Comments

  • Human Motivation as a Constant Self-Deceiving
    ↪schopenhauer1
    I can't see the deception in the behaviours described. To say there is deception is to say that there is an objective state of affairs that the deceiver denies. But the OP is about feelings, which are subjective. So I cannot see how deception comes into it.

    Of course it is possible for somebody to deceive themself about their feelings. It often happens that someone is angry yet tells themselves and others that they are not. But only that person themself can ultimately know whether they were self-deceiving in that way. Any belief by a person about whether another person has the feelings they say they do can only ever be a guess.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    @Pierre-Normand I've thought some more about why I have been defending The First Law's ability to prevent bifurcation when looking backwards in time. It looks like I started in response to your post quoted below.

    Notice, though, that this proposed expansion only shaves off 'branching outs' from bifurcation point towards the future. Determinism is commonly defined as a property of a system whereby the state of this system at a time, in conjunction with the dynamical laws governing its evolution, uniquely determine its state at any other time (either past or future from this point in time). This is a time-symmetrical definition of determinism. Under that definition, if the laws are such that there remains bifurcation points in phase space that are branching out towards the past, then the system still is indeterministic. The system past or present states uniquely determine its future; but its future or present states don't always uniquely determine its past. — Pierre-Normand
    I have come to the tentative realisation that I don't have any intuitive sense that a model of the world needs to be satisfy that criterion. Key contributors to this feeling are:

    • it seems entirely natural to me that there might have been more than one path by which we got to the situation we are now in. This contrasts with my feeling that a simple model like Newton's is more aesthetically pleasing without multiple possible future paths.
    • I do not feel intuitively that tracing back into the past should be as easy as projecting into the future
    • my sense of the purpose and meaning of Newton's Laws is that they are purely future directed. The observation that, in all physically possible cases, they still hold when we change the sign of the time coordinate, was made later by others, and I am not aware of any important physical theorems that rely on that observation.

    With that in mind I have returned to favouring my original reformulation of Newton's First Law:
    Where there is more than one future movement pattern (locus) of an object that is compatible with the 2nd and 3rd laws and the conditions in place at time t, and one or more of those loci involves the object's velocity remaining constant for the period [t,t+h) for some h>0, the pattern that occurs will be one of those latter loci. — andrewk
    This is not just an artificial construction. It is my best attempt at stating formally what I believe intuitively to be the case for a Newtonian model.

    It is carefully formulated so as to still allow movement where there is a time-varying external force on the particle, that is zero at time t when the particle is stationary. In that case, if the force starts to increase at time t (eg according to formula F(t') = t' - t), the object will commence movement at time t because it would contradict the 2nd law if it did not do so. But in the case of the dome there is no time-varying external force. The external force varies by position, not time.

    I would be interested in comments on this position.

    And another thing

    Another way to avoid bifurcations, both future and past, might be to replace the 1st law by a new law saying that the relationship of any force to time must be analytic. Analytic functions are expressible as a power series, which implies, but is stronger than, the condition of being smooth. I have a strong intuitive sense that all force functions are analytic.

    With this constraint, the dome could not be constructed, because its surface is not smooth, so it would require application of a non-smooth force to make it into that shape. I also doubt whether the ball could be positioned perfectly atop the dome by application of an analytic force.

    For this thought too I would very much appreciate comments.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    Having reflected a bit, I don't think I'm motivated to defend Newton's laws against suggestions that they don't always allow unambiguous projection into the past (retrojection?). I have always felt rather dubious about that idea, and would be not at all upset to find that it cannot hold in all situations.

    I don't know why I've been arguing in its defence. I suppose I just got caught up in the momentum, and the challenge of coming up with arguments against a well-directed set of challenges.

    I'm thinking of reverting to a version of the first law that only removes ambiguity (bifurcations) going forward, not backward, as that is what my intuitive feel for Newton's Laws is.

    But I'll sleep on it first, in case I change my mind again.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    Les us assume that the ball has been shot up with a canon, or hit with a cue stick, if you like. — Pierre-Normand
    In that case the path that involves the ball having always been at the top of the dome will not be consistent, under the 2nd law, with the current state of the cannon or the cue stick (eg heat, momentum) Also, the momentum of the dome will be different in both cases, as the ball transfers its horizontal momentum to the dome (3rd law) as it climbs to the top.

