I'd say the image on the screen like any photo or painting is really a "flat" three-dimensional image. Of course, I am not denying that we call such images 'two-dimensional' because they are presented on "flat" surfaces. but there is no such thing as a truly flat surface, and even if there were any surface still possesses depth, otherwise there would be nothing to project the image onto or present it on.

I wasn't able to find that one either.

http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=90871E7BBAF3F977883F28F6597FD1CB

Yes, I think the inference is based on the constant conjunction of events as pointed out by Hume. But we also now have a massive coherent body of understanding based on forces, which are thought to be the efficient lawlike agents of change.

I had in mind that empirical science theories are grounded in observation. — Mww

Maybe we are looking from different angles. I think of empirical science theories as grounded in models of causation, and causation as not being observed, but inferred. Certainly, the entities, except perhaps those posited as fundamental, that are understood to be causally acting and acted upon are observable.

When looking at the world situation with an eye toward the future, it is natural to measure things, temperatures, markets, etc.
Harder to measure is the inner experience of being a human right now.

What alchemy is going on in the hearts and minds of a humanity pushed to extremes?
What hopes are sprouting despite the dark clouds and sulphuric air?
Why does love and acceptance seem even scarcer than money and gold?

Maybe a new way of thinking about a different way of living is slowly being born.
One naturally imagines signs of spring during a harsh winter blizzard. — 0 thru 9

I agree, it is how people feel about their lives and how much they can bear of a situation which perhaps all, including those who do not tend to reflect on much, feel to be well out of kilter, not to mention outrageous and unjust, that may bring about a radical shift, when and if things get bad enough.

It does seem to be better, more conducive to better outcomes, to preserve hope than to sink into despair. As the saying goes "prepare for the worst despite hoping and, as much as possible working, for the best".

Logically grounded theories in the metaphysical discipline necessarily justify, or validate if you’d rather, whatever is the case given by the course of the argument.

It never was that “metaphysics sets out the background against which the world is ordered”, but sets the background by which the subject orders himself, such that the science by which the world is ordered, by and for him, becomes possible. — Mww

I'm not sure what you mean to refer to by "logically grounded theories". Are not all consistent and coherent theories logically grounded?

Also, I see metaphysics as positing imaginable models of world ordering, and phenomenology as describing the ways in which we, on reflection, find our experience, perception and undertsnding to be invariably ordered.

When we look at the world, we initially see a two-dimensional image. I am not aware of any two-dimensional surface that this two-dimensional image is projected onto. — RussellA

On what basis do you say we initially see a two-dimensional image? I don't, and don't recall ever, seeing a two-dimensional image.

Parallax can be used to determine the distance of an object, as nearby objects show a larger parallax than farther objects, but it doesn't allow us to see the back of a three-dimensional object.

What is parallax doing? Is it giving us information about the distance of an object from us or is it giving us information about the three-dimensional space that the object occupies? — RussellA

The world appears to us as three dimensional. As I see it there are no two-dimensional images; you have length and breadth and depth in any image. without depth the image cannot exist. Think of paintings; colour and tonal relations give the sense of depth. We might want to say the canvas is a two-dimensional surface, but it is not so.

As @Banno said even those with sight in only one eye still experience depth-perception. Of course, this experience is amplified by parallax, but it is a matter of degree not all or nothing.

My question earlier, which you have not attempted to answer was 'what two-dimensional surface do you think the purportedly two-dimensional image of our visual field is projected onto"?

I don't think you can justify 'must be the case'. You can presuppose it. You can wish it. But can you say it must be true? Mostly metaphysics are tentative theories aiming to explain why the world seems to be how it is. But I don't think we even have a way of establishing precisely how the world is, let alone answering the why part. — Tom Storm

:up:

:ok:

This is one very limited conception of what it means to be doing philosophy.

When I look at a cup, in my mind is a two-dimensional appearance, but science tells me that what I am actually looking at is a set of atoms in a three-dimensional space. — RussellA

Are you not familiar with the depth perception due to parallax? Is there really any such things as a two-dimensional image? Even lines and the paper they are on are really three-dimensional. A truly two-dimensional surface would be non-existent. Where is this purportedly two-dimensional image of yours to be found, and where the "surface" upon which it is purportedly projected?

If you want to do something and nothing stands in your way, do you have any choice about doing it? Only in principle I would say, which doesn't count for much.

Do you regret having done it or wish you could stop doing it? I don't.

Yes, and what if mankind was a different species? I don't see much to be gained by going down these alleys of conjecture. — Tim3003

You don't need the populace to be a "permanent existent entity" you just need everyone, or at least enough people who get the picture, but yes, I don't believe it will happen; the point was just that without the possibility of globally coordinated action then it doesn't look too hopeful. The elites will screw the populace, and the politicians will let them do it.

Without the populace itself, at least some number of people which would constitute a kind of critical mass, refusing to be screwed then it will remain all smoke and mirrors, and we will continue to be screwed, until civilization itself is screwed.

As to "going down these alleys of conjecture" it doesn't seem any more pointless than this whole topic is.

Why pursue philosophy? If you have a choice, perhaps best not. — Banno

Do you mean to say that we shouldn't bother to pursue philosophy unless we want to? I would take that as read, because the alternative would be that we ought to pursue philosophy even if we don't want to which seems absurd.

That would be unprecedented, but interesting. — Vera Mont

Yes, it would...I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.

Voting has very little effect on the social and economic structure. It fractures due to design flaws, not user input. — Vera Mont

I agree, and I think the problem is the two-party system, with effectively little to choose between the two.

Whereas biology has had to begin to pay more and more attention to context, which appears in the form of ‘the environment’, as it’s become clear that organisms can’t be completely understood except for in that context. — Wayfarer

I agree with this, but this a case of realizing that no organism is isolated or can be properly understood without taking into account its interactions with other organism and also the inorganic environment.

The so-called observer problem in QM is the closest context I can think of to bringing the perceiving subject into the picture. But even there what constitutes an observer is controversial. For the doing of science considerations of the perceiving subject seem to generally be bracketed, but of course I agree it should be philosophically acknowledged that science deals with what appears to us, and not anything beyond that ambit.

Well, it's atomic structure is not something I'd call perceptible. Yet I am sure there are folk who know about such things. You want something more than that, I suppose, an acknowledgement not that we don't know everything, but that there are things we cannot know even in principle? Here you are bumping up against paradox: if there are things beyond knowledge, then what can you claim to know about them?

I'll admit the possibility and then choose silence. Many a philosopher will wax prosaically at length on this topic. That seems muddled. — Banno

Atomic structure is still no more than an appearance, and a mathematically based theory, albeit made possible by perception augmenting technologies. We cannot have more than that, so that leaves open the possibility that there may be real things, as opposed to imagined possibilities, which we cannot know even in principle; we don't even know if there are such things or not, so we really cannot claim anything at all about them. But we can exercise our imaginations, and I see that as a valuable creative exercise in itself, and that's why I say the distinction between 'for us' and 'in itself' is important for human life.

I agree with you that from the perspective of propositional knowledge such "waxing" is "muddled", but I don't think that matters, I don't think that negates its value.

The difference in parlance is a deeper issue.

Sure, there are things about the cup that are unperceived, and things about the cup that we don't know. But perhaps you want to say something more than that? — Banno

No, I would not want to say more than that except I might say "can't know" instead of "don't know", because I want to acknowledge that there could be things about the cup which are just not perceptible at all.

I mean as implausible as we might think it is, there is the metaphysical or logical possibility that the cup is, as Berkeley would have it, an idea in the mind of God or some collective entangled consciousness rather than just being a physical existent, but we can never know which is true or what the differences between such existences could be, because it is beyond the range of perceptibility.

Well, what is your source for reading up on rebirth?

The way I've learned it from Early Buddhist sources and Theravada is this: Kamma, therefore, rebirth. If one understands kamma, one will understand rebirth. For some of these schools of Buddhism, a person is a bunch of stuff held together by craving. — baker

Karma makes no more sense than rebirth to me, and I am very familiar with the theories in Buddhism and Vedanta. The point about dualism stands even without the idea of a soul, because there must be thought to be something (at the very least mental tendencies to attachments) over and above the body that carries on from one life to the purported next one, if sense is to be made of the idea of rebirth. But then this is just mind body dualism in another guise.

Notice how in all major religions, the religious doctrines are said to be given to mankind by God, or some other supreme being, or by an otherwise uniquely and supremely developed human?

Religious doctrines are always top-down, not bottom-up. — baker

That's true of course, but the followers must feel that what is being fed to them "rings true". There is always the possibility to question, and accept or reject, what is offered, which is not to say that everyone is capable in actuality of such questioning.

The elites only supply a demand
— Janus
and when social structure is in tatters, demand shifts to bread, shoes, antibiotics, and clean water. Mountains of fancy electronics and luxury cars rust away in containers on stranded ships in the Suez Canal. — Vera Mont

What if everyone collectively decided they did not want their money to be in the bank or in the financial and stock markets, and collectively decided to keep their energy consumption to an absolute minimum, grow their own food, only travel when absolutely necessary and so on?

I think the whole edifice would collapse if that happened. No doubt many people are seemingly inextricably entangled with the banks via mortgages, but they could just walk away from their houses. Of course, I don't believe anything like such mass coordination could actually happen. I think most people won't vote for anything that more than marginally affects their accustomed lifestyle. Most people do not seem willing even to forgo their big SUVs, air-conditioning and holiday travel whether in their countries or overseas.

Is the difference merely a difference of parlance, or is there a deeper issue? I don't think it makes sense to say there are two cups, but I am okay with saying that the cup can be considered as something perceived and as something that also exists unperceived, even if we don't know what kind of existence the latter is beyond saying that it exists as something to be perceived and that in its interactions with us it manifests its humanly perceptible qualities.

I can't see a ready answer to this either, but I'm not philosophically inclined to such views. Possibly Wayfarer would provide us with an account of how this might be of use. It's probably not so much that adding the personal experience is possible, but recognizing that our scientific views are a form, perhaps, of intersubjective agreement, which ultimately fall short of that elusive thing: reality. — Tom Storm

I'm with you on this, I think, though I don't think the problem of recognizing that science only deals with things as they appear to us should find too much opposition, at least among those who have thought at all about it at all; I mean I think it is pretty much tautologously true.

It's not as if one's ontology can be utterly seperate from one's epistemics. Each informs the other. Indeed, if what we know does not "coincide" with what we know there is, there is a big problem. — Banno

I agree, but what we know there is for our experience does not necessarily coincide with whatever there is absent us, and that is not at all a problem really, well at least not a practical problem, even if it might be a metaphysical problem for some folk; and if that is so, then that is really a psychological problem for them.

There is a need to go back to the question: how many cups are there? — Banno

There is only one cup for us; the one we all perceive. Do our perceptions of it exhaust what it is? Will there always remain something unknowable about the cup?

The elites only supply a demand; it is the populace that demands what they provide and if the populace acted as one in ceasing to purchase what the elites offer then the elites would become impotent.

That you have to make such sophisticated an argument, sundering ontology from epistemics, what is from what we know, does not bode well. — Banno

Is there not a coherent conceptual distinction between what is and what we know, or in other words between what we believe to be so and what is true or actual? Not to say that the two might not coincide, but there seems to be no guarantee that they must.

But it seems to me that in the unpacking of our experience, phenomenology may well show us that much of what take to be reality in the first place is a construction of culture, emotion and perception, with brains busily at work, sense making. Or something like that. — Tom Storm

I wonder whether the purely descriptive activity of phenomenology can tell us where our experience originates or what explains it: that seems to be more in the domain of epistemological and metaphysical conjecturing.

This is not to say that phenomenologists have not ventured beyond the bounds of description into the realms of speculation and hypothesizing.

Sure. I think most people would agree. But many might say this approach is a mistake. — Tom Storm

It's fine to say that the scientific methodology which leaves the subject out of the picture and just focuses on the phenomena as they present themselves is a mistake if you can explain how incorporating the subject into scientific investigations would make a difference to the results and also how it could even be done. For example, how would you incorporate the subject into chemistry, biology or geology? are there any sciences that would accommodate the incorporation of the subject? I just can't see any conceivable way of doing it. Am I missing something?

I guess this is fair but we can dissolve most metaphysical problems by simply pronouncing that we'll bracket them off. Is that fair? — Tom Storm

I don't say we shouldn't indulge in metaphysical speculation; I think it's a great creative exercise of the imagination; but I don't think metaphysical question are decidable and I can't see how they could be incorporated into scientific investigations. Findings in QM and biology, for example, may give rise to metaphysical questions for some folk, and be subject to metaphysical interpretations, but that wouldn't seem to change the findings themselves.

I find phenomenology - the littIe I understand of it - intriguing. I simply don't have time or the disposition to make a proper study of it. — Tom Storm

I don't understand phenomenology to be metaphysics except in the sense that metaphysical speculation shows us what we are capable of imagining. Husserl methodologically bracketed the metaphysical question as to the mind-independent existence of an external world.

Similarly, I think science has no need of metaphysical realism or materialism, and also can safely bracket the question of the role of the subject in constructing phenomena; it can simply take things as they appear and imagine explanatory hypotheses, unpack what such hypotheses should lead us to expect to observe and then proceed from there to further experiment and observation.

So, I remain unconvinced and unconcerned about purported "blind spots" in science; I just find that critique to be inappropriate.

They're building luxury bunkers in preparation for "the event". I don't think they have a whole lot of faith in their power to stave it off.
How much longer can this collapse be staved off?
Ten years? Unless the nukes get here first. — Vera Mont

I've heard that they are building such bunkers; I guess we should not be surprised. Your ten years seems a little pessimistic, but who knows?

:up: Far be it from me to pontificate as to what should seem intuitively plausible to others.

What I meant was whether the financial elites would allow control to be handed over to benign "strong AGI".

I would say the financial elites, whether psychopathic or not, are as in control, given the uncertainty of the future as it is possible to be, and I believe they will do everything in their power to stop the collapse of their "house of cards". How much longer can this collapse be staved off? Who knows?

I agree with you that the populace cannot unify itself or at least that it is very unlikely. I also agree with you that no one is really in control, and that the situation is progressing like a juggernaut. You could throw a million fat men in front of it and it won't slow it down.

Okay, what I should have said is

What I question or what I am skeptical about, is whether the financial elites would allow it of their own accord and/ or whether the populace could ever manage to unify itself sufficiently to defy them and their cronies (the politicians). — Janus

According to Buddhist theory, there is not anything that 'carries from life to life'. — Wayfarer

Holding that idea in mind disqualifies me utterly from making any sense at all of the idea of rebirth.

Perhaps it's better analogized in terms of a process that unfolds over lifetimes, rather than an entity that migrates from one body to another. — Wayfarer

Yes, but the idea seems to depend on a belief that there must be something independent and separable from the body that carries over from life to life, since the body obviously does not.

Fair enough. As the saying goes " you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink", but I also acknowledge that it might not be water at all, but a mirage.

I think we basically agree on that, except as I keep saying I think the fact that we can and do make such a distinction has had profound consequences for human life, but yeah beyond those historical, cultural consequences for religious, metaphysical, aesthetic and even ethical thinking, I think it is nowadays pretty useless, and becoming increasingly so in a world so polemically divided which faces so many much more pressing issues.

There are actually n cups my friend, where n = the number of people experiencing, and thus representing the cup. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Even if that is rejected on the basis that those are all experience of the cup, and not the cup itself; leaving experience aside altogether it remains trivially true that there are indeed many cups in the world. :smirk:

I really do not much care which account of Kant is the correct one - one world or two. Rather, my point is that, that this is such a bone of contention counts against the utility of the whole Kantian enterprise. — Banno

I think the 'dual aspect' as opposed to the 'dual world' interpretation of Kant is the only coherent one, but I do get where you are coming from.

Ergo: that 'dualistic' as opposed to 'pluralistic' phraseology stems not only from Descartes and Christianity, but also from common sense and intuition. — Leontiskos

:up:

The question I have is whether the financial elites would allow it and/ or whether the populace can ever manage to unify itself sufficiently to defy them and their cronies (the politicians).

:roll: :rofl: