I also refer back to this post and the traditional virtues of sagacity and detachment whereby the sage 'sees things as they truly are'. That is what science aspires to do, it is the very impulse that science arose from. — Wayfarer

To me scientism is an awkward attempt to be detached and objective. I think good philosophy and bad philosophy chase the same ideal, and we call that philosophy 'good' that does a better job of it from our perspective.

Science, or at least its general methodology is definitely the best known tool by which we, as a whole, can obtain a high degree of objective knowledge. But this in no way suggests that objective knowledge is superior to non-objective knowledge, and by that measure, neither can science be declared as the superior method for obtaining knowledge. Knowledge of my self, my life, who I am and where I stand is something that science cannot touch, at least not at the purest levels of subjectivity, and something that I would suspect has been on every true philosopher's mind at one time or another. For me, such subjective knowledge is infinitely important. Nevertheless, science shows excellent results. — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree with all of this, and I look forward to you returning when you have time to other issues we've touched on. I think we share a cosmic sense of humor.

question the legitimacy of extending it to include the origin of science, or of the intellect, or of rationality as a faculty or capacity, because it implicitly or even explicitly reduces these capacities to those which can directly be understood for the advantage for reproduction that they obviously might provide. — Wayfarer

Well I do relate to the sense that anti-realism has its problems. I argue against the strong reading of Nietzsche, Rorty, and others.

Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.

This actually is a really deep conundrum in modern philosophy, we can't just brush it off. — Wayfarer

I agree with you here. This is one of the sore spots of that view. And I am moved by Husserl's arguments against psychologism. I'm not saying that I reject the theory of evolution, but I do see the problem. I haven't studied biology closely. That said, I do think it's possible that currently unnoticed factors are involved. And it's logically possible that those factors won't ever be detected in traditional ways.

But then again they had in common that they did philosophy and not just physics. When you do physics only, you are stuck thinking within the mainstream theories of the era, seeing the assumptions at the root of the theories as truth rather than as assumptions. — leo

I think we can meet in our appreciation of scientists that are also philosophers. There are indeed philosophically naive scientists who don't realize they are caught up in primitive systems. They add on lots of junk philosophy to a living core of utility.

I started the sentence with "If", "If there are only minds", "If there are only minds, then there is no mind-independent 'here' or 'world' that our minds are in". If you disagree with that sentence, I would be interested to hear what makes you disagree, because in my reality I don't see how it could be wrong. — leo

The word 'mind' loses its traditional meaning along with the 'here.' I think overlapping minds is a plausible theory. It gets something right.

Now if there is repeated consistency and agreements between how we name our experiences, then we can say there is a common ground between our realities. Does it imply there is one single reality? Are we going to agree on everything? What of people who don't see that tree? Is there something wrong with them, are they delusional because they don't see the single reality that you assumed exists? — leo

I value the anti-realist points that you make. For me anti-realism + naive-realism = sophisticated realism. We would call people who hear voices we can't hear 'delusional.' We would call people who couldn't see the tree 'blind.'

Let me put your point in another way. We shine a certain frequency of light into many people's eyes. They all say that it is 'red.' Are they therefore seeing the same color? No. Or we can't know. So I agree that we are caught 'outside' of the 'direct experience' of others.

https://aeon.co/videos/does-the-meaning-of-words-rest-in-our-private-minds-or-in-our-shared-experience

That's a nice video. Not saying I agree 100%, but it's a good point.

And I talk of "we" because we have a common ground, our realities partially intersect. — leo

Fair enough. But don't we naturally think and talk in terms of a single 'ideal' intersection? I don't think we are good at exactly specifying it, but I think our talk is constantly aimed at it.

If there is a single reality, then in principle they could find an explanation, such as your brain being different in some way to theirs. — leo

For me explanation has limits. So single reality != explainable reality. Brute fact rules as we climb up the ladder of why-why-why. We get either an infinite chain of 'whys' or some first principle that just is.

Today many people agree on the idea of a single physical reality, but they can't explain how is it that they can experience anything at all in such a reality. At that point there is only faith holding that single reality together. Minds believing in it. — leo

I hear you, but aren't you aiming this insight at the same single reality? True, you see as I do the problem with framing it as 'physical.' The anti-realist points do indeed devastate scientism. But to do so they still have to aim at something that grounds their statements.

BTW, I do enjoy your posts and am glad to discuss this you.

There were quite a few German scientists of that period who opposed atomism on philosophical grounds. I seem to remember this attitude was one of the things that drove Ludwig Boltzmann to suicide. — Wayfarer

Yes that's how I remember it also. It reminds me of Cantor being given hell, especially by Kronecker. Cantor irrationally hated infinitesimals, which eventually were made respectable. While both atoms and set theory have been useful and illuminating, I still think both Mach and Kronecker had a point.

Atoms are a useful way of looking at things. My mother isn't 'really' atoms. She is atoms and many other things. And then subitizing ('God created the integers') and metaphor ('and all the rest is the work of man.') look like a truer foundation of math than today's set theory (impressive though it be.)

I think it's our recent habit of using science as the one and only tool for examining the world. ... Other perspectives than the scientific one can also have merit. — Pattern-chaser

Hi. I agree that other perspectives have merit. I'm not so sure that humans have ever used it as their one and only tool or that they ever could.

Knowledge has to be objective otherwise it's mere belief. — luckswallowsall

I like to use the typical definition of 'objective' as (roughly) unbiased.

Can't knowledge be a belief? What if my opinion is relatively unbiased? Because I think critically, etc. Maybe I stick to quantified measurements and so on. And then some beliefs are more highly regarded than others? As in I listen to the physicists about physics and not the homeless guy. Even it's possible that the professor is wrong and the bum is right.

Scientific facts and mathematical truths are examples of things that can be objectively known.

Knowlege is indeed necessarily mental ... but it's also necessarily objective.

Knowledge requires a combination of ontological subjectivity and epistemic objectivity.

An irrational fool has the ontological subjectivity but lacks the epistemic objectivity.

A rational robot has the epistemic objectivity but lacks the ontological subjectivity.

Your mistake is due to thinking that if something is ontologically subjective then it also has to be epistemically subjective. That's an equivocation on your part. — luckswallowsall

Basically I agree with you here. But I do think subjective and objective are about the perspective. A highly subjective statement would be biased or personal in a way that reduces its trustworthiness or utility to those who aren't like the particular person involved. Think of a witness who loathes or loves the defendant. An objective statement is more likely to come from someone who is not involved emotionally with the subject matter itself. Some people even pride themselves precisely on being unbiased. They are biased toward unbiasedness.

I agree by the way that we can make objective statements about what someone is feeling. We can give better or worse reports depending on the presence or absence of bias. We can't check in some sense, but feeling as a public entity is disclosed through tears, laughter, gesture, expression, etc. Even if we can't be sure, we trust some people more than others (which is to say they are objective.)

There is definitely a problem when people attempt to use the subject/object(subjective/objective) dichotomy as a means to account for everything. Banno finds it useful in certain situations. Those who attempt to do too much with it find themselves in an impossible situation. They cannot take account for that which consists of both, and is thus neither. Folk who do that create their own problems... those problems are the bottle. — creativesoul

Well I think I agree with you. To me the subject/object distinction indeed breaks down. But I even embrace naive realism as the mundane pre-philosophy from which we start and never actually leave.
I like OLP too. We never forget how to use subject and object talk in the real world, and we do it well.

It's when we try to do pseudo-math with essences that we get in hopeless tangles. Meaning is more like a fluid that flows through both words and actions simultaneously.

Do you not think/believe that there are many self-perpetuated problems, all of which are a result of people becoming bewitched by certain language use? Frameworks are language use. Dichotomies are a part of all frameworks. Some dichotomies are used - historically - as a means for doing something that they are inherently incapable of doing. — creativesoul

I agree with this earlier statement too.

Banno wants to continue/limit it's use, for/in/to some contexts I suppose, but I find it fatally flawed in such a way that it's use loses all explanatory value. It is inadequate for taking account of the attribution of meaning, the presupposition of correspondence to what's happened, and thought/belief formation itself. — creativesoul

I am interested in the related themes of truth as correspondence and truth as disclosure. To check that a proposition is true, we have to look at the world and see the already disclosed entity as that proposition described it. When we talk about potatoes, we can just use our sense organs, etc. (along with an understanding of the world that operates noiselessly and makes the proposition intelligible.)

But if I talk about other objects, like the correspondence theory of truth, I am disclosing them as I describe them.Or some of my statements intend to reveal them. It's only after entities are disclosed or revealed that we can have truth as correspondence.

This stuff is in Heidegger I think, but it stands or falls on its own merits. I don't want to pretend to have thought this up myself.

The ability to grasp and form concepts is basic to language and reason. — Wayfarer

I agree. It's a faculty. I believe that Hegel called it the 'understanding,' which tears organic unities to shreds.

So what I'm questioning is the idea that everything amounts to a form of 'experience' - logic and reason don't arise from experience, but are an innate capacity. But, 'innate capacities' are generally verboten to empiricists with their dogma of the 'blank slate' onto which everything is 'inscribed by experience'. — Wayfarer

Well I agree. But I don't see too many blank-slaters. Or if people still like the empiricists it's not for that. To be sure there are probably non-philosophers who still hold such crude views.

my view is that at the point humans are able to use language and reason, they transcend the biological and our capacities are no longer explicable in purely biological terms. — Wayfarer

I agree. I personally think we can't just ignore biology though. For instance, I don't believe in the afterlife because I do think my consciousness depends on the life and health of my brain --and therefore, at least these days, on the heath of the rest of the body. No brain, no consciousness. I can't prove that. If there was disembodied consciousness, it would be hard for us to verify it for obvious reasons. Especially in the context of wild claims from criminals who hear voices.

In the same way a UFO very well could grab a human for experiments and let them go. But if one thinks that most stories like this are false, then the true is lost in the haystack. I would need to see it happen.

It's the same with genuine spiritual experiences. They exist in the context of fakers. To me that is one reason why thinkers tend toward explaining things in terms of the familiar. And then anything too esoteric is almost by definition outside of (public) reason. One gets it or not. A sign is flashed. Let those with ears to hear...

Anyway, here's an example of Mach's relative open-mindedness.

In this investigation we must not allow ourselves to be impeded by such abridgments and delimitations as body, ego, matter, spirit, etc., which have been formed for special, practical purposes and with wholly provisional and limited ends in view. On the contrary, the fittest forms of thought must be created in and by that research itself, just as is done in every special science. In place of the traditional, instinctive ways of thought, a freer, fresher view, conforming to developed experience, and reaching out beyond the requirements of practical life, must be substituted throughout. — Mach

If there are only minds, then there is no mind-independent 'here' or 'world' that our minds are in. — leo

But what can it mean for you to say what you said above? About what is it true?

What use is it to talk of a single reality if we can say nothing at all about it? Just like it is seen as meaningless to talk about what's outside the universe, in the view here it is meaningless to talk about a single reality. — leo

Is it meaningless for us to talk about a single reality? Or just for you? For me there's a performative contradiction in arguing against a single reality. Or rather the good arguments against a single reality are well aimed at bad conceptualizations of the single reality.

