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Old 05-31-2007, 04:55 PM   #41
Kilroy_x
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Quote:
Originally Posted by aperson View Post
No, then you can't say that other's cognitive biases lead to fallacious modes of thought like you did above. Oops. You've fallen into a postmodern pit too. Nice one.

You're right, it isn't a refutation but it dismembers most of your pathetic arguments above.
Right. Because calling all perspectives into equal doubt and then building another perspective on top of the rubble isn't hypocritical. Or, if it really isn't why bother deconstructing a perspective in the first place?

Quote:
Mind pointing out why or how? Oh wait you can't you just like throwing blanket labels on things and casting them aside; get some substance or get the hell out. Haha how postmodern. Haha how perspectivist. Haha how consequentialist. Hold on let me namedrop some Nietzsche be right back.
That's interesting. No really it is. Apparently language is incapable of having semantic value now. I'm intigued. How do you manage to carry on a conversation without meaning?


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So basically you just dug yourself a postmodern pit and jumped out right before you buried yourself in it. Nice save.
At least I didn't bury the world in it and pretend I'm the only one still above ground.

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And why wouldn't it be just as skeptical to say "Now, again since skepticism is more useful in critical epistemology then faith, I assume that there is no evidence of inherent action beyond our ability to perceive or otherwise deduce."
I suppose there wouldn't be. In fact this would be more skeptical. However, it would also be taking skepticism beyond the point where it is useful in constructing perspectives. I prefer rejecting a perspective because there is no hypothesis which can test it, rather than rejecting a perspective because I reject the concept of a hypothesis in the first place. Is this purely preference? Maybe. The truth is I don't care. I don't have a taste for self-castration, amputation, and lobotomization. Perhaps you do.

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Well I'll be damned, there's the negation of your claim worded as a similar positive. Funny how that works. Wrench your brain really, really hard with some far transfer skills and maybe you can fathom how this applies to my original arguments.
Why don't you do it yourself, you're the one arguing the issue.

Quote:
Here's a direct example of the relativity of positive and negative I was talking about earlier. Haha jesus christ, you said this and can't even notice what is going on. Also, it's hilarious as hell that you're arguing against causality with scientific empricism when every single bit of scientific discovery ever made pretty much underlies the notion that events occur as causal phenomenon. You should really listen to some of the crap you're saying some time.
Actually, you should listen to it, then maybe you would be able to address it rather than talking around it. I never argued against causality, just against singularity of causality. Of course things seem relative when you pretend they're all made of the same element. But then, if everything causes everything, which is the endpoint of your position, once again causation becomes meaningless. The perfect interconnection of all actions makes any sense of consequentialist morality meaningless. Congratulations, you've stripped a language of all meaning. Please, go ahead and do this to all language. Pragmatic language, deontological language, utilitarian language, perspectivist langauge. Oh wait, those are all just words. Words in a language. Darn.

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And beyond that, your argument boils down to some thought process analogous to the thought an ostrich makes when it runs away from fear by sticking its head in a hole; well if I can't see it, it can't be there
This doesn't mean anything to me.

Quote:
"That's great, but it doesn't mean anything because any conjecture on the causal or non-causal nature of reality beyond that threshold is untestable."
How is this ostrich-like? Doubt isn't the same as rejection because, after all, you can't prove a negative. Assuming the negative when you're in the dark isn't retreatist, it's sensible. It's a limitation of language to constructing meanings around that which can actually be observed.

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Nice one, you call my stance empty postmodernism then do the exact same thing. You're brilliant, man. This is A+ sophistry right here.
That's nice. Nice but wrong. Actually at this point I wonder why you're bothering to argue at all, if you want to make it clear that I'm capable of being wrong, I understand that. It you want to actually argue in a manner that supports your position you don't have the tools in your possession to actually do it, you've resigned yourself to deconstructing meaning so any act of attempting to affirm meaning is blatant unsupported hypocrisy.

Quote:
Oh wait you do understand it. You just feigned ignorance above to wrap around my last point and then magically got the picture when you started arguing against moral repsonsibility here. Man that's neat.
Isn't it though? Language has meaning precisely because it has a function within a larger language. Independently of context, language doesn't have meaning. Your example of causality had no meaning. Now it does.

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But you know what, YOU'RE RIGHT! Now maybe you can understand that you are making an arbitrary threshold argument.
Well then, if both of us are making arbitrary arguments, perhaps neither of us should be conversing.

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You're trying to set a JND (I'm namedropping psychology terms now) on where intentful causality occurs. And you're setting this threshold through some nonsensical view based on your cognitive biases on what denotes a positive action versus a negative (I mean this in the sense of A and ~A, not in the sense of good and bad).
So you reject formal logic now. Ok. Well I really don't know what the hell to do now because apparently there's no language acceptable to you in which to convey a concept. Oh, except yours, of course, and that's not a language used for communication.

