Are there .5% or 35 million Active Killers at Present?

[Skepdick]

Do you think that the relationship between the temperature of a substance and the reading on a thermometer is subjective just because the numbers that are on the outside of the thermometer could have been other numbers?

Of course it's subjective! Humans choose the scale and the fixed point.

Explain something equivalent to how temperature moves the mercury in a thermometer

Uhhh. Temperature has no causal properties. It's a human scale used to qualify experiences such as "hot" and "cold".

Temperature doesn't make anything do anything. It's a manifest concept.

How deep do you wanna go before you concede that you have no fucking idea what you are talking about?

Give us the mechanism that causes the number to be true mister Personal Objecivity.

Sure! Just as soon as you give us the mechanism for your truth predicate!

Because, true/false is a measurement. You know that, right?

[FlashDangerpants]

Well I guess now we get to see exactly how desperate Veritable Arquebus can get. Is his desire for "peronal objectivity" so all encompassing that he would take your help to keep it even though that's a pact with Satan? Is he willing to adopt a universalisation of relativism and end his project to do away with moral relativism in the process because he never really noticed that you aren't on his side and you don't give a fuck about his arguments?

And is he shit enough to do that just in the hope that I can't explain that the physical properties of some stuff we call "mercury" tracks the physical property we like to refer to as "temperature" in a substance, which in some cases we may attach the label "stuff" to.

This is always a fun game because he is quite thick and you never know which of these things he's going to go for. With your help he can probably be induced to express a directly positivist notion that the scientific definition of temperature is the actual meaning of the word. Shall we get him to finally commit to "language-proper".

[Skepdick]

Well I guess now we get to see exactly how desperate Veritable Arquebus can get. Is his desire for "peronal objectivity" so all encompassing that he would take your help to keep it even though that's a pact with Satan? Is he willing to adopt a universalisation of relativism and end his project to do away with moral relativism in the process because he never really noticed that you aren't on his side and you don't give a fuck about his arguments?

Just look at how you are framing this. "His side", "Your side"

Can you even help yourself when it comes to navigating dichotomised thinking?

You are accusing the people arguing FOR objective morality of relativism and you are attacking them using linguistic relativism, and then you are trying to flip the tables so that you can climb back on your moral high horse.

Does this accurately sum up your confusion?

And is he shit enough to do that just in the hope that I can't explain that the physical properties of some stuff we call "mercury" tracks the physical property we like to refer to as "temperature" in a substance, which in some cases we may attach the label "stuff" to.

Physical properties or physical quantities? You understand that "properties" are emergent phenomena resulting from interactions we call "measurements", right?

You understand that the reification of quantities (abstract mathematical structures/forms) is fundamentally Platonism or at best - Mathematical realism, yes? Or would that be a world shattering revelation to you?

You understand that "interaction" is communication/information transfer right? Which is why measurement is ALWAYS mutual information.

You are using temperature to measure the mercury and you are using the mercury to measure temperature.
You understand that in the realm of science you are imprisoned by symmetry, yes? All quantities are subject to preservation laws.
You understand that the fundamental nature of "learning" (information gain/information transfer) is asymmetrical, right?

And so physics fails to explain how it is that we can measure anything in a universe of symmetries (the mirror of nature argument).

This is always a fun game because he is quite thick and you never know which of these things he's going to go for. With your help he can probably be induced to express a directly positivist notion that the scientific definition of temperature is the actual meaning of the word. Shall we get him to finally commit to "language-proper".

Well well now! You are talking about "actual meanings" of stuff! What is the "actual meaning" of energy? What is the "actual meaning" of quantities?
What is the "actual meaning" of ...?

Since you want to play the objectification game where you keep pretending that your language/semantics reifies and mine doesn't, lets play it.

But you are going to run out of Mathematics long before I do.

[tillingborn]

You understand that "properties" are emergent phenomena resulting from interactions we call "measurements", right?

Why have you put "properties" and "measurements" in quotation marks? Properties might simply refer to the things we think significant, because we are able to "measure" them, whatever that means. Are you saying that if it can't be measured, it isn't a property? Fundamentally, that's the logical positivists' rant.

