When you are done ad homming and put your philosopher pants on, I'll wait for you. For now, ignore.

He only skipped desert that day.

Is this to say that Agape, Philia, and the like are wrongs to be avoided and shunned? — javra

Philia and Agape may be actually more acutely understood through withdrawal. Philia by way of not imposing more harms than necessary. Agape would be enhanced because one is showing compassion by not engaging. The delusion is that engagement means necessarily more love. In fact, it can be quite the opposite.

After all, if there for example is no "emotional entanglements" of friendship, then there is no possibility of undergoing the suffering of being betrayed by those you trusted as friends - nor is there the possibility of inflicting such wrongs upon others. — javra

Why would you want this??

Not my cup of tea, this general outlook. But it does appear entailed by your conclusion: friendship is a vice rather than a virtue. Am I wrong in this inference? — javra

It is a vice in that it causes more harm.

Oh, and if anyone posts Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock," don’t even bother- I’ve already called that cliché. You can try to romanticize being a "social animal" all you want, but at least the rock knows that peace comes from detachment. So, cheers to embracing solitude- and not just as some overused trope, but as a legit path to freedom from the madness.

Suffering is not simply caused by being born but by the demand that your life should be other than it is. — Janus

It’s caused when you are conscious, and amplified and a difference even in kind of suffering through self-awareness of existence.. In that regard, Schopenhauer’s Will is apt. Desire, needs, goals, lack in general. But whatever gotcha contrary opinion you want to answer here, I advise to read the dialectic of this thread as I think it’s helpful to see the development.

I won't take your word for it ;-) — Wayfarer

And yet, you deny the basic fundamentals of cause and effect. Suffering is caused by being born. It's that simple. No more.

I'm sure the Buddhas understand that. Escaping enculturation is the reason Buddhism started as a renunciate movement (one of many in that culture). — Wayfarer

The Middle Path, already shows defeat. Mama and papa.. Buddhist societies go on. Crying at birth won't do no good. It happened.

Yes, but as you know, I don't believe in the soteriology that Buddhist peddles. It's my suspicion that often spiritual terms get mixed with everyday psychological terms. We have an ego because there is an enculturation process, not any metaphysical other trappings. We have an ego because we are born (in the physical sense). We have an ego because we have language. Things like this.

Speaking of the Will and the power of boredom, one is reminded of Pascal's summary, "All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone". — BC

Schopenhauer in a nutshell. The process is something like described here from Wayfarer's post:

In his book The Theory of Religion, translated by Robert Hurley (Zone Books, 1992), Georges Bataille analyzes the arising of human consciousness as it emerges out of animal consciousness and shows how religious sensibility necessarily develops from this. His argument goes like this:

The animal world is a world of pure being, a world of immediacy and immanence. The animal soul is like “water in water,” seamlessly connected to all that surrounds it, so that there is no sense of self or other, of time, of space, of being or not being. This utopian (to human sensibility, which has such alienating notions) Shangri-La or Eden actually isn’t that because it is characterized at all points by what we’d call violence. Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “isness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world. Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my me, though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it the sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity. — Wayfarer

That is to say, the irrevocable breach of our existence into the framework of conceptual objectification of the world. The self-and-other, the self that needs goals, the self that suffers, is felt in the immediacy of self-awareness.

I enjoyed the essay on boredom, thanks.

It looks very much what you call "Will" is what I framed above as "Self".

