Did it now? How? I mean, if we apply your outlook consistently, then all our beliefs are almost certainly and irredeemably false, being that the world is independent of them, and they are independent of the world. But how then do we prove or disprove anything? What meaning can such words have? — SophistiCat

I don't think this is all that challenging. I'd prefer to say things are useful, not true or false. This is my thesis. I'm not claiming to be inerrant about this matter, it's simply my tentative model for understanding things, and it relates to the original post.

Some things work well for us in certain circumstances, and some things don't. It's always evolving and changing. I suspect you're right. We never really get to truth, at least not if by truth we mean something external to our contingent factors like language and culture.

The next obvious criticism is: if nothing is true, then neither is what you said, Tom.

To that, I would agree. Saying “we never get to truth” expresses skepticism about objective or foundational truth claims, but it is not itself a universal truth, rather, I'd see it more as a useful framework for managing ideas and guiding actions. I think Richard Rorty may have settled on this frame too, but I am not a philosopher.

Of course, there are intersubjective communities that share views and models, and many of those are useful. Those communities may even see their frames as 'how the world is'. But they soon are found wanting and they change. Just look at the history of medicine. In 200 years, it's likely we'll look back on many of our current practices as a mix of ignorance and barbarism, just as we how view much of what was done 200 years ago.

Things don't have to be true to be of use.

This one comes from Hilary Lawson. A good example of how something doesn't need to be true to be useful is Aristotle’s geocentric model of the universe. Although we now know it was completely wrong (the Earth isn’t at the center, and there are no crystal spheres) the model was used successfully for over a thousand years, especially in navigation. Sailors relied on tools and star charts based on that system to cross oceans and navigate by the stars. It worked, even though it wasn’t true. As Lawson points out, this shows that conceptual frameworks can be effective 'closures' that help us act, even if they don’t reflect reality as it actually is.

Back to laws and patterns. Perceived patterns in the external world emerge through our embodied interaction with the environment. I am wondering if they reflect what human cognition projects onto experience and that they can function provisionally to produce what we call useful outcomes.

This is a yes or no question. My answer is no. — David Hubbs

I’m not sure it is, unless I’m missing something. I identify as conservative or progressive depending on the issue, it’s not a neat either-or situation. As an Australian, I find myself progressive on some issues and conservative on others. Plenty of people I know vote differently at each election because, fundamentally, they don’t identify with a single party or ideology. They are politically fluid.

See, you speak of order in the world . Results (things in the world, that we point to), that are pragmatic (according to some reasoning, some ordering, some practical relationship to them). So you are speaking of a world and speaking of order (pragmatic) in the world (results are in the world, not merely an agreement). Maybe you said it for nothing more than to conjecture, but that small, pregnant quote assumes the existence of a lot that you are trying to say is not there. — Fire Ologist

No. I'm speaking of a 'world' to which we ascribe order by virtue of all the factors I've described several times.

My basic (and speculative) thesis is this: we find ourselves somewhere, though we don't really know what somewhere is, even though we give it names (like world or reality) and we go about using our cognitive faculties and languages to give order to it. We invent names and concepts and theories, many of which seem to match what we appear to be involved in. This is something we do to help us predict and act. But this process doesn't necessarily map onto any external reality independent of us; rather, it helps us cope with whatever it is we inhabit. Our theories and models eventually fade and are replaced by new ones and they in turn fade and on it goes...

I guess my point is more basically, whether we put the order in the world or it is just there, we can’t escape finding order in the world. So why bother resisting “order in the world”? Look for it. Make your words make sense as descriptions I would also make because we are in the same world. (Which you do, but don’t seem to see the ordered world in it.) — Fire Ologist

Yes, and this is the question I’m attempting to address. My intuition tells me that what we call “order” is a superimposition upon our situation, not something intrinsic to the world or external to us in any absolute sense. Humans live by abstractions. We generate patterns, names, systems, all of which help us navigate what would otherwise be an overwhelming flux. But that doesn’t mean those patterns are in the world in a mind-independent way. They’re ways we cope, predict, and make meaning. So it’s not that I deny the experience of order or its usefulness to us — I’m simply cautious about mistaking our interpretive frameworks for the nature of reality itself. Something doesn’t need to be true to be useful.

