Graham Priest on Capitalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDAJDN57tXM

 

43:45 - "Well it's clear that [capitalism] makes a lot of people pretty miserable. I think it'd be better if we had a socialist configuration that didn't do that."

 

Bonus:

 

49:40: "A lot of people I'm afraid aren't terribly thoughtful; they never really think about what they believe and why they believe it."

 

Bonus 2:

 

1:01:58: "Some people think that changing your mind is a sign of weakness; I think it's a sign of intellectual strength."

Michelle Liu and Philip Goff – revelation and phenomenal definitions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4lxt2Hhc0k

 

28m

 

Michelle Liu gives these test sentences: 

 

"I know what gold looks like but I don't know what gold really is."

 

Sounds fine. 

 

"I know what an itch feels like but I don't know what the feeling of an itch really is."

 

Sounds contradictory. 

 

"We have all seen diamonds, but do you know what a diamond really is?"

 

Sounds fine. 

 

"You have experienced toothaches, but do you really know what the feeling of a toothache really is?"

 

Sounds like a self-answering question because if we have experienced toothaches then the answer must be yes, we really know what the feeling of a toothache really is.

 

When we're talking about appearances themselves, the appearance/reality distinction collapses and you have phenomenal / noumenal collapse where the thing-as-it-appears and the thing-in-itself are one and the same.

 

So I have the intuition in favor of revelation. 

 

Revelation is the theory that just by having an experience, the nature of that experience has been revealed to you. Or as Goff puts it (4m): "A feeling is defined by how it feels, and you know how it feels when you feel it." Or, "We grasp the nature of the feeling just by attending to introspectively." (14m)

 

Goff mention's Ned Block's idea of overflow where we can be blind in the peripherals of our experience, and change blindness apparently provides some empirical evidence of this. However, "insofar as we grasp what it is like or how it feels, to that extent we grasp the essence."

 

Goff and Liu mention that while the word 'essence' or 'nature' might sound mysterious to non-philosophers, it's an entirely unproblematic notion. If you accept that words have definitions, then you accept that things have essences. A triangle is defined as a closed shape with three sides. So having more or fewer than three sides would get you kicked out of the triangle club so to speak. Being a non-shape would also get you kicked out. While being a shape helps you get into the triangle club, it's not enough by itself because you can be a shape without being a triangle, so that's a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a triangle. Having exactly three sides is also necessary but not sufficient, because you could have a square with one side removed. Only a closed shape with three sides is allowed in the triangle club.

 

Argument against physicalism:

 

Structure (modus tollens): 

 

1) If P, then Q.

2) ~Q.

3) Therefore, ~P. 

 

Argument: 

 

1) If physicalism is true, then to know the nature of a feeling is to know the physical mechanisms of that feeling.

 

2) To know the nature of a feeling is to not know the physical mechanisms of that feeling.

 

3) Therefore, physicalism is not true.

 

The controversial premise here is premise 2. So why believe premise 2 is true?

 

Structure (modus ponens):

 

1) If P, then Q.

2) P.

3) Therefore, Q.

 

1) If revelation is true, then by experiencing a feeling we know the nature of this feeling just by feeling it.

 

2) Revelation is true.

 

3) Therefore, by experiencing a feeling we know the nature of this feeling just by feeling it.

 

(Note: To know the nature of something does not require that you know the underlying cause of it. You can know that an ingot of gold is in fact gold without knowing where that ingot came from.)

 

If it's true that when we experience our feelings, we know the essence of this feeling, then it's also true that when we experience our feelings we don't know the physical mechanisms behind them, supporting premise 2 in the first argument.

 

If premise 1 of each argument is accepted, and they both seem uncontroversial, then the physicalist will have to deny either premise 2 of the first argument or premise 2 of the second argument.

 

Goff asks Liu (33m) how to respond to the demand of defining something phenomenal. What is the essence of pain? What is the essence of red?

 

The answer is that phenomenal definitions are not propositional. Liu mentions how know-how knowledge often cannot be put into words, but you still have the knowledge. Maybe know-how knowledge is a kind of phenomenal knowledge? Though I suppose know-how knowledge is also bundled up with thoughts of goals, success, and step-wise instruction.

