We seem to have come to a standstill. I find that you incorporate so much of neuroscientific knowledge and inferential reasoning into your understandings of percepts, this so as to accommodate your understanding of time, that you conflate what is immediately experienced with very abstract inferences concerning a hypothetical nature of time. — javra

You're missing the fundamental point though. I insist that we have no experience of time. Time is conceptual only, therefore any temporal notions are derived from abstract concepts.

To sum up your stance as I understand it: We know from science that all our immediate percepts occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses first register data, and you thereby conclude that all our perceptions occur in the past. We however do not perceive expectations, so these are not of the past, being instead inferred to regard the future. There then must be inferred a transition between this non-past and past, an infinitesimal threshold of some sort, and this you demarcate as the non-experienced but purely conceptual present. — javra

This is not quite right. What I said is that I distinguish between memories and anticipations as fundamentally different. I do not know how I make such a distinction, it's just a base intuition.

I do not use neuroscientific knowledge to justify my claim that there is mediation in sensation, just simple logic like Plato used in describing seeing. There is spatial separation between sense organs. The mind unifies these spatially separated places, and this requires that something traverses the gap. And traversing a spatial gap is not instantaneous.

In other words there is mediation, a medium, between the parts of my body, in the same way that there is a medium between you and I, it's just on a smaller scale. This is not a new idea, the ancient atomists proposed that bodies consisted of atoms and void. I replace void with medium because void doesn't make sense to me.

To the average person on the street (who most likely doesn’t even have the learning to know that our immediate percepts of which we are consciously aware occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses register information) that all our “perceptions are remembrances” would be utter nonsense. To such, there is a clear distinction between “I am now seeing a house” and “I am remembering a house I once saw ten years back”. By the conclusions you've so far advocated, I'm tempted to speculate that this person should instead be saying, or at least conceptualizing, “I am right now remembering that house over there that I’m now point to (with our awareness of our so pointing also being a memory to us, since this awareness too is perceptual and therefore of the past)” and “I am remembering a house that I visually first remembered ten years back.” Again, to the average person so conceptualizing is nonsense, precisely because it contradicts the experiential nature of present perceptions as contrasted to what is commonly understood by memories. — javra

The average person on the street is like Plato's cave dweller, believing that the reflections, or representations of reality, are reality. The philosopher has the task of leading those cave dwellers out of the entrapments of their false opinions. What Plato taught is that we build up layers of representation, and this is like a narrative. What I say is that the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created.

I, again, was addressing what we directly experience, and not any reasoning regarding the mechanisms of our perceptions or the ontological nature of time. — javra

Sure, but we do not directly experience time. Time is derived from abstraction. So you have no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event, because from experience you have no principles to substantiate the meaning of before or after. And you are proposing an ontology of goal driven determinacy. I propose that we move to substantiate "before" and "after" by referring directly to our experience of memories and anticipations.

I agree but that's not what you wrote previously. — 180 Proof

Right, I did not use the precise terms of jargon which you used "ontologically independent", I explained in common terms how it is incorrect to say that the prescription lenses could be in any true sense, "independent from us", unless we tackle the problem of how a thing might be conceived of as free from dependence on its creator. So your imaginary scenario of prescription glasses independent of us, which was supposed to be analogous to ideas independent of us, is simply incoherent without such an explanation.

You then went on to claim that what you meant was "ontologically independent", so I had to reassert, that the glasses cannot be "ontologically independent" because they are clearly dependent on the creator for their existence.. Such an ontology, would exclude from the understanding of the existence of the object, the fact that it is artificial, created.

Now you seem to agree with me that the glasses are not ontologically independent. So to go back, and correct your original analogy. Do you agree that it is incoherent to even talk about glasses as being independent from their creator, or ideas as being independent from us, unless we posit some other type of being which is independent from us, with ideas, like God? In other words, it doesn't make sense to talk about ideas as independent from minds, nor does it make sense to talk about footprints as independent from the feet which create them, unless we can express an understanding of the process whereby one gains separation from the other.

and ontologically independent. — 180 Proof

As I explained, the glasses are not "ontologically independent". They are dependent on the creator for their existence. I guess misunderstanding is your thing?

Do you hold percepts that you deem to be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images obtained via the physiological sense of sight that pertains to your physiological eyes; sounds obtained via the physiological senses of sound that pertains to your physiological ears; smells obtained via the physiological sense of smell that pertains to you physiological nose; etc.? — javra

No, I do not agree with immediate "percepts". There is mediation between the sense organ and the image in the mind. That's why I argued that the thing sensed is always in the past. I feel pain in my toe, and I know that there is mediation between the feeling, and the organ which does the sensing. I believe this is the case with all senses. So the feeling, or "percept" is a creation of the mind, the subconscious part of the mind, in response to the sense organ, then presented to the conscious part of the mind as the "percept", image, or feeling.

My OED defines "percept" as a concept resulting from perceiving. This is what the ancients, like Aristotle described as the activity of abstraction. The mind abstracts certain properties from the object, through the use of the senses.

Next, can you hold any percepts that you deem to not be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images that you see with the mind's eye but not with your physiological eyes; sounds that you hear with the mind's ears but not with your physiological ears; smells that you smell with the mind's nose but not with your physiological nose; etc.?

E.g.: I see the unicorn I am right now visualizing, and I can hear its neigh in my imagination. — javra

Since I understand all such images, to be creations of the mind, there is no clear dividing line between fictitious images (eg. unicorns), and the percepts created with the assistance of the sense organs. The existence of hallucinations, and dreaming (which is imaginary yet appears to the mind to be real sensing) supports my position. The conscious part of the mind, which I believe to be a relatively small part, provides us with the capacity to distinguish between fictitious images and true percepts, but it is limited in this capacity, and is not always correct, as hallucinations demonstrate.

If you honestly answer "no" to either of these, then we have drastic differences in what we experience, and I'd be inclined to find out more about our differences. Assuming that you can experience both as I can: — javra

I do not believe that these differences are "differences in what we experience". I think they are differences in the way that we each interpret our experience. I think that "what we experience" is fundamentally very similar, each of us being a very complex organism, which, when you take into account the extent of complexity, are extremely similar. We are very complex, and very similar, so I conclude that "what we experience" is very similar, as this is provided for by innate features, genetics etc. The "experience" I would say is mostly produced by the subconscious, and we could say that the conscious mind is what experiences the experience.

However, the interpretation of the experience is necessarily carried out by the conscious mind, as that which experiences. And the conscious mind is greatly influenced, shaped, by acquired features, i.e. learning. As you probably know, learning is very circumstantial, so it varies greatly from one person to the next. Now when we, each one of us individually, interprets our experience, respectively, we come up with a very large variety of differences in our explanations. This I believe is not indicative of a large difference in the way that we experience (according to innate features), but it is indicative of a large difference in what each one of us has experienced, the circumstances (learning) upon which the conscious mind becomes accustomed to making judgements.

Next, are the memories you experience of the first or of the second type of perception? — javra

So I think I've answered this one already. I see no clear division between the first and second type, as the first type is not grounded at all, and not a real acceptable category. So memories suffer from the same problem, they are often false, influenced by the creativity of the mind, and we have no real way to distinguish a true representation of the past from a false representation. This is why people can honestly insist "I remember it this way", and be demonstrated to be incorrect.

Just to clarity, is your stance that of deeming the notion of a language to be a "fundamental ontological error". Thereby making languages ontologically nonexistent? Because in what I wrote I was addressing a language as having downward determinacy upon a collective of individual psyches. — javra

Yes, I think that is a fair conclusion. I see the concept of "a language" as an ontological entity, to be fundamentally flawed. You can look at the way Wittgenstein breaks down language as an example. If we look at language as a game, for analogy, we see that "a language" as a game, breaks down into a multitude of smaller language games, and cannot exist as one coherent game, as the multitude of smaller games have rules which are inconsistent with each other. This denies the possibility of "a language' as a coherent whole. If we proceed further in the direction of breaking down language in analysis, we will find that each individual instance of use will assign a particular meaning to the words employed, which is unique to the particular circumstances of that instance, and this is the foundation of meaning, rather than a top-down imposition of rules determining how to use language.

Pardon the crudity of this. If one were to skin a cat from tail to head rather than from head to tail then the given outcome of having skinned the cat would itself be different? — javra

This is the point of the distinction between general and particular. The description of an activity is always general, running, walking, sitting, drinking, etc.. Until you mention the particular entities, individuals involved in describing a particular activity which has already occurred, the named or described activity will remain as something general. An activity is an attribute, or property, which may to predicated of numerous different individuals who may do the named activity.

However, we can narrow down the generality of the named or described activity by being more specific. So, to "skin a cat", is quite specific, it refers to a specific type of procedure which must be done with a specific type of animal. However, even in that degree of specificity there is still a vast amount of generality. You might for example specify the colour of skin required. Also, you might specify the technique, as your example, head to tail, or tail to head.

Of course the outcome will be different depending on the technique, as a different technique will provide a different product, even if the differences are minimal. That is why such differences are called "accidentals", because they are insignificant with respect to the named activity "skin a cat". But if we change the specification, because for some reason the differences which seemed insignificant before, are now viewed as important, one might specify "skin a cat from tail to head", and the differences are no longer viewed as accidentals.

What your thinking of in terms of particulars and generalities I'm thinking of in terms of subordinate intents relative to the given intent itself - and then of supraordinate intents to boot. In the example you've given, the intent is that of alleviating the hunger one experiences. A subordinate intent might be to intake a particular hamburger. And a subordinate intent of so doing might be to open up the fridge. And then, the supraordinate teleological reason for intending to alleviate one's hunger is, or at least can be, that of intending to survive. Before continuing, do you find so addressing the matter problematic? And if so, why? — javra

This is close, but not quite what I'm thinking. The difference between generalities and particulars is a category difference, The subordinates and supraordinates are all within the same category, as generalities. The difference between them is just like the difference of making things more specific, in the example above. The more general the goal, the more opportunity for different possibilities in fulfillment. As we move toward less and les general, i.e. more specific, the possibilities are narrowed down.

