Stack Exchange
log in

Kristian Berry

 Discussion on question by Syed: Why i…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Jul 18 07:44
Is life improbable because it is fragile? It is highly improbable for a burgeoning lifeform to survive in a hostile primordial environment. If an ur-organism emerges under those circumstances, it is unlikely that they will survive. However, if there are less hostile environments available ever and then for long enough, alongside the whole dynamic of adaptation, then do we say that it is unlikely that life will expand on this basis well enough when given the chance? But then talk of the categorical (unconditional) probability of life is less perspicuous.
 

 Discussion on question by Cartesian D…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Jul 15 10:27
Now, since assuming nonipsism to be true nullifies all further use of words like "I," "you," "me," "we," "him," "her," "it," and so on, w.r.t. persons, it follows that nonipsism is self-undermining. It is self-undermining enough to where that explains why it's "not being discussed" (even though it is discussed betimes, e.g. by Hume as Bumble pointed out): it's like why few people discuss the claim that 2 + 2 = 1111 (because we already know it's false).
Kristian Berry
Jul 15 10:27
@MichaelHall the OP asks us why people aren't discussing nonipsism more, while telling these people to doubt their own existence. So, let's assume nonipsism were true. Then it would follow that no one is discussing it or failing to discuss it; there is no one to do either such thing. They say that we have no "experience of self," but it is almost as if I do not exist, for my mind is so weak that I cannot possibly understand what "no experience of self" is supposed to mean in this context. What is an experience, firstly? This word too is not per se "experienced."
Kristian Berry
Jul 15 10:27
@Idran I just meant that the OP's not having a "sense" of self (whatever that means) is not proof that no one has a "sense of self." For example, if one defines such a "sense" as e.g. transcendental apperception (as in Kant), then one might have such a "sense." And maybe not everyone has it. Likewise, just because some people are aphantasiac, or blind, or deaf, or whatever, is not proof that no one can see or hear things, is it?
Kristian Berry
Jul 15 10:27
IOW: If I don't exist, then I don't fail to discuss the idea of nonipsism. If I don't exist, then I don't fail to doubt my existence. If no one exists and there are no philosophers, then that's why no one is discussing their (own!) nonexistence: they don't exist to discuss things! Should I say, then, that I am not even writing this very answer? Apparently I'm not writing it. It's just being written in a free-floating way. (Why would I ask, "Should I...?" if I don't exist, though? It seems like any engagement with this topic collapses into a presupposition of my existence as such.)
Kristian Berry
Jul 15 10:27
But how do I know that the proposition, "Nonipsism is more reasonable than solipsism," to be true? How do I know this, that is? Do I just say it's "known" in some free-floating way? Also, unfortunately, that some people do not have the same robust sense of self as others is no testimony against those others (cf. the condition of "aphantasia"). (Moreover, "why does no philosopher ask question X" is almost always a failed question, because you will almost always find out that some philosopher has indeed already asked said question.)
 

 Discussion on question by Syed: How i…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Jun 16 21:47
How do you get "it can't be true at all" from "sometimes it might not be true"? And why not analyze pairs of theories which have actually instigated this challenge instead of a pair of theories (wind vs. goblins) that is not relevant to this challenge?
 

 Discussion on question by gaazkam: Wh…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Jun 12 22:28
If it was just about random words, trans people would not want to change their physique to reflect their inner sense of such identity. If you want to understand transgender identity theory, you should probably look into how transgender people actually experience their desire to transition instead of playing ideological guessing games.
 

