What does it mean for something to be "logically possible"?

[Speakpigeon]

There are objects, and objects exist independent of us. Objects move, and an object that moves can do so independent of us. Objects that move are events. Many events are independent of us.

You mention events as labels. I'll come back to that, but first, I suppose you also think objects are also just labels. They are not. There is an object high up beyond the skies in space we call the moon. If there was no us, there would be no name (at least not from us) of the object, but like I said earlier, the object is independent of us.

That object that has a name (that also would exist without a name) moves. It orbits the Earth, and though the event is called by a name, it would still move independent of the name given to it by us.

The example of the moon fools you because it seems so clear cut. But we speak of lot of things as objects which are just more or less arbitrarily demarcations of what we see as features. Waves, curve of the road etc. you see: i dont say that the features which we modrl as objects doesnt exist, but the modelling of the world into objects is a feature of the human mind.
It is a very useful and reasonabel model, but a model none the less.

The same goes with events.

Thus investigating the generic properties of objects and events will be an investigation of the human mind. Not of realities of the world surrounding us.

I agree essentially with that but it's also crucial to keep in mind that we use objects and events as proxys for the real world, basically because that's all we have. So we certainly trust that objects and events do tell us something about the real world, something that's good enough to be useful in a practical way, or at least this is what most of us believe, which is why we keep doing it. People who come to experience mental health problems may become suspicious that they can't trust their own 'objects' and 'events' any longer, but for most people, life quickly becomes mostly unsurprising after only our first few years as human beings.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Aren't space and time each "piece-wise continuous", at least in our ordinary conception of them?

These concepts are not defined on space and time.
We dont know how thet behave at planck scale and smaller.
Only how they behave on bigger scales.

Sure, and that's why I specified I was talking about our ordinary conception of space and time.

I'm sure most people think of space and time as both continuous and complete, in the sense that the set of Reals is.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

The sense you attribute to the expression 'logically possible' is not standard. Logically possible just doesn't mean physically possible as you keep pretending.

Look here, that's the standard sense and there's no secondary senses. So you have no excuse:

Logically possible adj. capable of being described without self-contradiction

You know what a self-contradiction is?

If you don't want to use standard English like most people here you're bound to have vacuous debates again and again. And what's the point of that?

If logical possibilities were meant to be no different from physical possibilities, I don't see why people would bother using 'logical' to front the expression to start with.

Your attitude is just absurd because literalist. Your attitude makes any debate with you pointless, and people should have realised this long ago.
EB

 

[untermensche]

The sense you attribute to the expression 'logically possible' is not standard. Logically possible just doesn't mean physically possible as you keep pretending.

Look here, that's the standard sense and there's no secondary senses. So you have no excuse:

Logically possible adj. capable of being described without self-contradiction

You know what a self-contradiction is?

If you don't want to use standard English like most people here you're bound to have vacuous debates again and again. And what's the point of that?

If logical possibilities were meant to be no different from physical possibilities, I don't see why people would bother using 'logical' to front the expression to start with.

Your attitude is just absurd because literalist. Your attitude makes any debate with you pointless, and people should have realised this long ago.
EB

The question is: Is this "standard" understanding really an understanding of something? That is the question to ask anybody who presents a "standard" understanding.

Or is it just a modern remnant of theological apologetics?

Possibilities are not governed by any human understandings.

They are governed by the nature of "reality".

To have an infinity of something real is nothing like having an imaginary infinity.

The infinity that exists between the number one and the number two is an imaginary infinity.

It cannot be expressed. It can only be swallowed whole. It can only be imagined to exist.

 

[Juma]

The example of the moon fools you because it seems so clear cut. But we speak of lot of things as objects which are just more or less arbitrarily demarcations of what we see as features. Waves, curve of the road etc. you see: i dont say that the features which we modrl as objects doesnt exist, but the modelling of the world into objects is a feature of the human mind.
It is a very useful and reasonabel model, but a model none the less.

The same goes with events.

Thus investigating the generic properties of objects and events will be an investigation of the human mind. Not of realities of the world surrounding us.

I agree essentially with that but it's also crucial to keep in mind that we use objects and events as proxys for the real world, basically because that's all we have. So we certainly trust that objects and events do tell us something about the real world, something that's good enough to be useful in a practical way, or at least this is what most of us believe, which is why we keep doing it. People who come to experience mental health problems may become suspicious that they can't trust their own 'objects' and 'events' any longer, but for most people, life quickly becomes mostly unsurprising after only our first few years as human beings.
EB

i think i agree . events and objects are useful.

 

[untermensche]

I'm not disagreeing with everything you say. If I take a snapshot of the universe at time stamp 'x' then again at time stamp 'Z', then the sum of the individual interim events all had a beginning. Necessarily, mmm, not so sure; contingently, yes.

What the fuck is ”the sum of the individual interim events”? And how is thesum a plural? ”All”? Are you referring to that each of the events has a beginning? Or that there one of the events was earlier than the others and therny marks the beginning of the entire set of events in that time interval?

In either case: what was your point man?

Dont let U drag you down...

I'm attempting to lift him up beyond the superstition that humans have any say in what is possible.

Yes, if you arrive in the midst of ongoing events as every human does it may not be always clear what is the beginning to some event.

But what is perfectly clear is that for any event, any change, to occur a beginning to the change is necessary.

You cannot have an event with no beginning to the event.

It does not matter one bit that our abilities to see those beginnings are limited because there are so many overlapping events.

Ultimately I think "change" is a better concept to use. Only for clarity since ultimately an event is just an amount of change.

No change can occur unless there is a beginning to the change. No beginning to the change means stasis.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The sense you attribute to the expression 'logically possible' is not standard. Logically possible just doesn't mean physically possible as you keep pretending.

Look here, that's the standard sense and there's no secondary senses. So you have no excuse:


You know what a self-contradiction is?

If you don't want to use standard English like most people here you're bound to have vacuous debates again and again. And what's the point of that?

If logical possibilities were meant to be no different from physical possibilities, I don't see why people would bother using 'logical' to front the expression to start with.

Your attitude is just absurd because literalist. Your attitude makes any debate with you pointless, and people should have realised this long ago.
EB

The question is: Is this "standard" understanding really an understanding of something? That is the question to ask anybody who presents a "standard" understanding.

Or is it just a modern remnant of theological apologetics?

Possibilities are not governed by any human understandings.

They are governed by the nature of "reality".

To have an infinity of something real is nothing like having an imaginary infinity.

The infinity that exists between the number one and the number two is an imaginary infinity.

It cannot be expressed. It can only be swallowed whole. It can only be imagined to exist.

Here you go again! That's truly impressive!

Clearly, you really don't understand what I just said or if you did, you just ignored it.

You're such a waste of time.
EB

 

[untermensche]

You seem unable to respond to any argument presented to you.

How about addressing the arguments. I do not accept your dogmatic pronouncements about your beliefs.

 

[fast]

The example of the moon fools you because it seems so clear cut. But we speak of lot of things as objects which are just more or less arbitrarily demarcations of what we see as features. Waves, curve of the road etc. you see: i dont say that the features which we modrl as objects doesnt exist, but the modelling of the world into objects is a feature of the human mind.
It is a very useful and reasonabel model, but a model none the less.

The same goes with events.

Thus investigating the generic properties of objects and events will be an investigation of the human mind. Not of realities of the world surrounding us.

I agree essentially with that but it's also crucial to keep in mind that we use objects and events as proxys for the real world, basically because that's all we have. So we certainly trust that objects and events do tell us something about the real world, something that's good enough to be useful in a practical way, or at least this is what most of us believe, which is why we keep doing it. People who come to experience mental health problems may become suspicious that they can't trust their own 'objects' and 'events' any longer, but for most people, life quickly becomes mostly unsurprising after only our first few years as human beings.
EB

Science can sometimes reveal to us things we did already know. For instance, when I look at a rock, science might teach us the inner processes that allows for it. That means, we now know more than we knew before. It doesn't mean what we thought we knew was inaccurate.

That's not always the case. Sometimes we think one thing then later find out we didn't know what we thought we did.

I think it's important to know which times it's the case and which times it isn't.

You think we have access only to mental percepts that separate us from the clustered atoms of the world, but be that as it might be, why not think we actually see the rock? How it is that we see the rock hasn't been changed by what we've learned. We just know more about it now. It's what's entailed in seeing the rock.

I change the channels of the TV with a remote control. Can you imagine an upcoming scientist that knew nothing of remotes investigating how the remote works and reporting back to us that we are mistaken about what we think we know and using the inner workings of the remote to justify some claim that only an aspect of the remote changes the channel?

 

[untermensche]

If logical possibilities were meant to be no different from physical possibilities, I don't see why people would bother using 'logical' to front the expression to start with.

You gotta love stuff like this.

Just because humans use some conception does not mean the conception exists.

Yes some people say "logical" possibility.

Yet not one of these users can actually explain why they need the phrase beyond something about human statements that don't contradict.