Our ongoing and tentative understanding of our situation. I would suggest this amounts to a range of evolving inter subjective agreements. But I suspect you’re not on board.

Well, I think your example points to the perspectival nature of beliefs. I would not accept that they have identified order outside themselves. More likely a conceptual structure or model that might pragmatically deliver some results.

I might say the Earth is the center of the universe as metaphorical description, indicating the centrality of our planet in all our priorities and values. And this would be true in a sense.

I wonder to what extent all knowledge and language are best understood as metaphor. Ways of managing our experince for a time. Some metaphors work better for certain purposes than others, right? Not sure I have much more on this today.

Maybe the science world should start using new words. — Patterner

Could be. But maybe conceptual frameworks need renewal too. If by science we hold the belief that the universe is intelligible and that science mirrors reality. Hey - I'm not sayign I'm correct on this (correct is problematic of itself) just that it's a perspective I have sympathy for and want to pursue.

Nothing certain. Nothing intrinsic discovered. And just say “order in nature.” Why is “order in nature” such a bugaboo? Why mist consensus always be given priority over that which is agreed upon? — Fire Ologist

Reification fascinates me and mainly because my philosophical journey and intuition has a focus on the idea that we make many assumptions. I find it fascinating to contemplate how much of what we call reality may be co-created, a product of our experience. This, from the smattering I know of it, is a rich theme in phenomenology and postmodernism, and of course, it is hotly resisted by many who prefer foundationalist models. That’s all.

I think this brings me back to my original question. If the patterns are not external, why would our cognitive apparatus produce them? — Patterner

Well peopel like Hilary Lawson would likely argue that the world is inherently open and indeterminate, so our minds create patterns to impose some order on that complexity. These patterns aren’t discoveries of fixed external laws but constructs that arise from our engagement with an otherwise uncertain reality. We engage with an open and indeterminate reality by constructing tentative models that help us navigate and make sense of it, knowing these models are provisional and will eventually be replaced as our understanding evolves. In thsi way we had Newton's laws of motion and gravity replaced by Einstein's theory of relativity and now what? QM? And after that? But hey, I'm not a metaphysician or academic and this is just what my intuition leads me into tentatively holding.

How does it help if these connections are only in our head and have nothing to do with the environment in which we live? How could we even exist in and of a world that lacks any order? For that matter, how do you come to any conclusions about the world, even such skeptical conclusions as you make? — SophistiCat

I am suggesting a constructivist view. Even the notion of "order" itself is a contingent human artifact. My instinct is that our knowledge, meaning, and order are contingent products of human interpretation, language, and culture. The world exists independently but is indeterminate or (as Hilary Lawson would argue) "open in itself"; order and meaning don’t exist “out there” waiting to be discovered but arise through our way's of engaging with the world.

So, in this view (which I think has some merit), we never arrive at absolute truth or reality; everything we hold is contingent and constantly changing. We don’t really have knowledge that maps onto some kind of eternal, unchanging foundational truth. What we have instead are provisional frameworks, interpretive tools and perspectives, that help us navigate and make sense of our experience, always open to revision and reinterpretation. Now, this either resonates with people or (especially if they are foundationalists and empiricists) will seem vague.

We're all making this up as we go. :wink: I've been wondering, is our aesthetic appreciation of the world partly responsible for why one might privilege, for instance, scientific approaches to understanding it? Scientific theories often offer elegant, parsimonious explanation models that display symmetry, simplicity, and predictive clarity. Such qualities would resonate with our sense of beauty and order, possibly making science feel more “true” not just because of its utility, but because it satisfies a deeper longing for coherence and elegance. For me, a key question is whether we are drawn to certain methods of explanation not only for their empirical strength, but because they resonate with the way we naturally perceive and make sense of the world. Note the above would apply to religion too but in different ways.

I had an interesting conversation with a mystic not long ago, and it seemed clear to me that he disliked science and empiricism, not because of any failings in reasoning, but because they made the world seem uglier to him than a boundless, fluid, and transcendent mystical model.

In my experience, this is where intuition comes from. If you want to simplify, I just you could just say I pick the ideas I'm interested in intuitively. — T Clark

Sure. I suspect that what we call intuition is really a shorthand for unconscious processes shaped by underlying preferences. These preferences are often privilege (by you or anyone) because they carry a strong innate or aesthetic appeal. Of course, I’m unsure if this can be definitively demonstrated, though I understand that current psychological theories, such as those proffered by Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt, support the idea that reasoning is grounded, at least in part, in affective processes and by extension, aesthetic sensibilities and preferences.

:wink:

What's up with that aesthetic preference? Is it possible to justify or ground it? And, in spite of it all, what do we do when we encounter someone with a different aesthetic preference, though we feel it ought be universal? — Moliere

I suppose there are people who believe that truth, goodness, and beauty (the transcendentals) are intrinsically linked, all originating from the same foundation, such that these ideas are direct expressions of the One Truth, rather than contingent products of human culture and language.

Nice OP.

I tend to hold that our beliefs are shaped primarily through the affective and aesthetic dimensions of our engagement with the world and that these serve as the basis by which we choose our ideas and form our preferences.

Which is why I often say that belief in God (for instance) is more likely a preference for a particular type of meaning and value which attracts us, rather than the outcome of sustained reasoning. If reasoning is involved, it tends to be post hoc.

I suspect we make these judgments at lightning speed, with minimal awareness, because they become built into our sense-making processes.

I've noticed in conversations with people about big questions, like meaning and God, that there is often a clear aesthetic preference for a world with foundational guarantees of beauty and certainty. For some, this makes the world more pleasing, more explicable, more enchanting. An enchanted world is a more engaging, attractive world for many. A hatred of physicalism and 'scientism' often seems tied to a view that notions of intrinsic meaninglessness is ugly, stunted and base. And therefore, wrong.

Maybe a virtual group hug instead?

I thought you were saying that, particularly when you said, "At present, I tend to believe that the idea that the universe “behaves in an orderly way” reflects a human tendency to project patterns and impose coherence where there may be none inherently. What we call "order" is not something we discover in the universe but something we attribute to it through our descriptive practices." — Patterner

Yes, my language is sloppy and I'm writing in the gaps of other activities. (I should also write "may not" rather than "is") I'm saying there are patterns, we see them and use them, sometimes successfully. But I don't know if these patterns map onto the world and say anything about the nature of reality, or if they are produced contingently by our ways of seeing and describing nature.

The question for me is: are the patterns external, or are they the product of our cognitive apparatus? To call a pattern a law of nature reifies it, or at least risks mistaking a useful human construct for something intrinsic to reality itself.

I’m not saying I understand Hart or Tillich, their work is quite recondite, and in my life, it has little practical use. But it is very interesting and aligns with well-established ways of understanding ideas of God. All I’m hoping to do is 'open up' the subject.

Why would we be machines of that nature? I would think because it's a successful strategy. If so, why would seeking patterns/meaning/connections in a universe where there aren't any be successful? — Patterner

I'm not saying there are no patterns, it's about how we tend to perceive things and that our predictive model change over time and may not map onto something we call reality. We tend to fall back on predictions to cope with our world. So if it rains after we pray or do a special dance, we'll keep doing it to try to bring rain again.

As an electrical engineer... — wonderer1

Ah... there's your problem... what is the expression? If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Bad paraphrase of Maslow. (And I'm just joking BTW)

do you have any explanation for why scientific frameworks would be useful for predicting if there were no reliable regularities to how things occur in nature which are described by such frameworks? — wonderer1

I am not saying we can't make predictions and find them useful, we can see predictive success as a contingent outcome of practices of inquiry, experimentation, and consensus, but not as proof of any intrinsic order in nature.

