Number being physically instantiated begs the question as to just what about physical existents exists.

I think abstract objects are products of analysis. — frank

It seems to me rather that abstract objects as artefacts of generalization are products of recognition and synthesis.

OK, that makes sense. I also think of being or existing as a verb. Being can also be thought of as a noun, but then it is an abstraction. It's interesting that existing cannot be thought of as a noun, for that the word gets changed to existence, which is also an abstraction.

Looked at from either the perspective of being as a verb or as a noun we cannot conceive of there being real being without there being real beings.

No it doesn't. It may be pragmatic to be an oppressive fascist dictator as its a very effective way of exerting your will and getting things done. Doesn't mean that it's moral despite how effective it might be on paper.

Morality is not about pragmatism, its about empathy. Its being able to "walk in the shoes" of another and see why your actions may harm them. — Benj96

I wasn't talking about what is pragmatic for individuals, but for societies. I think you'll find that theft, rape, assault and murder are illegal even in fascist dictatorships. The fact that those in power can sometimes get away with these acts doesn't change the fact that they are generally unacceptable to people. Imagine a society in which there was no punishment, other than other individuals taking revenge, for those who committed such acts. It would be anything but a harmonious society. There is honour even among thieves

Religions are what happen when a significant truth is appointed deep and enduring value to a group such that a lifestyle and culture grows around it. — Benj96

Religions only flourish when they satisfy, or seem to satisfy, social needs. Of course, that includes the need for the authorities to exercise their power. How long do you think a religion that promoted free-for-all theft, deception of others, assault, rape and murder would last?

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Then what is missing exactly if we know the way they see the world? — Harry Hindu

We infer the way they see the world. It doesn't follow that we can see the world that way.

But I asked what a "thing in itself" even means. It sounds like a misuse of language. Does it mean to BE the thing in itself? If so, is there a BEING to a chair, table, house, car, or rock? If not then there is nothing missing. — Harry Hindu

We don't know what things are apart from how they appear to us. Once that is realized it is possible to make the logical distinction between how things are for us, how they are for other animals and how they are in themselves. Some believe that physics shows us how things are in themselves, but the problem is there is no way to know if that is true, and anyway even the quantum physicists say that they can form no coherent picture of the quantum world and that understanding it is only possible via mathematics. What QM does seem to show is that things are not what they seem.

I'm intrigued. I have no idea what you mean unless you are thinking of counting as an act.

In this context, perhaps there is room for a question I mostly shelve, about whether the difference between reasons and causes is also discovered or created. Mostly, philosophers treat it as a given, though explaining it to people learning philosophy or reluctant to recognize it can be difficult. (It's not intuitive). I don't have a crisp answer. It could be either or some combination. — Ludwig V

I've thought about this question in regard to mathematics. I think it's fair to say it's both. Thinking about reasons and causes we discover a valid distinction in our thinking between them in that we consider acting for reasons to be self-generated, intentional. Being caused to act is thought in terms of being pushed by an external agent. There are many ways in which the two notions bleed into one another, so there is no absolutely clearcut distinction.

Yes. Indeed, with some reservations, it would not be wrong to say that for them, teleological explanations were dominant. Which suggests that explanation by causes was developed later, by distinguishing it from the teleological. (Though it would be more accurate to say that it was developed from Aristotle's account of explanation, which gives one model for everything.) It's curious that the non-teleological explanation has taken over and nearly ejected teleological explanations altogether - like a cuckoo. — Ludwig V

Is it curious or is it because in the development of our investigations and understandings of the world we have come to see that there is no need for imaginary entities to explain natural phenomena?

I like the concept of a rational reconstruction for this. (I found it recently in Lee Braver's "Groundless Grounds".) — Ludwig V

By "rational reconstruction" do you mean something along the lines of 'thinking about how things seems to us and then imputing it (in some kind of suitably modified form) to animals' or something else? I have that Braver book on my shelves somewhere, but I've never gotten around to reading it. Would you recommend it?

