MonDie

The audience member skewed the question when they said, "How do you justify the scientific method?" Justify what about it? Like any other method, the scientific method is a formal set of guidelines. To justify its use, we only have to point out that it works. However, that doesn't answer the question "What does the success of the scientific method indicate about the nature of reality?"

Update Manager says there are exactly 100 updates available. Holy crap! I need a numerology reference!

I traced the cross with some image software. The top tracing connects the most visible sunspots. It's not very perpendicular, hence the title "Master Architect, Terrible Artist." The bottom one traces through the outermost sunspots instead of the most visible ones. This makes it more perpendicular. However, if I were to trace between the innermost sunspots, it would be even less perpendicular than the top tracing. In addition, the arms extend much further than those of a typical cross. That's interesting. What do you see? I see a satanic pentagram, but maybe that's just me. Oh well. Let's not bicker, just enjoy the pretty shapes.

What you think my argument is: The fundamental principles were just a random effect with an unknown or unpredictable cause. What my argument really is: The principles that are responsible for causality do not necessarily need a cause. I will admit it, the idea that everything has a "cause" is very persistent. But as far as we know, this rule only applies to things that exist within space/time. What is cause and effect anyway? There is no all-encompassing definition that covers all the bases. When attempting to define it, some key considerations are: - Sufficient Causes versus Necessary Causes - Ordering in time; which event occurred first? (Has anyone yet proved that time is actually moving forward and not backward?) - Subjective / choice-based (If I do this, it will do that.) versus objective / deterministic (When I do this, it does that.) EDITED: I'm correcting myself. I was going to contrast present-to-future type causation with instantaneous causation, but it appears there is no instantaneous causality. Well, rapping it all up, "cause and effect" is just a broad term used to denote a variety of observable patterns. We believe in these patterns because they're observable, but it's not a logical necessity that a thing exists as part of such patterns. Whatever is responsible for the essence of these laws/patterns is something that doesn't necessarily abide by these laws/patterns. You may be mistaking unicorns for skeletons, but it's irrelevant anyway.

I like the way you put that. I guess you could say that, to a certain extent, Americans have faith that the founding fathers were right. They like to think of this faith as a strength, not a weakness.

Photon propeller might get some insight from this. It's a quote from a post I made on another thread. "However, I did toy with some interesting ideas. At first, I assumed [this concept] would require two types of principles. One tells things to exist, and the other [processes this present existence into future existence] (i.e. if/then rules, cause and effect). However, one can imagine these as one unified principle as well. Instead of the principle having an if/then portion, it simply states how things will unfold. By this I mean that the patterns of causality we observe would be just that, patterns. There would be no if/then rule, but simply a systematic process going "then, then, then, then..." without ever judging any ifs." "What's coming up is perhaps the most interesting part. The persistent idea that every thing has a cause is not actually a logical necessity, it's merely a consistent observation. If these principles are what are responsible for causality, they may not need any external cause. But, again, those who actually know physics may come in and burst my bubble."

Let's get as literal and decontextualized as possible. Wouldn't "the right to bear arms" mean the right to carry a gun around? Airports are looking pretty unconstitutional right about now. How do we effectively stop them from shooting people if we can't take away their guns? It's not like the constitution is there just so we can say, "You're not supposed to kill people, but we really can't do anything about it until after you've shot 11 people. And, well, if you kill yourself too, there's virtually nothing we can do about it." "One can blame the careless and improvident, even regulate against carelessness and improvidence..." ... regulate against it by restricting gun ownership.

It's more enjoyable in high quality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOFO1XOZXRM Chosen based on musical similarity, not thematic similarity. lol

How do we determine when one right violates another? Must they be in direct conflict on the level of individual action, or merely on the level of government enforcement? I'll elaborate. When one owns a gun, there is an increased probability that someone's right to life will be violated. When such an event occurs, the person most to blame may be the owner simply because they owned the gun. For example, the owner's son of 15 steals the gun and accidentally shoots someone. But such instances probably don't comprise the bulk of gun deaths. In most instances, the owning of a gun was only secondary. For example, suppose the gun owner shoots himself. He might not have killed himself if he didn't have a gun, but he still had a choice when he had the gun to his head. Similarly, if someone else shoots him with his gun, it's not his fault for owning the gun, it's his killer's fault for shooting him. However, this whom to blame point is irrelevant from a regulatory perspective. The best and perhaps only regulation(s) to prevent these situations may be a guns ban.

Rangifer tarandus erythrorhynus, meet Equus ferus unicornus.

You're right. "Down" doesn't imply movement over a distance, but "2 feet" does. If they aren't simultaneous, he must be alternating between upward and downward motion within each second. However, this doesn't mean the climb value can't express net distance. On its own, "It climbs 3 feet every second" would imply that, variation aside, the net upward distance for each second is 3 feet. It's the sentence's second clause that makes the whole sentence difficult to interpret. "It climbs 3 feet every second but slips down 2 ft in the next second." Hmm, why is "the next second" given the modifier "the" if there are actually multiple "next second"?

pilfer

Why won't they show us?

Philosophy Idea Yeah. I only read the intro. I just wanted to attach some sort of meaning to the word.

Waltz, halts, salts, malts, and faults are all very close, but they're not perfect. False is unique because its "al" is followed by a normal S sound, not a z-like S sound. Someone will probably come up with a rhyming proper name at some point. With the tinges of bright oranges, children still fear the big syringes.

I have, but the principles are (or refer to) manifestations. I don't think there is anything unmanifest in this philosophy. When I looked up "unmanifest," I wandered to the Wikipedia page on acosmism. It's always fun to contrast Western concepts with Eastern concepts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acosmism I didn't say it necessarily begins with an 'is' (with the meaning given in the OP). The principles we can directly observe are the principles regarding the doings, not the 'beings' (or is's), and it is those principles that must suggest the 'beings', if any, that are necessary to explain the 'doings'. Although the 'doings' can be the referents of language, they don't 'exist' in the typical sense. Tao's Wikipedia page seems to describe the same idea as I, but I'm sure there are other ways to interpret the following. I'm not a Buddhist.

I've been busy, but I found time to contemplate this subject. Arjun was kind, but I still cannot follow his reasoning. However, I have found quantum mechanics to be relevant to the topic. I should have articulated better, but this thread is an off-shoot I made to avoid flooding ydoaPs' thread with irrelevance. When I said 'is', I meant any property of composition or location, i.e. I was talking about the states of physical things. When I said 'do', I was talking about causality, the supposed consequences of the 'is' properties. Now I will address your concerns. We tend to think of principles as mere abstractions, and our language doesn't help us overcome this problem. When an object-describing word doesn't describe any existent objects, we say the thing doesn't exist. When a principle doesn't describe actual behavior, we say the principle is false. Despite this linguistic partition, both are examples of abstract concepts describing reality, both are references to real phenomena. You say a principle cannot exist "disembodied," but I could turn this around by saying "things" could not exist unless some principle directed them to exist. And, although we seem to privelage object-type existence over principle-type existence, I think it is the principles that should be privelaged. We cannot see a thing exist; we cannot see space nor time; we only see colors spread upon a field of vision. However, we can plainly see that the world around us follows principles, and these principles are what scientists seek to explain. If things actually exist, it is the principles that should suggest this to us. However, quantum mechanics are not deterministic. Electrons don't "move," they just jump around randomly within orbitals defined by probabilistic ranges. To me, this seems to upset the idea that current states causally determine future states (do from an is), but maybe one of the physicists can burst my bubble. Here's a video introduction to quantum indeterminacy. BACKGROUD INFO: In Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Δx × Δp ≥ h/4π, Δ means uncertainty. Δx is uncertainty about position, and Δp is uncertainty about momentum. The more precisely you measure one, the less precisely you can know the other. Moving on from PeterJ's concerns, it's hard to make a conclusive argument that physical things are or aren't mere manifestations of principles. One easily arrived at argument for monism is that two things of inherently different natures (e.g. principles and "things") would not interact with one another, but this is a flawed argument. To see, you only have to ask "How do I know two inherently different things cannot interact?" and, from there, "What are two other things that I know to be inherently different?" One argument for thing-ism could be that, in order for a principle to determine future states from current states, things must exist one way or the other, either as manifestations of principles or as things separate from principles. It is just as easy to imagine either. Indeed, they could argue that I've simply performed a bait-and-switch, i.e. "Oh no no, you still get to keep your things, but now we call them 'principle manifestations'. *wink* " However, I did toy with some interesting ideas. At first, I assumed that a monistic world would require two types of principles. One tells things to exist, and the other processes present existence to generate future existence (i.e. if/then rules, cause and effect). However, one can imagine these as one unified principle as well. Instead of the principle having an if/then portion, it simply states how things will unfold. By this I mean that the patterns of causality we observe would be just that, patterns. There would be no if/then rule, but simply a systematic process going "then, then, then, then..." without ever judging any ifs. What's coming up is perhaps the most interesting part. The persistent idea that every thing has a cause is not actually a logical necessity, it's merely a consistent observation. If these principles are what are responsible for causality, they may not need any external cause.But, again, those who actually know physics may come in and burst my bubble. That's as far as I've gone. I hope this post can spark some interesting discussion.

The "s" is pronounced differently in those plurals. Is it just my dialect? I don't need a rhyming word for any particular reason, but I found it interesting that I could not think of one.

What rhymes with "false"?

Imagine the monkey is constantly slipping and constantly propelling himself such that he remains in one spot on the pole. Would you still say he is "climbing" the pole in this situation? Would you still say he is "slipping down" the pole in this situation?

If I don't didn't exist, I can't wouldn't do anything, thus these words will would never be read.

The comparison between identity loss and death is something I mentioned in a long (but amateurish and mostly trivial) treatise on a want-based utilitarianism. Since I wrote this several months ago, I've come to doubt that wants are precisely what should be the basis of morality, but there is a portion of the treatise that happens to coincide with this discussion. Suppose there is a button that, upon being pressed, would kill every person on the planet and replace them with new people who would be perpetually happy. Would you press it? You might not press it because you wish to continue living your life, or because your life has been lived for the world you already know. Maybe you would press it if you would survive, but that's clearly inconsiderate of the others, who would urge you not to press it. In contrast, one might argue that it would be selfish to not press the button to spare your own life, so you should press it even if your life will be lost. But the underlying maxim is a bad one. Sure, there might be multiple variations on the golden rule that could work. However, if the golden rule were “treat yourself as you would like to treat others” or “treat yourself as others would like to treat you,” we would have some big problems with it. Even something like “treat yourself as you would well-meaningly treat others” would be incomplete at best. An intuitive understanding of what it means to treat oneself well is the only rational basis for what it means to treat others well. Without that intuitive basis, such a rule would boil down to something like, “treat yourself as Yoda tells you to treat others,” and Yoda might tell you that violent screaming is a sign of joy. You mentioned that it is wrong to take a life once it has begun. Now, not only do most people prefer to continue existing, they usually like the fact that they came into existence in the first place. Per the argument above, this would suggest that it is a good thing to bring a new human into existence. Just an FYI to readers: This is not an anti-abortion argument. The uniting of gametes has absolutely no ethical relevance in my utilitarianism.

ATHEISM!!!! I'll admit it, I'm sort of just putting in filler until we get to page 12.

She'll need wide hips if that egg is drawn to scale! In the second image, she has her arms crossed, and the shape of her cheek bones makes it look like her jaw is clenched. I like that. It looks tough. You should make a stern facial expression where she has her jaw clenched (a more square shaped jaw) but her mouth is still closed. It would go well with her tattoos red markings.