But to deny that there is also something beyond the scope of our senses, is also unreasonable. — Gnomon

That's so. We know that to be the case. But this doesn't mean that there is in all cases something not only outside the scope of our senses, but something we can never know.

It appears that you accept uncritically as knowledge that which you think you know. And fair enough, that's how a lot of the world's work and play get done. — tim wood

Well, I can, if pressed, come up with reasons for my acceptance of my cat as a cat, just as one can come up with reasons why we know a chair is a chair. But my point is that those reasons and their recitation isn't required for there to be knowledge in such cases. There are times when reasoning and investigation are required for us to know. But those are instances different from what we know and act on regularly in our day to day lives.

What do you do when need to take a critical stance? That is, when you have to know for yourself? What do you dig into, how, and how and why do you rely on that? Kant's answer, as I read it, was it's this way (that he described) or no way. The this way takes reason, which in the case of perception, is simply no part at all of the thing-(in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself) perceived. — tim wood

We're justified in taking a critical stance where we have reason to doubt. But I would say if we don't have a reason to doubt, it's not appropriate to pretend there is one. This is Peirce's point in his criticism of Descartes and his exercise in doubting what he plainly didn't doubt if his existence and conduct is any guide.

I'm a fan of Pragmatism to a large extent as you may have guessed. Dewey referred to what he called the "philosophical fallacy" which roughly speaking is the neglect of context. According to Dewey, philosophers have a tendency to suppose that whatever may be the case in certain conditions will be the case under other conditions. The fact that reason is required to know in certain cases doesn't mean it's required in all cases.

The language is simple; e.g., "I see a tree." What exactly does that simple language entail to be meaningful? Care to take a try at it? The one thing it cannot mean is that you see the tree. If you disagree, then make the case. — tim wood

I find it hard to think of situations where I'd say "I see a tree." Perhaps I would if, for example, someone asked me what I see outside my window, and there's a tree outside my window. Or perhaps if they showed me a picture of a tree and asked "What do you see, a tree or a kangaroo?" In those contexts, it would be perfectly appropriate for me to say "I see a tree" and it would be a true statement.

You're then habituated to the idea. Is that how you understand knowledge? — tim wood

I think that most of our lives, our experiences, are non-reflective. We're not engaged in reasoning most of the time. We don't have to use our reason be aware of what's going on about us. I don't think knowledge is the use of reason or is confined to the results of its use as "knowledge" "know" or "knowing" is ordinarily used. When we define "knowledge" in that fashion we discount, or perhaps even ignore, most of our lives. Knowledge then becomes very limited and narrow. It's no wonder that such a narrow definition of "knowledge" leads to Skepticism and Idealism.

What we know, as we ordinarily use that word, can include what we're familiar with from past experience; it can include there results of reasoning or scientific inquiry; it can include what we've perceived. For me, the fact that what we know isn't limited to what results from the application of reasoning or scientific inquiry doesn't mean we don't "really" know in that case.

Our cat sitting on the floor presents no problems to solve, creates no doubts that plague us, no needs to be satisfied, no questions to answer, no reason to think.

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I don't understand, sorry. Is reasoning or scientific inquiry required to understand how I know that what's before me is a cat? I confess I've never before been called upon to describe the process involved.

The fact is, like Dewey, I don't think we reason, or engage in scientific inquiry, or even think unless we encounter a problem or experience doubt which we want to resolve. A cat presents no such problem or reason to doubt. There's no reflective process involved. There doesn't have to be.

How do you know its a cat? — tim wood

Are you going to say something about our senses deceiving us, or being unreliable? If so, then if I say I've known many cats over the years, and know generally how they behave, that the cat has all the characteristics of Felis Catus, that he's been my cat for about 17 years, etc., uses the litter box, purs, meows, chirps, yowls, wakes me at odd hours by tapping my nose or knocking things off the nightstand or dresser, sleeps a great deal, it won't matter, I assume.

but a critique of the limits of human Reason. — Gnomon

There certainly are limits to human reason, but to claim the real is forever beyond our knowledge seems, to me, excessive, and unjustified.

Claim and believe what you like, can you improve on Kant? — tim wood

I can ask what the "cat-in-itself" in this case is supposed to be, and if the only answer given is that it's something different from the cat but cannot be known or described, I can ask why it is that I should accept as "real" that which cannot be known or described. I can also wonder whether the "thing in itself" is a thing at all, and what it adds to our view of the world.

Do you really know what's real? My position is similar to that of Kant : our senses are probing the presumed reality outside our heads, but the picture we construct from those bits of data is a mind-made (subjective) representation (symbol), not the ultimate (objective) thing, as known to omniscience. — Gnomon

I think all knowledge is provisional, i.e. though based on the best evidence available, subject to revision as new evidence is discovered or obtained. Regarding the subject matter we're addressing, I think the best evidence is that we're living organisms which are part of a world, universe, environment--whatever you wish to call it. As such we interact with the world and our fellow creatures all the time. We're not outside the world looking in. What we think, what we experience, what we do or don't do, all take place in the world.

