Luckily, everything that happens to me has a material explanation in association with my cognition, which is produced by my brain. So, no, you're wrong. — Garrett Travers

:rofl: No I was right; you apparently do suffer from a terrible poverty of subjective experience.

No such thing. Thoughts are produced by an objective brain. No way around it. — Garrett Travers

I haven't claimed that subjectively real phenomena could not be produced by objectively real phenomena; so you are attacking a strawman.

The illusion is thinking the sensation does not have a material explanation. It does, and it's called: the brain. — Garrett Travers

Again I haven't said that sensations don't have material causes. I think your focus on the brain is too narrow, though. The genesis of sensation is the living embrained body/ world.

It is YOU who must demonstrated what YOU are claiming to be real that cannot be observed as evidence. — Garrett Travers

If you carefully observed your own experience I believe you would see that there are many phenomena therein which you could not possibly demonstrate to be real. Of these it should be said that they are not objectively, but subjectively, real. It you want to call them illusions despite the fact that you know you have experienced them, then go for it; I just don't think 'illusion' is the best word to define something which has undoubtedly been experienced.

If you want to say you don't experience such things, then I can only pity you on account of the poverty of your subjective experience.

Crap. My bad. I went from describing to constructing, without due diligence. Let’s just go back to the point where we agreed, and let it go at that, or, continue on but talk about one thing at a time. — Mww

At the moment I've lost track of what we were agreeing, and what we were disagreeing, about
anyway. Maybe it'll resurface later...

Reason isn’t the set of rules, rules being the purview of the understanding, the only purely logical faculty in this particular speculative metaphysical system. — Mww

You're right; I wasn't thinking deeply enough. Reason (considered as the activity of reasoning) is not restricted to the merely logical, it may be analogical, imaginative, associative, metaphorical, poetic or even irrational.

I believe I've already answered this ↪180 Proof
. If we can, we ought to improve upon even our "adaptive illusions" when necessary, no? — 180 Proof

Yes, I agree with that. However, there may be some "illusions" which, even though they might seem to be contraindicated from a rigorous "third person" perspective, are nonetheless essentially adaptive and indispensable to human flourishing.

I am not missing any point. Sensations, such as the ones you are describing, are not real. They are sensations of that which is real; ancillary sensatory effects resulting from brain activity that only the person to which the brain belongs can detect. It is you who are missing the fact that the only thing real in the equation you are trying to assert is the brain and body it is attached to: You. You are real, and your emotions and thoughts cannot be detached from neural activity, which is a material phenomenon. — Garrett Travers

You are assuming what you need to show; that is that anything which cannot be objectively (inter-subjectively) shown to exist cannot be real. I agree that such things cannot be objectively real, because the criteria for that is inter-subjective demonstrability.

You are missing that fact that subjective feelings as they are experienced, as opposed to being thought to be some third person observable processes, are real, and in fact the most real phenomena, to the experiencer.

Such subjective feelings might be considered to be illusions from a third person perspective just because they cannot be demonstrated to be objectively real: a point which I have already acknowledged. That's why I say that what is real should not be thought to be exhausted by the objective.

You're still missing the point. Whether or not there are real neural correlates to my hopes, desires, fears, expectations, assumptions and so on; those emotions, dispositions or whatever can never be inter-subjectively determined to be real per se for the simple reason that only I know them, and you must rely on my testimony that I have them. So, they are demonstrably subjectively real only to me.

If something is maladaptive, then by all means we should get rid of it. But what if some of our "illusions" are adaptive? In fact you had said that our meanings and purposes are mostly adaptive illusions.

You seem to be missing the point that my hopes, fears, preferences and assumptions and so on, are real to me, in fact are the most real things of all; but they cannot be real for you. So they cannot be objective (inter-subjective) realities, and yet they are realities nonetheless.

This is not a statement that makes sense. Reality and objective reality are the same. Objective is a reality descriptor. So, I don't know what you're saying at all. — Garrett Travers

Of course it makes sense if it is granted that there are also subjective realities. Our wishes, hopes, preferences and assumptions, for example.

(and that works only as long as we remain in denial that our 'meanings and purposes' are just (mostly adaptive) illusions)? — 180 Proof

If our meanings and purposes are "Illusions" which are adaptive is there any sense in undermining them, though? What, that might be desirable, could be gained by doing that?

