u/WarrenHarding

I can't say I don't struggle with this Platonic topic sometimes. It especially becomes a problem when I deal with lasting issues in life. Applying a Platonic lens to things can be genuinely therapeutic when I dwell on various personal problems, but this one hasn't quite worked out for me. I also don't think my well-being is entirely dependent on applying a Platonic lens fwiw, but I wanted to provide the sentimental context behind this post as some of you may perhaps relate and see the value in solving this issue.

The problem is, how can we hold the Platonic system and then account for evils that last for extremely long and damaging lengths of time? If these evils are all necessarily bound to the realm of Becoming, then why doesn't "unbecoming" seem to be happening for them, to the very worst of them?

In assessing these questions in the title, I do think the first necessarily must be denied to avoid affirming the others. Goodness and Beingness are so wrapped up in the Platonic Forms that I don't think you can reformulate it to say that they don't mutually imply one another. But then how do we go about denying that first question? How can we Platonically argue that, between two things which exist for two different lengths of time, the one that exists for longer has no more Being than the one that takes a shorter time? Do we simply say that all things in the carnal realm have an equal proportion of Being, and are all only properly objects of Becoming? Because in this, I think we run into many famous traps regarding the separation of the Formal and Carnal realm, ones that we should avoid. Or do we say that there is some parsable Formal origin to the logic of varying temporality, but that it has nothing to do itself with whether a thing has more or less Being, and has entirely to do with its contextual presence in the carnal realm and if it is bound to come into contact with things that cause its non-existence? Honestly I'm just thinking out loud at this point of the post but I wonder if theres something there

Really I just want all of your thoughts here. Let's have a discussion.

Edit: this is quickly turning into a question of whether or not the universal set or universal class is a thing that can exist or be defined, based on differing sources of authority. If you can offer insight into this more specific question, I would appreciate it

The current set theory book I’m going through, by Norman Hamilton and Joseph Landini, seems to avoid defining any set ¬A as simply the set of all x where x ∉ A. That is, they seem to avoid formulating this sort of negative set in any way.

What they do employ early though, is the complement, and through this concept they seem to be able to make a lot of the same conclusions and formulations as they would with the aforementioned negative set. For example, instead of saying that “A ∩ ¬A = φ” they say “A - A = φ.” Both statements however seem to claim the same one idea in different formulations: “the set of all x where x ∈ A and x ∉ A is the empty set”

So I understand that to a significant degree this is just a convention. But what I’m wondering is whether it’s a trivial one or one that has some sort of epistemic significance? Here, the concept complement seems to smuggle in the simpler concept of a set considered negatively, since that negative set is whatever set is considered second in the relation. If I were to proceed in the exercises of this book by employing this simpler concept myself and formulating some negative sets in my proofs, would that in the strictest sense be going against the procession of the book? Would this be something that needs a definition, axiom, or theorem for citation before I can formulate them? And in doing so would I be doing something generally inadvisable in the study of set theory, or would I be doing something that could easily be found as a convention in another textbook?

I’m in the safehouse right now and something odd has caught my eye.

When you walk up the wood stairs past the shed to the helicopter, and then take a look to the left behind the shed, you will be able to notice some cathedral-like ruins very close to where you already are. If you keep instinct on while looking around that area, you will soon see an object that is highlighted as usable. It is under some low archway of the ruins, next to a shovel which is not marked as usable. If you use your camera to get a closer look at the slivers of the object behind the trees and rocks, it most resembles a generator. However it seems a little different, a little more like a rusty container perhaps.

It seems like this object is fully out of bounds. But has anyone been able to figure out what it actually is?

In the popular elementary probability problem where there is, say, 10 seniors and 5 freshmen, and you need to find the probability of 1 senior and 1 freshmen being picked from the group, why does the probability only account for unique combinations and disregard the order being picked? Does the problem assume that both students are picked at the same time?

If there is one reality where Bradley is selected first, and Caleb second, this feels quite causally distinct from the reality where Caleb is picked first, and Bradley second. It appears that there are two distinct sets of possible conditions that would bring the outcome of those two boys being picked. But in probability theory, they appear to only represent a single unique connection, and thus are counted as only one possible outcome.

Why is this the case? I can actually understand the problem if I do consider the two students as chosen simultaneously, like grabbing two marbles from a bag at once, but if one is chosen before the other, then it feels like the probability for seniors opens up way more. For n seniors there would be (n-1)^2 connections instead of half of that.

I’ve been sinking my teeth into the problem but only in my own head because I’ve only seen the problem mentioned various places and don’t remember where. But is it really as simple as the fact that I just disregard the notion of order in this problem to grasp its solution?

I don’t know how to explain it without going a lil crazy. I just have a personal bad habit studying anything, in which after comprehending the basics, I continue to focus on mastering the basics much more often than proceeding to the intermediates. I will dip my toes into further material but will become strangely obsessed with being able to master the basics, and focus on being able to articulate the essential elements as intuitively and communicatively as possible.

That last part is what motivated me to become a teacher in the first place. Being able to break down basic concepts that confound students, largely because they are too “simple” for other teachers to properly explain in words, this is where I felt a strange superpower. But it’s a little out of control now. I feel as though I can’t turn off the scaffolding switch. It was helpful during my first year which I just finished, because many of my high schoolers I taught were testing at the elementary level. But now I’m interviewing with other schools, many of which have mostly grade-level students, and so I got feedback in a demo lesson today that I’m overscaffolding. I can totally recognize that I am, but when I got to run the demo again to flip the feedback, I felt like I still was too long and detail focused even after trying to be more succinct. It was kind of better, but, meh.

The interview was mostly practice for me because I’m still unsure if I would even accept an offer from this particular school, but it was good practice because I think I really could have done better in this area. It’s made me think a lot about the value of having a momentum in learning a topic. This is something that conflicts with my habit of focusing on basics and beginnings. Part of me also really values the detailings because I know that each student could be confused from a different place, and I want to cast as wide a net as possible. But I also think it’s clear I could be a little more laconic and still be just as effective in communicating. Maybe this post is proof that I could improve? You tell me.

Anyways, the question is really directed toward anyone who has explicitly dealt with this issue and has learned how to work with it, or kind of break down this habit that can’t simply be circumvented. If you also have some insight despite that though, of course it is welcome.

I did peruse a few of the previous threads before making this one, but I didn’t feel as though any of the responses were speaking to my line of thinking.

Let me try to lay out as succinctly as possible the particular angle I’m seeing this from:

According to Kant, 7+5=12 because 12 is not contained in 7+5. Now what I clearly understand is that the predicate of 12 is not contained in 7, +, or 5 individually. Yet, I also realize that Kant claims that 12 is also not contained in “the combination of the two numbers,” that is, 7+5 as a whole, and this is where I disagree. It is difficult for me to accept the idea that they are not different elaborations of the same one concept, and I feel like I have sound reasoning for believing so.

The question is begged: what is understood as 5? Is it simply the number after 4? Because if that is proper, then that would make it an analysis of 5 into two parts, being the quality “number” and the sub-quality “after 4.” But if we were to analyze further what being “after 4” means for a number, we should only be able to understand it as “1 more than 4” or “4 and 1.” If, following from this, we break down 4 into “3 and 1” and then 3 into “2 and 1,” and 2 into “1 and 1.” Then we can arrive at a full analysis of 5 as “1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1.” This in itself seems to serve as proof of what I am trying to express: the number 5 is unintelligible unless its concept by itself is held as an accumulation of 1’s, i.e. put into an equation with the ones. I will now proceed to make the same argument to the 7+5=12 proposition.

Now, if that’s how we understand 5, then certainly we must understand 7 as “1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1.” Further analysis of “+” will determine it to be logically identical to the word “and.” Thus, a full analysis of 7+5 should give us the final clarification:

“(1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1) and (1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1)”

Now, smuggled into this elaborated conception is a principle of association, something Kant was definitely familiar with through Hume. According to this principle, we can freely combine together and abstract away various different simple ideas to our liking, and the procession of these associations follows a preassumption (or for Hume a habit) of identity. In other words, we are free to associate the parts of a single mathematical expression (like 7+5) as either separate things, or together as a contiguous whole. Therefore just as I may abstract or collect together the parts internal to any concept in proper analysis, so too may I collectivize the parts internal to “7+5” in order to most fully understand the whole as:

“1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1”

Which is of course, the same elaboration as above, but without the unnecessary divisions in association, i.e. with the concept considered as a whole. Now, it is only proper that this concept has a proper name. So just as “1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1” as a concept has the name of “5,” so too does our above elaborated conception have a name, which is “12.” To now take it in the other direction, we can analyze 12 down to “the number after 11,” and further down to “11 and 1” and finally all the way down to the elaboration of ones I’ve listed above. But in this sense we should be able to see that 7+5 and 12 are two different ways of cognizing the same one concept, that is, a specific series of 1’s. Perhaps it could simply be said that 7+5 is the series of ones with the parentheses, and 12 is the series without the parentheses (or perhaps with a single set of parentheses surrounding the full series, to imply its full collective accumulation).

I struggle to see how I can accept that math statements are synthetic unless I am also convinced against the idea that statements of equality are statements of identity, i.e. two different ways of naming the same one thing.

Is there anyone who can at the very least provide literature or names of thinkers who argued down this path, or even better, someone who can perhaps dispel any errors in thought I’ve had above? I will at least selfishly insist that although my above account might involve errors, it can perhaps be simplified to avoid those errors altogether. But perhaps not!

Looking back on this season, what players do you think ended up being a surprisingly valuable piece on their team without necessarily getting any of the national attention? Someone who does not have any sort of good or even notable reputation outside of the team’s close fans, but ended up being incredibly important to that team’s success. This can even be a player on a bad team, as long as they can be considered a big factor in the team’s successes and a small factor in the team’s losses.

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64…

Is there a name for this sequence? It seems somewhat significant in various loose topics. For example it seems to have played a central part in the Ancient Egyptian method of multiplication, and looking into that also revealed to me the fact that any positive integer can be constructed from a non-repeating selection of numbers from this sequence.

It feels as though a shorthand for this sequence would be helpful. If I wanted to speak of that property of integers, for example, it seems useful to have a name to call the sequence to mind, especially since everyone is familiar with it.

I have the opportunity in the next couple years to go to grad school for education, in order to get my certification for teaching grade school. I have plenty of time to decide what school I would like to go to.

To be fully honest, I have little interest in whether my school does or does not have a notable education department. From the accounts I’ve heard of teachers who have gone, and the impression I’ve gotten in the field, it seems to matter very little where exactly you go. My fellowship, for example, is offering to set me up with a “school” that is completely online and specializes in education for people to get their teacher certs, and nothing else.

This leads me to consider my main deciding factor in which school I would like to attend: whichever school has a world-class library, and specifically a generous selection of philosophy texts. This is my main choice because I expect to be able to use the library after graduation, and I anticipate staying in NYC quite some time, so I would take immense value in having access to a university library with a top-class selection of texts and late-nite hours for my own schedule of research.

Now, I understand any university library will have a wealth of philosophy texts, but I would love as large a selection as possible. My undergrad school in CT has a great selection, but is deeply limited in certain respects, as are the public libraries in NYC (including the research library, which still is in some respect my best choice at present). I would love a library where, if I want to read the primary texts of a significant thinker, the school will more likely than not hold a copy of those texts. I also think the late-night availability of it would also be pretty essential in just being open whenever I need it, because I have had many moments past midnight where I would do anything for a quiet and safe place outside my home where I could do research until I pass out.

For a little while, my default choice was simply NYU. This is because I had been in the library once before when my father was an adjunct, and it was also my first university library at the time so it really made a strong impression on me. But I realize that NYU is not necessarily esteemed for its philosophy department (perhaps I’m wrong). This makes me then think, perhaps Columbia, but considering their shown stances on the genocide overseas I feel a little morally insecure making the deliberate choice to study there

I would appreciate any and all thoughts regarding this. Maybe I’m going after this in all the wrong ways, let me know. I do think I know what I’m doing with the library being my determining factor, but it also does seem unorthodox enough that I could use a second opinion for sure.

First off I’m really sorry if this comes off as a self-theory, I am totally not dying on this hill if I am told this is a wrong idea or if does not make sense (though I would like to try to at least clarify myself if the latter is the case). I also don’t quite know if this is a question for psychology or philosophy instead but this board felt like the most reasonable place to ask first.

My thoughts are this: if we take fire as an example of a source of light, in what way do we consider the fire itself to be bright as an innate property, rather than the light itself as it streams from the fire and reflects on its objects (including the fire itself)? If a stream of light is indisputably capable of being itself bright, and making things it touches bright, does the same apply for the physical substance that exists logically prior to the light it produces? As another example, when we look at the sun, it seems clear that we do not see the sun itself, but the incredibly powerful ray of light that is pointing from the sun to our exact position. If this ray of light is what we see as overwhelmingly bright, what about the object beyond that? Even if every cubic inch of this sun is bright from its massive firey body, is the chemical structure within it that emits these photons itself innately bright like the photons are, or are they only contingently bright from the emanation of the photons they themselves had to make?

P1. Kant’s transcendental philosophy has the peculiar feature of asserting that things which exist in themselves and independent of our perception are inaccessible to us, and that thus we only have access to the appearances, which we can still systematically organize (i.e. approach scientifically)

P2a. Plato asserted that things which exist in themselves exist in a separate realm than the one which we perceive

P2b. Plato asserted that while we only have immediate access to the things-in-themselves (the Forms) before and after our lives, we do not have true or clear access to them within the period of our mortal lifetimes.

C. Since Plato asserted that things-in-themselves (i.e. by his conception, Forms) exist in a separate realm than what we perceive, and that we do not have access to this realm (while we are alive), then he implicitly asserted that we only have true access to the realm of appearances, of which we may still use the dialectical method to approach a systematic (scientific) diaresis of the appearances, categorizing our objects of perception in the most universal terms possible. Thus, he developed a transcendental philosophy that successfully anticipated Kant’s by 2000 years.

[The Premise which I’m burying the lede by hiding: Plato seemed to insist that we did approach some real and objective access to the Forms through dialectics and diaresis, even if they themselves were concerned with addressing objects of perception, and thus he strikingly differs from Kant who denied any formal conception of the things-in-themselves]

Some counter arguments I could anticipate:

1. The buried lede: Plato obviously thought that dialectics led us on some path closer to a true conception of forms, i.e. the actual truth of the things-in-themselves, and thus this makes his philosophy distinctly non-transcendental

2. Anti-doctrinal: Plato did not assert any of these things because the dialogues are non-doctrinal by nature, and we can’t assign any significant assertions onto him. Thus (P2a) and (P2b) are both unjustified.

3. Anti-skeptical: Plato did in fact think we could have perfect access to some forms such as in the field of math, and so (P2b) is incorrect because he didn’t preclude access to the things-in-themselves in our lifetime

Let’s say that I could argue against (1) by saying it’s a matter of scholarly interpretation, and that many interpreters argue that Plato thought anything short of a perfect account of a form was not real access or knowledge; that I could argue against (2) by appealing to the clear almost-systematic consistency of ideas which emerge across the dialogues and make up the substance of almost all Plato scholarship, while holding a compatible acceptance of his non-dogmatic approach to this system; and that I could argue against (3) by showing that most scholarship claims that for Plato even the number forms are difficult and obscure to us in our lifetimes, and are something beyond those numerical conceptions which we apply methodically in math problems (which also illuminates the argument against (1), because since the conception between instantiation and Form are quite distinct in nature, we thus clearly have no access to the actual formal nature of these things-in-themselves while we live).

Thus I would be arguing against all three rebuttals with the same essential claim that the scholarship supports my points. If (big if) this is successfully argued, then would there be any other argument that could be made to deny that Plato anticipated transcendental philosophy before Kant? Is there, I’m asking, any other angle to which a rebuttal of this claim or my premises could culminate?

On the page for freelancer on the hitman wiki, there’s a section that mentioned that all the locations have codenames after games.

For example, Dubai is Chess, Hokkaido is Shogi, Paris is Craps, Whittleton Creek is Solitaire.

But where do these names come from? I’ve never seen them in all my time of playing freelancer.

I have an empty glass in my room previously filled with water. There is a light in my room, and it is on. I can assert the following logical implication p=>q

>If the glass is full of water, then the light is on.

The precedent is false, but the consequent is true making ~p^q, so the implication is said to be true, because it fulfills ~(p^~q)

Yet I remember, last night, before I went to bed, I filled the glass with water and turned the light off. I also expect that tonight I will do the same, as I do every night. Each time it happens, it makes the above implication false, because it asserts p^~q

But right now, as I said, the light’s power and the glass’ fullness hold truth values that currently make the implication true. So although in this strictest sense I might say the above implication is true because of what I can gather from my sense experience, I can also apprehend from the same sense experience that the implication is often false, and is thus functionally unreliable.

So following this, would I have any recourse to say that instead, in this very moment, the implication is actually false, even though the components in this moment would hold it to be true in a static sense, and that I can assert this because there is potential for the false construction of the implication to obtain?

This seems to be a valuable desire for me to want this, because there seem to be plenty of moments on the one hand where experience shows that various true implications can become false, or vice versa, while other ones seem impossible to change from being true or false. Of the former group, I can point to the example I gave above. Of the latter, I can assert something like:

>If 3 is 3, then a four-sided triangle exists

Which will always be false, because 3 will always be 3, while there can never be a four-sided triangle, making the fatal p^~q. Therefore, in this situation, the truth of this implication can never obtain. Alternatively, I can say something like:

>If 3 is 3, then 4 is 4

or:

>If a circle of limited sides exists, then a four sided triangle exists

And these would both be eternally true implications, because the falsity of the implication, p^~q, could never obtain (the former is always p^q and the latter is always ~p^~q). Wouldn’t this be a truer sense of implication, deriving solely from a deeper material analysis of the truth values of the terms in more than one circumstance? Wouldn't it be truer because it never obtains falsity by any measure?

And furthermore, couldn’t I take this further by saying that a particular implication in the truest sense should be able to obtain for all truth combinations which make the implication true? Meaning that it cannot only be an eternally true implication like the above examples, but it must be possible to have all truth combinations that make the implication true and impossible to have any of the truth combinations that make the implication false, and thus uniting it with sufficient causality? For example:

>If a ready mind is put through proper schooling then it the person in question will be wise

If we take “ready mind” and “proper schooling” in its strictest sense here, we can imagine it as a perfectly good example of a sufficient cause by means of definition. The proper schooling will be sufficient to make the person wise, but it is certainly not necessary. Thus, we can obtain p^q (schooled and wise), ~p^q (unschooled and wise), and ~p^~q (unschooled and unwise), but we certainly by definition cannot obtain p^~q (schooled and unwise), and no matter how much we apply the logical implication to various assessments of schooling and wisdom, we shall never reach this falsity as long as our definitions are properly applied (or in another light, the proper application of these definitions will involve avoiding falsity of the implication)

So take these three examples of applying logical implication:

1. the water and light examples
2. the eternally true (and false) math examples
3. the schooled and wise example.

All examples are true in this moment (excluding the eternally false math examples), but the first type is susceptible to be false, while the second type is always true but only formally connected, but the third transcends mere implication, and much more united with the experience of sufficient conditionality

How established is any of this already? Is this just one of the principles of the scientific application of logic? Would I be right to suspect that logic would be weary to welcome methods of application to its own domain? I would understand this, but as I mentioned above, the transition to a consideration of a static material circumstance, to a consideration of four different material circumstances corresponding to each line of the implication’s truth table, seems to me as just a change in degree of what’s already practiced, not anything new.

It seems that eudaimonism and virtue ethics assert the same idea, in different senses. The former seems to think that it’s personal fulfillment that ethics is centered around, but also seems to often argue implicitly that it is a life grounded in the consistency of virtue which brings about its fulfillment most effectively. The other way around, it seems like from what I’ve seen of virtue ethics, the argument seems to always eventually dictate that this virtuous way of living necessarily brings the highest amount of fulfillment and satisfaction the soul, i.e. a sense of eudaimonia.

Now, I understand how *in themselves* these are two distinct theses. But it does seem that the best argument each system can use will also employ the other system in defending it. Plato and Spinoza are two thinkers who come to mind who seem to think of virtue and eudaimonia as inextricable from each other, but this seems to be an incredibly common thought across many thinkers, even if they are not self-ascribed virtue ethicists or eudaimonists