We don't know everything about the world of which we're a part. I think we have much to learn about it. But in our interaction with the rest of the world (or that portion of it we've encountered thus far) we've not merely seen, heard, touched its other constituents, we've measured them, we've eaten them, we've built with them, experimented on/with them; we have, in other words, tested and employed them, suffered from them, benefited from them, in various ways and what takes place when we do so is repeated time and again. To that extent, we know their qualities and characteristics. We have no reason to doubt that our cats and dogs or lawns or cars, etc., are in any significant sense different from what we believe them to be. We know quite well they are cats, dogs, etc., and not something "unknowable" or the product of an evil demon or a group of mischievous sprites or something else. When we have reason to doubt what we see, then we investigate, and learn.

Now one can say that we know only to the extent we can know as human beings. But that's a mere truism. Let's wait until we have a reason to believe a cat isn't a cat to ponder what it "really" is or whether we can know that it's not "really" some kind of thing or creature that merely appears to us to be a cat, doing what cats do.

And of course there is no such thing as a sunset. I'll presume you're talking about the experience. If that, no argument, beyond observing what you observe, that the experiences themselves are all different and only by processes of abstraction and agreement is the phenomenon processed as an experience, and further shared as one.

But what is a sunset to the sun, or the horizon, or to the processes themselves that create it? Nothing more than a judgment of sorts attached to a cognitive asterism of unrelated objects. — tim wood

I don't think we have within us a "thing" which is an experience of a sunset which has a separate existence, cutting us off from the rest of the world. Nor do I think experience is a result of abstraction or agreement. But if you're willing to say that when what we call the sun, through the earth's rotation, "sinks" below the horizon we experience a sunset, that's fine with me. If you mean to say that there is no sun, no earth, no horizon--or that what they "really" are is unknowable, then I believe we're at odds.

No two of them see the same thing. — tim wood

But they do, you know. They see exactly what they should see--the sunset. The fact that their position may make their view of it somewhat different than that of their neighbor is a matter of position. The fact that one of them is color blind and sees the sunset differently is a matter of the problem of color blindness. The fact the stars we see look like small points of light although they're huge, bright, burning spheres is a matter of distance. The fact we see as we do is a matter of being human as opposed to, for example, a murder hornet. There's nothing remarkable or mysterious about these things. But all is a part of the same reality.

Who said it was? What I said was, "A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know." Do you disagree with that assertion? — Gnomon

You also said this, which is what I responded to:

But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion. — Gnomon

My response was that my understanding of the claim being made is that we can't know what's real. If that's a misstatement of your position, let me know.

Regardless, though, to answer your question, I wouldn't we say a major feature of wisdom is to know what we don't know; I'd say it is to know that we don't know what is the case, or something or other. Knowledge is a matter of context. We can't know what we don't know, we simply know we don't know it. We can't know what cannot be known, however, which you seem to think is the real. It seems a very futile view of the world, to me.

One of the problems with this position--that we can't know what the real world is--is that it perpetuates the view reality is "out there." It treats us, or at least our minds, as something apart from and observing the world rather than as a part of the world and in constant interaction with its other constituents.

Well, if you can't know the real, which it appears you, Hoffman and others claim, you can't know what is real, can you? The skeptical scientists and philosophers you refer to thus believe in the existence of a something which, it's maintained, we can for all intents and purposes treat as it seem to us, but is unknowable. I wouldn't describe the belief that only the unknowable is real as wisdom.

It strikes me that if the "real snake" (or whatever it may be) cannot be known, the mental representation snake is what is of significance to us. It doesn't matter what the "real snake" is, nor does it matter if our snake is a mental representation.
,

Well, let's speak of snakes and trains, as does Hoffman in The Atlantic.. According to Hoffman, our snakes and trains are "mental representations" or "symbols" of some kind. Now, he seems to acknowledge (rather grudgingly, it seems) that our snake "mental representation" may bite us and our train "mental representation" my run us over if we step in front of it. I speculate he would even admit, if pressed, that our snake "mental representation" and our train "mental representation" will look like and act like a snake and a train, respectively, and that we will very appropriately treat them as if there really is a snake and a train in our interactions with them.

So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains?

I wonder if there can be a more compelling example of a difference which makes no difference.

Are you familiar with Donald Hoffman's book : The Case Against Reality? He doesn't deny Reality out there, but merely shows that we only know our ideas about reality, in here. :smile: — Gnomon

What does he think is difference between the reality "out there" and the ideas about reality "in here"? If he says the difference is that one is "out there" and the other "in here" I'm not sure he says anything of note, so assume he says something else.

