Existence exists?

[BaalChatzaf]

Is Newton's Law of Addition of velocities True? Not according to special relativity. Someday there will be adjustments to SR and it will no longer be True. You see, Truth implies a static, unchanging, complete knowledge and such a thing does not exist.

It has been experimentally disproved. The surest way of falsifying a law or hypothesis is to show that a logical consequence of same is at variance with an observed fact.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited April 3, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[tjohnson]

GS:

That is why defining terms is critical to highly rewarding debate.

Yes here it comes....

HOW DO YOU DEFINE TRUTH?

Adam

What I'm talking about is absolute certainty in all respects - something like that. The world is not black and white, there are many gray areas. If you believe in True and False then you will have a 2-valued, either/or outlook which is dissimilar to the world we live in and leads to disagreements, arguments, wars, etc. This is encouraged by our linguistic habits centered around the use of the verb "is".

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS's arguments sound to me like trying to claim that the top doesn't exist because it is not a bottom, and the bottom is flawed because it is not a whole, which doesn't exist, anyway.

Michael

[Selene]

GS:

As the esteemed Rhodes scholar, federal perjurer and sexual predator who used to occupy the White House stated:

"Well now that would depend on what the meaning of 'is' is."

I chose to believe that I have the natural right to own things and the natural right to protect them. That is a moral black and white. If someone believes there is a grey, they should come prepared when they intend to exercise their grey decisions upon me.

If I remember ole Ayn say in that heavy, sonorous and ponderous, smoke impaired voice of reason:

Show me the compromise between strychnine and food? Or did she use arsenic.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The world is not black and white, there are many gray areas.

GS,

How about a world that has black, white, all shades of gray, and even the full spectrum of colors?

Sort of like the way reality is...

Why deny that some of this exists?

Michael

[Rich Engle]

I love any debate about existence; in the right place, it is like watching Beavis and Butthead done over ballet.

It is the ultimate topic.

Where I'm at with it these days, I find positive. Meaning, when I read discourse every time it turns up (and, oh, yes, it certainly will), I smile.

But that's just me--I have simple working proofs for when people ask me these things.

Mostly, I just tell them to walk forward until they hit a wall. At least at that point they know (well most of them) know the object exists because their head hurts. It's a good start.

You know, a equal a junk.

rde

Ow, I just tried that again and it still hurts.

[Selene]

Rich:

By the way, I have been remiss in congratulations on your escape from Ohio and your landing in a state with no state income tax. More importantly, success with your writing. I know you will succeed because you will give it 100%.

I used to employ that type of physical proof. I would cock my fist and tell the person [the life is grey/reality is what you want it to be] to believe that it was a "warm spring breeze" coming at them.

You would be amazed at the conversions!

Adam

[tjohnson]

Mostly, I just tell them to walk forward until they hit a wall. At least at that point they know (well most of them) know the object exists because their head hurts. It's a good start.

How does saying that existence and knowledge are interdependent get twisted into implying that one can walk into walls without consequence? Does one walk into a wall or does one's nervous system register intense localized pressure. To be is to be related.

[Selene]

GS

So I can marry my first cousin without moving to West Virginia? Kewl! She's a hot red head.

Adam

[tjohnson]

GS

So I can marry my first cousin without moving to West Virginia? Kewl! She's a hot red head.

Adam

Incest is best - roll your own!

[Selene]

GS:

It's just like nepotism, which is fine, as long as you keep it in the family! :yes:

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I can't resist the opening.

Delbert: Paw, I ain't gonna marry Mary Lou no more.

Paw: Why son?

Delbert (indignantly): She's still a virgin.

Paw: Well... yor right there. If she ain't good enough fer her own folks, she ain't good enough fer yew...

(Back to metaphysics and epistemology.)

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Michael, really... It's already complicated enough for those of us with Southern descent, endlessly trying to figure out the family tree... why I can be married to my cousin and she is still my grandma.

Yeah, and if it hadn't have been invented in West Virginia they would have called it a teethbrush.

rde

Hillbilly pronounciatin' word of the day: "Fahr-Tar." As in "The ranger's been up on the fahr-tar all day checkin' fer trubble in the woods.

[Alfonso Jones]

Rich:

By the way, I have been remiss in congratulations on your escape from Ohio and your landing in a state with no state income tax. More importantly, success with your writing. I know you will succeed because you will give it 100%.

I used to employ that type of physical proof. I would cock my fist and tell the person [the life is grey/reality is what you want it to be] to believe that it was a "warm spring breeze" coming at them.

You would be amazed at the conversions!

