u/Training-Promotion71

Does existence have an explanation?

Every explanation consist of the explanandum, i.e., what is to be explained, and the explanans, i.e., that which explains it.

The explanans cannot presuppose the explanandum. If existence is explicable, then there is an explanans that explains existence. In our case, existence itself is the explanandum, so there is no explanans that explains existence. Therefore, existence is inexplicable

In free will debates, we typically assume that time exists and we rarely consider timeless worlds.

Prima facie, it seems to be trivially true that if time ever existed, it always existed. But that time always exists doesn't mean that time exists necessarily, since timeless worlds are or might be possible and whatnot. So, the point is rather that there is never a time at which there is no time, which means that if there is a time t, there is time T : so, if time doesn't exist at all times, then time doesn't exist at any time. Contrapositive: if time exists at any time, it exists at all times.

Suppose there are only two times, t1 and t2. Then either (1) t1 is past and t2 is present or (2) t1 is present and t2 is future. It is impossible that t1 is future, and t2 is past, viz., if t1 is past, t2 must be present and if t2 is future, t1 must be present. We cannot seriously consider time without appealing to the present, hence, the combination "t1 is past and t2 is future" is impossible.

Consider the following. Time is what passes, so if there is time, it passes: a present time t lapses and thereby becomes a past time t' ; i.e., it gets replaced by a new present moment t''. Consider (1). If time passes, then there is a time t that lapsed. The lapsed time is t1. But by (2), no time t lapses since t1 is present, so it is not the case that time passes. This implies that there is no time in (2). Yet there are two times, namely t1 and t2, a fortiori, one time t. Therefore, it is not the case that times presuppose time, viz., there could be a plurality of timeless times.

Parmenides famously claimed that what is is, and what is not is not. Leucippus believed that both what is and what is not are, namely what is is, and what is not is. He divided reality into body and space: body is what is and space is what is not. Leucippus was an ancient greek pluralist and pluralists agreed with Parmenides that the stuff that makes up reality is uncreated, indivisible, eternal and immutable, so they conceded Parmenides' claim that nothing new can ever come into or go out of existence. They also agreed with Heraclitus that there is change, motion, becoming, etc.; In order to reconciliate these views, they turned Parmenidean one into plentitude of atoms and introduced void to allow for locomotion. In fact, pluralism emerged as a reconciliatory approach between Parmenides' and Heraclitus'.

Let's make a quick reconstruction of Leucippus' argument:

1) Body is what is

2) What is is

3) Space is what is not

4) Space is as real as body

5) Therefore, what is not is (1-4)

We see that Leucippus grants the following conjunction: being is and nonbeing is.

Let's take a reconstructed version of Gorgias' argument against that:

1) Assume for reductio that being is and nonbeing is

2) Being and nonbeing are the same with respect to their being (1)

3) Nonbeing is not

4) If nonbeing is not and being and nonbeing are the same with respect to their being, then being is not

5) Therefore, being is not (2, 4)

6) Neither being nor nonbeing is (3, 5)

7) Contradiction! (1, 6)

8) Therefore, 1 is false (reductio 1-7)

Let me pull out my anti-Eleatic argument to spice things up:

1) If being is, then nonbeing is not

2) What cannot cease to be is

3) Nonbeing cannot cease to be

4) Therefore, nonbeing is (2, 3)

5) Therefore, being is not (1, 4)

Word is "brains are computers"

A quick argument:

1) Computers were invented by humans no earlier than the 19th century

2) Brains are computers

3) Therefore, brains were invented by humans no earlier than the 19th century (1, 2)

4) All people who lived before 19th century were brainless (3)

Suppose someone denies 1 and suppose we grant it. Presumably, the objection targets the exact century or time period when computers were invented. In that case, we can run the following argument:

1) Computers are man-made objects

2) Brains are computers

3) Therefore, brains are man-made objects (1, 2)

4) Dinosaurs required brains for life

5) Therefore, dinosaurs required man-made objects for life (3, 4)

6) But dinosaurs went exctinct long before humans even existed

7) Humans travelled in the past and animated dinosaurs (5, 6)

In any case, computers are human invention, so since 3 is obviously false, we should deny 2

Maudlin's argument against physicalism:

1) Goldbach's conjecture is either true or false

2) The truthmaker of Goldbach's conjencture is not a physical fact

3) If physicalism is true, there are no non-physical facts

4) therefore, physicalism is false (2, 3)

This is roughly how he stated the argument. I suspect some physicalists will deny commitment to a truthmaker theory or complain about the assumptions behind the second premise, and some will deny 3.

Take supervenience physicalism. Supervenience physicalism concerns the relation between a set of properties or set of facts. Namely, there is no change in non-physical properties without a change in physical properties. But mathematical truths do not require the existence of any physical facts. So, if there are mathematical truths, physicalism is false, a fortiori, supervenience physicalism is false.

There are two notions that are frequently used interchangeably: reality and the world. Typically, the world is defined as a totality of entities or reality as a whole. The notion of reality is sometimes used to denote how things actually are independent from our interpretation. I'd like to use the notion of reality in an all-inclusive sense, viz., reality is everything that exists; the totality of existents.

If reality is everything that exists and reality exists, then everything that exists, exists. Hard to deny that. Most people who accept that reality is everything that exists, accept the multiplicity thesis, viz., there are many existent things. Here's the problem: if reality is everything that exists, then nothing exists apart from reality, viz., only reality exists. If multiplicity thesis is true, then there are many existents. Contradiction! Stated differently: if reality is among existent things from which it is distinct, then something exists apart from reality, viz., it is not the case that only reality exists. Contradiction! So, given the truth of multiplicity thesis, either reality is not everything that exists or reality doesn't exist.

One of the famous Zeno's paradoxes of motion or arguments against the possibility of motion goes as follows: in order to cross the room, you have to first get halfway to the end. Since every step takes you only halfway to the end, there is no step from any point to the end, hence you cannot cross the room, i.e., motion is impossible.

By asking "How do you ever cross the room if each step only gets you halfway to the end?", Zeno is asking a general question: "How is motion possible at all?"

The claim is that you cannot cross the room or get to the end because each step only gets you halfway to the end. But if the end of the room would be a halfway point between you and some other end, then you could cross the room. For example, let A be the starting point of whoever walks and B be the endpoint. Let AB denote the distance between A and B, i.e., the length of the interval from A to B. AB is traversable iff there is a point C such that BC=AB, AC=2AB and A, B and C are collinear.

Yet the paradox still blocks reaching halfway to any end because every halfway point is itself an end, so there is always another halfway point between you and that point no matter how many steps you take. Iow, the aforementioned reply begs the question, it would work only if motion were possible, which means it doesn't answer Zeno.

Since my last post about Cavendish's causal occassionalism generated high interest among members of this sub judging by how many times the post was shared, lemme make another one, which some posters might find interesting, useful or connectable to the relevant issues in free will debates.

Margaret Cavendish belived that minds are material. One of her arguments is as follows: it is inconceivable that souls as incorporeal entities can move in space since only corporeal entities can move in space and incorporeal entities cannot have corporeal actions no more than corporeal entities can have incorporeal actions.

But a dualist can reply that she straightforwardly begs the question by assuming that incorporeal entities cannot move in space, either intrinsically or in virtue of being incorporated. They can also say that she equivocates over "corporeal", as spirit bodies are paradigmatically corporeal, and some of her contemporary philosophers like Henry More believed that souls or spirits themselves are spatially extended. Notice another point, a dualist can agree that minds are material and reject that any mind-external object is. An inverted dualist believes that minds are physical or material, and bodies(or the external objects) aren't. In fact, one can turn the table like Chomsky and say that all matter is ghostly, viz., the whole world is immaterial. Rather than souls being too ghostly to interact with matter, the matter itself is ghostly, as matter was stripped off its intuitive mechanical properties since Newton.

To be fair, Cavendish allows the possibility of existence of immaterial entities like souls or God, but denies that we (1) can know anything about them, and (2) are talking about them when referencing minds by which we think thoughts, have ideas, feel, etc.; since those partake in motion and interact with bodies, which in her opinion means they are material.

She says:

>Wherefore no part of nature (her parts being corporeal) can perceive an immaterial; because it is impossible to have a perception of that which is not perceptible, as not being an object fit or proper for corporeal perception.

The above statement might commit Cavendish to dualism if she tacitly assumes that all material entities are perceivable. Most of the things in the universe are imperceivable, therefore, most of things in the universe are immaterial. In fact, light itself is imperceivable. That light is immaterial follows from the definition of matter in chemistry, but that's beside the point.

Here's another difficulty with Cavendish's contention. She grants that souls or immaterial entities might exist, but if they do exist, then we cannot form ideas about them. Yet both we and Cavendish are forming ideas about souls or immaterial entities since time immemorial, but we are not committed to her implication, in fact, it would be absurd to believe that we could form ideas about p only if p does not exist. Notice that what she says doesn't make any sense because if we cannot form ideas about p, then we cannot meaningfully assert anything about it, thereby, her statement cannot be true. To assert that immaterial entities like souls might exist, presupposes some intelligible conception of them.

Bonus: That minds are material or physical, doesn't imply that materialism or physicalism is true. Inverted dualism is just one example.

Margaret Cavendish argued that body-body interaction is unintelligible and concluded that all bodies are self-moving. For example, it is false that when I throw a ball with my hand it is my hand that causes the ball's motion; rather, the ball moves itself. Likewise, when someone walks across the snow, the footsteps do not genuinely produce the prints. The snow organizes itself into those shapes, viz., footprints, through its own motion. Her contention is that bodily interaction is inexplicable in terms of either the transfer of motion or one body acting upon another.

In what follows, I will partially channel Chamberlain's analysis of Cavendish's view. The first target is the standard idea that one body transmits motion to another. In fact, she rejects all transfer theories of motion + all reaching models, viz., one body reaching into another body and causing motion in that body. She confidently argues that bodily interaction cannot be explained neither in terms of the transfer of motion nor in terms of one body acting in another body. In her times, the contention was that motion is a mode of body, so her objection was that motion cannot literally detach from one body and migrate into another. Further, if the action of one body is identical with passion(active-passive) of another, then one and the same motion would belong to two different objects at once, which she takes to be incoherent. We can also add something that she missed as per my knowledge, namely, that there would be no distinction between action and passion in that case.

Consider raising your hand. The fact that the fingers move together with the hand does not show that motion is transferred from the hand to the fingers, nor that the hand literally causes the fingers to move. On Cavendish's view, each part moves through its own intrinsic principle of self-motion. External bodies merely occassion the motions of others without genuinely causing them to do so.

Cavendish's view is based on three claims:

No causal interaction: if two bodies a and b are numerically distinct, then a is not a true cause of b's motion.

Self-motion: each body is the true cause of its own motion.

Occassional influentism: if we have two bodies, a and b, a can occassion the way b moves, and vice-versa.

To recap. If bodies never truly act on one another, how do we explain the remarkable regularity and coordination we observe in nature? Iow, why bowling balls typically move only when thrown, or snowprints appear only when someone walks across the snow or externally imprints them? Cavendish answers that bodies respond to occassions according to their own internal powers rather than via genuine transeunt causation. It is the nature of animate matter to move, so bodies move themselves. What we ordinarily call causation is in fact occassioning. A hand occassions the ball's self-motion; footsteps occassion the snow to organize itself into footprints. Thus, external objects do not cause or produce motion but function as enabling or constraining conditions under which bodies exercise their own power.

Many members of this sub claim that libertarianism implies substance dualism. What I am interested in are arguments in support of that claim. I grant that many libertarians in fact are substance dualists and I expect that posters will grant that many are not. What the claimant should do is show that libertarians are committed to substance dualism, iow, that libertarianism is incompatible with the falsity of substance dualism.

Intensional definition is a form of definition which uses some other notion to determine its content. We are defining necessary and sufficient conditions some item has to satisfy in order to fall under defined term. Extensional definition is a form of definition in which we determine the reach, range or scope of a term. We are determining all items that fall under.

A traditional definition consists of a definienudum, that is, the term we define, and a definiens, or the term we use to define the initial term.

A triangle is a geometric figure bounded by three sides. The triangle is the definiendum, and the rest of the definition is the definiens. The definiens is the genus proximus and differentia specifica, thus the closest genus and specific difference. For example, in the above definition of a triangle we have 'geometric figure' as the closest genus, and the specific difference is 'bounded by three sides', as a difference from other geometric figures.

A geometric figure is a superordinate concept in relation to a triangle. A triangle is a subordinate concept in relation to a geometric figure.

Division is the partition of a superordinate concept into subordinate concepts. Division of the entire scope of a concept. Some rules of division are: it should be complete or exhaustive, specific concepts should be disparate, a single principle should be used for the entire division, it should be gradual, etc. We often witness the misuse of these conceptual tools on this sub.

One of the early, revolutionary shifts in philosophy happened when Socrates asked "what is x?", where x stands for "it", whatever it is. The question was intended to call into question those familiar moral and aesthetic notions such as justice, good, beauty, and so forth. A socratic definition is what has been intended as an answer to "what is x?" question because these types of definitions are not definitions of words but of things. So Socrates never intended to ask what a word means. He intended to know what a thing named by the word is. Iow, he's not asking for the meaning of the word "beauty", he's asking what beauty is, so what is the essence or nature that makes beauty beauty. Ioow, he's asking for the account of the essence of the thing defined. That's a real definition as per John Locke. Nominal definition explains the meaning of a word. There's a frequent conflation of these two notions on this sub.

We also often witness people citing dictionaries in the context of well-defined philosophical topics, which is rather hillarious. Anyway, in order to have a dispute over some x, we have to agree on the definition of x, otherwise we are not talking about the same thing.

Creatio ex nihilo, iow, nihilogony, is the thesis that [God] created the universe from nothing. The ex nihilo principle states that nothing comes from nothing. The creation of the universe from nothing implies something came from nothing. So, either nihilogony is false or the ex nihilo principle is false.

There are various problems with nihilogony. Here's one:

1) Assume for reductio that the universe is created out of nothing

2) there is nothing (1)

3) there is no universe (2)

4) Contradiction! (1, 3)

5) 1 is false (1-4)

2 entails that there is no God. Surely that God could not create the universe out of nothing because if there were nothing, there would be no God to create anything at all. Another problem is that if there's neither God nor the universe, there is no creation, a fortiori, no creation ex nihilo.

William Lane Craig apparently believes both nihilogony and the ex nihilo principle. He points out that what we want to say is that God created the universe not from or out of nothing, but not from anything, viz., there is no something that is nothing from which God creates the universe.

Construed in Aristotelian terms, when we say that God created the universe from nothing, we mean that there was no material cause involved: creatio ex materia is false. I.e., assuming creationism, nihilogony and hylogony(creatio ex materia, not the birth of matter) form a true dilemma. But if we interpret the thesis in these terms, then the creation is ex deo, which implies God is not anything.

Argument:

1) If being is, then non-being is not

2) what cannot cease to be is

3) non-being cannot cease to be

4) therefore, non-being is (2, 3)

5) therefore, being is not (1, 4)