For example, I say that physical nature exists independantly of human cognition, which is a realist statement, but then I realise that such a statement, that nature exists independantly of human cognition, is borne of human cognition, and wouldn't be possible without it. Then I get stuck in a double bind. — Aidan buk

Ask yourself what reasons there are to wonder whether nature exists, given the fact that you interact with it every minute of your life. Ask yourself what reasons there are to believe that you are somehow separate from nature given the fact you interact with it every minute of your life. Then ask yourself whether those reasons provide a basis on which you should doubt what you clearly don't doubt if your conduct in your day to day life is any indication.

I don't have high hopes for the goodness of man, for universal pacifism or other high mindedness and pompous grandstanding. I believe in the old Roman saying from Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus "Si vis pacem, para bellum". — ssu

And I believe in Cicero's assertion that silent enim leges inter arma, and think Sherman was right when he said war is cruelty and cannot be reformed.

I asked earlier if 'war' is seen not as a solution but a problem in itself, how do we solve it ?
What sayest the Pragmatist or Stoic view. John Dewey, Epictetus ? — Amity

Marcus Aurelius spent a good part of his reign as Emperor at war, and died in his military headquarters in Pannonia (now Serbia). The Empire also saw famine and plague while he was Emperor. I'm amazed he found time to write his Meditations--but know of nothing he wrote specifically addressing war. I suspect his attitude toward it was that war was evil, but a necessary evil to sustain the Empire. From the standpoint of a Stoic Sage, I think war, if not defensive, would be viewed as motivated by concerns related to acquisition of territory. wealth and power, which are matters regarding which we should be indifferent, and contrary to virtue.

I'm not sure what Dewey felt about war, but suspect that he would feel context must be considered in assessing the appropriateness of judgments, and that as a result it's not possible to to draw absolute conclusions regarding it, if he addressed it as a philosopher.

Tolstoy seems to have been a very sanctimonious fellow and, as would seem to follow from that, exceedingly self-righteous. All should read Donald Barthelme's story, At the Tolstoy Museum, which pokes fun at him and his mythos most enjoyably.

As to the New Testament, I would say an atheist would in all likelihood have little to complain about when it comes to most of what Jesus is said to have said about loving our neighbors, for example, and letting the one without sin to cast the first stone, and ridding our eyes of logs or whatever that was about--the simple recommendations regarding how to treat one another which are contained in that work. I say "simple" because most of that was said by others such as philosophers long before Jesus the man was a twinkle in his Father's (and therefore his own) eye, but in a more complex manner.

I'm uncertain just what a philosophy of war is supposed to be. Is it an explanation of it? Is it the consideration of how war should be waged? Does it involve the question of when war is "just"?

To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter.
— 180 Proof — tim wood

That's quite Deweyian (Deweyish?) I think. For him, judgments which are the outcome of controlled inquiry for a purpose, not propositions, indicate what may be asserted as "true" (or warranted).

Oh hell, I'll try to provide an example. This is something of Austin's (but it's been quite some time, so I might screw it up).

I assume we're all familiar with the claim made that our senses are unreliable. This is one of the bases on which it's contended that what we perceive isn't what's really there. From it as well comes such wondrous philosophical concepts as sense qualia, or the external world, and more.

Why do we think our senses are unreliable? Well, a pencil when placed for God knows what reason in a glass of water appears crooked, or bent. But it isn't crooked! It isn't bent! See (or don't see)?

How about stars? We seem them as tiny, shiny dots in the sky. But they're not! They're huge, hot gassy things.

As Austin points out, a pencil in a glass of water doesn't seem crooked or bent. We know what something looks like when it's crooked or bent (like a branch or stick) in the ordinary world, and the words "crooked" or "bent" in ordinary language refer to that. The part of a pencil in the water seems located differently than the portion out of the water through refraction--almost separate from it--but doesn't seem bent or crooked.

By saying the pencil appears crooked we distinguish what we see from the reality. In reality, the pencil isn't crooked, but it seems that way to us; therefore, we don't perceive what is in fact. In fact, though, a pencil in a glass of water looks to us just as it should look. It looks like a pencil in a glass of water. We wouldn't expect it to look straight, i.e., like a pencil when not in a glass of water. Nobody, seeing a pencil in a glass of water, shouts out "My God, what happened to the pencil!"

By using ordinary words in an extraordinary manner, we create fictions, problems through extrapolation.

Joe Rogan agrees and he was born Catholic. — Trey

Someone born Catholic disagrees with Church doctrine? Mirabile dictu!

What would an alien see as evil? — Trey

Other aliens, I would guess, for one thing.

Yet, he asserts that “Leaving behind the End of History, we have arrived at something like History as End.” — Number2018

I wonder what that's supposed to mean. Must I read the damn essay to understand?

If he means that history is an exercise in rhetoric, meant to serve a particular end by persuasion and, if necessary to the end, by simple and superficial contrivance, then it no doubt has been that, and is that where the 1619 Project is concerned. Claiming an a single incident which took place when a privateer snatched 20 enslaved Africans off a Portuguese ship and brought them to what is now Virginia in 1619 "started it all" isn't credible.

I think it's more likely other factors played a part, and that it's as certain as it can be American institutional slavery would have come into being even if instead of the 20 enslaved persons, Jesus Christ himself, his mother, the apostles and all the saints had been brought to the shores of British colonial America in 1619. The Spanish and the Portuguese had been vigorously pursuing slavery just next door (relatively speaking) for years. It was legal in Great Britain until 1833 (abolished effectively in 1834), and enslaved Africans would have been transported to British North America regardless of this incident. There's no question that slavery greatly impacted the U.S. and still does, but it's not necessary that it result from a single cause or event nor is it reasonably to claim it does.

What might we learn from such experiments? — jorndoe

That we are more appropriately considered vermin than are rats.

However I don’t know what to call this other concept. The concept of willingly choosing some suffering in contrast to the boredom of comfortability.
10 hours ago — Pax

It's a kind of self-indulgence, of the kind engaged in by those with far too much time on their hands.

This is just the kind of problem which should be pondered by those longing for Ancapistan.

Gender-Neutrality is the lack of gendered terms, and given that these terms aren't gendered they would not need to be removed. — Bradaction

Communication would be less confusing. The absence of pronouns will increase clarity of expression as clarity will be required for communication. Also, it would reduce the potential for mistakes. For example, "How does the person in a leather coat feel?" would make it clear that the person in a leather coat is the object of the inquiry, not someone nearby. "It's the birthday of the person wearing tweed" would do the same at an office party, as would "Tweed-wearer says loafers-wearer should be fired" when actual names are unknown.

In order to be completely gender-neutral, the use of pronouns should be discontinued. Just stop using pronouns. For example, instead of "Do you want some coffee?" simply say "Coffee, yes or no?" Instead of "I disagree with you" simply say "Disagree." Hand gestures may come in handy (get?) as well.

Think so, or don't think so?

A Stoic is indifferent to what's not in his/her control. You're not indifferent to whether you live or how you live to the extent that's in your control.

John Stuart Mill, who was a member of Parliament for a time, famously or infamously said:

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives..."

When pressed to explain his statement, he replied:

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."

I can't say that I agree with Mill when it comes to those who once were Conservatives here in God's Favorite Country (though there's always been a Birchist streak), but I wonder whether this may be true of what the Republican Party--the party of the Big Lie, Trump, "election reform," anti-vaxxers, evangelicals, etc.--seems to have become.

How about The Grand Trismegistus. — Noble Dust

I joined the Elks Club because my wife and I wanted to use its location for our wedding reception (it was unusually nice and even had a golf course). I've always liked the title of its leader--Grand Exalted Ruler. No doubt the Masons have something even more silly, or perhaps the Shriners.

Can I "like" my own posts? If so, how many times can I do so? Just wondering.

And perhaps we should call debate moderators "arbiters" so as to save on typing. — Banno

An arbiter actually decides an outcome, or is someone whose opinion in a matter is considered preeminent, unsurpassed (e.g. Petronius, who wrote The Satyricon and was called elegantiae arbiter, the judge of elegance), So unless that's the role being taken by Hanover or anyone else in his position in a debate, I wouldn't use it. How about another nice Latin word, magister? The magister ludi was the master, or chief or director of the game(s), gladiatorial and otherwise. The magister didn't compete, but ran the show; matters of propriety and decisions on rule disputes were his to make.

The Republican party exists to line the pockets of their friends and sponsors (and their own as well, of course); to assure that the wealthy and large corporations are predominant in politics; to maintain the status quo socially and culturally; and finally, to convince those who are less fortunate that they should remain so because that is in their own interest and that of the United States.

Dancing HAS BEEN a source of law, in fact. Ordinances, case law that I know of. A form of expression granted First Amendment protection here in God's Favorite Country.

My reference to Legal Realism and positivism was intended to go a bit deeper in describing my views, but the primary point of my post was to explain my thought that we shouldn't seek a "Basic Norm."

My inclination is to consider the law as something which derives from our interaction with each other and the rest of the world of which we're a part, and from the view of a practicing lawyer. As a result, I have sympathy for American Legal Realism and, in certain respects, Legal Positivism. I'm leery of the idea of a "Basic Norm" as I'm generally leery of efforts to find a single source of or basis for law, just as I am with efforts to establish a single source of or basis for many other vast, complex systems or things.