I think I'll invest in Charmin and Cottonelle while I'm at it. The socialists are going to be so stressed out over the next 5 years, they'll have constant bouts of diarrhea thanks to Trump, the anti-christ.

So this might be the new normal if and when there are pandemics, even less dangerous ones. — ssu

Sound like we'll have more opportunities to buy Apple and Microsoft stocks at discount prices. Nice! Sounds like a good reason for the media to fan the flames of some crisis.

I agree that logic is an essential part of a good philosophy, it specifies how inferences can be made.

But the philosophy of logic is not logic itself. So what is logic? — A Seagull

I didn't say philosophy of logic was a good or bad philosophy. I said that logic is what determines what is good philosophy or not. Logic is typically lacking in religious and political/ethical claims, and emotion is typically rampant within these domains, hence these are examples of engaging in bad philosophy.

Logic may be defined as the branch of philosophy that reflects upon the nature of thinking, or more specifically reasoning, itself.
— Harry Hindu

Logic is concerned with the nature of reasoning, i.e., correct reasoning as opposed to incorrect reasoning. The nature of thinking is much broader in scope than logic. — Sam26

That's why I said, more specifically reasoning.

There can be good and bad reasoning within any subject, including science. You can't just say that science equals good philosophy. It depends on the subject matter, and the arguments that are put forth. — Sam26

If there was bad reasoning involved, it wasn't science that was being done. Maybe you're thinking of pseudoscience.

It seems that Trump has succeeded in getting into every socialist-in-liberal-clothes' heads.
— Harry Hindu

The notion that liberals are closeted socialists is another sticky idea, apparently. — praxis

No.

I said socialist-in-liberal-clothes', as in a wolf-in-sheep-clothes, as in knowing you're a socialist, but trying top pass yourself off as a libertarian (the only true liberal), in order for you ideas to sound more reasonable to others.

t seems that Trump has succeeded in getting into every socialist-in-liberal-clothes' heads. Trump is all they think about to the point where almost every philosophical topic turns into an opportunity to bash Trump. That's pretty sad when that is what dominates the thoughts in your mind.

It’s how they signal their bona fides to one another. — NOS4A2

You mean like how the religious signal their bona fides to each other? I'd agree. Their hatred has reached a religious fervor. It's sad to have your mind dominated by the acts of Trump (Satan or the Anti-christ in their mind), because of the bubble they allow themselves to be put in.

I asked my kids if they are suffering because they know there is suffering in the world. They said, "No. There is also happiness in the world that wouldn't be realized if there wasn't some suffering". Smart kids.
— Harry Hindu

That makes no sense actually. Do you pine over the happiness not being realized by the non-existent aliens on Mars? — schopenhauer1

What I said makes no sense to you and what you said makes no sense to me. Are we speaking different languages, or what's the problem?

That is precisely the thinking that gets us into this position. You would be using the suffering of the next generation (by having them knowing the world contains some suffering) to try to mitigate what is happening currently, thus continuing the cycle. Not a good policy if you want to end the cycle itself. — schopenhauer1

I asked my kids if they are suffering because they know there is suffering in the world. They said, "No. There is also happiness in the world that wouldn't be realized if there wasn't some suffering". Smart kids.

It seems that Trump has succeeded in getting into every socialist-in-liberal-clothes' heads. Trump is all they think about to the point where almost every philosophical topic turns into an opportunity to bash Trump. That's pretty sad when that is what dominates the thoughts in your mind.

If you think "liberal innovations" are bad.. So are "free-market capitalism". Antinatalism scoffs at both of these as FORCING more people into the world in the first place by having more children. A pox on both your houses. Both liberals and conservatives feel entitled to force their ideologies on yet another generation to live out their demented ideas about ways-of-life.. Oh but great, if the child doesn't like it they can just go kill themselves! What a foolish unsettling system all ideologies are and people who thus create more progeny to have to live out their ideological abstractions. Its all using people for an ideology. Its all ego-stroking thinking YOUR child MUST be created to experience life. All of you can go bugger off with your ideologies and forcing others to live them, honestly. — schopenhauer1

What about apolitical parents, with no political party affiliation, having children?

