It still seems to me like you are not understanding the distinction I am making, and are making other (valid) points tangential to what I'm talking about. You are working from the assumption that we have a single agreed-upon uncontroversial definition of "X", and that "the philosophy of X" just means "X"; when my point is that "philosophy of X" is often used to mean the field which asks "what is the definition of X?"
I agree completely that whatever philosophical principles genuinely underlie the activity called science ("the philosophy of science" in the sense you seem to use it), those principles are identical with science proper, and science proper is defined as just those principles, whatever they are. I further agree that asking if and how those principles are justified is, as you say, doing something else, namely epistemology and metaphysics. But that's not what I'm talking about.
There are many people who ask, rightly or wrongly, "what is the correct definition of science?" Many philosophical questions are really quests for proper definitions. Nobody sat down a few hundred years ago and said "We define 'science' to be such-and-such, and henceforth will proceed to derive conclusions from these definitions", thus beginning the field of science. We just have all these people who came to be called scientists who are all doing this activity which we came to call science; but what it is that all those scientists do, which distinguishes what they're doing from other things that we don't call science, seems to be a contentious question, at least amongst some people. The field of study wherein people ask these questions is what it usually called "the philosophy of science". The phrase is analogous to "the philosophy of education" or "the philosophy of art"; those phrases don't name a particular philosophy that underlies education or art, but rather a field that asks questions about philosophies which may underlie some form of education or art.
A clearer analogue would be if you said something like "economics says that [whatever]", instead of something like "the theory of supply and demand says that [whatever]". Economics itself doesn't say anything, it's a field of study; various theories in that field say things. One is a set of questions; the other is a set of answers. Everything you're saying is true of "the philosophy of science" understood to mean the set of answers to epistemological and metaphysical questions which constitute the scientific method; my point is that it is not usually understood to mean that amongst people who commonly use that phrase, but rather they use it to mean the set of questions about "what answers to epistemological and metaphysical questions constitute the scientific method?"
Your objection seems to overlook the point I was making.
There is a philosophy, as in some system of philosophical propositions, underlying science; or you could say that science is an application of some set of philosophical conclusions; or that science, as an ideal methodology rather than as a sociological phenomenon (you might say "true science" as opposed to "whatever people labelled 'scientists' do"), is itself a philosophy in this sense. This is actually a contentious claim, but we both seem to agree on it so I won't harp on that.
Then there is a branch of philosophy which asks "what are the philosophical underpinnings of science?", since it appears that many proposed answers to that question can be met with examples of things we want to call great examples of science, yet which do not adhere to the proposed philosophical characterization of science. And then, as you say, epistemology and metaphysics etc say things about the validity of those underpinnings, once we identify what they are. I personally don't think this is such a tricky philosophical problem to name what philosophical assumptions distinguish science from non-science (in other words I disagree with Feyerabend), and that epistemology and metaphysics do us just fine in investigating whether and why those assumptions are the right ones, but nevertheless there is a field devoted to the study of such things anyway.
The only point I'm making is that while the phrase "the philosophy of science", understood literally outside any history of that phrase, could be used to mean the first of those two things ("whatever philosophical positions actually underly science"), which is how you seem to be using it, it is traditionally used to mean the latter thing ("the branch of philosophy asking questions about what underlies science") instead, and that talking about "the philosophy of science" meaning the former thing could throw off someone used to it meaning the latter. As a philosopher by training, I am accustomed to the latter sense of the phrase, and so I had to reread your post a few times before I understood that you weren't talking about a field of philosophical investigation, but rather about a set of philosophical propositions. I thought it might be helpful to point that out for future usage in case other people end up more confused than I was.
I'd just like to comment, to all of those arguing about why science is better than non-science of some sort or another, or more particularly why philosophy is worthless compared to science: you are doing philosophy right now. Yes, even if you are arguing against philosophy, in doing so you are doing philosophy; specifically metaphilosophy, which is the philosophical investigation of philosophy itself.
Any investigation, argument, or debate, taken far enough, has to end up in philosophy. Your fellow physicists may disagree about some details of your pet theory but agree with your underlying assumptions and methods; other physicists from very different schools (e.g. string theorists vs anyone else) might disagree with some of those underlying assumptions and methods but at least you all agree on some general, vaguely defined scientific methodology, something critical, mathematical, empirical, and realist. But if you're trying to defend such science against voodoo or whatever, you end up doing philosophy, just as much as if you wanted to defend voodoo against science.
Philosophy is not a side in any battle: it is the battlefield. Some people on that battlefield, such as most philosophers in the English-speaking world since around World War II, are trying vigorously to build a defense of science, sometimes by directly battling those who attack science, and sometimes by suggesting ways science itself could change to be less vulnerable to attack. You might say philosophers produce nothing of value in the world, but we're the ones down here coming up with ways to convince people that what you scientists are doing is worth all those grant checks that fund your work. You might as well say that pure mathematics is worthless; why, it doesn't even make claims about the world at all, all it does is provide abstract tools for scientists to do the real work with...
Minor nitpick, not about any of your ideas but about the words you use to express them: the phrase "philosophy of science" denotes the field of philosophical investigation which asks questions about science (what is it, does it work, how does it work, why does it work, etc); not the philosophical theory which underlies science, as you seem to be using it.
