It depends on the level of specificity you want in an answer. Corpses are human bodies, no? Do corpses have minds or experiences? It would appear not. So, the one can exist without the other.

Likewise, it is at least conceivable that one's consciousness could exist outside the body, or be transferred to other bodies. Personally, I think that conceivability is a very weak standard for possibility, since we can often conceive the impossible as possible due to not understanding what we are talking about, but at the very least the two don't seem as essentially linked as say, a triangle and its lines.

---
Anyhow, I think the better arguments for the existence of incorporeal souls' existence outside the body tend to rely on a very particular metaphysics, and presenting them in a coherent manner is going to require extremely large detours into concepts like vertical reality, the nature of being/God, Logos/logoi, etc. But when people try to copy these arguments into the context of prevailing contemporary metaphysical assumptions I think they almost always fall incredibly flat, and I don't think they can be justified as part of a philosophy of nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The corpse example does not say much. I mean, if the body is dead then the mind is dead too. You would have to show how a mind can exist outside a corpse, which is crucial evidence that is missing. That would be a very strong indication that mind and body are different categories.

Conceivable, yes. But very weak, as you say.

You could attempt to give a naturalistic account of mind being separate from body, without going into Platonic metaphysics. You could say that the laws or habits of mind are, in principle, different from the laws of physics and heavenly bodies. Maybe that's true. Maybe not.

But I don't think we know nearly enough about body to say that the mind cannot be a body modified in a specific way.

I limit myself to monism, and I call it "materialism", but it can be called "naturalism" or "mentalism", it doesn't matter much. I very much admire the Platonic tradition, and I think it has a lot of value, but it also needs to be modernized a bit.

Those are all very, very different positions; but you said it like they are all claiming the same thing. — Bob Ross

Not really. Not in this specific case. They are using different words to signal the same general thing: what we have access to are out mental constructions, not external objects.

The very idea that objects cause these “anticipations” (or more accurately: representations) is itself subjected to your own critique; which you seem to have overlooked. — Bob Ross

This is what is being discussed in effect: when we speak about "ordinary objects", we are actually speaking about representations (notions, anticipations) and is what any example we can use to illustrate any point consists of.

The only "help" I can see this offering, as opposed to thinking that we see are objects themselves, is that conscious experience is what we are most confident exists in the universe.

We complicate things considerably if we say that we are confident that objects (which ground) our representations also exist. It's a postulate, which I think makes sense, but now we have to worry about "proving" representationsin addition to objects which stimulate these representations.

The latter is extremely obscure to analyze with much depth.

What is a body? Can you specify when a body "ends" and a mind "begins"?

I can't. Either mind is part of body, or body is part of mind. The point is the distinction needs to be made as to what the difference between these two are - IF it can be stated.

So, asking am I my body is problematic.

Quite. For all we know the cup could have vanished from existence, or turned into a basketball or anything you can imagine. Quite unlikely, but we can't say for certain - at least I can't.

But to claim the cup remaining were I last put it proves it exists, no more proves that because I can see an oasis in the distance on a hot sunny day, they must exist in the world as well.

It is easier on the brain. I personally can't get over the fact that what we take for granted (almost) completely is precisely what we put into the object. It's so counterintuitive, goes against every fiber of my instincts that I can't believe it. Yet it must be true.

one can trust their experience enough to know that (1) they exist — Bob Ross

Well...

One thing is to state this within an everyday context of tables and chairs and going to work and going to sleep and the whole routine thing. This is the given.

But in the empirical world, there are no certainties, only grades of confidence. They can be quite high (I know what I am experiencing at this moment) to medium (I don't know if that person is pretending to be in pain) to low (am I dreaming?).

You can't prove objects exist. We take it for granted for the sake of convenience, but the proof is not established. It may sound excessively skeptical, but is nonetheless a serious issue.

If not Kant himself, then his predecessors are on the right track, the world is representation (Kant, Schopenhauer), notion (Burthogge), or anticipation (Cudworth).

We can then say we have high confidence that our notions are real things in us. But as to the objects which cause these anticipations, we know very little if anything.

A disaster. It may grow much bigger, maybe beyond the Middle East.

Iran is firing misses at Tel Aviv

So now we move to Lebanon, which, given the current dynamics at play, and explicit and overwhelming support by the Biden administration of Israeli evil, was, in hindsight inevitable.

It's lamentable that Nasrallah was murdered. He was, till the day of his death, willing to cease the attacks on Northern Israel, in exchange for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Quite a reasonable view. Now comes someone who will be much harsher and less sensible.

