Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself. — Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1988

So, Man follows the Earth, which follows the Universe, which follows the Tao. No mention of Nature there.

That is what the Ancient Roman philosophers called the Quaestio here. — Arcane Sandwich

If you cannot say what you think Nature is, then how can say it is different than the Tao?

and the noumenal?
— Janus

I'll let Lao Tzu himself answer you question, in the very first line of the Tao Te Ching: — Arcane Sandwich

So, you do equate the Dao with the noumenal?

I still have no clue what you think "Nature" refers to, and much less how it could be different than the Dao.

Not "perfect," just a substantial (type-of-thingal) form (actuality), which could be rendered "actual type of thing" or "what-it-is-to-be of certain types of thing." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So, you are not talking about Platonic essentialism?

The straightforward translation of essence is just "what-it-is-to-be" and form is what anything is, any whatness it has, and so to be anything at all, instead of sheer indeterminate potency (nothing) involves form. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK, but what it is to be a particular tiger is not what it is to be any other tiger, because their forms are not identical. Leaving aside Plato's conception of transcendent forms, my limited familiarity with Aristotles idea of immanent forms does not think those forms in terms of sets or bundles of attributes or characteristics, as far as I know. I could be wrong about that, admittedly.

And you seem to be alluding to just this here:

I think what you've suggested is largely in line with that view, although there would be the further question of if what-a-thing-is is properly decomposable into properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where your definition would also differ from the traditional view is that the traditional essence is not simply definitive but rather constitutive due to a notion of formal causality. Being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are the forms of things not constituted by their characteristics (leaving aside the further question of behavior)? And saying that being a tiger explains why tigers do what they do seems like a non-explanation which could be fleshed out by saying that how tigers are constituted enables them to do what they do, and if you included the brain in that constitution it would also explain (up to a point) why they do what they do. I say up to a point because individual tigers probably do not act exactly the same as other tigers—that is their behaviors may vary in small ways, since presumably no two tigers are exactly formally the same, and also the contingencies of experience may modify their behaviors somewhat.

It's rather difficult to form an opinion concerning essence while what an essence is remains obscure. — Banno

Yes, indeed!

So if nature is the manifest world
— Janus

Is it? Perhaps it is the real world instead. Perhaps Nature is Reality Itself. Tao (Greatness) is simply a manifestation of Nature. — Arcane Sandwich

How do you understand the difference between the manifest world and "reality itself". Are you invoking the phenomenon/ noumenon distinction? If so it sounds like you would be equating nature with the noumenal. But then how would you draw a distinction between the Dao as described in the verse below

Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and Earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great. — Lao Tzu (Laozi)

the noumenal and Nature?

The preceding verse has nothing to do with Nature, nor with what is natural. It is speaking about Tao (Greatness). That is the name that Lao Tzu (Laozi) gives it, because he does not know its name. Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things. We call it great, only for the lack of a better word, as Laozi (Lao Tzu) says. — Arcane Sandwich

So if nature is the manifest world ( which seems to be the only option left) the Dao preceded it according to the verse in question. — Janus

Perhps you have another option in mind: you say nature is not the manifest world, and you also say that the verse (which sounds like an allusion to the noumenal) has nothing to do with Nature but is about the Dao but youo haven't spelled out just what you think Nature is. So then in your understanding what is Nature according to Lao Tzu?

The Tao follows what is natural. It does not say that Greatness follows Greatness, or that the Tao follows itself. There are translations that make this mistake, but Jane English did not make this mistake in her translation — Arcane Sandwich

If you don't understand the language the text was written in, how do you know that the translator avoids a mistake?

Please explain the equivocation going on, to the best of your ability. — Arcane Sandwich

See the above and provide unequivocal distinctions between the Dao, the manifest world, "Reality itself" and Nature as I have requested.

Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and Earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great. — Lao Tzu (Laozi)

So if nature is the manifest world the Dao preceded it according to this verse. We cannot follow that which is
Born before heaven and Earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
But it is also
Ever present and in motion. which is also Dao but sounds like a description of nature. So, there seems to be some equivocation going on.

As with all philosophical problems, I argue, this matter is discovered in the simplicity of the world's manifest meanings. A proposition as such has no value, and this is true of anything I can imagine, a knowledge claim, an empirical fact or an analytical construction. States of affairs considered apart from the actuality of their conception sit there in an impossible abstract space. — Astrophel

I'm not sure what you mean by "manifest meanings". Do you mean to say that we are affected by how things appear to us? If so, that would be a truism. An empirical proposition has no inherent value to be sure. For example, take the proposition 'it is raining'—the proposition itself if assertoric is merely the expression of an observation and the only value, meaning or quality it has is that of being true or false, and it is the actuality of rain that may have some value, whether positive or negative.

States of affairs are concrete not abstract; it is propositions about states of affairs whose content can be considered to be abstract in the sense of being generalizations.

So what about Wayfarer's talk about clinging "to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying"? — Astrophel

That well laboured old chestnut? It is also a truism. That we are subject to being affected by those things which we are attached to would have to be one of the most obvious observations regarding being human (or animal). That things are transitory, and that humans often wish they were not so are also simply obvious facts.

When people start bringing out ideas like this I would say they have to try to justify their sine qua non historically. "If [insert absurdity] is not true, essentialism fails." The response, "Show where you are getting the idea that [absurdity] comes with essentialism." Objections to essentialism tend to be strawmen through and through. — Leontiskos

This notion of a perfect form, eidos or essence is the traditional understanding of essentialism. You admit that essentialism is not monolithic, and yet you call criticism of the traditional thesis a strawman on account of its failure to be a cogent critique of, and even though it does not purport to be critiquing, what you call "modal essentialism". It seems that any strawmanning here is on you.

Sure, it can be said that things have essential properties in the sense that they would not qualify as whatever those essential properties would qualify them as if they did not possess those qualities. To say this is very different than saying there is some essence we might refer to as "tigerness' or 'carness".

Here is the issue I spot. Tigers are animals, and being an animal seems essential to what a tiger is. But not only tigers are animals. Likewise, being a tree is essential to what an oak is, but not all trees are oaks. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's true. I think the individual characteristics are all necessary but only the whole set is sufficient to identify an entity or a kind of entity. And if there are other entities or kinds of entities that have the same set of characteristics then it would seem there must be at least one extra characteristic which is not shared by that other entity. I'm not sure I've expressed that in a way that is not open to equivocation, but let's see.

:up:

So here's my question, generally speaking. How is "blind faith" not an adequate response to the Problem of Induction? — Arcane Sandwich

We see regularities in nature everywhere. We have a coherent and vast body of scientific knowledge that tells us there is not any reason to think the Sun will suddenly cease working. The Sun has always risen throughout at least human recorded history, and we have good scientific reasons to believe it was shining long before life on Earth arose. So, I would not call our confidence in the Sun continuing to rise "blind faith". For me, blind faith is belief in something without any empirical evidence or logical justification at all.

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. It begs the question, Why do it (for it is assumed one does it for a reason)? No one wants this. The summum bonum is not a "defensible thesis." — Astrophel

Are you not proposing something? And do you not need some justification that can be intersubjectively assessed in an (hopefully) unbiased way? Let's say for the sake of argument that spiritual insight, even enlightenment, is possible—what one sees is not explainable, not propositional, and yet ironically it is always couched in those terms, and people fall for it because they are gullible and wishful.

If altered states of consciousness were explainable, we would have all long been convinced. So, your epiphany may convince you of something, but it provides absolutely no justification for anyone else to believe anything. If they do believe you it is because you are charismatic, or because they feel they can trust you or they believe you are an authority, and so on. If you could perform miracles that might give them more solid reason to believe what you say.

Thanks, but I'm no clearer on what the problem or the "other problem" are.

