/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15087112
>>15087441
>"cause" of depression?
Diagnostics, but what is depression? Like I said the 'cause' of schizophrenia is libido deterritorialized from the Oedipus complex; the efficient cause is desire and final cause is the schizo-entity itself. Schizophrenia exists as concrete process, not merely a diagnostic abstraction, and this is a fine example of dealing with misplaced concreteness.
>Does the Enlightenment really exist
In natural science, nature is defined as that which is perceived through the senses. Can we perceive 'the Enlightenment' through the senses? In some ways sure, we can read about it. The Enlightenment is abstract, and we abstract from the natural world. But, do abstract entities exist in the same way concrete entities do? No.
>Does depression really exist
Psychological depression may be abstracted from chemical processes or emotional disposition. Actual depression does exist in the act of depressing, like we 'depress' the handle of a toaster to lower the bread. Our entire concept of depression is abstracted from this type of concrete act. It is the /action/ which is concrete, the "depression" is always abstract, thus a term like 'concrete depression' could be very confusing. I've found no effectuate 'depressive process' nor actual 'depress-entity'. That is, depression seems to have no ontological being to become depressed. We can be diagnosed with abstract depression or put in a hugbox with concrete depression, but there is no depressed Becoming.

>>15087112
Pardon my word salad~ 'Social forces' would be abstractions with some concrete outcomes. Does the tree which the table is made from 'actually' objectively exist? Yes, from seed to table. We can't sense all that has passed, but can sense the table before us. It is tangible. thus so is its history: all that growing, cutting, sanding, etc., has been co-created from the past into the present, i.e., made tangible in the present as an actual table. That seed was cause for tree, and tree was cause for table, are empirical observations. To avoid neglect, table is also cause for tree, the past given actuality by the present.

I think materialist psychology is okay, kind of a science of libidinal investment, with the unconscious regarded as an aggregate of productive processes of desire. I could say that deterritorialization from the Oedipus Complex is the 'cause' of schizophrenia, but the actual cause is that desire which deteritoralized the libido, i.e., they acted on a desire.

An important question is whether you consider abstractions to exist. I do as an ontological principle. "The reasons for things are always to be found in the composite natures of definite actual entities." It helps in distinguishing efficient causes(desire 'causing' act) and final causes(actual entities 'causing' themselves), while avoiding fallacies of misplaced concreteness.

>>15086791
Thank you for engaging. I distinguish between social forces by their actuality and virtuality. The actuality is objective, not a matter of attribution: you acted, responding not to fear or laziness, nor merely rational self interest, but to the whole. The attributions of fear and laziness are virtual, having a reality but no actuality of their own: there is no direct 'act' of fear or laziness or self interest. I agree that the mere existence of "social forces" is not very substantial, but that has no baring on the evident fact. It seems OP is opportunistically denying social existence, and I'd be here for it if there were a coherent case.

For me, objectivity is foremost individual. I can know the consensus and theories, the reality, but find it abstract fantasy unless observable on the grounds of fundamental ontology. Note that my motivations are far more religious than scientific~

>This doctrine is the direct negation of the theory that religion is primarily a social fact. Social facts are of great importance to religion, because there is no such thing as absolutely independent existence. You cannot abstract society from man; most psychology is herd-psychology. But all collective emotions leave untouched the awful ultimate fact, which is the human being, consciously alone with itself, for its own sake.. Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. (Whitehead)

>>15086727
Well, that didn't clarify anything. We see packs of animals hang out and interact, which would be an impossibility without what we call a society. As I see it, observation of any two entities clearly evidences an objectively quantifiable existence of society or social fact..

>>15086685
So there are no 'social' forces acting upon you as you read/write this post? Is your body not a society of enduring physical objects? Aren't any group of individual entities that act upon and respond to each other be in a 'social' relationship? Not to be semantic, I'm really just not sure what you mean by "society doesn't exist".

>>15086664
Are society and social conditions not empirically verifiable?

>>15029650
We can imagine a being whose awareness suffers no transition of passage. There is no essential reason why memory should not be raised to the vividness of the present fact; and then from the side of mind, what is the difference between the present and the past?

