• Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer
    If you check out Schopenhauer's description, he's clearly referring to the first person experience. — frank

    I'm just pointing out that the "first person" there is redundant. Are there any experiences which are not "first person"?
  • Hidden Dualism
    Do you agree that your commitment to the laws of nature is faith-based and not a publicly observed piece of data? — Bob Ross

    I'm not committed to the laws of nature: I'm saying that regularities are observed everywhere; if you want to study things and try to understand how they work, what alternative is there to observation?

    Are you saying that logical consistency coupled without observation is all that we can know? That would exclude all laws of logic except for the law of noncontradiction (which, to me, seems like special pleading), the laws of nature, and literally any other metaphysical claim. Why? — Bob Ross

    Why can you not carry on a discussion with me without distorting what I've said? I've said that what we can know via observation, logic and mathematics is all we can know. If you think there is some other kind of knowledge which can actually be demonstrated to be such, as opposed to being merely speculation, then please offer up an example.

    Secondly, that one should be logically consistent, since it is not publicly observed, would be a matter of faith under your view as well. — Bob Ross

    More distortion!. That is not my view at all, and nothing I've said states or implies that it is. How will I know what you think if your argument is not coherent, consistent and does not contradict itself? This has nothing to do with faith, but with coherency and intelligibility.

    Correct. But it would be faith based on your view irregardless: you were arguing that metaphysics (such as idealist theories) are faith-based because they are not publicly observable evidence. My point is that this self-refutes many principles (such as logical consistency) under your own view: you are cutting your own head off (and this is why full-blown empiricism, which is just scientism, is self-defeating). — Bob Ross

    I've said many times that all metaphysical positions, including materialism or physicalism, cannot be tested by observation, and so are faith-based, How does this refute the principle of logical consistency and what are the many other principles you claim it refutes?

    Logical principles determines what is true insofar as they are the form of the argument; so I can say that an argument with a logical contradiction in it is false because it violates that logical law. — Bob Ross

    The principle of consistency determines what is valid not what is true. It might help you to take a course in elementary logic. The conclusion of an invalid argument may indeed be true.
  • Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer
    ↪Quixodian
    I have no doubt that (some) animals have a sense of being (Dasein), but of course in order to think about, in the abstract sense, that primordial sense of being language is required. If anything, I would say this is thinking about ourselves in the third person.

    Would I be correct in surmising that in your mind, idealism is necessarily solipsist? — Quixodian

    Hasn't he explicitly said he thinks that ad nauseum?
  • Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer
    ↪frank
    Yes, it's no first person.
  • Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer
    ↪Quixodian
    Echoing the voice of Dasein.
  • Thing-in-itself, Referent, Kant...Schopenhauer
    the immediate first-person sense of being. — Quixodian
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    Yes, your version is more prototypical, and mine is a generalization. To me the main is idea is the closure and exclusiveness.

    ***

    I do think statements like God is love intend a truth about the world. I wouldn't call such a statement esoteric so much as ambiguous. What metaphor is isn't easy to say. I'd probably have to use metaphors.     — plaque flag

    It's interesting you say "closure and exclusiveness" because as you have also said, my everyday sensual experiences are exclusive to myself and closed to others. So, my focus in thinking about the esoteric is that my experience can be transmitted to others through touch or shock or befuddlement of the mind resulting in the shutting down of the internal dialogue; Zen exemplifies these kinds of ideas. So, enlightenment is seen as a state that an enlightened one can definitively, without any doubt, recognize in others. I am skeptical of that,,,although I acknowledge that it may be so, but even if it were, such a thing could never be demonstrated to be so either empirically or logically, so it would seem to be discursively useless.

    Have to go and do some framing now, so will have to leave any further responses until later...
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    So 'my ecstatic vision' has a 'truly private' aspect, and that private aspect is likely to be by far what matters most to me. But this is also as mundane as the feel of hot water in the bathtub which is not itself just concept. — plaque flag

    I can relate to that. All experience is really non-dual and cannot be adequately explained in (necessarily) dualistic language, So, our explanations are actually paltry tokens compared to what they attempt to explain...but I think that is so only provided we can be actively present to experiences...and for that I need an empty head rather than a full one...but that's just me and I acknowledge it can be different for others.

    I think we have a somewhat different conception of the esoteric. I'd include heraldry. I'd include stars-and-stripes, hammers-and-sickles, swastikas, muted post horns, any kind of excluding symbol. Even sexism has an esoteric aspect, brilliantly emphasized in Lynch's version of Dune. Race is often (usually?) discussed/experienced esoterically. My genitals, my skin, is a 'magical' organ, giving me transrational access to Insight. So to me the esoteric is as big as the shadow cast by the ideal communication community, which is to say that it's the rule rather than the exception. — plaque flag

    I think we are speaking about different things. I have in mind the idea that there is hidden knowledge which can be transmitted from master to acolyte. That said, I don't deny that people can, to a certain degree, be schooled in techniques that may assist in the art of waking up and becoming more present.

    I think I can relate to the idea of "transrational insight"; if you mean that the ordinary sensual experiences may open up previously hidden doors and corridors of the imagination.

    A little playfully but also seriously, I'd say the world itself is most entirelessly without substance. — plaque flag

    As a great comedian once said, "I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less".

    To me the justifications are scaffolding that we can be rebuilt as needed. The main thing is to get it said.

    I think you are right that there aren't that many necessary insights. But I experience myself as a painter or composer in the world of concept, so I treasure the variety and the complexity ---to some degree but it's so satisfying to find the grand patterns in it and harmonize the chaos.     — plaque flag

    I can relate to that, too. There have been times in my life where I felt the attraction of the purely conceptual, and I can well understand how mathematicians may see their craft and its investigations as an art form. For me it's poetry, painting and music, all of which I see as being more sensorially and feeling oriented.
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    This is very interesting to me. I tend to read to catch up with things and I think my reading for aesthetic pleasure is over for the time being.

    My view of complex arguments and 'high theory' is that they make almost no difference to how I live my life. I am not an academic, nor do I feel the need to remain up to date. I also don't have the disposition to follow complex arguments across scores of intractable pages. I find I'm more interested in people's presuppositions rather than the vast edifices they often erect upon these foundations.     — Tom Storm

    I also read to catch up on things; mostly science and issues like resource depletion, global warming, ecology, cosmology...The interesting difference between much of philosophy and science (and of course fiction) seems to me to be that the latter consists in stories. So, I can read a whole book about cosmology, ecology or natural history and some fiction, but I have always had difficulty sticking with major philosophical texts that are so systematic that the whole must be digested in order to understand the parts, or at least to see where they all fit in the greater scheme. I find the most salient parts interesting in themselves, and they can always be related to the body of my own experience it seems, even if only at the risk of misreading.

    So, I like philosophical texts I can dip into; much of Nietzsche and some of Wittgenstein is like this for example.

    I also like to read some poetry. Like you I am not, nor do I have any aspirations to be, an academic. I studied philosophy at the undergraduate level as part of an Arts degree, but I lost interest as soon as I had completed the courses that interested me and I had no use for the piece of paper, so I dropped out about half-way through...without regret.

    I agree with you completely about the presuppositions and basic insights to be found in philosophical works being more interesting than the vast edifices...although I do understand that some people find those vast edifices aesthetically engaging, and may enjoy the challenge of mastering them...different strokes...
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    Absolutely. So rationality is just a way of harnessing collision the collision variety. — plaque flag

    I'd go further and say that absent rationality there could be no notion of collision in the first place.

    A profound spiritual experience might also come up in a conversation as an explanation for why someone quit drinking or got rid of most of their property. — plaque flag

    Of course that's true, but the experience itself cannot be definitively explained.

    To me the 'real' esoteric stuff, which is important to me, is properly a secret in a circle of trust. — plaque flag

    For me the esoteric can be, has been, interesting, but I think it is mostly, to distort Shakespeare, full of secret unsoundness and innuendo, signifying nothing. The ideas, as exercises of the imagination are useful only insofar as they are exoteric, out there.

    The genius for the alienated beginner is a vague hope, a promise shining in the distance, a magical father figure, a gleaming token in the fallacy of argument from authority. — plaque flag

    I think that's right. I like to misinterpret Bloom's notion of the "anxiety of influence" to explain why I don't like to read much into the complexities of others' thoughts: I am fearful of filling the mind with the thoughts of others. As per the quote you provided from T S Eliot, I acknowledge the importance of tradition as a repository of key ideas, allegories, possible worldviews...

    I think the importance of major thinkers consists in just a very few insights central to the human condition, and the rest, all the arguments designed to justify those ideas are relatively tedious, obsessively driven filler. Of course, I am speaking only for myself.

    When I read, and I do read a lot, but in a very scattered fashion, I read mainly for aesthetic pleasure. I need a story, rather than a complex argument, to hold my attention; I just have little confidence that following along, sloggin' it, with a complicated argument will yield any fruit worth the effort in the end. Life is short...









    .
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    I don't stand opposed to that stuff. In fact, I think anything potentially experienceable is part of the lifeworld, which is essentially 'horizonal' and infinite. — plaque flag

    I agree with this in the sense that anyone who experiences anything is obviously a part of the lifeworld, but I don't think it follows that everything experienced is available for public scrutiny and assessment in the way that. for example, the observations of the natural sciences, mathematics and logic are.

    I insist tho that I am 'existentially' humble. Maybe the mystic is on a better path. I don't preach my suffocating & claustrophobic* ontology to anyone who isn't preaching their own brand, looking to criticize and synthesize with me. — plaque flag

    I think one of the problems is that some think that their own faith-based beliefs must be amenable to being rationally argued for. If someone comes on a philosophy forum and tries to argue for such beliefs, they commit a category error and are fair game for rigorous critique. On the other hand, if people come on just to express their own personal beliefs without providing anything resembling a rigorous argument, well, that quickly becomes uninteresting, and such people usually double-down and start to interpret their interlocutors tendentiously or simply flee the discussion when they feel the heat.

    ↪plaque flag


    I agree except I don't hold with the idea of "genius" especially the stink of authority it always seems to carry. I think so-called geniuses are often simply suitably obsessed people who put in much more thought and effort into their pet subjects, and they are no less, simply on account of the complexity of their thought, prone to error than the rest of us. I think the cult of the "genius" is something that we can do without, and arguably often holds back progress.
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    No doubt that's a crucial part of it, but we can't forget the attitude of fallibility and a willingness to learn from others --- the second-order synthetic-critical tradition. I mean we can't do so as philosophers.* — plaque flag

    I agree with that. Part of the challenge is attaining the self-knowledge we spoke about earlier; seeing if an attitude or belief I hold is on account of what I want to be true rather than motivated by what I believe to be, in a disinterested fashion, most plausible. I think it also must be acknowledged that the assessment of what seems most plausible to different individuals, assuming that they have equal access to all the facts that bear on the case, is always an individual matter.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    ↪Mww
    Yeah, that's it in a nutshell!
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    I meant the curtailment the extravagances of thought without stifling it. The subject imagining freely, but understanding he can only go so far with it. — Mww

    I agree with this; I am all for unfettered imagination, and the "curtailment" I advocate consists in not taking those flights of imagination as being knowledge.

    There very well may be those processes. I just figure if we not only aren’t, but couldn’t possibly be, aware of them, it makes no difference to us whether there are or not. How would we ever be able to tell? Correct me if I’m off-base, but isn’t that what the doctrine of phenomenology posits? Those processes creating this shared world we may be able to know about? — Mww

    I agree that such possible processes are, in the domain of what we think of as knowledge, discursively useless, but I think the very fact that we must posit an unknowable "in itself" defines our condition and is far from irrelevant.

    So, I am disagreeing with those who think that either there is no unknowable, or that even if we do not only face the knowable but also the unknowable, that fact about us is irrelevant and not worth consideration. On the contrary, I think it is central to what it means to be human, and that it does, as Kant asserts, open up all the possibilities of imagination and faith.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    My getting us clearer as subjects, is probably more closely related to metaphysics, which in turn is closer to your mention of critical thought.

    What do you mean by….what would it be like to be……affected pre-cognitively?     — Mww

    Do you mean getting clearer via critical thought as to just what can be knowable and justified metaphysically speaking?