Here is the reason for maintaining the category separation. Suppose we get to the extremely specific. My goal is to eat that particular hamburger, now. Until the action is actually carried out, there is still possibilities, with a bun, condiments, etc.. It is only after the action is carried out, that it can be described as a particular, without any possibilities. This is the endstate, and it is categorically distinct from the goal, as a particular occurrence, having already occurred. The goal is a view to the future, with respect for possibilities, while the endstate is something which has happened and is now in the past, there are no more possibilities if truth is to be respected.

So that is the reason why we need a good understanding of "the present", because the present, "now" is what provides us with that category separation, and confusing the two categories is a category mistake. We have a difference between the activity described as a goal for the future, and the activity as described as a past occurrence (the endstate). What lies between these, within the medium, is the accidentals of the actual activity. No matter how specific we get with our description of the desired activity, we cannot include all the possibilities for accidentals, so the goal will always remain as something general in relation to the activity which will be brought about, allowing for a multitude of different possible endstates to fulfill the conditions of that goal.

Finishing the marathon is implied in running the marathon, otherwise one would either 1) run indefinitely without ever stopping or else 2) run for a few yards or so and consider one's goal actualized. And, as with most anything else, implicit in finishing a marathon is that of doing so honestly. If one were to finish a marathon by driving a car, how would that yet be a marathon? If one were to take a shortcut from the marathon's path, one again would cross the finish line without having run the given marathon. — javra

Yes, that is the nature of the named activity, to "run a marathon", that finishing it, and not cheating, are implied by the definition. That is a feature of the specification. What I was pointing out is that "run a marathon" is not exactly the same specification as "finish a marathon", and one might be defined differently from the other, with different things implied.

Reification fallacy I think (or is it misplaced concreteness?). Prescription lenses*, for instance, are just pieces of 'glass' independent of us. 'Ideas' are abstract tools insofar as we (or some complex information processing systems) use^ them, otherwise they are just 'footprints on the beach at low tide' so to speak. *Benny & ^Witty, respectively. — 180 Proof

Prescription lenses cannot be "independent" from us because they are dependent on us for their creation. Since independent means 'not depending on', this would require a special meaning for "depend", one which allows that the created thing does not depend on the creator for its existence..

This leads to a very important metaphysical question. How is it possible, that a being like a human being can be dependent on something else for its existence, yet be free in the sense of free willing, and therefore "independent" in that sense? The simple solution is to deny the Creator, giving the being "independence" in an absolute sense, rejecting the reality of that sort of dependence. But reality is complex, and the simple solution is obviously not the correct solution.

So it's finally been decided?
Metaphysics is defined as "peddling woo". Then there's a special class of peddling woo, wooing that works, and this is called "science".

To conceive of a point that divides past from future is already an act of dealing with a conceptual abstraction of what time is ontotologically. It is not what we directly experience time to be - but is, instead, how some of us conceptualize the objective nature of time to be. Some claim our experiences of time to be an illusion, yet we nevertheless experience time as such. — javra

I've been arguing that we do not directly experience time at all. It's conceptual, an abstraction. You end the paragraph with "we nevertheless experience time as such" , but you don't say what you think we experience time as. We've defined "moment" as a short duration of time, but what is duration? We've really said nothing about how we come to a notion of "time", or how we would distinguish a short duration from a long duration. Even the idea of "duration", the dimensional extension of time does not appear to be derivable directly from experience. It's more like a comparison of activities, one to the other, and noticing that one takes longer (extends past the other), that gives us a conception of time as duration.

This is why I proposed the difference between past and future, as something derived directly from experience, as the principal defining terms for "present", and also "time". I think that we directly experience a substantial difference between past and future, which is fundamental to the way that we view the world, and it inheres within us, and influences everything we do and think. You asked me, how do I distinguish between the experience of a memory and the experience of an anticipation, and I cannot answer this for you. It's something deep within my intuitions, as fundamental to my experience itself, that I recognize things remembered as distinct from things anticipated. I therefore have a fundamentally different attitude toward things anticipated than i do toward things remembered. How I can distinguish one from the other, I cannot say, but this is only because this distinction is so deep, at the base of my experience.

There is a way, I believe, towards understanding why this fundamental distinction exists within our minds, and why that difference is always evident to us. The separation between the two exists as the difference between the particular, and the general. Memories of the past are always of particular things which have occurred. Anticipations, being grounded in what you called potential, are always general. This is why anticipatory problems, like anxiety disorders are so difficult to deal with. There is never a particular thing which causes the anxiety, it's just a general feeling.

We can, as you do, name a particular goal, as that which causes the anticipation, but having what we might call "a particular goal" is really just to direct the anticipation in a particular direction. It does not address the question of what anticipation really is, like we might say that a memory is a representation of a particular incident in the past. We cannot say that anticipation is of a particular incident in the future (such as a goal), because it doesn't really exist that way. It's something general, and shaped by the conscious mind to be directed in a specific direction.

Right, because it is experienced as the (extended) present.

However, I think that an "intersubjective experienced present" is not sufficient for an ontology.
— Metaphysician Undercover

Nor am I claiming that an "intersubjective experienced present" is sufficient for an ontology of time. But it is a necessary account of what our experiences of time consists of - if we are to be truthful about what we directly experience (be our experiences illusory or not). — javra

In all truthfulness, I really don't believe that we experience time as passing at all, therefore what we experience as the present is not an extended duration of time. If you rid yourself of any conception of time, and think about what you are experiencing, there is a lot of things happening, but we cannot say that this is time we are experiencing, we are experiencing changes. We only derive a concept of time as passing when we compare changes, with measurement, and apply numbers. Then we start to talk about time as something passing. But if we start strictly with our experience, we have things changing (external observations), and intuitions of future and past (internal observations of memories and anticipations), but we don't have a passing time. We only construct a passing time when we put these two distinct types of experiences together, derive an independent future and past, and say that things change as the future becomes the past. But I still don't see the principles whereby you derive the idea of time as passing. It can't be from experience, because we don't in anyway sense time, and we don't experience it internally, we only seem to have intuitions of a distinction between past and future.

First, we experientially find that the ever-changing present we live in consists of befores and afters. Right now listening to crickets chirping in the backyard while at my laptop. At the very least every individual chirp I hear occurs for me in the extended present, not in the past and not in the future. Yet each individual chirp likewise has a starting state and an ending state, and the start of the chirp occurs before the end of the chirp, despite the total chirp again occurring for me within what I experience as the present moment (neither memory nor prediction, but a present actuality). When time is conceived of as a series of befores and afters, time passes even within the experiential present moment. This confuses our conceptualizations of what time is, but it is an honest account of what we (or at the very least I) experience to unfold withing the extended duration of the present moment. — javra

I can see your point, to think of your experience in terms of befores and afters, But this is to look at time from the perspective of memory. Notice that you only assign (judge) a before and after, after remembering the entire sequence. We can remove the need for this type of judgement if we look directly at our experience of memories and anticipations, to derive our conception of time. Now there is no need for such a judgement (a judgement which could be wrong), because we refer directly to our experience, of the difference between things remembered and things anticipated, to produce a conception of time, and we have no need to say that one is before the other, or after the other, they both exist within us, together, but are simply different. That's what experience tells us, that remembered things are different from anticipated things.

But when you make a judgement of before and after, you are already employing a preconceived notion of time in that judgement. So when I hear a cricket chirp, I notice it's in the past, a memory, and I might anticipate another, in the future, but without a conception of time, I can't analyze the chirp, breaking it down into parts, saying one part is "before" another part . I think that this is fundamental in experience, that we notice things as wholes, and breaking them into parts in analysis, or even making a relationship between one thing and another, such as the before/after relationship, is conceptualizing. The memory/anticipation separation is not a relationship, it's a distinction, as a first step toward breaking things into parts. It is an act of conceptualizing, but a first step, therefore not requiring prior conceptualizations.

Downward determinacy and upward determincay are not mutually exclusive. That said, one aspect of culture is language. Yes, we might and on occasion do communally change the language which we speak in minute ways (dictionaries change over time), yet that does not negate that the thoughts and expressions pertaining to a collective of individual psyches which speak the same language are in large part governed by the language which they speak. It's why foreign words are sometimes introduced into a language by those who are multilingual so as to express concepts that would otherwise be inexpressible (if at all imaginable) in the given language. Zeitgeist as one example of this. We as individual constituents of a language do not create the language we speak in total; our thoughts and expressions are instead in large part downwardly determined by the language(s) we speak. Do you disagree with this as well? If so, on what grounds? — javra

I disagree with you fundamentally on this issue, so I do not see any point really in discussing it. I think that assuming "a collective of individual psyches" as a whole, is a fundamental ontological error. derived from a category mistake which males a generalization into a particular. When we see things as similar, we class them as 'the same" in some respect, placing them in a collection, or set. But that set does not have real existence, as an object or a true whole, and despite the fact that you can point to all sorts of relations between the particular individuals, members of the collective, this does not justify the claim that such a collective is a true whole. So for example, we see a species as a whole, therefore you might call that whole a particular individual, but this is just making a universal into a particular. What is fundamental to a particular, as an individual, is difference, not sameness.

Taking an expression at face value, you find it an impossibility that there can be more than one way to skin a cat? Here "skinning the cat" is the goal. The "one or more ways" are the means toward said goal. If you do find this to be an impossibility, on what grounds? Determinism? — javra

I say this on the grounds of how a particular object, a thing, is defined, by the law of identity, each thing being different from every other. When you define "goal" in such a way, so as to make it a thing (the particular desired endstate), then you must respect the differences between particular things, what Aristotle called accidentals. Since the accidentals between two things are different, then despite being the same type of thing, the two things are distinct. And the existence of a contingent thing is inseparable from its causes,, as what is required for the existence of that thing. So we cannot say that two contingent things, being "two" because they exist under differing circumstances, are the same thing, because that would contravene the law of identity. The best we can say is that they are two of the same type of thing.