We can suppose that the vivid remembrance and the present fact are posited in awareness as in their temporal serial order. In memory the past is present, It is not present as overleaping the temporal succession of nature, but it is present as an immediate fact for the mind. Accordingly memory is a disengagement of the mind from the mere passage of nature; for what has passed for nature has not passed for mind.

Accordingly we must admit that though we can imagine that mind in the operation of sense-awareness might be free from any character of passage, in point of fact our experience of sense-awareness exhibits our minds as partaking in this character. How curious. It is almost as if a duration has within itself a past and a future.

>>15029602
I used to simply say that there are n-sexes, but the only feedback I ever got is that I'm an idiot schizophrenic that will never be a woman. So I don't say it anymore, because it just leaves me feeling stupid. I'm pleasantly shocked to see someone post the answer I would consider 'correct'. Uh, thank you.

>>15028709
Do you have any sound metaphysical reasoning for proposing that God is omnipotent?

>>15028700
I use the term 'moment' to mean 'all nature at an instant.' A moment, in the sense here used, has no temporal extension, and is in this respect to be contrasted with a duration which has such extension. What is directly yielded to our knowledge by sense-awareness is a duration. A moment is a limit to which we approach as we confine attention to durations of minimum extension. In this instance attention is confined to durations extending a single second. (The word 'limit' has a precise signification in the logic of number and even in the logic of non-numerical one-dimensional series. As used here it is so far a mere metaphor, and it is necessary to explain directly the concept which it is meant to indicate.)

You need not dogmatically preach materialist ideology. I know that on the materialistic theory the instantaneous present is the only field for the creative activity of nature. The past is gone and the future is not yet. Thus (on the materialistic theory) the immediacy of perception is of an instantaneous present, and this unique present is the outcome of the past and the promise of the future. But we deny this immediately given instantaneous present, it is already gone. There is no such thing to be found in nature. As an ultimate fact it is a nonentity. What is immediate for sense-awareness is a duration.

I welcome teaching or critique of my position; I may be mistaken, but I'm fairly sure of your rational and find it deeply lacking.

>>15028700
I use the term 'moment' to mean 'all nature at an instant.' A moment, in the sense here used, has no temporal extension, and is in this respect to be contrasted with a duration which has such extension. What is directly yielded to our knowledge by sense-awareness is a duration. A moment is a limit to which we approach as we confine attention to durations of minimum extension. A moment is a limit which we approach as we confine attention to durations of minimum extension. In this instance attention is confined to durations extending a single second. The word 'limit' has a precise signification in the logic of number and even in the logic of non-numerical one-dimensional series. As used here it is so far a mere metaphor, and it is necessary to explain directly the concept which it is meant to indicate.

You need not dogmatically preach materialist ideology. I know that on the materialistic theory the instantaneous present is the only field for the creative activity of nature. The past is gone and the future is not yet. Thus (on the materialistic theory) the immediacy of perception is of an instantaneous present, and this unique present is the outcome of the past and the promise of the future. But we deny this immediately given instantaneous present, it is already gone. There is no such thing to be found in nature. As an ultimate fact it is a nonentity. What is immediate for sense-awareness is a duration.

Feel free to provide teaching or critique of my position; I may be mistaken, but I'm fairly sure of your rational and find it deeply lacking.

>>15028568
>>15028600
This argument seems ultimately semantic. There is passage of time within our perception of reality; in the action of the world, there is _observable_ change from moment to moment. We can see the clock hand tick from 1 to 2, and we can recognize that movement. To ask if this is 'physical' or not is ontologically nonsensical, but the scientific relevance is implicit to its inclusion in physical models(not at all a matter of time being 'really physical' or not). As to whether such a 'passage' from 1 to 2 is an 'empirical' observation, would be a subjective observation. They're moving the goalposts, but you're gatekeeping. Since when is radical empiricism _not_ empiricism? The rational of your argument seems to be "keep it simple for me." And I don't mind you doing that, but I'm not a little girl. For me, excluding subjective observation from our models would be neglectful and lazy.