 

A hint that you've stumbled onto a phenomenal definition is whether trying to define the thing in question leads to a circular or restated definition. What is an itch? It's that itchy feeling. What is pain? It is that painful feeling. What is red? It's that red color.

James Miller, Words and Other Linguistic Entities

Miller, James (forthcoming). Words and Other Linguistic Entities. Oxford University Press.

 

Abstract: 

 

Linguistic entities play a major part in almost all elements of our lives. Despite this, relatively little work exists in philosophy that considers what such entities are. In the work that does focus specifically on the metaphysics of words, the dominant view is type-realism, which posits that words are abstract types, instantiated by concrete tokens. This book argues, however, that type-realism faces a range of problems and that positing abstract types cannot help us to explain a range of ordinary everyday linguistic phenomena. In its place, this book argues in favour of a novel version of nominalism about words, holding that ordinary claims about words are in fact claims about collections of word-tokens only. Through combining nominalism with a trope-bundle metaphysics, this book proposes a 'bundle-nominalist' metaphysics of words, in which word-tokens are analysed as bundles of particular properties, which cluster in repeatable and predictable ways due to the acting of various homeostatic mechanisms. This view is then extended to other linguistic entities, such as morphemes, phonemes, sentences, and languages. The result is a unified metaphysics of linguistic entities, which is argued to be both consistent with linguistic theorising and highly explanatory. Words and Other Linguistic Entities outlines how this 'bundle-nominalist' metaphysics can provide new insights into a range of linguistic phenomena, including linguistic mistakes, linguistic change, and the nature of offensive language, and can help illuminate ongoing debates over the subject matter of linguistics and the evolution of language.

 

I gasped when I read this. Bundle theory mentioned!

Traceability in property reference in a bundle theory of propositions

Josh Rasmussen gives a kind of bundle theory (in terms of arrangements) of propositions. ("About Aboutness", Metaphysica)

 

Inspired by this I write the following, but I won't attribute any of the following, and any mistakes it contains, to Rasmussen's view.

 

Property: A direct, indirect, or modal experience. By 'modal experience' I mean something a person would experience if they were situated in the right context. 

 

Concept: A concept is a reference to a property. So, concepts reference direct, indirect, or modal experiences.

 

Word: A word is a combination of sounds, symbols, or both, and refers to a concept or bundle of concepts. By transitivity, words refer to properties or bundles of properties.

 

The words 'fire' and 'feu', while different words, both refer to the same concept(s) (or close enough), and thus are bundling the same properties.

 

Proposition: A combination of concepts that designates, by predication, what is being referred, and thus can be true or false.

 

Sentence: A sequence of words governed by grammatical rules that references a proposition.

 

The sentences 'Fire is hot' and 'Le feu est chaud', while different sentences, refer to the same proposition (or close enough).

 

Truth: Reference to non-fictional properties.

 

Falsity: Reference to fictional properties. 

 

Problem: You can take a single word like 'unicorn', which refers to fictional properties, and yet this singular word cannot be true or false. But if falsity just is reference to fictional properties, and 'unicorn' references fictional properties, then 'unicorn' is false.

 

This is where predication comes in: Only by designating what is being referred to can you evaluate whether something is true or false. While 'unicorn' refers to fictional properties, we don't know what is being said about unicorns. If you say:

 

    Unicorns are everywhere.

 

This is false. But if you say:

 

    There are no unicorns.

 

This is true.

 

So referring to false properties isn't enough to reach falsity; to reach falsity you need to make an existential claim, which means attributing non-fiction to fictional properties, or attributing fiction to non-fictional properties. But abstract objects like propositions don't make claims; people make claims. So how do I capture the claim-like nature of propositions?

 

Maybe attribution is enough – attributing fiction to non-fictional properties, or vice versa? Or maybe propositions have a representational aspect, and false propositions contain misrepresentation?

 

But that's beside the point here. The above definitions are rough and need revisiting, but the task at hand is to focus on the concept of fiction.

 

Fictional properties: Properties (or bundles) that can be traced to an act of imagination.

 

Non-fictional properties: Properties (or bundles) that cannot be traced to an act of imagination.

