Nonsense in the Wittgenstein meaning of it? If let's say Earth is no more, what of the universe? That's an event that can (and will) happen. So how is that nonsense? There was a universe "before" humans and "after". So why the hostility? It's not nonsense, you are just unreasonably miffed by the subject. Wittgenstein's idea of "nonsense" isn't a license for shutting down all inquiry in the name of calling out "Nonsense!". — schopenhauer1

Well, not hostile, just in disagreement.


Witt writes:

Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit
to thought, or rather—not to thought, but to
the expression of thoughts: for in order to be
able to draw a limit to thought, we should
have to find both sides of the limit thinkable
(i.e. we should have to be able to think what
cannot be thought).
It will therefore only be in language that
the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the
other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.


One cannot think of a limit to thought for one cannot conceive of the opposite of thought. It takes thought to conceive. He knows that to have an idea at all in mind is to have logic in play already. One can't imagine a logic-free "world". Having a perspective is exactly the same thing in this matter here.
Imagining a universe before humans is, of course, a conception. When we talk about a Big Bang, it is a projection of what the world is processed in logic and experience. Take away this latter, the BIg Bang is just meaningless.

This just sounds like a complaint without content. If there are no sentient beings. What then? I'll try to use as little words that you don't like as possible here... — schopenhauer1

It's is just an argument from nonsense. To talk about perspectivelessness is nonsense.

Your idea of "bad metaphysics" was just asserted without any jumping from your claim to your conclusion. A philosopher can't just write an article "Bad metaphysics. The end".

But anyways, you seem to be answering your own objections.. Yes, a universe has no privileged perspective on its own. But my question is what is a universe without a perspective? I mean literally, what does that look like? The only thing I can posit that people might say (especially information-enthusiasts) are localized interactions somehow inhering in the universe. But I don't really know if I buy that. — schopenhauer1

Bad metaphysics is metaphysics that has no grounding in analysis of experience. Talk about God as omniscient, omnipotent and so on--one asks, for evidence and it isn't forthcoming. Talk about God as, say, a grounding for ethical affairs that are inherently incomplete due to undeniable features of the given world, then metaphysics is not entirely a fiction.

If there is no privileged perspective, then the term 'perspective' stands in its meaning only against other perspectives, and loses meaning entirely in talk about "a universe without a perspective". Anything you say is already "perspectival"; to speak at all implies perspective; to say "without perspective" is itself a perspective.

I think the idea of the blind spot is a metaphor for the failure to recognize a bias held by our own position - humans often assume a god-like, objective understanding of reality when it is actually a perspective with limitations. In this I think the notion is appropriate and I think Wayfarer states the problem well. — Tom Storm

The idea of a blind spot implies that we re blind to something, something there that we cannot "see". If it is conceived as a metaphor, then it has to be such that both sides of the metaphor are known. I have brought this up earlier: a metaphor only makes sense, as in, Ingrid such a tiger in political conversation, if one knows about tigers and Ingrid. Both. Witt argued that one sided metaphors are nonsense. So the blind spot in this context, would be a one sided metaphor. Blind, but blind regarding what?

I am not discussing knowledge versus other experience here. Rather, I am asking, what is a universe without any perspective? We imagine a universe independent of humans, but that imagining takes on the character of what "we" perceive it as. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, but I think you know where this goes: In order for the "without any perspective" to make any sense at all, the concept of perspective has to make sense. Of course, a perspective only makes sense vis a vis other perspectives. There is no single, privileged "perspective" except in the "mind of God" and this puts the idea clearly in the area of bad metaphysics. This is nonsense.

I’d take time to read that article carefully, it has sound provenance. — Wayfarer

You are right, and I hadn't read it all the way. So now I've read it, and I do appreciate the direction it takes. But my views on this run rather radical, perhaps you've noticed. Take this: 'Our experience and what we call ‘reality’ are inextricable."

I put it quite differently: Our experience IS reality, and this is not an idealist claim. It is just to say that whether you want to talk about what is out there and in here or not, experience is not such that it is to be compared to or set apart from what is real. Then the matter takes its epistemic course: The cat considered out there has no "proximity" to me, since there is nothing about out thereness that is at all intimated. But the presence of the cat there, just as it is, this is where the "real" gets its meaning; this is the "originary" locus where talk about the real begins. It is not "in here" but simply "there". It is the intuitive presence of the cat as well as the eidetic presence of the thought that conceives it, these are, I would argue against others, direct and unassailablein their presence, whatever that means, which brings me to the problem: I say "whatever that means" because meanings distort presence, and the word 'presence' is itself embedded in a system of thought, which is freighted along with the simple utterance.

Hard to put this succinctly; there is a premise lurking in the shadows of all this: the point of philosophical work is not to arrive at propositional truth. It is to realize value; it is liberative (which is why I take Eastern thinking seriously. I suspect philosophy's issues were solved long ago, sitting under a fig tree) Value rules inquiry, not thought; and thought is pragmatic, a utility, to achieve value. We think to make things happen, but thought cannot "deliver" reality any more than a hammer can deliver a house. Language has use value. Talk about universals vs particulars, e.g., is simply more talk about meanings and how they converge, reflect, straddle, agree with, and so on, each other. And this is a big point: Concepts will never converge with the real, but they themselves are real. One simply has to abandon the scientific insistence on a fiction called materiality. Thinking is not disputable as a "presence"; what thinking is about is entirely different. Of course, I did just say that all language is like this, distorting or interpretative, so it has to be explained how a "direct" intuition unassailable in its affirmation, while the language's nature is inherently something assailable.

Anyway, this is where my thought begins on the matter of what is real. Bringing inquiry back to the foundation of all things, the actual presence of the world. One has to ask, then listen at the intuitive center, where, as Eugene Fink puts it, the "being-tendency (enworlding)" is revealed. One discovers, again, I argue, something alien and profound vis a vis our naturally lived lives.

