I was just thinking of more straightforward examples, like if we had never seen an animal, nor any picture or drawing, it could still be described to us. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Like, "Water is transparent"? It seems like my example is an instance of this, but I am certainly open to other concrete examples.

It may be confusing that I used the word "sensible" . I was using it metaphorically. The point was not that we cannot have an indirect understanding of water, say, through a proposition about transparency.

The causal priority of things is needed to explain why speech and stipulated signs are one way and not any other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I agree.

I think that's a difficulty with co-constitution narratives as well. They tend to make language completely sui generis, and then it must become all encompassing because it is disconnected from the rest of being. I think it makes more sense to situate the linguistic sign relationship within the larger categories of signs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think someone might say the chicken came before the egg, and another person might say that they know of a chicken that came from an egg. As you say, the priority is causal. The claim is not that no chickens come from eggs.

Co-constitution, especially in the context of my discussion with Moliere, looks to be a quibble. Even in the case of language acquisition it usually isn't true. For example, a child's first words are never co-constituted with the reality they signify.

But the point I was making with Moliere is <If one does not have familiarity with water, then they will not be able to use the sign 'water' successfully>. ("Successfully" is a better word than "sensibly.") Both Aristotle and Lavoisier are assuming that the substance water has a precedence to our understanding of it, and that is the key. If there were no external substance of water then @Moliere's argument would hold good. In that case there would be no adjudicability between Aristotle and Lavoisier.

But learning to drink and wash is itself learning what water is. There is no neat pre-linguistic concept standing behind the word, only the way we interact with water as embodied beings embedded in and interacting with the world. Our interaction with water is our understanding of water. — Banno

The problem here is that it commits you to the idea that dogs and ducks understand water, when in fact they don't. Walker Percy's study of Helen Keller vis-a-vis his own deaf daughter bears out the fact that Helen's understanding of water was not present until she was seven years old—long after she had been interacting with water. Interaction is not understanding; language does aid understanding; but one will not be able to successfully use the sign 'water' if they have no familiarity with water (either directly or indirectly). It can be said that the sign and the sign-user emerge simultaneously, but it remains true that the signified is causally prior to the sign, in much the same way that the non-sign-user (e.g. Helen before she was 7) is prior to the sign-user (e.g. Helen after she reached age 7). Much of this goes back to the quote.

But is that right? That "Water before word" or "Word before water" exhausts all the possibilities? — Banno

But this is a strawman. No one has said that there must be a temporal precedence between encountering water and encountering the word 'water'. The point is that one does not use a word like 'water' correctly if they have no familiarity with water, and yet one can certainly have familiarity with water without having familiarity with the word 'water'. There is a causal precedence between water and 'water', not a temporal one (although in most cases one will encounter water before encountering 'water').

- Right... I guess I would need you to set out the thesis that you believe to be at stake. I wrote that post with your emphasis on falsehood in mind. You have this idea that Lavoisier must have falsified something in Aristotle. The whole notion that we can grow in knowledge presupposes that we have something which is true and yet incomplete, and which can be built upon.

For myself it seems that if we accept a realist metaphysics, and our meanings change, then we have to accept the very real possibility that most of what we know is false -- that it's "good enough" to begin with setting out a problem or understanding something... — Moliere

It is odd to say that it is false. If it is "good enough" to begin understanding, then it simply cannot be wholly false. If it is wholly false then it is not good enough to begin understanding.

If I know something about water, and then I study and learn more about water, then what I first knew was true and yet incomplete. It need not have been false (although it could have been). Note, though, that if everything I originally believed about water was false, then my new knowledge of water is not building on anything at all, and a strong equivocation occurs between what I originally conceived as 'water' and what I now understand to be 'water'.

For Aristotle learning must build on previous knowledge. To learn something is to use what we already know (and also possibly new inputs alongside).

I agree that Aristotle would accept and expect this -- but I don't think he'd predict what's different. — Moliere

Right. He knows that there is more to be learned about water even though he does not know that part of that is H2O.

But then, in comparing the meanings between the two, it doesn't seem they mean the same thing after all... even if they refer to the same thing, roughly. — Moliere

Right, good. Let's just employ set theory with a set of predications about water:

• Aristotle: Water: {wet, heavy unlike fire}
  
  • [Call this AW]
• Lavoisier: Water: {wet, heavy unlike fire, H2O}
  
  • [Call this LW]

On this construal Lavoisier's understanding of water agrees with Aristotle in saying that water is wet and heavy unlike fire, but it adds a third predication that Aristotle does not include, namely that water is composed of H2O.

What is the relation between AW and LW? In a material sense there is overlap but inequality. Do Aristotle and Lavoisier mean the same thing by "water"? Yes and no. They are pointing to the same substance, but their understanding of that substance is not identical. At the same time, neither one takes their understanding to be exhaustive (and therefore AW and LW do not, and are not intended to, contradict one another).

Now the univocity of the analytic will tend to say that either water is AW or else water is LW (or else it is neither), and therefore Aristotle and Lavoisier must be contradicting one another. One of them understands water and one does not. There is no middle ground. There is no way in which Aristotle could understand water and yet Lavoisier could understand it better.

