I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. You seem to say it dies when the last representative in its equivalence class dies, but don't address how the last idea (or any idea) could cease to exist. — Art48

It seems to me that, without realizing it, you assuming what you want to prove. It's as if you are still assuming some kind of transhuman ideastuff that precedes and outlasts us. I presume you imagine an infinitely fine strand of angel's hair to run from human expressions like '2 + 2 = 4' to a particular associated mindcrystal in the platonisphere. I'm being playfully and explicitly metaphorical here to maybe dig out the unrecognized metaphoricity of your own thinking. I know the platonisphere or mindscape is not a 'normal' place. Can you give a meaning to your signs here ? Are we dealing with a piece of white mythology ? *

Consider also the equivalence class {1/2, 2/4, 4/8,...}. The mainstream view is that this entire class/set is a rational number most familiarly represented as '1/2.' Any member of the set can function as a name for the set, so it has many names. In fact it's even just the set of its names. We have a bunch of objects whose differences make no difference for this or that purpose. If all of those objects are lost, it's hard to see how the set (which is something like the similarity of certain objects) isn't lost too.

*Detail on metaphorical point

I was thinking how the Metaphysicians, when they make a language for themselves, are like … knife-grinders, who instead of knives and scissors, should put medals and coins to the grindstone to efface … the value… When they have worked away till nothing is visible in these crown pieces, neither King Edward, the Emperor William, nor the Republic, they say: ‘These pieces have nothing either English, German, or French about them; we have freed them from all limits of time and space; they are not worth five shillings any more ; they are of inestimable value, and their exchange value is extended indefinitely.’ (WM 210). — Anatole France

The idea is that metaphysical terms are anemic or whitewashed myths that have lost their vividness. Breath becomes the soul and we forget we are still savages trading hieroglyphics. We know not what we mean...but what can I mean by that ?

The “usury” of the sign (the coin) signifies the passage from the physical to the metaphysical. Abstractions now become “worn out” metaphors; they seem like defaced coins, their original, finite values now replaced by a vague or rough idea of the meaning-images that may have been present in the originals.

Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts. Concepts, whose real origins have been forgotten, now only yield an empty sort of philosophical promise – that of “the absolute”, the universalized, unlimited “surplus value” achieved by the eradication of the sensory or momentarily given. — link

https://iep.utm.edu/met-phen/#H4

If you just want to talk about how religious belief is sold, come out and say so. — Vera Mont

I'm interested in a deeper structure or in a generalization of religion. There's no need for supernaturalism. Someone could make Richard Dawkins their sage. Or the ghost of Chairman Mao.
Or the homeless guy in the park who plays the flute. Or Plotinus or Lincoln. Or ChatGPT.

I'm looking at interpersonal dynamics, arrogance masked as humility, humility masked as arrogance, transactional analysis --- and how all this is tangled up with talk of the ineffable and transcendent.

The kid is buying a brand, just as Sikhs, Republicans and patriots etc. always have. No envelope, just a competent shill. — Vera Mont

The brand is the envelope. The point is something like the inside being promised by the outside. The content, which is presumably profound, is not immediately available.

Have you ever seen stupid blurbs on the back of a book you love ? Some of them look shallow and cynical. Quotes from newspapers and not human beings directly (names we might respect) are especially ridiculous.

As a possible achievement - why else would they seek it? — Vera Mont

That's what I thought, just clarifying. If you believe in enlightenment without having found it, then (in this context) you have the envelope but not the letter. You are the detective looking for that letter. Yes / no
?

Poetically obscure. No idea what it means. — Vera Mont

You seek enlightenment which you haven't found, correct ? But you are still looking because it's not in your field of vision yet ? Whatever it is, it must not be anything that you've had a look at so far. This is the play of light and shadow, of what you know and yet don't know. Is there something like an itch that we have and we are looking for what will scratch that itch ?

OK. Perhaps in fact a particular band of warriors was being more practical than symbolic.