No, we don’t, but there comes from the possibility, that damnable, cursed transcendental illusion, in that we know we construct logically predicated on our intelligence, then it follows that if reality is logically constructed, reality is its own form of intelligence. — Mww

That reality may be constructed logically does not necessarily imply reality is its own intelligence, when it could just as possibly be that reality is constructed logically by an intelligence that so constructs in its own right. — Mww

I don't think it would necessarily follow from the real being logically constructed that it therefore must be either intelligent itself or constructed by an intelligence. So, I don't count those as the two lone possibilities; the real might simply be logically constructed.

Of course as we both agree, we don't and cannot conceivably know, and it doesn't really matter anyway, so...

I can’t find a reference for reason being empty, and without a citation, I have nothing by which to judge your assertion, mostly because I don’t think Kant said anything of the sort. — Mww

If 'reason' is considered synonymous with 'logic', then reason would be empty, in the sense that it has no inherent content, but is merely a set of rules governing form; consistency being the main criteria.To say that nature might be, completely independently of us, logically structured would be, at minimum, only to say that it is consistent throughout and doesn't break it's own rules. Law-like behavior, in other words.

How would a logical reality even be recognized as such, if the system that views it isn’t itself logical? It would appear then, we do not describe a logical reality, but rather, we describe a reality logically. — Mww

We know our descriptions are logically constructed, but we don't know whether what we describe, prior to our descriptions of it, is logically constructed.

So the question is, when considering the genesis of logic, on the assumption that we are not separable from the world in which we have our own genesis, is it more plausible that we arbitrarily impose logical structure on something that totally lacks it, or that the logical structure of our descriptions reflects a logical order in the precognitive nature of things?

The above is assuming that our orientation is naturalistic. If we wish to evoke some kind of super-naturalism, or transcendent realm, than that is a whole different kettle of unknowable fish.

Of course, if we don't want to answer that question, and wish to rest content with not deciding either way, what does it matter, what could it matter?

(BTW, when I speak of naturalism I don't mean it in the sense of the naturalism that is rejected by phenomenology; which is the idea that everything about human experience can be explained in the "third person" reductive or mechanistic terms of cause and effect).

By this token, all the pharaohs ought to be historically suspect... — Olivier5

No, because they are not claimed to be gods or God today; it is what is claimed about Jesus today that determines the focus of attention, not what was claimed in ancient times.

I take your point about the popularity of Christianity and it's global dominance, but since it is those interested in western philosophy who are, in this context here at least, attacking it, I think its dominance in the west is the salient point. It could be seen as a kind of Freudian slaying of the father, a rebellion against authority; I have noticed that the most vehement critics of Christianity are often those who were schooled in it when young and probably enjoyed (or didn't enjoy) a period of fervent belief.

I have already told you that the oldest manuscripts of the gospels are in Greek. — universeness

That claim is not without controversy. It is true that the earliest surviving gospels are in Greek, but there is also purported to be evidence that earlier copies in Aramaic or Hebrew were the originals. The Old Testament was, for the most part, written in Hebrew with the excepted parts in Aramaic.

The Jesus Freaks were a thing. They may still be around. I think they even called themselves "Jesus Freaks." Even Elton John referred to them in Tiny Dancer ("Jesus freaks, Out in the street,
Handing tickets out for God"), so they must have existed. — Ciceronianus

They existed; they were here in Australia in the early seventies; I'm not sure they referred to themselves as "Jesus Freaks", but they were certainly referred to here as such. I'm not sure if they were the same, but there were also the Children of God.

Why is all the erasing attention going to that same guy Jesus, always, as if the Buddha or Socrates did not even not exist? That's not fair. — Olivier5

It's possibly because of the claim that Christ was the Word incarnate; the one true Son of God, and that he literally died for our sins. No such claims are made about the other figures you mentioned.

See my answer to Wayfarer, Mww. Hopefully that should answer your questions.

Firstly, Kant nowhere claims that differences must be spatiotemporal. One pure concept is different than another, — Mental Forms

I didn't say that Kant claimed that. Concepts differ in their semantic content; I was referring to the supposed differences between "things in themselves", which if they exist, are not concepts but real things. We cannot conceive of differences between real things that are not spatio-temporal differences.

I'm sure that that is not what Kant means by transcendental. Doesn't he go to the trouble of differentiating 'transcendental' from 'transcendent' to avoid that implication?

Layman's explanation: what is transcendental is what is always already the case, what must be assumed to be so by any supposition, what is implicit in experience without being visible to it. — Wayfarer

I am not saying Kant didn't make the distinction, but I am questioning whether the distinction holds in light of the implications of his philosophy. Think about the differences between phenomenology as presented by Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau Ponty and Kant's philosophy.

Phenomenology posits the "transcendental reduction", which, as I read it, is transcendental in the "ordinary" sense as I outlined in brackets in the previous post.The objects of sense are understood, in their pre-experiential rawness, as transcendental, which renders the empirical as not separate from the transcendental, and undermines the notion of a duality of ideality and reality that lingers in Kant despite his refutation of idealism.

For example the purely formal notion of the transcendental subject in Kant is replaced in Husserl with the embodied subject, thus establishing the a priori nature of materiality.

Hadot, Suzuki, and others are alright as far as modern analyses go, but I think the key to understanding Plato is to read Plato. — Apollodorus

Problem is unless you're reading Plato in his original language (and even then you will be imposing interpretations native to yours) you are reading Plato as interpreted by speakers of your language and as rendered in that language with all the implicit presuppositions that involves.

That said, someone who has studied Ancient Greek language, culture and philosophy for a lifetime would arguably be better at avoiding such prejudices than a Greek language neophyte would, so you are probably better off reading translations. But still scholars differ in their renderings and their interpretations, and it seems no one can completely escape their native assumptions, which means that Plato for us is always going to be Plato-for-us.

That conception of the transcendental seems to be based on the assumption that empirical intuitions are not always already conceptually mediated, even prior to conceptions becoming explicit.

On that alternate view the conceptual dimension of the empirical is not given transcendentally, but immanently. The transcendental view seems to rely on the existence of something otherworldly or divine; which would mean that the distinction between transcendentality and transcendence is moot. (Of course in its '"ordinary" sense, as something not empirically observable 'transcendental' retains its coherence). No way to prove any of this, but it's an alternate view.

And if we make definite claims about the occulted nature of the empirical and of empirical intuitions, then we would seem to be overstepping our bounds and indulging in the kind of speculation, which is neither emprically (obviously) or rationally justified, that Kant would want us to eschew.

Perhaps, not in idealist (folk psychologist) terms, "intuition" is just (the perceptual – noninferential – aptitude of) pattern-recognition (e.g. gestalts). — 180 Proof

That certainly seems to be a possibility.

That constructed schema is a “non-empirical intuition — Mww

It is certainly arguable though that it could be an abstraction derivative of empirical intuitions. It seems to be one of those "chicken and egg" problems. Do you think we learn to see things as things via being taught to as well as possessing evolved constitutional aptitudes? As 180 says "seeing as" relies on a consitutional capacity for "gestalting". I don't think there's much question that animals also do it.

The term 'synthetic a priori' suggests that Kant thought these a priori intuitions are synthesized, which begs the question as to what 'material' they are synthesized from. It seems they become a priori only after the fact (of empirical experience), so to speak.

In any case when considering the question of intellectual intution, we are considering more abstruse (metaphysical) intuitions, such as Platos' Forms, Spinoza's one substance and Hegel's absolute spirit, and I think it's fair to say Kant had no truck with that kind of metaphysical intellectual "intuition" (speculation).

It's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer. Spinoza believed in intellectual intuition of a certain kind (understanding "sub specie aetermitatis", or "under the aspect of eternity"). Hegel, as I understand it, sought to restore the idea against Kant's rejection of it. Perhaps the issue is that there could be no way of demonstrating that such intuitions are yielding true knowledge.

As to mathematics, our understanding of it may be explained as rule following, or abstracting from empirical experience. It's obviously a complex subject, to which much more thought might be given.

