Interesting read, as well. Thanks to you too.

Interesting read. Thanks for it.

Chomsky is too modern, too political, and FAR too analytic, for me, so what about Schopenhauer do you find disagreeable?

I asked how to know a mental state, such that it couldn’t be anything else. But you referred me to experience. Am I to infer that the only thing a mental state can be, is an experience?

Apparently I cannot have a mental state of driving a GT40 at 150mph. Never having done that, never having seen it done, thus having no experience of it, in the context of your pain and music, how is it possible for that sentence to come to me?

Then it must be that imagination is a mental state, but imagination is not experience, therefore, experience is not all a mental state can be.

Because you stipulated simplicity, I won’t pursue the correctness that a toothache is a feeling, not an experience. Just sayin’.......

So yeah, I think there are a few paths open in TI. — Manuel

Depends on whose T.I. you’re talking about. Won’t be Kant's, because.....

“...My chief aim in this work has been thoroughness; and I make bold to say that there is not a single metaphysical problem that does not find its solution, or at least the key to its solution, here....”

The paths open, are the changing of it, by finding a metaphysical problem it doesn’t solve or isn’t able to solve. Seems like a lot of trouble.

The knowledge of mental states is not available to us? — RogueAI

I don’t think so, but it’s fine if you do. Hell.....I don’t even know what a mental state actually is. How would I know it, such that it couldn’t be anything else?

I think some conceptual work can be done in TI — Manuel

Such as? Synopsis?

Could you humor me and mention some names? — Joshs

Be happy to, but I don’t know any of them. Heard of ‘em, though. Those guys.....in general, whoever denies the workings of science.

I don't think Schopenhauer would've minded that he be labeled a TI. — Manuel

Probably not, considering.....

“...The whole actual, that is, active world is determined as such through the understanding, and apart from it is nothing. This, however, is not the only reason for altogether denying such a reality of the outer world as is taught by the dogmatist, who explains its reality as its independence of the subject. We also deny it, because no object apart from a subject can be conceived without contradiction. The whole world of objects is and remains idea, and therefore wholly and for ever determined by the subject; that is to say, it has transcendental ideality....”

....even if I can’t find a reference where he actually calls himself one, as does Kant, practically, in CPR A370, “From the start we have declared ourselves in favor of this transcendental idealism...”, which grants immediate acknowledgement for objective reality, while at the same time withholding knowledge of it in itself.
—————-

But I don't think I've seen an argument that refutes "things in themselves" that is satisfactory. Probably because I think it is true. — Manuel

Agreed, and because, or, iff, the human cognitive system is in fact representational, and iff our empirical knowledge is of those representations alone. Otherwise, some new theory is required in order to refute it. Somehow. Ain’t been done yet, but maybe just because nobody cares anymore.

Your claim is dualistic. — RogueAI

Absolutely. Making no bones about it.

You're saying that brains cause experience, which is to say that for any mental state, there's a causal brain state. — RogueAI

I never said anything like that. Never mentioned a mental state. That’s a knowledge claim, and I’m showing that particular knowledge is not available to us. I said the the brain enables us to think the brain is responsible for experience.

Hmmm.....now that you bring it up, I’ll add, it is we that give brains mental states; the brain does not give them to us. Technically, the brain is wholly at the mercy of natural law, whereas it is not so obvious that mental states are. I mean....if mental states wholly followed natural law, why would we need two instances of the same thing? Nahhhhh....better that mental states are wholly at the mercy of logical law, and even if that begs a whole buncha nagging questions, at least we’ve got someplace from which to start explaining the ground of experience.

do you think physicalism can survive an infinitely long explanatory gap? — RogueAI

The set of Planck limits? Dunno about an infinitely long explanatory gap, but we got it right now. I don’t hold so much with Penrose’s quantum tubules, but I do more so with the interference problem, in that attempting to penetrate to the piccoscale with instruments might just disrupt the very thing we’re trying to look at. I know there are pictures of clefts.....blew my mind, that did.....but to assimilate all involved clefts into an instrumental observation of the experience of bungee jumping? Can you even image the size of THAT helmet???

Besides, if it is possible that natural law relinquishes it intrinsic certainty at some infinitesimally small scale, why couldn’t they relinquish it at the scale of 30B synapses/mm3? Seems reasonable to me, but then......I’m me.

“....all causation, that is to say, all matter, or the whole of reality, is only for the understanding, through the understanding, and in the understanding. The first, simplest, and ever-present example of understanding is the perception of the actual world. This is throughout knowledge of the cause from the effect, and therefore all perception is intellectual....”
(WWR, 1.1.4., 1818, in Haldane/Kemp, 1883)

I can’t read that as anything but indirect realism. He does say “actual world”, implying an objective reality, but that actual world is “in understanding” because of intellectual perception. Thus, it looks like the world isn’t directly there, otherwise we must have a head full of actual world objects, but only intellectually there, hence is indirectly. The world is mediated by intellect, mediated is the same as contingent upon, which is the same as indirect. Can be viewed as indirect?

Schopenhauer didn’t like Kant’s ding an sich, so went on his merry way towards working around it. Representation is internal; the object represented is external, with respect to the subject. Subjects can only know the representation. If the representation can be external, and knowledge is still only possible by means of them, then the thing-in-itself is representable and therefore knowable. POOF!!! Kant is refuted, but....oh oh.....transcendental idealism, for all present intents and purposes a Kantian creation, is sustained.

Not to infringe on your understandings herein; you’re probably quite comfortable with them as they are. Just carryin’ on the conversation.

Hey.

Thanks.

Additions/changes welcome, if you’re so inclined.

Sorry, shouldn't have added the bud. — frank

Heck no. That didn’t bother me. I’m just not agreeing with what you said (it very much is indirect realism, and the body is in no way representation of Will), but didn’t quite understand why you said it. So I decided to leave it alone.

I'm reminded of people typing on computers connected to the internet that science cannot possibly work... — Kenosha Kid

Those guys.....deserving of little mention and even less respect.

“...For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse. Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy....”
—————

And I, yours.

Respect.

What is the causality you're talking about? How matter causes experience? — RogueAI

In general, yes. How amazing, a.k.a., fantasmagorically convoluted, is it, that because some sufficient neural network is not yet enabled, we are permitted to say we have no idea how the brain causes experience, but that only because some other network is enabled that permits us to say it. Taken a step further, we find that the brain tells us both, that it is responsible for experience, because we’ve already thought so, but at the same time cannot tell us how, because those thoughts have never come about. We, being rational agents, on our own accord, go even further, and rightfully assert that if we do not know a thing, it is possible there is either no thing to know, or we are simply not equipped to know it.

Aaaannnndddd.....the brain falsifies itself. Figuratively.

Then the argument comes up, that philosophy is just making stuff up, which is exactly what it is. I know, cuz I just did it. But we’re allowed, because the brain won’t inform us of making-stuff-up’s pathological uselessness by informing us of the truth of it all. And maybe.....just maybe....it doesn’t because it can’t.

Again, the dualist will admonish against claims regarding insight into ourselves, for which there is a plethora of justifiable speculation, in juxtaposition to claims about the mechanistic origin of ourselves, for which there is barely any insight at all. In short, we have been given what’s necessary for insight into ourselves (brains/matter), but not yet what is sufficient (causality).

Now, the pure undifferentiated idealist does have something interesting to say, if he is so bold as to invoke the cum hoc ergo proper hoc argument, in that it is because we don’t think in terms of natural law, that unknowable mitigating factors are proved, which demand explanation, over and above mere brains. And of course, under those conditions, an explanation will be impossible.

Anyway....didn’t mean to butt in. Ok, fine. I did. Now I’ll butt out.

Excellent commentary. If I may......

In reality, I don't know what it is like to be a bat and never will. — Kenosha Kid

.....I would ask, can we also say we don’t know what it’s like for our neurons to fire? Assuming, of course, that what happens after, is not the same as what happens. If granted, it is easy to see why the dualist maintains that the conscious subject is not to be found in the objective apparatus.

OK. Thanks.

It's trickier than just adding idea to matter to equal a thing. — frank

That’s Schopenhauer, not Kant. The use of “idea” is an earlier translator’s choice, because “vorstellung” can be and was translated as representation in later publications. Taken as representation, Schopenhauer follows Kant, but taken as idea, he does not. The world as will and representation is a direct affirmation of Kant’s distinction between pure and practical reason, but the world as will and idea is something quite different.

But whether adding idea, or adding representation.....neither of those is what the respective authors want us to take away from his theory. In both, objects become something else, which makes adding to them, a misunderstanding.
————-

TA? The only TA I am familiar with is transcendental aesthetic or the transcendental analytic, in the CPR. I guess I’m not grasping the point you’re making with this part. Neither of those speak to ideas, or packages, or pairs of opposites. Unless you’re taking a shallow dive into dialectics, but that’s TD, not TA.

Ya lost me, bud. “Everpresent situation”? Dunno what that is, sorry.

All that intro is the groundwork for empirical knowledge, and as groundwork, we are not conscious of its operation. All that happens before conscious thought, which is shown by “...undetermined object...”. Ideas, on the other hand, are conscious thoughts insofar as we are aware of our ideas. So it is that ideas are not part of the groundwork of empirical knowledge, for ideas are not a product of sensibility. Ideas are not phenomena, which gives us the extension that ideas do not have objects that belong to them as intuitions, but only as conceptions.

As far as the duck/rabbit is concerned, it is the case that either the duck or the rabbit is given as sensible phenomenon. As far as our knowledge goes, it doesn’t matter which one it is; it just cannot be both simultaneously, and, it must be one or the other. Enter the conscious part of knowledge, found in the understanding, which is the source of concepts. If either one of the phenomenon is the immediate representation in intuition, then understanding relates the arrangement of that form (via imagination, if you were wondering) to the concept understanding thinks as belonging to it, and we cognize one or the other, each of its own time.

The duck/rabbit thing is not a fluke of perception, a “fancy of the mind”. There actually is a duck form and a rabbit form manifest in the illustration, thus it is not contradictory for understanding to synthesis one concept or the other, to it. Same with that table/little ol’ lady double perception. Even if a purposeful deceit, understanding compensates. But the system is not perfect, as the checkerboard/cylinder shadow illusion recently, and as far back as Plato’s equal lines, show. Those, and that damn dress. Leave it to a human, perhaps the most intelligent agency on the planet, to intentionally confuse himself.

isn't idealism about the part ideas play in the makeup of the world? — frank

It was, generally, until Kant, and is still, from some more modern quarters, re: Royce via Hegel. For whatever all that’s worth.

I think the bottom line is....idealism is a doctrinal theory, but ideas are conceptions born of reason alone. And by attempting to quantify the empirical domain of the world, that is, to determine its makeup, with that which has no empirical content, there is immediate contradiction.

But it remains that all theories begin with either observation, or an idea that warrants a possible observation. If the latter, the theory may sustain itself pending empirical proof, or it may never obtain the certainty of experience, which is what an empirical proof actually is. SR, for instance, began with the idea of the simultaneity of relativity from a measly train station, of all things, but needed 35 years for observational justification. But even so, SR is not a condition of the makeup of the world, but only justifies a particular kind of intelligence’s particular kind of relation to it.

So, no, I don’t think ideas play a part in the makeup of the world. There’s a rather long segment in Kant that admonishes us to let established word/concept relations stand undiluted. From that, it may be best to let “makeup” of the world denote the substance of its constituency, and if so, and by the same token, if ideas have no substance, then it follows ideas cannot partake in the constituency of material things, such as worlds.

Odd, isn’t it, that realism is complementary, but idealism is not? If a thing is thought to be real, it cannot at the same time be thought unreal; it is, or it isn’t. Idealism, on the other hand, has a multiplicity of conditionals, such that a variety of idealisms are all logically feasible depending on and consistent with their respective initial conditions. Absolute idealism (Hegel) does not immediately negate subjective idealism (Berkeley); transcendental idealism (Kant) does not immediately negate monistic idealism (Leibniz). A modified idealism is nonetheless an idealism.

Idealism is methodological human cognition writ large, and because it is absurd to suppose humans do not think, by whichever name under which it is manifest, it is equally absurd for the idealism which follows from it, to not be. As such, while it may be rational to object to idealism’s initial conditions, it is always irrational to object to idealism itself.

If proper idealism is an epistemological doctrine, not ontological, it follows that the more cognizant juxtaposition with respect to it, is internal/external, which reduces to thought/experience, and not ideal/real. It is not contradictory for thought to contain both the ideal and the real, but it is contradictory for experience to contain both the ideal and the real.

So....do humans in fact think, experience, know? Dunno, maybe not. No empirical proofs. But it doesn’t really matter, does it. Even if wrong, best to be the least possible wrong.

I agree philosophy is unavoidable.

Ok. Thanks. While I hold with an inherent dualism with respect to human cognition, and primacy of reason rather than mind, I think T.I already contains epistemic idealism. It is, after all, we that tell the world what it is, not the other way around. All the world ever does, is present itself.

I'm inclined to some combination of transcendental and epistemic idealism. — Wayfarer

Question: what do you think belongs to epistemic idealism, that isn’t already included in transcendental idealism?

The mind is definitely not a thing. — Wayfarer

If it was, it must be conditioned, hence the possible invocation of infinite regress. Or, in order to relax infinite regress, some condition for mind must be allowed that is itself unconditioned. Better to just let the mind be the unconditioned placeholder, otherwise speculative theory runs away with itself and we end up with nothing.

Philosophy remains unavoidable rather than necessary or useful — Banno

What is it, then, that is at least sufficient to cause the unavoidedness of philosophy? Seems to me if philosophy remains unavoidable, it is necessarily so.

So while at first I was gladdened to see a defence of the need for philosophising, I don't think Midgley succeeds in her defence. — Banno

Perhaps because philosophizing is more an egotistical desire, than a pathological need.

The poverty of the myth of the individual is that it just fails to address the Other, and so fails to enter into moral discussion. — Banno

If there are logically coherent moral discussions predicated on the individual alone, then they are not necessarily myths. If such discussions have no need to address the Other because it is concerned with the individual alone, it is not a poverty by exclusion, but a consistency with it.

The necessity for inclusion of the Other in moral discussion makes explicit moral judgements are at least meaningless, and at most impossible, by an individual with respect to himself alone, an absurdity for which no one has argued successfully.

Rhetorically speaking.....

What’s a proper dialectician to do, with so little to work with.

Place has become a farging metaphysical kindergarten lately, I swear.

in terms of images and feelings. The essence of what we think. — Thinking

Essence of how we think. But that aside, it’s always been my contention that fundamentally, humans think in images and feelings. Tough sell, though, these days.

what I do see as being a problem is the view that there are 'experts', who have the last word. — Jack Cummins

For any situation calling for an immediate moral judgement on your part, what......you gonna query an expert? Nahhhh......I suspect you’d agree you’re the last word, and it’s you alone that has to answer to yourself, for whatever you do with that last word.

Ethics is what you learn; moral is what you are.

it is interesting to think about whether morality, or ethics can become based on empirical principles. — Jack Cummins

Maybe this is why morality is a philosophy, and ethics is a science, in that morals can have no empirical principles whatsoever, while ethics is in fact, predicated on them. This follows if it be granted ethics concerns itself with an object, in the form of community, or society, with behaviors relative to its constituency, but morality, on the other hand, does not have an object, it being nothing but a method by which any behavior of a single individual is to become justified by himself alone.

An ethical community implies a voluntary bonding among individuals, but morality determines the conditions under which an individual member determines himself bondable. Ethics authorizes a welfare state, but my moral disposition may very well disavow my participation in it.

One way to look at it, anyway.

One notion by which ethics differs conceptually from morality:

“....Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not. (...) In this way there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysic- a metaphysic of nature and a metaphysic of morals. Physics will thus have an empirical and also a rational part. It is the same with Ethics; but here the empirical part might have the special name of practical anthropology, the name morality being appropriated to the rational part....”

This reduces....eventually.....to morality being a philosophy for individual determinations of conduct in particular, ethics being the science of the consequences of the application of them, in general.

Good.

It’s known colloquially as the “Copernican Revolution”, although Kant never called it that. It’s found in the preface to the second edition of the first critique. Dunno about that Magee guy, but metaphysically-inclined folks been bashing or idolizing it since 1787.

Although, it’s not technically a thought experiment, per se, in that Kant theorizes as to the actual validity of the process it describes. So.....no physical science here, no Einstein or Schrodinger, but to some, every bit the paradigm shift in its field, as either of those in theirs.

That settles it. I guessed wrong, I didn’t get it, which just goes to show....you’re way too smart for me.

Two things, both of which have been covered in these comments:

One thing.....
Your diagram represents a given present, called “0”, initiating a regression of quanta, such that one of the infinite quanta is included in the totality of them. As such, three hours ago is a member of the set of all hours regressing from zero, which is the same as being included in the infinity of such hours, which is the same as being included in infinity of past hours, which is the same as being included in the infinite past. And you thought I didn’t get it. Shhheeeesh......gimme some credit, huh??

I grant the present represented by zero is synonymous with the beginning of negative hours, just as Kant’s argument stipulated the beginning of the world. It follows that there must be a time where negative hours did not exist, just as there must have been a time when the world did not exist, for that which has a beginning must have a time relative to it necessarily.

Nevertheless, do you see that these two are not compatible? And therefore cannot be used to argue that one invalidates the other? In the case of the numbers, the non-existence of negatives is subsequent to them; the non-existence of the world, is antecedent to it. Therefore, that past consistent with each, isn’t consistent with itself, insofar as the infinite past of negative numbers is yet to be past, but the infinite past of the world has already past. Now it is clear that given an infinite already past of the world, the beginning of it has no referent, hence the existence of it cannot be said to have ever occurred. But no matter its beginning, it did have one, therefore it could not have had an infinite past in which no beginning is to be found. Hence, that the world has an infinite past, is self-contradictory.

The other thing....
Your diagram represents exactly that which resides in the accusation of “confusing the measurement with the thing you are measuring“. The concept of negative hours included in an infinite past, is very far from the existential reality of the world as it was, and must have necessarily been, three hours ago. Again, Kant’s remark, that do so is “mere subterfuge”.

Your turn. How is the argument invalid?
—————

On modality.

Whatever steps are taken, it must be possible to take them. Given it is possible to take them, something must existent in order to take them. Given that steps are taken, it must been necessary for that which takes them, to exist as something capable of taking them.

“......It is to be added, that the third category in each triad always arises from the combination of the second with the first. (...) necessity is nothing but existence, which is given through the possibility itself....”.

This is not to say we cannot have different notions of modality. On such occasions where it is questioned, the above is my answer.

By my reading and treatment, this thread is more about an argument's validity than about time's actual beginning or lack thereof. — InPitzotl

Agreed. I don’t care about time in and of itself. That which it conditions, or is the condition for, interests me.

To me, it's unknown whether time had a beginning. — InPitzotl

To everyone, I would think.

But it's certain that argument is invalid. — InPitzotl

There have been a few. Which one, please? Popper’s? “That argument” denotes specificity, so....

To what does the phrase "illegitimate in experience" refer? — InPitzotl

Stuff like this:

If Sam falls into an eternal black hole — InPitzotl

————

It is impossible to prove there is a point on an infinite line, if there is no possibility of an infinite line.
— Mww
...but proving the possibility is equivalent to disproving the impossibility. The original post is about challenging Popper's proof of impossibility. — InPitzotl

It wasn’t Popper’s, it was Kant’s. And it wasn’t a challenge as much as a misunderstanding by the thread’s author, of the original argument logically proving the impossibility of the world having no beginning. Still, you are correct, insofar as proving the possibility of an infinite line would at the same time prove one and all points on the line. To prove a possibility, one must prove a necessity, and to prove a necessity one needs prove an existence. Otherwise, all that’s proved is sufficiency. To prove the possibility of an infinite line one must show the existence of one. Which is impossible. So all that’s left is to represent an infinite line sufficiently, using those little dots after the uncompleted series of whatever’s. Or maybe something like “n + 1”.

In the case herein being senselessly beaten to death, the existence is given, re: the world, so the need to prove its possibility is negated, as is for the equivalency in disproving the impossibility that the world had a beginning, or, which is the same thing, that the beginning of the world is in the infinite past. The common rejoinder is, of course.....why not both. A beginning for the world and that beginning infinitely long ago. The contradictions so blatantly obvious, the counterarguments so lackluster......eventually regressing into such modern conceptual monstrosities as (gaspsputterchoke) “spagettification”

(Sigh)

My point here is that at least in some of your discussions you're confusing the measurement with the thing you are measuring. — InPitzotl

This is going on, and it is what the fighting’s all about, as my ol’ buddy Roger Waters would have you know.

Misplaced concreteness writ large, and I’m trying to demonstrate the futility of it.
————-

It's kind of irrelevant that our numbering system along that bottom ruler "never ends"... that line segment certainly has a point on it. — InPitzotl

Sure it does. It has an infinite number of them. Do you see this doesn’t relate to my arguments with respect to the thread’s original proposition? It is not contested that, given an origin, an infinite regression from it is logically possible. It follows that an infinite number of points are given by that possible infinite quantity which contains them. What I am saying, is diagrams do not prove the case, but merely represent that logical possibility. So neither of these two pictorial renditions prove the absolute necessity, of that which is grounded only in a mere possibility.

It is impossible to prove there is a point on an infinite line, if there is no possibility of an infinite line. This is a perfect example of reason in conflict with itself.....substituting what is legitimate in thought, with what is illegitimate in experience. Still, all that in itself is utterly irrelevant with respect to the thread, in which there is given the origin of a completed whole......the universe. The universe as a whole is the logical equivalent of your pictorial representation. As such, there is an infinite quantity of constituency in the universe, just as there is an infinite number of points on the line segment, 0 through -1. But the other diagram is bounded by infinity itself, no beginning and no end, which makes it absurd to locate any point on that line. I mean.....where is the access point?

Anyway.....metaphysics. Can’t prove it, can’t refute it. Best to discover the limits of what can be done with it.

For example, the concept of infinity is inherently an abstract concept, which, it seems, just simply cannot be applied to reality, and so this and similar discussions necessarily lead us to some kind of paradox, one way or another. — Zelebg

Good.

Basically, I think we cannot find satisfying resolution to this question until we first do something with our vocabulary, perhaps make definitions of concepts involved more robust or restrictive, or maybe come up with some new concepts and definitions, — Zelebg

Better.

My vote for Best......maybe we cannot find satisfying resolutions until we first do something with our metaphysics.

All I’ve contended here, is the notion of proof. I’m ok with your general thinking....and it wouldn’t matter even if I wasn’t....but I categorically reject the possibility of any proof for your original proposition, other than logical syllogism.
————-

For example, does "time" make any sense if nothing moves, if there is no change, and similarily, does "space" make any sense if there is nothing in it? — Zelebg

This, buried back in this maze of comments, is pretty much what I said. Just maybe with a couple additional reductions.

Ahhhh....ok, then. A symbolic proof. Thing is....that little squiggly thing at each end of the representational dotted line segment presupposes the very thing you’re using to prove something about it. “A” could be located at that point, or any other point, whether or not the line is infinite. Denying the antecedent comes to mind. Actually, there’s no point “A” could not be found on an infinite line, so it says nothing at all about the line itself, to say where “A” is found.
—————-

Do you think space could be infinite? — Zelebg

Sure, it could be. I also think it could be bounded by the current universe. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Mathematical/logical proofs for both, empirical proofs for neither.