I like this. It helps to bridge the gap between counting (as the ground in our practices) and arithmetic. — Ludwig V

Would you be able to elaborate on this a little?

Nice!

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

Note that Burge writes "number" not 'numbers'. I find it to be an important distinction because the quality of number is of course present wherever there is diversity whereas numbers as entities are not. To put it another way, say there are four objects—it seems to me to make sense that the quality or pattern of four, that is fourness, is present, but not the number four as a separate entity.

To say that animals see things differently than we do implies that we know something about how they see things. We sense things differently using different senses. Seeing a surface and feeling a surface provides us the same information in different forms. If we can be informed of the same thing via different methods then it seems to me that there isn't much more, if any, to the thing in itself. If there is then we'd never know it and wouldn't even be able to use it as evidence that we don't experience things as they are.

Do we experience our mind as the thing in itself? Is that what one means by the thing in itself is that you have to BE the thing? — Harry Hindu

We infer that they see things differently on the basis of observation and analysis of their different sensory setups. We can infer that they see different ranges of colour, or even only in black and white for example.

It's true that we can get the same or similar information from different sensory modalities, but the sensations themselves are different. All of that information falls inot the category of 'how things appear or present themselves to us'. It seems natural to think that there must be more to things than just how they appear or seem to be. Of course we can never know more than that, but the fact that we are compelled to think of the 'in itself' has many ramifications for human life. Not in terms of something we know, but in terms of what we can never know. The knowledge here is just self-knowledge.

As to our experience of mind I think this is a real minefield. If mind consists only in our experience and judgements would it follow that we know all there is to know about it? Psychedelics and altered states in general show that we have the potential for very different experiences, so it would seem presumptuous to imagine that we have explored all there is to know about what it is possible to experience.

t does not follow that if there is a god and that god holds the truth that this truth is ipso facto beneficial. — Tom Storm

Yes, that's true. But this would only be a problem if we could somehow infallibly know the awful truth and would then be left with the choice of either rejecting the demand for worship and accepting whatever punishment that would entail or accepting the unacceptable out of the desire to avoid punishment.

You may have a point. I think the two are different articulations of the same problem. Which I agree is a pseudo-problem, except that I can't spot how the illusion is created - yet. — Ludwig V

What springs to mind is that they are two different articulations of the human all too human need to explain. The need to explain is the problem. We have to explain our behavior to others and we do so mostly in terms of reasons, although sometimes in terms of causes. We have to explain the behavior of animals and we do this sometimes in terms of (imagined and projected) reasons and sometimes in terms of causes and we have to explain natural phenomena and we do so in terms of mechanism, forces and causes. In regard to the last in ancient times some explanations of the natural were also in terms of reasons.

How complex do you want morality to be? Would you like it obscure, esoteric, out of reach, unintuitive?

I think you'll find most religions are -at their core - when removing all the arbitrary fluff/tripe and dogma, about doing right by one another. — Benj96

I don't believe morality is either complex or dependent on religion. At least when it comes to the most significant moral issues. Those regarding theft, assault, rape, murder, child abuse and so on. Morality grows out of pragmatic social necessity.

So, I see the religious aspects as being unnecessary to morality, rationally speaking. Although it could be argued that they are emotionally or psychologically necessary for some people.

How do we rule out a god (if one exists) who is also an intolerant pissant? What if the truth is horrible? — Tom Storm

You mean the God of the Old Testament? The Gnostics believed that God was a flawed, self-important lesser deity. On the other hand, I think each, the approval and the disapproval of Yahweh, are just one story among meany others. Humans seem to need to select one story and declare it the literal truth. What if it's stories all the way down?

Then we don't have to rule out a god or any particular god, and nor do we have to rule one in. We just need to recognize they are all just stories, and that no one knows the absolute truth or for that matter any truth beyond what is observed and what is tautologously so.

Might it be an even bigger problem, to label oneself with a philosophical label at all? — wonderer1

:up: The direct/ indirect polemic seems to me to thrive on the failure to recognize that the two ways of thinking about our experience are just two different perspectives. It doesn't have to be an absolute either/ or but is rather just a matter of different ways of thinking in different contexts.

