"It is undoubtedly true that we cannot conceive of concept-independent things without conceiving of them — StreetlightX

But this is not what Berkeley says. He does not say 'we cannot conceive of concept-independent things without conceiving them.' The point is we cannot conceive of concept-independent things full stop. And to see that this is so, he moves by reductio: suppose you conceived of something concept independent. By by hypothesis, you are conceiving of it. Ergo, it is not concept independent.

...that's built into the very form of any argument that does not distinguish between concepts and objects (i.e. that begs the question). — StreetlightX

How does it beg the question? Where does Berkeley assume that concepts and objects are identical? Rather, he establishes this conclusion as the result of argumentation, part of which involve sa reductio.

Begging the question is a formal fallacy. If he commits it, you should be able to outline explicitly what premise he maintains, and how it the conclusion is logically contained in it.

since there is no logical transitivity from the mind-dependence of concepts to that of conceivable objects. — StreetlightX

But this is not what is being claimed. The claim is that it is not possible to conceive of something that no one is conceiving of. But this is precisely what the realist calls for, and so precisely why Brassier feels he must 'refute' Berkeley.

since the assumption that things are only ideata — StreetlightX

This isn't an assumption, though, it's the conclusion?

Of course. For example, I am male. Therefore, if we don't make a distinction between conception simpliciter and conception ex hypothesi, then I can't conceive of something that isn't being imagined by a male. Thus, there are no objects that are not conceived of by males. — Pneumenon

So, first, I'm not saying there is no such distinction. I am denying that it is the distinction in which the realist is interested. The realist is interested in objects independent of experience simpliciter, not independent of experience within certain hypothetical scenarios, while dependent on experience in order to be conceived of in those hypothetical scenarios.

Second, even if that were what the realist is talking about, your conclusion does not follow from your premise, since you are not the only one who can conceive things. And so there is no inference from what you can conceive to what can be conceived.

What do you mean by, 'conceived ex hypothesi?' Do you mean that, when we imagine an object no one is experiencing, that object is actually experienced, but not experienced ex hypothesi? Is this what the realist is interested in?

Can a painter ever paint someone alone?

Wouldn't the analogous question be, can a painter ever paint someone who isn't being painted? Of course, in the picture, he does not have to paint another painter. But he himself is painting this person, who he perhaps claimed was being painted by no one.

Why would someone ever suggest they could conceive of an unexperienced object — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't know -- it's not a very smart thing to suggest. Let alone write a paper about.

without them conceiving of something?

You can leave off this part, it doesn't add anything.

Look, it's very simple. The realist is concerned with objects no one is experiencing or thinking about. Since he thinks his project isn't nonsense, he claims he can conceive of such a thing. But you can't conceive of an object no one is conceiving of. This is not that hard, people.

The experience, indeed, doesn't exist when unexperienced. The dairy is not unexperienced until the states of experience of it cease. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But at such a time, you aren't conceiving of it either. So this does not show that you can conceive of something that nobody is conceiving of.

OK, but if an object is a "bundle of ideas" then it is a bundle of conceptions; i.e. it is conceptual. That doesn't change the substance of the argument. — John

No, Berkeley's master argument is not based on a tautology. It is a reductio of the realist's claim that he can conceive of something that no one is conceiving of.

-Assumption for reductio: It is possible to conceive of something that no one conceives of.
-Hypothetical assumption: Someone conceives of something that no one conceives of.
-But by hypothesis, someone is conceiving of it.
-Therefore, someone does not conceive of something that no one conceives of.
-Therefore, by discharging of the assumption from a contradiction, it is not possible to conceive of something that no one conceives of.

I always have it in experience. Including the times I conceive of objects which aren't being experienced. — TheWillowOfDarkness

They can't both be 'in experience' (by which I assume you mean, they are being experienced) and not be experienced. That is a contradiction you see.

Just because I'm thinking about it now doesn't mean the object can't be known or unexperienced at some other time. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Right, but if it were, you couldn't conceive of it being so, which is the point. You want to isolate the object in an alternate reality or time and say there it isn't being experienced: but this just loops the problem back into the present experience of a supposition about the past. It does not, as Brassier desires, 'break out' of the circle to find the object independent of experience simpliciter. Idealists of course have always been fine with complex overlapping structures of experience. But the realist is interested in escape form them.