Previously, you said : the state should not punish them simply for doing something that might increase the odds of them causing harm, if no actual harm was caused.
Recklessness is doing something that might increase the odds of causing harm, but does _not_ necessarily cause harm.
I admit that I misstated my position there, and my parallel examples of attempted (intentional) harm and my being OK with preventing such was intended to clarify that.
The idea is that your state of being itself should never be a crime, not should performing any action in a particular state of being in the same way as performing said action in a different state of being. Being angry should not be a crime; trying to punch someone should be, and actually punching someone should be. Likewise, bring drunk should not be a crime; flailing around wildly and dangerously should at least warrant a stop and check that this person is not doing to be a further hazard; and actually smacking somebody by drunken accident should still be a crime. Similarly, being angry should not be a crime, but trying to hit someone with you car should, and actually hitting someone definitely should; and likewise, being drunk should not be a crime, but swerving all over the road wildly and dangerously should at least warrant a stop and check that this person is not doing to be a further hazard; and actually hitting someone with your should still be a crime.
Basically, I say if you cannot tell by a person's gross actions that they are a dangerous (whether of intentional or accidental harm), then their state of mind should be of no legal consequence. The practical upshot of that being, cops should be pulling people over for driving recklessly and then assessing whether they are safe to drive and taking them off the road if they're not, regardless of why they may be unsafe (drunk, tired, angry, whatever); but they should not be stopping people randomly and doing a chemical test just to see if you have certain blood chemical levels that would dispose a significant fraction of people to drive recklessly. The law needs to care only about your actions, and only about those actions which directly threaten (intentionally or accidentally) immediate harm to person or property.
Yes against speeding laws unless the speed is demonstrably reckless. Just driving fast is not bad; driving recklessly is.
Firing an AK-47 into the air in Times Square is reckless and so I would not be OK with that. By "reckless" in general I mean something like "demonstrably threatening immediate harm". If I attempt to punch someone, I think someone should be allowed to stop me before I actually land the punch; that's malicious intent though, so lets look at something slightly more analogous. If I am running around blindfolded swinging my fists wildly and people are having to dodge out of the way to avoid getting hit, then likewise I should be stopped before I actually hit anybody. That is recklessness. Likewise firing a gun wantonly in a crowded place is the reckless analogue of trying to shoot somebody. And swerving all over the road is the reckless analogue of trying to run someone down with your car.
But just "moving around while blindfolded" should not be illegal, if somehow you are managing to do so safely; nor should "firing a gun without a target", if you are somehow far enough from other people that no one is threatened by that; nor should "driving while drunk", if somehow you can do so and maintain control of your vehicle. In all three cases, doing one thing is probably a bad idea because it is very unlikely that you can do that without recklessly endangering other people. But the recklessly endangering part is the bad part that should be punished, and if somehow you can manage to do whatever without recklessly endangering anyone, then that whatever should not in itself be punishable.
I'd say you should be able to drive whatever vehicle does not damage public resources (e.g. roads, air) in its operation, anywhere on public property, in any safe manner, without any kind of licensing, yes.
This is a recurring problem in many areas of law: we need to punish the actual harmful acts, rather than just things with high correlation to such harms. For this example, I agree that driving drunk is stupid and a bad idea because your reaction time and coordination is probably not good enough to safely operate a vehicle. But the only actual problem is you unsafely operating a vehicle. That should be the punishable crime, and the cause for you unsafely operating the vehicle should be irrelevant (except as testimony to your mens rea; if you're unsafely operating a vehicle because you have an unexpected aneurism through no fault of your own while driving, that's different from if you are doing so because you voluntarily inebriated yourself; one is an accident, the other is negligence).
Even worse with driving is we say that you are unilaterally not allowed to do something that by all rights should be allowed (operate a device in a safe and harmless way in a public place) unless you jump through these specific hoops. If those hoops were just a way to check yourself that you are able to operate the device safely and harmlessly, then they would be fine; if you can skip them and still operate it safely and harmlessly, no harm done, should be no crime. But instead we presume that you are unable to operate it safely and harmlessly, presume that if you operate this device you definitely will be doing something wrong, and so we make operating the device at all a crime until you can prove your ability to operate it without doing anything wrong.
Note that this doesn't actually stop people from driving without a licence. Anybody can still get in a car with no license and drive around, and if they do so in a safe and harmless fashion nobody would be any the wiser unless they get stopped at a random check point or something; or they get stopped for one thing, and the lack of licensing is just another charge to slap on. The only crime is doing something without the state's permission, because they presume that you are unable to refrain from causing harm, even if you didn't cause any actual harm.
To be clear, I think people should pass a driving test before they start driving. I think people should not drive under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. People should generally do the things that the law currently requires them to do, because if they don't, they will probably cause harm. And the state should punish them for causing such harm. But the state should not punish them simply for doing something that might increase the odds of them causing harm, if no actual harm was caused.