Quote:
Okay and isn't one of his means to choose not to act? Oops glaring contradiction in your entire argument. Maybe you should think more before you choose to namedrop yet more people.
I haven't done any namedropping. And how about you? Bringing up Kant for no reason, bringing up others? No, this stopped being a conversation as soon as you started talking, you had no intention for an exchange of information to occur. One of his means is to choose not to act, but this makes him responsible of bad character not of causation. So how about that, things of the same property

AREN'T ALWAYS CONNECTED!



[img]Highly meaningful response. Absolutely stunning refutation. Especially noteworthy because of clear understanding of concept to which it was responding[/quote]

No really, learn to recognize distinctions. I don't care if you think they're entirely language based and not real, but if you're just going to keep conjoining 6 or seven different concepts and some emotion into a hypocritical mutation of reason I'm not even going to bother.

And you call me a sophist.
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Old 05-31-2007, 05:20 PM   #42
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

When you're smart enough to actually understand what I'm saying, then you can get back to me with points. Until then, try not saying anything.

Here, let me bring out an example of how absolutely fucking retarded you are so maybe you (or everyone else) can understand how much of a brain you lack.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilroy_x View Post
Well then, if both of us are making arbitrary arguments, perhaps neither of us should be conversing.
In response to

Quote:
But you know what, YOU'RE RIGHT! Now maybe you can understand that you are making an arbitrary threshold argument.
You broke apart the sentence as arbitrary(threshold + argument). If you would have took the time to actually sit back and read what I said, using this wonderful tool called 'context' you seem to be so excited about, you would've understood that the word "arbitrary" was modifying the word threshold, and not the whole phrase threshold argument, like such: [arbitrary(threshold)(argument)]. Maybe if you would've took the time to look up what the phrase JND meant (because I had to look up what a bunch of your dumbfuck terminology meant), you would've had the contextual mettle to pull off this stunning feat of decoding. But obviously, you took so little time to sit back and read what I said before you started jacking off all over your keyboard that you didn't even get the context of what I was saying and chose to fall back onto some LOL POSTMODERNISM argument instead. Your brain has descended to a hunt and find mission where you look for words like arbitrary or meaningless and immediately think that obviously I'm making some argument that nothing has meaning.

So I've got an idea for you, shut the fuck up and actually understand the points I make before you start rattling out some halfassed comeback to my responses, because it's hard to debate a point with someone when they aren't even debating what I said.


And for those few times you actually do understand what I'm saying, let's try not to contort what I said into such a disfigured shape that it has no bearing to what I originally said any more:

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That's interesting. No really it is. Apparently language is incapable of having semantic value now. I'm intigued. How do you manage to carry on a conversation without meaning?
In reponse to

Quote:
Mind pointing out why or how? Oh wait you can't you just like throwing blanket labels on things and casting them aside; get some substance or get the hell out. Haha how postmodern. Haha how perspectivist. Haha how consequentialist. Hold on let me namedrop some Nietzsche be right back.
You know as well as I do that I was telling you to actually back up your statement with ideas of substance instead of just namedropping philosophies. For every philosophy there's a counter philosophy and a counter-counter philosophy ad nausea, I don't give a fuck that you know who Nietzsche is. If you don't provide any substance to your arguments through actually expanding on these terms in any reasonable manner, then yeah, they are just empty semantic labels.


Oh, and probably the funniest example of how fucking stupid you are:

I said
Quote:
Well I'll be damned, there's the negation of your claim worded as a similar positive. Funny how that works. Wrench your brain really, really hard with some far transfer skills and maybe you can fathom how this applies to my original arguments.
And you responded with

Quote:
Why don't you do it yourself, you're the one arguing the issue.
Well if you hadn't had your panties in such a bunch that you wanted to give a line by line breakdown of stupid sophist ranting without reading my whole post first you would've read the VERY NEXT LINE where I said

"Hold on, I'll probably have to make it black and white for you:"

and then went on to explain it in the next paragraph where you responded with more keyboard jacking off:

"Here's a direct example of the relativity of positive and negative I was talking about earlier. Haha jesus christ, you said this and can't even notice what is going on. Also, it's hilarious as hell that you're arguing against causality with scientific empricism when every single bit of scientific discovery ever made pretty much underlies the notion that events occur as causal phenomenon. You should really listen to some of the crap you're saying some time."


Seriously, use your fucking brain, not just the stem.


Edit: One more since I couldn't resist. Especially since you're saying this to someone whose had 2 years of symbolic logic.

Quote:
So you reject formal logic now. Ok. Well I really don't know what the hell to do now because apparently there's no language acceptable to you in which to convey a concept. Oh, except yours, of course, and that's not a language used for communication.
LET'S TAKE A MYSTICAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND OF SECOND ORDER LOGIC.

Let's assume that in our universal domain, there exists at least some property that A that holds for some object in the domain
(∃A)(∃x)[Ax]

Hold on, watch out, I'm about to do something really mystical here. I'm going to define another predicate that represents ~Ax BUT DOESN'T REQUIRE NEGATION TO SAY SO.
(∃B)(∀x) (~Ax -> Bx)

So Bx says that x does not have property A all the while not using negation to make the claim.

Oh my god, my claim certainly brought the world of formal logic onto it's knees yessiree.
But wait, I hear, you're going to gloss over this and respond "BUT APERSON I STILL SEE A ~ YOU ARE LYING THERE IS NEGATION DUMMY."
To which, I will elegantly respond,
"Okay, then we can define our predicate B as:

(∃C)(∀x) Cx
(∃B)(∀x) [Cx -> Ax] xor Bx
"

Q.E.D.
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Last edited by aperson; 05-31-2007 at 05:45 PM..
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Old 05-31-2007, 08:58 PM   #43
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

somehow I knew this topic would escalate into something like this.
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Old 05-31-2007, 09:05 PM   #44
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Well we can't all be penguins.
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Old 06-1-2007, 02:04 AM   #45
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

I give up. Half of the conversation has moved beyond my ability to address and the other half is based on misinterpretation. So...

Quote:
When you're smart enough to actually understand what I'm saying, then you can get back to me with points. Until then, try not saying anything.
Quote:
So I've got an idea for you, shut the **** up and actually understand the points I make before you start rattling out some halfassed comeback to my responses, because it's hard to debate a point with someone when they aren't even debating what I said.
Quote:
And for those few times you actually do understand what I'm saying, let's try not to contort what I said into such a disfigured shape that it has no bearing to what I originally said any more
The feeling's mutual.
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Old 06-1-2007, 03:51 PM   #46
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Well, I went back through the topic, and I can accept responsibility for some misinterpretation and subsequent sidetracking. However, I still consider myself to be correct, at least in spirit if not in letter.

Also yes, I am an idiot.

Last edited by Kilroy_x; 06-1-2007 at 04:30 PM..
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Old 06-3-2007, 04:28 PM   #47
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Ok, revised statements.

1. Even if everything that exists is in an intricate blanket of causality, the specifics of how that blanket are woven remain unknown to a large extent.

2. The basis of the "JND" isn't arbitrary, merely subjective. It reduces to preference, or perhaps more broadly culture, but then the issue is over whether or not preference or culture can be valid bases for forming rules. Since there aren't any other bases that I'm aware of, I don't see the problem. Cross evaluation of these bases determined by the merits or demerits of various systems and their effects, as judged by careful observation and preference, seems like the best method to go about such determinations.

"innocent until proven guilty" may reduce to a cultural artifact, but the effects of this cultural artifact, even if not the artifact itself, would be supported by virtually all parties within the culture that adopted it.


So, unless you were meaning to argue that the interconnected nature of reality makes it acceptable to punish anyone for anything, I don't think I need to take this any further.
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Old 06-4-2007, 04:54 PM   #48
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilroy_x View Post
So, unless you were meaning to argue that the interconnected nature of reality makes it acceptable to punish anyone for anything, I don't think I need to take this any further.
Think of your life as being a string (a timeline of events). Now let's think back to how your life began: the converging of two timelines (your mother and your father), therefore your life is the result of social interaction. Likewise, think of all your own social interactions and the influence they've had on your life. Whether you like it or not, you're are still being influenced by the decisions others make everyday, though not always directly, just as you influence the lives those around. Basically, no action (or inaction) is entirely independent despite whether or not it has an apparent outcome.

So why don't we punish anyone for anything? Well, there is a thing known as free will...you know...the thing that makes you responsible for your actions (or in-actions). As a human, you have free will to do (or not to do) whatever it is you please. The future isn't set in stone. In fact, if anything, the future is constantly being altered by the actions (and inactions) preformed by people and their interaction with their environment (in other words, an infinite number of futures are born and die every nanosecond).

Quote:
Even if everything that exists is in an intricate blanket of causality, the specifics of how that blanket are woven remain unknown to a large extent.
An intricate blanket of causality does exist and is known as an ecosystem and the specifics aren't largely unknown. While we don't know everything, we are advancing everyday in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology and psychology.
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Old 06-5-2007, 01:25 AM   #49
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

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Originally Posted by jewpinthethird View Post
Basically, no action (or inaction) is entirely independent despite whether or not it has an apparent outcome.
True, but you've only shown linear connection here, and you haven't shown a direct connection between all things. Now, while it is true that nonlinear connections can and likely do occur, it's currently outside the realm of human knowledge to know when and to what extent.