    The second point has a more general application than the first. If we truncate our histories before we get back to the firing of the cannon, so that it starts with the ball already in motion, the momentum of the dome will differ when the ball is at the top between the case where it was always there and the case where it rolled up.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    I am assuming that the system consists in the dome, the ball bearing, the ambient gravitational field, and nothing else. — Pierre-Normand
    In that case it is impossible for the ball to have rolled up the dome, because there is nothing in the system that could have given it the necessary upward impulse. So if we observe it sitting at the top of the dome, the only possible history is that it has always been there. This can be derived from the 2nd law alone. The 1st law is not needed.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Why do you think that? You asked a question about the future and I replied about the future. I didn't say anything about the past in that latest reply because the question was not about that.

    The definition above prevents bifurcation in the past by means of the subset W. As I said earlier, one needs to be more cautious when talking about bifurcation in the past. Generally, for any given observation, no matter how ordinary, there are multiple past scenarios that could have led to it (example of ball at bottom of inverted dome), and distinguishing between them needs information about more particles than just the ball and the dome. But that's not bifurcation in the sense we've been discussing. It's just a lack of complete information.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    Is your law mandating that the ball will stand still indefinitely after it has reached the apex — Pierre-Normand
    Yes. Say it reaches the apex at time t2. Then there is a path compatible with the 2nd law in which it remains there for the period [t2,t2+h) for any h>0. So that path must be what happens rather than a path in which it continues down the other side.

    I think my use of the word 'observation' in the above rule may have conjured up images that were not intended. I have changed the words so that now it just refers to what the location in phase space is at that time, regardless of whether it is observed. It could, for instance, have been predicted from an earlier observation. In the case of your latest post, we have an observation at time T, which enables us to unambiguously project the path up to time t2, using only the 2nd law. At time t2 the 2nd law on its own allows for bifurcation, so the 1st law steps in and requires that the path that it follows is the one for which the velocity remains constant at zero from that point onwards (until such time as the dome wobbles or a new force acts on the ball).
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    both the second law, and your expanded law (if I understand it correctly) are silent regarding what happens next. — Pierre-Normand
    My expanded first law prohibits the ball rolling down (a solution not in U) because there exists a solution in U, ie in which it does not roll down, and the law requires that a solution in U be taken in preference to a solution outside it.

    As regards what happened in the past, to project backwards we need more information than just the current phase location of the ball. We need the phase locations of all the other elements of the system, including whatever it was that fired the ball up the slope, if that is what happened. This is a requirement for backwards projection in any multi-particle system, not just those with potential bifurcations. Essentially we are asking 'how did the ball get there', and we can't work that out just by looking at where the ball currently is. Eg consider a ball sitting at the bottom of an inverted dome. It could have rolled down from any angle, or dropped directly down out of the sky. Our inability to say which happened reflects that we don't know the current phase locations of all relevant particles, not that a bifurcation may have happened.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    I'm not sure I understand the question. The above law would require that a ball sitting stationary exactly on top of the dome would not roll down. The second law does not require that.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Hmm. I think removing backward-looking bifurcations would necessitate a further lengthening of the law statement. Perhaps something like this:

    'Let P be the case that an object O has location L in phase space at time t. Let the set of patterns of motion of the object that are consistent with P under the 2nd and 3rd laws be S. Let U be the subset of S such that the object's velocity remains constant for some open interval [t,t+h), where h may vary by pattern.
    Let W be the subset of S such that the object's velocity remains constant for some open interval (t-h,t], where h may vary by pattern.
    Let V be the intersection of U and W.
    Then the actual pattern of motion (both pre and post t) is in V if that is nonempty, else in U if that is nonempty, else in W if that is nonempty.

    This states that the solution must have locally constant velocity both looking backwards and forwards if that is compatible with laws 2&3, else locally constant future velocity if compatible with 2&3, else locally constant past velocity if compatible with laws 2&3. Otherwise the law is silent.

    This seems to do as much as possible to remove both future and past bifurcations in a way that is consistent with our intuitions.
  • Why shouldn't a cause happen after the event?
    What is the difference between a cause and effect, if not their ordering in time? A common attempt to remove temporal ordering from the relationship, beloved by some fundamentalist apologists, is to replace temporal ordering with logical ordering, by which they envisage something like an entailment A->B, with the cause being the antecedent A and the effect the consequent B. The trouble with this is that, in most cases, when all information is incorporated into the calculation, the arrow becomes bidirectional A<->B.

    We typically say that fire causes smoke: Fire -> Smoke. But as the saying goes, 'there is no smoke without fire', which gives us 'Smoke -> Fire'. If we remove the temporal aspect - that the fire started before the smoke did, it becomes as valid to say the smoke caused the fire as it does to say the fire caused the smoke.

    Similarly for when some people argue that we can infer the existence of God from the existence of the world. So we have World->God to match the usual statement that God->World.

    In ordinary language, as well as in the philosophical definitions of people like Hume or Russell, part of the definition of a 'cause' is that it temporally precedes its 'effect'. It becomes a contradiction in terms to say an effect precedes its cause.

    So when somebody says 'causes can occur before effects', it becomes more crucial than ever to ask them what they mean by 'cause' and 'effect'. Odds are they won't be able to answer the question.
  • Marx's Value Theory
    ↪fdrake
    Thinking about this a bit more, they don't need to be separate economies to raise challenging questions. Say Lakshmi can produce wedding cakes or funeral cakes at the rate of ten per day, but the best anybody else can do is five per day, because Lakshmi possesses unique skills, and the demand is for ten wedding cakes and ten funeral cakes per day. Then how do we work out the labour-value of wedding and funeral cakes? It seems unrealistically optimistic to me to say to say they are both 0.1 day, since the demand cannot be met at that price. But it also seems unrealistically pessimistic to say the prices are 0.2 day, since the demand can be met at a lower price than that.

    I wonder how Marx would address this. The labour-value of each seems to vary according to how much of her time Lakshmi spends on Wedding cakes.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    Ah, that makes more sense. I think I'd approach it this way:

    First we observe that Newton's laws were aimed at explaining real phenomena and so did not use the pernickety precision needed to cover all boundary cases. The case being discussed here is not only practically impossible but has probability zero of occurring even in Newtonian theory, so is also 'theoretically impossible' if we make the fudge of equating probability zero with impossible.

    So to try to apply Newton's Laws to such a bizarre scenario we'd first have to expand them so it was clear what they entailed in that situation. I think expansions could be made both that make bifurcation possible and that prevent it.

    An expansion that allowed bifurcation would be to essentially remove the First Law, by expressing it in a way that is unambiguously contained within the second law. We could do that by re-writing it as

    'The time derivative of the velocity of a massive object is zero at any time at which the net force on it is zero'.

    That makes it a special case of the 2nd law, so it adds nothing to it.

    An expansion that prevents bifurcation could be:

    'Where there is more than one future movement pattern of an object that is compatible with the 2nd and 3rd laws and the conditions in place at time t, and one or more of those patterns involves the object's velocity remaining constant for the period [t,t+h) for some h>0, the pattern that occurs will be one of those latter patterns'.

    Very wordy, I know, but it has to be in order to deal with nonphysical cases like this without just disappearing into Law 2. Note also that it leaves open the possibility that there may still be bifurcations possible with this law - not the one discussed in the paper, which would be ruled out, but other ones in even more pathological cases. I suspect it may be possible to prove there cannot be, but that's just a hunch.

    I'm thinking there might be some sort of analogy to Asimov's three Laws of Robotics, where each law can overrule those above (or is it below) it, but I'm not sure if that works.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    this construal of Newton's first law would also have the very unfortunate consequence that it makes it inconsistent with the third law in other cases. — Pierre-Normand
    I got a bit lost here. Newton's third law is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I can't see how that law is relevant to the questions being examined in this scenario. Can you outline what you had in mind here?
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    The jounce wasn't zero on the way up. It was constant and equal to 1/6. — Pierre-Normand
    True.

    I realised that what I wrote above, as powers of (t-T), is not actually the Jounce, Jerk etc but rather the higher derivatives of the radial coordinate r. It's a scalar rather than a vector. I doubt that helps but I need to get my perspective right before commenting further. At present, I'm finding the case of sliding the ball up more perplexing than it starting at the top.

    I'm also wondering whether we need to incorporate the dome into the system we are analysing rather than treating it as a supplier of external forces, in order to make sense of the scenario.

    Also - I just realised that the dome is not smooth. a geodesic over the top will have a nondifferentiable first derivative, because the second derivative of r^(3/2) blows up at 0+. That can explain the discontinuity in what we've been calling Jounce. That Jounce is a function of the dome's shape, and the shape is not smooth at the top, so it is reasonable for there to be a discontinuity in Jounce there, as you point out there is.

    A new perspective on the whole problem just came to me though. Here it is:

    The paper argues that the ball could move because there is a solution to equation 2 (d^2r/dt^2 = sqrt(r)) in which the ball moves, where that equation 2 is derived from Newton's Second Law. But that doesn't mean the solution is applicable. To test whether it's applicable, we need to substitute it back into all Newton's Laws and see if they still hold.

    Newton's first law says that an item will remain in its state of motion (which is interpreted to mean its velocity does not change) unless acted upon by a net external force. So the ball in a perfect, stationary position at the top will remain in its state of motion, which is stationary. It will not roll down. Hence the solution is non-Newtonian and must be rejected. It satisfies the second but not the first law.

    The same goes for when we slide the ball up. When it arrives at the top it is stationary and balanced. Newton's first law says it will remain in that state until pushed.

    For me, that solves the puzzle. The solution in which spontaneous movement occurs only satisfies Newton's 2nd and 3rd laws, not his first.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    I suppose if we send it sliding up with exactly the correct initial velocity, and no touching it after we release it, all higher derivatives of displacement will be zero once it is on its way up. It follows that it will stop at the top rather than continuing down the other side, because it will have zero velocity and zero horizontal force on it at that time.

    The higher derivatives would have to be nonzero for the ball to pass the cime and go down the other side. If it stops there, there are no discontinuities because Jounce and Jerk were already zero on the way up.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    Any explanation for why this curve is somehow poised in a way that allows for the claimed indeterminism? — apokrisis
    The curve is constructed so that the displacement function is a constant multiple of (t-T)^4 for t>=T. The same would work for a displacement function proportional to (t-T)^n for any n>=4. In that case the non-differentiability won't appear until the (n-1)th derivative of the displacement function. So as long as n>=4 the nondifferentiability will be out of sight and out of mind.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    I don't often read external sources. But I trust your recommendation, so I had a look. It's an interesting setup. What is not immediately apparent in the presentation is that the displacement vector of the object is not smooth (infinitely differentiable), and to allow non-smooth functions destroys the notion of causality because they will have unexplained jumps in higher derivatives.

    The location function given has discontinuous Jounce (aka Snap), which is the fourth derivative of displacement (second derivative of acceleration) wrt time.
    The Jerk (3rd deriv of displacement) is non-differentiable.

    Jerk is (t-T)/6 for t>T and 0 otherwise.
    Jounce is 1/6 for t>T and 0 otherwise.

    So I don't think this case does what it at first seems to do, which is to generate breaking symmetry out of nothing. The breaking symmetry is always there in the discontinuous Jounce, which we have simply assumed. The plausible physical solution is that which has smooth displacement and all derivatives are always zero - ie symmetry doesn't break.

    It does raise an interesting question for me though. There are functions called 'bump functions' that are smooth and yet are zero everywhere except on a compact interval. An example is f(x) = exp(-1/x) for x>0 and f(x)= 0 for x<=0. This is zero until it gets to x=0 and then it suddenly starts increasing 'for no reason', and asymptotically heads towards 1 from below..

    I wonder if one could construct a dome of a shape that made the displacement vector a bump function. That would be mysterious because the function is infinitely-differentiable, and hence doesn't implicitly already deny causality.

    The way one excludes bump functions, when one wants to do so, is to restrict ourselves to analytic functions, which can be expressed locally as a power series. There are no analytic bump functions.

    I have always found bump functions very mysterious, and like to ponder them when I have nothing else to do. They are a truly beautiful case of nothing happening, then something suddenly starts to happen, without a discontinuity anywhere to be found.

    I will muse over whether one could construct a dome shape that would make the displacement vector a bump function.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    The point is about how we like to assign causality to particular triggering events, but if a triggering event is almost sure to happen, then the particular loses its hallowed explanatory status. — apokrisis
    OK. I don't find assigning causality a productive exercise, so I'll leave the field to those that do.
  • Causality conundrum: did it fall or was it pushed?
    the answer becomes we couldn't prevent that because any placement on the apex had to involve infinitesimal error. — apokrisis
    That is my view. The ball fell because when it was released by whatever was holding it on the apex, its centre of mass was not exactly above the point of contact with the dome, so it started falling.

    One can foresee an objection that says 'But what if the CoM was exactly above the point of contact when released?' The response to this is:

    1. The probability of that being the case is zero, as the horizontal coordinates of the CoM would have to match two exact real numbers.

    2. In addition, the CoM would have to have both horizontal components of its velocity exactly zero upon release. In practice no object can have an exactly stationary CoM, because of the same probability argument.
  • Marx's Value Theory
    I don't agree with the discounted cash flow not having any reference to buyers and sellers. The discount curve you're going to use is an interest benchmark in most cases, which in turn is based on actual transaction/quote data (spot and forward). — Benkei
    You're right. I thought exactly that as I wrote it and then - arrogantly - thought 'nah, this is a philosophy forum, not a finance one - nobody will pick me up on it'. I was wrong!
    I'm on the fence about APT. — Benkei
    This is another case of me being lazy. I didn't mean APT (Arbitrage Pricing Theory) but arbitrage-free pricing of derivatives (Black-Scholes and the like), but I forgot the 'free' bit and found it easier to just write 'arbitrage pricing'. Arbitrage-free pricing of course still depends on market prices because it relates the value of a derivative to the value of the underlying asset, but what I had in mind was that the relationship between the prices of derivative and underlying asset doesn't depend on market sentiment. Of course it does, at least at second order, because interest rates and implied volatilities come into it, at which point your first objection comes into operation.

    Perhaps a better way to characterise the distinction I think I was trying to make is as model-based prices versus observed prices. The latter assigns the value of item A on the most recent prices at which such items were seen to be sold. The former seeks to work out the benefit to the prospective holder of purchasing the asset, in terms of ultimate profit through holding to maturity (leaving aside early exercise for American options and the like) without making any assumptions about what the item could be re-sold for.
  • Marx's Value Theory
    I have only read part of this, and even that has raised some interesting questions for me.

    (1). Marx talks about divergence of price from value. Does that mean that he thinks the two are different? I find it hard to define value without using price. A topical and handy reference point is the definition of 'fair value' under the IFRS and GAAP accounting standards, which identifies fair value broadly as:

    "the price that would be expected by a willing, but not overeager, buyer to a willing, but not overeager, seller to transfer an asset or liability, after taking all available information into account."

    In finance there are ways of calculating value that make no direct reference to buyers and sellers - two examples of which are discounted cash flow and arbitrage pricing. This can have two purposes depending on context:

    - for an item that the holder intends to hold to maturity (or until consumed or worn-out, in the case of a physical item), it is the value to that holder of the item. That value can, and does, vary significantly between holders. An oil rig has no value to me other than what I might be able to sell it for (which would not be much, since I don't have the right contacts) but would have great value to an oil company, as it will be a source of future profit.

    - for an item that is likely to be sold, the calculation serves as an estimate of what sale price might be able to be achieved. For this to work it must be the case that most other market participants use the same general valuation approach as I do. This becomes particularly interesting in periods when major changes in valuation methods are being adopted, as has been the case in finance since the 2008-09 economic crisis. At such times big differences can arise in valuations made by different market participants.

    (2). The part of it that is most interesting to me is the attempt to equate value of an item to the minimal hours of labour needed to produce it. This strikes me as laudable, if it can be made to work.

    I wonder if it can cope with trading based on comparative advantage though. The classic example is islands A and B that need primary commodities C and D to survive. Island A can produce both C and D for fewer hours labour than B requires - because of geographic conditions, climate, tools, education of population, or other structural differences. But rather than A each making all its own stuff and A being much more prosperous than B, both islands benefit from B making the item for which A has the lower comparative advantage over B (say it's D), and then trading some of its D for C produced by A.

    Since both islands benefit from the trade, I wonder how this can be accommodated into Marx's framework that regards value of an item as being somehow universal at each point in time.

    A-ers will place a higher value on item D (measured in units of item C) than B-ers do. When A trades it acquires some D at a price (in units of C) that is lower than the value A places on it.

    Conversely, from B's point of view, it sells some D at a price (in units of C) that is higher than the value B places on it.

    I supposed we could say that each commodity has three values:

    1. the value A puts on it, in terms of the other commodity, if no trade is occurring. This is based on the relative time costs for production in A
    2. the value B puts on it, in terms of the other commodity, if no trade is occurring. This is based on the relative time costs for production in B
    3. the exchange rate between the two commodities that is used in trade. This will be between the above two numbers, otherwise the trade will not occur because it will not be beneficial for one party.

    It's made a bit tricky in that, while 1 and 2 may be stable, 3 can be any number between 1 and 2 and will depend on the relative skill of the two nations' trade negotiators. So while 1 and 2 seem more like the notion of an observer-independent value - unrelated to price, 3 is completely dependent on market negotiations.

    I had some other thoughts, but this post is already too long.
  • Moderators: Please Don't Ruin My Discussions
    ↪S
    : It is standard practice in online forums that aspire to a certain level of depth to merge discussions that are similar. This happens all the time on StackExchange for example. I understand that the degree of similarity of threads is a matter of opinion and that you feel strongly that the two were very dissimilar. Personally, I agree with fdrake's judgement. It's worthwhile to note that the forum has been bombarded with new threads promoting theism or atheism recently, which is very annoying to those that see such interminable arguments as borderline philosophy at best.

    I'm sorry that the merging upset you. I hope you find that fdrake's adjustments above at least mitigate the annoyance.
  • Free until commanded
    ↪Teofasa
    I can think of at least two real life examples of this.
    1. Ella Enchanted, who is under a spell that forces her to do whatever anybody commands her to do.

    2. The Imperius Curse (one of the three Unforgivable Curses), which puts the subject under the direct control of the one who cast the curse.

    In the explanation and discussion of those cases there is no question that the free will of the individual had been constrained, and that that is a bad thing.

    A somewhat different case is the Ludovico Technique, where aversion therapy is used to control violent impulses of the subject. Again there is no doubt that the subject's free will has been constrained, but opinion is more divided in this case as to whether that is a bad thing.
  • Hell
    Hell Does Not Actually Exist

    A recent response I made in this forum has caused me to think a lot about the existence of hell. The response I made against the fact that God created hell resulted in me coming to the conclusion that hell does not actually exist. My response can be found here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/comments/2793/francesco-di-piertro

    I wanted to hopefully generate some more discussion on this topic and consider objections to this view. So, I decided to synthesize and lay out my argument in an outline form to make it a bit clearer. It is worth noting that my objection is targeted at the popular, modern Christian conception of hell, with hell being a satanic realm that serves as the eternal home of the unrighteous as opposed to an eternity in heaven with God.

    My argument against Christians who adopt this belief in the existence of hell hinges on the assumption that Christians believe the Bible to be true. By saying, “believe the Bible to be true”, I do not mean to imply that I think Christians have to believe every nuance and story in the Bible to be verbatim truths about reality. What I want to communicate is that I believe Christians have to commit themselves to the fact that what is contained in the Bible is true insofar as it is inspired by God, reveals truths about God’s character, and informs us of how He interacts with His creation. From this understanding, my argument against Christian belief in hell is as follows:

    1. If hell exists, there would be Biblical evidence for its existence, or it exists only conceptually in the minds of human beings due to misinterpreting the Bible.
    2. Things that only exist conceptually in the minds of human beings do not actually exist.
    3. There is no Biblical evidence for the existence of hell.
    4. Therefore, hell does not actually exist.

    As previously mentioned, my rational for this argument can be found in another response I made recently on this forum that is linked above. Thanks for considering this argument and I look forward to reading objections.     — Francesco di Piertro
  • Pascal's Wager
    Pragmatic Encroachment and Pascal’s Wager

    If knowledge is circumstantial, it is seemingly impossible to make a knowledge claim about atheism. Under the view that knowledge is circumstantial and subject to the stakes of the circumstance, atheism faces several problems. According to Pascal’s Wager, the belief in God is a high stakes situation. If God is real, then belief in him is infinitely rewarding and non belief is infinitely punishing, if he is not real then belief in God is slightly punishing and non belief is not rewarding or punishing. So in any case, belief in God is a high stakes situation. Pragmatic encroachment affirms that if the stakes are higher in a given circumstance, then more evidence is required to obtain a justified belief. This presents some problems for atheism. Since the stakes for atheism are greater than theism, it requires more evidence to claim knowledge of atheism given equal evidence. Granted that the evidence is equal, it is near impossible to have a justified belief in atheism.

    If pragmatic encroachment is true, atheism falls short in the burden of proof debate. Since the stakes are higher for atheism it requires more evidence to be proven true, and the evidence is equal, so the burden of proof must fall on atheism. While atheism can still be true, it is far from justified under pragmatic encroachment, therefore it fails to be knowledge.     — Dgallen
  • How does paper money get its value?
    ↪Purple Pond
    I think the necessary characteristics for an effective currency are:

    1. supply is limited but not TOO limited;
    2. general agreement of the society that uses the currency, to accept it in return for goods and services that one is prepared to sell.
    3. The smallest denomination currency item has a low enough exchange value that, for any non-trivial purchase, the percentage change in the payment that is made up by one additional unit of the smallest denomination is very low (say, less than 1%).
    4. The currency items are not perishable.
    5. The currency items are easily portable.

    Gold and silver worked as currencies for centuries, as it met those criteria. Small, light silver coins could be used for small denominations. Shells have been used in some island cultures, where they met the required characteristics. It would need to be a type of shell that was common, but not so common that it didn't require a fair bit of effort (time spent searching) to obtain a shell from nature.

    When the conditions break down so that one or more of the criteria are not met, people avoid using the currency, resorting to barter or use of a different currency. This has happened reasonably often, when people in economies suffering hyperinflation or concern over counterfeiting resort to barter or the use of precious metals, jewels, or another country's currency.

    ↪Posty McPostface
    The foreign exchange market sets the exchange rate between currencies to a temporary equilibrium point that is determined by the relative demand for the two currencies. If the value of the pound against the euro gets too low, people will want to only buy things made in the UK, as they will be cheaper. That will increase demand for the pound, and hence raise the exchange rate of euros per pound. Hence, over the long term, exchange rates are self-correcting. But not in the short, or even medium term, because it takes a long time for manufacturing and trade patterns to change.
  • Being VEGAN is NOT CHRISTIAN
    ↪flight747
    The person that wrote the article sounds like a fanatical crank. Their arguments are facile, disingenuous and not worth the trouble of rebutting. I suggest you just ignore them.

    Good on you for being a vegan. I am a vego who would like to be a vegan but have a few health problems that preclude me going all the way (together with a certain weakness of will). If your version of Christianity is focused on the exhortation to love, then I would think that veganism is a natural consequence of that.
  • Do you believe there can be an Actual Infinite
    This thread has been restored from the inadvertent closure that happened to it. Anybody that wants to post in it should now find it possible to do so.
  • Infinite past is impossible proof.
    This discussion was merged into Do you believe in the Actually Infinite?
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    ↪PossibleAaran
    Yes I do have the view that it rarely ever convinces anybody. I also agree that that is generally the case when people come to a discussion with entrenched positions, on any topic, not just religion. So my distaste for arguments for or against God is matched by my distaste for arguments for or against a mind-independent reality, whether we have free will, and whether there exists an objective morality. There is nothing in principle wrong with discussions about such topics but, at least in places like this, the discussions are usually just repetitive shouting matches between people with entrenched opposite positions.

    I do think that good argument can convince people of important things, but the people that are convinced are those that are open to being convinced, open to learning (in short, open-minded), not those that come to the discussion in order to teach others the right way to think about things (which is of course their own way).

    I'm not saying I'm immune to the temptation to do that by the way. I have at times entered arguments with an entrenched position, and pushed it for longer than made any sense. I always feel rather foolish afterwards for having done so. I like to think that I rarely do this any more, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

    I agree that philosophical discussion or argument can be very useful if it brings one to an understanding of the positions of others and why they hold them. I have learned a great deal on this forum and its predecessor by reading the arguments of others, and sometimes engaging with them. But some topics seem less conducive than others to an open-minded approach, and debates about religious beliefs seem the least conducive of all. I honestly can't remember ever seeing anybody on either side say 'Oh, I see what you mean' or 'Good point, I shall have to think about that' in such a discussion.