 

Problem: Someone could, by luck, or by educated prediction, use their imagination to combine properties and stumble upon a true proposition that nonetheless traces back to an act of imagination. And despite these properties being non-fictional, they can be traced to an act of imagination. Is this a fictional proposition, or non-fictional?

 

The answer is that it is non-fictional, requiring the fix: 

 

Fictional properties*: Properties (or bundles) that can only be traced to an act of imagination.

 

Examples: Golden mountains, unicorns, wizards.

 

Note: If 'unicorn' itself is something like: horse + horn + magic + rarity, or something roughly like this, then the properties of horse, horn, etc., are not fictional. What's fictional is the bundle of the properties. Same with gold + mountain: two non-fictional properties that together make a fictional bundle. Even magic probably can be reduced to real properties, with the bundle being fictional. If all acts of imagination depend on experience, then all fictional properties are ultimately fictional bundles of non-fictional properties.

 

Non-fictional properties*: Properties (or bundles) that cannot be traced in all cases to an act of imagination.

 

'In all cases' applies to modal cases: If everyone only ever imagines wormholes, but wormholes end up being real, wormholes are still non-fictional because it's not in all cases that wormholes can be traced to acts of imagination; if someone were in the right situation, they would experience wormholes (even if only indirectly through scientific instruments), and in this case the wormhole properties could not be traced to an act of imagination, but must be traced to experience.

 

(Also, it's almost certainly the case that what is being imagined is not quite what is real; imagination is never perfectly successful. But imagination can still be successful enough in a broad sense to enable this traceability objection.)

 

And that's what we're getting at with falsity versus truth: Can the proposition only ever be traced to acts of imagination even given modal cases (falsity), or can the proposition be traced to experience, at least modally (truth)?

 

The modality can be restricted. It might be that wormholes are impossible in our universe, but possible in a different universe. To say wormholes are fictions is to say that an omniscient observer restricted to our universe would not experience wormholes (though they would experience our thoughts and stories about wormholes).

 

But maybe there's a simpler strategy: If properties are experiences (including modal), then fictions are non-experienced bundles of properties traced to acts of imagination. "Fictional property" becomes an oxymoron, with only bundles being fictions. While ‘magical’ sounds like a fictional property, again magic could be reduced to a fictional bundle of real properties (of agency, power, etc.)

Red Button, Blue Button

You find yourself teleported in a room. There are two tables, one with a red button and one with a blue button. Above the red button is a sign that says, in whatever language you are most fluent in, MURDER BUTTON. The same for the blue button, except that sign says SUICIDE BUTTON.

 

In whatever language you are most fluent in, a sign between the buttons reads the following:

 

Hello! I am a Djinn who has teleported you into this dream world. Don't worry, time outside has been stopped. All other able-minded adults in the entire world aged 18 and up have also been teleported into this dream world at this time.

 

If 50% or more of participants press the red button, all participants who press the blue button will be killed. So, if you press the red button, you are guaranteed to survive, but you might be guilty of murdering however many people press blue.

 

If 50% or more of participants press the blue button, all participants will live. You are guaranteed to be blameless of participating in anyone's death, but you might die.

 

Which button will you press? 

 

For those who are thinking of pressing red, please consider: It's statistically guaranteed that at least a small number of people will choose blue. So if red wins, you will be guilty of killing these people.

 

When pressing the red button, you might disagree that this is the MURDER BUTTON. After all, those who choose blue are willing to die; they are killing themselves. The rational choice is to guarantee your survival, and if everyone chooses red, everyone survives. Who cares if a few irrational people die? If irrational people take themselves out of the gene pool, isn't that a win for humanity? "I'm not killing anyone by pressing red; the Djinn is the real killer here! I didn't choose to be here. I'm just guaranteeing my survival, which is the rational thing to do, and everyone else has just as easy access to their own survival as I do, so it's their own fault for choosing to risk their lives for no reason." So, you might figure that pressing the red button does not constitute murder, or even homicide.

 

For those who are thinking of pressing blue, please consider: You may trust your own culture to choose blue with you. But how confident are you that most humans in the world will choose blue? Won't most people follow the above logic about self-preservation and rationality? Maybe only a small percentage will press blue, and your vote never would have made a difference, and you will have died for nothing.

 

When pressing the blue button, you might disagree that this is the SUICIDE BUTTON. After all, if only 50% or more choose blue, everyone survives; no suicide here. Most importantly, you know that some people will press blue to ensure their own blamelessness, guaranteeing some blue votes. You are risking your life to save these people by pressing blue. Isn't that the noble thing to do? Who could live with themselves knowing that they helped cause the deaths of those noble enough to press blue? If red barely wins, nearly half of everyone will die. Are you willing to risk this?

 

I will give all of you one hour to decide which button you will press. At the end of the hour all of your fates will be decided. During this hour, if you press one button, you can press the other button to change your vote. If neither button is depressed within the hour, you die, and no vote will be cast on your behalf. Any deaths will be instant and painless.

 

***

 

It's interesting to see this thought experiment articulated in different ways, and to see on Twitter how different articulations can yield different results. With this articulation, I'd press blue, but not necessarily because I am a "good person", whatever that means, but because doing the blameless thing makes me happy. Participating in the deaths of blue voters would make me lose self-respect, and while red voters would call this irrational, because you shouldn't feel bad for those who take unnecessary risks, their arguments are weak enough that I don't see my mind changing soon. For example, voting blue is a necessary risk if feeling blameless is very important to you. Arguably, voting red is the unnecessary risk – of becoming an accomplice to mass murder.

 

Additionally, voting red incentivizes you to take on a callous attitude towards dead blue voters to cope with your choice, exposing either your own moral insecurity or indifference. I prefer to avoid that.

 

One final note: Some folks want to apply expected value calculations to show that pressing red is the correct choice. But if these calculations fail to incorporate the value of being happy with oneself, the cost of self-hatred, and the cost of lives lost, then they are incomplete.

Florence Bacus on grounding value in conscious states and on what morality is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zjflulzeAU

 

What morality is:

 

28m: ". . . without God, what is morality? So I think morality is just rational action independent of desire. . . . There are times where the reason I ought to do something is because it achieves some further end, but then there are cases, at least if morality is real, where you ought to do something regardless of whether you antecedently desire that end."

 

29m: "If you understand morality as something else, then okay that's fine, you're answering a different question from me. But I find myself in cases where I do various things just because I want to get what I want, and then I wonder are there cases where I should act a certain way even if it doesn't get me what I want in any respect. So if you're gonna tell me that I ought to do something, either you're telling me I can get what I want—and then I would say yeah, that's an important question, but it's not morality—or you might say I ought to do something regardless of what I want, and I would say okay yeah, I want to figure out what that is, that's what I call morality."

 

Florence goes on to accept a form of Kantianism. I reject Kantianism quite thoroughly, so it's no surprise that my value theory would differ from Florence's value theory as discussed in the next section.

 

I don't think there can be a categorical imperative, so the core questions of morality are different for me. People, including myself, tend to live their lives believing certain things about themselves, like that they are a good person, that their beliefs are true, and so on. Part of one's self-conception is that these beliefs that one has about the world and oneself are not totally, radically incorrect. Here's the problem: Your beliefs about the world and yourself are totally, radically incorrect. At least, they might be. Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, and naturalists cannot all be right. If naturalism is true, then the beliefs of Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims are profoundly false. People don't want to hold profoundly false beliefs about the world and themselves. They want to believe what's true. That will include truths about the nature of morality and what it means to be a good person.

 

Many people, myself included, and arguably all people capable of basic rationality, hold the following desire within themselves: "I want to believe what's true about morality. I want to believe what's true about right and wrong, so that I can do what's right and not do what's wrong. I want to desire what I ought to desire, and not desire what I ought not. I want to know what it means to be a good person so that I can become that kind of person."

 

This changes the framework: Morality is not about being rationally obligated to do something irrespective of what I want, but morality is, just like epistemology, about reconciling my beliefs to reality. If I believe rightly, I will desire and act rightly. Morality is not about acting against my desires for the sake of the greater good, but about adjusting my desires to be aligned with what the greater good actually is. To suggest that someone could have all true beliefs but still act wrongly is to suggest that truth and morality come apart, and I don't believe that. If I behave within the confines of truth, then I cannot be blamed, lest truth itself is somehow evil. (I have encountered philosophers who think truth and morality can come apart. Someone with all true beliefs could still lack the virtue to act according to those beliefs, or by akrasia do what's wrong despite knowing what's right. I accept the Socratic rejection of akrasia.)

 

(Feel free to replace 'greater good' for something more deontic sounding, like: for the sake of acting from a good will, or promoting the kingdom of ends, or treating people as ends unto themselves, or acting freely, or fulfilling obligations, or doing what I am rationally obligated to do, or doing what's right because it is right, or for the sake of moral goodness – basically, for the sake of right action broadly speaking: Morality is not about acting against my desires for the sake of right action, but about adjusting my desires to be aligned with what right action actually is.)

 

A potential challenge to my view falls along these lines: If morality is all about maximizing goodness, then doesn't morality fall apart at the point of survival? We don't blame predators for killing prey because their lives depend on it. Can we say the same for us? When Nazis murdered Jewish people and defended themselves by saying "We were just following orders", they apparently have in mind something like: "If I didn't follow orders, I would have been killed, and you can never blame a creature for doing whatever it takes to survive." You can tie this into desire in this way: Everyone has a desire to live; no amount of "reconciling your beliefs to reality" will change that. So if morality, to be a meaningful authority over us, requires us at some point to give up our lives for the greater good, then we will be acting against our desires.

 

I reject this and say yes, even the desire to live falls away when greater goods are recognized. Parents don't think twice in risking their lives for their children. In movies we often see characters sacrifice themselves to buy time for the rest of their group. If I realize the truth that my happiness is no more intrinsically valuable than the happiness of others, and thus come to have the goal of maximizing happiness period (not just my own), then at some point my own survival can become an obstacle to my goal if my survival requires the suffering of others. So we see that my consequentialist, "true belief first" approach to morality can accommodate the truth that for morality to be "authoritative" in some sense, morality cannot break down at the point of survival; at some point choosing your own survival over the happiness of others is evil.

 

Grounding value in conscious states: 

 

22m: "If we're going to assess the realist view that grounds [value] in the intrinsic goodness of states of consciousness, and I want to say no, [things are] only good because people prefer them, we'd want to look at a case where the two come apart. So, a case where a state of consciousness is good, but a person doesn't prefer it, or a state of consciousness is bad but a person doesn't disprefer it."

 

When Florence uses the term 'good' or 'bad', I don't know what these are supposed to mean. If these mean 'preferred' and 'dispreferred', then it's a tautology to say that good experiences are preferred experiences. Maybe the question is: Is there any analysis of good/bad on which a good experience can be dispreferred?

 

Yes. In the phenomenal analysis of good/bad where goodness/badness just are conscious states, there are cases where a state of consciousness is pro tanto good (good to a degree), but a person doesn't prefer that state because obtaining that state entails a cost that a different state doesn't.

 

There's always pro tanto desire for intrinsically good experiences, but there's also always pro tanto desire to avoid intrinsically bad experiences. There's also a pro tanto desire to obtain intrinsically better experiences; do I stay home and do something safe and comfortable, or do I go to the party and potentially have greater fun at the risk of greater discomfort?

 

So all of these calculations are warring within us, and this is why it's easy to make sense of avoidance behavior in response to something we know will feel good, and affective behavior in response to something we know will feel bad.

 

Avoidance behavior + intrinsic goodness: There are things we know will feel good but will make our lives worse in the long run. We see the intrinsic goodness and thus have a pro tanto desire for it, but we also see the cost and have a pro tanto desire to avoid that cost. Maybe this is eating junk food, procrastinating, smoking a cigarette, cheating on a partner, or getting back with an ex. Despite whatever intrinsic goods these things will provide in the moment, we avoid them when we do because of the greater costs down the road.

 

Affective behavior + intrinsic badness: There are difficult conversations to be had with ourselves or with a loved one, and that pain motivates us to avoid the conversation, but we see how things will be better over all if we suck it up and push through it. Applies also to chores, self-improvement, working towards difficult and personally meaningful achievements, and undergoing medical procedures – these things can be greatly painful but we do them anyway because not doing them is even more painful in the long run.

 

Paradoxically then, I might prefer to have a difficult conversation than to eat junk food, because I know one is worth the pain while the other isn't worth the happiness. And yet the pain of having a difficult conversation is still intrinsically bad despite preferring it to eating junk food, and the happiness of eating junk food is still intrinsically good despite dispreferring it to having a difficult conversation.

 

Indeed, I don't see how to make sense of the concept of preference without first going through the intrinsic goodness / badness of experience. To prefer X over Y is to see how X is better than Y, and to see that X is better than Y is to see that X is more good than Y (however good Y happens to be). If goodness just is preference, then this is circular. But this definition of preference appears non-circular to me, which tells me that goodness isn't just preference.

 

If goodness is defined in terms of desirability, and to prefer X over Y is to have greater desire for X than Y, then I don't see how to make sense of the concept of desire without first going through the intrinsic goodness / badness of experience. To desire X is not to see X as desirable, as that's a circular definition, but to see X as good. Why do we desire? Because we experience intrinsic goodness and intrinsic badness, and we desire intrinsic goodness because of what it is, and we desire to avoid intrinsic badness because of what it is. It is only because intrinsic goodness / badness have the essences they do that explains how it could be that desire exists at all.

 

Returning to preference, I don't see how to explain why my preference would be what it is without intrinsic goodness and badness. Experiences happen first, then preferences later. So preference depends on experience. But preference also depends on what I see as good or bad. So preferences depend on my good and bad experiences.

 

You might try to say that my preferences depend on what I take to be my good or bad experiences, but this just kicks the can down the road a step. Why would I take something to be good or bad? Because of the intrinsic goodness or badness that this thing constitutes or causes. There is a difference between experiencing badness and judging something to be bad. Experiences come first, and preferences and judgments come later based on experiences. Desires qua judgments of goodness come later, but desire as affective intending is simultaneous with intrinsically good experience; you can't have a good feeling without at the same time having an affective intentionality towards that feeling, meaning having a pro tanto desire for, like, conation, motivation for, or intending toward that feeling. As discussed here (https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2026/03/there-is-conceptual-connection-between.html), while affective behavior and intrinsically good experience can come apart, affective intentionality or intending toward is conceptually connected to intrinsic goodness. We intend to pursue happiness. Why? Because of what happiness is, and that intention begins the same moment the happiness is experienced.

 

P.S. - Florence mentions becoming an ex-Christian as of a year ago (so roughly March 2025). Being an ex-Christian myself, starting sometime in early-ish 2022, I understand what it's like to be a Christian for a long time and to feel the internal violence of being gutted of your entire worldview, being left to pick up the pieces. It's not easy, and it's traumatic, and I feel great sympathy for anyone who goes through that.

Matt Duncan on certainty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Odt7Mzu-4

 

32m: Duncan makes a distinction between a psychological sense of doubt and an epistemic sense of doubt. The more epistemic justification you have (whatever that is), then the less psychological doubt you should have.

 

"And I distinguish that psychological sense of doubt with this kind of epistemic sense of doubt, where it's something like you've got a very strong form of justification or something – lot of different ways to spell that out . . . 

 

Duncan goes on to discuss when we can be certain:   

 

. . . the way I prefer is that it's immune from skeptical doubt, where that means that there's no skeptical scenario consistent with the way things seems to you where the relevant thing doesn't exist."

 

34m: "[I] argue ultimately that the phenomenal properties of our experiences pass the doubt test. I mean, this is a familiar idea, you know, Descartes, I can't doubt that I exist . . . I spend a lot of Chapter 3 unpacking the epistemology there. . . there are two routes to doubt here. One is lack of acquaintance . . . But there's this other route, phenomenal indistinguishability, that still leaves room for some kind of doubt, and that's why I think acquaintance itself doesn't foreclose doubt. Now in the case of phenomenal properties, I think both routes are foreclosed. There's the acquaintance route – foreclosed – and then there's the phenomenal indistinguishability, and the reason why that route is foreclosed here is because phenomenal properties are defined and individuated by the way they seem, the way they appear. And so there couldn't be any skeptical scenario in which things appear like this and yet your different phenomenal properties are instantiated in your experience because it would just follow that things wouldn't seem like this, they would seem at least a little bit different. . . . for phenomenal properties, there really is no skeptical scenario consistent with the way things seem in which those aren't instantiated in your experience. It's really phenomenal acquaintance where we get full certainty, because both of these routes to doubt are foreclosed."