And more mass death for everyone.

It's just my perspective, you could end up liking it and finding it convincing. His aesthetics might be good. If you want to, give it a go. It just didn't live up to the hype in my areas of interest, with some exceptions to be fair.

Edit: more details.

His analytics were quite shaky and dubious.

His physics were ok, some interesting stuff in it.

His metaphysics were pretty bad.

The main bulk of the work, aesthetics and ethics, I did not read, as these aren't my cup of tea, but I can't say if it's good or bad.

Human language is countably infinite because:

its alphabet is finite
every string in human language is of finite length — Tarskian

But it isn't.

But it isn't true.

But it isn't true, manifestly.

But it isn't true, manifestly you can go on forever.

But it isn't true manifestly you can go on forever and ever.

And I told him "But it isn't true, manifestly you can go on forever and ever."

We had a discussion, and I told him ""But it isn't true, manifestly you can go on forever and ever."

etc.

How do you know that what you believe in is true if you can't express it?

Oh man... they are torture... But once you find the good stuff, then you get top tier idealism.

Yes, they should, though Burthogge is not a Cambridge Platonists. He has certain strong Platonist elements.

Thanks for giving them a shot- as always if you have something you think I'd like, I'd be happy to take a look.

:victory:

Damn! On Amazon for MUCH less: 8 dollars for the Kindle version. Don't know how much it would be in Australia.

My paperback was around 30 bucks, while not cheap, is worth it given it's a rare reprint type of thing.

Also, there is a free version of the book online:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A30630.0001.001?view=toc

It's quite readable. But I'm with you on preferring to read philosophy in physical form, for the most part.

Correct! :cool:

You know of Cudworth and More. Music to my ears. :cheer:

Yes - His Treatise though not his True Intellectual System.

And also Richard Burthogge - extremely, extremely interesting - An Essay Upon Reason. A mix of Locke and Kant. Superb.

Other forms of consciousness are not even hypothetical, we have all kinds of animals which, according to all available evidence do experience the world in a very different way.

But as for shifts in human consciousness - well, so little is understood from a scientific perspective, that speaking of "evolution" of consciousness may be premature.

But possible. For us right now? We likely won't see a massive change. But, who knows?

Ah. Maybe. It's hard to say.

Full sense meaning being experts or elite at something? I mean, very few, there is an important genetic component to consider when talking about elite level anything.

But I think the of a highest ideals "in all areas of life" is probably not possible. Or if it is, it is very very rare. Unless you have in mind something else.

Yes, that did come out much more literal than it should have. It's a metaphor, not literal, meaning, we can see how certain activities are reflected in the brain, we can see a certain patterns between a person doing one thing vs. a person doing another and what that reliably may trigger.

But what we don't know is how we do X rather than Y. For that we don't have a way to do research.

It's been a while since I read Metzinger - very interesting from what I recall.

As for Hume, yes, but he was analyzing the self in so far as it could be subject to empirical investigation, meaning his system.

But he was very clear that his system concerning the self was "very defective". and concluded, lamentably that:

"In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz., that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou’d be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding."

How useful is this area of brain research to the debate between free will and determinism? — Jack Cummins

It might be interesting or useful if choices were made by brains. But choices are made by people.

We have learned a bit about the strings and the pulling of them but are completely in the dark about the puppet master.

Do you think that self-mastery is possible? — Jack Cummins

Sure. At least, I don't see what is problematic about self mastery.

Ooo a Discord server, nice! Will join later today. The other philosophy servers on Discord aren't bad per se, but the topics I've seen covered are quite limited.

A TPF one would probably suite me. Good plan B.

Sure thing!

Do animals have rational thinking? Do animals have communication skills? Is intuitive thinking rational or maybe something better? — Athena

I suppose a bare minimum has to be symbolic representation akin to something that arises with language use. Animals do not have language, if by "language" one has in mind propositional knowledge.

There may well be other aspects to thinking that are not related to language, but we don't know what they are. We are back to speaking about these things through language. So, until we have some proposal as to what non-linguistic thought is, we are stuck.

As for communication? Yes, they do, and they seem to be highly efficient at it. Look at bees or birds or dolphins, they have some amazing capacities for communication that we lack.

Intuition is somewhat hard to describe. I don't think it's better than non-intuitive thinking, just different. Though we should keep in mind that our intuitions can be quite wrong.

To clarify and or get rid of certain words or tendencies that prevent discussion from advancing.

This applies to a lot of metaphysics and a part of epistemology.

But as for ethics or aesthetics, I don't think ordinary language helps much, because we are dealing with facets of life which we have less depth of insight. And when there is lack of depth of insight, what we can say about it amounts to very little:

Why should we be just?

Why should we not do evil?

Why is this beautiful?

These questions have answers which don't give much depth of insight. They tend to be rather trivial but are nonetheless crucial issues for life.

If so, then it is a sensible approach. It would be hard to believe that ethical or aesthetic considerations could be eliminated.

I don't know Austin's claim. I was replying to your comment.

Austin's argument is about what he sees as the misuse of particular words in philosophy. He is not making (or does not see himself as making) arguments about 'realism' (naive, indirect, or otherwise) per se. — cherryorchard

Sure - words can be problematic in philosophy. People get stuck discussing words rather than ideas all the time, so there is room for "ordinary language philosophy".

But there's also the temptation to treat all philosophy or almost all of it, through this lens which is a way to sidestep issues rather than deal with them.

It's up to each one to see if the topic under discussion is or is not an issue concerning the misuse of language.

Manuel, would you agree that Austin is wrong about indirect realism becoming meaningless due to a lack of contrast? I think an example of that kind of breakdown in meaning is the kind of idealism where one says everything is ideas. That makes the concept of idea meaningless because the very stuff that once gave the word meaning, that is physical stuff, has been redefined as ideas. If everything is ideas, the concept of idea becomes meaningless. — frank

I have not read Austin.

If the claim is that if everything is indirect, then nothing is because we would have no notion of what an alternative could be, or something along those lines, then I think that's right.

We have to experience some things directly to say that are something we don't experience directly, and the other way around.

I'm not sure it would apply to idealism, because we already know of alternatives to it. With the case of realism or indirect realism, it's a bit trickier.

This would depend on what type of panpsychism one envisions. The panpsychism I am familiar, Galen Strawson's, does include incomprehensible (to us) subjects of experience, but it's not to be viewed in terms of something that thinks or wills- it's a very, very, basic type of phenomenon, quite rudimentary.

Other forms of panpsychism many be more extreme, but I don't know them in depth.

You are right, I don't understand a lot of animism well, and I will take your word that it mirrors say, something like what William James argues for. Which is fine. It's not my persuasion, but it's a legitimate view.

As for Hoffman himself, it's somewhat hard to say, since he says we don't evolve to capture truth at all. That's seems to me more excessive than the current science indicates, including the science Hoffman uses to defend his views.

These merely reflect the respective impact on me, which of course is the only thing I can say.

Politics:

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

The Great War for Civilization by Robert Fisk

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste by Philip Mirowski

Philosophy:

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality by Ralph Cudworth

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

Novels:

Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

This forces me to leave our portions of books which I would otherwise recommend, such as Hume's Skepticism with Regard to the Senses which is a chapter, or Richard Burthogge's An Essay Upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits which I did not read in complete form, or indeed Kant's Solution of The Cosmological Idea of Totality in the Derivation of World Events from Their Causes,Possibility of the Causality through Freedom... Eludiation of the Cosmological Idea of A Freedom... or even essays, such as Chomsky's What Can We Understand? which I consider the most important essay in epistemology/metaphysics.

Same thing with fiction, I have to leave our portions of books, such as the first half of Michael Cisco's Animal Money, or the short stories of Borges, etc.

And I'm sure I'm leaving out stuff that I would kick myself for forgetting. But it's kind of inevitable.

It's almost impossible to write such a list, but it's an interesting exercise.

I mean, I don't think we can become the thing in itself either, at best we can perhaps say some negative things about it, or we can use "as if" (or "like a") language to speak about it, as Plotinus does.

But I don't think we will ever get more insight than that and furthermore, I fully understand why some may think this may a complete waste of time or effort (not that you are saying this.) But I find myself and always have been, extremely attracted to and fascinated by this idea.

Panpsychism could be a solution, but animism less so, though as you point out they can be similar. The issue as I see it is that panpsychism only considers the (conscious) mental aspects of reality, either explicitly denying or overlooking the non-mental aspects of reality, which by far outnumber those things we consider "mental".

If you believe knowledge is inherently relational (as I do), then I don't see an alternative interaction. At least none that I can detect using our human intelligence.

Maybe God or angels - or, if you want to be less poetic and more naturalistic, an extremely intelligent alien species - could have an intelligence utterly above ours, which may include other ways of knowing.

Or maybe it's impossible. Hard to say.

