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@3RU7AL
I would generally say, Objective: Unbiased, identical to all possible observers, not subject to variation in description or value (opinion).This would include the property of being (physically, mentally and axiologically) identical to all humans at all possible points in history.This would also, necessarily include the property of being (physically, mentally and axiologically) identical to all conceivable non-human observers.
Consider a particular rose. It is red, pretty and has 7 thorns.
Of course it being red and pretty is just my opinion - a colour-blind philistine might well disagree. But even a colour-blind philistine will agree it has 7 thorns! The properties of colour and prettiness are observer-dependent or subjective. The number of thorns is observer independent or objective.
It seems you want to create a lot more hurdles for someting to be objective, but the standard subjective/objective distinction is very useful because it seperates attributes that are 'mind-based' (such as colour and prettiness of a rose) from those attributes which belong to cold, hard external reality, such as it's number of thorns.
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@Ramshutu
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@Ramshutu
You go on adult sites and scope the couches? That's plain odd.Dude, I can show pics of leather couches from the ikea catalogue that show up on adult content sites
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@3RU7AL
I believe that since all possible human knowledge and experience is sample biased, it is misleading to call Quanta "objective".
I'm sure this has come up before, but what does objective mean?
What I mean by 'objective' is that something is independent of the observer. That is to say it doesn't matter if it's you, me or or Joe Soap who measures the wavelength of some laser, as long as its measured competently the same result (allowing for experimental error, of course) is obtained. The same is not true of the colour of the laser which may or may not vary between observers.
An important thing about objective qualities is that represent how things really are 'out there'. That is to say the reason we all measure the laser wavelength to be 440 Angstroms is simply because that the laser has that wavelength!
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@3RU7AL
I'd say the words 'exists', 'real' and 'true' are a bundle defined in terms of each other. I agree that using exists in an extended sense muddies the waters, and that apllies to the other words as well. I don't like terms such as 'true for you' and 'real for them'. For example, if joe believes X then I think its dead wrong to say 'x is true for joe'. X is either true or false. if it appears otherwise X is probably badly worded!In other words, I believe it unjustifiably muddys-the-waters to say something like "exists (real) as a concept (imaginary)" (since a particular concept is not scientifically verifiable and or logically necessary).
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@3RU7AL
I'd be careful to explicitly distinguish Quanta from Qualia.
What do you mean by those terms? If it helps, I imagine that quanta are objective and qualia are subective, so an example is the wavelength of light (quanta) and the colour of light (qualia). Quanta can be measured by a device but qualia are perceived by a mind.
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@nagisa3
Hmmm.... is it only an agreed convention that it is impossible to breathe underwater? Reality cannot be directly perceived and we can sometimes be unsure what is real and what is dream, but the difference between a real lion and a dreampt lion is a real difference and not a matter of agreeing a convention!No person can do this, it is about what others around you call the dream world and reality, then we agree and move on. In other words, distinctions between "real" or "extant" facts and hallucinations are only conventional.
I think you are confusing what we can know about the world from how things are (or are not) in the world. If you don't see the edge of a cliff we cannot save you by agreeing on a convention that there is no cliff edge there.
I don't dispute what we perceive is not the real world - what we perceive is a mental image inside our heads. But there is a real world too where 'real extant facts' are not conventions.
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@Alec
Well, I suppose the US has some experience of using nukes. I'm not sure that a reason to trust them, tho'.The US can be trusted with nukes. Iran can't.
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@nagisa3
way back (post #416) you wrote
And, keithprosser, something is said to exist if a change in the universe is traceable back to that thing.
Why i think you are wrong is that suppose someone was so say 'God does not exist'. Now, what did that person intend to convey by that remark?
If you are right the intended meaning is 'no change is traceable back to god'.
But I think the intended meaning is 'god is absent from the universe'.
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@3RU7AL
I think Wittgenstein was right that 'meaning is use'. Philosophers' usage of the word 'knowledge' is that it stands for JTB. You are at liberty to use the word 'knowledge' (indeed any word) however you like, but only at the risk of being misunderstood.
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@3RU7AL
@nagisa3
What is this?
You might well say 'a unicorn', but that's not quite right - it's a picture of a unicorn. We often don't bother to be pedantic, but sometimes we should be! pedantically, Sherlock Holmes does not exist. Stories about SH do exist, thoughts about SH do exist andso on but SH does not exist.
We could extend the meaning of 'X exists' so that it includes 'thoughts about X exist' , but I think that is asking for confusion and misunderstanding/ I much prefer a narrow sense of exist,albeit it means having to be a it pedantic about what it is that exists.
