For some, no doubt. However, most philosophical positions are inconsistent with solipsism. — 180 Proof

It seems to me that all philosophical positions are inconsistent with solipsism, since they all require language, which is born and evolved inter-subjectively.

If it were "intersubjective agreement" that were needed, you would be asking others if you feel shame in walking naked through the mall. But that's not what happens. — Banno

Of course you don't need to ask; it is an inter-subjectively established collective representation that walking naked through the mall is shameful.

The only place in which this is brought into doubt is when one plays at philosophy. — Banno

Yes, we can be certain that others have minds for the simple reason that inter-subjective agreement is the only source of being (discursively) certain about anything in the first place. If we assumed that others do not, or even might not, have minds then we could not be certain of anything at all. And even merely subjectively feeling (discursively) certain about anything, such as an afterlife for example, ultimately has it's genesis in inter-subjectivity, since discursivity requires the collective representations which come about only with symbolic language.

Just my opinion, but I don't think consciousness is possible with a linear system. It requires massive parallel-processing, like our brains. — Real Gone Cat

It seems plausible to me that for consciousness to manifest an organic sentient body with a CNS is necessary. Do I believe that? No, but it seems more plausible than the alternative.

but your posts read as if the people who disagreed with you are wrong. — Bylaw

I haven't suggested they were wrong, but that they were responding in ways that showed they were not taking in what I was saying, which was advocating for more precise usage of terms.

So, what I've been saying, in a nutshell, is that, to me, the logic of the idea of believing anything consists in feeling certain, with doubt consisting in feeling uncertain. And the distinction between merely feeling certain and being certain shows the difference between subjectively held beliefs and inter-subjectively justified beliefs respectively. Basically that's all I've been saying; how the underlying logic of those ideas seems to me. And then people respond with "but this is not in accordance with common usage"; well, yes of course, that was actually the point.

As I see it the only argument for the importance of an idealist understanding might be that it better supports "spiritual" aspirations and intuitions. Personally, I don't think that is the case, but I guess it depends on the individual; and in any case if spiritual aspirations are not important to you, and you have no such desires, feelings or intuitions, then I think it certainly wouldn't matter. For me the whole debate just seems overly simplistic and misguided.

I have read that cats, (on average) due to the ratio of their surface area to their mass, reach terminal velocity after falling from about the height of a seven storey building. If that is true, and they can survive a fall from that height then they can survive a fall from any height (assuming there is enough oxygen available to them) and may even be more likely to survive falls from greater heights due to having more time to prepare for landing.

Sure. I specifically am asking for an idealist account of this so I can better understand the thinking. — Tom Storm

The only idealist accounts I am familiar with invoke a higher realm of some kind; a realm of absolute goodness, beauty and truth, which is only ever partially reflected in this fallen world of ours. But I don't see how this could have much potential for being an account that anyone who lacked the kinds of intimations this understanding springs from could be persuaded by.

That said, although I think goodness in the ethical sense can be related to social well-being and hence requires no transcendental account to understand its wellsprings; beauty and truth seem to be entirely resistant to accounts in terms of anything more fundamental.

So much could be contained in this one statement. — Tom Storm

Or so little...

So presumably an idealist, who makes judgements about beauty is identifying how an instantiation of something (a sculpture or painting, say) reflects an ideal form. Ditto ethics. — Tom Storm

It seems to me that the underpinnings of ethics are easy enough to comprehend in terms of the understandable desire social animals have for social harmony; a pack, troupe, group, community or society riven with conflict does not benefit the collective.

The idea that beauty in painting or sculpture consists in reflecting an ideal form doesn't seem plausible to me. Take the human form, for example; how, on the basis of what criteria, would an ideal form become established that actual forms might be related to? Or a landscape; what is the ideal form of a mountain? Can we invoke symmetry, or is that not too simplistic?

Fromm's position is that malignant aggression, as exhibited by humans, is "virtually non-existent" in the animal kingdom. I accept your example of cattle-poaching wolves as a possible exception. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Does "malignant aggression" consist in taking pleasure in inflicting suffering? The question would then be as to whether predatory animals which "toy" with prey, slowly killing and then perhaps not eating the prey, or even just killing prey and then leaving it, are taking pleasure in inflicting suffering.

Why do they not consume their kill? Are they saving it for later, or is there some other reason? Perhaps they enjoy the 'sport', but do they actually conceive of the prey suffering, of 'punishing' the prey, and take sadistic pleasure in that? I doubt the last is the case.

As to the aggression displayed by social animals, I think that is plausibly understood to be a modified or elaborated form of the "fight or flight' kind of aggression, which is driven by fear or insecurity and by the need to establish social hierarchical order.

I am not sure I understand how one is supposed to access or understand 'pure ideas' such as truth or beauty in order to appreciate them in our reality. — Tom Storm

Don't we understand them only in terms of feelings or intuitions we have in respect of real things? A beautiful person, or landscape, a true friend or situation, and so on? How else could we understand truth and beauty? Remember Keat's chiasmus at the end of 'Ode to a Grecian Urn':

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Glad you like your new place. I'm with you all the way when it comes to preferring being more on the land than in the city or suburbs. Luckily, we live on an acre, so it's not so bad as the quarter acre carefully designed plots with fences between that are common nowadays. Twenty or fifty or a hundred acres would be better though! — creativesoul

Cheers...

You want to change that language use, but I'm unclear as to what you want it changed to. — Isaac

I thought I'd explained it pretty clearly; it makes perfect sense to me, but if others don't get it or agree that's fine too. It's by no means that important and I've run out of enthusiasm for pursuing it any further.

If that were true, it would be impossible for anyone to be certain that "God exists" is true. — creativesoul

it is impossible to be certain of that. You need to up your reading skills it seems.

Being certain and knowing the truth are different. — creativesoul

It's true that one could inadvertently know the truth without being certain of it; so all instances of knowing the truth are not necessarily being certain of knowing the truth. But all instances of being certain of knowing the truth, as opposed to feeling certain of knowing the truth are instances of knowing the truth.

I've given examples; do you disagree that I can be certain that 2+2=4. that the Earth is roughly spherical, that vertebrates have an internal skeletal structure and so on? Do you disagree that I cannot be certain that God exists, but that I can feel certain of it? Answer those questions in a straightforward ingenuous way and/ or provide counterexamples, or I'm done conversing with you.

No, I'm not; that's just your fantasy. Are you certain of the kinds of things I've used as examples of what is commonly taken to be certainly true? The statements that are expressed about those things are commonly understood to be true because they correspond to the the actuality of the things the statements are about. What more needs to be said about that?

You claimed that being certain is knowing the truth and then later openly expressed no concern about what truth is. Nothing left for me to say... — creativesoul

You're haven't been saying anything relevant in the way of disagreement any way, so probably better that you don't feel you have anything left. We don't have to know what generally makes things true in order to know that they are commonly counted as such. I have never seen any account which makes more sense than correspondence, so it seems that at least we agree on that much.

Nothing you say there tells against the MMT principle that inflation will only result if supply of goods is not adequate to demand, even if extra money has been injected into the economy.

So, if this principle is right, then supply chain issues would be the proximate cause of inflation, and it seems likely that if supply cannot meet demand, inflation (perhaps not as significant) would still have resulted even if extra money had not been injected,

Contrary to what you've said, I have set out the differences between "we can feel certain even when we are not" and "we can feel certain even when we are not right". As hinted at above, the term "right" was added without subsequent objection. You offered the claim, and I added a term andchecked for your agreement. You readily offered it up. You did not object to that term being added. Rather, you claimed that I was "echoing" what you said. — creativesoul

"We can feel certain even when we are not" means, as I read it, we can feel certain even when we are not certain (i.e. cannot be certain). And this of course entails that we can be wrong about what we feel certain about. So, nothing there is inconsistent with what I've been saying; rather it supports it. That's why I said you had been echoing or paraphrasing what I had said.

Given that you originally invoked "knowing the truth" as the distinction between feeling certain and being certain, if you are not concerned with what truth is, then you're not concerned with what "knowing the truth" means. — creativesoul

I'm concerned with the kinds of things which are counted as being beyond reasonable doubt, i.e. certainly true, by the community at large, not with what constitutes or justifies being counted as such. That is an entirely different discussion.

It's probably not as simple as you want to paint it. See the post above yours.

And btw to everybody, has anybody seen anything anymore from the MMT crowd? — ssu

One of the principles of MMT is that injecting more money into the system will only cause inflation if there are shortages of goods.

I don't think feeling certain or being certain are distinguished in the use of certain. He was certain he was right but he was mistaken. He felt certain he was right, but he was mistaken. Both those sentences read a plausible assessments to me. — Bylaw

They may not be distinguished in sloppy common usage, but isn't that the point of sharpening usage: to clarify the underlying logic?

