Could Honor have temporarily been the strongest Shard?

[Calderis he/him]

Personally, I feel that any heavily invested being, Shard or Splinter, is bound by the very investiture that they are made of. I think that any of those entities making a promise with Intent is going to be intrinsically bound by their word. I think it is an inherent property of investiture, Honor or no Honor. 

[Ripheus23]

20 hours ago, Calderis said:

Personally, I feel that any heavily invested being, Shard or Splinter, is bound by the very investiture that they are made of. I think that any of those entities making a promise with Intent is going to be intrinsically bound by their word. I think it is an inherent property of investiture, Honor or no Honor. 

But why? Especially if oath-related Investiture has in fact all been "assigned to" the Shard of Honor? Why would "obeys promises" just happen to be an inherent property of Investiture in general? That seems highly unlikely, especially given what we know about how the Cosmere works (as little as this is, it's enough for us to recognize that magic would not just "happen" to "obey promises" in itself).

Also, I came up with another piece of evidence for the power of Honor. Basically, Honor designed the Honorblades, which the Shardblades imitate. Then the Five Scholars studied Rosharan Blades and came up with Nightblood. So, Nightblood, which is an incredibly powerful thing, is modeled after something Honor originally designed. Indeed, the Scholars might've been able to Worldhop to various places but for some reason they ended up focusing on Roshar, at least as far as the supersword project went. They didn't try to copy the Metallic Arts, or AonDor (admittedly that would've probably been very difficult given the locality obstacle), or Threnodite silver, or the Aviar, or whatever. They chose to try to copy the power of Honor. Now this doesn't by itself imply, "The Scholars tried to copy the ultimate power they knew of; this power was of Honor; therefore, the ultimate power simpliciter is Honor's," since for currently-undisclosed reasons it is possible that the Scholars really could only, or only reliably, Worldhop to Roshar. For example, maybe from the Cognitive Realm of Nalthis to most any other powerful Shardworld's, transit is troubling except or primarily in the case of Roshar. (I think there might be one or more WoB's that could testify to such an argument.) Also, it might be that other powers were known by the Scholars to be greater, but it was not feasible to try to copy them.

Nevertheless, Nightblood is a testament to a little bit of something, here, maybe.

[So I also came up with a theory about Nightblood as a "robot spren." Originally I took this to mean that he performs the same function as a spren (specially represents a Cognitive concept on the Physical plane), and that his injunction, "Destroy evil," maps to the concept he represents. However, let's suppose that the Cognitive distance between knowledge that Shardblades are made of spren, and this fact, allowed an odd tertiary Shardspren to appear, so to speak. That is, in addition to the spren that actually make up the Shardblades, a species of spren formed based on the common legends of Shardblades, a "legend-of-Shardblades-spren" as it goes. This would have been involved, somehow, in the making of Nightblood, and I think it might account for the anomaly in him. That is, he has been made into a spren of the spren of the Shardblades in that he is literally based on the legend of Shardplates (as much as the facts).]

[Calderis he/him]

58 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

But why? Especially if oath-related Investiture has in fact all been "assigned to" the Shard of Honor? Why would "obeys promises" just happen to be an inherent property of Investiture in general? That seems highly unlikely, especially given what we know about how the Cosmere works (as little as this is, it's enough for us to recognize that magic would not just "happen" to "obey promises" in itself).

Because Honor, per WoB is not about oaths specifically. 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Shards. We started with fairly obvious ones, magic wise. Trying to keep this spoiler free, so: Ruin, Preservation, this kind of thing. Then we get the weird ones. Why do we have Shards that can only exist in the mind of a sentient creature? Like the concept of Honor can only be done when it's carried out, essentially, by a sentient creature.

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

So when I split Adonalsium I said, "I'm going to take aspects of Adonalsium's nature." And this involves personality to me. So the Shattering of Adonalsium was primal forces attached to certain aspects of personality. And so I view every one of them this way. And when I wrote Mistborn we had Ruin and Preservation. They are the primal forces of entropy and whatever you call the opposite, staying-the-same-ism-y. Like, you've got these two contrasts, between things changing and things not changing. And then humans do have a part, there's a personality. Ruin is a charged term for something that actually is the way that life exists. And Preservation is a charged term for stasis, for staying the same. And those are the personality aspects, and the way they are viewed by people and by the entity that was Adonalsium.

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction. So a lot of them do kind of have this both... cultural component, I would say, that trying to represent something that is also natural. And not all of them are gonna have a 100% balance between those two things, I would say, because there's only so many fundamental laws of the universe that I can ascribe personalities to in that way. 

So I find Honor very interesting, but I find Autonomy a very interesting one for the exact same reason. What does autonomy mean? We attach a lot to it, but what is the actual, if you get rid of the charged terms, what does it mean? And this is where you end up with things like Odium claiming "I am all emotion." But then there's a charged term for it that is associated with this Shard. I'm not going to tell you whether he's right or not, but he has an argument. 

source

An oath is just a rule you've chosen to follow. 

If Honor is just "being bound by rules" and that were to map out to everything... Then realmatics is of Honor. The rules that decide what a Shard is and isn't capable of within its intent are Honor... 

It's too broad. Ruin isn't completely devoid of the ability to create, as long as that creation serves his purpose. Why would other shards be any less capable of making an oath? The powers of the Shards are all capable of the same things, they are just limited by the intents placed upon them. 

They are alignments, not completely hard written lines. 

[Fanghur Rahl he/him]

15 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Because Honor, per WoB is not about oaths specifically. 

An oath is just a rule you've chosen to follow. 

If Honor is just "being bound by rules" and that were to map out to everything... Then realmatics is of Honor. The rules that decide what a Shard is and isn't capable of within its intent are Honor... 

It's too broad. Ruin isn't completely devoid of the ability to create, as long as that creation serves his purpose. Why would other shards be any less capable of making an oath? The powers of the Shards are all capable of the same things, they are just limited by the intents placed upon them. 

They are alignments, not completely hard written lines. 

I wonder whether natural law would also fall under the purview of Honor? Admittedly, natural laws are just st descriptions of how nature consistently behaves, but still.

[Ripheus23]

36 minutes ago, Calderis said:

[Quoting Sanderson] Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction.

39 minutes ago, Calderis said:

If Honor is just "being bound by rules" and that were to map out to everything... Then realmatics is of Honor. The rules that decide what a Shard is and isn't capable of within its intent are Honor... 

I'm not saying it's about being bound by rules in the sense of a rule as, "Every A is B," or whatever, or even, "Every A should be B." As you mention, an oath is a rule you've chosen to be bound by. But then why is it said that, "Ruin was promised the chance to destroy the world," or however that goes? Why is the Oathpact-component of Odium's binding related to something that is named after two types of promises? If these are merely meta-rules for the Shards, then they would probably be better referred to as "principles," except even that word has both a metaphysical and a metaethical value. Referring to them as pacts, promises, agreements, and so on sets them apart from mere abstract mathematical formulas or axioms or whatever.

18 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I wonder whether natural law would also fall under the purview of Honor?

This WoB indicates the answer to this question, maybe:

Quote

Honor doesn’t belong to gravity. But bonds, and how to deal with bonds, and things like this, is an Honor thing. So the way Honor accesses gravity is, you make a bond between yourself and either a thing or a direction or things like that and you go. So it’s filtered through Honor’s visual...

[Fezzik]

4 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

Why is the Oathpact-component of Odium's binding related to something that is named after two types of promises?

Odium is not bound by the oathpact. His entrapment in the Rosharan system is due to something else.

[Ripheus23]

Just now, John203 said:

Odium is not bound by the oathpact. His entrapment in the Rosharan system is due to something else.

He is not bound by the Oathpact itself but the Oathpact is Connected to what is holding him in place. Indeed, if he can be freed "at will" (there's a moment when Dalinar appears to accidentally almost set Odium free) or in relation to a voluntary contest of champions, whatever this holding power is, it falls under the purview of "being bound by rules you choose to follow," which is what is of Honor/Honor is of.

[Calderis he/him]

Alright. Here's the thing. Whether this is somehow attributed to Honor or not is irrelevant. 

Odium is bound to his agreement for a contest of Champions... And Honor is splintered, and Dalinar had not yet Ascended to even a portion  of Honor at the time of his agreement. 

And yet, he is bound, per the conversation with Taravangian. Honor need not be directly involved in any of this at all. Which means Honor, or an inherent property, an agreement/oath/pact/promise/whatever you want to call it creates the effect, even if honor isn't whole. 

Edited September 15, 2018 by Calderis

[Ripheus23]

I can agree that Tanavast per se isn't still "directly involved" in Odium's binding. But I think the Shard of Honor, though severely damaged, is still powerful enough to maintain the binding of Odium, or that some network of its Splinters does so, or whatever.

[Calderis he/him]

That's not what I'm talking about. 

He was bound to an agreement, with a mortal man, because of his word. If that is somehow attributable to Honor, then it is still an automatic mechanism of the Cosmere and needs no input from a Shard. 

[Ripheus23]

8 minutes ago, Calderis said:

That's not what I'm talking about. 

He was bound to an agreement, with a mortal man, because of his word. If that is somehow attributable to Honor, then it is still an automatic mechanism of the Cosmere and needs no input from a Shard. 

According to John Rawls' theory of promissory duties in the actual world, promises are morally binding because of both a background institution that justifies making promises at all, and then actual use of such an institution. Honor's power forged the "institution" of the contest-of-champions, and even with the founder of the "institute" dead, the structure remains in place. So it's still Honor's power that is binding Odium, not just a mere agreement with a mere man.

Promises aren't binding "just so," I guess you'd say.

Edited September 15, 2018 by Ripheus23

[Calderis he/him]

Yeah... This is just going to stay a disagreement. I don't think Honor set anything up in advance there. 

[Ripheus23]

Well I'm assuming promises are promises, so whatever is essential to a promise will be true of those in the Cosmere as much as in the real world. The color red has extra properties in the Cosmere, but it's still red. Likewise, promises can't exist as real things without background institutions (although see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/promises/#NorPowVie for the hypothesis that promises can be genuinely authored by sheer fiat).

And a contest is usually at least quasi-instituted, so to speak. It is a quasi-abstract structure with variables that get filled by people who are not identified by name or definite description beforehand. For example, the contest of champions doesn't presuppose that any particular person has to be a contestant. It is an institution in which people can participate without being absolutely essential to it.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Ripheus23

[goody153]

All shards started as equals. Basically the separating factor would be the intent that they advertise.

Things that other shards could do can be be by other shards so long as they're not prevented by their intent or they know what they're doing.

[Quantus he/him]

On 9/16/2018 at 4:32 PM, Ripheus23 said:

Well I'm assuming promises are promises, so whatever is essential to a promise will be true of those in the Cosmere as much as in the real world. The color red has extra properties in the Cosmere, but it's still red. Likewise, promises can't exist as real things without background institutions (although see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/promises/#NorPowVie for the hypothesis that promises can be genuinely authored by sheer fiat).

And a contest is usually at least quasi-instituted, so to speak. It is a quasi-abstract structure with variables that get filled by people who are not identified by name or definite description beforehand. For example, the contest of champions doesn't presuppose that any particular person has to be a contestant. It is an institution in which people can participate without being absolutely essential to it.

This is going to limit the conversation, because it set most of Realmic Theory entirely aside.  "Promises" as defined in the real world and "Promises" as defined in a Cosmere context of Spiritwebs, Connection, and the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms are going to bear only passing resemblance to each other. 

 

 

[Ripheus23]

4 hours ago, Quantus said:

"Promises" as defined in the real world and "Promises" as defined in a Cosmere context of Spiritwebs, Connection, and the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms are going to bear only passing resemblance to each other. 

Not at all. Red still looks red in the Cosmere. Promises still function as binding in the Cosmere. If it is by definition impossible for a promise to be binding without an institutional background, this will be so in and out of the Cosmere. Otherwise we might use the word "promise" in both contexts but we will not be using words quite so correctly as we might. Now, it might not be definitive of promises that they require an institutional background, but I suspect Sanderson might have some familiarity with the notion of institutionalization (at least in the form of divine covenants) and even if he doesn't as such, still, the contest of champions is institutional in form.

[Calderis he/him]

We've seen such a contest before though, without need for any kind to formal agreement. 

Marsh vs Elend. 

There was no binding needed there. It the Intent placed on the agreement that matters, not the contest itself. 

[Ripheus23]

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

We've seen such a contest before though, without need for any kind to formal agreement. 

Marsh vs Elend. 

There was no binding needed there. It the Intent placed on the agreement that matters, not the contest itself. 

My memory of that battle is rather fuzzy but I don't recall it being implicated in a divine being's being trapped by binding. The situation regarding Odium is directly caught up in issues of Honor, the Heralds, and so on, so the notion of Honor's possible champion being able to assume his role without a background institution in place seems weird to me. (Now by the way, a background institution needn't be something like a written constitution, it could be something abstractly/tacitly consented to.)

[Calderis he/him]

In the final clash between Preservation and Ruin,we see Elend and Marsh battling, both being directly fueled by their respective Shards. 

Quote

And he saw—just briefly—an enormous figure in the air just above him. A shifting, brilliant personage of pure white. Her hands held to his shoulders with her head thrown back, white hair streaming, mist flaring behind her like wings that stretched across the sky.

    Vin, he thought with a smile.

    Elend looked back down as Marsh screamed and leaped forward, attacking with his axe in one hand, seeming to trail something vast and black like a cloak behind him. Marsh raised his other hand across his face, as if to shield his dead eyes from the image in the air above Elend.

If that's not a "contest of champions" I don't know what is. 

The difference is that there was no formalized agreement. No cost to one of them losing. 

The issue on Roshar has nothing to do with the battle, and everything to do with the agreement made. 

[Ripheus23]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

In the final clash between Preservation and Ruin,we see Elend and Marsh battling, both being directly fueled by their respective Shards. 

If that's not a "contest of champions" I don't know what is. 

The difference is that there was no formalized agreement. No cost to one of them losing. 

The issue on Roshar has nothing to do with the battle, and everything to do with the agreement made. 

That's obviously not the same kind of contest of champions. It might be in a general sense, but not in the particular sense that Honor was talking about. Honor mentioned a procedure of agreement, but the mere agreement would mean nothing if there were not a principle of championship in question also. When the agreement is come to, the champions will have to explicitly claim themselves to be what they are to become, as with a speech-act.

Rawls, AToJ, pg. 307:

Quote

Or as Prichard expressed it: what is the something implied in there being bona fide agreements which looks much like an agreement to keep agreements and yet which, strictly speaking, cannot be one (since no agreement has been entered into)? Now the existence of a just practice of promising as a system of public constitutive rules and the principle of fairness suffice for a theory of fiduciary obligations. And neither implies the existence of an actual prior agreement to keep agreements. The adoption of the principle of fairness is hypothetical; we only need the fact that this principle would be acknowledged [in the original position]. For the rest, once we assume that a just practice of promising obtains, however it may have come to be established, the principle of fairness is enough to bind those who take advantage of it, given the appropriate conditions already described.

The Shard of Honor is the magical version of the "agreement in hypothetical/pure-possible space." But now whenever there are agreements that depend on magic to be "enforced," they will be routed through the Shard of Honor.

Which brings me to the quasi-obvious counterargument to my major contentions throughout this thread, which I am surprised no one else has brought up until this point: if Honor is involved in all Invested promising, then would not Ruin have to be involved in all Invested destruction? Yet it does not appear as if Ruin is involved in this, does it? Of course, I've focused on Shardic agreements to temper such a meta-implication.

Quote

Douglas

When Kelsier destroys the Pits of Hathsin in Final Empire, it is mentioned that they'll take something like 300 years to start producing atium again. Do the Pits of Hathsin still exist in any form after Sazed reshaped the world, and is that timeline for them still valid?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

source

However, I also do have a theory about that subject, too, namely that whenever a Shard was Splintered/Vessel was killed, Ruin did intertwine with the event. The test for my theory would include whether Hathsin-regrowth is relative to Shard-damage in general.

[Scion of the Mists]

16 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

The Shard of Honor is the magical version of the "agreement in hypothetical/pure-possible space." But now whenever there are agreements that depend on magic to be "enforced," they will be routed through the Shard of Honor.

We have no indication that this is how the Shard agreements work.  Brandon has not said anything about it, nor is there any mention of the mechanism in the cannon.  

I fail to see how quoting real-world philosophy (as you seem to be fond of doing) has any bearing on the Cosmere.  Besides the fact that there are plenty of different schools of real-world philosophy (which conflict with each other), the Cosmere is a fundamentally different reality that our world.  There's magic, for goodness sake.  They are similar in a lot of ways, but they're also dramatically different.  

[tmnsquirtle]

 

18 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

The Shard of Honor is the magical version of the "agreement in hypothetical/pure-possible space." But now whenever there are agreements that depend on magic to be "enforced," they will be routed through the Shard of Honor.

To add to what @Scion of the Mists said, this is actually completely untrue, at least the first part, due to a previously quoted WoB:

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Shards. We started with fairly obvious ones, magic wise. Trying to keep this spoiler free, so: Ruin, Preservation, this kind of thing. Then we get the weird ones. Why do we have Shards that can only exist in the mind of a sentient creature? Like the concept of Honor can only be done when it's carried out, essentially, by a sentient creature.

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

[...]

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by.

[...]

source

Agreement implies some form of consent between two parties. What Sanderson is saying here is that Honor's game is closer to, say, a 'New Year's Resolution' style of agreement than a 'Divorce Paperwork' kind of agreement, if that makes sense.

 

 

For what it's worth, I do think that you have a good thing going by quoting philosophy, since a lot of what Sanderson does is bring interesting concepts and ideas from our world and twist them in neat ways in the cosmere. But the philisophical arguments that you bring to bear don't really seem to be quite as relevant as the data that we actually have.

[Ripheus23]

8 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

We have no indication that this is how the Shard agreements work.  Brandon has not said anything about it, nor is there any mention of the mechanism in the canon. ... I fail to see how quoting real-world philosophy (as you seem to be fond of doing) has any bearing on the Cosmere.

Doesn't Sanderson base the difficulty in holding Ruin and Preservation together, partly on actual chemistry? Doesn't he use the laws of thermodynamics in his overall system? Don't actual religious concepts show up in his implicit and explicit descriptions of the religious groups and forces in his story? Denying that real-world philosophy is relevant to the Cosmere seems weird to me.

6 hours ago, tmnsquirtle said:

Agreement implies some form of consent between two parties. What Sanderson is saying here is that Honor's game is closer to, say, a 'New Year's Resolution' style of agreement than a 'Divorce Paperwork' kind of agreement, if that makes sense.

My impression is that Honor deals in covenants. I mean the Oathpact is a pact, after all. A rule you are bound by, by choice, is just a promise. That's what you do when you make a promise: you voluntarily place yourself under an obligation. Some obligations are just there, like, "Don't murder," but some, like marriage, are more dependent on our will.

EDIT: Honor bears the weight of God's own divine valor, after all. He's way above just divorce paperwork as well as New Year's resolutions...

EDIT 2:

I have to admit, though, that I have not given an argument for why Sanderson would believe in the hypothetical-agreement theory of promises instead of the normative-powers one, especially since the Ideals fit to David Hume's critique of the concept of promises on the ground that a promise seems like magic, that just by sheer will you can create a new instance of the most important kind of fact in the universe. However...

First, Sanderson seems well-versed in quite a lot of things. Rawls' book that I quoted is arguably the most preeminent such book in the last half-century. The exchange between Shallan and Jasnah over what the different Moralities imply about Jasnah's recent deed, showcases that Sanderson is definitely aware of the academic form of much debate in moral philosophy. Also he calls one of the Shards "Autonomy," and the idea that he would use this word with only a passing awareness of its primary meanings seems doubtful to me. Not that Autonomy is the Shard of moral autonomy at all---that would seem more like Honor, to be honest---but still, Sanderson's personal religion is highly grounded in the concept of agency, of the value (and even glory) of free will as such.

More specifically, it has been observed several times that Rawls' concept of the original position bears a striking resemblance to the LDS legend of a council-before-the-creation. Not that they are the same notion in different castings, to be sure, but at any rate I feel like there's a decent chance that a professor at BYU, who is a member of a church that has major beliefs about agency, who knows a thing or two about the details of academic moral debates and terminology, might know of Rawls.

That being said, the extra thing---that Sanderson is going with a Rawlsian theory of what promising depends on to "work," versus the more common-sense "a promise is truly made just whenever someone truly wills it to be so"---I have little to no evidence of, as such. The extra-extra question, whether the contest-of-champions is an institute, and whether this implicates institutionalization in Honor's power, or whatever, is not decidable on the basis of that alternative's resolution, though. Barring a near-absolute handwave on Sanderson's part, denying that Honor's power is involved in the contest-of-champions is exceedingly unlikely to be correct. The alternative is that promissory sealing is inherent in Investiture, which far from disproving my point as such, actually just makes it in a wild way, namely it amounts to claiming that the Shard of Honor is most akin to the unified power of Adonalsium himself. (This would have to be the case, because Adonalsium would have been using the most unified form of Investiture, and if the promise-binding power over the Shards (per the Ati-Leras pact or the sealing of Odium, among other things) is a holdover from Adonalsium, as it were, then Adonalsium's nature as meta-Shardic would entail that it is the power of Honor that is most like the meta-Shardic binding.)

Edited September 19, 2018 by Ripheus23

[Scion of the Mists]

On 9/14/2018 at 3:57 PM, Ripheus23 said:

Well, sometimes I disagree with Sanderson's explanation of his own worlds

I'm not sure that any of the below is going to work, because we seem to have a fundamental disagreement about how to reason about the Cosmere.  If the creator of the Universe says that something is the case - it's the case.  We call them Words of Brandon for a reason.  (Yes, sometimes he misspeaks or changes his mind, but that's actually fairly rare considering how many questions he lets us bombard him with)

 

19 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

23 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

We have no indication that this is how the Shard agreements work.  Brandon has not said anything about it, nor is there any mention of the mechanism in the canon. ... I fail to see how quoting real-world philosophy (as you seem to be fond of doing) has any bearing on the Cosmere.

Doesn't Sanderson base the difficulty in holding Ruin and Preservation together, partly on actual chemistry? Doesn't he use the laws of thermodynamics in his overall system?

These are science, not philosophy.  (Some people may have a weird definition where they're the same, but I think it's generally accepted that science deals with objective questions while philosophy deals with subjective questions) 

Regardless, it's besides the point.  My point was that the Cosmere is a fictional world that is very different from ours.  Things do not have to be the same.  There is a huge difference between saying

• "Brandon seems to be borrowing from the concept of thermodynamics; therefore, I think it's likely that *insert hypothesis here*"

and saying

• "According to the (real-world) laws of thermodynamics, *hypothesis* must be true."  

 

This is compounded by the nature of philosophy where, unlike science which generally has one answer to each question, there are multiple competing and conflicting answers to each question.  This is not a dig at philosophy, it is simply a difference in the types of questions that each field is designed to answer.  Therefore, it makes no sense to say

• "According to *philosopher's* school of thought which states *theory*, *hypothesis* must be true because logic."

Because not all philosopher's here in the real-world agree to *theory*, not to mention the fact that the Cosmere has magic and works in a fundamentally different way than our world.  

 

Starting a thread with

• "Brandon's works seem to match up well to *particular philosophical branch*: *insert evidence from books/WoBs.  Therefore, I think that we could also apply it to *topic* and find that *hypothesis* might be true"

would be great.  I think that plenty of people on this forum would appreciate a philosophical perspective of the Cosmere.  

[Ripheus23]

8 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

Starting a thread with

• "Brandon's works seem to match up well to *particular philosophical branch*: *insert evidence from books/WoBs.  Therefore, I think that we could also apply it to *topic* and find that *hypothesis* might be true"

would be great.  I think that plenty of people on this forum would appreciate a philosophical perspective of the Cosmere.  

I'm sure people have done that (I'm sure I've done that) with better or worse results.

8 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I think it's generally accepted that science deals with objective questions while philosophy deals with subjective questions.

People who don't know philosophy might think this to be the case, but it's about as far from true as can be. EDIT: Because you can't even begin to try to define the very difference between an objective and a subjective question, without implicitly "doing philosophy." (Besides which, as an avid reader of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I will devoutly testify to the fact that objective questions are raised there all the time. (EDIT 2: For that matter, I would testify to the same thing on the ground that a great number of classic philosophy texts either don't revolve around the objective/subjective distinction in the first place, or circumscribe it, or whatever (e.g. The Republic or The Critique of Pure Reason or Principia Ethica or Principia Mathematica or A Theory of Justice for that matter. Indeed the mere fact that computer programming is half-based on mathematical kinds of logic testifies very well to the fact that philosophy is even intertwined with technology. (EDIT 3: It's like when I see people contrast ethics with mathematics, saying the first is subjective and the other objective. Well, not quite. Besides the general debate, in mathematics, over formalism/intuitionism/logicism/Platonism/etc., it's just a fact that pretty much everything in the entire world is partly objective and partly subjective (which incidentally is a different issue over what is absolute or relative; a chair might be to the left of me, which is a relative fact (for me) but it's objective.)))

Edited September 20, 2018 by Ripheus23