Running with the phenomena-noumena thing, you can know how something interacts with you at least, yes?

Say, you may interact with an apple-an-sich, which might at least tell you something about the apple, namely about your interaction therewith. Or, you may interact with a neighbor-an-sich, which might tell you something about the neighbor, namely how the neighbor interacts at least. — jorndoe

Yes, I believe it does, but we don't know how. As in, once you remove all senses from our experience of an object, I think something remains, which itself is not only our unification of properties to create a phenomenal object.

Some have tried to read it this way, say Cristoph Koch, he says something like there was the "sun-in-itself" the "planets in themselves" etc., but that is problematic, imo.

For you are already presupposing a great deal about an object by saying it's an apple (in-itself), that suggests that no matter what creature would arise, an apple as an entity in the world. Different creatures might well pick up different properties.

If we expect apple-omniscience/certainty, then we're over-demanding.
In terms of (phenomena-noumena) epistemics, what would be required (perhaps expected) to know a ding-an-sich (without interaction)? Becoming das-ding...? — jorndoe

Ah. There are different views here.

Kant doesn't think there are any - with a somewhat problematic (but very interesting) exception: free will. It's due to a kind of causality which is not solely a naturalistic one.

Schopenhauer would say the thing in itself is will, roughly energy, which we feel when we move an arm or a leg and pay attention to what we are doing. He would say that this is akin to what other objects in themselves would probably feel like too, if we could feel them. But we are still removed from it due to our cognitive apparatus.

Plotinus, much older, speaks of the One, which we can only speak in an "as if" manner, very interesting and quite reasonable.

There are other options, but none that come to mind that straight out say this is how we know a thing in itself. Of course, there are probably exceptions I am missing.

Reading some parts of The Philosophy of Redemption by Phillip Mainländer.

He has some interesting ideas in his Analytics and Physics, but his Big Idea, shown in the Metaphysics ("God" chose to kill himself rather than continue living) section verges on complete embarrassment. His argumentation is paper thin, and I'm surprised he has a few followers...

I had higher hopes for him, but I suppose I'll take out of it a few bits here and there.

Yes, good. If I understand correctly or roughly, sure we can think what we please and face no contradictions (save logical ones) and we could go on thinking we are grasping something which is not, noumena for instance. Of course, for us, and our mode of thinking, if we leave this out of the picture, then something seems to be missing intellectually.

This of course does not guarantee we are (or are not) getting at something and then there is the point you raise in your last sentence that we can't find a representation which consists of an object in itself.

I think your interpretation of Kant would be called a "deflationary" one? Maybe.

Edit: this is for my indulgence. The explicit Kant discussions stops here.

Alright. Maybe we are leaving Kant maybe not or maybe we are talking about S. now, it doesn't matter much, the topic is what's interesting to me:

We have representations. All our knowledge is representational. This necessarily implies that what we experience is an interaction between a subject and an object. Knowledge is relational. No relations, no representations, no knowledge. But we don't want to say (at least I don't) "no things" remain.

Objects exist and have a way of existing. We only know how objects exist as representations. Objects must have a way of existing that is not reducible to us alone. They must have a way of being, independent of us, in virtue of which they exist independently of us.

If this is false, then we have to deny astronomy, paleontology, geology, etc.

My final twist here is that, astronomy, geology, still do not tell us about noumena. Nothing can, outside this intellectual feeling we have that something like that ought to exist in some manner.

What is wrong here?

Objects are relations all the way down, insofar as they remain intelligible for us. Given from the principle of cause and effect, it is only incoherent for us when we look for one of those without the other connected to it. So…don’t look there. — Mww

Well, I may have been either tainted or mislead, but for better or worse I have taken in Lucy Allais interpretation of Kant so if I removed this aspect for my interpretation then my understanding of Kant would almost entirely collapse. Which is quite plausible.

In any case, this is the section which I find interesting:

"Accordingly the understanding limits sensibility, but without therefore expanding its own realm. And inasmuch as the understanding warns sensibility not to claim to deal with things in themselves but solely with appearances, it does think of an object in itself. But the understanding thinks it only as transcendental object. This object is the cause of appearance (hence is not itself appearance) and can be thought neither as magnitude nor as reality nor as substance… Hence concerning this object we are completely ignorant as to whether it is to be found in us-or, for that matter, outside us… If we want to call this object noumenon, because the presentation of it is not sensible we are free to do so… [it only serves] to mark the bound of our sensible cognition…”

(A 288-A 289, B 344- B 345)

When he says this object is the cause of appearance (transcendental object) I take it that he does so because he thinks that, if an object as appearance consisted of relations all the way down, things make no sense. In a previous page he says:

"It is startling, to be sure, to hear that a thing is supposed to consist altogether of relations. Such a thing, however, also is mere appearance and cannot be thought at all through pure categories..." (A 286. B 341-342)

I mean, then we also can't understand an object consisting entirely of relations either. Ugh.