How do we know that we have incomplete knowledge if we didn't already know what was missing? If we come to the conclusion that something is missing then how did we do that, and does that really mean that we have incomplete knowledge if we know what is missing? — Harry Hindu

I don't know if this was meant to be addressed to me since I didn't say we have incomplete knowledge of things in themselves. That said I agree with the idea. Just as an example we have good reason to think other animals see things differently than we do. We can't see things as they do so there way of seeing things is a different kind of knowledge of things than ours. There for we can say that our knowledge of things is incomplete. We also seem to necessarily think that things must have an inherent existence that is not (fully, at least) apprehended in their appearances to us, or even the totality of all their appearances to all the creatures they appear to.

Sure, humans decide what is deemed "Word of God". Is that neccessarily opposed to what inspires them? Why so? Must they be in opposition, at odds? — Benj96

"As opposed" in the way I used it means "as distinct from" not "opposed to". Its common parlance. If something inspires me, I do not have to conclude that it therefore must inspire others.

If someone was willing to put their own wellbeing on the line to spread knowledge/truth and foster good intentions, and gave you a choice to agree with this agenda, ignore it or oppose it, what would you choose? — Benj96

That a simplistic picture in my view. If the person was merely saying "we should be good to one another" then that would be hard to argue with. But its not as simple as that when it comes to religion.

What you say here is not relevant to the point. It is always humans that decide whether something is the "word of God", as opposed to being something that just personally inspires them.

I fail to see how they decide for "everyone" beyond themselves specifically, the only thing they decide is who they tell in their immediate circle. After all they're only responsible for their own actions. — Benj96

I see evangelism as being essential to Christianity. "The Word" is understood to be the word of God, and it is believed that those who accept it will be saved and those who don't will be damned. So those who accept the Word accept that it is the ultimate truth for all, and that the "good news" should be spread so that everyone has access to it.

I don't think that what I'm proposing is a new paradigm. It's just a different way of looking at an old paradigm, which better reflects the questions that we ask and dissolves some of the puzzles that the old paradigm seems to generate. — Ludwig V

It seems to be that there is an inherent incommensurability and thus incompatibility between our two paradigms of explanation—the one in terms of experiences and reasons and the other in terms of mechanisms and causes. It's that inherent incompatibility that leads me to believe that the so-called "Hard Problem" is a pseudo-problem that comes with failing to recognize this fundamental incommensurability.

And who propagates it? — Benj96

Anyone who decides to take it upon themselves to decide for everyone that it ought to be spread.

And no one has done that. — Benj96

Of course someone has done that. The so-called "Word" would not have gotten out there in the first place if no one had done that.

Therefore, I don't see how any one individual should take it upon themselves to decide for everyone else that it ought not be spread. — Benj96

Accepting that principle, it follows that no one should take it upon themselves to decide for everyone that it ought to be spread.

Well, I thought you might find my suggestion interesting. — Ludwig V

I didn't mean to be dismissive. I have to acknowledge that a new paradigm of explanation is possible, I guess I just don't see it as a likelihood.

Also, I think it's fairly easy to see the adaptive and survival advantage that reason possesses. Perhaps that is (pragmatic) justification enough. I think the advanced capacity for reasoning that symbolic language brings with it has enabled humans to successfully adapt to almost any environment and to consequently strain the planet's resources, destroy vast areas of habitat and pollute the natural world. It's reason that should let us collectively understand this, and maybe it has, but the problem now seems so vast and intractable, given the cultural impediments to harmonious global planning and action that reason alone is insufficient. Will is also needed.

One step that may be useful is to escape from "gives rise to" or "causes". — Ludwig V

All our explanations are in terms of either causes or reasons. It might be imagined that some completely new paradigm of explanation will be found, but I see no reason to think so.

