Thank you StreetLight. Very thought-provoking.

My approach to difficulties with what 'feminism' means, and whether one agrees with whatever that is, is my usual approach of rejecting the use of 'isms' and instead focusing on the beliefs themselves. So rather than think I am in favour of feminism, I instead think that I am in favour of specific policies, like universal free access to family planning, abortion on demand, equal pay for equal work and, in less developed countries, equal rights to things like attending school, dress, permission to drive, permission to work, ownership of property etc. If somebody asks me whether I support feminism, I'll reply that I don't know what that means, but if they'd care to ask my opinion on a specific policy that relates to gender I'd be delighted to answer.

My daughter, who is very passionate about these issues, strongly disagrees with me and asserts that it's important to identify and support the 'feminism' label itself, and hence the passionate arguments about what the word means are essential. She thinks I'm a cop-out by deprecating labels.

I'd like to understand her position better, but it's hard to do that with one so passionate (don't get me wrong. I love that she is so passionate about important issues). If anybody in this 'safe space' could explain why some feel the label is important, rather than the policies themselves, I'd appreciate the opportunity to learn about that.

BTW : thanks for the link on motte-and-bailey arguments. I'd heard the term before but didn't know what it was. Now I do, and I think it's a really helpful concept. I doubt their use is correlated with a concern about social justice, as has been suggested, but that's a separate point.

The mistake most atheists make in asking 'who made God, then?' (usually with a triumphant crossing-of-arms, as if it's a knockdown argument) is that it fails to grasp the 'uncreated' nature of the first principle. In other words, it attempts to situate the first principle on the same level, or within the same domain, as phenomena. — Wayfarer

That putative atheist argument can be viewed in a negative or a positive way, just like how Peter Singer's arguments for animal rights can. Anti Singerians protest 'you're trying to reduce humans to the level of animals' to which Singer would reply 'No, I am trying to raise animals to the level of humans'.

Similarly in this case, the theist protests 'you are vastly underestimating God' to which the atheist can reply 'No, you are vastly underestimating the universe'.

Which one is right? Maybe we'll never know.

There is a tradition in philosophy for philosophers to develop the meaning of a term. This means that one has to read much of the philosopher's work to understand fully the application of the word — Metaphysician Undercover

That corresponds with my understanding of certain sorts of philosophy (eg classical theism, Heidegger) and that's why I see those sorts of philosophy it as mysticism. Plato sometimes sounds non-mystical but I find him to be mystical in much of his work.

There's no way that reading several books can be necessary to comprehend a definition. The definitions and rules of quantum mechanics could be written in no more than ten pages, so I figure anything that takes longer than that is poetry rather than logic. That's not a criticism. I find much of the best philosophy to be poetry. It's just that it would be futile for us to try to interpret it as logic.

What will hold them together? — Agustino

This is in fact one of the key reasons why my impression is the opposite of yours. Staying together to ride out the ups and downs that happen even in the best partnership is generally a good thing and, in my experience is practised by both believers and non-believers. It is much more a function of wisdom and maturity than it is of religious beliefs.

But it is often the case that people form a partnership that is bad for both of them, because their personalities and aspirations are simply not compatible. Untold misery is then caused when religious dictates make such a couple remain together.

The notion of a 'simple' God, and other such words used by classical theists, has led me to the (tentative, as always) view that Thomism is actually a form of mysticism. I expect many Thomists would fervently disagree, and the popular image of Thomas is as an analytic scholar.

I don't mean 'mysticism' in a pejorative way, by the way. I regard mysticism very highly and am trying to cultivate it in myself - although along different lines from Thomism, that are more suited to my temperament.

The reason I see Thomism as mystical is that it relies on various words that have no definition that can escape either circularity or triviality, of which 'simple' is an example. Others are 'contingent', 'conditioned' and 'immaterial'. They mostly seem to be based in ontology and connected to the Aristotelean idea of essence - another term that one either finds meaningful or one doesn't. Since no definitions are available, people either find themselves naturally accepting them as if they mean something, or they don't. I am in the latter camp. But I have great respect for Thomists in that they have, over the centuries set up such a rich, fascinating worldview. It's only when they get start insisting that theirs is the only possible correct view, and that all others should adopt it, that it becomes irritating. And, to their credit, that sort of triumphalist evangelism is not a characteristic of most of the Thomists I have encountered.