Re noumena, this, with passages from Kant, comes from Wikipedia:

Kant also makes a distinction between positive and negative noumena:[22][23]

If by 'noumenon' we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition, and so abstract from our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the term.[24]

But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special mode of intuition, namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we possess, and of which we cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be 'noumenon' in the positive sense of the term.[24]

The positive noumena, if they existed, would be immaterial entities that can only be apprehended by a special, non-sensory faculty: "intellectual intuition" (nicht sinnliche Anschauung).[24] Kant doubts that we have such a faculty, because for him intellectual intuition would mean that thinking of an entity, and its being represented, would be the same. He argues that humans have no way to apprehend positive noumena:

Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories can never extend further than to the objects of experience. Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding to the sensible entities; there may also be intelligible entities to which our sensible faculty of intuition has no relation whatsoever; but our concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition, could not in the least apply to them. That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon' must be understood as being such only in a negative sense.[25]*

^ Kant's words bolded

So Kant apparently rejects intellectual intuition; the kind of intuition which Plato claims gives access to the Forms.

I like what you said, but couldn't it be countered that these ostensibly defeasible disciplines also develop their orthodoxies and may be resistant to new ideas or approaches they view as outliers and heretics? — Tom Storm

Yes, I agree, but I think that the development of orthodoxies is intrinsic to religion while not being intrinsic to those other disciplines, and is actually counter to their spirit of inquiry. I think orthodoxy is intrinsic to religion because it (at least any organized religion) is lost without authority.

"Unbiased" discourse? What is that?? — baker

Science, mathematics, logic, phenomenology. Any discourse which depends on observation and reason, and does not depend on authority. Any discourse, that is, that is in principle at least, defeasible and endlessly revisable, and wherein expertise can be gained by understanding clearly defined ideas, principles and observable or self-evident facts.

Any religion, including Buddhism, cannot be an unbiased discourse, because it depends on faith. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way, but in order to respect intellectual honesty it should at least be acknowledged. Talk of "direct knowing" is a nonsense, inter-subjectively speaking, and can never constitute an unbiased discourse.

I agree; I think ethics is basically a sense, a matter of conscience, not a set of rules.

This is not out of line with the notion of the sovereignty of the individual, though; if this sovereignty is considered as belonging to all individuals, in which case the bounding condition on one's sovereignty would be the performative contradiction involved in one's own sovereignty restricting the sovereignty of others.

What I think you arrive at though is not that teh definition of freedom is contextual, the actual assessment of who is free and who is not is contextual, determined by the facts of the case. — Tobias

Right, though I haven't said the definition of freedom simpliciter is contextual; I meant that who is defined as being free, and how we might be defined as being free on one perspective and not on another is where the contextuality comes into play.

Got it, thanks. I'll let you know my thoughts on that when I've finished both the essay and the article.

I haven't read the web site article, just glanced at it, and I'm working my way through Arendt's paper. I'm interested as to what part of the essay you think has been used dishonestly and how.

Thanks, but is that not the same link to Arendt's essay as was given in the OP?

I wonder if you have come across this alternate picture of freedom before, is all. — Banno

Ah, right. I've started reading the Arendt article, since I have more time on my hands today. So far, I would say 'yes or maybe'. I think I may have actually come across this paper before, when I was an undergraduate at Sydney Uni I took a unit which included Arendt. But memory aint what it used to be!

On the other hand if you mean had I come across the idea of freedom as political freedom, or the freeing possibilities of politics, then yes, I had been aware of that, but I probably haven't given it as much thought as it might deserve.

Yep, none of us are perfect readers to be sure.

However, that definition leads to absurd consequences because it means traffic lights would make you less free. — Tobias

Actually I misread this. Since I said that the more control the more freedom, I had thought you thought I meant control per se, and I misread this as "would make you more free". But this brings up an interesting question: do traffic lights make you more or less free? Since I see freedom as being always contextual, I think the answer could be either. If there were no traffic lights and little traffic, then you would be more free to drive unimpeded (assuming that is what you desire). On the other hand traffic lights are designed to facilitate the flow of traffic, so if there is a lot of traffic they may afford you greater freedom.

So, as I said previously I think freedom is easy to understand, it is contexts and the will(s) which create them which are more difficult to elucidate.

But until now you may not have been aware that there were alternatives. — Banno

No idea what you're trying to say here.

For instance whether it matters at all whether we really really are determined, Strawson uses this approach. — Tobias

I would say that what is important (from the POV of the individual) is the experience or feeling of freedom. And since the question cannot be answered then it doesn't matter. If it could be answered and the answer was that freedom (in the full libertarian sense) is completely illusory, then that might matter to individuals, since such a realization might demotivate or demoralize people. It would more definitely matter for the idea of moral responsibility, praise and blame.

However, that definition leads to absurd consequences because it means traffic lights would make you less free. — Tobias

Sorry it wasn't clear, but I meant personal control, not external control.

That is a question tackled by some compatibilist philosophers I think. Possibly also by some in this thread. If you define freedom as freedom from natural impediments and control by other people, (or just control by other people) than by definition the will is free. — Tobias

I consider freedom from external control to be freedom, as experienced, of course. Beyond that, the metaphysical question as to whether we are completely determined by brain activity over which we have no control is undecidable, in my view. How could it be tested?

For me the ancient Greek conception of noumena is so different from Kant's that I think it is irrelevant. I don't see a problem with Kant using the term in his own way, and I see no warrant for criticism of his use of the term per se. Schopenhauer's criticism is for another reason than the use of the term as I outlined above.

If the term is used to denote the Platonic forms the same criticism applies, since there are different forms, but then as far as I know it wasn't explicit in Plato that the forms do not exist in time and space (of some unknown ideal kind presumably).

The distinction he makes is between 'things as they appear to us' - as phenomena - and 'as they are in themselves' (the infamous ding an sich) which is often equated with the noumena. However opinion is divided as to whether 'the noumena' and 'things in themselves' really are synonymous - this is one of the things Schopenhauer criticized, saying he used both terms inconsistently. — Wayfarer

The way I see it, more or less irrelevant etymologies aside, is that Kant uses the term "noumenal" to denote what we might think of as the 'non or extra-phenomenal' reality of things (what they are over and above their (possible) appearances).

Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant in this, is that in calling the noumenal "things in themselves" he contradicts his denial that they could be spatio-temporal entities, since there can be no "things" without difference and no difference without spatial and temporal separation.

I think it's fair to say that if we have any capability of control at all, then that is a quantum of freedom. If we never could have done otherwise than we did, then freedom is an illusion; our lives are pre-determined or at least not determined by us.

That said, in the absence of external political or social forces controlling us, we can enjoy a felt freedom; would it matter if, on some externalist perspective alien to our actual lives, the feeling of freedom were thought to be an illusion?

Anyway it seems obvious to me that the question of agency or free will has a history which predates the deliberations and deliverance of the church fathers, and that was all I was responding to. I haven't made bold to comment on the article, since I haven't read it, but only on the generalized comments of others. I don't intend to read the article, so I won't discover whether Arendt makes the claim that the idea of free will originated with the church fathers, and that's OK.

Edit: I see @Banno now says the Arendt article does claim that "free will was introduced by St Peter to explain the internal conflict required by sin", and that there is a distinction to be made between the idea of free will and the idea of freedom. It's not clear to me what such a distinction could be if it is not merely the distinction between being subject, and not being subject, to externally imposed human constraint.

Was the claim that the idea of free will originated with the church fathers in the article or was it exclusively yours?

You're deflecting. The passage quoted from SEP was merely to show the facile and spurious claim that the idea of free will originated with the church fathers for what it is.

Yes, it seems we owe free will to the Church Fathers. — Banno

Not so.

From the SEP entry on free will:

The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions. Questions concerning the nature and existence of this kind of control (e.g., does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise or the power of self-determination?), and what its true significance is (is it necessary for moral responsibility or human dignity?) have been taken up in every period of Western philosophy and by many of the most important philosophical figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant.

Questions of moral responsibility and freedom are inevitable in any society where a tradition of thinking about the human situation arises.

scrambled pig brains — Gnomon

This thread...same old menu...nothing's changed. :rofl:

This, it seems to me, is by way of articulating the antisocial consequences of what has been revealed as the Christian notion of free will. — Banno

This is nonsense. "Do unto others..." etc., and in Christian morality, one is to be held accountable for their acts; both by society and by God.