• Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    More human meat for the insatiable "God of Abraham/Ibrahim" ...

    David attacks Goliath. What other viable choice does David have but from time to time to bleed in order to remind Goliath that he is also mere flesh and blood. Nonetheless, Goliath has far more to gain than it loses and David simply has nothing to lose which keeps oppression's tragic cycle of indiscriminant, reprisal murders going. Goliath savages David.
  • What is real?
    beyond realityAli Hosein
    How do you know there is "beyond" (especially since it is "beyond" knowing)?

    On what grounds do you assume "reality" has a boundary and therefore an exterior?

    You mention Spinoza, but he teaches that reality (i.e. substance) is unbounded in time and space (i.e. eternal and infinite, respectively), therefore not transcended. Even if you do not agree with Spinoza, Ali, your notion of "beyond reality" seems as ad hoc and incoherent as 'north of the north pole' or '"up" on 2-d plane'.
  • What are your philosophies?
    In sum:

    anti-supernaturalism (ground)
    ecological-economic democratism (path)
    singularitarianism (horizon)

    addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/798898
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    You have quoted my demonstration; show it is invalid as is or concede the point. I've no interest in trying to persuade you of anything, ucarr.
  • Conceptualizing Cosmic Consciousness
    You think Plotinus' conception of the One to be comparable to Jungian collective unconscious?Manuel
    Sure. Even more so it's comparable to Spinoza's substance (or Democritus-Epicurus' void)
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Can a statement not be truth-apt without having a truth-maker?Bob Ross
    What makes a statement "truth-apt" that does not refer, even if only in principle, to at least one truth-maker? C'mon, Bob. Without indicating possible truth-makers, statements cannot be truth-claims. I think meta-statements (i.e. suppositions e.g. metaphysics) only interpret – evaluate – object-statements (i.e. propositions e.g. physics).
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    Here's how I understand your communication:

    The property of transcendence and the cognitive entity "fact" are mutually exclusive. Given this, there is and cannot be any set of transcendent facts.
    ucarr
    :up:

    Did you ignore my questions to you because you think them evidence of my misapprehension of your communication?
    Yes, they are non sequiturs.

    Since, in my view, transcendence_supervenience are similar, ...
    I don't share this view. To transcend a fact isn't remotely "similar" to a property or process supervening on/over a fact.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    In the summer of 2022 I had speculated that the NYS civil fraud case would be Loser-1's Achilles Heel and at the top of a list of reasons he'll likely have to drop out of the primaries ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/726831

    My guess is that the verdict will drop before the 2023 holiday season begins (mid-Nov) and the NYS AG will win a judgment, including "clawing back" $500m - $1b USD of ill-gotten profits, which will trigger a fire sale of business assets to begin by the summer / fall of 2024 while Loser-1 will be appealing his convictions in the federal J6 Conspiracy trial and beginning (after more than half of his co-conspirators have "flipped") of the slam-dunk state RICO trial in Fulton Co, GA. 'Self-financing' will be impossible by the end of 2023 (if it isn't already – IIRC, according to his tax returns, Loser-1 has a $300m debt that comes due in 2024 and his 90%-owned, failed media platform "Truth Social" has lost $600m in value since 2022 knocking him again off the Forbes 400); also, there are just not enough small donor MAGA-morons (especially since GOP mega donors abandoned him a couple of years ago) to subsidize Loser-1's legal bills AND campaign grift or, for that matter, for him to overcome his electoral losing streak and win the popular vote in 2024 (especially if and when the Secretaries-of-State movement to remove Loser-1 from state ballots pursuant to the US Constitution's 14th Amendment, Section 3 "Insurrection Clause" spreads like wildfire to a number of "purple" / "reddish" states).

    Loser 1's Money Dominos Are Falling! :clap: :mask:
  • The Mind-Created World
    Yeah, especially when you butcher the quote. And @Janus got it (with a :up:) so the entire post – context and all – is clear enough. Besides, I asked you to define your terms and you chose not to, so ... :yawn:
  • The Mind-Created World
    Okay, from your vague usage of terms "objectively exist" and "objectivity" what you are saying, Wayf, is too unclear for me to respond further. And since you've not raised compelling objections to my naturalistic position^^ on "mind" in this thread, I rest my case for now.

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842850 ^^
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    Regarding the first sentence of your quote, you posit the conditional that a transcendent T is coupled with a transcendent F such that they instantiate membership within TF-set.ucarr
    You've completely misread what I wrote. The argument does not refer to "transcendent T" or "transcendent F". You're objecting to a strawman, ucarr, rather than what I wrote.

    To wit: IFF TF-set has two membership rules – (1) X is transcendent, (2) X is a fact, THEN there is not any X that satisfies both membership rules; THEREFORE TF-set does not have any actual members.

