True enough. Some logical arguments conclude sound inferences, some do not.

If epiphenomenalism is true, then epiphenomenalism is an epiphenomenon. — Olivier5

Yep. Circularity. Never provable, but refutable, by merely invoking different majors or minors.

Start here, you get epiphenomenalism; start there, you don’t.

Common courtesy mandates a response, so......Thanks.

And therefore... — Olivier5

Circular. Not contradictory. With respect to illusion.

1.) The mental model of the brain.....

that determines brain workings.....
which determines mental models to be illusory....

....must therefore be illusory.

1A.) An illusory mental model of the brain....

that determines brain workings....
which determines mental models to be illusory....

....remains consistently illusory.

This is the “killer blow” so far missed. It is human reason itself, the ground of everything human, that is intrinsically circular, therefore susceptible to an illusory conclusions. It is the nature of the rational beast, inevitable and irreconcilable, possible only to guard against, but never to eliminate.

Science as a doctrine sets the ground for trying, but it is always a human that does science, so.....just more potential circularity.

Mental models for brain workings that determine that mental models are impossible......is contradictory.
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With respect to epiphenomenalism, science may eventually falsify the premise, empirically, but it is currently viable as an explanatory thesis, metaphysically, merely because we don’t possess knowledge sufficient to negate it, and while it violates the principle of cause and effect physically, it stands as non-contradictory from a purely logical domain.

Rhetorically speaking.....

Interested in reading group, or another thread? — creativesoul

I’m non-committal, but I might eavesdrop from behind the fake rubber tree.

I don't disagree with what you say there. I agree that it is accordance with ordinary parlance to say that causation is presupposed in all our searches for explanation. — Janus

Ordinary parlance, yes.

I also see that basic presupposition as a kind of foundational belief — Janus

Presuppositions, yes.

we don't consciously presuppose or believe in causation, it is rather constitutive of our whole process of thought. — Janus

I’m sure you wouldn’t contradict yourself as obviously as this last seems to contradict the first, so I’ll just assume I’m not getting what you’re saying.

I guess I’d first have to ask what you mean convention, consensus, to be the primary reasons for.
— Mww

Why do we assume the presuppositions that, often unconsciously, underlie our understanding of the world. — T Clark

Ahhhhh....Ok, gotcha. Reasons for assuming presuppositions. All those are sufficient reasons for assuming presuppositions, experience being my personal favorite, probably. At least the most obvious. Only nit worth picking is, intuitions are not representative of “spontaneity” as I used it.

I guess I’d first have to ask what you mean convention, consensus, to be the primary reasons for. Spontaneity and those are very far apart, so just wondering what they might have in common.

if by that I mean in line with RGC. — creativesoul

Yeah.....(chuckles to self).....I’m trying really hard to stay in the proper lane.

what is the absolute presupposition they express? You say it is causality; but what could it mean to presuppose causality — Janus

I emphasize “metaphysically speaking”, for none of the following has any affect on Everydayman, who doesn’t know, and cares even less, about any of it. Speculative epistemology is intellectual entertainment, not a solution to existential difficulties.

Metaphysically speaking, humans presupposes causes, which we question and answer for ourselves in propositions; we absolutely presuppose causality, which we never talk about because without causality, there wouldn’t even be any cause questions to ask. We reason to instances of cause; we grant causality, which is the point of departure for reason to come up with causes.

Much like...when we go to the store for a thing, we presuppose the thing to be there, because of experience (milk, eggs, butter) or it’s just the kind of store that has that thing (granite, lawnmowers, Chinese silk), but before all that we always absolutely presuppose the reality of the thing, because if we’ve presupposed it being in the store, we must have absolutely granted that the thing exists.

Furthermore, after granting its existence, we still presuppose the possibility of the particular thing being in the store we’re going to (because it is impossible to know it’s actually there), then it must be the case that we’ve already absolutely granted the general notion of possibility itself, because without it, whether the thing was in the store or not would never have become a question, a concern or a satisfaction/disappointment, for us. This is the possibility in relation to space, because we’ve already granted the possibility of the thing in relation to time, from the mere fact it exists.
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Once the concept of causality is formed, then the idea that it either obtains or does not obtain logically follows. — Janus

This is part of RGC’s thesis, in that once the concept of causality is formed, whether or not it either obtains or does not obtain, is a nonsense implication. Once it forms, it has obtained, hence the logic of it is irrelevant. Which is not quite the right way to express it, but the point remains. The reason for this is given in Kant, but not so much in Collingwood, so I’ll refrain from it.

Don’t mean to speak for you, but perhaps your sentence would have been better stated as...once the concept of a cause is formed, whether it obtains or does not obtain, logically follows (that is to say, whether or not the necessarily conjoined effect follows from it).
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then the term "absolute presupposition" understood as being beyond truth aptitude, seems itself simply wrong, because causality is being proposed, even if not explicitly. — Janus

Agreed, it is confusing, and seemingly self-refuting. Collingwood covers this confusion by stipulating that absolute presuppositions are not “propounded”, which we take to mean not proposed. Thus, if the conception of causality is not proposed, it is immediately removing from susceptibility to truth aptitude, and, rather, it is tacitly understood a priori, antecedent to our conscious construction of empirical propositions.

Remember....all our conceptions arise from something. It is easy to see conceptions of objects arise from sensibility, but it is not so easy to see from whence abstract concepts arise. It is irrefutable that we have them, re: time, beauty, justice, etc., but they cannot arise from sensibility, so....wherefrom?

I’ll leave you with....(gulp)......spontaneity.

I don't agree the three examples of absolute presuppositions Tim Wood quotes there have no truth value — Janus

Tim didn’t quote absolute presuppositions; they were explicitly stated by the author as metaphysical propositions, and as such, can have truth value. You are justified in asserting truth values are possible for them as propositions, but cancel yourself by calling them absolute presuppositions.

On pg 52, the author says these proposition express an AP, albeit under three different configurations, which is very different than saying they are AP’s, in and of themselves. It is in the underlaying conception expressed, taken for granted, by the proposition, to which a truth value assignment is tantamount to “nonsense”, because that which the proposition takes for granted, assumed as immediately given, is nothing but a single, solitary, unconditioned conception, re: causality.

For all intends and purposes, pursuant to the reference literature, AP’s are just single words, which is sustained by the author asserting that AP’s are not propositions. Linguistics attributes truth value to propositions alone, which includes beliefs, but single words are not propositions not are they beliefs, hence, as such, can not have the truth value of a proposition, re: is “yes” true or false? Metaphysics can ask if AP’s are logically valid, and if answered that they are, then to ask if they are true or false, is utterly irrelevant. Or.....in the author’s vocabulary......nonsense.
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I would consider it a great success if I could get you to see that AP’s are not beliefs, I shall smooth potentially ruffled feathers beforehand, by reminding you that while your ordinary language use is all fine and dandy, the reference material for this thread is predicated on critical thinking, for which, one must admit, ordinary language use lacks sufficient authority.
————

Once more, into the breach........

as I said before, the logic is inexorable. — Janus

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON. DANGER!!!!

“...Now it may be taken as a safe and useful warning, that general logic, considered as an organon, must always be a logic of illusion, for, as it teaches us nothing whatever respecting the content of our cognitions, but merely the formal conditions of their accordance with the understanding, which do not relate to and are quite indifferent in respect of objects, any attempt to employ it as an instrument (organon) in order to extend and enlarge the range of our knowledge must end in mere prating; anyone being able to maintain or oppose, with some appearance of truth, any single assertion whatever. Such instruction is quite unbecoming the dignity of philosophy....”

Nothing wrong using the logical form supposition/belief; presupposition/belief; absolute presupposition/absolute belief. They’re just words thrown together. But try to substitute reasonable arguments against the words, and you find that the relationship the words imply were, shall we say, unbecoming.

Now for the success. Maybe. Logical consistency maintains that if suppositions are beliefs, which could be true, then presuppositions should be pre-beliefs, which is a logical illusion, for we have no idea what is contained in a pre-belief. And then we have what should be.....absolute pre-beliefs. You can easily get from supposition to belief and do so rationally, but you cannot get so easily from presupposition to pre-belief. And it is quite irrational indeed, to attempt to get to absolute pre-belief from absolute presupposition. Parsimony suggests the better illusory reconciliation to be, therefore, that suppositions can be beliefs, but presuppositions and absolute presuppositions, cannot.

TA-DAAAA!!!! (Mic drop, exit stage left)

One man’s pedantry is another man’s precision.

We don’t think in terms the scientists use to tell us how we think. You’re asking a stonemason how he would plumb a bidet when all he knows how to use is a trowel and mud.

Thankfully, you know that as well as I do.

Cool. Thanks.

I would say that, according to ordinary parlance, there is little difference between the two terms....... — Janus

Little difference in ordinary parlance, yes. But what difference there is, speaks volumes: the first says “the fact of believing....” and the second says “something believed....”. The first makes explicit an object that is a rational cognition, the second is a rational cognition in which an object is implied. The first presupposes believing, the second presupposes something. The first, iff it is a fact, stands as an absolute presupposition, the second can only be a relative presupposition because some question can be answered by it, what the something may actually be.

But even aside from that, the definitions are so close, virtually using the same words, they practically define the same conception. Except the conceptions are not the same.
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.......although a presupposition might be considered more basic. — Janus

Agreed; my sole raison d’etre for getting involved in the first place, to demonstrate how that is actually the case.

I take Kant's to be a construction, Collingwood's to be a finding. — tim wood

Pretty much, yeah. Kant bottom up construction, Collingwood top down analysis.
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The short historical perspective which Kant inherited from Voltaire was at this point his undoing — tim wood

As far as physics is concerned, and the notion that his presuppositions were sufficient for future physics, this is true. But Kant didn’t base his philosophy on physics, but on mathematics, which far antecedes both Voltaire and Greek physical science. He does this to demonstrate why physics as a science didn’t advance as far and as surely as mathematics, because the Greeks didn’t apply the same apodeitically certain a priori principles of mathematics to physical science. Enter Copernicus, whom Kant supposed, did.

Good stuff, Maynard.

Beliefs are more fundamental than knowledge — Pantagruel

More fundamental only as in less rigorous. Ehhh....not going to get into the speculative subtleties explicit therein. Too long, too deep and not relevant to the topic.

In what sense is a "presupposition" not a kind of belief? — Pantagruel

In ordinary linguistics, they may be, from which arises the relative presupposition, according to Collingwood. In metaphysics, on the other hand, where I stake my epistemological tentpoles, presuppositions are taken as necessary conditions, re: absolute presuppositions, and beliefs, at best, are merely contingent judgements. Only here does it become apparent that the negation of a judgement does not falsify the presupposition that supported it. “Elvis is not dead”, a possible belief, has no affect on the presupposition of Elvis, the condition necessary for the belief. We don’t need to analyze the proposition to grant the necessity of the presupposition contained in it, even while analyzing the truth of the proposition itself.

Also according to Collingwood.....beware customary jargon from “desultory and casual thinking of our unscientific consciousness”.

There is no reason to believe that absolute presuppositions are not presupposed. — Pantagruel

Hey.....no fair confusing me, dammit!!! I had to go back through all my comments to see if I indicated absolute presuppositions were not presupposed, and I couldn’t find where I gave that indication. I’m arguing contrary to your claim that presuppositions are beliefs, which I emphatically reject on purely metaphysical grounds. So, no, there is no reason to think absolute presuppositions are not presupposed. In fact, it is no other way possible for them to be logically viable, then to be presupposed.