Yep, and if we want to say that this is not a tiger then we are already appealing to the idea of an essence.

Folks like to say, "Well, unless you can give me the perfectly correct (real) definition of a tiger, I won't accept that essences exist," which looks like sophistry to me. It's like saying:

Do you have a car?
Yes.
Prove it. List every part that constitutes your car.
*Gives a list of tens of thousands of parts.*
This list omits a rear-left brake pad. Therefore you don't have a car. — Leontiskos

Things have characteristics, not essences. So, what's the problem if one or a few characteristics are neglected? It would only be a problem if some other object possessed all the same characteristics, and the few that have been omitted by the list were the very ones the other object did not possess.

It's not a matter of listing every part that constitutes a car (or tiger), but of listing that set of attributes which only cars (or tigers) possess.

Rödl treats Nagel as the last exit from the highway of absolute idealism:

The aim of this essay, as an introduction to absolute idealism, is to make plain that it is impossible to think judgment through this opposition: mind here, world there, two things in relation or not. To dismantle this opposition is not to propose that the world is mind-dependent. Nor is it to propose that the mind is world-dependent. These ways of speaking solidify the opposition; they are an impediment to comprehension.
— SC&O, Rödl, page 16 — Paine

Once we step beyond non-dualism, as all our thought does, and have identified such things as mind and world, then logical dependence relations may become apparent. For example, we transgress non-duality when we identify fish and water, and if we inquire as to whether there is a dependence relation between them it immediately becomes obvious that fish depend on water whereas water does not depend on fish.

I think the same can be said for the relation between mind and world (although this may depend on what we mean by 'world)—the mind depends on the world whereas the world does not depend on the mind. Of course, we could stipulate that 'world' means 'world as experienced by humans' which would of course make the world dependent on (the human) mind, but I don't think that is the common usage or intended meaning of the term 'world'.

According to absolute idealism the world just is the world as experienced by humans—"the rational is the real", so it doesn't seem clear that Rödl is moving beyond absolute idealism. I haven't read his work so maybe that is not his intention—do you read him as claiming that it was Nagel's intention? It's a very long time since I read The View From Nowhere.

Perhaps the problem is I'm not sure what you mean "last exit from the highway of absolute idealism".

Yep, that's the one...

Uncontaminated by human reason. In that sense, they are matters of pure, unadulterated blind faith. It's uncompromising fideism, it is the complete sacrifice of reason. And as stupid as that may sound, that is exactly the sort of blind faith that I have in my own two feet. I don't need to think how to walk, I just walk. I trust my feet and my brain enough to do that on auto-pilot, it is strictly a-rational, as you call it. — Arcane Sandwich

That's an interesting analogy. On what basis do I trust my own feet? Is it because they are yet to let me down, because they have proved to be, barring the rarest exceptions, competent? If so, would that be rational, but in the inductive, not the deductive, sense?

Hume says we have no reason to believe the Sun will rise tomorrow. I take that to mean that just because it has always, during the whole of human experience, risen and just because our science tells us it should continue to work for billions of years, that does not entail that there is any logical necessity in its rising. There seems to be a distinction in human affairs between practical and "pure" rationality.

Cheers, it seems we certainly agree about what is the core of philosophy. I've also come around to thinking that analytic philosophy (which I used to dismiss as "logic-chopping") has an important role to play in clarifying concepts and (hopefully) dispelling linguistically generated confusions.

Do you really ask this kind of quesion, or does it come up indirectly through interactions with ideas and day to day living? — Tom Storm

I do ask that kind of question of myself—'how well can I face my own death?'. I don't dwell on it or become morbid about it, but I try to see what I am attached to in my life and think how to minimize the hold things have on me. I've always liked the Stoic idea and Spinoza's expression of it, that acceptance of those things over which we have no control is the key to living a good life. The more total the acceptance the better the life.

But at it's core, philosophy is the acceptance of the reality of death. It has nothing to do with the love of wisdom. — Arcane Sandwich

I'd say that acceptance of the reality of death is wisdom, and cultivating that acceptance is the love of wisdom.

I guess it can only mean something based on language and zoological classification. Which is fine for me. If there is a realm where cowness is found.. who cares? — Tom Storm

The salient thing about that is that even if there were a realm where cowness exists we could never find it or at least know that we had found it.

I guess it's all just another way to chase after a god surrogate. Ultimate truth being a conduit towards the Ultimate Concern, Tillich and other theist's term for god. — Tom Storm

For me the only questions that approach "the ultimate concern" are 'how should I live?" and "how should I die", and I can't see how any purported transcendent or ultimate reality could have any bearing on those question just because they cannot be real to me.

On the other hand, I might enjoy thinking or reading about such questions just to see what the creative human imagination can come up with.

As North Americans like to say: what you just said there is an opinion, not a fact. Can you prove that what you're saying is true? If so, then it is self-refuting — Arcane Sandwich

The idea of an absolute truth for us is self-refuting.

Because these are questions about what we ultimately are. These are questions about our own ultimacy. What are we? — Arcane Sandwich

Whatever we say about what we are will not be an ultimate truth but will be merely an interpretation of the human condition based on human experience and will thus be a relative statement, true or false only in some context or other.

An ultimate truth would be context-independent. How could there be any such thing (at least for us)? So, you say we are merely "pattern-following objects" and that may indeed be true from some perspective. just as we being subjects is true from a certain perspective.

It's a definition not an argument. How would one demonstrate that cows are "cows" either? For something to be transcendent, it cannot fail to transcend. If "absolute" is to mean "all-encompassing" and we posit both reality and appearances, than by definition the absolute cannot exclude one of the things we've posited.

Perhaps the definition is defective. One can have bad definitions. I don't think it is though
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Not entirely sure I'm following this one. That might be on me.

A cow can be demonstrated via a clear zoological example, can't it? A simple correspondence. Transcendence is a qualitative adjectival abstraction that seems closer to poetry. — Tom Storm

I think this is an interesting issue only in that it highlights our epistemic limitations. How can one demonstrate that cows are cows? We perceive things we call cows, so I think there is no right and wrong in that. We could have called them by any other name, and they would be the same.

Does the question not really devolve to whether or not cows exist as cows in themselves? I mean they obviously would not think of themselves as cows. So what could that question even mean, other than whether there is some independently real thing which appears to us as a cow?

About that question we can only infer what seems most plausible. since the question is outside both the empirical and logical ambit. It is surprising how much interest these kinds of strictly ambiguous and undecidable questions generate.

Saying that knowledge represents the world makes no more sense than saying that the evolution of more and more complex forms of life is a representing of the world. — Joshs

I agree, knowledge does not represent the world it presents the world, makes it present. More knowledge makes the world more present.

But st the same time , the laws and properties that we ‘discover’ in nature are not external to the ways we arrange and rearrange our relations with that world as knowledge — Joshs

Of course not, since we are not separate from nature. Do we have good reason to think that everything that goes on in the Universe is accessible to our cognition even in prinicple? I don't think so. So, our knowledge presents us with what is, at any given historical moment, accessible to us, and that is ever-expanding (or at least it has been up until now).

I think the independent existence of things is so important to you because you confuse intrinsic content with integrative processes of knowing. — Joshs

The independent existence of things seems to be the most plausible conclusion—the inference to the best explanation for what we experience. From a practical, everyday life perspective whether things exist independently of our cognitions or not really doesn't matter unless we have some existential agenda that relies on thinking about it one way or the other.

It is not rational for a father to sacrifice his son to a deity, even if that deity is the Christian God. It just isn't, it's not a rational thing to do. — Arcane Sandwich

'Rational' doesn't seem the right adjective here. It's not a virtuous thing to do, even if one may have reasons to do it. Rationality is simply having reasons—following some axiom and then reasoning consistently on that basis. A failure of rationality is a failure to be consistent. Most of our starting presuppositions are not irrational, but a-rational—meaning they are matters of faith.

Have we got to the Ultimate Truth About Reality yet? It seems there are questions around the question about the ultimate truth of reality that are more amenable to an answer than the question itself, such as :

Would that truth (if we could get to it) be over and above reality itself?

Does our capacity to formulate a question in words guarantee that there must be an answer to it?

If we did find the answer, how would we know it is the right one?

And even assuming that we had the right one, what difference would it make to how we live?

That's been my experience with Buddhism. Doesn't help they tell you their truth has to be experienced, which makes me doubt that it is truth. — Darkneos

I know what you mean. I think the idea that absolute truth can be experienced is completely incoherent. People (very unBuddhistically) cling to that idea and yet no one can explain how it would be possible. Challenge them to explain and they'll just tell you that it's a deep and difficult thing you don't understand. Nietzsche called it "muddying the waters to make them appear deep".

Well I have many suspicions about it not being relative but that's neither here nor there. — Darkneos

I'm not clear as to what you are saying is not, or might not be, relative.

Well I sorta have a problem just letting things go and I crave validation. — Darkneos

What could validate your thoughts apart from logical consistency and/ or empirical confirmation?

I think that might be thinking way too hard about it. The way I see it science gives us a close picture of that "ultimate nature" otherwise none of this stuff would work like it does. "What is really real" used to give me anxiety until I gave it some thought and found it to be a dull question. — Darkneos

Right, I was merely mentioning those questions to try to highlight what seems to be the driving force behind many people's preoccupation with philosophy, not to suggest that those kinds of questions represent my own concerns.

I saw that in myself when for a while I chased "being right" above all else. I needed to know what was the truth of reality so that then I could be right and live according to what is right and...well be right. But the problem with that is I had no personal take on anything. — Darkneos

For me the point is that there is no absolute right way to think. Those who think there is an absolute right and wrong are mired in a need for authority. For me it has been important to establish a "personal take", and I don't see that as an easy or fast thing to do. It has taken me many. many years to get clear on how I personally see things, and I don't claim that my way is the only way.

Many folk (and I believe I see this all the time on these forums) are desperately afraid, it seems, of relativism; it is the great bogeyman. When it comes to understanding what it means to be human, I think there are many possible ways to understand that. Relativism can be ruled out only in matter of direct empirical observation, science, mathematics and logic. That's my take, anyway.

Problem is, everyone thinks they got it and I don't know enough to call them all it. So all I got is a bunch of "rules" in my head from every person who thinks they know and no matter what I do I'm always wrong according to one of them. — Darkneos

Others may think you are wrong, but so what? They are just fallible humans like the rest of us. Getting it right, in my opinion, is not a matter of proving others wrong (although when others put their ideas out there, they are fair game for critique that points out the internal inconsistencies, incoherences or vagaries of their assertions). If someone's ideas are free from such problems, any disagreement will be about first principles, and I don't believe they can be rationally or empirically or any other way confirmed or disconfirmed.

Very relatable. It's not bush or outback or city, it's how you situate yourself and your life. — kazan

:up: I just noticed I failed to specify that I was in the bush on weekends, not during the week so much.

I don’t know the difference between the bush and the outback. I use them interchangeably if I have to use them. But generally I talk about going to ‘the country.’ — Tom Storm

When I was a kid living in Epping (a suburb of Sydney) there were corridors of bush (which I believe still mostly exist). I used to spend all day from breakfast to dinner from the age of about seven playing in the bush.

My family used to go on very primitive road trips to the outback (Nyngan, Bourke, Tilpa, Wilcannia, Broken Hill, Coonabarabran, Lightning Ridge, White Cliffs, etc, etc.).

So, I think it is understandable that I don't see them as being the same at all.