A model can be useful even if it isn't true. For instance, the miasma theory of disease turned out to be false, but it worked to some extent, it helped people notice a connection between sewage and illness. Promoted the use of fresh air and isolation to manage disease, which proved effective, even if the underlying model was incorrect. Who knows where understanding will be in 200 years? Who knows which laws of physics will still be standing?

Of course, I can't expect someone without my background knowledge to see things the same way, but I still find it somewhat baffling that you hold such a perspective. — wonderer1

Our knowledge and preconceptions can also hold us back. Being baffled may be the start of a breakthrough...

I’m not saying to ignore science or stop using tools based on predictions, that would be a misunderstanding of the point. I’m simply suggesting (and there’s no way to establish this conclusively) that humans use predictions and metaphysical models to anticipate outcomes. Because we can make accurate predictions, we assume the model maps onto reality in some way. But we don’t actually know this. My intuition is that we don’t need to know if the model truly corresponds to reality; what matters is that it works well enough for our purposes. Instead of searching for some ultimate, final truth, we should focus on the usefulness of our concepts and tools and how they help us cope in the world.

So coming back to the OP, are there laws of nature, or apparent regularities which are produced by how we perceive the world, but not a product of reality itself? We can’t really demonstrate either, although it is instructive to see over time how models of reality seem to change.

In my opinion anyone who rejects physicalism and the associated reduction of conscious experiences to material processes must assume that these experiences are based on something else. But on what – an élan vital, magic, or what else? — Jacques

There might be various models offered as alternatives. One would be to invert physicalism entirely and argue (as Bernardo Kastrup does) that physical reality is how consciousness appears when viewed from a particular perspective. In other words, physicalism is a product of consciousness, not the other way around. There are detailed and well-argued accounts of this view, which go well beyond the scope of a few posts here.

Why would humans attribute order where there is none? Wouldn't that mean order is a part of our nature? — Patterner

Good questions. I’d guess that humans are pattern seeking, meaning making machines. We see connections everywhere and this often helps us manage our environment. Even when those patterns or connections later, sometimes much later, turn out to be bogus. Whether that be astrology, the cause of thunder or the sun revolving around the earth. Patterns and meaning dominate human thinking and activity, and some of it works pragmatically for us for a time.

A more interesting comparison would be Cezanne and Warhol. Is Pop art a variation of impressionism or does it involve a more radical rethinking of the meaning and role of art? — Joshs

Or can it be both?

If it makes it easier I can rephrase the question… why does the universe behave in an orderly way ? — kindred

At present, I tend to believe that the idea that the universe “behaves in an orderly way” reflects a human tendency to project patterns and impose coherence where there may be none inherently. What we call "order" is not something we discover in the universe but something we attribute to it through our descriptive practices. I don’t think we ever access a world “as it is” apart from interpretation; what we take to be real or empirical is shaped by historically contingent terminology and shared frameworks of understanding. These frameworks are always provisional or tentative, useful for communicating, and predicting, but not revealing some deep, necessary structure of the universe. Any sense of order is thus not a property of the world itself, but of our current ways of making sense of it, which remain open to continual revision.

Are there laws of nature?

I am more inclined to say that there are regularities in nature that we pay attention to.

"Laws" sounds like there's a universally true statement about nature. — Moliere

Was going to say the same thing. Language used makes implications which may not be accurate. There are also the infamous "laws" of logic, or as I prefer to call them the logical axioms.

I also find the word 'creation' problematic when referring to nature, as it implies a creator; just as laws imply a lawmaker. It all sets up language to back the worldview of the Islamic or Christian apologist.

All of what we know is contingent human understanding, which in 200 years time may well look very different.

Consider the phrase, "I am politically nonbinary. — David Hubbs

Silly wording, but I think this can be reasonable. I identify with both conservative and progressive issues in politics. I support some traditions, political institutions and the rule of law, etc, I also support some (progressive) radical change. Many people don't sit neatly in one camp, I would have thought, which often explains why people vote differently depending upon the issue important to them at a given election.

