The Lost Continent
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Yes, rationality means different things to different collectives. My sociological interests tend to collide with philosophical anthropology, following that premise.

If rationality equals consistency, what can the starting premises of a movement of thought be consistent with? Tradition? Scripture? Science? Everyday experience? — Janus

:up:

Rationality is also a narrative.

I'm a keen student sociology, especially symbolic interactionism. For me, Habermas' communicative rationality seems a logical development of that. Instrumental rationality is a core theme for me. I also like to read him as counterpart and contrast to Rawls' theories of distributive justice. His writing is dense but it is concise, and his knowledge encyclopedic. Also is a monumental work.

Habermas looms large in modern philosophy for me.

Also a History of Philosophy, Volume 2: The Occidental Constellation of Faith and Knowledge
by Jürgen Habermas

Escape on Venus
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

§ 553. The notion of mind has its reality in the mind. If this reality in identity with that notion is to exist as the consciousness of the absolute Idea, then the necessary aspect is that the implicitly free intelligence be in its actuality liberated to its notion, if that actuality is to be a vehicle worthy of it. The subjective and the objective spirit are to be looked on as the road on which this aspect of reality or existence rises to maturity.

There is a sense of a real evolution here of both the meaning and the nature of the subjective and the objective. I think this might be summed up as "The evolution of understanding of the concept of the thing is at the same time the evolution of the thing which is a concept for understanding." From a subjective perspective. But, equally, it would seem that understanding is itself a property of those things which are understood.

Carson of Venus
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Hegel's ideas accrued a lot of fame overtime, but what exactly can we make of such a complex and multi-dimensional proposition? For me, to really get this, i would have to break it down word-for-word and ask a ton of questions, even for this very small section — ProtagoranSocratist

I have been reading this particular Hegel for 6 weeks and it will be several more before I finish it. I reread those sections several times. There is a certain kind of familiarity with concepts and lingo that is required, but even then you can't beat re-reading and asking questions. It is good that it is provocative I think.

Take "belief is irrational" like saying, "Todd's gone nuts!" It doesn't mean there's absolutely no sanity left in Todd, does it? But nuts enough that it's significant and has to be dealt with. Like that. — Millard J Melnyk

Exactly. It is a matter of degree. Hence by definition no longer binary. We have moved now onto a scale which lies between two extremes.

Yet one more reason that belief is irrational, because the interest in imposing epistemic authority (if it's merely asserted, it carries no authority) and the act of imposing it are thoroughly irrational. — Millard J Melnyk

Just because it is "not yet rational" doesn't mean that it is the opposite of rational. This is a classic fallacy of the excluded middle. Rationality and irrationality can be on a spectrum, not sides of a coin.

Premises:
[1] Epistemically, belief and thought are identical.
[2] Preexisting attachment to an idea motivates a rhetorical shift from “I think” to “I believe,” implying a degree of veracity the idea lacks.
[3] This implication produces unwarranted confidence.
[4] Insisting on an idea’s truth beyond the limits of its epistemic warrant is irrational. — Millard J Melnyk

This hinges on the fact that we both believe what and that we are thinking, and think only what we believe. Even if I think "the moon is made of green cheese" either I do so from a context of genuine empirical ignorance, or in the mode of intentional counter-factuality. In which case the second premise, that there is tendency to epistemic over-valuation - due to the epistemic coincidence of belief and thought itself - is unwarranted. Belief is not irrational so much as it is pre-rational. Or foundationally rational would be my construction.

The fact that you believe something fundamentally involves asserting an epistemic authority. However it is not unwarranted so much as it is committed to establishing warrant. Hence the basis of rationality.

external things of nature which exist for consciousness...constitute the external material for the embodiment of the will....But the purposive action of this will is to realise its concept, Liberty, in these externally-objective aspects, making the latter a world moulded by the former....
Section II. Mind Objective, § 483,4

The intuition of mind is at least as certain and at least as real as that of matter. There is no counter to that argument that is not parasitic on the premise (since it would be an "argument", hence itself a mental product). Naive materialism is a joke without a punchline.

To say that all experience is first and foremost linguistically mediated would be to claim that non-linguistic animals don't experience anything, which would be absurd. — Janus

Yes, you've already said that and I never did make that claim, as I clarified. I'm glad we agree.

Since the problem of will was brought up, Hegel's formulation leads to the recognition that will necessarily includes the concept of its own right application. And also that the concept of the freedom of will or Liberty as a fundamental right - as it emerged in and through Christianity - freedom unearned, is a misconception.

"No Idea is so generally recognised as indefinite, ambiguous, and open to the greatest misconceptions (to which therefore it actually falls a victim) as the idea of Liberty: none in common currency with so little appreciation of its meaning. Remembering that free mind is actual mind, we can see how misconceptions about it are of tremendous consequence in practice. When individuals and nations have once got in their heads [pg101]the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength, just because it is the very essence of mind, and that as its very actuality. Whole continents, Africa and the East, have never had this idea, and are without it still. The Greeks and Romans, Plato and Aristotle, even the Stoics, did not have it. On the contrary, they saw that it is only by birth (as e.g. an Athenian or Spartan citizen), orby strength of character, education, or philosophy (—the sage is free even as a slave and in chains) that the human being is actually free. It was through Christianity that this idea came into the world."

Hegel has quite a lot to say about Will...

this is why I don't fully subscribe to idealism; I accept it on the basis that thought = perception, and those perceptions can "create reality", yet it seems that people like Hegel and Descartes can't really acknowledge the wordless and indescribable aspects of existing. — ProtagoranSocratist

As for Hegel, I'd say that Will is the culminating synthesis of self-determining awareness that coincides with these 'wordless and indescribable existences.'