The single reality I have in mind is manifest in the very structure of our communication, the same communication we use to give artificial names to it like the 'physical.'

Yeah I think we have the same attitude and sense of transcendence of dogma. We embrace a dynamic, shifting reality.

And, indeed, our human journey is probably back into the void. We form groups in terms of a feared-hated-despised other, and the same individualism that allows for explosive creativity also keep us from working together. And then we die like dogs after a short life and can't be bothered with the long-term consequences of our actions.

My response: try to act decently and also laugh with gods now and then.

Well I think I agree with all of that, and it was a pleasure to read.

you will appreciate the delightfully-named Afrikan Spir. — Wayfarer

In his Journal (2 May 1896) Tolstoy wrote: "Still another important event the work [Thought and Reality] of African Spir. I just read through what I wrote in the beginning of this notebook. At bottom, it is nothing else than a short summary of all of Spir's philosophy which I not only had not read at that time, but about which I had not the slightest idea. This work clarified my ideas on the meaning of life remarkably, and in some ways strengthened them. The essence of his doctrine is that things do not exist, but only our impressions which appear to us in our conception as objects. Conception (Vorstellung) has the quality of believing in the existence of objects. This comes from the fact that the quality of thinking consists in attributing an objectivity to impressions, a substance, and a projecting of them into space". — wiki

But this reading sounds just like Mach, who responded to Kant and had a problem with the thing-in-itself (along with other post-Kantians).

To navigate existence as a whole, we find patterns in the pieces of existence, some of which we classify as self and others as world.

But usually we are something like naive realists, IMO. We are 'Conception' and we 'project' objects into space. Except we just experience them as objects that are already there.

Notice the reference to 'ideal mental-economical unity' (whatever that means) — Wayfarer

I think that just means that intelligence is directed. To make sense of things we have to simplify them. And make sense of things in order to live well.

Mach was a rank materialist, — Wayfarer

I can't make sense of this claim. The paper I linked to sure looks 'non-dual' to me. It's not far from James' metaphysics. What we have are 'elements' that are neither mental nor physical. As I read Mach, it's only for selfish/practical reasons that we have to tighten up and think in terms of ego versus world. This also reminds me of Hegel's 'speculative truth.' Objects are concepts are objects are concepts. Elements are intelligible unities in a network, with interdependent essences. Idealism is holism. Abstraction is grasping an element out of its context and losing information. The truth is only in the whole, and we live that evolving truth (completing or extending god-reality).

According to traditional philosophy, ideas and sensations belong to completely different ontological levels, namely that of form and matter, respectively. Logic consists, not of the relationship of experiences, but of ideas (including number and arithmetical proofs etc.) These are not 'experiences' and nobody 'experiences' them. — Wayfarer

I agree, but this idea/sensation distinction is one of those useful abstractions. We live in a world of apples and tornadoes. It's hard to for us to dry out out concepts. When we do we are left with math or symbolic logic. I think Kant was basically right on math. It's based on a shared intuition of space.

On logic, what can we mean by 'nobody experiences them'? It is raining or it is not raining. P v ~P is a tautology. If no one experienced the force of logic, then what are arguments?

And as far as seeing proofs goes, I say look again at the proof without words of the Pythagorean theorem. Where is logic in that? The truth of that theorem can be grasp by spatial intuition being pointed in the right direction.

Nonsense on stilts, empiricism run amuck. — Wayfarer

I'm surprised you say that. What have you done today/tonight? Surely you have moved through the usual world of objects. You ate some food. You didn't doubt that the floor was beneath your feet, and that it was an 'external' floor that others could walk on. Naive realism looks like the default position of everyday life. It requires philosophy to think that it's all a dream or the intersection of private dreams, etc.

And I talk of "we" because we have a common ground, our realities partially intersect. — leo

Right. At the very least we have some kind of intersubjective situation. We are both (partially) 'here' ---wherever or whatever 'here' is.

In my view, in the temporary intersection of our realities we find regularities, which we summarize in what we call scientific laws, and we make predictions from them, from which we create technology, which is a way to shape our shared reality. In that view scientific laws would not have a universal everlasting validity, they would apply to a temporarily shared reality, and they would be wrong or meaningless to someone who doesn't share that reality. — leo

I think I can meet you here. Science is only possible within a 'form of life' or 'understanding of being' or a context of know-how and sharing an ordinary language for a metalanguage. Thanks to Hume, we know that it's just in our blood to expect the persistence of such patterns. And then, as I'm sure you know, science itself is filled with approximations that make calculation convenient or possible. Beyond that there are conceptual difficulties. We have algorithms that give reliable predictions, but we don't have an intuitive grasp on 'why' they work. We trust them as we might trust buttons we push that happen to keep giving us what we want.

Yet in practical life there is such a strong experience of law & order that it's like sanity itself to recognize and adapt to the patterns we find and trust.

People mostly use language in a context where they presuppose an external reality, so the words they use refer to things that are part of an external reality, but I am not referring to an external reality myself. — leo

I agree with you. I suggest that philosophers try to theorize this external reality in ways that don't work out (contradictions, ambiguities, aporias.) Non-philosophers think in terms of the food in the cabinet and the guilt or innocence of the accused (roughly the distinction between dreaming and actual sensual experience of the shared as opposed to private reality.) But even philosophers appeal to 'world' as I intend it. 'World' is what our philosophical theses describe. 'There is no single reality' is aimed at some kind of a single reality, since otherwise it would have no use. We who speak only have reason to talk and listen inasmuch as we are in a single reality/world which we can inform one another about. Yet we don't seem to be able to get clear on what this reality is (pre-conceptual? a priori structure of cognition?)

