Excellent post! Not that 'we' always do a good job, but I think the ideal is that we protect young people from their own impulsiveness.

I think I know where he's coming from. When I first read Kojeve on Hegel, I was filled with intellectual ecstasy. I understand him to be sharing a beautiful realization.

It means you are one with All, by being part of an infinite universe. There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. — DanielP

Perhaps this is what Freud meant by the 'oceanic feeling.'

In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole," inspired by the example of Ramakrishna.[1][2] According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion.[3] Freud discusses the feeling in his Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). There he deems it a fragmentary vestige of a kind of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated himself or herself from other people and things.[4] — Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling

Nietzsche analyzes Christ in a similar way.

What the “glad tidings” tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; the faith that is voiced here is no more an embattled faith—it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit.... A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not de nounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with “the sword”—it does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by rewards and promises, or by “scriptures”: it is itself, first and last, its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own “kingdom of God.” This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. 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. — Nietzsche

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

The OP isn't so radical as to 'guard itself against formulae.' But this ecstastic idea of all-is-one does break down dissolve all merely apparent (for it) conflict and separation.

Well causality is a feature of time, so placing the first cause beyond time seems to be the only way to have an 'uncaused cause' - then there is nothing logically or sequentially 'before' the first cause - the first cause has permanent uncaused existence. — Devans99

I understand where you are going. But how sensible is this time before time? I find it as questionable as intuitions of actual infinity. Personally I think human cognition runs aground on issues like this. It's as if we just weren't equipped for such questions. If time and space are automatic intuitions, then we run the risk of talking non-sense. At the same time, we can create mathematical models that defy intuition that nevertheless have practical power.

This is why I like instrumentalism as an interpretation of science. And I also think that reality as a whole is inexplicable on principle. Some principles always must remain 'true for no reason.' They are patterns that are just there. Later we may derive them from still larger patterns, but this just expands the circle whose outermost ring is contingently true.

Such a conversation is intimately linked to the existence or non-existence of Actual Infinity. — Devans99

At some point I think this leads us into the philosophy of language. How do the signs 'actual infinity' function in our community? Is there ever some sharp meaning in our head? Maybe the question isn't binary, one of clear existence or non-existence. For why should 'exist' be any less complicated semantically than 'actual infinite'? I

"One abyss calls to another

The abyss of my spirit
Always invokes with cries
The abyss of god -
Say which may be deeper."

Meister Eckhart



God is the not that is not not. — ZzzoneiroCosm

This is a beautiful post. Thank you.

Paradoxical phraseology is best suited to describe a certain kind of spiritual excitation. Better not to say a word. But these ecstatic moments can be so transformative and so exciting that it's difficult to hold one's peace. Mum is the wisest Word. — ZzzoneiroCosm

An interesting position. But what of great music, great art, great poetry? While I like the idea of silent monasteries, I'd also like an entire culture of ecstatic moments. Humans insist on 'magic,' and the billboards are happy to give us magic commodities. When I remember great parties, I also recall great music and great conversation, everything aimed at the 'magic' of life and its ecstasies and opportunities.

A good part of why logophile, logicophile philosophers are so hostile to god-talk. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Logophilic/logiphilic philosophers should perhaps consider how language itself and human rationality have properties traditionally associated with the divine.

Here are some quotes that bolster the notion that the Enlightenment project is a transformation of monotheism into humanism.

Reason, which conceives God as an infinite being, conceives, in point of fact, its own infinity in God.

The necessary being is one that it is necessary to think of, that must be affirmed absolutely and which it is simply impossible to deny or annul, but only to the extent to which it is a thinking being itself. Thus, it is its own necessity and reality which reason demonstrates in the necessary being.

“God is unconditional, general – 'God is not this or that particular thing' – immutable, eternal, or timeless being.” But absoluteness, immutability, eternality, and generality are, according to the judgment of metaphysical theology itself, also qualities of the truths or laws of reason, and hence the qualities of reason itself; for what else are these immutable, general, absolute, and universally valid truths of reason if not expressions of the essence of reason itself?

Philosophy presupposes nothing; this can only mean that it abstracts from all that is immediately or sensuously given, or from all objects distinguished from thought. In short, it abstracts from all wherefrom it is possible to abstract without ceasing to think, and it makes this act of abstraction from all objects its own beginning. However, what else is the absolute being if not the being for which nothing is to be presupposed and to which no object other than itself is either given or necessary?
— Feuerbach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm

If the world is unbounded, then why do you think humans focus on boundaries? — DanielP

For practical reasons. We abstract from the totality because it's instrumentally valuable. When I just need a chair for a guest, I don't need to understand how that particular chair came about within the entire history of the world, even if this is a better approximation of the total chair.

For instance, in physics, they say something has gone wrong when infinities are shown, such as in the infinite gravity of black holes, or some people say in the infinitely small point of the Big Bang. — DanielP

This is because the mathematical model breaks down. The connection between pure math and nature is complicated. Popularizations can only gloss over technical complexities.

I welcome your response. — GeorgeTheThird

I really enjoy our friendly and sincere conversation. Thanks for being a charitable conversationalist.

As someone who converted from an atheistic, human-centered, and essentially selfish worldview to a God-centered life of service to God and my fellow man [aside: however poorly executed that life of service may have been so far, the 180 degree turn in outlook is real and genuine], I find it difficult to understand and impossible to accept that humanism is a continuation of theology. — GeorgeTheThird

We probably agree that secular culture is largely dominated by selfishness and materialism. I'd say look to leftist thinking (at its best) for the humanist continuation of Christianity. If one goes way back, early Christians were revolutionaries, at least by some accounts.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/

I don't consider that the existence of God can be proven. — GeorgeTheThird

I respect that. I suppose I was suggesting that God should not be conceived as an object at all. Metaphorically speaking, I think God (what I mean by that) is 'proven' in that 'He' is what does the proving to being with. Since you and I are united in English, we are already components of an infinite subject (shared evolving consciousness within language).

