Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

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"Violet is not blue and it is also not red. I'm not asking for a bluish red but for a 100% blue color that it is also red."

If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time).

"You are misusing the language, or rather I am in this case, to ask a paradoxical question. Where are all the cat dogs? This is a never ending game because we don't agree on the language. This is exactly the realm of metaphysics."

It's the realm of semantics (ie. definitions), but I'm not convinced that every metaphysical question could be reduced to a semantic one.

If you take the question of whether one has some sort of existence (like, say, as a "soul") before birth, I think that question would still exist even after we'd agreed on the constituent definitions. Also, I don't see anything paradoxical in that question. Even were it paradoxical, its paradoxical quality would in no way disqualify it for me. Perhaps I'd be even more interested in examining it, as examining paradoxes has been a very fruitful approach throughout human history.

"To me greatness could be quantified by how much progress has been made in answering the question. After a thousand years and possibly millions of lives wasted trying to answer "is there existence before this life?" we are not one single iota closer to an answer."

There have been answers, they just haven't satisfied everyone. The same could be said of pretty much every other great question, no matter whether the answers come from science, religion, philosophy, intuition, or elsewhere.

> If you're asking if there exists something that's 100% X at the same time as being 100% not-X, I'm not sure there's much to debate about it, as there clearly isn't (at least not in this world, where things can't seem to be themselves and not themselves at the same time).

You found the loophole! Sad to see you abandoned so swiftly your own logic when the time came to evaluate your own statement. This is exactly why the metaphysical deals in the realm of ambiguity: once you define it in a clear and concise manner all the mystery disappears, and that to some, is no fun.

That is also why a question like “is there life after death?” is uninteresting: by definition life comes before death.

"a question like "is there life after death?" is uninteresting: by definition life comes before death."

You're not being charitable to the questioner by interpreting it as a paradox.

Clearly, what most people intend to ask by that question is whether one can exist in some form (as a "spirit" or as "soul", or maybe come out of the VR that is the world, or in heaven even in a body like the present one or a more perfect one, or in hell, or maybe reincarnated in as another lifeform, etc) after your physical body stops functioning. There is no paradox in that.

Not so clear, because you see, that is another question. This is why we need to define things very explicitly and then accept the implications of those definitions or we’ll never get anywhere.

Now that you accepted that there is a paradox in the original question (“is there life after death?”) you reformulated it in a way the paradox is no longer present and your meaning is less ambiguous:

“Is there something not physical that continues to exists even after the physical body no longer does?”

And that is a very interesting question, but first we have to acknowledge that it is a different question and because you asked it in a non paradoxical way it opens up avenues for exploration unavailable to the original question. I would personally start simply by asking “is there something not physical, ie. a soul, “in” a being?” That is in itself is own can of worms because even if there are “souls” they might “die” when the body does so it is not as clear cut as one might initially think, but at least is a start. I’m sure there are other approaches, but at least we should all agree: it is a different question.

My point is only unparadoxical questions can have a shot at being answered. Most of the “great questions” are paradoxes; “what came before the beginning?” sounds very profound but it will never lead anywhere, as centuries pondering it have already proven.

If we take the following questions:

P: "Is there life after death?"

Q: "Is X the same as not-X?"

Then you could argue that question P (and all "metaphysical" questions) amounts to or really has the structure of something like question Q, and that it's therefore paradoxical, trivial, or uninteresting because the answer is obviously "no" ("by definition", as you point out).

I would disagree for the following reasons:

First, if you interrogate people who ask question P what they mean by it, you're likely to find out that they're not asking anything like question Q, but rather something like the following question:

R: "Can one continue to exist in some form after your physical body stops functioning?"

Now, it's true that question P and R are different on the surface, but when most people ask P what they mean by that question is R. So underneath the surface, at the meaning level, they intend to ask R. Question R is not paradoxical, trivial, or uninteresting, and it has no obvious answer that could be arrived at "by definition".

Second, I believe even trivial-seeming questions and paradoxes are frequently much deeper and more interesting than they appear. Careful study and analysis of them could yield profound insights and areas of future research. Witness all the progress in logic from studying paradoxes and other "trivial" corner cases (like the Liar's Paradox[1], Russell's Paradox[2], etc). From such study you get things like Paraconsistent logics[3] and dialetheism,[4] which can fruitfully deal with contradictions.

Third, even things that are "true by definition" can be useful and interesting. Wittgenstein argued that all logical truths are tautologies. Well, if so, they're still worthy of study and have proven to be interesting and useful.

Finally, I am not convinced that all, most, or even many "metaphysical" questions can be charitably reduced to paradoxes, nor that they are trivially answerable "by definition".

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_paradox

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism

It seems to me you are more interested in the question than in the answer. You agree with me, and then spend two paragraphs justifying why you don't want to agree with me because somehow asking the wrong question still has value. It may have historical value, poetical value, emotional value, and that of course is valuable. But as to the question itself, when everyone means something else either the question is malformed or the language is useless.

And it is not so obvious what they actually mean as everyone interprets it in a different way. Some people mean still existing in this "plane", some in some other reality, some mean to be reborn, some mean to trascend, some to reincarnate, some a mix of two, or of all.

If we keep pretending the question is right when it obviously lacks meaning and all the information necessary to be able to answer it we are never gonna find out.

But again, that is what some people want, for some things to always remain a mystery, so they ask paradoxical questions.

"What was I like before I was born?"

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