I'll add a little more that sketches his character.

The primary fact is not the ego, but the elements (sensations). What was said on p. 21 as to the term " sensation " must be borne in mind. The elements constitute the I. s have the sensation green, signifies that the element green occurs in a given complex of other elements (sensations, memories). When I cease to have the sensation green, when I die, then the elements no longer occur in the ordinary, familiar association. That is all. Only an ideal mental-economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist. The ego is not a definite, unalterable, sharply bounded unity. None of these attributes are important; for all vary even within the sphere of individual life; in fact their alteration is even sought after by the individual. Continuity alone is important. ...But continuity is only a means of preparing and conserving what is contained in the ego. This content, and not the ego, is the principal thing. This content, however, is not confined to the individual. With the exception of some insignificant and valueless personal memories, it remains presented in others even after the death of the individual. — Mach

Note how willing he is to let the 'valueless and personal memories' go. He takes the impersonal personally. The 'content' (the flame) is what's important and not the container (the candle). Of course we don't see the flame without its candle, so the body is the temple of god 'content.'

And this dude resisted the theory of the atom. That's how skeptical he was. Was his passion for understanding not spiritual somehow?

And here's the cash value:

The plain man is familiar with blindness and deafness, and knows from his everyday experience that the look of things is influenced by his senses; but it never occurs to him to regard the whole world as the creation of his senses. He would find an idealistic system, or such a monstrosity as solipsism, intolerable in practice.

It may easily become a disturbing element in unprejudiced scientific theorising when a conception which is adapted to a particular and strictly limited purpose is promoted in advance to be the foundation of all investigation. This happens, for example, when all experiences are regarded as " effects " of an external world extending into consciousness. This conception gives us a tangle of metaphysical difficulties which it seems impossible to unravel. But the spectre vanishes at once when we look at the matter as it were in a mathematical light, and make it clear to ourselves that all that is valuable to us is the discovery of functional relations, and that what we want to know is merely the dependence of experiences or one another. It then becomes obvious that the reference to unknown fundamental variables which are not given (things-in-themselves) is purely fictitious and superfluous. But even when we allow this fiction, uneconomical though it be, to stand at first, we can still easily distinguish different classes of the mutual dependence of the elements of " the facts of consciousness "; and this alone is important for us.
...
The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless.

The philosophical point of view of the average man - if that term may be applied to his naive realism - has a claim to the highest consideration. It has arisen in the process of immeasurable time without the intentional assistance of man. It is a product of nature, and is preserved by nature. Everything that philosophy has accomplished - though we may admit the biological justification of every advance, nay, of every error - is, as compared with it, but an insignificant and ephemeral product of art. The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind. Professor X., who theoretically believes himself to be a solipsist, is certainly not one in practice when he has to thank a Minister of State for a decoration conferred upon him, or when he lectures to an audience. The Pyrrhonist who is cudgelled in Moliere's Le Mariage force, does not go on saying " Il me semble que vous me battez," but takes his beating as really received.

Nor is it the purpose of these " introductory remarks " to discredit the standpoint of the plain man. The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are provisionally obliged to abandon it. No point of view has absolute, permanent validity. Each has importance only for some given end. ... — Mach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm

If we claim that we are made of physical entities, then we ought to explain how these give rise to experiences, and if we can't then there is something missing in the idea that we are made of physical entities, as it isn't an idea that fits the very fact that we experience. — leo

This is good point. If we are made of physical entities, then it appears our concept of the physical entity is missing something. How does a sperm cell and an egg cell join together and eventually become what we call conscious?

The mobius strip boggles the mind. We use concepts (if we still want to call them that) to divide experience into self and world. If we stretch out theoretical imaginations, we can imagine a pure plane of experience. (I cross it out because the 'ego' that experiences is one more experience.)

You may have already looked at this, but in case not:

Colours, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and so forth, are connected with one another in manifold ways; and with them are associated dispositions of mind, feelings, and volitions. Out of this fabric, that which is relatively more fixed and permanent stands prominently forth, engraves itself on the memory, and expresses itself in language. Relatively greater permanency is exhibited, first, by certain complexes of colours, sounds, pressures, and so forth, functionally connected in time and space, which therefore receive special names, and are called bodies. Absolutely permanent such complexes are not.
...
The apparent permanency of the ego consists chiefly in the single fact of its continuity, in the slowness of its changes. The many thoughts and plans of yesterday that are continued today, and of which our environment in waking hours incessantly reminds us (whence in dreams the ego can be very indistinct, doubled, or entirely wanting), and the little habits that are unconsciously and involuntarily kept up for long periods of time, constitute the groundwork of the ego. There can hardly be greater differences in the egos of different people, than occur in the course of years in one person. When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories. Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself.
...
Colours, sounds, and the odours of bodies are evanescent. But their tangibility, as a sort of constant nucleus, not readily susceptible of annihilation, remains behind; appearing as the vehicle of the more fugitive properties attached to it. Habit, thus, keeps our thought firmly attached to this central nucleus, even when we have begun to recognise that seeing hearing, smelling, and touching are intimately akin in character. A further consideration is, that owing to the singularly extensive development of mechanical physics a kind of higher reality is ascribed to the spatial and to the temporal than to colours, sounds, and odours; agreeably to which, the temporal and spatial links of colours, sounds, and odours appear to be more real than the colours, sounds and odours themselves.
...
That in this complex of elements, which fundamentally is only one, the boundaries of bodies and of the ego do not admit of being established in a manner definite and sufficient for all cases, has already been remarked. To bring together elements that are most intimately connected with pleasure and pain into one ideal mental-economical unity, the ego; this is a task of the highest importance for the intellect working in the service of the pain-avoiding, pleasure-seeking will. The delimitation of the ego, therefore, is instinctively effected, is rendered familiar, and possibly becomes fixed through heredity. Owing to their high practical importance, not only for the individual, but for the entire species, the composites " ego " and " body " instinctively make good their claims, and assert themselves with elementary force. In special cases, however, in which practical ends are not concerned, but where knowledge is an end in itself, the delimitation in question may prove to be insufficient, obstructive, and untenable.