Fair enough, I avoid art which tries to teach or works hard to make statements about life. Do you think these artists coveted media tales of perversion, or were they simply perverse and the media lapped it up?

I also reject the idea that humans possess some irreducibly mysterious cognitive abilities. Qualia, intuition, consciousness—they are all real phenomena, but I see no reason to believe they’re anything but products of material data processing. The brain, though vastly complex, is just a physical machine. If that machine can experience qualia, why not a future machine of equal or greater complexity? — Jacques

That should start the usual disagreements about scientistic physicalism and how this has collapsed the richness of conscious experience into merely computational or mechanistic terms. Next comes the points about the hard problem of consciousness, followed by some Thomas Nagel quotes. Enjoy.

During the post modern period, High Art lurched from one development to another culminating in conceptual art, which was nonsense asserted as High Art and grotesque perversions of modernism, asserted as High Art. — Punshhh

I am largely immune to art (it mostly bores me rigid) but why would you argue this? Is your dislike of modern art rooted in a preference for classical and formalist traditions, and in the sense that contemporary art conflicts with your ideas of beauty and moral coherence?

May I ask, what are your views on the matter of causing death through something destructive, and how according to any ethically bounded theory, what this actually results in? — Shawn

In my view, there are no results or consequences other than the deaths (and suffering) you facilitated. Of course, there is the possibility that you might receive some kind of prize.

Cool. Thank you.

For at least 2,600 years of philosophical effort, philosophy could not find a theory or attitude that could eradicate strife, civil disobedience, revolution or war. Nor did philosophy find the knowledge that could eradicate these problems. — Pieter R van Wyk

Maybe your expectations of philosophy are as naive as a young friend of mine who says medicine is useless since it can’t cure cancer. At least with medicine it’s clear what it sets out to do. Philosophy, by contrast, is an umbrella term for many (sometimes conflicting) approaches. The notion that a couple of thousand years of evolving schools of thought should result in an approach that will resolve all of humanity’s problems is wild.

The other problem is the gap between a useful approach and actual human behaviour. This line of thought assumes that if we have a way to "eradicate these problems," people will agree and put it into practice.

But surely there's a difference between (1) having a philosophical solution and (2) implementing it. What if the philosophy in question can only be understood or enacted by a small percentage of people? What if it depends on a particular level of education or sophistication to be effective? There could be any number of great philosophical models for ending human suffering out there, but perhaps the real problem lies in human practice, not the theory.

Morality as cooperation contradicts Hobbes understanding of our pre-civilization nature. It is not Hobbesian. — Mark S

I wasn’t arguing your whole model was Hobbesian.

There’s also a strong Platonic or idealist undercurrent in Husserl’s later thought—his notion of eidetic reduction suggests that essences are real and perceptible to intuition, and not merely empirical generalizations. So while he doesn't affirm metaphysical or spiritual doctrines, his work provides a space for them. — Wayfarer

Yes, this would seem to be the case... although maybe it's others who, rather eagerly, seek to fill this space.

I wounder what @Joshs would observe here.

But—and this is important—his work touches on the metaphysical at the deepest level, especially in the Crisis, where he discusses the forgotten origins of science in the life-world and argues for a kind of transcendental grounding of meaning and rationality. Meta-metaphysical, if you like. — Wayfarer

Nice term. He's not doing metaphysics as such, but commenting on the space where they may take place.

Nicely put. I have no real sense what philosophy is for and as far as the average person is concerned, I think we inherit presuppositions, and even our reflections on these are based on sets of presuppositions.

The term 'help' may be ambiguous, but surely it is possible for indivduals to know what helps, and what hinders, them? — Janus

Not sure if that helps. To a Marxist help is going to look very different than to a Randian. I'm not convinced we all inhabit the same world, see the same things, recognise the same barriers or enablers of good practice (for want of a better term).

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p143

Would you describe Husserl as a secular philosopher who avoided metaphysical and spiritual claims altogether, or as someone who bracketed such matters without affirming or denying them?