In thinking about unexperienced objects, we have the concept of an object which is not experienced. They are not inconceivable at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But you see, you were thinking about it. So it was not unexperienced after all.

An object, according to Berkeley, is a congeries or bundle of ideas. I usually think of a 'conception' as some sort of act.

Congruent with Berkeley's complaint, there has never been an instance of an object thought of without the someone thinking about the object, but... this does not amount to the absence of unexperienced objects. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sure, but it amounts to their inconceivability, which is the point that the realist is not willing to grant (hence why, when people see the Master Argument, they try to refute it at all costs).

I think it's fair to say that Berkeley's 'master argument' is, to put it very simply, based on the tautologous idea that what can be conceived must be itself a conception. — John

No it isn't?

I think it matters in the sense that, the assumption tends to be that what is experiential or conceptual is not real, or is somehow opposed to the real as something that 'gains access to it' without being identical to it, and Berkeley is pointing out that reality is something that in everyday terms we define using means besides experience-independence, and thus claiming that objects' being experiential, as opposed to non-experiential, has nothing to do with whether they are 'real' or not. A fair and basic point that I think even the most sophisticated of philosophers outside the idealist tradition really do not understand.

Yes, Stove and Brassier's readings of Berkeley are irredeemably shallow if you take them as readings of Berkeley, but my impression here is that Berkeley himself is not really the target, but just a sort of stand-in for a propensity they dislike. They also claim this propensity manifests in a certain form of argument that gets repeated over the ages, and of which Berkeley himself is a classical source. I don't think this latter claim is true: I'm not sure of anyone who actually argues for the Gem as Stove characterizes or Brassier recapitulates it.

This is obvious if you look at what Berkeley says in the passages Brassier quotes, and then Brassier's characterization of the argument: the two seem to have nothing to do with each other, with Brassier' attributing claims to Berkeley that he does not make (the tautological premise that 'we cannot conceive of something without conceiving it,' which appears nowhere in the Master argument, let alone as a premise), and also fundamentally getting the form of the argument wrong. Berkeley presents the argument as a reductio of a realist premise, whereas Brassier presents it as an espousal of a first premise (a tautology) that then moves to another premise (a non-tautology), rather than an internal criticism of realism on its own terms.

I'm delighted to see an engagement with Stove's Gem and Berkeley later in the paper, which is a fun topic. SX, this is apparently where your opinion on the Master Argument came from – it's always eerie to find the sources of people's opinions.

I wonder, does anyone want to discuss his criticism of the Gem? I think so far it's the only part of the paper that tries to offer some sort of substantive argumentation, so it might be amenable to some decent discussion. Further, the rest of his project seems to rest on the Gem being (1) real [i.e. philosophers have in the past more or less made the argument as Stove presents it] and (2) ineffective [i.e. Brassier's diagnosis of it drawing a non-tautological conclusion from a tautological premise is right].

What makes you assume that universities do have a higher caliber of discussion? — Thorongil

Man, I'm not assuming it, I've witnessed it. Professionals in their field are often arrogant, yes. But they also spend a good portion of their lives working on their subject, and just like you wouldn't expect some random person to have the skills of a plumber, you can't expect some random person to be as good at discussing that topic as someone who devotes their life to it.

I foresee universities become job-training daycares for middle-class kids within the next three decades or so — Pneumenon

This is what they already are, at the undergraduate level. But then, I kind of think the graduate model is where it should start anyway. I really don't see the point of the undergrad system other than to perpetuate adolescence and make money. You don't really learn anything as an undergrad, and it's not because of age, it's because of the system.

I would like for genuine philosophical communities to make a comeback, but like I said, when they happened in Greece that was extraordinary, not the rule. I don't see it happening. There is a fundamental disconnect with that way of life and the modern one: it's not a matter of certain contingent things about life being out of whack, but the values that determine what people think a life should consist of to begin with are so foreign to those interests that there's no connection.

It didn't stop Kant from replying to Hume, for example. — Pneumenon

It did, though.

