it is that it absolves God of any moral responsibility. God is a person and persons are moral agents. — Bob Ross

I wasn’t clear. I’m not saying God isn’t a moral agent and that because He is God he gets to do evil and have it not called evil.

God has revealed that He is all-good, all-just and never evil. I’m saying how that is the case, I don’t think we can just do some math, use our reason, and figure it out.

I’m saying all moral agency exists under an authority. I know my authority - it is God. My duty is to follow the will of God. I know I am moral most perfectly to the extent I know I am doing what God tells me to do.
But God’s duty and who is God’s authority, is himself. I only know God by revelation. God hasn’t revealed to me HOW what He does is all-good and always justified and never evil. God knows these things. God can explain them to me. And God will explain them if/when I seek them.

And God has a lot of explaining to do about our suffering.

But I don’t think we people, even if we were all philosopher saints, can figure this out ourselves. It has to be revealed.

If a man kills another person can you tell if he is an evil murderer without knowing his heart, his reasoning and his intention? I would answer this question “no”. This is why Jesus tells us not to judge our brothers and to leave justice to God.

We can’t even fairly judge each other - how can we conclude God is evil?

Are there any deaths of anyone that are not God’s plan? God sent Adam and Eve out to die and all of their offspring, all of us unable since the moment of conception to return to eternal life. Why pick certain stories from the OT to chastise God’s actions? None of us are Adam or Eve, but we have all been punished for original sin? Aren’t we innocent of the crimes that led us to know death?

I’m not saying this is not an important conversation. It’s the problem of evil, written about since Job and and since Adam and Eve. Why was Abel allowed to be murdered? I’m saying this is a theological question, mot a philosophical question. It’s a personal question we have to take up ultimately with God.

And if we find the answer in this life, the answer is not going to be found absent revelation - basically, we all need to ask God “why have you forsaken me?” I personally believe he will show me how, despite my days in this desert, I was never forsaken and will be satisfied (so long as I seek Him).

——

But left to my own wits, does God ask any one of us, or anyone in the OT to undergo anything Jesus (God) would not undergo willingly if asked by the Father? Is there any injustice done to my body if it is done because God asked me to do it? Is there any glory and honor that can be fashioned out of hard work, even unto death?

I think you can find that:
1. We cannot know the reasoning and will of God except only when he tells us (much like all persons, although we men and women are more predictable in our weakness). So we cannot judge Him, at least we must withhold judgment, (allow Him His day in our court so to speak). This is why we cannot judge each other’s sins, and why we can boldly demand “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
2. God is not the direct agent of injustice, because there are no innocents as each of us relates to God (except where God makes us innocent) - we all have already earned death for ourselves so much so that any particular death might be an act of mercy for all we will one day know.
3. We will one day know justice.

These are the better conversations there are on this earth. But they are not merely philosophical, if they are philosophical at all. The best way to find these answers is to love God, to read of his mercy and goodness and know that the all-powerful creator loves you, Bob, in particular, so much so that he would die for you, and did so on a cross - that is the person we are here asking to explain His deeds. And he will explain them to you because he loves you.

But I don’t think our human calculations will adequately sort out the flood, the killing of the first born in Egypt, etc, etc.

One of my favorite passages is John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
God has a lot of explaining to do if this is how he treats his friends, but I have faith we will have our explanation and it will be better than we could ever devise ourselves.

Just because some things are better than others doesn't mean there's a best. “Better” only implies “best” under artificially limited conditions. Otherwise, the concept of “best” isn’t required. — Banno

I’m saying “better” always relies on a “best”.

Better exists on a scale of worst to best. You don’t see the better “thing” without knowing the “best” as ideal. “Best and worst” are the standard. The ideal, to which you hold up things and find them always somewhere in the middle.

5. It is unjust to directly intentionally kill an innocent person (viz., it is wrong to murder);
6. It is unjust to own a person as property; and
7. It is unjust to rape someone. — Bob Ross

From what I can tell reading your posts you are a good man Bob.

An immediate adjustment here is to humbly accept that the above rules apply to you and me, not God. The commandments say “THOU shalt not murder.” God was telling us. Jesus followed all of those laws as a man, but who knows if he has to as God, the creator of mankind and our universe. So immediately we can recognize that maybe we are not in a position to judge the goodness and badness of God’s actions.

We are told God is all good, by God. And if we have faith, we believe, and rely, on this. Keep that in one hand held close to your heart as you ask these questions.

So when God floods the earth and kills the “innocent” (another judgment of others we may not be in a position to make accurately), we can rightly trust that justice is for God to ultimately decide, and so we will have to ask God and expect Him to answer, but not now in the meantime think He can’t explain it.

So you and me can’t murder, and you and me can expect God to justify all things, and you and me can’t judge another as innocent (as to God) or sinful (as to God) and should just focus on ourselves and our actions and ask what laws God has for us (what is His will).

But all of that said - God can justify death in afterlife. It may not be murder when God takes life - meaning both who are we to judge God a murderer, and who are we to know God’s ways and plans?