Something that never made anything possible.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I agree essentially with that but it's also crucial to keep in mind that we use objects and events as proxys for the real world, basically because that's all we have. So we certainly trust that objects and events do tell us something about the real world, something that's good enough to be useful in a practical way, or at least this is what most of us believe, which is why we keep doing it. People who come to experience mental health problems may become suspicious that they can't trust their own 'objects' and 'events' any longer, but for most people, life quickly becomes mostly unsurprising after only our first few years as human beings.
EB

Science can sometimes reveal to us things we did already know. For instance, when I look at a rock, science might teach us the inner processes that allows for it. That means, we now know more than we knew before. It doesn't mean what we thought we knew was inaccurate.

That's not always the case. Sometimes we think one thing then later find out we didn't know what we thought we did.

I think it's important to know which times it's the case and which times it isn't.

You think we have access only to mental percepts that separate us from the clustered atoms of the world, but be that as it might be, why not think we actually see the rock? How it is that we see the rock hasn't been changed by what we've learned. We just know more about it now. It's what's entailed in seeing the rock.

I change the channels of the TV with a remote control. Can you imagine an upcoming scientist that knew nothing of remotes investigating how the remote works and reporting back to us that we are mistaken about what we think we know and using the inner workings of the remote to justify some claim that only an aspect of the remote changes the channel?

I hear you.

Still, it is precisely because of the success of scientific theories that we now believe we understand our situation in the world properly. And it's a fact that whatever we are conscious of can only be contents of our mind, i.e. something we think is generated by, and most likely within, our brain, although we don't really understand properly how that works. We are not directly conscious of things in the world. All we can do is trust that our brain works properly and that working brains generally produce a useful representation of the world in which we exist. Still, it's just naïve to think that what you see is just what there is. Instead, what you see is just what things look like to us when we use the human visual system. Just imagine what the world would look like if we had not human eyes but a radar or X-rays! That would be very different and yet just as truthful as the human eye. You could also replace the human eye by reams of values (on paper!) of electromagnetic wavelengths and spatial coordinates. Just as precise and truthful and yet nothing like what the world looks like to us. The rock as you see it does not exist in the real world. Presumably there's something but how it looks like to us owes a very great deal to the apparatus (our own eyes) we use to look at it. And we don't really have a choice. Even if we use X-rays, we still have to look at the X-ray images using our eyes. We can also touch things and although that doesn't exactly contradict what we see, the fact is that what we feel touching something provides a very different experience from looking at it. And it's still not what the world really is. It's all our percepts.
EB

- - - Updated - - -

I agree essentially with that but it's also crucial to keep in mind that we use objects and events as proxys for the real world, basically because that's all we have. So we certainly trust that objects and events do tell us something about the real world, something that's good enough to be useful in a practical way, or at least this is what most of us believe, which is why we keep doing it. People who come to experience mental health problems may become suspicious that they can't trust their own 'objects' and 'events' any longer, but for most people, life quickly becomes mostly unsurprising after only our first few years as human beings.
EB

i think i agree . events and objects are useful.

I'll drink champagne to celebrate!
EB

 

[untermensche]

Still, it's just naïve to think that what you see is just what there is.

In terms of size and shape of discreet objects it is what there is out there. A bunch of equations are not out there. Waves of energy might be out there but they create discrete objects in our scale. Real objects are out there.

Vision allows navigation.

But if size and shape are not represented extremely well navigation is extremely difficult and you will find yourself constantly bumping into things. Especially in places like jungles and forests.

If you are a predator that does not help you catch your lunch. Chances are your kind will not last long.

If you jump and do not get a very good representation of the size and shape of the next branch your kind will not last long.

 

[fast]

What I see may be filtered, but I see it nonetheless.

 

[fast]

When I looked up and saw that beautiful woman, I soon realized that I did not see her directly, and as I come to find out, all I actually saw was her reflection in a mighty clean mirror, but that I didn't see her directly in no way means that I did not see her--I saw her, I saw her, I saw her -- indirectly.

Yes, I might can only remember the reflection of her radiant beauty as it reflected back at me through that mighty clean mirror, but I saw her. That I saw her through a mirror changes things very little.

What you're doing is adding another layer of filter. You deny that I even seen her reflection but rather say that I merely saw a percept of her reflection, but suppose it true my brain not only accessed the percept, but I saw her reflection (directly) and thus her (indirectly).

 

[fromderinside]

I agree fast. Conceptually seeing is no different from information transformation via a filter of an object by such as a mirror, microscope, or amplifier system. Seeing is a complex transformation or set of transformations but it changes things not a whit except to the extent the filter causes information loss via signal transformation.

 

[Speakpigeon]

When I looked up and saw that beautiful woman, I soon realized that I did not see her directly, and as I come to find out, all I actually saw was her reflection in a mighty clean mirror, but that I didn't see her directly in no way means that I did not see her--I saw her, I saw her, I saw her -- indirectly.

