SophistiCat

I don't know what mathematical models you are referring to, but it seems to me that it is unwarranted to jump to any metaphysical conclusions from the...

The 90% figure is rhetorical, but yes, much of engineering mechanics is based on the linear elastic model, with plasticity accounting for most of the ...

It's very useful for practical stuff though: from ball bearings to bridges to tectonic plates. Take Hooke's law into 3D (with shear) and you get linea...

They significantly reduce transmission. You have one example from livestock, and it doesn't look like what we are seeing with COVID. This virus has pr...

I was kidding, of course. But you could trace the ancestry to the Hooke's law from the stress components of the tensor. I am not sure, but that may ha...

Hey, Einstein field equations are basically a glorified Hooke's law :) The second law is a statistical law, so yes, it doesn't deliver absolutely cert...

You can have that without Many Worlds too. I don't see what Many Worlds adds here. Instead of one timeline you have an ensemble of timelines all subje...

I am out of my depth here, but as far as I understand, dark energy is what accounts for the expansion of space, which in turn creates more dark energy...

This is why entropy as a measure of disorder isn't always a good metaphor. A textbook example of increasing entropy is a half-evacuated chamber: https...

How are memes different from other social, or for that matter physical ideas? Contracts, nation states, cats, electrons - these are all instantiations...

And that's why your construal of the core dualist position cannot be accurate. You've refuted it yourself (your construal). It would be like insisting...

But who believes that these categories cannot interact? The mind-body problem is precisely a problem, it is posed as a challenge for dualism, not some...

I still don't see what substantive claim is being made. Sometimes we make distinctions, sometimes we lump things together. When we lump everything tog...

So what does "any one kind of thing" add to just "thing"? What is monism's substantial claim in your view? Is it about the existence of some fundament...

I would say that anything that you are capable of affirming or denying perforce has a truth value, and not just those things that can be scientificall...

You keep going back and forth between calling everything in our experience and imagination fictional (thus rendering the claim vacuous) or specificall...

So it's a completely vacuous statement, but also misleading, since originally you singled out multiverses in particular as fictional.

I understand that, but my point is that you cannot make any progress in answering the question if you are not clear on the criteria that the answer sh...

sure, you win the internets

But you didn't explain a complex concept - you gave the sort of use example that would help four-year-olds connect the words "cause" and "effect" with...

Well, that doesn't say much. Justification for whom? Just you, or "us" (as in your response to RussellA), or some kind of objective justification (if ...

Speaking of epistemic standards, or perhaps just clarifying the question: how do you judge whether a proposition is true or false, decidable or undeci...

This doesn't seem to lead anywhere, because it involves a vicious epistemic circle. Truth or falsity are established in the framework of some epistemi...

Carrier, seriously?

OK, I gather this has nothing to do with peculiarly Greek usage, but with your own views of what words ought to mean, in defiance to the rest of the l...

I must say, I have never come across this usage. Perhaps it is specific to Greece? (But don't tell me that Greeks own "metaphysics.") It's funny thoug...

It is not so much flawed as inadequate. Your persistent examples of billiard balls are the sort one might use to explain what "cause" and "effect" mea...

I think you would benefit from doing some reading about causation (and disabusing yourself of the notion that there is only one kind and everyone agre...

This is not a novel idea. It goes something like this: From the "point of view" of a photon, no time passes as it travels. I put the scare quotes arou...

I already explained several times, including in the remainder of the post that you quoted. I don't feel like spending more of my time on this.

"Cause" is sometimes used in a loose sense, synonymous with explanation, reason, grounding. In that sense, one can ask about the "cause" of time - mea...

Let's not multiply conceptual muddles without necessity. This is an old trope, on par with 0.9... =/= 1, but has nothing to do with the OP.

There you go again making the same basic mistake. You just can't seem to get over the cause/explanation equivocation. Assuming that the world regresse...

This is such an old and commonly discussed topic that I am at a loss as to what to recommend. See Agrippan (Munchhausen) trilemma, principle of suffic...

I wouldn't want to call a brute fact a "first cause," because it would be misleading. Take your trichotomy of possible brute facts, for example: infin...

I can't make sense of this. You presented three alternative hypotheses - infinite regress, causal loop, first cause - each of which encompasses all st...

Here you are. Rather than addressing general issues of causation, as others have done, I will go over the argument as it is presented. Initially causa...

This is precisely wrong for reasons that I just explained. Newton's theory doesn't break down at large or small scales. Nothing special happens at tho...

Precision =/= Accuracy. As applied to a theory, precision is how specific the predictions of the theory are. Newtonian mechanics is about as precise a...

There you go - a conspiracy theory about "conspiracy theories"!

He has rejoined several times since then. I must say, when he joined as Gravelty he was clearly making an effort to hold back at first. Wasn't startin...

There is an infidelity in my phlogiston analogy in that "phlogiston" and "self" are not on the same level in terms of their pedigree and epistemic cen...

I am not sure how to take this. Is this just a generic putdown, or did you mean something more specific? What am I missing? Well, referring to the phl...

An eliminativist about personal identity could hold the phlogiston as a counterexample. To be sure, the phlogiston, identity, water element have been ...

You have no self-respect, do you? How many times have you been kicked out of here?

When you oppose consciousness and mere simulation, genuine consciousness and artificial consciousness, you are already denying the functionalist thesi...

Simulated consciousness would be the (a) genuine article assuming a functionalist account of consciousness (not identity). It's a controversial stance...

Here you are:

Heh, "Life as we know it" - not too ambitious, are we? ;) I heard Sean Carroll talk to Friston on his podcast about his free energy minimization model...

When we develop models analytically, such as in science or in everyday reasoning, it is certainly possible - and seductive - to come up with a model t...