Thanks, on my list.

the Aristotelian sense of logos as both reason and structure — Wayfarer

Everything you wrote about Hart and Vervaeke is fascinating and on point for me (though I don't see Hume as the diabolus ex machina they do). My particular m2m problem is a bit different, but can hardly be addressed without taking account of the perspectives you're describing.

I was especially struck by the quoted phrase. I've long held out for a difference between causes and reasons. If we can speak meaningfully about m2m causation, then I think causation has to be understood, or interpreted, as a type of reason, not a physical cause. And the logos concept has a lot to offer here. How can a mere structure also provide reasons that cause/influence/lead to mental events? And yet, when we entertain a syllogism, isn't this what happens? But the problem begins even before thought is seen as syllogistic: Somehow, what we call the "content" of a thought (be it propositional or imagistic) appears to provide causes (or reasons) for other thoughts. A reductively psychological explanation involving "associations" will not suffice, as I hope to argue.

Thanks, but what are you quoting?

It depends on the stance. Substance dualists have a completely different view to monists. — I like sushi

Sure. I don't want to get ahead of myself, as I'm still drafting the OP, but one of the difficult issues is that you need to first lay out some plausible positions on how the mental relates to the physical, before you can then posit solutions for how to understand (alleged) mental-to-mental causation.

The other big issue, which has already come up in some of the responses to this query, is that words like "mental" and "thought" can be taken from the point of view of logicism, or of psychologism. We do both, in our ordinary talk, so it's easy to accidentally confute them. I think Frege was right in wanting to keep them strictly separate. I'll have more to say about that. But could the concept of causation figure in either construal? We don't usually talk about the premises of a syllogism causing the conclusion, whereas the much weaker link of "association" (a very unfortunate term, but we seem to be stuck with it) does carry some causal weight, at least in common parlance, because we imagine this happening in a particular mind, not in Proposition World.

Anyway, to be continued, and thanks for everyone's interest and help -- even those of you who think m2m causation is impossible!

Yes, this is a big part of what I'm trying to write about in the OP I'm drafting. Does logic connect thoughts, necessarily or otherwise? As you perhaps know, Frege used "thought" to mean "proposition," and with that usage, I think we'd agree that logic describes how propositions may be connected. But "thought" can also mean -- and more usually does mean -- a psychological event that happens in a particular brain at a particular time. (Popper's World Two versus World Three, if you like.) How do these two conceptions relate? Could it be the case that a proposition, as "contained" or "expressed" in a thought (it's hard to find a neutral word for it) does have some lawlike power to produce the next, entailed thought?

As for causation, we spend a lot of time trying to understand physical-to-physical causation, and trying to make a case for mental-to-physical causation, and its reverse. Mental-to-mental causation is assumed to be either the same thing as logic, when it happens at all, or explainable by redescribing thoughts (in the psychological sense) as physical brain-events, thus giving them a foot in the causal world. I don't think any of that is obvious and possibly not even coherent.

Also, as you remember from Rodl, this whole subject is very much a part of the "what is p?" question. How do we understand the idea of a proposition which is somehow not in a thought? etc.

It's not clear to me that they can be separated from 3rd-person/objective claims such as "God exists".
— J

I'm puzzled by your last sentence here. How can "god exists" be an objective claim if there is no possibility of confirming it such that anyone unbiased would have to acquiesce, or even at the very least the possibility of assessing it against our overall experience in terms of plausibility? — Janus

Well, you've packed a lot into that question! To begin simply: "God exists" as a proposition is surely meant to state an objective fact, and that's really all I meant. (I'll say something below about why I think it may be inseparable from how we rate the plausibility of accounts of mystical experiences.)

Your further qualifications seem extreme. "No possibility?" John Hick points out that, at the very least, claims about God may be "eschatologically verifiable" -- that is, we may find out when we die (or, of course, we'll cease to exist). On an earthly plane, "have to acquiesce" is surely too strong? I keep trying to make the case for less-than-certain knowledge here. Does a cosmologist "have to acquiesce" that dark energy exists? I don't think so; at the moment, it's the most likely explanation. Could this never be the case with regard to God?

Here's what I think is going on here, and why I said that the question of whether God exists may be inseparable from accounts of mystical experiences: You're starting from the position that a god or cosmic consciousness cannot or absolutely doesn't exist. And from this standpoint, you'd be right to dismiss any arguments from plausibility concerning mystical experiences. You'd say something like this (and tell me if I've got it wrong): "If there could be such a thing as a god, then you could construct some very plausible arguments to account for mystical experiences that way. But that's like constructing an explanation for how and why humans dream by claiming that elves appear when we're asleep and help us do it. That would deserve a hearing, and might even have much to recommend it, except for one problem: there are no elves. So we have to look elsewhere for plausible explanations."

And so with mystical experiences. If an actual divinity of some sort is ruled out beforehand, then of course there is no plausibility to any explanation that uses the notion, nor can the experiences themselves count as evidence for such a being, since we already know there isn't one. Is that more or less your position?

some metaphysical claims are far more consistent and coherent with the human store of knowledge and understanding than others.

Of course it is still up to the individual to make their own assessments. — Janus

I agree with this -- but, while I appreciate your courtesy, aren't you being too accommodating here? If what I wrote above does characterize your position, wouldn't you have to say, "The human store of knowledge includes knowledge that there are no gods, so metaphysical claims to the contrary can never be consistent or coherent"?

↪J I believe Timothy has addressed this adequately in his subsequent post. — Wayfarer

Yes. Thanks to you both.

No, it's worth a look, thanks for the reminder.

Thanks!

Hume speaks about this quite a bit (not using modern terminology). — Manuel

Are you talking about the "association of ideas" thing? I'm looking for someone who actually tries to explain what that means, how it would work, especially with reference to whether an idea can cause another idea.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

But what was 'real' to the scholastics, was not the physical world as such. When we say “physical world,” we usually mean what modern physics investigates—matter, energy, and their interactions. But for St. Thomas, there was no such concept as a self-subsisting “physical” realm. — Wayfarer

I'm sure this is true. But if we could translate our concepts for St. Thomas -- and I see no reason why he wouldn't be able to understand us -- and ask him whether, when we see an apple, we are seeing something that is really there, more or less as presented to our senses, wouldn't he say yes? That is the sort of realism I was suggesting the Scholastics accepted.

Scholastic philosophy was not at all 'realist' in the sense we now understand the word. They were realist with respect to universals, — Wayfarer

Is this right? I don't know Scholastic philosophy very deeply, but I thought that the concept of intelligibility meant that we can know what is real in the physical world as well.

Can you explain what you mean by "these intuitions are correct as to their source"? — Janus

Yes, it wasn't very well put. I only meant that, in addition to the possible explanations you named, it's also possible that the universality of mystical intuitions is explained by their actually being what they claim to be, namely experiences of God or some transcendent consciousness.

. . . the presumption that those beliefs are demonstrably true. — Janus

I haven't followed every post between you and @Wayfarer today, so I'll just speak for myself. I don't think a statement like "I have had an experience of the Godhead" or "My third eye opened" or "I encountered Jesus and was born again" or any of the countless variants of this should be presumed to be "demonstrably true." Nor are they demonstrably false. It's not clear to me that they can be separated from 3rd-person/objective claims such as "God exists".

All I can say is, we're left with possible explanations, possible ways of assigning probability values to the statements under discussion. And we'll rate these probabilities differently, based on our own knowledge and experience -- just as we would for any topic that's tough to know about for sure. I see plenty of daylight between "My account of my mystical experience is demonstrably true" and "Here's what I think probably accounts for my experience." The latter seems unexceptionable to me.

A thoughtful response. I have no opinion about the meaning crisis; my earlier comment was meant to point out that standards of truth, as they may vary from era to era, are themselves subject to critique from a viewpoint. So whether there's a way of evaluating a mystical experience that can call upon concepts of non-objective truth, or the kind of truth you describe as valid and important to the pre-moderns, is itself a matter that may be either true or false -- but according to which lights? "Veritas" vs. "objective validation" -- we appear to need a commitment to one or the other of these standards before being able to say which is more reliable, or more appropriate for a given question. Thus, the snake eventually swallows its own tail.

But this is an issue that pervades every philosophical discourse, not only talk of subjective experience.

Nagel, and you, are right about Plato and about how philosophy was conceived for many centuries. So if someone wanted to say, "Heck, if Plato wasn't a philosopher, than who is?" I couldn't object. Yet there is a different sense of philosophy as a developing discipline -- or if that's too biased, at least an evolving, changing one. I do think we've made progress, in the last 100 years or so, in understanding what can be meaningfully discussed within philosophy. It's a good thing that we've been able to set limits on our attempts to wrestle experience into the rational language of analytic philosophy. On my view, this still leaves plenty for language, and life, to do. (Not to mention Continental phil!)

We can explain the universality of such intuitions in the moral context, as I said, as stemming from a demand that there should be perfection and justice. We can explain it in the epistemological context as being due to not having scientific explanations for phenomena. And we can explain it in the existential context as being on account of a universal fear of death. — Janus

All true, if you mean "offer as possible explanations." But another way we can explain it is in the accuracy or correspondence-to-the-facts context -- that is, these intuitions are correct as to their source.

But . . . how do we determine which context, which putative explanation, is the right one? This is what you and @Wayfarer are thrashing out.

You may recall that this is the subject of my essay Scientific Objectivity and Philosophical Detachment. — Wayfarer

Yes, good piece of work.

the pre-moderns had a very different sense of what is real. — Wayfarer

Indeed. So we have the question, Is there anything to guide us in choosing between these different senses? The question lends itself to special pleading, as I'm sure you're aware: It's tempting, and convenient, to say, "Oh, when it comes to what is scientifically real, the pre-moderns were hopelessly wrong, but with spiritual reality the reverse is true; it's we who don't understand."

The world was experienced as a living presence rather than a domain of impersonal objects and forces. In that context, the standard of truth was veritas - rather than objective validation. — Wayfarer

Not sure this was across the board, but let's say it was. We're still left with asking, "OK, how well did they do, truth-wise?" Is there a meta-level from which such a question can be addressed? For me, this pushes us to the boundary of what philosophy can talk about.

they are not decidable by the methods of science. Their test is existential: whether practice transforms the one who undertakes it. — Wayfarer

And this illustrates why. Personal transformation is inaccessible to science, but nothing could be more important to the person himself or herself. The results of spiritual practice (including in my own life) form part of my reason for saying that the mystical revelation is "very likely" true. But I'm still not prepared to call my belief knowledge. Trying to be honest, I'm aware that I could be wrong, there could be other explanations. All I can do is assert that these other explanations look much less plausible to me than the traditional, spiritual explanations.

Would you say that it is likely, if someone believes that certain kinds of altered states of consciousness give us access to a divine reality, that they were already inclined, most likely by cultural influences during their upbringing, to believe in a divine reality, and that others who do not have such an enculturated belief might interpret the experience as being a function of brain chemistry? — Janus

Yes.

Wherefore the intuition of another world? — Janus

We know that such an intuition has been with humanity since there were civilizations, and no doubt before. Whether it's true or not, isn't really about one's predisposition to believe or disbelieve, wouldn't you agree?

Just to be clear, I don't think an argument from "common longstanding intuitions" can make the case. All it can do is provide evidence that the experiences under discussion have been given a mystical interpretation in many times and places -- along with plenty of non-mystical interpretations, I'm sure. Up until very recently most people had an intuition that the heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth. Well . . . nope. So anyone who doubts the validity of a longstanding intuition has every right to do so.

Again, this is why the topic is so recalcitrant to philosophical expression. I suppose we can do some work on the logic of "self-credentialing experiences," but that's not quite on the money.

My modus is not a static thing-in-itself. — Astorre

It's unclear to me if Kant thought noumena were static in this sense. I don't see why they would have to be. At any given moment of perception, we have the noumenon and the ensuing phenomenon. "Noumena" is a kind of placeholder, a way of expressing the fact that we don't have access to whatever it is that lies beyond our perceptions. As such, it could be a "different" noumenon five minutes earlier. "Noumenon" is not a name for some essence or quiddity.

I am defending the subject, but not to the degree of anthropocentrism seen in Kant, whose phenomena are an act of cognition. — Astorre

Yes, to adequately compare your schema with Kant's, we'd have to go back to my question:

"We require apple, light, and observer in order for the redness to manifest itself; do you want to say that this happens in or to the observer?"

I'm saying dark matter and consciousness are both thought to exist because matter is doing things that can't be explained by what we know about matter. — Patterner

OK, I see that parallel.

There probably aren't two people in the discussions here who agree on the definition of consciousness. — Patterner

True, but I bet we all would affirm that our own consciousness is real and (perhaps) indubitable. As you say:

I was meaning that in regards to my position, that consciousness is fundamental. — Patterner

What I don't think anyone can be at all certain about is as to what could be the metaphysical implications of such experiences. — Janus

Yes, my comments about certainty were meant to cover both the occurrence of the experience and the interpretation of it. So I'd call it highly likely, but by no means certain, that such experiences are "genuine" in that they do give access to a divine reality. Even using such a phrase, of course, takes us outside of philosophy entirely, in my opinion, though I know @Wayfarer thinks we can expand our understanding of what philosophy is and does so as to include it.

Note the qualifier, 'objective knowledge'. — Wayfarer

Right. I could say that a mystical experience is about something objective -- God or Divine Reality or whatever phrasing you like -- but only occurs subjectively. But the problem is how a subjective experience could provide evidence for sorting out the difference between some genuine objective reality and a mere psychological event, however powerful. In other words, my asserting the objective existence of what I'm experiencing doesn't make it so. How many such assertions would make it so? That's a complicated question, focusing on the blurred line between objectivity and intersubjectivity. A thousand mystics can all be wrong. Still, what we ideally want is an independent criterion that would tell us whether such a "genuine" experience is even possible.

I just don't like to see people interpreting such beliefs as objective knowledge, for that way lies dogma and fundamentalism. — Janus

A lot depends on how much certainty you want to pack into "knowledge." Suppose I said I was pretty sure that I'd had a genuine mystical experience, but wasn't certain. Not "absolutely convinced," but on the whole persuaded. That's a soft "know," and hopefully doesn't start me down the road of dogma, but I think it's fairly characteristic of the attitude many of us take toward these puzzling, powerful experiences. Kind of IBE, really (inference to the best explanation). And taken as a single person's experience, it demands virtually nothing in the way of acceptance by others. It's only when thousands of people over vastly different cultures report similar things that it becomes food for thought. But as always, the intelligent thing to do is to find out for yourself.

OK, thanks. I have some reactions to that but gotta run now. I'll circle back later.

I don't know about "spirit" and "soul"―it seems very difficult to think in terms of those without carrying all the unacceptable cultural baggage that comes with them — Janus

Well, I think both @Wayfarer and myself, in our different ways, are positing a non-mental self, a self that not only thinks but animates and, perhaps, connects with something larger. You're right about the cultural baggage, but as philosophers we can try to see beyond that. @Wayfarer is good at reminding us of the deeper, more thoughtful traditions of spirituality that were there long before some religions tried to codify and moralize spiritual experience. The words "spirit" or "soul" may not be helpful for a particular individual, but let's not rule out this aspect of being alive and human.

We know dark matter exists, because of its gravitational effect. But that's it. With all our sciences, we can't detect it at all. It doesn't absorb, reflect, or emit light. It doesn't impact matter. Nothing. But we know it's there.

I think we know consciousness is there for a similar reason. — Patterner

It may be the case that both dark matter and consciousness are inaccessible to current scientific investigation. But I don't think we know about them for "a similar reason." As I understand it, dark matter is a postulate that seems to be required by the math, and has so far stood up under theoretical pressure. Surely consciousness is more than a postulate, something we have to infer or deduce? Or maybe you mean that it would look that way from a strictly 3rd person viewpoint, with no access to any person's mind? But of course this immediately raises the conundrum of how there could be any viewpoint at all that did not partake of consciousness. In short, my access to consciousness is a given, even when I'm wondering whether other beings have it too.

