Metaphysics and Observation

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fucking drums. i feel you man,i have shit neighbors too

That is a very nice green shirt.

glad to see you're safe!

I hope everything is OK, man!

What happened? Were you kicked out?

In bed with Kane. This feels romantic.

Is the zebra at the zoo just a donkey painted to look like a zebra? The incentive exists for zookeepers, assuredly. We could probably come up with a conspiracy theory that involves the claim "At least the majority of zoos don't have any zebras."

It's possible, but most of us just aren't that interested to verify things. Maybe it doesn't seem like it's realistic.

The point I'm making badly has something to do with interest. Much to my dismay, most of the people I know just don't have much interest in metaphysics other than when it is in the context of philosophy of religion. Even then, people sometimes like to see a problem formulated. But try getting most people to read a published article about that problem.

This relates to another issue, which is that getting anywhere in advancing the conversation, or just one's capacity to be involved therein, quickly becomes a daunting task. Wading in metaphysical debates at the water level of your ankles is easy and pleasant; it doesn't take an extraordinary commitment. But there is a real doozy of a cliff that, should your interest lead you over it (usually this will be a problem that "bothers" you or makes you sufficiently uncomfortable), your life will have to change in some way. You are going to have to make room to become competent, and it's an investment I think most people can't or don't want to make.

So, there seems to be "two metaphysics". People who have made room in their lives to become acquainted with the requisites (weirdos) may find they are bothered, sometimes in pleasant ways, by considerations like mereological nihilism. Sometimes you just appreciate the creativity, and other times you just want to refute things you think are stupid.

But if most of the people in my life who are unaware of my "philosophical double life" knew how much the problem of meta-skepticism bothers me, they would (maybe correctly) think I was psychologically troubled.

Everyone is a metaphysician until their interest level is capped, at which point metaphysics becomes stupid. I could just as easily have substituted "philosopher / philosophy".

Yay!

I hope you soon find some fundamental particles arranged bolt-wise!

Ma dude, you could take a year off and there would still be a list of your videos to be watched. Take your time.
All the best.

I feel like mirilogical nihilists would still believe in composite objects as a matter of pragmatism. At the base level, reality is just fundamental atomics and forces., but people have the ability to create composite objects in their minds. The first form of self awareness created in its mind, a composite object of self. Literally, I think therefore I am. Take the sun for instance, it is just a bunch of fundamental atomics and forces that are squished together. It's us who points at the phenomena and callis it the sun. We can empirically observe the Sun, and we can also empirically observe that the boundary between Sun and not sun is indefinable because it is just fundamentals. The problem isn't that we cannot empirically observe metaphysical theories; the problem is that we observe them all.

This is not a comment on your video, just a collection of bits arranged comment-wise.

(it seems easier to take mereological nihilism seriously when talking about information in computers rather than physical objects in the real world)
(though probably "mereology" is the wrong term when talking about whether bits compose "real" composite data such as strings or hash tables or subroutines or whatever.)

doing metaphysics homework and then this drops 😎

Alas, even geniuses aren't free from drama at home. Stay safe man

I’ve definitely been eagerly awaiting the video this week!
As I’m applying to colleges and thinking about the future (I’m in my senior year of high school), I just wanted to say how profound of an impact you have had on my interests. (And I’m the type of person where my interests are pretty much the most important thing to me.)
I mean, I probably won’t major in philosophy, given that I also adore math and physics.
But I’m doing what I can to get my friends to have an appreciation of philosophy, since I think the public’s perception of it (especially in the sciences) is absolutely tragic!
I’ve probably watched every video on your channel at least once over in the two years since I found it.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that your work has definitely meant a lot to me, regardless of whether you take a break, upload unscripted videos, or whatever else!

first and foremost, take care of yourself.

I think you've made a category error, observations and perceptions aren't objects, they're processes. they are what the things do, where miriological nihilism doesn't describe what the things do or emerge into, it only addresses what the things are.

Take care of yourself! I hope things will be back to normal soon.

Hi Kane. On the subject of mereological nihilism/universalism, I was wondering, have any philosophers tried using mereological universalism as a basis for a moral system?

For example, I am an agent with desires and interests, and doing certain actions will satisfy some interests or frustrate some desires. Decisions that frustrate all of my desires and satisfy none of my desires are pretty poor decisions. But the unrestricted combination of me and another agent creates a further composite agent with desires and interests. So a psychopath torturing a baby is a composite agent making a very poor decision regarding its interests. "The point of view of the universe" is just the largest composite agent, and talk about categorical reasons are just reasons that satisfy the interests of the largest composite agent that you are a part of.

I don't think I've seen anyone else express this view, but I also haven't really read into mereology at all. Are there any universalists who have defended this position?

Tornado?

When by "chair", you just mean an assortment of atoms that is arranged in the shape of a chair, then a mereological nihilist won't have any issues with granting that "chairs" exist. In the same way, there's no problem to accept that "you" can make an "observation".

This only becomes a problem when you assert that "you" are anything other than an assembly of your fundamental parts, with each working exactly the same way that you would expect them to based on their basic properties.

To say that the mereologist has been proven wrong by the question is just to insist on your own assertion and claim that it's universally entailed by the word "observation". That just seems like equivocation.

And I believe that metaphysics do have epistemic consequences. Namely, you would just have to observe how something new comes about from combining multiple parts that isn't described by just the behavior of its fundamental parts. The reason why you think that this observation is impossible to make is because you're already too committed to mereological nihilism, but that doesn't make it impossible in theory.

Wish you luck in the next days!

Take care ! Are you going for the Diogenes lifestyle ?

I think metaphysical commitments can have indirect consequences, because depending on the metaphysical commitment, any particular philosophy might turn out differently. Even doctrines outside of the realm of metaphysics can be influenced by a philosophy's metaphysics. Now all you need is such a philosophy to be influential. Now you've got a case for why metaphysical commitments might actually matter, even though they don't seem to matter at first glance. Take for instance the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer as something that cannot be separated from his metaphysical beliefs and which has considerable influence, to this day.

Wish you the best of luck with anything you're going through! Stay safe.

I have no problem with weird philosophies and philosophical proposals. E.g. I liked your video titled "Nothing" very much. Personally I enjoy philosophy more as an intellectual exercise and some kind of so to speak kinky distraction than as an depot of life-changing explosive ideas that can blow up my mind. And as far as I know philosophers personally (well, actually I used to know one many years ago) I suppose that your professional problem is that you take philosophy and its figments way too serious. I know, I know, some philosophical ideas and theories had profound impact on human history, unfortunately I'd add, but I think that the only safe way of dealing with all that intellectual shit is by taking it with a huge grain of salt. Otherwise it may turn out to be highly toxic, psychologically.

TLDR The self does not exist. It is just bunch of particles in space flowing into more likely configurations (ie entropy increasing). Sometimes they happen to form thoughts that have the delusion of existence.

Lopez Frank Martin David Hall Larry

Arguably a video can be either quick and cheap but not good. Or quick and good but not cheap. Thirdly cheap and good but not quick (takes time to bring quality to videographer content). The metaphysics of videography has observational consequences too, like if finding the flicker reduction parameter this mitigates the light source interfering with sensor uptake of photons etcetera. This would make the video cheap and good but time consuming given have to focus on technical details, but it might give a clue to a metaphysical puzzle of the nature of god as an all powerful and all knowing god (given the problem of evil) could not be good. Who's the god of the video?

I enjoy your lectures very much. Keep safe and keep posting your fascinating content. I graduated in 1988 and am now retired and really like hearing about developments since then.

Idk I sort of think that if the mereological nihilist claims there are no observations, while their opponent does not, then like, maybe we have to be careful not to look at this observational difference the wrong way. Maybe we shouldnt say "observing something debunks the mereological nihilist while observing nothing confirms them". Instead we should say "observing observations debunks the mereological nihilist and not observing them confirms them." Like, if theory X expects A to exist, we try to observe A. If theory X expects observations to exist, we try to observe observations, we dont try to just observe generally. And if we don't observe any observations, that shouldnt make us think we won't observe anything else. Our own observations on the first layer should be like something entirely detached from the second layer observations that are being observed, like some kind of metalanguage or something. Idk if I can really justify that but it seems like the right angle to work at idk.

The metaphysics of audio transmission might aid in part the dynamic content that captures a wide, accurate stereo image of the philosophical content (what the world is like or this audio world) through audio, and so making it feel like recording music, ambient soundscapes, or anything requiring stereo which arguably gives listeners in non locales a sense of the speakers content of mind, if that happens to be true. So a mic with acardioid condenser capsules working in 20Hz - 20kHz frequency range and has maximum 143db SPL can aid in this metaphysical/audio (trans local) pursuit.

Just do George Berkeley and Rupert Sheldrake then return to Plato's "Parmenides".
Oh, and don't forget, one is merely having a monologue w/... God? ;)

start a cult

I wont telm you to take care of yourself, I absolutely hate that.
Good luck though

the computer analogy is fitting, people often regard a screen being the computer the itself, but then ignores the keybaord and mouse aspect of it due ot them being human interfacing devices, and perhaps driven by how the screen displays the states and the "being" of a computer, hence somehow more correlated to the metaphysical idea of a computer itself, but then disregard the fact that a computer can be without all those interfacing devices and exist on its own, like a socially isolated kid at school is still a kid despite his/ her representation towards the other kids

The mereological nihilists appear to want to be "scientific." So, it would seem that one could pin them down with the requirement that any claim they make must be testable, and that it is incumbent on them to define the test.

Suppose that all that exist is random particles. Then if the distribution law is unbiased, the particles may clump randomly into many patterns. If the world were infinite in such a way that there were infinitely many particles, "one" might see a portion of the universe that looks like ours. However, chairs and people are emergent entities in such a universe. It would seem that talking about ultimate reality is to foster an illusion. The furthest removed emergent entity is just as fundamental as any random particle.

But are we to deny that quarks form larger particles, which form atoms, and spark the rise of chemistry? Any that a key feature of chemistry is the dissolution of monadic reality and the creation of groups composed of monads. If the nihilist allows that the monads have a character or characters, he must account for the purpose of the characters and their effects.