Well, this just says you haven't a clue. A bit like the Christian who insists through Jesus redemption arrives, but when asked how defers to faith.
If knowledge is justified true belief, and I am sure it is just this, and you believe "ability to experience" yields a justification, then show this. It is NOT that I am denying that we do have knowledge of the world AT ALL! It is rather that when you take this question seriously, you are forced to reconstrue everything everything you believe vis a vis basic questions. — Astrophel
I have "taken this question seriously" but what it come down to is all I have is experience and experimentation through experience. If that's not good enough then it sounds like a you problem. You say you're not denying knowledge o the world at all but honestly your posts say otherwise.
Anyone, that is, who does not think about serious philosophy. If scientists never tried to understand the fossil record, we would not at all have a concept in place about geologic eras and their subcategories. This is what happens when one chooses not to think. — Astrophel
Understanding the fossil record has nothing to do with philosophy bud, that's all science. Dating techniques, looking at positions in the rock layers, stuff like that. Again you're just making this harder than it needs to be. "serious philosophy" just sounds like you stroking your own ego.
No Darneos; you have it all wrong. This is because you haven't "read" your way into the discussion about the structure of consciousness. It is the only way into a philosophy of existence.
You should at least be curious as to the epistemic relation between a brain and a world. I mean, to have no analytic inquiry about this at all behind you, yet to come out swinging as you do....curious, and then some. — Astrophel
The "Structure of consciousness", at this point I'm really starting to have major doubts about you (as if the primordial origin wasn't enough). The only philosophy of existence that is worth a damn IMO is ethics or how to live. As to the relation of the brain and the world, brain constructs a best guess of reality based on the input of the senses, that's what the evidence shows.
Stuff like the Evil Demon, simulation, etc are nice games to play but they are useless to think about because they don't impact your life.
You're not really curious about this stuff, I think you're just looking to appear "smart" by asking "the big questions". I used to be like that. But after much experience I realized that a lot of the "important questions" of philosophy didn't really matter that much.
Causality is apodictic. Try imagining its contradiction.
The brain: but there is the brain and there is fence post. How does this work, exactly, or even vaguely, such that the former knows the latter. You take a philosopher like Quine, one of my favorites because he was an explicit naturalist in the Deweyan tradition, yet so revered in analytic philosophy, and you find nothing but frustration when it comes to accounting for how it is that causality, which he takes as foundational in explaining the world, produces meaning; and this has to be taken as priority: when you THINK at all, you are not IN meaning, but ARE meaning.
But such questions that apply to this kind of thinking have to begin with curiosity. One has to be motivated by seeing the deficit in human understanding at the basic level. If you don't see this, you really have no motivation, and end up in the back of the class sleeping.
Question: why take this class at all? — Astrophel
Weird that you say that about causality considering Hume made an interesting point against it. We assume causality according to him.
Again this just sounds like more ego stroking, I asked a while ago what the point is to any of this and you haven't given anything. You're all over the place, writing more than you need to, and deliberately being unclear in your communications (other posters are able to do it but you choose not to). This just sounds to me like you want to be special or unique for wrestling with such things.
I wouldn't say causality produces meaning, we do. It's actually a feature of our brains, we are meaning making machines. It's called pareidolia, it's how you can see a smiley face as a face even though it ain't really a face.
Not really sure what you mean by IN meaning or ARE meaning, it's just meaning. But then again heaven forbid you make yourself clear or explain yourself. My guess is that you are IN meaning when you think, you aren't meaning.
I mean it is obvious to everyone that we are limited in our ability to understand and know things around us. That all we will ever get is a close enough or good enough understanding of things, because you don't know what you don't know. I find it odd that someone so versed in philosophy doesn't understand that there are some problems that have no solution. Like the problem of solipsism, there is no way to get outside of your perspective so whether there is a world outside or not you'll never know and there's nothing you can do about it. Or Descartes about what can be known for certain, and you can't truly know if you're being deceived or not. There is a great degree of faith that comes with living after all.
And most people seem to do just fine knowing there won't be total certainty, because life goes on.
Curiosity is fine and all that but it does have to have a goal in mind and at times you have to be able to recognize when you simply can't. So far people have asked you what the point of all this is and as far as anyone can tell there doesn't seem to be one. It just goes in circles.