I wanted to take a short break before I answered. I'll get back to those questions later. — Astorre

Of course, no hurry.

For Harman, the hammer is revealed in its use—we see only one aspect. I propose to refine this: "hammerness" as a property is revealed in an act of participation, an act of encounter, and depends on the participants in the interaction — Astorre

This is a welcome improvement on Harman, as I understand him. (I'm still balking at "hammerness as a property," but that's secondary.). Your version allows the observer to bring whatever concepts and agenda they may have to the encounter. As you say, it's not a one-dimensional "hammer or nothing" situation. Among other virtues, it gives us a way of understanding how an ordinary object like a hammer can become an art object. (See the "What Is a Painting?" thread.)

One question I would raise: This schema is Kantian in structure -- "the subject doesn't create properties; it co-participates in their actualization." How would you differentiate "modality" from "noumenon"? Can Kantian phenomena be understood as a series of co-created properties?

(Whatever translator you're using is doing a great job.)

but rather an affordance for perception such that people perceive it differently. — Moliere

Yes, and as @Astorre has proposed, the affordance (or "mode", in their terminology) provides a realist-friendly link with the external world.

That said, we probably need to do some work on "affordance" or "mode" to make sure we're not just employing placeholders.

Fair enough. I wonder if the so-called human sciences might offer some options. Some versions of psychology, for instance, offer themselves as hard explanatory science, yet don't limit their explanations to physical causes.

Yes, because my attempt to treat the set and the property as one and the same object seems to have failed.
— litewave

But I hope you see that your intuition - that having the property of being red and being a member of the set of red things say much the same thing - remains valid?
. . .
I think the intuition in the OP is quite right — Banno

Yes, this is what I was getting at, or trying to, when I said:

"There's an intuitive rightness to what you're proposing -- that our language for talking about something like "red" can be simplified through analysis and discovered to be largely redundant -- but is "property" the right flag under which to fly this idea?"

And I join @Moliere in appreciating the fact that you can pull back from your original position and freely acknowledge its defects. Not many can do that. Look how much we've all learned as a result!

And here's a 60s blast: remember "Douglas Traherne Harding," by the Incredible String Band?

Ever run across Douglas Harding 'On Having no Head'? — Wayfarer

Yes! Haven't thought about it in years. And I'm sure you're right that "being in the head" is learned (with some help from the proximity of the sense organs of sight, sound, and smell).

@Janus @Ludwig V I find that fascinating because, as y'all have pointed out, it seems irresistible to me to locate my self or "I" within my head. Or perhaps a better way to say it is: I can't help locating the part of consciousness which thinks, perceives, and imagines as being within my head; but that leaves open the possibility that spirit or soul should be identified with breath, heart, or guts. So a deeper or more cosmic "I" is not necessarily conceived as mental.

But then there's the Third Eye, which opens in . . . the head.

John Deely is a better place to start even if I think there are some flaws in his treatment. His "Dialogue With a Realist . . . " — Count Timothy von Icarus

Getting back to this . . . Is this the piece you're recommending?

Didn't Aristotle say that the mind resided in the heart?

Redness, then, is not inside the apple. It is born from the interplay of all three participants. This makes the property contingent: for a different observer (say, someone with color blindness), or under different lighting conditions, redness may not manifest at all. — Astorre

I like your approach, which has the virtue of preserving realism (the mode is an actual internal structure of the apple) while recognizing that the property is contingent on the other factors you name.

On this view, does the property happen in a specifiable location? We require apple, light, and observer in order for the redness to manifest itself; do you want to say that this happens in or to the observer?

That makes sense to me, but it seems like a criteria for "who gets a hearing" not which positions are accepted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. I took it as read that weren't trying to answer the question of what is just, but set up the parameters for how to discuss it. My own view is that the question doesn't admit of a definitive answer; you perhaps see it differently; but on either view, "Who is closer to the truth?" can only come into play once we have "entered the room" of this particular practice, or communicative action. (I use Habermas' term not to be pedantic, but because I like the way it emphasizes how thinking about something is a process that happens among people, it is a doing. When we think, we are always part of a community, otherwise our concepts would be meaningless.)

I'm still trying to fit all this into @litewave's very interesting conception. If the "set of all just things" is indeterminate, and even contains contradictory elements, it needs another name. "Set of all things called just" won't do; this set is more discriminating than that. What we can say is that the uncertainty about the property of being just is reflected in the uncertainty about what to call the set, so that may be a point in litewave's favor.

In the end, I think we're likely going to abandon the whole "property" notion for justice, and conclude that, even if some things are properties, "being just" isn't one of them.

I agree. A key problem is how we know that a subjective experience is being had in the first place. We posit such experiences for everything from other people, to animals, to (for some optimists) AI . . . What version of science can help us with this?

My reply above was a groaner, wasn't it. — litewave

I admit, I did some head-scratching! :smile:

However, I think that these two properties are not really different; they are one and the same property, just described differently. — litewave

This is similar to your response about being equilateral and being equiangular. In the case of triangles, I was ready to allow the possibility, due to the logical equivalence. I'm less sanguine about saying that the difference between "being X" and "being a member of set X" is one of terminology. (What is the equivalence between a color and an individual in a set?). Your subsequent exchange with @frank brings out some of the problems. (I realize it's ongoing, too, and likely to cross posts with this, so sorry for any confusion.)

I can't help but feel that the term "property" is responsible for some of this. @Banno has raised some important issues here. There's an intuitive rightness to what you're proposing -- that our language for talking about something like "red" can be simplified through analysis and discovered to be largely redundant -- but is "property" the right flag under which to fly this idea? I don't know, and can only say that I'm uneasy about properties in general, and wish I had something clearer to suggest. I also wonder -- and again, there are folks on TPF who know much more about this than I do -- if the issue can be described more fully in Logicalese, which might give us a more precise handle. Volunteers, anyone?

I agree with Chalmers that we'll need to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity" in order to make progress with the Hard Problem.
— J
Does Chalmers say how this can be accomplished; what it means 'to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity"'? — Patterner

I'm not sure. The problem seems to hinge on whether we can speak objectively about experiences that can only be had subjectively. A lot of traditional science would rule this out.

If you meant [the study of life] as a way to begin Chalmers' reassessment, I would say life is being studied extensively, and has been for some time. I take it you mean in a deferent way? Or with a different focus? — Patterner

Not so much. More that we ought to say, "If we can do that with the phenomenon of life -- which is also intensively subjective -- why not with consciousness?"

My point is rather that there seems to me be some significant daylight (sometimes a great deal) between "who is currently said to be wise (in our preferred context presumably)" and who might actually be wise. It does not seem to me that the two must coincide, or even that they must inexorably progress towards coinciding. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. None of this is cut and dried. What Habermas calls "communicative action" is never a simple process, if engaged in good faith.

So then the standard would really be "what philosophers of repute" take seriously. But I wonder if this really works well for all contexts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can imagine some contexts in which it wouldn't. But my version of "repute" doesn't have to mean "acclaimed by colleagues." I'm struggling to find a term that describes people who "know the subject," as I said earlier. Perhaps there isn't a single term for that. Or is it "expert"? But then I know quite a few subjects while not considering myself an expert. Maybe it's more like, "If you can read an article in a contemporary phil journal, understand the discussion, have read many or most of the references, and are familiar with the issues that have arisen about the position being espoused, then you deserve a respectful hearing in reply." But even that admits of exceptions, of course.

a standard based on the opinions of those with current repute seems to rule out, by definition, any radical critique until that radical critique has already been accepted by those of repute. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A radical critique need not be accepted in order to gain a hearing. The acceptance involved is "a seat at the table," as described above, not agreement with the critique.

If nonsense is limited to statements on a level of "justice is a fish," then it seems to keep out very little though, right? But "nonsense" was originally the criteria for what deserves to be taken seriously, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think we both fell into using "nonsense" without being clear what we meant. I agree that a position can be safely ignored even if it isn't literally nonsense. How do we learn to discriminate? By engaging in the practice with others and watching how they do it, and why.

I can see the confusion in context. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, I wouldn't want you to think I was deliberately blowing smoke. My position is that "knowledge of" doesn't have to start with a lexical identification, so we should resist that. I thought you were placing untoward emphasis on a "definition first" approach, but as you say, the issue raised in the OP is difficult.

I don't think the difference substantial. Again, after Davidson, I'd suggest that we have overwhelmingly agreement as to what things are just and what are not, developed over time and use, but that we focus on our differences because they are more interesting — Banno

I wish that were true! For me, the question of what sort of economic system can be considered just is the great ethical question of our time. I don't find any agreement about this within philosophy or outside it. Is it just that some people are born in poverty, others in wealth? Is property ownership just? Even such simple questions have no agreed-upon answers, because we haven't decided whether economic justice is a real concept, and if so, where it belongs in liberal democracies. But I go astray . . .

Really? In those words?

Have you read the New Athiests? . . .et al — Count Timothy von Icarus

I haven't read the New Atheists because I wasn't aware they were taken seriously as philosophers. Nietzsche and Russell, sure, but my question stands: Terms like "nonsense" and "sophistry" evidence more than disagreement; they in effect repudiate the user's qualifications to speak at all. Do you find this in the writers you mention? Do you think it characterizes what good philosophers do?

You think "might makes right" is nonsense but not Thrasymachus' claim that justice is "whatever is to the advantage of the stronger?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's just it -- I don't think it's nonsense. It's a position that needs refutation, unlike the position that justice is a fish. My question was, Why is Plato willing to give us the conversation between Thras. and Socrates, but not to bring in some rando who thinks justice is a fish? And my answer would be, Because although we (and Socrates) are ignorant of the ultimate nature of justice, we nonetheless know quite a bit about it, enough to know what counts as a good question.

But then why do traditions that put forth nonsense not recognize this then [an innate knowledge of what is nonsense]? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are there really philosophical traditions of nonsense? Which ones do you have in mind? And no, there's nothing innate about being able to tell nonsense from insightful discourse. We learn it by joining the conversation. It's the "building the boat on the ocean" idea. We aren't handed a set of rules. We learn what the conversation is about, and what questions respected predecessors and colleagues are pursuing and think worthwhile. I suppose one could step back and ask, "But how do I know all of this isn't nonsense?" It depends how literally one means "nonsense," I think -- whether it's shorthand for "views I don't find defensible." But I don't want to overcomplicate this.

Who is "we?" That particular take has had a great resurgence on far-right circles that have a good deal of sway these days. I imagine that Bronze Age Pervert has sold a good deal more copies than any academic philosopher in the past decade. — Count Timothy von Icarus

(I like that epithet!)

I have no idea what sort of philosophy the far-right circles may be espousing. By "we," I meant philosophers of repute, those who know the history, the questions, and the difficulties.

That's how intellectual investigations operate, over time. Less plausible, less defensible positions are weeded out, and newer, stronger possibilities are broached. And the discussion goes on.

Is this something like a "law of history," inexorable in the long term? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a good question, and perhaps highlights something unique about philosophy. Yes, I believe there is philosophical progress, but it has to do with clarifying questions, not producing definitive answers. I wouldn't say there's anything lawlike about it; it just seems to describe (one version of) the history of philosophy. I think we're better able to discuss ontology than Aristotle's contemporaries were, but that doesn't take away anything from his brilliance at showing how the questions might be laid out.

J's usual straw man to the effect that if one mentions knowledge of the relevant subject (i.e., justice, health) as the measure of expertise or wisdom, one must necessarily be appealing to a "Great Philosophical Definition in the Sky." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I feel bad that this could be seen as a straw man, as it suggests I didn't give you a generous enough reading. I truly believed you were focused on definitions rather than knowledge, and claiming that without a definition of, say, the good, we wouldn't know how to recognize good things. My apologies if that led me to construct arguments that weren't to the point. Perhaps you could say more about how the quest for a definition of a concept relates to what we can know about it?