If one wants to escape the problematic univocity of analytical philosophy they must posit the human ability to talk about the same thing without having a perfectly identical understanding of that thing. That is part of what the Aristotelian notion of essence provides. It provides leeway such that two people can hit the same target even without firing the exact same shot, and then compare notes with one another to reach a fuller understanding.

To agree democratically to abolish democracy seems like a performative contradiction. When I elect a party different to the one you want I haven't taken away your freedom, and your party can always win the next election. But a democratic vote to abolish democracy, if it were not supported by everyone, would illegitimately abolish the freedom of those who opposed it. If absolutely everyone agreed to abolish their freedom then it might be okay, but then what about those yet to reach voting age? — Janus

Unless you want to say that democratic votes require unanimity, they do not illegitimately abolish the freedom of those who voted differently.* In a majoritarian democracy a majority consensus is required; in a super majority democracy a super majority consensus is required; in a unanimous democracy a unanimous consensus is required. There is simply no reason why a democratic consensus must be unanimous in order to be valid. I would say that if a democracy cannot be democratically disbanded then it is not a democracy at all. But of course democracies can be democratically disbanded, in most cases according to the formal rules of the democracy itself.

If a democracy votes to disband itself, then the last act of that democracy is the act of disbanding. The act of disbanding is a democratic act. There is no performative contradiction here; there is just a majority of people who decide to order their political arrangement differently.


* In all likelihood you are conflating democracy with liberalism and particularly with a governmental defense of natural rights. But the idea of unalienable rights is not democratic - it does not flow from democracy. In fact it is undemocratic in the sense that it places a constraint on the democratic principle. Democratic rights are always alienable.

- I don't think anything you said followed from anything I said, which seems standard at this point. You've gotten to the point where you're not even reading posts.

Yes, in a way, but I think reality comes first. I think we have to have some familiarity with water before we have any sensible familiarity with "water." Familiarity with water is a precondition for familiarity with the English sign "water." — Leontiskos

I agree as a rule, although the tricky thing is that one might indeed become familiar with something first through signs that refer to some other thing. We can learn about things through references to what is similar, including through abstract references. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not so sure. What would an example be? That we become familiar with transparency, and because water is transparent our familiarity with transparency is therefore familiarity with water?

I would say that familiarity with transparency is not itself familiarity with water. Nevertheless, someone could say, "You don't know what water is, but you know what transparency is, and you should trust me when I tell you that water is transparent." We can learn something about water through this sort of trust (and philosophy is always built on faith of this kind), but on my view this counts as "familiarity with water" (via someone who has knowledge). Once even that sort of second-hand familiarity is in place the English sign "water" is available to us, at least in a limited sense. Still, this won't work if our source has no familiarity with water.

(I suppose I am also presuming that the one who takes on faith the claim that water is transparent is also differentiating between water and 'water', and is thus aware that their source is making use of a sign.)

And the difference between these two models lies in the question: in the second model, what is signified: the object, or an interpretation called forth by the sign (the meaning)? That seems to be the essence of the question here to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is good. I would only add that Walker Percy's simplified triadic model may be helpful in a place like TPF, given that even skeptics are generally able to admit that not every sign-user has an identical understanding of every sign:





---

- :up:

I would simply want to ask @J what his telos is. What is his aim? Truth? Pluralism? The moral avoidance of strong knowledge claims (which might create conflict)? And if he is aiming at multiple different things, then the question is whether those various aims are mutually consistent.

For example, his claim that he is not a relativist (and that he believes in truth) is somewhat at odds with his conviction that strong truth-claims are morally problematic. Perhaps he solves the riddle by defining truth as intersubjective agreement, but the difficulty there is that we all know that there is a difference between intersubjective agreement and truth, and that we are even at times morally obliged to disregard or even oppose the falsehood represented by the intersubjective agreement.

At the end of the day I would simply say that although we must avoid injustice, nevertheless it is not unjust to affirm what one believes to be true (at a general level). Even with something like racism, it is not unjust when it is in earnest, as some of the cases that Daryl Davis engaged demonstrate. One must be mindful of the ways in which they engage others, but to earnestly believe that something is true is never unjust. One might even avoid pronouncing a truth for the sake of some communal good, but it does not follow that one should not hold the thing as being true. The reason the left frets over this sort of thing is because they conflate per se and per accidens causality and implication.

- Lots of non sequitur here.

My only objection here would be to ask whether this happens fast enough to constitute the complete explanation of recognizing a memory. — J

A good way to approach this is through shape recognition. If I present you with a triangle or a square, will you be able to recognize the shape immediately, without discursive reasoning? Presumably you can. But a young child who is learning their shapes apparently cannot do this. They have to do things like take wooden blocks and see whether they fit in differently shaped empty spaces. They engage in empirical exercises and eventually come to better understand the notion of shape, which in turn grows into shape recognition.

