Is bending curving? Space can have curvature. The metric can change. — EugeneW

Bending, curving, arching, swaying, leaning, accelerating, moving, and on and on. Things move IN space, e.g., space cannot move unless it moves In something else.
The metric? you mean the standard of measurement. But this doesn't enter into tit. It is bending as such.

That's a questionable assumption... — EugeneW

But you have to see the whole idea presented. I am not way the gods do not exist, or did not. I am saying a comprehensive understanding of what this could be cannot be done thinking about divine creation nor human imagination. It issues from both, but looking into this requires a good deal of compromise. Much, no, most that we casually understand has to be dismissed.

You can't bend space like a stick. You bend it with mass. — EugeneW

It is not about how something is bent. It is about bending as such.

In 1912, Bertrand Russell wrote "On the Notion of Cause" in which he makes the argument that causation is not a useful way of thinking about the world. In 1943, R.G. Collingwood wrote "An Essay on Metaphysics" in which he wrote something similar. My point? It is not "absurdity" to deny the principle of causality. — T Clark

Read that Russell essay and you will find Russel, in good analytic fashion, is complaining about how well causality can be explained using available means to do so. To utter a definition at all is to bring the wrath of analytic clarity upon you, and this applies to your cat and your sofa, as well. But this is not how we take causality, as a concept with an unproblematic analytic profile. It is an apodictic intuition: one cannot imagine a spontaneous effect. And that is all.It is not that this can be laid out in language that can be equally coercive to the understanding. Language is at best interpretative. But to just sit an imagine an object moving by itself, in good faith, it is clear as anything can be: impossible. A coercive to the understanding as modus ponens.

To know at all is to take up the world AS this knowledge claim is expressed. Taken APART from the knowledge claim, pure metaphysics. The cup on the table, e.g. is qua cup, a cup, but qua a palpable presence not a cup at all.
— Constance

I don't know what this means. More evidence you and I do not have the language to talk to each other about this. — T Clark

Sorry about that. It simply means that language and the sensuous intuitions that it is about are qualitatively distinct. The former cannot be about the latter for they are separated by a chasm of difference.

Well, they made the universe, with all life evolving in it. I don't think we made them.
You mean it's a conspiracy that both the gods and life are involved in? — EugeneW

I mean the term 'gods' was certainly an invention, a fiction created by humans long ago; but it is not the case that this means there are no gods if it can be shown that such a term is necessitated by conditions of actuality. In other words, while we did an awful lot of invented, narrating, imagining through the ages, there are actual material conditions of your being human beings that are that from which our narratives find their meaning. Metaphysics is not a myth. We are it.

Of course. But we also have to condition the subject, i.e, us. There is no such thing as "an observation". Thats already a theoretical claim. How and what we observe is not theory-laden but a theory, a story on its own. Space can have an objective existence, like the bending of it. A bend space(time) is a physical reality. The GW hunters at LIGO don't wanna chase metaphysical ghosts! — EugeneW

But this is just what I say space cannot have. Try to conceive of something bending without a medium in which something can bend. All possible examples of bending require a stable foundation of space as an assumption such that bending can be understood relative to this stability. If I bend a stick or a piece of paper how is this bending determined? By identifying spatial changes in position. This is how all change, movement is measured and determined, vis a vis something that does not change or move. If it is posited that space itself changes or moves or bends, then this in turn requires the same stabilizing setting.
So to say space bends requires yet an additional medium in which space is, for all bending requires this in order for 'bending" to make sense.
This is certainly not to say another space is therefore to be posited. It is to say that our geometrical ways of stabilizing the space of the world are just projections onto an otherwise impossible presence. Reason, logic, language are utilities, only thrown, if you will, unto a world that otherwise has nothing of this "utility". This plays out across the board in every and all attempts understand in all the sciences, for these attempts are propositional, categorical, and the world is nothing like this. Science does not speak to us about the world; it speaks what we need to say about it in order to deal with it.
The world? Utterly metaphysical.

I dont think we are the gods. I think they made us. They had good reason. There are as many gods as creatures in the universe. We just play the game they played already eternally. From virus gods to hominid gods. The god story will be revealed shortly... Exclusively herd on Peee Eees Eeeef! — EugeneW

I will be listening for the god story, looking for a clue to something profound. Hint: I don't think they made us. Nor did we make them. It is a conspiracy and we are both in on it.

People used to think that there must be a luminiferous aether because they thought that electromagnetic waves had to have a medium to propagate through. Turns out they were wrong. I don't see how your inability to conceive of space bending without any outside space to bend in is any different. — T Clark

Think of it as an apriori problem, not an empirical one. What if someone theorized in a way that violated the principle of causality? Putting aside that someone has in fact done this, ask your self how well this sits with your understanding. It is a blatant absurdity, apodictically impossible. Rejecting the aether theory of light propagation was not like this at all since aether had no apriori status.

I don't think that any reputable physicist doubts quantum mechanics at all. They may argue about the interpretation, but I think that is a metaphysical argument, not a scientific one. Fact is, it works. As they say, shut up and calculate. It doesn't make any difference if you can understand why. Science isn't about understanding why things happen, it's about understanding how things happen. Your "...yet" is a bit too cute for my taste. Most physicists don't think further study will make QM any less counterintuitive. The world is not obligated to arrange itself in a way that fits into your way of thinking about it. You can't change the world, but you can change your thinking. — T Clark

Richard Feynman: "I think I can say that nobody understands QM." Not that I am fond of quoting authority to argue a point, but in my own limited exposure to this idea, I can say with confidence that it is not something people understand. When I say "doubt" I mean just this. They don't doubt the repeatability of the evidence; they doubt it can be understood. A bit like understanding rockets go up, escape the atmosphere and so on, but not having a clue as to how. How that cat can both dead and alive. Unless you have something I never heard of.

But as to, "The world is not obligated to arrange itself in a way that fits into your way of thinking about it." If you think the world is so "radically contingent" that anything could happen because nothing constrained by the "laws" of physics, I think you are right. There are no laws like this sitting out there among things. This is our doing, and it sounds like you agree with this. But are you willing to agree with the what follows from this? It is not the indeterminacy of a handful of problematic ideas. It is all that comes before us: To know at all is to take up the world AS this knowledge claim is expressed. Taken APART from the knowledge claim, pure metaphysics. The cup on the table, e.g. is qua cup, a cup, but qua a palpable presence not a cup at all.

It's a physical concept. Our perception of space is like it really is. We can move in it. Objects can move in it. It's the sauce between matter. It's the stuff objects can move in. — EugeneW

Of course it is, that is, until you get to the part where it is bending. Then you have to explain this. When you reach an explanatory threshold like this, you have to concede that though the idea works to explain one thing, it creates a problem that also needs explaining, like a rug's wrinkle that is flattened out here, but rises up again over there. In this case the wrinkle is a metaphysical one.

The real problem? This lies not in the world, but in the conditions of its observation. To observe at all is to condition the object. Language and logic are not these "transparencies" that record the conditions of the world around us. They are "opacities" if you will, that are an independent existence.

This, however, wasn't/isn't possible with the dichotomy paradox. Logic clearly demonstrates motion is impossible; observation, to our dismay, shows that motion is not only possible but actual (ambulando solvitur).

As you can see, a pre-Zeno reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism is impossible. We have to make a choice: believe our minds or believe our legs, but not both! We all know Zeno's preference: motion, in the Parmenidean umiverse, is an illusion. I guess this means Zeno, Parmenideans, were true blue rationalists. — Agent Smith

Bring Parmenides and Heraclitus together and you have Plato, essentially. It seems Parmenides won the argument in Plato, the latter insisting the what what truly real was the idea, not the palpable phenomenon. By my thinking, Heraclitus wins out, though it gets pretty complicated, because while the desire to yield to an ontology of a palpable world over what is merely a conception of it, concepts are in their own way, just as palpable: No concepts, no singularities.

Slippery. The trick is, obviously, to reconcile the conceptuality with the irrational yet imposing and really impossible world (impossible because it is not contained categorically. It qualitatively "exceeds" categorical thinking. Sui generis).

Zeno's arrow proves spacetime is continuous. The problem with discrete spacetime is particles moving in it and time advancing. Spacetime can't be broken up though and the nature of space remains a mystery.
Einstein's theory of spacetime showed we can actually bend space by mass. How mass informs space remains a mystery in GR.
The gods created spacetime. The reasons for their grounds remain a mystery.

That's a triplet mysteries. Performative contradiction, like I'm dead, are no mystery though. — EugeneW

Well, just note that you had to bring god into it. If you do your explaining of something with this kind of talk, then you must realize you have gone metaphysical. Is space time a metaphysical concept? It is. Of course, measurements of speed, mass, relative values for these and so on, this is not metaphysical at all. Very clear ( I have read how it is clear, that is. Not the actual physics). But space time IS. For in order for it to make sense one must posit something entirely inconceivable: that IN which space bends.

the gods created spacetime? No, I think not. We created it in a system of pragmatic utility to "deal with" what the "gods made". Quantitative measurement is a logical function. If you think we are the gods, then fine. Maybe we are.

But at last, I agree, it is a mystery. But the mystery has consequences. How about acceleration as a concept? Acceleration occurs in spacetime, and this is the mystery. How about any quantification AT ALL vis a vis the empirical world?

Science is all about finding out situations where our intuition is wrong. Intuition doesn't come from the great beyond, it can be changed by experience and understanding. Do you also doubt special relativity and quantum mechanics? Those theories are certainly counter-intuitive. — T Clark

I think quantum physicists "doubt" quantum mechanics, meaning they really don't understand it because it itself is not clear...yet. By counterintuitive is simply mean that space bending makes no sense as a logical concept. It is apriori nonsense: One cannot even imagine something bending without a medium in which it bends. I said space is real, and I mean space is not an abstract concept. I wave my hand through ???? It is not nothing. The physical concept of nothing requires space to be nothing IN. This is how it is with bending, or curving, arching, rounding out, and so on: these are spatial terms. They presuppose space. Space bending is like saying logic implying: to imply is to USE logic. It cannot be its own presupposition.

Is it wrong to think empirical science dis really not about the actualities lie before us. After all, the actual world is not a quantified presence; language and logic make it so;
— Constance

If this is true, and I think it is, why can't spacetime bend?

isn't science's claims about being about the world a hidden reification of logic?
— Constance

Everything put into language is a reification of something. Every word is reification. Reification and metaphor, that's all there is. I guess reification is the same thing as metaphor. — T Clark

As I see it, to bend absolutely requires a medium in which a thing can bend. Bending is a contingent idea.
Reification is the same thing as metaphor? An intriguing idea. How so?

Space is real, and I don't think space bending is a metaphor.
— Constance

Seems to me, most ideas refer back, or at least originally referred back, to something at human scale. That certainly makes sense with "space." Of course, there's always been space - the three-dimensional volume in a room, etc. I wonder if the development of the idea of space was changed by the development of Cartesian geometry. It certainly seems like it would have been as people learned that there were long distances between those bright things up in the sky. Science and science fiction probably changed the meaning of the word even more. General relatively just continued those changes and added another dimension. So, no. Space is not real, if by that you mean that it hasn't changed and can't change again.

And of course space bending is a metaphor. People can bend a tree branch or a piece of metal, but you can't bend air. Until, suddenly, you can. — T Clark

The idea of wind bending certainly seems unproblematic. It is not like bending something solid, but it is as determinate quantity of something, the kind of thing such that it curving here, arching there makes sense. If one can conceive of a material substance that is so hard it breaks before is bends at all, then one can still conceive of it bending given some alteration in the conditions of it doing so. That is, it is still logically possible that it can bend. The point I would make is that if the posting space "bending" is a metaphor only and not meant to be taken literally, then what IS the "literal" side of this?

Cartesian geometry had an impact on the way things were conceived and measured, I know. Important is the the basic assumption that objects are in space res extensa at all! Extension in space requires the a conceptual framework to conceive of it. The concept "extension" is a quantitative measure: to extend something has to extend to a certain degree, length, depth; and if the extension is deemed indeterminate, it is implied that determined quantifications would be possible if one knew them. The question here is, Is the world a quantified presence that when encountered we "read off" from its presence what it already has. Or, is the world altogether without quantification, and the quantifying is done by us in our efforts to systematically make use of it?

... isn't science's claims about being about the world a hidden reification of logic?
— Constance
I don't think so, I don't see how, especially insofar as logic consists of syntact translations of tautologies and function like scaffolding for building mathematical models of physical systems. — 180 Proof

Yeah, it works, and very well at that. But the actual "things of the world" are actualities that are not the logical forms assigned them when trying to make things work. So when the astronomer analyzes a light spectrum, the logicality of the analysis is what s/he contributes and not the visible phenomenon. This latter has nothing at all of the logicality in the description, yet science is generally confident that its work is essentially connected to the objects of its quantifications, that is, logicality (logic being essentially a quantifying utility).

Agreed that it can't make the case that it's rational to be rational on pain of circulus in probando. I'm telling you, I'm speaking the truth! How can you prove that, we ask? Well, I vouch for myself, I guarantee that I don't/never lie! WTFery!

The paradox is this: logic is the gold standard for proof but it can't prove itself without committing a fallacy, begging the question. I can't be trusted. Does this get an A for honesty and an F for intelligence? Logic, as it turns out, paradoxically, is a fool! The whole point to its creation and development was to build trust in a system that would always deliver the goods when it comes to truth. Yet, here we are, logic can't justify itself. — Agent Smith

Unless, on the other hand, the question begged leads to a finality that IS a finality. Put it this way, if logic were to conceive of its own generative foundation, that too would be suspect. Indeed, to question logic in this way is simply nonsense, for the asking of the question is self contradictory since the question possesses the logic form of an interrogative (and implicit assertions, negations, and so on). We only get put out because we expect logic to be something it is not. It exists, like a chair or a piano, and talk about the generative source of anything at all is nonsense.
Just to point out, logic has no point. Unless you think it is part of a divine plan, or the like. Also, when we use logic to lie, it is not logic's fault, but its use. This is different from "I am lying" or "this sentence is false." These are fashioned out of logic itself.

Usually this expression is used in reference to spacetime and depends on a certain metric. Objects, however, become distorted by gravity and speed. Length contraction, etc. — jgill

Yes, so account for distortions, what is the most elegant theory? The curvature of space. Is this an idea that makes sense, not as it is theorized about, but as a singular concept? What do you do with theory that explains things well, but is radically counterintuitive? Space bending is, as Wittgenstein put it, "an argument place" meaning it must first, to make sense at all, pass through the logic that is deployed to explain it and bring it into being, and space bending presupposes yet another space IN WHICH bending may occur, but this leads to an infinite regression of spaces. Maybe. Not clear on how positing this "second" space would make the same demands the first is subject to (that it bends, of course). At any rate, clearly, this second space would be eternity (keep in mind, we do not "see" eternity when looking up in the ight sky. This is because we are not seeing this second order of spatial existence. Interesting to note: When you do gaze into the night sky, there is this unsettling weirdness of at once facing infinity, yet not comprehending it at all. this is because what you are observing is the inside of your cranium).

On the contrary, misrecognized misuses (e.g. reification) of logic, or grammar, generates "paradoxes". — 180 Proof

Yes. But then, the very structure of the performative contradiction, "this sentence is false" is very curious. It is not really a misuse, but a simple logical construction that is self contradictory, that generates contradiction where only tautologies should be allowed.
And with the others, I think there are important problems that are ignored, generally. What is God, if one ditches the Christian "misuse"? Is it wrong to think empirical science dis really not about the actualities lie before us. After all, the actual world is not a quantified presence; language and logic make it so; isn't science's claims about being about the world a hidden reification of logic?

General relativity is something different. GR is a theory, a model, which very effectively predicts the behavior of certain aspects of the world. Talking about space bending is a metaphor that helps people picture and understand what is happening. GR redefined what "space" means. I don't see it as a paradox at all. If you were talking about the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, I would be more likely to agree with you. — T Clark

Space is real, and I don't think space bending is a metaphor. No mysterious force acts upon any two particles with mass that attracts them to each other; they are simply following the curvature of spacetime itself, caused due to their respective masses. Put it this way, metaphors are only as good as that which is source of the borrowed quality and that to which the quality is applied. So, I say, "He is an animal!" and the sense of it depends on the person in question and animals being both familiar. If space bending is just a metaphor, then what IS it that the metaphor is being applied to?

Or is that your point? — T Clark

The point? It is a diffuse point, sort of bound up in the ideas presented, each one in its own right a challenge, but the general point would be that the perversity extends from the thinking that logic can serve as a structured way to speak about the actual world. It cannot, and all of our utterances about the world are really about something else altogether. This something else is. of course, the epistemic relation we have with the world. In the traditional analysis of knowledge, S never even approaches P. Einstein's space time is not about the "actual" world, e.g. Does not "touch" the world.

I don't think you're agreeing with Schopenhauer. The freedom is in thinking, according to him. Our actions then becomes caused by our thinking. So, what conclusion could you form about this? The necessity is in our action, but freedom is in our thinking. Determinism is misplaced here. The ocean example is to point to you that one could think about an action, but chooses not to act on it. — L'éléphant

But that choice we make is still bound to what the understanding can conceive, and this makes something like "independence of the law of causality" just an apodictic impossibility. I don't think naturalists will be moved one bit by this; they will simply say, transcendental will??? You must be mad. They will pull out Occam's razor, or insist the facts do not support such an idea, and dismiss it.

I am for demonstrating freedom, first. Where does it show up in the world that we can even talk about it? It shows up in judgment, the kind of judgment that responds to a break in the well being of affairs, like the car not starting, or the hammer's head flying off. Prior to this kind of break, freedom can in no way be seen. My fingers may be busy typing these words, but it is not a "free" act that is doing it. In fact, it would be a disaster to in interpose my "freedom," that is, my conscious awareness, between the fingers and action. I wouldn't be able to type second guessing every movement. Most of life is lived like this, an unconscious process. Foucault asked, are we not being ventriloquized by history? I always thought tis fascinating: how can one see where automatic systems end, and "I" begins? For my "will" is a question begging concept: will is always will to do something, and this is impossible without something that is not will, namely, a value, a motivation that creates to desire that makes one want, need. A will without this is nonsense. A will to.....will? No motivation, no will.

Kant is maddening on this. Talking about a "good will" that responds dutifully to rationally conceived obligations that may NOT have desire behind them. This disembodied rational will is a pure fiction, just like the categories (which make sense analytically, yes. But to treat them as an actuality??)

So for me, at any rate, this break in our affairs shows where freedom is to be found. It gets, frankly, a bit weird from here, and I'll make is brief: Take this simple break, the hammer head flying off, and there you are in the middle of a suddenly dissociated action. But, you are no longer in the "spell," the pragmatic spell, I would argue, of the carrying forth. You are no longer "carried". Most, of course, move directly to an examination of remedies. But take the idea of freedom to its philosophical conception, and it is not a hammered, it is the question about the world as such. We, at this most basic level, are in, and ARE indeterminacy. No matter where the critical gaze goes, it will always meet with indeterminacy; in time, space, identity, ontology, aesthetics, and on and on, indeterminacy. Our freedom lies here, in the radical withdrawal from, not a hammer's use or a car's ignition, but ALL THINGS.

(Obviously, all I say here is derivative, with my own take on things applied. We all stand on the shoulders of others.)

This can be argued about, if you have the desire to do so.