    I probably didn't express myself very clearly; don't think being affected pre-cognitively can be like anything, because we cannot be conscious of it. It seems to me that we cannot but think that we are so affected though...or in other words that there are processes that are, or "something" that is, that we cannot be aware of creating this shared world of things we inhabit.
  • Hidden Dualism
    Either you (1) believe there are laws (which are inductively affirmed by science) and philosophical principles (which are presupposed in science) or (2) you don’t. Laws are not observed regularities: the latter is evidence of the former. — Bob Ross

    There do seem to be laws of nature; there are constantly observed regularities, and very little, or perhaps even no, transgression of those laws. Are those laws independently existing or are they human formulations that merely codify observed invariances? Who knows?

    What logically follows is what logically follows, no faith required unless we want to claim that what logically follows tells us something more than the premises, and their entailments, from which it logically follows.

    This is incoherent with your belief that anything which is not directly observed (and thusly so-called ‘non-public evidence’) is not epistemically justified: laws of logic is not something you directly observe and would consequently be a ‘faith-based’ absurdity under your view.     — Bob Ross

    I have said that both what is publicly observable and the principle of consistency (validity) in logic are unarguably important in those domains of inquiry where knowledge is most determinable. Consistency alone is important everywhere. So, there is no "incoherency" or inconsistency in what I've said, since I've never claimed that logical principles are observable.

    They are pragmatically necessary if you want to have a coherent and consistent discussion about anything is all. But they cannot determine what is true. This is a basic understanding in logic; that you can have valid arguments which are unsound, because although the conclusion(s) are consistent with the premises, the premises may be untrue, or even nonsensical.
  • Parsimonious Foundationalism : Ontology's Enabling Assumptions
    Some of 'em don't even see the 'field of normativity' yet that gives their 'skepticism' meaning. — plaque flag

    I cannot see "the field of normativity" as consisting in anything more than the principle of consistency. This applies as much in theology as it does in science. in metaphysical speculation as it does in psychology. There really is no one "field of normativity" beyond that; there are, rather fields of normativity, as many as there are fields of enquiry, sense and ideas, and the normativity governing those fields seems to consist primarily in the principle of consistency coupled with the demand that if you are going to participate you must be minimally acquainted with the current state of the art, or risk being irrelevant.

    I said earlier I thought we had reached the "end" of our disagreement, by which I didn't mean there was no remainder, but rather that the remainder had become crystal clear. I want to repeat that I think that disagreement is over the "in itself' that dialectical counterpart to the "for us" that you seem intent on restricting us to in all domains.

    I come back to this because I think the only publicly available "for us" lies in the fields of empirical inquiry, where publicly available and confirmable observations are possible, and in the domains of mathematics and logic. But there are many other fields of inquiry, where the more or less indeterminate nature of the subject matters of speculation only exist because they stand in the shadow of the "in itself".

    These are the fields of sense, realms of discourse, where ignorance, unknowing, tears open the horizons for the imagination and intuition to play at will. Fields of faith, if you like. More could be said, and no doubt will be.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    Philosophy gets us clearer on empirical reality perhaps….
    — Janus

    If one holds with the position that it is we who decide what reality is, or, perhaps, how the reality that is, is to be known as such, that says more about the decision-maker than what is decided upon.

    Philosophy gets us clearer as subjects, yes, regardless of that to which we as subjects direct ourselves.     — Mww

    I tend to think that when it comes to thinking about the empirical, about how things appear to us to be, and to work, we can get clearer and that that is not all about us, the "deciders", but also, it seems plausible to think, reflects how we are affected pre-cognitively. That said we cannot become conscious of that pre-cognitive affecting that is prior to the emergence of the shared empirical world, but it would seem to warrant being called "real" in itself, whatever it might be, even though it remains ideal, a matter of mere ideas, for our consciousness.

    On the other hand, I think you are alluding to getting clearer via philosophy (critical thought) about our ideas in all domains, even the more speculative ones, and I would agree with that too.
  • Climate Change (General Discussion)
    It's happened before as a result of global warming, and the conveyor is slowing as we speak. So yes, it's a distinct possibility. The evidence supports it. — frank

    Yes, but if it happens it is global warming causing local cooling. Global warming may also cause more extreme weather; colder minimums and warmer maximums, but overall it is still global warming.