What I propose to you, is that we recognize "a goal" as a general type of thing, a universal rather than a particular thing. This would allow that two distinct sets of circumstance could lead to two distinct endstates consistent with "the same goal". "The same" being used in the sense of similar, meaning the same type, not in the sense of "the same" as in the law of identity. But then "a goal" cannot be a particular endstate, but a general, type of endstate, allowing that many different endstates might fulfill the criteria of that one stated goal..

I think that this is consistent with our experience of anticipations, desires, and intentions. Take hunger for example. In it's raw anticipatory form, it is simply an unpleasant feeling, an anxiety of want and need. When we apprehend this feeling we associate it with the very general need for food. The goal starts as most general, the desire to quell the uneasy feeling. But then to fulfill this goal, we specify general types of things which one might want to eat, or what is available to eat. In relation to the goal, we maintain its generality so as to keep many possibilities. But when we observe particular items of food available to eat, we rapidly narrow down the goal to a particular item which is readily available. So the shaping of the goal, is a narrowing done from the very general, to the more specific, then perhaps to the particular. But when we reach the particular, the goal to eat this particular hamburger, we cannot say that this is the same goal as the goal to eat another hamburger beside that one, even though the two goals can both be described as the same goal, to eat a hamburger.

In this sense, fulfilling a goal can be said to be bringing about a particular endstate from a general goal. In maintaining a separation between the goal, as something general, and the endstate as something particular, we allow that many different endstates can truthfully be said to fulfill the same goal. But if we say that the goal is a particular endstate, eg., I need that particular hamburger, then we misrepresent what a goal really is, and force upon ourselves an unrealistic need (the need for a particular endstate) in relation to fulfilling our goals. Fulfilling our goals does not require particular endstates, and creating this illusion that on particular thing is required to fulfill your goal is self-deception.

So I do accept that a goal can be fulfillrd in many different ways, and I understand this as the goal being something general, and each endstate as something particular, so that many different endstates might fulfill the conditions outlined by "the goal", as describing something general. This is the same principle we find when many different things are said to be the same type.

When I remember something I do not experience a perception obtained via my physiological senses' interaction with external stimuli; I instead experience a memory, which has many of the same perceptual qualities as an imagination but is instead felt to correlate to present moments I once experienced but no longer do, past present moments in which I then experienced perceptions obtained via my physiological sense's interaction with external stimuli. To observe is to take note of what is happening ... in the present. The observing perspective takes place in the experienced present, not in the experienced past. See my initial reply regarding the experienced extended present. — javra

I don't agree with this, and I don't believe you actually do experience things in the present the way that you claim to. Take your cricket chirp for example. By the time you recognize that it is a cricket chirping, is it not in the past, and you are dwelling on it as a memory? you are remembering it. And by the time you analyze it for a start and end, isn't it already in the past, a memory? Even if you think, "there's a start", after it starts, and before the end, the start is already in the past, and just a memory.

So I believe that you are simply denying the role that memory is playing in your experience at the present. Committing things to memory is not necessarily a conscious activity, so recalling things from memory, remembering, could take place without the person even knowing that the things were already memorized, and being recalled. Imagine that you are watching someone do something, or listening to a piece of music. You would have no idea as to what was going on, if your memory was not constantly providing you with what just happened before that moment. Because you are not consciously committing what si happening to memory, and recalling it, you do not want to say that the memory is active here. But it is.

Now you might want to extend the present "moment" beyond that quarter of a second which is human response time, to include things longer in the past as part of the present, but then I think that you would be simply using an inaccurate representation of the "moment" just for the sake of denying the role which your memory plays in your experience

And as for observation, to "observe" is to take note of what is happening, so remembering is obviously a necessary aspect. The thing observed is definitely in the past by the time the observation is made, so observation, as much as it is a part of the present, is always of the past. We take note of what has happened, so observation is in itself a recollection of what has already happened. It is not as you and many others seem to believe, a taking note of what is happening, it is a recreation of what has already happened, through the use of memory. As human beings we do not have the capacity to take note of things as they happen, we need to interpret first. So we remember, and take note after the fact, using our memories to the best of our ability, to recreate what has just happened.

Running a marathon is an activity driven by the desire to finish the marathon. So is the person's finishing, or not finishing, the marathon not real, else fictional? — javra

I still don't agree with this. The motivating desire is to run the marathon, not to finish the marathon. If the desire actually was, as you say, to finish the marathon, the most inspired marathoners would be looking for the best cheats, ways to finish without making the effort of running. But clearly the goal is to make the effort and actually run the marathon, not just to reach the finish line. The "finish" is simply the glory, or satisfaction of knowing that this particular desired activity has been carried out. The goal is not to finish, but to carry out the activity, but the activity is such that it has a clearly defined "finish". So the finish is not the goal, it just so happens that the desired activity is one which has a clearly defined finish. So the finish indicates that the goal of carrying out the activity, has been obtained.

The only true unfalsifiable series of propositions 'S' in the way you seem to be construing 'un-falsifiability' are statements or metaphysical viewpoints that for any experiential phenomenon 'E' they would be consistent with it.

This is to distinguish this from some practical weaker sense of 'un-falsifiability' that you portray here, — substantivalism

Yes, that's what I mean. Isn't this what falsifiable, and unfalsifiable mean? If empirical evidence can be used to prove the falsity of the proposition, then it is falsifiable. The only truly unfalsifiable propositions would be ones in which it is impossible to get empirical evidence to falsify them. The closest we have is tautologies, and self-evident truths, which might still be falsified if we alter definitions.

The "weaker sense" seems to say that if the empirical evidence is not readily available we can designate the proposition as "unfalsifiable". But the judgement as to whether the evidence is readily available or not, is completely subjective. So those who are too lazy to seek the evidence required to falsify the various metaphysical propositions will simply designate them as "unfalsifiable", and refuse to engage in the metaphysics required to determine how the various propositions are to be falsified.

The curious issue I have is about metaphysical hypotheses that are by definition consistent with any previous, current, or future experiential phenomenon. Take idealism, forms of neutral monism, most forms of ontology on substances, the brain in a vat, the simulation/matrix hypothesis, the misleading demon, being in a dream, etc. These are unfalsifiable in that you could most definitely define the terms well enough in question to the benefit of your intuitions regarding them but yet be no where closer to falsifying or proving any of them nor would it be the case that any one of them is necessarily true. . . it is also not the case that any are necessarily false. — substantivalism

I don't agree with this because I do not accept your initial premise. I don't think there is such a thing as a metaphysical hypothesis which is consistent with all experiential phenomena. If there was, then metaphysics would be complete, no more need to solve metaphysical problems, and no more metaphysics, which is the activity of trying to resolve such inconsistencies. We have self-evident truths, but they do not really qualify as metaphysical hypotheses. And a big part of philosophy involves analyzing supposed self-evident truths to determine whether they really are.

So, all that is required to falsity such hypotheses is to find the inconsistent phenomena. And all metaphysical hypotheses are falsifiable in this way, because no one is capable of completely understanding reality to the extent of producing a metaphysics which describes experiential phenomena to that degree of perfection.

Your critique of this weaker sense of 'un-falsifiability' being an appeal to a healthy skepticism to our best scientific knowledge of the world that certain experiences, such as going beyond the observable horizon of our local cosmos, are physically impossible but such knowledge could be in fact over turned. Give or take a few hundred years, a thousand, or an indefinite amount of time until it is done so. — substantivalism

Actually, there are other methods, like the application of deductive logic, using premises derived from empirical observation. That's the way we normally proceed don't we? We already go far beyond the observable horizon of our local cosmos, through logical proceedings, as quantum physics deals with particles which cannot be observed..

Per Wiktionary, "moment" has two non-specialized definitions: a brief but unspecified duration of time and, potentially at odds with this, the smallest portion of time. But in both cases, there is a duration - rather than it being akin to a mathematical point on a linear diagram of time. I was using "moment" in the first specified sense. As to the divisions being arbitrary, they are in the sense that the experiential division between past, present, and future are fully grounded in the experiences of the arbitrator. Yet, as I previously mentioned with conversations, there is an intersubjectively experienced present whenever we in any way directly interact. — javra

OK, I always understood "moment" to refer to a point in time, but we can define it that way, as a short duration, if you want. I just wish to ensure that there is no ambiguity, so that if we talk about a point, which divides one portion of time from another, this is not a "moment", as we hereby define it, a moment is not a point, it's a short duration. So if we posit a short duration, a "moment", as the divisor between the future and the past, what this means to me is that we assume a short duration of time which we cannot determine whether it has passed or not.

However, I think that an "intersubjective experienced present" is not sufficient for an ontology. I believe that the passing of time is something which occurs whether or not there are human beings in existence, and as I explained, the way that the world appears would be quite different to other types of beings which experienced a different duration of present. Therefore it is incorrect to assume that an intersubjective description of the present provides with a true description.

I don't find this to be the case. For instance, natural laws determine things in a downward direction: from the source's form, i.e. the given natural law, to the many givens that are partly determined by it. Same can be said of a culture's form (or that of any subculture, for that matter) partly determining the mindset of any individual who partakes of it. These being examples of downward determinacy. In contrast, the type of forest that occurs (temporal, tropical, or else healthy or sickly, etc.) as a form will be significantly determined upwardly by the attributes of individual trees to be found in a given location. Or else the attributes of a given statue as form, such as the potential sound it would make were it to be hit, will be in part determined by the statue's material composition (wood, bronze, marble, etc.). These latter two are examples of upward determinacy. In both upward and downward determinacy, that which determines and that which is determined by it occur simultaneously. You can't have one occur before or after the other - if at all conceivable - and still preserve the determinacy in question. So the lengths of "now" would hypothetically only make a difference to this in terms of whether the given determinacy is at all discerned. But if discerned, the determinacy would be found to have the determiner(s) and determinee(s) concurrently occurring. — javra

I have to reject this passage completely. I don't see that the proposal of "natural laws" has been justified. Laws are made by human beings, and are therefore artificial. Some people seem to think that the the laws of physics, which are descriptive laws, are representative of some sort of prescriptive "natural laws", which govern the way that inanimate things behave. But this really makes no sense to me, because prescriptive laws need to be interpreted and understood by conscious beings, to be followed, so I can't see how we can conclude that the motion of an inanimate object is somehow determined by a natural law.