It matters how you get to the motions of procreation - if you get there maimed, humiliated, and broken - or you get there whole - most non-religious people get there in the former category. — Agustino

That's an interesting claim. It is the exact opposite of my own impression, although I would not seek to elevate my impression to a claim.
Perhaps you have a source for your claim?

The argument in lines 1-3 doesn't get anybody anywhere.

* Some people who believe in God will accept premises 1 and 2, but the argument will make no difference to their life because they believed in God anyway.
* The rest of the people who believe in God will reject one or both of premises 1 or 2, and hence reject the argument (like that Christian theologian/philosopher Wes Something from a US university that ripped Craig's argument to shreds). But that will make no difference to their life because they believe in God for reasons that have nothing to do with this silly argument.
* People who don't believe in God will reject one or both of the premises, and hence reject the argument. Why? Because otherwise they'd be convinced by the argument and hence believe in God. By the contrapositive we can conclude that, since they don't believe in God, they must find the argument unsound and hence reject at least one of its premises. So the argument makes no difference to those people either.

It's theoretically possible that there exists one or more person who disbelieved in God and then changed their mind in response to the Kalam argument. I have never heard of such a person. William Craig certainly wasn't such a person. I seem to recall him telling a story that he first got into Jesus because a cute girl in his class at Uni told him that the reason she smiled so much was because she was into Jesus. Now that is a convincing reason to adopt a new worldview. The urge to go through the motions of procreation is very powerful.

The fourth line is a bald assertion. It has no logical argument supporting it. There aren't even any premises to consider and decide whether to accept.

The sole value of the Kalam argument is that it provides good theatre for people that like to watch atheists and Christian apologists doing battle.

I'm confused by this. Let's take the observable universe as an example. Surely it's flat (parallel lines never cross, the corners of cubes will always make right angles, etc.), finite, homogenous, isotropic, and spherical (given three spatial dimensions of equal distances)? — Michael

We don't know any of those things. I'll consider them one by one.

Flat? The density parameter has been measured to be very close to 1, but it has to be EXACTLY 1 for the universe to be flat. But if it is exactly one there will always be values greater than and less than 1 within the error bounds of any unbiased measurement. We can never know the exact value of any measurement. If the universe is in fact flat we will never be able to tell whether that is the case or whether it is elliptic or hyperbolic with a parameter very close to 1. In the flat and hyperbolic cases the universe would be infinite. In the elliptic case it would be finite but unimaginably large.

Homogeneous and isotropic? We know these do not hold at the usual scale. The cosmological principle states that these must hold 'at the large scale' but no formal definition is given of what that means. One of my current projects is to develop a formalisation of that definition, but it keeps getting interrupted by other things. Most cosmology tends to just assume the universe is isotropic and homogeneous.

Spherical? It depends what is meant by that. Certainly we can mark out a sphere in space, and develop a spherical system of coordinates for it - indeed Spherical Coordinates is a standard type of representation of 3D Euclidean space. But that tells us nothing about the shape of the universe as a whole. The three shapes envisaged by current theories are Elliptic, Flat and Hyperbolic, corresponding to density parameters greater than, equal to and less than 1. It is conceivable we could prove the shape is elliptic or hyperbolic, because it's possible to get a confident reading about an inequality. But we could never prove it is flat because that would require a reliable measurement of an EXACT equality. The best we could say is that it is very nearly flat, but that doesn't help at all with the crucial question of whether it is finite.

Under current theories and methods, the only way to conclude the universe is finite (infinite) would be to get a measurement that shows the parameter is greater than (less than) 1, beyond the limits of experimental error.

The wiki article on the shape of the universe covers these issues and I think is rather good.

When one says sphere, one can be referring to either

• the 2D object that is the surface or boundary of the sphere. In 3D Cartesian coordinates, this is the set of points that satisfy the equation x^2+y^2+z^2=r^2, or
• the 3D object comprised of both the boundary and the interior. In 3D Cartesian coordinates, this is the set of points that satisfy the equation x^2+y^2+z^2<=r^2

Both of these are objects that are embedded in 3D space - hence the three coordinates x, y and z.

Since space is 3D, to get something like a sphere for our universe we would need to be referring to the analog of these that are objects embedded in 4D space, which we would call 'hyperspheres' because they have one extra dimension. These would be the spaces whose coordinates satisfy the equations

• x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2=r^2 for the boundary; or
• x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2<=r^2 for the boundary and interior

The second is not possible because it has a boundary, and can be dismissed by Aristotle's ancient argument about going to the boundary and then poking my spear through it.

However the first has no boundary because it IS a boundary. It is a 3D space inhabited by 3D creatures, so they cannot point their spears in a direction perpendicular to their space. So that space is possible, and is one of the three models that is possible for the shape of the universe under current cosmological theories. Those models are elliptic, flat and hyperbolic, and the hypersphere is elliptic.

Which of the three models is the case depends on whether the overall global average spacetime curvature is positive, negative or zero. Zero corresponds to flat. We could never prove that curvature is zero because there will always be an accuracy limit to our measurements, so we can only ever determine that the curvature is less than some number. On the other hand, it IS conceivable that we could prove that curvature is positive or negative, in which case we would know the universe is elliptic (hyperspherical) or hyperbolic.

So in answer to your specific question, a (hyper)sphere is possible, but it is not flat. A spacetime that is both flat and finite would have to have a boundary, and that possibility can be dismissed by a variety of arguments, including Aristotle's, and the observation that such a space is not homogeneous (because some points are nearer the boundary than others).

Technical point. Although we always visualise a 2D sphere boundary as embedded in 3D space, it is not necessary for that to be the case. One can construct such an object without using three dimensions. Similarly, there is no need for a 3D hypersphere (which mathematicians call a '3-sphere' or just S^3) to be embedded in 4D space. I mention this otherwise pedantic-seeming point just to head off comments that then there must be something for the universe to 'expand into'.

What is the shape of a finite, flat, homogeneous, isotropic universe with dark energy? — tom

According to current cosmological theories there cannot be such a spacetime. If it is flat it must be infinite.

Finite spacetimes can expand just as well as infinite ones. There is no need for them to expand into anything and no need for anything to be outside it. Things just get farther apart, is all.
Put differently, the length of the shortest straight-line trip around the universe (analogous to circumnavigating the Earth along the equator or another Great Circle) increases.

Certainly expansion of a finite spacetime can create room for more guests if by room we just mean 'empty space'. Where the hotel & guest analogy breaks down then is with the question 'where are the extra guests going to come from?' If they were in the spacetime all along then there's no need to make room for them. On the other hand if they somehow come from outside the spacetime then the spacetime is not a closed system and we'd need a whole lot more info about what sort of system it is to begin to analyse the question.

The expression 'an armed society is a polite society' makes me think of such very polite people as:

- Dr No ('No Mr Bond, I expect you to die')
- Don Vito Corleone, courteously accepting the petitions of wedding guests to have their enemies harmed or sent to sleep with the fishes.
- Hannibal Lecter, and his Olde Worlde courtesy to Jodie Foster's character in Silence of the Lambs
- The courtesy that surrounded the verbal aspect of aristocratic duels to the death in the 15th-19th centuries.

How do we choose between a decrease in manners (assuming for the sake of argument the saying is true) and an increase in schoolyard killings? It's a tough one.

Oh, no wait. My mistake. It isn't.

You said they were talking about galaxies moving farther apart. Now it's equations? — jkop

There's no incongruity. When they are doing physics, they are working with equations. When they are talking to lay people to try to give them an approximate sense of what the equations are about, they may talk in terms of galaxies, as in the balloon analogy (example here).

