Glib.

In Proverbs we are told that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is both a starting point and a terminus. The Biblical God is a willful God.

There is another sense, which is what I think you have in mind. Perhaps you intentionally left open the question of whether one comes to know or only feels they know a higher truth. — Fooloso4

Yes, faith is very much emphasized in Christianity, but I think it is also important in other religions like Buddhism; one of the seminal texts is The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana. Religious practice cannot but be sustained by faith, even in religions like Buddhism where it is the 'living' insights that come with practice that are considered to be the most important.

But as you seem to imply in your second sentence, even in relation to "spiritual experience" it is faith that grounds any interpretation or propositional exposition of that experience, despite the protestations of those who want to claim that direct knowing is possible. (If you ask them whether what is directly known is anything propositional, I've found that you will not get a straight answer).

That said, faith plays an important role in almost every aspect of human life, so it comes as no surprise that it should be pivotal in all religious and spiritual practices.

So, in answer to your last sentence I would say that one, even an enlightened one, could only be certain of their conviction that they know anything propositional (such as claims about previous lives. karma, God or the afterlife and so on, to be the case); even the enlightened, being mere humans, could not be infallible.

Agree it might be a generalisation, but it is an observable tendency. — Wayfarer

I'd say it is more of a tendentious observation.

I think this is a good point. I wonder where the line is. — Tom Storm

Competence in many areas is, at least in principle, publicly demonstrable. For example, technical proficiency, if not aesthetic command, is demonstrable in music, the arts and literature. Competence in science and mathematics is demonstrable to one's peers, if not the public. Competence in the trades, crafts and all kinds of practical pursuits is easy enough to demonstrate. Competence in religion or spirituality is not, and hence there is no way to determine whether a purported master or man of God is the real deal or a charlatan.

I agree with a distinction between experienced and consciously experienced, which is what you seem to be aiming at. I was certainly not wanting to diminish the status of animals or humans to that of machines.

If anything, I want to raise the status of cliffs and rivers, as well as animals and humans and even the lowly machine, but not claim they are all equal.

Cliffs don't have eyes or noses or nervous systems, so there is no 'news' generated by anything that happens to them, and thus no experience. — unenlightened

I would say that when the rain streams down the cliffs and the wind howls against them, there are changes and that changes are "news", at least potentially. I'm not claiming the cliffs, the rain and the wind are conscious.

We are completely unconscious of the processes by which our senses are affected, we are (possibly) conscious only of the end result; of those things we come to notice and care about.

Read a little beyond what I have quoted, and you will find a suggestion that we moderns have formed a distorted conception of ourselves as angel/devils or soulless machine masters of the universe. It is in how we understand the 'human condition' that I think a paradigm shift is being proposed. A psychological shift that reunites human with nature, and mind with body. Quick as you like please, because the soulless machine masters are killing us all. — unenlightened

This is an important point; we are bedeviled by polemics. the battle between the "too otherworldly" and the "too this-worldly". On account of this state of conflict and confusion we are killing ourselves or at least allowing ourselves to be killed.

Yes, that is my position. It is possible that I am wrong, that I do not recognize wisdom because I am not wise. By the same token, unless someone is wise they may be wrong when attributing wisdom to Aristotle or anyone else. Is there anyone here able to make that determination? — Fooloso4

I agree with this, and this is where faith comes in. For those who believe in higher truth it can only be a matter of faith, and even if there is a possible state of knowing higher truth, what that could mean is not clear, since it cannot be a truth in the discursive sense.

I think altered states of consciousness are certainly possible wherein one feels that one knows a higher truth, but that knowing cannot be expressed propositionally.

Suppose that your experience leads you to a fork in the road. On one fork is said to be a place of great natural beauty, on the other a person you have texted with and are interested in, but not met or made any commitment to. I am saying that your choice of which fork to take is based on how you choose to value these incommensurate goods. On your theory, how is this valuation made? — Dfpolis

I have to say I don't really know. I will choose that which motivates me more, and what motivates me more is a characteristic of my nature (my nature at the specified time, since it might change). So, for example, presuming that you were referring to someone of sexual interest, the choice I make might depend on the strength of my libido at the time.