Furthermore, I think you have the relationship between the individual human being, and the culture, backward. Individuals act to create a culture, so that the "culture" is just a reflection of the acts of individuals. The culture is not causally active in determining individual acts, the individuals are active in determining the culture. The entirety of the "culture" can be reduced to individual acts, because only the individuals are active, the culture is not. Being inactive, the culture itself has no causal force. The relation between the individual human being, and the culture, is really not different from the relation between the individual tree, and the forest.

So I believe your examples of downward causation are really upward causation, in disguise. This is why determining the true length of the present is so important. When your present "moment" is too long, you do not apprehend all the rapid activities of the smallest parts, which are responsible for creating the appearance of a whole. All you see is the whole, as a static thing, and you think that this static thing somehow has a magical force which might control the activities of the individuals, in downward causation, because you do not see the extremely fast activity of the parts, which actually act in an upward causational way, to produce the appearance of a whole.

I'm confused here. Weren't you arguing that goals are not found in the future? Facing one's goals would then not be tantamount to facing one's future - as far I've so far understood your arguments. — javra

I guess you misunderstand. The goals are not in the future, as I said. but facing one's goals is how a person faces the future, because this is our only means of relating to the future. So the goals are as a medium, an intermediary between the conscious mind and the future. To face the medium is to face the thing which lies beyond the medium, but the medium is not that thing, nor is the medium within that thing, it is between you and the thing.

Two disagreements. My goal of, say, writing this post to my satisfaction does not cause the specific words that appear in this post. I could have chosen words that are different to those that now appear while still being determined by the exact same goal I hold or writing this post to my satisfaction. — javra

I don't agree with this. You cannot write different words, without having a different goal. You are simply saying that you could, to back up your position, but you really can't. That is why "meaning" is defined as what is meant. To change the words changes the meaning, therefore what was meant, so it's necessarily a different goal. I think you are just free and easy in your writing as to what a "goal" is, but you haven't taken the time to determine through introspection what your goals are really like.

This in the sense that one can do different things for as long as each of the two or more alternative paths yet lead to the fixed potential end one strives to make the actual end of ones given set of activities, this being the given goal. It is not my stated goal which causes these individual typed words but, rather, it is I as a conscious being (that is partly determined by my goal) who causes these specific words. Again, I could have chosen to cause different words than what appear while yet being driven by said goal. — javra

This as well, is very doubtful to me. I do not see how two distinct activities could lead to the very same end state. I used to think in this way, but I've come to see it as false. Minute differences are still differences, and mathematical allegories don't suffice because "equal" is different from same.

So I really think that you are making up a falsity, saying that you could have chosen different words, while still being driven by the same goal. Obviously, if the words you chose were different, you'd have been driven by a different goal. I really do not think that you are taking the time and effort required to think about what goals are really like, as they exist within you. I find that they really do not take a form which is easy to name or describe as a desired end state. We seem to be trained to make long term goals which are describable as desired end states, so that we might be able to state them, but all the very short term goals, which we are acting on at the moment of the present, are not even stateable. So we fool ourselves, thinking that goals are these stateable long term plans, when in reality what really influences our actions the most are short term intentions which we haven't even the ability to state as goals.

The second contention is that my typing words on this screen is perpetually under the sway of getting closer to my goal of writing this post to my satisfaction. My goal always dwells ahead of me while I type words. The end I pursue - technically, the potential end that I want to make actual - has not yet occurred. When and if the goal is actualized (I could erase all I've written and try again some other time), all activities that strive to actualize it end with its actualization (when I've written this post to my satisfaction, I no longer type words for this purpose). It is not until my goal is actualized that I might look back at what I once wrote and need to also then look back to what my intents were in so writing. But for every existing goal that I hold - every goal that has not yet come to fruition - it is never behind me but, instead, is found in front of me. So, I'm not currently looking back in time to remember my goal of finishing this post to my satisfaction; I'm instead looking forward to the time that this goal will (fingers crossed) become actualized. A time period I approach with every activity striving to accomplish it. — javra

This is a fine description, but can you see that it is not "the observing perspective". To be always looking forward toward your goals, and intent on obtaining your goals, leaves no room for "observing". To observe requires taking note of what happened, and this is to look back and to remember. The observing perspective is very different from the goal oriented perspective, that's one of the principal points I've been arguing.

But my initial point was that if you uphold free will, as I think you do, then it is you in the present as, in part, "the observing perspective" which causes effects via your free will. You as cause is the very observing perspective addressed. Yet this free will that causes effect is always in part determined by its intents, or goals, in so causing - which, again, dwell ahead as that which one is nearing. — javra

So I disagree with this. I think the free will is tied to the goal driven, forward looking perspective, not the backward looking "observing perspective". The point of observing is to be passive, not active.

Goals can change. True. Yet a goal is still a potential state of affairs one wants to accomplish. No? — javra

Well, this is how you would define "goal", and it is how we have been trained to. What I am arguing is that it doesn't really represent what truly motivates us to act. I think that we are already motivated to act, and therefore are acting naturally. Goals will assist us in directing our actions, but this requires that they become integrated into the action, as part of the acting. To represent goals as desired end states is to separate them from the acting.

Notice that you're here equivocating between telos (potential end striven for) and endstate (actual end arrived at). Also that an endstate is the culmination of any activity - and not the ultimate cultimation of all of one's activities. But to be more forthright, death, as in a complete non-being of what once was, is only one of a number of possible ultimate endstate scenarios for any individual psyche. That we die is a certainty. That our mortal death equates to eternal non-being is a faith, for it cannot be demonstrated. An arduous topic, though. — javra

I don't agree here for the reasons given. I don't agree with your concept of actual end states. I don't think we ever get to end states, we keep goin until death. There is an end state in relation to the goal, if the goal is achieved, you can say you've reached an end state. But that's not a real end state in relation to the person, the person keeps going. Nor is there a real end state if the goal is not achieved, because the person could keep trying, or alter the goal. This is why your description of "goals", and end states upon achievement or failure is not accurate. The end state is a fictional position only existing in relation to the goal when "goal" is defined in this way. Since this definition of "goal" produces this fictional end state, we need to consider that it doesn't accurately represent what goals really are within human beings.

I have so far not found this in Aristotle (but I grant most of my readings are secondhand). Can you point out some references from Aristotle that substantiate this interpenetration of what the unmoved mover is for Aristotle? — javra

You'd have to read his Metaphysics toward the end of Book12.

When two things are clearly incompatible ("NFPW" and "FPW"), how can something else be compatible with both?

As per your description, how can free will allow that you both can, and can't, know what the outcome of your choice will be?

It means that determinism is neither here nor there. It makes no difference to the issue of free will. It doesn't matter. — Olivier5

That doesn't jibe with:

Compatibilism is perfectly fine and logical. — Olivier5

Sure, there's nothing obviously false about compatibilism if you say determinism is unrelated. But then you've just misrepresented "compatibilism".

But of course, if you so much as refer to any of that, then you're 'peddling woo'. — Wayfarer

You shouldn't take "woo" so negatively. Wooing is an art form which needs to be mastered. When mastered, the audience won't even notice the woo. But some will automatically dismiss all forms of rhetoric as "woo", except of course, their own.

I believe that free will is compatible with a non-fully-predetermined world (it would also be compatible with a fully predetermined world). — Olivier5

A "non-fully predetermined" world is not compatible with a "fully predetermined world", so how could "free will" be compatible with both of these?

Dennett arguing that it does exist, but is compatible with determinism; — Janus

Compatibilism is self-deception. It's usually composed of a false representation of "free will", which makes free will an illusion, but it can also be composed of a false representation of determinism, like soft determinism, or its composed of both false representations. Any way, it does not get to the real reason why free will and determinism are incompatible, because of the misunderstand presented by these misrepresentations.

But, again, to me this does not constitute our experiences regarding the extended present moment; which, again, is at least in part composed of actualized percepts that have not yet become consciously recalled memories. — javra

That the present is extended, is the reason why it ought not be called a "moment". "Moment" usually refers to a much more precise point in time, not an extended duration. When we realize that the "experiential present" is an extended period of time, rather than a moment in time, we need principles which separate now from past, and now from future, or else any divisions made are arbitrary.

Consider that the average human reaction time is around two to three tenths of a second. If we take this as a base for a non-arbitrary length of "now", then we can see that other possible durations of "now", would provide us with completely different perspectives of various activities. But what makes this "now" the best "now"? With our duration of "now" for example we can't sense electrons moving (other than getting burned or shocked by them), but a being with a much shorter "now" might in some way be able to observe moving electrons. Likewise, if a being had an extremely extended "now", like a hundred years or so, this being would not be able to observe the earth moving around the sun, because in that period of time which is "now" for that being, the earth would have circled the sun a hundred times, rendering itself a blur, just like an electron cloud is a blur to us.

This provides a good argument for why we need to be careful with naive realism. Our temporal perspective, the length of any supposed experiential "now" has a huge influence on how what we call "the world" appears to us. So we need to take this into account, and validate any principles we use to designate the length of "now", when speculating ontological principles, because how the world appears, from the perspective of experience, is greatly shaped by the particular temporal perspective.

Upward determinacy (bottom-up; or Aristotelian material causes) and downward determinacy (top-down; or Aristotelian formal causes) would occur such that what determines is fully simultaneous to that which is determined. — javra

The difference between upward causation, and downward causation, may simply be the product of different temporal perspectives, different lengths of "now".