[FlashDangerpants]

Well I guess now we get to see exactly how desperate Veritable Arquebus can get. Is his desire for "peronal objectivity" so all encompassing that he would take your help to keep it even though that's a pact with Satan? Is he willing to adopt a universalisation of relativism and end his project to do away with moral relativism in the process because he never really noticed that you aren't on his side and you don't give a fuck about his arguments?

Just look at how you are framing this. "His side", "Your side"

Can you even help yourself when it comes to navigating dichotomised thinking?

Can anybody? You think that you are right about stuff and I am wrong after all.

You are accusing the people arguing FOR objective morality of relativism and you are attacking them using linguistic relativism, and then you are trying to flip the tables so that you can climb back on your moral high horse.

Does this accurately sum up your confusion?

I'm mostly accusing VA of arguing contradictions on a sloppy and contingent basis. When he is in the act of writing any given sentence he may be arguing that moral truths are universal and derive that status from facts about DNA, or that no truths are universal. At the time it suits him to assert it so, his claim of moral truth is exclusive and asserts that competing truth claims are false. But when it comes time to justify any of that, then he's suddenly a fan of "personal objectivity". Somehow his FSK is supposed to contain proof that it is the right correct and -proper source of uniquely true moral knowledge, then in the next breath all that is required is self conviction and that "confidence" he talks of so often.

You of course don't do dichotomised thinking, so you presumably think he's right and I'm right and you're right too because there's really no difference between being correct and being a teapot.

And is he shit enough to do that just in the hope that I can't explain that the physical properties of some stuff we call "mercury" tracks the physical property we like to refer to as "temperature" in a substance, which in some cases we may attach the label "stuff" to.

Physical properties or physical quantities? You understand that "properties" are emergent phenomena resulting from interactions we call "measurements", right?

No, but I'm not a positivist. If you are accurately describing a scientific language game, then within that context what you write may well be meaningful there, but in the common language context, no, that's not really how the concepts work.

You understand that the reification of quantities (abstract mathematical structures/forms) is fundamentally Platonism or at best - Mathematical realism, yes? Or would that be a world shattering revelation to you?

Far from shattering, that would be irrelevant to me because I am not interested in replacing language with something more "-proper" like a postivist would be.

You understand that "interaction" is communication/information transfer right? Which is why measurement is ALWAYS mutual information.

That's more language-proper positivism.

You are using temperature to measure the mercury and you are using the mercury to measure temperature.
You understand that in the realm of science you are imprisoned by symmetry, yes? All quantities are subject to preservation laws.
You understand that the fundamental nature of "learning" (information gain/information transfer) is asymmetrical, right?

I'm using a tool to arrive at a judgement about how hot or cold something is. Everything else you sy I am doing is merely the imposition of a positivist assumption about the way language ought to work instead of the way it does.

And so physics fails to explain how it is that we can measure anything in a universe of symmetries (the mirror of nature argument).

Great. Let me know when the mirror of nature argument has something to say about a screwdriver not telling me why I need the screw.

This is always a fun game because he is quite thick and you never know which of these things he's going to go for. With your help he can probably be induced to express a directly positivist notion that the scientific definition of temperature is the actual meaning of the word. Shall we get him to finally commit to "language-proper".

Well well now! You are talking about "actual meanings" of stuff! What is the "actual meaning" of energy? What is the "actual meaning" of quantities?
What is the "actual meaning" of ...?

I think that game is a waste of time and effort. You seem to be working with a theory of language that has something to do with reducing language to logic, and then logic to what can be explained to a Turing Machine, and then you circle round and tell the rest of us that we don't understand what this or that concept means unless we put it in the form of something that can be explained to a TM.

Since you want to play the objectification game where you keep pretending that your language/semantics reifies and mine doesn't, lets play it.

But you are going to run out of Mathematics long before I do.

There mere fact that you referenced Mathematics suggests that I should not bother with that test, so I choose to withhold the effort of working out what you even mean by it.

[Skepdick]

Why have you put "properties" and "measurements" in quotation marks? Properties might simply refer to the things we think significant, because we are able to "measure" them, whatever that means.

Well, you don't really get to say "whatever that means". It's precisely the demarcation of what is and isn't measurement is what we are conflicted about, no?

Are you saying that if it can't be measured, it isn't a property? Fundamentally, that's the logical positivists' rant.