Nevertheless, neither talk about equations nor the relation between galaxies is talk about the nature of the universe, whether it is finite or infinite.

The equations are capable of making definitive statements about whether the universe is finite or infinite, based on observations. Observations have not been made to date that can determine which it is, but it is possible that there may be in the future, in which case the finitude or otherwise of the universe will become definitively and scientifically settled one way or the other.

I should add that the equations only relate to this spacetime. Proving that this spacetime is finite would not rule out the possibility of additional, possibly inaccessible spacetimes, of which there could be infinitely many. In that case we need to be more precise about whether by 'universe' we mean 'this spacetime' or 'everything that exists'.

No they are not talking about the galaxies but about the equations of the spacetime metric. Referring to galaxies is just a way to give a vague sense of it to those that don't want to grapple with the rquations, as is saying that space is expanding.
Neither statement captures the full, precise meaning of the equations. If it did, there would be no need for the equations.

That's correct the way lay people think of 'expanding', meaning that the total size of the thing is getting bigger. To get bigger it must be finite.

Now when a physicist talks about expanding space they don't mean that the universe is getting bigger. They just mean that galaxies are getting farther apart. That can happen in either a finite or an infinite universe.

There is currently no conclusive evidence as to whether the universe is finite or infinite.

First let me say that this is a topic that really interests me, so although it may look like I'm arguing, I'm actually trying to explore the notion in the only way I have available (other than solitary reflection) which is dialogue.

What you've written there is very similar to what I sometimes say to myself. Often the 'everything is a manifestation of the one' vibe - which I first picked up a few years ago influenced partly by Alan Watts - is helpful to me, but sometimes it just seems silly.

The trouble is that, when I then try to get all hard-headed and rationalist about it and address what you call 'the case in hand', expecting to find a solid question that is amenable to rational consideration, I find that there is no clear question. Looking back at the OP, we see the question 'who are you'. When I try to approach this in a rational way, I only ever end up with trivial, reductionist answers - answers such as 'this sequence of episodes of consciousness' or 'this body'.

So when I am in that mode, I end up giving up, and concluding that there is no satisfying answer to be had via a rational approach to the question. I suppose that is because the question is so poorly defined. It is a mantra rather than a formal inquiry. But if it is a mantra, and there is no rationally precise answer to be had, then perhaps there is no information to be lost in offering a response that omits distinctions.

I wonder, is there any way of interpreting the question that allows an answer, but not just one that is either trivial and reductionist, or mystically holistic? If those are the only two choices, I will usually opt for mystically holistic, but being a lifelong rationalist, I could not resist a more rational answer if I could see one that was nontrivial - one that 'explains the phenomenon' as you rather elegantly put it.

I believe you. And for me*, the greater satisfaction comes from viewing the different phenomena as parts of a whole. It's a lucky thing that there are so many different metaphysics around. There's one to appeal to (almost) everyone.

* D'you see what I did there? I'm trying out this 'and' instead of 'but' thing. It seems rather contrived to me, but I think I should give it a fair go because it seems that maybe there's an appealing principle behind it.

I'll stick my head above the parapet and defend the 'Plastic bag is the universe becoming a container' or 'I am the universe becoming self-aware' epigrams.

I find such statements meaningful within the context of process metaphysics. Under that approach, the universe is one gigantic process and any object or phenomenon is what the universe is doing in that place and time.

So one cannot reduce it to 'the plastic bag is the pile of horse manure' because the plastic bag is what the universe is doing here, now, and the pile of manure is what the universe is doing there, then. I am the universe being self-awarehere, and Un is the universe being self-aware there, and this keyboard is the universe being self-unaware (or not, depending on whether I want to mix my panpsychic leanings in with this) below the ends of my fingers.

I find this approach coherent and strangely satisfying, but I fully understand that many people feel it is a load of New Age baloney.