Cheers 180 :cool:

What you say basically seems to come down to the idea that if the universe is one, and we are not in any way separate from that one, self-determining being, then the idea of radical freedom is inappropriate. I said "radical freedom" but I could have said 'pure freedom' or 'simple freedom'.

And while self-determination is not identical with the complex idea of "freedom," it is often what we are talking about when it comes to the metaphysical side of "freedom" as a concept. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say self-determination is not identical with the simple idea of freedom; the idea of pure or absolute freedom is not complex, whereas self-determination is, because it consists in the absence of external constraints on an entity's capacity to act according to its own nature, but its own nature is complex. We can act according to our natures (absent external constraint and within the bounds of nature itself) but we do create ourselves, our natures, so libertarian free will seems to be a non-starter.

That action modifies my brain state, causing a presence we can be aware of as an "image." That is Aristotle's phantasm. We can also imagine things not so caused. If an image is not caused by an object, it cannot be our means of knowing an object, because it is not the dynamic presence of an object. — Dfpolis

I agree with what you say, but I see imagiation as involved in both interpreting or undertsnding something as something and in imagining something that does not actually exist. Note that this latter function of imagination relies on the combining of preformed images of objects that do exist.

I agree with this statement. I don't think it is what Kant meant, but I am not a Kantian and so no expert. As I understand him, the mind adds forms of understanding, rather than basing concepts such as space, time and causality on reality. — Dfpolis

I do read Kant that way, but then even Kant scholars disagree about certain aspects of his philosophy. I agree with you that Kant seems to think, or is often interpreted as thinking, that concepts of space, time and number are not based on experience, but are given by the mind as a priori forms of intuition or categories of understanding. I don't agree with that take myself.

If you mean, as Spinoza did not, that thoughts and neural processes are two activities of a single person, I agree. — Dfpolis

Spinoza did not think in terms of neural processes (as far as I know) but I think he would agree.

Does our explicit awareness of our thoughts come as we think them or after the fact? My experience tells me that I do not decide what to think prior to thinking it, and that my explicit awareness or consciousness of what I have thought comes after having thought it, via the "echo" of memory, wherein I can "hear" my thought repeated as a "silent locution" in my "mind's ear".
— Janus

Clearly, this is not completely true. I wanted to know how physical processes engender knowledge, so I decided to study authors who had written on cognition, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Bucke, James, Stace, Suzuki, the Churchlands and Dennett. Clearly, I decided what to think about before I analyzed their arguments. As I read, my neural net activated related contents, giving me the means of testing what I read. Yet, even there, I valued some contents more and other contents less, and that valuation determined the amount of time I spent thinking about various points in light of various facts. — Dfpolis

Right, what I said was based on my own reflection on my experiences. Of course, if I read other authors I will be moved to agree or disagree depending on how what they say accords with that experience or not. I don't see any of that as saying anything about libertarian free will, though. I don't experience myself as being able to freely decide what to value or agree with; I experience that as being determined by what I have, through my own experience, been led to think.

I see my neighbor take the trash out. I believe that my neighbor is not just flesh but the site of another streaming of the world. — plaque flag

Of course, everyone takes it for granted that others, including animals, have their own inner experiences that are hidden from others. I cannot know your experience, even in principle, except insofar as you describe it, (assuming that telepathy is not a possible thing). Such descriptions are inevitably poor compared to the experience itself, and being dualistic in nature cannot ever adequately express the non-dual nature of experience. The conclusion is that all our propositional talk is really inadequate, except for practical tasks, and only poetry serves to possibly be able to present a more vivid picture by allusion and metaphor. But you can't coherently argue about the truth of poetry, as it is not truth apt in any propositional sense.

So, all these kinds of arguments, for example, about whether being or consciousness or matter is fundamental or whether things can exist independently of the human are fatally flawed and potentially misleading.

Note: when I wrote this, I hadn't read your above post where you mention ESP.

Because I view Consciousness as Emergent, instead of Elemental, I don't agree with the "pan-experiential" form of Pan-Psychism (all mind). — Gnomon

Thinking of Whitehead, I understand him to view consciousness as emergent, it is experience he sees as elemental. His concept of experience is broad, so he would say that, for example, "the cliffs experience the erosive effects of the wind and rain", which is analogous to the way our sentient bodies are precognitively affected by photons, sound waves, scent molecules and so on. These affects result in us seeing, hearing, smelling etc., a world of things, but we cannot be conscious of that process of affection except perhaps after the fact and then it is a defeasible analysis that yields propositional belief, not unmediated knowledge.

Yes, this would be how I think of it. I don't speculate beyond a certain point since there would be little value in doing so, but for the sake of relating consciousness and mind this would be my interpretation of what is said.by those who know. Plotinus states that we should not think of 'The One' as God or mind, and so this seems to be the arrangement. Would you agree? Or is there another way of looking at it? . — FrancisRay

Speculation can be a fun exercise of the imagination, but I don't take any of these ideas very seriously because I think what-is in its non-dual nature cannot be captured in concepts. I'm not too sure about the idea of "those who know" if it is understood that they know something propositionally that is hidden from the "unenlightened". I think of it rather as an altered state of consciousness, wherein a whole different way of (wordless) seeing and understanding opens up. So, I would agree with Plotinus that we should not think of 'The One' as God or mind, in fact I would say that we should not think of the non-dual as "one" because it is both one and many, and neither one nor many. and even saying that could be misleading.

The Transcendental Ego (or its equivalent under various other formulations) refers to the self that must underlie all human thought and perception, even though nothing more can be said about it than the fact that it must be there. — plaque flag

So, what's the difference between saying that about the transcendental subject and saying that the transcendental object must also underlie all perception, even though nothing more can be said about it than the fact it must be there. It would help if you could explain your position clearly in plain words and leave the salad for dessert. So far, it's mud to me, and that is not on account of my laziness or stupidity.

To me this reads as a word salad comprised of assertions which don't actually assert anything coherent, or an attempt at prose poetry. I guess you must have some sense of what you mean—if only you could explain it clearly.

I realise I made a careless mistake earlier. It is not consciousness that begins with distinctions but mind. For the advaita view neither mind not distinctions would be fundamental. . — FrancisRay

Is this a response to my having said that distinctions begin with consciousness? You have expressed it here in reverse; that mind (not consciousness) begins with distinctions, and I think that works too since we can say they are co-arising. So, I take it that for you mind is intentional consciousness, and by 'consciousness" you mean satchitananda?

I'd say it's an empty phrase. If you give it the least bit of content, the contradiction appears. — plaque flag

The emptiness consists only in the fact that we don't know the nature of that existence, since it is inaccessible to the senses it cannot become concrete for us. On the other hand, our experience naturally convinces us of that extra-experiential existence, of which we can know and say nothing other than that it must be. So no, not empty in any way except sensorially.

,

Of course. Who disagrees with this ? That you bring it up again suggests that you don't understand my point, which is more semantic than epistemological. — plaque flag

So, are you suggesting that your assertion that saying things may have an existence apart from any possible relation to us is an empty phrase is true semantically, but not epistemologically? If so, I have no idea what that could mean.

It no more seems to me that you understand what I'm saying than it apparently seems to you that I understand what you are saying. So, it seems we cannot but talk past one another. There is no fact of the matter in this, as to whether it is empty or incoherent to say that we cannot even in principle know everything about things, that their existence apart from our possible experience of them is beyond our possible ken, so it is just a case of disagreement pure and simple, so best leave it here I think, since repetition of empty assertions quickly becomes tiresome.

Thus, physical necessity is based on how nature works, not on how we describe it. It was as physically necessary that you would fall in paleolithic times as it is in the era of general relativity. What this shows is that there is a difference between the laws of being, on which classical logic is based, and those of nature. So, the laws of nature are contingent, and thus require a sustaining cause. — Dfpolis

Yes, I agree that as long as nature behaves invariantly then it would seem that behavior is physically necessary. As far as we know nature has always behaved invariantly. We agree that nature's behavior is
not logically necessary, but that might not mean much more than that we are able to think counterfactually.

Augustine was a dualist, but he would never have said that the soul is thinking stuff (res). — Dfpolis

Yes, as you say it was Descartes who introduced the idea of two substances, understood in the human context as separate body and soul. Spinoza saw the soul as the idea of the body.

From SEP entry on Spinoza:

According to one interpretation, God is indeed material, even matter itself, but this does not imply that God is or has a body. Another interpretation, however, one which will be adopted here, is that what is in God is not matter per se, but extension as an essence. And extension and thought are two distinct essences or natures that have absolutely nothing in common. The modes or expressions of extension are physical bodies; the modes of thought are ideas. Because extension and thought have nothing in common, the two realms of matter and mind are causally closed systems. Everything that is extended follows from the attribute of extension alone. Every bodily event is part of an infinite causal series of bodily events and is determined only by the nature of extension and its laws, in conjunction with its relations to other extended bodies. Similarly, every idea or mental event follows only from the attribute of thought. Any idea is an integral part of an infinite series of ideas and is determined by the nature of thought and its laws, along with its relations to other ideas. There is, in other words, no causal interaction between bodies and ideas, between the physical and the mental. There is, however, a thoroughgoing correlation and parallelism between the two series. For every mode in extension that is a relatively stable collection of matter (an individual body), there is a corresponding mode in thought (an idea or mind).

One of the pressing questions in seventeenth-century philosophy, and perhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartes’s dualism, is the problem of how two radically different substances such as mind and body enter into a union in a human being and cause effects in each other. How can the extended body causally engage the unextended mind, which is incapable of contact or motion, and “move” it, that is, cause mental effects such as pains, sensations and perceptions? And how can an immaterial thing like a mind or soul, which does not have motion, put a body (the human body) into motion? Spinoza, in effect, denies that the human being is a union of two substances. The human mind and the human body are two different expressions—under thought and under extension—of one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.

I am asked "Do you know that strange object?" I say "Yes," because I have seen it, not because I understand it. That is not to say that I don't try to understand what I see, but that I know it with the first flash of awareness. — Dfpolis

If you know an object then you must have an idea of what it is, and I would count that as being possible due to imagination, We have 'images' of things, of their patterns or forms, which enable us to recognize them.

As I understand Kant, he does not believe that phenomena are real. They are just how things appear (very like Plato's "shadows"). His noumena are real, but they are not accessible. — Dfpolis

I think that is a misunderstanding of Kant. Remember that he classed himself as an "empirical realist". How things appear to us is a function of how they and we really are. Appearances are relational, the thing in itself is not; it is what the thing is apart from all its relations.

Your argument only works if neural processes can be reduced to purely physical processes. If they have a partial dependence on intentional processes, our thoughts and actions would be partially determined by prior thoughts and not by prior physical states alone. This dependence must exist. — Dfpolis

If all thoughts are preceded by neural processes, then those prior thoughts would also have been. Note Spinoza's "parallelism" as explained above ion the SEP quote. For Spinoza there is no real separation between thought and neural process, it is not that thoughts are caused by neural processes, but that "thought" and "neural process" are the two ways we have of understanding the one thing. We are not aware of our neural processes, but we can become aware of our thoughts.

Does our explicit awareness of our thoughts come as we think them or after the fact? My experience tells me that I do not decide what to think prior to thinking it, and that my explicit awareness or consciousness of what I have thought comes after having thought it, via the "echo" of memory, wherein I can "hear" my thought repeated as a "silent locution" in my "mind's ear".

I'm out of time at this moment so I'll have to address other points you made later.

In those quotes Bateson speaks of mind at all levels of relational existence, not of consciousness. I know that I am not conscious myself most of the time, if consciousness is defined as something like 'explicit awareness' as distinct from mere (implicit) awareness. That seems like a valid phenomenological distinction to me.

I remember Whitehead defining himself as a "pan-experientialist" rather than a panpsychist, and he also asserts that most experience is not conscious. So, I guess the question is as to whether panpsychism postulates consciousness, as defined above, at all levels.

As far as I can make out, you still don't get it, though it I admit that it's hard to find the right words. — plaque flag

Ah, the old 'if you don't agree then you must not understand' gambit; a tried-and-true deflection.

You seem to think (?) of everyone getting their own representation of the world. As if everyone lived in their own bubble of 'appearance.' In other words, the world is X and every person's experience is only f(X), where f is that person's cognition, which never gives X in its purity. So there's Real World out there but we only get the mediated version. — plaque flag

I understand what you're saying but I just don't agree. We each have our own unique experiences, interpretations, understanding and beliefs; there are as many as there are people. We each assess ideas as to their seeming plausibility, which is measured against what we know and what we take ourselves to know. We all experience the same world of phenomena, and I see every reason to believe that no individual experience nor the totality of individual experiences exhausts the real. I see no reason to believe that the unknowable does not exist, or that our inability to know it logically entails its non-existence.

So you claim, but one can also make the phrase 'round square.' I continue to claim that beyond all and any perspective is nonsense. — plaque flag

That's a poor analogy: 'round square' is incoherent in that it is a contradiction. The idea of things existing which we cannot, even in principle, know about is not a contradiction. It might seem to be nonsense to you but that says more about your attitude than it does about the idea.

Is there a real difference? If they are invariant, they are necessary. It is irrational to suppose that processes have invariant ways of acting without there being a reason for their doing so that might justly be called a principle. — Dfpolis

They have been observed to be invariant, but it does not follow that they are necessary;
as implausible as it might sound there is no logical reason they might not change.

That does not change the the potential nature of his substance -- which means that from an Aristotelian perspective, it is a kind of matter, though not the normal kind. — Dfpolis

I guess that's one way of framing it, but I doubt it is what Spinoza had in mind.

There are at least two kinds of knowledge: knowledge as acquaintance (Russell's "knowledge of things"), and propositional knowledge. Abductive reasoning is one of a number of ways to justify a belief, not knowledge in the strict sense. — Dfpolis

I agree there are different kinds of knowledge. In relation to knowledge as acquaintance, I'd say that we become acquainted with things by learning to understand them and I think this process of coming to understanding involves imagination. Also, I understand abductive reasoning to be more about conjecturing. imagining possible hypotheses, then it is about justifying beliefs.

We more or less agree, except that Kant believed that reality (noumena) is not knowable, because our mind adds content to it, such as the forms of space and time. — Dfpolis

As I understand him, Kant believes that empirical reality, appearances or phenomena are knowable. The in itself is unknowable by definition. For me it's hard to escape the conclusion that the empirical is a manifestation of the in itself, and real as such, but it does not exhaust reality, only the reality available to us.

There is no reason to think that neural processes are completely determined by physics. — Dfpolis

The point is that if neural processes determine thought and action, which seems to me highly plausible, then there can be no libertarian free will, regardless of whether physics is deterministic or indeterministic. And we have no way of knowing which is true, in any case.

There is no reason to suppose that such a recess exists. — Dfpolis

My point was precisely that no such recess exists. Choices are made because we feel compelled to go one way or the other at the moments of decision, and we don't really know what determines that. It is hard to believe that there is some non-physical entity which is the person, and which stands outside of the causal order of nature. I find the idea impossible to make coherent sense of. I don't flat out deny it could be the case, but if it is it seems to be incomprehensible. All that said I certainly feel free to choose, when there are no external constraints on my acting in accordance with my own nature, my desires and/or beliefs. But I don't see myself as some entity outside of the greater nature that has produced that personal nature with its desires and thoughts.

There's just the world-from-perspectives, an utter fusion of the subject and object. — plaque flag

The world from perspectives is not the fusion of subject and object, but the separation of them. Of course, as you must know by now, I agree that we can only talk about the world from some perspective or other, but we are also able to think that the world is, in itself, beyond all and any perspective. Our experience is itself, prior to the attempt to discursively describe and explain it, pre-perspectival.

Yes, they demand a metaphysical explanation just as the foundations of mathematics demand a meta-mathematical investigation. — Dfpolis

The problem is that there is no way to determine whether the so-called 'laws of nature' are merely descriptive of the invariant ways that nature manifests itself to us, or whether they stand as somehow real transcendent principles of nature. The latter idea seems to be hard to coherently articulate, just as the idea of Plato's transcendent forms is.

The Information Philosopher discusses mainly Bateson's notions of Cybernetics (feedback systems), Semantics (meaningful patterns), and Holism (integrated systems). He also mentions that "He variously identified this system as Mind or God, a sort of panpsychism. The supreme system he thought was a whole, not divisible into parts". — Gnomon

If I'm going to be convinced about Bateson's purported panpsychism or deism, I'd want to see quotes from his own work not from some interpreter of it. It's a long time since I read Mind and Nature so even if I don't remember getting the impression that Bateson was panpsychist that might down to my failure to notice it or remember noticing it.

Spinoza is often framed (and I think misinterpreted) as a panpsychist, but he was undoubtedly a deist.

It's like asking whether two plus two equals three or five. This question is undecidable as asked, but not an intractable problem. , . — FrancisRay

I am not getting your drift here—I see the question as decidable two plus two does not equal either three or five. If the question is whether reality is foundationally matter or mind, or something else, we cannot answer; and that is what I mean by undecidable. The closest we might get to a decision there would be to say the question is inapt, that no answer we give can state the actuality.

I'm speaking of the 'Being, Consciousness, Bliss' of the Upanishads. . — FrancisRay

I think the same goes for this answer. We don't know, discursively, what "being. consciousness, bliss" is, so discursively speaking it is a non-answer. One might enjoy an altered state of consciousness wherein one feels and thinks intuitively "Oh, this must be the satchitananda the sages speak of", but this remains an experience, open to different interpretations. Another person might say "I saw God". These kinds of experiences are ineffable and discursive interpretation necessarily distorts them because thought and language are inherently dualistic, and such experiences, in fact I would say all experiences, are inherently non-dual.

Another good point. An inability to see beyond intentional consciousness might be the most ubiquitous problem in modern consciousness studies. . . — FrancisRay

I agree, though I'm not convinced we should expect any discursive or analytic investigation to be able to see beyond intentional consciousness. One might have an experience that convinces one that one sees beyond intentional consciousness, but the belief that one sees beyond intentional consciousness is itself a dualistic interpretation of a non-dual experience.

I'm endorsing Middle Wat Buddhism, which is an ontology and epistemology.(since 'knowing' would be fundamental) as described by Nagarjuna, who attempted to normalize the sangha on a specific metaphysical position. — FrancisRay

Yes, I think this is analogous to what Hadot says about some ancient philosophies: that they were systems of ideas designed to be aids to spiritual transformations and realization, not discursive propositions to be debated.

All the words are hopeless. Words are inherently dualistic. Really we should say 'Being/non-Being' Hence Lao Tzu states 'True words seem paradoxical'. Sri Aurobindo explains this point clearly in his 'Life Divine'. But we have to use words, and the usual words are 'Being, Consciousness, Bliss'. . . . . — FrancisRay

:up: I agree; those words do seem to be the most appropriate in the context of spirituality.

Quite so. Although even phenomenologists seem to sometimes forget this. — FrancisRay

Yes, they are merely fallible humans like the rest of us, and it is very human to want to overstep one's bounds.

And what has the potential to take on various forms is matter. In my mind, that makes his substance a kind of matter, — Dfpolis

For Spinoza substance can take the various forms of matter and of mind, matter is the attribute or mode of extension and mind is the various attributes or modes of thought or affect.

Many thoughts begin with imagination. Knowledge begins with experience. — Dfpolis

Knowledge results from interpreting what is experienced; and I count interpreting as one aspect of imagination. Peirce calls it abductive reasoning.

The notion of reality comes from experience. You can try to extend it to mean something other than what we experience, as Kant tries to do, but there is no justification for that. So, to say "what we experience is not real" is an abuse of language, as "real" means like the things we experience. — Dfpolis

I agree the notion of reality comes from experience. Further thought about this situation leads to the distinction between what is real as experienced and what is real in itself, absent any experience. So, I don't take Kant to be saying that what we experience is not real, rather it is one limited aspect of the real.

I see no difference between "absolute" reality and plain old reality. The term "absolute" adds no definable information here — Dfpolis

The "absolute' signifies what is real despite or in addition to what we or any cognitive being experiences. Some things are unknowable to us. We cannot experience what animals experience, for example, we cannot know how things appear to them, so there is an aspect of reality which is effectively closed off to us. If we grant that things exist independently of our experiencing them and that our experiencing does not exhaust the reality of the things we do experience, then the distinction holds.

That is not what I meant, but I do not agree. We can and do decide what to attend to. And it is what we choose to attend to that sways us. — Dfpolis

There are two objections to the idea of radical libertarian free will. First, if we accept that our actions and thoughts are determined by neural activity of which we have no awareness and over which we have no control, then libertarian free will is impossible. Second when we choose, we do not choose to choose and choose to choose to choose and so on, but at a certain moment a choice arises, and we act or attend or whatever. There seems to be no way to make sense of the idea of libertarian free will.

It all goes back to disagreement, and what to do about it, how to think about it. — baker

Yes, I think it's just natural human diversity. Can you imagine living in a society where everyone agreed about everything?

It's precisely disagreement, on various levels, that points in the direction that the mental is all we have to work with. Not that the mental is all there is. But that it is all we have to work with. — baker

The salient point about disagreement is that things, human experience, can be framed in various ways. Why should we expect there to be just one true way of framing things?

Traditional literary theory disagrees with you. — baker

Right, I said there is no way to demonstrate that there are objective aesthetic criteria, I didn't say that no one could think there were such.

Actually that wasn't the point. — plaque flag

That was my point and I was quite explicit about it. Go back and read again...or not...suit yourself...

Ahh... to be young and gluttonous!

Granted, it's also fun to try to eat the whole meal in one bite. :grin: — Leontiskos

I tried that and I nearly choked. not my idea of fun. :wink:

Sure. And that's the essence of my response. — plaque flag

Right, so it all comes down to personal preference.

The timebinding [ scientific ] philosophical Conversation is the actual protagonist — plaque flag

I think you're reifying an imagined entity.

Your thinking, applied to physics, would reduce Newton to dust -- as if we weren't basically still Newtonians. To be sure, we aren't pure Newtonians anymore. — plaque flag

That's untrue and irrelevant, for three reasons: first I was talking about philosophy, not physics, second, I don't think Newton's mechanics are obsolete, just not as accurate as Einstein's and third I was speaking about the relevance of thinkers as being relative to their whole systems of thought. How do you think Newton's mechanics would fare if you removed its lynchpins? The point was simply that both Leibniz' and Berkeley's metaphysics fall apart if you remove God.

Because in his philosophical theology, particulars derive their being from God - that they are created and maintained in existence by the divine intellect. Not only does God grant existence initially (through creation), but He also continuously sustains all things in existence. Without the continuous causal activity of God, things would cease to exist. In this way, God is not just a distant first cause; He is intimately involved in maintaining the existence of all particulars — Wayfarer

And here is another case in point. God is central to scholastic metaphysics as well. Although that said, on a different point, Wayfarer, how do you (or Aquinas) know God holds things in existence via his "intellect"? Could it not be his desire or will? And a further point is that even in this scenario things are human-mind independent. God, if he exists, could presumably create a whole world with no humans in it. The Catholics accept the current cosmological paradigm, according to which the cosmos existed for far, far longer without humans than it has with them.

Edit: I see @Leontiskos beat me to the point concerning human mind-independence.

I would agree that an inconsistent argument is not a viable argument, for obvious reasons. Consistent or valid metaphysical arguments may be sound or unsound; that cannot be determined.

People cannot be forced to argue consistently, but if they don't they are, effectively, not arguing but merely asserting. The range of possible consistent arguments is limited only by the imagination. Is that universal enough for you?

It seems to me that you are ultimately arguing that argument is not decisive. — plaque flag

I am describing the human situation which shows that argument cannot be decisive. If you disagree you could offer some examples of arguments which definitively show themselves to be decisive.

I hope you are offering more than the reminder that we could always be wrong, that life is not just about logic. — plaque flag

If that's what you think I have been offering then I think you haven't read closely enough. I am not saying simply that we can always be wrong (which is pretty much true) but that metaphysical arguments cannot be shown to be right or wrong. You could refute that by giving one example of a demonstrably right or wrong metaphysical argument. Good luck...

Discursive thought is necessarily dualistic, but nonetheless dualistic thought can be more or less clear or muddy, consistent or inconsistent. Dualism as a metaphysical stance, despite its current unpopularity, cannot be shown to be right or wrong. I don't favour it myself, because it seems implausible to me, but I acknowledge that plausibility is an assessment which must remain subjective, depending as it does on the whole of each person's experience, acquired and accepted knowledge and understanding.

nothing to do with relativism and it's not a matter of valid or consistent logic, it's a matter of presuppositions or premises. Valid argument can be mounted from any premise you like, soundness (in the case of metaphysical arguments at least) is undecidable. Also the diversity of opinion amongst humans is unarguable.

I'm not taliking about science, though, but metaphysics. That said, scientific theories cannot be proven; they remain forever defeasible.

I'll let their ghosts debate that issue with you, since neither system is my own. — plaque flag

My point was only that the importance of their systems (given that we accept for the sake of argument that they are important beyond merely their place in the canon) principally relies on what you want to discard. Even just their importance as members of the canon relies on their system being accepted as a whole.

Problem is that there is no one rational understanding. Humanity is diverse.

That sounds like an analytic proposition, with metaphysical propositions thereby implicitly defined. Which is fine, if endlessly debatable. I like the word ontology better myself. — plaque flag

It's a synthetic phenomenological proposition in that it reflects the actual and historical situation, as experienced and reflected upon by me. Have you encountered and can you present one metaphysical question which can be shown to be decidable?

Metaphysics can be understood to be reducible to ontology, but it can also be understood that ontology is subsumed by metaphysics. It depends on how you want to define the terms.

It's very easy for humans to snap together words into phrases that do not compute. — plaque flag

Doesn't compute to who, though? The distinction is perfectly clear to me; perhaps you cannot understand how that could be, but conversely it is hard for me to understand why it is not clear to you. This is just down to the fact that we all think differently, accept different foundational presuppositions and so on. This is exactly why metaphysical questions are undecidable; and that doesn't mean that you or I cannot decide one way or the other what to believe, but that there can be no definitive demonstration of truth regarding metaphysical propositions.

The problem is their systems fall apart when the lynchpin is removed, which raises the question as to how we might think their systems are important when they are in a shambles.

Phenomenology is the business of describing how things appear to be, not explaining anything in terms of metaphysical theses.

There is a clear conceptual distinction between 'knowable' and 'unknowable'. Can it be proven that everything is knowable or that some things are unknowable? Fitch's Paradox of Knowability?