"He was certain he was right, but he was mistaken" expressed in my terms means that he felt certain he was right, but he was not certainly right (because he failed to investigate the matter sufficiently, or whatever). To be certain means, inter-subjectively speaking, to be certainly right. You can be certain of many things: 2+2=4, the Sun is larger than the Earth, vertebrates have an internal skeletal structure, and so on and so on, almost endlessly. Of these kinds of things you can be certain (excluding ridiculous radical skepticism). As I've acknowledged, being certain subsumes feeling certain, but feeling certain does not necessarily entail being certain.

So what is the name of my attitude toward "its afternoon"? — Isaac

It's a weird example, but I'll play along. If you are uncertain as to whether it is afternoon, then it seems to follow that you entertain some doubt, Are you vacillating between believing it is afternoon and doubting it? In other words are you vacillating between certainty and uncertainty?

But that's just not the meaning of the word at all. If I'm 99.9999% sure it's afternoon, no one in their right mind would describe that situation as me "doubting it's afternoon" — Isaac

But that's a ridiculous stipulation; you are a hundred percent sure it's afternoon (if it is). In any case if you are 99% sure of something (ignoring the stupid idea that you could ever quantify that) or unsure to any degree, then you are not certain but are entertaining a blend of belief and doubt.

Considering the differences between your statements is not enough to understand the remarkable difference in the meaning between our respective statements. You've now confirmed more than once that my paraphrasing captured what you meant. — creativesoul

The differences there are remarkable enough to shed light on the problems with your particular use. — creativesoul

You seem to be contradicting yourself; you've said your statements "capture what I meant" which I read as meaning they agree with what I meant, then you speak of some purported "remarkable difference" which you haven't explained as far as I can tell.

There only seems to be this, and I've already corrected the misundertsnding which seems to lurk there:

You hold that knowing the truth is about the believer, and while I would not reject that claim outright, for knowing the truth is indeed about the believer - in part at least. — creativesoul

I'm not concerned with knowing the truth in any absolute sense or with what truth is. I'm saying that being certain is being certain of knowing the truth in a verifiable inter-subjective context which is contrasted with merely feeling certain of something being true which cannot be inter-subjectively confirmed.

You should know from my past history of posting on here that I've argued that the so-called deflationary conception of truth as expressed in Tarski's T-sentence just is, despite the protestations of the dogmatists, an encapsulation of the logic of correspondence. But I'm not concerned here with accounts of what constitutes truth as such, but with the difference between subjective and inter-subjective experiences of certainty. so it still escapes me as to what you think the "remarkable difference", your elusive purportedly very significant point of disagreement, is.

The more significant idea I've been exploring is that it makes no sense to speak of knowing something that one is not certain of or believing something one does not feel certain of. To the extent that one is uncertain one does not know, and to the extent to which does not feel certain one does not believe, but rather doubts.

I disagree, though this is semantics and use does vary.
Certain has to do with a mental attitude, not the truth value of one's belief. — Bylaw

I haven't said otherwise. I've said that merely feeling certain obtains when one believes that something one cannot be certain of is true; the example I gave was being certain that God is real.I shouldn't have to keep repeating myself to clear up other's misunderstandings..

So what extra is needed to go from feeling certain that God exists to being certain? — creativesoul

You can't be certain that God exists, because being certain is knowing and the things we can be said to know are things that are inter-subjectively corroborable.

I'm trying to get Janus to explain what the difference is, according to his/her position, between feeling certain and being certain. Seems to me like that difference amounts to feeling certain being on par with belief whereas being certain is on par with knowledge. — creativesoul

Feeling certain is feeling that you know the truth while being certain is knowing the truth; both are about the person. So, again I can feel certain that God exists, but I cannot be certain that God exists. I can be certain that 2+2=4. Can you spot the difference yet? — Janus

Can you see how what you said above is the same, in different words, as what I said above? Also you do seem to be agreeing that there is a difference between being certain and feeling certain. If not then point to the difference you think is there between the two statements above.

Do you think we can be said to know anything we cannot be certain of? Do you think we can be said to believe anything we do not feel certain of? ( To anticipate an objection that might be raised to the second question: I allow that we might vacillate between believing and doubting; being certain and being uncertain, but the question is whether it could make sense to say that we can simultaneously and rationally (or even irrationally for that matter) both believe and doubt something.

Go back and read carefully what I've said, and then tell me what you agree or disagree with, and then we can talk.

What does your practice add to our understanding here that the quote above lacks? — creativesoul

You just seem to be paraphrasing what I've already said. Do you agree that there is a valid distinction between feeling certain and being certain, or not?

Right, I get it; you're compelled to resort to expletives and ad hominems because you can't give a straight answer to the question I asked without making my point for me.

We can feel certain even when we are not right. We can feel certain even when we are not justified in being so. We can feel certain even when we're dead wrong.

We cannot feel certain when we are not feeling certain. — creativesoul

Why would I not agree when you are simply echoing what I've already said?

Janus' use of "feeling certain" is about the believer, but his use of "being certain" is about the truth of the belief. — creativesoul

No, you've got it wrong again. Feeling certain is feeling that you know the truth while being certain is knowing the truth; both are about the person. So, again I can feel certain that God exists, but I cannot be certain that God exists. I can be certain that 2+2=4. Can you spot the difference yet?

Banno won't say whether he agrees or disagrees with those two statements, because he will appear a fool if he disagrees, and if he agrees he will be acknowledging that he actually agrees with my distinction, which his ego won't allow him to do. So, he hides behind insults and attempts to appear above the discussion. It's a bit sad, really.

You continue to ignore my example that clearly shows they are not the same: to repeat, one can feel certain that God exists, but one cannot be certain, i.e. know, that God exists. — Janus

You must disagree with some part of the above then. Which part?

Balls. You asked me pages back if I were certain of anything. I said yes. You didn't follow up on my reply. — Banno

Can you know something without knowing it? Are you certain of anything? If so, do you know it is true or not? Do you feel certain of anything that you don't know to be true? — Janus

It's not the only question there. Do you now admit that you were wrong, and that there is a valid distinction between being certain of something and feeling certain of something?

The consummate politician is always playing to the crowd. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes, he is certainly behaving more like a politician than a philosopher!

Yes, there are structures. I think so too. The nature of these structures are hard to decipher, I think. Even though we manage to navigate the world somehow, it's not trivial.

I do think there are things absent us, we cannot merely think the world to completion, because we don't have enough relevant data. Hence the need for further experience, and science and experimentation. — Manuel

:up:

To be sure, it is clear that you make a distinction here. What I've been doing is trying to draw out form you what that distinction is. I think I hit on it here:

So being certain is just feeling certain of something, and that thing being true. — Banno — Banno

No you complicated it to make it seem confused, when it isn't. You conveniently failed to answer my questions:

Can you know something without knowing it? Are you certain of anything? If so, do you know it is true or not? Do you feel certain of anything that you don't know to be true? — Janus

in answer to this:

Why add "knowing"? — Banno

You're looking distinctly disingenuous now.

I think my work here is done. — Banno

Then you'd be wrong; your work has not even begun.

You just seem to be trying, by tendentiously paraphrasing what I've said, and by making asides to others about my purported "confusion", to worm out of having to admit you were wrong to say that being certain and feeling certain are the same. I have clearly shown they are not, so it is you that is confused, not me.

Why add "knowing"? — Banno

Can you know something without knowing it? Are you certain of anything? If so, do you know it is true or not? Do you feel certain of anything that you don't know to be true?

So being certain is just feeling certain of something, and that thing being true. — Banno

Being certain of something is knowing that it is true.

Feeling certain does not necessarily mean knowing the subject is true, as the example of feeling certain that God exists shows. Of course being certain includes feeling certain, though, which means that some instances of feeling certain do mean knowing the subject is true.

With sentences like that, is it a surprise I have not understood you?

Is this "No level of certainty implies knowing the subject is true" or is this "No, you are wrong, Banno, being certain implies knowing that the subject is true", or something else? — Banno

OK, fair enough, I overlooked a comma, thus rendering the sentence open to ambiguous interpretation. It should be ' No, being certain means knowing the subject is true', as opposed to your previous interpretation that asserted I was saying 'Being certain means the subject is true". Apologies for my sloppy (lack of) punctuation.

OK, that wasn't clear to me but :cool:

And?

Seems that "be certain" means the subject is true. An odd phrasing that leads Janus astray. — Banno

No being certain means knowing that the subject is true.The subject being true and knowing that the subject is true are not the same. Your lazy reading and/or thinking is leading you astray.

Being certain and feeling certain are the very same thing. Being true and being certain are not. — creativesoul

See above; you are making the same mistake as Banno. You ignored my example that clearly shows they are not the same: to repeat, one can feel certain that God exists, but one cannot be certain, i.e. know, that God exists.

One can be certain and wrong. Thus, certainty does not equate to, nor does it always indicate knowledge.

If 'X' is certain, do we not also feel certain about 'X'? In other words, I do not think you've drawn a distinction here. According to what you've said above, 'X' is both knowledge and belief. — creativesoul

We cannot be certain and wrong, but we can feel certain and be wrong. Of course if you are certain you also feel certain, but the converse does not follow; i.e. we can feel certain even we are not. For example I might feel certain that God exists, but I obviously cannot be certain about that.