Answering a very old question to its asker, when the said asker has changed his position, is simply pointless. — Agustino

A polite way to put that would be:
'Actually I've changed my position since the OP. You probably haven't noticed because this thread is very long'
I still find your position on public execution barbaric, just not as barbaric as the former position regarding torture.

Should unrelenting torture of the worst kind be a punishment for such a person UNTIL and IF they repent and feel sorry for what they have done? — Agustino

No.

Why or why not? — Agustino

Because I don't want anybody to have to suffer torture. Further, it would be disgusting and abhorrent to me for such a barbarity as deliberate torture to be conducted by a state of which I was a part.

I think many of us would feel good to see such a person subjected to the worst kinds of suffering until he begs for mercy. Would you disagree? — Agustino

I agree that that many feel like that. But I don't feel like that, and I regard it as sad, and a source of much of the misery in the world, that many people feel like that.

Would you not feel good to see such a bastard suffer? — Agustino

No, I would feel very distressed.

Thus far, it is just about feelings. Your feelings are almost diametrically opposed to mine. One cannot rationally debate feelings.

But then we see an attempt to move from an expression of feeling to a rational argument:

A more rational reason is so that other criminals who intend to commit similar crimes see what will happen to them and repent sooner rather than later. — Agustino

That might be rational if there were any empirical evidence to support it. But none has been provided. To me it sounds like wishful thinking.

such a punishment ensures that justice is adequately done - which is required for people to have faith in the justice system. — Agustino

These are two assertions - both provided without rationale or evidence. The first is just an assertion of what you feel to be just, and so lies in the undebatable realm of feelings. The second is contrary to my impression of what the available empirical evidence says. The countries that have lower rates of crime tend to be those that have less vengeful justice systems. Finland has lower crime than the US, which has lower crime than Afghanistan.

It seems to me that the analog/digital distinction is not so much about the binary Yes/No nature of digital things, but rather about discrete vs continuous mathematics. Discrete mathematics is about cases where there is a finite or at least countable set of possible states, whereas continuous mathematics - of which calculus is the best-known example - is where there is an uncountable set of states, with a metric over that set to denote distance between states (eg the distance between 2.71 and 3.141 is 0.431).

I've just noticed that it's curious that we tend to (or at least I do) think of digital as 'binary' whereas etymologically it refers to a base-10 system, because 'digital' is in reference to our ten fingers.

Another observation is that, whereas nature may seem continuous, in very many common situations it is actually discrete. For instance QM tells us that there are only a countable number of different energy states of a pendulum. It's just that they are so close together that they seem continuous/uncountable.

Conversely, some processes that seem discrete are actually continuous, or at least have many more states than we think of them as having. For instance we think of a gate on a computer chip as being either Off or On, but actually that is determined by the voltage applied to the gate, which is usually high or low, but it could - in the presence of abnormal environmental factors or a flaw in the chip - be somewhere in between, providing a state in between on and off.

I haven't yet got my head around what that means for DNA, but it seems to me that there may be scope for interpreting the world either as discrete or continuous, digital or analog.

It sounds reasonable to me. I take 'inherent meaning' to suggest some sort of 'global meaning'. If there is no global meaning there can still be local meaning, which is just what we mean by 'meaning'. There are plenty of other things that work locally but not globally.

Aaarrrgh. Now the site will get stuck in an infinite regress, crash, get buggy and end up an electronic wasteland like The Other Place.

Really I hate the whole thing, the sooner I can be out of this contract, the better. — Wayfarer

It sounds like you work in something related to IT. I'm interested in what sort of work you find the most rewarding in your chosen field. I expect it varies greatly between individuals but I'd like to hear what works best for you.

I don't like hackers either but I'm sure we can find a bright side. All those people employed by IT security companies have jobs, earn wealth and pay tax that enables us to maintain our marvellous welfare state (no sarcasm intended, just in case it's not obvious) and look after the poor and vulnerable. Even better, they are doing it in an industry that creates very little waste of physical resources or greenhouse impact, because there is almost no physical production or transportation involved. AND, many of the people involved enjoy their job, whereas otherwise they might get depressed and/or develop criminal tendencies.

Who knows, maybe the Y2K fear partly drove the economic boom of the nineties. Maybe all that work was necessary, maybe it wasn't, but it generated lots of low-physical-waste activity and kept people happy and engaged.

In his essay 'In Praise of Idleness' from around 1915, Bertrand Russell proposed that we should benefit from our increased productivity by sharing the work and wealth around, so that everybody worked only about sixteen hours a week. There seems to be too much greed around for that to happen so the next best thing may be relatively harmless make-work activities, to stop all the wealth from ending up in the hands of the running-dog capitalist pigs that own the means of production.

Only if you're a scientific realist, right? If you're an instrumentalist then two incompatible theories are both valid if they both make successful predictions about their target subject matter. — Michael

Good point. I'm a little uncomfortable using the word 'valid' about a theory, as it doesn't seem to convey the aspect of provisionality (temporariness) that attaches to any theory (IMO), but I can't think of a better word, so let's go with 'valid'.

But if your expertise in Popper matched your expertise in physics, then you would know that, according to Popper, it is logically impossible to falsify any theory. [bold added by andrewk] — tom

My knowledge of Popper's works is much less than that of physics, but nevertheless I think you may be mistaken here. Did you mean 'logically impossible to verify any theory'? If so, then that matches my understanding of Popper, and agrees with what I was saying.

If you really meant 'falsify' then could you please provide a direct quote from Popper where he says this.

According to current experimental evidence, both general relativity and quantum mechanics are perfectly correct theories of reality
.......
we know they are incompatible because their deep explanations do not agree. — Tom

Without knowing anything about science, one can be certain from basic logic that one of those statements cannot be correct.

Adding my knowledge of physics to the mix, I can point out that it is the first one.

Philosophy's greatest (IMHO) ever contribution to science was Popper's notion of Falsifiability. Any scientist that claims to have a perfectly correct theory of reality needs to go back to university and start learning from the beginning again. ALL theories are only ever currently non-falsified hypotheses.

I agree that one can get stuck in an uncomfortable feeling of infinite regress if one insists that science is 'explanation'. I know we all talk about it like that, myself included. But I think that if we examine closely the real meaning of statements like 'Newton explained why objects fall towards Earth', it is no more literally accurate than when I say 'I laughed my head off'.

I think science does two important things.

(1) It enables us to make better predictions, so that we can better control our environment and increase the likelihood of achieving some of our aims. This is the 'instrumental' aspect of science and the only practical one. We don't care why Newton's or Einstein's gravitational laws hold. We just need to know that using them will enable us to get a communications satellite to where we want it to be.

(2) It enables us to see patterns in the universe - aka regularities, aka symmetries, aka laws. This is the more 'fun' part of science, and the one that gets confused with explanations. We call things like Newton's gravitational law an explanation, but neither it nor any other observed regularity can ever be a complete explanation, because we can always ask 'why that regularity'.

We live in a universe that has some delightful patterns in it and the non-instrumental aspect of science is finding ever more patterns, usually somewhat more general and wide-ranging than the ones they replace. They are lovely to behold and searching for them is great fun. But they are no more explanations than is 'because I wanted to' or 'because I said so'.

It is a consequence of the laws of physics that you, or any aspect of you, including your qualia, can be rendered exactly by a virtual reality generator. We don't know how to achieve that yet, but it is guaranteed possible under known physics. — tom

No. It isn't.

Your first post is this:

It will take more boots on the ground in my estimation, or else we will continue to see very slow progress if any at all. The Syrian situation called for humanitarian military intervention years ago, but the West was too cowardly to act due to the perceived failure of Iraq and an increasingly isolationist electorate. — Thorongil

Your suggestion is to put 'more boots on the ground'.

It's fine that you believe that that would work, even though past evidence suggests that that can at best provide a temporary reduction in the problem. There is room for doubt, so it is not unreasonable for you to hold the opinion that it would work.

