Time for round 2 of CPR, very soon. Well, technically round 3 and 4, cause the damn book has the A and B editions in it. Ugh.

But I must. If I don't get something much more solid this time, I suppose Kant himself, isn't for me, but his successors and predecessors are.

Bring it on. :cool:

That's right.

How more right wing could they become?

I mean, Israel only has the strong backing if the US, and to a lesser but still substantial degree, Germany.

If not for them, Israel would be alone. You cannot do what they are doing and expect the world to say nothing about it. I mean the barbarity of this is unprecedented. Or at least, not seen in many years.

I don't think it's necessary to be too insistent on the topic of this statement being literally problematic.

Someone can saw they are an agnostic atheist in the following, trivial way, I am an atheist as regards to the Abrahamic religions, but am agnostic as to the topic of if there is some "higher power" or force or entity that orders the universe.

I don't see any good reasons to believe this, but, I don't think we attain certainty in the empirical world.

The Rigor of Angles by William Egginton

Quite an interesting book mixing Kant, Heisenberg and Borges to explore the limits of human understanding.

Title based on a wonderful quote by Borges:

"Enchanted by its rigour, humanity forgets over and again that it is a rigour of chess masters, not of angels”

"Encantada por su rigor, la humanidad olvida y torna a olvidar que es un rigor de ajedrecistas, no de ángeles.”

Well. It's a problem, surely. If we have half the population living in utter fantasy and we cannot even agree on facts and furthermore, tensions are rising, then somethings going to happen.

I don't like Trump, I don't like Biden. I think Trump would be worse for the world, though Biden is far, far from being good.

However, and despite my own personal wishes, if Trump is not allowed to run for president, then that could very well lead to something like a civil war.

As far as I know, experts are saying this is the strongest case they've seen in terms of "intent of genocide", so, I suppose that counts for something.

I hope South Africa will win... But there's the whole political angle that makes this more difficult than usual.



True, historical issues make this a thorny issue for Germany.

However, there seems to be a divide between the people and the government here, as is the case in most "Western" countries, but how large this gap is between public opinion and the German government specifically, I can't say, haven't seen any polls on the issue.

But this could all be rendered significantly less important if Israel goes to full scale war with Hezbollah, which could happen. It's very tense.

I'm not seeing the "any means necessary" part, in that document, not that they haven't said it, they have in many ways, maybe I'm looking at the wrong part.

But there is no argument here against intent, the intent is crystal clear. The genocide is not far away, especially if food and medicine do not come in in sufficient numbers, then we will have an exponential death and that would be actual genocide.

But, the fact they bothered to show up to court, means they can't completely disregard world opinion, otherwise they could've skipped this, as they have done before.

It's no guarantee that SA will win of course, but, it's some tiny bit of light.

Very much so.

I personally would be in favor of more evidence forcing us to reformulate our picture of the universe. It signifies progress, though if such oddities can be accounted for within our existing theories, then I suppose that's progress too, but it's a bit less exciting.

From what I've read through Haaretz, Al Jazeera and several knowledgeable people on the situation, including UN agencies, some aid is getting through, but it's nowhere near the amount of aid that needs to get through to prevent mass starvation, so it's kind of a band-aid for sawed off limbs.

I don't know if things would change if many thousands start dying from lack of food and water. Likely Biden, Blinken and Netanyahu wouldn't care, but then at that stage, maybe other Arab countries might be forced to do something much more significant.

If that includes breaking diplomatic ties, or cutting off trade or even war, I cannot say. But proportionally, what is happening in Gaza is almost unprecedented in modern war, so many doctors, journalists and babies being killed on purpose is ghastly.

Rwanda was worse, Yemen maybe, a few others. But even in terms of Israel's quite abysmal record on human rights in war, it's the worst they've done by quite a bit.

It's better than nothing, but it's still a pittance. Something's gotta give, or else this genocide may come to full fruition as mass starvation starts killing tens of thousands, maybe more.

So, there are reasons to suspect that in the short term nothing will change much, but it's also not sustainable for too much longer, Israel's economy is not doing well, and they may soon enter a full-blown war with Hezbollah. That would be quite disastrous for everybody, but Israel will be significantly harmed...

It's a powder keg.

They should.

But they also have the Samson Option, which they could use if they see themselves in an existential threat. Egypt, Jordan and others have done almost nothing.

Qatar has done good work.

Yes, Biden's policies in foreign affairs have been by and large pretty bad. Not to mention that if Israel did not receive so much aid from the US, Israel couldn't do what it is doing, with such intensity and impunity. Or at least, the conflict would not drag on so long. This also shows the Israeli government doesn't have a clue what to do with Hamas.