Quite the opposite! I am saying that man is the measure of all things. I am saying that EVERYTHING can be measured if you stretch the definition of "measurement" broadly enough.

I keep recommending this book.
And I keep pointing out that the most basic unit of measurement we, humans have is the Bit - the answer to one yes/no question.

In the most trivial of examples of what measurement looks like in practice. Any assertion/statement in the English language can be re-written as a question.

Statement: It's hot outside.
Question: Is it hot outside? Yes. 1 bit of information.

[tillingborn]

And I keep pointing out that the most basic unit of measurement we, humans have is the Bit - the answer to one yes/no question.

Isn't that the essence of dichotomised thinking?

[Terrapin Station]

Do you think that the relationship between the temperature of a substance and the reading on a thermometer is subjective just because the numbers that are on the outside of the thermometer could have been other numbers?

If they're arguing something akin to "You'd need to say that temperature is subjective if you're saying that morality is subjective," it would suffice as a support for "morality is objective" if they could show something akin to a thermometer--so some extramental device responding to extramental properties--for moral edicts or maxims or whatever they want to call the supposed objective moral whatevers. The same thing goes for the red circle comments. Show anything akin to a spectrometer, say, for moral properties, and we'll accept that morality is objective.

[Skepdick]

Can anybody?

Yes. Cooperative game theorist can.

You think that you are right about stuff and I am wrong after all.

How is that even possible? You don't believe in objective "right" and "wrong".

So now I must play a language game where you are making me guess how you are equivocating those terms.

Ohhhhh wait! You are trying to frame this as a dichotomy. Again!

You of course don't do dichotomised thinking, so you presumably think he's right and I'm right and you're right too because there's really no difference between being correct and being a teapot.

It actually occurs to me that you don't understand relativism to its fullest extent.
In the sense of General Relativity everything is relative to the observer indeed.

And then there's the inconvenience that every moron (and I count you in this list) needs to acknowledge
when they use "relativism" as some sort of pejorative or a slam-dunk invocation which is supposed to blow
"moral relativists" out of the water, and enables you to do some victory dance as the King of all intellectual Kings.

In general relativity all relativists (the observers) actually agree on the speed of light as being constant and absolute.

To spell it out in a language that your retard-philosopher brain can understand: relativists can actually agree
on absolutes.

So this is where I expect your good-for-nothing Philosopher brain to go "Uh! Oh! But is that really relativism then?"

No, but I'm not a positivist. If you are accurately describing a scientific language game, then within that context what you write may well be meaningful there, but in the common language context, no, that's not really how the concepts work.

You don't have any idea how language works. You don't even understand the difference between context-free and context-sensitive languages.
How are you going to go make such claims that there is a "default context"? Your ego can't cash those cheques.

Is the "default context" English, Russian, Spanish or Chinese? Because each of those languages works differently and leads to different ways of thinking.

The entire reason why science works is because you submit to the controlled vocabulary of the community which you are a part of. You stop fighting that dumb Philosophical urge to control the semantics/narrative.

Far from shattering, that would be irrelevant to me because I am not interested in replacing language with something more "-proper" like a postivist would be.

That's a lie. You've replaced the common English with the Philosopher's English. You use all fancy terms like "ontology" and "epistemology" and "arguments" and "soundness" and "validity".

That's just another Controlled Vocabulary.

But hey, who am I to tell you such things. It's not like I know anything about the science dealing with control-flow.

That's more language-proper positivism.

No, it's just the controlled vocabulary of science.

I'm using a tool to arrive at a judgement about how hot or cold something is.

Idiot. You can't possibly "understand" the readings of any measurement instrument if you don't understand how that reading corresponds to human experience.

The LCD screen says 435 burfensmurfs. Is that "hot" or "cold"?
The mercury is 17 centimeters tall. Is that "hot" or "cold"?

Everything else you sy I am doing is merely the imposition of a positivist assumption about the way language ought to work instead of the way it does.

You don't get to claim that "language works" without specifying some criteria for success/failure. What would we be observing if language didn't work?

If I define "the ability to arrive at consensus in a reasonable amount of time" ( Auman's agreement theorem) then it's obvious that language doesn't work the way Philosophers use it!

Great. Let me know when the mirror of nature argument has something to say about a screwdriver not telling me why I need the screw.

This screwdriver is telling you about the principle of equifinality. The screw is only one way to get what you are after.

I think that game is a waste of time and effort. You seem to be working with a theory of language that has something to do with reducing language to logic, and then logic to what can be explained to a Turing Machine, and then you circle round and tell the rest of us that we don't understand what this or that concept means unless we put it in the form of something that can be explained to a TM.

I am working on nothing of that sort. I am just pointing out that if you frame all Philosophical disagreements as disagreements over the descriptive use of language, then all that you could ever disagree about is denotation, not connotation.

If I tell you that the square is "red" and you tell me that the square is "green" there is literally NOTHING to disagree about. We denote stuff differently.

So what?

There mere fact that you referenced Mathematics suggests that I should not bother with that test, so I choose to withhold the effort of working out what you even mean by it.

OK. I'll explain it to you in the simplest way I know how to put it. Whether you understand it is another matter.

Thought and language can determine things only up to isomorphism.

[Skepdick]

Isn't that the essence of dichotomised thinking?

Is it?

[Skepdick]

If they're arguing something akin to "You'd need to say that temperature is subjective if you're saying that morality is subjective," it would suffice as a support for "morality is objective" if they could show something akin to a thermometer--so some extramental device responding to extramental properties--for moral edicts or maxims or whatever they want to call the supposed objective moral whatevers. The same thing goes for the red circle comments. Show anything akin to a spectrometer, say, for moral properties, and we'll accept that morality is objective.

That's fucking stupid. Have you seen any "extra-mental" measurement devices that don't produce symbolic output?

A spectrometer that doesn't produce its "answers" in some language that you "understand"?
What exactly would you read off a mercury "thermometer" without temperature markings?
What exactly is it that you would understand if your car speedometer told you that you are traveling at 4123 lumbars per gartic?

Scientific measurements do one thing and one thing alone. They predict future human experience.

[tillingborn]

Isn't that the essence of dichotomised thinking?

Is it?

Yes.

[Skepdick]

Yes.

So you didn't consider "No" and "Maybe" as alternative answers?

[Terrapin Station]

If they're arguing something akin to "You'd need to say that temperature is subjective if you're saying that morality is subjective," it would suffice as a support for "morality is objective" if they could show something akin to a thermometer--so some extramental device responding to extramental properties--for moral edicts or maxims or whatever they want to call the supposed objective moral whatevers. The same thing goes for the red circle comments. Show anything akin to a spectrometer, say, for moral properties, and we'll accept that morality is objective.

That's fucking stupid. Have you seen any "extra-mental" measurement devices that don't produce symbolic output?

A spectrometer that doesn't produce its "answers" in some language that you "understand"?
What exactly would you read off a mercury "thermometer" without temperature markings?
What exactly is it that you would understand if your car speedometer told you that you are traveling at 4123 lumbars per gartic?

Scientific measurements do one thing and one thing alone. They predict future human experience.

I have you on ignore but displayed this post to see what your suggestion would be.

The issues you're bringing up with these measurement devices are fine. There's no need to argue over them. Can we produce a measurement device for morality that has the same issues? If so, present it, and despite the issues you're bringing up, we'll accept that morality is objective.

[FlashDangerpants]

Can anybody?

Yes. Cooperative game theorist can.

You think that you are right about stuff and I am wrong after all.

How is that even possible? You don't believe in objective "right" and "wrong".

So now I must play a language game where you are making me guess how you are equivocating those terms.

Ohhhhh wait! You are trying to frame this as a dichotomy. Again!

You agree with me at least as far as if one of us is right then the other is wrong.
you can fantasise about some alternate world where I need to explain rightness and wrongness for you to understand that sentence as much as you like.

You of course don't do dichotomised thinking, so you presumably think he's right and I'm right and you're right too because there's really no difference between being correct and being a teapot.

It actually occurs to me that you don't understand relativism to its fullest extent.
In the sense of General Relativity everything is relative to the observer indeed.

Is there a "fullest extent" for relativism? That sounds a bit absolutist tbh.

And then there's the inconvenience that every moron (and I count you in this list) needs to acknowledge
when they use "relativism" as some sort of pejorative or a slam-dunk invocation which is supposed to blow
"moral relativists" out of the water, and enables you to do some victory dance as the King of all intellectual Kings.

You have missed the point by trying to make everything about you again.
Vaginal Astronaut is a moral realist, he is engaged in a war agains moral relativism.
FleshDoodyPants is a moral skeptic, moral relativism is merely the formalisation of failed attempts to apply certainty in error as far as FuckDiddlyPiss is concerned.

In general relativity all relativists (the observers) actually agree on the speed of light as being constant and absolute.

To spell it out in a language that your retard-philosopher brain can understand: relativists can actually agree
on absolutes.

So this is where I expect your good-for-nothing Philosopher brain to go "Uh! Oh! But is that really relativism then?"

I would only bother doing that if you weren't a relativist. To work out whether to do so, I would have to take you seriously enough to think it mattered whether you believe in moral factual relativism, and for that I would need to ask you to explain what you meant, which has never been worth the effort in the past.

No, but I'm not a positivist. If you are accurately describing a scientific language game, then within that context what you write may well be meaningful there, but in the common language context, no, that's not really how the concepts work.

You don't have any idea how language works. You don't even understand the difference between context-free and context-sensitive languages.
How are you going to go make such claims that there is a "default context"? Your ego can't cash those cheques.

Ihave consulted my ego and it wasn't aware it even needed to wake up for this conversation. It doesn't care what a context-free language is.

Is the "default context" English, Russian, Spanish or Chinese? Because each of those languages works differently and leads to different ways of thinking.

The entire reason why science works is because you submit to the controlled vocabulary of the community which you are a part of. You stop fighting that dumb Philosophical urge to control the semantics/narrative.

I am using a language where my tea is cold, but a bath of the same temperature would be hot. I am doing that without the slightest concern for whether a scientist would or would not approve of such usage.

Far from shattering, that would be irrelevant to me because I am not interested in replacing language with something more "-proper" like a postivist would be.

That's a lie. You've replaced the common English with the Philosopher's English. You use all fancy terms like "ontology" and "epistemology" and "arguments" and "soundness" and "validity".

That's just another Controlled Vocabulary.

But I only apply that context in ... a context. What I don't do is that context universally to tell people that they don't even know what "hot" means. That's the sort of behaviour I leave to you.

But hey, who am I to tell you such things. It's not like I know anything about the science dealing with control-flow.

So, you've just abandoned that computers obsession and replaced it with everything-is-about-science have you?

That's more language-proper positivism.

No, it's just the controlled vocabulary of science.

I'm using a tool to arrive at a judgement about how hot or cold something is.

Idiot. You can't possibly "understand" the readings of any measurement instrument if you don't understand how that reading corresponds to human experience.

The LCD screen says 435 burfensmurfs. Is that "hot" or "cold"?
The mercury is 17 centimeters tall. Is that "hot" or "cold"?

Everything else you sy I am doing is merely the imposition of a positivist assumption about the way language ought to work instead of the way it does.

You don't get to claim that "language works" without specifying some criteria for success/failure. What would we be observing if language didn't work?

If I define "the ability to arrive at consensus in a reasonable amount of time" ( Auman's agreement theorem) then it's obvious that language doesn't work the way Philosophers use it!

Great. Let me know when the mirror of nature argument has something to say about a screwdriver not telling me why I need the screw.

This screwdriver is telling you about the principle of equifinality. The screw is only one way to get what you are after.

I think that game is a waste of time and effort. You seem to be working with a theory of language that has something to do with reducing language to logic, and then logic to what can be explained to a Turing Machine, and then you circle round and tell the rest of us that we don't understand what this or that concept means unless we put it in the form of something that can be explained to a TM.

I am working on nothing of that sort. I am just pointing out that if you frame all Philosophical disagreements as disagreements over the descriptive use of language, then all that you could ever disagree about is denotation, not connotation.

If I tell you that the square is "red" and you tell me that the square is "green" there is literally NOTHING to disagree about. We denote stuff differently.

So what?

There mere fact that you referenced Mathematics suggests that I should not bother with that test, so I choose to withhold the effort of working out what you even mean by it.

OK. I'll explain it to you in the simplest way I know how to put it. Whether you understand it is another matter.

Thought and language can determine things only up to isomorphism.

Bored