Well, they are pretty related, even though people specialize in one field or another. You can't do epistemology without a world, and a world makes no sense without epistemology.

Another question altogether is if "metaphysics" is even possible without a heavy epistemological component. I don't think it is anymore.

Not sure what you mean by apprehended here. That something can even be perceived requires that thing to be of such a nature we can perceive it, sure, but that’s bordering on the tautological, isn’t it? But that something is of such a nature to facilitate its perception says absolutely nothing whatsoever with respect to understanding what that thing is. — Mww

It's attempting to elucidate what is given descriptively, maybe it's a bad formulation. I'm assuming that when analyzing something given, what we capture through sense data and then proceed to conceptualize is only part of the totality of what is given.

What is given is the sense data, which, depending on the uses you have in mind for said object, we categorize it as something, in this instance, say, a "pen". For someone else, the same given can be thought of as a "weapon" or a "plastic stick".

Nevertheless, we simplify sense data into something intelligible, in effect taking away "noise" from our interpretation of things. We recognize specific objects such as as pens, but a "pen-desk" is not something we tend to isolate as an object, but it could be so thought as by a different species.

It is not an assumption: there are no empirical objects of perception in my head. How that downstream something relates to that which it stands in for, is a logical postulate. — Mww

Correct. The objects are outside my head. We perceive what our experience picks out from the objects. We postulate that these effects come from the object, this needn't be the case. It could all be a brain in a vat. What's relevant is the sensory impressions we transform, more so than the object itself.

I don't think we reach the actual objects. We approximate them through scientific investigation.

Ehhh, I'm feeling kind of stupid today so, have a bit of mercy...

Susan Haack (a prominent philosopher of science) suggests strongly that there is no scientific method as such. — Tom Storm

She calls science "a loose federations of interrelated kinds of inquiry."

Thing is, even if the given is already shaped by us, say, by imagination for some other internal use downstream, that in itself doesn’t say what the other use is, nor that such shaping is sufficient for specific so-and-so’s. Even while the grounds for them lay in imagination, the specifics cannot be so lawless. But you knew that. — Mww

Whatever is given to creatures like us (which is very difficult to tease out), must be of a nature that it can partly be apprehended by us in perception.

So far as we are able to discern, the given for experience cannot be seen from a neutral perspective, that is, involving no perception at all.

So the given is of the kind which we already shape automatically, we can't help it. We assume that "downstream" something "stands in" for what we perceive, but that's a logical postulate, not an empirically verifiable claim.

I have to leave room for that aspect of giveness that one must assume exists independent of mind.

Of course, the specifics are lawful in so far as we have to deal with them as creatures. That's how we interact with nature.

Pardon any obscurities here, I've begun studying this seriously, so I'm not as fluent as I would like to be.

:up:

Yep. We can't get out of our bodies to see how things might look like absent our specific perspective. There's always a pragmatic element to enquiry, otherwise we wouldn't bother.



True. That phrase was not accurate enough. It's quite a nuanced process because saying that that which gives rise to our considerations already makes the process seem more intellect or reason-involving than is meant.

I'd say that there is the given, which we then interpret according to our imagination, which we then call a specific so and so "a rock", "a blade of grass", "the sun".

The given is already shaped by us, but I want to say that there is an element there which doesn't depend on us. Otherwise it seems to me that we could will ourselves into thinking anything could be anything else just by thinking about, such as willing to change a cloud to a hill and so forth.

As noted by you, both try to make sense of the world. The difference is that some aspects of philosophy have an empirical basis, whereas Religion use of empirical phenomena is weaker. And there's also conceptual analysis which is a crucial component of modern philosophy.

Religion evidently seeks to provide meaning and purpose explicitly by invoking God (or Gods) and thus all phenomena are ultimately explained by ending up relating back to a supreme being. This can happen in philosophy too, so there's no escape from some kind of intuition or basic idea of which we have an intuition is correct.

Religion tends to provide an answer, whereas in philosophy issues can be clarified, minimized or left behind and often more questions result for pursuing the issue at hand.

A professor I had once joked that philosophers have a question for every answer. Susan Haack pointed out that if two people are in a room and always disagree, they are usually philosophers, which is correct, to a point.

The spiritual element (or mystical or numinous) is not as easy topic for philosophy to deal with, whereas in religion it is taken as a given or an evident phenomenon.

I suppose the key difference, in my mind, is that one field keeps asking and debating age old questions whereas the other often has the answers "ready made", though interpretive issues do arise. Descartes had a point that at least once in our life, when appropriate, we should question everything, and see what follows form this.

It's a good exercise for thinking a bit more clearly about how we interpret and relate to the world.