I did not mean to bring up that element as a rebuttal to your thesis. But if the introduction of history is not germane to the argument, why not just stick with Kant where all of this is just the way it is? — Paine

Sure. But I'm reading Hegel right now. And I liked the formulation, it was evocative. If you wanted to reformulate something in more Kantian terms that would also be interesting. Which isn't to say I don't consider the historical dimension worth study, just not in this specific context.

My own views on historicism align more with Collingwood, less an unfolding of Absolute Spirit, more as a reconstructive act of thought. Historical thinking recovers the conditions of intelligibility, just as reflective thought recovers its own ontological foundation.

It presumes that we most directly know our thoughts, and then goes on to make a universal ontological claim based on that presumption — Janus

Not exactly what I said. I noted that the self-evidence of material intuition can't exceed that of self-evidence simpliciter, which is to say thought. It isn't an ontological claim, but an epistemological framework for making an ontological claim.To assert anything about reality —material or otherwise— is already to presuppose the structure of intelligibility in which that claim appears. That structure is thought.

A further point I would add is that the idea that what we are most directly aware of is thought if true at all, would seem to be true only in moments of linguistically mediated self-reflection. If that were so, it shows us only how language might make things seem to us, and that says nothing about the arguably more fundamental pre-linguistic experience of the world. — Janus

To me, this aligns with my further reflections on Hegel's claim that "We think in names." Perhaps not pre-linguistic, per se, but proto-linguistic. And yes, linguistically mediated self-reflection is a kind of culmination of self-awareness, which doesn't exclude or preclude other kinds, whose existence doesn't contradict the characterization.

But the linguistically mediated reflective mode is not the most common mode of human experience at all. When I am engaged in activities, such as playing or listening to music, painting, wood-working, gardening, playing ball games and an endless list of other activities, it is simply not phenomenologically true that thoughts are what I am most directly aware of. — Janus

Your phenomenological inventory doesn't actually contradict the premise, which doesn't require us to be constantly reflective, only capable of reflectivity...among other things.

That does not depict the role of history Hegel insisted upon.

How ever that is framed in the many interpretations, History is the criteria absent from the mythological as various attempts at representation.

I would not like to see people skate by a problem which Hegel intended to bust up the party. — Paine

I'm aware of Hegel's views on history, but they aren't central to my perspective on rehabilitating the validity of the intuition of Idealism. They don't necessarily undercut or limit all of his other descriptions of the relationship between thought and object.

It is also very interesting how he frames "names" as instrumental in the intelligent cognition of reality as reflective consciousness. Intriguing because the name is the intersection of the universal and the particular, again, the intersection point of being and meaning (thinking).

By the inference of the interaction problem drawn from the intuitions of the material you mean? Course you do. And I never mentioned a thing about substantial dualism. Nice strawman though, just in time for Halloween!

like it. From an earlier idealist philosopher, but still…. — Mww

Very generous.

I guess the famous (or infamous) descarte quote is one of the earliest forms of philosophical idealism...as opposed to visionary idealism, which is a totally different thing. — ProtagoranSocratist

I definitely would say that the Cartesian cogito supports mind-independence (which I have long believed). Although it doesn't inherently imply idealism, I think it works well with Hegel's formulation above, which explicitly does.

the questions were intended to help clarify what you and Hegel mean with the above proposition... — ProtagoranSocratist

As was the answer.

The section from Hegel definitely expands further beyond what I explored. However it very nicely expands the Cartesian cogito in such a way as to render intuitively satisfying the sense of the meaning of idealism. Which was my take. Among other interesting aspects is the contention that this self-recognition is its own, "in the name it rediscovers the fact". Elaborating his contention from another section that "we think in names". The mechanism whereby the particular and the universal are unified in and through intelligence.

Bear in mind this is an extension of Hegel's reasoning that (I believe) clarifies the core historical problematic of idealism, that it is somehow refuted (or even refutable) by a naive reductive materialism. I would say Hegel's formulation might be that thought is the form in which reality becomes explicit to itself through the mechanism of history. Mine is (I hope) a modern-informed take.

Lost on Venus
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pirates of Venus
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Skylark of Valeron
by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Comprehension is more important than authenticity.

If AI helps me compose more correctly, why not? — Copernicus

TPF has always seemed more compositional than conversational; AI just exacerbates that quality.

So is philosophy a monologue, or a dialogue? When employed compositionally, and edited intelligently, AI output can seem very human. When employed dialogically, AI quickly shows its true face.

No AIs were consulted in the making of this post.

Skylark Three
by E.E. "Doc" Smith

The Skylark of Space
by E.E. "Doc" Smith

The Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
by Yuval Noah Harari

The Sociological Imagination
by C. Wright Mills

Dewey's Liberalism and Social Action is an absolutely phenomenal little book on the tension between individualistic liberalism and the embedded-embodied forms and features of socialized intelligence. An optimistic and practical perspective, still very much relevant today as social-commentary.

Liberalism and Social Action
by John Dewey

Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction
by Norberto Bobbio

The biography of Dewey and American Democracy was a long but excellent read. If you aren't familiar with Dewey, it would be phenomenal as a deep introduction to his thought.

John Dewey and American Democracy: Public Opinion and the Making of American and British Health Policy
by Robert B. Westbrook

Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol 2
by Jean-Paul Sartre
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