The Existential Crisis

[FlashDangerpants]

Is that a question? <--- what you gave me there suggests this is not. In which case, your defintion is arbitrary. Now when you are actually on YOUR TURF not ours, you can define the parameters of your study any way you like. But compsci is not the relevant framework here, and no amount of tantrum is changing that.

You just said you don't want economists to just POINT at a bank. You asked for a sophisticated answer.

Why then are you POINTING at a question instead of giving me a sophisticated answer?

I am not studying the question of what is a question. I have no intention of manufacturing a huge edifice of knowledge of my own over such meta bollocks. Real philosophers have probably gone into excruciating detail on the subject in the past, just as they have over the question of what does "I" mean. I don't delve into every shit question in the field though.

Here's an article by somebody who did. I scrolled to the end and the proferred answer of course is vague. It's like porno, youcan't easily define it, but you know it when you see it. Somewhere in the middle it refences an example that probably does suit your needs, however you are in error to make such an exclusive claim.

Ultimately, you should be smart enough to realise that only an absurd rush of arrogance on your part can lead you to presume you have any right to tell any competent speaker of the English language that they don't know what a question is. You make a caricature of yourself when you behave this way.

Again, you are doing what I told you in that parable of the annoying dick who got treated as a fool by all the archaeologists.

You aren't even DOING what you are telling me to DO. You are doing the OPPOSITE of what you are telling me to DO.

You can't reconcile your own dualisms in classical logic, and you don't even grasp why that problem goes away in Quantum logic.

Yes, well I can live with ambiguity in a way that you cannot - which is suprising and perhaps somewhat contradictory given the terms of the logic you are shouting about. But I don't have to resolve all dualisms in language, and I don't share your pointless zeal for correcting language as if it is itself a mistake. So I have no intention of throwing the baby out with that bathwater, sorry.

If the end result of following your rationalisations is total personal certainty that all psychological nouns are meaningless then I have gained little. If the cost comes in making a complete fool of myself trying to gatekeep the concept of 'question', then that is more than I am willing to pay for such a dubious prize.

[Skepdick]

I am not studying the question of what is a question.

I know that! Which is why you don't actually have a conceptual understanding of what a question is.

I have no intention of manufacturing a huge edifice of knowledge of my own over such meta bollocks. Real philosophers have probably gone into excruciating detail on the subject in the past, just as they have over the question of what does "I" mean. I don't delve into every shit question in the field though.

It's fucking hilarious, that you think reasoning about beliefs (doxastic logic) is not "meta bollocks, but reasoning about reasoning is "meta bollocks".
It's called meta-linguistic abstraction.

It's the foundation of problem-solving/model construction.

And you can't DO any meta-linguistic abstraction without having a meta-circular evaluator.

If you want to do science you don't get to not-do metaphysics.

Here's an article by somebody who did. I scrolled to the end and the proferred answer of course is vague. It's like porno, youcan't easily define it, but you know it when you see it. Somewhere in the middle it refences an example that probably does suit your needs, however you are in error to make such an exclusive claim.

My need is addressed, thank you. I have a formal model for asking questions. It's as precise as it gets!

I understand what a question is Mathematically. I don't need the English prose.

Ultimately, you should be smart enough to realise that only an absurd rush of arrogance on your part can lead you to presume you have any right to tell any competent speaker of the English language that they don't know what a question is. You make a caricature of yourself when you behave this way.

But you don't! You know how to USE questions - you have no fucking clue what they are or how they work mechanically.

If you understood that you would have the intuition to recognise bad questions.

I have the right to tell you this.
And you have the right to throw a tantrum for me telling you this.

Yes, well I can live with ambiguity in a way that you cannot - which is suprising and perhaps somewhat contradictory given the terms of the logic you are shouting about.

Everybody can live with ambiguity - is not like they have a choice. Learning to navigate and resolve ambiguity - that's a whole different story.

But I don't have to resolve all dualisms in language, and I don't share your pointless zeal for correcting language as if it is itself a mistake. So I have no intention of throwing the baby out with that bathwater, sorry.

Look! You are still thinking in dualisms. You are still thinking of "correct" and "incorrect". Right/wrong.

When you snap out of this and begin thinking on continuums, you might just see that what I am trying to do is an improvement.

Linear logic is a substructural logic proposed by Jean-Yves Girard as a refinement of classical and intuitionistic logic, joining the dualities of the former with many of the constructive properties of the latter

If the end result of following your rationalisations is total personal certainty that all psychological nouns are meaningless

They are not meaningless. They are the most meaningful thing there is! But the meaning is not in the bloody words.

The meaning is in the understanding of the meaning of the words. That's some more of that meta-circular bullshit you don't want to hear...