Here are two quotes to specify what I mean:

Feuerbach made his first attempt to challenge prevailing ways of thinking about individuality in his inaugural dissertation, where he presented himself as a defender of speculative philosophy against those critics who claim that human reason is restricted to certain limits beyond which all inquiry is futile, and who accuse speculative philosophers of having transgressed these. This criticism, he argued, presupposes a conception of reason is a cognitive faculty of the individual thinking subject that is employed as an instrument for apprehending truths. He aimed to show that this view of the nature of reason is mistaken, that reason is one and the same in all thinking subjects, that it is universal and infinite, and that thinking (Denken) is not an activity performed by the individual, but rather by “the species” acting through the individual. “In thinking”, Feuerbach wrote, “I am bound together with, or rather, I am one with—indeed, I myself am—all human beings” (GW I:18). — page

the I, the self in general, which especially since the beginning of the Christian era, has ruled the world and has thought of itself as the only spirit that exists at all [to be] cast down from its royal throne. — Feuerbach

You mention having had an 'essentially selfish' worldview. I too came from that direction. I liked all the evil thinkers, the egoistic and ironic thinkers. But as I kept reading philosophy and thinking about language, my initial understanding of the self evolved (I call it progress) to grasp our essential historicality and sociality. We think in terms of one rationality, one science. What 'I' am is mostly the cultural software-softwear-softwhere I've inherited.

My impression is that your view (and Feuerbach's view) makes sense—to a point—if one begins with the assumption that the spiritual realm is mythical and metaphorical. — GeorgeTheThird

I appreciate the charitable reading. Just to clarify, for me 'mythical' and 'metaphor' aren't the reductions that they seem to be. In some sense they have the most profound kind of being. To me it's only against the background of power-obsessed scientism that myth and metaphor are secondary concepts. I'm not accusing you of this scientism. I mean something like the dominance of technology on what taking the scientist as the true philosopher is grounded. Only the instrumental fictions of science are 'really' real seems like a common enough attitude. 'Philosophy is silly talk,' etc. Because it 'can't do anything.' (Perform technological miracles.) 'A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign.'

As I see it, your view stops making sense when you say, "Such myths and metaphors help us create good communities and live honorable lives."

You speak of 'good' and 'honorable' as if these characteristics exist for humanity as a whole. If there is no spirit, there is no more connection between one human being and another than between one rock and another. — GeorgeTheThird

While I am pessimistic about what might actually happen with human beings, I think this denial of connection is incorrect. Our conversation exists within a shared field of meaning. The atomic notion of the human beings (minds locked in bodies) is, as I see it, a philosophical prejudice. It has in my view already been demolished in a tradition that stretches from Hegel to Derrida. I don't at all pretend that humans have solved the political problem.

A less abstract proof of our connectedness is the rhetoric of politicians. They appeal to freedom and justice. Even if humans often fail to live up to their ideals, these ideals are alive in us. We at least want to believe that we believe in them. And even the bitter cynic enjoys himself as partaking in the value of truth at all costs, including the cost of comforting illusions. That used to be my game. I saw us all as little profit-maximizing monsters, even if that profit wasn't simply money but perhaps prestige or self-approbation.

The notions of 'good' and 'honorable' are meaningless in a spiritless world. In a spiritless world, one nerve impulse is as good as any other, whether the impulse is to help an old woman across the street or throw her under a passing bus. None of it matters. The universe doesn't care whether the collection of particles we call "that woman" continues in its current configuration, or is dispersed from one end of the galaxy to the other. There is no such concept as 'value', no means by which such a quantity might be measured.

In a spiritless world, humanism is an illusion. — GeorgeTheThird

I understand this view. What humanism has to forfeit is the immortality of God. If we go, then all of our myths and living community spirit goes with us. Outside of the realm of spirit (which for me is culture and community), there does indeed seem to be a nature that is utterly indifferent to us. But declaring kindness meaningless because we can't find it in our physical calculations is questionable. It accepts science as the one true metaphysics. I don't think the choice is between traditional religion and a physics driven nihilism. I do confess that philosophical humanism doesn't offer everything that traditional religion does. And we live in surreal times. Hegel and Feuerbach lived in a century that believed in endless human progress. We live under the threat of climate change, nuclear war, capitalism run amok, etc.

Despite all this, I find my greatest joys in relationships with other human beings, real and virtual. If one understands spirit in terms of human relationships, then it is the distinctly human element.

Are Davidson's philosophical forays in general stabilized by a kind of radical charity? — ZzzoneiroCosm

I have mostly been exposed to Davidson through Rorty. That said, I think coherentist approaches are likely to be found among charitable conversationalists. A bad listener focuses on some disliked word and interprets it selfishly in anticipation of a retort. A good listener (so I opine) understands that a thinker is all of a piece and must be understood as a personality. No individual word choice is decisive. Each must be interpreted in context, and the total context is one's entire existence, loaded as it is with centuries of interpretation via an inherited language and culture.

Truth as basic, unanalyzable. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I connect with this Heidegger. We are being-in-a-world-with-others-in-language, a unitary phenomenon. Our language discloses or unveils a shared reality in a 'primordial' or sub-theoretical way. This is so close to us, so automatic, that it's hard to see. This shared space or world or what even most self-consciously doubtful philosophers can't help talking about as they bring their thoughts forward to be recognized as rational and true.

A different critique is that of the assumption that assigning some sharp meaning to a decontextualized or 'unworlded' noun is a sensible project. The superstition here is that language is a nomenclature for a tidy system of atomic eternal concepts that snap together like tinkertoys.

There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. It also means with the lack of true innate boundaries in the universe, everything in it is constantly mixing, creating the balance we see in the universe. It also means you can free yourself from a finite perspective where you focus on finite things like job, house, family, etc. You can adopt an infinite perspective and weave these important things like job, house, family, into a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe. This also means that the finite labels we apply to things are approximations of an infinite reality. We can apply labels like tree, but a tree is infinite. We can know some things about trees, but not everything. We can say, “you are a man or a woman” and be correct, but still just be making an approximation. You are a vast collection of complex infinity in your own right.

Looking forward to a good discussion. — DanielP

I agree with you. I'd call this the speculative truth. For practical reasons, we often have to understand ourselves as a meat-box of thoughts and feelings, navigating a world that is not us. I like your web metaphor. All individual things get their meaning from their relationships to other things. To understand a cat is to understand mice is to understand cheese is to understand cows. 'No finite thing has genuine existence.' We rip out a 'thing' from the web. We yank out (ab-stract) an entity with a focus that ignores its essential interdependence with respect to all other things.

Anyway, there's a clever version of this presented in I Heart Huckabbees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kB_mOfvDPU

Socrates was an addict. He was addicted to winning arguments. Philosophical arguments. In that sense I feel akin with him (without his genius, but never mind). — god must be atheist

It is nice to win arguments. To me it's a temptation I try to manage. As you say, it's an addiction. Perhaps you'll agree that learning is often a case of us admitting to ourselves that we were biased and wrong.

Hobbes, however, was a mechanical thinker, who was bereft of human insight — god must be atheist

I really like Hobbes' prose, and I love "Of Man,' his sketch in Leviathan of human nature. He can be too mechanical. But he had a fierce, penetrating mind.

Continual Successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean the Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense. — Hobbes

Hume! Hume! Humanity!! — god must be atheist

Hume was lovable indeed.

The measure of the interval [0,1] is 1 and the measure of the interval [0,2] is 2. This way of classifying size also leads to the conclusion that a point must have non-zero length:

length of a interval = pointsize * pointnumber — Devans99

I will humor you. The number of points in [0,1] is uncountably infinite. Measure, however, is only countably additive.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CountableAdditivity.html

That means you can't split [0,1] into points and then add the measure of the points to get the measure of the interval. You can, however, split [0,1] into [0, 1/2) and [1/2,1]. In this case all is well. One can even measure Q, because Q is countably infinite. And the measure of Q is 0. Note that the two most famous kinds of infinity (that of N and that of R) actually do come into play right away in measure theory.

Keep in mind that I might as well be talking about the rules of chess. You can say that these are all fictional entities. It is true that theoretically this is the foundation of statistics. But I suggest that human beings would still apply math without careful justifications that few of them ever study in the first place. We trust tools that work. Consider Hume's problem of induction. All of our technology is based on a gut-level faith in the uniformity of nature.

We are talking about the nature of time, whether it has a beginning or end specifically. Such a conversation is intimately linked to the existence or non-existence of Actual Infinity. Maths treatment of the subject could hardly be described as definitive - a set of non-sensical assumptions IMO. Notice I have highlighted the phases 'pretend', 'without worrying much'... such words hardly inspire confidence... — Devans99

You are asking math to do what it cannot do and does not claim to do, namely metaphysical philosophy. If you want a deep investigation of time, look into Hegel or Heidegger or Kant. The results of math being so certain comes at the cost of their significance being indeterminate.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. — Russel

I think this is an illuminating exaggeration. Intuition is important in math, but math is protected from the endless misunderstandings found on philosophy forums by rules and exact definitions.

Many things in maths and science are then built upon the foundation of set theory. Again we have whole swaths of knowledge based on bad assumptions - all that ‘knowledge’ is therefore not valid. — Devans99

'Foundations' is a misleading metaphor. In general, applied math comes first. Calculus was invented and successfully applied long before a careful definition of real number system was given. Pure math isn't, in my view, the genuine foundation of applied math. Instead human beings just trust tools that tend to give them what they want, reliably.

If you live in the city, consider the tall structures of concrete and steel. Why is it that they don't tumble down? Aren't they based on the axiom of infinity? No. Formal set theory is arguably more of an aesthetic enterprise. Engineers don't need it. Pure math is its own beast, and I suggest that its prestige is parasitic upon that of the technological enterprise.

But assumptions that are plain wrong/bad (counter logical) lead nowhere useful, lead other folks (in the physical sciences) astray, and result in lots of clever folk wasting huge amounts of time on wild goose chases (eg a good portion of modern cosmology is like this IMO). — Devans99

I think you'd have to make a case that physical scientists are being led astray, a claim I find less than plausible. I know very little about modern cosmology, but some of your other comments make me think that you are wrestling with Kantian themes. Is a beginning of time thinkable? No. Is beginningless time thinkable? Also no. I'm sympathetic to that kind of thing. I like instrumentalism as a way to make sense of science. To me neither math nor physical science offers 'metaphysical' truth (replaces philosophy).

It is indeed a complicated issue. I have been quite attracted to intuitionism at times. I haven't studied it closely because my institution was not only mainstream in this regard but never even discussed its position as a choice. I did study computability in Sipser's excellent book. I very much sympathize with wanting a math that is concrete and computable as possible. It's more beautiful and real that way.

