I would have thought, if we know more about the nature of mind, then it would help understanding the ideas of mathematics and forms of Plato. And your claim about mind as general or universal being was interesting, if not mysterious :)

Correct. This is Plato's Theory of Recollection (anamnesis) — Apollodorus

Thanks for your confirmation.

Physics is nice but one wants a bit more! At least, if I''m that one. — Prishon

Physics is cool, but Metaphysics is even more cool. :grin:

strong disaggreement (talking of which!) with Popper. So... I have read that book of Popper you have on your shell. It's on my shell to, but to say I wipe the dust off...No. He should himself be falsified! — Prishon

I have a couple more Popper - Self and Brain(??), Open Society and Its enemies.

Anyhow, suppose I have a theory about the origin of the universe. What took place around the big bang (inflation) and before (and after). How long should I go on criticizing or trying to falsify it ( which would be a bit problematic...)?

Always nice writing with you! :smile: — Prishon

All theories with weakness deserved to be criticised and falsified.

:up: :smile:

That all of our individual minds also form part of a collective consciousness. Jung's idea of a collective unconscious. The Buddhist doctrine of ālāyavijñāna, the 'storehouse consciousness'. That there is a kind of 'species consciousness' - a form of consciousness common to h. sapiens, mediated by culture and history. Unity of mankind. That kind of thing. But it's very important not to reify it as 'the One Mind', as something objectively real. It's not something we can objectify. (There was a popular 1960's book about Tibetan Buddhism 'liberation through knowing the One Mind', but it was by a Californian theosophist who never set foot in Tibet. Such ideas are very easily misconstrued.) — Wayfarer

But wouldn't that view of mind is a mythology rather than philosophy or science?

We live in the shadow of our images, the results of our attempts to imagine what is happening. Noticing that is happening doesn't put the "material world" in a place. That would be pretty arrogant after just saying you didn't know what things are. — Valentinus

Plato's dualistic world view must had been opposed by many, even one of his pupil Aristotle. Aristotle seemingly had his own worldview (monistic), and his own theory of form.

Indeed, the word "fact" seems to be an endorsement of the correspondence theory of truth. — TheMadFool

Facts are usually given to us as form of selective interpretations on the occurrences of the past in the world.

I think transcendental has different meanings depending on the context. There seem to be at least two different meanings: — darthbarracuda

Excellent work on your posts, looks interesting and a lot to go over in them. :up:
Sure, I appreciate your points on "transcendental". Will read and reflect on them, and get back if there are further queries. cheers.

Here too the Forms are hypothetical not things known. In the Republic we also find the promise of dialectic being able to move beyond hypothesis by the use of hypothesis. But nowhere in any of Plato's dialogues does he identify anyone, either an historical individual or a fictional character, whose journey ends in knowledge of the Forms. The journey always ends in aporia. — Fooloso4

Plato was also a dualist I gather. The material world we live now is a shadow of the true world of Idea. Maybe in the world of Idea, is where the Forms belong? Some books says that Plato thinks that we are all born with the Forms from the past life. We never learn new things. The knowledge is all in the mind and forms already with us, and we just retrieve them.

Right! Damned! Why don't you write things once in a while with which I don't agree? — Prishon

How about "We never agree on anything."
We will have some disagreements for sure, but that's just natural. :D

It was Xenophanes .... Popper "expanded" endless falsification as the real thing will never get reached; tiring indeed. Why not saying that after falsifying, criticizing, falsifying, criticizing, ...ad inf. that you theory is "it"? — Prishon

I think your elaboration is excellent. I remembered my teen time reading Archimedes shouting out "Eureka '' coming out of the bath after finding out how to measure mass of any matter no matter how odd shaped they are, just immersing them into water, and measuring the overflown water from the tub. Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery is still in my reading list. :roll:

Very tricky indeed. But nevertheless essential, I think. — Apollodorus

:ok:

But I think there's a theme in world philosophy of there being 'mind' in a sense more general than 'the individual mind', yours or mine. Actually I'm embarking on a course of studying the current philosopher, Bernardo Kastrup, who has this kind of philosophy. — Wayfarer

I feel that the only way minds can be universal is sharing knowledge and truths discovered by reason and logic, and keep passing them onto other minds.

You hunt something down by following its tracks until you see it. The tracks of the Forms are the universals, the things whose properties can be perceived in particulars .... — Apollodorus

The universals and particulars ring a bell. Yes, it was in the Introduction to Metaphysics book. I can remember vaguely.