I'd say our considerations do (obviously) depend on us, but that which gives rise to the considerations does not. — Janus

Put in that way, it is true. The issue is articulating what is that "which gives rise to these considerations".

Sense data? I don't know.

Sure, you cannot will the movements of planets or galaxies, in that sense reality is certainly independent of us. There is "world-making", to use Goodman's idea, to consider however. What we consider galaxies and stars and planets do depend, in part, by how we categorize these things.

For instance, not until long ago was Pluto considered a planet, before it's downgrade. So there is also a sense in which the universe we experience is shaped by us, which shouldn't be overlooked completely.

Systematic racism exists everywhere. There's even racism here (Dominican Republic) by brown people towards more darkly toned brown people. Not to mention the hate Hatians get - it's a complex history, but very ugly.

The point is to undergo a continuos transformation in which we shed our biases and prejudices. There's plenty of things to do in regard to improving race relations, same with women's rights.

The issue is how to address them. Some tactics employed by university students, while well intentioned, backfire, like having, I don't know, 30 or 50 pronouns or whatever. Most people don't care about that to that extent at all.

If we still have serious problems addressing literally half the world's population still, we will have issues to deal with regarding race.

If not, then how do you make sense of anything? We can't simply guess at everything the other person is saying, we wouldn't know what to do.

The problem, as I see it, is trying to articulate what common sense is. It's not hard to point out thought experiments or even real life news events, in which most of us would say "yeah, she was wrong" or "he's guilty" or whatever. But when you try and say what this consists of, we end up appealing to our intuitions, which we can't really go behind.

So, in saying that in interpreting others we need common sense, we are actually saying a lot, in terms of all that goes into common sense.

Heh.

That's true. Nature is powerful enough that in thousands of years, we should predict for some kind of intelligent life to return.

Of course, since I have some doubts as to my longevity and that of my family and friends, I'd prefer if it weren't that long...

Well, you could be a "libertarian" and want the ice to melt, better for shipping and commerce and stuff.

I'm not finding a place where to complain about stuff only philosophers or philosophically inclined people could ever conceive of complaining. Absent that, I'll post here just to get it out.

Whatever the heck are colours? They make no sense. They're not in objects, they're in minds, but they seem to be in objects.

They're caused by photons hitting the eye, which have no colour incidentally. Yet I am seeing a blue box right now, and cannot doubt that the damn box is blue, but it isn't blue, because if I close my eyes, the box has no colours. So why does it look like it's in the object, if it's not?

They're extremely vivid properties, we are delighted by them and horrified too, the same colour can induce feelings of joy or depression (blue as in the sky, or blue as in feeling blue). Do they even matter to us? Plenty of red things can be eaten, others kill you.

Let's not even talk about the ocean, that blue thing that is transparent in a cup and look black at night. How about a damn rainbow? You see many colours, but they're not in the world, somehow.

Why do colours produce emotional reactions? How can photons turn into any colour. Why would the brain do this?

I don't get it.

Fuck this.

At one point or other, it would seem normal to think we would disappear as a species.

To have it be of our own conscious decision making, is sad.

One may not like him, but he's a capable politician. Which is a strange thing to say these days.

but I think it was just cheap journalism. — Wayfarer

I mean, sure. Not being too cynical about it, it's becoming more difficult not to find cheap journalism. Or at least there's much more bad journalism everywhere.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/freylindsay/2021/09/13/world-bank-predicts-massive-internal-migration-from-climate-change-by-2050/?sh=49b8333510e4

The report is notable for focussing on internally displaced people, or IDPs - a class of migrants who don't leave their own country and are therefore excluded from many of the protections at least nominally afforded those that cross a border. There were more than 50 million IDPs around the world at the end of 2020, most of them forced from their home regions by violence and conflict, but many of them by natural disasters as well.

The number of IDPs referenced above was the highest on record, but if the World Bank is correct in its predictions, it will be dwarfed in the coming decades. According to the report, by 2050 there could be up to 86 million internal climate migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as 49 million in the East Asia and Pacific region, 40 million in South Asia, 19 million in North Africa, 17 million in Latin America, and 5 million in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

As for the heat info, this article is interesting:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/climate-change-humidity/

Scientists have found that Mexico and Central America, the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia are all careening toward this threshold before the end of the century.

Mass migration, serious food shortages, increased natural disasters, job scarcity, not being able to be outside a building for much time at all. If you live in a coastal city or on an island, like I do, you're going to have to move to a place that's already over populated.

The outcomes of climate change are worse than the initial predictions, due to how interconnected the climate is with everything that goes on in Earth. So the announced problems will likely be worse, not better, than what is predicted now.