Adam

Exactly. The person KNOWS that what they are maintaining is nonsense, and can't live based on it in even the most elemental situation.

I'm reminded of a story of the Christian philosopher/evangelist Frances Schaeffer told about conversing with someone who maintained that good and evil were equivalent, and the choice was just a matter of prejudice. He told of he (or was it someone else) holding a container of hot water over the person's head and repeating the statement that good and evil were equivalent, . . .

Bill P

[tjohnson]

Rand defined existence in what she called an "ostensible" manner, by swinging her arm all around and saying, "I mean this."

As I have mentioned several times here, this doesn't work with sub-atomic particles, for example, or distant galaxies - it only works for everyday things that we can sense directly, like a pencil or a cup. We humans speak about things we cannot sense directly, we postulate their existence, but this does not necessarily make them less real, depending on your definition of 'real'. Because of the technological changes man has accomplished to increase the scope of his senses, with telescopes and microscopes for example, we now know there is far more going on than we could know with our unaided senses. Interestingly enough, much of what is going on is best described in advanced mathematics which involves more logic than observation.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

You are still stealing concepts.

You can't have any notion of subatomic particles or distant galaxies without "everyday things that we can sense directly."

Your postulation pretends you can—that there can be "technological changes" and "man" and even "advanced mathematics" and "logic" and even "subatomic particles or distant galaxies" without having a notion of existence in the first place.

As you correctly insinuated, one of the main purposes of scientific equipment and procedures is to bring parts of reality we cannot experience directly within our size of sensory awareness. But that stuff (the equipment and procedures) has to exist before we can claim or learn anything about subatomic particles and distant galaxies, and they have to exist before such equipment and procedures can be run on them with any kind of consistency. Notice that I said the word "exist."

There is a construction process, including sequence and priority, that you completely ignore in concept-building when you make statements like you just made.

Subatomic particles and distant galaxies exist, but we only know that after we understand that we exist and the things around us exist. The only way to communicate all the stuff around us (for those with the faculty of sight) is to point at it and make an all-inclusive gesture. This is not an assumption, but a correct construction of the concept "existence."

Our knowledge of the existence of subatomic particles and distant galaxies builds on the knowledge we have from that starting point, although we have usually just looked all around us (and similarly used our other senses) ever since we were infants and didn't bother with the gesture. Our knowledge of the existence of subatomic particles and distant galaxies does not run in parallel or exclude that primary knowledge.

You cannot amplify something so that it can be perceived by man unless it exists in the first place. This is not an assumption. It is a fact.

Michael

[tjohnson]

You cannot amplify something so that it can be perceived by man unless it exists in the first place. This is not an assumption. It is a fact.

I don't think the word 'amplification' is applicable here. We can't see electrons in the sense of normal objects, it's not a question of amplification.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

I don't mean physically amplify the entity. I mean amplify the traces it sends to our sense organs or cause them to trigger larger traces we can perceive. I mean amplify in that sense. It's either that or "translate" the traces to another sense through a device, like using a visual spectrum analyzer for sound waves.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

You cannot amplify something so that it can be perceived by man unless it exists in the first place. This is not an assumption. It is a fact.

I don't think the word 'amplification' is applicable here. We can't see electrons in the sense of normal objects, it's not a question of amplification.

The magic word is detection. Our machines detect the electrons singly or en mass and produce an output our ordinary senses can deal with.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

GS,

You are still stealing concepts.

Michael

We each have our own language and won't give it up however irrational and non-objective it appears to the other guy. You have to look at the bottom line.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

You cannot amplify something so that it can be perceived by man unless it exists in the first place. This is not an assumption. It is a fact.

I don't think the word 'amplification' is applicable here. We can't see electrons in the sense of normal objects, it's not a question of amplification.

You are implicitly claiming objectivity in your epistemological activity so I guess you are a closet Objectivist, if nothing else, after all--which is why you are here?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

If you strive for objectivity you are an Objectivist. Whether you achieve it is a whole another matter.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The magic word is detection.

Bob,

I'll buy that for the pre-output part. A device detects what exists. If something doesn't exist, the device can't detect it. Existing is a precondition of being able to be detected.

Michael

[tjohnson]

Yes, our eyes are detectors as well, but they don't detect objects, they detect lightwaves. If we must use the term 'existence' then it should apply to the things we detect, not the things we abstract.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

Why should it?

This presumes that our eyes exist as functioning organs separately from our brains. The whole shebang exists to detect and identify what exists. Much more exists than the photons our eyes process.

Abstraction is merely part of the identification process.

Michael