 Discussion on question by Groovy: How…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Jun 12 03:33
@RonJohn the government created by an aggressive hyper destructive foreign superpower and perpetually beholden to the American advisors and later military occupation? But if you're conflating legality and right vs. wrong, you're already wandering astray from the truer paths.
Kristian Berry
Jun 12 03:33
@RonJohn the political organization of the NLF was significantly distributed between Viet Minh cadres who remained in the south after the national split, and officers of the DRV, as well as a great many people formerly unaffiliated in the south. For better or worse, atrocities by and against the DRV, and the NLF, were not very separate matters.
Kristian Berry
Jun 12 03:33
@RonJohn the US helped France during its illegal attempt to retain control over Vietnam, divided the country in two, then invaded South Vietnam when they rebelled against the regime we were using to try to control the country after France withdrew. We used 11,000,000 tons of bombs and artillery against South Vietnam while polluting and otherwise desecrating the landscape, and killing most of the 2,000,000 civilians who died during the war.
Kristian Berry
Jun 12 03:33
If a Vietnamese citizen acknowledged DRV/NLF atrocities, they would just be acknowledging DRV/NLF atrocities, not necessarily denying the much larger amount of US atrocities during the invasion. Since no side should commit atrocities, this acknowledgement is just an acknowledgement. What would be externally, and extremely, problematic would be using DRV/NLF atrocities to justify joining the US side of the war. Is one entitled to sit the war out if all major factions are committing atrocities? But there is no proof that one has a duty to join any faction whatsoever, is there?
 

 Discussion on question by Michael: Do…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Jun 2 00:43
The advanced, or even naturalistic, social constructivist will reply that the concepts of anisogamy and speciation are also socially constructed, seeing as some will say that e.g. the concept of quarks is socially constructed, or that any categorization of objects involves this process because otherwise there is just one all-encompassing blobject that exists in every category together (existence monism in metaphysics).
 

 Discussion on question by Syed: Which…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
May 9 18:13
You'll have to look into the history of the teleological and cosmological arguments. Now I should also think that any partial or incomplete explanation gives rise to further questions by nature, but it would be difficult to precisely quantify over which incomplete explanations give rise to more further questions. There is something "freeform" about the process of coming up with new questions, so that whether something raises more of them than something else might be pretty subjective/relative.
 

 Discussion on question by Syed: Is th…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
May 4 11:58
@emesupap no, you're right, but I just don't feel like deleting another answer again. I wasn't sure the question would be closed prior to an edit by the OP, either. I'm hopeful it wouldn't take much to clear up the excessive bias against multiverse concepts...
Kristian Berry
May 4 11:58
@emesupap I posted an answer first, then VTC after it was downvoted, albeit I was guessing why it was downvoted.
Kristian Berry
May 4 11:58
I have VTC this question on the grounds that it is pushing a personal philosophy about talking about multiverses, one plagued by strawmanning of relevant points of view (including the poster's own).
 

 Discussion on question by Syed: Do ex…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Apr 20 23:50
Why can't we work with the concept of incomplete explanations? Or isn't that what we work with?
 

 The Symposium

A Party Space for Philosophy.SE! Both philosophy and mundane c...
Kristian Berry
Apr 16 21:39
I want to keep my FB profile pic with this Trojan-lookin' dude but it is SO outta place here on this SE 😭
 

 Discussion on question by Syed: Is in…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Apr 5 14:28
What proof is there that there is a universal, exceptionless definition of causation? Wouldn't the example of entanglement be a case where many physicists had agreed that instantaneous causation or at least instantaneously correlated physical functionality occurs or is at least logically possible? At any rate, Kant himself already accepted simultaneous causation back in the late 1700s.
Kristian Berry
Apr 5 14:28
Why wouldn't we be able to redefine the concept/word "causation" to include instantaneous/simultaneous physical functionality?
 

