To imagine the immaterial is nearly as nonsensical (to you) as to conceive of the inconceivable and I feel the two are related, like Cantor's infinities, one bigger than the other. — TheMadFool

Do you "feel" that the "two are related" or think it? :wink: The difference with Cantor's idea that infinities can be larger or smaller is this can be shown logically, so I don't think the analogy is really appropriate.

How? A well-crafted argument would go a long way towards making your case. Remember there are two points to consider: relative limit (what we can say/think) and absolute limit (what can be said/thought).

We can think that there's an x that we can't think of but that doesn't mean we can think of x. — TheMadFool

If we think of God in apophatic terms as being nothing we can think of, then it follows that we cannot think of God even as being, since being is something we can think of. The same goes for the idea that God does not exist, but is real; that claim, when I think about it, makes no sense. What is the sense in saying that something is real and yet non-existent?

So,what is the point of saying God is real, if we cannot say what it means to say that God is real? In this then we are talking about feelings, not about thoughts. If we believe in God er "feel" that God is real. But that God is real is a proposition and it seems strange to say that we feel rather than think a proposition.

So, really if we have a feeling for God, then we should, I think, just focus on that feeling of sacredness, devotion, mystery or awe and forget about trying to say anything propositional at all We can speak in poetic language, evoking our feelings and intimations, without proposing anything or concerning ourselves with knowing anything. Otherwise we will just talk nonsense while imagining that we are saying something sensible; the first step towards fundamentalism.That's my take anyway.

I'm well familiar with what apophatic theology is purported to consist in by at least two of its advocates, Jean Luc Marion and John Caputo, both of whom I have read.

The problem I see with saying that God is not anything you can think of, is that it follows that God is therefore...not anything at all.

It's both. Vague propositions often don't have a single truth value, precisely because they're vague. — Michael

To say someone middle-aged is young or old is not so much vague as it is senseless unless there is a context in which a comparison is being made. By contrast we can sensibly say a child is young because it is implicit in that, that compared to the larger demographic of adults a child is young. When it comes to saying a forty year old is young, it is meaningless unless some explicit or implicit (given by the context) comparison is included. So, for example, it can sensibly be said that a forty year old person is young compared to octagenarians, It can also be sensibly be said that a forty year old is middle-aged, although that would be somewhat vague, but not senseless.

I think there may be a problem with your characterizations, because some Platonic immaterial objects are real because they can be empirically represented, but some Platonic immaterial objects are real insofar as we are affected by them. Then it must be the case that empirical diversity and quantitative relations are not sufficient in themselves or describing them. — Mww

We are discussing number which can be understood as being necessarily instantiated in diversity. If you are thinking about the so-called platonic forms of objects, like for example the form of the horse; we can be affected by the empirical form of a horse or the imagined form of a horse. When it comes to a number, say five, we can be affected by the empirical form of five, five apples for example, or we can be affected by thinking about five. When it comes to the form of the good, we can be affected by an empirical form of the good, a good action for example, or we can be affected by thinking about the good. There are diverse instances of horses, instantiation of five and examples of the good, so I'm not seeing the difference you are attempting to refer to?

Peter van Inwagen, if I recall correctly, proposed (in Material Beings) the idea that only living things have an identity. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. this is exactly the point I made in my last response to your question about the identity of the caterpillar and the butterfly..

The point then is simple: no idea of God one could imagine/conceive of is "not even wrong" (Wolfgang Pauli) No such thing is even a mistake which we could correct to arrive at the truth, the right idea (of God). Apophatic! — TheMadFool

Yes, but does an apophatic conception of God entail any kind of reality or existence at all? Because if not, then God is simply the imagination of something so great that we cannot imagine it. We don't imagine the unimaginable (which would be a contradiction), we imagine that there is an unimaginable. What kind of reality or existence can we imagine the unimaginable to have?

I was backtracking for context, and it became apparent that if I was to comment on the dialogue you’re engaged in with ↪Wayfarer
, I’d first have to find out how you intend the term “immanent” to be understood, insofar as it asks “of patterns, of species and kinds”, in which “existence” they are contained, or perhaps, to which “existence” do they relate. — Mww

By immanent I just mean that we have every reason to think there is real difference in the world, real patterns or repetitions, if you like, that would explain our perception of a world teeming with different species. landforms, and elements.

It seems obvious that our fellow percipients see the same differentiated world that we do. If there is differentiation, then there is number or quantity. So I don't say there are real numbers; immaterial platonic objects or ideas, I say that there is real number, shown to us in the diversity of the world of similarities and differences that we perceive.