    Is this paraphrase any clearer?
  • The Mind-Created World
    Accordingly, 'objectively existent' is not the sole criterion for what is real.Wayfarer
    I'm not sure what you mean by "objectively existent" or "objectivity". Please clarify what makes this "criterion" problematic.

    Also, do you reject what I (briefly) say on the thread "What is real?" ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/839360
  • The Mind-Created World
    Is it not conceivable that the first stirrings of life, the very simplest organisms, are also the manifestation of mind?

    Well, as said above, I agree that mind is not anything objectively real
    Wayfarer
    :roll: Any "manifestation of" that which "is not objectively real" is, of course, "conceivable". But are we just fantasizing, Wayf, or are we philosophizing?

    :up:
  • What is real?
    As usual, ↪180 Proof interprets "outside, beyond, and transcendent" in a physical sense.Gnomon
    Your "physical interpretations" ...Gnomon
    Such as — ? A link to a post or specific quote will do the trick to make your (non)point. :smirk:
  • The Mind-Created World
    @Wayfarer

    Unless solipsism obtains, mind is dependent on (ergo, inseparable from) More/Other-than-mind, no? and that "experience" consists of phenomenal traces (or outputs) of the 'entangled, or reflexive, interactivity' of mind with More/Other-than-mind? and therefore mind interprets "experience as world" which is wholly subjective, or imaginary – an 'online hallucination' that is nothing but mere folk knowledge (i.e. parochial heuristics / biases) aka "common sense" to the degree "common sense" is n o t bias-filtered/error-corrected by hypothetico-deductive testing (i.e. science and/or sound arguments)?

    So what is 'mind'? AFAIK, basically mind is a recursive (strange looping, phenomenal self-modeling) aspect of More/Other-than-mind – a nonmental activity (process ... anatman), not an entity (ghost-in-the-machine ... X-of-the-gaps), that is functionally blind to its self-recursivity the way, for instance, an eye is transparent to itself and absent from its own field of vision.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    40ct23

    I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October. — Virginia Woolf, from one of her diaries
  • What is real?
    As usual, ↪180 Proof interprets "outside, beyond, and transcendent" in a physical senseGnomon
    :roll: Strawman – unless you can cite where I have actually done so.

    The American Heritage Dictionary defines Metaphysics ...
    :rofl:

    Ultimate Reality is a view from the outside, not in a literal sense, as 180 alleges, but from an imaginary perspective, as philosophers do routinely.
    In other words, the alleged (incoherent) "god's-eye view from nowhere" – woo-of-the-gaps. :sparkle:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    RICO Defendant-1 for Speaker of the US House of Representatives?
    The fact that ir's even slightly more than a mere possibility ... sh*ts the bed.

    :yikes:

    Welcome to Absurdistan, folks!
  • Culture is critical
    That's the main draw of religion: absolute certainty; simple answers to hard questions like "How should we live?" "What are right and wrong?" "What do owe one another and our society?" "What is the purpose of life?" Contrary to what many atheists like to repeat, religion was not the answer to "How did the world begin?" or "What causes thunder?" - those questions either do [not] arise of their own accord, or are dealt-with in myth, legend and folklore - no gods required. Gods were invented to hand down commandments and to favour us with supernatural power if we please them. That is: they command us and we manipulate them. Thence comes also the divine right of kings and infallibility of popes and evangelists, and of political dogma and the rise of dictators. They give us rules, solidarity, certainty and purpose - "something greater than myself" to belong to.Vera Mont
    :clap: :100: Amen, sista!

    "Lots of horrible shit in this world gets done for something larger than ourselves." ~Sandor Clegane
  • What does it feel like to be energy?
    I don't see how, because energy operates according to physical laws,
    — Wayfarer

    And consciousness doesn't?
    Benj96
    :up:
  • What does it feel like to be energy?
    Given your stated assumptions, it seems to me you're tautologically asking 'What does it feels like to be feeling?' (Or existentially, but in thermodynamic terms: what does it feel like to be dissipating? à la Schopenhauer or Bergson, Whitehead or Deleuze-Guattari).

    Could consciousness be a form of energy like the rest?
    What then is 'unconsciousness' – non-energy? How then does it do work constitutive of consciousness? I don't think this "energy" analogy works, Benj.

    I'm inclined to believe that consciousness is the ability of the system to self organise.Benj96
    So, for example, hurricanes and viruses, salt crystals and stars, evolution and ant colonies are "conscious" (à la panpsychism)? :eyes:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    But [Bob Ross] who studies metaphysics as that which is beyond all possible experience? Not Descartes, not Locke nor much that come to mind prior to Kant.Manuel
    :up: :up:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    How is the claim, for example, “all truths are relative” not a grammatical statement that is truth-apt? Or “Consciousness is fundamental to reality”, or “mathematical structures are real”, … ?Bob Ross
    And the truth-makers for these statements are?

    Metaphysics is the attempt at determining ‘what things are’. No?
    —Bob Ross

    No. It's more like an "attempt at" deducing concepts and interpretions of"what things are". —180 Proof

    That’s the same thing.
    :roll: :sweat:

    e.g. An assembled pile of logs, Bob, is not equivalent to a painting of "a log cabin".

    My point is that it is a study that thinks it can get at what reality actually is, and what things in that reality are.
    Those modifiers ain't working ...

    Anyway, my point is
    Metaphysics is the study of what it rationally makes sense to say about the most general prerequisites and implications of counterintuitive physics (i.e. natural sciences – which provisionally "determine how things are" in / constituting the world.) — 180 Proof

    Addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842289
  • The Mind-Created World
    Bitbol's "counter" is lost on me. Why don't you instead – in your own words, Joshs – counter my counter to @Wayfarer's counter of my counter to his OP? :chin:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Addendum to ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842289

    Give an example of a ‘philosophical statement’ which is not a proposition which references the world in any manner.Bob Ross
    Really? How about ...

    Forms-of-life regulate, or constrain, language-games played-created within them (e.g. exchanging "philosophical statements"). All truths are relative. Transcendental categories of reason create experience. I think, therefore I am. Consciousness is fundamental reality. God is the ground of being. Atman is Brahmin. The highest good is the Form of the Good. To be is to be perceived. Mathematical structures are real. A brain-in a-vat has no way of knowing whether or not it's a brain-in-a-vat. Things-in-themselves are unknowable. Observation collapses the wavefunction. Souls are eternal. 'A = A' is a necessary truth. Only ideas are real. God, or Nature. There is only one substance with two properies: mental & physical. The many emenate from the One. God did it. Nothing does not exist. The only constant is change. Definitions have use-values, not truth-values. The nothing noths. There are also unknown unknowns. All values are arbitrary: nothing matters. One can only live forwards and understand backwards. Philosophy is the art of learning to die. The wavefunction does not "collapse" which implies ... many worlds.

    ... etcetera. :roll:

    Metaphysics is the attempt at determining ‘what things are’. No?
    No. It's more like an "attempt at" deducing concepts and interpretions of "what things are".
  • What is real?
    I had never heard that term [immanentist] before.Gnomon
    To jar your memory, an excerpt from a reply to you, Gnomon, on an old thread "What is Metaphysics? Yet again" ...
    Anyway, you're familiar with negative theology, aren't you? Well, my negative ontology (aka "immanentism") is more or less the same but applied to reality (in general) rather than just to g/G (in particular).180 Proof
    Simply put, an immanentist rejects 'transcendent ideas / values / entities' as rationally unwarranted (i.e. wholly subjective). Thus my short list of notable philosophers ...
    Epicureans & Stoics, Kynics & Spinozists, Nietzscheans & Peircean-Deweyans180 Proof
    & all other anti-supernaturalists, or anti-antirealists. :mask:

    Addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842279
  • What is real?
    Sometimes it's claimed that perfect versions of what we experience within the Universe are beyond it, or God ...Ciceronianus
    It seems to me folks are still making fetishes of their fallaciously reified hasty generalizations (à la Feuerbach et al). 'Homo religiosi', no? Man the Idolator (idealizer, ideal/idol-reifier ). "Bewitched by language" (or Meinong's Jungle) – no doubt an atavistic cognitive illusion/bias prevalent with "beyonders" of all varieties that's stubbornly immune to philosophical reflection, etc. :zip:
  • The Mind-Created World
    Thanks for your feedback!Wayfarer
    :up:

    First point - when you say 'the world' here you refer to 'the totality of experience', right?
    Incorrect. By the world I'm referring to 'the totality of facts' (re: TLP, 1.1-1.21).

    ... this is an argument that the mind is both unitary and transcendental.
    Then why not instead title the thread

    "The transcendental mind-created common experience of the world"?

