COLOUR

[skepticalbip]

Seems like he is saying what we see as blue in our mental video images is perception not physical. I can see the point. The perception is not the light itself.

I don't see where that gets you. Whatever the perception is, it is still based in the physical brain.

And on the wavelength of the light that is the stimulus that begins the process of the photoreceptors sending a signal to the brain... which is then perceived as color.

The proposed "movement of a nitrogen atom" as a start of perceiving color must assume that that the spunky nitrogen atom has free will to act whenever it wants rather than "moving" in response to the stimulus of light at a given wavelength.

 

[fromderinside]

Seems like he is saying what we see as blue in our mental video images is perception not physical. I can see the point. The perception is not the light itself.

I don't see where that gets you. Whatever the perception is, it is still based in the physical brain.

The proposed "movement of a nitrogen atom" as a start of perceiving color must assume that that the spunky nitrogen atom has free will to act whenever it wants rather than "moving" in response to the stimulus of light at a given wavelength.

Getting back to reality the activity of opsin depolarizing effects leading to release of transmitter substances also arising through evolution, one might think that those transmitter substances would be related to opsin rather well, negating all that chatter about nitrogen moving.

Ah yes. The receptor only depolarizes then repolarizes in response to light opsin cascade. Action potential come after sufficient buildup of potential in neurons receiving transmitter substance from releasing activity of depolarization in receptor.

Amazing how so many bought into the Kool Aid of untrmensche's 'argument'.

Give 'em enough rope .....

 

[Marvin Edwards]

"People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive".

[1999, attributed to Dr Stephen Palmer, Professor of Psychology (speciality: Cognition), Visual Perception Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley].

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/

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Claim 1: objects are not themselves coloured, they do not have colour.

Claim 2A: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

Claim 2B: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon of consciousness only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

I think claim 1 is the easier and more recognised to be the case. I might hold that one quite strongly.

Claim 2A is, I think, not something that can be shown to be the case by any reasonable standard and is therefore (I would separately claim) an unresolved issue, but it is my inclination to go along with it and so I will start off defending the statement quoted above (which is apparently in blue).

Claim 2B is slightly more onerous, and may be even more up for debate, imo.

Does anyone have any views on the topic?

The color is a property of the object. You move the red chair, and the color goes where the chair goes.
The experience of the color is a property of the observer. Two observers may experience the color differently.
For example, a Dog's Poem: "Roses are Gray, Violets are a slightly different shade of Gray, I smell a cat, gotta run!".

 

[skepticalbip]

"People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive".

[1999, attributed to Dr Stephen Palmer, Professor of Psychology (speciality: Cognition), Visual Perception Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley].

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Claim 1: objects are not themselves coloured, they do not have colour.

Claim 2A: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

Claim 2B: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon of consciousness only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

I think claim 1 is the easier and more recognised to be the case. I might hold that one quite strongly.

Claim 2A is, I think, not something that can be shown to be the case by any reasonable standard and is therefore (I would separately claim) an unresolved issue, but it is my inclination to go along with it and so I will start off defending the statement quoted above (which is apparently in blue).

Claim 2B is slightly more onerous, and may be even more up for debate, imo.

Does anyone have any views on the topic?

The color is a property of the object. You move the red chair, and the color goes where the chair goes.
The experience of the color is a property of the observer. Two observers may experience the color differently.
For example, a Dog's Poem: "Roses are Gray, Violets are a slightly different shade of Gray, I smell a cat, gotta run!".

Whether or not an object has color is a matter of word games in how someone defines the word, "color". Physicists define colors by the wavelength of light. Some here who consider themselves to be philosophers define color as how someone experiences their perception of light.

An object that emits or reflects light of 450nM can certainly be said to be the color blue because it has the property of both emitting or reflecting 450nM light (to satisfy physicists' definition) and, if someone sees it, they will experience the color blue because the light from it will cause them to (to satisfy the sophistic "philosophers' definition").

 

[Marvin Edwards]

"People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive".

[1999, attributed to Dr Stephen Palmer, Professor of Psychology (speciality: Cognition), Visual Perception Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley].

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Claim 1: objects are not themselves coloured, they do not have colour.

Claim 2A: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

Claim 2B: Colour is a psychologically-experienced 'mental' phenomenon of consciousness only. Colour does not really exist other than in this way.

I think claim 1 is the easier and more recognised to be the case. I might hold that one quite strongly.

Claim 2A is, I think, not something that can be shown to be the case by any reasonable standard and is therefore (I would separately claim) an unresolved issue, but it is my inclination to go along with it and so I will start off defending the statement quoted above (which is apparently in blue).

Claim 2B is slightly more onerous, and may be even more up for debate, imo.

Does anyone have any views on the topic?

The color is a property of the object. You move the red chair, and the color goes where the chair goes.
The experience of the color is a property of the observer. Two observers may experience the color differently.
For example, a Dog's Poem: "Roses are Gray, Violets are a slightly different shade of Gray, I smell a cat, gotta run!".

Whether or not an object has color is a matter of word games in how someone defines the word, "color". Physicists define colors by the wavelength of light. Some here who consider themselves to be philosophers define color as how someone experiences their perception of light.

An object that emits or reflects light of 450nM can certainly be said to be the color blue because it has the property of both emitting or reflecting 450nM light (to satisfy physicists' definition) and, if someone sees it, they will experience the color blue because the light from it will cause them to (to satisfy the sophistic "philosophers' definition").

The light in its wavelength would be how the color is transmitted between the red chair and the observer.

What the observer sees depends upon the observer's eyes and brain.

But the chair is red. We know this because it says "Red" on the can of paint we used when we painted the chair.

To say that the chair is "not really red" is a trick to catch the reader's attention in order to explore the full chain of processing.

 

[skepticalbip]

Whether or not an object has color is a matter of word games in how someone defines the word, "color". Physicists define colors by the wavelength of light. Some here who consider themselves to be philosophers define color as how someone experiences their perception of light.

An object that emits or reflects light of 450nM can certainly be said to be the color blue because it has the property of both emitting or reflecting 450nM light (to satisfy physicists' definition) and, if someone sees it, they will experience the color blue because the light from it will cause them to (to satisfy the sophistic "philosophers' definition").

The light in its wavelength would be how the color is transmitted between the red chair and the observer.

What the observer sees depends upon the observer's eyes and brain.

But the chair is red. We know this because it says "Red" on the can of paint we used when we painted the chair.

To say that the chair is "not really red" is a trick to catch the reader's attention in order to explore the full chain of processing.

As I said, this thread is a game of words. You define "red" as the contents of a can of paint (but not what property makes it "red" instead of "blue" or "green")... All painted chairs are not "red" so what property distinguishes the color other than the label on the paint can? Physicists define "red" as light with a wavelength of ~650nM. Unter defines red as an experience.

None of this has anything to do with philosophy and more to do with lexicography.

 

[fromderinside]

What impresses me is how people say things without taking account of what has evolved and what is actually being processed. An experience is a system of presumptions about how one comes up with the words she hears in her head when she sees the 'colour' (another set of presumptions) about noises heard in head.

Look the processing of acoustic signals and making noises are pretty well understood by neurophysiologists and doctors working with speech and hearing. Acoustic energy is broken down by frequency and intensity along with associated relations among extant components of input, passed through a series of neural and chemical analyses processes organized to produce commands by neural processes to muscles in tongue, mouth, larynx, activation, and coordination functions to produces vocal utterances among other things like interpreting for seeing sources, responding to observed and heard objects and beings, etc.

Experiences are heard, felt, and otherwise sensed information being processed by the same systems as those which produced them. We know this because we have good evidence that humans produce sub-vocalizations and other physical micro-responses to all this information and activity we produce. And we are more or less completely integrated up-system, down-system, integrated neural processing beings. Not rocket science, not emergent, all in accordance with physicalist presumptions about the nature of things.

What is presumptive are any insertions of intervening variables to provide categories for such as experience, consciousness, self, awareness, that are not physical. Those voices in our heard are you hearing what you are doing produced by you doing them. The capability to do those things are useful to maintaining each of us alive at the expense of those that can't do those things and others who can but aren't as good at doing such.

That there is color is because we produce words to reflect what we sense which is, in the case of vision, photic energy which is characterized in process by frequency.

This is a philosophy thread after all.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Whether or not an object has color is a matter of word games in how someone defines the word, "color". Physicists define colors by the wavelength of light. Some here who consider themselves to be philosophers define color as how someone experiences their perception of light.

An object that emits or reflects light of 450nM can certainly be said to be the color blue because it has the property of both emitting or reflecting 450nM light (to satisfy physicists' definition) and, if someone sees it, they will experience the color blue because the light from it will cause them to (to satisfy the sophistic "philosophers' definition").

The light in its wavelength would be how the color is transmitted between the red chair and the observer.

What the observer sees depends upon the observer's eyes and brain.

But the chair is red. We know this because it says "Red" on the can of paint we used when we painted the chair.

To say that the chair is "not really red" is a trick to catch the reader's attention in order to explore the full chain of processing.

As I said, this thread is a game of words. You define "red" as the contents of a can of paint (but not what property makes it "red" instead of "blue" or "green")... All painted chairs are not "red" so what property distinguishes the color other than the label on the paint can? Physicists define "red" as light with a wavelength of ~650nM. Unter defines red as an experience.

None of this has anything to do with philosophy and more to do with lexicography.

Good definitions should help us to speak more clearly, and say more accurately what we mean. The chemical that reflects the "red" wavelength when placed in normal room lighting, is in the can of paint, and is now on the chair. That's what "the chair is red" means. To say "the chair is not red" would contradict that empirical fact. Now, we can move on to the way the eye works, and how the brain works, and explore how different people experience red when the "red" wavelength is detected by the cells in their eyes (or not detected if they are blind to the color).

Pragmatically, if I ask you to move the red chair, and you insist there are no red chairs, but only the perception of redness, I would find that very annoying. And so would you.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

What impresses me is how people say things without taking account of what has evolved and what is actually being processed. An experience is a system of presumptions about how one comes up with the words she hears in her head when she sees the 'colour' (another set of presumptions) about noises heard in head.

Look the processing of acoustic signals and making noises are pretty well understood by neurophysiologists and doctors working with speech and hearing. Acoustic energy is broken down by frequency and intensity along with associated relations among extant components of input, passed through a series of neural and chemical analyses processes organized to produce commands by neural processes to muscles in tongue, mouth, larynx, activation, and coordination functions to produces vocal utterances among other things like interpreting for seeing sources, responding to observed and heard objects and beings, etc.

Experiences are heard, felt, and otherwise sensed information being processed by the same systems as those which produced them. We know this because we have good evidence that humans produce sub-vocalizations and other physical micro-responses to all this information and activity we produce. And we are more or less completely integrated up-system, down-system, integrated neural processing beings. Not rocket science, not emergent, all in accordance with physicalist presumptions about the nature of things.

What is presumptive are any insertions of intervening variables to provide categories for such as experience, consciousness, self, awareness, that are not physical. Those voices in our heard are you hearing what you are doing produced by you doing them. The capability to do those things are useful to maintaining each of us alive at the expense of those that can't do those things and others who can but aren't as good at doing such.

That there is color is because we produce words to reflect what we sense which is, in the case of vision, photic energy which is characterized in process by frequency.

This is a philosophy thread after all.

Yes. But one aim of philosophy should be to help us speak more clearly, rather than throwing roadblocks in our way.

 

[skepticalbip]

As I said, this thread is a game of words. You define "red" as the contents of a can of paint (but not what property makes it "red" instead of "blue" or "green")... All painted chairs are not "red" so what property distinguishes the color other than the label on the paint can? Physicists define "red" as light with a wavelength of ~650nM. Unter defines red as an experience.

None of this has anything to do with philosophy and more to do with lexicography.

Good definitions should help us to speak more clearly, and say more accurately what we mean.

I absolutely agree. But good definitions are necessary for not only speaking clearly but also for reasoning clearly. Fuzzy language (words) yields fuzzy thinking.

Without explicit definitions for the terms being used that all involved agree on, there is no reasonable communication. However the definition you offer for "red" fails at being explicit and useful. There is much that is "red" other than paint... What common property do things like ripe tomatoes, rubies, lava, blood, stop lights, etc. have that make us perceive them as being "red"? The only definition that I know of that does fit all the above is the one offered by physicists.

 

[fromderinside]

Yes. But one aim of philosophy should be to help us speak more clearly, rather than throwing roadblocks in our way.

No roadblocks. I'm just building on known settled reality, not chanting on human invented intervening variable fantasy. If you don't know that what you see in your so called 'mind' (analogy of the cave) isn't what's there then one need resort to better tools for finding what's there worth actually discussing.

Personal narrative has never been deemed sufficient.

 

[WAB]

The problem, as is now clear, is rooted in language and the use of language, particularly with respect to communication among people who are limited to speech or written correspondence. Absent sufficient time, patience, and at least and modicum of willingness to admit to any breakdown in the capacity of transferring ideas, whatever that breakdown might result from, and whoever might be at fault for the lack of common agreement and/or understanding, no real progress can or will be made for all parties.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

As I said, this thread is a game of words. You define "red" as the contents of a can of paint (but not what property makes it "red" instead of "blue" or "green")... All painted chairs are not "red" so what property distinguishes the color other than the label on the paint can? Physicists define "red" as light with a wavelength of ~650nM. Unter defines red as an experience.

None of this has anything to do with philosophy and more to do with lexicography.

Good definitions should help us to speak more clearly, and say more accurately what we mean.

I absolutely agree. But good definitions are necessary for not only speaking clearly but also for reasoning clearly. Fuzzy language (words) yields fuzzy thinking.

Without explicit definitions for the terms being used that all involved agree on, there is no reasonable communication. However the definition you offer for "red" fails at being explicit and useful. There is much that is "red" other than paint... What common property do things like ripe tomatoes, rubies, lava, blood, stop lights, etc. have that make us perceive them as being "red"? The only definition that I know of that does fit all the above is the one offered by physicists.

Of course. But if all of those things have something in common (the wavelength) that causes us to say the chair is red, the tomato is red, the ruby is red, etc., that should not lead anyone to state that the chair is not red, the tomato is not red, the ruby is not red, etc. They are all red. Now, whether their redness is perceived or not is a matter of the cone cells and the brain. But, assuming the normal human eye and brain, that which makes the tomato red is present in the tomato. We know this, because we have seen the tomato when it was green.

 

[skepticalbip]

The problem, as is now clear, is rooted in language and the use of language, particularly with respect to communication among people who are limited to speech or written correspondence. Absent sufficient time, patience, and at least and modicum of willingness to admit to any breakdown in the capacity of transferring ideas, whatever that breakdown might result from, and whoever might be at fault for the lack of common agreement and/or understanding, no real progress can or will be made for all parties.

Well said...

One of the first changes made by science when it separated from general philosophy was to explicitly define the terms being used. There is no difference between the understanding of the meaning of terms like force, acceleration, mass, velocity, etc. etc. among scientists anywhere in the world. This means there is no misunderstanding or debate over the meanings. Another improvement in communication was to adopt an unambiguous language, mathematics. This eliminated any misunderstanding of what was being presented. Another major change was in methodology. While both science and philosophy seek to understand reality by offering hypothesis. A philosopher's methodology is to offer arguments to support their hypothesis but scientist's methodology is to try to disprove their own hypothesis and, if they find it impossible to do so, assume it is a strong hypothesis... if they do disprove their hypothesis then they drop it and develop another (rinse and repeat).

Maybe this is why science has made so much progress in understanding reality over the last couple hundred years.

 

[skepticalbip]

I absolutely agree. But good definitions are necessary for not only speaking clearly but also for reasoning clearly. Fuzzy language (words) yields fuzzy thinking.

Without explicit definitions for the terms being used that all involved agree on, there is no reasonable communication. However the definition you offer for "red" fails at being explicit and useful. There is much that is "red" other than paint... What common property do things like ripe tomatoes, rubies, lava, blood, stop lights, etc. have that make us perceive them as being "red"? The only definition that I know of that does fit all the above is the one offered by physicists.

Of course. But if all of those things have something in common (the wavelength) that causes us to say the chair is red, the tomato is red, the ruby is red, etc., that should not lead anyone to state that the chair is not red, the tomato is not red, the ruby is not red, etc. They are all red. Now, whether their redness is perceived or not is a matter of the cone cells and the brain. But, assuming the normal human eye and brain, that which makes the tomato red is present in the tomato. We know this, because we have seen the tomato when it was green.

That looks like a strawman. As I said, they can be said to be "red" because they either emit or reflect light at ~650nM, not because the label on a paint can says "red".

 

[Marvin Edwards]

I absolutely agree. But good definitions are necessary for not only speaking clearly but also for reasoning clearly. Fuzzy language (words) yields fuzzy thinking.

Without explicit definitions for the terms being used that all involved agree on, there is no reasonable communication. However the definition you offer for "red" fails at being explicit and useful. There is much that is "red" other than paint... What common property do things like ripe tomatoes, rubies, lava, blood, stop lights, etc. have that make us perceive them as being "red"? The only definition that I know of that does fit all the above is the one offered by physicists.

Of course. But if all of those things have something in common (the wavelength) that causes us to say the chair is red, the tomato is red, the ruby is red, etc., that should not lead anyone to state that the chair is not red, the tomato is not red, the ruby is not red, etc. They are all red. Now, whether their redness is perceived or not is a matter of the cone cells and the brain. But, assuming the normal human eye and brain, that which makes the tomato red is present in the tomato. We know this, because we have seen the tomato when it was green.

That looks like a strawman. As I said, they can be said to be "red" because they either emit or reflect light at ~650nM, not because the label on a paint can says "red".

Just to come full circle, the reason the label on the paint can says "red" is because its contents emit or reflect light at ~650nM. To say one is to say the other, except that if I want you to move the red chair and not the blue chair, I don't want to have to say, "Please move the chair that reflects light at ~650nM". And if a scientist wants the red chair moved, he'd best be speaking to another scientist.

 

[skepticalbip]

That looks like a strawman. As I said, they can be said to be "red" because they either emit or reflect light at ~650nM, not because the label on a paint can says "red".

Just to come full circle, the reason the label on the paint can says "red" is because its contents emit or reflect light at ~650nM. To say one is to say the other, except that if I want you to move the red chair and not the blue chair, I don't want to have to say, "Please move the chair that reflects light at ~650nM". And if a scientist wants the red chair moved, he'd best be speaking to another scientist.

Thus demonstrating why "philosophy" discussions on the internet are a waste of time. The emphasis is on quibbling and attempts to defend some earlier fuzzy or erroneous statement not on an attempt to understand reality, as philosophy should rightly be about.

The purpose of defining a term is so that everyone understands and agrees what is being discussed. Using a term, once clearly defined, means that the definition does not have to be repeated for everyone to understand exactly what is being said.

Robust definitions of terms that everyone accepts also avoid such asinine 'arguments' as "but tomatoes aren't painted with red paint so they can't be red."

 

[WAB]

That looks like a strawman. As I said, they can be said to be "red" because they either emit or reflect light at ~650nM, not because the label on a paint can says "red".

Just to come full circle, the reason the label on the paint can says "red" is because its contents emit or reflect light at ~650nM. To say one is to say the other, except that if I want you to move the red chair and not the blue chair, I don't want to have to say, "Please move the chair that reflects light at ~650nM". And if a scientist wants the red chair moved, he'd best be speaking to another scientist.

Thus demonstrating why "philosophy" discussions on the internet are a waste of time. The emphasis is on quibbling and attempts to defend some earlier fuzzy or erroneous statement not on an attempt to understand reality, as philosophy should rightly be about.