Similarly, class-consciousness, class-prejudice, the feeling of nationality, and even the narrowest-minded local patriotism may have a high importance, for certain purposes. But such attitudes will not be shared by the broad-minded investigator, at least not in moments of research. All such egoistic views are adequate only for practical purposes. Of course, even the investigator may succumb to habit. Trifling pedantries and nonsensical discussions; the cunning appropriation of others' thoughts, with perfidious silence as to the sources; when the word of recognition must be given, the difficulty of swallowing one's defeat, and the too common eagerness at the same time to set the opponent's achievement in a false light: all this abundantly shows that the scientist and scholar have also the battle of existence to fight, that the ways even of science still lead to the mouth, and that the pure impulse towards knowledge is still an ideal in our present social conditions. — Mach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm

Secondly, the symbol ∞ is not irrelevant or immaterial, because it is definitely mentioned in usable reduction rules that can successfully extend classical arithmetic. For example: a + ∞ = ∞ and also a * ∞ = ∞, with for example, a ∈ ℝ. The symbol clearly has some kind of "absorbing" effect on other elements in its domain — alcontali

Good point. It's even in floating point systems. I like the idea of an old cash register modified to ring up $\infty.$

I also like f($\infty$) for the limit of f as x goes to $\infty$. I find this kind of limit fairly intuitive. Many uses of infinity are intuitive in math. Finitism is cute, but it doesn't do justice to our intuition as a whole.

BTW, you mention math as pure reason. I relate to that formalist point of view, but I suggest that metaphor and intuition are important in doing math. I'd say that it's a kind of language.

There are plenty of things that used to be considered real that aren't considered real anymore, and plenty of things that didn't use to be considered real that are now considered real. There is a lot that shows that what we call reality is socially constructed. — leo

I do agree that what we often call 'reality' is socially constructed. By agreeing, I'm saying that 'in fact' (in reality) what we call 'reality' is a function of power, etc., to some degree.

In the quote above, you open with There are. What is in this 'are'? Heidegger talks about this stuff (I know I'm not original), but the issue itself fascinates me apart from any particular lingo. 'Reality is socially constructed' seems to want to tell me about reality, about 'real' reality.

I understand anti-realism in terms of the lens metaphor and the desire to abandon it. We see through a cultural lens, a personal lens. Deeper than either is the biological lens, our sense organs and nervous system.

What I'm getting at may be a feature of this biological lens. It's as if we can't coherently deny reality or at least some virtual other. Alone of a deserted island I understand my words as potentially intelligible to others, even if they aren't there. Maybe this is switched on as we learn language.

Thanks for quoting with such surgical precision. Not my idea, but I claim that particular metaphor.

I'm digging A Thing of This World at the moment. By connecting all the great continentals since Kant, it really brings out the theory of the mask/lens and the (futile?) attempt to get beyond the lens metaphor.

Thanks. I hope you stay around. I love reading philosophy, but there's no substitute for paraphrasing and debating, in my opinion.

As far as writing style goes, I also found places like these great for experimenting. To me there's no substitute for just trying stuff and seeing how it goes.

I agree that aporia is inevitable if we try to do traditional metaphysics on the subject and object.

I also agree with genetic epistemology, which sounds like Hegel without finale.

I also agree about an infinite set of meanings.

But what am I agreeing with you about if not the 'world' as a phenomenon or structure of communication or a 'how it is'?

If Rorty tells me I should abandon the lens metaphor, then why should I believe him? How is he going to make a case without describing reality in some way? A person could try to just lead by example and ignore metaphysics. But even if doing this we are going to get descriptions of reality.

If we try to do non-fiction at all, we are talking about reality. Just because a stiff or word-math approach to metaphysics leads to aporia doesn't mean IMO that we have transcended being in a world together.

[None of this is of much practical importance. I see that. But it's fun to try to get clear on. So I am offering the thoughts that softened my adoption of Rorty and other thinkers. The attitude is right, but they only cut the knot. They don't untie it.]

I'd say the rudest are the professional physicists, they base all their reasonings and career on the belief in an objective reality, they consider themselves to be uncovering and probing the fundamental constituents of reality, — leo

I have been around that type myself. In my own adjacent field there is some scientism here and there.

I personally agree with your resistance to the notion that physics tells us what is 'really' there. The table is just as much the place where we have our dinner as it is molecules. Objects have many descriptions that suit different purposes.

If only you saw that apple, and no one else can find a reasonable explanation for its disappearance, then you might start being seen as delusional, as not being able to discern reality. Was the apple real? Well to you it was. To everyone else, you imagined it. — leo

I agree that consensus plays an important role. What we call 'madness' looks like a function of consensus. At one time homosexuality was viewed as an illness. These days a diagnosis of homophobia is more likely. I do think that it's hard to intelligibly deny that some kind of bodily contact is constant 'beneath' our interpretations of whether our feelings about that contact are virtuous.

One of Kant's critics summed up his system as 'persistent illusion is reality.' I think there's some truth in that. 'Reality' can usefully be described as the intersection of our private dreams. But any system like this tends to have problems. It's as if most metaphysical systems get this or that right but run aground on close investigation.