If some guy works at a boring job, then spends all his leisure time contributing to an online philosophy community, then we might have something good going on, provided that nobody minds the "internet socializing loser" stigma. — Pneumenon

But the problem is, I don't think it's 'leisure' at all, if by that you mean something opposed to work. The ideal academic life is one in which there is no distinction between the two, because what you do is simultaneously deeply enjoyable and serious. That is something that I think is missing from online communities, including this one, seriousness. People argue without reading, when they're contradicted they get offended and don't want to probe any deeper, it's just a kind of game of verbal jousting. There is no genuine desire here to spend hours conducting serious research and digging deeply into a topic that there is a serious effort to understand. A mind can't be sustained on that sort of thing, it needs substance.

Then again, I notice that you often take the ancient Greek stuff as a model. Are you doing that here? And if so, what's your motive? — Pneumenon

Greek philosophy was a historical anomaly, and utterly extraordinary. Whatever the material conditions were that allowed it to exist as it did, it was something precious. Modern philosophy doesn't have quite the same depth of community or commitment to understanding life on its own terms. It is 'professional' and exists in the universities alongside other 'professions.' Again, the ideal academic life is one in which there is neither profession nor vacation. Modern philosophers for the most part are just regular people who do a certain kind of thought-work as a 'day job' Sure when they go to the pub they talk about certain things other people wouldn't, but even then one gets the impression they're chatting about 'work stuff.'. Once they clock out they want to fuck their wives and go to the Bahamas or whatever. There is a kind of lack of seriousness there, a separation between 'work life' and 'real life,' where at the end of the day there's a sense in which the latter is what really matters, and philosophy is a kind of professional game. But still, I think the university is more serious than the internet, by far, because while on the clock, people think seriously.

I don't think that we can build an online version of the Stoa from scratch in a decade. But if we take Brassier's lead, then we won't even start, now, will we? — Pneumenon

Well, I think there are a couple problems. The first is, the university is an old system that was built slowly and painfully. We can't expect other fora for the same quality of work to just spring up overnight for no reason. So yes, the internet is new. It doesn't have the same social institutions underpinning it. It has other interesting social institutions that I think are good for other purposes, and that you can't find in real life, certainly not in academia. But its virtues don't include good philosophical discussion.

Second, I really think that part of a good academic community is living and working in physical proximity. Being an academic, to me, means being dedicated to seriously trying to understand a topic as a lifestyle. I don't think the internet, now anyway, is at all amenable to that level of dedication and seriousness, and there is the problem of physical distance as well.

But then it bears asking, if such a community is something we could have, why don't we have it? Again, it's nice in theory.

Universities are old institutions. They were built painfully and slowly. It shouldn't be expected that other fora for the same caliber of discussion could just pop up overnight for no reason.

Is Landru a real person?

Out of curiosity, Pneumenon, where on the internet can you do serious philosophy? The only thing I can think of is academic journals published online, which clearly isn't what you mean.

I am aware of literally no place on the internet where you can have a good philosophical conversation. Your egalitarian view sounds good on paper, but then when you hit brass tacks, there are places where good philosophy is done, and the internet is not one of them. Is that a coincidence?

I don't know, SX, from the descriptions you gave, anyway, all of that stuff sounds like typical, even mainstream, secular notions.

I'm reading through this very slowly, because it's pretty far outside my usual reading and interests, so here is what I understand from the programatic suggestions of the first 10 paragraphs.

-The traditional arch-problem for philosophy is the relation between what there is and how 'we' (I'll leave it as a problem who this 'we' is supposed to be) come to know it.
-Trying to solve the problem requires that we recognize that each question, of what there is and how we know about it, has to be informed by the other.
-This fact led modern continental philosophy to accept a kind of 'correlativism' in which being and understanding are conflated, or we find a way to hook ourselves into a circle whereby we start with our own understanding of being, use that to reflect on being itself, and so on.
-Instead of doing this, we should recognize that there is no originary meaning to hook onto, and try to give an account of how meaning arises through unmeaning constituents. Such an account can't be outside our conceptual apparatus by definition, but at the same time it seeks to know how things are independently of our relation to them, to 'break out of' this traditional circle.
-Doing this requires that we perform a 'Critical' project, like Locke's or Kant's, into our own understanding.
-Recent attempts to bridge the gap between knowing and being by declaring everything equally real and on an equal plane (meaning is just one more thing in the world) have failed. Our method should respect that traditional divide, and answer questions about its nature in a naturalistic way. This means that there cannot be any first meaningful principles onto which our explanations circularly or foundationally latch: every 'higher' mystery is explained in terms of something 'lower' that does not use the 'higher' mystery's vocabulary. (There also seems to be a sort of scientism he alludes to, where all such vocabulary must ultimately be able to be cashed out in scientific terms. I don't know why this follows from or is even associated with the kind of 'naturalism' he is talking about, and I have the inkling that it may even contradict it, as an idealization of science).