I want the next misses in a puddle in a two please bikini, aloof in sheets coding, eternally farting years old (every tug has its toy.) Born in scence, upon scum, I prey with my wait paint which is wet point. — lll

That really is adorable. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Just got that one.

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Oh, this is Wilfred Owen. I didn't recognize. I taught WWI British poetry once to high school students (in India, no less). I did not teach this one. He and Siegfried Sassoon. Bloody mess to read. Some of the imagery was simply too much to bear.

The nihilist is christ on the cross as he doubts the fondness of his too far father. — lll

Christs finest moment is his cry of dereliction. Was he a nihilist for the moment only, or did it follow him to his death? Then, the withdrawal of God was the moment he became a human being. You want to be there at the foot of the cross screaming up, Oh, so now you get it. It takes a jolt.

As I see it, nonconformity is only ever partial if it's at all intelligible. I agree with Rorty and others that metaphors are mad, essentially senseless until assimilated by a mutating dance. Is Hooligans Wink a work of madness? It takes us back to Vico's divine men, poets without distance from their ghost-gushing imaginations, living therefore a thunder-hunted world of fairy tails. The proximity of madness and enlightenment reminds me Cambell's talk of the shaman as an ambiguous figure, a sort of necessary evil for the tribe, the one who forays beyond the fence, a bastard John Snow, secretly a king (unacknowledged legislator of moon kind.) — lll

It does make you wonder. A Korean man nailed himself to a cross, somehow, imitating Christ. Easy enough to call him mad, but the real question to me is, what was going on in his mind to give him that kind of conviction? It must have been an extraordinary thing. Me? I wonder if the oatmeal cookies will be done in time for dessert. Forget the "truth" (Maybe truth is a woman, Nietzsche wrote) and its antiseptic
pathology. Nietzsche really liked Emerson, a Unitarian minister, for a good reason: He took the soul to such heights and revealed something of what the age of reason buried deep: a fathomless and impossible affirmation: "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."

All this insipid philosophical bickering over God occludes the unspeakable presence of the world, which can be powerful, profound, beautiful, like those first few minutes of Mahler's 9th. Or Barber's Summer Knoxville 1915. This is where one should live. I dare say.

I was thinking not of nostalgia but of a withdrawal of conformity sufficient unto the day to see the Right way as merely the tribe's way. I think of dogs trained by wireless leashes. — lll

Well, that does put a damper on going to the state fair, and everything else, really. What survives? The question insinuates itself into every corner of existence, into language itself, then the self itself. At this point, you're either mentally ill, or you're enlightened. If you believe there is such a thing as the latter, and I do, though it is difficult, this is forced into analysis and you end up reading things that further alienate, or, rationalize alienation, and you end up thinking people are just lost and understand nothing....and you're right!

That wireless leash sounds like Foucault's panopticon society, in which everybody is the keeper, even ourselves.

Intriguing. Do philosophers (the 'special' kind) refuse to crow up? (Peter Pun asks Windy.) — lll

Reading them, one gets the impression that they want very much to leave this world. Who could blame them? It is an awful place. Very good to me, relatively speaking, but so awful this tonnage of suffering that history is made of. One day, you're a ballerina, the next Putin has drops a bridge on you.
Suffering and happiness, these are the stuff of the only meaningful philosophical issues. Value and metavalue. All things yield to this. Put a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds. What is THAT doing in existence? Here is Kierkegaard:

One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?

Perhaps analysis computes with the metaphors provided by revelation once they've cooled and congealed? — lll

That is clearly what happens, if there is anything such as revelation. Irony plays against, metaphors play with something else in language, but whether there is an inroad to existence that is NOT language is the big question. Ask Derrida. Can language ever really touch the world? If not, what is this horrible tennis elbow experience? It ain't language....but it IS there. Oh my. Are we not steeped in metaphysics in the most obvious, intuitive way? Right before our very noses?

I think you are on to something, though the word 'real' is perhaps unnecessary. As I see it, one task of the philosopher is to reveal so-called necessity as a congealed and disguised contingency which hides in plain sight. 'That which is ontically nearest is ontologically farthest.' Trapped in the illusion of necessity, deviation is not yet even conceivable. Possibility languishes unborn. Along these lines, the philosopher has an intensity of withdrawal that allows the too obvious to finally become questionable. — lll

Well, I am taken aback again. If you've read Heidegger, then you have a perspective.

The intensity of withdrawal? Not many would talk like this around here. This withdrawal is a radical concept lying not in the everydayness of things, nor in the discoveries of science, but at the fringe of intelligible thought itself: metaphysics. But this that languishes unborn, this nostalgia should not be historically conceived. It is immanent in presence, in the metaphysical presence, but not in the negative sense; a positive one, for apophatically a person can discover things most extraordinary about the lived actuality of what has been called nunc stans. In other words, there is that "childhood sense of adventure" Kierkegaard talks about in The Concept of Anxiety that inspired Heidegger's What Is Metaphysics and the "nothing" which is this foundational nothing we encounter when we pull back for affairs. There is something to the nothing, but here, one has left analysis. Now the matter turns of the revelatory.

I speculate that this 'one' is just reason or language, which is a unified system of concepts and a communal possession. The softwhere is one. — lll

Yes! I conditionally agree with this. I mean, this is a very tempting idea, especially when we examine the community nature of language, history, education and the structured self this produces. How can one think or have identity at all if one is not IN an historical context? Language itself is historical. And even the Buddhist Madhyamika concept of no self chimes in. But there are other features of our world that will not allow for this, depending, of course, on how one defines the self.

Why would the Madhyamika take this view? Go deep into a meditative state, and all that one is in the world is intentionally annihilated. Time is annihilated, if things go well, for what is time if not the passage of events, and if these are nullified then time is nullified (putting aside a physicist's take on this. Here, it is "stream of consciousness' time, foundational time, that is presupposed by empirical concepts). And the constructs of language and culture are suspended. NOT, however, that these are not in the underpinnings of the "nothingness" of a deep meditative state. After all, in this state one is not reduced to an infantile mentality. The constructed self is there, maintained in the "I am" position. But there is no mistaking the experienced vacuity, the nothingness of experience that sits before your awareness.

Who are you now? Neither baker nor candlestick maker. The empirical self suspended. Now the matter becomes, not analytic, but revelatory. One doesn't have to meditate for this: Just take yourself out of contextual relations with the world. Stand in a meadow and clear the mind, with more or less success. Argument ends here. Affirming the self in the openness of things is a radical move. An Emersonian move (see his little book called Nature). A Husserlian move (see his epoche). Tough to argue, though. But it can be approached phonologically in the analysis of the structure of experience. If you want to go there, it does get interesting. Let me know.

Why must it be 'one' experiencing the model? What if the singularity of the ghost of the soul is part of a contingent and inherited model inspired by the perceived unity of its containing body? 'One is one around here.' 'One' can imagine a society where each body is understood to host several or seven souls, one for each day of the week, each learning to ignore what's not its concern on its six days off per week. It may be something like the unity of 'reason' that's projected on the body which is given a soul for its little prison palace. — lll

Well, you throw me off a bit with "soul" talk. But consider an adjacent idea: you are suggesting a body of dividedness rather than unity; or rather, the unity of any given occasion is a singularity that comes and goes. Right now I may be an accountant doing my job; later I am a parent instructing my children; and so on. Is this what you have in mind? This has been called the "fractal self" based on the observation that there is no perceivable singular self beyond all the various different selves we are in different contexts.

On the point that there must be "one" experiencing: Approach this apophatically: I am this abiding self in all that I can conceive. I think of myself as a parent, teacher, friend, and so on, but there is an position of being apart from all these can be. I may be a teacher, but I can withdraw from this and stand away from it, and in this it has no claim of me. It seems that whatever I think of, I can position myself apart from it, in an act of reflection. This reflective self is always NOT the role being played. But cannot be observed or even conceived.

Okay, you got one thing right -- causality. But did you read what Schopenhauer wrote (I posted a passage in this thread). See where the necessity lies -- not in the thinking.

As to the definition of the naturalism as a philosophical view, please read up on the definition. I think you're missing the main point of naturalism. Yes, it is nature - but I want you to think in terms of philosophical argument. — L'éléphant

What I gave you was a philosophical argument. The thoughts I presented issue from a phenomenological perspective on freedom, which takes the matter into the structure of the given experience of the free act. Acts are not free when they are practiced and done without explicit intention, like typing these words. So where does the issue of freedom in experience even arise at all? is the first question.

Schopenhauer, of course, gives a clear account of what determinism says. Writing about deliberating over future actions, he considers:

I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife............. This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: I can make waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed)- I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond. (F, 43)

That is, we are no more free than a flowing water to determine our future. Rorty put it like this, in the context of the epistemic relationship with the world: I no more have "knowledge" of the affairs around me in the traditional sense than a car's dent has knowledge of the offending guardrail. Thinking like this (Rorty's pragmatist position; and he was no naturalist at the level of ontology and epistemology analysis) entirely undermines talk about will and decision making (It also undoes any attempt to validate science's knowledge claims. That is, at this basic level of analysis. Otherwise, science is just fine, as analytic philosophers, inspired by grandfather Kant long ago).

But then there is Schopenhauer's "higher view":

the empirical character, like the whole man, is a mere appearance as an object of experience, and hence bound to the forms of all appearance ) time, space, and causality and subject to their laws. On the other hand, the condition and the basis of this whole appearance is his intelligible character, i.e. his will as thing in itself. It is to the will in this capacity that freedom, and to be sure even absolute freedom, that is, independence of the law of causality (as a mere form of appearances), properly belongs. (F,
97)

Yes, we are now in the world of noumena. How do we account for this? If I may depart from Schopenhauer on this, the problem lies in the radical distance Kant puts between our empirical selves and our noumenal selves, the latter being some impossible postulate. If you want to look closer into the anatomy of a free act, the only route is through phenomenology. Freedom reveals itself in the analysis Time and the event of pulling away from the seamless flow of determined actions. For this see what I wrote earlier.

I don't think this is the "thinking" we're talking about in this thread. I gave examples of Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer's idea of freedom in thinking. It is rational thinking. And we don't always think rationally, of course, such as in your example above. The point of freedom in thinking is, we do have it at our disposal if we are so inclined. There is deliberation, there is decision, and there is future possibilities. That's what they mean. — L'éléphant

You wrote, "The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain."
If this is where the issue begins, then this whole affair of biology has to be understood at a more basic level, where the true argument of this "naturalism" lies. Naturalism is grounded in the apodicticity of the principle of causality. I mean, no one is going argue that decision making is a "natural" affair without understanding what it is in naturalism that decides things in the matter of human freedom. Nature is in turn what, exactly, that makes the case? It is this underlying causality that rules the determination of all natural events. Otherwise, naturalism simply begs the question: why is there no freedom in a natural world.
So you see, if you're talking about nature, the brain and neural transmissions along axonal fibers and on and on, and freedom, the matter instantly turns to causality. What else? Talk to a naturalist about reason, then. This will be a reductionist position: all reasoned thought is reducible brain functions. Then you are back to causality. The fight of freedom contra determinacy has its final argument here.
I move from this, on to an analysis you are ignoring, for reasons I cannot understand. Perhaps it is because it is unfamiliar. The argument presented above is grounded in a phenomenological method of thinking. The fluid continuity the lived life of a person is mostly the kind of think in which freedom doesn't even step in, for we don't usually freely act. Most of what we do is rote behavior. When it DOES become a matter of freedom, it is the kind of thing I described.
to say we "have it," that is, the freedom of thinking, if we are so inclined, simply begs the naturalist question. How is being so inclined make it free? Just the opposite, one would argue, for "being inclined" to do something would make the inclination the prime mover, not the agent who is so moved.

I didn't proof read. Left off here above:

.....have no argument, no justification, no explanation. We cannot say we really understand such things at all, for they are givens, in the fabric of the world. Transcendental.

I made two posts in this thread about the critics who argue against the idea that we have freedom in thinking. The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain. When we think, we think in such a way that our thoughts are produced by the environmental stimuli acting on our nerves and cells and make us believe that it is our own voluntary thinking from which our thoughts are produced.

And I said this is question begging coming from the naturalists because they started off by claiming because of our nerves, cells, and chemicals, our thoughts are only produced by nerves, cells, and chemicals. — L'éléphant

A determinist will argue that the principle of causality has no exception, notwithstanding the weirdness of quantum physics; and here, physics do know either, but they certainly don't deny effects have causes. This is an apodictic impossibility, that is, one cannot even imagine a spontaneous event (natural events presupposing this, so they are not the true ground of determinacy)--- that is how strong causality is. But the rub of determinism: We don't really know the nature of this intuition behind ex nihilo nihil fit. We call it causality and we acknowledge the apodicticity (trying to imagine an object moving by itself), but this is not an empirical concept, and so it is not contingent, its justification is not derived from something else, some logical argument. It is its "own presupposition". That is, it is a given, this, call it a "pure intuition" that cannot be spoken really. This make the determinist's position indeterminate, for intuitions as intuitions have no
Then there is freedom, a very rare event, for most of our lives are lived thoughtlessly, like when I drive a car and open a bottle: all automatic, spontaneous events, these fluid movements we go through without question or intrusion from analysis. If you ask me, those guys who stole the car, got drunk and killed ten people on the highway were anything but free in their actions. Even as they began their adventure of debauchery, and reviewed the law, the consequences, the danger, this was not sufficient for freedom, for the struggle to decide was a matter contained within the inner tensions between possible actions. Had their been more motivation on the side of care rather than carelessness, they wouldn't have done it. So why was there stronger motivation to do it? There must be in that entangled personal world of each a very extensive causal analysis, so complex untouchable by analysis, really.
Then what is "real" freedom? Real freedom lies within the mechanism of withdrawal, I can be argued, for when I turn the key to the ignition, and nothing happens, I withdraw from the engagement. There is the moment of indecision, of "indeterminacy" that is instantly filled with possibilities regarding the battery, the engine, who to call, and so on. But to fail to fill this indeterminacy with possibilities, herein lies freedom, for there is an absence of the sufficient cause putting effect in motion. The question is, how is this indeterminacy possible? It should not be possible. You can call it a mere illusion of indeterminacy, and insist that the moment before ideas are set in motion is always already filled, just not explicitly, yet. But then, Real freedom stands apart from any motivation. There may be in the background emerging potentialities, but there is no "standing in" and one of these.
The concept of human freedom rests with this indeterminacy. Probably the most pure form of this is seen in the concept of kriya yoga. But in our daily affairs, when we stand in conscious wonder about what we do, who we are, why we exist and so on, we are free of motivation. Doe this make us a spontaneous cause? Not exactly. But the freedom that can stand apart from the motivation to act, think, etc. conceives of possibilities from a stand point of diminished determination. But causality is apodictic, and there can be no room for "diminished determinism". Therein lies the issue.

So, going back to the “I” of consciousness, it turns out that the “I” is not primordial or primitive in our view of the world. It is the “We”. The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. The plurality of existence which is embedded in our brain. So, experience, therefore, was not due to having the consciousness of self, but having the consciousness of the “we”. And we’ve somehow achieved freedom of thinking by arriving at the ”I” or the self. By differentiating ourself from the collective “we”. — L'éléphant

It is a good approach to an analysis of the self. The self is fashioned after a model of plurality, witnessed in the world of others. This idea has a history and I think it was Herbert Mead who is most famous for it. So when I observe myself, my behavior, feelings my own thoughts, I am working within a structure of social organized affairs: I AM the "other" of a conversation, as I witness myself.

This makes sense, but it does lead to a deeper issue, which is the digression toward the determinative self, the final self that is not the social model, but the one experiencing the social model. Here is where you approach Descartes: the cogito says "I think" and this is supposed to be the end of the line, the definitive self that is not epistemically assailable. The "we" is an empirical concept, and internalized model; Descartes cogito is not contingent like this. Of course, "I am" is an empirical concept, too! So we can see where Descartes has his limitations; but then again, it can be argued that this "I am" is existential, a true presence "behind" the utterance, which is called for since the transcendental ego does show up: Even if "I am" is an empirical social construction, "who" is this actual witness that can stand apart from the role playing?

A rebuttal to the naturalistic view of mind -- freedom in thinking is only an illusion - is this: how do the adherents of naturalism determined this "illusion"? Did they arrive at this conclusion through the brain processes? In that case, their conclusion is also an illusion.

They cannot assert that we do not have freedom in thinking because their conclusion is begging the question. — L'éléphant

The illusion? What do you mean? What question is begged? Not that I disagree, but how do you frame this?

Just wondering how many forum members are prepared to say there are no thoughts. Thanks for playing! — ZzzoneiroCosm

It is at first, a simple question confirmed by the presence of thought in the asking of the question itself. The trouble rises when you want to reduce thought to something that is not thought. This reduction, however, presupposes thought.
If you want to say there is no thought, you are going to have to live with a contradiction. Thought cannot be reduced.

And logic doesn't need to do so, as it is a concept generated by a self-perpetuating, and concept generating brain. And again, A=A. It does not matter if our methods do not know how to square that, it is already the case. Question begging is only applicable to non-correspondent claims of truth. Correspondent claims are not subject to our need for an answer to "why?" And never will be. — Garrett Travers

The concept of a brain is itself an empirical concept, and empirical concepts like brains and beetles do not constitute a basis for tautological reasoning. Brains are "accidents" meaning they don't have to be by design of logic, and with analyticity (though there is that paper by Quine that denies even analytic propositions are true that because different terms are not identical. In fact, the notion of identity itself suffers from this). You will have to deal with Descartes then Kant on this.

A=A does not get you anything. You're thinking on this doesn't really count as thinking.

you have still not explained what you think the mind is if it isn't a function of the brain. — Garrett Travers

THAT would be an massive post. I'll tell you what, though. I would give you a propaedeutic on the way this goes if you would simply provide an answer to the simple question, how does anything out there get in here? It has not gone unnoticed that this has been presented several times and been entirely ignored. It is pivotal. If all is so patently clear to you one this matter, then this should be easy.

We experience a world, not a brain. On that we agree. But how can there be an explanatory basis for this? You will have exceed the limitations of the positing of a brain as the sole material counterpart to the phenomenal world we experience.

This is correct as far as any known evidence has ever been concerned. — Garrett Travers

Then make it happen. See the question above. I'll get you started: There is my cat on the sofa. I know this. Now, explain the epistemic relation.

I don't regard it as an issue. It is propositional, and all propositions are created by words that are created and coherently understood before being placed in the proposition. Synthetic a priori is a mental distraction from a non-problem. "Some items are heavy." Every one of these words means something understood by all people in experiencial or emotional valence before being placed in the proposition. Let me demonstrate: Some x are X. See how that doesn't meaning, or truth value corresponding to anything with out the x values. Ah, except where the other words that are presnt have meaning. So, SOME x ARE, in fact, X. "Some are" has meaning, because they had meaning before being placed in the proposition. — Garrett Travers

Well, that is ...entirely not Kant. The Kantian matter has to do with the apriority of judgments made about the world of objects. How is this possible, he asks, that I know objects in space to conform to the laws of geometry, which are apriori, when understanding about the world only yields aposteriori affirmations.
You don't know what this is about do you.

Notice how this isn't any form of argument? It's the rational metric being removed from phenomenology in accordance with modern neuroscience which is the issue. The brain accrues data, data that is used to navigate the world in pursuit of its basic function of achieving and maintaining homeostasis. If that isn't where you start from phenomenological as regards thought, you aren't using a rational metric, you're using dogma. — Garrett Travers

You think like this because you don't know what it is. A "metric" would be a standard of determination. This would require judgment and content. Phenomenology does not conceive of the world with the same content. It looks, rather, to the broad intuitive field of "givenness" that goes unexamined in scientific work. Take time. Spacetime is now a popular concept, but it is based on measurements of objects in motion relative to one another. Ask about the phenomenological concept of time that is in the structure of the perceptual act that registers the world logically prior (meaning one cannot conceive of these measurement being possible unless this more fundamental condition were in place) to empirical measurements and you are in an altogether different set of paradigms for analysis. Time is an essential past present and future of the given moment in which the perception occurs. I see my cat, but this is not a perception simpliciter, but an apperception whereby the past issues forth content that entirely qualifies the future anticipation; but then this future looking event is never past nor future as the past presents itself as an adumbration of what was past and the future a present anticipation. Certainly, the analysis here suggests that there is only one palpable account of time, and this is a "present" givenness. Simply put, past and future are never experienced, only their vestigial remains in the one timeless reality, which is the timeless present. This has a long history called nunc stans. Absolutely fascinating the way this works if you read through the literature. Start with Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety.
This is something close to what Wittgenstein picked up from Kierkegaard and Augustine. Read his Tractatus. An interesting follow u[ on this is Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. Of course, the most powerful work on phenomenological time is Heidegger's Being and Time.

Look, you don't read philosophy, and you don't have a clue about any of this. Why bother pretending you do? Just give it a rest. Phenomenology takes a lot of work. In the beginning nobody gets it.

I'm out, really. :smile:

Cute. Kant's philosophies are immoral and I wish nothing to do with them. Of course I've read, I reject him. And the sun is of itself so, irrespective of if you've been lost, that was clear when you said brains don't produce thoughts. It is not deniable that the sun is of itself extant in accordance with the strictures of reality, just like every other star, in all of the billions of galaxies, also of themselves so and universally present long before we discovered them. But, you can't keep asserting as much while the plants photosynthesize inspite of such non-arguments. — Garrett Travers

Oh, well you've read Kant. Why didn't you say so. I would have to resort to materialist assumptions like brains thinking of brains, which was only done for your sake, to show that even prior to any talk about phenomenological analyses, the material assumption gives a perfect reductio. You know, brains conceived exclusively in brains can only produce things that are in and of brains. You have to show how one gets "out" of the brain to a perspective that is independent of the brain to affirm brains as a scientist would desire. It is just like Wittgenstein's argument: logic cannot explain its own generative source, for it would require logic to do this. Question begging.

Understand in this something really quite important, and almost always missed: We are still dealing with a world, and when the skull cap is removed and the surgeon who wants to keep you conscious so as not to remove important tissue, and is asking questions as the probe touches the interior, and the probe goes here, and you have a sensation of a smell, or a memory, perhaps, and so on. There is NO DOUBT whatever that the brain is connected to our mental awareness. No one doubts this. The question is not about this. It is about a reduction of mind to this. If mind were reducible to brain activity, then all that is in the mind is localized in the brain. Period.

But you know Kant?? Well then how do you solve the issue of synthetic apriority?

No, it's quite the opposite. Their based on the ideas being familiar, and being rejected because they aren't correct. And don't bring up science as a standard, you were just called out for disregarding known science, that's not something you care about. It's in writing above numerous time, anybody can read it. — Garrett Travers

I haven't once disregarded science. I claim you have done this. See the above. And see the latter part of what I wrote: The difference here is between science on the one hand, and the intuitive foundation of science on the other. These are not the same kinds of inquiry.

No, they are amenble in the world as data integration and concept generation to embody behavior in association with them. Very different, more scientifically consistent idea. — Garrett Travers

So then, this analysis of data integration and concept generation, you're talking like Kant. Isn't this the way all knowledge is? No, not scientific. Phenomenological. Because this is an analytical notion that attempts to explain the intuitive playing field of cognition, and this is presupposed by science. Phenomenology, of course, is a construct, in the Kantian sense, if you like, I mean, there is something intuitively plausible about Kant's "concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind." make no mistake, you have just landed your foot into a different body of paradigms altogether. Time to bring in Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and so on. Good luck!

The human species. There's about 3.5 billion years of biological history, and about 2-300k years of human. That definitively ends your reality synthesis, Kantian mysticism that never made sense to begin with, and was predicated on Christian influence, which isn't philosophy. But, you know that. — Garrett Travers

You have this all wrong. You live in a world of first order mundane beliefs built on top a reality you can't acknowledge because you haven't done the reading. If you think Kant was a mystic, then you have my sympathies. It's like calling day night. Hmmmm...you really haven't read this have you? I mean, people who have don't talk like this. Kant is the very most emphatic opposite of this. He was censured for not being like this.
Not that I am a Kantian at all. His ethics is all wrong. But did you call him immoral?? What ??! Tell me, how is his metaphysic of Morals immoral? You can't just throw outrageous things out there and...what did you expect?

Very true, about the most reasonable thing you've said so far. Paradigms of belief, just like logical validity, in no way imply knowledge of truth, systems of accurately accruing said knowledge, implementing it, or any other rational metric along which we could analyze such a thing. In fact, as Kuhn has mentioned, it is exactly the paradigms themselves, and the cultures they generate - which is actually what that was all about - that inhibit scientific progress, in the same way and for the same reason they inhibit philosophical progress, which science is a direct derivation of. — Garrett Travers

Remember, Kuhn was a Kantian. "Accurately accruing" begs the question, obviously. What is accurate apart context, and what is contextual in science? The rational metric you need to discover is called phenomenology. Again, you are working in a set of values that ignore foundational matters.

No, it isn't. Dealing with it has 'a' pragmatic element, it is not exclusively relegated to such a label, as your post-modernist teaching would have you attempt. Meaning, you are only 1% correct about this assertion, as you have done yourself in by another reduction fallacy. You'll understand in time. — Garrett Travers

No, look: pragmatics is not about the practical applications of things. You need to read more closely: it is a "property" if you will, of language itself. Pragmatism is an epistemic concept: to know AT ALL, is to know pragmatically. Such reductive fallacies must refer to the understanding that when we talk about things we work within a matrix of interpretation, and this means that even when we make our theories about, say, the pragmatic nature of language, we are as well working within pragmatic possibilities. This makes any attempt whatever to speak foundationally question begging, true. But, as Heidegger said, circular thinking is inevitable, but the important thing is where the working paradigms allow thought to go.
You work with science's paradigms and you are under the misguided belief that these are philosophically determinative. They don't. It is a common error made by those who only read science. But really, it is like explaining geometry with animal husbandry. Nonsense.

I don't have any issue with this assertion. However, there is no conclusion actually implied by the truth of it that is relegated to a single aspect of viewing the very complex manner in which humans accrue data, and generate concepts for better navigation of the world within which they are suspended. Broaden your analysis. — Garrett Travers

You broaden yours. Philosophy is the broadest perspective. You need to see that when a person gets "broad" in her perspective, other lesser perspectives are suspended. Physics does not care much about pottery, but physics is IN all of what pottery can be because its purview is much greater. Physics is subsumed under philosophy in just this way. But such is the way of impertinence.

The reason why this seems strange to you, is because you are concluding with just "Pragmatic" as an essential. You're not an automaton, there is nothing simply pragmatic about you, or any other human to ever exist, or any other system to ever exists. That's what's messing you up, fellow. And no, there's no such thing as exhausting the account of what is real. You are talking about complexity beyond human reckoning. Complexity of which can be shown to be astronimcal, exponential, adaptive, self-contained, and self-emergent. — Garrett Travers

I agree with some of this, though being an automaton is off the mark; it's not about human freedom.

The problem, however, does reveal itself here: You think the inexhaustible nature of what stands before an inquirer lies in the extension of science's paradigms into a future of evolving thinking. I am telling you that in order to grasp what is before the inquirer that eludes science foundationally is already there, at hand, in the world, and to access this and realize the dimensions of its epistemic possibilities, you have to perform the Husserlian reduction to acknowledge the intuitive ground of all things. Eugene Fink lays this out nicely.

Which is absolutely brilliant, I love the process myself. I'm fully committed to it. But, if you are really thinking, which is self-contained to your brain and senses, which can be used to verify things, and matter how many people we get on the subject, how many advanced tools we build to investigate, the only evidence that emerges as existent is that of material entities and systems, operating under universally understood pretenses, and arranging themselves in ways most closely approximating homeostasis; if that's the case, which it is, then thinking beyond the point of verification, or potential verification that one may strive for, is NOT philosophy, it is mysticism. — Garrett Travers

No, I don't think it is self contained in my brain. That is what you think. I put that out there to demonstrate a reductio ad absurdum that issues from the assumption of materialism. You see, you cannot produce meaningful knowledge claims out of this.
And I love science. But when I say it is not philosophy. See where I've said this many times. Mysticism?? and Kant is immoral, and...you can't talk like this and call yourself reasonable informed person.

There's truth here, but it does attempt to get to the bottom of things. The greatest piece of art in human history was designed for exactly that reason, the LHC. The problem there is, if the univeres is tauological in it's nature of emergent truth, which it is, the odds of us being able to break that universally set paradigm may be out of our reach, as a stricture of reality, which so far has proven to be the case. So, we'll have to go from there. That being said, no amount of mystery can, or will ever be an argument for a reality that hasn't been observed, understood, philosophically explored with both correspondence and coherence together, and applicable utiliized. That's all there is to that. — Garrett Travers

Did you say the universe is tautological? Wittgenstein said something close to this, one could argue, when he said that all facts are states of affairs constrained by logical structures. He has been, on this, considered a phenomenologist and a Kantian of sorts.
Apart from this it is bewildering. Unless you refer to the hypothetical deductive method which looks at possibilities for future discovery to be deductively predelineated: all there is to discover is possessed by what is known by analytic discovery. Analytic philosophers seem to hold something like this. But that ship has sailed, wrecked and sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Again with the reduction. It's fucking up your entire worldview, man, no kidding. NO, not true at all. The person that posited the idea of empirically, rationally investigating reality, as an ethical code, to avoid fear of bullshit mysticism, was in fact, not just a philosopher, but the philosopher whose legacy brought us out of mystic science, and into empiricism. That would be none other than Epicurus, to whom humanity in it's current form, owes so much to. Science, inductive investigation, was FOUNDED as ethics, my friend. You seriously need to take your training to this point, stash it away, and begin investigating where philosophy really comes from, and why Plato and Aristotle were miserable failures in practice in competition with Epicureanism, just as Christianity was. Problem there is, mysticism has this way of murdering those it can't take in open intellectual combat. — Garrett Travers

No, it's not about Epicurus. Your quaint references to philosophy's history are no match for just asking. My views here are about metaethics, and if you think Derrida is not plausible, because you haven't read him, then metaethics will send you screaming. First, you have to read G E Moore's Ethica Principia, then Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics, and parts of his Nature and Culture, then John Mackie, then of course, Heiddgger, then Levinas. Look, you're not equipped for this. And put mysticism out of your mind. this is just a pejorative reaction you have to unfamiliar thinking. You work from a position of deficit: you really don't understand anything that is being put before you.

Keep in mind that thinking about what someone said as recollection is not thinking.

Then never say to me, or anyone elseif you desire this statement to EVER be taken seriously, that I need to stop incorporating it into my philosophical analysis, which is exactly what you did, and was in fact a disregard of science that I will let slide this one and only time, as you seem to be willing to correct yourself. — Garrett Travers

No. See my comments on the distinction between doing science and bringing inquiry to bear on the intuitive foundation that science presupposes. Don't just ignore this. And you don't have a philosophical analysis. Not yet, anyway. You have to make that qualitative leap into philosophy.

Empiricism is a philosophical tradition. It works in a vast network of highly complex, evolutionarily evolved organic systems of computation and control by way of elctromagnetic and chemical interactions that it is self-emergently designed to conduct to achieve homeostasis of the body its body. It happens to be the most complex system in the known universe. Here's a good source to start with, plenty more where that comes from too. What one is seeing are computational representations of data accrued through evolutionarily designed means of perception that correspond to objectively existential elements of reality that have developed as the result of achieving greater and greater homeostasis as a species in accordance with environmental and sexually mutative pressures placed on the species through the course of 3.5 billion fucking years of the most intense system generating and destroying crucible fathomable to ultimately give rise to a brain powerful enough to ask just that very question you did before receiving just this very answer from a being just like that individually represents that which is constituted as the Pinnacle Predator of this world, respectively: The Human Being. — Garrett Travers

I am aware of all of this. I have taken lots of courses in empirical sciences. No kidding, lots.
But you have to make an effort. When I say philosophy is radically different from this, you have to at least be curious. Take a look at Husserl's cartesian Meditations, see if it makes sense to you.

More reduction reduction reduction. There's no such fucking thing as "Just," and damn sure not in regards to biological systems of such complexity and sophistication as to be incomprehensible. You're not going to get away with this kind of statement with me. Broaden. Your. Analysis. For your own sake. — Garrett Travers

See for "broaden" above. I have been down this road many times. When an interlocutor starts using fuck a lot, it means s/he's exasperated, which compromises objectivity. There is only on e reduction that makes the qualitative difference: the phenomenological reduction, or "epoche" of Husserl. You don't know what this is and this is the reason why you can't even begin to make sense of any of this. You have my sympathies, but then, it is up to you to find out.

So what? That's the truth of things is so what. Nothing more. And any attempt to derail this conversation from this recognition on your part is going to be met with swift opposition. — Garrett Travers

I mean, how is it tautological? I don't say that it's not, I just want you to explain it since there is more than one way to understand it. Ethics has it s existential grounding in something that is not tautological, e.g.

You had me to this point right here. The sun is undefined as an entity that plays a specific role in the universe with or without observation? This, simply, is not, and will never the case. The sun is not the word, or the group of characteristics we have used to build coherence around the word used for its identification, but is most certainly itself so, and of itself so; and will likely outlast human existence, just as it preceded it. — Garrett Travers

You lost me at "it is most certainly itself so" I'm beginning to suspect you haven't read Kant. to understand the world philosophiclly you have to read philosophy, and this begins, I will hazard, with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. You're objections, all of the, are simply based on this kind of thinking being so unfamiliar. You have never turned your analytical gaze to the intuitive foundations of science.

No, I dismiss it as I aught to, as it is a fallacy of reduction. What "IS" is beyond langauge, or any language affair, even if it has a linguistic dimension for us to analyze, it is not confined to it. If one claims it is a dimension of assessment, you have an ally in me. If one fallaciously claims that it IS a language affair, then I'm gonna have to remind you that language was use to identify what IS as a self-evident IS in the universe before we came along. And IS, more accurately, is an entity in a vast number of systems that are also not linguistically dependent or confined. And that such an assertion is also a reductionist fallacy. — Garrett Travers

But as I recall you were amenable to the suggestion that objects in the word were a synthesis of intuition and concept (this is Kant).
Before "we" came along? What could this be about?

What would Thomas Kuhn say about this? Before we came along, people lived in a paradigm of belief. Paradigms are evolving dispositions to believe. These have no grounding in some absolute about the universe that labels things according to the way we believe. Our beliefs rise up and address the universe up in historical paradigmatic terms, and work to deal with it. "Dealing with it" is pragmatic. That ancient person grunted at a rock was not saying, "my look; there is, let[s call it a rock, and notice its extension in space and inertial state sitting there." S/he was saying give me the rock! Or, Rock there. Paradigms of understanding are built up in time out of this kind of thing. But that shining thing in the sky ONLY A FAMILIARITY. The sun was THERE and this thereness never evolved. Telescopes and microscopes give us more detailed thereness and logic (keeping in mind, logic itself is "there" only in familiarity) is good for solving problems. But the basic pragmatic attitude never asked foundational ontological and epistemic questions until "WE" came along. THAT was paradigm shift.

The question that presents itself is this: If my understanding is essentially pragmatic, just taking up what is there, familiar, and making food and shelter and eventually making surgical needles and cell phones, does this exhaust an account of what is real?

This is where thinking takes a turn, asking questions like this. The quest for the nature of what is real, what exists, what being IS, is philosophy. It is a paradigmatically distinct set of values for inquiry. Sui generis, once you get through Kant to Husserl. The basis of the question "what is real?" exceeds the boundaries of empirical investigation, because there are questions there that are, if you like, begged in science: Science does not explore the intuitive foundation of being in the world. It only deploys paradigms that are grounded in utility and familiarity.
Principle of philosophy's prerogatives is ethics. Science has no interest in ethics for a very good reason. It cannot examine ethics empirically.

Hmm. Um, No. That's exactly the kind of thing that someone who didn't want to venture into objective territory in philosophy would say: "This talk of established neuroscience has to stop."
Not just no, dude. Fuck no. If dismissing science is what you'd like to do, then go talk to a mystic — Garrett Travers

It is not dismissing science, as I said, Science is fine; we love science. It is merely realizing that there are questions that do not belong to the domain of inquiry of empirical science. Einstein would tell you this. He read Kant when he was thirteen. He knew the difference.

Nope, no evidence suggests this. And boy, did I get the feeling you were going in this direction with your ambiguous rambling about nothing. You are not correct. Thinking is not something that comes before the production of thoughts by the brain that produces them via the most complex data computational networks in the known universe. Such an assertion isn't even entertained in neuroscience, it's absolutely laughable. Disregard of known science fallacy, and a bad one. — Garrett Travers

But neuroscience is an empirical account. Of course, we "see" the brain there on table. But explain how this works. What are you seeing when you "see"? How are you, in the familiar language of material science, NOT seeing just neurobiological entities?

Think hard about the opacity of the brain and ask yourself simply this question: how does anything out there (on the material model of the world, something Neil DeGrasse Tyson would accept) get in here (pointing to your head)? You can ignore this question, but note that the term 'ignore' is the grammatical basis of ignorance. This is the kind of thing the church did to early scientists.

This conclusion is the result of us only recently understanding that all of our actions are computationally informed by senory data accrual and assessment as conducted by the brain through its functions. Everything you said leading to this is the result of numerous years of data collection building conceptual frameworks through which you navigate reality. The Tao, in other words, is not something you are designed to speak about, but to explore experientially and build waysto speak about,including speaking itself. — Garrett Travers

The "ways" you are talking about are already in place. It is called phenomenology. You will find it is Husserl, Heidegger and lots of others, but its essential insight lies in Husserl's Ideas I and II; of course, he stands on the shoulders of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Frege, and everyone else, frankly. Read Kierkegaard and you find the core thoughts of Heidegger and Sartre and Jaspers and Levinas. It is an quite an undertaking looking into all this, which is why those whose educations were glued to the sciences, anyone who has attended high school, really, do not have access and are bewildered by the seemingly extravagant claims. You are what you read, and Kierkegaard is far, far off the beaten track of what is read in the West. He has to read to be appreciated. But, like Derrida, no one reads him. They hear about what he says and dismiss it. Similar, I think, to how modern physics would be received by the medieval mentality.

But I am NOT kidding about this. If you want to approach grasping what Lao Tsu had to say, read Eugene Fink's (Husserl's assistant) Sixth Cartesian Meditation.