I still maintain that this kind of gesture exists. 'I can take you with one hand tied behind my back.' Or I can ride a motorcycle at high speeds without a helmet. Or I can drink mountain man booze. Or I can go without vaccines, without flattery, without apologies, etc.

I think my friends personal hell, that was triggered by his personal contemplations of the notion of infinity, is very similar to your 'solipsism' obsession. — universeness

Good mention!

This stuff happens, and I think we agree it's not essentially about the concepts involved, because most of the time we can safely play with these ideas.

Here's where I think we are at. Solipsism isn't logically coherent, but the issue, in my opinion, isn't really logic. There's something irrational and emotional driving the logic. I know of similar issues with suicidal ideation. The internal monologue compulsively and constantly rehearses justifications for suicide, as if a demon sat on the person's shoulder whispering self-destructive advice in his ear. Another version is compulsive wanting to say 'fuck God' or some other kind of blasphemy, as if a repressed attitude is boiling over. The self is only ideally a unity, one might say. As we get older, we hopefully integrate more and more and obtain a relatively constant sense of self-control and self-esteem.

David Markson sounds great and is a new lead. Thanks !

I've read a few of Cormac's and at the moment, after Blood Meridian of course, it's Child of God.. But I thought The Counselor and No Country (which I haven't read yet ) were great flicks. I will definitely read the newest. One features an insane female mathematician. Should be fun. Gotta wait for that paperback to come out though. It doesn't make cents to go without dollars.

I watched a crime show not too long ago where a man in prison sent information to his friend on the outside, written in very fine pencil on the back of the stamp. But he mentioned, in an otherwise innocuous letter, that the recipient's son might like the stamp. — Vera Mont

:up:

Nice!

The novice doesn't claim to truly evaluate the sage; — Vera Mont

Just to clarify, I had three characters in mind. There is the sage, who is basically a gleaming icon, with no interior. There is the young novice, truly humble, who projects. Then there is the older novice or disciple who exalts the sage in what I'd call a cloak of humility or the yoke of superstition. True humility is there in the young novice, probably with some angst. If a fourth character were to be added, it would be a frankly immodest version of the older novice, who no longer exalts the sage but something generally available to all who work through the feelings and concepts. The issue here is the play of light and shadow.

he goes by the sage's reputation in his chosen field of endeavour. Only time will tell whether the teaching is worth the learning. — Vera Mont

I think this is basically correct, with certain exceptions. But then the sage is a uncertain product with good reviews. In case it helps, I don't think plumbers are the issue. As I see it, the issue is how spiritual symbols and books and individuals affect people who can't yet (not immediately) understand them.

Believing that there is such a thing as enlightenment and hoping to achieve it may give someone a purpose, but a purpose is not enlightenment, and nobody who believes in enlightenment would mistake the one for the other. — Vera Mont

Do you mean they believe in Enlightenment as a possibility ? Or as a personal achievement ? If it's the first, then I'm interested in why/how the unenlightened can be so sure that enlightenment is definitely not having a purpose or being in a state of creative play. It's as if there are rumors of an object that few will admit to seeing while being sure it's not the field of vision. Life is elsewhere. Enlightenment is else wise.

it's no cryptic than letting the phone ring twice then hanging up: just a signal. — Vera Mont

For the receiver, yes, but the idea is that the envelope is supposed to be found or seen. The detectives assume that its decisive contents are missing. Perhaps the ashtray on the desk contains the ashes of some other letter, a genuine piece of evidence.

Would that apply to psychotherapy? When a therapist helps a patient to surface a repressed memory, could such a catharsis have been effected without the therapist? — Wayfarer

Great example. The skill of the therapist matters. 'The envelope is the letter' sounds better though than 'perhaps the way a message is delivered or its messenger should be included in our conception of the content.'