The purpose of defining a term is so that everyone understands and agrees what is being discussed. Using a term, once clearly defined, means that the definition does not have to be repeated for everyone to understand exactly what is being said.

Robust definitions of terms that everyone accepts also avoid such asinine 'arguments' as "but tomatoes aren't painted with red paint so they can't be red."

Two points:

1) Yes, science does seek more rigorous definitions, and scientists have come to a considerably larger consensus about terms than philosophers; BUT - as I mentioned, all scientists have to do philosophy, as a part of their reasoning, research, data interpretation, and logic. They must be philosophers too. However, conversely, philosophers do not have to do science, although they most certainly ought to take any and all factual, evidence-based findings from science into their methodology - if they have one. A thinker, even a lay person, can think philosophically, even if in a rudimentary way: and even if they are talking out their rear-ends; and especially if and when they are merely sheeple and uncritically accept some authoritarian or dogmatic drivel as fact (and among these people, there are not only philosophers, theologians, pseudoscience-adherents, conspiracy nuts, religious people, but people susceptible to scientism: which is an ever growing number of individuals. It is true that philosophy can stand in the way of science, by navel-gazing speculation (Berkeley, Kant, Hegel,and lots of others) and silly primacy of consciousness approaches (from pre-Plato/Socrates all the way up to the present), and by semantic games (Derrida!), and convoluted word salad (Kant, Hegel, a plethora of modern thinkers...up to and including theologians, new-age quacks, far-left AND far right authoritarian backside-sniffers, and any number of people hammering away on social media who think putting up a meme is presenting an argument).

2) It is evident from the available news sources, and the peer-reviewed papers that intellectual professionals write, that scientism AND religious and/or new-wave, and/or new-new wave political correctness, the anti-anti-establishment intelligencia, political agitators and writers of bizarre manifestos, which has led to internecine fighting among groups that would ordinarily have been defending one another but are now at each other's throats, has risen to popularity. ALSO - there are avowed actual, real, well-credited scientists (retired or still working in their respective fields), or professionals in the big-brained tech industries, engineers, and goodness knows what else (some of them imposters, no doubt, but some of them who have even linked to their OWN peer-reviewed work), and some of them are clearly motivated by what I would consider a prejudiced and thoroughly unprofessional (nonobjective/emotional) attitude towards philosophy as a discipline, and who clearly have mixed up views about egalitarianism, pragmatism, and speak in offensive generalities meant only to discredit freethinkers on the Internet, or some specified group of people currently on the hit-list, such as Libertarians, (which some people here insist is identical to conservatism, which is funny and depressing), conservatives, republithugs, Karens, plague-rats, and a million other convenient labels - the harm of which is that these generalities include everyone who might fall under such silly labels who then in turn become targets of persecution and rampant, salivating, teeth-gnashing, fist-pounding ridicule: such as all the decent and bright individuals who may happen to have conservative views, religious, non-secular views, and even those who are merely too dumb to figure things out for themselves, like the ever-growing ranks of Randroids and faux libertarians, who don't even know, don't even realize, and don't even care ! that Ayn Rand herself specifically trashed libertarians, not once, but many times, and was adamant that self-proclaimed "Objectivists" please eschew using that word (at least the capital 'O' version), since she didn't want libertarianism to be conflated with her own system of thought which, (and albeit she apparently did not even realize herself) was NOT original, but stemmed from Aristotle (A is A), Locke, Spinoza, Adam Smith, Nietzsche, and a slew of other thinkers and economists - whom she either acknowledged or passed over.) She was admittedly not well-read in the vast literature of psychology and neuroscience, even of contemporary philosophy; and her views on esthetics were appalling, as well as much of her views on morality and politics. She was decidedly a rape-fetishist, willingly cuckolded her husband, seemed to rank women beneath men universally, not just specifically (saying she didn't think a woman should be President of the USA!), which was directly contrary to her system of thought, a primary feature of which was the denouncing of most forms of determinism!

I have gone on too long - and I am tired of these discussions. Bottom line: science and philosophy are not contraries. It is not a "my side versus your side" affair. The two things must be reconciled and integrated in society and in every person; they must cooperate; as must all individuals. Voluntary cooperation, a positive social interest and community "spirit", empathy, and most of all Spinozan level-headedness and lack of aggression, which the bleating randroids have given up for their authoritarian, tribal, and ironically collective anger, sense of superiority, and spewing of dogma instead of love and patience, tolerance and good will towards others - this voluntary, meaning not literally forced, integration of philosophy and science (with science taking the lead, as it should), must happen, or some kind of situation will occur, be it Orwellian (doubtful), Huxleyan (possible), or just simply a low-level but literally armed conflict between zealots from the left AND the right.

The sky is not falling, and the US is not going to descend into chaos or full blown civil war - that fear is based on ignorance. Besides what some libelists and chicken-littles say (some of them right here on TFT), Americans are not going to be slaughtering one another in megadeath numbers, leading to a national and total collapse. Her military and various government operants (sly and tricksy devils, and extremely lethal and very well-trained) is too strong for that to happen, at least not any time any of us here will live to witness - I hope. But spare a thought for your children, and your descendants, as I do for mine.

ETA: Oh, and another thing (lol): I would like to introduce another term into the public lexicon. Let's see how many people actually read these posts (or my silly ones anyway )

The term is "Degreeism", with a capital 'D'. It must, I declare, I insist, MUST have a capital 'D'! Anyone hereafter caught using "Degreeism" without the capital 'D', i.e "degreeism", shall be rounded up, tied and gagged, forced to listen to light opera *, or death-metal (I would definitely choose the death metal), and flogged in a comfy chair with a tickler purchased from AMAZON - IT MUST BE AMAZON!!!!!!

*Stolen from Woody Allen, film: Bananas. A must-see for all Degreeists!!!!!!!!!!!

Degreeism is the silly belief that one must have a college or university-level education and diploma in order to argue on the Internet. Degreeism's mascot shall not be Bob, but Frank Zappa, whose ghost shall haunt anyone (accompanied by incomprehensibly complex music, just for starters) who disobeys my edict!!!!!!

 

[fromderinside]

I, Ambrose von Bluster Blowhard, see red if one must qualify, to being labeled so rudely. If one writes a story about the value of self in "L" types in a world of "F" types I shall always object. Those who do are wrong headed inciters of difference in race of beings defined by genetic similarity. Both scientists and philosophers subscribe to the idea of reality as basis for their value to this race of beings. Yet only one requires rigor based on the nature of what they pursue. It is nuts to say any idea can be be developed when it is settled that only one fundamental idea has been demonstrated.

So I stand here defiant, in spite of being with degree, defending the right of the writer above to proclaim empirical basis for pursuit of ideas. Anything else must come with tea and crumpets and be conducted in the drawing and quartering room.

 

[skepticalbip]

Thus demonstrating why "philosophy" discussions on the internet are a waste of time. The emphasis is on quibbling and attempts to defend some earlier fuzzy or erroneous statement not on an attempt to understand reality, as philosophy should rightly be about.

The purpose of defining a term is so that everyone understands and agrees what is being discussed. Using a term, once clearly defined, means that the definition does not have to be repeated for everyone to understand exactly what is being said.

Robust definitions of terms that everyone accepts also avoid such asinine 'arguments' as "but tomatoes aren't painted with red paint so they can't be red."

Two points:

You seem to have read much, much more into that post than was there.

To the beginning of your point 1, absolutely science uses philosophy as part of their attempts to understand reality. Hypotheses are arrived at through philosophical reasoning but scientifically stated to make them testable. Einstein wouldn't have been able to develop his theory of relativity without a hell of a lot of philosophical reasoning over several years on the nature of time. In fact the second term of the theory of relativity is nothing but pure philosophy (though explicitly defined). Then there are some areas of science that are predominately philosophical such as cosmology or even string theory.

My point was that there can be no reasonable philosophical discussion unless all involved in the discussion understand and agree on what the hell they are discussing.

Your point 2 lost me. Your apparent frustration with people's take on scientism, Ayn Rand, libertarianism, etc. seems to me to be a very different matter.