So all that and likely more.

Yes, but, notice he spoke in English to the press, he could have left had he wanted to. Or said "no comment." Yeah, the press is a nightmare, but Macron knew what he was doing, clearly. Especially in an event of this magnitude.

That's the thing, it still is not set in stone that we will miss the target yet.

If we do, it's very bad news. I don't have children, nor plan to, but they will not be living a good life or even get a sliver of a chance of a decent life due to this disaster.

Thanks for that reply.

Did he explicitly mention Mainlander? The only thing I can recall explicitly is Nietzsche's condemnation of Mainlander's advocating of abstinence and also mentions him in a letter to someone.

I mention it because it's a shame Nietzsche didn't mention him more frequently, maybe Mainlander would be better known by now.

That's quite optimistic you know. At least with us gone, the world has less worries. :joke:

Yeah, that's not with billions of people living in cities who don't know how to survive in the wilderness.

We'll be back something close to baseline in 10,000 years. — frank

If we are still here, I guess. It took about 250 years to get to this point, most of the harm being done in the last few decades, so hopefully we'd have learned not to repeat the same mistakes.

It's still quite hard to absorb the idea that we are willing to destroy most sentient life on Earth, many if not most of our fellow citizens for reasons of power and profit, essentially.

We haven't faced something this big ever, involving the entire world population and the vanishing of countries and cities. We may adapt, but maybe billions will die.

It's going to get very ugly. I hope you're right.

Great article.

These politicians are of low quality recently. Maybe it's a bias, but what they're saying is pretty embarrassing, in this case, the Australian government. Welcome to the club. :cool:

Yeah, that's the gist of the logic. And the solution is really that straightforward. Stupid competition and bragging rights about "growth" and the like will cost us dearly.

But if countries do not sign legally binding treaties, what can be done? Give these types of speeches and empty promises.

Have to keep pressuring these people to change policy, or we're done.

We have no idea.

We can gesture at some vague notions of "symmetry", or "simplicity" or "elegance", and have not a clue why we find things meaningful in the arts.

Sooo... Based on headlines and a few articles read, so far everything has gone exactly as expected.

By the time we get to 2030, we might actually see politicians say "we've totally destroyed the planet, we cannot believe we have failed so miserably, but we have to do something for our children!."

And then we can have a good laugh. And then burn or something.

I remember her and liked her too, seemed to be doing the right things. Shame she still isn't in power, or at least remained in office for a longer period of time. Sure, politics in Australia cannot be as bad as it is in other parts of the world. Yep, my impression is that Australia has done decently well with COVID.



Yeah. It's a problem with the media is owned by so few people, especially those under a Murdoch ideology. I don't know who'd want to attack Australia such that it would need nukes. Military spending, such as it is, is a waste of money.

"Albo", perhaps...? — Banno

I've got to read a good book by some learned reporter or scholar on Australian politics, I used to know a decent amount, for somebody who's very far away from Australia, but finds it fascinating.

I'm seeing that Labour isn't doing that well in the polls. Yet I'm seeing lots of hate for Scotty, politics all over the world is quite messed up these days, I don't get the situation over there.

Yeah, found out about the nickname in the Australia subreddit.

I had heard that the original French submarines weren't nuclear powered, but I haven't gone on to verify.

Well with ANZUS in the way, the so called "threat of China", countries just do what the US says, with very few exceptions. France'll just have to be embarrassed worldwide and mad at Australia, but it is an insult to the French, no doubt.

Hope your next PM will get a better nickname, at least. :joke:

The government, sure. But what about the voters, or is this deal not very relevant to them?

After all, you still get the submarines...

Macron went to the point here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/qk1ezu/macaron_telling_it_like_it_is/

Would it be fair to say that some people there are embarrassed or not really?

[Deleted]

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't even read your OP, just the title. Given what you say, you probably should see a professional. It doesn't look to me as if your insane, you are aware of what's going on, if you weren't, that would be a big red flag. But, yeah, got see professionals here.

If the multiverse is infinite (in terms of quantity of universes) then I could see the case as to why anything would eventually happen, paradoxes aside.

Maybe that's why we are here? That's one answer to the question: we are here because, given enough time, circumstances arise in which intelligent life will arise.

But there's as yet no way to detect other universes.

I would say that Mainlander's vision is one of accepting the futility of the struggle for life, because - in his philosophy - everything that becomes life is just prolonging "suffering", that which is completely non-existent and impotent if the concept of "death" is applied.

His argument does not defend "death" per se, but rather the cessation of all that potentially brings about "pain" or, in terms more metaphysical, "entropy" — Gus Lamarch

Sure. I read the Spanish translation, which is just a small portion of what he wrote, so I cannot opine too strongly on his larger ethical views. As it looks to me currently with my limited understanding, his argument about cessation of suffering is interesting. There's obviously some truth to it, but I think it is an exaggeration too, though I have to read more.

It is no accident that I had to revise some parts of my egoistic philosophy through a pessimistic reading, as many of the arguments presented by Mainlander directly relate to the concept of "individual purpose", something that is intrinsic to Egoism and the "Self".

Nietzsche, Stirner, and others, all applied his - Mainlander's - concept of "Wille zum Tode" - aka, "Will to Death" - in some way or capacity. — Gus Lamarch

I'm particularly drawn to his very interesting and considered critique of Kant and Schopenhauer. I think he makes quite good points, but would love to wrestle with them more.

There's lots of stuff in his work that lends itself to all kinds of modes of thought.

And yeah, it does appear as if Nietzsche was reacting against him, but he only referred to him once or so.

:heart: :heart: :heart:

His translation is coming out next year. There's one made by a an enthusiast in Mainlander's subreddit, which is pretty decent.

But if you already know German, that's very cool.

He's a bit of a downer, but his arguments in metaphysics are extremely interesting.

:up:

First of all: yes, even physicists and other scientists argue about terminology.
Second of all: Why? because ideas are expressed through terms and most philosophers are aware that we must get the vocabulary right in order to get the ideas right... otherwise they wouldn't bother arguing about them. — Artemis

The physicist is not interested in the definition, they are interested in the phenomena. Most physicists I know don't spend time worrying about the definition of energy or gravity.

Words give you an approximation on what experience informs you of, but it's not mathematics.

I'm not actually trying to be dismissive or negative, though of course criticism almost invariably comes across as such. Instead, I'm just stating a fact: if you don't understand the terms, then of course you can't be persuaded by the argument, because you can't understand the argument without understanding the terms. That's --oh the irony!-- both the impediment to you understanding me as well as the core issue I'm trying to explain. C'est la vie.

Oh well. You can lead a horse to water, as they say... someday, when you've wrapped your head around the basics, let me know! Then I'd be interested to see if you have some better arguments for your critiques of JTB. — Artemis

You're insisting that the terms you use are the ones that are de facto true or should be evident. By that standard, using your own words I could say that:

if you don't understand the terms, then of course you can't be persuaded by the argument, because you can't understand the argument without understanding the terms. — Artemis

So knowledge is whatever you say it is and since I don't agree that that's knowledge, then we can't have a conversation, therefore you are correct.

That's a tautology.

We won't profit anymore here. But thanks for the conversation.

First of all, philosophers spend a great deal of time trying to get their vocabulary right. I don't even understand how you (as someone who seems to have spent some time in academia) would come to dismiss the need for a clear and precise vocabulary in philosophy. Doesn't mean you can't revise the vocabulary, but you absolutely must be clear about what you're saying. — Artemis

I actually disagree with you, no surprise. If these terms are so well defined, why the heck do people argue about them all the time? Do you see physicists arguing about what energy means or what inertia means?

Additionally, an idea or a thought is not the same as a belief. You don't believe all the thoughts and ideas you have. Belief is a kind of thought or idea, namely one you think is true.

You can't both agree that we should be clear whether we are speaking of cats or pandas AND dismiss the need to be clear what we mean by "knowledge" or any other term in philosophy. — Artemis

I didn't say that an idea or though is the same as belief, I said it could be substituted for the term idea or thought. Then we can ask are all my thoughts justified? No. Are my ideas correctly representing the external world? Probably not.

If that's what you say belief is, fine.

I think it's pretty evident that there's a difference between cats, pandas and knowledge.



My thesis was on Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky and to a lesser extent Tallis. Though I also know a bit about Haack and Schopenhauer.

By focusing on Strawson and Chomsky, I'm already disagreeing with a good portion of how philosophers use certain terms, "reference", "materialism", "representation", etc. That's part of what makes it interesting to me.

I don't have an obligation to entertain you, if you don't find my answers satisfying, that's your problem, not mine.

I don't find your arguments persuasive on this topic.

Go ahead and define these terms as you wish. I've had plenty of interesting conversations here with all kinds of people. But it's not going to please or be instructive to everybody, that's par for the course.

In a possible world we could be ants in the playground of a little kid. In another possible world there is a massive horse that rules the universe.

Therefore being ants in a playground and being subject to the whims of a horse are real. But if these words have no causal influence on ours at all, does it matter?

In other words, if God exists in another possible world what meaningful difference does that entail for us here? I can think of nothing, but perhaps you can tell me what I currently not seeing.

Well put. :up: