When I think about something I will do tomorrow, that, "what I will do" is a thing in my mind, and it is a future thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not future, it's happening right now, not in the future. If I have a thought, that thought occurs now, not in the future. So what future are you talking about? I might be thinking about what I will do tomorrow, but tomorrow is my distinction, which is occurring right now in the present. There is no tomorrow.

In the example, he is thinking about an apartment he will furnish in the future. The act of rearranging is clearly driven by this anticipation. In all these acts, which Manzotti refers to, rearranging the furniture, juggling words, and the child learning, we can ask why does the person who does this, do this. The answer is always that the person anticipates a future need. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree that the person always anticipates a future need. What if I'm just imagining different ways chess pieces could be arranged on a chess board just for fun? For no purpose (that is located in the future) at all?

First, he doesn't properly distinguish between past and future, such that all objects in the mind, are explained by encounters with past objects (memories). — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think there is any past or future in his vision. There is just the present. The past and the future are merely distinctions in the present. There is no other time but the present moment.

An "agent" is a source of activity, an efficient cause. I really don't know how, you could explain any rearranging, juggling, or learning, going on without a source of activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

So why can't the activity have no source? Why can't the activity just be? Where is the logical contradiction in this? It's only when we try to play a specific game, and look at the activity as something that we can predict, that we hypothesise a "past" and a "future", which are merely useful fictions. To use an economic example.

I was talking with ssu awhile ago about financial value. So I said that every businessman and investor wants to know the REAL value of an asset, not the market value, under the assumption that in the long-term, even if in the short-term the market can undervalue / overvalue it, the market will approach that real value. But why does the businessman / investor want to know this real value in the first place? Because they want to make a profit - they want to know what will happen to the markets so they can position themselves to make a profit. So what if there is actually no real value, and it is only their desire that makes them hypothesize a real value, which can be used to take decisions, and even very successful decisions, even though it's not real, and it's just a fiction? What if time (past and future) are likewise merely useful fictions?

But there is a break in the chain of efficient causation when the object goes into memory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay, but you're presupposing a certain view of time here. You're viewing time as something that flows as it were. Why can't there be no time? There is change, a continuous change, but without a past or a future. What you call past or future are merely useful fictions. You use this fiction to say that the past events cause the current ones. But why can't current events always include the so called past? Maybe the present doesn't include just what is visible, but rather it includes everything within itself, and we just break it up into future and past for ease of analysis.

I don't know what you are saying here. — Cavacava

Just that you are developing concepts in experience (such as "being born", "physical structures"), and then turn around and use them to explain the causes of your experience (which are clearly outside of experience). You're just being circular.

I know that the concept of individuation will only enter awareness AFTER experience, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist prior to experience as an activity. — Agustino

Get a life.
I've no idea what is wrong with your ability to think.

But isn't a basic purpose of learning the construction of our world, which affects how we understanding it. We learn that objects don't just disappear when they go out of sight, that a ball rolls somewhere, we learn to think causally because this methodology is successful. Our conclusions are the product of our bodies ability to interact with the world and our ability to learn from those interactions.

Being circular can be a problem for logical thought, but I don't that has any bearing on what we experience phenomenally. The stick is phenomenally bent in water that's the way we experience it, we conclude that it is not bent, that light refracts its image and that the stick only appears bent. There is nothing wrong with this distinction assuming our senses are working properly. The conclusion that the stick is not bent, forms the basis of our understand of how light gets refracted, but it does not stop the stick from looking bent.

It's not future, it's happening right now, not in the future. If I have a thought, that thought occurs now, not in the future. So what future are you talking about? I might be thinking about what I will do tomorrow, but tomorrow is my distinction, which is occurring right now in the present. There is no tomorrow. — Agustino

The "thing thought about" is in the future. We have a distinction between the act of thinking, which is in the present, and the "thing thought about". In this case (Manzotti's interview), the things thought about are words. The existence of the words in thought is attributed to the past encounters with the physical occurrence of words. However, since we are discussing "things thought about", we must include things thought about which are in the future as well. We cannot just ignore the "things thought about" which are in the future, to focus on past "things thought about", just because the future "things thought about" do not fit into our preferred ontology. That will produce a lopsided and ineffective ontology

I disagree that the person always anticipates a future need. What if I'm just imagining different ways chess pieces could be arranged on a chess board just for fun? For no purpose (that is located in the future) at all? — Agustino

You can say things which are nonsense. Just because you can talk about doing something without purpose, doesn't mean that you can actually do that. When you decide to do something purposeless, then in making that decision, to do something purposeless, you have already given that act purpose.

I don't think there is any past or future in his vision. There is just the present. The past and the future are merely distinctions in the present. There is no other time but the present moment. — Agustino

That's false, the objects of thought in Manzotti's description are past encounters. Yet his description of thinking is to put these objects in relationships with future events:

Imagine you’re lying in bed planning to furnish a house you’ll soon be moving to in a distant town.
[future event]
...
When we say we are thinking, what we are actually doing is rearranging causal relations with past events, objects that we have encountered before, to see what happens when we combine them.
[past encounters]

What if time (past and future) are likewise merely useful fictions? — Agustino

I doesn't matter if it's fictional or not, past and future is a division which enters into Manzotti's description of thinking. Because it is an integral part of his description, then it is real as per that description. To say it is fictional is to say that his description is fictional.

One could perhaps produce a description without the references to future and past, but it wouldn't be Manzotti's description, it would be completely irrelevant to Manzotti. According to Manzotti, the existence of words, and other objects of thought, within the human mind in the act of thinking, is derived from past encounters. If we remove the past, claiming that the past is fictional, then there is no source for any objects of thought in the human mind. We're left with nothing.

Get a life.
I've no idea what is wrong with your ability to think. — charleton

I wonder what you'd say to Kant :p

We learn that objects don't just disappear when they go out of sight, that a ball rolls somewhere, we learn to think causally because this methodology is successful. — Cavacava

This isn't saying anything really. All that you're telling me is that I learn how to manipulate my experience better. I know that if a ball goes out of sight, there is a way to retrieve it, and that is by turning my head first, so that it enters into sight, and then going after it.

Our conclusions are the product of our bodies ability to interact with the world and our ability to learn from those interactions. — Cavacava

Why "bodies"? There are no bodies. There is just experience.

The stick is phenomenally bent in water that's the way we experience it, we conclude that it is not bent, that light refracts its image and that the stick only appears bent. — Cavacava

And what do you really mean by it isn't really bent? All that you mean is that in a certain experience (looking at the stink in water from outside the water), it really is bent. And that in a different experience - looking at the stick in water from inside the water yourself - it isn't bent. All that is, is two different experiences. Why do you feel the need to pick and choose one as the "reality" and the other as the "appearance"? You should take both of them as equally valid, because, in fact, they are. The only reason why you prioritise the one over the other is because it makes calculations easy - so again, predictions. Because you want to predict, you create the useful fiction of 'reality' and 'appearance', when in truth, no such distinction exists.

Same idea with the "size" of an object. A desk really is smaller when seen from far away. There is no "real" size as such of the desk. All that you're doing is that by your own fiat you say that the real size is the size you measure with a ruler that touches the desk. Why? Because you want it to have a size that you can measure in order to manipulate it better. So you create a useful fiction.

The "thing thought about" is in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, there is no thing apart from the thought. The thing is the thought. Or if you don't like it this way, there is one thought (the word) and another thought (idea, ie vague impression) which is the thing. Both are in the present.

We have a distinction between the act of thinking, which is in the present, and the "thing thought about". — Metaphysician Undercover

Why?

I doesn't matter if it's fictional or not, past and future is a division which enters into Manzotti's description of thinking. Because it is an integral part of his description, then it is real as per that description. To say it is fictional is to say that his description is fictional. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, his description is fictional, just like it's fictional when we say that the sun goes down. But it's a useful fiction.

