You mean preferences?
— Posty McPostface
I mean, there's a tale in the realm of economics that asserts that diamonds are more valuable than water; but, not at all times.
Are you a Tractarian by any chance? The world is the totality of facts not things. Therefore, we must analyze the state space we both inhabit. This can only be done through perfect asymmetrical information sharing. — Posty McPostface
To me it's not particularly useful to say that the world is the totality of facts. Or its useful for one particular purpose. I think roughly that Wittgenstein was annoyed at people being scientistic about religion and art, and that that was part of his goal, to reveal the mystery by clearing out the confusion. — macrosoft
Ideas are mental phenomena. As such, they occur "in persons' heads." They're literally brain states that the person has--it's what it's like to BE that brain (or rather those parts of that brain), in those dynamic states. — Terrapin Station
Indeed. But, what's wrong with stating that the world is the totality of facts and not things? This seems elementary to me. — Posty McPostface
I mean "preferences" is true, but it doesn't sound like as much fun. — Michael Ossipoff
I'm not even saying I disagree, but what is a fact for you? Merely offering the phrase out of context doesn't say much. This is my tedious meaning holism. To figure out what that sentence means to you, I have to get to know you. By all means, tell me how it exists for you in context. — macrosoft
Sounds that people can make with their mouths, things they can type or handwrite, body motions they can make, etc. are not at all the same as ideas they have. Those things are correlated to ideas, but they're not the same as them. — Terrapin Station
But, I have expressed holism by stating that the totality of the world are facts. — Posty McPostface
I mean to assert that things are really just facts that we can agree on. There are also bedrock beliefs we can agree on. — Posty McPostface
Yeah, or the stuff we can all agree on that we stand upon. — Posty McPostface
Hmm, this is ambiguous. Don't you agree that because I have two hands (fortunately) that the external world exists? — Posty McPostface
Banno, unenlightened, what do you chaps think? — Posty McPostface
I just mean that though likes can be called preferences, that word sounds unnecessarily neutral. "Likes" more fully expresses their positive nature. — Michael Ossipoff
I don't think this does justice to what we mean and experience. I can totally relate, though, to relating our experiences of being a brain to measurable aspects of the brain as an object. I know that I can swallow certain pills and make pain go away. But really we don't talk about our thoughts and feelings in the same way that we talk about objects. We can say that thoughts and feelings are 'really' just objects, but this seems to add too much to the uncontroversial relationship of thoughts/feelings and brains. — macrosoft
Agreed, and the light that hits are eyes is not the tree. But one can say that we see the tree, that the light reveals the tree to us through our eyes. So the marks and noises communicate something we call meaning. On the level of preferences, I lean this way. — macrosoft
Secondly, if Terrapin Station is right, how do we understand what he meant? — Banno
Why do you think that it's important for philosophizing to be consistent with the way that most people talk about something? What if the way that those people talk about something is based on incorrect beliefs — Terrapin Station
By the fact that understanding and communication do not at all work via literally sharing meanings. — Terrapin Station
I don't know what to make out of that superficial distinctions you have made. Thoughts — Posty McPostface
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