I will read up it again, and the Phaedo too. The Form was always very tricky part in Plato.
Thanks for the info.

That's why I can't buy into this idea that it's simply something humans thought up, it's the discovery of something deep about nature herself. When Galileo said the book of nature is written in mathematics, he wasn't simply employing poetic allegory.. — Wayfarer

Hmmm I am not sure if I could agree with that point.
Who can only write the book of nature in mathematics? Humans. (I don't believe God or the aliens or cats can do this.)

Who discovered the antimatter? Paul Dirac. What was he? A human. (I don't believe he was a God or the aliens).

If you woke up on the earth 20000 years back, and were standing on a field with no one around you.
Just field, sky and yourself. Would you have been able to imagine the antimatter? The book of nature? Calculus or the Relative Theory? :) I think they are all in human mind, and the maths, the laws, scientific knowledge and all the facts have been discovered, and manifested into information by humans. Well, the ancient Greeks started the ball rolling.

But I think there's a theme in world philosophy of there being 'mind' in a sense more general than 'the individual mind', yours or mine. — Wayfarer

How did you come to that thought? Do you have any explanation for that belief or thought or conviction? Just a feeling? Guess? Personal experience? Inductive or deductive reasoning? If there were such things as general mind, then again where is it? Who is owning the mind? Having a mind means the haver can perceive, feel, think, and act. Does the owner of the mind exist in physical form?

Et voilà — emancipate

There had been a huge RG for the book already.
But it looks like it had been closed.
Wonder if it would be good idea to open a new one.

A statement will be a fact if and only if it is true.

Seems pretty straight forward. — Banno

Problem with facts are the fact that, all accounts and descriptions of occurrences is just interpretations, which call for verifications before qualifying as knowledge. (including this fact)

By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous

What could be "this cosmic nous"?

Not quite. The modern translation is ‘intellect’ but it’s a bit starchy to convey the gist. The Wiki entry is a good intro. ‘nous’ is preserved in vernacular English as being cluey or having a kind of insight (‘got nous, that bloke’) — Wayfarer

It sounds nous is being suggested as equating part with pure reason in Wiki.

"As in Xenophon, Plato's Socrates frequently describes the soul in a political way, with ruling parts, and parts that are by nature meant to be ruled. Nous is associated with the rational (logistikon) part of the individual human soul, which by nature should rule. In his Republic, in the so-called "analogy of the divided line", it has a special function within this rational part. "

Wiki on Nous is excellent actually.

You need nous to see ‘em — Wayfarer

Would it be same as pure reason?

Only God knows, I guess. — Prishon

Maybe one needs to do transcendental leap to be able to see them?

You need to have some cognitive elements, visual or auditory, etc. in order to perceive space and time. Prior to this, there is no time and space. The Forms being unchanging, eternal, etc., cannot be anywhere else. — Apollodorus

I think I do. I am seeing clouds in the sky, and a hill below it. I am also seeing this text as I am typing.
I hear the sound of the cars passing outside on the road. But cannot find any forms. Well the only forms I normally see are in the junk mail for placing orders for clothing from the mail order companies.

No matter where I looked, the platonic forms were not found. Now I am guessing, they could be my intuition or pure reason.

Where could X be? — TheMadFool

Intuition? or the pure reason?

If religious beliefs were the same kind as sentimental or epistemic beliefs, then there would be no place for Philosophy of Religion.  But there is the official subject called Philosophy of Religion, and Epistemology of Religion is discussed in the subject. I don't believe my definition of religious belief is unique, and if it were, I wouldn't be worried about it.

I am certain that the existential philosophers of religion would take my definition of the beliefs, because they would believe that religious belief is different from other beliefs in that it tends to be absurd, irrational and based on personal religious experience and insights rather than sensory perceptions, reason or objective evidence and contextual nature.

Nice, me too. :up: — Pantagruel

This book cries out for reading group.

In contrast, the Form of Triangle is one, unchanging, and eternal. It is beyond space and time and cannot be expressed in language. — Apollodorus

If something is beyond space and time, then where could it be?

This is probably the trouble. Beliefs simply are - the way that they arise is the subject of study in a variety of fields. You seem to have reached a conclusion about how "religious beliefs" arise that is totally counterfactual, arrived at through no rationalizing, evidence, or explanation, but will now hold firm to your conviction. Is your feeling a religious belief? — Ennui Elucidator

There is no trouble here. Things are crystal clear, but you seem to make it unclear.  I am not religious myself.  So I don't belong to any of the isms, and I am not even an agnostic. I am only discussing it on a philosophical level.