 Discussion between Lawrence and Krist…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Mar 11 00:27
In a certain ranking sense, what type theory forms a hierarchy over/for might not be so much the foundations of mathematics as the foundation of logic, see the SEP here.
Kristian Berry
Mar 11 00:21
Conifold one time suggested assimilating the occurrence relation to the multiplicity relation for multisets. Now also, while I remember it, the SEP entry on type theory talks about translating back and forth from set and type theory together.
Kristian Berry
Mar 11 00:20
Well, in colloquial/natural-language typology, we have types-tokens-occurrences instead of just types-terms or types-tokens (the SEP has an article about this also).
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:44
IIRC the SEP entry on category theory mentions the inspiration for the modern usage of the word "category" there.
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:43
So, Job is a type of Christ, who is the transcendental antitype of Job then, and by comparison, the moral law and the natural law enter into a type-antitype relation.
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:42
In this usage, Kant is echoing the Christian use of the words "type" and "antitype," where an antitype is not the contrary of a type by nature but is situated on the opposite end of a "timeline" relative to its corresponding types.
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:41
Like, the concept of universal laws of nature is a "type of" the moral law, hence his univeralization test.
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:40
the moral law via the laws of nature.
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:39
At one point mid-Critique (the first one), he ranks representations such that above concepts as units of understanding, there are "notions" and then "ideas." When it comes to ideas, there is also a singular ideal, that of the divine nature, which we calls the "transcendental prototype." Then, in the second Critique, he talks about the "type of the moral law," which is a quasi-imaginative representation of
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:33
@Lawrence interestingly, Kant uses the words "type" and "category" in ways evocative of the modern use, but also reflecting much older, even Christian-theological, use (that "also" has more to do with his use of the word "type"). And Kant was one at least slight inspiration for the mathematical word usage, here. At any rate, Kant would rank types higher than categories in terms of his hierarchy of sense-understanding-reason, for whatever that's worth.
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:33
@Lawrence well, we could go on to claim that abstract metaphysics is more general than type theory, or whatever along these lines. Part of the problem is whether there is such a thing as a "most general" POV. This seems paradoxical as then we could specify that POV by the description "most general."
Kristian Berry
Mar 10 23:33
@Lawrence I assume that he is speaking from the POV of an outdated extension of category theory, since from what I've seen on nLab, category theory indeed can be or has been expanded to encompass most everything there could be (aside from various minutiae such as the question of amorphous sets in AC-minus set theory).
 

 Discussion on question by Mikhail Kat…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Dec 10, 2024 06:48
@MikhailKatz our metaphysical/philosophical acceptance of the premises behind Gentzen's or Artemov's results, if grounded in pluralism about consistency theory, would allow for e.g. appealing to Artemov to counteract the bent of Giaquinto. That seems like an OK dialectical move. I do think that if the pluralism is emphasized up front, counteracting Giaquinto might be even easier, though (and even more on the philosophical level).
Kristian Berry
Dec 10, 2024 06:48
@MikhailKatz hmm, from a pluralism-about-consistency-theory standpoint, we do have to consider that the incompleteness phenomena, even on the "transfinite" level, are relative to background assumptions about what consistency is/should be, about what proof is, etc. I'm reminded of I think it was Tarski's response to Gentzen's consistency proof, something flippant but exact like, "The proof only convinces me to increase my belief in PA by ε."
Kristian Berry
Dec 10, 2024 06:48
If PA could derive "PA is consistent," wouldn't it be able to derive "PA is inconsistent" also, since being inconsistent is what would allow its proof of consistency? Is that what Artemov is trying to get at or is there supposed to be some other meta-conclusion?
 