It is more intelligible (to me) to say a thing (as appearance) consists of relations. But the ultimate ground of these relations we do not know. They must play some kind of grounding role, which we cannot know.

As you can see, I don't know how to cite him properly.

Positive or negative noumena don’t matter; each is noumena as far as understanding is concerned, and since understanding is the problem-child here, the exposition of its flawed or illegitimate functionality is paramount. Besides, positive or negative noumena have to do with intuition anyway, in which either there is a kind of it we don’t have, re: that kind which can develop its representations given merely intelligible existences, or, there is that kind we do have, re: that kind which develops its representations only because there are real existences. — Mww

Hmmm.

But he says

"If, on the other hand, by merely intelligible objects we mean merely objects of nonsensible intuition - objects for which, to be sure, our categories do not hold and of which therefore we can never have any cognition at all (neither intuition nor concept) - then noumenon in the negative signification must indeed be admitted..."

(B 343)

Then he goes on to say this is the "problematic" concept of the noumena. And now I have trouble finding his comments on "positive noumena". But he quite likely has in mind Leibniz and his monads.

This is quite more laborious that I thought, though I should have known...

In any case, let me try to zone it in.

hence the grounding relation of appearances is known to us. Cause and effect: for every sensation as effect there is necessarily a thing which appears, sufficient as a cause of it. — Mww

I see a green tree. The cause of it is photons hitting my eye, then my brain does something we-don't-know-what then I see a tree.

But, what causes the photons? And then we keep going down and down.

So, what we are doing is describing relational structures at a certain level of complexity. Mind you, even describing photons and eyes, we still are entirely ignorant as how could photons lead to any phenomenon.

Anyway, have at it. I suppose the best we can hope for is some kind of agreement on like two topics. Wild.

Out of fear of forgetting to do what I wanted to, let's just go straight into it. I don't know if it is appropriate to this thread or no.

So, Kant speaks about "things in themselves" and these are the ground of appearances. We do not know how this grounding relation works, only that it must be so, otherwise objects would relations all the way down, and that's incoherent for us.

On the other hand, Kant speaks of noumena. He is quite clear on noumena in the positive meaning of the term, these are the things traditional metaphysics was discussing and never managed to advance.

Positive noumena could including things like Leibnizian monads or Cartesian souls - maybe even Platonic Ideas. We have no idea if this knowledge is possible and how it could possibly be like.

Since this is so, we best leave noumena in the positive sense behind, it's like arguing over words.

The issue, as I see it, is Kant's description of noumena in the negative sense. He says it may exist, but we can't be sure, it's a kind of limit to speculation.

But yet: 1) He shows no such hesitation when speaking about "things in themselves" and 2) in the practical domain, he has recourse to speaking about noumena to account for freedom!

Why not do this to things-in-themselves? Or rather, why would he even bother saying there are things in themselves, but there may or may not be noumena in a negative sense?

In short, I don't see why Kant couldn't have merely said there are things in themselves and noumena in a positive sense and put aside noumena in a negative sense. It seems excessive to me.

These are my impressions, and I probably misread many things.

My brain is fried. I dunno how I am typing right now. Yeah there's some stuff in what you quoted from which is potentially problematic from my perspective. But not today.

You will not bait me..... :halo:

We may need to chat about this one day. Not too too long in the future. But not right now, I Kant.

It's been a lot of work. :cry:

:cool:

What "debate"? You haven't even stated the proposition in contention we're supposed to either be for (thesis) or against (antithesis). Please clarify ... — 180 Proof

:100:

Quantum physics merely makes Newton's observations much more evident; Newton (nor Locke and Hume and Priestley) could not understand gravity. We don't understand gravity. We understand quantum physics even less.

But the topic I think, should not be prima facie too difficult. One should state what matter is and why is cannot include mental stuff, or the opposite.

If this can be done, then we can proceed. If not, then the issue seems to lack clarity, it is a proposition posed in a question-like format, but it has no answer.

This is done to avoid Descartes formulation of the problem, which most people don't accept in the manner he did at his time. Of course, in his time it made sense to be a dualist.