Self-contradictory. But the self-contradiction doesn't exist out there in relation to another mind-independent reality, it is a mind seeing a self-contradiction. — leo

I largely agree. If we take 'mind-independent' in a sharp, metaphysical sense. But I think the opposite position fails for the same reason. What is the 'mind' but experience of the 'world' or 'non-mind'? I think Mach made some good points on this. For me the mind versus non-mind distinction is problematic when we try to do 'math' with it. I think Wittgenstein and Heidegger are great at wrestling with these issues.

In ordinary life, I think we are mostly concerned with bias and wishful thinking. Reality is largely verified by the senses. In a murder trial, there's usually a sense that the defendant did it or did not do it. As we move into metaphysical psychology, thinks get murky. We are tempted to call all reality as we know it a 'dream' which is a function of some unknowable X. We get lost on a Mobius strip. The world is in the brain and yet the brain is in the world.

I suspect that we are up against some kind of glitch in our cognition on this issue. I also think that the 'world' or 'reality' is more like an a priori structure of communication than an object that can be talked about.

If 'mind-independent reality' is a contradiction, then that only matters if it's a contradiction for us. What is it that is 'for us' and 'not just me' that grounds intelligible conversation? You and I have to share a language and a sense of logic to even discuss the issue. So being in language together is (I argue) being in a 'world' together. But this 'world' is not some object. It's the 'wherein' of all objects, including conceptions of the world that ignore the structure I'm trying to point out.

And, whatever anyone's motives are, there remains the issue of the merit of the arguments. — Andrew M

I agree.

It does seem that we can only argue within a common framework. So perhaps we have 'arguments' for frameworks that are (value-neutrally) rhetoric and then arguments proper within these 'irrationally' founded frameworks/paradigms.

This is that amongst the many attributes of a Buddha is Yathabhutam, 'seeing things as they truly are'. I think there is a parallel concept in Stoic philosophy. Anyway, in traditional philosophy, this requires the attributes of sagacity and detachment, of being able to view things detached from any sense of self-interest, desire or aversion. Now, modern scientific method was also aiming at this, with the crucial distinction that the means by which it chose to arrive at this judgement were purely quantitative (↪Merkwurdichliebe there's 'the reign of quantity'). And that's because of Galileo's emphasis on the superiority of dianoia (mathematical knowledge) which he derived from Plato (not forgetting that one of the key figures of the Italian renaissance was Ficino, who first translated Plato into Latin.) — Wayfarer

How about primarily quantitative? As some of the Vienna Circle discovered, the metalanguage is (for instance) English. We have to understand what a measurement is, how to be a decent person in a community, etc., before we can dream of doing science. So science clearly depends on something that we largely take for granted, a kind of know-how and being-in-the-world. Because this foundation is not controversial, it's mostly ignored. We look at equations and equipment. We take paradigms as necessary rather than as contingent poetic acts that caught on.

Maybe the essence of science is that its hypotheses can be uncontroversially tested (at least ideally.) The hypotheses aredefinite enough to be falsified. Quantification is needed for this.

On a related note, I think intuition is the life of math. Logic is a hygiene. But math is more of a language than a 'dead' game with symbols. Of course we can intuitively use math to investigate dead games of symbols.

Which is true as far as it goes - but what does it leave out? How to arrive at detached and sagacious judgements regarding anything that *can't* be described in terms of quantitative analysis? — Wayfarer

In Braver's A Thing of This World, he stresses how often detachment as a path to correct seeing comes up in what he calls realism. Bias is distortion. So I agree.

I suggest that the emotional appeal of science is a spiritual/philosophical. Those who reject science 'sin' against the holy ghost of unbiasedness/objectivity. To avoid bias, we have embraced an amoral staring. I think of Kinsey at IU. He was a violator of the sexual norms of his time, but he got away with it in the name of science. It was one norm versus the other.

As I think Nietzsche saw, it's the will-to-truth (a modification of Christianity) that leads to the death of God. Being biased (believing without justification) becomes the mortal sin. Christ puts on a white lab coat. Eventually, however, scientism itself is revealed as a superstition. Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein can be understood as anti-scientism. So 20th philosophy has largely been anti-scientism, with phenomenology as a truer and richer approach to knowing existence.

I have to drop a piece of my favorite Nietzsche quote (from The Antichrist). This is another take on the 'ironic mystic.' He's interpreting Christ.

But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory. — Nietzsche

The position he describes is 'behind' words. I'd say it's beyond piety and impiety. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. So what is this 'life'? Anything we can say about it is not it, since the concept of life is an attempt to climb out of the mud of mechanistic distinctions.

'Under' or 'over' what I might call a practical, worldly realism, the attitude above is something like the 'spiritual' for me. In this context, we can see how the quotation marks apply. If 'it' ain't beyond the words we are tempted to stick on it, then it ain't it.

The paradox is that I attempt all this as a blind man, with no clue as to what constitutes correctness of character or how it might be attained to. — Merkwurdichliebe

But surely you do have some sense of virtue that guides your steps? I do understand a certain inescapable darkness. We carry a torch through the forest at night.

I cannot rely on any ideological formula for correct character, and if I do, I am not determining my own character, I am mimicking what is prescribed by another. — Merkwurdichliebe

'I must create a System or be enslaved by another man's' (Blake)

I am 100% with you on this issue. If I had to pick the essence of philosophy, I might choose the denial of mediation. No priest or sage steps between me and existence/life/'God'/reality. I think of this as 'spiritual' masculinity. It's not about parts tucked away in briefs. It's about facing reality directly, or about wanting to do that. This is the anxiety of influence, the desire to be one's own father. Sartre would call it the impossible project that makes us so creepy. This gap between us and nature is what Feuerbach might call the essence of Christianity. Introducing 'man,' the monkey who wants to be god. And for that reason 'monkey' doesn't fit so well.

each individual must discover/create the values in his own life and apply them in his living of life. Yet, there is no basis for prescribing correct character, neither through consensus nor scientific knowledge - that is called ideology, and it is a very frightening proposition. — Merkwurdichliebe

That is a powerful/terrible idea. That's one way to look at Sartre as well. The idea is like : man has no essence but is self-created or self-creating like God. We are what we decide to (pretend to) be.

All of this was also in Hegel (he contains multitudes.) He viewed something like this position (held by hipsters in his day) as 'The Irony.' Stirner took this an expanded it into a long book. Nietzsche may have read Stirner (up for debate). For me it is half the truth. The business side of me embraces traditional virtues. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't beg. Etc. But the icing on this cake is a kind of ironic mysticism (cosmic or golden laughter, divine malice.)

Now if we stop at these absolutely empty forms which originate from the absoluteness of the abstract ego, nothing is treated in and for itself and as valuable in itself, but only as produced by the subjectivity of the ego. But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains. To admit or cancel it depends wholly on the pleasure of the ego, already absolute in itself simply as ego. Now thirdly, the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself.

Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming one’s life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc., – by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential, so that I only become essential myself in my own eyes in so far as I have immersed myself in such a content and have brought myself into conformity with it in all my knowing and acting. When the ego that sets up and dissolves everything out of its own caprice is the artist, to whom no content of consciousness appears as absolute and independently real but only as a self-made and destructible show, such earnestness can find no place, since validity is ascribed only to the formalism of the ego.

True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free)[52] as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical. — Hegel

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s7-3

Examine: he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. This seems like a big part of the eros of philosophy. We want to strive against the fixed, essential, and obligatory...and be like gods above those still tangled in the contingent that they, poor dullards, still understand as necessary.

Consider 'language on holiday' or 'forgetfulness of being' or 'woo' or other intellectual sins. Where I think Nietzsche really nails it is his focus on the drives ('will to power'). Control is up. Transcendence is up. King of the mountain, etc.

That would be a great topic, and very incendiary: "Masculine virtues contrasted with feminine virtues". I propose g0d or Janus make the OP. — Merkwurdichliebe

Great topic, but it's almost impossible to get right in public conversation. It's not that such taboo things would be said. It's just tough to get the tone right. Anything shrill misses the point. A looseness is central here. It's an old idea that a man wins the heart of women by being funny. It's this cosmic laughter that really is important in Nietzsche than this or that thesis.

As a machine for the production of assertions, Nietzsche isn't that important. As a poet of cosmic laughter he is arguably the best in the tradition.

You brought up the notion of inproving one's own character by 'seeing the world aright'. — Merkwurdichliebe

Or actually seeing the world aright by improving one's character. Mask is lens.

And in the context of life philosophy, in which objective truth is irrelevant and my life is preeminent, the creation of my own values (in the context of improving my character) is of the utmost priority. — Merkwurdichliebe

Indeed. I suppose I have to agree if creation of values is understood as self-creation. I guess I think the elements are pretty much given. The arrangement and proportion is on us. Whatever I say about existence, I also say about myself. A cosmic vision == an interpretation of human existence. For me it's just that most of this is outside of science. It's framing, metaphor. It's usually not testable but rather makes observation possible by disclosing a system of objects. So philosophy is ur-science, etc.

I think the call for the pitchforks might have more to do with a certain kind of temperament than whether one subscribes to realism or not.

The more natural response for an intellectually curious realist would be to investigate why the new person thinks differently to the others given that they're all interacting in the same world. — Andrew M

I think you are forgetting how familiar we all are with wishful thinking and its dangers. While it is sometimes geniuses who are thinking differently, perhaps that's the exception.

And then an impatience with solipsism or a denial of one shared reality might be driven by a curiosity about the real. Maybe certain positions just don't cohere, but some people need them emotionally and refuse to see this.

Personally I have mostly encountered intellectually incurious realists, who believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, who ridicule and dismiss those who believe differently as cranks, adepts of pseudoscience, believers of supernatural bullshit, brain diseased, delusional, too stupid to see why they are wrong. — leo

Is this even true of realists who like philosophy? Of course there are rude people around.

But the mind-independent framework has a lot of intractable and unsettling problems. In that framework we cannot explain how we can experience anything. We never see things as they are. Free will is very limited or inexistent. Why do these things bother us so much? Maybe because they are not an accurate representation of existence. These problems go away if we stop assuming a mind-independent reality. — leo

The problems as I see them are largely about awkward language. I don't think we can solve them. So maybe a sharp metaphysics of mind-independent reality (as opposed to noticing the structure of communication) will always be difficult.

We only never see things as they are if we insist that reality is hidden. You claim there is an apple in the cabinet. We both check and it's gone. Then we theorize about what happened. What can't we call that apple real? Must we call its molecules real instead? Why aren't those molecules just another aspect of the same apple?

With free will it's tricky. I don't even know what people mean by the term. I do think we are somewhat predictable.

For me the issue is that you imply that the theory of mind-independent reality could be wrong. Wrong in relation to what? If statements like that are or are not the case, then thats the slippery reality we should be thinking about.

Earnest philosophy presupposes a reality about which the philosophers can be right or wrong. Or am I wrong? And if I'm wrong, what am I wrong about if not reality?

Facts about subjectivity are only subjective in the sense that they're facts about subjectivity. They're still objective in the sense that they're a fact. After all, subjects are just one kind of object: one with consciousness. — luckswallowsall

I think I understand and agree. It is (roughly) true or false that Gary was thinking about pizza at a particular moment.