The patient is not satisfied with regarding the analyst in the light of reality as a helper and adviser who, moreover, is remunerated for the trouble he takes and who would himself be content with some such role as that of a guide on a difficult mountain climb. On the contrary, the patient sees in him the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and consequently transfers on to him feelings and reactions which undoubtedly applied to this prototype. — Freud

I don't know if Freud was right. Perhaps that prototype is not personal. Perhaps we have evolved a tendency to project that makes it easier to raise children and organize labor.

Would that apply to a student of piano or cello? Isn't there a genuine differentiation between student and teacher in that context? — Wayfarer

I don't think this example works against my point. The student can see and hear whether the potential teacher can play beautiful music.

There are legendary professors who are said to inspire awe and reverence amongst their students. — Wayfarer

Of course. The issue is something like the transition from expectant projection to an assimilation that makes equal. The envelope, the idea of a forgotten wisdom, can itself be such a piece of wisdom. It's a symbol of transformation, a mytheme with its own power. The simple act of professing, independent of content, seems to include at least an implicit promise that something is worth professing and therefore learning.

In classical philosophy the sage was said to represent the true form of wisdom. — Wayfarer

Blazingly archetypal, no? Which is fine, but hardly contrary to my point. How does one establish or verify that X is the true form of wisdom without having that true form of wisdom ? Could it be that trusting in the existence of such wisdom is itself that wisdom ? 'Faith in faith' need not be interpreted as an antispiritual joke.

I also think Kierkegaard is great. Is critical thinking about spirituality not an aspect of spirituality ?

The body has a "time-passing-sense" (probably operating in the brain stem) and as we age, it slows down. As it slows, our perception of time speeds up. — BC

No kidding? That's wild.

I think this other fellow is more on target.

I find it ironic that an apparently solipsist is, in fact, such a slave to this imaginary concept of "truth", that shouldn't be possible. ...

I would tell you that reality is an illusion, that everything exists from the perspective of the individual, the individual holds a privileged position to dictate what is and isn't true, and to legitimatize their way of interpreting and characterizing all concepts and things. You would deny that, and talk to me about the harsh nature of reality, and about being unwilling to compromise when it comes to truth. That's your idea of solipsism? What the fuck? — Judaka

wanted something particular from philosophy, that is a desire, but not a personal "psychological" feeling. — Antony Nickles

I can guess at what you mean, but it's not clear as it stands why desire is not a personal feeling. If you just mean it's a deeper more generous drive, then I agree. It's a 'spiritual' or 'artistic' or 'selftranscending' urge.

I am convinced or sure that I can not have absolute irrefutable knowledge. — Antony Nickles

Who would refute it though ? And what would refutation mean ? If the self is all there is, there is nothing the self can be wrong or right about. How could logical norms be binding ? If they are binding, then that's already the beginning of the world, something that opposes and restricts the self, something that holds the self responsible. Unless there is something I can be wrong about, what can uncertainty mean ? And if I can be wrong, then there's a world beyond me.

This is not a mathematical proof but an attempt to make visible the basic unintelligibility of solipsism. It's a complicated form of "god is made of however" or "ideas sleep furiously in the green."

I'd say the sense data is not in the mindscape, but the idea of shit is. — Art48

To me there's a relatively reasonable interpretation of 'mindscape' along the lines of 'geist' or 'spirit' or culture. We humans live together in a symbolically articulated lifeworld. We have marriages and milkshakes and murder and mud here. We are held responsible for what both what we say and what we do and their relationship. The language we are "in" does transcend the individual, but you seem to want to make it transcend the species.

Some philosophers pretend they can break up this unity into components without talking nonsense, but I don't think it's so easy. The confusion is various versions of secret insides, like ideas that hide inside or behind expressions, ghosts that hide inside meatsuits and drive them around with nothing but willpower and a pineal periscope, the the really really stuff that hides beneath every namable floor.

"There are ideas" just places ideas in the domain of the dicusion. But you erroneously take this to mean that they have a place or a time or some such. — Banno

:up:

It's way too easy to use words like 'idea' and 'exist' without hearing their hollowness, their elusiveness, their contextdependence, ...

Can you describe how and when an idea goes out of existence. For example, 2+2=4 is an idea. Will it ever cease to exist. — Art48

If we stick with the equivalence class metaphor (with a blurry substitute for the mathematical version), then the idea dies with its last representative, just as it was born with its first.

It's conceivable that we'll include 'Klingon' expressions in such an equivalence class, if we last that long and someone finds us.

But I'd give logical priority to the idea itself so defining the idea in terms of its expressions seems backwards. — Art48

But that's exactly the step that I'm questioning (I go into this in my Semantic Finitude thread.) It is arguably the basic superstition and the basic confusion of Western philosophy, tangled up with the complementary immaterial subject for whom such beings are supposed to be mysterious and immediately present.

The trouble is you haven't set out what it is you are asking; how you are using the word "exist". — Banno

:up:

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Good post ! Rucker is great. Let me throw a wrench into the machine. What is an idea ? One approach, that might save us some trouble, is that it's an equivalence class of expressions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_class

I'm happy to explain the concept of an EC if you are interested.

In short, I don't think ideas always existed. Or always will exist. I don't think it makes much sense to try to 'get around' the historical 'space of reasons.'

What's your take on the desire to make one's mark in the world - not necessarily to be recognized, but to leave a legacy, even if no one knows it was you? — Tom Storm

I suspect that we are evolved to enjoy bringing resources back to the tribe. We tend to love children and pets, just for being there. It's even one of the great joys of life to nurture.

I think the truest and deepest art (I include philosophy and drama) comes from a similar place. It is fundamentally self-transcending and directed at least to a virtual community that it may even be helping to create. The desire is to bring the gift. If it's experienced as truly a gift and of value, then its assimilation is not only or even primarily recognition but the empowerment of the tribe or species. It's like wanting your baby to eat the good food you made.

I joke that there's only one philosopher/artist, one 'spirit' or Geist, that gets poured differently into different skulls, to run its adversarial self-expansion and self-exploration routines. As Feuerbach noted, every species is self-loving, self-asserting, and glories in itself. When humans love human children, it's like they are loving the image of their own eternity. In art and philosophy, it's as if they are adoring their own transcendence, the glory of their minds. "For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage." A generalized polyamory beyond the flesh ? An onanistic orgy of the singular Dionysos reassembled?

Earlier we contemplated whether freedom was doing without identification with the eternal. In this context, I think Schopenhauer nails it. We know on some level that death is unreal. Our little self, however unique, is still essentially replaceable. There are some hangnails we can talk about, but I'd like to see what you make of this.

*Last thought. The individual body cannot reproduce itself, which mocks our personal egoism.
The flesh itself betrays our need for and directedness toward others. Until rich dudes achieve immortality and sleep in a pile of sexbots who speak 17 languages.

This work by you on my behalf is a very valuable service and I'm now thanking you for it. More power to you in your interactions with others. — ucarr

That's very kind! Thank you for taking the time to be so kind. And it's nice to hear that my writing is doing what I want it to, which is spread/inspire beautiful ideas.

Do you think that when we drive over a bridge spanning a body of water, say, The Golden Gate Bridge, we're trusting an application of math language that is an attempt to define numbers within empirical experience? — ucarr

I'm not quite clear on what you mean here. Hopefully this is related. I claim that pure math (the proving of theorems) is not the practical or 'genuine' foundation of applied math (of technology). We trust what works like monkeys. Psychologically we do as 'one' does, conform to the current engineering standards. The civil war in the philosophy of mathematics (intuitionism versus formalism versus logicism versus and so on) is not, to my knowledge, on the curriculum for engineers. Yet real numbers are eerie upon close examination. Mainstream math says that the set of computable numbers has a measure of zero. This means that practically all real numbers do not even have finite 'names.' Keep in mind that familiar transcendental numbers like $\pi$ do have a finite 'name' in the sense of a program of finite length that computes and therefore compresses them. But most real numbers contain a countable infinity of bits of information (can't remember if one is technically allowed to say infinite, but it's informally the case, if I remember correctly.) To be sure, our computers use floating point numbers, but algorithms are justified in textbooks using real analysis (a science of elusive, theoretical entities). The big point here is that real analysis is a beautiful, hairy mess, but the world is mostly unaware of all this. We drive over that bridge because 'everyone' drives over that bridge and we didn't just see a disaster on the news.