The "biases," as you put it, would wrapped up in the "Seeking". — I like sushi

Will is Schopenhauer's label for the restlessness. The boredom essay sort of captures it. Boredom was very important to Schopenhauer, as it showed Will's negative (lacking that is) nature. That even just existing carries with it a sort of lack. Hence my quote here:

So we are a lifeform that is self-aware of its existence. Consciousness, even without self-awareness, is pulled along by some drives- hunger, boredom, mating, etc. Self-consciousness brings with it a negative element to it as well (as in "lacking" something). That is to say, we have hunger- lack satiation or the stimulation of the senses in the form of food. In a more general sense, we lack a general satiation of the mind- a profound angst or boredom. We lack social stimulation in the form of loneliness and being lovelorn. — schopenhauer1

Read some of the previous posts to understand what I'm getting at. The gist is a pessimistic understanding. Self-awareness of existence entails an understanding of suffering. The quote from Wayfarer describes the process:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944435
This is more-or-less the conclusion:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944343

With the self-awareness, we divert the attention of the immediate conclusion. It is the biases of Pollyannaisms and "but what fors".. As I have described throughout the thread. So I would say read the thread as a whole to see what I mean, then reply.

If concepts are created then this implies Values are concepts that have been created. This is all skirting around ineffable territory though. — I like sushi

What are we aware of by being self-aware of existence? What is the content of our/everyone's existence?

Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “isness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

Damn that comes close to a lot of themes I've explored on here. That's a good one.

Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world.

I like...

Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my me, though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

Yes, great point.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it the sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity. — Wayfarer

Good point.

Of course, much more need be said, and this is only an excerpt, but I think it frames the issue well. — Wayfarer

Yes it does, and corresponds very much to what I've been saying. Human being and (other) animal being has a difference in kind, that is a gulf, and it creates problems for us. But in this particular thread, I am also teasing out that there seems to be entailments with this "self-knowledge".

Edit: One of them is the self-recognition of the process described here.. but are there others? This is clearly not immediate, but indeed is a conclusion one makes from self-recognition. Is there something more immediate with knowing about this existence?

More edit: An inevitable conclusion that gets diverted with Pollyannas?

@Wayfarer
I wonder, with the profusion of media, that comedy and the overuse of irony adds to the diversions from the stream. More stones. As long as you can add a light-hearted quip, you are saved for now... Go about your day. Anxiety (not really) thwarted. Face saved.

@Wayfarer
Added a bigger part of the quote from the linked post above.

So, in the case of Buddhism, the basis of value - the fundamental axiology, if you like - is the ubiquitity and unavoidable nature of suffering, old age and death. Its formulaic exposition is always given in those terms - you will loose what you love, be beset by things you don't like, suffer, and die. Those are given facts of existence. Liberation from that (nibbana, Nirvāṇa) is the extinction of the factors that drive continued existence in the mode of existence subject to these conditions. — Wayfarer

Ok, so not quite following this request:

My guess is you will bring some Buddhist concepts to this. Suppose you were to formulate an answer without that- let's say it had to use common everyday language, and/or standard philosophical jargon. What would you say? — schopenhauer1

:razz: But I think the way that was phrased it was unclear that I didn't want any mention of Buddhism, just everyday or normal philosophical jargon (not translate Buddhist terms into everyday language). But that's okay, I can work with that, but veering away from the strictly Buddhist bent, just its implications...

So existence is basically a "suffering", in terms of this definition being the temporariness of satisfied states, and the initial lack that we feel, an incompleteness that is basically never-ending.

As I stated here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944343

But the cruel part is the "fooling" aspect. As the human animal, unlike mere instinct or simpler forms of experience that other animals exhibit, is that we make "goals" for ourselves. And those goals often are thwarted, and we are disappointed, or when they are reached, they are but temporary, and thus "the vanity" of Ecclesiastes. And throughout all this will-thwarting-temporary satiation, we have the anxieties and physical ailments of social and physical harms. We are self-aware, we know this. Yet what biases delude us?

The ever pursuit of stability (work/home). The ever pursuit of social bonds (love, relationships, friendships, family), and all sorts of self-limiting things to focus the mind (hobbies, interests, studies, and other toys and imaginative wonderings). But if Schopenhauer is right, these are temporary, not satiating, delusionary, and often lead to more pain. But even more tragic, is it prevents someone from understanding this very nature of Will which is so ever-present in the dialectic of self-awareness of existence itself. Life itself should not be imposed.