I think that Europe doesn't want to get dragged into a much larger conflict if things go sideways, regardless of the harm on international trade. But I'm not sure what they're thinking.

Interesting to note that the poorest and the people who have been through one of the worst wars in the 21st century are almost the only ones trying to do something to help Gaza to whatever extent it can. And Hezbollah too, but they are Palestinian so, they would do something.

Now we are all just waiting for the Israel-Lebanon situation to go completely blow up and then who knows what will happen?

I mean yes, technically Hezbollah. But remember Lebanon offered to remove Hezbollah from the border on condition that Israel stop its bombing campaign.

The reply was a murder of a Hamas leader in Beirut.

However, Hezbollah have been extremely restrained (given what they could do), because they know that if they go all in, Lebanon will be in ruins.

But there's the issue that if Israel keeps escalating inside Beirut, then the whole country may explode. And by then it would be beyond Hezbollah, even though they would be the single biggest actor inside Lebanon.

Sure, the Houthis have replied and are being quite effective. Are for numb, it's always a possibility. It's just not sustainable to maintain the same level of emotional attachment for a prolonged period - or at least, many people (me included) find it hard to do.

But the Gaza situation is just so awful, that I still think anything could happen, in terms of things blowing up. If Israel were rational, they would just call it a "victory" and just stop the damn thing.

Because finally, and unfortunately, you will get the American politician that doesn't praise AIPAC or Israel. Who simply won't care about it. And why I say this is unfortunate is because then it's going to be real field day for the real anti-semites.

Israel's hope is that there comes another issue which takes the attention away. — ssu

Standard issue so far, but as you indicate, it's becoming less effective. You can only continue this mass butchery for so long, people see the pictures and it just becomes impossible to defend.

I think they are hoping that Lebanon will eventually lose its patience, then Gaza can be forgotten for a bit. Probably not helped by the issue that Netanyahu may end up going to prison for unrelated issues.

War is an excellent motivator for many politicians.

Sure, what else are they going to say? Well, they did say South Africa was the legal extension of Hamas.

But it's all pathetic, having no defense, they hurl insults, which is what happens when your arguments (or rather, propaganda) no longer work.

Yes. It's insane to see, but there it is. And they will keep saying insane things.

Yes he was fantastic, and so was the judge. All of them really.

This case South Africa presented against Israel was superb. Defense against such facts, will be near impossible.

At least one country in the world is doing something serious against Israel.

That's in the Amphiboly if I don't misremember. Allais breaks down that section impeccably, and says pretty much what you say.

The question is, what do we make of it? Me feeling is that Kant was right, though we do not know how Leibniz would have replied. I have not read the Monadology, opting for his New Essays instead.

The issue with Descartes and Leibniz, as I see it, is that they were way too ambitious and too confident in the reach of reason, which Locke and Hume clearly saw as being a total mistake, correctly.

Yet, even after Kant wrote his Critique, we continue with "metaphysics", in manners he may not have approved of. The distinction between what counts and does not count as the bounds of legitimate speculation is not so clear to me.

Him arguing that metaphysics is essentially the topic of God freedom and immortality sounds off to modern ears. Freedom is still relevant.

But I suspect there may be other speculations which are near the borders "beyond all possible experience".

It's tough.

Or….I got it all wrong. There is that, of course, so…… — Mww

You better not.

If so I am doomed. And will say that Kant considers monads to be negative noumena available to introspection!

You have been warned. :grimace:

Yeah - he covers a fantastic deal of territory in that book. We are always going to try some parallels between our "ordinary experience" and whatever science says about the world, it very hard not to do so. We like to have some general intuitions - even if they are mostly misleading in some cases - than "just" an equation, that does nothing for most people.

Sure, as long as we don't find evidence of another intelligent creature, we might as well be the "center" of the universe.

As Wittgenstein famously said, a serious work of philosophy could be done consisting mostly of jokes.

Or as Schopenhauer said, on an individual basis life appears as tragedy, but looked at from a species perspective, life look like a comedy.

If I sometimes laugh to myself, it is because the questions I ask are so difficult to even give a bad guess, then humor must be a component. As I was walking today, I don't know why I was contemplating what constitutes a trivial answer? What makes something obvious to everybody (or most people anyway) as opposed to something that is not obvious?

Maybe something to do with immediate awareness and expectation, but, I couldn't go further. So I laughed - briefly mind you, not like seeing Monty Python or something.

But, at the same time, for me, philosophy fundamentally begins with what Raymond Tallis said, "astonishment".