It is well known that some animals can perform more or less rudimentary. counting, so add to that symbolic language and you have the ability to conceive of numbers abstractly. Anyway that's the explanatory scenario, such as it is, that I find more plausible than that numbers are somehow universal independently real or existence entities; that each number is somehow a universal independently real or existent entity..

So, I lean towards thinking that number is real in its instantiations in our diverse world of same and different kinds of entities.

So if your “immanent existence” in not the same as the existence his phenomenal objects go “in and out of”, you’re each talking past the other. You’re not on the same page, which makes the entire dialogue a mere intellectual squabble — Mww

I don't think it is a "mere squabble", in fact it could be thought to be the great divide in philosophy since Plato and Aristotle disagreed (or at least have been understood to have disagreed) on this very point.

But, consider the caterpillar. Is it now a butterfly or do the two not share any identity? Why do catterpillars maintain identity through their metamorphosis but not boats that turn into airplanes? — Hanover

Because organisms, as opposed to boats and planes, are self-regulating and self-transforming perhaps?

This is the closed minded perspective. It's nothing more than I cannot fully understand you, because I cannot put myself in your mindset, on a larger scale. I cannot become you, and I cannot become an ancient person, but that does not mean that I cannot put myself in your mindset, or in an ancient person's mindset, to understand. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well. we'll just have to agree to disagree about that. :wink:

I think I understand Wayfarer's position very well and all the more so since I actually used to inhabit it. — Janus


Coming from the person who just said wayfarer's position (putting oneself into the ancient mindset) is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Firstly Wayfarer is not an ancient, and secondly I used to think just the way he says he does which means I am in a very good position to understand his worldview. But as I said it's a worldview I no longer inhabit. The other thing with contemporary interlocutors is that you can ask them what they mean, which is impossible with the ancients.

But if you didn't think you were right, you wouldn't disagree. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's mot how I see it. I could disagree because I think an alternative view seems the more plausible, without even necessarily being wedded to that alternative view.

But isn't it the case that when two people disagree it's mostly likely that they misunderstand each other? — Metaphysician Undercover

I know that I don't share Wayfarer's belief that something important has been forgotten in the modern world. I think it's way too much of a generalization, and presupposes that there was some absolute ( as opposed to contextual) truth understood in the ancient world which is beyond our understanding today, rather than simply being a vision of the world that belongs to an earlier paradigm, and thus one which we cannot fully understand no matter how hard we try, because we simply cannot put ourselves into the ancient mindset since we are not ancients. I think I understand Wayfarer's position very well and all the more so since I actually used to inhabit it. I've changed my mind, I've "moved out" so to speak, so it doesn't follow that I misunderstand Wayfarer's perspective. Does he understand mine? That is another question...

I plan to go and do some house painting and other work on the farm right now,, but I may be able to come back with something. As you know it is not easy to summarize the overall systematic arguments of complex thinkers, but I may be able to focus on some points that can be explained without too much difficulty. I don't want to have to write a paper on it.

At the moment suffice it to say that I think McDowell does a reasonable job of not falling into either naive realism or anti-realism. I'll leave Brandom out of it as I'm not quite as familiar with his ideas.

I think we should always be open to the possibility that we have it wrong; but of course we will require cogent arguments to convince us to change our minds. Wayfarer and I have known for a very long time that we disagree, so what would be the point of discussing the issues upon which we disagree, if not to present such arguments?

And actually what I should have said is "you act as though you think those who disagree with you must not understand," as that would be even more accurate to the situation as I see it.

You might be interested in Brandom's and McDowell's (somewhat different) takes on the idea that everything is always already interpreted. To put it simply McDowell says the world is always already conceptually shaped. Both Brandom and McDowell build on the work of Sellars and Davidson.

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674576100

There's actually a proxy for The One Thing to hand: the unceasing flow of sensory data. And sure enough, people who start there, who in some sense consider that the realest of reals, are inclined to say that what you take to be an individual object is a fiction, that sentences like "My coffee cup is on the nightstand" aren't literally about coffee cups and nightstands but about artifacts of the model we build based on the flow of sensory data, and thus not literally true. Maybe it makes a difference that something is theorized to be "out there" causing the flow of data, but maybe it doesn't. — Srap Tasmaner

If there is "something out there" that reliably results in every person who has adequate eyesight seeing a coffee cup on a nightstand, then there must be some independently real (of individual human minds, at least) existence or reality, no? Whether we call that (for parsimony's sake) "the coffee cup on the nightstand" or less parsimoniously "the unknowable X that reliably produces our perception of the coffee cup on the nightstand" wouldn't seem to make any significant difference to what we can claim to know (provided we are sophisticated and mindful enough not to fall into naive, as opposed to relational, realism).