[FlashDangerpants]

I understand what a question is Mathematically. I don't need the English prose.

Then go away and do whatever that rigid insistence is useful for. What you are doing with it now is doing you fuck all good.

[Skepdick]

Then go away and do whatever that rigid insistence is useful for. What you are doing with it now is doing you fuck all good.

You have a weird fucking conception of "rigidity".

I have access to the English perspective that you have.
I ALSO have access to the Mathematical perspective.

So, I have one extra conceptions of what a "question" is. I think that's more fluid than your intuition

[FlashDangerpants]

Then go away and do whatever that rigid insistence is useful for. What you are doing with it now is doing you fuck all good.

You have a weird fucking conception of "rigidity".

I have access to the English perspective that you have.
I ALSO have access to the Mathematical perspective.

So, I have one extra conceptions of what a "question" is. I think that's more fluid than your intuition

So it's possible for you to have that capability as an extension of the normal set.
But you chose to be the guy who says "you don't know what a question is" even so.

[Skepdick]

So it's possible for you to have that capability as an extension of the normal set.
But you chose to be the guy who says "you don't know what a question is" even so.

Dude. You can't even decide what you want!

I don't tell economists to answer the question "what is a bank" by finding thier local branch and pointing at it. So if I ask them what a bank is, I should expect to receive a much more sophisticated answer from them than the picture of Barclays with a red circle round it that I might get from you.

On the one hand you want sophistication, on the other hand you want the normal set. Choose one!

If you claim to be a Philosopher (or to be doing Philosophy) I expect a sophisticated answer from you on "What is a question?"

I give you a sophisticated Mathematical answer - you shoot it down.

[FlashDangerpants]

So it's possible for you to have that capability as an extension of the normal set.
But you chose to be the guy who says "you don't know what a question is" even so.

Dude. You can't even decide what you want!

I don't have to. This is entirely consistent with the description of philosophy that I gave you before.

I don't tell economists to answer the question "what is a bank" by finding thier local branch and pointing at it. So if I ask them what a bank is, I should expect to receive a much more sophisticated answer from them than the picture of Barclays with a red circle round it that I might get from you.

On the one hand you want sophistication, on the other hand you want the normal set. Choose one!

If you claim to be a Philosopher (or to be doing Philosophy) I expect a sophisticated answer from you on "What is a question?"

I give you a sophisticated Mathematical answer - you shoot it down.

Strawman. The example I gave of economists was that they have their own methods of investigating their own sets of questions, so they formed their own collective to do that work rather than trying to tell philosophy that it was in error not to be subdued and used as their tool. Also, obviously, that they don't refuse to accept a question unless given a map to the answer. A sophisticated understanding of an issue can result in a nuanced and incomplete answer if the subject matter is nuanced and understood with sophistication. An economist would likely tell you that a bank is any institution that borrows on a short term basis and lends on a long term basis, which isn't terribly helpful outside their field, but is an excellent insight within it. That definition doesn't exclude any things which are banks (i.e. within the normal set) but which they don't want to think about today, which is something that your definition of a question obviously does do.

Thus, I wouldn't really agree that your definition is sophisticated. You can give it the appearance of such by directing me to any number of computer science concepts you like, but sophistication requires subtlety, and such understanding of the subject is not evident if you neglect to allow for the question "why not?".

The point of all this is to explain to you why your current behaviour is getting you nowhere and why your results will never improve. You aren't making progress because you aren't learning from clearly visible mistakes.

[uwot]

You know how to USE questions - you have no fucking clue what they are or how they work mechanically.

If you understood that you would have the intuition to recognise bad questions.

Given that you presumably think you do have the intuition to recognise bad questions, why do you persist in asking them?

[Skepdick]

Given that you presumably think you do have the intuition to recognise bad questions, why do you persist in asking them?

Well, lets see if we share an intuition.

What do you think makes my questions bad?

[Skepdick]

I don't have to. This is entirely consistent with the description of philosophy that I gave you before.

It's also entirely consistent with Quantum logic to hold two seemingly opposing states without contradicting yourself.

So it seems to me that Quantum logic is way more fit for the way you practice philosophy than Classical logic.

Use it. Don't use it,

Strawman. The example I gave of economists was that they have their own methods of investigating their own sets of questions, so they formed their own collective to do that work rather than trying to tell philosophy that it was in error not to be subdued and used as their tool.

It's not a strawman - you just can't grok my point.

If "good questions" are the very instrument of philosophy, it sure seems like a good idea to understand what your tools are made of and how they work.

Also, obviously, that they don't refuse to accept a question unless given a map to the answer. A sophisticated understanding of an issue can result in a nuanced and incomplete answer if the subject matter is nuanced and understood with sophistication.