And if front of the astonishing, I suppose many reactions are valid.

Finally some info on this.

Thank you very much. :pray:

I read this one! How did you become interested in Plotinus? — frank

As I am working on Cudworth's philosophy, I found that he frequently cited Plotinus in favor of his views and I found such views very interesting.

So, I got this book originally for Kindle, but wanted a paper back for closer study, it's very good.

Re-reading:

Plotinus by Eyjolfur K. Emilsson

Reading:

The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino

Sure, it is an account that may sound persuasive to some, but I do appreciate him attempting to sketch out a framework of our mental activity and I do sympathize with his focus on trying to provide an alternative to scientism (which he calls "materialism", which I don't think necessarily follows at all).

I agree—I tend to see 'mind' as a verb not a noun, and I see mental functions as one kind of physical function. The tricky part is that the physical aspects of mental functions are well-hidden from us; we don't so easily feel the physical aspects of mental functions as we might, for example, with digestion. We don't feel our brains, I mean that's why they can be operated on without anaesthetic. — Janus

Very tricky yes. I mean, I agree that at least some important non-mental physical aspects are not felt by us, and obviously some parts of the brain play a role in experience which as parts, are not felt as experience.

But then we do know, from the inside, what a brain is "like" by having experience, given that experience must arise from this organ. The issue is, what parts of it are we experiencing? That's very hard to know at this stage.

I wonder if there isn't some merit to the concept, if reframed in terms of us being elements of a social species, whose thoughts are very much a function of of our encounters with conspecifics. — wonderer1

There's an element of that, it's hard to think so otherwise, but even taking this to account, I don't see how this expands to objects being "disassociated boundaries", with people you could say that, but I don't see how this entails creates Kastrup's idealism.

And I think that's what substance in the philosophical context, at least, means "that which stands under" or something like that. — Janus

Ah - ok. Yes, this is reasonable. I believe that the mental is another aspect of the physical though, so it's not an opposition, but your point is well taken.

But I'm really not referencing cosmological or physics theory, I'm just going with the more basic fact that everything seems to be constructed of energy in its manifold configurations and conditioned by energy exchange and entropy. We don't know of anything that escapes those conditions. — Janus

Energy yes - as far as I know, I think this applies. Entropy is tricky though, is the universe an open or closed system? What is order and what is disorder? Ben-Naim has written about this, it's quite interesting.

If one does. I'm saying that 'substance' is a poor choice of words, for the reasons I gave. I'm not denying the reality of the mind. — Wayfarer

Yes, substance is problematic and dated. But if qualified, it can be used, though it can lead to confusions.

Talk of mental substance, when everything we know tells us that mental phenomena are entirely dependent on this energetic foundation seems to me to be incoherent. We may not fully understand the idea of physical substance, but we have no idea at all of what mental substance could be. — Janus

That's a bit misleading I think. I agree with you that Kastrup, while interesting in some areas, goes off the wall with attributing "dissociated boundaries" to objects, this is an extreme extrapolation.

But I think we have a pretty decent idea of what mental substance, if one wants to use that term is, we have it with us all the time, it's what we are best acquainted out of anything. Which is why we can read novel, participate as jurors, pass laws, create art, etc.

The nature of the non-mental physical, is rather stranger. We only understand 5% of it, from a theoretical standpoint, even here, we have plenty of problems understanding this 5%, it's the other 95% of the universe, that we know almost nothing about, save that it needs to be postulated in order to make the 5% we do know, work.

At his age, it's not very plausible, he likely thinks every other person is serious deluded. Oh well.

Which he denies exist. Saw an extended interview with him the other day. His views on consciousness are frankly embarrassing to me. It's as Galen Strawson says you need to be trained to believe in this eliminitavist lunacy.

I mean, if we are talking about conceivability, it's also conceivable that the mind of supreme being exist, absent anything else, that is, no matter, no physics - no "material substrate".

Reductionism is of limited use.

These zombie arguments are kind of pointless. They show nothing, outside of the fact that we can imagine stuff. Sure, that's why we write fiction and stories.

It's just an excuse to rehabilitate behaviorism to show it is wrong again, and to paint consciousness as magic, whereas everything else in the world is just normal "expected stuff".

It is not a-priori evident that non-conscious things with complex behaviors should be evident or obvious at all.

Not addressed to me I know, but, thanks for the clarification. :up:

And happy 2024 to you and yours, am looking forward to exchanging books and ideas on mutual interests.

It would be a mistake not to talk about politics, especially if it's controversial.

Most philosophers up until recently were very much involved in current events, so, it is a crucial topic to cover because it is important and part of the tradition.