-----

So far, like ciceronianus I have little sympathy with this project and the opening strikes me as tedious and wrong-headed. But I will see if something changes over the course of the paper.

Right, that's a recapitulation of the standard view I just outlined. It might be true, it might not be. It seems to me that sex has an influence that changes other things, but I wouldn't know what exactly that is.

But the question then is, do asexual people participate in romantic relationships in the way that sexual people do? The politically correct answer is yes, obviously, because the prevailing doctrine is that all these things -- love, sex, gender, and so on, are just freely interchangeable ideal categories, and you can mix and match any category with them without affecting any of the others. But that's dishonest; we all know they're related in interesting ways.

You get different numbers. It's like rape, hard to get the right stats on because no one reports or talks about it. You should be careful of Wikipedia just in general, too, by the way.

(Also, note that the mixed mating strategy involves not just misattributed paternity, but cases of known cuckolding as well as non-cuckolding where the offspring is not the husband's, such as men marrying single mothers).

I think the ideal school has people living and interacting in physical proximity. I'm old-school that way. Departments on traditional campuses are alright, but I actually like the old Greek model even better. I like the idea of research as a lifelong joint project and lifestyle, rather than an ephemeral meeting of people to swap notes at 'conferences' or in 'lectures' and meetings.

I'm looking at the course listings, and my first thought is, it's telling that these are all 'multi-interidsciplanry approaches to post-21st century reactions to the rise of anti-post-Hegelian science' sorts of things, and there's no, say, Linear Algebra course.

But not all "good fathers" are simply fathering someone else's child. — schopenhauer1

Sure, but cuckolding is an important structural reproductive phenomenon, and a lot of male and female reproductive identity don't make sense without it.

As to the good fathers, of course there are some good fathers, just as there are some loving wives. But a father never loves his children because he's a father, whereas a mother does because she is a mother. This is what I mean by the difference between psychological idiosyncrasies and structural phenomena.

I don't know though. Don't some (many perhaps) women cry and show emotions of pain when they lose a significant other via breakup, death, or long time away? This seems to show care. — schopenhauer1

Everyone cries when they lose something that causes them pain at its loss. But you can't tell from the crying whether it's because you've lost a person or an asset.

Certainly, some women will cheat (just like some men), and maybe even desire (unconsciously) to sleep with some more alpha dude.. — schopenhauer1

I don't think it's unconscious. People don't want to have sex with ugly, unfit, etc. people, that's just a fact. Lots of marriages are sexless, usually as a result of the woman's lack of interest, not the man's. Sexual attraction just isn't required for marriage, and most men aren't that great looking. Sexually, men seem to like women more than women seem to like men.

I'm willing to bet many or most people in a committed relationship are also willing to weigh that against the odds of losing out on someone they know they get along with — schopenhauer1

Notice that that doesn't show care for the person, though, any more than weighing the consequences of breaking the law shows care for the law.

Additionally, the longer the couple stay together, the more they know about each other adding to the sense of care, creating a kind of feedback loop for care. The more you know, the more nuances there are to care about in the significant other. This again, creates a relationship with a high capital (someone who knows the nuances), that is difficult to build again and would be a loss of time, energy, and interpersonal knowledge on possibility of something that (though might seem shiny, "alpha", attractive, etc.) might be worse off or not work out. — schopenhauer1

Well, it works the other way too. Familiarity breeds contempt.

So, though there might be a tendency for bad fathers, this is not the ideal choice for females who want to see their offspring thrive. — schopenhauer1

Right, this is why the 'beta male' or provider needs love to entice him. Women are 'mixed maters.' One class of men fathers the children, and another class raises them (the ones that love the women).

But see, this just shows you the very theoretical nature of evolutionary psychology. A lot of it is "just so" theories and hard to pin down what is an adaptation, or what is an "idiosyncrasy" as you might call it. — schopenhauer1

I don't really care about the evolutionary history, though, I care about the synchronic function of these social roles, which you can observe happening right now.

Couldn't this be studied in such a way to verify this behavior scientifically? It makes sense in a theoretical way, but this seems like something that can be verified by testing. Of course, even then, it would have to be multiple testing, across cultures, probably over many generations. That would have to be a very extensive research project. — schopenhauer1

I didn't think it was controversial that men are less attached to their children than women, on whatever metric you care to use. Or am I wrong about that?

So do you think that women care only enough for there to be offspring to take care of? Similarly, do you think that men care more intensely so that the situation for offspring can occur in the first place? — schopenhauer1

Maybe, but they don't experience it that way in their individual psychology. Men experience it as love for the women, women as love for their children. (I also think that structurally, men have no reason to care for children, and do not as much as women do; the fact that men don't much care for kids is part of why love needs to entrap them into a situation that doesn't benefit them). That is the function each unwittingly performs, though, yes.

And of course the ultimate goal of breeding is to breed more suffering.

The problem is this all social smoke and mirrors — TheWillowOfDarkness

The world is all smoke and mirrors. If you want to understand the world, you have to understand that.

Do you think this is due to biological or cultural reasons? — schopenhauer1

We're all disciples of Schopenhauer here, aren't we? Culture is biology, it's all will.

In other words, can't the mundane things be more of a byproduct of love (i.e. living together in the same space, being legally bound by a marriage, etc.). — schopenhauer1

No. If you like, there is a demand these arrangements be met, and love is a vehicle through which this gets done, or these things are actually part of love to begin with.

Also, what is your answer to the question from the previous post: If this is the case are you saying that most women do not necessarily care about their partner, but accept them being around because they get the benefits of care that men display? — schopenhauer1

Yes. By and large, I think women merely put up with men and do not really care for them.

Sure. When I say something is structural, I mean it happens in virtue of some social category that a person belongs to. So, for example, if I'm tall, that's a social structural advantage. That is, certain advantages will accrue to me because I am tall. I may still get shit on, in the way a short person does, but in most causes, not because of my height, but for independent idiosyncratic reasons. Being short is a structural disadvantage: if you are short, you will make less money, people will take you less seriously, and so on, because you are short: for that very reason.

So my claim is that men love women because they are men and women are women (for structural reasons). The reverse is not true. If a woman loves a man, it is because of her personal traits independent of her gender. In other words, love from women directed towards men is always in spite of these structural biases, not because of them.

That is if you accept my definition of romantic love being care + sexual attraction and/or relationship. — schopenhauer1

I think this doesn't get quite to the heart of love, which involves far dirtier and more mundane things, like the transfer of money, the rearing of children, and various forms of socially accepted obedience (accepting, in the case of men, that your female partner has a serious say in who your friends are, what you wear, and so on).

Do you really think females have no ability to care for someone that they also want a sexual relationship with? In other words, do you think that females are not capable of romantic love? Or do you believe that females do have strong feelings of care and sexual relationship, but they simply don't display it? — schopenhauer1

I think that women are under no social pressure to love or care for their partner, like men are. What that means is that a woman can love a man, and some do, but if she does it is due to emotional idiosyncrasies. Whereas there are structural reasons that men love women; they love women because of the social roles allotted to them. In other words, women only love when they are loving people; but men are often led to love because that is what is required of them as men. It's like the divide between personal bigotry and systematic racism.

From a social point of view, heterosexual relationships are constructed such that from a woman's point of view, a man is fungible and reducible to what he provides for her; but the man, in order to keep the relationship going, because the women provides nothing materially for him, has to be given a spiritual significance to make her attractive. So the women cannot be fungible, but must be intrinsically valuable while the man is disposable. Hence the man aspires to the woman, not vice-versa, and love originates in men towards women, not vice-versa.