 Discussion on question by Annika: Is …

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Nov 25, 2024 00:10
@Syed I can't ask that question unless I've been determined by prior causes to ask that question. The only possible questions are actual ones.
Kristian Berry
Nov 25, 2024 00:10
@Syed how am I supposed to imagine something when it's not possible for me to imagine it? There's no prior cause determining me to imagine an infinite chain of books, so I can't imagine it. The only things that are possible are the things that actually happen, so it's impossible for me to imagine something that I'm not imagining.
Kristian Berry
Nov 25, 2024 00:10
@Syed can you prove that it's an obvious fact? Can you prove that the universe has a propositional structure in the first place? And no, my actions, including my mental actions, are determined completely by prior causes, so I "can" imagine only what I do imagine. It's impossible to imagine things other than what is actually imagined.
Kristian Berry
Nov 25, 2024 00:10
@Syed can you prove that there is such a thing as "overthinking"? How do you know that nothing is preventing me from imagining infinite causal chains in the first place?
Kristian Berry
Nov 25, 2024 00:10
@Syed can you prove that it is possible to imagine other possibilities? Can you prove that the concept of explanations can be applied to itself? Can you prove that proofs exist, or that it is obvious that there are obvious things? Can you, that is, do any of this without circularity?
Kristian Berry
Nov 25, 2024 00:10
@Syed actually, per the gap between first- and second-order logic, it need not be possible to quantify over all explanations as a unified whole, so one could say that every term in a system of explanations has a regressive local explanation, while denying that the question of a universal explanation is meaningful. Then it is not, "The whole system is a brute fact," but the concept of brute facts doesn't even apply to the whole system.
 

 Discussion on question by Syed: How d…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Nov 21, 2024 03:17
@TedWrigley I should probably just let himself shoot himself in the foot again, the mods will notice that he's doing the same comment abuse thing as before, I'll give it time...
Kristian Berry
Nov 21, 2024 03:17
@Syed we know you're using another account to evade your prior ban. You don't even make an effort to hide it because you use the same linguistic fingerprints as before. You are not supposed to be posting on this site, because you're not sincerely asking questions about philosophy but pretending to have all the "obvious" answers.
Kristian Berry
Nov 21, 2024 03:17
I think it could seem like pure lunacy to evade a site ban again and again, to post up the same comment wars that prompted the ban in the first place, trying in vain to convince the PhilosophySE that one knows what one's talking about (when one is dealing with people who have studied this topic at an extreme academic level) while not only talking in circles but trying to act like one is talking in a perfect straight line from obvious conclusions to self-evident truths.
 

 Discussion on question by user80226: …

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Nov 18, 2024 10:04
@Syed of course it's possible to reverse death. It would just be quite difficult with our current technology. Imagine claiming that humans could never fly because they hadn't yet (before planes and helicopters and hot air balloons).
Kristian Berry
Nov 18, 2024 10:04
@Groovy I was just going off the resurrection narrative that underscores the reason for the OP question. That narrative includes a claim that the onlookers knew that Jesus had died. Of course, the story also goes that they didn't even actually recognize him when he first came back to them, so the possibility that they just started believing some other person who hadn't died, was an undead man, is a possibility I could grant as well.
 

 Discussion on question by user80226: …

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Nov 8, 2024 10:04
I'm not sure there's much value in citing the idea of a universal probability bound. People might not like having to deal with the esoteric aspects of second-order arithmetic, the problem of arbitrary subsets of the naturals, etc., but this is real understanding that does not uniquely corroborate Dembski's vision. There is, at best, an ultrafinitist theory of probability that might support a figure like 10^150, but ultrafinitism is not guaranteed to be true any more than infinitism is (and probably less so, after all, since anything that is infinitely grounded is more grounded than if not).
 

 Discussion on question by Mikhail Kat…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Kristian Berry
Nov 1, 2024 20:22
One of the ways Storer describes the difference is that "any" expresses "schematic generality" whereas "all" expresses the "logical product of its instances." He claims that "all" then requires a "determinate range of instances." So he often uses Dummett's phrase "indefinite extensibility" per a denial that e.g. the powerset function delivers a definite, inwardly non-extensible domain. Storer doesn't seem to be a dedicated anti-realist, though (he seemingly accepts a completed set of natural numbers but not of real numbers, so maybe he's a realist about some infinities and not others).
Kristian Berry
Nov 1, 2024 20:22
"Modern mathematics does not seem to recognize such a difference between 'each' and 'every'": on the contrary, this is a fine point of predicativist argument, see Storer[10], pg. 48.