>"Science conceived as resting on mere sense-perception, with no other sources of observation, is bankrupt, so far as concerns its claims to self-sufficiency. In fact, science conceived as restricting itself to the sensationalist methodology can find neither efficient nor final causality. It can find no creativity in Nature; it finds mere rules of succession. The reason for this blindness lies in the fact that such science only deals with half of the evidence provided by human experience.” (Alfred North Whitehead)

The natural sciences define nature as that which we perceive through the senses.
Anything not observable in nature cannot even be said to exist.
>>15028472
fpbp
>>15028579
>If God exists then nothing is natural.
Begging the question.
>>15028597
Yes, we do find supernormal phenomena in nature.
>>15028606
>How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?
Begging the question.
>>15028573
Yes, they would actually be natural.

>>15028286
>Meaningless drivel.
It means an entity that really exists in the natural world.
>Time is real because every accurate model of reality says it is.
Time is real regardless of the accuracy of our models. Any accurate model would reflect that.
>Your mental masturbation doesn't change that.
It merely explicates why time is real. Metaphysics is about logical frameworks for the conduct of discussions of the character of the world, and clearly you're not into that kind of thing.

>>15028050
>But there is no passage of time, time could be running backwards for all you know
There is no implication of directionality. The measurable time of science and of civilized life generally merely exhibits some aspects of the more fundamental fact of the passage of nature. It is in virtue of its passage that nature is always moving on.
>there are only events which come after previous events with no discrete separation, ergo with no time
The causal outcomes obey the usual well-respected rule that the causes precede the effects in time. Some pairs of processes cannot be connected by cause-and-effect relations, and they are said to be spatially separated. This is in perfect agreement with the viewpoint of the Einstein theory of special relativity and with the Minkowski geometry of spacetime.
>any measurement you take of an event is only an approximation limited by your own senses and measuring devices
Measurable time exhibits merely the character of passage in nature, but the quality of passage itself which is in no way measurable except so far as it obtains in nature. That is to say, 'passage' is not measurable except as it occurs in nature in connexion with extension.
>but on the most basic levels this separation simply doesn't exist
Two corresponding durations which are respectively related by simultaneity to two discerned components of sense-awareness are necessarily distinct. This is an exhibition of the temporal passage of nature; namely, one duration has passed into the other.

>>15028029
>>An actual entity
>Meaningless
An actual entity is a general philosophical term for an utterly determinate and completely concrete individual particular of the actually existing world or universe of changeable entities considered in terms of singular causality, about which categorical statements can be made.

Put more simply, actual entity is a term to refer to the entities that really exist in the natural world. An actual entity is how something is happening, and how its happening is related to other actual entities. The actually existing world is a multiplicity of actual entities overlapping one another.

>>Actual entities are occasions of experience.
>Occasions imply time.
Yes, necissarily. It is a way a of defining the actual entities that makes them all alike, qua actual entities.

Time is relative to an inertial reference frame, an occasion, different reference frames defining different versions of time, different occasions. This process is most importantly characterized by extension in space-time, marked by a continuum of uncountably many points in a Minkowski or a Riemannian space-time.

>>An occasion of experience consists of a process of prehending other occasions of experience, reacting to them.
>Word salad. Take your meds.
In time defined relative to it, each occasion of experience is causally influenced by prior occasions of experiences, and causally influences future occasions of experience. A process may be considered as temporal generation by the actual entities which are its contributory causes.
https://youtu.be/IASxe4oFKGo