Everybody gets this. What I am pointing out is the practice of asking questions that can't even get an "incomplete answer". They get NO answer.

They get incoherent ramblings that sound like answers, but are completely meaningless.

An economist would likely tell you that a bank is any institution that borrows on a short term basis and lends on a long term basis, which isn't terribly helpful outside their field, but is an excellent insight within it.

It's a terribly useful insight if you localise time into your logic!

And it becomes a super-powerful abstraction when you begin thinking about borrowing time on short term, and lending time on long term.

That is how you end up with the linear speed-up theorem in Computer Science.

The point of all this is to explain to you why your current behaviour is getting you nowhere and why your results will never improve. You aren't making progress because you aren't learning from clearly visible mistakes.

Lets just say that the way I am measuring my progress and the way you are measuring my progress are not aligned

[uwot]

What do you think makes my questions bad?

Well, the fact it's you asking them isn't a good start. How seriously should we take a question from someone who says this?

...I have explicitly told you that I intentionally contradict myself.

Or who responds to this:

The thing is you are demonstrably a liar and a cheat who will rip the heart out of the truth until it says what you want it to.

Thus:

That is EXACTLY how communication works! That's exactly how "being heard" works! I make words mean exactly what I want them to mean.

Since you make words mean exactly what you want them to, the answer to any question you pose is going to be exactly what you want it to be. If you call that communication, you are stupid.

[FlashDangerpants]

I don't have to. This is entirely consistent with the description of philosophy that I gave you before.

It's also entirely consistent with Quantum logic to hold two seemingly opposing states without contradicting yourself.

So it seems to me that Quantum logic is way more fit for the way you practice philosophy than Classical logic.

Use it. Don't use it,

Fine.

Strawman. The example I gave of economists was that they have their own methods of investigating their own sets of questions, so they formed their own collective to do that work rather than trying to tell philosophy that it was in error not to be subdued and used as their tool.

It's not a strawman - you just can't grok my point.

If "good questions" are the very instrument of philosophy, it sure seems like a good idea to understand what your tools are made of and how they work.

If

Also, obviously, that they don't refuse to accept a question unless given a map to the answer. A sophisticated understanding of an issue can result in a nuanced and incomplete answer if the subject matter is nuanced and understood with sophistication.

Everybody gets this. What I am pointing out is the practice of asking questions that can't even get an "incomplete answer". They get NO answer.

They get incoherent ramblings that sound like answers, but are completely meaningless.

And that's your excuse for attempting to hijack the concept of question so clumsily as to exclude the question of "why"?

Anything you can't think of a way to answer isn't a real question to you, and I'm sure that's fine for whatever subject you are in the process of creating.

But in plain descriptive factual terms, philosophy does consider questions for which there is no clear path to a good answer, and investigating the questions themselves to see what makes them so resistant to resolution while often havint the appearance of simplicity is very often the best way to go about it. If that doesn't suit you, you had the option to go into some sort of detail about what it is that you have to offer instead, but you have opted to go with a tell-don't-show approach.

An economist would likely tell you that a bank is any institution that borrows on a short term basis and lends on a long term basis, which isn't terribly helpful outside their field, but is an excellent insight within it.

It's a terribly useful insight if you localise time into your logic!

And it becomes a super-powerful abstraction when you begin thinking about borrowing time on short term, and lending time on long term.

That is how you end up with the linear speed-up theorem in Computer Science.

That is not a relevant response to what I wrote, it's just you segueing into your familiar rant.

The point of all this is to explain to you why your current behaviour is getting you nowhere and why your results will never improve. You aren't making progress because you aren't learning from clearly visible mistakes.

Lets just say that the way I am measuring my progress and the way you are measuring my progress are not aligned

Well there is no mystery about the progress I percieve you to have made. What is your opinion? Presumably you have some reason why you can't tell me that information and it's my fault for lacking some spirit of cooperation.

[Skepdick]

How seriously should we take a question from someone who says this?

We who? The question wasn't targeted at anybody else but you.

Well, the fact it's you asking them isn't a good start.

It's an exceptional start. I need information that I do not have. You have it.

I know my reasons for asking questions.
I don't know your reasons for asking questions.

That's why I am asking you.

Or who responds to this:

The thing is you are demonstrably a liar and a cheat who will rip the heart out of the truth until it says what you want it to.

It depends entirely on whether you think there is such a thing as THE truth.

As far as I am concerned Philosophy's "Truth" is much like Theism's "God".