Either way I think it seems obvious that there is something out there (meaning something independent of the individual mind) because it could not plausibly be thought to be a collective hallucination unless there is something different out than a substantial world ot there: a collective mind, or a connection between all minds that we don't know about. Even then it would not be definable as an hallucination because that is when one person sees something others don't. So it seems we are stuck with believing that something is out there and the issue just boils down to whether it makes a difference as to how we refer to that something.

the immanent existence of patterns, of species and kinds, makes the intuitive understanding of number possible and indeed inevitable. — Janus


As if that amounts to saying something. — Wayfarer

It is suggesting that our very experience of the world with its natural kinds and individuals makes thinking in terms of sameness, or similarity, and difference inevitable. If we can identify individual things, the "ones" among the many, which it seems obvious even animals can do, why would it not lead to thinking in terms of number once we had acquired the linguistic ability to make names for the different quantities?

Hunter gatherers would have been able to identify the different kinds of animals, fish, fruits, nuts and so on in their environments and all the more the so the ones they used for food and other things. If you were a hunter gatherer and you caught a few fish, for example,why would you not create names (numbers) for the quantities of fish? Once this process is started it's only a matter of elaboration. How is that not an argument for the plausibility of a naturalistic explanation?

Think of prime numbers, for example. That they are divisible only by themselves and one means that if you have a prime number of nuts you cannot separate them into any equal number of multiples. My argument is that it is plausible enough to think that number, even in its complexifications, is elaborated out of the simple human experience of patterns and kinds.

You haven't offered any counter-argument or reason to think that is not plausible.

Empiricism is the basis of science, and I don't see why scientific explanations of the origins of life, consciousness and rationality should be ruled out. — Janus


Again - 'I don't see why' is not an argument. — Wayfarer

"I don't see why scientific explanations should be ruled out" is not an argument it is a request for an argument from you as to why you think they should be ruled out (if that is what you think; if you don't think that, you should just say that you don't, and then we could move on). I don't want to be directed to read Nagel, I'm here discussing the issue with you.

So, you want empirical evidence for the shortcomings of empiricism? — Wayfarer

Did I say I thought that empiricism has shortcomings? I don't think it does provided it keeps to its proper ambit. Empiricism is the basis of science, and I don't see why scientific explanations of the origins of life, consciousness and rationality should be ruled out.

On the other hand scientific explanations of aesthetics. love or ecstasy don't seem to hold much water; and that's what I refer to by "ambit".

The philosophical argument I gave was this, which refers to a controversy in philosophy of maths, but which I think illustrates the larger point.

To which you said:

I hear you on all that, but I'm just not convinced that it makes any significant difference. — Janus


I should have left it at that, I was mistaken to pursue it further. — Wayfarer

The article you refer to which advocates a platonic view of number, is only one of at least two alternative explanations, as I already pointed out. Personally I don't find it the more plausible, so why should I think it makes any significant difference, particularly when there can be no evidence either way. and it seems the less plausible explanation?

Am I not allowed to present an alternative view or disagree with yours? You act as though you think those who disagree with you must be wrong. I told you I don't even have a settled view on the issue, although I lean towards the naturalistic explanation of number because it seems the more plausible. But you don't for a minute address or critique that naturalistic alternative, you just seem to want to arbitrarily rule it out of court; to claim that it must be wrong, seemingly just because you don't like it, and you don't want it to be the case.

That is why it is so frustrating trying to have a discussion with you; you become offended and dismissive as soon as anyone disagrees with you, and you won't even give a detailed explanation of what you think is wrong with alternative views other than "they have forgotten something" or that your view is just unreflectively seen as "taboo" or something along those lines.I don't know what you're looking for man, but you certainly don't seem to be looking for open discussion.

Falsifiability is not a criterion for what is real; it is only a criterion for what is empirically true, and the question at issue is not an empirical question. — Wayfarer

You can say whatever you like about what you think is real, but if you cannot marshall some evidence for your claims then it won't amount to much in philosophical terms. It might be good poetry...it is might be inspiring, or soothing, or beautiful...it might even form the basis for a religious practice.

Anyway naturalistic. evolutionary explanation of the origin of rationality don't purport to be anything more than the most plausible explanations we can come up with, given the evidence; they always remain defeasible.