Yet it is, I believe, common knowledge that Wittgenstein's approach to justifying reason grounds it in our human way of life, our practices, our language-games. If one accepts that, the idea of evolution presents itself as a way of deepening his gestural account and explaining why our way of life and practices are what they are. — Ludwig V

The fact that we have developed the capacity for reason evolutionarily does not "justify" reason. Reason needs no justification. No justification of reason that doesn't use reason is possible, and this circularity ensures that justifying reason is an incoherent, an impossible, fantasy..

No, it asks a very good question which draws attention to the incoherence of physicalism and the inability of it to explain the process which you say is ‘fairly well understood.’ — Wayfarer

I haven't said that the factor or mechanism or whatever you might want to call it in the neural processes that gives rise to conscious self-awareness is well understood. I would say it never will be because consciousness cannot be directly observed, and because the kinds of explanations we have for intentional behavior are given in terms of reasons, not causes, and the two kinds of explanations cannot be unified into a single paradigm.

It's a pure prejudice on your part that says that because we can give explanations in terms of reason that physicalism or strong emergentism must be false. It's merely an argument from incredulity.

Physicalism cannot explain subjective feelings obviously, but it doesn't follow that it is false, merely that it is limited in its scope. There is no reason to believe that we should be able to explain or understand everything. The fact that we cannot does not indicate that there must be a transcendent realm or a divine mystery. That is just wishful thinking.

By some process yet to be understood….. — Wayfarer

Neural processes are fairly well understood. The difficulty is with explaining how physical processes can give rise to consciously experienced feelings. I don't believe the question is answerable because it comes from trying to combine two incommensurable accounts. So the "hard problem" is based on an incoherent question.

God forbid that we should even contemplate the possibility that the sun's burning should be dependent on our senses. That's pure Berkeley!
But it is perfectly true that the study of physics is dependent on human senses. That's what I meant to say. — Ludwig V

:up:

... and yet, here we are, doing exactly that. Not well, but at least trying to work it out. — Ludwig V

Here we are talking about doing it. I don't believe we've made even the first step, and I see no reason to believe we ever will for the reason I gave in my response to Wayfer above.

Physics has no conceptual space for them - yet physics is utterly dependent on them. — Ludwig V

The study of physics is dependent on human senses, but I think we have little reason to say that physical processes in general are. Human senses and brain activity are certainly dependent on physical processes.

From one perspective we can say that thoughts are physical processes, presumably causally related to one another. From another perspective thoughts may not seem like physical processes at all. This reminds me of Sellar's "space of causes" and "space of reasons". The two ways of thinking do not seem to be possible to combine into a single discourse.

And yet, one feels that there must be some relationship. — Ludwig V

I think it's just a case of looking at thinking from two perspectives. I certainly don't buy the argument that says that if thought is determined by neural activity, then thoughts could not rightly be said to have logical, as well as causal, connections with one another. It's merely an argument from incredulity.

How do we reconcile these problems as indirect realists that accept that our conscious experience is representational? If we do trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent (as a necessity and way out), then how do we determine the limits of what we can know about the things-in-themselves? — Bob Ross

I don't see any puzzle. It comes down to what is meant by saying we don't know things in themselves. Insofar as they are thought as what gives rise to our experience of a world of things, then of course we can say we do know them. But it can also obviously be said that we only know them as they appear to us.

Good question. Isn't the issue that they do seem incompatible. We can express this in more than one way. They are different language games, different categories, different perspectives. At any rate, they seem incommensurable. Yet we know that a physical process can result in a logical conclusion. If it were not so, computers would not work. Indeed, if it were not so, calculation by pen and paper would not work, either. — Ludwig V

If they are incommensurable explanations, then it would seem to follow that they cannot exclude one another.

If you say "Raining," is your utterance necessarily either an assertion or a non-assertion? — Leontiskos

Good point: 'raining' does not have the assertoric grammatical structure that 'it is raining' could be said to have.

In this view, mental states, including beliefs, are determined by physical processes in the brain, which are themselves the result of evolutionary pressures and biological mechanisms. Whereas, reasoned inference works by different principles, relying on the relationship between propositions where the truth of one proposition logically necessitates the truth of another. — Wayfarer

Why should one explanation preclude the other? Another point is that most of our reasoning is inductive or abductive, where there is no logical necessity in play at all.

It occurred to me after you responded, that in that video we have a demonstration of Kahneman's fast and slow thinking occurring in a dog. (And literally fast and literally slow.) — wonderer1

Right, I am only passingly familiar with Kahneman's work, but I think I see the point.

Propositional knowledge is a form of know-how. So your dismissal of "know-how" is unjustified. And, as I said, you want to reduce "knowledge" in general, (which would include all forms of know-how) to one specific type, knowing how to explain things through the use of propositions, to serve your purpose. That's not productive, we need to go the other way, to see what all the different types of knowledge have in common, if we want to understand "knowledge". — Metaphysician Undercover

You are still misunderstanding the point. I realize that propositional knowledge can be understood as a kind of know-how, but that is not relevant to what I've been saying. As I already said we can easily explain how we know that something is the case if we've witnessed it and we can easily see that we know things deductively in logic and mathematics and when it comes to know-how we can easily see that we know how to do something when we are able to do it.

Now I've challenged you to come up with some other kind of purported knowledge, and to explain how it is that you know that it is knowledge.

Put differently, in asserting, "If p then q," we are asserting something about p and q. Is the takeaway then that assertoric force is not binary? And yet, is assertion binary? — Leontiskos

An interesting question. "If p then q" seems to be inherently an assertion about the relationship between p and q. It is an inherently asymmetric relation: "if q then p" is not entailed.

"It is raining" has the form "x is y", just as "it is green" does, and yet they are not the same. To state that it is raining, I could just say "raining", which would seem to indicate that assertion is not always binary.

I hope I've understood your question; I'm pretty confident about working out the logic of natural language, but I'm not great with formal logic.

:up:

You narrow down the definition of "knowledge", to make the word refer only to one specific type of what is commonly called "knowledge", to produce an argument which supports your prejudice. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I apply the word 'knowledge' only to those cases where we can clearly explain how it is that we know. It is obvious that we know things propositionally via observation and via logic. If you can point to another mode of knowing (other than know-how and the knowing of acquaintance or recognition, because those are not the subjects at issue) then do so.

I don't know what you have in mind with "structure", and whether it is relevant to the following, but I don't think it reasonable to see what is shown below as merely a matter of instinct. — wonderer1

:up: Fascinating! This seems to confirm what I have always believed: that dogs are capable of deductive inferences, rational thought.

It seems nothing will convince the diehard human exceptionalists; probably because their thinking is rooted in some religious dogma or other.

OK, so you support what I said then. Your use of "arguably" indicates exactly my point, we really have no consensus on what warrants "knowing". — Metaphysician Undercover

If a slime mold can do something self-initiated then it knows how to do that thing. I'm not claiming that it experiences itself, or understands itself, as knowing.

Anyway, know-how has not been the focus of my part in the discussion, but rather 'knowing that' or what is called 'propositional knowledge'. We can warrant that we know things via empirical observation and logic. We cannot warrant that we know anything propositional in any other way I can think of. If you can think of an example that involves and demonstrates another way of knowing-that then why not present it for scrutiny?

Does a slime mold have "knowledge" for example? — Metaphysician Undercover

Slime molds arguably have know-how. It's not a matter of a "hard and fast prejudice" but of being cautious ascribing the "honorific" 'knowledge' to cases where we cannot explain just how they could count as such.

We know we have empirical knowledge in the form of observations, logical and mathematical knowledge in the form of deductions and know-how insofar as we are demonstrably able to do anything. How would you justify for example a belief that one might hold that they had an experience wherein they knew God or "the true nature of reality"?

The burden would be on you to explain how such claims to knowledge could possibly be warranted.

So . . . which sentence are you referring to as mentioned? (or all three?) — J

I'm not sure which three sentences you are referring to. I was addressing 'if p then q'. Us talking about this sentence is an example of 'mention'. We are not concerned with whether it is true, and are not claiming that it is true, so there is no intentional assertion going on in our referring to the sentence.