That flies in the face of the fact that humans produced langauge as the result of experiencing reality over vast swathes of time and determining for themselves that having reliable communications between in-group members maximized homeostasis and well-being. So, langauge generation is in fact a form of primitive empirical scientific development. Langauge is presupposed by a reality that requires the necessity of its development on the part of conscious individuals who have determined its utility through inductive data accrual. — Garrett Travers

That part right there, "Langauge is presupposed by a reality that requires the necessity of its development on the part of conscious individuals who have determined its utility" I take to be well said. I am a pragmatist in that I follow Dewey, James and Rorty (though this does NOT mean I abide by all they say). What is a pragmatist's concept of language? It works! The best I have come across is the hypothetical deductive method which is simply a characterization of the scientific method: what is something like, say, nitro glycerin? It is, "IF you toss it across the room, Then it impacts and explodes." A very crude illustration, but it makes the point. All knowledge is of this nature, for the world is given to us in time, and time is a conditional structured affair (if...then), the meanings from which that emerge are, per Dewey, "consummatory".
But if this is the way meanings of terms emerge (imagine how an infant learns language like this, associating word sounds with objects, and so on. IF this sound is made, Then this "red" is designated)) then where is it in language's essential pragmatic nature to produce a-pragmatic meaning? The actualities of the world, the affectivity, the aesthetics, the struggles and delights, the "existence" these constitute, remain analytically untouched by the machinery of problem solving. Pragmatics is only foundational for our pragmatic relations. But falling in love is not reducible to the language pragmatics that deals with falling in love. There is, in fact, a vast horizon of intuited "world-ness" that has nothing at all to do with this, and herein lies the beginning of phenomenology.

Not this philosopher, not until it is clear that something beneath reality, or above it exists. If your philosophical explorations are not correspondent with reality, then they are useless, irrespective of how much coherence you build around themlogically, theoretically, or linguistically; just ask the string theorists, whose theory has now been dispensed with by the scientific community for just that reason. — Garrett Travers

"Beneath" is just a metaphor. It is there, always already, but ignored, largely because people don't take an interest in Continental philosophy. Of course, science is everywhere and most think now that this is philosophy. It's not.
It is phenomenology. A "getting back to the things themselves." The claim is that when you're doing science, you don't address questions about what lies there in the world that is taken up for science's paradigms to deal with. Take Time and space. We know about spacetime and how Einstein changed our thinking, but does his spacetime deal at all with the basic temporal intuitions that had to be in place PRIOR, as a presupposition, to thinking about spacetime? Of course not. He knew this, for he had read Kant when he was 13. Apples and oranges, these two approaches to an analysis of time. The phenomenology of time goes back to Augustine.

All one has to do in response to this type of gaslighting nonsense, is repeat the question back to them until they answer the question themselves. And then explain to them that "that," is a word used to describe a self-evident fact of reality that can be used to achieve greater outcomes in association with one's self-directed goals. You'll not be hearing anymore of that shit from them thereafter. — Garrett Travers

Ouch! I knew you would appreciate Derrida. But he does have a point and it goes back to Ferdinand Saussure's semiotics, structuralism and other places I've never been. Derrida is not reader friendly, but then, neither is Einstein, except to those who understand. One has to be prepared to read him, and I am not saying I am so wonderful at this. I have read it though, and its not nonsense.

Nutshell: You have to accept that when you talk about something, the words you use are completely without meaning on their own. If I say "cow" and you would need the English language to understand it. But what ELSE is there you need to understand? A lot. "Cow" doesn't come to us free of context, as if to know X is a cow is some stand alone acknowledgement. You must admit, such an idea is absurd. You have this long history of cows, stories about them, endless references and jokes about cow fill our world, and are there, attendant to any given occurrent cow encounter. Context is what gives the world its possibility for singularity in thinking; context is implicitly there along with the picture of the cow, the song, the casual reference, and on and on; these are all THERE always, already there. They "make" what a reference IS. A single reference to a cow is not single at all.

Rorty liked Derrida. He also thought Heidegger was one of the three most important philosophers of the last century.
Derrida says, among many many things, that in this matrix of intra-referential meaning, analysis cannot make its way OUT of this to actually get to the thing we get milk from. The referring is always bound up in the "difference" of the concepts in play. I say hi to you on the street, but what is hi in our understanding but a long history of language and culture acquisition?

Long story short, Read his Of Grammatology

A fair point, as far as general perception, but not 100% accurate. The things is itself so. The sun does not require your explanation. It stands in defiance the human concept of "what for?" Becuase it says so, that's why, and such is logically the case with all objective phenomena, and all logical validity. A=A, tautologically, and it does not care that such does not make sense to anyone. — Garrett Travers

The sun is not the sun without explanation, I mean, without the language that says, there is the sun. Once I was an infant child, blooming and buzzing the world was. Had I been born feral and survived, I would still relate to the sun, somehow. It would be part of my acquired pragmatic relations. But there would be no question, no symbolic meanings that could be put to logic to make for determinations about what it is. It's this "what it IS" dimension is a language affair. I think you don't appreciate this as much as you should.

The presence of pain is the production of the exact same computational system that produces consciousness, and thereby all known concepts in the universe used to navigate it: the human brain. It doesn't transcend it, it IS it, just as language is thought, or consciousness, or desire. It is all the same system of systems, producing these phenomena in accordance with the data retrieved from the reality within which it exists, and existing in unrivaled sophistication and complexity as realities greatest known productive achievement. — Garrett Travers

No. I am talking about that sensation of pain, not the way we talk about. And this brain talk has to stop. You think that thought is produced by the brain, but in order to conceive if this, the thinking comes first. This is worst possible case of question begging one can even imagine. Look, it is not that there is no correlation between brain events and manifest thought and behavior. That there is is obvious. The problem is when you try to reduce the latter to the former. Analysis reveals it is the other way around: the concept of a brain is FIRST conceived, then applied interpretatively to that three and a half pound mass. No thought, no talk at all of brains, mass, neurons and axons.
Also, just try the opacity test: consider that the only access to a brain is "through" a brain, and a brain is NOT a mirror of nature, at all. (Rorty wrote a book denying this). It is as opaque as a fence post,or a rock.
Having said that (which will resist your every attempt to deny it) we do have to deal with the apparent "sight" we have of affairs around us. Alas, this will not go well for science.

Again, this is why saying "philosophy looks to presuppositions for possibility," is inaccurate. Logical analysis is only a singular framework by which to navigate the truth of reality, and oddly enough, do you know what reveals to us? I'll show you:

If P then Q
P
_________
therefore Q

All logically valid propositions are distinguished a tautology of true premises, leading to a true conclusion. Logic itself demonstrates that reality and truth are of themselves so. A=A is both factually correct, and logically fallacious. Brains think because they do. Evolution created species because it did. You and I are speaking online because we chose to. Speaker speaking about speaking??? See how that line of inquiry doesn't make sense when you think about it? — Garrett Travers

Logic demonstrates reality and truth are OF themselves? Truth is propositional. Only propositions can be true of false, strictly speaking. But reality, this is another mater altogether. A=A is logically sustainable, yes, and it is a tautology. Why logically fallacious and what has this to do with it?
Saying brains think because they do is simply ignoring the problem stated above. Evolution? this is an empirical theory. Quite respectable, of course, but irrelevant. Philosophy is not an empirical science. It examines the presuppositions of science.
Speaking speaking about speaking actually makes the point: Language is an interpretative medium, and even as I write these words, I am working within a framework of meaning that is OPEN. Language is not a closed system; think of all we do and say as Thomas Kuhn thought about science: paradigms are inherently open, waiting for revision, and their is no finality to this, no Hegelian God at the end ot this process; or, if there is, it would take a God to finalize for what is "final" would have to reveal eternity itself).
Truth is Made, not discovered (This IS the pragmatist's pov.).

That's why you don't expect such a thing. What I expect science to do is reveal to me through inductive art the nature of the reality that is self-emergent. It has done this marvellously from a full perspective of the scope of the art. — Garrett Travers

Self emergent? But how do we characterize what is emergent? Saying something is an emergent affair is still dealing with an intuitive givenness which is what is presented. If you're a pragmatist, you are still going have accept that the calling something emergent is merely a pragmatic construct. The understanding constructs meanings that make for an essentially pragmatic epistemology. What you KNOW is the working of it, the success taking a certain meaning AS this thing of state of affairs. But knowing what it is in the way you would like to claim: One no more KNOWS this tree is a tree than dented car fender KNOWS the offending guard rail (that is lifted from Rorty). This brings the matter too the intuitive, a-pragmatic horizon of affairs mentioned above. This is philosophy: dealing with that which is foundational, or better, as foundational as possible.

Because the logical framework developed to determine what tautologies were are exactly the framework with which you asked the question. Furthermore, because such a property is an intrinsic characteristic of that which exists. However, belief is just a concept itself. You will be made to accept reality, irrespective of whether or not you believe it, and it will tautologically dominate your every thought and motion. — Garrett Travers

You seem to think that because thought is a rule governed activity, our affairs in the world can produce nothing but tautologies. If my every thought and motion is tautologically dominated, then so what? It is like saying every symphony is dominated by music theory. Listening to music is NOT music theory. (Nor, I should add, it logic truly logic. After all, 'logic' is a particle of language that is there grounded in utility and familiarity with the world. Its generative source remains a mystery).

Logic is itself a, self-generated concept. It cannot be expected to account for self-emergence. By proxy, because nature is self-generated, it is also impossible to understand it from within itself as a conscious observer created by it, to develop a way in which to break this universal law. Thus, exploration is the only path open to us for answers on anything. — Garrett Travers

Certainly. Logic will not be second guessed, and it is massively boring to inquiry as a mere system of moving parts. But then, logic is NEVER given to us like this. It is always given as an interest. Logic thus called is an analytical abstraction from analyses of judgment and thought (Kant). It is not the case that there is such a thing as logic. There are no actual conditional propositions, e.g. This is just a token of speech.