I'm not telling you what you haven't bothered to read, you have admitted that you haven't read the Churchlands, Dennett or Nietzsche; three of your favorite targets. I've read The View from Nowhere years ago and was not much impressed by it, so I am not going to bother to read Nagel further, which is fine because I'm not attacking what I take to be his philosophy. If I wanted to critique his philosophy, then I'd read his work and address it point by point, which is what any good undergraduate would be required to do. Having finished university degrees is irrelevant; particularly since you didn't major in philosophy, but even if you had...I can't see the point in even mentioning it.

it doesn't attempt to explain everything about human nature in Darwinian terms. — Wayfarer

And by the way, I think there's an enormous difference between explaining everything about humans in Darwinian terms, explaining things which are more plausibly explained in cultural terms, and explaining the origin or our cognitive and rational faculties in evolutionary terms, because our cognitive and rational faculties had to have been already more or less in place before culture was possible. To explain the origin of reason in naturalistic terms is just to eschew supernaturalistic explanations; which are non-explanations anyway because they are not falsifiable.

OK, but the point is that a naturalistic, evolutionary account of the origin of reason does not entail the kind of reductionism you like to rail against. And in the case of some of your favorite targets, I think it's an oversimplified strawman you are attacking any way; which is probably because you haven't bothered to read their actual work.

Not all of us have an "end in itself". :wink:

This seems like a gross and unwarranted generalization. The enactivists, the semioticians, the existentialists and the phenomenologists, by and large, advocate naturalistic explanations of the origins of life, sentience and sapience, or at least they don't generally advocate supernatural explanations. Why the need to seek to diminish or patronize those who don't share your worldview?

A theist might feel reassured that God has company in universals and their idea of an immaterial being suddenly doesn't seem that outlandish — TheMadFool

I'm not convinced that the idea of an immaterial being seems outlandish at all to many or most of those who haven't thought about it much (which is not say I think it necessarily should seem outlandish to have thought about it a lot)..

Naively, many of us seem to imagine ourselves as immaterial beings who "have" or "inhabit" the body.

You're going to have to explain the relevance of this response, because I'm not seeing it.

God needs some kind of environment, a world if you like, in which God is real and that's where universals come into the picture. — TheMadFool

You could equally say universals meed some kind of world, a mind if you like, in which they are real and that's where God comes into the picture.

I like the quote from Weinberg, but I'd just add than any good ideology will do just as well.

You beat me to it! Same here in Australia.

Something like that but don't forget that religious folk believe they're good even though they may not be. — TheMadFool

But they're not good if they are acting in ways which harm others are they? I don't think "human error" is the same thing as unsupportable thinking, or to put it another way unsupportable thinking is not merely an example of human error, and any thinking which leads people to believe they have a God-given right to harm others is unsupportable.

Being good or not is a result of your understanding. 'Trying to be good' is often not a successful means to that end. Hence the saying 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. (c.f. 'You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free'.) — Wayfarer

Yes but I didn't speak of "trying to be good"; I spoke of becoming better people. Of course that involves bettering your understanding.

You can't 'explain' reason, reason is the source of explanation, not the object of it. Whenever it is 'explained' in terms of adaptation then it's being sold short. I think it's also a mistake to equate adaptive necessity with a philosophy, when it's not; it's simply an explanatory principle within the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

Again you are misreading me. I was referring to explaining the origin of reason. It is only on your explanation of its origin that it would be "sold short" by an evolutionary understanding of its origin, and that it would be is self-evident by virtue of the fact that you don't accept an evolutionary explanation.

Those adhering to an evolutionary explanation don't find the problems with it that you do simply because they don't share the same presuppositions about it that you do. No view is context-free or context-universal.

Of course, as do the most people. I know that swimming against that current. Anyway, good reply and thanks for it. — Wayfarer

There is no necessary vice involved in sharing a majority view or necessary virtue in swimming against the current. I'm not trying to suggest that you were implying that there is, but just in case. :wink:

:ok:

That would be ideal, the alternative of massive numbers of foreclosures would seem to be likely to crash the economy. What measures are the banks taking there?

This is from the Washington Post, so Google it if you're a subscriber. In addition, if I understand correctly, banks haven't been able to foreclose on properties where the owner died, so there should be a little bonanza of foreclosures coming up. Just saying. — frank

I've wondered about this in Australia. Apparently something like one third of all mortgage holders are right on the edge in regards to being able to service their mortgage. Governments payments to secure jobs will end when we come out of lock-down and "life returns to the new normal", so many people will be economically affected by that which may lead to defaults and foreclosures and if house prices suddenly declined (amazingly they've risen more in the last year than at any time since the late eighties) and margin calls are made, or if interest rates rise, then there would likely be a huge number of defaults. Would the banks foreclose on all those (which would cause property prices to plummet causing even more defaults in a vicious feedback loop) or would they instead assume ownership of the properties and become the new order of landlords?