Amazingly put. — finarfin

I bow in gratitude.

But what of the external world? Does that not shape us and our actions more than our own decisions? Why, yes, that may be true. But still, these choices, even under total duress, serve to solidify the identity. — finarfin

Indeed, we are self-replicating machines for converting disaster into opportunity and necessity into contingency. Thus spake the second law of thermodemonics!

I find the histrionic narcissism repellant. 'I... I... I... me... me... me... blood... courage... goblins... — Tom Storm

He gave Wagner hell for what they had in common perhaps, for being an actor, a drama queen. I recall Socrates asking the poets where they got their stuff from and not liking their answers. Nietzsche is like some prank the gods pull. One body was stuffed with both a mad poet and a mercilessly ironic analyst.

Maybe. What I do find startling as I get older is the rush of time going by. I have ties older than some of the kids who work for me. It's remarkable how little and how much you can do in one life. — Tom Storm

:up:

I think (?) that the rushing by of time as we age is because the vast machinery of a personality has long been assembled and is now settled and has been running without much trouble. Of course that goes with a lifestyle that keeps you out of trouble. I can't be what the young me tolerated from companions in retrospect, but then they had to tolerate that younger me.

I wondered about that when I read it back to myself. — Tom Storm

Your post is helping me work this out. The earliest lecture/draft of Being and Time has everyday or inauthentic running like a rat in the wheel of a clock that tells everyone's and therefore nobody's time. If we look at how Heidegger and Derrida and Emerson lived, they had to mean something like the joy of courageous creativity. But I think it's more than fair to include joking with the wife over coffee about the pets. To obsess over fame or getting paid would, as I see it, put us back in that clock, insisting that we are machines for converting time into social capital. It may be the case that those who live carelessly 'accidentally' sometimes create such capital. But when I hear great music for instance, I experience it as a gift and not a request. If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

You'd have to unpack this a bit for me to comment... — schopenhauer1

Let's think game theoretically. If a nation forgoes some advantage in the name of goodness and decency (if it hobbles its economy and outlaws fossil fuels), then it'll become a little fish and be gobbled up by a bigger fish that's bigger because it did not make that sacrificing choice. It's like the prisoner's dilemma. Another version. 'My' company doesn't do AI, because it'll kill us all or turn us into pets or the NSA or the terrorists will enslave us with it, etc. Too bad. I lose on the market that demands the next gadgets, the more powerful shovel for digging out that coal. Puff puff black smoke go into the air.

CHOO CHOO TRAINWHISTLE

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

You can also think of this on the level of genes or memes. An antinatalist 'has' to be statistically rare or he could not be here in 2023, because we would not be here, had that kind of wiring ever been dominant. How much antinatalism is genetic as opposed to memetic is a complicated issue. Are some people wired for more pain and less pleasure ? Would this not make them more susceptible to carrying the antinatalist meme ? As opposed to the ironist meme ? Or be-fruitful-and-multiply meme ?

So, an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? Does that resonate? — Tom Storm

Is it more like the acceptance of death is precisely that liberation from dread? Perhaps dread is a terrified resistance to the endless rush forward of life, as if one note from the horn refused to die to make way for the next.

Is the expansion of identity precisely the destruction of its pettier identifications ? Perhaps angels can only fly naked.

Great thread, by the way. I've been chewing on this issue.

Aren’t the moments themselves worthwhile? Is eternity the only criterion of value? — Tom Storm

This is possibly (?) the freedom or self-becoming Heidegger and Derrida had in mind. If I stop desperately trying to identify with something lasting and indestructible -- conceived as the only way something can be 'truly' real -- then time becomes mine in a new way. Like Sartre/Roquentin in the cafe listening to the notes from the saxophone, dying away, an irrepeatable experience. Is it better to die young, perhaps because one lived with a beautiful and reckless courage ? As opposed to a safer but less vivid longevity ? Who decides this ?

Since no man knows aught of all he leaves, what is it to leave betimes ?

You may be dealing with a compulsive thought that will not be fixed with a rational argument. Solipsism looks 'existentially' like a denial of the reality of being alive. It reduces life to a video game with no one watching or judging or loving or hating.

If you are making something like a psychological point, then maybe I agree. One does not reason madness. In the case of this thread, my hypothesis is that the fear of solipsism is actually a fantasy of solipsism. Fear of life, fear of the weight of being in Kundera's sense. One side of the self is terrified by the other.

they can always fall back on the irrefutable position that everything can be uncertain, wrong. — Antony Nickles

"I am certain that I cannot be certain."

Haha, nice little ditty. — schopenhauer1

Thanks. In case you missed this one:

what crystal castles we construct
when first we see that we are fucked

Usually this is praised, but it actually represents a kind of "break" in nature (similar to how Zapffe characterizes it). — schopenhauer1

Yes, and of course it is self-praised. Voices float to the top, predictably, which praise themselves and their listeners. Have you heard of the concept of Moloch ? It's a game theory metaphor. I think it's great. Production cannot stop. The machine is deaf. Self-cancelling memes are eliminated. Once one grasps 'Moloch' in its Darwinian form one grasps also the futility of hoping for more than a secret handshake here and there (or becomes David Pearce?)
I'm not an antinatalist myself (or a natalist), but I fucking get it. It's Camus' issue generalized to the species.

Moloch explained by a woman who should love me forever : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF-E40pxxbI

The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal to consistently focus their attention on. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society and stated that "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future"[5] are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments. — Peter Wessel Zapffe

I agree and would interpret this in terms of something like a 'hero program' which I take to be fundamental. We are programed to put on a costume and rut and grunt our hour upon the stage.

It stops the Will temporarily, and thus we get some reprieve, though short lived. — schopenhauer1

To me the pleasurepain loop is undecidable. I might tell the demon 'yes.' Beauty and horror and terror. Cacophony of voices. The best lick all conviction. The worst are fool of passionate intensity. [sic]

But notice, the things that count are creative within the system, not questioning it altogether. Useful not questioning the system itself. — schopenhauer1

Of course. Hence the joke (?) about getting that carbon out. We are replicators who somehow woke up within the Darwinian nightmare orgy and saw this as our situation. Biological evolution (along with cultural evolution) became self-conscious through us. This might be because, as warring apex predators, it was overall a good strategy to open up that window. That's why it has stayed open. Sickle cell anemia. A few on the cross, the rest obey the boss.

I'm a fan of Zapffe. Do you like Leopardi ? Discovered him recently. I respect the courage of pessimism. It looks at the world as at a painting that perhaps ought not to have been painted. There's an old book where the gods snuff out mankind because we're noisy and they are trying to sleep.

And in the midst of deliberation, we could claim that a given sentence is "meaningless", so it doesn't count against a theory of meaning. (it's easy to find ways to "save" a pet theory of meaning) — Moliere

Yes. It's all too easy to cheat and make excuses. Old fashioned virtues like honesty and courage have no small place here. We've got to be willing to suffer wounds .... which is probably made possible because identity is not too invested in this or that theory but rather in the image of the self as courageous and honest and willing to let its pet theories die. So a higher and better narcissism, which is open to all members willing to follow the rules, tames a lesser, lonelier kind.

It's as if philosophers share the same ego ideal of honest courage that tarries with the negative in the name of the positive.