    ... the reality of first-person consciousness is apodictic, cannot plausibly be denied.
    If X is true by definition (i.e. apodictic), then X is merely abstract and not concrete, or factual. Given ubiquitious and continuous (i.e. embodied) multi-modal stimuli from environmental imbedding, sufficiently complex, functioning, brains generate recursively narrative, phenomenal self models (PSM)¹ via tangled hierarchical (SL)² processing of which "first-person consciousness" consists. That these processes are also voluntarily as well as involuntarily interruptable, Wayfarer, demonstrates that the "reality (that) cannot be plausibly denied" is primarily virtual. :sparkle:


    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model#Overview_of_the_PSM [1]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop [2]
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Philosophical statements are not propositions about the world. Again, metaphysics is not theoretical. You unwarrantedly assume that such an inquiry attempts to determine 'how things are' and then criticize it for failing to do so. This (mis)conception of metaphysics is the actual problem you're having with metaphysics, Bob. And your 'antirealist' (mis)conception of science is inadequate as well insofar as natural sciences consist in models of phenomena, which are not remotely what you keep calling "models of experience" (e.g. Neo-kantian "symbolic forms").
  • What is real?
    How [to] justify a search for "the real" outside of Nature, beyond the Universe?Ciceronianus
    Has any thinker ever demonstrated that the whole of reality-nature-universe has a boundary in space and/or time (to provide grounds for assuming there is an "outside, beyond")?

    Given that any such search is only possible for us in media res (not from the "outside" or "beyond"), assuming some transcendent "outside, beyond", like searching "up" on a 2D plane, is both nonsense and imaginary (à la jabberwocky ... which, unfortunately, @Gnomon takes literally).
  • What is real?
    [re @Gnomon & Herr Heidi] Creating new words is not an issue so much as misusing or redefining words commonly used, thereby promoting confusion and uncertainty.Ciceronianus
    :100:

    I would equate Nature with the Universe. We are parts of Nature. Our interactions with the rest of the world (including other humans and animals and objects) are parts of Nature--they take place in the Universe. What we create become parts of the Universe when they're created (just as anthills are parts of Nature/the Universe). It happens our interactions with the rest of the Universe encompass language and culture; they're not separate from the Universe; they take place in it.
    :fire: :up:

    We immanentists agree on that much at least – i.e. Epicureans & Stoics, Kynics & Spinozists, Nietzscheans & Peircean-Deweyans!
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    For example, I define it as "the study of that which is beyond the possibility of experience".Bob Ross
    To "define ... that which is beyond" seems patent nonsense to me. Also, "the possibility of experience" amounts to an anthropic / subjectivity-bias (contra Copernicus' mediocity principle & Peirce's fallibilism). Typical idealism.

    Anyway, a summary of what I've written so far on this thread. To wit:

    IME, metaphysics has always been the reflective study of the most general prerequisites (i.e. ontology) for rationally making sense – interpreting the paradigm changes, research programs & provisional results – of physics (i.e. the counter-intuitive, defeasible study of nature (i.e. ontics)).

    In other words, metaphysics describes what also must be the case and not be the case in order for 'whatever we think can or cannot be the case' to be soundly explainable. Metaphysics, however, does not explain, or determine, whatever is or is not the case. Thus, it is the name of "the book that (deductively) follows from the book on nature." Study nature; then reflect on 'what makes it possible to study nature' (not merely to have 'subjective experiences') – Aristotle surpasses his teacher Plato here – this is metaphysics, or where ("first") philosophizing begins ("in wonder").
  • The Insignificance of Moral Realism
    Yes, in praxis, no doubt, other positive goals can be useful; I think what I've presented on this thread hints at a prolegomena to a future minima moralia. :smirk:
  • The Mind-Created World
    Well written and clear OP, but I'm not persuaded by the case you're trying to make, sir. To my mind:

    (1) In order for Mind to "create the world", Mind must be unitary and transcend – be independent of – the world;
    and (2) by independent what is implied is alien to individual minds which are immanent to – entangled with, inseparable from – the world;
    and (3), though the world populated by individual minds (subjects) exists, only Mind is real – exists even when the world of individual minds (subjects) does not exist (i.e. before the world was created and after the world dissipates);
    and (4), because Mind transcends the world, individual minds (subjects) in the world cannot have corroborable evidence of Mind – including that the world is/was created by Mind ...

    ... therefore (5) Mind functions only as a creator(god)-of-the-gaps placeholder, or implicit appeal to ignorance, such that the thesis "Mind creates the world" amounts to nothing but an unparsimonious just-so story.

    So tell me, Wayfarer, what I get wrong here and/or why my objection fails.

    addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841677 :eyes:

    NB: Maybe someone has already pointed this out, but the definitions of "physicalism" and "naturalism" in the OP do not correspond, IMO, to how most physicalists and naturalists use the terms.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    :roll:

    Spoon-feeding ain't my jam, Bob.
  • What is real?
    *BAM*
    What you [@Gnomon] were doing was making false claims. I don't know why you would consider that to be a valuable contribution to a philosophical discussion.

    Harry Frankfurt has a different name for what you refer to as "addressing a philosophical question":
    wonderer1
    :clap: :100: :lol: