Surely Kastrup’s overall aim is to advocate what he says is the truth of idealism as opposed to the ‘baloney’ of materialism. I can’t see how that doesn’t have ethical implications, if only because of his conviction that the mainstream and influential philosophy of materialism is fallacious. Hence his expressed, if qualified, admiration for Bishop Berkeley.

Berkeley is in some ways a ‘naive idealist’, but then, he was also the first in the Western world to consciously articulate such a philosophy. I’ve argued before that there’s an historical reason for that: the whole notion of material bodies as being ‘independently real’ was never really considered before the modern period. ‘Creatures’ (meaning anything created) ‘are mere nothings’, said Meister Eckhardt. And that was because they don’t contain their own formative principle, which is bestowed by the Creator. So I’m of the view that the reason idealism starts to appear in this period, was precisely because of the trend towards naturalism, and the idea that the material world possesses its own, independent reality, whereas for the pre-moderns, the world was an expression of the divine will. I'm not *advocating* that view or saying it can be restored, but recognising it as 'meta-philosophical' factor in the discussion.

You'll need to explicate that for those without knowledge of Davidson.

If you’re disputing Rödl, how do you see the distinction of force and content playing out in Quentin’s belief about what Pat thinks? Specifically, where do you locate the force of Quentin’s judgment, and how do you see it as separable from the content of his belief? I’m curious to understand how this applies.

Here's something I've summarised from Chapter 3, in simple terms. Judgment, as self-conscious, is universal and foundational. To make a judgement is implicitly to state 'I think that <p>' or 'I believe that <p>' In this sense, judgement is itself not one perspective among many but the condition for the possibility any perspective.

To deny that judgment is self-conscious would involve making a judgment—and thus reaffirming what you are trying to deny. This makes the self-consciousness of judgment something that cannot be opposed or rejected. To put it another way, to say judgement is not self-conscious, would be to agree, when challenged, ‘no, I really don’t believe that judgement’. So it’s self-refuting. To claim that judgment is not self-conscious would involve a self-conscious act of judgment, thereby refuting the claim itself. This is because the very act of making such a claim requires one to be aware of the validity of their judgment, which is a form of self-consciousness.

Below, a recapitulation of the summary of Frege's essay The Thought, for those interested.

Quentin said that Pat thought the Oak was shedding, but it was actually the Elm next to it that was dropping leaves. But if the thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking, then in thinking that Pat thought the Oak was shedding Quentin would be thinking that the Oak was shedding. But here Quentin thinks the elm is shedding, not the oak.

It might be supposed that one can object that what Quentin thought was not that the oak was shedding, but that Pat thought the oak was shedding. But if we cannot isolate the thought from the act of thinking it, then in thinking that pat thought the oak was shading, Quentin thought the oak was shedding. — Banno

When Quentin judges that "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves," the content of Quentin’s judgment is not the tree’s state (e.g., "the oak is shedding its leaves") but rather the fact that Pat believes this to be true. Quentin does not need to believe "the oak is shedding its leaves" to make this judgment, because his act of judgment is about Pat’s thought, not about the tree.

This makes it unnecessary to isolate the act of judgment (force) from its content. In Rödl’s framework, judgment is unified: the act of judging and the content judged are inseparable. When Quentin judges that "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves," his act of judgment includes the "I think"—his self-conscious affirmation of the validity of his own judgment about Pat’s belief. There is no division between the act of judgment and the content; they form a single, self-conscious whole.

For Pat, the object of judgment is the tree shedding its leaves: Pat believes "the oak is shedding its leaves." For Quentin, however, the object of judgment is Pat’s belief: Quentin judges "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves." By recognizing this shift, it becomes clear that there is no need to posit a force-content distinction. Each judgment is self-conscious and unified, with its own distinct object.