Still, I don't find this to affect the uncontroversial assertion that intents partly determine behavior. Right? IOW, by my reckoning, the reality of our experiencing ourselves to be goal-driven in a good part of what we do is not contingent on establishing the temporal placement of goals. So I figure we can further address telos-driven determinacy without needing to agree on the temporal location of teloi. — javra

I agree that goals determine behaviour, and that having goals is a large part of our experience. And I would also add that to be facing one goals, facing the future, is to be forward facing in time.

More importantly to me is this quote above. When I cause these words to appear on my screen, me as cause to the words that appear is not "further away from the observing perspective" than are the words I type as effect and observe. — javra

Take the forward looking perspective, looking ahead in time. You have the goal of making certain words appear on the screen. You act, and then the words appear. You, as an observer, "the observing perspective", see the words appear. Now you have to look back in time to remember your goal having caused the words to appear Having the goal to make the words appear was prior in time to the words appearing, therefore further away, in time, from you as observer, than the words appearing is. Perhaps I wasn't clear to say "further away in time", but I was talking about temporal relations.

OK, more concretely exemplified, my goal of completing this post to my satisfaction is in and of itself an activity in which way? Regardless of the goal's temporal placement, it is a state of affairs which has yet to transpire that I want to accomplish. My activities to actualize this goal might differ, but the goal remains fixed for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal. The goal is static while the activities done to actualize it are dynamic. — javra

My argument is that to characterize the goal as an endstate is a misrepresentation. Your true goal is to write the post, and this is an activity. That there is an end, a completion is a feature of "the post", not a feature of your goal. Most likely you will continue on, and write another post, so finishing that one particular post is not really your end goal, it's juts a step along the way, in an activity which has stops and starts.

Incidentally, this is probably one reason why goal directed activity is so hard for physics to understand. Physics doesn't have the principles to understand one extended activity, which consists of many stops and starts (writing many different posts for example), these would be distinct actions in physics, therefore not necessarily in the same direction. But with goal directed activity, the activity may stop and start, while keeping going in the same direction (the same goal).

My activities to actualize this goal might differ, but the goal remains fixed for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal. The goal is static while the activities done to actualize it are dynamic. — javra

I agree that this is the way "a goal" is commonly characterized, but I think it's a mistake. Suppose that you fix a goal in your mind, and you are what we call "determined" to achieve that end. I believe that this is not the best disposition to have. Consider that things change, circumstances evolve, and unknown factors become known. We must be willing to adapt our goals accordingly, as we move forward. So being hard set in one's ways, and to relentlessly seek to fulfill a fixed goal, is not good. We must be flexible.

In reality, the goal and the activity mix together, and become one. The activity is directed toward a goal, but the goal then gets adapted to match what the activity is capable of. Then the activity must be readjusted to meet the new goal. The proposed endstate is what, death?

Also, since you've brought up Aristotle's notion of "a final end (or ultimate telos)", remember that for Aristotle this ultimate telos was an unmoved mover (this with no intimation of personhood whatsoever) of all that is. Being unmoved, this final telos cannot be an activity. It instead teleologically drives all that is activity - this while remaining determinate, or fixed, or static, in a metaphysical sense. At the very least here, the telos cannot be activity. — javra

The unmoved mover is a thinking which is thinking on thinking, and this is clearly an activity. That's why Aristotle described the most virtuous activity as contemplation. And this divine thinking, of the unmoved mover was posited to account for the eternal circular motions of the planets.

In the moment one looks the other direction and simply doesn't feel anything. Needle tech has come a long way in 20yrs. There isn't even a pinching sensation anymore; one would have to be trying to feel it. — Cheshire

I sure as hell felt it. Maybe it's the technique of the person injecting, which makes a difference, like the dentist with freezing. And afterwards, I felt like I got punched in the arm.

For my part, I don’t understand how your claim that present perceptions are aspects of the past can be obtained without reliance on inferences made by neuroscience. — javra

Neuroscience supports what I'm saying, but is not necessary. Even Plato argued that there was a medium, light, between seeing, and the object seen. All I'm doing is extending this acknowledgement of a medium, from the external of the body, to the internal, so that there is a time delay between the sense organ, and recognition by the mind, such that sensation is temporally prior to conscious apprehension.

With these neuroscientific inferences being themselves an aspect of reasoning, and not one of direct experience. — javra

The problem is that "time" itself is an aspect of reasoning, not an aspect of direct experience. So to move toward an ontology which is based in temporal conceptions such as "goals" which implies future, we need something other than direct experience, as a premise. The difficult thing here is to find the premise which provides us with the highest probability of being true. So we want a temporal premise which appears as close as possible to being consistent with experience, without distorting and manipulating our description of "experience", in a way which would be caused by an attempt to rationalize a premise already held due to prejudice or bias.

I’m only clamming that as far as direct awareness is concerned, the perceptions we are directly aware of are taken to occur in the now... — javra

I think that you are employing a preconceived, temporal conception of "now" here. This is the point I was trying to explain to Luke. We cannot employ descriptive terms which are purely conceptual, ("now" being based in a concept of time rather than something empirical), and claim to be making an empirical observation. This is what happens when we proceed toward description, we employ predication. So we take preconceived ideas, descriptive terms, as predicates, and apply them toward describing our perceptions. Basically, this is observation. However, the descriptive terms may not be well defined, causing ambiguity and confusion, and this is the case with your use of "the now".

What does "the now" mean to you? If you define "the now" as the time which you are perceiving, then you are begging the question. If we define "the now" in relation to a justified conception of time, we have something much more solid to start from. But this is not easy to do. As I said earlier, by the time you even say "now" that now is in the past. So if "now" is supposed to refer to the present, we do not want to place it in the past in our conceptualization. How do we define "now" then? That's why I suggested we define "now" as the divisor between past and future.

..are taken to indicate nows that have already passed by... — javra

This exposes another problem with "the now". We experience the passage of time as continuous. Do you agree, that a continuous passage of time is most consistent with experience? How do you support individual and discrete "nows"? Is there one long continuous "now", or is there many past "nows"? Notice that both of these put "now" into the past, assuming that the past presence of "now", or past "nows", are part of "now". But why would we do this? Now ought not consist of something past.

And I maintain that these concrete experiences consist of an ever-changing now, of former nows, and of nows that have yet to be: with former and future nows being meaningful only in reference to the ever-changing now which we perpetually live through at the level of direct experience. And yes, I agree that the now we live through is extended in duration, otherwise we would not be able to experience sounds (as we once previously discussed on a different thread, with emphasis on musical notes). — javra

Now you mix the two incompatible definitions of "now". You talk of one extended, ever-changing "now", but then you say it consists of past nows and future nows. It's only when you put the now into the past and future, that you derive these "nows". If we define "now" as the divisor between past and future, we no longer have this problem. We have one continuous now, which separates past from future, and all the individual, discrete "nows" are really just the products of memories and anticipation, therefore distinct from the true continuous "now".

But, again, I don’t think the nature of time is all too pertinent to what I’m stipulating for as long as there is general agreement in there being a past, present, and future. — javra

You are proposing an ontology based in a temporally grounded idea "goals", so the nature of time is very important. If we do not have principles to separate past memories from future goals, such an ontology cannot even get started. You asked me yourself, how do I distinguish memories from anticipations, in my mind. If we do not have clear definitions of what constitutes the difference between past present and future, such an ontology would be lost in ambiguity.

If we agree that a goal significantly determines one’s intentions toward said goal, that one’s intending to achieve said goal occurs in the present, that the future is not fixed (or actualized) prior to it becoming the present moment, and that the goal (i.e., that aim one intends to make actual) references a future state of affairs, why again do you object to claiming that the as of yet unactualized (ese stated, potential) future one strives to make actual determines one’s presently occurring intentions toward said goal? Such that here, a potential future state of affairs determines the actuality of present activities. — javra

What you describe here is having one's attention firmly fixed on the future, one's goals. As I described in an earlier post, addressed to Arcturus, we need to distinguish between this, and having one's attention firmly fixed on the past, empiricism. Please read that post. It is only by having a very good understand of what constitutes "the past", and what constitutes "the future", that we can distinguish principles derived from facing the past, from principles derived from facing the future. There is an inversion involved with any sort of "turning around" (for example, what is behind you on the left will be on your right when you turn around), and the inversion between past and future is difficult. So I believe that making this distinction is very important, so that we can determine the nature of the inversion, allowing that principles of empiricism (backward facing) can be transposed to a forward facing goal-oriented ontology.

Therefore, to answer the question "why again do you object to claiming that the as of yet unactualized (ese stated, potential) future one strives to make actual determines one’s presently occurring intentions toward said goal? Such that here, a potential future state of affairs determines the actuality of present activities", let me again refer to what you call "a goal". The "goal" exists as part of what you call "present activities". However, as an object, or objective, it is a thing, and therefore has the status of a static state, the desired object, or state. This is inconsistent with "activities", and such a conception is based in backward facing memories of remembered states, what you called "nows".

When we turn around, to face the future, "the goal" becomes something active rather than passive, as the means, what you call "telosis", and the goal, as "an object" becomes elusive. In Aristotles ethics, the end is "that for the sake of which". But each end is just the means to a further end, onward indefinitely, until we posit a final end, which he suggested as "happiness". But he further suggested that the highest virtue was to be found in activity, because as living beings our nature is to be active. Now we have the problem that activity is usually represented as a means to an end, telosis, because we ask what is the purpose of any activity. But this is just the product of the backward facing ontology which makes "the end" a static object. When we replace this with an ideal, such as "to better ourselves", then activity, or practice is implied rather that a static goal. And the goal itself is to be active.

This is my proposition. Forward facing "goals" are activities, such that true goals are described as activities. Backward facing descriptions, observations, are expressed in terms of static states. This implies that activity does not really happen at the present, it occurs in the future, in relation to our experiential perspective which we call the now.

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But of course we do "derive directly from experience" that "we are experiencing things happening". It is this that we do not need the additional "idea" for. Some might even say that our experience (or our "experiencing things happening") is less conceptual than our memories and anticipations. — Luke

My point was that we do not derive directly from experience, that things are happening at the present, when "the present" is supposed to be a temporal concept. I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

Sure, the additional "idea" is not necessary, but if you remove that distinction which I'm trying to make, you'll never understand what I'm trying to say, and keep repeating the same questions over and over again.

It may be true, that we are experiencing things happening, but this does not mean that we are experiencing the present, unless you remove the temporal conception of "the present". So if you insist that there is no need that "the present" as an "idea", so that things happening is synonymous with the present, you just create an inability to understand the difference which I am trying to explain.

If you do not agree with me, you might argue that there is no difference between things happening, and the present, but as i explained, there is an inconsistency between "the present" as a "moment", and things happening at the present. So you need to reject one or the other.

Whatever. If time doesn't pass at the present moment, then time doesn't pass. And you can't have a past or future without a present moment. — Luke

Time could pass at the present, so that there is no "moment" of the present. That's the point of two dimensional time.

Then I ask you again: — Luke

As I said, I find "present moment" to be incoherent.

How does one overcome the fear of getting a needle stabbed into one's flesh, to make this into a voluntary event?

What's the difference? — Luke

There is an object of experience, just like there is an object of sensation. The present is not an object of experience, nor is it an object of sensation. So, we do not experience the present, though we conclude logically that we experience at the present.

We "derive directly from experience" our conscious perceptions of the world, just as much as our memories or anticipations. We don't need the additional "idea" of these things (over and above these things). — Luke

The present is not a perception. And, since it is clear that a conception is not the same type of thing as a sense perception, nor is it the same type of thing as a memory or an anticipation, being composed of elements from all these three, I think we do need the additional "idea" over and above these things.

I could equally say that no time passes in the past or the future, either. In that case, according to your logic, past and future cannot produce the concept of time, either. — Luke

I agree with the first part here, you can equally say that no time passes in the past and future, but you cannot say that this statement does not employ a concept of time. You have used "time" in that statement. So you simple employ a particular concept of time, within which time passes, and claim that such a conception of past and future would not require that particular concept of time, but it just requires a different conception of time.

But we can say that we are always experiencing at the present moment, — Luke

I look at this as incoherent. No time passes at a "moment", so it is impossible that we are doing anything at the "present moment" because activity requires the passage of time. I find "present moment" to be logically incoherent and that is why I assume the need for two dimensional time, a thick present, or a present with breadth. The idea of a timeline, with a point that marks the present, even if that point is supposed to be moving, is inconsistent with what we experience. We experience activity, change occurring at the present, therefore there must be temporal duration of the present, and not a "present moment".

Your description of experience does not include conscious perceptions of the world? — Luke

That's right, I am a skeptic and I find the proposed concept of "the world" to be unacceptable as a starting premise. There are objects of sensation, as I said above, but as I also said previously, these objects are all in the past by the time they are perceived by me through the medium of sensation. Therefore I class such perceptions with memories, images which appear to me, but the true object represented by the image is in the past. So what you call "conscious perceptions of the world" (assuming that you refer to sense perceptions) are in fact memories, by the time the images are present to the conscious mind.

Even if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed", that needn't contradict the statement that "we are sensing at the present". The present could just as easily be defined as the time at which we are sensing, instead of "the time of things" - whatever that is. — Luke

I did not deny that we are sensing at the present, I deny that we experience the present, as Javra said. What I was trying to argue is "that we sense at the present" is a logical conclusion, not directly derived from experience. Your post simply demonstrates a logical necessity to assume 'the present", as I've argued. We conclude, from logic, that we must be experiencing at the present, but we do not actually experience the present.

That is, when is the present moment if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed"? If the present moment is not 'the time at which things are sensed', then the present moment must presumably be time shifted by adding or subtracting some arbitrary amount of time to or from 'the time at which things are sensed', in order to account for light bouncing off an object, brain function, or something else. In other words, you are still using 'the time at which things are sensed' as your benchmark of the present moment, except that you account for some arbitrary "gap" or "medium" between an event and our sensing it. I can tell you what I am sensing at any given time, but what is the definition of this arbitrary gap or "medium" between some event and my sensing it? What, according to you, is the amount of time between the present moment and the moment things are sensed? — Luke

As I explained, we derive directly from experience, memories, (that something just happened, or happened a long time ago), and also anticipations (concerning things which will happen). This provides what you call the "benchmark of the present moment". We do not derive directly from experience, the idea that things are happening (and we are experiencing things happening) at the present.

The reason why I say this is that "time" is conceptual. So to have a concept of "the present" which is grounded in, or substantiated by a concept of "time" (i.e. to have a temporal notion of "present"), requires that there is coherency between the two "time" and "present". To produce a concept of time requires reference to past and future, as I described. And when the concept of "time" is constructed in this way, the idea that things are happening at the present moment becomes incoherent. because no time passes at the present moment, and activity requires the passage of time.

As an alternative, you might suggest that we start with the simple notion that we are experiencing things occurring at "the present". From here, we cannot derive a concept of time though, without referencing past or future, .so this concept of "the present" is not temporal.

This is the problem with Javra's proposition. If we start with the assumption that we are experiencing "the present", then there is no means by which 'the present" says anything temporal, it's just, 'being-here', 'being-there', or something like that, in an eternal (as in outside of time) way. And there is no problem with saying that we experience the present, so long as we do not conflate this idea of "present" with the temporal idea of "the present", which gives the present a relation to past and future. to give 'being present' a temporal meaning requires reference to before and after. So Javra's proposition gives us no approach to "goals".

It's merely two different ways of describing "experience". Javra describes experience as being present, and I describe experience as consisting of memories and anticipations. What I am arguing is that Javra's description, of being-here, or being-there, excludes temporality from experience, whereas my description makes temporality an essential part of experience. And unless we start with a description like mine, we have no basis for a "goal" based ontology which is also supported by experience. We could still make a goal based ontology but it would be supported by assumptions produced in some way other than experience. In other words, Javra has no way to get from the description of experience as "being present", to the premise that having a goal is experiential, without switching to a description of experience which includes the anticipation of the future as an essential part of the experience.

Hm. We here hold different perspectives. I find that the separation of all experiences strictly into past and future is the product of a logical, rather than experiential, conclusion. I again find that the present is extended experientially, as in the experienced sound of a musical note. An interesting topic for debate, though I'm not sure it is pertinent to the issue of where goals are temporally located. — javra

Well, what does "experience" mean to you? Let's say, it's real observation, or something like that. Isn't all observation, and all experience, past? You assume that it occurs at the present, but the present is not an experiential aspect of time at all. Imagine that you sit and do nothing, meditate, or just enjoy the experience of being present, or something like that. This in itself, is not a temporal experience, and does not give rise to any notion of "present" in time. It is only when you take notice of things having just happened, or anticipate things in the future, that temporality becomes part of the experience. Temporality only becomes a feature from these determinations of past and future. Then, it is from these constructed notions of past and future, that we produce a concept of time, and proceed to the logical conclusion that we are experiencing something called "the present". But without the construction of these temporal notions of past and future, we would not see ourselves as being at the present. We might say that a creature without temporal conceptions would still enjoy the experience of being present, but I do not think this being would be cognizant of being "present" in the sense of present in time.

That is why I argue that our base "experience" gives us the past as memories, and the future as anticipations, but it does not give us the present. All of our feelings concern the past and future, and although we say "we are sensing at the present", we are really sensing things which are separated from the mind by a medium, and because of this separation, the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed. We sense the past, not the present. That we are experiencing "the present" is a sort of self deception which we impose in our attempt to come to grips with the overwhelming difference between past and future.

This to me points to goals having an important relation to the yet to be actualized - hence potential - future. I'm trying to see where our disagreements dwell and how we might, maybe, remedy them. If a goal is not, in and of itself, a potential future (of which we are aware and yearn to actualize), then, given the aforementioned agreement, how would you say a goal differs from a memory or a perception? This with agreement that all three (memories, percepts, and goals) in at least some sense also always occur in the present. — javra

See, I look at this as if you are starting from a faulty premise, that premise of self-deception in which "all three (memories, percepts, and goals) in at least some sense also always occur in the present". Memories tell us of a past, and anticipations tell us of a future. The substantial difference between these two inspire us to assume "the present", to separate them. But "the present" only serves as a non-dimensional boundary, a division between past and future. As a divisor between the two parts of time, past and future, the present cannot partake in time at all. Then there is no time passing at the present, because all time is on one side or the other of the divisor, so we cannot say that these things occur "in the present".

This is a dilemma, and it leads to the notion which Joshs was talking about, the "thick" present. I like to think of two dimensional time, and call it the breadth of time. Now we do not have a single dimensional timeline with an arrow, but a wide line, and within that line, we do not really understand the directionality..

So to answer your question, how does a goal differ from a memory, it differs by the same principle that the past differs from the future. And, as I say, I believe this is a substantial difference, because we know from our experience that we cannot go back in time. Things which have happened cannot be changed, they are necessary, but things of the future have no real existence, being contingent. The difficult question is, how do things change from being contingent to being necessary, at what we call "the present" It is impossible that things can change in an instant of a dividing line, so the present must consist of some parts of past, and some of future.

For there to be an endpoint, there has to be goal, but not only in the sense of determinism. The goal also determines what counts as an endpoint, either by supplying any given state with flags such as "success", or "give up", "hey, that's even better", or whatever. — Dawnstorm

This is an important point. When one attempt fails, we often try another, so in these situations there is no real "endpoint", until success is achieved. This is actually a fairly common aspect of life, trial and error. Also we see a similar situation when one practices to better oneself, a musical instrument, a game, an athlete, etc... The goal is simply to get better, and this is like an "ideal", as there is no real endpoint because we never reach perfection.

What you call "forward' causation is really, backward, and this is because determinations of forward and backward are perspective dependent, they are determined according to which way one is looking. If we place cause and effect in a temporal relation to each other, the cause is always further away from the observing perspective, than the effect is.

So if we orient ourselves in time, such that we are looking backward, into the past, the cause is further back in the past than the effect is. You call this "forward-determining causation", but it is dependent on a backward looking perspective. If, on the other hand, we turn ourselves around, such that we are facing the future, then the goals which are furthest in the future are the more final ends, and we prioritize the nearer goals as means toward those more final goals. In reality therefore, a true forward looking perspective will see things furthest in the future as being most significant causally, and things furthest in the past as least significant causally.

Now it is only from that backward looking perspective that "forward-determining causation" appears to be responsible for shaping the world. This is the perspective of those cave dwellers in Plato's cave allegory. They are looking at the past, as if it is the true reality, when the remembered past is really just a shadow of the activity which is occurring at the present. The memories are a representation, a reflection. Until they apprehend this fact, and turn around to look directly at the other side of this activity at the present, the future side, to see the good (what is intended, the goal), as the cause of whatever activity occurs at the present, they will not recognize that all the occurrences of the past are just reflections, shadows or representations, of that cause of the activity at the present, final cause, intent, free will, and so they are merely the effects of final cause, or intention.

I see where you're going with this. Still, connotations stand in the way for me. For instance, given the possibility of hallucinations, one could say that all our present perceptions constitute our "imaginary present", since our perceptions are only in the mind, and since there is a slim possibility that they could be wrong. In short, describing all our awareness of past, present, and future as imaginary on account of it taking place in the mind fails to distinguish between imagined truths and factual truths - for me at least. — javra

Yes, this is the point, all such temporal distinctions are imaginary, even our designation that now is the present. Notice that even by the time you say "now", it's in the past, so the present is just as illusory as the past and future. What I think is that we recognize a real difference between past and future, and this leads us to believe that there must be a division between them, hence "the present" is afforded reality. However, from this perspective we only come to believe in "the present" as a logical conclusion. The present is not experiential, we experience the past, and anticipate the future, and since we understand a substantial difference between these two, we come to the logical conclusion that there must be a present which separates them.

I really don't know what you mean when you suggest a difference between imagined truths and factual truths. I think that "truth" is always a judgement, so it is always a product minds, and in that sense, always imagined. We might assume a "factual truth" as independent from human minds, but that would imply a judgement of God, or something like that, as truth is a judgement.

In assuming as much of an ontological ignorance as possible, can we experientially agree that our goals reference a future that has not yet been actualized but which we want to see objectified, i.e. to see actualized? Furthermore, that it is this referenced unactualized future of which we are aware that then determines our present choices (regarding how to best actualize this as of yet unactualized future)? — javra

Yes, I'm in agreement with this.

There's something subtly difficult about goal-driven determinacy (whose occurrence I find is incontestable) and, as mentioned in a previous post, it as determinacy is a different category from that of causality as understood in modernity. — javra

By "determinacy" here, do you mean that we, in a sense, determine the future, through our goal-driven acts? This is obviously different from "determinacy" in the sense of determinism.

How is "the intended fulfillment of the goal" - which, as you say, is understood as in the future - not a redundant way of saying "the goal"? (e.g., Wiktionary defines "goal" as "a result one is attempting to achieve". To which I add that this result is not yet achieved, hence not of itself in the present.) — javra

Perhaps I didn't phrase that well. There is a difference between the goal, and the fulfillment of the goal. The former is what exists in one's mind, at the present, as a determinate thing, the latter is indeterminate. Because it is indeterminate, I could not refer to it as a thing, "the fulfillment of the goal", so I referred to the "intended fulfillment of the goal". I think we must distinguish between "the goal", as a determinate thing intended, and the "intended fulfillment of the goal", to maintain the possibility that the goal might not be fulfilled.

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, memories, perceptions, and goals all occur, ontologically speaking, in the mind and in the present. Everything that we are consciously aware of does. Yet our memories are our epistemological past, our perceptions are our epistemological present, and our goals are part of our less than certain epistemological future. To say that a goal takes place in the present holds the same weight as saying that a memory takes place in the present. Yet the memory is our awareness of the past (of past present moments we have already lived through) just as a goal forms part of our awareness of the future (of future present moments we have yet to live through). — javra

I agree with this, but I would not say that our memories are necessarily our epistemological past, nor that our goals and anticipations are necessarily our epistemological future. I wouldn't even say that our perceptions are necessarily our epistemological present. This is because I think we use other conceptions to form our temporal conceptions, which serve as the base for our epistemological "time", therefore, past, present, and future. This is why we can have an epistemological "time" like eternalism, which removes past present and future from the experiential definitions which you give them.

I believe it is important to ground epistemology in solid ontology, so I think that going in the way which you do, referring to the ontology of time, for your epistemological definitions of past, present, and future, is the correct way. But I do not think that this is necessarily the way that epistemological definitions of past present and future, are formulated.

What I'm maintaining is that the future is not fully fixed ontologically. A goal is as much of the future as a memory is of the past. — javra

This is why I insisted on the distinction between the goal, and the (intended) fulfilment of the goal. A goal is "of the future", just like a memory is "of the past". But this is an imaginary past and future, existing in the mind, at the present. We ought to stress this point, that a memory, though we say it is "of the past", is a creation of the mind, it is the mind's attempt to recreate the past, so it is a product of the imagination, at the present. Therefore it is not a true product of the past, It may be influenced by the mind's anticipations of the future for example. This is why the memory can often be wrong, it is not truly "of the past", it is an imaginary recreation of the past.

Because of this situation with the memory, the past is not fully fixed epistemically., just like the future is not fully fixed ontologically. This results in two very distinct senses of "possibility", the epistemic, or logical possibility as to what may have occurred in the past, and the ontological possibility as to what may occur in the future.

Yet the "result each is attempting to achieve" resides in the potential future and not in the present. — javra

You use "potential future", here, in a similar way to my "imaginary future". I think it's better that we use something like "imaginary", to maintain that this future is only in the mind, and the future within the prey's mind is different from the future in the predator's mind. We can compare this to two people who have different memories of the same past situation. They have competing "pasts". And we might say that these are two "potential pasts", referring to epistemic potential. But when we're talking about "potential futures", it's a different type of "potential", because there is no real future, as there is a real past, so this is an ontological potential.

As an aside, do we agree that a goal partly determines one's present choices of how to best achieve given goal? — javra

Yes, I mostly agree with what you have written. It's just that the terminology is difficult with this subject, so I'm trying to clarify some things to make sure that we actually do agree.

That said, because a goal is always a potential future which one strives to make objectively real (here placing goals found in fantasies and dreams aside), a goal as telos is always found in the future. It doesn’t matter if it occurs prior to the intending or is contemporaneous to the intending; in both aforementioned cases, the goal always holds place in the potential future (and, contingently, in the actual future as an endstate if one’s intending is fortuitous). — javra

I don't think you can truthfully say that the goal is in the future. The goal always exists in the mind, at the present, and it is the intended fulfilment of the goal which is understood as in the future. The goal itself is in the present. That there is a difference between the goal itself (in the present), and the apprehended potential fulfillment of the goal (in the future), is evident from what you say about telos-accordant, and telos-discordant endstates. If the goal itself were in the future, then fulfilment of the goal would be necessitated, and telos-discordant endstates impossible.

So the following assumption cannot be held either:

And, since in telos-driven activities the telos always occurs in the potential future relative to that which it determines, then telos-determinacy can be further specified as backward determinacy. — javra

We cannot make backward determinacy out of telos-driven activities, because the goal is always existent at the present, with only a view (imagination) toward the future. It is not a real future, that the goal pertains to, but an imaginary one. That is why the telos discordant end state is possible. Therefore the activity which is supposed to be the means to the end might occur without the desired end state occurring, so we cannot say that it was the end state (in the future) which caused the activity. It was the goal, in the mind, at that time, with the imaginary future, which caused the activity which followed.

SO this potentially comes back to asking if logic is normative. I'm thinking that it isn't. That is, it sets out what we can think, but does not set out what we ought think. — Banno

I think the evidence shows that you have this backward. Often people think illogically. So thinking is definitely not contained by logic. We can, and do think in ways far outside of logic (yours truly being your living example). So if logic gives any directional influence to thinking, it must be normative.

You don't seem to have any idea what the concept of free will encompasses. Ever look it up? Or do you just dismiss it as "a cultural meme" every time you see or hear the words, and your eyes glaze over?

Or maybe freewill is just a cultural meme - a faulty characterisation of a human social construct as something metaphysically fundamental?

(Spoiler: That is indeed all it is.) — apokrisis

I see that you continue in your contradictory ways. Free will is a necessary requirement for the existence of any "human social construct".

This denial, that ideas, goals, and intentions, are the real causes of artificial structures, is the reason why you'll never be able to understand that part of reality. Until you face the reality that immaterial ideas are real active causes in the world, causing the existence of artificial material things, you'll be forever lost in your bungled metaphysics which attempts to explain final cause using the contradictory notion of retrocausation.

if the theories are faulty then you wouldn’t be receiving these distant disturbing ideas over the technological marvel of the internet. — apokrisis

That a theory can provide us with a particular convenience, does not demonstrate that the theory is not faulty, unless the judgement of faulty/non-faulty is based solely on the desire for that end. Really, it just demonstrates that the theory suffices as the means to that end. But that is not the end we are concerned with here, we are concerned with characterizing the nature of reality

There is a fundamental incompatibility between the concept stated as "Newton's first law of motion", and the concept stated as "free will". A very similar incompatibility was questioned extensively by St. Augustine, as the question of how it could both be true, that human beings have free will, and God is omniscient. If God can know everything, then everything must be predetermined, and there is no room for free will.

The free will creates motions without the application of force, as it is a first cause, producing an efficient cause with no efficient cause prior to it. Only a final cause is prior in time to this first efficient cause.. This incompatibility between free will, and Newton's first law, has no affect on the marvel of the internet, but it means that physics, in it's acceptance of this law, is incapable of understanding that part of reality which provides us with free will.

But what is for certain is that the existence of the Universe has zero to do with human consciousness, or any kind of idealist schtick. — apokrisis

Your denial of idealist principles leaves you incapable of understanding how ideas are causally active in the world. That ideas are causally active is empirically verified by each and every artificial object observed. Instead of recognizing this fundamental fact, and the corresponding idealist principle, that the idea is prior in time to its corresponding material object (which by Plato's cave allegory is a reflection or representation of the idea), you resort to an illogical, incoherent , proposition of "retrocausality". You refuse to be lead out of your cave, in your rejection of the "idealist schtick".

I think that's consistent with what I said. It's a teleological process, i.e. working towards an end or outcome. In this case, a plausible step towards the 'end or outcome' is just the emergence of rational sentient beings such as h. sapiens. This also ties in with the cosmic anthropic principle. — Wayfarer

The important point, is that the concept of "final cause" is not consistent with the concept of "retrocausality". In final causation the cause is the end, as an idea, or goal existing in the mind as intention, and this goal precedes in time, the action brought about as the means toward the end. The idea, as the goal, or end, is the cause of the action, and the action follows the end, in time, it does not precede it.

The way that modern physicalism turns this around, is to deny the causal reality of the idea, or goal (as apokrisis demonstrates), assigning "the end" to the material object brought about by the action, that action being the means. Then "the end", (incorrectly understood as the material object produced by the means), which is posterior in time to the action which produced it, is assigned the title "final cause", and "final cause" is said to be a cause which is after its affect. As you can see, this is just a misunderstanding of "final cause".

There is no such thing as "retrocausality", this is basic logical incoherency, inconsistency, therefore logically impossible. "Cause" is a temporal concept. In all of its senses the "cause" is always prior in time to its effect this is essential to the concept of cause. To posit a "cause" which is posterior in time to its effect, is to negate the definition of "cause", in the way of contradiction. To proceed with such an incoherent principle would render spatial-temporal existence as unintelligible.

Now you can choose other interpretations - like Many Worlds. But they ought to be even more offensive. — apokrisis

There are other options, such as physicists apply faulty theories. and faulty mathematical axioms. But to many, these options are even more offensive.

What about the final cause? The final cause of a match is fire, in that matches only exist for the purpose of starting a fire. The match exists before the fire, but the fire is the final cause of the match, being the reason for its existence. — Wayfarer

I take this sort of explanation as a slight misunderstanding of "final cause", common to our modern, materialist society. The final cause of the match is actually the intent to produce fire, and the intent is prior in time to the manufacture of the matches. So we say that fire is the final cause, but it is really the idea of fire, within the mind as the motivating factor, being "the end", or "that for the sake of which", that is the actual cause of the manufacture and existence of the match.

In Aristotle's "Physics" you'll find the example of health being the cause of a man walking about.

'(Why is he walking about?' we say, 'To be healthy', and having said that, we think we have assigned the cause.) The same is true also of all the intermediate steps which are brought about through the action of something else as means toward the end, e.g. reduction of flesh, purging, drugs, surgical instruments, are means toward health. All these things are 'for the sake of'' the end, though they differ from one another in that some are activities others instruments. — Aristotle, Physics 194b

As "the end" the final cause is a goal, or objective. That's what "the end" means in Aristotle, so it is in the mind, as an idea. As such, "the end" acts as a cause of intentional human action. So it is not the material existence of the thing itself, the fire in your example, which is the cause, but fire as "the end", the goal, or intention, an idea which acts as a cause in bringing about the activity which is understood as the means to the end. The end is the cause of the activity, or instrument, which is the means, but the end is the idea, the goal, as intention, which exists within the mind. The end is not the material thing brought about by the means, because the means are the efficient causes of that material thing. So the end (mental intention) is the (final) cause of the means, and the means are the (efficient) cause of the physical object produced. This is an important part of understanding final cause, which is derived from reading Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics".

OK, by "retrocausally", I assume you mean an effect which is prior in time to its cause. That's what I mean I say such a concept is illogical, incoherent due to contradiction. Causation is a temporal concept. To reverse the temporal order of cause and effect is simple contradiction, unless you are no longer talking about causation. But then what are you talking about?

It must be a matter of self-organised Becoming rather than merely brute Being. — apokrisis

The problem with this concept of "self-organised Becoming", is that within an organized being the parts all have a specific function in relation to the whole being. This implies logically that the being as a whole, is the organizing agent. Since this organizing agent, the whole, the being, cannot exist prior in time to itself (that would be contradictory), it cannot be assigned the role of the cause of itself, nor can it be responsible for the "Becoming" of itself.

Therefore, when we look to understand the becoming of an organized being, we need to look beyond the Being itself, to understand the cause of it. The proposed concept "self-organised Becoming" is illogical because the becoming of the being is necessarily prior in time to the being, and "self" is a property of the being. So in that time of "becoming", there is no such thing as the self, to be doing the organizing. And "self-organised Becoming" is incoherent.

Because of this problem we must dismiss "self-organised Becoming" as illogical, and investigate elsewhere for the organizing agent. There are two basic possibilities which are not completely incompatible, immanence and transcendence. The former would hold that there is inherent within each part, the intent which is necessary to create the organized whole, and the latter would hold that the intent which creates the whole is external to the parts. They are not incompatible because the intent may come from an external (transcendent) source, and be placed within the parts (therefore also immanent), if the parts are themselves created intentionally.

My reading of the correspondence theory of truth requires two essential components:

1. An actual reality. Call this R
2. A proposition about that actual reality. Call this P

When P matches R, there's a correspondence and then we can claim P is true. — TheMadFool

That two things correspond is a judgement. Correspondence is never anything more than a judgement. So there's really no such thing as "when P matches R", just the judgement, and the claim.

Consider mathematics, like any form of language, to be a tool. As such, the part of reality which it must correspond with is the part which consists of means and ends, intentions,, and fulfilling them, described by final cause, purpose, and function.

As rightly points out, "reality" is not something which we have a firm grasp of (though many like to deny this fact), so a judgement of correspondence is never a simple issue. This part of reality, which consists of final causes, means and ends, intentions, purposes, functions, etc., we barely even recognize as being a part of reality.

Do you deny that some animals see different colours? What explanation could there be for seeing different colours other than that there are different colours? I would see different colours regardless of what I called them; or are you denying that? So what does it matter if you call two colours red and I call one red and one orange? — Janus

You seem to be missing the point altogether. A person might see two completely different shades of red, hence different colours, yet call them both "red". Likewise with orange. And, the same thing which I might say on one day is "red", I might say if instead I encountered it on another day, under different conditions, is "orange".

The issue is not a matter of seeing differences of colour, it's a matter of seeing instances of different colours, and calling the different colours by the same name, "red". In this case we are saying that two different colours, which we clearly perceive as different, are the same colour, red.

This is why I say there must be theory involved. It is not a matter of always seeing the very same colour, and calling it by the very same name, "red". It is a matter of seeing a very wide range of different colours, and calling them all the same, "red". The capacity to categorize a particular instance of colour, under the classification of "red", cannot be a matter of habit, because one can see a completely new shade of red, never before encountered by that person, and have no problem categorizing it as red. How could one be employing habit in the completely new activity consisting of categorizing a colour never before encountered?

I am at a loss to know what it is that is confusing you about this, so I am afraid I can't be of further help. — Janus

It's not that I'm confused, not at all. I just find it a very poor explanation, and therefore unacceptable. If you said "that thing is red, and this thing is orange", and I asked you why you say so, and you said because I associate the term "red" with the colour of that thing, and the term "orange" with the colour of this thing, I'd say that's a very poor explanation. In fact, I'd reject it as most likely false. It's the answer of a lazy person who does not want to take the time and introspection required to determine the real reason why the one was designated as red and the other as orange.

The thing about habits is that they must get formed, created. They cannot be taken as granted. So when asked, why do you do things in that particular way instead of another way, the explanation is not "because it's my habit". The true explanation is the process which formed the habit. And, it is the person who is avoiding the question due to intellectual laziness, or some other infliction, who simply says "because it's my habit".

You're not paying attention. I already said I am not making any claim beyond what is the case in the context of seeing colours. IF we see different colours we see colours as different from one another, from which it logically follows that there are differences between colours, as seen. — Janus

Then you've changed the subject. We were discussing how one would distinguish red from orange, not simply how one would see that one thing's colour is different from another thing's colour. The former, distinguishing red from orange, is what I argued requires theory.

If we see them as different then from the point of view of seeing there just is a difference, otherwise how could it be that we see them as different? — Janus

We can't take that for granted, that's the point of skepticism. Things are not necessarily as you perceive them. So the conclusion "they are different" is not validly derived from "I see them as different".

The theory would be that humans cab see different colours on account of differing wavelengths of light (and also possess the requisite visual capabilities, obviously). But I don't need that theory in order to see different colours, obviously; I don't need any theory at all to do that. Animals can do it too, to varying degrees and in different ways. — Janus

We were not talking about simply seeing them as different. We were talking about labeling them as "orange" and "red", and this is what I said requires theory.. You seem to be either attempting to deny that there is a difference between seeing things as different, and being able to identify the specifics of that difference, or else you are just not grasping that there is such a difference. So whenever I say something about the latter, identifying the specifics concerning the difference between what is called "orange" and what is called "red", you attempt to reduce this to a general capacity of seeing that there is a difference. But seeing that there is a difference could apply to any different colours, and what we are talking about is specifically the difference between orange and red, not the general capacity of seeing that two things have different colours.

The difference between two colours is on account of the fact that we can distinguish between them. — Janus

This is the faulty principle which falls to skepticism. You claimed, :I'm only talking about what we see not some purported reality beyond that", yet you claim that there is a real difference on account of the fact that you see a difference. Until we thoroughly understand the means by which colours are sensed, and discount as impossible that one could be deceived in sensation, this conclusion is not valid.