Without the younger generation, who is going to pay for your medication and hospital visits when you are old and retired? You end up running into the same problem China is after the implementation of their "one-child" policy.

Solution: Coronavirus.

Logic.

Logic may be defined as the branch of philosophy that reflects upon the nature of thinking, or more specifically reasoning, itself.

Logic is perhaps the most fundamental branch of philosophy. All branches employ thinking; whether this thinking is correct or not will depend upon whether it is in accord with the laws of logic.

In this sense, religion and politics are bad philosophy. Science would be good philosophy.

Are you talking about my emotions personally, or is this just some general observation that conservatives and liberals just have a different emotional view of the wold — boethius

I wouldn't know, I dont see the world through some political ideology. I view human nature scientically, not politically.

That one is funny. Guys lets stop pointing fingers please, lets all point them to China. Let's castigate the Spanish for the Spanish flu and the Mexicans for the Mexican ones, lets point to the gays for aids and the Napolitans for the ubiquitous pizza hut. — Tobias

Apples and oranges.

You're comparing diseases prior to the advent of genetic engineering with those after, where viruses are created intentionally for scientific research or as a weapon, and possibly to control your population. India has a comparable sized population and geographic location with China, but most of these viruses are coming out of China.

Isn't bailing out a reward full stop? Is "restructuring" really a negative consequence to the business? — boethius

Should we be punishing the workers along with the corporate heads? I think it was quite clear that the negative consequences will be brought upon those making the corporate decisions.

I think your emotions have an major influence on how you read into things.

The danger of the coronavirus pandemic is not individual chance of death, as this article attempts to portray to try to calm people down, but the systemic effects of overwhelming health systems and governments forced to act to lower the infection rate to something manageable. — boethius

Thanks to the mass hysteria the media is causing, people are unecessarily flooding the healthcare system. When 95% of the tests are negative for corona, which means that they have a different respiratory illness, the stats aren't a necessary cause for people to worry that they have corona at the first sign of a sore throat.

If the govt wants to has to continually prop up industries that fail during a crisis with my taxpayer dollars, then I want some consequences laid on the corporate heads of these industries. The way you change behavior is to make sure there are some negative consequences to the behavior, not rewards. Every bailout should require a restructuring of the corporate environment that needed the bailout.

Shoppers charged over toilet paper brawl | Nine News Australia — dclements

I'm selling leaves in a ziplock bag for $10.

Here's the reality folks. If Italy had acted sooner, this may not have happened. Death rate there stands at 6%. — Baden

The reality is:

the Italian population is the oldest in Europe, with about 23 percent of the inhabitants age 65 or older — and with a median age of 47.3, compared with 38.3 in the US, according to Live Science, which cited the New York Times.

Many of those who have died in Italy were in their 80s and 90s, a segment of the population that is more susceptible to the ravages of COVID-19.

The overall death rate depends on the demographics of a population, Aubree Gordon, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, told Live Science. — NY Post

https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/heres-why-the-coronavirus-death-rate-is-so-high-in-italy/

Did you even read the link I posted?

Jost now

[qutoe=theguardian]
Live: Spain prepares for lockdown as WHO queston's UK "herd immunity" strategy


Turns out the pandemic experts haven't heard of this approach.

Why? because it's completely made up by propagandists to try to cover their asses. — boethius

...Says some who doesnt even do a basic Google search before posting ignorance like this.

I did a Google search for "coronavirus vs other outbreaks" (which isn't a search for "herd immunity" specifically), and the very first link mentioned heard immunity:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-deadly-is-the-coronavirus-compared-to-past-outbreaks

The fact is that previous flu pandemics have had higher death rates more more deaths than coronavirus, yet the media (and others) has fanned the flames, causing hysteria within the ignorant portion of the population.

It seems like most people see life through a political prism, which is a shame. It's why we have threads like this pointing fingers at each other rather than China - where all this shit comes from. No one questions a communist/socialist govt that has a fetish for population control and where the older population places a big burden on a socialist healthcare system and are therefore expendable.

He picks up where he feels Kant left off, with the world as representation, which is to say mental picture. It is a biological fact that our brains receive a "feed" of sensory data through the nerves, and build a picture from it, which is the world we know. The problem then becomes, what, if anything, is the real world, the "thing in itself," apart from being represented in the mind? Space, time, and cause/effect thus become merely the "program" that our minds use to build this representation, and we have no reason to believe that they are valid outside of it. Even science cannot penetrate this veil.

Schopenhauer's answer to the nature of the thing in itself is actually quite simple: our will. The desires and emotions we experience play out in time but not in space, and are the inner mechanism of causality. They are the direct line to ultimate reality, which he characterizes as an infinite striving. Applying this then to the rest of nature, he sees it in animals, plants, magnetism, gravity, and energy itself. Like white light through a prism the blind and indivisible will manifests itself through space and time as every single phenomenon in the universe, yourself included. Multiplicity is thus seen as an illusion, and death becomes a moot point. — 3017amen

So Schopenhauer questions our mind's picture, claiming to have no reason to believe that the picture is valid outside of it.

Then Schopenhauer goes about using his own observations (observations which is his own mental picture that he is so skeptical of representing facts of the world) of plants, magnetism, gravity, and energy itself to support his claim.
:roll:
Yep, typical philosophical bullshit.

If he is so skeptical about our understanding of animals, plants, magnetism, gravity, and energy itself, then how is it that he is using his understanding of animals, plants, magnetism, gravity, and energy itself to support his thesis?

The fact is that our mind is part of the world that it is representing. It is beholden to the same laws that the rest of the universe is. If something is a representation of something else, then by definition, the representation is about what is represented, or else it can't be a representation. A political representative that didn't represent it's constituents isn't a representative. They would be an unrepresentative.

So you're a panpsychist informationist. — Marchesk

If by "panpsychist", you mean that I believe everything from atoms to the universe is conscious, then no. I think we should clarify the distinctions between qualia, thoughts, experiences, and consciousness, and determine if any one is a fundamental building block of another.

Why would my feet be conscious if my brain was aware of the state of my feet? What layer of reality does my consciousness reside? Is it neurons that have consciousness, brains, or whole bodies? Why would there be different layers of consciousness if the upper layers could simply be conscious of the lower layers, thereby bringing them into existence? It seems a bit more complex than is necessary to claim the everything at every layer or reality is conscious, when consciousness seems to reside at a certain layer, and not all of them.

The objects that seem conscious are the ones that have brains. The brain could be thought of as an sensory information feedback unit. It is how the brain tracks behaviors and their results in real-time and compares it to some goal in the mind. It is a way of mapping one's progress towards changing the current state-of-affairs to match a conceptual state-of-affairs. This is where the feeling of "looking at qualia" that entails what many think of when they think of consciousness - an experience, with the experienced and the experiencer. I don't see matter other brains having this information feedback producing a "what it is like". Only brains do that, thanks to the massive energy they process for fuel.

The rest of the universe, we are told is "mostly empty space", and "matter and energy are interchangeable", so how is it that we can't think of consciousness as pure energy, or an energy feedback loop? How is that incompatible with a materialist view of the universe, and how would that leave consciousness under-explained?

I tend to think of information as the relationship between causes and their effects. So when I say everything is information, what I mean is that everything is causal relationships. You mentioned relationships before. Apples are the effects of prior causes - an accumulation of events, becoming exponentially more complex with the steady stream of energy flowing into the system, within a particular area. Our minds are a snapshot of a particular event in space-time, even symbolizing the snapshot with words, "a ripe apple", transforming the event in the world into an object of the mind, hence our idea of physicalism.

Materialism is wrong, it's information. — Marchesk

I don't know. What does it mean for something to be material as opposed to information? Why not just say the mind is made of matter? If you only know about matter by how it is represented in the mind as concepts, then what exactly is the nature of matter and how does it interact with mind if the mind is not matter as well? Is there any difference in how matter and information behave, or interact causally?

idealists have the problem of anthropomorphically projecting themselves onto a world that isnt composed of just ideas. Its information all the way down. Ideas are composed of qualia, or sensory data. Ideas are not fundamental - qualia are. If you can break down ideas into various sensations then ideas can't be the building blocks of reality.

Difference between epistemology and ontology. Hard problem raises the possibility that the ontology of the world is dualistic, but it also raises an epistemological question of whether we can know what the nature of consciousness is. — Marchesk

You have it backwards. The hard problem is the product of the dualists own making by positing two different substances with no means for them to interact. How does meat generate meatless illusions? There is no hard problem for a monist.

The problem of the relationship between body (objective) and mind (subjective) does not authorize a strict dualism. The mind is not independent of the body. There is no evidence of such a thing. In my opinion it is a problem related to emergence. Different levels of matter cannot be explained by the "lower" ones. That pseudo problem exists even between the macrophysical and microphysical (quantum mechanics) world. And no one says that chrysanthemums are independent of atoms.

Mind dependence of body is well attested. There is no need to abandon materialism. — David Mo

The problem is certainly obvious between the macrophysical and microphysical (quantum mechanics) world, but this could simply be ascribed to our ignorance. We could just be missing a crucial piece of the puzzle (the role minds play?).

The "levels" are actually mental viewpoints/snapshots from different size scopes. The "levels" would just be a digital representation of an analog variation in size scopes of reality. The different vantage points within the Milky Way galaxy and outside of it lend us to think about reality as different "levels" where there are none - just different vantage points of the same thing.

what the illusionist is saying is there are no ineffable, intrinsic, private and immediately apprehended sensations. There is no redness of red. Instead, there is an appearance of something which seems to have those qualities. — Marchesk

The illusion is that there is an appearance of something that is red that seems to have the quality of redness, but it doesn't? I don't get it. What is that something that appears to be red but isn't, and why does it appear red? What are we referring to when we say, "red"?

They even overlap providing fault-tolerant and reaffirming information about an object's location relative to the body
— Harry Hindu

Yes, and those senses still don't tell us most of what an object is without serious investigation by many people.

So it seems to me that a very important part of the description of some object is it's location relative to the body.
— Harry Hindu

Yes, but that's a relation. What is an object when we're not around to sense it? — Marchesk

Wait, I thought we needed many people to tell us what an object is, yet now you are asking what an object is without people. You're not being consistent.

Qualia certainly makes dualism a possibility. But there's no getting around some sort of dualism, even if it's only epistemic. There's a difference between how we experience, think and talk about the world and the world itself. Unless you're an anti-realist. — Marchesk

The only necessary dualism is cause and effect. Redness is a property of minds. Ripeness is a property of apples. When they are both causally related, the experience of a red apple occurs (the effect). Maybe the illusion is assuming apples are red as well as ripe instead of the correct answer which is that red represents ripe. One would be confusing one's mental properties with the properties of the apple. Just as saying the "apple is good", good is a property of minds that projects values onto objects in which values are not a property. It's not the apple that is good or red. The apple is simply ripe. Good and red refer to our gustatory and visual sensations of the apple's ripeness, and are not properties of the apple, but of our mind.

While multiple senses may provide fault-tolerance and reaffirmation, the downside is that they may also provide the appearance of multiple properties of an object where that object is actually simpler than that. One property can appear like five different properties to five different senses. Naive realist and idealist minds tend to confuse the properties of minds with the properties of the object that isn't another mind. Minds with multiple instruments may tend to make the world to appear to be more complicated than it is.

How we experience, think and talk about the world is part of the world itself. How we experience, think and talk about the world, is an effect of the world (natural selection) and has an effect on the world (culture and technology). I have been trying to point out that our minds have causal power and are in turn caused themselves. Our minds are just as real, and part of the world, as everything else is.

What is an "experience"? What does it mean for an object (a brain) to have, or generate, an "experience"?
— Harry Hindu

i feel like this ground has been covered already. — Marchesk

Really? Where?

How is the brain different from the experience?
— Harry Hindu

Are you asking whether idealism is the case? — Marchesk

No. I'm simply asking you what the difference between a brain and an experience is - ontologically. If the two are so distinct, then how does one generate (cause) the other? How does meat get fooled by illusions?

Right, so you use the concept if words to refer to other concepts for the purpose of communicating concepts. If "prudence" exhausts what it is to be your grandmother then both "grandmother" and "prudence" refer to the same concept. Words without concepts are simply ink on thin sheets of carbon or vibrating air molecules.

First step would be understanding how the illusion is generated. Neuroscience would have to supply that.

As for seeing things as they really are, eyes only give you limited information from a certain perspective. You need other instruments to form a proper physical description. — Marchesk

We don't just have eyes. We have other instruments (senses). While each one provides a different experience (seeing you is different than hearing you), they share this quality of depth. They even overlap providing fault-tolerant and reaffirming information about an object's location relative to the body. You are where I see you, hear you and feel you. So it seems to me that a very important part of the description of some object is it's location relative to the body. It is even how the visual field is arranged - the world located relative to the eyes.

Our subjective experiences are being misinterpreted as something which is hard to reconcile with any sort of objective explanation. — Marchesk

Maybe the problem (illusion) is assuming some kind of dualism, like subjective/objective, physical/mental, direct/indirect, etc.,

Sure, but that doesn't work for the experience of color, because physically color is a label for the wavelength of photons based on our having experiences of color. The photons themselves are not colored. It wouldn't matter if they were, because it's electrons which get sent to the visual cortex, not photons. The brain has to turn that stimulus into an experience of color.

As some people like to say in response to direct realism, the green grass doesn't get into our heads. It's not like the color green (or it's shape) hops onto photons from their reflective surface, rides the photons into our eyes, then hops on electrons to ride into the brain for us to see it. Rather, we generate an experience of green grass from the information provided by our senses. — Marchesk

What is an "experience"? What does it mean for an object (a brain) to have, or generate, an "experience"? How is the brain different from the experience?

Illusions are misinterpretations of sensory data (mirages). I still don't get what exactly is being claimed the illusion is - the sensory data being interpreted as sensory data, consciousness being interpreted as an experience being had by a physical body (whatever that means), or what?

What is it that is being misinterpreted, and what is it being misinterpreted as, and what is the truth (how it should be interpreted to overcome the illusion)? You overcome the illusion of a mirage by understanding that you see bending light, not pools of water. If we see light and not objects, mirages and bent sticks in water is what you would expect one to experience.

It seems to me that if you claim that it is an illusion, then you know how to overcome the illusion and see things as they truly are. You're going to have to explain the underlying mechanisms (the behavior of light and it's interaction with a visual sensory information processor) that create the effect (the mirage) and why it gets misinterpreted, or why it appears to be something that it isn't (as a pool of water rather than bent light waves).

Can something that is never used have a purpose?

Can something that doesn't have a purpose have a use?

Interrogatives, exclamatives, proper nouns, and imperatives come to mind — StreetlightX

If they "come to mind", how are they not concepts?

Words, sentences, grammar, spelling etc. These are all concepts that are conceptually related to the concept, language.

Think about this:

How would camouflage evolve if visual experiences were merely illusions, or fictions, and didn't play a causal role in nature. Just as predators and prey have a causal relationship in each other's evolution, camouflage and visual experiences play a causal role in the evolution of better ways to avoid visual detection and better visual systems to detect hidden objects.

The mind and "physical" bodies play a causal role in each others' evolution. In this sense, "physical" and "mental" categories become meaningless. It is all information.

"Out there in the world" is understood to be mind-independent. Naive realism assumes that objects have all the properties we perceive them to have, the way we perceive them. That has been shown to be wrong. The mind-independent world is not simply a reflection of our perceptions. Not unless you're a subjective idealist. — Marchesk

An indirect realist understands that objects have properties that our perceptions represent. If you understand causation, you understand that effects are not their causes. No, the apple isn't red, it is ripe. I get at it's ripeness (property of the apple) by experiencing redness (property of my mind). It doesn't make sense to talk about direct vs. indirect if I can get at the truth - which the state of ripeness of the apple. If you had direct access, and I had indirect access, but we both realized the apple is ripe, then what exactly is the meaningful difference?

Of course I'm assuming science is providing answers based on some correlation with the real world. But there is a long standing problem of perception. Which is why skepticism never completely goes away, and people come to different metaphysical conclusions about the nature of reality. — Marchesk

Science is based on making as many observations as possible from all perspectives. If science is based on observation and science wants to claim that those observations are illusions, then then scientists have pulled the rug out from under themselves.

Science is not compatible with the world being colored in, full of sound, feels, etc. — Marchesk

Science is based on observations, which entails colors, sounds and feelings representing the world as it is

Inference to the best explanation, given the overwhelming data from studies, experiments and various medical cases we have now.

Science is not compatible with the world being colored in, full of sound, feels, etc. But this was known to an extent in ancient philosophy. Full-blown naive realism is cannot be the case. Now maybe a sophisticated version of direct realism can work, but not one that places our perceptual sensations out there in the world. — Marchesk

This is a contradiction, as I was trying to point out before. If you're going to claim that our mind is an illusion and that naive realism cannot be the case, then how can you even claim that brains exist, as brains are concepts that stem from our experience with the world? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

How can you even claim that science has provided answers if we don't get at the real states-of-affairs of the universe in some way? Direct and indirect become meaningless if we get at the answers of the universe. Effects carry information about their causes - no matter how direct/indirect the causal relationship is. Each effect carries information about all subsequent causes - just as your visual experience (the effect) carries information about the ripeness of the apple, the amount of light in the environment and the state of your visual system. The eye doctor asks you to read a chart that is the constant where each patient is the variable. The eye doctor isn't testing the light or the chart when he asks you to read it. He's testing your visual system, as the light and the chart are the constants.

Why would the doctor reference your illusion to test your visual system?

Our perceptual sensations are out there in the world if there are other minds. If you were to call them other "illusions" wouldn't make much sense. Those "illusions" have causal power. Think of Beethoven and Picasso.

How does the brain introspect, and when a brain introspects, why doesn't it experience an arrangement of excited neurons rather than the qualia of colors, shapes, sounds, etc.,?
— Harry Hindu

Why would the brain produce a qualia of colors, shapes, sounds, etc.? Qualia aren't compatible with neuroscience. That's why it's called the hard problem. — Marchesk

For something to be useful, it has to have some sort of connection with real states of affairs in the environment.
— Harry Hindu

Yes, but I take it this position is assuming indirect realism. It's certainly assuming that science has shown that the world is not colored in, doesn't sound or taste or feel like we experience it. — Marchesk

If the world isn't colored in, or sound or feel like we experience it, then how can you say that there are brains that produce qualia? It seems to me that minds produce brains - which is a 3-dimensional colored shape as we experience it. What is it really "out there" - brains or minds? How does a mind "fictionalize" other minds - as brains?

A fiction would be useful for hiding the overwhelming complexity an organism is dealing with. But you raise some good question I don't know enough to answer. — Marchesk

That's more of a model, or representation. I don't think "illusion" or "fiction" would be the proper terms to use here. The illusion would be to mistake the representation for reality, just as a mirage is to mistake the behavior of light over a heated surface for a pool of water.

and a mirage would be an illusion within the "illusion" of consciousness,
— Harry Hindu
I'm not sure whether this is a pro or con. Maybe the fact that we're subject to illusions and hallucinations suggests that the entire thing is illusiory. Why would genuine qualia be subject to illusion? — Marchesk

Illusions are a mistake in judgement, or the wrong interpretation. The qualia that create the mirage is real. It is what you would expect to see if we see light, not objects (just as we see bent straws in water - we see light, not the actual objects). The part of the mind that interprets the qualia uses past experiences to interpret current experiences. The mirage looks like a pool of water and is interpreted as such - hence the illusion. The illusion is broken when you realize that the pool of water moves and your past experience is that pools of water do not move. More observations make better interpretations. Visual illusions are usually based on the mind believing that it is seeing objects and not light.

I'm loathe to use terms like "fiction" and "illusions" when it comes to consciousness. I don't understand how a "fiction" is useful for anything but entertainment, and a mirage would be an illusion within the "illusion" of consciousness, which doesn't make any sense. How does natural selection filter out or promote these introspective fictions and illusions? Are there "fictions" and "illusions" that are more useful than others? How and why? To say that one "illusion" is more useful for survival is saying that it is less of an illusion than some other concept. For something to be useful, it has to have some sort of connection with real states of affairs in the environment.

How does the brain introspect, and when a brain introspects, why doesn't it experience an arrangement of excited neurons rather than the qualia of colors, shapes, sounds, etc.,? Does it make sense to say that a brain can think about thinking? If it can do that, then is "thinking" (I think therefore I am) an illusion? How do you know where the illusions stop and reality begins to even say "I think, therefore I am"?

Honestly now, when you see a dog, do you really use words to tell yourself what you just saw wasn’t a cat? — Mww

That was what I was asking you based on your previous post. I made the point that the concepts that the words represent are what define larger concepts. You distinguish between dogs and cats with different concepts, which words are just representations of. So concepts DO define larger concepts, right? You can define a cat without words, but can you define a cat without concepts?

Descriptions and definitions are propositions composed of words; words represent concepts; therefore concepts describe and define concepts, which is impossible. A concept cannot define itself. If a concept cannot define itself, and if the reality of it is given, it must represent that which can be defined, but only as the means to facilitate the possibility of communication. We have no need of definitions in pure thought. — Mww

You seem to be confusing the concept with what represents the concept. If definitions and propositions are composed of words and words represent concepts, then the representations are describing the concepts, not the concept itself. It's like you are confusing the word "whiskers"
with whiskers. "Whiskers", "furry", "pointy-ears", "meow", "scratching furniture", "walk on four legs", etc. are all words, but they represent properties of a cat. The properties are not the words, they are actually characteristics that define a cat, with all of them together distinguishing them from say, dogs, who also have four legs, whiskers, are furry, but don't "meow" or scratch furniture.

Without using words (representations of concepts), can you distinguish cats from dogs? Can you distinguish cats from dogs using the concepts themselves, and not the representations (words)? Sure you can, it is those physical characteristics that you are aware of in your mind - that are pure thought - mental images of cats, and the sounds they make, in contrast with the mental images of dogs and the sounds they make. In your mind, you have a description of a cat that isn't composed of representations, but of the actual physical characteristics that make a cat different than a dog, and anything else.

Smaller concepts (whiskers, meowing, etc,.) define larger concepts (cats).

How do you compare these things in their attempts to seek knowledge about the world? Is science a part of philosophy? Is science an entirely different method of seeking knowledge about the world? Does religion have any meaningful role to play in seeking knowledge about the world? — Malice

Knowledge is a justified (true?) belief.

Faith does not lead to knowledge because faith is belief without justification, and sometimes in spite of justifications, or reasoning, that contradict or oppose those beliefs.

Philosophy just asks questions, even asking what knowledge is, and is therefore a mode of skepticism or recognizing our ignorance - which is the antithesis of knowledge.

Science is the only method that leads to knowledge through both empiricism and reasoning. Both are necessary components of proper justification for some belief to qualify as knowledge.

Even reasoning requires some kind of empirical structure. What we think or reason about takes the form of our empirical structures of colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes. How do you know you are thinking, and how do you know what you are thinking about, if your thoughts or reasoning don't take some form (I think, therefore I am)?