Back when I was in school I was consistently at the top of most of my classes, and very active in class discussion so my understanding of the material was obvious to the other students and not just the teacher. As a consequence I often had fellow students coming to me outside of class asking me to help them study or to proofread their papers or things like that. Aside from basic spelling/grammar/presentation issues in their text itself, I would point out where I thought they didn't understand the material well enough, and explain my understanding of it to them, which they would almost always take as gospel and incorporate into their papers, in their own words, which I would then critique again in a later draft, etc.
Was I, by your definition, helping them "cheat"? Or was I, as I thought of it, helping them learn?
And since the professional copy-editor the GP spoke of was presumably only helpful in spelling/grammar/presentation issues and not actual content (being a copy-editor, not a PhD in the subject in question), she was offering even less help than I was. It is just the fact that she was a professional, even though she was not acting in her professional capacity, which made getting her advice "cheating", in your book?
Monopolies in unregulated markets are fairly common.
Unregulated markets in the modern world are fairly uncommon (because monopolies were common in them and we took steps to address that problem).
You asked for examples of current unregulated markets, in response to his talk of unregulated market monopolies. He said that there are few unregulated markets currently; but that that is irrelevant to whether there are often monopolies in unregulated markets.
Mathematically (for m = some market, U() = unregulated and M() = monopolized, and C = the set of current markets), he said that "for most m, U(m) -> M(m)". You asked "show me some U(m) in C", and he said "there are few U(m) in C"; but what does that have to do with his first statement? We're not just talking about C, we're talking about markets in general.
DISCLAIMER: I don't believe any of this, but this is what a Biblical literalist would answer you with.
- Why do we have different languages?
The Tower of Babel scenario happened after the Flood. Between those two events everybody spoke the same language.
- Who (other than Noah and his wife) was a witness to these events?
Nobody, obviously, since the rest of them died.
- Why do we have different races/colors of people? I though Man was incapable of genetic drift, being made in the image of God and all, but if there were only two survivors of the Flood...?
Noah apparently had kids of different races (wife must've really got around). Ham went south after the flood and from him came the Hamites (Africans). Shem went east after the flood and from him came the Semites ("Asians", meaning the near east, not the far east). Japeth went north after the flood and from him came the Japethites (Europeans).
- Why do we have known things like genetic inbreeding of recessive traits, and if there were only two of each animal (including humans) why didn't they die out of horrible inbred mutations within a handful of generations?
I don't think this is a stock answer, but I expect it would be acceptable to a Biblical literalist: everything was perfect in the beginning, and things do mutate, but mutations cause "devolution", not evolution; things get worse over time. The survivors of the flood were still pure enough to repopulate the world on their own, but since then we've accumulated all these recessive defects that make inbreeding a problem. Probably because of Sin. (Cause, you know, Sin is radioactive and causes genetic degradation).
- Why do people still believe any of this as any kind of science when it consistently and constantly refutes observable events? "The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways" is OK for a civilization that doesn't understand the world around them, but it's not like we're short on credible, observation-based theories that can explain things in much more likely terms than "Then A Miracle Happened".
Because people are scared and lazy and learning is hard and upsetting, so they latch on to simple, comforting myths, and fight to defend them so they don't lose the comfort they provide.
Black holes are not more massive because they are dense, they are dense because they are more massive. (More mass means more gravity which squeezes the matter together more densely).
In principle a black hole does not need to be a spectacularly massive object. If our sun was somehow compressed into a black hole, it would not magically grow more massive. We'd continue orbiting it just like usual. The only difference is, things that would normally collide with it and by deflected (like the interplanetary medium) would instead just fall into it and add to its mass, making it constantly grow in mass, unlike our present sun. That is the only sense in which black holes "suck" more than other stars.
Of course, our sun wouldn't become a black hole of its own accord. Only much more massive stars would. So black holes usually are quite massive. But it's not because they are dense. They are black holes because they are dense, but they are dense because they are massive; and the are not massive just because they are black holes.
Speaking of natural units, there's always the theoretically easy solution of defining our units of mass in terms of distance (which is already defined in terms of time and c): define one kilogram as the mass of a singularity with a Schwarzschild radius of ______. Fill in the blank so that the mass of such a singularity equals the kilogram as currently defined and there you go.
Problem is, practically speaking, nobody wants to have to create a singularity every time they need to check that their kilograms really match the standard.
But what happens if Q tells the person P that P is going to have B for breakfast (which Q foresaw), and P decides that Q is annoying and has A? That is essentially a time-travel paradox and has the same possible solutions. Either it's impossible for information from the future to reach the past*, which doesn't necessarily mean determinism is false, just that it's insufficient for perfectly <em>predicting</em> the future; in fact, determinism basically guarantees that information cannot travel back in time except in self-sustaining ways (closed timelike curves), another classical time-travel paradox solution; alternatively, there are multiple possible futures, in which case determinism is effectively false.
*(strictly speaking, 'impossible for information to be transmitted acausally'; we can't peer straight into the past any more than we can peer into the future, in both cases we make inferences about other times from the state of the present. There very well may be multiple possible pasts just as much as there are multiple possible futures).