THAT IN FACT, SELF-AWARENESS ITSELF LED TO THE ANXIETIES THAT LED TO THE IMPOSITION OF MORE SELF-AWARENESS :scream: — schopenhauer1

But, is there something axiologically entailed for a being with self-awareness of existence?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15556/existential-self-awareness/p1
@Wayfarer

My guess is you will bring some Buddhist concepts to this. Suppose you were to formulate an answer without that- let's say it had to use common everyday language, and/or standard philosophical jargon. What would you say? In a Buddhist sense, you might agree with Schopenhauer that Buddhist practice is what the self-aware animal must look to. I just wondered what else you might say. Is there a definite conclusion that is often biased away, for creatures that have self-awareness of existence? Is there a definite course of a stream from this fact that we are self-aware that is trying to be diverted by the stones of biases?

It's important to note that axiology is a branch of ethics regarding the degree of good or evil. — Shawn

I'm going by this definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_theory

That is to say, I see ethics as a type of value, not the other way around. Axiology > Ethics.

Aesthetics, economic value, love, and ethics are axiological in nature.

Yes. But.

I was being silly and didn't intend to subject Bambi to the further suffering of existential analysis. I also don't want to suffer by being forced to think more deeply about Bambi. In the last five minutes I've tripled the size of the Bambi case file, and most of the New Yorker article remains to be read. — BC

I know you were being ironic and silly. But even this can be instructive to my point. Please do add more, maybe not about the plight of Bambi, but the question at hand:

Does having the capacity for existential self-awareness imply anything further than this fact?
That is to say, does a species of animal(s) that has the ability to conceptually "know" that it exists, entail anything further, in any axiological way? — schopenhauer1

I felt compelled to scribble a little nonsense about fawns burning in the forest. It's an example of the Will to Nonsense. — BC

That's not entirely true in the animal that is SELF-AWARE OF EXISTENCE. Is there not something in this understanding that is quite clear and leads to conclusions, and not simply a fact? The fact that we know Bambi can burn means something?

How believable and/or compelling is Schopenhauer's blind and aimless "will"? It seems like one could dismiss this "blind aimless will" as easily as a personal creator. Isn't Schopenhauer just swapping out one invisible entity for another? — BC

Which is why I said this in reply to Shawn:

As for the notion of the Will itself, I think it can simply be a metaphor as if we are "driven by an aimless "Will". As the fact of a metaphysical Will and the practicality of living as a conscious, and self-aware being is basically identical. That is to say, the reality of Will as some metaphysical entity at play, need not even have to be the case for Schopenhauer's conclusions about how life (from the perspective of a subject/lifeform) operates.

So we are a lifeform that is self-aware of its existence. Consciousness, even without self-awareness, is pulled along by some drives- hunger, boredom, mating, etc. Self-consciousness brings with it a negative element to it as well (as in "lacking" something). That is to say, we have hunger- lack satiation or the stimulation of the senses in the form of food. In a more general sense, we lack a general satiation of the mind- a profound angst or boredom. We lack social stimulation in the form of loneliness and being lovelorn. — schopenhauer1

I'd find Schopenhauer's cold wind of will sweeping across the cosmos more convincing if the wind was God. God doesn't have to be warm, fuzzy, loving, up close and personal or personable. God could be distant, cold, hard edged, indifferent, not lovable and still be God and creator. Just between you, me, and the fencepost I rather think God is closer to being a cold wind than a god keeping watch over sparrows and dandelions, — BC

If the ancient Israelites were correct, and we are reflection of God, then God is also a reflection of us. That gives me a cold shiver indeed! I think things were muddled when medieval philosophizing tried to misconstrue God as all-powerful/all-loving/all-good, etc. Rather, the one from the Bible is capricious YET oddly goal-driven, needs things to happen to be satisfied. This God is rather not necessarily all-X, but rather a SUPER version of the human. The human traits MAGNIFIED into (monstrously) awe-filled forms.