The stick is phenomenally bent in water that's the way we experience it, we conclude that it is not bent, that light refracts its image and that the stick only appears bent. — Cavacava

And what do you really mean by it isn't really bent? All that you mean is that in a certain experience (looking at the stink in water from outside the water), it really is bent. And that in a different experience - looking at the stick in water from inside the water yourself - it isn't bent. All that is, is two different experiences. Why do you feel the need to pick and choose one as the "reality" and the other as the "appearance"? You should take both of them as equally valid, because, in fact, they are. The only reason why you prioritise the one over the other is because it makes calculations easy - so again, predictions. Because you want to predict, you create the useful fiction of 'reality' and 'appearance', when in truth, no such distinction exists. — Agustino

In addition to my previous remarks, consider a game. I play a game when the experience of seeing a stick bent in water is the signal to participants in the game to take a certain key action. Would I, in those cirumstances, say that the stick isn't really bent? No, of course not! Because it really is bent in that case. So as you can see, depending on what is useful to us, we make different choices in the distinctions we make. This doesn't make those distinctions real.

Why do you feel the need to pick and choose one as the "reality" and the other as the "appearance"?

The phenomenal is real, it is the basis for what we conclude, not the other way around.

The phenomenal is real, it is the basis for what we conclude, not the other way around. — Cavacava

Right, so if everything is the phenomenal, then we don't have access to anything beyond it.

If by that you mean things in them self, things outside of us, then yes I agree no access. It is a different story when it comes to the body, which is not beyond us, which is in my estimation the locus of the unity we call our self.

I think Kant would be as confused at your thinking as others are.

Right, so if everything is the phenomenal, then we don't have access to anything beyond it. — Agustino

This sort of misbegotten hyperbole is an example of the crazy world of Gusto.

I think Kant would be as confused at your thinking as others are. — charleton

I don't think you've read Kant. Or at any rate understood what he was saying. If you did, you would know that Kant spoke of transcendental conditions which must exist for any experience at all to be possible.

If by that you mean things in them self, things outside of us, then yes I agree no access. It is a different story when it comes to the body, which is not beyond us, which is in my estimation the locus of the unity we call our self. — Cavacava

I don't think it makes sense to talk of things "outside" of us, if by that we mean outside of experience. Our body is known within experience, and it is known as well as any other things can be known within experience.

I don't think it makes sense to talk of things "outside" of us, if by that we mean outside of experience. Our body is known within experience, and it is known as well as any other things can be known within experience.

Of course it makes sense to talk of things outside our self. These manifestation of the phenomenal are due to something, I see the smoke and I assume fire. We can talk about space exploration but I doubt I will ever experience it. We don't hold objects in existence by our thought, I only suggest that we can't know these things with any kind of absolute certainty, since they are our conclusions based on our phenomenal experience and there is no guarantee that our thought corresponds to the way things are in the world.

Our body is not like any other thing, it is not outside of us it is the limit, what separates the inside from the outside. Our intimacy with our body is unlike our experience with anything else.

Of course it makes sense to talk of things outside our self. — Cavacava

Notice the continuation "if by that we mean outside of experience"? I will take that as a yes. If so, then no, I disagree. The smoke and the assumed fire are both within the realm of phenomenal experience. We see the effect and must look for the cause within experience - there are no causes outside of experience.

Our body is not like any other thing, it is not outside of us it is the limit, what separates the inside from the outside. — Cavacava

I disagree that any such a limit really exists. Everything I experience is the same. I experience pain, just like I experience sunshine. Why is one outside, and the other inside? It seems somewhat arbitrary.

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from? — Agustino

This is how it seems to me:

Individuation is inherent to experience. Experience is obviously possible without an explicit concept of individuation. The ability to reflect on experience that comes with symbolic language use apparently allows us to reflect on what is inherent in experience. So, the question as to where individuation comes from seems ill-formed; perhaps you should be asking where experience comes from instead. (I don't think that question can be answered, though, since the very idea of 'getting outside of experience' in order to answer it is incoherent).

So, individuation comes with experience; they interdependently co-arise, and the explicit concept of individuation is enabled by symbolic language use. The idea of individuation is inherent in symbolic language use, but that idea need not be explicit. It is made explicit by reflection on what is entailed by experience.

Notice the continuation "if by that we mean outside of experience"? I will take that as a yes. If so, then no, I disagree. The smoke and the assumed fire are both within the realm of phenomenal experience. We see the effect and must look for the cause within experience - there are no causes outside of experience.

We build on our conclusions, when I see smoke, I don't have to see the fire to imagine it. I can imagine how it might feel to be weightless in space, even though I have never experienced it. We conclude causes we don't experience them as such, and we can be wrong.

[/quote]I disagree that any such a limit really exists. Everything I experience is the same. I experience pain, just like I experience sunshine. Why is one outside, and the other inside? It seems somewhat arbitrary.
[/quote]

I feel the warmth of the sun on my body when I go outside my house but the sun I see, I conclude is way outside of me, it is at a distance unlike my warm skin which is at no distance from me. The pain I feel from my stubbed toe, is hardly the same as my experience of the chair that I stubbed it on. How can you not get this difference, since it is only through our body that we can experience the world?

I feel the warmth of the sun on my body when I go outside my house but the sun I see, I conclude is way outside of me, it is at a distance unlike my warm skin which is at no distance from me. The pain I feel from my stubbed toe, is hardly the same as my experience of the chair that I stubbed it on. How can you not get this difference, since it is only through our body that we can experience the world? — Cavacava

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? All that we mean by "sun" is a certain cumulation or association of experiences (the certain warmth, the certain sight, etc.)

We build on our conclusions, when I see smoke, I don't have to see the fire to imagine it. I can imagine how it might feel to be weightless in space, even though I have never experienced it. We conclude causes we don't experience them as such, and we can be wrong. — Cavacava

But still, there will be no fire outside of your (possible) experience.

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? All that we mean by "sun" is a certain cumulation or association of experiences (the certain warmth, the certain sight, etc.) — Agustino

And building on that, likewise, your body is also a cumulation of experiences, and nothing more. So in the end, it's all experience - both your body and the sun. There is nothing apart from the experience.

Just that you are developing concepts in experience (such as "being born", "physical structures"), and then turn around and use them to explain the causes of your experience (which are clearly outside of experience). You're just being circular. — Agustino

The circularity would apply equally to your questioning here as it would to Cava's answer that you are questioning.

SO, if some of our philosophical discourse is circular in this way, then absolutely all of our philosophical discourse is circular in this way, in which case there could be no point to any philosophical discussion at all.

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? All that we mean by "sun" is a certain cumulation or association of experiences (the certain warmth, the certain sight, etc.)

Your use of the word 'experience' is equivocal, not all our experiences are external to us. Our experience of the world forms the basis for internal experiences, what we imagine or conclude about what we experienced, our train of thought these too are experienced.

your body is also a cumulation of experiences, and nothing more

Our body is our only access to experiences in the great outdoors, it also provides me with my only access to the experience of my thoughts, my inner world. It is unique and as I previously stated the locus for unification of the self.

What would that look like? — Banno

Hard to say without using the word "red".

The point here is that red is not a thing in the head so much as a relation between behaviour and the way things are. — Banno

I would include cognition; a relation between cognition, behavior and the way things are. For me the salient point would be that cognition is not "in the head" any more than behavior or the way things are is

No, there is no thing apart from the thought. The thing is the thought. — Agustino

You are misrepresenting Manzotti's position. The word is an "external object" which is "encountered". Therefore it must exist prior to the thought which contains it. Unless the thought actually creates the word, the word necessarily exists apart from the thought. But Manzotti's description is that we encounter the word as an object, not that the word is created by thought.

If you want to put forth an ontology in which the thought actually creates the word, then this is completely different from Manzotti's. And you'll still have to account for the physical presence of the word, when we speak and write it down. This is when the word is separated from the thought, and this is inconsistent with your statement that there is no word apart from the thought.

Sure, his description is fictional, just like it's fictional when we say that the sun goes down. But it's a useful fiction. — Agustino

I don't see it as a useful fiction, I see it as a misguided ontology. And, if someone presented me an ontology which described the sun as going down, and going around the earth to come up on the other side in the morning, I would say it's a misguided ontology. Manzotti's ontology is very primitive and useless because he provides no distinction between particular instances of objects which we remember from the past, and general, universal principles, which we apply toward the future.

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? — Agustino

And building on that, likewise, your body is also a cumulation of experiences, and nothing more. So in the end, it's all experience - both your body and the sun. There is nothing apart from the experience. — Agustino

Well, I for one like to think there's more to the world than what meets the eye (including my neighbor's dog). Solipsism is a performative contradiction.