The problem is in the ambiguity of the concept of consciousness. For example, a computer is able to react to the presence of a person or even to the expression of her face. Can we call this consciousness? If the answers is yes, then consciousness is everywhere, because everything is able to react to anything. If the answer is no, then it becomes extremely difficult to show the difference. When I say “extremely difficult”, I refer also to Chalmers’ expression “hard problem of consciousness”. Obviously, anybody is able to show that their position is not stupid, since the very existence of the “hard problem of consciousness” is impossible to prove.
In order to talk properly about consciousness we need first to admit this ambiguity and confusion. The first problem about consciousness is in using the word “consciousness” as we knew what we are talking about, while actually we are in the middle of the deepest confusion and ambiguity. — Angelo Cannata

Frankly, consciousness is not the hard problem, as I see it. It is the one thing IN consciousness (all things are, no?) that is worse then hard; impossible. And that is valuing, our affectivity.

Philosophy can even be considered ridiculous, hypocritical, stupid, in its efforts to assign to quantums and neurons and structures and molecules the task of building a good relationship of man with himself. Pascal taught us not to escape ourselves through the "divertissement", through diversion.
We can even consider noble, honourable, this pseudo-science, because science is research that, as such, improves human knowledge and human condition.
It is an easy fact, though: how can we think of "understanding" ourselves, our consciousness, our being "I", by identifying it as a "hard problem of consciousness", or a matter of quantums and electrons? This is still the typical, prehistoric, rough, mentality of solving problems through "understanding", which means grasping, conquering, destroying, sacking, war.
What I am talking about is not morality, it is knowledge, a different approach to knowledge. You cannot gain knowledge of consciousness through quantums and relativity, because consciousness is you, the subject, the one who is waiting to be met. You cannot meet yourself through quantums and metaphysics. Rather, what Pascal suggested was "esprit de finesse", spirit of fineness, or we can just say spirit. — Angelo Cannata

Teetering on the edge of phenomenology.

Science cannot be the "measure of man/woman" because it is an abstraction that merely quantifies the world, and, as I think you are saying, a person is not some quantifiable mass with weight, density, velocity, acceleration, gravity, temperature, chemical composition and so on. A brain, a body, is this, but a person is falling in love, and off cliffs, and worrying insanely, and wondering, and fabulous, and wretched, and personality, and irony and on and on.

Two VERY different sets of descriptive criteria. The latter, I would argue, subsumes the former. Science is not science until someone comes along, has an interest, invents vocabularies, thinks, and the rest.

And that's the blind spot. — Wayfarer

But of course, all there is, is blind spot, for positing what is not blind would issue from what is blind.

In the Blind Spot sits experience: the sheer presence and immediacy of lived perception.
This statement is LOADED with problematic talk about something that is "blind". One has to wonder how blindness, us, can produce its opposite to set such a thing against itself. I don't think this is impossible, frankly, but it will not be done via any model science can provide.

Yet humans at least act as though we have a privileged perspective to being close to what is “really going on”, more than other animals at least. Now take away humans, take away animals. We get a view from nowhere. Here is true metaphysics. — schopenhauer1

True metaphysics is an idea established by OUR deficit. Take away the deficit, then there is no metaphysics, nor physics. To think of an "absolute" metaphysics is just bad metaphysics.

And it can be reasonably argued that the measure of superiority between species is not about what one knows. One could have all the factual knowledge there could be and still it could be objected: so what? It is not knowledge that is the measure, but value. The depth and breadth of affectivity.

I wonder what all that elephant brain's 257 billion neurons actually do; certainly not philosophy. But perhaps some glorious, unfathomable sense of well being. A world of extraordinary experiential depth and breadth, I would hazard, is there.

:rage: I used to positively hate emojis. Now I see their value.

-Again chronicling is irrelevant. What Rand believed or not is irrelevant. Objectivity stands on its own merits. Objectivity has been an established criterion way longer than Rand's takes on its importance. — Nickolasgaspar

Sorry Nickolasgaspar. I mean no disrespect, but you are starting to sound like a nitwit.

ITs irrelevant to this topic but you can always google it. Well here is the first link I got.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/ — Nickolasgaspar

Nickolasgaspar, just say it. Why do you think Kant is just metaphysical speculation? Proof is in the pudding. Give me a paragraph, your assignment: Write in one paragraph a concise statement on why Kant's CPR is speculative metaphysics.
I'm not going to say up front that it isn't. It's just, if you know it, you can explain it. so explain it. Who knows, maybe you've got something there, but we will never know until you properly say it.
People who have something to say, say it. Spell it out Nickolasgaspar. I'll help you:

In Kant's CPR, he argues.............It is his claim that .......that I argue is merely metaphysical speculation, because........................

-And.....? its the same way. We observe people's brains like we observe all environmental phenomena. We gather systematic information for every aspect of that organ and its factions. That is a text book example of special pleading and an argument from ignorance fallacy.
Our ignorance of specialized knowledge on how the brain works doesn't justify to assume supernatural explanations. — Nickolasgaspar

You have to understand that philosophy's business is necessitated by the real condition in human affairs, which is its foundational indeterminacy. This cannot be ignored since that would mean ignoring a condition in plain sight, and science will not permit this. This would amount to ad hoc dismissal. So we apply the scientific method: What has to be the case, in order for what is the case before us to be what it is. Usually in science, this works out fairly well, no? One's sees mountains' irregular features and asks, why? What caused this? And theory of weathering is born, so to speak.

But what if the question about something has no empirically observable response? As when we ask, what is knowledge? You should see first that this is not a merely speculative question. One encounters the question as one would encounter a any other phenomenon's question. Only here, the question goes to the observer and the act of perceiving, and this is a foundational question, applicable to all things, for all things are first presented as knowledge claims before they are taken up as empirical claims.

If you take up the question of the nature of a knowledge claim, you are thrown into a problem that is unique, for anything you can say is itself the problem, that is, it too presupposes knowledge claims. To think at all presupposes what is inherently part of its own problematic.

Now this is NOT an invented issue. So all that you want to put out there in favor of what science has to say is not even on the table, because, of you will, the putting anything on the table at all is included in the problematic.

Look, at this point, any reasonable person has to see this. So, I don't take issue AT ALL with anything science has to say, any more than science would reasonably take issue itself. So spare me all this endless droning on about what science has to say. Try to put it aside, because after reading your comments, I am truly beginning to suspect you might have a problem, one very unbecoming of a scientist: dogmatism. Consider philosophy a paradigmatic challenge, and you have to switch the mode of your analytical approach. The question presents itself whether or not a knowledge claim

So, sorry for not going tit for tat with you in all you said. It would be pointless. I mean, I read it, but you have to make that fundamental shift away from what an empirical argument would look like; or better: Remember entirely what empirical arguments look like, but ask a question about them, which goes to their basic epidemic indeterminacy. You are invited then to analyze the structure of the epistemic relations, and this is inevitably gogin to be just as question begging as empirical science, but at least here, in the Husserl, Heidegger, and so many others, here one has brought the natter to its most basic analysis, because the work here done is specifically about the revealed features of the knowledge relationship, and this is as far as inquiry can go.

It is because philosophy takes things to this level that you find it disturbingly without content. But this IS the foundation of being human. Underneath the assumptions of all science there are all questions, nothing definitive.

You like to call this an argument from ignorance, but then, all science goes this way! Before there were theories about stellar composition based on spectral analysis, there were questions about what stars were that were unanswered, I.e., ignorance.

No one has mentioned "god" claims. This is your doing.

And intellectually unevolved. What's particularly dangerous isn't Rand herself, but the cult-like following of her. She's only somewhat responsible for that, but not entirely. I think she herself would mostly be against the dogmatism and zealotry of her followers. Having once given her due attention, I've since moved beyond her -- although there are still aspects I like. I like that she echoes Aristotelian virtue ethics, for example. But her views on ontology, epistemology, and politics is very limited indeed. — Xtrix

People are pretty clueless about this sort of thing. Back in the 40's, The Fountainhead was made into a movie starring Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper, a kind of celebration of the capitalist ubermensch, the guy whose talent placed him far above the pettiness of normal people's affairs. Everyone else was a parasite on his genius. Rand thought herself like this.

American Christians were so full of themselves and worshiped the corporate gods of capitalism, and so afraid of communism, they never understood that she was telling them all they were just a bunch parasites to the rich and famous, to whom they should all bow low. And Rand was a professed atheist! They bowed anyway.

-Nothing really except his critique. I only pointed out that no matter how great the name of philosopher, a metaphysical speculation is just that. — Nickolasgaspar

Details, Nickolasgaspar, details. What, exactly in his Critique is metaphysical speculation?

Do you have objective evidence of mind properties rising independent of a functioning biological brain (natural process).
If you do have you then you should make some space on your shelves for a Nobel Prize...
That is a pseudo philosophy. — Nickolasgaspar

What makes the case of the brain so unique is that while exterior events are forthcoming for observation, the brain itself is problematic, because the only way to confirm its existence is through its own operations, thus, one would have to establish how the brain can be its own source of verification, and this can only be done through the very brain processes in question. Put clearly: all that experience is, is brain phenomena, and the only way one can confirm the brain's existence is through these very phenomena. How is it that one can stand apart from the brain and observe it apart from the very phenomena that are posited as brain generated? All you ever get is the phenomena; you can never achieve that Archimedean point to truly witness the brain.

This, of course, problematizes all witnessed events, for how does one ever witness what is NOT a phenomenon? You need that perspective from another position that is not phenomenological.

Good luck with this. If you can respond in a way that shows the phenomenon can be bypassed, and an observer can jump into the "real" world that is not conditioned and constructed by thought and experience, not only will you win the Nobel Prize, but you will have discovered God's omniscient providence.

First of all your answer doesn't really address any points made in my first paragraph. We don't have a way to be sure whether our feedback of an invisible underlying reality is accurate or not. What we can verify is that in different scales of reality we observe different characteristics that are quantifiable and verifiable.
What Kant or any philosopher says about metaphysical aspects of ontology is IRRELEVANT and an argument from false authority since there aren't any experts or authorities in metaphysical claims! — Nickolasgaspar

I have no idea what this is about. What makes you think Kant talks about metaphysics??

Of course they have. If you talk about mind properties non contingent to natural processes or "post modern Theology" or accept unfalsifiable metaphysical statements as foundations for your philosophical views then both of my labels are justified in this conversation!
Those terms just point out that the promoted ideas do not carry epistemic foundations sot they can not be used as tools for the understanding of the world (not that they are wrong). — Nickolasgaspar

But none of this applies. You are having a discussion with yourself. Mind properties not contingent to natural processes? But of course they are. All I ask you is, what are natural processes? And how can one separate ontology from epistemology? Do do this would require the most egregious metaphysics, as if one could identify something epistemically detached from one. There is nothing metaphysical about asking the simple question: what connects S to P in the equation, "S knows P"? Are you suggesting we should ignore this question? Is this what you call science, ignoring glaring questions contradict your paradigms? I suspect you're heard of Thomas Kuhn? What do you think he would say about this? Do you understand the scientific method? Think this through: it is a method that connects knowledge with the world. How do you think this happens, magically? This has to be explained, and you don't turn away because it is difficult. You engage it because it is difficult, but it is not the job of a scientist. It is the philosopher's job. It is NOT a metaphysical question. It simply accepts that the objects before us cannot be conceived apart from the experience in which they are found.
It is, in its essential justification, that easy. Science is very good at describing objects in the world. This is given. It has no clue at all as to how to describe the intuitive foundation that constitutes that-which-is-being-taken-up by science nor can it speak of epistemic relations, THE foundational relation upon which all science rests. One does not reach into absurdities to do this. One simply observes the relationship and analyses the structure of experience. Nothing metaphysical at all. these are just reflexive responses you have to things unfamiliar.

- Is it? Are they? Maybe you are right.
Two problems.
1. What do you mean by reading philosophy? Chronicling? Finding out who (philosopher) said what?
Do you really think that Chronicling is Philosophy or that it will help you to promote a metaphysical statement to an epistemic degree of value, by knowing about it?
The fact that those conclusions have never being evaluated or used to produce abbitional knowledge or wise claims that we can act upon..... doesn't raise any flags for you?
Sure some great names made some metaphysical claims that you agree with...this is all you have!
The question is What makes you think that they are philosophical or at least meaningful?

2.People in science are generally philosophically clueless....meaning that they are really bad in Chronicling. THis is because they ignore ideas that are not proven Wise and with zero epistemic potential.
They are only familiar with Philosophical ideas that are epistemically and instrumentally valuable. (Naturalism, Objectivism, Humanism, Situational ethics etc etc etc ).
So at least in my case I don't give much attention to philosophical claims that do not achieve the goal set by Philosophy itself....to provide Wise claims about our world on solid epistemic grounds.
Sorry If I sound condescending...that was not my intention. — Nickolasgaspar

Chronicling? You would have to say what you mean. Are you talking about recording history?

There is only one goal set for philosophy--only one: to examine the world at the level of the most basic assumptions. Period.
On condescension: All is forgiven. Sometimes I fail to realize that people simply do not know what philosophy is. The presumption of knowing without, well, knowing, is common.

So never mind, then, and put all this aside. Have a lovely day!

Ayn Rand devotees are cute. — Xtrix

And dangerous. Like libertarians, morally unevolved.

How I this an arguement against anything I said? You need to rephrase. — Harry Hindu

By calling something accidental, you are implying purpose. By implying that inanimate objects, like the universe, have accidents you are projecting purpose (anthropomorphism) onto things that have no purpose. There is no purpose outside a mind's own goals, therefore there are no accidents outside of some mind's goals. — Harry Hindu

You are saying there are no "accidents" in the world apart from the mind that conceives such things. Calling something an accident is simply saying it is contingent. All things are contingent, most philosophers would say, and this means they are not "stand alone" in the meaning they have. Meanings are contextual, and nothing that can be understood, stands outside of a context.
"The world" is contingent; to say otherwise is just bad metaphysics, with one exception. Value. And this really isn't an exception at all. Or is it? Value is where things get interesting.

Paraphrasing

Spock (bleeding): I'm pondering upon the meaning of life.

Dr. Leonard McCoy (applying compression to the wound): Feeling philosophical, eh? That's what massive blood loss will do to you. — Agent Smith

Better: Morpheus: "Do you think that's air you're breathing now?"

That's what religiologists, culturologists, and the like do. Not what religious people do. — baker

I know what they do and how they think. Philosophy's job, as I see it, is to take this, and give a reflective analysis. What is going on when we pull away from the participation, and see it in a broader context?

By calling something accidental, you are implying purpose. By implying that inanimate objects, like the universe, have accidents you are projecting purpose (anthropomorphism) onto things that have no purpose. There is no purpose outside a mind's own goals, therefore there are no accidents outside of some mind's goals. — Harry Hindu

Still too slippery, Harry. How is this different from what I said?

Yes, it can look like this. It can also look like my uncle Raymond who has a phd in geology. Do better!

-You can never say that an objective set of observations can or cant mirror nature accurately!
You are using an argument from ignorance fallacy as an excuse to dismiss our only credible and objective source of knowledge and sneak in pseudo philosophical speculations as competitive ontological frameworks.
Again I am not saying that our observations are absolute true or the picture we receive is 100% accurate. I only pointing out that we can not evaluate the accuracy of our observation so we are forced to work with what we got (pragmatic necessity) either they agree with our metaphysical worldviews or not! On the other hand idealistic and supernatural claims fall outside our Cataleptic Impressions and our methods of observation so we have zero objective information about these speculations. — Nickolasgaspar

But reading Kant does not yield zero information. That is, well, silly. Not that he's right about everything. Not the point.

I don't read Tyson. He is too poetic for my taste and diluted in epistemology. Again phenomenology has many varieties. Some are philosophical but many are pseudo philosophical. This is the problem with Philosophy. Under the same umbrella term its possible to found good and bad Philosophy!
My statement "whatever it means" was my response to the claim "consciousness being fundamental".
ITs was not a cheep blow. I used that statement because consciousness in Neuroscience has a specific definition and pseudo philosophy/supernaturalism definitions are pretty vague.
What verify in science is in direct conflict with the proclaimed "role" of consciousness by pseudo philosophical views. — Nickolasgaspar

You toss terms like "pseudo" and "supernaturalism" around like you think they have some place in this disagreement. To me it is just the presumption of condescension usually found among those who are limited in their reading. People in science generally are philosophically clueless, which is to be forgiven; after all, they don't read philosophy, or, if they do, it ends up being the philosophy of science.
Generally, when I ask someone with your predilections, they really haven't read anything.

-What I personally think is irrelevant. In science we establish Sufficiency and Necessity between a causal mechanism and the effect by verifying Strong Correlations between a process and a phenomenon. So to explain this process in terms of your example.....an Environmental or organic stimuli (a drowning child or a pebble or a fish breaking the surface of the water etc) produces connections in the brain (surface ripples ) that in turn enables the emergence of mental conscious state with a specific conscious content( wave, bubbles, foam, distorted reflections etc). — Nickolasgaspar

Personally?? The idea here is that a CT scan is not a mirror of the mind in the truest sense of what a mirror is. We can talk like this, but this is a metaphor at work here. In the matter at hand, imagine you had a CT scan of something, but you were told you had to dismiss all familiar possibilities for its interpretation. So much for interpretation. But then, you do have what is there before you to be taken not as something impossibly beyond the phenomenon itself, but simply AS itself. That is where we are.

In this case there the phenomenon is all things. The relation in question is epistemic. If you want to declare the epistemic relation to be a causal one, then you will have a lot of explaining to do. For one thing, the very notion of causality itself would have to be causally accounted for.
The idea here is not to deny what science does, nor its conclusions nor its theorizing. It is to say something really quite simple and without argument: all science has to say rests with what lies before the perceiving intelligence. This is, if you will, a horizon of intuition. Nobody disagrees with this. The most devoted analytic philosopher understands that phenomenology cannot be refuted, only ignored by people why prefer to think of other things. Who cares? You may thematize the world as you please as long as the world has those themes there for the inquiry.

Again you are making an argument from ignorance (because we can not disprove that there is an addition level of reality responsible for mental states we can dismiss or ignore Neuroscience's epistemology without evidence against it and without any evidence for the suggested idea)!
This is NOT how the burden of proof works. This is not how we identify a Default position(Null Hypothesis) .
This is fallacious reasoning! We can not throw out of the window our objective observations and frameworks that make testable predictions (diagnose pathology) and real life technical applications (accurately read complex thoughts, surgery and medicinal protocols)...just because some believe a fallacious claim!
By definition the truth value of a fallacious claim is unknown so we are forced to dismiss it as pseudo metaphysics. — Nickolasgaspar

Not to ignore neuroscience's epistemology. To realize that this epistemology is based upon something more foundational: intuitive givenness. Science is left alone since no one is denying its claims. It is a different world of inquiry altogether.
If you are looking for evidence, and you want to be a good neuroscientist, consider how you would you would translate neurological events into events that are not neurological. There is no assumed ignorance. Just do it. If I asked you to do this in any other case of identifiable connectivity, you wouldl be appalled at the presumption that one could make a scientific claim with out this connection in place. So, just make it. If you cannot, and you can't, you may continue on in your fashion. But you would be thoroughly disabused about the foundational validity of your claims.
Or you can exercise your curiosity and ask questions like, how is it that ideas and object are related? I cannot apprehend an object apart from the understanding, so is it that objects cannot be considered as a "stand alone" presence? What does stand alone even mean at the basic level of inquiry? And on and on.
Pseudo metaphysics? Yes, I despise this sort of thing. I am interested in authentic metaphysics.

-I think I understand what you want to say. You are misusing the term "observation" and that creates a miscommunication. To set things straight , of course we can observe the act of believing and knowing by many methods. We can either compare brain scans in relation to specific stimuli, check blood profile , behavior etc.
What we can't observe is how others individuals subjectively experience those states. This is because it is a subjective experience!
Our goal is not to experience other peoples experiences!!!!! Its nonsensical to even suggest it! What w can do is to verify the processes responsible for the experience. We can do that with objective methods of investigation. — Nickolasgaspar

You have to read more carefully, and then think more carefully. I did say, "even in one's interior observations." I do suspect your problem is that you don't have a capacity to think beyond the models provided the science text. Observe the thought, the experience rising within. Observe that YOU are in a believing state. To observe this is an obvious and simple matter. You have beliefs and you know this. So, there you are believing the sun is out or the cat is sleeping, and conviction is, say, upon you. Now ask, how is it this belief state has verification? That is, clearly you believe and trust your belief, but what is this trust grounded upon? It is purely an intuitive presence of belief that determines this, but because this is given without a justificatory grounding, then it sits there, indeterminate, believing, but at its basis, indeterminate. Of course, you can say, this indeterminacy is the best we can do. We do not live in the mind of God, and so all knowledge claims are like this. And I say, brilliant. This is our indeterminacy.

The more time you spend trying to see this, the more you understand that this condition is not remote from our existence. It is only remote FROM the pov of the presumption of knowing, which is pervasive in all things, like passing the salt and taking a bus. This philosophical perspective is THE perspective: a suspension of the "pass the salt" affairs in order to examine things at a level where presumption itself can be interrogated. Philosophy asks, what is belief?

The "knowing of anythings" is the process of interacting with the world and composing objective descriptions about it. Knowledge is any claim that's objectively in agreement with current facts and carries Instrumental value. Everything gets in our brain by empirical interactions. If you have ever observed babies growing up, you will see that in their early years they know nothing about the world. By interacting with it and testing their assumptions (this is why they are prone to accidents lol) their small brains construct a mental model. This process is called Learning. We can see the changes in the brain and how learning things affect size and function. — Nickolasgaspar

This is just evasion. Or you really can't understand the question. Empirical interactions? But this is exactly what is being questioned. You can't say, oh well, these are just the way of it. Is this how science works?? Is a cloud just a cloud, with no care given to its anatomical analysis?

The think is we are talking about the knowledge on a phenomenon that is studied by a Scientific discipline so "understanding philosophy" or better listening to pseudo philosophical ideas on the mind or consciousness is irrelevant.
When we need to learn things about the causal mechanisms of a biological phenomenon....we study science.
When we want to understand the implications in real life of this knowledge, its value and meaning for our lives...then we use philosophy.
WE NEVER use philosophy to assume magical ontologies that are Unnecessary, Insufficient and Unfalsifiable.
Its not like they are the products and conclusions of our observations!! Someone made up an magical realm and placed his idea in a safe place away from falsification without any epistemic foundations! — Nickolasgaspar

Quite the opposite. What is magical are unexamined assumptions. You are fond of the world magical. This is a sure sign of a dogmatic personality. There is therapy for this; it is called reading outside what dictates your thoughts. It is not magic your fear. It is the unknown, the disconnect from the ready grasp, the letting go of certainty and familiarity, this frightens you. Understandable. It is disquieting to learn that the world is, at the basic level, alien to your ability to know.

-"This is an epistemic relation, not a causal one."
-Correct....observing doesn't cause the event you observe....where exactly do you see a problem???
I don't get what problem do you see in an event (volcano) and an observer observing the event (which is a different event on its own).
Could you point out where the problem is???? — Nickolasgaspar

It is the question that has been there throughout. "Observing doesn't cause the event you observe," THIS is just massively naive. What, is causality suspended to account for how you, the perceiver, can "reach out" to that over there? Remember, I am not thinking like aa phenomenologist at all here. I am thinking like an empirical scientist. Witness two distinct events and say the one has a relation to the other, it MUST BE a causal relation. Unless you have something else in mind for objects and there relations? Whatever it is, it will be reduced to a causal accounting.

I'm not a post-modernist or deeply read in Derrida, but I find myself agreeing for the most part. For me it seems that the anti-foundationalist conclusions of po-mo are an inevitable consequence of a process that began in earnest (perhaps) with the enlightenment project. We have peeled away the layers of the onion and found that there are only layers and ultimately nothing at the core. While this represents a freedom of sorts, it terrifies and outrages those who insist on foundations. Humans seem hard-wired for this, we navigate via certainty. The challenge for us all is how to reinvent ourselves in relation to this conception. My prediction in the short term is that the culture wars will lead us back into flailing 'certainties' and ever escalating cant. — Tom Storm

This "reinventing ourselves" sounds like Heidegger and Nietzsche before him. True, I think. But I would go one step further: I put aside terms like "hard wiring" for this. It suggests a resignation to some inevitable limitation that is undefined. One thing about onion layers is, if you will, the onion itself, which has layers, no doubt, questions about questions, and there is no way out of this. But that about which the questions apply sits there. This is existence. Can this be questioned? Of course. But there is in question the palpable world that does not belong to language. This deserves analysis as a palpable world. Tricky.

.

I think that what you're saying was already well known thousands of years ago, and was even discussed by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue.

And all this elaboration on speech and meaning were already discussed very sensibly by Locke, Reid, Priestley and others.

Was there more added later on? Very much so. Quite a lot.

I think you simplify analytic philosophy. People like Nagel, Haack, Tallis, McGinn and a few others are very, very good.

But, to each there own. — Manuel

Derrida is not Plato. Analytic philosophers have been very helpful for me. It is the sacrifice of content for the sake of clarity that I don't approve of. The world is, at its epistemic foundation, a really, impossibly interesting place. Philosophy should deal with this, not ignore it. Post modern theology, the so called French turn, following Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas et al, does this.

I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation.
The only things that do "fall away" in oxygen deprivation practice are your cells and tissues, specifically, your brain cells. It's an ascetic practice that doesn't lead to any noble attainment.

Again, I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation. — baker

Fear not, I breathe. It is not as radical as it sounds. But you are invited to wonder what the experience is about.

Why should I be content with someone else’s answers to that? — praxis

You certainly should not be. I take this question to be truly primordial, issuing form the the world, if you will, not the church. The church invents "answers" with its robes and solemn initiation rites, etc. Beneath all this is the question that is buried, It is a terrible impossible question the more it is pondered, something we loose a sense of while staring at our cell phones. Not to be cynical of modern life, which a like. But it is very, very weird, not to put too fine a point on it, to pull away from it and reclaim that original territory of wonder and terror.

A.k.a. hypoxia. — baker

Ahhh. But what is hypoxia? It is not a deficit of oxygen outside of the physiologist's lexicon. And there IS an outside of this.

No. Evolution is happening now. As long as environments with organisms change, there will be selective pressures to adapt in some way to those changes. For things to happen by accident implies that there was a goal or purpose in things being a certain way that somehow wasn't - as if the universe has a goal or purpose as existing without the existence of opposable thumbs, yet it still happened anyway. It also implies that you know how the universe was suppose to be (without the existence of opposable thumbs) yet they exist despite how you know it was suppose to be. Nothing happens by accident. What happens now is dependent on what has happened before. — Harry Hindu

It sounds like you are saying that by calling something accidental we imply the nonaccidental, and the nonaccidental is just presumptuous assumption the calling it accidental is supposed avoid. By calling something structureless, we assume structure in the calling.

But this is true, of course. The term accidental is defined in a contextual embeddedness, and it plays off other terms for its meaning. You speak from a position outside of this?

It's not clear that actual religious people think that way about religion. They are not relativists and doubters like that.

It's Easter time. The local Catholic parish sends out a monthly newsletter to everyone living here, including the non-Catholics. "This is the time of celebration, of the victory of life over death", "Christ has risen", and so on reads the newsletter.

To suggest that the people who wrote this newsletter believe that they are dealing with something merely constructed about the radical unknown??? — baker

I think you are right about that. But then, a newspaper deliverer does think of herself as, say, a pawn in the grand capitalist game. There is "living in" without pause or question, then there is stepping away into a broader context, and giving an account.

Religion is the broadest possible context, which is without form itself, brought down to earth, if you will, through the rituals and the candles, and the spooky dark church interiors (which I like), and so on. But ask aunt Betty who sits in a pew on Sunday, and she will tell you about Jesus and redemption, or the like.

Now that humankind has appeared on the scene we can begin to evolve more consciously. Certainly this can be done on the individual level: this forum is evidence of a will to psychical evolution. It may be a Morlock-Eloiesque evolution, but it always is. We found an okay body so now we can start to upgrade our brains and imaginations, wordskills and emotional life. On to homo misteriosus. — ZzzoneiroCosm

But then, one can put aside this kind of thing altogether, not dismissing it, just affirming it likely true in one way or another, then ask another question: This "evolutionary plateau" in which we find ourselves, what is this? What is the foundational description of it? This is phenomenological. The basic givenness of the world. Here, I would add, one discovers that all theory, certainly including that of evolution, is constructed out of the matrix of thinking afforded by this very givenness. In other words, evolution is a construct of the very thoughts that are supposed to explain things, itself included. The question is begged.

Actually, Buddhism of all schools stridently rejects the charge that it is nihilistic. It is a charge that was frequently made by its Brahmin opponents and was also characteristic of the early European intepretations of Buddhism. It's not 'annihilation of the world' but a clear insight into clinging to the apparent reality of sensations and concepts as inherently real. It's a subtle skill, and exceedinly hard to master - I don't claim to have mastered it in the least.

The point I tried to make, which I'm afraid has not come across, are the convergences between that characteristically Buddhist discipline of 'choiceless awareness' of the contents of consciousness and the idea of 'bracketing' that is found in phenomenology. That has been the subject of considerable commentary i.e. in the 'embodied cognition' movement. — Wayfarer

But nihilism can be taken both epistemologically as well as ethically. When I say annihilation of the world, I refer to language and culture that constitute what makes our existence what it is, It is not like the common thinking that all there is, is unity and particularity is just an illusion. I consider this to be, well, bad metaphysics. Annihilation is a temporal concept: I sit quietly doing nothing and in this I rush of thoughts and feelings fall away. I call the world these thoughts and feelings, speaking generally. The self as a constructed historical entity falls away, is forgotten, if you will.

I do think those "sensations and concepts" are inherently real. But they are interpretatively missing the mark, and the mark is invisible, so any kind of Hegelian, is you will, convergence is impossible to conceive. Presently I think we acknowledge it in "indeterminacy", which is the way I see metaphysics as a concept. As a lived experience, it is wonder and grief thrown upon the abyss from which all things come. But re. the reality of sensations and concepts, generally speaking: this has to be given existence as a presence. Important to see that, to put it all too simply, perhaps, they exist but they are wrong, or merely interpretative or indeterminate. The rub: the term 'reality' too is wrong, or indeterminate; that is, when I say a concept is real, I am simply saying there is something there.

Final definitions? All things are hermeneutically in play. Annihilation to me is saying, look, when we terminate thought and attachments, an extraordinary stillness emerges that intimates something the usual engagements obscure and distract from. Many want to describe these engagements indifferent ways, and they are, many of them right. But the intimation cares nothing for this. It simply beckons with profound irresistible presence, and when one actually follows, s/he annihilates the world.

Finally, the idea of bracketing: As I see it, this is a momentous kind of thing to do. Why others don't see it this way I will never know. I read Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy and I am instantly interested, while others are repulsed. I can't go into why this is.

There are non-religious approaches to that end. I think the utility is in binding tribes, which can offer well-being, but if well-being were essential then I think religions would be better at the task. There is no reason they couldn’t be better at it. — praxis

But religions have that dimension of the radical unknown, the metaphysics. I can think of many ways cultures take of the world and systems of thought as a utility, true, but religion is a "utility" or perhaps a complex heuristic (a provisional dealing with) that has as its object no object at all, and the constructed object, its rites and symbols, are these weird, threshold institutions that deal with this foundational position of our indeterminacy in all things. This is why philosophers like Quine and Wittgenstein would not dismiss religion. It's a metaphysical necessity, because the world is, beneath all of our affairs, indeterminate, especially indeterminate in value and ethics (Oh why are we born to suffer and die? is not an vacuous metaphysics).

There are more things than there are words! The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao! The named are things that are critical to our well-being and I mean those things that are both harmful and/or beneficial; that which is neither, our minds ignore for a good reason in my humble opinion viz. to nip information overload in the bud. We've evolved to sense only mates, prey and predators and anything else that gets caught in this sensory net, being the right size in a manner of speaking. — Agent Smith

Perfectly right. I never argue with what is supported by observation and logic, and if religion were the kind of thing that could be handled in this way, I would defer to readily.
But it's not. Evolution and its ideas and theories taken as a given. We have to understand that evolution is not a theory about what is. It is a theory about how it got here and has nothing to say about the qualitative conditions of our existence. That the hand has an opposable thumb is entirely an "accident". There is no "principle of evolution" in the world moving things forward.

According to the instruction manual, Right View (twelve link chain of dependent origination, karma, rebirth, etc.) is doggedly claimed to be essential to liberation. — praxis

Right view is a method, and has to do with what is not liberation. As I see it, the matter is simple, but the language we fit to it, and the contextualization of it in our habits to schematize and endlessly "understand" what it leads to distortions.

It is hard to conceive that language itself is a utility. The four noble truths, Hindu metaphysics, and all we can think of is a just there as a "method" of grasping the world, a utility that serves one end: the security of well being. So what is well being? One can only discover this, and if the Hindus are right, and I am sure they have to be, then well being is off the charts.

Language is delimiting, pulls things down to its own terms. Finitude itself, it could be argued, is language.

I think however there are some very useful pearls of insights in Descartes and Cudworth (who is unknown) that really set the stage for a kind of special "power" in our souls, in which with our "cognoscitive" powers we are able to take stimulations (not objects) and enliven them.

Once this is cleared up a bit, I think one could proceed down the lines of "reduction" or Tallis "episteogony" and much else that follows. But before checking consciousness, I think there are some obscure factors in play, which allow the mind to have the capacities it does. — Manuel

On postmodern thought, it tends to be ignored because it is so damn mysterious and apart from normal thinking. But I think philosophy makes it clear that this is where questions lead. Analytic philosophers essentially say, oh well, nothing we can do, might as well talk about things we can talk about, which always leads massive question begging about everything they say. Continental ideas move forward into the "threshold". As for Derrida:

As I see it, one needs to take the matter all the way to Derrida, which is not a happy thought for people, because he is deliberately obscure. But what makes him so important is his arguments that show that language is, in its nature, not metaphysically groundable at all. Rorty like Derrida for this. One cannot ever escape the "regionalism" of a language use, is the way I think of it, borrowing from Heidegger who borrowed from Husserl, and this means that when I say, there is my cat, the term cat is not AT ALL a definite designation. It is a kind of context of terms, all related to cats that are not the term cat but "gather" in cat regional thought and relevance and out of this emerges, there is my cat, which is itself certainly definite enough in the usage, but the philosophical analysis yields no definiteness at all. It is, as I think of it, a diffuse meaning, spread out in a web of interference, no single referent of which is itself singular.

This is, I think close, and right. Caputo examines Derrida's thinking in terms of apophatic theology/philosophy: It puts language as, as I see this, a self annihilating position. Deconstruction is self deconstructing as the deconstructive analysis has no exceptions. This is Derrida's version of hermeneutics: radical. Language, to put it in a familiar way, never "touches" the world, for reference is impossible in the familiar way this is thought of. Reference is a "spread out" in language "regions" in which the difference of the interplay expresses as singularity in speech and thought and writing.

So, our language is not in an analogical relation to God's, if God is conceived as being anything at all, because all of our terms are in their nature, at the level of basic analysis, diffuse and in regional "play". And we are, as Caputo cites Eckhart, finally "free of God", that is, God the concept, the idolatry of know ing. Apophatically liberated.

Never tried that. Sounds like a bold approach. "Air hunger" - that's got to focus the mind — ZzzoneiroCosm

It is the ultimate control, watching air hunger rise, then calming it down, but it insists, but there are moments when the massive energy of thought and feeling fall away.

Actually, if you think about it, this 'using the concept of spirit only figuratively' is not a million miles from Aquinas' analogical language. — Wayfarer

As I see it, one needs to take the matter all the way to Derrida, which is not a happy thought for people, because he is deliberately obscure. But what makes him so important is his arguments that show that language is, in its nature, not metaphysically groundable at all. Rorty like Derrida for this. One cannot never escape the "regionalism" of a language use, is the way I think of it, borrowing from Heidegger who borrowed form Husserl, and this means that when I say, there is my cat, the term cat is not AT ALL a definite designation. It is a kind of context of terms, all related to cats that are not the term cat but "gather" in cat regional thought and relevance and out of this emerges, there is my cat, which is itself certainly definite enough in the usage, but the philosophical analysis yields no definiteness at all. It is, as I think of it, a diffuse meaning, spread out in a web of interference, no single referent of which is itself singular.

This is, I think close, and right. Caputo examines Derrida's thinking in terms of apophatic theology/philosophy: It puts language as, as I see this, a self annihilating position. Deconstruction is self deconstructing as the deconstructive analysis has no exceptions. This is Derrida's version of hermeneutics: radical. Language, to put it in a familiar way, never "touches" the world, for reference is impossible in the familiar way this is thought of. Reference is a "spread out" in language "regions" in which the difference of the interplay expresses as singularity in speech and thought and writing.

So, our language is not in an analogical relation to God's, if God is conceived as being anything at all, because all of our terms are in their nature, at the level of basic analysis, diffuse and in regional "play". And we are, as Caputo cites Eckhart, finally "free of God", that is, God the concept, the idolatry of know ing. Apophatically liberated.

:clap: Hence the links that have been discerned between Pyrrho (ancient Skepticism), and Buddhism, which has emerged in the last couple of decades (e.g. see Everard Flintoff 'Pyrrho and India'). From this you can discern a 'family resemblance' between Husserl's ‘epoché’ and the Buddhist ‘śūnyatā, between the Skeptic 'ataraxia' (tranquility) and the Buddhist 'nirodha' (cessation) which connotes 'suspension of judgement'. e.g. from an OP on 'emptiness — Wayfarer

I have read, and pondered, the Prajnaparamita, and, of course, one can easily see why thinking like this is all but absent from our culture and thinking. It calls for the annihilation of the world, if taken to its conclusion. And clearly, I'm not talking about the physicist's world. "There is no world, only worlds," and whatever that which is the ground of all things may "be" it certainly does not good to call it substance or energyat the level of basic questions. These terms are fine for science, and we all use them all the time. As I see it, śūnyatā is the term that, while it cannot be explained positively, it can be gotten to around the back door, so to speak. I've listened to lectures and read a scattering of commentaries about this, and the best I can think of to indirectly account for it is Husserl and his ilk. For Buddhism is a "way of liberation" at its core, not a metaphysics, which, as I see it, is its great virtue.

I cannot well access scholarly work in Buddhism or Hinduism; I'm too embedded in other things. But then, I do believe all roads lead to śūnyatā. To me, this is an annihilation of the world and time. Time is the doing of things and the interest that motivates this, the anticipation, the assumed goal and its cultural generative sources issuing forth the doing and the doing of thinking and feeling. This is Kierkegaard (minus the Christian obsession). This is K's analysis of the concept of original sin, this cultural transfixity.

These ideas about time, the world and annihilation are radical, and I know have no place in the thoughts of normal thinking.

A second difficulty is that Buddhism's aims were soteriological (i.e. concerned with salvation or liberation), but in our minds such philosophies must necessarily depend on the acceptance of dogma (which is what we equate with 'faith'). So here we're presented with something that seems paradoxically like a 'skeptical faith'. — Wayfarer

Yes, I should have read down for this. Soteriological, eh? Never heard of this term, but I guess I knew there had to one for this. I should have read Suzuki, but instead, I stuck with Allan Watts for the popular read.
On dogma, K's book's full title is Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Not well received by the church. He was a true threshold personality, though. Couldn't actually become a knight of faith himself, such is the trouble with having a genius mind--too entertaining.

I've been an avid student of meditation for over 20 years: the obsession settled into a placid daily practice. And I have to say - after twenty years' experience - I don't see meditation as offering a link to nothingness. (I played around with notions of nothingness for a long time....) I see it as the ability to sustain near-sleep and near-dream states while maintaining full to partial conscious awareness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I practice stopping my breath. Genuinely interesting, for air hunger comes along and is very insistent. And I have to ignore this, tame it, and there is, beneath the breath, if you will, an extraordinary sense of the presence of, well, presence. I can see that our thoughts and attachments are not abstractions, but real energic forces. A thought is not an abstraction. It requires energy to think, that is, a production of interest, and it "covers" the world up. And what it covers, and this is where it gets impossibly weird, is the Real world, which we never see in our everydayness.
Yes, doable. But certainly not everyone's cup of tea.