Contrary to sentimentalists, Bambi burned with equanimity because he understood the necessity of his sacrifice. — BC

:lol:

The morbid justifications of the Pollyannas...

Bambi's bit-part nameless mother also experienced natural sacrificial immolation after Bambi was weaned. She was bitter and resentful about the whole deal. Her last words were "Fucking patriarchy!". Bambi's father didn't have to burn because his doe and fawning son fulfilled all of his debts--a good thing because he was the bearer of the Wisdom of the Forest.

It all worked out for the existential good of all. — BC

Echoes of Pangloss?

According to Arthur Schopenhauer, the concept of a creator, particularly a personal God, is essentially non-existent; he viewed the driving force behind the universe as a blind, aimless "Will" which does not correspond to any conscious or intentional creator, effectively negating the idea of a traditional God figure.

So, I believe that without a driving force guiding the universe apart from the Will, which determines how things happen, then my concern is over how to find happiness in a world where the Will is all encompassing. With regard to the totalizing nature of the Will, what are your thoughts about it? — Shawn

Ok, so you are focusing on Schopenhauer's Will, and not the idea that it can just be a metaphor, got it. I wasn't sure. As for the notion of the Will itself, I think it can simply be a metaphor as if we are "driven by an aimless "Will". As the fact of a metaphysical Will and the practicality of living as a conscious, and self-aware being is basically identical. That is to say, the reality of Will as some metaphysical entity at play, need not even have to be the case for Schopenhauer's conclusions about how life (from the perspective of a subject/lifeform) operates.

So we are a lifeform that is self-aware of its existence. Consciousness, even without self-awareness, is pulled along by some drives- hunger, boredom, mating, etc. Self-consciousness brings with it a negative element to it as well (as in "lacking" something). That is to say, we have hunger- lack satiation or the stimulation of the senses in the form of food. In a more general sense, we lack a general satiation of the mind- a profound angst or boredom. We lack social stimulation in the form of loneliness and being lovelorn.

But even all this, which we might impute as the nature of Will (even as just a metaphor), is a contributing factor for a more general notion of Suffering. Schopenhauer, agreeing with various ancient wisdoms, thought that Suffering (capital "S") is the only way that this Will can be characterized. That is to say, this "lack" is equivalent to a profound form of Suffering. Playing into Platonic notions of completeness (in the Forms), and even more profoundly in Buddhist/Hindu notions of "Moksha/Nirvana", there is a sort of incompleteness to the animal that causes unfulfilled/neverending needs. But the cruel part is the "fooling" aspect. As the human animal, unlike mere instinct or simpler forms of experience that other animals exhibit, is that we make "goals" for ourselves. And those goals often are thwarted, and we are disappointed, or when they are reached, they are but temporary, and thus "the vanity" of Ecclesiastes. And throughout all this will-thwarting-temporary satiation, we have the anxieties and physical ailments of social and physical harms. We are self-aware, we know this. Yet what biases delude us?

The ever pursuit of stability (work/home). The ever pursuit of social bonds (love, relationships, friendships, family), and all sorts of self-limiting things to focus the mind (hobbies, interests, studies, and other toys and imaginative wonderings). But if Schopenhauer is right, these are temporary, not satiating, delusionary, and often lead to more pain. But even more tragic, is it prevents someone from understanding this very nature of Will which is so ever-present in the dialectic of self-awareness of existence itself. Life itself should not be imposed.

THAT IN FACT, SELF-AWARENESS ITSELF LED TO THE ANXIETIES THAT LED TO THE IMPOSITION OF MORE SELF-AWARENESS :scream:

Yes, well this is where Schopenhauer left this aspect out of the discussion about the axiology of the World itself. I believe that this aspect left out of the discussion about the nature of the Will is important to have. — Shawn

You'd have to explain more for me to respond to what you are actually saying.

This is the kind of question that only a species of animals that has the ability to conceptually know that it exists would ask or answer. What would be the value of a response from that kind of animal? — T Clark

I mean that's the point. The kind of species of animal with self-awareness of existence cannot but help but know this. And clearly I'm indicating that there is something entailed with this fact.

Yet, every act or deviation from the nature of the Will could be perceived as ignorance of a greater truth. — Shawn

:up: One of the hugest stones is the pursuit of X.. (love is a big one...but insert any lofty goal). Schopenhauer identified it as variations of Will fooling the hapless manifestation. But we need not take Will literally as a metaphysic for the metaphor to be true.

But it is the nature of this fooling that we should explore for biases.

What does existential self-awareness actually consist of? Does a recognition of mortality accompany it? When I first came to this realisation as a child my primary reaction was, why did I have to be born? In reversing the usual cliché about such matters, I often thought to myself that it might be bad luck to be born - to have to go through the laborious process of learning, growing, belonging (to a culture you dislike), experiencing loss, decline and ultimately death. It's not easy to identify an inherent benefit attached to any of this. — Tom Storm

:up: You've identified (informally, through example), the inevitable conclusion. And you even recognized some underlying factors for the diversions:

But there's a lot of noise called philosophy and religion which seeks to help us to manage our situation. — Tom Storm

There's also the Will. I think that's a pregnant topic which I haven't seen you often talking about. I made a shot in the dark about how wild nature is and how we struggle with our own inner instinct.

There's also the poor fawn in the burning forest that experienced what some might call gratuitous harm. — Shawn

So using the OP's point as a starting point, there is the "fact" that some animals are "self-aware". There is an indication that this leads to a certain set of conclusion, like an inevitable stream that can only be temporarily diverted, but never really moved from its final destination.

Indeed, Will is something to consider for "self-awareness". Will is part of the inevitability of the stream. There are diversions that try to make it seem like the conclusion is not inevitable, but these diversions are more psychological biases detracting from the logic of the dialectic of the fact of self-awareness.

Yes, well the trodden path is usually, according to Schopenhauer, that of the nature of desire and how it causes us harm.

Other paths include life affirmations and even the vanity of existence. — Shawn

:up:

Very good. But I want to actually see the deviations in action. You mentioned gratitude. There's an example. I want to see the the stones trying to divert the stream of the conclusion. Keep them coming. A compendium of stones.

Well, I don't like labeling things as totalizing or brute in terms of facts, and I think you may have a point. Even with the high propensity for beings with self awareness to feel grateful sometimes changes after learning and the growth period end.

It is perplexing that children just feel happy or not depressed most of the time; and yet such feelings subside as they grow up... Food for thought. — Shawn

Funny thing is, children are usually deemed not fully "self-aware", so that might be even more of a case against the initial claim.

But I'd like to take this down a path that I think there is a case that practical reasoning leads to various conclusions if one considers the fact of self-awareness. I'm wondering if others would get there too though. I'm wondering what side-trails people would take to deviate from the conclusions that it seems to inevitably lead to. The dialectic only leads one way, but then I want to know the psychological biases that lead the dialectic in a different direction from where the current is actually flowing.

In terms of axiology, being the science of value, you can find the predominantly expressed attitude of the earliest time of self-awareness as a highly valued state. Most beings express gratitude for being able to exist and enjoy their own existence. — Shawn

I mean, this is kind of circular. Being self-aware allows for gratitude in the first place. But also, it allows for so many other things, that to pick out gratitude alone would be a major selection bias. Certainly, self-awareness allows for one to have feelings (like gratitude) about self-awareness, but that's more accurate than the idea that the gratitude is necessary/automatic.

It's existential angst, isn't it? That's the subject of John Vervaeke's 52-episode lecture series on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, which I'm part way through. — Wayfarer

Here's the thing, the angst-driven "What do I focus my attention on?" precedes everything. Even someone who represents naive physicalism, someone like say a "Dawkins type", someone who supposedly "only cares about facts", has to "care about" something, that precedes the "facts" that are deemed most important.