Quote:
So why don't we punish anyone for anything? Well, there is a thing known as free will...you know...the thing that makes you responsible for your actions (or in-actions). As a human, you have free will to do (or not to do) whatever it is you please. The future isn't set in stone. In fact, if anything, the future is constantly being altered by the actions (and inactions) preformed by people and their interaction with their environment (in other words, an infinite number of futures are born and die every nanosecond).
Prove it. Also, free will isn't actually a counterargument.

Quote:
An intricate blanket of causality does exist and is known as an ecosystem and the specifics aren't largely unknown.
This statement could only be made if you were aware of how much remained unknown. Granted this reveals a flaw in my language as well.

Quote:
While we don't know everything, we are advancing everyday in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology and psychology.
Right. However, as long as the details critical to determining someones guilt, or "responsibility" are fuzzy, there's most certainly a reasonable doubt as to whether or not a causal connection exists between the persons actions and an outcome. Now of course every action so far observed has an effect, but not every action has every effect, which is the root of the issue. Since it's fair to assume we know very little about nonlinear and anachronistic causation at the moment, the spirit of my claim remains unchallenged.

Last edited by Kilroy_x; 06-5-2007 at 01:28 AM..
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Old 06-5-2007, 03:02 PM   #50
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Quote:
True, but you've only shown linear connection here, and you haven't shown a direct connection between all things. Now, while it is true that nonlinear connections can and likely do occur, it's currently outside the realm of human knowledge to know when and to what extent.
I'm sure you wouldn't argue something as complex as culture is linear. Your decisions are based on 10,000 years of culture. We've survived as long as we have and as efficiently as we have because of the collective knowledge inherit in culture.
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Old 06-5-2007, 03:13 PM   #51
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jewpinthethird View Post
I'm sure you wouldn't argue something as complex as culture is linear. Your decisions are based on 10,000 years of culture. We've survived as long as we have and as efficiently as we have because of the collective knowledge inherit in culture.
Linear doesn't mean of a single lineage. Also culture isn't an independent identity, it's the product of the interactions of all individuals ever to exist. At least to the extent these interactions connect any given individual or group of individuals. The citizens of Easter Island probably didn't have any effect on the citizens of ancient Rome, for instance.

Knowledge doesn't come down from this ceiling you've labeled "culture", it springs up among individuals, then is tested in the proper evolutionary manner and, in terms of single generations, in a manner which is artificially (and perhaps imperfectly) evolutionary in nature by whether it confers some benefit (although this doesn't mean the benefit implies there's truth in it. Religion is probably successful for instance because of the psychological benefits and perhaps a handful of benefits in interpersonal interaction if nothing else). If it does work, it sticks around, if not, then not. That's how knowledge works. As for truth, no one knows how the **** that works.
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Old 10-26-2007, 04:10 PM   #52
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Default Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Ok, having given myself time to cool down from earlier, I see the following basic problems.

Quote:
Let's assume that in our universal domain, there exists at least some property that A that holds for some object in the domain
(∃A)(∃x)[Ax]

Hold on, watch out, I'm about to do something really mystical here. I'm going to define another predicate that represents ~Ax BUT DOESN'T REQUIRE NEGATION TO SAY SO.
(∃B)(∀x) (~Ax -> Bx)

So Bx says that x does not have property A all the while not using negation to make the claim.

Oh my god, my claim certainly brought the world of formal logic onto it's knees yessiree.
But wait, I hear, you're going to gloss over this and respond "BUT APERSON I STILL SEE A ~ YOU ARE LYING THERE IS NEGATION DUMMY."
To which, I will elegantly respond,
"Okay, then we can define our predicate B as:

(∃C)(∀x) Cx
(∃B)(∀x) [Cx -> Ax] xor Bx
Exclusive disjunction articulates the same thing as implication of a negative. I don't see the point in articulating the concept independently of negation.

Let's take the mutually exclusive actions breathing and drowning, for example. It could be expressed D -> ~B or D =/= B. Seems pretty elementary to me.

The quantum physics thing is also very vaguely done. You didn't so much explain how not pulling a lever means killing a person as you did how sneezing causes child molestation. While it is entirely possible that something the person is doing, like breathing, or maybe even thinking, causes some sort of series of events to unravel which transcends standard conceptions of space-time to cause the person's death, this is clearly unrelated to the specific action of pulling the lever.

Also what does that fact that different people will label the same thing differently have to do with anything? I think you might be trying to argue things for which you need additional premises. Maybe you are trying to argue that since we will never have perfect epistemic access to the workings of the world, differences in perspective mean we shouldn't hold any of them since none can be substantiated.

Are you a logical positivist, by chance?

Last edited by Kilroy_x; 10-26-2007 at 05:29 PM..
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