:cool:

So verificationism is not a theory about truth. It is a theory about verification. — Banno

It's not even a theory; as Michael said, it's a tautology.

If you want to consider anti-realism then your hypothetical scenario is "I caught my wife having an affair and then saw evidence that this had been going on for a long time." Perfectly coherent scenario. — Michael

Yes, but that it had been going on for some time entails that it was true that it had been going on, and yet unverified; so the two terms cannot be synonymous, at least not according to ordinary usage. Sure, you can massage the terms to make them synonymous, but what have you really achieved by doing that other than establishing an eccentric usage of terms?

I can't find anything to disagree with here, Sam, which is a shame. :wink:

No, it's to deny the realist's claim that "true" and "verified" mean different things. — Michael

But the claim that 'true' and 'verified' means the same thing leads to absurdities. Say my wife is having an affair with someone, and then I catch them at it. I have verified that she is having an affair. It seems fine to say that prior to my having verified it it was not verified, but it seems absurd to say that prior to my having verified it, it was not true that she was having an affair.

I agree that the idea of reincarnation seems incoherent without the accompanying notion of a soul that is reincarnated. The Buddhists have a 'candle flame' analogy which is that the succession of lives are like candle flames where the subsequent flames are lit by the prior flames in the succession.

They also believe that even though we don't remember our past lives, the karmic connection between them (the earlier flames lighting the later) means that there is a kind of continuity that does not require a souls, and that once enlightened we will be able to remember the past lives in the unique series that each of us belong to.

Even so, there doesn't seem to be any motivation for the individual to care more about his own future lives than he would about anyone else's. Although I suppose if the individual developed a sense of responsibility for the unique karmic series that he belonged to that might be an incentive. but a lot would need to be taken on faith. In general I don't like the idea of being concerned with any purported afterlife or future existence because it devalues the importance of the present life. and in any case there is no definitive evidence that any such afterlife is anything more than wishful thinking..

It matters that some people who are decidely bad (by their fruits...) are under the (false) impression that they're good. Two things to consider here:

1. The belief itself (theism): God is real. Note God's uber bonum and infallible.

2. What this God commands us to do. From 1 follows,
a. Theists are good
b. Whatever God commands is good

As you can see, such people (religious folks) actually want to be good even though they're really not. Their belief in god then can be taken as a marker of their innate goodness even though such goodness has been distorted to the point of being unrecognizable. And universals have ontological relevance to God and God is a necessary part of religious morality (purveyor cum enforcer). — TheMadFool

So, you're saying that the belief in the independent reality of universals is bad because it leads to belief in an omniscient God, whose commands are believed to be absolutely good regardless of how unjust they might seem in the the eyes of humans, and also to the theists believing they are privy to what God commands and that they are bound to carry them out?

OK, I think I can see where you're going with this; you think the idea of the non-physical eternal reality of numbers points to a transcendent non-physical eternal reality which underpins our rational capacity to understand anything.

I agree that is one explanation, but I also think that the immanent existence of patterns, of species and kinds, makes the intuitive understanding of number possible and indeed inevitable. I also believe that some animals have an intuition of number, although of course they don't have a conception of number or symbolic representations of different numbers.

As far as I know there are still many platonists in regards to mathematics, so I don't think the situation is that anything has been forgotten; it's just that today we have rival theories to explain our ability to reason mathematically. I light of the evolution of thought, I don't see how the situation could ever again be such that there could be just one overarching theory of rationality.

I don't think it's necessarily about 'being a better person'. — Wayfarer

So, when you say this I wonder what you think is the most important thing in human life if not that we should all be better people. Because as I have said to @Baker in regards to the issue as to whether there is any final solution to the problem of suffering, I think there can be no final solution and the only way to diminish the suffering of all beings as much as is possible is precisely to become better people.

I do agree with you if you are saying that whether one is a platonist or not about mathematics would make no difference to whether one was motivated to become a better person. Anyway for myself, I sit on the fence on the issue; and if anything lean towards a naturalistic explanation.

I haven't said I know better than the Buddha. — Janus

You said:

There is no "final" or complete solution to the problem of suffering. — Janus

The Buddha maintained that there is a final solution to the problem of suffering. So if you say that there is no "final" or complete solution to the problem of suffering, you are in direct opposition to the Buddha. — baker

That should be read, obviously, as "In my opinion there can be no final solution to the problem of suffering". So, as I have said, if Buddha says there can be a final solution to suffering then I disagree with him. If you agree with what you have imputed to Buddha and think there can be a final solution to the problem of suffering, a solution that would completely end all suffering for all time, a solution other than the total extinction of the world (which could not be effected anyway), then what do you think that solution could be?