Of course, the risk is much higher in that people will be nasty and the like, but that should be navigated, as is done here.

Because that is one of the goals of the developments of AI, so of course questions about consciousness are going to rise.

I didn't say that AI is going to cause us to marvel about gravity or mutations. What I am saying is that without these two, we wouldn't be alive to try to make sense of experience, nor would we be around to create such machines.

On that basis alone, these things merit much more wonder that they often do. But we are much more ignorant about them then we are about consciousness.

My main disagreement is the emphasis in which consciousness is held to a problem, over and above anything else, it's a very recent and narrow focus in philosophy. There's a lot more to say, but it's late here so I won't go into detail now, tomorrow (or whenever) sure.

Certainly, Locke and Schopenhauer cared about consciousness (Locke's "ideas of sensation" and "ideas of reflection", and Schopenhauer's "representations"), hence hey wrote entire books dealing with how it is we come to acquire knowledge. But they did not see consciousness as more problematic than other properties of the world.

Well, there is historically a hard problem of motion, that was made worse when Newton discovered gravity, which to his dismay made no sense to him.

I think an appropriate way to look at these things is to see that they are all at bottom mysterious. As Schopenhauer said:

"The tendency to gravity in the stone is precisely as inexplicable as is thinking in the human brain, and so on this score, we could also infer a spirit in the stone. Therefore to these disputants [between 'spiritualists' and 'materialists'] I would say: you think you know a dead matter, that is, one that is completely passive and devoid of properties, because you imagine you really understand everything that you are able to reduce to mechanical effect. But… you are unable to reduce them… If matter can fall to earth without you knowing why, so can it also think without you knowing why… If your dead and purely passive matter can as heaviness gravitate, or as electricity attract, repel, and emit spark, so too as brain pulp can it think."

I think that is accurate perspective. Or take Locke:

Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being, or Omnipotent Spirit, should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought... it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that Eternal first-thinking Being...Body, as far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and affect body, and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being able to produce nothing but motion; so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker. For, since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon?

(Bold added).

I could add more from Hume, Priestley even Leibniz, and others.

So yeah, I think there is a deep mystery as regards to oxygen, gravity, mutations, liquidity, and virtually everything, on equal footing with consciousness.

Gravity for one. If we didn't have gravity, we would not have neuroscience, compute science, philosophy, etc.

Electromagnetism too, if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have a universe, or at least, nothing with life or of any interest would be around.

Oxygen is another important one, which would also render everything we adore obsolete, nitrogen too. Iron.

Mutations: no mutations, no speciation. Plate tectonics.

And on and on and on.

Philosophy is the main field we are talking about.

I wouldn't like - at this moment anyway - to repeat what I've said too many times before. I don't believe that the "hard problem", should be considered uniquely so.

I think there are good historical reasons to be suspect of believing that there is such a thing as "the" hard problem, I think there are many (hard problems), and highlighting one at the expense of others shows how little awareness there is on the history of this topic, which was debated by Descartes, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Priestley and others.

I was going to share my Chomsky thread, but just saw you participated in in.

So, if people are still debating the "hard problem" a thousand years from now, that would just be the utter death of the field.

It would be very general, and the semantic issue can't be completely taken away. But it would be something like there is at bottom, one kind of stuff in the universe. Why is it one kind as opposed to two or many?

Because if they don't share the same nature, our intuitions tell us that they cannot interact even in principle. Dualism as a metaphysical view is problematic, pluralism would be a nightmare: many different kinds of stuff making up everything there is, doesn't make sense.

So, choosing monism as a necessity, all that's left is to call whatever remains something, and here we just choose, I think "physical", rightly understood, is less problematic than mental or ideal.

If not, then "natural" might even be better. But the issue of the scope of science cannot be under-emphasized, by "natural" or "physical", reductionism should not be entailed such that if we say either of these words, we are merely pointing out to metaphysical "substance", not to view that physics or nature explains everything. It doesn't.

My usual spiel, physicalism (a version of materialism) doesn't really have a good definition anymore, because there's nothing which can sensible be made that physicalism can be opposed to.

Even idealism, where it differs, is at bottom, an issue of semantics. For one can say, all that exists are minds and ideas, but very few would deny that ideas come from brains in human beings.

That, or your a substance dualist - and then you have the traditional problems of interaction and unification.

Nevertheless, one should be careful, because physicalism does not (or should not) entail phyciSalism, the idea that everything can ultimately be explained in terms of the stuff physics says. That seriously distorts the purview of physics.

So yeah, not a bad term, but these metaphysical views often boil down to semantical problems.