“Materialism” is an empty word. An incendiary article.

[phiwum]

That sentence much intellectual weight to the argument as you are, it just did it in fewer words.

You're mistaking wordiness for content. There's 3 separate threads all full of people trying to add enough word salad fluff to "Reality doesn't exist" to make it slip under intellectual radar.

You're utterly confused about the subject of this thread. You haven't a clue what is being discussed here.

There are a number of people here who actually can follow the conversation, can see that it has ****-all to do with "reality not existing", whatever that would mean, and have the interest to contribute. Is there some reason that this bothers you?

If semantics, distinctions without difference, word games, and the ponderous "Lookit me I'm the wise old man on the mountain" routines are what you think adds to discussions, then no I will not be adding to this discussion.

Fine, please consider the alternative I suggested.

There's good philosophical arguments and bad, but you really need to be able to understand the broad topic of the argument before you try to distinguish the two. The fact is that you haven't the foggiest clue what this conversation is about. I wonder why that doesn't give you pause before offering your scathing critique.

(The question at hand, by the way, is whether the materialist thesis can be clearly specified in a way that makes it meaningful and plausibly true. I don't know what's going on in those other threads, but no one here is arguing over whether the universe exists.)

 

[tsig]

If you will continue to misrepresent the situation, I feel compelled to reply.

Let's return to your claim: to exist is to interact.

Obviously, the things in our universe interact with one another, and hence satisfy this condition. Were there a distinct, disconnected universe, the things in that universe would also interact with other things in that universe. Hence, they would satisfy the criteria that you have suggested (without any real justification, aside from epistemological).

Therefore, we see that if it is coherent for one universe to exist, there is no obvious contradiction with your own criteria that a separate universe also exists.

(Other of your principles led to clear and explicit contradictions, but I haven't heard any disavowal of those principles, by the way.)

Wow, that sounds devious.

Who's doing that?

You really aren't reading this thread, are you?

You're utterly confused about the subject of this thread. You haven't a clue what is being discussed here. There are a number of people here who actually can follow the conversation, can see that it has ****-all to do with "reality not existing", whatever that would mean, and have the interest to contribute. Is there some reason that this bothers you?



Fine, please consider the alternative I suggested.

There's good philosophical arguments and bad, but you really need to be able to understand the broad topic of the argument before you try to distinguish the two. The fact is that you haven't the foggiest clue what this conversation is about. I wonder why that doesn't give you pause before offering your scathing critique.

(The question at hand, by the way, is whether the materialist thesis can be clearly specified in a way that makes it meaningful and plausibly true. I don't know what's going on in those other threads, but no one here is arguing over whether the universe exists.)

Looks like your go-to argument is to accuse others of not reading or understanding the thread.

Could it be you who does not understand?

 

[tsig]

You're utterly confused about the subject of this thread. You haven't a clue what is being discussed here.

There are a number of people here who actually can follow the conversation, can see that it has ****-all to do with "reality not existing", whatever that would mean, and have the interest to contribute. Is there some reason that this bothers you?



Fine, please consider the alternative I suggested.

There's good philosophical arguments and bad, but you really need to be able to understand the broad topic of the argument before you try to distinguish the two. The fact is that you haven't the foggiest clue what this conversation is about. I wonder why that doesn't give you pause before offering your scathing critique.

(The question at hand, by the way, is whether the materialist thesis can be clearly specified in a way that makes it meaningful and plausibly true. I don't know what's going on in those other threads, but no one here is arguing over whether the universe exists.)

When you see one that is not semantic game playing and is anything more than word play please post it.

 

[David Mo]

As no one has ever demonstrated that non-measurable, non-observable entities, mental or otherwise, can even be said to exist, this is not particularly concerning.

Hate, fear, love… are not measurable. I doubt they are not matter for you.

So the universe is not defined by a set of characteristics?

What is your alternative position?

Universe=matter. Petitio principii.

I know some different ultimate entities that can be considered as (provisional) components of the universe: atomic particles, photons, energy, force fields, etc. Some of these have some features, others have different features. But I have not a closed definition of all them (matter).
I have a relative knowledge of the basic entities in current science. And it is neither unified nor definitive.

 

[phiwum]

Looks like your go-to argument is to accuse others of not reading or understanding the thread.

Could it be you who does not understand?

It could be, but it isn't.

There's not a single person in this thread who has suggested that "reality doesn't exist", whatever the heck that would mean.

But go ahead and prove otherwise. Show me a post to that effect.

(NOTE: Even if it were the case that a bit of this thread covered that topic -- and it hasn't, so far as I've seen -- that would have nothing to do with my contributions, which have not ventured that direction in the least and have been straight in line with the subject in the OP.)

 

[phiwum]

When you see one that is not semantic game playing and is anything more than word play please post it.

Sure.

Not to pick on Nonpareil, but take for example his suggestion that

If neither P nor NOT P is verifiable, then we must take NOT P to be true.​

I gave a very brief, simple and clear argument that this principle entails that either there are no undecidable statements or "we must take" two contradictory claims to be true.

To be honest, I see now that I bungled it in the last presentation. Let me fix it here.

According to this principle, whenever Q is undecidable "we must take" NOT Q to be true. But if Q is undecidable, so is NOT Q, so by the same principle, we must take NOT NOT Q to be true. Hence, per this principle, we must take two contradictory statements to be true if any proposition is undecidable.

That's not wordplay or semantic games. That is a very simple exercise in logic showing that a proposed principle leads us to a contradictory conclusion. Surely, you agree that one ought to be committed to the consequences of one's principles, yes? And that it is a bad thing to have a principle committing one to a contradictory conclusion? And hence that the principle as stated is therefore a bad principle.

(Hint to Nonpareil: you might be able to fix this principle if you'll consider intuitionistic logic, but I don't know if it fits your intuitions.)

 

[tsig]

Sure.
Not to pick on Nonpareil, but take for example his suggestion that

If neither P nor NOT P is verifiable, then we must take NOT P to be true.​

I gave a very brief, simple and clear argument that this principle entails that either there are no undecidable statements or "we must take" two contradictory claims to be true.

To be honest, I see now that I bungled it in the last presentation. Let me fix it here.

According to this principle, whenever Q is undecidable "we must take" NOT Q to be true. But if Q is undecidable, so is NOT Q, so by the same principle, we must take NOT NOT Q to be true. Hence, per this principle, we must take two contradictory statements to be true if any proposition is undecidable.

That's not wordplay or semantic games. That is a very simple exercise in logic showing that a proposed principle leads us to a contradictory conclusion. Surely, you agree that one ought to be committed to the consequences of one's principles, yes? And that it is a bad thing to have a principle committing one to a contradictory conclusion? And hence that the principle as stated is therefore a bad principle.

(Hint to Nonpareil: you might be able to fix this principle if you'll consider intuitionistic logic, but I don't know if it fits your intuitions.)

I never saw Nonpareil make that statement, what he did say was that if something can't be detected then it might as well not exist you are the one who is misinterpreting what he said so your example is an exercise in wordplay.

 

[Aridas]

I never saw Nonpareil make that statement, what he did say was that if something can't be detected then it might as well not exist you are the one who is misinterpreting what he said so your example is an exercise in wordplay.

Given you, that you didn't see it isn't a huge surprise. Yet... if you go back just a little, one can find...

If something is actually unknowable - that is, in no situation could we ever state that it is true - then, in every meaningful sense, it is false.

Which is what phiwum addressed initially with that point and is quite in line with how he's representing it. You, tsig, seem to be the one in error. Perhaps you would be open to admitting your error, for once?

 

[phiwum]

Given you, that you didn't see it isn't a huge surprise. Yet... if you go back just a little, one can find...

Even more explicitly, we can see this:

That is not what I said. I stated that, if neither P nor !P can be verified as true, then !P must be taken as true.

Compare that to what I wrote.

Not to pick on Nonpareil, but take for example his suggestion that

If neither P nor NOT P is verifiable, then we must take NOT P to be true.​

So, given the above evidence, tsig, do you care to retract the below? Or do you just plan on ignoring your blatant error?

I never saw Nonpareil make that statement, what he did say was that if something can't be detected then it might as well not exist you are the one who is misinterpreting what he said so your example is an exercise in wordplay.

 

[Marras]

(Hint to Nonpareil: you might be able to fix this principle if you'll consider intuitionistic logic, but I don't know if it fits your intuitions.)

There's no need to enter the bottomless mire of intuitionistic logic: default logics were developed just for cases like that.

The idea behind those logics is that they define a way to say 'this is usually true so assume that it is true unless you know for certain that it is false'. The exact way how this is achieved depends on the semantics in question.

The reason why this is useful is that classical logic breaks down when you have lots of unknowns. With it, you either get no conclusions at all (if you take the safe approach) or you commit yourself to one set of conclusions without a way to retract them if you find out that it wasn't the usual case, after all. For example, if a public transportation road map says that bus X goes from A to B, then it would be nice if we could conclude that you can get from A to B by taking that bus. And 99.99% of time you could, but then comes the one time when someone runs the red light and hits the bus or the bus just spontaneously catches fire--both things have happened to me--and the travel plan fails.

You have to implement some sort of belief revision system on top of the classical logic to handle the changing information, and those are notorously difficult to get right. Default logics provide a simpler way to achieve the same result with less added hassle.

The simplest form of default reasoning is the default negation of atomic propositions. This means that an atomic proposition P is assumed to be false unless we have a reason to believe that it is true. What exactly this mean depends, again, on the specifics of the logic that we use. This is pretty much what Nonpareil was using, though, I don't know whether he has actually encountered default logics before. The reason why your double negation doesn't cause a contradiction in these logics is that 'not Q' is not atomic and only atoms have defaults. All compound propositions get their truth values calculated in the usual way based on the truth values of the atoms.

You may now be tempted to try to cause another inconsistency by creating a loop with two propositions: 'P if not Q' and 'Q if not P'. However, that doesn't cause problems. Default logics are usually used in a model-theoretic way. A set of propositions has a set of models, each one corresponding to a possible state of the world. In this example there are two models: one where only P is true and one where only Q is true. When we find out the truth value of an atomic proposition, we prune out those models where it has the opposite value.

Note: this post wasn't intended to either support or oppose Nonpareil. It's just a comment on logic in general.

 

[phiwum]

There's no need to enter the bottomless mire of intuitionistic logic: default logics were developed just for cases like that.

The idea behind those logics is that they define a way to say 'this is usually true so assume that it is true unless you know for certain that it is false'. The exact way how this is achieved depends on the semantics in question.

The reason why this is useful is that classical logic breaks down when you have lots of unknowns. With it, you either get no conclusions at all (if you take the safe approach) or you commit yourself to one set of conclusions without a way to retract them if you find out that it wasn't the usual case, after all. For example, if a public transportation road map says that bus X goes from A to B, then it would be nice if we could conclude that you can get from A to B by taking that bus. And 99.99% of time you could, but then comes the one time when someone runs the red light and hits the bus or the bus just spontaneously catches fire--both things have happened to me--and the travel plan fails.

You have to implement some sort of belief revision system on top of the classical logic to handle the changing information, and those are notorously difficult to get right. Default logics provide a simpler way to achieve the same result with less added hassle.

The simplest form of default reasoning is the default negation of atomic propositions. This means that an atomic proposition P is assumed to be false unless we have a reason to believe that it is true. What exactly this mean depends, again, on the specifics of the logic that we use. This is pretty much what Nonpareil was using, though, I don't know whether he has actually encountered default logics before. The reason why your double negation doesn't cause a contradiction in these logics is that 'not Q' is not atomic and only atoms have defaults. All compound propositions get their truth values calculated in the usual way based on the truth values of the atoms.

A couple of things.

First, and importantly, Nonpareil said nothing about atomic propositions and I don't think that they are necessarily relevant, since the sort of propositions we had in mind didn't seem to be atomic.

Second, while my familiarity with default logics is only superficial, I don't recall the principle you invoke here and it doesn't strike me as a particularly good principle. It makes the logic very sensitive to the selection of atomic predicates vs. defined predicates. But, I suppose that if this is a standard approach in default logic, then this sensitivity is something that either people don't mind or matters less than it seems at first blush.

ETA: Reflecting a bit more, the idea that atomic propositions are "by default" false makes even less sense to me. In addition to what I said above, the motivation is lacking. Is it "normally" the case that atomic propositions are false? I see no reason why this should be so. I don't think that nature has a bias against atomic propositions, does she?

Is this "simplest" form of default logic actually defended? I don't recall running across it when I briefly looked into the topic a decade ago.

You may now be tempted to try to cause another inconsistency by creating a loop with two propositions: 'P if not Q' and 'Q if not P'. However, that doesn't cause problems. Default logics are usually used in a model-theoretic way. A set of propositions has a set of models, each one corresponding to a possible state of the world. In this example there are two models: one where only P is true and one where only Q is true. When we find out the truth value of an atomic proposition, we prune out those models where it has the opposite value.

Note: this post wasn't intended to either support or oppose Nonpareil. It's just a comment on logic in general.

Thanks for your comment. To be sure, my mention of intuitionism was only a half-thought, and I'm not sure it's relevant. But, if I'm right that the kinds of propositions we were discussing at the time Nonpareil introduced his principle were non-atomic, I'm not sure that default logic is the solution either.

 

[annnnoid]

This is pretty much what Nonpareil was using, though, I don't know whether he has actually encountered default logics before.

"Default logic is a non-monotonic logic proposed by Raymond Reiter to formalize reasoning with default assumptions."

I think Nonpareil would be the first to admit that he hasn't a clue what that statement even means...thus your conjecture is slightly...conjectural.

 

[Nonpareil]

Well, that sure makes your conclusion easy.

But, of course, your characterization of existence is purely your own. You've "proved" that nothing exists outside our universe by stipulating that existence involves our universe. It is begging the question in quite an explicit way.

It's not begging the question. Again, it's an ontological statement, and largely semantic in nature. It is not intended as a proof so much as it is a means of providing a meaningful description of something.

In this case, it is a simple statement that, in order to say that something exists, it must have an effect on the universe. If it does not, then it is functionally indistinguishable from an imaginary entity, and saying that it exists is nonsensical.

Again, yes, it's utterly trivial, it's very nearly a tautology, and so forth. I never said it wasn't. But it functions, and provides a coherent means of distinguishing between real and unreal entities. I have yet to find a working alternative, but I am open to ideas about what one such might be.

Is there any inconsistency in the notion of undetectable stuff? Evidently not.

That's my point. I am saying that there is, because if this stuff is undetectable, it by definition has no properties, and cannot therefore be said to actually be stuff at all.

The principle that

If neither P nor NOT P is verifiable, then we must take NOT P to be true,​

leads to the conclusion that, whenever Q is undecidable "we must take" both NOT Q and NOT NOT Q to be false

Yes, you said this before. This is what I see as unjustified, and what I am asking you to explain. I do, however, think I see where you are going wrong.

NOT NOT Q, you see, is just Q. Your restatement of my argument as "if NOT Q and NOT NOT Q are both unverifiable, we must take NOT NOT Q as true" is simply reversing the order of P and !P, then saying that, because the order is reversed, we must take P as false.

However, whether or not this is correct, I will admit to once again failing to communicate my ideas clearly. I apologize; it is not often that I actually end up having an extended conversation on the subject, so I haven't had much practice in expressing them formally. Allow me to try again.

Given a proposition P, where both P and !P are defined in such a way as to be unverifiable, if either statement violates parsimony, it must be treated as false.

(Note that the above may also fail to be a perfect phrasing, as it is late and I am already overdue for bed. You will have to bear with me on this.)

A thing can not be any one of its properties, nor a unity of its properties, because there is no unity relation between or within properties.

I do not understand your objection. Can you rephrase?

Hate, fear, love… are not measurable.

Yes, they are. They are chemical reactions taking place within the brain. Given a sufficient knowledge of neurochemistry and so forth, as well as a detailed definition of the emotion, they can be measured.

Note that this is not currently practical, but that does not change the fact that, given sufficient information, it can be done.

Universe=matter.

And what is that matter defined as, then, if not as the sum of its properties?

 

[Nonpareil]

First, and importantly, Nonpareil said nothing about atomic propositions and I don't think that they are necessarily relevant, since the sort of propositions we had in mind didn't seem to be atomic.

I would consider "X exists" to be atomic, and as this is the specific kind of statement that I am discussing, it does seem fairly relevant - though default logic is only tangentially related to my point.

"There is a garage dragon in my living room" is unverifiable, because garage dragons are defined as undetectable. To say that there is one there - that is, that it exists - or even that it could be there is simply false, because the garage dragon does not meet any functional definition of existence.

Everything else, from the P and !P and so on, is just an attempt to illustrate that point. It may be poorly phrased, or even wrong, as stated, but it is simply a means of elaborating upon that central point. For the sake of argument, I would prefer that this were addressed directly. I am still open to being educated on the rest of it, as it is intensely interesting, but I feel that it is important to note that the central argument stands on its own, independent of my own additions.

"Default logic is a non-monotonic logic proposed by Raymond Reiter to formalize reasoning with default assumptions."

I think Nonpareil would be the first to admit that he hasn't a clue what that statement even means...thus your conjecture is slightly...conjectural.

And annnnoid still prefers to lurk and snipe at me personally (using Wikipedia quotes, no less) rather than try to make any sort of coherent contribution to the discussion.

Business as usual.

 

[Aridas]

"There is a garage dragon in my living room" is unverifiable, because garage dragons are defined as undetectable. To say that there is one there - that is, that it exists - or even that it could be there is simply false, because the garage dragon does not meet any functional definition of existence.

Meh. Oh well. This thread seems to have pretty much changed to this subject, at this point, so I'll add a little. To say that there is one there begs the question of how the claimant would know that one is there, if it is supposed to actually be undetectable, and why anyone should believe the claim that there actually is one or more there, as well, over the competing options of lying, deceived, or mental malfunction. That's plenty right there, before touching on other potential fallacies that might be invoked, to dispute the claim that "There is a garage dragon in my living room" when "undetectable" is one of the properties ascribed to it. No need to arbitrarily make up your own special definition of "existence" just to try to conflate the issues at hand to simplify things for yourself fallaciously. Fighting fallacy with more fallacy is, in fact, a poor way to operate for anyone who likes truth.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Hate, fear, love… are not measurable.

You sure about that?

scientists can identify your emotions based on brain activity

 

[Aepervius]

The problem is that even those that violently reject the philosophy have some kind of philosophy. Physicalism is a philosophical project not a scientific solution. I think that philosophy can teach us methodological caution (moderate scepticism) and analytic capacity. And nothing more.

As opposed to philosophy butting into physic and taking of stuff he does not understand ? Frankly he is apparently mistaking mathematical models , assumption of physic, and what reality is. just the fact he cited black hole shows the problem.

The fundamental physical postulate are that there is no preferred direction in physical laws, no time variance of laws, and no coordinate variance. From this postulate and physical measurement a series of law describing particle and interractions from even down to quark and gluon and upward we have models describing the world.

The postulate are what you call materialism / physicalism. It is not that people like me are holding a philosophy, it is that until the postulate are demonstrated to be false, they are the basis all of our modern physic. As such moulines and you have it backward. ETA: to give you an idea on how backward this is , remove the postulat, and you can't say anymore that gravity law apply the same at your place or at mine than it was measured by physicist like newton. Remove the postulat and here maybe gravity can eb described by -g/2*z^2 but maybe in paris it is -g/2*z^2.1 maybe tomorrow it will be -g.z^3. And maybe dragon will spontaneously appear. You essentially stating "yeah those postualt are wrong" is throwing the whole branch of physic out in the trash and pretending it is all wrong. So don't be surprised if moulines/you look laughable. Until those postulat have been demonstrated to be wrong as such there is no reason to think they are.

You want to pretend the postulate are wrong, go ahead. But then butt out of physic and the real world discussions basic on claim and evidence.

 

[NotEvenWrong]

You sure about that?

scientists can identify your emotions based on brain activity

The researchers successfully measured the neural correlates of emotion, not the emotions themselves. These are different things.

An example if this isn't clear: Emotions also correlate with facial expressions, body language, and behavior. If I were allowed to observe someone over a period of time, I could most likely infer their emotional state. This does not mean I am measuring emotions.

Similarly, the researchers are observing neural activity over time, and training their model with known emotions of subjects. They can then infer emotions of new subjects based on fMRI data. They're not actually measuring qualia.

 

[NotEvenWrong]

As opposed to philosophy butting into physic and taking of stuff he does not understand ? Frankly he is apparently mistaking mathematical models , assumption of physic, and what reality is. just the fact he cited black hole shows the problem.

The fundamental physical postulate are that there is no preferred direction in physical laws, no time variance of laws, and no coordinate variance. From this postulate and physical measurement a series of law describing particle and interractions from even down to quark and gluon and upward we have models describing the world.

The postulate are what you call materialism / physicalism. It is not that people like me are holding a philosophy, it is that until the postulate are demonstrated to be false, they are the basis all of our modern physic. As such moulines and you have it backward. ETA: to give you an idea on how backward this is , remove the postulat, and you can't say anymore that gravity law apply the same at your place or at mine than it was measured by physicist like newton. Remove the postulat and here maybe gravity can eb described by -g/2*z^2 but maybe in paris it is -g/2*z^2.1 maybe tomorrow it will be -g.z^3. And maybe dragon will spontaneously appear. You essentially stating "yeah those postualt are wrong" is throwing the whole branch of physic out in the trash and pretending it is all wrong. So don't be surprised if moulines/you look laughable. Until those postulat have been demonstrated to be wrong as such there is no reason to think they are.

You want to pretend the postulate are wrong, go ahead. But then butt out of physic and the real world discussions basic on claim and evidence.

There is a very large difference between saying "physicalism and empiricism are useful philosophical positions for doing reliable science" and "everything that exists is matter".

The first statement is pretty much true, the second statement is meaningless (according to Moulines).

(Whether you agree with OP and Moulines or not, you must agree that the statement "Matter makes up everything that exists, by the definition of matter. Therefore everything that exists is matter" is a pretty boring and useless ontological position.)

 

[annnnoid]

And annnnoid still prefers to lurk and snipe at me personally (using Wikipedia quotes, no less) rather than try to make any sort of coherent contribution to the discussion.

Does someone have a thin skin? If Marras point was not conjecture then feel free to dispute it, otherwise we’ll just have to assume that you don’t have any familiarity with default logics. Then again, I doubt too many folks do.

You sure about that?

scientists can identify your emotions based on brain activity

…yup, unconditionally sure. Your link is a fine example of neuro-porn though. Some more info on which can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And, as NotEvenWrong quite accurately pointed out…emotions are not being measured. Brain activity is being measured. There is a very very very big difference. No science nowhere nohow has any ability to measure emotions.