He thinks this proves that all things are physical, when he himself is explaining that certain non-physical things are have a connection to physical things.
The other error is thinking “reality” = “the physical” — although he doesn’t think this, because of non-physical systems.
1 All formal systems are connected to the physical at at least one point
2 Formal systems exist
3 For X to be connected to Y by a cord, X is not a subset of Y
4 So formal systems are not physical [1, 3]
5 So non-physical entities exist [2, 4]
Further, I add
6 Formal systems contain information
7 ∴ Not all information is physical [5, 6]
Extreme physicalists have a really hard time when they try to claim that non-physical things are ‘really’ physical by positing they are ‘connected’ to the physical.
Because “connected to the physical” ⇏ “is physical.”
The mental is connected to the physical.
“connected to the physical” ⇏ “is physical.”
The mental is connected to the physical.
Neither of these works:
1 The mental is connected to the physical
2 ∴ the physical is mental
1 The mental is connected to the physical
2 ∴ the mental is physical
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As Putnam notes, the fact/value dichotomy fails because it never manages to actually distinguish the two entirely, due to a kind of necessary entanglement (or kinds) between putative "facts" and "values."
What we have is a situation of distinction where in some facts are not values, some facts are values, some values are facts, and some values are not facts.
What we do not have is a fact/value dichotomy which amounts to a metaphysical dualism.
This is one of my rules. I use language quite carefully. When someone response to something I have said by calling it "word salad," nothing is lost by blocking them.
There is no possibility they are being an honest interlocutor.
Anyone with more that a child's level of acquaintance with theology should understand that talk about God will always be quite unlike talk about anything else, unlike talk about any creature (which everything but God is).
This does *seem like* a huge incoherence in transgender ideology.
It seems as if it is absurd on its face to say that children can consent to medical "transition" and a lifetime of medicalization and sterilization, but not consent to smoking a cigarette or having a beer.
An honest atheist (if there were such a thing) might say that he does not believe in an uncreated creator. No!—he must pretend that the concept of an uncreated creator is nonsense!
As if everything that does an action need be susceptible to such an action!
A lot of picture-thinkers will form an image of what’s being talked about and then think something that only belongs to the image belongs to the idea itself. Which in turn causes them to miss/reject other cases that instantiate the idea but don’t fit their particular image.
Descartes gives an example of the limits of substituting pictures/the imagination from concepts/the intellect:
Consider a chiliagon, a thousand-sided figure with equal sides. Conceptually, this is easy to understand, but it is impossible to picture clearly and distinctly.