I think life is more important than philosophy. If philosophy cannot help us to live better, then what use can it be beyond being an interesting diversion? — Janus

We often talk about philosophy as if it’s a single activity. Traditionalists would probably argue that many versions of philosophy aren’t truly philosophical, or are simply dead ends and mistaken paths. One issue with philosophy is that it has no clear starting or end point. It’s an umbrella term for a range of activities and ideas, so disparate and complex, it’s a wonder we have any agreement on this site at all.

To determine whether philosophy helps us live better might amount to a kind of conceptual trap. An infinite regress, even. How can we do this without relying on philosophy to decide what “living better” even means? And even the verb “help” is somewhat ambiguous.

Yet behold! An epoch where even the philosophers are decadents. Even? Especially the philosophers! And now they've even made it to the Big Leagues—all the way to the Oval Office. I am not sure if being filtered through Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, and "Bronze Age Pervert," (complete with a return to radical asceticism in the form of fasting tax payer funds) jives with the original intent, but it certainly demonstrates the rollicking freedom of thought. :wink: (This, of course, ignores the philosophers who made themselves into accountants, but that's what people do with them—ignore).

When the Last Men become First, they can make themselves into Overmen—even colonize Mars if they want. The difficulty is that they fancy themselves Milton's Satan—or Macbeth, holding the dagger that killed God—and yet really they play Iago to themselves; yet it's not like the human race was ever more than the womb for AGI and Capital anyhow, the prime matter for the instantiation of Mammon, who's destined to birth Roko's Basilisk (i.e., ol' Jörmungandr, whose fiberoptic tail wraps tightly round the Earth underneath the waves even now). Volanturism clears away the old form and the ol' Demiurge—Yaldy-Baddy himself—shakes his mane, uncoils his tail, and does the rest. Dostoevsky was right about the Inverse Tower of Babel, bringing Heaven down to Earth, but missed that achieving this Brave New World would first require recreating God's punishment: linguistic atomization and separation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you might be right. Are we witnessing the end of one order and the beginning of another, or is it just the same preoccupations, endlessly repackaged and reinterpreted for our age? Hard to say whether it's a rupture or just another loop in the cycle.

I think post-modern man is a myth; a bit like sasquatch. It seems to me that all supposed "post-moderns" achieve is Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid modernity." — Count Timothy von Icarus

What would a post-modern man consist of? I can't tell, is Bauman's liquid modernity a stage between the modern and the post or is it what we actually have, the 'post' in this view being an erroneous prefix?

Wasn't Alain Badiou largely motivated by a strong critique of postmodernism and a concern about the rise of relativism and the disappearance of any commitment to truth? He was certainly critical of thinkers like Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, whose work he saw as contributing to a loss of faith in universality and radical politics. In other words, Badiou had his own philosophical vision to sell, which as at odds with the above thinkers. Should we trust his assessment?

Tom, it is not a Hobbesian view, but there are two categories of descriptively moral behaviors. — Mark S

It is. In Chapter 28 of Leviathan, Of Punishments, and Reward, he writes that without fear of punishment people would simply follow their own interests and ignore the common good. It's a view held by many. But so what? So you share a view with Hobbes (and you like game theory).

As far as I can see, postmodernism just regurgitates ideas that have been around for a long time and tries to apply them to modern life and politics. Strikes me that to the extent it is influential, it’s primarily influential among philosophers, not the public at large. — T Clark

I’m not smart enough to get the most out of po-mo but our mutual friend here - Streetlight - was right into it and gave me some insight into the brilliance of it with a personal tour. And he was smart as fuck. The fashionable view is that PM is derivative and relativistic flap doodle which suggests to me there might be something to it. It may still be too early…

That’s not a perspective shift—it’s a full-blown collapse of physical reality into narrative illusion. — RogueAI

Well yes, idealism is the ‘collapse’ of physical reality. I’m not an idealist but the case can be made and Kastrup seems to do a better job than most. One needs to read him closely - he’s easy to misconstrue. But this is for one of the idealism threads where this stuff has been given a thorough work out.