One problem that we haven't touched on is the increasing complexity of math as one looks at more complicated theorems. At some points proofs become so big that one can no longer hold them all in one's mind. One can check the links in the chain, of course, but some of the beauty is lost as one is forced to trust the machinery of logic. Unfortunately this is necessary, at least if one wants to ground certain technical practices in pure math's proofs.

From what I remember about intutionism (and in response to your specific point), the strangest thing was the state of a proposition being neither true nor false before a proof establishes which. This yanks math out of eternity, often violating intuitions that I find trustworthy. Intuitively a given Turing machine operating on a given input will or not halt, even if we know which while it's still running. What does your intuition say about that?

More like it's clinging to and grasping of the sensory domain (which ends up being the meaning of 'empiricism'.) — Wayfarer

We need the sensory domain, though. Since we are fundamentally social beings, it's our sense organs and our flesh generally that make language and thought possible.

I heard that Schrodinger's cat had eaten Wittgenstein's beetle, although others heard differently. — Wayfarer

That looks like a dodge.

It’s the ‘formal realm’, I think - the domain of laws, conventions, number, logic and the like. We ‘see’ it through the ‘eye of reason’. Whereas the spiritual realm is seen through ‘the eye of the heart’ according to mystic lore. — Wayfarer

Note the necessary appeal to metaphor. I understand the metaphor and agree with it. This metaphoricity is one of the ways that natural language exceeds formal language.

I also like 'eye of the heart.' This metaphor emphasizes the passion involved in the 'spiritual.' I realize that some might understand metaphor to be a reductive concept, but as Derrida noted: if metaphysics is metaphorical, then metaphor functions metaphysically within such an assertion. To compare God to a literary object is as much a promotion of literature as it is a demotion of God. Alternative approaches (justifying God as a scientifically defensible entity) seem the wrong way to go (I think you agree here.)

But this dialogue is actually from a larger context in which Wittgenstein advocates a finitist viewpoint of mathematics. — Wittgenstein

I wonder how relevant the finitism still is. Note that we apply math with finite computers, and we use a finite subset of rational numbers to do so. Or a finite set of symbols in computer algebra systems. Technologically math has always been finite. And proofs have always been finite. So Wittgenstein can only really being chiding people, it seems, for their philosophical projections on these finite procedures. Or perhaps he could endorse intuitionistic logic, but I'm not aware of him doing serious work on that.

Perhaps at the time there was more fervor about set theory being metaphysical and not just formal.

I have studied some of Wittgenstein's philosophy of math, and it is fascinating. But it's also quite eccentric. Wittgenstein sometimes seems (after his youth mysticism) allergic to profundity.

What occurs to me is that, when we discovered that 2 had no square root , we just invented a new kind of number, extended the concept. To me it looks like we have conventions that we sometimes are inspired to modify.

I'm arguing that because the meaning of a proposition can be represented in different symbolic forms and even in different media, then the meaning or the intelligible content of the proposition, is separable from the physical representation. It's suggestive of a form of dualism. As far as I'm aware, it's a novel argument. — Wayfarer

With formal languages perfect translation (between media) is not only possible but common. And I agree that this is fascinating indeed. But non-formal languages are famously only imperfectly translated. The act of reading is also creative. Moreover the writings of the past are changed (recontextualized) by the writings that come after. What is 'the ideality of the literary object'? It's a 'spiritual realm,' as I see it. But this spiritual realm also seems to be dynamic, caught up in time, and subject to dissemination.

The dualism is still there, but isn't this culture versus nature?

That's because language-using beings orient themselves to the world via meaning. — Wayfarer

We might say that this orientation is meaning. The mind/matter distinction is a historical contingency. The beetle in the box is problematic.

Wittgenstein invites readers to imagine a community in which the individuals each have a box containing a "beetle". "No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle."[16]

If the "beetle" had a use in the language of these people, it could not be as the name of something – because it is entirely possible that each person had something completely different in their box, or even that the thing in the box constantly changed, or that each box was in fact empty. The content of the box is irrelevant to whatever language game it is used in.

By analogy, it does not matter that one cannot experience another's subjective sensations. Unless talk of such subjective experience is learned through public experience the actual content is irrelevant; all we can discuss is what is available in our public language.

By offering the "beetle" as an analogy to pains, Wittgenstein suggests that the case of pains is not really amenable to the uses philosophers would make of it. "That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation', the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." — Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument

If the notion of pure mind is threatened, then so is the notion of pure matter. Indeed, 'mind' and 'matter' are troubled in the same way by the argument above. Private meaning is problematic. And yet I depend on the same system of signs that I use to unveil the strangeness of this system.

The individual - 'me' - exists like the foam on a wave on an ocean. The most recently-arrived and most ephemeral of beings. — Wayfarer

Indeed. The human being is a radically historical and social being. What I am pre-philosophically inclined to call 'my' reason is the work of centuries. More locally, the human being without a tribe is unthinkable. We are born helpless with necks too weak for our heavy heads. A human brain that doesn't learn a language is largely wasted.

Our quickly senescent bodies would be pathetic indeed were they not the vessels of a time-binding software or 'philosophical subject.' If philosophy is the religion of self-consciousness, then the self that is known is not primarily the helplessly mortal self (we have magazine quizzes for that) but the human in its/our unfolding potential. The materiality of the signifier and material in general are crucial for time-binding, for the human being to lift itself up from superstition and poverty (its immersion in nature, one might say).

I wonder if I have ever been able to think, or If I was just repeat someone else's words? — armonie

Clearly we think as individuals. Wouldn't you agree? But we think in the words of the tribe.

It does imply that 1/0 = ∞, we need only pre-school maths to arrive at such a conclusion: — Devans99

The problem is that you think you can do philosophy of math with only pre-school mathematics. If you don't know how to read and write proofs, then you don't really know what math is.

Where is your dispute with the above reasoning? — Devans99

I've already discussed that. Measures are countably additive set functions. Cardinality is actually important here. But measures will make no sense without a mastery of basic real analysis. Usually one learns this over a course of years. It's like learning to become fluent in a language. Since inexpensive Dover books are easily available, I won't go into great detail that's likely to be ignored anyway.

If you actually want to resolve your confusion rather than install it as a work of genius, you'll just have to learn some math.

And that means that scientific materialism has failed to explain the natural world in terms of cause and effect, and so has failed in its attempt to eliminate God as cause. — GeorgeTheThird

For me the main problem here is that God ends up functioning as a piece of explanatory machinery, Himself unexplained. It's like painting a beautiful face on our ignorance. Now I think the concept of God is of great importance, but I have passed through the fiery brook. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

I agree that we humans will often end up against principles or patterns or laws that are true for no known reason; they are brute facts so far as we can tell. — GeorgeTheThird

Right, because seemingly brute patterns can be woven into grander, more comprehensive patterns. So the 'brute fact' is not fixed but rather our currently most general theory of existence.

It seems to me that the "is" of the universe (as opposed to the "does") will always be in that category. — GeorgeTheThird

We agree. It is not how but that the world exists that is the mystical. (Wittgenstein).

And yes, I suppose the existence of God is true (or not true, depending on perspective) for no reason that we can ever know. (The theist might add, in this life anyway.) — GeorgeTheThird

Even in the next life, if there is one, I don't see how human cognition escapes from something being true for no reason. If all existence is explained in terms of God's nature (what he wants), then that nature is the brute fact. For me this involves the nature or concept of explanation. Just thinking about explanation reveals that the whole is inexplicable in principle.

Well, if you will pardon me for saying so, that is just bad theology from a Christian (and Jewish) perspective. In the Scripture, God presents himself first to our reason; emotions will follow as, when, and if appropriate. — GeorgeTheThird

We disagree here. To me humanism is a continuation of theology. I don't expect to change your mind, but I insist that God as theoretical object is a bad framework. For me this is religion infected by scientism. To use logic and science to 'prove' God is to make logic and science primary and God a merely piece of bad physics.

God is Spirit": God is spirit, not physical; he exists apart from the physical world that he created. — GeorgeTheThird

I think this symbolizes man's distance from nature as a self-creating cultural being.

Human beings, though obviously physical, are also moral. Our honor, commitment, and devotion to God is moral in character, just as he is moral. — GeorgeTheThird

This is where we start to agree. The spiritual is the moral is the cultural. That's why an evil creator wouldn't be tolerated. God represents humanity's highest values.

Feuerbach begins The Essence of Christianity by proposing that, since human beings have religion and animals don’t, the key to understanding religion must be directly related to whatever it is that most essentially distinguishes human beings from animals. This, he maintains, is the distinctive kind of consciousness that is involved in the cognition of universals.[10] A being endowed with such “species-consciousness” is able to take its own essential nature as an object of thought. The capacity for thought is conceived here as the capacity to engage in internal dialogue, and thus to be aware of oneself as containing both an I and a Thou (a generic other), so that, in the act of thinking, the human individual stands in a relation to his species in which non-human animals, and human beings qua biological organisms, are incapable of standing. When a human being is conscious of himself as human, he is conscious of himself not only as a thinking being, but also as a willing and a feeling being.

The power of thinking is the light of knowledge [des Erkenntnis], the power of the will is the energy of character, the power of the heart is love. (WC 31/3)

These are not powers that the individual has at his disposal. They are rather powers that manifest themselves psychologically in the form of non-egoistic species-drives (Gattungstriebe) by which individuals periodically find themselves overwhelmed, especially those poets and thinkers in whose works the species-essence is most clearly instantiated. [11] Such manifestations include the experiences of erotic and platonic love; the drive to knowledge; the experience of being moved by the emotion expressed in music; the voice of conscience, which compels us to moderate our desires to avoid infringing on the freedom of others; compassion; admiration; and the urge to overcome our own moral and intellectual limitations. The latter urge, Feuerbach contends, presupposes an awareness that our individual limitations are not limitations of the species-essence, which functions thus as the norm or ideal toward which the individual’s efforts at self-transcendence are directed. — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/#CritChri

God is worthy of our honor and obedience; our full commitment and devotion. — GeorgeTheThird

As I see it, we try to incarnate God (the highest values) and imitate Christ. For me these terms are mythical and metaphorical, but then I think the spiritual realm is mythical and metaphorical. While this may sound like a demotion, I don't think it is. Such myths and metaphors help us create good communities and live honorable lives.

But as I understand it, maths frames infinity as an object that already exists (axiom of infinity). I believe that axioms should be more than assumptions - they should be self-evident truths - and what is self-evident about the existence of an actually infinite set? — Devans99

I think that's a good question. To me it's fair indeed to operate at this level and engage in a philosophical debate about the rules of the game that human beings freely decide upon. I'm not a specialist in set theory, but certainly a set theorist wants to construct more familiar mathematical objects like natural numbers.

the other axioms are insufficient to prove the existence of the set of all natural numbers. — Wiki

Basically they had to have it if they wanted the natural numbers, and they had to have the natural numbers. But others have wanted to take the natural numbers as fundamental.

The primary concern of mathematics is number, and this means the positive integers. . . . In the words of Kronecker, the positive integers were created by God. Kronecker would have expressed it even better if he had said that the positive integers were created by God for the benefit of man (and other finite beings). Mathematics belongs to man, not to God. We are not interested in properties of the positive integers that have no descriptive meaning for finite man. When a man proves a positive integer to exist, he should show how to find it. If God has mathematics of his own that needs to be done, let him do it himself. — Erret Bishop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errett_Bishop

'God created the positive integers' is just a metaphor for their obviousness to intuition. Other comments involve constructive/intuitionistic logic. There's a fascinating ideological purity in this that appeals to me. But the mainstream chose otherwise. At the same time, most mathematicians don't worry themselves about this stuff in my experience. (I stand out by questioning the meaning and value of the game, but then I should have studied philosophy instead.) They learned a certain set of rules that they are happy with. The rest is disreputable 'philosophy,' inferior because it's just 'opinions.'

I am not disputing it is possible to measure intervals, I am disputing the common mathematical claim that there is an actually infinite of points on a line segment length 1. — Devans99

I still think you are confusing mathematical and metaphysical claims. What do you mean by 'actually infinite'? Math isn't done with ambiguous philosophical terms. You can complain that the axiom of infinity violates your intuition (fair enough), but it's trivial to show that [0,1] is an infinite set using 'the rules.' What that means philosophically or metaphysically is another question entirely. It is essential for math that it function independently of metaphysics. Once the rules are chosen, there is no more room for confusion or ambiguity. It is a dead machine.

How many points do you claim there are on a line segment length 1? The answer must logically be one of the following:

1. Infinite number
2. Finite number
3. Undefined
(there are no other possibilities)

If it is [1], that means 1/0=∞ which is nonsense
If it is [2], then a point must have non-zero length which is not the definition used in maths.
So I contend it must be [3]. — Devans99

What you neglect here is the ambiguity of 'infinite number.' This is pre-mathematical metaphysical ambiguity. In truth, I think you are guilty of the very think you accuse mathematicians of. If one wants to be strictly and even mechanically logical, then one needs strictly and even mechanically defined terms. This is precisely why notions of cardinality and measure were painstakingly developed within a 'realm of law.'

Cantor's most famous breakthrough was showing that one notion of infinity was not enough. His work has consequences for theoretical computer science. It's not only artistically charming. Whatever limitations or blemishes one finds in mainstream math, it's a spectacular structure.

Also, choice #1 does not imply that 1/0 = infinity. Saying so is pseudo-math. Since your attracted to this stuff, why not study some math? Even if you just want to criticize it, your criticism will only be plausible if you can project a basic competence --that you actually know what math is and how it operates from a position within math. Fascinating criticisms of math can be made, but all the criticisms I've seen online by the untrained have so far been just projected misunderstandings. I don't mean to be offensive. I like the critical philosophy of mathematics. It just has to know its target in order to hit it.

You can communicate with me because we belong to a specific linguistic community, that is where the symbolic operates, in the specific, true, but it still has a physical support. — armonie

I agree. As I understand Derrida, one of the deep fantasies of philosophy is meaning without 'physical support,' meaning without a vessel that is directly present 'in' or 'for' some mind. Can I talk to myself without an historically generated language? Can I talk to myself at all in the sense of learning anything from this monologue? I think that we do learn from talking to ourselves. The symbols don't refer to timeless entities but are caught up in time and recontextualization.

We are one race. The entire humankind. — god must be atheist

I agree with you. To me this is humanism, the 'religion' of intellectuals. There is one human rationality. This 'transcendental pretense' is central but also unnoticed as too close to us, too obvious. I think it's a modification of monotheism. God died and became the rational/enlightened community.

If God created Man & Woman for distinct roles in the world, then where do LGBTQ humans fit into the scheme of things? Are those who refuse to remain in their rigidly-defined physical and social niches, somehow defying the law of God? Even for those who are not concerned about the laws of God, what about violating the laws of Nature? — Gnomon

Did God create some to be slaves and others to be masters? Perhaps He marked their skin to help us figure out who's who. This offensive thought is used to make a point. Using the idea of God in this way is the primary justification perhaps for anti-religious feeling. Imaginary creators in such cases are transparently used to dominate and control. I consider such superstition to be pre-philosophical.

IMV, the heterosexual norm was a fiction from the beginning, imposed on a polymorphous perversity for various reasons.

As for human nature in general, I view it as dynamic and historical. We are radically cultural and historical animals. Our nature is to have no nature, or our nature is to always be developing our nature. Some philosophers have believed that this development process would cease at a kind of perfection (was on the way to some satisfying and process-stopping finale.) I don't believe them, though I do think individuals often evolve into relatively settled personalities. Indeed, I think philosophers tend to project their own semi-concluded process onto human history in general.

I do mean that the predictable behavior of the macro world is in itself an astonishing thing. There is no reason for the macro world, which is a collection of unpredictable particles, to act in a predictable way. It's as though the output from a random number generator were to present as a set of logarithm tables.

Why does the macro world behave predictably according to mathematical laws, instead of randomly as one would expect a collection of unpredictable particles to behave? That's what we don't understand, and in that fundamental sense we do not understand reality. — GeorgeTheThird

I suggest looking into statistics. That explains how the macro world is quasi-deterministic. Resolving that difficulty, however, doesn't (in my view) solve the problem. At some point we have structures that are brute facts. Now at a later time we may weave this 'brute fact' into a more comprehensive structure. But whatever the most comprehensive structure is at the time operates as a brute fact. Or at least I haven't seen any good arguments against this yet.

I think one of the basis of his argument is that mathematics doesn't base itself on the meaning of the symbols or operations but a SAME use. — Wittgenstein

The issue is even bigger than math. 'Meaning' is external. Sure, we have various intuitions, but intelligibility is primarily a social phenomenon. This short video is worth a look.

@https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x86hLtOkou8

Here's a crucial piece of what you quoted above.

This is a difficulty which arises again and again in philosophy: we use "meaning" in different ways. On the one hand we take as the criterion for meaning, something which passes in our mind when we say it, or something to which we point to explain it. On the other hand, we take as the criterion the use we make of the word or sentence as time goes on. — Wittgenstein

As the video suggests (and more reading on the subject consolidates), the supposed interior of the mind is only accessible via public (arbitrary, conventional) signs. Indeed, 'interior' is a sign. Note the metaphorical bleed. I don't deny that we can investigate our intuitions of words, but these intuitions aim are of decontextualized essences, as if language was simply a nomenclature, neglecting the 'context effects' in which it actually lives.

I like the Heideggerian approach to Wittgenstein. A person learns to speak a language as they learn a form of life. This is knowing what one does in different situations, including knowing how words are used. It's only after the mostly unconscious assimilation of such conventions that one can think of oneself as a relatively free individual mind. 'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' The culture that I might want to improve or rebel against is what gave me the ability to speak and think. We wake up on a galloping horse, neck-deep in conventions we did not choose.

Therefore it is very unlikely that we actually have any truly finite proofs, because definitions are produced with words, which themselves need to be defined, etc., ad infinitum. — Metaphysician Undercover

It can and has all been done with symbols. It's like a game of chess. In practice words are used to abbreviate formal proofs and aid the intuition.

A formal proof is a finite sequence of formulas, each member of which is either an axiom or the result of applying a rule of inference to previous members of the sequence. Typical rules of inference are modus ponens and the substitution of equals for equals. A grammar for formulas, a collection of axioms, and a collection of rules of inference together define a logical theory.

For the usual theories of mathematics, e.g. set theory or number theory, it is a relatively modest exercise to write a program called a proof checker that will check, in a reasonable amount of time, whether a given sequence of formulas is a proof. — link

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/boyer/ftp/ics-reports/cmp35.pdf

This isn't surprising. Unless proofs could be verified, math wouldn't be a normal discourse. It would just be a quasi-literary metaphysics with mathematical themes.

Cantor did nothing to help our understanding of infinity IMO; he has lead us down the wrong path entirely. — Devans99

To me this frames infinity as an object that already exists, already has a nature. Philosophers can compare their intuitions in natural language, but mathematicians have got to make some rules.

So perhaps the burden is on Cantor's critics to offer a mathematical substitute.

My (and Galileo's) point exactly - you fundamentally cannot measure something that is
uncountable/infinite - you would never finish measuring it - it is impossible to measure and claiming that bijection can provide a sound measure is ignoring the evidence (of paradoxes). — Devans99

You misunderstand me. The measure of a set is different than its cadinality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebesgue_measure

Some of the confusion about Cantor seems to involve not realizing that mathematicians also have other ways of comparing sets. Measure is more intuitive than cardinality. [0,2] has twice the measure of [0,1] and yet the same cardinality. And then also have homeomorphisms in topology. These concepts each treat of a different quality that sets can have in common. With people we can talk about height, eye color, shoe size, etc. It's the same with sets.

Yes, we can class mathematics as "normal discourse", but to characterize "normal discourse", as working with finite objects of meaning, is what Wittgenstein demonstrates as wrong. This is why we must work to purge the axioms of mathematics from the scourge of Platonism, To consider proofs as finite objects is a false premise. — Metaphysician Undercover

I find it hard to make sense of this. Proofs are obviously finite objects, or we could never finish reading or writing one.

Wittgenstein can't demonstrate that this or that as wrong mathematically. He comments ultimately about interpretations of the calculus (game of symbols). I like some of his critiques. And I also like intuitionism, finitism, constructivism. The philosophy of mathematics is deep and complicated. A person can have philosophical doubts about mainstream mathematics and still be good at it.

And then most people never learn pure math. They learn algebra, trig, calculus, applied linear algebra. This stuff is fairly intuitive and incredibly useful. To me anti-Cantorian passion suggests a love for pure math in that it wants to get the infinite 'right.' The door is always open. A person could construct a system. To be math, it would need rules. This guy actually tried to deliver a replacement for the foundations he objected to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._E._J._Brouwer

A few people work on systems like that. But most people who use math don't care at all about philosophical disputes. Math is just a tool that they use according to conventions.

I also think that much contemporary thinking about knowledge confuses two distinct questions. "When do we have knowledge?" and "what 'is' knowledge?" Even if we can agree about when we have knowledge, that doesn't necessarily tell us what knowledge itself is. — Bartricks

A case can be made that knowledge isn't something other than our conventional use of the word 'knowledge.' To learn a language is to learn how to use many words in the context of living in a shared world. Just because 'knowledge' is a noun doesn't mean there's a definite entity called 'knowledge.'
This also applies to 'reason' (used as a noun).

While philosophers have often trafficked in decontextualized essences, other philosophers have pointed out the problems with this approach. We can imagine Descartes trying to achieved certainty. Only his doubting voice is certain. At least this doubting voice exists. But this doubting voice speaks a language learned in a world with others. It's already in the world, intelligible to others, the product of convention. The signifier is arbitrary, conventional. What are the consequences of all this?

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life. — Wittgenstein

This 'element' is being-in-a-language-with-others, which includes knowing how to use 'knowledge.' Only too late do philosophers arrive to (try to) decide what knowledge 'really' is.

There is...something that average everyday intelligibility obscures... that it is merely average everyday intelligibility...This is what Heidegger called 'the perhaps necessary appearance of foundation....What gets covered up in everyday understanding is not some deep intelligibility as the tradition has always held; it is that the ultimate 'ground' of intelligibility is simply shared practices...This is the last stage of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The only deep interpretation left is that there is no deep interpretation. — Dreyfus

<emphasis mine>

'No deep interpretation' doesn't mean we shouldn't further clarify our existence. Indeed, suggesting that 'knowledge' refers to no essence is part of that project.

I don't all claim that this is a final word on the matter. On the contrary...

The view that all philosophical problems are linguistic problems. — Per Chance

Thanks. I think there is some truth in that, but those linguistic problems are also the problems of what it means to be human, as I see it. What is language?

I think the later Wittgenstein saw that language is inseparable from social existence. So problems of language quickly become problems of social existence. Who have we been? Who are we? Who shall we be?

I was halfway through zizek's hegelese/less than nothing when my ADHD medication was cut off. — Per Chance

That would be tough. Less Than Nothing was less than I hoped it would be. I like Zizek, but I prefer Kojeve on Hegel. And then of course one should just read Hegel.

Hence no, I can't say for sure i know hegelese or least hegel through zizek. And no, i was referring to zizek when i said psychoanalysis. — Per Chance

Just to be clear, those quotes in my first post were from Hegel. I was trying to dispel the common notion (among those who haven't studied him) that Hegel is word salad.

Lacan via Zizek is fascinating. I can understand your frustration. Zizek has a lovable persona. He tempts one to read history backwards. But it's hard to read Hegel without having read Kant, and it's hard to make sense of Lacan without making sense of Freud. The temptation is to skip to the end, to find the result. But, as Hegel tells us, philosophy doesn't work like that. The result is a dead string of words without the process of its construction. It's only at the end of that difficult cognitive journey that the result (an aphoristic summary) has real meaning. I'm not saying that any mortal human can grasp it all. But one can make real progress over the years.

He said when i am into software engineering i have no right to also study philosophy along with it. — Per Chance

Ah. That's complicated. I should be studying software engineering right now. I could improve my marketability. Instead I'm obsessed with softwhere engineering. Anyway, sounds like a tough situation. To me philosophy is one of the better vices. As I understand it, social skills are quite valuable in the software world. One has to work on teams, project oneself as valuable, etc. And then philosophy is conceptually challenging. I suspect that studying philosophy helps with most intellectual pursuits, as long as one doesn't forget to practice coding.

As I said, ellipsis means unfinished. So using the ellipsis and claiming "it's done" is a false claim. — Metaphysician Undercover

The ellipses aren't necessary. We have an increasing sequence of partial sums that is not bounded above. This sequence has no limit in the real numbers. 'Diverges to infinity' indicates more than merely a failure to converge by specifying that the sequence of partial sums is increasing. This is basic real analysis.

Consider also that proofs are finite objects. These finite objects and the things we do with them are inspired by intuitions of the so-called 'infinite.' And mathematicians aren't allergic to intuitive ways of talking. But in the end we have finite proofs that use a finite number of symbols. Such proofs can be (tediously) translated into dead symbols (bits if you like) and checked mechanically (by a computer, for instance).

This makes mathematics a prototypically 'normal' discourse, and perhaps explains the mixed feelings that metaphysicians have toward it. As I see it, the old dream of metaphysics is to do 'spiritual math' about matters of ultimate concern. Proofs of god, etc. But non-mathematical language seems caught up in time to a much greater degree. 'History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake.'

Until recently i held on to the opinion that philosophy is really needed for the sake of philosophy itself. — Per Chance

Thus we now meet the view very usually taken of the history of Philosophy which ascribes to it the narration of a number of philosophical opinions as they have arisen and manifested themselves in time...This history, considered only as the enumeration of various opinions, thus becomes an idle tale, or, if you will, an erudite investigation...If the history of Philosophy merely represented various opinions in array, whether they be of God or of natural and spiritual things existent, it would be a most superfluous and tiresome science... — who

Later in the text, after being told that philosophy evolves toward the truth, we find that

the study of the history of Philosophy is the study of Philosophy itself, for, indeed, it can be nothing else. — who

excluding those that write also psychoanalysis and hegelese — Per Chance

If you successfully made sense of the quotes above, you already know Hegelese. I've also read biased writers warning against the dangers of Hegel. Well, Hegel is readable (most of the time). And, as to Freud, isn't there a middle ground between believing whatever he says and writing it off because he said it?

I swore an oath to uphold a Wittgensteinian view regarding philosophy — Per Chance

Which view is that? I'm curious.

Do enlighten me. — Per Chance

Philosophy feels to me like what I, as a human being, was born to do. 'Doing' philosophy largely means studying philosophy which largely means reading the history of philosophy. Metaphorically speaking, there is just one philosopher who leaps from dying ape to dying ape. In the same way a single flame from leap from melting candle to melting candle. To participate in philosophy is to be more than a harried self-concerned ape.

Perhaps we should (as some of us already are?) think of justification in terms of convention. A false belief is justified if it is obtained according to certain conventions. Even if I am wrong, my excuse for thinking I was right is good in the eyes of the community.

Specifying these conventions is an infinite task. If I had reason to think the clock was broken, I lose the justification of my false belief. I should have known better. Or perhaps I act on news from a source that I should have known was not to be trusted. Then my actions are not justified. If we zoom on all the beliefs that would have warned me away from the broken clock or bad source of news, we repeat this logic. At some point explicit justification is revealed as an infinite and therefore impossible task.

Moreover we can question whether the words we use tend to have pure meaning for an ideally aware subject or (more likely the case) we largely employ these words with the mindlessness of a knife used to slice tomatoes. Perhaps we retrospectively falsify our thinking when asked for reasons. Perhaps we mostly glide on the surface of the world, responding with skill to the demands of the day.