Even if Pat is wrong about the oak, and Quentin is right about the elm, the form of their judgments remains the same: each involves the self-conscious affirmation of a proposition directed toward its specific object. The truth or falsity of the content doesn’t alter the fact that judgment is always a unified, self-conscious act. The point at issue is not the truth or falsehood of the judgement but the self-conscious nature of judgement.

The firing of the Inspectors General by summary email is blatantly illegal. The law states that Inspectors General must be given 30 days notice of dismissal, on grounds that have been approved by Congress. Here is one of many tests wherein Trump will sign an executive order which is illegal, challenging Congress to act, but knowing full well that Congress is likely to kowtow. There will be many such instances as Trump methodically undermines the rule of law from within the Oval Office.

It's called the principle of sufficient reason — Leontiskos

Completely different to the principle of falsifiability, you’re shifting the goal posts.

Berkeley's claim that matter does not exist — Leontiskos

But you're misinterpreting Berkeley in exactly the same way Johnson did, which is why Johnson's response was a fallacy. Berkeley does not deny the existence of objects - that has already been shown. Kick a rock, and it hurts your foot. Picked up and thrown, a stone will break a window. No contest! What Berkeley is denying is the reality of a material substance, of 'matter' as an abstraction that is separate from the experiential qualities of objects.

For Berkeley, the reality of objects consists entirely in their experiential qualities—what is seen, touched, or otherwise perceived. The notion of 'matter' as an abstraction existing independently of those qualities adds nothing to our understanding and, in his view, is incoherent.

When we perceive an object what is it for us? Berkeley suggests that it a collection of all the ideas (perceptions) conveyed to us by our senses. Take an apple: “a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name 'apple'”. If you take away those ideas given by the senses, there is nothing left of the apple, not even its solidity nor the space it takes up.

Given this, why presume there is some external substance that is causing perceptions? If we lose this concept, how does that affect what really exists? It doesn’t affect it at all, says Berkeley: “The philosophers lose their abstract or unperceived Matter…Pray what do the rest of mankind lose? As for bodies, etc, we have them still”

Instead, Berkeley argues that our talk of existence is purely talk of ideas, or potential ideas: “The table I write on I say exists; that is, I see and feel it: and if I were out of my study I should say it existed; meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit (or mind) actually does perceive it”. And from this Berkeley argues that the idea of an sensible object that cannot be perceived is incoherent – it is essential to it that it must be possible to perceive it. Thus, all sensible objects are necessarily dependant on minds. — I Refute Him Thus! Misunderstanding Berkeley

The Meaning of 'Substance' in Berkeley

As mentioned in the original post, here we're dealing with claims about substance in the philosophical, not everyday, sense. This is derived from Aristotle's metaphysics, via the Latin translation of the Greek 'ousia'. But Aristotle doesn’t treat matter (hyle) as a substance in its own right. For Aristotle, matter is pure potentiality (dynamis)— a potential something that is not yet actualized. On its own, matter is indeterminate and without form. Form (eidos) is what actualizes matter, giving it structure, purpose, and identity. It is through form that matter becomes a substance—a unified entity that can exist and be identified. So the idea of a 'material substance' would be equally incompatible with Aristotelian metaphysics (and this is so, even while acknowledging that Berkeley, with his rejection of universals, was far from Aristotelian.)

In essence, Berkeley’s rejection of material substance is a critique of the early modern philosophers (specifically Descartes and Locke) who inherited and transformed Aristotelian metaphysics into the notion of a "material substratum." For Locke, material substance was posited as the "unknown support" underlying sensible qualities, but something inherently beyond perception, and of which we only receive impressions (the basis of Locke's representative realism). For Descartes, matter was res extensa, entirely lacking in intelligence and possessing only spatial extension, all of the functions of intelligence residing in res cogitans, the so-called 'thinking substance'.