We might ask, "Is the recognition of a shape a discursive or a non-discursive act?" The answer is both or neither. We actually have the ability to "automatize" complex processes into simple acts, and the fallibility of the act follows the fallibility of the process (i.e. we can also automatize false or invalid processes). Life is complex, and not everything is like this, but it seems to me that memory recognition probably is (yet in an inevitably more complex manner).

(It may be worth noting that this "automatization" is different than intellection.)

In order to talk about what is real we need to know what it is we mean by "What is real?" -- this would be before any question on essentialism. In order to talk about what water is we have to be able to talk about "What does it mean when we say "Water is real", or "Water has an essence"? or "The essence of water is that it is H2O"?" — Moliere

Yes, in a way, but I think reality comes first. I think we have to have some familiarity with water before we have any sensible familiarity with "water." Familiarity with water is a precondition for familiarity with the English sign "water."

We can't really deal with any dead philosopher without dealing with meanings -- the words have to mean something, rather than be the thing they are about. — Moliere

I think the key here is that when Lavoisier says, "Water is H2O," he could be saying two different things:

M: "Water is H2O, and if anyone, past or future, says anything else about water, they are wrong."
N: "Water is H2O, and there are all sorts of other true things that can be said about water."

You seem to take Aristotle to have said something like (M), but that's not generally what a scientist means when they say, "Water is such-and-such." If all scientists are saying things like (M) then there can be no growth in knowledge and therefore Aristotle's approach is wrong. But given that scientists are usually saying things like ( N) there is no true barrier to growth in knowledge - either individually or communally.

Whether they falsify one another or not is different from whether they mean the same thing. I don't think they do, but are probably talking about the same thing in nature. I do, however, think you have to pick one or the other if we presume that Lavoisier and Aristotle are talking about the same thing because the meanings are not the same. The lack of falsification is because the meanings are disparate and they aren't in conversation with one another, and they aren't even doing the same thing. — Moliere

Much of this is right, but again, the crucial point you are failing to recognize is that neither Aristotle nor Lavoisier mean that anyone who does not mean what they mean must therefore be wrong. That is a very strange reading. No one is claiming to have a complete and exclusive understanding of water.

It's the difference in meaning that raises the question -- if the thing is the same why does the meaning differ? — Moliere

Because learning occurred and knowledge grew. Lavoisier knows more about water than Aristotle did. Aristotle would expect this to be the case for later scientists.

Yes. My only objection here would be to ask whether this happens fast enough to constitute the complete explanation of recognizing a memory. But as T Clark and I were discussing, this stuff can happen very quickly beneath conscious awareness. — J

Sure, for example:

In a more general sense I think it is important to recognize that contextual situatedness can be intuited in a moment. One does not need to survey, analyze, and engage in induction in order to understand whether something tends to be contextually situated and integrated within increasingly large spheres of influence. — Leontiskos

You might do this very quickly and automatically. — Leontiskos

In general I would say that the mind is not as discursive and time-bound as our age tends to believe. I think this is probably a huge underlying issue on the forum, not unrelated to intuition and intellection.*

I think I agree with this, but let me clarify: "not allowed to survey anything [else]" means you could look at the photographs but, per impossibile, not allow any associations to form in your mind? And "contextually inform" means respond as we normally do, with a fully functioning mind? If so, then yes, this seems right. — J

Yes, that's right, such as the example I gave where you are not allowed to let the pixels coalesce into an image of your mother.

The thesis is that the photograph from the party you attended will possess a different "contextual situatedness" than the photograph from the party you did not attend, and that this is why you remember the one but not the other.

What is your own theory of memory recall or memory recognition?


* Edit: But if you want to think about the fallible "mark" of a memory, this is how I would approach that:

The intentional stance with which we approach a memory may give it a "pastness" color that even dyes it either temporarily or indelibly. If this is right then a confabulation probably becomes more solid each time someone surveys it and (falsely) views it as a memory. — Leontiskos

either the thing has both meanings — Moliere

I would say that things don't have inherent meanings (at least for philosophy). I think you are still conflating metaphysics with linguistics. Throughout this post you talk a lot about "meanings," but essentialism is not about what words mean, it is about what things are.

1. The essentialist would be likely to say that water is H2O (or that water is always H2O).
1a. The essentialist would say that the term “water” signified H2O before 19th century chemistry. — Leontiskos

In (1) the essentialist is talking about a thing, water. In (1a) the essentialist is talking about a sign, "water." You are still talking about the meaning of signs, such as "water," at different times throughout history.

Neither Aristotle nor Kripke are merely talking about what a word-sign means.

For myself it seems that if we accept a realist metaphysics, and our meanings change, then we have to accept the very real possibility that most of what we know is false — Moliere

I've already pointed out that Lavoisier's discovery did not necessarily falsify what came before:

↪Moliere - Okay, great. And for Aristotelian essentialism this is taken for granted, namely that we can know water without knowing water fully, and that therefore future generations can improve on our understanding of water. None of that invalidates Aristotelian essentialism. It's actually baked in - crucially important for Aristotle who was emphatic in affirming the possibility of knowledge-growth.