If they are presuppositions, then they are "pre-supposed". — Pantagruel

Yes, but these are relative presuppositions, and according to Collingwood, may serve as answers to previous question, re: Prop 5. Answers must be subjected to rational predication, which permits them propositional form, which in turn allows them to be supposed antecedent to the question they are intended to answer.

They are "fundamental hypotheses" about the nature of reality, not expressible in propositional form directly but consonant with some set of relative propositions, which are taken for granted and acted upon as if they were real, in consequence of which is engendered all manner of actual behaviours, including scientific theorization. — Pantagruel

And these are the absolute presuppositions. Although, while certainly fundamental, I’d hesitate to call them hypotheses, which implies the very propositional form denied to them.

Why should we construe belief so narrowly? — Pantagruel

Because metaphysics is the science of thought, and any science is grounded by basic principles, axioms or conditions.

The best answer is the reduction to the the capacity to distinguish belief from knowledge. And if certainty is one of two fundamental human interests, the other being some moral disposition, it is all the more metaphysically pertinent to disseminate the conditions for its possibility scientifically, as opposed to the contingency of mere belief.

Beliefs apply to things like cultural norms and habitual practices and for the vast majority of people take the form of presuppositions. — Pantagruel

These are at best in the purview of psychology, which, according to Collingwood, is “anti-metaphysics”, probably because those applications are in the public domain. Besides, “Beliefs apply to.....”, while correct from the view of practical reason, still makes no allowance for that which justifies both the content and the applicability of belief in general, which only arises from pure reason. One must, after all, think a belief before applying it.

Absolute presuppositions are not considered, weighed, and chosen — tim wood

Agreed, and sustained in Prop. 5, “absolute presuppositions are not propositions”, and if not a proposition, cannot be considered in propositional form, which weighing and choosing would seem to require.

But if be said thatbsomeone holds a presupposition is that not equivalent to saying that they believe it? — Janus

If we allow a supposition to be a belief, which is not contradictory, then from mere language we see a pre-supposition makes explicit that which has yet to meet the criteria of belief. If belief is the consequence of some cognition relative to a thing in conjunction with a judgement made upon it with respect to the subjective validity of the cognition, it follows that presupposition does not lend itself to any of those cognitive faculties relating thought to an object, but, if anything, given their validity, are necessarily antecedent to them. Hence, in Collingwood, the notion of “logical priority”.
(In Kant, “logical priority” is the transcendental condition making the categories possible, which Collingwood modernizes to “absolute presuppositions”, in his attempt to modernize post-Kantian metaphysics in general, in order to accommodate advances in the hard sciences)

So the question, at least from one point of view, attempts to misuse our cognitive faculties, which leads to self-contradictions. Throw in “absolute” as a quality of presupposition, and it makes that idea not even contained in cognitive faculties, from which arises the ground of the contradiction, re: the absolute is the unconditioned, for which no object is possible in human experience. In addition, with respect to Collingwood, to further qualify absolute presuppositions as, A.) that of “to any question it is never an answer” (Def. 6), and B.) “never verifiable” (pg 32), in that absolute presuppositions are in and of themselves not contained in, are indeed never even subjected to, the faculty of cognition at all. And that which is never cognized can never be a belief.

Problem is, of course, neither Kant nor Collingwood venture an altogether satisfactory origin of the categories in the former, nor absolute presuppositions in the latter. They each arrive at his own version of some irreducible metaphysical necessity, and each recognize they’ve tacitly boxed themselves in.

Same as it ever was......

If suppositions or presuppositions are beliefs, which in accordance with ordinary parlance they indeed are, then absolute presuppositions are absolute beliefs. The logic is inexorable. — Janus

Not going to gang up on you, so I’ll just say I’m surprised you’d consider presuppositions are beliefs, or, as you say later, are truth-apt. Both of those would seem to make presuppositions congruent with empirical judgements and absolute presuppositions congruent with a priori judgements. Dunno how to justify that, at least from a metaphysical domain.You know...what with logical priority and all.