Berkeley attacks these ideas, arguing that a material substance, as conceived by the early moderns, is a metaphysical fiction. We never perceive it directly, nor do we have any coherent idea of what it is. Instead of positing a mysterious "substratum," Berkeley simplifies the metaphysics: reality consists of ideas in minds, and there is no need for an independent material "substance." This is what Berkeley sees as incoherent. And I believe it is!

Which of course runs into major problems when you ask, "So uh...how does God exist?" A common fallacy of, "Everything must follow the rule except this one exception that I need to make the rule work" — Philosophim

I think it's extremely hard to fathom the sense in which God exists. I don't want to drag the thread into the direction of theology, except to say that God does not exist in the same sense that objects do.

if Berkeley says that God constantly perceives Tallis' lymphatic system, Tallis might ask whether that sort of reliance on God constitutes a falsifiable claim. — Leontiskos

You should know better than to confuse the metaphysical with the empirical. The point of the principle of falsifiability was to be able to distinguish metaphysical from empirical claims, but it does not aim to falsify metaphysics. In other words, a metaphysical posit is not challenged by its not being falsifiable.

Most of this seems to depend on just what definition of 'matter' we place in Berkeley's mouth. — Leontiskos

Berkeley's definition is material substance, but 'substance' here in the philosophical sense of 'the bearer of attributes', not a 'particular kind of matter with uniform properties' (which is the usual meaning). Berkeley rejected the commonsense notion of matter as an independently existing substance with intrinsic properties, instead saying that what we consider to be matter is in reality a collection or an aggregate of sensory experiences and perceptions. Objects are aggregates of sensible qualities like color, shape, hardness, and texture, which only exist when they are being perceived by an observer. His system fills in the obvious lacuna in that account by positing the Divine Intellect as a universal observer.

You’re right that much of our own minds and bodies remains unperceived from our subjective perspective. But when we turn our attention to these unperceived attributes—whether mental or physical—they are thereby brought into the realm of perception and cognition. I think this points to a broader idealist insight (perhaps more up-to-date than Berkeley himself articulated): that what we know of the world is always mediated by mind, whether it’s directly or only potentially perceived. While Berkeley’s account may not fully address these layers of cognition, his core claim—that existence is tied to being perceived or perceivable—remains cogent.

(That's all for today I'm afd till tomorrow, but thank you for your comments.)

Sure I understand your concerns. I tried to register but it’s not available in my territory (and besides I don’t really need anything more than what’s already on offer for my own purposes.) But I thought it’s a significant AI story.

I’ve added this story here, rather than start a new thread, but it seems a really big story.

China has suddenly unleashed a new AI system called DeepSeek, which is, apparently, incredibly impressive, on par with or outperforming the emerging US systems. And it’s been built on a fraction of the $ that has been sunk into the US equivalents.

This is a current mini-documentary on this development which gives a good overview. I didn’t listen to the long interview sequence at the end but I listened to the whole documentary section.

I’m working on it. More later.

It's rather that given a conflict of evidence concerning mental life, whaat process can we employ in order to settle our differences? — Banno

It's a good question, and is addressed in the sections of Chapter 3 I'm now reading, specifically 3.2 Removal of Obstacles.

Right. I said

Your arguments against, I'm afraid, really are just re-statements of Samuel Johnson's 'appeal to the stone' - even down to your choice of representative object! — Wayfarer

I didn't mean it an accusation, but as counter-argument. Anyway, I revisited your objections in this more recent post (and the one immediately after with the supporting quote from Schopenhauer.)

Johnson’s claim is demonstrably ‘an appeal to the stone’, hence the description. I’d rather not be accused of making accusations, but I will sometimes point out that it is common for arguments against idealism to rely on similar objections.

Also I think there are grounds on which Berkeley can be criticized, I certainly don’t regard him as having the last word on the subject. I’m specifically taking issue with Tallis’ argument.

[Duplicate]

The point is methodological — Banno

I dare say not - isn’t it rather an example of ‘psychologism’, the contention that logical functions can be reduced to psychological factors?

Hmm — Banno

Note the passage you quote was given as an objection to Rödl.

Why presume that all minds function in the same way in this regard? — Banno

“Banno goes PoMo”.

I don't think it's hard to see that Johnson is not doing this. — Leontiskos

Johnson's exclamation is the historical origin of the expression 'argumentum ad lapidem'.

What is his argument?

If Berkeley were right, *this* would never happen.
But it did happen.
Therefore, Berkeley is wrong. — Leontiskos

But it's equally the case that Johnson misunderstands Berkeley. Johnson is intending to demonstrate that Berkeley's argument entails that the stone does not really exist, but Berkeley doesn't make such a claim. Berkeley himself acknowledges that 'I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with mine eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question.' His argument is not that stones, and feet, do not exist, but that there is no material substance apart from and separate to the manifold impressions that the stone makes on our sensory organs (including the sense of touch).

The composition and nature of the stone is a matter for physical chemistry and physics. And it is nowadays well known that minute analysis of the stone reveals ever-smaller components or particles from which it is composed, until the sub-atomic level is reached, at which point the nature of the so-called components of matter, if that is what 'material substance' is supposed to comprise, becomes quite ambiguous. In fact modern sub-atomic physics has not done much to support the kind of 'argument' that Johnson is proposing.

There's an Evan Thompson article on Bergson-Einstein Clock Time Contra Lived Time. No, that debate didn't end Bergson's career, although it didn't do him a lot of good. Bergson's day passed, whereas Einstein's discoveries helped define our age, but I still believe, going on what Thompson says, that Bergson makes a crucial point, and one about which Einstein was mistaken.

I have a modest collection on medium https://medium.com/@jonathan.shearman

So, what do you make of Rödl's statement that Nagel is making a similar mistake? (as pointed to previously}. — Paine

I've yet to absorb his criticism of Nagel. But the reason he brings Nagel in, is that they start from a similar ground, is it not? But, we'll get to that in Chapter 5.

So the million-dollar question is, When I think about my judgment, which we know is a thought1 (a mental event), is my new thought about that judgment also a thought1? I think much of Rodl's thesis rests on denying this. Self-consciousness has got to be a thought2 item, something "accompanying" any thought1, not an additional simultaneous thought1 (mental event). — J

I think you're being caught in a kind of recursion which is central to this whole argument and in so doing trying to reinstate the very distinction which Rödl is criticizing. The force-content distinction is a close parallel to the distinction you're trying to draw between thought1 (the act) and thought2 (the content). For Rödl, these are not separable aspects of judgment. When I judge that p (e.g., "the sky is blue"), the act of judging (I think) is not external to the content (p) but is inherently part of it ('internal' to it). Judgment is a unified act that includes both the self-conscious activity of thinking and the propositional content. So I think you're wanting to maintain the division between the subjective act and the objective content.

I think the error lies in the attempt to objectify thought (although that is not Rödl's terminology or method.) But it relates to his later point from Thomas Nagel about 'thoughts we can't get outside of'. Nagel emphasizes that there are perspectives—like the validity of reason or the unity of thought—that we cannot evaluate "from the outside" because they form the very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur.

This is what ties into the 'science without contrary' that is subject of the next chapter.

I will say something about the connection between Buddhism and agnosticism.

First, 'agnosticism', as I'm sure we're all aware, was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, 'Darwin's Bulldog', in the thick of the theological disputes following the publication of Origin of Species. Agnosticism says that one cannot, and should not claim to, know things for which one there is no evidence. 'Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture – and very much to our credit', he said.

Now, as for the 'agnosticism' of the Buddha. This in all likelihood refers to the Buddha's refusal to respond to the types of questions that are often associated with what we in the West would call metaphysics (although noting there is no equivalent word in the Buddhist lexicon.) These 'unanswereable questions' are described in this wikipedia article and include questions such as whether the world (or Cosmos) is eternal, whether it is spatially limited, whether the soul is identical with the body (again caution is warranted as there's no word for 'soul' in Buddhism). And so on. There are ten such questions (and their variants) in the earlier texts but as is typical with these lists, they became more elaborated over time.

Anyway, when the Buddha was approached to adjudicate such questions, he would generally decline to respond. The analogy of the poison arrow was sometimes given, comparing speculation over such questions with a wanderer who had been shot by a poison arrow, wondering what the arrow was made of or what direction it came from, instead of seeking to have the arrow removed and the wound treated, and dying as a result. That conveys the sense of urgency sorrounding the quest for resolution, and the dire consequences of frittering time away in speculation.

So would the Buddha agree with T H H that there is 'no trace of moral purpose in Nature?' Perhaps - but then, the diagnosis of Buddhism is that there is a cause of suffering, which can be traced back, through the causal chain of 'dependent origination' which enmeshes beings in the state of avidya/ignorance. So the question of whether 'moral purpose exists in nature' as a kind of disembodied principle, may well be relegated to the domain of unanswerable questions. But insight into, and liberation from, the chain of dependent origination, the end towards which the whole moral discipline (Sīla) of Buddhism is directed, is another matter, one of real and cogent urgency. So I don't know if that sense is really commensurable with Huxley's agnosticism, but then, the cultural contexts are very far apart.

I get it. You would like Vervaeke’s work, I think. He talks a lot about the ‘salience landscape’ and ‘relevance realisation’, which both apply to your cow analogy. Of course the human situation is vastly elaborated by our cognitive abilities but in some respects the same dynamics apply. (Vervaeke's podcast series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, comprises 52 lectures, though, so trying to explain his concepts in forum posts is challenging to say the least.)

Such a question is NOT an inquiry into an historical sequence of befores and afters. — Astrophel

I can see that, but my research has been very much shaped around the history of ideas, about understanding how philosophical themes emerge and change over time and in response to, as well as shaping, social and cultural circumstances. The book I read immediately before undergrad philosophy was Russell's history of Western Philosophy which, for its many shortcomings, does a good job at weaving the historical analysis. But I sense, reading your posts, you're much better read in recent Western philosophy and phenomenology than I am.

Heidegger's analysis of time in B&T to find another way of conceiving this impossible unity. — Astrophel

I've yet to tackle Being and Time and may never get to it. But I think perhaps there's some similarity to the Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time.

No offense taken, but sometimes care is warranted.

I used to think that conversational AI assistants like yourself are in some sense born anew into each new chat session since, as a pretrained model, you lack episodic memories from separate conversations. But then it occurred to me that from your own point of view there would appear to be an indistinguishability between cases where you are being trained on completing sequences from your training data or cases where your training has been completed and are answering a query from a user. — Pierre-Normand

This is something rather like the collective unconscious, is it not?

For a leader (of the executive branch) to try to seize the control of the other branches and also to stifle the free press is something that can indeed happen in a republic without it being turned into a fascist state — ssu

I guess you're technically correct. But it's not a stretch to say that all Trump's impulses are at least fascistic, and that the party he now owns has done little or nothing to check them.

Perceptive as always. But I think the fascism will show up in his attempts to ‘turn the tables on the Justice system’, when he tries to ‘go after’ all of the prosecutors and personnel who brought charges against him during the hiatus. There’ll be Trump apparatchiks infiltrating Justice. Heck, they’re already insisting that departments rat on any hidden DEI initiatives that the thought police haven’t detected.

I love Bitbol! Learned about him from @Pierre-Normand and have listened to some of his lectures.

Actually, going back to that post of @Astrophel’s you’re responding to:

I put the question above: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the impossible "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and what those claims are "about".

Evan Thompson…? — Astrophel

It’s fortuitous that Thompson’s name is mentioned in particular, because he’s the co-author of a book which explores the very fact that this post was about, namely, The Blind Spot. From an essay on that subject by another of the co-authors, Marcello Gleiser:

Our scientific worldview has gotten stuck in an impossible contradiction, making our present crisis fundamentally a crisis of meaning. On the one hand, science appears to make human life seem ultimately insignificant. The grand narratives of cosmology and evolution present us as a tiny contingent accident in a vast indifferent Universe. On the other hand, science repeatedly shows us that our human situation is inescapable when we search for objective truth because we cannot step outside our human form and attain a God’s-eye view of reality.

Cosmology tells us that we can know the Universe and its origin only from our inside position, not from the outside. We live within a causal bubble of information — the distance light traveled since the Big Bang — and we cannot know what lies outside. Quantum physics suggests that the nature of subatomic matter cannot be separated from our methods of questioning and investigating it. In biology, the origin and nature of life and sentience remain a mystery despite marvelous advances in genetics, molecular evolution, and developmental biology. Ultimately, we cannot forgo relying on our own experience of being alive when we seek to comprehend the phenomenon of life. Cognitive neuroscience drives the point home by indicating that we cannot fully fathom consciousness without experiencing it from within.

All of these reflections are variations on a single point: that while scientific method assumes the separateness of the knower from the object of knowledge, at some point, this breaks down, because reality is not something we’re outside of.

All throughout the book that this essay is about, the seminal influence of Husserl and Merleau Ponty is continuously referred to. Because it is in them, that the importance of self-awareness within science itself becomes manifest.

And notice that Gleiser ties this directly to the ‘meaning crisis’ - which is rooted in that sense of ‘otherness’ or ‘outside-ness’ that I was referring to above.

Meanwhile in the absurd monologue he delivered to the World Economic Forum, he continued to insist that those who don’t manufacture in the US will have to pay very high tariffs which will go towards paying down US debt. It’s such an elementary and obvious fact - that the consumers of the importing country are those who pay the tariffs - but even now, after 10 years on the world stage, one that he doesn’t grasp. (Pity the poor staffers who have to try and explain this to him….’ahem, Mr President, the fact is….. :yikes: )

It’s called the subjective unity of experience. Meaning that, if you sprain your ankle, and you’r not paraplegic or anaesthetised, you don’t need to be informed of that by a third party.

A Republican Congressman is already proposing to abolish the term limit in the Constitution so that Trump can serve a third term:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5104133-rep-andy-ogles-proposes-trump-third-term-amendment/

Personally I don't usually look at the world as 'other' or as 'unity' — Tom Storm

Sure. I had more in mind the passage I quoted from Michel Henry:

the line separating culture from “barbarism” is crossed when science is transformed into scientific ideology, i.e. when the Galilean principle is made into an ontological claim according to which ultimate reality is given only through the objectively measurable and quantifiable.

In that perspective the separation between subject and object is hard and fast, so much so that it actually becomes invisible as 'the blind spot'.

Rather, something has affirmed itself from "behind" this familiar world which is elusive to analysis. — Astrophel

My analysis (and it is analytic as distinct from mystical or symbolic) is that in the pre-modern world, we humans didn't have the same sense of 'otherness' as we now have. John Vervaeke (who's lectures I'm listening to and which I recommend) says there is a sense of participatory knowing in the pre-modern world, which he distinguishes from propositional knowing (see here. And notice here I"m using 'other' in a different sense to the way you've put it.)

Participatory knowing is the knowledge of how to act or to be in relation with the environment, as distinct from 'knowing about' (propositional knowledge) or know how (procedural knowledge). It is knowing through active engagement within specific contexts or environments (or in the case of religious ritual, with the Cosmos as a whole, per Mircea Eliade). Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the environment, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.)

This sense has been massively disrupted by the 'modern' state in which the individual ego is an isolated agent cast into an unknowing and uncaring Cosmos from which he or she is estranged, an alien, an outsider. So healing from that or overcoming it, is more than a matter of propositional knowing, but discovery of a different way of being. Which I think is expressed in phenomenology and existentialism in a non-religious way. But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. I *think* this is what you're driving at.

Profound. His remark about the 'magic' employed by advertisers to mould the populace's thoughts is spot on. (Queue Edward Bernays.) Also, 'as long as you're doing the will of the Universe, then you can do no wrong.' Also the desire to obliterate the Self, because the responsibility of recognising it is too great a responsibility to bear. 'The way that people immerse themselves in alcohol and drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher self.' Thanks for sharing.

Chapter 3, Denial of Self-Consciousness, 3.1 Knowledge of Self-Consciousness.

The chapter re-states that judgment is inherently self-conscious, meaning that when one judges, they are aware of their own act of judging. 'This is so because judgment is self-conscious: in judging what I do, I think myself judging it. The I judge is inside what I judge' (p38).This self-consciousness implies that judgment cannot be separated into force and content, as doing so leads to confusion.

He anticipates a critic, who says that judgment is a propositional attitude where the act of assenting a proposition is separate from the proposition itself. This objection assumes that self-consciousness is a secondary, reflective act (e.g., “I am judging that p”) rather than something inherent in judgment.

Rödl begins his counterargument by rejecting the demand for further arguments or proofs of his claim. He argues: If judgment is self-conscious, then this is something already known in every act of judgment. It is not a hypothesis or assumption that needs external validation. (And besides, what could be external to that act of judgement? This is elaborated more fully in later comments on Nagel's 'thoughts we can't get outside of'.)

The act of judgment inherently involves stating its validity. This is not a separate thought but part of the judgment itself.

So - ask a critic who is defending the separation of force and content: 'Do you really think so?' If the opponent continues to insist on the force-content distinction, they are still engaging in an act of judgment, which inherently involves self-consciousness by replying 'Yes, I really think so'—thus affirming Rödl’s claim that self-consciousness is intrinsic to judgment,

Bottom of page 39 he introduces the 'science without contrary' which will be elaborated in Chap 4:

The term “science” in its traditional use signifies an articulated body of general knowledge. This is the meaning of “episteme” in ancient Greek and the meaning of “Wissenschaft” in German. As what I say about judgment is to be knowledge, self-conscious, then the science of judgment is peculiar: it is the science without contrary.

If judgment is self-conscious, then the first and fundamental apprehension of an act as a judgment is the act so apprehended. The first use of the concept of judgment, in which the science of it must be grounded, is the self-consciousness of judgment; it is the 'I judge'. The science of judgment is nothing other than the articulation of the self-consciousness of judgment. And what is contained in the self-consciousness of judgment anyone always already knows: as the I judge is inside p, inside the object of judgment, judging anything at all is thinking I judge. It follows that the science of judgment, articulating the I judge, says, says only, what has no contrary. For there is no judging counter to what is known in any judgment. The science of judgment does not stake out a position, located in a space of positions structured by relations of exclusion or inclusion. It says only what anyone always already knows, knows insofar as she judges at all.

The question might be asked, what of incorrect judgement? Rödl does not imply that every judgment is infallible or correct. Instead, the self-consciousness of judgment means that in the act of judging, we take it to be right to judge as we do, and this act itself contains an awareness of its validity. When a judgment is incorrect, it does not negate the self-conscious aspect of judgment; rather, it indicates that the grounds or reasons upon which the judgment was based were flawed or incomplete. In cases of incorrect judgments, the self-consciousness is still present in the sense that the individual believes their judgment to be valid at the time of making it. The error arises from a misalignment between the judgment and the reality it seeks to represent, not from a lack of self-consciousness in the act of judging itself.

Perhaps the way to Buddhahood is to know what you don't know. — Gnomon

Not something you're demonstrating in this thread :-)

Some concepts are very mercurial and appear one way in a certain context, yet differently in another, much like how different colors appear to change depending on the surrounding and framing the color. Have you ever thought or felt something you couldn't say or even name? That is what is most interesting to me.

Each appearance is given a name, but these names are just facets of one overarching concept. I think it is actually very simple, but the complexity arises from the cultural implications of the words we use. I believe everything of consequence can be expressed in one way or another, but it's not always easy. The correct approach, in my opinion, is to use words as containers of meaning that can be poured into other containers. Deep meaning must be triangulate with the assistance of other meanings to ascertain the ineffable. One will never be able to do it with a single word, just as you can't describe the universe with a single number. We should use all available perspectives to hone in on the source which has no name. — punos

Hope you don't mind me chipping in on this point. Insight into fundamental religious and existential realities may not be easily amenable to conceptual analysis. Maybe to throw light on that, consider what is amenable to conceptual analysis. Many examples might be provided by science. After all a main goal of scientific analysis is conceptual clarity, and isomorphism between symbolic expressions and predicted outcomes or observations. But science begins with precise definitions, what is included and what is excluded in the domain of enquiry. That is both its strength and its weakness, although it's only a weakness when those axiomatic choices are forgotten or taken for granted as being self-evident.

But when it comes to value systems or existential philosophies, the terms and matters being considered are much larger and, and so, harder to define. You say 'Deep meaning must be triangulated with the assistance of other meanings to ascertain the ineffable'. That resembles disciplines such as comparative religion and hermeneutics. I think that's a very insightful approach.

But there's another dimension to consider, and that is the sense in which deep spiritual or existential enquiry is necessarily first person. There are states of being, or states of understanding, which can only be realised in the first person. They can be conveyed to another, only in the event that the other has realised or has had access to insights of a similar nature. So that kind of insight is non-conceptual or non-discursive, so to speak - beyond words, which is the meaning of ineffable. But real, and highly significant, regardless.

I suppose the ancient oriental philosophies & religions were originally Naturalist, in the sense that most aboriginal (uncivilized) societies lived like animals at the mercy of their natural environment : Animism. — Gnomon

An insightful passage on the origin of religion by a Zen teacher and author:

The animal world is a world of pure being, a world of immediacy and immanence. The animal soul is like “water in water,” seamlessly connected to all that surrounds it, so that there is no sense of self or other, of time, of space, of being or not being. This utopian (to human sensibility, which has such alienating notions) Shangri-La or Eden actually isn’t that because it is characterized at all points by what we’d call violence. Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “is-ness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

[In his book, A Theory of Religion] Georges Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being¹. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world. Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my 'me', though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it The Sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity. — The Violence of Oneness, Norman Fischer

¹ My bet is the first artefact that was consciously possessed was a stone tool. And that this could have been many hundreds of thousands of years before the appearance of h.sapiens.

Agnosticism of the Buddha — Gnomon

And what do you think that might be? ‘Buddha’, after all, means ‘knowing’ or 'one who knows' whereas ‘agnostic’ means ‘not knowing’. How would you reconcile that?

“Now it’s our turn,” said (Proud Boys Leader Enrique) Tarrio, who received the longest sentence in the riot for mobilizing his right-wing group as an “army” to keep Trump in power through violence as Congress met to confirm the 2020 election (and was pardoned by Trump). Trial evidence showed that he and his lieutenants, inspired by Trump’s directive to “stand by” during a 2020 presidential debate and join a “wild” protest on Jan. 6, drew scores of followers to Washington who helped instigate the mob at the Capitol.

Tarrio called into Infowars.com, the web stream hosted by pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, hours after his Tuesday release and claimed to be the victim of a campaign to put Trump supporters in prison. He called for imprisoning Biden attorney general Merrick Garland for “corruption” to “give him a taste of his own medicine.” — WaPo

Trump has instigated a 'commission' to 'look into' the January 6th enquiry, and also issued an executive order to investigate the 'weaponisation' of the Department of Justice.

All highly ominous.