But it makes no sense for you to assert that the West 'refuses to destroy its source'. The respective governments, and their advisors, simply disagree with you. They do not believe that what you propose can destroy its source. I could equally argue that the West 'refuses to destroy the source' of Daesh by continuing to support the Saudi regime and not taking a hard line with Israel over settlements and genuine attempts at a Palestinian solution. But I won't, because I recognise that there are genuinely differing views about this.

Governments and people can and do have different opinions about what would work, but it's pure fantasy to imply that others know that your proposed solution would work but are just scared to implement it.

Lurking here and there. Why? Is there a post I've missed that explains how Daesh can be surgically removed from the Earth without causing enormous suffering to those unfortunate enough to live where Daesh hangs out?

For the first time in some 70 odd years, bombs and bullets can be heard again in its great cities. Why? Because the West refuses to destroy the source. — Thorongil

'Refuses to' implies 'is able to'.

Explain then, how the source can be 'destroyed', and how many innocent people would be killed in the process.

It occurs to me that even playing atonal music requires agreement on two parameters, and hence is not toally free of constraints - provided it is within the 'well-tempered' framework that is used for Western music.

Those parameters are (1) the frequency of a reference note - say A4=440Hz, and (2) the standard distance between notes, which in a well-tempered system is determined as a frequency ratio between adjacent notes equal to the twelfth root of two (referred to as a 'semitone').

Sliding and non-fretted instruments, and voice, need not be limited to that, but instruments with keys are, although a very skilled player can 'bend' the notes on a wind instrument.

Bending aside, every note playen in an atonal piece within a well-tempered framework has a frequency of the form 440 x 2^(k/12) for some integer k.

Indian music uses quarter-tones, but that just doubles the richness of the framework, so that any notes of the form 440 x 2^(k/24) can be used. There is still a constraining framework.

I wonder what an 'absolutely free' performance would sound like, in which notes of any frequency were played.

I'll try to defend this post against potential protestations of irrelevance on the grounds that it shows that even when we think we are being completely free of frameworks, we often find that we are still within a framework that we hadn't noticed. That can apply to morals as much as to music.

Yet we don't need to talk about the computer telling the story. For all its of-then statements are programmed consciously by a programmer, and realized consciously by a user. — IVoyager

It occurs to me that an additional necessary condition of something being a story (additional to the conscious teller and conscious listener) is that the sentences be in the indicative mode of speech, not the imperative or interrogative.

Instructions to a computer are in the imperative mode (I command you to do this!).

What are people's views on Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique? As I understand it, there is no home key in that form.
At the time (1920s) plenty of people protested that it was not music. I think the majority of musicians these days accept it as music.

Yes I think I agree with that.

Understand final cause and we will know why the world has to exist the way it does. It's about making the world by reason, rather than existing states. — Willow

Do you think it is possible that that understanding could ever be achieved?

I feel very confident indeed that it is impossible, although I doubt I could formally prove that.

No, because I think within Platonism there is, I think, a terminus of explanation or a vision of the intelligibility of the Cosmos, which originated with Plato, and found completer expression by later Platonism (and neo-Platonism). — Wayfarer

Can you explain what that completer expression is, and how it matches up to the definition of intelligibility you gave in your earlier post as being a complete understanding. Does human understanding of anything satisfy that completer expression? If so, of what?

I still can't see how anything could ever satisfy that definition of intelligible, so to pick on physics just because some people find the Standard Model inelegant (and I include myself amongst those people)and many of those would prefer some resources to be diverted from particle physics to condensed matter physics, is arbitrary at best.

Also, I'm mystified by this:

And to say that the ancient religious philosophies simply constitute a sticker saying 'God did it - ask no further!' betrays a basic misunderstanding of such accounts. .............
such understandings are embedded in a realm of discourse - taking them out of that, and referring to them as kind of formulae or slogans, can't convey anything meaningful about them.

Against whom are you arguing here? Has anybody in this thread accused ancient philosophies of using slogans or resting upon 'God did it'? Where?