My response to you now is the same as my response to you then: You don't know what "truth" is, and you are applying Classical logic so you can't navigate around the Liar's paradox. I can't help you with your biased (mis)understanding and your constant obsession with normative linguistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox

In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that he or she is lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In "this sentence is a lie" the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis. It is still generally called the "liar paradox" although abstraction is made precisely from the liar making the statement. Trying to assign to this statement, the strengthened liar, a classical binary truth value leads to a contradiction.

Since you make words mean exactly what you want them to, the answer to any question you pose is going to be exactly what you want it to be. If you call that communication, you are stupid.

It looks to me you did EXACTLY what I am doing in the paragraph above. You made words mean what you want them to mean.

The question is still "Why?"

[Skepdick]

And that's your excuse for attempting to hijack the concept of question so clumsily as to exclude the question of "why"?

I have done that! Did you not hear me? Maybe one of us lacks the communication skills necessary.

I asked you WHY you keep attacking the grammar of an argument but you keep ignoring semantics.
Semantics is the "Why?" question! So I suppose, I could've been more clear in asking "Why are you attacking the WHAT and not the WHY?"

It's why I keep telling you to start with "What do you want?". That sufficiently answers the "Why?" question for me.
It goes back to the same old cliche: Defining the problem is half the solution.

Is just that since most people have been programmed to erase themselves from the map in the pursuit of "objectivity" - they tend to have the emotional intelligence of potatoes so they have difficulty expressing their wants/needs/desires.

But in plain descriptive factual terms, philosophy does consider questions for which there is no clear path to a good answer, and investigating the questions themselves to see what makes them so resistant to resolution while often havint the appearance of simplicity is very often the best way to go about it. If that doesn't suit you, you had the option to go into some sort of detail about what it is that you have to offer instead, but you have opted to go with a tell-don't-show approach.

That seems rather misguided. WHY do you need to answer ANY questions?

What do you need the answers for? Oh, shit! Are we allowed to talk about human needs when doing philosophy?
It's hard to tell with all the dismissiveness going around.

That is not a relevant response to what I wrote, it's just you segueing into your familiar rant.

It's 100% relevant from where I am looking. I guess you can say our relevance filters work differently.

Linear logic also happens to allow for the concepts of "resources" by the way. So if you are interested in saying coherent things about "resources" - like an economist, you might find it useful...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_lo ... rpretation

Lafont (1993) first showed how intuitionistic linear logic can be explained as a logic of resources, so providing the logical language with access to formalisms that can be used for reasoning about resources within the logic itself, rather than, as in classical logic, by means of non-logical predicates and relations. Tony Hoare (1985)'s classical example of the vending machine can be used to illustrate this idea.

Well there is no mystery about the progress I percieve you to have made.

Is there any way in which your perception of my progress is not grounded in your expectations?

And since you haven't told me what you want/expect (despite my repeated requests) it's really difficult for me to determine whether I am living up to your expectations.

What is your opinion? Presumably you have some reason why you can't tell me that information and it's my fault for lacking some spirit of cooperation.

Because that information is not in my head? Your expectations of me are in your head! You haven't yet told me how high you want me to jump!

But you don't like that "meta bullshit"

[FlashDangerpants]

But in plain descriptive factual terms, philosophy does consider questions for which there is no clear path to a good answer, and investigating the questions themselves to see what makes them so resistant to resolution while often havint the appearance of simplicity is very often the best way to go about it. If that doesn't suit you, you had the option to go into some sort of detail about what it is that you have to offer instead, but you have opted to go with a tell-don't-show approach.

That seems rather misguided. WHY do you need to answer ANY questions?

What do you need the answers for? Oh, shit! Are we allowed to talk about human needs when doing philosophy?
It's hard to tell with all the dismissiveness going around.

And now I just refer you back to the tale of ....


Imagine a man walks into an archeology conference and makes the following set of demands:
1. Quit thinking about the past, you should make space lasers because it is futuristic.
2. Quit fucking around with trowels and brushes, this hydraulic press has ten billion youtube views so it's cooler than they are.

That man wouldn't be a very useful archeologist, and his criticisms would be ignored. You are of the same sort; you don't approve of philosophy's objectives or its methods and wish to impose alternatives to both.

Remember when you rejected the analogy as a strawman? It keeps coming back because it is a fairly reasonable comparison though.

You object because even you presumably wouldn't tell archaeologists that they aren't doing to right thing by choosing to study the physical objects of the past? And you presumably would not tell them to actually abandon the tools they have crafted for their purpose and methods either.

Yet you have no problem trying to do that to philosophy, over and over and over again. If you are rejecting all of our standards, and our questions and our methods of investigation, I don't see what it is that you even value in philosophy at all. Help me out, what is your actual objective and what has it got to do with us?