But you did stipulate “ordinary parlance”, so.....there is that.

Found it, thanks.

Agreed, as far as I give ontology any consideration at all.

“..... and the proud name of an ontology which professes to present synthetical cognitions a priori of things in general in a systematic doctrine, must give place to the modest title of analytic of the pure understanding....”
(CPR, A247)

“....the metaphysician’s business is not to propound them, but to propound the proposition that this or that of them is presupposed...”

These “absolute presuppositions” hold congruent with the categories, insofar as any ontological or epistemic proposition is grounded by them a priori, without exception.

1.) is necessity; 2.) is reality; 3.) is causality; 4.) is possibility.

Thanks, . That’s what I wanted, from Collingwood himself, not a reference which gives me examples of what they do but does not tell me what they are.

Here's the thing i would guard against: — Banno

No need, really. Having gained their victory, such theoreticians find precious little profit in venturing into that which for them, would be naught but a wasteland.

Still, probably best beware the odd quixotic nonetheless, for whom the proper theoretician is not responsible.

very unambiguous example in the Essay on Metaphysics. — Pantagruel

Would you cite that for me, please? Or something similar? I just want to know what is being used as an unambiguous example of an absolute presupposition.

I’m wondering if I know it by another name, is all.

Thanks.

True enough. But it doesn’t follow from the general capacity for feeling pain, that individual instances of it are necessarily mutually inclusive.

Dunno if it relates, but you said “metaphysically” and “anyone?”, so....pain is a subjective condition common to humans in general; pain, as the subject’s “appraisal of his subjective condition”, is never shared.

Just as is, or is not, pleasure.

cooking breakfast. — Banno

HA!!! We just finished dinner, which on this fine Saturday night, consists of.....breakfast.

Isn’t relevancy a judgement? Or do you just wish to disregard the part where the authors all but reduced the experiments to “episodic memory”?

I wanted to ask you.....the “bottom of page 84” is a footnote, so what was that article supposed to tell me?

Why those quotes? They don't say anything relevant. — Banno

Oh, I dunno. If one chooses between yours consisting of 4:36 minutes of anecdotal hogwash, and mine consisting of peer-reviewed publications, I guess you’d be right.

Of particular note, at 1:08, “...my brain automatically tries to recreate the sensory experience of other people as if I am them and they are me...”, which SERIOUSLY begs the question.....what difference does it make to say, “as if......”?

Gimme a break.

Fair point. Cannot something be accurately described in more than one way? — creativesoul

I trust you’re not considering something so mundane as.....describing a horse in French is just as accurate a description of horses as describing a horse in Japanese.

It seems your question merely adds to “all the ways the object is”, without addressing “the way the object is”. Just between you and me ‘n’ the fence post, from dialectical precedent doncha know, we both surmise the key here is “none of these constitute the object as it is”, which implies your accurately describing in different ways doesn’t have anything to do with such constituency.

If the original quote contained the fair point, and the main of the fair point was constituency given by “none are the way the object is”, why does it appear that your question is tending to undermine it?

Now I know, from my own experience that I cannot feel other's pain. — Janus

Agreed, but not just from experience. I know I will never feel another’s pain merely from sheer logistics, in that the source of pain in another in not resident in me. And if it should be the case that some common event is the source of pain in both of us, it is my brain that registers my physiological malevolence, and his pain is entirely his own. It’s actually quite absurd to suppose otherwise, for then it must be explained why I never feel my brother’s hypoglycemia, and, what’s worse, it gives the impression that human nature arbitrarily/circumstantially invites pain such nature aesthetically makes every effort to avoid, in contradiction with itself.

