<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div>Ben, your logic is not rusty. We are struggling with centuries old questions. Hume says there is nothing in the universe that says logically/necessarily the sun will rise tomorrow, except our knowledge (belief!) that it has always done so in the past.<br><br></div>On this belief/experience we build a theory of planetary motions, etc., within the framework of which the sun, therefore the day, <u>must</u> (logically must) appear tomorrow. Our expectation within that theory is necessary. Outside of it a belief system, one might call an empirical expectation, I think, quite close to what you are saying.<br><br></div>A side question: since the sun rises every morning, is it boring? By our discussion of boredom until this moment, shouldn't it be?<br><br></div>The words "justice"/"guilt" embody beautifully the tension between empirical and non-empirical (open ended?) expectations.<br><br></div>Legally, guilt (justice) has a clear definition. If someone is tried and a verdict is reached, justice is served. Then, one's guilt or non-guilt has an empirical answer. But that does not necessarily answer the question, was justice served? Justice is one of these loose words that may lead to daydreaming, so to speak, to a daydreaming of ideas (metaphysics being a kind of thought daydreaming).<br><br></div>My comments may appear off the topic sometimes, but I am trying to make a point. I feel (perhaps I am being unfair) that the discussions on boredom have been too result oriented, affected by the ethos of efficiency. Boredom is a word like justice, becoming more complex (descending on the ladder of abstraction), more ambiguous, less clear, riddled with exception the more one studies it.<br><br></div>Murat<br><div><div><br><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 1:58 PM, B. Bogart <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ben@ekran.org" target="_blank">ben@ekran.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Hello Murat,<br>
<br>
</span>I think of prediction as a description of what is likely to occur next<br>
that is explicitly not occurring now. A definition does not seem to<br>
involve any inherent sense of time.<br>
<br>
When I wrote my previous message I was wondering whether a fetish video<br>
that contained no explicit sexual acts, but only the correlated fetish<br>
implements and bodies, would be pornography. To a person that does not<br>
respond sexually to whips or rope, the film may not be considered<br>
pornographic. To a person who does, it might be. I suppose all this<br>
means is that definitions are context dependent. Prediction is exactly<br>
about learning (temporal) contexts.<br>
<br>
Of course, as predictions are so engrained in our cognition, we have<br>
plenty of cultural descriptions that refer to expected occurrences over<br>
time. It's hard to imagine a definition of justice that does not depend<br>
on conclusion where misdeeds in the past lead to punishment in the<br>
present or future.<br>
<br>
You ask:<br>
> ...in what ways, if any, if your predictions are empirical and not<br>
> purely deductive?<br>
<br>
That is a very good question. I would say that predictions are learned<br>
from experiences and thus empirical. What are deductions? If we mean<br>
logical inference, then they still depend on a structure of relations<br>
between atoms. In the case of prediction, these relations are based on<br>
proximity in time over many iterations. In deduction where do these<br>
relations come from? I suppose what I'm saying is that while deduction<br>
appears to be non-empirical, it may actually depend on an underlying<br>
structure learned from embodied experience of the world, and thus just<br>
as dependent on empirical data as prediction. My logic is rusty, so my<br>
understanding of deduction may be too simplistic... Perhaps restating<br>
the question may make this easier.<br>
<span class=""><br>
Ben<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>