    (I haven't read the subsequent thread, so if someone has already pointed this out...take it as emphasis).
  • Entangled Embodied Subjectivity
    ↪plaque flag
    :up:

    I want to add that I've often heard it said the we humans are the world coming to know itself, and in that sense, it didn't exist until it came to be known by us. But then what about the other animals, whose cognitive umwelts are (mostly) hidden from us?

    If the pre-cognitive world is at worst altogether non-existent and at best totally "dark" and totally blind, what if we and the other animals are expressions, manifestations of that darkness, blindness and ignorance as much as we are the expressions, manifestations of newborn knowledge (in every sense of the word)?

    Of course, this "vision" precludes a God or universal intelligence, or at least allows only a blind striving deity like Schopenhauer's "Will". The very idea of an all-knowing God seems to be an affront to the dignity and sanctity of both animals and humans.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    ‘Tis vain hope, I must say, although you are nonetheless welcome to take that point. — Mww

    Philosophy gets us clearer on empirical reality perhaps, and I think that is the only reality that @plaque flag allows.
  • Kant's Notions of Space and Time
    ↪charles ferraro
    "I think therefore I am" is a mere tautology, because in the beginning "I" is posited in "I think". Of course I can say that I am; I would contradict myself if I said that I am not. But this tells us nothing about what I am. It doesn't prove that I am a thinking substance: I might be nothing more than the thought "I am".

    Descartes, in the same fashion as the ontological argument brings in the goodness of God as a guarantor that we are not deceived in thinking that I am a thinking substance; the cogito alone does not suffice to do the job.
  • Hidden Dualism
    Please demonstrate to me how you are able to empirically verify that every change has a cause. — Bob Ross

    I have never claimed that our understanding that every change has a cause is universally applicable, or that it tells us anything beyond how things seem.

    Without logic, whether inductive, deductive or abductive, we might as well give up discussion altogether. Logic is what demands that we be consistent, coherent and not contradict ourselves.
  • Entangled Embodied Subjectivity
    I don't think it's that simple. Of course I see why one would say so. But are mountains mountains in the same way without us grasping them as mountains with all that that entails ? I'm serious about my anthropormorphic ontology. — plaque flag

    I think it's just different ways of talking. I don't know what mountains are independently of humans recognizing them as mountains, but it seems reasonable to think that they somehow do exist independently of humans grasping and recognizing them as mountains. Of course, I don't claim to know that, for all I know nothing at all would exist if there were no humans.

    For me the phenomenologically (and spiritually) important thing is precisely our not knowing. If we knew everything, or even in principle could know everything, then there would be real mystery, only things yet to be known, and thus no room for faith. Faith, different faiths, open up whole areas of thinking and feeling. And as I've said, for all we know our faith-based speculations do open up windows to what lies "beyond the veil", although of course we can't know that is the case either.

    I love the "divine ignorance" of humanity as much as I love its knowledge. Divine ignorance is the dialectical counterpart of knowledge and a profound source of creativity.
  • Hidden Dualism
    It is just as much of a 'faith-based' reasoning as PSR or that there laws (as opposed to mere observed regularities): do you reject those as "unprovable" as well? — Bob Ross

    What is observable can be confirmed by observation: no faith required, unless we want to claim that what is observable is real beyond the context of its observability. What logically follows is what logically follows, no faith required unless we want to claim that what logically follows tells us something more than the premises, and their entailments, from which it logically follows.

    Anything else is either mere speculation or the result of intellectual intuition into reality, but we cannot determine which; so here we have entered the realm where faith rules. This also applies to scientific theories; we don't know if they tell us anything about how things are beyond the context of appearances.
  • There Is a Base Reality But No One Will Ever Know it
    ↪vanzhandz
    What is most generally called 'reality' is empirical reality, the reality of phenomena. This reality is relational, it is relative to our experience. There can be no determinable reality apart from that for human beings because anything we can determine would obviously be relative to us. Does it follow that there is nothing real other than what is or can be determined by, or relative to, humans?

    It doesn't seem to follow logically, deductively. So, what could an argument purporting to show that there can be nothing real that cannot, even in principle, be determined by humans, look like?
  • Entangled Embodied Subjectivity
    The concept dog is different from any actual dog, yet in some sense it makes that actual dog possible as a dog. — plaque flag

    Surely the dog is what it is absent the concept or more precisely name, "dog". Actually 'dog' by itself does not seem to be a concept but is so only on account of all the associations which it carries; associations which come into play after the familiarity cultivated by seminal cognition and subsequent re-cognitions.

    The concepts associated with the name 'dog' transform the mere name into a category constructed out of observed characteristics and attributes.
  • Hidden Dualism
    ↪plaque flag
    ↪plaque flag
    ↪plaque flag
    :up: It seems we have reached the end of our disagreement such as it might have been.
  • Hidden Dualism
    ↪Quixodian
    Right, however that doesn't seem to support your argument.

    We fool ourselves into thinking we leave our bodies to look at a brain from a "neutral" perspective - this is not what actually happens. — Manuel

    This seems to accord very well with Kant's notion of the ding an sich. We know things only as they appear to be and as we model them.
  • Hidden Dualism
    To me that sounds like direct realism. Respectfully, what work is being done by 'as they appear' ? Are you thinking in Flatland terms (a great little book) ? Perhaps in Reality there's a sphere, but we flatlander humans see only a circle, a projection of the sphere into our smaller world ? If so, it's a beautiful idea. But I still find it a bit paradoxical, as if a beautiful analogy is leading us astray. — plaque flag

    If we acknowledge that we know things only as they appear to us, then the dialectical counterpart of as-they-are-in-themselves becomes obvious. We realize that what we know of things as they appear gives us no guarantee that that knowledge tells us anything about how they are in themselves, and for me it seems that we cannot but think that they have some existence in themselves independent of our perceiving and understanding them. Even if that existence is unknowable to us, it doesn't follow that the idea that there is such an existence is incoherent.

    That is how it seems to me at least, and since there is no fact of the matter about what is coherent or not; it really comes down to what seems incoherent to the individual. So, if it seems to be an incoherent thought to you, I am never going to convince you that it is coherent and vice versa.

    Also, I don't see how thinking that thought could lead one astray, as it really has no implications for what really matters; the world as it appears to us; it is only thinking in and about that empirical manifest context that being wrong could have consequences, or so it seems to me.

    As I see it it also follows that intellectual honesty demands that we just don't know, which opens up the field for metaphysical speculation, which is fine and can be a very positive and creative thing provided we don't believe that there can be evidence for such speculations or that anything we might believe about such speculations could be anything more than a matter of faith.

    I think the fact is that you are never going to convince people to give up such speculations and faiths, anyway, even if it could be, per impossibile, proven that they are somehow, in themselves and acknowledged as being faith-based, a negative activity.
  • Hidden Dualism
    Another story in the same class was about kittens raised in an environment with only vertical barriers. When after some weeks they were introduced to horizontal barriers, they walked into them, at least until they acquired the new behaviour necessary. — Quixodian

    Do you have a reference for that?
  • Hidden Dualism
    ↪Quixodian
    I don't pretend to understand your position.
  • Hidden Dualism
    ↪Quixodian
    I do try to, and yet you continue to misunderstand which is puzzling.
  • Hidden Dualism
    ↪Quixodian
    I don't believe science show us the truth about anything beyond how things appear to us, and even then, I am only speaking about the basic observational phase of science, which is just an extension and/ or augmentation of ordinary observation, so I think you continue to misunderstand where I am coming from.
  • Hidden Dualism
    They were in clear sight and the crew could make out individual details through telescopes. But the indigenes showed no response whatever to the appearance of the ship. — Quixodian

    I don't believe that story because even animals can see and respond to things they have never encountered,

    The pygmy story is more plausible, but I think that is probably apocryphal too.

    But even in that context, our understanding is conditioned by cultural consensus. — Quixodian

    Our understanding may be somewhat conditioned by a degree of cultural consensus, but there is much we disagree about, so I doubt there is any overarching cultural consensus about anything.
  • Hidden Dualism
    Since we have already discussed this, I will be brief here: I disagree that we cannot come to know things at all in-themselves. — Bob Ross

    Since the very idea of "in itself" denotes that which cannot be known by us, I think what you are saying cannot be substantiated. Intellectual intuition may give us insight into the ultimate nature of things, but we have no way of knowing whether it does or doesn't, so it remains a question of faith. And faith-based beleifs cannot be argued for, because there is no publicly available evidence for them.
  • Atheist Cosmology
    ↪ucarr
    I'm not seeing any relevance of your questions to what I've said, so unless you can show me some relevance, I have nothing to say at this point.
  • Hidden Dualism
    'The Many live each in their own private world, whilst those who are awake have but one world in common' ~ Heraclitus (quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos) — Quixodian

    Yeah, I don't agree with that at all; I think all the evidence points to the fact that the only world we share is the publicly accessible empirical world.

    Those who have faith in transcendence may have that much in common but comparative religion shows the tremendous differences in interpretation, so it can hardly be called "a world in common".

    So, I think that quote is just a nice little bit of fluff that has nothing to do with any justifiable argument for anything.
  • Hidden Dualism
    FWIW, I think Husserl makes a good case that even familiar objects have a kind of transcendent infinity. I can't see this lamp on my desk from every possible angle in every possible lighting and so on. — plaque flag

    True, you could not see the lamp from every possible angle and lighting, but you could in principle see it from any possible angle or lighting.

    I am familiar with the idea of the phenomenon as appearance or representation (indirect realism) which is given completely and certainly. This is the idea that I can't be wrong about how things seem to me. It's a classic and respectable thesis, though I've pointed out my objections. — plaque flag

    Right, but that's not really what I'm saying. I'm not saying that we just see appearances, but that we just see things as they appear, and can appear, to us. I'm not really concerned about whether we can be wrong about how things appear to us, that seems to be a separate, and unrelated, question, but there might be a connection I'm not aware of.

    More positively, I think we can put seemings and toothaches with doves and quasars on the same plane of rational discourse. Instead of dualism, we have a radical pluralism, you might say. — plaque flag

    This reminds me of Justus Buchler's radically pluralist ontology, although I'm not saying that he would necessarily agree; it's too long since I read him and then only cursorily. I think there are things which are publicly available and things which are not, but I don't think of any of them as unreal or non-existent on account of that difference. For me the difference just consists in the degree of determinability with which we can talk about different things.

    For me the point in this context is semantic. I suspect that experience informs what we can mean by words. So I, anyway, don't know what I'm saying if I talk beyond my experience. — plaque flag

    I allow for the possibility of intellectual intuition, but I do not hold that anything purportedly issuing from that constitutes any inter-subjectively corroborable evidence for anything. So, as an example the idea of an infinite being could just be the dialectical counterpart of our experience of finite beings, or it could be an intellectual intuition of something transcendent: the problem being that there is no way to tell which is the case.

    So, people can be convinced of transcendent things by experiences and intuitions they have had, and we can dismiss those as mere interpretations, or wishful thinking or whatever, but since we have no way of knowing what such people have experienced, we are not really in a position to judge as to the validity of the faith that they might have on account of such experiences.

    On the other hand, they have no justification for considering their experiences to be valid evidence of anything for anyone else. We all live with our own private mythologies, and I would not have it any other way.
  • Hidden Dualism
    So the stuff our language intends --- the stuff of experience we can talk about meaningfully, -- ought to be embraced as real rather than as mere appearance. But this does not mean we pretend that we do or can ever know it exhaustively. — plaque flag

    I don't intend to imply that appearances are not real. I think they are real on account of real pre-cognitive effects on our senses. In principle we can know exhaustively whatever is accessible to our senses, both what is available naturally and what is available to our senses however augmented technologically. We have no way of knowing what is not, even in principle, accessible to our senses, but I see that as no reason to claim that there is nothing more than what can be known, in principle, via the senses. In other words, I think that from the fact that there can be nothing else knowable to us than what is accessible in fact and in principle to the senses, it does not follow that there can be nothing more tout court, nothing more that exists.

    I also want to say that although that position is what seems reasonable to me. I don't think there is any imperative that it must seem reasonable to you, because in matters that cannot be determined either empirically or logically, I think what is acceptable or rejectable comes down to personal assessments of what seems plausible or coherent.
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