I believe Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God. And Jesus, the Son, referred to the God of the OT as his Father. So there is no difference between the God of the OT and the NT. If you look hard you see Jesus and the Father share the same Holy Spirit. Jesus made hard decisions and caused pain and division and inevitable death, and the God of the OT showed tenderness, mercy, forgiveness, and love.

It’s all there and worth looking for and understanding better, for all of us, for all time.

This discussion, to me, is not really for a philosophy forum. Because the best answers is to read the Bible and study it and pray over it with other people who love God. God will reveal himself to you more readily in that than what will likely happen here on the forum. Nothing against the forum, and I love the fact that you ask this question, but I have some trepidation.

It's a metaphor. Explaining art is philosophy, — frank

And I think it’s a good one - experiencing art as art is an active participation and a sort of dialogue with the art, where something is planted and something can grow as one continues to experience the art. This metaphor, if more analytically rendered, would be a good part of a methodological critique of art. Can we measure how much does the artwork plant a growing seed? And maybe the seed planting/growing is the interested part, and the “explaining art” measurement aspect is where the disinterest comes in.

So though I might sound like I am agreeing with you by liking your metaphor, we may actually still be disagreeing a bit here? I’m not sure what to make of this:

philosophy, which I think is an activity that stands apart from language games. — frank

I don’t think “gaming” as I understand Witt or others might mean it (that is, the language game is meaningless without a use) is essential to all language, so I could agree with this quote. There is rational activity that stands apart from Wittgensteinian type language games. (There is a language that would survive Witt’s whole system - the one that gives meaning to “throw away the ladder”.)

But I also think, in another sense, all language always plays with the world as opposed to language being made of or part of the world, and as a separate thing from the world, could be called the play or game of knowing/speaking; from this view, there is no spoken activity, ie philosophy, that is apart from language games. In this view, words do a good job of referencing things in themselves or essences (occasionally).

(In other words, I think, Witt saw language as a game with all it’s moving parts internal to itself, and the “world” was more simply certain words inside the game and need not have anything to do with the world - from this view, I disagree with Witt and so could agree with you that philosophy stands apart from language games because philosophy really is about the real world distinct from its language. However, philosophy and language are not themselves walking around the world to be discovered. We must use language to build a philosophy of the world. In this sense language is a gay science (gay recalling the playfulness of gaming) - language is always the game. It’s just that the game is about living in the world even a world in itself, absent language.)

art is like seeds that sprout in the souls of the observers.
if you aren't fond … It's that you're rocky terrain for that particular seed. — frank

‘Seed planting and seed sprouting or not sprouting’ is an analysis of all art. You set up a language game.

The way a piece of art gains value in our world is a reflection of the capitalism that pervades it — frank

That’s another game - a lousy one (to the true art lover) that would be ill-advised to play if you didn’t know how to play the seed sprouting game (because new seeds can sprout for hundreds of years where art is really art, but investment values change for the worse all of the time).

I must apply reason and logic to intuitive and aesthetic beliefs. — RussellA

If you would keep the linear constructions of reason and logic, along with the wholistic constructions of intuitive and aesthetic beliefs, all under the purview of philosophy, I think we are both walking a straight line onto the same whole page. :grin:

Yes, that's the question under discussion. Don't draw a line under it yet! We're just getting started. :smile: — J

I agree. What I am saying isn’t crystal clear to me.

I need to think on the Battle of the Bands analogy to directly address it and will get back. I think I’m saying the sense of ‘best’ that is collapsed into the ‘better of choices’ is the same and only ‘best’ there ever is. We don’t have to reify anything discreet between ‘better than’ and ‘best’ once we set a limit (meaning we limit the world to two bands, and the one that is better becomes the one that is best); if there were 4 bands, one would be worst, another better, another better still, and one would be best, but none of that analysis happens without some standard (ideal) measuring stick that must have worst and best on it at the very least.

Or go back to my light switch analogy. On/off represent the superlative ideals. Dim represents where we live in the middle. If we call everything in the middle some level of dim, the light has to be on at all before it is dim. The on-ness of the light, is the best-ness of the better-than.

We can't compare items in terms of qualities they may share unequally without 1) understanding that there indeed may be an ideal amount/kind/degree of said qualities, even if we don't know what it is; and 2) understanding how to use superlatives. — J

I think I am saying for 1 that we show an understanding that there indeed IS an ideal.

So this sounds ontological - like some platonic form of the ideal is out there for us to grab and make a measuring stick. I think I am tabling the ontological question. How an ideal exists, I don’t know. But as soon as I say “this thing is better than that thing”, I am admitting into the world the presence of an ideal I am talking about. So maybe the ontological reality of the “best” thing is me saying “best” - my mind IS Plato’s universe of the forms.

But regardless of all that speculation, I don’t get past the “better than” starting line without simultaneously getting past the “best” starting line. “Better than” doesn’t work, has no use, means nothing, without the baggage (or bonus) of “best”.

Logical objective facts against intuitive subjective feelings.

Absolutism versus relativism.

The truth against my truth. — RussellA

Good stuff. Curious what Moliere will say.

I offered an aesthetic theory of philosophizing that referenced the different questions or angles of approach different philosophers took. I think this jibes with your theory. And I’ll explain why below. First, you mentioned how your theory raises the specter of relativism. But I think there is a solution to that, and that is, we need to think linearly AND holistically; we all takes wholes and reason linearly about them. (Just like we all ask all the questions - what, how, whether is, why…)

So in my theory this would translate to we all ask “what?” as we behold the whole. And we all ask “how?” as we seek the lines of reasoning surrounding that whole.

Maybe?

I think I’m seeing the same sort of aesthetic differences between what-first or whole-first thinkers, and how-first or rational-linear-working-of-parts-first thinkers.

There's an equivocation here between "best" as a conceptual or metaphysical endpoint -- this is what I'm claiming we don't know, or even understand, in the musical example -- and "best" as "out of X number of choices, the top choice." — J

I think I agree there is an equivocation, but it is between ontological (like physical/actual) objects, and their grouping (language-ifying/metaphysical-izing) as choices and comparing them against the best-worst measuring stick. Calling Beatles the best in a Battle of the Bands with Gerry and the Pacemakers, or calling them better than…both equally understand “best” as “better than” and so both equally use “best” when speaking about the two bands as a grouping.

I am starting to see Banno is right to avoid references to the ontological “best” out there somewhere, but I am right to avoid agreeing we can compare or speak about objects without an understanding of ideals and superlatives.

Banno said “one thing is better”. One ultimate thing among some group? That is an absolute best - same thing. ‘Better than’ means ‘best of’ - same thing - so ‘the best’ is metaphysically there when we speak about comparisons of what is ontologically there.

We cannot fully understand the world using reason and logic, as reason and logic only allows us a sequential understanding of the relation between the parts. Reason and logic are sequential, as in the syllogism. Starting with A is leads into B and concludes with C.

In order to appreciate beauty we need to be aware of the whole at one moment in time. — RussellA

That is great. :fire:

Linear thinkers versus wholistic thinkers.

That’s another aesthetic theory of philosophizing.

Why not? — Banno

Because you keep saying best. We all do.

If one is better than the other, then one is best.

You don’t see ‘better’ until you see ‘best’.

You know a light switch with a dimmer on it. When the dimmer is all the way down the light is off and when the dimmer is all of the way up the light is brightest; and in between the light is dim. You seem to be saying that the light is always dim to one degree or another. I agree with that in one sense, because when the light is off we don’t have absolute darkness and when the light is brightest the whole world is not full of light. But in another sense, when the light is dim, it is still on. So if you compare a dimmer to a simple on/off switch, a dim light is on. You don’t have ‘dim’ absent ‘on versus off’.

You don’t have ‘better’ absent ‘best’. It doesn’t mean we have the ontological ‘best’ in our hands. Like when the dimmer switch is brightest we don’t have a world full of light. But we would never know there was more and that we were somewhere in the middle if we did not have the concept of the superlative metaphysically. Which highlights that ‘better than’ is also a metaphysical theory not an ontological thing in hand.

We could throw away all use for ‘better than’ if you want (doubt we could get through a day of speaking with others without it), but if we want to use ‘better’ we are using ‘best’.

we don't need an absolute standard in order to be able to say that one thing is better or worse than some other. — Banno

By what you just said above, you don’t mean to say merely that:

one thing is better — Banno

…but you had to say it anyway to say what you said.

I don't think one can discuss "better or worse" while denying ends completely. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly.

Banno, you seem to be rejecting the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’, while seeking to retain the ‘better than’ and the ‘worse than’.

But to do this, you are saying “one thing is better” which means, between the two things, one is best and the other isn’t.

I don’t think any of us would necessarily be disagreeing regarding the quality of some thing, just because Banno might call it ‘better than’ the others and Count might call it the ‘best,’ but I still don’t think one can use ‘better or worse’ without invoking ‘best and worst’, and without saying things with as much finality as Banno saying “one thing is better”.

It’s like “better” only happens after “best” has happened. “Best” is tied up with the standard and measurement and theory; and with that in mind, or in hand, while operating in the middle somewhere far away from the best, we can then identify what is better and what is worse in hand because we have best in mind to judge.

We start in the middle: with questions, distinctions, and confusions… — Banno

I agree with that. That, full stop, is worth pondering itself. We have to stake a claim to make a ‘start’ because we are already in the middle.

However, in addition, I don’t think we could tell we are in the middle without also seeing a

cause or overarching purpose. — Banno

We see ‘middle’ only when we simultaneously see ends. We cannot speak, think or point to any one thing without referencing ‘start, middle, end,’ or ‘worst, better, best’ no matter where in the middle of these scales the thing actually falls.

This is all right in the crosshairs of everything - good discussion. I don’t think anyone has made our points clear enough yet.

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims...
— Leontiskos
Oh, Leon. That's so far from what was actually said. — Banno

But do you at least see why he said that?

I know you are aren’t meaning to say it, or meaning to mean that, but you actively avoiding aims, telos-speak.

I think it’s worth addressing.

I could add that I am almost totally unconcerned about science undermining itself through totalizing, and I think the reason is somewhere in here, but untheorized. — Srap Tasmaner

Could that be simply because it works? We can point to progress in science by using what we learn, so that, who cares that it totalizes and undermines itself - it works.

Philosophy has a harder time doing that, a harder time yielding results we can point to working and that change how we live regardless of how they may also lead to self-defeating, paradoxical, unspeakable conundrums.

I would say philosophy is more immediately self-aware than physical sciences. You have to take an extra step to make science self-aware (which is why they can ignore their assumptions and just run with the experiment).

the whole point of an experiment is to submit some apparatus or material to the forces of nature so that you can see what happens. This part of the work of science deliberately submits itself to nature at work.

But the two further steps, observing and theorizing, are intended to be separate, and not subject to the forces and constraints and whatnot under investigation. The weights fall from the tower and I observe the action of gravity upon them, but my watching them does not require that I too fall from the tower. I need not submit my process of observation to gravity to observe the effect of gravity on bodies. — Srap Tasmaner

Philosophy is the act of separating from the forces in order to observe and theorize. When a biologist observes and theorizes they don’t call it doing philosophy because we have placed the biologist so firmly in a box of organic material. But when the bill fist bumps up against chemistry, or bumps up against the physics of gravity, they become a meta-biologist, or more simply, a philosopher. Because doing philosophy is stepping outside of in order to observe and theorize. Being human, desiring to know/understand, taken to an expert level.

I always thought of philosophy as a science first. Maybe like politics can be a science and history can be a science, so not like physics and chemistry, but more like physics and chemistry than arts like painting or literature or music. There was always a reason philosophy led to schools and the sciences, and a reason so much math was developed by philosophers (Pythagoras, Descartes, Leibniz, Russell).

Philosophy is the science of science (which looks obvious to me in the quote just above), or the science of language (as all sciences must speak), or the science of being human in the world (we speakers of scientia), thereby making the subject of philosophical inquiry everything all at once and each thing taken apart, simultaneously. But a science.

We call it an art because it involves so much ice sculpture (invisible shapes that are easily broken apart if they don’t melt first, always restating ‘water’, something like that… :wink:), always hoping something we say won’t just melt. Like scientists try to say something as “law” or at least “repeatedly working, over and over”.

Dolly Parton, Evan Bartells, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash — AmadeusD

I always liked Dolly Parton (she wrote hundreds of songs including some hits - a real artist) and Johnny Cash was always more than country - another true artist - his take on nine-inch-nails ‘hurt’ shows how good art transcends any categorization - I mean what genre is that music?

Wouldn’t deny Loretta Lynn made some good music either, and there are some really impressive instrumentalists (fiddle, slide, banjo) that could keep me listening.

I really want to like country more.

Will check out the others you mention. :up:

I choose to leave you thinking that you have a free mind that is unable to affect others with words. Enjoy!

I would like you to admit that everything you’ve been writing is nonsense. How would I go about that? — NOS4A2

You would have to form a persuasive argument.

But words only work inside rational people. So, what gives you the impression I even speak English? I hope I haven’t caused confusion or misunderstanding to fire off in between your causally linked brain cells. Do you think I speak English? Have I caused you to reply back to me in English without you even knowing that makes no sense to me? What gives you that impression?

Do I have to put the words in a certain order or something? — NOS4A2

Depends on what effect you want them to have in others.

So maybe you do.

The very idea of an overarching framework in which art takes place and is to be judged is anathema, to be immediately challenged. The framework becomes the target.

Much the same in philosophy. It questions the framework (aim) rather than submits to it.

↪Fire Ologist, pay attention. — Banno

I am. I find that inconsistent.

What framework clarifies “anathema”?

compel — NOS4A2

That’s the rub for you.

What is compelled, and what is free.

I don’t think you can explain either consistently.

So then persuade, convince, provoke, incite, teach, trick, etc. me into agreeing with you. — NOS4A2

I did way back - I tricked, incited, coerced, and provoked you into responding to me here on the forum. Remember? You are my slave now.

You keep posting as if you have a choice, but you don’t. My words are the cause, not you or your mind. I’m pretty sure if you posted some copyrighted material here I would be sued and you wouldn’t, because everyone knows you are just posting because I said so AND because you don’t understand how speech, like copy written material, can cause others to take physical action, like suing me.

The odd thing is, only if you have a mind of your own is there a possibility of words causing action. You seem to believe in a mind of your own. How is such a mind possible?

Did someone convince you to say that, or do you have a mind of your own? — NOS4A2

Isn’t that something you can only ask yourself? Your words, according to you, will never be able to prompt someone to answer you. You should ask yourself that - because if you don’t think words can cause action, it makes no sense to say you have a mind of your own, unless words never cross your mind either.

Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else? Lots of people don't want to hear Bach. — Patterner

I don’t like country music.

I am certain I have not been introduced to it properly. There is no way a 100 year old genre of music enjoyed by hundreds of of millions of people with ears and brains like mine are all liking the badness I hear - they are hearing something I don’t hear. I could be shown how to listen, what to listen for, and who does it well and who does not do it well (if I had patience) and I believe one day, just enjoy a country song, and identify things in a new song as good and bad, and predict ones that would be loved by many or hated by many. (Right now I think most of them would be hated.) But that’s because there are some rational-izable aspects to country songs that I just haven’t been taught to recognize.

Like coming to like jazz or fine wine - you need to practice and learn some things before you are even doing what needs to be done to enjoy the nuances and things that make something interesting and engaging and make to be critiqued.

Like rock music - the best stuff has a raw edge to it that is there, but tamed, into something delicate, on the edge of collapse but over-confident in its precariousness. It has to convey a sense of not giving a crap what anyone thinks, because it already knows the right people love it.
So cleaned up pop music about rainbows and vanilla ice cream, unless ironic and subversive, is likely boring and shallow and just bad music. It could show you what makes the guitar sound bad, the arrangement bad, the production bad, etc. lots to talk about as if these were brute facts.

It is a matter of taste, but not only a matter a taste, and taste itself can change and you can actively cultivate a new taste. I mean, if someone told you Bach like all classical music, is boring and weak, I think you could show them how they just haven’t heard, just haven’t listened, and in time would see that “classical music is boring” is simply not meaningful to anyone but the bored person.

Something that helped me understand what I think Moliere is getting at is thinking about discussing something aesthetic for someone else. Not just saying ‘that’ you like X but giving the reasons. They can be any reasons at all - like the counterpoint harmonies versus more linear Mozart - just something translatable into critique besides just listening to the music. The translation has a sort of disinterest in itself for sake of what it might enlighten in the other person who is hearing the critique.

Another thing that helped is the difference between critiquing genres, and critiquing individual pieces within the genre you like. So if I say I like rock music and I don’t like country music, that isn’t really a critique or useful to anyone else. That doesn’t mean to anyone, no matter how much you know me or have agreed with me, that rock is better than country. But, since I like rock music, I should be able to tell you about a new rock song, and describe some good things and bad things about it that might have some meaning. This critique can be meaningful.

And only after listening and learning to much more country music and hearing other’s critiques and listening to more to understand something of what those critiques meant, then I might be able to take a disinterested look at some country music and offer a meaningful, useful to others, critique (please don’t make me listen to country music - I’m a musician and have come to appreciate many, many styles and instruments, and there are some great country songs…but only some and they aren’t that great - sorry!). So I am too interested in my dislike of country music to be able to offer a critique.

Even ice cream. Unless there is a flavor that makes you gag, you should be able to tell something useful about a good vanilla versus a bad vanilla even though you like chocolate better.

There is a clear circularity to the idea that the power of the people controls what coerces tehmselves. — AmadeusD

Yes - I personally don’t need a government and am basically a libertarian. I’d be one of the good guys in Lord of the Flies. But I would rather there be some other options besides just “live free or die”.

I think I have the concept wrong.

It seems Kant was trying to get at critiquing art, and not generating art. Does that sound right?

It takes a certain disinterest to be able to compare and universally judge art, while the art itself remains of interest. Like the critic is only interested in sculpture and not painting (the “interest” part that makes things specific and particular), but when discussing various sculptures, the critic is best when being disinterested in what the criticisms (more universal judgments) may be.

Maybe? I read the SEP stuff and got lost (lost interest :razz:).

In my understanding of the idea of disinterested interest it has something to do with:
- letting the muse inspire the art, where heart drives the interest but mind does not judge, disinterested in itself and only interested in staying absorbed in the passion.
- like improv, where there is no time to deliberate,
- like not letting yourself get in your own way,
- an earnest openness.

Seems like a meditative, more eastern way of approaching activity.

Interesting Kant developed this a bit. He wasn’t much of a mystic or an artist. Was this where he talked about beauty and the sublime?

Isn’t that in Kierkegaard too?

Don’t this:

doesn’t require that there is something to be properly led to — Banno

And this:

that leads us into confusion, pseudo-questions, or circular debates — Banno

Contradict each other?

Aren’t you just disagreeing with the substance of where you are being led, (somewhere specific vs. confusion). not disagreeing with the fact that you are being led (acting with a goal)?

I never said law isn’t coercive. It is. Government speech (law) needs to be highly restricted by a constitution and the power of people to rewrite the law and the constitution. Government is for people to be kept free.

I am not claiming that causal determinism is true. I am only arguing that agent-causal libertarian free will is incompatible with eliminative materialism, and so that your positions are inconsistent. — Michael

That’s what I tried to say a while ago.

Everyone here seems to agree there is a such thing as freedom of speech and that laws should not restrict it (with some exceptions, which caused the disagreement).

@NOS4A2 however, seems to forget that laws are government speech.

If speech can’t become a cause in the causal chain, laws can never effect anyone’s actions either.

So if NOS wanted to really stay consistent with the idea the words cannot cause actions in others, then he should say he could care less what the government says is “law” (speech).

But he isn’t saying that.

most of the important questions in philosophy are driven by a desire to understand, not a desire to know. — J

Interested in the term of art distinction here between understand and know.

Do you mean “important questions in philosophy are driven by a desire to understand what others are saying, not a desire to know the things in the world they are talking about.”

So understanding is of language.
Knowledge is of the world.

Is that something like it?

I disagree with where you apply “important” between the two, but that is only because I don’t think anyone can interpret anything without both a language and a world about which the language speaks. When interpreting a language, one uses the world as the measuring stick and arbiter of meaning of the language; when interpreting the world, one must use language as the measuring stick and arbiter of the world.