To generalize your scenario without mention of whether time X or Y comes first, we could say, "what happens if, at time Y, Q tells P that P has B for breakfast at time X, and P decides that Q is annoying and has A at time X instead?" If X is later in time than Y, then you have your scenario: Q is somehow telling P about the future, and P decides to act in a way to change that future. If X is earlier in time than Y, then P's choice in the past is somehow being affected by what Q will tell him in the future. In either case, you've got backwards causation going on, which raises a whole slew of insufficiently resolved problems that come up whenever time travel is under discussion.
Lets say that at time X, some person P is asking himself whether he should do act A or act B, and then tells himself he should, and will, do act B, rather than act A. Then P proceeds to do B.
Elsewhen, at time Y, person Q knows about the aforementioned event at time X.
Lets say I am Q and you are P, time X is yesterday morning and time Y is now, and A and B are your choices for what to have for breakfast. In that case, I know what you chose to have for breakfast yesterday. Not a problem for free will at all, right?
Now, lets change just one of those things: time X is not yesterday morning but tomorrow morning. In that case, I know what you will have for breakfast tomorrow. Why is that suddenly a problem for free will?
Similarly, assuming causal determinism, then the past logically necessitates the present and the future; but, likewise, the future and the present logically necessitate the past. Given causal determinism, the fact that I am writing this post (as well as any other fact about the present) necessitates that the dinosaurs went extinct; but do we say that, by doing so, I am making them go extinct, in the past? Likewise, given causal determinism, the extinction of the dinosaurs (and every other fact about the past) necessitated that I write this post; why then do we say that (if causal determinism is true) the extinction of the dinosaurs forces me to post this?
Determinism just means that the events of one time necessitate the events of all other times. Where those different times are in sequence to each other makes no difference. Events in one time having a causal connection to events at another, or people at one time knowing about people's choices at another, don't make any difference as to whether a choice-event was free or not.
Incompatibilist notions of free will are inherently broken. Randomness is no more freedom than determination, and adding a little randomness into an otherwise deterministic system (or adding determination into an otherwise random system) doesn't magically introduce freedom. Some people like to take this to mean that free will is logically impossible, but I take it to mean that people arguing about freedom vs determination have a fundamentally incoherent understanding of 'freedom'. In other words, whether or not people have free will has nothing to do with determinism or the lack thereof.
Lately, new people I meet always ask me if I have a Facebook account; or rather, they ask me what mine is, presuming I have one. I don't, and I tell them so, but offer them my email address and/or website URL instead; and they usually decline.
I'm trying to figure out for what possible reason I would want a Facebook account. I've had a website of my own that I control and can give whatever functionality I want (and remove any I don't want) since before Facebook existed, so I have no use for it as a means of expressing myself. Anything I want to share about myself with the world, I can put up there.
As for communication, there's still email and a variety of instant messaging and chat protocols that I make extensive use of.
So what possible reason would I have for wanting a Facebook, and why would people want to know my Facebook account and yet have no interest in my email or website?
Do you really expect me to do coordinate substitution in my head while stuck to a spinning ball of rock hurling through space around a gigantic thermonuclear reaction?
Who said I even own a car? (I don't, for the record).
I'm just complaining about someone defending smoking on "mind your own business" grounds, when it's not just their own business. I wasn't saying anything about the relative damage of smoking versus car exhaust; you brought that up.
The particulate matter in cigarette smoke does, as a matter of fact, bother my lungs a lot more than the mostly carbon oxides and water vapor coming out of cars, so that gets me in a huff (literally and figuratively) much more, and is my pet cause; but if someone else like you wants to champion stronger vehicle emission controls, go right ahead, I acknowledge the moral grounds on which to do so.
And we as a society have accepted that it is the rest of our business what other people are spewing into the air from their factories and vehicles and so on, and placed limitations on the amounts and kinds of emissions that they can put out. These have been very effective in the past; compare the air in Los Angeles before California's strict smog-control laws versus after. Maybe those limitations still need to be stronger, and factories and vehicles still emit too much in the way of harmful toxins; that's not my point of discussion here. My point is only that smoking, because of its direct effects on others, does not fall within the same category of "mind your own business" things that it was listed in with; and neither do vehicle or factory emissions, but we already acknowledge the latter and don't say factories should be able to spew all they want, while the former still seems to get a lot of libertarian-styled "who are you to tell me what to do?" defense. (Which, to be clear, I am generally in favor of, when it comes to actions that are genuinely none of anyone else's business).
Not to derail this thread more than it already is, but I don't think smoking belongs in that list. Everything else you listed are things which affect you and you alone (or at most, others who consensually join you in them) and are rightly nobody else's damn business. But smoking affects the other people who have to breath the air that you are spewing that smoke into.
Smoking alone in your own house with no dependents who have no choice but to be there with you: none of anybody else's damn business, agreed.
Smoking anywhere in public, or around people who don't have a choice to not be with you in private: other people's damn business too.
Or that the working and driving are happening at the same time.
Sail from one safe anchor to another during what would be a normal work day day; code or whatever during what would be normal leisure time at night; sleep until dawn, resume sailing. Or, switch up the order and durations as you please. Either way, you don't have to be mixing the difficult parts of sailing and the difficult parts of coding (or whatever) together at the same time; you can alternate.