This means that Lavoisier can learn something about water, in the sense that he learns something that was true, is true, and will be true about the substance water. His contribution does not need to entail that previous scientists were talking about something that was not H2O, and the previous scientists generally understood that they did not understand everything about water. — Leontiskos

When Lavoisier talks about water he is talking about a thing, not a word-sign. He is interested in the reality of water itself.

Yes, it's hard to know what is typical here. Perhaps I'm given to daydreaming! For whatever reason, the "unannounced or contextless memory" phenomenon is common for me, which is probably why I got curious in the first place about how we recognize a memory. — J

Yes, fair enough.

Or another metaphor: Let's say a memory is situated within its causal nexus in the same way as a rock that has been thrown. There it sits, on the ground, having been thrown. Another rock, nearby, is so situated as a result of having been excavated around. So, different causal stories and contexts, but we couldn't tell which was the case just by looking at the rock, or at least not readily. That's the question I was raising -- would the memory (rock #1) still be recognized as a memory if the only thing that differentiated it from an image (rock #2) was its causal context? — J

When I used the term "causal nexus" I was careful to make it secondary, after the more primary sense of "contextually situated." After thinking about your conversation with Count Timothy and the way you view causality in a very specific sense, I somewhat regretted using the idea of causality at all.

So the first thing I would say is that a causal nexus is not merely a causal history, although it could include that. The second thing I would say is that for someone like yourself who has a very specific understanding of causality (i.e. efficient causality), it would probably be better to talk about contextual situatedness.

How is a memory contextually situated? Some ways come to mind: via chronology and via the associations noted (sensual, proprioceptive, intellectual, teleological...). Like a spider's web, if you pull on one thread the whole thing starts to move, because it is a part of an integrated whole. We know what it's like to pull on that sort of thing as opposed to pulling on the silk thread of a larvae. It's different.

Regarding your rocks, a static image or snapshot will tend to lack context. If you see two photographs of two different Christmas parties, and you are not allowed to survey anything other than the two photographs, then it will not be possible to determine whether you were at one of the parties. Only if you are allowed to contextually inform the photographs will you be able to recognize one or both. For example, if you are allowed to recognize a subset of pixels as the image of a person, and you are allowed to recognize the image of the person as the image of your mother, then you can begin to contextualize and make sense of the photograph. Then you will be able to contextually situate the scene from the photograph within your own memory and decide whether or not you were present at the party. But the possibility of remembering will be impossible insofar as we limit ourselves to a contextless datum, whether it be a set of pixels, or a static photograph, or a randomly presented image. A memory is a part of a whole, and parthood cannot exist without context.

Certainly, discussions of logic and the form of arguments and discourse can inform metaphysics. But I think the influence tends to go more in the other direction. Metaphysics informs logic (material and formal) and informs the development of formalisms. This can make pointing to formalisms circular if they are used to justify a metaphysical position. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's exactly right. I think the reason Analytic philosophy likes "possible worlds" is because its reified formalism is logically manipulable in a very straightforward way. On that single criterion it is better than Aristotelian essentialism. But in no other way is the notion of "possible worlds" more helpful or intuitive or functional then the notion of "essence." The common person will use the latter and hardly ever use the former. The claim that "possible world" means something substantive relies on circular reasoning. The notion of possibility is entirely impotent without some undergirding metaphysics.

Facts are supported by evidence, faith is not. By 'evidence' I man 'what the unbiased should accept'; that is what being reasonable means. — Janus

This is what I spoke to in the .

We all hold beliefs for which there can be no clear evidence. To do so is not irrational, but those beliefs are nonrational, not in the sense that no thoughts processes are involved, but in the sense that the thoughts are not grounded in evidence. — Janus

And this is what I spoke to in the last section of that post.

For most people, myself included, to believe X is true without possessing evidence for X being true is irrational. You don't think it is. Now I do not want to adopt your premise arguendo, and the reason I don't want to do that is because the premise is not generally accepted by others in the thread. I think it would be misleading for me to adopt that premise arguendo, because both myself and the many anti-theists would see it as accepting, arguendo, the premise that faith is irrational.

not in the sense that no thoughts processes are involved, but in the sense that the thoughts are not grounded in evidence. — Janus

There are epistemological problems here, and they center around the question of what the difference is between evidence and (subjectively) justificatory "thoughts." I think this problem runs deep in the thought of strong coherentists such as yourself. has targeted this problem in some detail.

But let me lay out a very common Christian approach to the issue you raise. The idea is that there are reasons and arguments that are undeniable (i.e. demonstrations proper), and then there are other kinds of reasons, which incline one towards a conclusion but do not demonstrate the conclusion undeniably (or "beyond any shadow of a doubt"). We could call these latter reasons defeasible reasons. An act of faith relies upon inferences and reasons that are defeasible and not undeniable (or indefeasible). But note that a defeasible reason does count as evidence, at least if we are to use "evidence" in the way that it has been used throughout human history. Faith involves rational underdetermination; the motives of credibility do not force the mind to believe. (Note that what I say here is technical, and must be read with precision.)

(This is why Christians believe that faith cannot be coerced; because motives of credibility are not demonstrations. Or more straightforwardly, because salvation involves the will and not only the intellect.)

No. I decided to trust the app. It tells me - I obey the relayed information. Note that I could be in Guam. But i judged the app to get me to wherever you live. — AmadeusD

Sure, you can decide (judge) that the app is to be trusted. Sort of like how you can trust a taxi cab driver to get you to your destination. Still, at the end of your journey you still have to judge that the app or cab driver is telling you that you have arrived (even though you are trusting them at the same time).

A case where no subordinated judgment occurs would be when you go under general anesthesia for surgery, simply trusting that you will wake up on the other side. Waking up is not a judgment, and so in that case there is only one act of trust-judgment. You are trusting that the judgments of others will cause you to wake up.

Yes, I can see why too. But I think jdugement should be a little more circumscribed to capture how it is used. — AmadeusD

Similar to "moral," philosophical definitions of "judgment" are going to be more precise and encompassing than colloquial definitions. That's why I used the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. If we go with colloquial definitions then we will run into things like the Sorites paradox mentioned earlier, and the reasoning will not be watertight. We can do that if we like, but then we no longer have a warrant to complain that the reasoning isn't watertight. If we want watertight reasoning then we must abandon vague definitions.

Nah, that's input-> output in this scenario. If I crash, I crash. — AmadeusD

It would be rather strange for someone to try driving somewhere and not care if they crash. To crash would be to fail to achieve your goal, and therefore you are generally always trying not to crash when you are driving somewhere.

Leontiskos talked about context and I think that is a better way of putting it than how I did. Everything in the mind is cross-connected. Memories are not stored in one place. They are connected with other memories of the same or similar events, places, and times. Those connections are non-linear - they're not organized in the same manner we might organize them if we did it rationally, chronologically, or functionally. — T Clark

Yes, I think that's a good way of putting it. A memory has a kind of organic embeddedness, a bit like a single strand of a spider's web.

Maybe we could try to approach this from the negative: what's the difference between not being able to imagine something, and not being able to remember something?

For me, what I expect to be lacking with a memory is a good deal more specific than what I'm lacking when I'm trying to imagine something. A gap in the memory is usually surrounded by other memories: there's something very specific that's not there. Meanwhile not being able to imagine something indicates a lack of experience - it's more fuzzy. It feels like the difference between closing in on something, vs. casting out for something. — Dawnstorm

This seems like a fruitful way to approach the question. :up:

I'm asking about the experience of having a memory come to mind. (To keep it manageable, let's say it's an unbidden mental performance that comes up at random, as I go through the day.) — J

I think it's worth noting that this is a very specialized question, at least if what I say is correct (namely that "memories don't generally arrive unannounced" and unelicited).

This is probably true, but is the kind of differentiation such that it would be recognizable in experience? I'd like to see more discussion of this. — J

Well, to continue with the "strand in a spider's web" metaphor, I think it is recognizable. I think a strand-within-a-web is recognized as different from a strand-without-a-web.

You could think of this in terms of navigability. We can navigate from a strand in a web to other parts of the web, whereas we cannot navigate from a strand-without-a-web. Or at least it is much harder. And I don't need to go through a lot of discursive exercises in order to know the difference if I am standing on a strand.

I think modern (Cartesian) philosophy has a desire for clarity which obscures the capacity of the mind for recognizing this sort of contextual situatedness. The notion of navigability is not a binary, not a crystal-clear marker. That's why I said that certain kinds of dreams can be very discombobulating (because they possess their own contextual situatedness, navigability, integrity, duration, sovereignty, etc.). Or in other words, it is hard for the modern to say what they are looking for even after they admit that they are not looking for infallible certainty.

Consider a corollary. It is sometimes claimed that in the moments before death people can have extremely long, detailed, and coherent dreams. If someone had one of these dreams, and it managed to mimic the resolution and duration and complexity of an entire life, then how would the person discern which "experience-narrative" was their real life and which was the dream? On my theory, they couldn't (or else it would be very hard), because each experience-narrative possesses its own robust contextual situatedness. On the other hand, when waking up from a superficial dream we find that it is much harder to "inhabit" that space as real, given its arbitrary contextual boundaries.

Cheers to MacIntyre.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
I hadn't heard that he was declining.

That hope and love are intertwined in faith indicates that its function has to do with human bonding rather than salvation. — praxis

This is a good example of an assertion with no attached argument. I'm not sure why you would think this. An argument would provide me with some insight.

Why should salvation require faith? — praxis

Are you at all familiar with Christian theology? Or the Reformation polemics? I'm not sure where your starting point is.

What do you think that implies? — praxis

Here is the quote in context. It seems pretty transparent:

So what I am saying above is, when I think of religious faith, I think of moms and dads loving their kids. The point being love.

Many on this thread, when they think of religious faith seem to think only of Abraham attempting murder, terroists bombing schools, etc. — Fire Ologist

Here is a quote from the OP of the whole thread:

6) Finally, why do Christians argue whether faith must have hope and love in order to cause salvation? Are not those three things always intertwined together? — Gregory

Yes, this "pastness" may be the very thing I'm calling the "feature" of an alleged memory, by which we recognize it as such. But I'm asking further -- what is it? What is the experience of pastness? — J

I'm not convinced that it is a mark so much as a kind of intuitional inference.

Suppose you can see the future. A "thick image" comes to your mind. It could be a memory of the past, a foreseeing of the future, a memory from a dream, or a mere mental image. You know that it is not a present experience, in the sense of an experience of the actual world that will in turn form a memory.

If the thick image arrives unannounced you will basically decide which it is through a process of elimination (and determining when a memory is indexed requires the same sort of process). You might do this very quickly and automatically. But memories don't generally arrive unannounced. Usually we call them up on purpose or else they are elicited by an intelligible association or cue. Because memory access is not random, there is usually a reliable process to sort out the different categories of "thick image" (i.e. things involving the depth I noted earlier). The intentional stance with which we approach a memory may give it a "pastness" color that even dyes it either temporarily or indelibly. If this is right then a confabulation probably becomes more solid each time someone surveys it and (falsely) views it as a memory.

Lovely thread.

How are we able to do this? Is there a feature of the mental experience that we single out? — J

On my view memories are contextually situated, probably within a causal nexus, and this is what differentiates them from a mere mental image.

Granted, memories also have a depth that a mental image or imagining lacks. Memories are holistic in the sense that they often involve multiple senses, proprioceptive senses, as well as teleological states such as hopes, anticipations, and fears. This is probably why confabulation is usually derived from dreams or hypnosis rather than simple mental images. That depth can distinguish a memory from a mental image, but it cannot necessarily distinguish a normal memory from a dream memory, especially in the case of deeply intense or trippy dreams. Still, I think normal memories possess a contextual situatedness that dreams lack. This means that the longer and more complex the dream, the more confusing it will be upon waking (because the more a dream imitates reality in length and character, the harder it will be to dismiss as unreal).

Augustine is very fond of this topic.

(In a more general sense I think it is important to recognize that contextual situatedness can be intuited in a moment. One does not need to survey, analyze, and engage in induction in order to understand whether something tends to be contextually situated and integrated within increasingly large spheres of influence.)

Religious people, generally, are softies, to the core. Lots of moms and dads, loving their kids. Not many thoughts like you are all having. — Fire Ologist

Pretty fucking rude. So atheists are none of them "moms and dads, loving their kids"? Fuck off. — Banno

Banno here relies on a non sequitur in order to take offense. Fire Ologist says that religious people do not exhibit the traits that Banno is ascribing to them, and instead exhibit good traits. Banno claims that Fire Ologist has said that no atheists exhibit good traits. Banno is relying on the conditional <If FO says that religious people have good traits, not bad traits, then FO is saying that no atheists have good traits>. This is completely invalid, and the false inference is made in order to try to paint FO in a bad light, pretend that he has said something offensive, take offense, and lash out. That's a good example of a bad faith reading of Fire Ologist. As Fire Ologist has pointed out, Banno has been involved in this sort of thing for a very long time.

But if, as we both now agree, faith is neither good nor bad, why is it that everything else you bring up about faith has to do with fathers murdering their children and fools acting without evidence or reason? Or theism? Because that doesn’t sound “neither good nor bad” to me. — Fire Ologist

Yes, exactly right. :up:
Banno is equivocating. One second he says that faith is neither good nor bad, and the next second he is back to construing faith as bad. It's a new rendition on what I described <here>.

Right, I wouldn't say it's always religion, but it's always ideology, which includes religion. Ideologies are like religions in that they are faith, not evidence, based. — Janus

I don't think this thread has ever moved beyond my observation:

If we are going to do real philosophical work then we have to have real definitions. What almost always happens in these discussions is that the atheist builds their petitio principii right into their definition of faith. This is how the atheist ends up defining faith:

Faith_ath: "Irrational assent" — Leontiskos

Faith_ath is a bad pathway to truth. The point is that if you can't stop appealing Faith_ath then you're just begging the question. You are committing fallacies, over and over. — Leontiskos

It could be, "Irrational assent," "Belief without sufficient justification," "Belief without sufficient evidence," etc. They all amount to the same thing.

Given the way that the anti-theists are consistently begging the question, what the theist can say, every time, is, "Yes, I agree that faith_ath is bad. We are in agreement with regard to your faith_ath. Let me know if you want to talk about a more relevantly defined concept." Telling me over and over that I engage in a religious act, namely faith_ath, which I obviously deny that I engage in, is nothing more than unphilosophical gaslighting. This sums up the whole latter portion of the thread. It's no coincidence that the religious get annoyed in the face of this obstinance.

NB: I admit that @Janus has a unique view where belief without evidence need not be irrational, and so things are a bit more complicated for him (i.e. he is a very strong coherentist). No one else holds that premise; therefore it doesn't fit the tenor of the thread; and therefore I haven't spent much time singling it out in this thread.

Are you saying I should approach the issue like Joyce? — NOS4A2

I am saying that bona fide nominalists, such as Joyce, would not seem to merely dismiss Peirce's observation as question-begging. I think it would be hard to find a bona fide nominalist who does that. Joyce is one example of someone who would agree that what is lovable is figment.

It seems palatable to me. — NOS4A2

Okay, but do you see how Joyce would in no way disagree with Peirce that, "all that can be loved, or admired [...] is figment"? He would not say that Peirce is engaged in question-begging or anything like that. Peirce cannot be dismissed so effortlessly. Joyce would say, "Yes, that's true, and therefore we must resort to make-believe." Peirce would probably say that the idea that nothing is lovable apart from make-believe is "dreary," and again, this claim is not so easily dismissed.

but always fucking religion. — AmadeusD

Except for Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or any of the other counterexamples to your assertion that it's always religion. You've presented premises about a single religion, Islam, and you are drawing conclusions about religion generally. That is an invalid argument to be sure. If all of your premises regard Islam, then your conclusion is about Islam. In that context, shifting from "Islam" to "religion" is a form of subtle equivocation.

(It would make no sense for me, a Christian, to look at your articles and say, "Oh, Islamic adherents killed a bunch of Christians; therefore religion itself must be the problem.")

This is wholly irrelevant. — AmadeusD

But why would it be irrelevant?

You say <Religion/religious fervour is the chief source of global harm>.

Suppose I gave a parallel argument <Humans are the chief source of global harm>.

You respond, "But humans are also the source of global good." It would not make sense to say, "This is wholly irrelevant."

Just because a subset of humans do evil does not mean humans in general are the problem. We could get rid of humans and "solve" the problem, but that is not a reasonable way forward. It's fairly important to make distinctions between humans, and between religions, especially when you are talking to religious humans.

To be clear: I think that is the right way to think about moral judgement in the context of dismissal - I am unsure a moral judgement is occurring in the quote. — AmadeusD

Hmm, okay. Well maybe the rest will help clarify some of this.

That would include machines 'judging'. — AmadeusD

No, I don't think machines "judge," hence the scare-quotes on both our parts. Thus when we talk about a human "computing" and a machine "computing" we are talking about two different things. One difference is that human computation involves judgment whereas machine computation does not.

I would not want to say that recognition alone (which a schedule requires, and naught else) — AmadeusD

I want to say that a schedule requires following, no? If I am to keep a schedule then I must recognize what I am to do, and then do it, no? Else, a schedule that no one is following is apparently not functioning as a schedule at all.

But I think the act of recognition involves judgment too. "This is 22nd street," or, "This is not 22nd street," are both acts of recognition and also judgments.

It may be that an adequate definition of judgement has to include literally ever act (given every act is a version of "this/that". — AmadeusD

Good, and this is perhaps one of the more foundational places where we may be disagreeing, because I think every choice involves judgment. Still, I am happy to distinguish speculative from practical judgment.

No, that's not up to me. Either when i get there there's a 1:1 match between you directions and my location, or there is not. I do not judge whether that is the case - it either is or isn't and I observe which it is. — AmadeusD

My point was that judgments must be leveraged in order to follow the directions. But is your claim here true? When you get to the end of the directions do you observe whether you have arrived, or judge whether you have arrived? In either case it would seem that you must decide whether you have arrived at the destination, no?

However, that analogy doesn't hold with my point - if you gave me an active, working Google Maps. — AmadeusD

I actually meant to include that scenario, but forgot. :up:

I closed my eyes, followed the directions(pretend for a moment this wouldn't be practically disastrous lmao) and then the Maps tells me i've arrived - that's what I'm talking about. I am literally not involved in any deliberation - I am, in fact, still taking instruction. — AmadeusD

I don't think closing your eyes helps you avoid judgment. To decide to obey (Google Maps) is a judgment. To decide when to turn your steering wheel with your eyes closed in relation to the instructions you are hearing is a judgment. I think auditory directions involve judgment just as visual directions involve judgment.

I think when the restriction is "the ones unopen to update" its not a tough one. — AmadeusD

There are lots of traditional religious groups (not open to updating) which nevertheless do not engage in the sorts of things you pointed to.

out-groups. — AmadeusD

I would just point back to the same argument that Holland makes, namely that the West's compassionate attitude towards out-groups comes precisely from Judaism and Christianity.

I have questioned the moral standing of those who believe in eternal damnation. — Banno

Like poor, benighted Wittgenstein:

When one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s graduate students allowed how much he regretted the Church’s condemnation of Origen’s doctrine that God would eventually abolish hell and redeem the whole world (including the devils), the philosopher shot back: “Of course it was rejected. It would make nonsense of everything else. If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with.” — Edward Oakes - Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy

Religious doesn't make one bad, but it makes one do bad, by most lights. At least, the ones unopen to update. — AmadeusD

It's a tough inference to go from Islam to religion more generally.

Sure, . :roll:
Just keep burying your head in the sand forever.

No we haven't. Your quoted exchange (assuming I agreed) doesn't show this. It shows that a "moral dismissal" results from a "moral judgement". That moral judgement is not assessed. — AmadeusD

Okay, let's look. Here is the exchange laid out:

Nevertheless, let's save the term "moral dismissal" for the situation where you dismiss someone based on a moral judgment of their own actions or behavior. Ergo: "I am dismissing you because of such-and-such an action of yours, or such-and-such a behavior of yours, and I would do so even if I had ample time to engage you." — Leontiskos

You responded:

I think this is the right way to think of a 'moral' judgement in this context. — AmadeusD

Note that your response has to do with a moral judgment, not merely a moral dismissal. The idea here is that to morally judge someone is to judge their actions or behavior. If you want to propose a different definition of moral judgment, then you can of course do that.

Then computation is judgement. I reject this. Deliberation is judgement (assuming it results in something). Marking the exam without a set rubric (i.e I must know hte answers and judge whether student has gotten it right) would be this. — AmadeusD

Yes, I think computation involves judgment. If I give you a math problem you will require judgment in order to solve it.

Here is a definition of judgment that seems fine to me:

The central problem is that of understanding the capacity of the mind to form, entertain, and affirm judgements, which are not simply strings of words but items intrinsically representing some state of affairs, or way that the world is or may be. The affirmation of a judgement is thus the making of a true or false claim. — Judgment | Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy

(I would say that judgment already involves affirmation, but that's a minor difference.)

This could be right, ubt I'd have to review the discussion and I'm not in place to do so right now. I cannot remember exactly what I excluded there. — AmadeusD

<Here> is the post where I spoke about a comedian's ability to read the room.

Perhaps I should have used the term 'schedule'. An actual, written schedule of right responses. — AmadeusD

Whether rubric or schedule, I think both involve judgments. It's just that they involve simple or relatively easy judgments.

If I give you directions to my house you will still be involved in judgments. "Drive north on Central avenue, take a left on 22nd street, and arrive at the third house on your right, which is green." You are merely following directions and rules, but you are still involved in judgments. For example, the judgment of whether this street is 22nd street.

Or even simpler, "I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from perceptual experiences to empirical beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how."

I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from religious experiences to religious beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how — Janus

This is yet another iteration of your, "I don't have the burden of proof. They do." If you don't believe there are no sound inferences then you would not say, "I can't see how there could be." People who can't see how X could be possible do not think X is possible, and they have reasons why.

We make inferences from experience all the time, and the idea that this is simply impossible when it comes to "religious" experience is question-begging. — Leontiskos

at least not in a way that is anywhere near as clear as "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists". — Banno

I'm not sure how possible worlds semantics is supposed to be clear. Hardly anyone knows what a possible world is supposed to be. Or else, if "possible world" is supposed be derived from colloquial meaning and usage, then "essence" is much clearer, having a much greater basis in colloquial meaning and usage.

Yes, and that's the issue that relates to the entire thread. The atheists here are arguing on the basis of de-contextualized interpretations that would be rejected by their interlocutors (and therefore they are relying on premises that their interlocutors would obviously reject, thus begging the question). This relates to "hostile translation":

Sider calls this "hostile translation." From the QV/Sider thread:

This is what Sider refers to as a "hostile translation" on page 14. It is interpreting or translating someone's utterance in a way that they themselves reject.
— Leontiskos

@fdrake wants to talk about "good counterexamples," and he relies on notions of "verbatim" or "taking someone exactly at their word" (even in a way that they themselves reject). The problem is that if these are still hostile translations then they haven't managed to do what they are supposed to be doing... — Leontiskos

Such flagrant AI bigotry. What is the world coming to. :fear: — praxis

Again, it's literally against the rules:

AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban. — Baden

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Anyway, my argument is basically that faith is unnecessary for genuine spiritual pursuits; it is religion that demands faith—not for the sake of salvation, but because religion is primarily concerned with forging strong, unified social bonds. Faith is necessary in religion because it is action that proves allegiance. Faith serves to filter out non-committed individuals and strengthen in-group loyalty. Faith in supernatural beliefs, especially when they’re costly or hard to fake, signals deep commitment to the group. And faith-based communities that required costly religious commitments (e.g., dietary restrictions, celibacy) have been show to be robust and long lived. — praxis

My response:

This hasn't been mentioned in the thread, but religious scholars will point out that faith is only central to revealed religion (i.e. revelation-based religion). In non-revealed religion faith is no more central than it is in other traditions or institutions. For example, I would argue that institutions like the military are much more faith-centric than non-revealed religion.

In the West we have a tendency to conflate religion with Christianity (or else Judeo-Christianity), and the notion that religions can be referred to as "faiths" is one symptom of that. This is yet another incentive to get clear on what is actually meant by 'faith'. — Leontiskos

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Please forgive the appeal to authority. — praxis

You are just name-dropping without providing any evidence that the authorities even agree with you.

- Did you see my post , where I looked at the position of a bona fide nominalist (in this case, fictionalist)? I don't think we will understand what nominalism is until we start looking at actual proponents, such as Joyce. Do you find Joyce's view palatable?