I am not ignoring the linguistic element in beliefs. But in religious beliefs, there are more than linguistic elements in the nature of the belief.

Certainty is hardly justified here. I'm sure you can imagine lots of things if you were willing to be a little less certain. — Ennui Elucidator

It depends on how firm and narrow your definition on these things are. You could make it wide and loose and be uncertain and allow anything and everything to be something, or you tighten up the definitions to more logical manner, and then things get clearer and simpler.

I feel that religious beliefs are totally different types of beliefs to other beliefs in that it doesn't need rationalising, evidence or explanation.

I find it hard to imagine how religious beliefs could be even thought of in comparison to other types of beliefs.

Because when one is committed to a religion, they don't need any form of standard reason, logic or evidence for their beliefs.  It is even irrational in the sense that one would believe all the contents in the holy scriptures, and they would even sacrifice their lives for their faiths and beliefs.

And your example of a 6 year old believing God before he could believe in other things, should we call that a theism? Could we call him a theist? 

Genuine religious beliefs are not just simple beliefs or knowledge about something, but it is a belief which has been hardened by not just the reasonings and logics of the religion itself, but also the believers own reasoning and their own logical justifications and personal experience too, all mixed and formed into a concrete slab of hard shell faith.  I wouldn't call a 6 year old naively calling out for God because he /she saw it on TV soaps.

Now how one could possibly try to convince anyone with that type of hardened beliefs, same as sentimental beliefs or epistemic knowledge, I couldn't imagine. Sorry.

Im not talking about or to any particular agnostic. The question is addressed to any agnosatic who agrees with the OP.
Okay, you're agnostic; but do you believe in g/G or not? — 180 Proof

:nerd:

All we can be sure about causality is that, it is a product of human mind, powered by imagination and intuition and reason.

Sure EE. A good post. I like your points backed up by the argument.
I see your points.

But my reply to that point would be, religious beliefs are not the same class as the sentiment or epistemic beliefs or knowledge.

I feel that religious beliefs are more stringent beliefs than normal beliefs, because they arrived at the beliefs not by their sentiments or epistemological evidence. They are likely to have arrived at their beliefs via personal religious experiences or some form of mental events that is more than simple sentiments or epistemic evidence. Or maybe some theists must have read, studied reflected and reasoned into their faiths. But whatever way they have reached there, their beliefs are far higher level than the normal epistemic knowledge or sentimental beliefs.

Simply seeing all the beliefs as same type is just not right and not meaningful at all for the argument.

If you read Kant, I think his view on the religious faith is that one must take a transcendental leap which is powered by the practical reason in order to see God. It is a totally different class of belief and faith you need in order to be able to say, I believe in God, to saying I believe it will rain tomorrow, or I believe my book is in the living room.

So, no I don't agree with your points and suggestions on the topic.

Okay, you're agnostic; but do you believe in g/G or not? — 180 Proof

Agnostics don't know. (They can and must doubt, because they are not sure.)
Atheists don't believe. (They don't doubt. They have nothing to doubt about.)
Theist do believe. (They must not doubt. If they doubt, they are not theist.)

The whole thing is about belief here. Indeed who is the agnostic you have been talking about?

Therein lies the rub. — TheMadFool

Ay, there's the rub.

The letter combination "th" is the most common two-letter (each distinct from the other) pairing to appear in the English language. Does this mean that "t" causes "h"? — TheMadFool

If there are exceptions and irregularities, then causal relations cannot be formed.
It must be constant occurrences.

But you're evidently not prepared to have a meaningful discussion on this topic, so I'll stop wasting my time. — Seppo

All you ever try to do is just breaking and distorting the formal concepts, then reasonable discourse is impossible with you.

Its a simple question. But you're evidently not prepared to have a meaningful discussion on this topic, so I'll stop wasting my time. — Seppo

Just screaming out self contradictory for everything you see is not philosophy or logic.

So... yes? Or no? — Seppo

Do you think you are in some TV game show?

nobody said that the fact that theists can doubt and remain theists "makes the formal concept of theist untenable". — Seppo

You said theist can doubt, so the definition theist believes in God is self-contradictory. I am saying you are just trying to break the formal concepts.

Do you see that the phrase "doubting theist" includes the word "theist", or not? Simple yes or no will do. — Seppo

This is not logic. I am not sure what you are after.

They can? They can do anything, but that doesn't make the formal concept of theist untenable.