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It still seems to me like you are not understanding the distinction I am making, and are making other (valid) points tangential to what I'm talking about. You are working from the assumption that we have a single agreed-upon uncontroversial definition of "X", and that "the philosophy of X" just means "X"; when my point is that "philosophy of X" is often used to mean the field which asks "what is the definition of X?"
I agree completely that whatever philosophical principles genuinely underlie the activity called science ("the philosophy of science" in the sense you seem to use it), those principles are identical with science proper, and science proper is defined as just those principles, whatever they are. I further agree that asking if and how those principles are justified is, as you say, doing something else, namely epistemology and metaphysics. But that's not what I'm talking about.
There are many people who ask, rightly or wrongly, "what is the correct definition of science?" Many philosophical questions are really quests for proper definitions. Nobody sat down a few hundred years ago and said "We define 'science' to be such-and-such, and henceforth will proceed to derive conclusions from these definitions", thus beginning the field of science. We just have all these people who came to be called scientists who are all doing this activity which we came to call science; but what it is that all those scientists do, which distinguishes what they're doing from other things that we don't call science, seems to be a contentious question, at least amongst some people. The field of study wherein people ask these questions is what it usually called "the philosophy of science". The phrase is analogous to "the philosophy of education" or "the philosophy of art"; those phrases don't name a particular philosophy that underlies education or art, but rather a field that asks questions about philosophies which may underlie some form of education or art.
A clearer analogue would be if you said something like "economics says that [whatever]", instead of something like "the theory of supply and demand says that [whatever]". Economics itself doesn't say anything, it's a field of study; various theories in that field say things. One is a set of questions; the other is a set of answers. Everything you're saying is true of "the philosophy of science" understood to mean the set of answers to epistemological and metaphysical questions which constitute the scientific method; my point is that it is not usually understood to mean that amongst people who commonly use that phrase, but rather they use it to mean the set of questions about "what answers to epistemological and metaphysical questions constitute the scientific method?"
Your objection seems to overlook the point I was making.
There is a philosophy, as in some system of philosophical propositions, underlying science; or you could say that science is an application of some set of philosophical conclusions; or that science, as an ideal methodology rather than as a sociological phenomenon (you might say "true science" as opposed to "whatever people labelled 'scientists' do"), is itself a philosophy in this sense. This is actually a contentious claim, but we both seem to agree on it so I won't harp on that.
Then there is a branch of philosophy which asks "what are the philosophical underpinnings of science?", since it appears that many proposed answers to that question can be met with examples of things we want to call great examples of science, yet which do not adhere to the proposed philosophical characterization of science. And then, as you say, epistemology and metaphysics etc say things about the validity of those underpinnings, once we identify what they are. I personally don't think this is such a tricky philosophical problem to name what philosophical assumptions distinguish science from non-science (in other words I disagree with Feyerabend), and that epistemology and metaphysics do us just fine in investigating whether and why those assumptions are the right ones, but nevertheless there is a field devoted to the study of such things anyway.
The only point I'm making is that while the phrase "the philosophy of science", understood literally outside any history of that phrase, could be used to mean the first of those two things ("whatever philosophical positions actually underly science"), which is how you seem to be using it, it is traditionally used to mean the latter thing ("the branch of philosophy asking questions about what underlies science") instead, and that talking about "the philosophy of science" meaning the former thing could throw off someone used to it meaning the latter. As a philosopher by training, I am accustomed to the latter sense of the phrase, and so I had to reread your post a few times before I understood that you weren't talking about a field of philosophical investigation, but rather about a set of philosophical propositions. I thought it might be helpful to point that out for future usage in case other people end up more confused than I was.
I'd just like to comment, to all of those arguing about why science is better than non-science of some sort or another, or more particularly why philosophy is worthless compared to science: you are doing philosophy right now. Yes, even if you are arguing against philosophy, in doing so you are doing philosophy; specifically metaphilosophy, which is the philosophical investigation of philosophy itself.
Any investigation, argument, or debate, taken far enough, has to end up in philosophy. Your fellow physicists may disagree about some details of your pet theory but agree with your underlying assumptions and methods; other physicists from very different schools (e.g. string theorists vs anyone else) might disagree with some of those underlying assumptions and methods but at least you all agree on some general, vaguely defined scientific methodology, something critical, mathematical, empirical, and realist. But if you're trying to defend such science against voodoo or whatever, you end up doing philosophy, just as much as if you wanted to defend voodoo against science.
Philosophy is not a side in any battle: it is the battlefield. Some people on that battlefield, such as most philosophers in the English-speaking world since around World War II, are trying vigorously to build a defense of science, sometimes by directly battling those who attack science, and sometimes by suggesting ways science itself could change to be less vulnerable to attack. You might say philosophers produce nothing of value in the world, but we're the ones down here coming up with ways to convince people that what you scientists are doing is worth all those grant checks that fund your work. You might as well say that pure mathematics is worthless; why, it doesn't even make claims about the world at all, all it does is provide abstract tools for scientists to do the real work with...
Minor nitpick, not about any of your ideas but about the words you use to express them: the phrase "philosophy of science" denotes the field of philosophical investigation which asks questions about science (what is it, does it work, how does it work, why does it work, etc); not the philosophical theory which underlies science, as you seem to be using it.
Previously, you said :
the state should not punish them simply for doing something that might increase the odds of them causing harm, if no actual harm was caused.
Recklessness is doing something that might increase the odds of causing harm, but does _not_ necessarily cause harm.
I admit that I misstated my position there, and my parallel examples of attempted (intentional) harm and my being OK with preventing such was intended to clarify that.
The idea is that your state of being itself should never be a crime, not should performing any action in a particular state of being in the same way as performing said action in a different state of being. Being angry should not be a crime; trying to punch someone should be, and actually punching someone should be. Likewise, bring drunk should not be a crime; flailing around wildly and dangerously should at least warrant a stop and check that this person is not doing to be a further hazard; and actually smacking somebody by drunken accident should still be a crime. Similarly, being angry should not be a crime, but trying to hit someone with you car should, and actually hitting someone definitely should; and likewise, being drunk should not be a crime, but swerving all over the road wildly and dangerously should at least warrant a stop and check that this person is not doing to be a further hazard; and actually hitting someone with your should still be a crime.
Basically, I say if you cannot tell by a person's gross actions that they are a dangerous (whether of intentional or accidental harm), then their state of mind should be of no legal consequence. The practical upshot of that being, cops should be pulling people over for driving recklessly and then assessing whether they are safe to drive and taking them off the road if they're not, regardless of why they may be unsafe (drunk, tired, angry, whatever); but they should not be stopping people randomly and doing a chemical test just to see if you have certain blood chemical levels that would dispose a significant fraction of people to drive recklessly. The law needs to care only about your actions, and only about those actions which directly threaten (intentionally or accidentally) immediate harm to person or property.
Yes against speeding laws unless the speed is demonstrably reckless. Just driving fast is not bad; driving recklessly is.
Firing an AK-47 into the air in Times Square is reckless and so I would not be OK with that. By "reckless" in general I mean something like "demonstrably threatening immediate harm". If I attempt to punch someone, I think someone should be allowed to stop me before I actually land the punch; that's malicious intent though, so lets look at something slightly more analogous. If I am running around blindfolded swinging my fists wildly and people are having to dodge out of the way to avoid getting hit, then likewise I should be stopped before I actually hit anybody. That is recklessness. Likewise firing a gun wantonly in a crowded place is the reckless analogue of trying to shoot somebody. And swerving all over the road is the reckless analogue of trying to run someone down with your car.
But just "moving around while blindfolded" should not be illegal, if somehow you are managing to do so safely; nor should "firing a gun without a target", if you are somehow far enough from other people that no one is threatened by that; nor should "driving while drunk", if somehow you can do so and maintain control of your vehicle. In all three cases, doing one thing is probably a bad idea because it is very unlikely that you can do that without recklessly endangering other people. But the recklessly endangering part is the bad part that should be punished, and if somehow you can manage to do whatever without recklessly endangering anyone, then that whatever should not in itself be punishable.
I'd say you should be able to drive whatever vehicle does not damage public resources (e.g. roads, air) in its operation, anywhere on public property, in any safe manner, without any kind of licensing, yes.
This is a recurring problem in many areas of law: we need to punish the actual harmful acts, rather than just things with high correlation to such harms. For this example, I agree that driving drunk is stupid and a bad idea because your reaction time and coordination is probably not good enough to safely operate a vehicle. But the only actual problem is you unsafely operating a vehicle. That should be the punishable crime, and the cause for you unsafely operating the vehicle should be irrelevant (except as testimony to your mens rea; if you're unsafely operating a vehicle because you have an unexpected aneurism through no fault of your own while driving, that's different from if you are doing so because you voluntarily inebriated yourself; one is an accident, the other is negligence).
Even worse with driving is we say that you are unilaterally not allowed to do something that by all rights should be allowed (operate a device in a safe and harmless way in a public place) unless you jump through these specific hoops. If those hoops were just a way to check yourself that you are able to operate the device safely and harmlessly, then they would be fine; if you can skip them and still operate it safely and harmlessly, no harm done, should be no crime. But instead we presume that you are unable to operate it safely and harmlessly, presume that if you operate this device you definitely will be doing something wrong, and so we make operating the device at all a crime until you can prove your ability to operate it without doing anything wrong.
Note that this doesn't actually stop people from driving without a licence. Anybody can still get in a car with no license and drive around, and if they do so in a safe and harmless fashion nobody would be any the wiser unless they get stopped at a random check point or something; or they get stopped for one thing, and the lack of licensing is just another charge to slap on. The only crime is doing something without the state's permission, because they presume that you are unable to refrain from causing harm, even if you didn't cause any actual harm.
To be clear, I think people should pass a driving test before they start driving. I think people should not drive under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. People should generally do the things that the law currently requires them to do, because if they don't, they will probably cause harm. And the state should punish them for causing such harm. But the state should not punish them simply for doing something that might increase the odds of them causing harm, if no actual harm was caused.
Back when I was in school I was consistently at the top of most of my classes, and very active in class discussion so my understanding of the material was obvious to the other students and not just the teacher. As a consequence I often had fellow students coming to me outside of class asking me to help them study or to proofread their papers or things like that. Aside from basic spelling/grammar/presentation issues in their text itself, I would point out where I thought they didn't understand the material well enough, and explain my understanding of it to them, which they would almost always take as gospel and incorporate into their papers, in their own words, which I would then critique again in a later draft, etc.