Common sense is not what is useful. That concept has been behind the justification of many, many things that were either incorrect, or evil. Reason is your tool. Common sense is an ambiguous term that means nothing and is often employed by people to insult you. — Garrett Travers

Or it can be taken as the way things are generally understood in everyday living. Husserl calls this the "naturalistic attitude". It is what we all have when we take out the trash, do our taxes and study physics. Then there is the phenomenological reduction which withdraws from this mundanity and studies its intuitive foundation.

Apple is a symbolic representation of a coherent enough amount of data accrual on a given percept, or group of perceptions reinforced by emotional valence and correspondence. This is a cognitive process. The "apple" is an abstraction from genuinely accrued data on the part of the brain. The existence of the apple presupposes its capacity for perception in conscious beings. In other words, your premises are correct, but your conclusion is wrong. It is the exact opposite. — Garrett Travers

I apologize in advance for all the writing. Too much time on my hands these days.

That which sits before me as an apperceived phenomenon is thing of parts. as you say, it certainly does have "symbolic representation" which is pragmatically taken up all the time. The point here is that once this representation is exhaustively reviewed for what can be taken up in language, there is a residuum of what is not language. I would call this an aggregate of sensory intuitions, but then I have to wary of bringing such a notion to heel like this, for 'intuition' is itself a particle of language. So there is something of a performative contradiction in talking about it all, and I find myself in Wittgenstein's intentional dilemma in the Tractatus: to speak of what cannot be spoken in order to say just this. I claim that this is also a way to deal with the Toa that cannot be spoken.

That's exactly what it is, if by sensory field impression you mean the brain accruing data through the use of its plethor of instruments designed by nature to do so. — Garrett Travers

No. I am saying that in order to talk about brains and sensory fields one does this through language, and so before empirical science even begins, there is this presupposition of language. This makes language the foundational.
Of course, this is not at all do deny science, which is absurd. It is simply saying that there is more fundamental order of analysis.

Everything in the macroscopic realm is an aggregate of atoms of varying types, irrespective of experience or knowledge. — Garrett Travers

Of course it is. But then, philosophy proper goes beneath this, into the world of assumptions talk about atoms works through.

Where is defined by relativity, which also does not require conscious recognition, but only an individual domain of influence as a result of its existence in relation to other phenomena across time and space. An atom is defined in space by its relation to other atoms in a given domain, with or without your recognition of such. — Garrett Travers

This sounds like you agree that space is at the level of basic questions, indeterminate. That is what I am saying. Everything, I want to say, is like this. There is this game deconstructionists play that gets very childish sometimes; it is the "what's that" game, the point of which is simply to show how language can only refer to other language. Try defining something by accessing the "thing itself" and you will find yourself deep in language. The trick, if you will, is to bring the understanding OUT of the language that is used to talk about things. Turns out that this cannot be done because the things one is trying tot talk about are, as things, of-a-piece with the language, and language is this historical phenomenon, its "paradigms" in constant play.

No, it's just a conceptual tool, like math, used to validate correspondence and build coherence. "Cup" is a symbolic mapping of a perceived objective phenomenon to an applicable/actionable group of potential behaviors. The more applicable/actionable that potential behavior becomes, the more coherence is built around that original conclusion established via correspondence. — Garrett Travers

I think this is right. Seems so. But what of the world-that-is-not-language? Take value. My kidney is speared through, the pain is intense. This pain is not a language event. We can talk about it, obviously, but the "presence" of pain as a actuality transcends the spoken possibility. This, I would add just to make matters worse, is why I am a moral realist: the pain of this affair intuitively speaks through moral language. (A tough issue, granted).

No, it is your brain exploring an idea for applicable/actionable actions associated with your current perceptual understanding of such an abstraction. It isn't performative, you aren't pretending to explore this, I am witnessing you explore it. Exploration is a data accrual function of the brain, not performance. Performance would be you showing me what you can accomplish as a result of the framework you've built through that data accruing exploration. See what I'm saying? — Garrett Travers

Well, in itself to utter "X is a to be taken up not as language" is itself taking X up as language. That is all that means.
But I don't disagree with what you say above, or something like it. I simply say that this is not a basic analysis. Philosophy looks to presuppositions that make the above possible. Note this: when we talk about brains, observe actual brains and study them, the perceptual/cognitive that in the very act of gathering data is itself as opaque as an object can be: a brain. Brains talking about brains? Nothing could be more question begging that this.

See? Exploration, not performance. Perhaps "that which cannot be spoken" is itself a conceptual framework worth exploring for validity that is clearly not established with a feasible amount of coherence, eh?

"Is it?" "Perhaps?" "it." "around it." "pointing." All expressions of exploration on a currently incoherent concept in your brain. Perhaps, you've already demonstrated to yourself that you are capable of speaking on any given topic. That's a cool idea to play with. — Garrett Travers

Without a feasible amount of coherence. Right you are. This is the way scientist would talk, along the lines of, We are on the cutting edge of discovery and our collective paradigms ("conceptual frameworks") are realizing something true about the world.
I agree with science. But science does not address its own preconceptions. I cannot, and its not its job.

Yes, if it is in fact true. But, the truth of tao cannot be assumed to reach a conclusion, as that beggs the question: how do you know the tao is true? And if the truth of tao is already assumed, then so is its objective nature relative to reality. Cool how logic works. — Garrett Travers

And if we were dealing with something that could be reducible to what can be spoken, logically framed, then all this makes sense, but it misses the point of Taoism. Taoist "truth" is not propositional. And when you speak, your utterance automatically binds and conditions.

I should quickly add that I don't care much for this old Taoist saw. Language is to me an open vessel. God could appear before me and I could the next day tell you just what happened. Communication, however, depends on agreement: you, too would have to have had something similar in your experiences for me to make sense, but it is not language and logic as such that stands in the way. If there were something better than reason, reason would discover it. But importantly: this works because language never did "speak the world" as if the actuality of the world were IN the language. It interprets the world. Language is hermeneutical.

The Taoists are just telling us to shut up and stop interpreting because your are missing something in the presence of Being.

Bingo. One thing you'll learn about valid propositional logic, that are also true, is that they are tautological in nature, and cannot be true without such. Here's where things get real fun. For example, A=A is a tautology, meaning it is unfuckwithably true. However, it is also begging the question, thus it is a logical fallacy. Objective reality is arranged in a self-evident manner, logically, as well as functionally. The key is to identify emergent characteristics of reality through induction. — Garrett Travers

Yeah, I get this. Wittgenstein said this, and I took logic courses once upon a time. The question begged is, of course, why should I believe tautologies? There was a paper by Quine I read once, The Two Dogmas of...anyway, as I recall, analytic propositions fail to account for connotative distinctions. Something like that.. But Wittgenstein made the point best: logic cannot determine its own generative source, for it would take an act of logic to do so. Question thereby begged for any and all logically formed propositions. He, like Kant, condemned thought to its own devices, and this is absolutely right, but it is also rather vacuous since it says nothing at all about content. There could be hidden realities. powerful, profound, and logic would not flinch. Identifying emerging characteristics, content, is, as you say, key.

All real philosophy is. The fake philosophers would have you believe that reality is a misapprehension, that logic outweighs factual emergence, and that you aren't capable of deriving an ethical code of morality from the facts of that reality within which you exist. I exist to demolish these false conceptions where ever, and whenever I encounter them outside of individual exploration for the sake of exploration itself. — Garrett Travers

Not sure what fake philosophies you have in mind. I do realize that reality is a term that has serious problems providing context for making it clear. If you are a physicist and tell me you are making discoveries about the nature of reality in, say, string theory, I will nod in appreciation. I do understand.

But if you ask a philosophical question about those findings, you will find yourself deep in questions.

You think accurately, friend. The position of that bank doesn't give a shit about whether or not you can mathematically, or linguistically prove its position and existence, it stands there to mock any attempt you may fail at to attempt to do so by declaring itself to your lying eyes. — Garrett Travers

Good common sense. I use this common sense 24/7. Then I think about what common sense stands on and things become problems. That's life.

Indeterminate as a premise, does not follow to the conclusion that spatio-temporal existence is to be negated. That would be a fallacy from ignorance. It is basically making an argument that is predicated on no clear premise, which does not produce a tautology characteristic of that which is true in terms of logic, or induction. — Garrett Travers

Negated? No. Not this. Recontextualized. When is an atom not an atom? When I am not talking about atoms, but something else that makes talk about atoms irrelevant. Meanings are bound to the ways we talk about things.

Does saying something establish its own validity at a certain level of understanding? I think they call that begging the question, eh? — Garrett Travers

More at a performative contradiction.
To speak is to imply that which you speak of can be spoken (nothing you can sing that can't be sung, sort of thing). But the tao, this is a concept that is "about" the unspeakable world. One cannot "say" an apple, rather, one speaks about it, contextualizes it, and without a context, it is not an apple at all. Nor is it a sensory field's impressions or an aggregation of atoms. Nor is it even "there" (where is there if not contextualized against a "here"?).
So there is something very interesting about our being able to on the one hand have our understanding bound to language and logic, and on the other, apprehend the world not-as-language. Of course, my not-as-language utterance is itself a performative contradiction.
Or is it? Perhaps in speaking about that which cannot be spoken I am not speaking "it" at all. But I am speaking "around it," "pointing" to it.
Question begging? How would this problem be cast as QB? to say the true tao cannot be spoken assumes that it CAN be spoken, and so this is an unproved assumption because it is unprovable, and it is unprovable because it is a contradiction.
All philosophy is question begging, eventually, down the road of explaining what is meant. But then, this is true of all claims whatever, as well. I say the bank is across the street, but can I give a determinative account of what "across from" means? It is a spatial designation that has to be in space somewhere, but being in space somewhere is always indeterminate for space itself is indeterminate.