The supposedly hard-nosed person who admonishes the baroque-types and their fancies, still found a VALUE and PRIORITIZED, this is all prior to any "facts of experience" or "facts of nature" or "facts of reality".

The neural capacities that this provide are exponentially more powerful than anything possessed by other animals including our simian forbears. My claim is that due to this, h.sapiens crossed an evolutionary threshhold that cannot be explained purely in terms of biological theory, as we have realised 'horizons of being' that are simply not available to other animals. These include abstract reasoning, language, art, scientific invention, moral reflection, symbolic thought, and awareness of mortality, that are all uniquely human. They indicate a qualitative leap, a difference in kind, rather than a mere quantitative increase in cognitive ability. — Wayfarer

I think the throughline through all this is a self-awareness.. a sort of Russian Doll Effect, whereby a sort of awareness of "something" is gleaned, but never obtained. Art, Beauty, Elegant Theories of Math and Science, yet none of it is sustainable. It appeals to a sensibility that is aesthetic, but there is always a remainder leftover. This may be akin to Schopenhauer's Will.. We feel it most acutely, whereas other animals only feel the acuteness of perhaps at most boredom. They don't have the Russian Doll Effect though, which amplifies it. We have anxieties foisted upon ourselves, mental disorders even, and then we have ANGST. It's reflected in literature going back to Egypt and Babylonia, ancient China, India, and anywhere where man could write more than a few thoughts down beyond the transactional.

I guess part of the problem is that unifications are often misunderstood as reductions in popular science. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This of course brings up metaphysical notions of emergence. This is taken for granted in naive physicalism / scientism.

My understanding of truth is that it is defined by the schema "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white, where "truth" is the correspondence between propositions in language and equations in mathematics and what is the case in the world.

If I am correct, then if a proposition in language or an equation in mathematics is independent of what is the case in the world, then by the definition of truth, such a proposition or equation can neither be true nor false. — RussellA

The problem I have with these definitions is it implicitly indicates a Kantian response, but then denies epistemology proper for some deflationary "logic-only" based answer. But this cannot be the case because implicitly by saying "independent of" and "case in the world", you are using epistemological considerations, even if implicitly. These epistemological explanations require meta-logical theory, not simply refer to the correspondence or (non-correspondence) itself, but why and what and how, etc. Otherwise it's just "I have believe" without an explanation, which though is valid in terms of asserting an idea, is not necessarily valid as an fully informed reason for why you think that way. Saying "Snow is white IFF it is the case that there is at least one case of snow being white", has many implications beyond the "satisfying" of snow being white. What is "case" mean? Why are we trusting what case means? Why would if it satisfies the case you assert something like logic is "independent of" the case? etc. etc.

Both. For 100 days we observe the sun rise in the east, and invent the rule "the sun rises in the east". The rule reflects past observations, but is no guarantee that the rule will still apply in the future. We impose the rule on the world, in the expectation that the rule will still apply in the future. — RussellA

Sure, but then, what of the propensity for uniformity or rules in the first place? The fact that it does act with regularities? Hume wants to skepticize this deriving or a rule as "habits of thought", but surely the habits are not like socially conventional habits like shaking hands or bowing. These are ones that nature is making, and we are taking note.

Some neo-Logos philosophies might say the mind cannot but help seeing the very patterns that shape itself.
— schopenhauer1

I'm with Kant on that. — RussellA

So you would be against the notion that the patterns are "of the world"? So, the neo-logos philosophies might say something like, "If nature has patterns, and our language has patterns, and we are derived from nature, it may be the case that our language is a necessary outcome of a more foundational logic". Thus, the logic would not be transcendental, but (for lack of a better term) "immanent" in nature, not some outside observing entity that is detached from it. There is a necessary connection proposed between noumena and phenomenal activities, but not in the "static" way of Kant, but perhaps evolutionarily conceived- there is no clear boundary as it is all derived from the same "logos".