Was I, by your definition, helping them "cheat"? Or was I, as I thought of it, helping them learn?
And since the professional copy-editor the GP spoke of was presumably only helpful in spelling/grammar/presentation issues and not actual content (being a copy-editor, not a PhD in the subject in question), she was offering even less help than I was. It is just the fact that she was a professional, even though she was not acting in her professional capacity, which made getting her advice "cheating", in your book?
Monopolies in unregulated markets are fairly common.
Unregulated markets in the modern world are fairly uncommon (because monopolies were common in them and we took steps to address that problem).
You asked for examples of current unregulated markets, in response to his talk of unregulated market monopolies. He said that there are few unregulated markets currently; but that that is irrelevant to whether there are often monopolies in unregulated markets.
Mathematically (for m = some market, U() = unregulated and M() = monopolized, and C = the set of current markets), he said that "for most m, U(m) -> M(m)". You asked "show me some U(m) in C", and he said "there are few U(m) in C"; but what does that have to do with his first statement? We're not just talking about C, we're talking about markets in general.
Minor nitpick: WorldWideWeb.app, by Tim Berners-Lee himself, was the first GUI web browser.
- Why do we have different languages?
The Tower of Babel scenario happened after the Flood. Between those two events everybody spoke the same language.
- Who (other than Noah and his wife) was a witness to these events?
Nobody, obviously, since the rest of them died.
- Why do we have different races/colors of people? I though Man was incapable of genetic drift, being made in the image of God and all, but if there were only two survivors of the Flood...?
Noah apparently had kids of different races (wife must've really got around). Ham went south after the flood and from him came the Hamites (Africans). Shem went east after the flood and from him came the Semites ("Asians", meaning the near east, not the far east). Japeth went north after the flood and from him came the Japethites (Europeans).
- Why do we have known things like genetic inbreeding of recessive traits, and if there were only two of each animal (including humans) why didn't they die out of horrible inbred mutations within a handful of generations?
I don't think this is a stock answer, but I expect it would be acceptable to a Biblical literalist: everything was perfect in the beginning, and things do mutate, but mutations cause "devolution", not evolution; things get worse over time. The survivors of the flood were still pure enough to repopulate the world on their own, but since then we've accumulated all these recessive defects that make inbreeding a problem. Probably because of Sin. (Cause, you know, Sin is radioactive and causes genetic degradation).
- Why do people still believe any of this as any kind of science when it consistently and constantly refutes observable events? "The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways" is OK for a civilization that doesn't understand the world around them, but it's not like we're short on credible, observation-based theories that can explain things in much more likely terms than "Then A Miracle Happened".
Because people are scared and lazy and learning is hard and upsetting, so they latch on to simple, comforting myths, and fight to defend them so they don't lose the comfort they provide.
How many human engineers does it take to duplicate a Pak engineer's ringworld?
Black holes are not more massive because they are dense, they are dense because they are more massive. (More mass means more gravity which squeezes the matter together more densely).
In principle a black hole does not need to be a spectacularly massive object. If our sun was somehow compressed into a black hole, it would not magically grow more massive. We'd continue orbiting it just like usual. The only difference is, things that would normally collide with it and by deflected (like the interplanetary medium) would instead just fall into it and add to its mass, making it constantly grow in mass, unlike our present sun. That is the only sense in which black holes "suck" more than other stars.
Of course, our sun wouldn't become a black hole of its own accord. Only much more massive stars would. So black holes usually are quite massive. But it's not because they are dense. They are black holes because they are dense, but they are dense because they are massive; and the are not massive just because they are black holes.
Speaking of natural units, there's always the theoretically easy solution of defining our units of mass in terms of distance (which is already defined in terms of time and c): define one kilogram as the mass of a singularity with a Schwarzschild radius of ______. Fill in the blank so that the mass of such a singularity equals the kilogram as currently defined and there you go.
Problem is, practically speaking, nobody wants to have to create a singularity every time they need to check that their kilograms really match the standard.
I already have a website (have since before FB existed), and I've never had a FB. What's your point?
But what happens if Q tells the person P that P is going to have B for breakfast (which Q foresaw), and P decides that Q is annoying and has A?
That is essentially a time-travel paradox and has the same possible solutions. Either it's impossible for information from the future to reach the past*, which doesn't necessarily mean determinism is false, just that it's insufficient for perfectly <em>predicting</em> the future; in fact, determinism basically guarantees that information cannot travel back in time except in self-sustaining ways (closed timelike curves), another classical time-travel paradox solution; alternatively, there are multiple possible futures, in which case determinism is effectively false.
*(strictly speaking, 'impossible for information to be transmitted acausally'; we can't peer straight into the past any more than we can peer into the future, in both cases we make inferences about other times from the state of the present. There very well may be multiple possible pasts just as much as there are multiple possible futures).
To generalize your scenario without mention of whether time X or Y comes first, we could say, "what happens if, at time Y, Q tells P that P has B for breakfast at time X, and P decides that Q is annoying and has A at time X instead?" If X is later in time than Y, then you have your scenario: Q is somehow telling P about the future, and P decides to act in a way to change that future. If X is earlier in time than Y, then P's choice in the past is somehow being affected by what Q will tell him in the future. In either case, you've got backwards causation going on, which raises a whole slew of insufficiently resolved problems that come up whenever time travel is under discussion.
Lets say that at time X, some person P is asking himself whether he should do act A or act B, and then tells himself he should, and will, do act B, rather than act A. Then P proceeds to do B.
Elsewhen, at time Y, person Q knows about the aforementioned event at time X.
Lets say I am Q and you are P, time X is yesterday morning and time Y is now, and A and B are your choices for what to have for breakfast. In that case, I know what you chose to have for breakfast yesterday. Not a problem for free will at all, right?
Now, lets change just one of those things: time X is not yesterday morning but tomorrow morning. In that case, I know what you will have for breakfast tomorrow. Why is that suddenly a problem for free will?
Similarly, assuming causal determinism, then the past logically necessitates the present and the future; but, likewise, the future and the present logically necessitate the past. Given causal determinism, the fact that I am writing this post (as well as any other fact about the present) necessitates that the dinosaurs went extinct; but do we say that, by doing so, I am making them go extinct, in the past? Likewise, given causal determinism, the extinction of the dinosaurs (and every other fact about the past) necessitated that I write this post; why then do we say that (if causal determinism is true) the extinction of the dinosaurs forces me to post this?
Determinism just means that the events of one time necessitate the events of all other times. Where those different times are in sequence to each other makes no difference. Events in one time having a causal connection to events at another, or people at one time knowing about people's choices at another, don't make any difference as to whether a choice-event was free or not.
Incompatibilist notions of free will are inherently broken. Randomness is no more freedom than determination, and adding a little randomness into an otherwise deterministic system (or adding determination into an otherwise random system) doesn't magically introduce freedom. Some people like to take this to mean that free will is logically impossible, but I take it to mean that people arguing about freedom vs determination have a fundamentally incoherent understanding of 'freedom'. In other words, whether or not people have free will has nothing to do with determinism or the lack thereof.
Not even Douglas Adams makes jokes in base 13.
To have a place to put things that I want to share with other people (my writing, my art, whatever). Why does anybody have a website?
Lately, new people I meet always ask me if I have a Facebook account; or rather, they ask me what mine is, presuming I have one. I don't, and I tell them so, but offer them my email address and/or website URL instead; and they usually decline.
I'm trying to figure out for what possible reason I would want a Facebook account. I've had a website of my own that I control and can give whatever functionality I want (and remove any I don't want) since before Facebook existed, so I have no use for it as a means of expressing myself. Anything I want to share about myself with the world, I can put up there.
As for communication, there's still email and a variety of instant messaging and chat protocols that I make extensive use of.
So what possible reason would I have for wanting a Facebook, and why would people want to know my Facebook account and yet have no interest in my email or website?
Do you really expect me to do coordinate substitution in my head while stuck to a spinning ball of rock hurling through space around a gigantic thermonuclear reaction?
Who said I even own a car? (I don't, for the record).
I'm just complaining about someone defending smoking on "mind your own business" grounds, when it's not just their own business. I wasn't saying anything about the relative damage of smoking versus car exhaust; you brought that up.
The particulate matter in cigarette smoke does, as a matter of fact, bother my lungs a lot more than the mostly carbon oxides and water vapor coming out of cars, so that gets me in a huff (literally and figuratively) much more, and is my pet cause; but if someone else like you wants to champion stronger vehicle emission controls, go right ahead, I acknowledge the moral grounds on which to do so.
And we as a society have accepted that it is the rest of our business what other people are spewing into the air from their factories and vehicles and so on, and placed limitations on the amounts and kinds of emissions that they can put out. These have been very effective in the past; compare the air in Los Angeles before California's strict smog-control laws versus after. Maybe those limitations still need to be stronger, and factories and vehicles still emit too much in the way of harmful toxins; that's not my point of discussion here. My point is only that smoking, because of its direct effects on others, does not fall within the same category of "mind your own business" things that it was listed in with; and neither do vehicle or factory emissions, but we already acknowledge the latter and don't say factories should be able to spew all they want, while the former still seems to get a lot of libertarian-styled "who are you to tell me what to do?" defense. (Which, to be clear, I am generally in favor of, when it comes to actions that are genuinely none of anyone else's business).
Not to derail this thread more than it already is, but I don't think smoking belongs in that list. Everything else you listed are things which affect you and you alone (or at most, others who consensually join you in them) and are rightly nobody else's damn business. But smoking affects the other people who have to breath the air that you are spewing that smoke into.
Smoking alone in your own house with no dependents who have no choice but to be there with you: none of anybody else's damn business, agreed.
Smoking anywhere in public, or around people who don't have a choice to not be with you in private: other people's damn business too.
Or that the working and driving are happening at the same time.
Sail from one safe anchor to another during what would be a normal work day day; code or whatever during what would be normal leisure time at night; sleep until dawn, resume sailing. Or, switch up the order and durations as you please. Either way, you don't have to be mixing the difficult parts of sailing and the difficult parts of coding (or whatever) together at the same time; you can alternate.