A quick perusal of “mirror-touch synesthesia for dummies”.......you know, Wikipedia.....shows such theoretical hysterics has barely anything practical to do with generally natural conditions. For good measure, upon deeper investigation, is found a fancy-assed exposition of plain, run-of-the-mill, our ol’ buddy.......mere experience. Or, to be more metaphysically accurate, intuition:

“....We have recently demonstrated that neurons in medial temporal lobe are reactivated during spontaneous recall of episodic memory. The action observation/execution matching neurons in the medial temporal lobe may match the sight of actions of others with the memory of those same actions performed by the observer. Thus during action-execution, a memory of the executed action is formed, and during action-observation this memory trace is reactivated. This interpretation is in line with the hypothesis of multiple mirroring mechanisms in the primate brain, a hypothesis that can easily account for the presence of mirroring cells in many cortical areas.....”
(Mukamel, et.al., 2010, in https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(10)00233-2)
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Food for thought, and only addressed to you because I’m too lazy to open another post, regarding psychologically-inclined science that does absolutely nothing for Everydayman.....

“....We recorded extracellular activity from 1177 cells in human medial frontal and temporal cortices while patients executed or observed hand grasping actions and facial emotional expressions....”
(Ibid

“....Many original articles, reviews and textbooks affirm that we have 100 billion neurons and 10 times more glial cells (Kandel et al., 2000; Ullian et al., 2001; Doetsch, 2003; Nishiyama et al., 2005; Noctor et al., 2007; Allen and Barres, 2009)....”
(Herculano-Houze, et.al., 2009, in https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/evolution/articles/humanbraininnumbers.pdf

.......compared to science that does, say, wherein a telescope irrevocably renders ten thousand years of human thought regarding the cosmos obsolete, it is found that the ratio of ~1 in ~100,00,000 neurons in the human brain sufficient to render the claim we do not feel another’s pain.....

questionable — Banno

we must know something of the territory in order to determine that some maps are more accurate than others. — Janus

Agreed.

The question is how do we know anything of the territory if not through maps (models or representations or whatever you want to call them)? — Janus

There’s no map of my house, but I know the territory pretty well. Could we say experience is the same as models, representations or whatever you want to call them? Hope so, because otherwise it’d be pretty hard to explain how Lewis and Clark came back with a map, but they didn’t leave with one.

As far as the playing of the game is concerned, there are two players if I am playing both colors. The quality of the game isn’t the least affected no matter who’s moving the pieces, as long as the movements conform to the rules.

Popper appreciates you respecting his metaphysical dispositions. If it’s any consolation.....Einstein didn’t.

the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want.
— Mww

Right, so as I said above it is not possible to create a private language (one constructed entirely in private terms) but it is possible to have private names for things that can be pointed to. We seem to be in agreement. — Janus

Close, but not entirely. If I combine a few imagined, private, names in an organized composition, wouldn’t I have created an imagined, private language? Note there is yet no incursion of meaning, intentionality, or explanation. There is only composition from extended representations relating to each other, which sufficiently defines the conception of language in the first place (contra Witt), as yet having nothing to do with the use of it.

“....When we say: “every word in language signifies something” we have so far said nothing whatsoever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make...”
(Wittgenstein, P.I.,1,13, in Anscombe, 1958)

Can maps be more or less adequate to the territory? — Janus

I guess, sure, but “more or less” is pretty open-ended and “adequate” doesn’t say much.

What’s the catch?

Ontological anti-realism is just some level of skepticism about ontology in general. — frank

Ok. I grant ontology in general, so I guess I don’t have some level of skepticism about it. I’m certainly skeptical that my knowledge of things is complete or true. Which is a metaphysical condition, I would say.

if you decided to create one, you would not be able to understand any of its non-ostensive terms except by translating them into your native, public language — Janus

True enough, which mandates that if I create a private language, its terms must directly correspond to their respective antecedents. Which they will, or the creation of that which represents a range of my subjective activities is impossible.

You, of all people, may understand the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want.

I'm not surprised. — Banno

Excellent. I haven’t exceeded my intentions.