>>15026794
>what is a "frame?
An actual entity.
>Frame of what?
Actual entities are occasions of experience.
>What is being compared to what?
An occasion of experience consists of a process of prehending other occasions of experience, reacting to them.
>It's OK to admit time exists
Inherent in each actual entity is its respective dimension of time.
>1 and 2 are specific places on the dimensions x and y
In arithmetic, 1 and 2 would be the actual first and second dimension represented by the graph, with x and y being abstract dimensions of the graph or representing actual extensions of 1 and 2.
>Instance of what?
Experience.
>>15026817
>Time _is_ an arbitrary unit of measurement
We should take care not to conflate the abstract durations of time available to thought for the concrete passage of time available to sense awareness.
>>15026861
>That depends on spacetime existing.
That _is_ spacetime existing.
>The coordinates are for a point, not a dimension.
The US dollar is a dimension of value, and has its own respective dimension of value; as does the meter in respect to distance and congruency.
>>15027142
>>You can define anything as anything
>Irrelevant to the argument
Shouldn't a coherent metaphysics divide frames of reference into fundamental instances? If we intend to reference actual time, the frame of reference is necissarily that of actual entities. The fundamentally existent things are discrete "occasions of experience" that overlap one another in time and space, and jointly make up the enduring person or thing.
>15026901
>which is why you can divide the state of the system into an infinite amount of instances
Yes. But the final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.
>time isn't a physical thing
Yes. But for all practical reason, we can consider actual entities to have properties of both a physical monopole and mental monopole.

>>15025970
>Religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious. Collective enthusiasms, revivals, institutions, churches, rituals, bibles, codes of behaviour, are the trappings of religion, its passing forms. They may be useful, or harmful; they may be authoritatively ordained, or merely temporary expedients. But the end of religion is beyond all this. (Alfred North Whitehead)

>>15025727
I think a theory of prehension is far stronger than a theory of the acausal. We need not suppose that the pre-creation chaos was comprised of processes that are acausal and thereby atemporal. To call the pre-creation situation a “chaos” means that it had no enduring individuals, with none of them organized into temporally ordered societies. Even in this chaotic state, temporal relations occurred. Each event prehended, and thereby was causally affected by, prior events; and each event causally influenced, and thereby was prehended by, later events. (Events are contemporaneous with each other when neither causally affects the other.) My argument is that God necissarily participates in all temporal processes; God is the one exceptional actual entity which is simultaneously temporal and atemporal. But I give no metaphysical privilege to the one over the many, as they presuppose one another: the many become one, and are increased by one.

>>15025570
Fine question. Without going into it too deeply, I would argue that gender permeates both the contingent, ontical reality of Being, and that the tendency to categorize into types is an ontological foundation of Being. It is not essential to Being that any particular gender norms be as they are, but it is necessary to Being that gender norms of some type do arise. I would also argue that the norms only arise when transgression is possible, as a necessary condition for norms to arise at all.
>>15025586
>It's called marking nouns with the gender that corresponds to the sex of the referents.
Yes, 'natural gender' is merely in correspondence to sex, but I don't quite understand how that isn't still literally (and grammatically) gendering.

>>15025355
Something preceded the 'Big Bang', but I would deny that the universe had a first temporal moment: there is no eternal act of divine creation that fixes the world in existence and there is no eternal perspective from which the universe can be considered a finished product. Time is the process of creation; the order of beings in time is the process whereby beings are created. In time defined relative to it, each occasion of experience is causally influenced by prior occasions of experiences, and causally influences future occasions of experience.

>>15025229
Apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, bare nothingness. The concrete enduring entities are organisms. The whole concept of materialism only applies to very abstract entities, the products of logical discernment.

>>15024394
>There is nobody who does this without also crying gender dismorphia.
Exactly. Many individuals cry gender dysphoria with absolutely no hint of body dysmorphia. They're fully content as cuntmen and dickgirls, because it never about their genitals.
>Nonsense. Man or woman is merely the correct way of saying human adult male or female sex.
There is sex, penis, vagina, those are real. Gender is entirely a product of language: to call one sex male and the other female is to gender the sexes.
>meaningless weasel words
Actuality refers to action, act. The act of perceiving someone as 'male' or 'female', i.e. the act of gendering. The cuntman doesn't care if you know he has a cunt, he just wants to be perceived as a man.
>They refuse to give it a name bc they pretend it's not a mental illness.
You haven't even begun to coherently describe what 'it' is.
>"Transvestic fetishism" would be a good name to call it.
Yet that refers to something else entirely.

>>15023595
>Of course psychosis exists. It’s an observed set of symptoms.
So psychosis exists as a list of symptoms used for diagnostic? The carceral product of medical institutions?