    Maybe the benefit of such debates, if they have one, is for the spectators rather than the participants. For a year or so, I listened to a lot of podcast debates about religion and God, and learned a lot about the positions of both sides, and heard some arguments I hadn't heard before, in doing so. Then it started getting repetitive and there was no more to learn, so I stopped, and I don't think I've listened to one since.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    It would make sense to first examine why they believe what they do, wouldn't it? — S
    Only if one is curious about that, which seems to bring things back to Mariner's point about curiosity.

    Is that the purpose of the thread - that you are curious about other people's religious beliefs and why they hold them, and you want to learn more about that?
  • Pascal's Wager
    Pascal's wager reminds me of the lovely old joke about the Irishman who lay dying, and a priest came up to give him the last rites. The priest asked

    'Do you renounce Satan?'

    to which the Irishman replied

    'This is no time to be making enemies.'
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    The debate itself will forever be on fire. — Modern Conviviality
    I expect so, but do you expect it to ever convince anybody to change their view, other than the occasional rare exception?

    You sound, from the rest of your post, like a deeply religious person. Are you that way because you were convinced by dry philosophical arguments such as this, or because of personal experience and feelings, or that you were brought up to believe what you do?
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    ↪S
    What details? I'm simply asking whether you are telling us something about yourself - which is how the OP reads - or making a judgement on anybody that feels differently, in particular, people who believe in some deity or other.

    If it's just telling, then thank you. It's always rewarding to know more about others' thoughts and feelings. If on the other hand it's a judgement, and especially a judgement that people who believe in a deity are irrational or in some other way poor thinkers, whom are you judging, for what beliefs, and what are the grounds for your judgement?
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    ↪S
    They might be mistaken and they might be unreasonable. Some almost certainly are.
    For any opinion one holds, be it ever so little grounded in reflection, one can say the same about people who don't share it. So the statement doesn't seem to say anything at all.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    So, there you have it. That's a summary of my position. Have at it. Any questions, ask away. — S
    I see no reason to criticise your position, because in the OP, you do not suggest that people are mistaken if they have a different position.

    Taken literally, the OP just says - I don't believe in god(s) and here's why. Tell me if you think you have an objective criticism of that.

    As a devout pluralist, my response is Absolutely Not. It seems from some of the posts since, that some have interpreted your post as implying that you think people are being unreasonable if they do not share your position. I don't get that sense from reading the OP. Did you mean to imply that, or are others just over-interpreting your post?
  • Censorship on the Forum
    You have discovered my personal religion. It is based on the following rules.

    1. Everything that moderates must be moderated, unless it's the special exception that I may mention later on.
    2. There exists a unique unmoderated moderator, and this premise absolutely does not contradict premise 1.
    3. I call that unmoderated moderator God.
  • Do you believe there can be an Actual Infinite
    Ok let’s use the language ‘fully defined’. A set is only fully defined once we have listed all its members. Clearly infinite sets are not fully defined yet maths tries to treat them in the same way as a finite set (which is fully defined). — Devans99
    You have defined a new term in relation to sets - 'fully defined'. What then?
  • Do you believe there can be an Actual Infinite
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    All that mathematical induction requires is that what is true of one number is true of the next, and therefore true of all the following numbers — MU
    This works for a logical theory in which the only objects in the domain of discourse are natural numbers. In that case, we can just use the following axiom of induction:

    and that does not require any assertions about infinity.

    However this doesn't work if we want to have objects in our domain of discourse other than natural numbers, because then we need to add a condition 'x is a natural number' to the above induction axiom, which requires referring to the set of natural numbers, whose existence cannot be asserted without the axiom of infinity, or some equivalent..

    I think this issue of the axiom of infinity may be related to that of omega-completeness, which is about whether there may be natural numbers other than those we get by adding 1 to 0 a finite number of times, ie 'non-standard' natural numbers. Omega-completeness is a very interesting subject, but it usually gets my head all muddled when I try to think about it, if I haven't done so in recent times.
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