall' to describe someone whose height is within one micron of the current live human average.

Let's generalize: If the statement "the categories typically referred to by words have fuzzy boundaries" were to be objectively true always, then the words used in that statement, and consequently the whole statement itself, have fuzzy boundaries. In other words, we could logically never be certain of this conclusion. — Samuel Lacrampe

Having fuzzy boundaries does not imply that statements cannot be made with certainty. I think everybody would agree that somebody whose estimated height is greater than two metres is tall, and that somebody whose estimated height is less than 1.5 metres is not tall. So we can make definite statements about such people. It is only about people between 1.5m and 2m that uncertainty arises.

We operate perfectly well every day communicating with each other using concepts that have fuzzy boundaries, because we typically only use words for those concepts in relation to phenomena that lie within the regions of certainty - ie away from the fuzzy region.

But are any of these words unclear? — Samuel Lacrampe

Yes.

Is hair included in the height measurement? If not why not? If so, does somebody become taller when a puff of wind pushes a single strand of hair up?

Is somebody that is 1 micrometre taller than average tall? What if their excess over the average is smaller than can be measured by any human instrument?

Do a whole bunch of non-tall people become tall when a 2 metre person dies?
Do a whole bunch of tall people become non-tall when a baby is born?

You seem to believe that others, perhaps yourself, have found a way of making death acceptable. How do you do this without producing the notion that you might as well just die right now? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, it's a question I sometimes ask myself, especially when I am feeling down. For the present, there are both internal and external reasons to go on. The internal ones include that I want to see what my children do as they make their way in the world. Should they choose to have children, I expect I will enjoy getting to know them. I also want to learn as much more as I can in my areas of interest - like maths and languages.

The external reasons are that my continuance seems to be a net benefit to the world because I do some useful stuff. The most tangible of these are some volunteer work I do and the fact that my paid job pays well, which enables me to give plenty of money to people in need, I think that also, at least for the present, my partner and children would prefer having me around, despite my being frequently quite annoying.

Re your feeling that lack of individual survival after death would render the present nonsensical: have you always felt that way, or has it evolved through life? In my case my attitude to death has undergone several major shifts in the course of my life. I wonder if that's normal, or unusual.

If "The notion of essence is philosophically defunct" is saying that words don't have objective meanings, then this statement is itself meaningless; and that is a self-contradiction. — Samuel Lacrampe

That's not what it's saying. It is saying that the categories typically referred to by words have fuzzy boundaries. The fact that a category has a fuzzy boundary does not render the category meaningless.

Consider state boundaries. Some are determined by rivers. Yet the exact location of the banks of the river, and hence its midpoint, changes slightly over time. That does not render the notion of states meaningless.

Nor does the fuzziness of the 'tall' category render meaningless, or even controversial, the statement that Michael Jordan is tall.

I find this to be a questionable idea — Metaphysician Undercover

I believe you. You are the best placed of any us at this forum to speak authoritatively about what goes on in your mind.

What you are not in any place to do is to speak authoritatively about what happens in other people's minds.

It is entirely reasonable to say 'I find it hard to imagine how someone that does not believe in the survival of the individual can accept their oncoming death'.

To say 'death only becomes acceptable to an individual when that person apprehends that the individual soul continues its existence after the death of the body' is unreasonable, because it is speaking about that which one does not know - which is what goes on in other people's minds.

You're right that they both feature notions of individual rebirth. I should have been more clear. I was referring to the ultimate goals - the attainment of Mokshah (Hindu) or Nibbana (Buddhist). That is where the notion of continuation of individuality dissolves.

In Buddhism and, I think also to some extent in Hinduism, one is condemned to be reborn as an individual until the cycle is broken by attaining the ultimate goal.

Note however that rebirth as an individual is seen as bad - that from which we seek liberation. In that context, expectation of continuation of individuality after death could hardly be seen as something that helps one to accept death.

The point I made, is that death only becomes acceptable to an individual when that person apprehends that the individual soul continues it's existence after the death of the body. This is exemplified by the death of Socrates, and the precepts of Christianity. What is believed in, is the continued existence of the person, the individual's soul. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure about Socrates, but that seems a fair representation of the beliefs of mainstream Christians about death.

But you have not restricted your comments to Christianity, and thereby you imply that somebody who belongs to a religion that does not say the individual retains its individuality after death, cannot accept their death. Given the very large number of Hindus and Buddhists in the world, most of whom do not believe that, and many of whom manage to accept their death with equanimity - that claim seems in direct conflict with what can be observed.

Well, one thing a p-zombie can do, is totally suck the meaning out of any philosophical dialogue. — Wayfarer

Well I personally feel that a dialogue that tries to make scientific arguments for or against a proposition that cannot be approached by science - such as the nature of consciousness, or the existence or non-existence of god - is a dialogue that we all benefit from being 'sucked dry', because such arguments cannot lead anywhere or give rise to anything interesting. Realising how dry and pointless they are allows us to move on to more fruitful lines of thinking (or practice) about consciousness, meaning or gods, untramelled by faux scienciness.

But, that's what's so elegant about it. — Question

Sure - elegantly wrong.

To me, a necessary condition for a solution being elegant is that it doesn't give nonsensical answers.

I am not a materialist, but I can't see why the placebo effect should be seen as an argument against materialism. Is there any good reason to believe a placebo effect would not apply to a p-zombie, with the 'belief' just being a particular pattern in the brain that causes the organism to relax and think positive thoughts?

Negation can mean (at least) two different things. The first applies to a logical sentence and means putting a 'not' in front of it. The second applies to a numeric quantity and means multiplying it by -1.

'Opposite' can be used to mean either. But I think it is less precise than 'negative'. For instance, say we are seated in a circular stadium. You could be opposite me but be in the front row whereas I am in the back row. So your position is opposite mine, but it is not the negative (antipode) of mine. That would only be the case if you too were in the back row.

In the case of orange, the colour negative of a particular shade of orange would have precise values of Cyan, Yellow and Magenta. But we could then multiply those values by any non-unit positive scalar to give a colour that is still 'opposite' but darker or lighter than the exact negative. It would be an opposite but not a negative.

That nuance seems to apply only to the numeric meaning of negation. For the logical meaning I think opposite and negation mean the same thing.

No, look at the function more closely. It cannot address it, because it has no inputs that indicate either the nature of the crime, or who the individual is that is contemplating it. So it will come up with the same results for murder as it does for jaywalking, and the same results for a psychopath as for a saint, if the other inputs are the same - which they very easily could be.

The only way out of this is to either

• introduce additional function inputs that denote the individual and the crime; or
• have different functions for different individuals and different crimes

but then the whole superficial simplicity of the approach starts to unravel.

What a classic, blinkered economist way of analysing things. Look at the input variables. Not one of them has anything to do with feelings, and yet feelings are the primary motivator of everything we do. Leaving the function unspecified provides no worthwhile flexibility if none of the inputs relate to the main drivers.

According to the above framework, somebody is likely to murder their child to sell the body parts for organ transplants, provided they don't expect to be caught.

Even classical finance economists allow for feelings in their calculations about people's investment decisions, via risk-aversion parameters. How much more important a role are feelings likely to play in analysing crime than investment decisions.

Either J Wooldridge has been taken out of context, or he needs to do some remedial study in Behavioural Economics.

Purgatory? Sure - that's one of very, very many eschatological theories. Won't it be fun finding out which one is more accurate?

Obviously, the societies of the time have something to do with the characteristics of their God, but I was interested in knowing what you thought about the idea of there actually existing only one God, which is identified under different names/personalities across all global religions. — Javants

I think the idea of a single God that presents itself differently to different cultures is an interesting one, and so is the idea of multiple gods.

I cannot see any way that we can figure out which of these is the case - or whether it's something else entirely - maybe no gods, maybe we are all gods, maybe we are all god.

I am not in a special hurry to die, but one of the things to look forward to about it is that, if there is a god or gods waiting until we die to reveal itself, that will be a nice surprise (as long as it isn't a horrid god).

Besides, the top seven countries in that graph have been subject to civil wars and/or invasions and/or long-standing sectarian conflicts, often between Sunni and Shi'a, which is one of the major exacerbating tensions behind many of the fatalities. — Wayfarer

Exactly - it's too much religion, not too much secularism, that - together with the poverty, warfare and general desperation - enables the terrorism. A 23 page word salad, by somebody that should know better than to stray from writing knowledgeably about spiritual opportunities and practices to writing superficially and speculatively about geopolitics and criminology, does nothing to change that.

Religiously inspired terrorism can be understood as a response to a fundamental problem of secular modernity: the ‘‘God-shaped hole’’ that motivates it.

This seems to be directly at odds with Vagabond's graph showing that nearly all terrorist acts occur in deeply religious Muslim countries, where one would have to search long and hard to find somebody with a secular outlook. Further, they are predominantly committed against religious people that belong to competing religions or sects - not against the non-religious. While on the other hand the Muslims in Western countries, that are every day confronted by 'secular modernity', are hardly ever motivated to commit terrorist acts.

My view is that the whole 'possible worlds' idea is dependent on imagination. Although not usually expressed that way, a 'possible world' is in my view just a set of circumstances that we can imagine.

I don't think this is likely. What's not unlikely, because it's already happened, is that radical Muslims will murder citizens in Western countries en masse. — Thorongil

The number of casualties from which have been far, far, fewer than from issues like the one WhiskeyWhiskers pointed out, and many other tragedies that Western governments continue to neglect simply because they don't make as exciting news copy as terrorism does.

If that's the worst that's likely to happen, the issue of dealing with terrorism can get in the queue behind those other issues. Why is there no hysteria over road deaths, inadequate-health-system-related deaths, or poverty-related deaths, all of which dwarf terrorism-related deaths?

Finally, you could simply cut off the snake's head by destroying ISIS. — Thorongil

You know it's not simple. If it were simple it would have been done.

Just finished 'Le chair et le sang' (Flesh and Blood) by Francois Mauriac.
It was a difficult read, but rewarding towards the end. It captured the ambiguity and uncertainty of human relationships really well.

It felt somewhat Existentialist to me. But it was written in 1926, thus pre-dating Existentialism.

This is why they must be extirpated post haste, — Thorongil

(1) You use the words 'This is why', as if the sentence logically follows from what went before it. But it doesn't. The only conclusions that follow from what you wrote are 'don't give terrorists planes'. It seems to me that the West's governments have been pretty successful on that front over the last ten years or so.

(2) Athough your conclusion doesn't follow from your premises, I think most people would agree with it, assuming that the 'they' you refer to is terrorists and by 'extirpated' you mean 'killed or imprisoned'. The question is, how do you plan to do that? I'm sure the West's security organisations would love to hear your ideas.

(3) Your post appeared to be an attempt to say that we should be more concerned about deaths from terrorism than deaths from other sources. But it gave no plausible reasons. Do you have any reasons? Can you make an even halfway plausible case that radical Muslims are likely to overthrow the governments of Western countries - which is what is implied by the hysterical term 'existential threat'? Remember that government overthrow by hostile powers was what we faced in WW2 and in the Cold War.

As a person, or do you detest his writing? The distinction is unusually important with Sartre because I understand he was a difficult person to get on with, and plenty of people that loved his writing couldn't stand the man.

I myself find it rather bizarre when I come across someone who categorizes all religious folk as being sky daddy worshiping young Earth nutcases, but will, on the other hand, see no issue when a person might label themselves "spiritual, but not religious." — Heister Eggcart

I think that in general the people who do that categorisation you describe are not going to sneer any less at self-described SBNRs. That is my experience at least.

There are plenty of people that reject the dogmas of the institutional religions, but still are spiritual in temperament and practice. I think I fit into that category. I would not describe myself as SBNR because I would say I am religious but do not accept the dogmas of any institutional religion. I think we recently agreed to disagree because for you 'religion' means organised religion, whereas for me it doesn't (unless that was somebody else in which case I apologise for misidentifying you).

In talking to somebody for whom 'religious' means affiliated with a particular religious institution I would have to say I am SBNR in order to avoid misunderstanding.

But I would not suggest that all people affiliated with mainstream religions are skydaddy-worshipping simpletons. I only did that in my radical atheist phase, which was several years ago. Now I'm not really a radical anything, except greeny.

Such ideas are generally not much recognised nowadays. — Wayfarer

If you mean the idea that conscience is our knowledge of God's law, then I think you're right, and I think the decline of such ideas is a reason for rejoicing.

On the other hand, if you mean ideas about conscience as our innate feeling of what is right, and our sometimes having internal conflict over what the right thing is, then don't you think that is a perennial theme of fiction, that is as powerful and vibrant today as it ever was? What do you make of Sartre's writings on this, such as the young French man torn over whether to join the resistance or stay and look after his mother?

#OklahomaCity
168 killed
680 injured

#Vietnam
1,353,000 deaths. Many more injured.

Trivialisation is putting a hashtag in place of a rational argument.

#Pompeii
10,000-25,000 dead

Plus, I forgot to add, she's a practising, moderate Christian, which is a good example of why secular societies benefit from being tolerant of moderate Christians as well.