Such a pov is a bit like swimming without the buoyancy aids of fixed axioms. — fresco

Right. And I've been drunk on Rorty's kool-aid, which is good kool-aid.

Anyone who can roll with Rorty will of course do just fine in ordinary communication. And we could use other names like Nietzsche to symbolize the insouciance.

I still think that the smoke clears and we are left with contradictions or sore spots. These don't really matter. Maybe Rorty and Nietzsche are primarily attitudes. They are to be digested more like musicians or comedians than as earnest theorists about reality, it seems to me. And I like them.

But I'd like to hear your thoughts if any on 'world.'

Heidegger scholar Nikolas Kompridis writes: "World disclosure refers, with deliberate ambiguity, to a process which actually occurs at two different levels. At one level, it refers to the disclosure of an already interpreted, symbolically structured world; the world, that is, within which we always already find ourselves. At another level, it refers as much to the disclosure of new horizons of meaning as to the disclosure of previously hidden or unthematized dimensions of meaning." — Wiki

<emphasis added>

To me it doesn't matter that Heidegger said it but that once pointed out I actually find it there. (Heidegger is useful, but I don't like when the talk shifts from a concern with what is and how it is to a concern with what so and so says as the focus. )

Let's get mundane; you are correct in your assessment, for which I wish to commend you. — Vessuvius

Thank you. I say that's getting mundane in a good way. I didn't have to slowly translate it. It's your business, but you are asking quite a bit from strangers when you have too much fun with the poetry. These issues are tangled enough already.

I am glad to see lots of different personalities around though, so I don't mean to be unfriendly.

It's not the case that 'expectancy' is 'just another noun' because the expectancy associated with using a word like 'tree' can vary according to context across a vast range. — fresco

I do agree that meaning does not live in individual words. Meaning is more like a fluid that moves through words and time. I think you agree. It's risky to write 'meaning is X' because maybe the primary point is that we are always already doing it. We live in meaning(s). We already know. So any theory like 'meaning is a fluid' is 'really' an anti-theory. It directs individual investigation this way or that.

Calling a tree 'an object' is merely to acknowledge that we can agree to contextually focus, or narrow down on the range of expectancies. — fresco

For me it's more like our neural network coming pre-trained by evolution to grasp the world as a system of objects 'in' a world (and not just spatially). Of course there is an artificial layer (our theory about it), but I think it's clear that dogs for instance recognize objects.

So maybe we have [biological <- cultural <- personal <- ] conceptual schemes & philosophy has trouble with the notion of intelligibility and the subject/object issue because these are deeper than the cultural scheme.

Within the cultural scheme we can notice the limits of the cultural scheme. We can find where it tends to glitch out.

All of that which we apprehend, as objects of the world, can never lie beyond the boundaries of representation for itself, as granted through the mind of the subject and thus, stands only partial; offering sight of the object, yet all the while lessening the clarity of its image." — Vessuvius

Yo, there's got to be a clearer way to say this.

Let me try to translate. We have to fit reality 'into' or 'through' our conceptual scheme. Reality (for us) can only be as 'big' or complex (for us) as this scheme. So maybe reality is more than we know of it. So maybe we only see part of it. And maybe what we do see we don't see in high resolution.

Is that close?

While that's plausible, there are famous problems with 'reality in itself' understood as part of an exact model.

Let's get mundane.

I 'm pretty sure I still have $55 in my wallet, a 50 and a 5 dollar bill. But then I look and there's just a 20.
Most representation is not aimed at some impossible beyond.

I'd say that the difference between philosophy in the 19th century (and , say, the first half of the 20th too) and the situation today is that at that time philosophers used to be also public intellectuals, they opened - as philosophers - new horizons of thoughts and then fed these insights into the public debate, whereas professional philosophy has become during the last decades a rather esoteric occupation: professionals sitting in their "ivory tower" and their "bubbles" talking at each other, citing each other, debating ultra-subtle questions that have no significance for the public. — Matias

I see your point. I wonder if our public intellectuals are just no longer called public intellectuals. Who are the folks that frame the situation for people these days? The internet changes everything. We can watch videos of anyone. No one needs a degree or a license. They just do or do not succeed winning attention from others.

That said, I've enjoyed 2 of Lee Braver's books,A Thing of This World and Groundless Groundslee. They are relevant to me. I read them for pleasure, insight and in the pursuit of wisdom.

He's a professor. So to me it's clear that some professors out there are doing it well. Admittedly his books aren't for everyone. They aren't as juicy as politics. But for those of us with the itch for clarity....

why is it so difficult - or even impossible - to detect progress in the philosophical debate ? — Matias

I suggest that many individuals strongly detect progress. It's just that philosophical progress is more controversial. If you want to win over doubters, just be able to blow them up with a new weapon.

I read early Heidegger and late Wittgenstein as dispelling confusing superstitions. But no one has to understand them or take them seriously. There's plenty of wiggle room for excuses and counterattacks. So philosophical progress is like cultural progress. For some having a different bathroom situation is moral progress. For others it is something else. I think it's the same with philosophy. What you say about the progress or not in philosophy is also the presentation of an identity and a taking of sides.

Responding to the anti-natalism, I think of arguments for vegetarianism, reducing my carbon footprint, etc. You make some points that might persuade someone not to have children. I haven't and won't have children, so it's not an exciting issue for me. To me the 'life is great' and 'life sucks' intellectuals are both rhetoricians, sophists. Which is fine but not that exciting to me.

I will say that antinatalism was exciting when it was new to me. But there's not much to chew on once the novelty wears off.