Yes, I might can only remember the reflection of her radiant beauty as it reflected back at me through that mighty clean mirror, but I saw her. That I saw her through a mirror changes things very little.

What you're doing is adding another layer of filter. You deny that I even seen her reflection but rather say that I merely saw a percept of her reflection, but suppose it true my brain not only accessed the percept, but I saw her reflection (directly) and thus her (indirectly).

I would agree that if you see a beautiful woman it's probably because there's something that looks to you as a woman, and a beautiful one. But then there's no real sense, beyond this, in insisting that this something is a beautiful woman. All you can say, even objectively if you can get the concurring opinion of several people, is that this something looks like a beautiful woman. What it is, you still don't know, except that it should be something that looks to you as a beautiful woman.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I agree fast. Conceptually seeing is no different from information transformation via a filter of an object by such as a mirror, microscope, or amplifier system. Seeing is a complex transformation or set of transformations but it changes things not a whit except to the extent the filter causes information loss via signal transformation.

You seem to miss the point that seeing involves light reflected off things. All that you will ever see is light reflected off things. Seeing does not involve the things themselves we are supposed to be looking at. The only thing you have for conscious consideration as an observer is the percept such as it is constructed by your brain from the light that's coming in through your pupils. Sure, there's a quite precise geometrical relation between percept and object, but all that you can contemplate is the percept, not the object itself.

And, basically, it is what you are saying yourself. As observers, we can get information about an apple we are looking at. We don't get the apple itself. And the apple is not information. It's an apple.
EB

 

[Juma]

What I see may be filtered, but I see it nonetheless.

To see = to probe an internal model created from visual (and other) input.

 

[fast]

When I looked up and saw that beautiful woman, I soon realized that I did not see her directly, and as I come to find out, all I actually saw was her reflection in a mighty clean mirror, but that I didn't see her directly in no way means that I did not see her--I saw her, I saw her, I saw her -- indirectly.

Yes, I might can only remember the reflection of her radiant beauty as it reflected back at me through that mighty clean mirror, but I saw her. That I saw her through a mirror changes things very little.

What you're doing is adding another layer of filter. You deny that I even seen her reflection but rather say that I merely saw a percept of her reflection, but suppose it true my brain not only accessed the percept, but I saw her reflection (directly) and thus her (indirectly).

I would agree that if you see a beautiful woman it's probably because there's something that looks to you as a woman, and a beautiful one. But then there's no real sense, beyond this, in insisting that this something is a beautiful woman. All you can say, even objectively if you can get the concurring opinion of several people, is that this something looks like a beautiful woman. What it is, you still don't know, except that it should be something that looks to you as a beautiful woman.
EB

I didn't mean to complicate matters by introducing a subjective element into the problem. Replace her with a bowling ball. <damn something sounded so not right about that>

I'm over here. The ball is over there. I submit that I see the ball. You disagree. You think we merely see a mental image (or percept) of the ball. My view is that you're narrowing what it means to say that we see something. Science might show the processes of vision such that the brain never reaches out and touches the ball but rather light streams in to us. That (to me) doesn't change anything, for that's apart of what it means to even say we saw something.

You can't walk around making the claim we don't really see anything outside our minds. People will think you're crazy. When you start to dodge objects in your path and you explain that your movement was due to doppelgänger mental images giving you a video with a setting tuned to human distortion, well, just sayin', it's better to just say you see the thing (just like they do). You can explain how we see, but don't deny that we see, nor deny that we see what we do.

Oh, and it would help if we drop this fascination with the brain being the person. I don't see percepts, even should it might be the case my brain senses them. I see the rock, the ball, and the girl.

 

[fast]

What I see may be filtered, but I see it nonetheless.

To see = to probe an internal model created from visual (and other) input.

Remember that show, "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?"

I don't rightly know what the experts mean when they say we see something, but I do know what a fifth grader means when they say they saw something. I mean what they mean. So, if they say they saw a beachball blow across the sand, bounce off an alligator by the shore and drop down hitting a patrolman on the head, then I mean to say I saw just that if I did.

How it is that I see (the inner workings of it all) is irrelevant.

Okay, so light come-a bouncy bouncin' from the sun to all those thingys then it comes traveling through the air attacking my eye. The brain captures it, wrestles with it, does a body slam in my brain, and poops out a dozen or so percepts that thankfully are not itchy.

I don't care what the short-sighted brain sees. The far-sighted person cannot see percepts. All we see are the things the light reflected off of, not in the brain but out in the world.