It depends on whose perspective. If ours, then it's gone. We are all traveling on the same speed of light. We are all changing and carrying with us just the memories of the past. If you used to live at A street 20 years ago, and you left that place, then your past will only exist in memory.I wonder if the past, in any sense, still exists. Or is the past utterly gone? — Art48
Historically, humans have turned, from time to time, to inanimate objects for worship -- crop circles, UFOs, the Titanic (that billionaires paid to see), the stock market. They thought they're gonna get some deep answers to the questions of life. Nothing surprising here.But I know there is a growing community of seekers who are turning almost exclusively to modern technology for answers. — Bret Bernhoft
An empty prophecy -- we've always overestimated the humans' capacity to do without intuition. And we've always failed. Technology is canned goods. We reach out for human contacts and human acknowledgment because this is what's natural for us. This is what feels good and comforting.And with it, will come a certain reverence for and optimism about modern technology's role in the destiny of humankind. Among, amidst both inner and outer spaces. — Bret Bernhoft
I think when we search for comfort we search for that -- a simple place.And that's what I mean by a place for which we feel homesick - a place where we found happiness. It doesn't seem to take very much, does it? — Vera Mont
Are you talking about the purgatory for people who were bad while on Earth?You never get to live there: it's only available to the dead. — Vera Mont
It seems to me like this is partially right, and partially missing something. Sans some interpretation of consciousness where mind does not emerge from or interact closely with nature, it would seem to me that our descriptive languages have a close causal relationship with nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, our math is axiomatic. The initial axioms drive the succeeding mathematical formula.To this point, I would argue that thinking of math as a "closed," system can be misleading in this context. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think it's causal connection. Zero does not exist in nature. (Contrast that with "there are two apples on the table", which you could actually count) Certainly, saying that a 'nothing' exists in nature is a human invention. And the system of math did not include zero for thousands of years. Zero is a modern invention.
I don't know how to define "closed" in this context, but I agree. With over 26,000 Wikipedia pages, and counting, mathematics continues to expand its realms, especially into abstractions and generalizations. I suppose "closed" could mean based on axiomatic set theory, which it normally is, although frequently some distance from Cantor's creations. — jgill
So, you don't include your own personal choice, no matter what your society's rules are? I mean, your own personhood -- the internal dialogue that goes on inside your feelings and mind about justice and compassion and fairness?For the purposes of this discussion, what is your definition of morality?
In its most broad sense, the study of that which is right and wrong (viz., what is permissible, omissable, obligatory, and impermissible). — Bob Ross
I looked up the synopsis. Not my kind of book. To me an excellent work is engaging (not necessarily entertaining, for others would find gossips entertaining) and the elements of insights and unexpected turns are artfully interwoven into the narrative. It's hard to describe, but I'll know it when I come across one.Yes, it is quite amazingly tedious and repetitive. Yes, it is cold, joyless and repugnant. But it turns out these are the things that make it so memorable and, at least in retrospect, stimulating.
I think it follows that at least some excellent works of literature are not entertaining, delightful, or enjoyable. — Jamal
There is a social contract. Living in a society obligates us to respect the social contract. That's why there's morality and the law. I wouldn't want to live in a world where people aren't obligated to help the victim of a kidnapper or rapist. Or a parent beating the child to death, literally. Or a spouse torturing the other.Furthermore, if there is any such obligation to do good, how do we go about determining which good actions are the "most" obligatory, for example giving money to a charity vs working at a local soup kitchen? It seems like if it is obligatory to do certain good things, even within your means, then you're almost a slave to the world around you.
So, what is the answer then? What should be the goal of a moral system? What is the grounding for the moral system, and if we aren't obligated to do good deeds, why — Jerry
I get this. When I'm repulsed at something, it lingers in my mind like.. not as a tumor (a nice metaphor)...but like a grime that needs to be cleansed. I choose what I read now. And it's mostly non-fiction.Yes, it is quite amazingly tedious and repetitive. Yes, it is cold, joyless and repugnant. But it turns out these are the things that make it so memorable and, at least in retrospect, stimulating. — Jamal
If I had read the book, I would use the word "misrepresentation". Probably. Maybe now he wants to be legit, so now he calls it a cautionary tale.So as he says, it’s a cautionary tale. However, I do suspect that this is a post-hoc rationalization of what was at the time a more purely artistic effort. That is, his words from 1995, twenty years after he wrote the novel, amount to an interpretation, with no more or less legitimacy than the interpretations of critics and appreciative readers. — Jamal
Yes, I've seen the movie. And your comment about it is on point.Have you seen David Lynch's Mulholland Drive by chance? Despite a lot of surreal disjunction of scenes and characters, we are still able to piece together a explanation of what might be going on that makes the film deeply satisfying, meaningful. — Nils Loc
I understand the sentimental value you attach to memory. Memory is a very important part of consciousness. But memory and consciousness are not interchangeable. Amnesia is one condition which allows a human being to be conscious but lacking memory. In another thread some time ago, I mentioned that there are perceptions we experience that are not temporal.I disagree. Consciousness requires storage - namely memory. Without memory, our sense of self, of place, of time, of coherent chronology, breaks down. As one with dementia experiences as their brains architecture breaks down due to disease.
If we had no memory (storage), we would not be able to revisit mentally the past, and thus contextually would not be aware that the present moment is indeed the present because we cannot retrieve anything beyond it historically. And lastly we could not anticipate a future because we don't have a past, nor present. So why expect a future? — Benj96
No. We can't harvest or store consciousness like the energy. There is no storage for consciousness. Consciousness is a live streaming.Could consciousness be a form of energy like the rest? — Benj96
What are you saying then?I am not saying that philosophy is an illegitimate practice. — Bob Ross
With the proverbial "heart". It seems to be perfectly possible to live a good life without any self-reflection or philosophical contemplation. You just "follow your heart". — baker
No, this is a misrepresentation of metaphysics such as Descartes's meditation. It's not the senses that mislead you, it's the thought that ideas come out of nothing. No one is deceiving us. The world out there does not deceive.The problem is that the senses often give us confusing and misleading information, i.e. they deceive us. For example, it looks to me, like there is nothing between me and the far wall of the room, but I know there is air in between. Logic has figured out that air is a substance even though it is unseen. — Metaphysician Undercover
No. Read below:Well, he kinda did. At the beginning of his meditations, he said something along the lines that he had hitherto held many false opinions purely because he'd swallowed the accepted wisdom. This is why he had to go back to square one, as it were, and put aside everything he thought he had known, starting with the self-evident 'cogito ergo sum'. — Wayfarer
And the longer and the more carefully that I investigate these
matters, the more clearly and distinctly do I recognize their truth. But
what am I to conclude from it all in the end? It is this, that if the
objective reality of any one of my ideas is of such a nature as clearly to
make me recognize that it is not in me either formally or eminently, and
that consequently I cannot myself be the cause of it, it follows of
necessity that I am not alone in the world, but that there is another being
which exists, or which is the cause of this idea. On the other hand, had
no such an idea existed in me, I should have had no sufficient argument
to convince me of the existence of any being beyond myself; for I have
made very careful investigation everywhere and up to the present time
have been able to find no other ground. — Descartes
First of all, thank you for starting this thread and writing the OP as you have done. I was trying to get comments in this thread https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14673/is-maths-embedded-in-the-universe-/p2Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene. — Wayfarer
With this I disagree. I object to the cognitive disorientation and I object to the following comment as well:This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. — Wayfarer
What does that even mean?What the ancients, like Plato, demonstrated is that the senses deceive, and we ought to trust the mind with logic, over the senses, as capable of producing a more reliable and accurate "world". — Metaphysician Undercover
For this question alone, no. To me, surrealism is an ambient atmosphere -- there needs to be the development of the characters themselves in order for it to be thought provoking.But can a story with surrealistic characters be thought provoking?
To me it’s like saying you had a revelation about a philosophical topic by reading a Disney story… You could understand the ideas of the author better, but how can it be thought provoking if you can’t stay in the story and think deeply about the characters, about how they would react in the world the author described? — Skalidris
Yes, this is a very astute comment. I will give an example of the movie Lamb (2021) by the director Valdimar Jóhannsson ( Icelandic). There is no book, I'm afraid. But a screenplay co-written by the director. This is a horror genre. In the movie there is the hybrid of lamb (or ram) born in the barn of a couple who owns and runs the farm. (The baby lamb has a father which is revealed later in the story. The father is also a hybrid of human)If in the story, there are a lot of birches (presented as regular birches) growing underground without any light, it's illogical if the author never explains how they do photosynthesis. Similarly, if a character is presented as a healthy human being, then later in the story is completely distorted, if that distortion is never explained, it's illogical given the premises. But if the premises are that the character is completely crazy (or not a human being), then, even if the reader can't make sense of their behavior, it can be considered logical. — Skalidris
I believe this is very true. (In this case, I am using a film, instead of a book).Whether unexplained underground birch trees strike the reader as delightful or stupid depends on the skills of the author and the experience and attitude of the reader. — Jamal
There is no other task that makes us think in a way that does not involve memorization of equation, procedure, or statistics than metaphysics. Philosophical discussions is natural to humans.In the sense that I defined it in the OP, I don't think we need metaphysics to expose errors in our reasoning: we can do so without making ontological claims. — Bob Ross
You don’t just suddenly drop everything you believe in for the opposite, unless you have mood disorders. And then going back to a grey zone just seems pseudo philosophical in the sense of “oh but nothing is black and white”. — Skalidris
Yes, good observation. One of the things I learned about fiction is that it is not an invitation to implausibility. A former professor would say that plausibility is what connects us to the characters, no matter how outlandish they are.In the end, when people read stories, do they want to be comforted in their opinions or do they want to learn something through a story that makes sense? — Skalidris
I was going to say this until I scrolled down to your comment.There’s more to metaphysics than just imagination it also includes reasoning not based upon experience but using deduction thereof such as found in math. It also includes tautologies which again are aspects of reason. — simplyG
This is a good starting point for a new thread because I was trying to discuss with @schopenhauer1 in the Kit Fine thread about what is existence without an observer.It seems to me like this is partially right, and partially missing something. Sans some interpretation of consciousness where mind does not emerge from or interact closely with nature, it would seem to me that our descriptive languages have a close causal relationship with nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Math was created within a closed system. Think of a language written in symbols. We came up with math because we need to describe the physical world predictably and reliably. We could have come up with a whole different numbering system than the one we have now.I wish to explore this because we have come up with many mathematical formula that describe how the universe operates from the famous formula such as e=mc2 which has practical applications to many others.
Or is maths completely independent of the physical universe and it just so happens that some mathematics is good at describing some aspects of the physical universe and in fact supersedes it? — simplyG
"Stuff" is what exists without an observer. Actually, reality would be reduced to two-dimensional world without an observer. Do you agree?What is existence without an observer? What’s the relation of observer with thevworld. These kind of things. — schopenhauer1
Meaning what?I am not saying that the world doesn't exist without an observer (necessarily), but the explanation of what that is (ontologically). — schopenhauer1
Maybe they do.People who quote their favourite dead philosopher as if he had the final truth of everything. — Vera Mont
You are combining both the questions about whether the world exists (or whether there is existence) and how do we know that the world exists.In other words, where is the "incorrect formulation" stemming from, and why do you think it implies a "why"? — schopenhauer1
Yes, and other similar pieces.Referring to pure fiction, like Orwellian Newspeak, as though it were something real. — praxis
This is an incorrect formulation of the ontology-epistemology question, which I've seen quite often. With the "How is it that the world exists" you really mean to ask "how is it that we know that there's anything that exists. Very different questions.But anyways, to the broader point, much of philosophy revolves around how it is that the world exists without an observer, or sometimes formulated as a human observer. — schopenhauer1
So, if one is doubting whether they're acting, then the doubting itself is an act that they're not sure of. This has a funny consequence -- I'm not sure I'm walking, but I'm also not sure that I'm not sure I'm walking, and I really can't be sure at all of anything, which means there is one thing I know non-mediately: that I don't know anything. So, there IS ONE THING I know for sure!!When you act do you know you are acting, or are you not sure whether you are acting? — Leontiskos
We know our actions in a direct way -- no input from the outside world. If I walked over to the kitchen, I knew it without waiting for an object to hit my eyes. My action is within me. My being is within me. A ball is outside of me, I can perceive it. I can perceive its qualities. If I lay down and imagine aliens, only I could know I am imagining. The act of imagining is not something that I perceive like I am perceiving a tree. In fact, compared to the perception of a tree, my imagination can take many forms; whereas a tree is a tree is a tree. Seven billion people could confirm that a pine tree is a pine tree.To everyone in the thread it is accepted that we know our own actions in a more immediate way than we know others' actions, — Leontiskos
It's valid because of the form of the argument.It's valid because "action is mediated" is not our argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Proof by contradiction works in math -- and it was built as a mathematical argument.Although, I am aware that mathematicians generally prefer direct proofs over the reductio, because a reductio lacks fecundity, it cannot be used to set up new proofs as easily. — Count Timothy von Icarus
...there's not a containment relationship that exists in the argument. "Setting a set of things" itself is part of theory of action, which is about critical judgment -- see Kant's theory of action. If you notice, the argument provided includes that critical judgment on judgment about appearances:It's a containment relationship that fails to obtain. Or we can define it through membership. Action is not in the set of "things known mediately," while "all appearances" are members of that set. Thus, on pain of contradiction, action cannot be a member of the set of appearances as this would entail that it is an element in the set of things that are know mediately (which is rejected in P2). — Count Timothy von Icarus
If anything is an appearance it is known mediately,
The individual knows that he (or she) acts non-mediately
Thus, action cannot be an appearance.
agree that depressed people are not happy, but I don't believe they have an accurate assessment of life. When they suggest there is no meaning to life and no reason for our existence, they are wrong and that's what makes them so unhappy. — Hanover
So, depressed people have a clearer perception of reality than most of us, and they are more "prepared" for tragic events than the overall. Oh, come on... why is depression the main cause of suicide then? :roll: — javi2541997
I have no objection to the above comments. I did not read the scientific study to support that article. I also find that glorifying the dark perception of life by depressed people is biased -- serious looks do not entail deep meaning.nteresting. In my experience people with depression are just as likely to get things wrong but the tendency is towards catastrophic underestimation and negative inferences rather than Panglossian overestimation. — Tom Storm
Because we have adopted the meaning of "purpose" as something that's got to be grand. Anything less than grand is just existing. And existing is easy to do. Rocks exist. People can't picture themselves serving a purpose if they make a minimum wage and cannot pay the rent. Or if fuel price increases and everyone is bothered by it. How can we think of the grand purpose in life if we're annoyed at the pump?Regret and sentimentality come from not believing one has a purpose that is constantly being fulfilled. If we accept that the driver for our acts aren't the causes that precede them but are for the purposes we are to fulfill, then it's hard to find a reason to focus on yesterday and try to run backwards in time and away from our intended destination. — Hanover
Except that we can't do it that way. Remember the OP's question is "IS it both valid and sound?"We could thus set this up as a proof by contradiction by assuming our premises and assuming that "action IS appearance." This results in a contradiction where action both is and is not a member of the set of "things known mediately," — Count Timothy von Icarus
What Is Depressive Realism?
Depressive realism is a psychological term describing the tendency of people with depression to have a more accurate assessment and perception of reality than those without depression. While people without depression tend to overestimate their successes, capabilities, and control over the world around them, people with depression generally have a more realistic view.
Depressive realism is based on an overall tendency among depressed people to focus on negative aspects of reality. Because the world can be a difficult, unpredictable place, and because it is likely that bad events will happen at some point in life, depressive realists may be more prepared for those eventualities than people who overestimate their control and capability. — Arlin Cuncic, Very Well Mind
I believe the field of psychology, or at least in the study of personalities, acknowledges that the pensive, quiet people (who often find life to be "not happy") are the ones who have a more accurate assessment of life. Not a good finding coming from this field -- but there you go.This is the social butterfly's view on life, who surrounds themselves with as many friends as possible. Do social butterflies live especially meaningful lives? This has not been my impression. — hypericin