The way I see it we trust science to the extent it works. Nothing can answer the question we don't seem to be able to help asking in various forms: 'What is the ultimate nature of reality?', 'What is really real?', 'What is the existence of things in themselves compared to the way they appear to us?' and so on.

I think we need to accept that that question is unanswerable and move on to more important questions like 'How should we live?'.

The senses are all we have to reveal the world to us. The rational mind in its "pure' deployment confabulates much more than it enlightens—you realize this when you contemplate the idiocy of much is what is presented as philosophy on these forums, and in fact much of what constitutes the so-called philosophical canon.

One would think that the people on here are well above average intelligence, but that is not necessarily a positive given that there seems to be a great capacity for cleverness to lead to idiocy, and to denigrate common sense. No wonder probably most people think philosophy is wankery, when for the most part it is.

I see a great gulf on these forums between those who are basically empirically and logically oriented in their thinking and those who are off with the fairies imagining all sorts of ludicrous crap.

I don't know. Say veganism is not the answer. it doesn't necessarily follow that there is an answer. The probability is that we will just keep muddling along, pretending that something is actually being done, until something out of our control happens to drastically reduce the human population.

It would help if you noted which text the quoted passage is taken from.

One of the points Aristotle makes is that belief and knowledge cannot be reduced to mechanistic (efficient) cause and effect. If belief is just the rearrangement of atoms, then it is hard to see how it can be "false." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If one is mistaken about what one perceives and this mistake leads to establishing a neural network which we would experience as a belief, then the said neural network would be false in the sense of "missing the mark" like the arrow that misses the target.

Is the toothy maw going to eat the arcane sandwich? :wink:

To answer a serious question—I'm not convinced that veganism is the answer. In order to feed our huge populations vast tracts of land have been converted to monoculture farming. This destroys habitat, and many plants and animals, and the chemical fertilizers needed to sustain such a scale of farming destroys the soil biome.

:up: That's the way forward!

Coopers comes up a bit too.
— Tom Storm
Especially if you drink too much. — Banno

I'll meet you in the vomitorium.

Yes, I'm a black-clad wanker, like the rest — Tom Storm

A wank-led lad?

:up:

:rofl: You're so full-o-shit, Wayfarer. Dream on—you've never dealt adequately with any of my objections.

Most Australians I know drink imported beers like Asahi or Corona. — Tom Storm

Sometimes, but mostly I drink Coopers Pale Ale. I guess I'm not most Australians.

Of course not. When I cite a source for support, it is to orient my arguments with respect to others, standard practice in debates. — Wayfarer

Your argument should be support enough for your position. But you don't present arguments, you just cite authorities.

And you're what Kant describes as a transcendental realist. That is a term he uses to describe the philosophical position that treats objects of experience (phenomena) as if they exist independently of the mind and are exactly as they appear to us. — Wayfarer

Typical! Instead of engaging with my point, that we all see the same things in the same places at the same times you seek to dismiss me by labelling. The question as to whether or not things exist in themselves exactly as we perceive them to be (which I think is probably an incoherent question anyway) is irrelevant to the point. What has to explained is the incontrovertible fact that we (and even animals) all do see the same things.

And you don't answer anything that would commit you to a definite position:

It's much nearer to what I believe to be the case, than the direct realism which holds that the world comprises individual subjects and particular objects that are all independently real.
— Wayfarer

So, you don't actually believe it, but it's nearer to what you do believe. Then what is it that you do believe? — Janus

I've reached the point where I cannot even take you seriously. My honest opinion is that you do not argue in good faith. I guess it's time to stop trying.

That's convenient for you. It happens to be central to his entire project of Incomplete Nature. — Wayfarer

Yes, and I've read it; although more than ten years ago now. Is he an authority? Must I agree with him?

That's because we don't. — Wayfarer

Of course we do. The dog sees the ball I throw. If you and I stand in front of a complex painting and I point to a particular spot on it and ask you what colour you see there, we will almost certainly agree. I see a tree three feet to left of the post of my carport—do you imagine you might see something different there—a mouse, a car, a tractor. If you were here with me now, I could point to hundreds of objects in the house and environment and ask you what you see there, and we would agree every time about just what it was I was pointing at. You are simply wrong about this—you just don't want to admit it because it doesn't suit your narrative.

It's much nearer to what I believe to be the case, than the direct realism which holds that the world comprises individual subjects and particular objects that are all independently real. — Wayfarer

So, you don't actually believe it, but it's nearer to what you do believe. Then what is it that you do believe?

Agreed, hence its relative unpopularity. But upon closer examination, all he’s saying is, it is by this means alone, that a human can call himself a true moral agent, even, at the same time, admitting it’s virtually impossible to actually be one, and even moreso, that we can all be one at the same time. — Mww

That's a good point. If to be a true moral agent is to act entirely free from self-interest and entirely in accordance with the moral law derived from reason alone, then that is indeed the only way to be a true moral agent.

Virtue ethics may have something different to say about what being a true moral agent consists in, though. For example, if someone had to choose between saving their child and a stranger, the person who chose to save the stranger on the grounds that it would be the more truly moral thing to do, being free from personal desire as saving one's child would not, that person would not be lauded, but would rather be considered to be a psychopath.

For example, if a person is drowning, and you have a rope, the morally correct thing to do is to throw them one end of the rope and save them. Why? Because that is what duty says that you have to do. Why? Because it's the rational thing to do. Why? Because if the situation were reversed, and you were the one drowning, you would expect someone else to throw you a rope. — Arcane Sandwich

Or perhaps you feel for them in their plight.

Because as a rational sentient being, you can number them. — Wayfarer

Animals also apprehend great numbers of things. but they don't have the language to name them and declare their quantities.

The point about objects of intellectual cognition such as numbers, geometric and scientific principles and the like is that while they are ideas, they are the same for all who think. They're not the property of individual minds. — Wayfarer

They were probably first articulated by an individual mind. The fact that they make sense to most all human minds can be explained by the idea that human brains have evolved to be generally structurally the same as each other.

First, I don't believe, on the same grounds that I don't believe numbers exist, that the 'One Mind' exists. — Wayfarer

But you believe numbers are real and you believe the One Mind is real.

It is an expression, like a figure of speech, to convey the irreducibly mental side of whatever can be considered real. Put another way, whatever is real, is real for a mind. But that mind is never an object of experience, it is only ever the subject to whom experience occurs. — Wayfarer

Of course considering something real is irreducibly mental. and whatever is judged to be real is judged to be real by a mind. Do you think experience occurs to anything other than individual subjects? Does the One Mind experience everything like God is said to? Do you think the minds of individual subjects are somehow connected, connected in some way hidden from us and that that explains why we all experience the same world?

Because it's a reification. To declare that such a mind exists is to make of it an object, one among others. — Wayfarer

I would agree with you that it is a reification. But those who believe God is real (as opposed to imaginary) would deny that their belief is a reification and would also deny that God is an empirical or abstract object. So, it is not necessarily either/or.

Absentials, — Wayfarer

For me Deacon makes too much of absentials. It's not controversial at all that sentient creatures can be motivated by the absence of things, by lack. So, in that sense the absent has causal efficacy. But the feeling or apprehension of absence is not itself an absence.

As for how we experience the same world, I invariably reply that as we are members of the same species, language-group, culture and society, then there is a considerable stock of common experiences which we will draw on in interpreting what we see. But it's nevertheless true that different individuals all experience a unique instantiation of reality albeit converging around certain commonalities. — Wayfarer

I've addressed this idea of yours before. It just doesn't pass muster. That we are all similarly constituted as perceivers explains that we see things like colour in the ways we commonly do. But it cannot explain the fact that we see precisely the same things in the same places at the same times. Either there are real existents there that we are seeing, or existents are ideas in a universal mind in which we all participate or our minds are connected in some way we have no idea about.

Any other explanatory ideas come to mind for you?