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@3RU7AL
I'd say the defintition of knowlege as 'justified true belief' is so widely used you need a very good reason to define 'knowlegde' as anthing else, and if you do it has to be made very clear.
If you tacitly drop the requirement that an item of knowlege is true then chances are a lot of talking at cross-puposes will ensue!
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@3RU7AL
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@nagisa3
But what is your definition of existence?
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms? (That's a quote, from Wittgenstein).
I'd say the meaning of 'existence' cannot expressed in ordinary language in away that is not circular or dependent on already comprehending the concept. We acquire an understanding of the word 'existence' by interacting with the world, not by looking up 'Exists (verb)' in a dictionary.
The meaning of existence is an important thing to learn about the world - the difference between something existing and something not existing is the difference between 'dinner' and 'no dinner', a distinction that has been crucial to every hungry living thing since the first peckish amoeba.
We learn by experience that somethings are present in the world, other things are absent. We learn to associate the word 'existence' with the things that are and 'non-existence' with the things that are not.
Basically, formal defintions are over-rated!
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@Stronn
I'd guess the nearest thing to a deified scientist recently was Stephen Hawking, but I'd say his fame and adulation pales in comparison to that of Beyonce.
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@PGA2.0
As I understand it, the OT scapegoat ritual was not a very powerful spell - it did not take away all guilt and only worked for a year. Hence in order to take away the guilt for Adam's disobedience permanently it was necessary for a human - ie not an animal - to be sacrificed.
The question remains - if God wanted to relieve mankind of the guilt acruing from Adam's sin, why not just do that? Why was Jesus' sacrifice required? indeed,why was a sacrifice of any sort required?
To this non-theologian, it is clear what happened is that the execution of Jesus threw the early church into crisis - the unexpected loss of their leader had to be explained and it came to be explained by portraying Jesus as a 'super-scapegoat', based on the OT tradition.
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@nagisa3
Dekaheads' inability to affect anything is a consequence of their non-existence. Their non-existence is not a consequence of their inability to affect anything. Hence existence/non-existence is fundamental, impotence is derived.
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@nagisa3
In my formulation, dekaheads have no traceable effect because they do not exist.Dekaheads do not exist because there is no effect in the universe traceable back to them.
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@nagisa3
Previously you wroteA person with 10 heads. I can't show you something that doesn't exist of course, but we can imagine something that doesn't physically exist, if you just take everything to exist, it's a pretty useless term
something is said to exist if a change in the universe is traceable back to that thing.
Inverted, that implies something is said to not exist if it does not change the universe.
But is it said that 10 headed people don't exist because decaheads don't cause change in the universe or is it sai that 10 headed people don't exist because there are no such things as decaheads?
I think you have confused a test of existence with a definition of existence.
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@nagisa3
Many people would argue that it is a contradiction in terms to know something that is false because knowledge is often defined as 'justified true belief'.
So joan cannot know the earth is flat. She can believe it, but not know it. False knowledge does not exist.
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@nagisa3
And, keithprosser, something is said to exist if a change in the universe is traceable back to that thing.
Everything exists and there is nothing that does not exist. If there is something that does not exist, show it to me.
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@3RU7AL
I agree - it was a scientific fact in 1845 that there were 7 planets - that is what you would find in text books of the time. But according to a slighylty different sense of 'fact' there were at least 8 planets.
I think the lesson is that one has to be careful when one says things like 'X is afact' because it could mean that X is 'rock solid' or that X is 'to the best of our current information'.
my instinct is that the scientific meaning of 'fact' is not well suited to philosophical use. That is a 'fact' is - by default - something rigorously proven and not subject to being overturned by a future discovery. I think that means very few statements about the state of the world are strictly facts.
now allI have to is wonder what it was we were discussing!
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@Mopac
@3RU7AL
I would say the basis of human rights is compassion, which is an aspect of empathy.
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@3RU7AL
I think the word 'fact' means slightly different things, depending on whether you are (figuratively) a 'scientist' or a 'mathematician'. To a mathematician a fact is something that has been rigorously established and error is impossile. Scientists are a lot more pragmatic - more or less a 'scientific fact' is something that hasn't been proven to be wrong!
Examples would be Pythagoras' theorem and newtons law of gravity respectively. Pythagoras' theorm is true forever; newtons theory is considered true until something turns up which forces usto reject it.
So when you ask " Would you have confidence declaring "there is no god" a factual statement?" the first issue is which sense of 'factual' is intended.
My view is 'there is no god' is a 'scientfic fact', not a 'mathematical fact', meaning that its not proven or provable by abstract logic but there is evidence against the existence ofgod, and nothing that forces rejection of it.
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Taken literally, I'd say no because the Turing test isn't strong enough. But if we are less literal, the issue is wheher sufficiently sophiticated artificial entities should be granted at least some 'human rights'.
I'd guess we are at least 100 years from producing artificial entities that would require more consideration than toasters or vacuum cleaners, but perhapsitsnot too early to begin the debate.
My view at this stage is to bear in mind a famous quote by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832):
The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?
Bentham was referring to animals, but I think his principle applies equally well to artificial enties (and foetuses, but that's a different debate!)
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@3RU7AL
Someone in 1845 could say, factually, "there are only seven planets in our solar system".
If it is a fact that only 7 planets existed in 1845, how could an 8th one be discovered? It must have existed all along, waiting to be discovered.
I wouldsay the existence of Neptune is independent of our knowledge about it. What the someone in 1845 should have saidis 'there are only 7 known planets' - that is factually true. That there are only 7 is factually incorrect, albeit the error is not known.
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@3RU7AL
All true, but that isn't Chalmer's 'Hard problem'.
There is a particular way that red looks which is different from how blue looks. I can't describe how redlooks in words, but if you look at ared obect you will experience red and that experience is different from the experience you get from looking at blue things.
The experience of red is also different from the experience of the smell of a lower, or of note C#. The challenge isto get a mchine or computer to have identical (at least in kind)experiences to ours.
Why doesthat matter? It's because those experiences happen in brains and unless they can be implemrnted in a machine somethig very oddis going on in brains - undermining physicalism.
I may repeat there is no issue that itseasy to implement something functionally eqiuvalent to subective experience in amachine. onecan mesure the wavelength light and use that measurement to control the behaviour of a device. But we do not experience light as having diferent wavelngths - we experience light as being of different colours. Getting a machine to the same is 'the hard problem'.
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@3RU7AL
I think maybe its the sort of problem that has to 'click' any thestrong n you see what hell all the fuss is about!
It often strikes me when I look at a brightly coloured object. For example, right now I'm looking a bright blue carrier bag.
As a result, I am getting a strong experience of its 'blueness' - a different experience from when I look at somethng bright red. It's almost too obvious to notice that blue looks blue and red looks red, but if I hook up a webcam to my computer and point it at something blue then something red, different signals and voltages arise in my laptop, but voltages and signals don't look blue or red. Circuits in my computer are designed and built to re-cast those voltages back into the original colours for my benefit, but my laptop doesn't experience colours as the the rich vibrant shades the way I do - as far as my computer is concerned they are just patterns of bits. Even if my computer is experiencing those bit patterns then experiecing $FF0000 and experiencing $0000FF is not the same as my experiece of actual colours.
I don't know if that helps or not. If you still don't see what bothers Chalmers and me, don't worry about it! i'd guess that one day it will crystalise. Perhaps the trick is to realise it's such a simple and obvious thing.
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@Mopac
Of course it is - this is the philosophy section!My position from the very beginning is that this debate amounts to little more than intellectual masturbation,
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@3RU7AL
I see that as over-complication. The question asked is whether neptune existed in 1845, purely for the purpose of clarifying the intuitive meaning of 'exist'. I think the ordinary, plain meaning of exist is such that the answer is a simple 'yes'.someone who lived in 1845 claimed (in 1845) that Neptune (even by some other name) "exists" without evidence, their claim would rightly be dismissed. That specious claim would not be supported by the evidence currently available at that moment in time.
Agreed, there are issues about our 'knowledge concerning the existence of neptune', but the question asked was not 'did we know Neptune existed in 1845?' - the question was whether it existed in 1845.
Neptune did not change between 1845 and 1846 - what changed was us; we learned that neptune existed - in other words, the existence of neptune did not change, it was our knowledge its existence that changed.
If i say 'neptune existed in 1845' I am saying something about the 'existential state' of that planet at that time. I an not saying anything about our knowlegde of that state at that time. If I wanted to say something about our knowlege then I wouldn't say 'neptune came intoexistence in 1846' - that sentence gives a completely incorrect picture of a planet popping into existence at that time.
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@Fallaneze
And you may be right. What I'm trying to do is pin down what 'X exists' means.I believe he is making a deeper philosophical distinction.
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@nagisa3
If you don't lke the sun as an example, consider Neptune which was discovered in 1846. Did it exist in 1845? I have no problem saying it did.
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@Club
I think not so much 'migrated to' as 'never left'.
I can't be bothered to look into it deeply. I was surprised DDO is still alive!
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@Club
@Gatorade
Ethang5 doesn't live here any more.
He's here, tho': https://www.debate.org/forums/
where,it seems, he is much happier with his bffs willow and hari.
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@Ramshutu
Be that as it may, correct forum etiquette is to deny even the possibility of being wrong and use any combination of deflection, equivocation,The important goal for anyone who’s thinking is rational, and logical is to recognize your own possibility of error and bias and constantly seek them out and repeatedly correct.
mis-direction and bare faced lying to avoid having to back down or apologise. If personal remarks and insults fail, as a last resort one may stop posting to the thread and hope it dies, but a dedicated forum poster should never, ever admit to being wrong or even fallible - that just 'isn't done'.
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@nagisa3
I'm going to dispute that! Consider: Did the sun exist before there was anything alive to perceive it or 'have a concept'? The way I want to use the word 'exist' is such that it it is true the sun existed before it was conceptualised. Put another way, if we can't use the word 'existing' fo rwhat the sun was doing way back then, what word can we use for what it was doing, shining away, unperceived?
I propose existence is a primitive - it does not reduce to anything more basic. Whether something exists or not is 'brute fact'.
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@Mopac
It's a fairly wide ranging debate!
You are notwrong - without free will we are robots, or slaves. Free will is undoubtedly 'a good thing', perhaps a necessary thing, but there is a problem. How can free will work if - as appears to be case - the world is governed by immutable cause and effect?
While you might get away with a theological argument in the religion forum, in the philosophy section its against the unwriiten rules to inoke any form of magic, miracle or divine influence - here we seek mechanisms and algorithms!
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Kyle Kuschvov made a dumb decision at the age of 16 to say a naughty word over a private text.
That makes it sound like he did it ages ago, in the dim distant past. He's 18 and wrote those messages a few months ago.
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@3RU7AL
I note that elsewhere you wrote
Qualia blows a huge hole right through the heart of science.
I think that's overstating things abit, but it seemswe agree there is a big problem reconciling science, physicalism and qualia.
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@3RU7AL
Computers can do a lot of things brains can do - I don't think I have questioned that. It is the specific issue of subjecte experience/qualia -- what Chalmers calls the 'hard problem of consciousness' where things get murky!
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@Mopac
But what I believe is irrelevant to your opinion, so it cuts both ways.Apparently, what we believe is irrelevant to your own opinion, which I don't believe is righteous discernment.
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@nagisa3
Also, I don't think existence needs to be objective. If a kid believes in the existence of an imaginary friend and does something as a result, from the child's perspective, the imaginary friend may well exist, while for others it might be the child's belief in the imaginary friend that exists, but there is no objective way to compare.
I'd say 'may well exist' is not the same as 'exist'. If a kid has an imaginary friend, what exists is some neural activity in his brain that results in a perception that they interpret as the presence of friend. The friend does not exist, unless one inadvertently allows a figurative meaning to creep in, which can happen very easily!
I think people sometimes say 'x exists' when it would be more correct to say 'the idea of x exists', or 'the x concept of exists'. Sometimes we din't bother being precise.
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@3RU7AL
not sure I follow - or rather i am sure I don't follow!
Do you think experiences happen in brains?
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@nagisa3
One of the things, anyway!What is being discussed here is, I think, physicalism.
Physicalism implies there is nothing a brain can do that a mechanism (such a suitably programmed computer) can't. One of the things a brain can do is have subjective experiences. Therefore it should be possible to build a machine that has subjective experiences.
However, it is not obvious how to make such a machine is possible, which leaves two alternatives:
1) abandon physicalism
2) make excuses for not being able to do it.
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@Mopac
how can it also be written in Saint Paul's letter to The Romans...
You seem unaware how writing works. All it needs is pen and paper... truth is optional, and very often absent.
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@Stephen
@Mopac
PGA 2.0 is big on that too. The theological problem that idea is intended to solve is the incompatability of the OT and NT version of God. The god of the OT is YHWH, the tribal god of the Hebrews. The religion of YHWH was all about rituals, sacrifice, war and earthly life. Theoloically, the Christian god is nothing like yhwh!The Mosaic religion ended in 70 AD with the destruction of the temple.
To appropriate the Hebrew god, Christian theology invented the idea that yhwh broke with the jews and transferred his patronge to the gentile world. In Christian theology, the destruction of the temple was by God's will (how could it be otherwise?), and was the outward sign that God rejected the Jews as they had rejected his son.
That theological nonsense played a large part in creating 2000 years of anti-semitism. The historical reality is that a nationalist uprising was put rthlessly down by a powerful empire. Non-existent Gods had no hand in it. Christianity practically invented anti-semitism.
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