So I would say it is as important to know as it is to understand because you can’t have one without the other, (or you can’t have the objects of one without the objects of the other).

I'm increasingly unconvinced that Banno is willing to provide his ends at all.
— Leontiskos
"Ends" are a figment of Aristotelian framing. So, no. — Banno

Ok. If meaning is use, then use must have an end. Otherwise, there cannot be any use in replying.

Or… I can just say meaning is use and that is enough; that "ends" bring baggage unnecessary to make use of language. But then, when language has been used, would we notice if the use actually occurred, would we notice it was language at all, if we did not notice some purpose or some end connected to that usage, or some effect by using the language?

Or in other words, what is the “use” of speaking becomes the same question as what is the “purpose” of speaking?

What is the use "Aristotelian framing" makes of Leon's idea, if not to relegate it and flesh out how "ends" are "figments"? "Aristotelian framing" does not merely have a use, but serves a purpose, an end, of clarifying a specific "figment".

If meaning is informed by use, then use is informed by purpose.

disinterested interest — Moliere

Yes. All people ask what, how, whether, and why, but the way a philosopher asks them might have something to do with disinterested interest. (You raise a “how” question about the philosophic.)

This is related to (but not the same as) why I tried to emphasize that all philosophers should strive to ask all questions in all areas. We may start with a particular instinct and particular question (first asking what or how), and feel we cover more ground in a particular area (metaphysics, epistemology, mysticism, or even physics), but, as a good philosopher, we need to ignore our own gut from time to time. We must allow things to come to us and try not to bring anything to the table so to speak. Our own aesthetic pleasures should be held out as repulsive at least once in a while, if the metaphysician is to truly appreciate the physicist, and the physicist is to truly discover what the mystic is saying.

Moliere,
Classic battle between a “what” thinker and a “how” thinker I am getting at on your Matter of Taste thread here (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/999316).

↪Count Timothy von Icarus
My classes did not begin with broad statements of what metaphysics is, but proceeded by doing metaphysics, self consciously, examining what we did as we proceeded.

Becasue we do not start with a definition—we start in the middle. We do not start with a definition becasue we are not only teaching a body of beliefs, but also providing a set of tools.

Nice rhetorical move on your part. — Banno

I post this point here because, Banno said two things here and left the one thing Count was asking overlooked. Banno said “no broad statements” and no “start[ing] with a definition”. Banno’s reply to Count pointed out “proceeded by doing” and “examining as we proceeded.” And “we start in the middle.” All of these are solid methods for the “how” first thinker.

But as I said we all need to ask all of the questions, Banno mentioned in passing he proceeded by doing “metaphysics”, and admitted that while doing other things he was “teaching a body of beliefs.” These are the objects of the question “what”.

So Banno basically classified Count’s line of thinking as a rhetorical move toward an aesthetic of “what” by making a rhetorical move towards an aesthetic of “how”.

They should be more open to fully addressing the issue along both lines. Banno is ignoring “what” he is doing, and saying Count is ignoring “how” he is doing it.

I think that information is a fundamental part of reality and is the relationship between causes and their effects. The analogy can describe evidence, or reasons (the blue and yellow paint), reasoning (the mixing), and a conclusion (the green paint). — Harry Hindu

So you would come up with “the Analogy of the Information Processor” to describe sensation, Kant’s noumenal/phenomenal distinction, and maybe some other concepts?

“…Information is the relationship between causes and effects.”

“Information is the relationship”

I am going to think about that. :up:

I think the examples that are particularly interesting here are one's that aren't necessarily talking about the same thing. — Moliere

Thinking about this OP again, I realized something about myself that might speak to an aesthetic analysis between philosophers.

What questions intrigue you, first? What is your gut instinct when making inquiry of something? How do you carve things up when wondering how things are carved up? Why do I notice something to question?

When I confront a mystery, I ask “what” first.

I seek a sense of ‘what there is’ first. Not exactly what, or entirely what, but I have to see some distinction there, something that purports to declare itself, something to ask “what” of, what of it, before, in my view, the more painstaking “how” and other questions, become valued and needed. I just, do.

‘What’ instinctually piques my interest and is the basic tool I use to carve things up, to dig into things.

Someone else might be more moved when first seeing the question “how” before any “what” is worth entertaining.

But this is not to say “what first” thinkers and “how first” thinkers don’t need to ask all of the questions. It’s just ‘what’ or ‘how’ sort of sets their initial tables, to ask anything at all, to start the effort and struggle for any knowledge.

We all ask three questions at least. And we give any one of them top priority at any given moment. All of them are necessary tools to carve up and refashion experience into knowledge of experience. But we all ask:
what it is,
And how it is,
And seek whether it even is.

We all have to ask all three questions. To even conceive of and conceptualize “what” you’ve already decided and now assume “whether” it is; and if it is moving at all you must immediately wonder “how” what it is changes and came to be what it might be. And it is the same no matter how you start or with whatever you start - we ask all of them.

What lends itself most easily to metaphysics. How is epistemology, and whether is ontology. But again we need all three questions in all areas.

So I’m wondering if there might be a sort aesthetic difference carved into one’s thinking based on what strikes you as the first question, or what strikes as the starting point, or goal - the sort of shape your question makes of your answer to come.

“What” first thinkers, like me, end up fixing things still against the motion. The ‘what’ as in, ‘the what it is to be.’ Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Socrates, Plato. Systematizers or categorizers. Truthseekers. Certainty fashioners. What is there to know, and what are we to think about. I see change, defeating whatever was, but I already saw ‘what’ever was, now changed, and I look for what again.

“How” thinkers notice the movement itself, the process, with initial intrigue. How is that even possible, before I care more about whatever it might be. These are as diverse as Heraclitus, Democritus and Lucretius, to the Existentialists, and the Analytics and Logicians. They become mathematicians and physicists (biologists, neuroscience-scientists, etc.) as well. These folks take whatever is done and first ask how it is done.

Those who ask “whether it is” first are just people living their lives. We all need to answer whether that car is going off the road and about to hit us here on the sidewalk. But thinkers who focus first on “whether it is” end up sounding more like mystics. When you ask “whether” and answer it, the answer is a belief, an opinion you hold in your heart that even if you don’t know what, and you don’t know how, you know more deeply because you know whether. Just like when you cross the street and avoid being killed.

What is a cat, and what is a mat, and what is a cat on the mat? What is the meaning of “on” in this sentence?
How is there a cat independently of the mat when there is a cat on a mat? “On” is a process and relationship - but how is that?
Is that a cat there? Whether or not the cat is there, there is a mat there with what could be a cat but we don’t know whether it is or is not.

Why do I like the philosophy that I do? — Moliere

Maybe because of your initial question, the way in that we choose, our sort of favorite or most comfortable tool we grab first.

So now the aesthetic question just becomes, “why do I ask ‘what’ as if I don’t need to ask ‘how’ first?” Or I could ask ‘whether’ there is anything to this notion of an aesthetic difference forged by the form of our first instinct. I could ask ‘how’ is an answer to this going to work? But for me, for some reason, I get started wondering what is this notion of the aesthetics of philosophy?

I skipped the question “why” but it must have its own aesthetic, its own flavor. I would assume some philosophers ask “why” first. I think “why” can actually mask “what” (as in ‘why, what is the purpose,’ and ‘why, what is its function?’). Or “why” can mask “how” (as in ‘why - what causes that’ or ‘why - how does that come to be?’). So “why” might not be a precise enough tool for the philosopher; although they may ask it first, I think they immediately break it down into what, how, or whether, and use these questions to inform “why”.

Maybe?

This question of the aesthetics distinguishing philosophers might beg for a more psychological analysis than it does philosophical. Because if you really want to do philosophy, you ask all the questions, and you need to “like” or at least respect, all of the philosophers. I think. And the end result of doing philosophy should not look so vastly different as we take Thales to be different from Russell. If they are both philosophers at all, they are both saying the same thing in some respects. Although I may just be sliding into my “what” box again…

Mixing seems to be a very important part. — Harry Hindu

Yes, mixing, as it relates to blue paint and yellow paint, is an important part of the analogy. But like we aren’t really talking about paint, or blue, or yellow, when we use them to analogize something else, we aren’t really talking about mixing necessarily either.

Maybe your thinking of yellow as the actual program, or algorithm, and the blue as the input. The program exists but it is inert until it receives input. Mixing here would be the action the program takes with the input. — Harry Hindu

Blue paint = inputs/data/garbage in
Yellow paint = programming/processing (yellow paint itself represents a sort of mixing; mixing the blue data with the yellow code)
Green paint = outputs/garbage out.

I think it follows the analogy.

I still think it is interesting how such a simple analogy can help us see som many different ideas.

“But we keep discussing:
- our language, as it
- comes from a speaker, and as it
- references a thing in the world.

I mean every word in that last sentence.

Many OP’s start from “laws in the universe” or “ways to philosophize” or “what is belief” or so many others, and we are back to grappling over language, speakers, and the world.” -FireOlogist

I'm not sure this monomania is necessary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m starting to think it is.

If we stick to all of the physical sciences, we can stick to talking about things in the world.
If we stick to logic and math, we can stick to language.
But if we want to understand speakers, namely, ourselves, if we want to “know thyself”, we, inevitably it seems, need to integrate language, speakers and the spoken about world.

Sure. If I'm correct then there's not really a separating one from the other -- we're attracted to an idea for a reason, itself an idea. — Moliere

I may not follow you here.

Your OP places the aesthetic as the prior, and asks what is the aesthetic behind one’s attraction to this or that particular idea or philosopher.

But if we are now saying that aesthetic and rational judgments are not really separable, can’t we now equally say:
“I see X ideas, because they follow the Y aesthetic”
OR
“I see the Y aesthetic because it follows X ideas?”

What does that make of your OP placing the aesthetic as prior to the ideas one is attracted to?

This makes me think of the following question: when using aesthetics to shape ideas, aren’t you being an artist, but if using ideas to shape aesthetics, aren’t you being a philosopher/scientist?

So for the philosopher, doesn’t that boil down to “what are the ideas” and not “why do you like these ideas over those ideas?” Philosophers only like truth.

And in the end, the philosopher need only care about the ideas and should never give in to any aesthetic temptation or prejudice. The aesthetics will fall into place based on the ideas, for the philosopher.

Unless one wants to be an artist, in which case, let the ideas fall where they may. That’s fine, but where aesthetics underpin, philosophy has not begun.

So, to me, the question of the OP has become, why do I like doing philosophy over doing art (and not why do I like this philosopher/idea over that philosopher/idea. The answer to this second question becomes easy: I like any philosopher that presents a clear enough idea that might one day inform my aesthetic.)

(Long form of - for the philosopher, aesthetics are a by-product, but ideas are the product.)

My basic (and speculative) thesis is this: we find ourselves somewhere, though we don't really know what somewhere is, even though we give it names (like world or reality) and we go about using our cognitive faculties and languages to give order to it. We invent names and concepts and theories, many of which seem to match what we appear to be involved in. This is something we do to help us predict and act. But this process doesn't necessarily map onto any external reality independent of us; — Tom Storm

I appreciate that you use plain language to get to the heart of things and speak your mind.

I think I see what you are saying. At root, this is your speculation: “[we use] our cognitive faculties and languages to give order to [experience/the world]. We invent names and concepts and theories.” We do this best when we do it pragmatically to “help us predict and act.”

I think I understand that and I think that all is happening.

But my issue arises and begs further speculation when we turn out abilities to give order and invent concepts back on ourselves, and on the world as a whole (and not the world in some practical contextualized circumstance).

When we reflect on your thesis, and further speculate, we end up needing to use words in this way:

“many of which seem to match what we appear to be involved in. This is something we do to help us predict and act. But this process doesn't necessarily map onto any external reality independent of us”

Our inventions of complex concepts like “external” versus conceptualized “reality”, and “matching” these and “mapping” these. Knowing whether our concepts do or do not map onto some independent world is one thing, but how do know there is such a thing as “mapping” or a separate world, at all?

Are we just making concepts and languages up, or are we also making up the fact that there is an independent world and concepts can attempt to map to? We never seem to admit all of the moving parts in our speculations without saying “independent” and drawing this clear line. Is the line already drawn? If so, how is this not an order of things that we did not invent?

The fish may feel it is one with the ocean, and as a conscious being, not know itself, and be a part of the ocean. But people make maps, and so we notice the fish without noticing the ocean.

So I don’t disagree with the positive assertion you say about what there is for us, except I would add there are more things we can speak about, and some of these, we didn’t invent. Like the fact that we live separately (from the world and each other), seeking to invent knowledge, of the world, that can be captured in language. This is a fact about the world and you and me in it. I didn’t merely invent you.

My intuition tells me that what we call “order” is a superimposition upon our situation, not something intrinsic to the world or external to us in any absolute sense. — Tom Storm

That is a better restatement of what I am taking to be your central, speculative, thesis.

I see that first, yes, we invent our language.

My intuition tells be I can’t leave it at that, because our language works too well to capture predictability and identify things.

It cannot be an accident that language about what I think maps to the world, and language about what someone else thinks maps to the world, and these two languages also match each other. There is too much circumstantial evidence for an order I didn’t invent. Everytime I cross the street safely, order in the world, in my eyes, is there for me to testify to in my words, words I can use to keep someone else from getting hit by a car.

Humans live by abstractions. We generate patterns, names, systems, all of which help us navigate what would otherwise be an overwhelming flux. — Tom Storm

If the world was ONLY an overwhelming flux, no abstractions would allow us to survive the day or make even less possible, planning for tomorrow. But we survive some days with predicable ease, and plan for next year about things that we sometimes actually make happen. This is not overwhelming flux.

Or I would say, this is not only overwhelming flux.

But that doesn’t mean those patterns are in the world in a mind-independent way. — Tom Storm

This is your intuition. In one sense, I have to make up a specific noun, predicate that noun from a point of view, place that object in a context of other nouns predicated from other points of view and knit this elaborate web before I can claim my words to reflect an “order in the world.” I agree, that is the process of ordering things.. My language itself is not mind-independent.

But I think that overlooks what language is and what thinking thinks about. Language is always about. We are always translating and interpreting - this is the invention you speak of - but we are always translating and interpreting something independent, something about which we speak. This is what I am trying to show you is always involved as well.

They’re ways we cope, predict, and make meaning. So it’s not that I deny the experience of order or its usefulness to us — I’m simply cautious about mistaking our interpretive frameworks for the nature of reality itself. — Tom Storm

For me to cope, to predict, to make meaning - we cannot simply invent. If there is something, like flux, that demands we cope with it, and somehow we are able to cope with it, to predict it - then there must be something about it our coping mechanism truly relates to just as we have truly felt it was coped with; you don’t get to say “coping” until something has been coped with - and that says something about some “thing” (the world). Same type of analysis for prediction (pre-duct, say it before it is in the world), and meaning.

Your caution is wise in the moment, when deciding when it is safe to step into the street and cross. We are wrong so often. But that caution is different than saying there is no order in the world that instructs the maps we invent to navigate this world.

Something doesn’t need to be true to be useful. — Tom Storm

I disagree. This statement isn’t itself useful when judging important, practical usefulness. Something DOES need to be true to teach others language (maps) that will help them survive crossing the street.