I can imagine a type of pattern whereby the mind works (X), and a pattern whereby the world works Y, and X may be caused by Y, but X is not the same as Y.
— schopenhauer1

Exactly. A postbox emits a wavelength of 700nm ( Y) which travels to the eye which we perceive as the colour red (X), where our perceiving the colour red in the mind was caused by the wavelength of 700nm in the world.

There is the general principle that an effect may be different in kind to its cause. For example, the effect of a pane of glass breaking is different in kind to its cause of being hit by a stone. — RussellA

But my metaphor was not just of any cause, but of how language connects to reality. Neo-logos philosophies might indicate that language is structured such that it must see "reality" as it is, to be useful. It is not happenstance that language allows us to describe reality with a great degree of success. Kant never explains why our minds would compose such a world, but evolution does. Patterns of the world become sufficiently complex as to see their own patterns. Other animals are driven by the consequences of the patterns, but humans can see the causal connections, reasons, create plans, etc. All this is due to our linguo-conceptual framework our brains developed through evolutionary factors.

Aesthetics is perceiving a unity in the whole from a set of disparate parts. For example, the magic of a Monet derives from the artist's deliberate attempt to create a unity out of a set of spatially separate blobs of paint on a canvas. Such a unity exists only in the mind of the observer, not in the world, in that one blob of paint of the canvas has no "knowledge" as to the existence of any other blob of paint on the canvas. Patterns only exist in the mind, not the world.

As patterns don't ontology exist in the world, but do exist in the mind, to say that patterns in the mind have derived from patterns in the world is a figure of speech rather than the literal truth. — RussellA

This is exactly what is being questioned. Wouldn't evolution put a connection between the efficacy of the mind and the world? Prior to evolutionary theory, it was perhaps easier to detach the two and remain the ontological skeptic. Perhaps with evolutionary theory, we can think in terms of how ontology shapes epistemology.

Perhaps it is more the case that the aesthetic brings meaning out of the meaninglessness of nihilism. It is the aesthetic that discovers the unity of a whole within disparate parts, finds patterns in randomness and seeks sense out of senselessness. For example, the aesthetic of Picasso's Guernica shows us the possibility of a greater good born out of the nihilism of war, and the aesthetic of the mathematical equation shows us a greater understanding born out of a nihilistic Universe that is fundamentally isolated in time and space. — RussellA

This is true. Good observation. But what is the world outside of an observer? This goes back to the old realist/idealist debates. Is it just the case that we are simply "adding value" (in a literal and metaphorical way), or does the world already have this in itself. Think of things like "information theory", which puts information prior to the animal. But it need not be this, it just needs to be a sort of pattern that can create patterns that can understand itself. In this view, the "aesthetic" is holistic in that the observer is a natural component of the whole. In the Kantian view, however, the observer is this transcendental alien that transforms the "noumenal" into something understandable to itself. Whence this disconnect then? What to make of the two, their origins, and their connection?

Kant and a Transcendental Deduction that mathematical truths are necessary truths

In B276 of the CPR, Kant uses a Transcendental Deduction to prove the existence of objects in the world.

As the equation "d=0.5∗g∗t2

=
0.5
∗

∗

2
" does successfully and consistently predict what is observed in the world, we could use a similar Transcendental Deduction to prove that in the world is the underlying reality that d=0.5∗g∗t2

=
0.5
∗

∗

2
.

Using such a Transcendental Deduction, we could unify a world that imposes itself on the mind and a mind that imposes itself on the world. — RussellA

Good stuff, but the question becomes, "Are the equations being imposed or simply reflected in the mathematics?". Some neo-Logos philosophies might say the mind cannot but help seeing the very patterns that shape itself. However, it need not be so congruent.

I can imagine a type of pattern whereby the mind works (X), and a pattern whereby the world works Y, and X may be caused by Y, but X is not the same as Y. They may be contingently related, but one happens to "loosely" understand the other rather than necessarily understand the other. Does this distinction I am describing make sense? And then, if you get what I am saying, how do we make sense of it? Which is it? Is our language contingently relating with the world or necessarily relating to the world.

I can see a sort of holistic beauty in the aesthetic of the language reflecting the world because it is derived from (the patterns) of the world. The beauty of the golden ratio, the spiral, a pattern, a smooth surface, a continuation, etc.

However, I can see a sort of nihilistic "contingency" in the aesthetic of language never really derived from, but only loosely reflecting the world. There is a disconnect between the logics. This is the horror and anxiety of remoteness, disconnect, discrete, contingency.

It is the "I" that sees a relation between many different objects in the world. It is not the world that is relating a particular set of objects together. — RussellA

And yet the world presents to us regularities that we capture in empirical research. The regularities that our minds create and the regularities of nature is a tricky subject. Kant, for example, seemed to conflate the two as part of the same "transcendental" constraints that our minds impose on "the thing-itself". Yet, this seems to be at odds with our usual intuition that something empirical, is in some sense a part of "the world itself', not just our minds' way of translating the world. We aren't translating perhaps, but simply copying what is the case- the usual "idealist vs. realist" debate. So the math works because "the patterns are real", or the math works because our minds think in terms of these regularities when it imposes itself onto the universe. Well, certainly, our language-based minds create "objects" from the anarchy of the environmental input. Yet, when our minds impose such things, it also sees that there are various regularities that constantly present themselves that are NOT just patterns, concept-creation, and syntactic manipulation that our brain creates ("notepad".. "thing".. "blob".. "amorphous shape".. "weird unknown object" "car", etc. etc.). Gravity, electromagnetism, chemical interactions, biological interactions, etc. work ways that impose on us their workings, not the other way around.

Q2 is a linguistic problem and results from a particular definition of "object".

23 things can be evenly divided into three collections of 723
7
2
3
things.

But Q2 defines an object as something that is whole and unbroken, meaning that if a thing can be divided into parts, then by definition that thing cannot be an object.

Therefore, although 23 things can be evenly divided into three collections, by the given definition of "object", 23 objects cannot be evenly divided into three collections.

However, other definitions of "object" are possible.

For example, as the object "house" is the set of other objects, such as "roof", "chimney", "windows", etc, an "object" could have been defined as a set of three other objects, in which event 23 objects is evenly divisible into three collections of whole and unbroken objects. — RussellA

This seems to relate to what I was saying here:

I look at a notepad, and I think "notepad". A notepad is a conventional object. It is a socially created object, for all intents and purposes. But then there is various laws of mechanics that were used in the making of the machines that made the notepad. These are "laws of physics". Whilst the technological use is in a way conventional, the physical laws behind it, which we also derived, as humans reasoning, are supposedly the ones we are discussing, the "objective" ones "in nature". The "true mathematical laws" that we are not conventionalizing, but teasing out with our mathematical models, and cashing out in accurate predictions and technological usefulness. So it is those we are getting at. Yet, imposed on top of that, is the same brain that makes a conventional item like "notepad", into "something" real, something that I presuppose every time I look at a notepad. I don't just see a bunch of atoms grouped together- I see a type of object. Now this is the tricky part where Kant does come in. What is the part that is conventional, and what is the "objective"? How are we to really know? These are two very different types of capacities coming together and converging:

1) The ability to parse the world into discrete objects and arrange them and describe them.
2) The ability to parse out various empirical understandings of the world THROUGH THE PRISM of a kind of brain that does the capacity described in 1.

So Nagel might say something like, The 2 [objective laws/logic] has created the 1 [cognitive laws/logic]. There is something that connects the two.

A true agnostic or nihilist of this scheme would say 1 and 2 are not connected in any meaningful way. Kant, for example, will make the move that 2 is really a sub-species of 1 (or how I interpret Kant). — schopenhauer1