OK, well there's not much point continuing if the discussion has exceeded your intellectual capacities. :wink:

Not to mention your poor teaching abilities. (Under the charitable interpretation that you're not just forwarding nonsense at this point.)

My "teaching abilities" or the coherence of what I have been saying would be in question if no one, or even the majority of people, could understand it (for which it is not necessary to agree, obviously). I doubt that is the case, and on the basis of a sample size of one who says he cannot even understand what I have been saying; I find poor comprehension skills, limited imagination or simply refusal to admit understanding, as an evasive tactic, to be more likely explanations.

No, I'm not sure what that's supposed to refer to, because all I believe exists are particulars. — Terrapin Station

Right, and just a few hours ago you were talking about the existence of music, and matter. How you contradict yourself.

The point isn't for it to have "weight," though, either. It's just to accurately describe the world in a way that's coherent/that makes sense. — Terrapin Station

I can relate to this project. What I meant by 'weight' was something like a clarifying force. Any 'ism' that doesn't understand what motivates its opposite is likely to be shallow and miss exactly the part of the problem that the other side sees. Framing the situation as the combat of positions might already stultify the pursuit of that coherent description of what is. At the very least a one-sided position that sees its opponent as absurd is failing to give a plausible account of that opposing position. If one really understands the opponent, then one can trace the logic of that opponent to the place where it goes wrong.

From my perspective, idealism and materialism both see complementary aspects of what is. For me the natural move (and maybe the natural move of thinking in general ) would be to synthesize these insights (which various thinkers have already tried to do.) IMV it's illuminating to consider what the idealism vs. materialism debate presupposes in order to exist as a debate. What does philosophizing 'blindly' assume as it speaks outward about what is to others?

Right, and just a few hours ago you were talking about the existence of music, and matter. How you contradict yourself. — Metaphysician Undercover

Some people refuse to admit when they are in over their depth, they will twist and challenge everything rather than accept that they may be wrong about something. This has been an excellent discussion thread that Terrapin is intent on degrading down to a level where he can make his points heard.

If I could go back and delete all of his posts from this thread we would actually have a pretty solid piece of philosophy here. Thank you Meta, Janus and wayfarer, you have all brought valuable points to the discussion. I suggest that we just stop answering this Terrapin until he starts doing some philosophy.

There is a shared world that is represented in unique, yet similar, ways in unique, yet similar, minds. — Harry Hindu

I agree, and denying this would seem to make the very project of philosophy senseless. What is one denying exactly if there is no shared worlds or similar minds? We are talking to others about something relevant to or existing for us all.

What maybe becomes interesting then is what is means for us to able to talk to another (to share in a language.) Just as we talk about the objects we share in one and the same world, we really on something like a realm of shared concepts that are there not only for our senses (the sound of voice and the sight of faces and marks) but also for some other hypothetical faculty (an innate capacity to largely live 'in' this realm as we live among the usual objects.) The ego that proclaims its isolation in the 'I am' and 'I doubt all that is not me' uses concepts are already intelligible to others. Anyone can speak the 'I,' so that the 'I' refers beyond the pituitary gland from which it spies on a perfectly private realm.

You can separate the formal and material causes of substantial being. So you can point to the form - the bottle - and you can point to the matter - the glass. But then you are losing sight of the thing you thought you were talking about - substantial being - in saying the form "just is" the matter. — apokrisis

Exactly. In some ways collapsing distinctions (this is 'really' just that) is simply moving backwards on the dialectical trail. A forward movement might instead take up those same distinctions 'under erasure' as partial and therefore incomplete truths or positions. A stitch in the coherence tempts us either to ignore it or fix it with more narrative or thinking. Distinctions accumulate. Our thinking becomes more differentiated and complex, containing our previous positions along with their limitations and what we did to synthesize them and proceed. From this position accepting the 'X versus Y' framework as we find it (uncritically) is itself the confusion. The staging of the issue is the heart of the issue perhaps.

Descartes employs a two prong retreat (mind and matter) from solipsism but is left with the mind-body problem as well as a few others. — Jamesk

I think a vague dualism is defensible in terms of understanding the distinction to be non-absolute. Another fix might be to recognize the intrinsic 'sociality of reason' (Terry Pinkard). None of this has to be understood in mechanical terms (like perfectly distinct matter-stuff and mind-stuff.)

As I see it, our life among both others with minds like our own and things without minds is more or less primary. Calling everything mind or matter even looks like a strange game from this perspective. What is the urge that drives such a project? Why cover over the complexity with a renaming that abolishes all living distinctions? Do I eat 'mind' when I eat a triscuit? Is my own mother 'really' just matter? We can assert such things and even defend them, but we don't stop treating triscuits and mothers and very different entities. This gap between theory and practice fascinates me. For me it points back to a questioning of the questioning. Why or how am I invested in materialism versus idealism? What is at stake?

If we saw people as minds the world would be very different. Ignore the body, the sex, the social position and just focus on the mind. That is where our individuality lies, it is everything important in our lives. It is the next stage of evolution that the materialists are not yet ready for and so do all they can to focus on wealth, beauty and fun.

If we saw people as minds the world would be very different. Ignore the body, the sex, the social position and just focus on the mind. That is where our individuality lies, it is everything important in our lives. It is the next stage of evolution that the materialists are not yet ready for and so do all they can to focus on wealth, beauty and fun. — Jamesk

I agree that our highest or most individual selves are in something like our (passionate) minds. What to me is fascinating is that our highest reaches of individuality are directed 'outward' toward an ideal community. I am most fascinated by that in 'myself' which transcends me in some sense, but not as an 'alien' object. Instead what I have in mind is a best self that I can live toward or up to, along with a sense of the universality of the virtue involved.

Personally I'd give wealth, beauty, and fun their due --especially beauty and fun (the worship of wealth for its own sake is hard to defend.) For me beauty and fun live at the heart of philosophy. Ultimately I think we want our lives to be beautiful and fun, which is not to insist on some shallow beauty or fun but quite the reverse. What I have in mind is a natural movement toward 'deep' beauty. Perhaps the incoherence or ignorance of an account of what is (of a philosophy) is a kind of ugliness that we seek to repair, so that the pursuit of truth is also a pursuit of beauty. Confusion is a kind of disharmony, perhaps, and thinking is a harmonization that simultaneously creates a new dissonance to be overcome (until maybe, as part of the philosophical dream, a final and stable harmony is achieved that no longer needs to be fixed.) Personally I think we never get to a point where the real stops trembling, but I do think we can live more and more in a sense of harmony (or at least more often in a sense of harmony which is maybe more intense.)

I am most fascinated by that in 'myself' which transcends me in some sense, but not as an 'alien' object. I — sign

That is your Kantian position.

Ultimately I think we want our lives to be beautiful and fun, which is not to insist on some shallow beauty or fun but quite the reverse. — sign

And here we have your Utilitarian / hedonist position.

The trick is finding a balance between the two. If you were only allowed to stick to one of these positions, which one would you choose? Which one has priority?

That is your Kantian position. — Jamesk

Must we fit it into that jacket? IMV, what I am pointing at is likely to interpreted 'mechanically' or in terms of fixed entities. I have something more organic, familiar, and yet elusive in mind. What do your words aim at? They are directed outward not only to me but to anyone who sees them. Do they not aim for further clarification, beyond the current grasping of the situation? And is this further clarification not only mine but anyone's? The clarified truth I strive toward is not just mine and yet it is not alien to me. It is where we all (ideally) meet.

For me there is a deeper kind of structure than the image of the ego viewing the world through some eternal filter. This structure makes that image presentable and valuable in the first place. I have in mind something language understood in its full mysteriousness.

And here we have your Utilitarian / hedonist position. — Jamesk

I am more guilty here. I do propose that we think in the direction of happiness. The word 'pleasure' has a crude connotation. We think of pleasure seekers who neglect the potential for higher states of being. But I find it hard to separate high states of being from some kind of positive feeling, something like a 'deep' pleasure. The pleasure I take in philosophy has a depth or height than typical more-bodily pleasures. I personally still wouldn't oppose lesser pleasures as the enemy of higher pleasures. It may be that a robust sensuality and 'emotional intelligence' in 'the guts' is even essential to the heights of thinking --especially if thinking is directed finally at an ideal community. We have to bring truth to the other as a gift and be open to that same gift for others. The rest largely seems to be a kind of will to claim the center akin to hoarding all the gold. An unfriendly argument just bangs positions together with no interest in synthesis and communion.

Must we fit it into that jacket? — sign

Sir may currently choose between jackets made from three types of material, Virtue, Duty, and Consequence. Once you choose the material there are further choices of 'cut' and 'style' for Sir's jacket, but yes the options are quite limited until someone invents or discovers a new concept. :)

But I find it hard to separate high states of being from some kind of positive feeling, something like a 'deep' pleasure. — sign

In search of our own pleasure we ignore the plight of the weak and of those yet to be born. IMO we need to have duty as the main position for morality. A duty to ourselves, to others, to the world, and to future generations. We must learn to forfeit pleasure for long term security.

Sir may currently choose between jackets made from three types of material, Virtue, Duty, and Consequence. Once you choose the material there are further choices of 'cut' and 'style' for Sir's jacket, but yes the options are quite limited until someone invents or discovers a new concept. :) — Jamesk

OK. How would you categorize the idea that virtue is itself already 'heaven'? It feels good to be good. There are different ways to feel good, but some of the best ways to feel good involve sharing something like beautiful truths with others.

In search of our own pleasure we ignore the plight of the weak and of those yet to be born. IMO we need to have duty as the main position for morality. A duty to ourselves, to others, to the world, and to future generations. We must learn to forfeit pleasure for long term security. — Jamesk

You do touch on a profound issue here. For me to enjoy my 'negative theology' next to my space heater and my clock radio playing classical music, I have to do nothing about a particular person in my mind who may be outside without shoes right now in a tent (it's been cold here.) In theory I could be hosting this person, but this person is in their situation exactly because they tend to turn order into chaos (and recently squandered an unearned, relative fortune on drugs in a spree.)

In short I do see a certain guilt and violence in even the higher pleasures. We are entering Nietzschean terrain. Is the suffering of many justified by the heights that a few can reach? If we embrace duty, on the other hand, are we not instituting a structure of infinite deferral? When are we finally done working and living for the future, a future that only arrives with its own future? I don't have easy answers here. Personally I embrace my 'selfish' yet community-directed higher pleasure. Are we caught within some intrinsically elitist structure? If you or I present duty as above beauty, for instance, are we not raising those who agree with us to a superior status? And is there no pleasure in the sense of such status? A pleasure in righteously denying pleasure?

And what of the pleasure in imposing the truth of duty as above pleasure? Let's think where duty-as-absolute is going. Was it a 'sin' in some sense for Mozart to write his piano sonatas? It may be so. But can we regret that sin?

It feels good to be good. — sign

Kant said that happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.
Nietzsche said that man does not strive for happiness, only the Englishman does that.

Rawls makes an important distinction between good and right, with right taking priority.

[wrong thread]

, but this person is in their situation exactly because they tend to turn order into chaos (and recently squandered an unearned, relative fortune on drugs in a spree.) — sign

You have no way of supporting such a generalization. People fall on hard times through no fault of their own, or by being unlucky. We are all just accidents of geography and family. Those who may have fallen into chaos also cannot be judged, we are all victims of circumstance and you really shouldn't judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.

You have no way of supporting such a generalization. People fall on hard times through no fault of their own, or by being unlucky. We are all just accidents of geography and family. Those who may have fallen into chaos also cannot be judged, we are all victims of circumstance and you really shouldn't judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. — Jamesk

I like the sentiment. I wasn't generalizing though. As I said, I had a particular person in mind. I have lived the difficultly of the situation of defending the order and happiness of my household against the claim of another.

As far as ideal shoulds, I'm not against them. (And if I was it would be an ideal should itself, I think.) But it's not really about anything as abstract as judging. It's more concrete than that. Do you give the junky who knocks on your door at 3AM money for 'food'? Do you let your brother-in-law crash when he very well might steal from you or set your house on fire? One says 'yes' or 'no,' whatever the complexity of one's mental state. Is everyone innocent in some sense? I think so. But that 'in some sense' doesn't slay the dragon of living through concrete situations. If a friend confesses to me that he has committed adultery, am I bound to tell his wife, an acquaintance? [This is a fictional example.] My current view on the matter is a distrust of any algorithmic approach to such things. The problems of real life are something like a collision of duties and values. This does refer back to your essentially Christian perspective (the forgiveness of sin.) As I act within a certain ignorance and darkness toward the good imperfectly grasped, making my own mistakes, I have to forgive other imperfect approaches. I have to try to understand why so-and-so did something I wouldn't have done. Can we learn without a certain openness or forgiveness of difference? Right here and right now the possibilities of our conversation depend on an mutual openness toward one another.

There was a great bit on the trolley problem in The Good Place. This show puts the ethicist in a Hell disguised as Heaven (for being endlessly indecisive and closed off to others in his righteous self-absorption.) He is joined by a stereo-typically selfish and cynical person along with a person obsessed with fame (in terms of charity as conspicuous goodness, of course) and a low-minded dummy. Of course they are all lovable in their way, and they become lovable largely as they learn to love and forgive one another and work together against the devil who runs the place disguised as an angel. In the second season this devil joins them. It was his idea to try a new form of Hell that looked like Heaven and yet was designed to shame its guests. They kept figuring out it was an illusion by coming together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIdNV22LQM

This second part is where it gets hilariously concrete and gory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWb_svTrcOg

The statement 'all that exists are particulars' is a general statement. So if 'all' denotes anything, then the word 'all' must be general, which means the statement is false. because ‘all’ is an existing word; and if it doesn't denote anything, then the statement is meaningless.

then the statement is meaningless. — Wayfarer

We have had a few of those in this thread so far :)

I suggest that we just stop answering this Terrapin until he starts doing some philosophy. — Jamesk

So asking people to ignore someone who doesn't hold your views and doesn't conform to how you think a philosophy discussion ought to be is doing philosophy?

The statement 'all that exists are particulars' is a general statement. So if 'all' denotes anything, then the word 'all' must be general, which means the statement is false. because ‘all’ is an existing word; and if it doesn't denote anything, then the statement is meaningless. — Wayfarer

All is quantifying all instances (not universals :wink:) of the predication of existing with the predication of being particulars. In predicate logic form: ∀x(Ex→Px).

So asking people to ignore someone who doesn't hold your views and doesn't conform to how you think a philosophy discussion ought to be is doing philosophy? — Happenstance

Please read all of his posts before commenting. There is only so much I can take from someone who keeps contradicting his own theory. I am expressing no views here, only discussing two theories.

I will defend each side as equally as I will attack them both. If Terrapin wants to make sophistic arguments then I just ask he does it somewhere else.

If you're saying that realists and idealists are saying the same thing, I don't agree with you. — Terrapin Station

Yet you haven't been able to explain the difference in what they are saying.

The idea of the physical is, among other things, the idea of radical, brute separation of all things from one another, whereas the idea of the mental is the idea of the deep inherent interconnection of all things.

So, if the substance is mental then all things are really one, and if the substance is physical then all things are separate and if interdependent are only so on account of quantifiable mechanical, energetic connections with one another. — Janus

It seems to be the other way around.

Science implies an interconnectedness between everything. You cannot exist without air, water or food. Atoms are just relationships between protons, neutrons and electrons. I have come to realize the interconnectedness of everything through my understanding of science.

When I was religious, there was a separateness that was implied. I was separate from nature - a spirit in a physical world. Dualism implies the same thing - seperateness.

Indirect realism allows for the world to not appear as it actually is. It appears as a representation and how it is represented makes many believe that that is how it actually is. Indirect realism implies that it may appear to be a world of separate objects when in essence everything is interconnected. Science shows this to be the case.

It seems logical that indirect realism would lead many to use some explanation of dualism to explain how they see the world and how they see their mind, but this ignores the fact that the mind and world interact and would be the same type of thing.

Matter is physical and mind is not. — Jamesk

This is begging the question. What is it about "physical" and "non-physical" that are different?

Materialists are gambling that one day they will have advanced enough equipment to actually 'see' our thoughts. Idealists are gambling that science will never be able to so. — Jamesk

We used to think that it was fantasy that human beings would walk on the Moon. What science has done since it's formal inception (the Scientific Method) is beyond what religion and philosophy have done and science has only been around a fraction of the time.

Material is made up of atoms that we can empirically measure. Mental states produce thoughts and ideas which cannot be empirically measured. We do not know how the brain works, all we know is which parts of the brain are working when we are thinking. — Jamesk

Finally you made an attempt to answer my question.

This is wrong. I already went over this with Wayfarer and he didn't disagree.

Measurements are comparisons between similar things, like the length of a meter stick and the length of a rope, or the change in the hands around a clock's face and the change in you falling asleep and waking up again. You measure ideas by comparing them to other ideas. What is it about an idea that you want to measure - it's impact on society, it's coherence? Ideas can be measured empirically.

I'm open to this. I think it's fair, however, to question whether it makes sense to talk about a primary substance. Maybe it does. The mind (or matter in a mind-like mode) seems to aim at unifying experience this way. Let's grant your point. Then all the apparently plurality (all the different kinds of things) would seem merely to be renamed as 'arrangements' or 'modes' of a primary substance. So there is 'really' just one kind of thing. But it's the nature of this primary thing to express itself not only in different modes that ask for useful and illuminating categorization but also this categorization itself.

The primary substance has to be the kind of thing that can mistake itself as a plurality. Moreover the primary substance has to be able to exist in the form of the question too. The primary substance unveils itself as primary substance, within time, by having a conversation with itself. So it also has a memory. It is (or one of its arrangements is) a speaking, thinking mode of primary substance (tempting us to call it a subject all over again.) It is also the world in which these subjects converse. Even if 'mind' and 'matter' are 'false' categorizations in some sense, they are inescapable at least as the ladder with which primary substance learns to grasp itself as one and homogeneous. [All this is just following out the implications of there being a primary substance and us becoming aware of it and how it happened.] — sign

Science explains the smallest unit of matter as protons, neutrons and electrons (or maybe quarks now). The arrangement and amount of protons, neutrons, and electrons dictate the the type of element that emerges on a larger size scale, and the amount and number of atoms dictate the emergent property of molecules on an even larger size scale, and so on, up to galaxies and universes.

What would be the smallest unit of the mind? Ideas? Sensory impressions? It seems to me that it would be the latter as all of our ideas, knowledge, imaginings, language itself is composed of sensory impressions - colors, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, etc. These things come together to form the contents of our minds (emergent properties).

So, which is it? Is the world composed of sensory impressions or quarks?

Indirect realism implies that we would think of the world as dualistic - of being some way independent of how we perceive it. If the world isn't really how we see it, then it probably isn't composed of quarks or atoms, or brains. Brains would simply be a representation of the mind. In a sense, the world would be mind-like but that would be making a category mistake deriving from an anthropomorphic worldview. It would be like a tree claiming that the primary substance is wood-like because that is what the tree is and the world interacts with it so the rest of the world must be wood-like too.

It might make more sense to say that primary "substance" is processes, or relationships. Minds are just a process or relationship. Another term I like to use is, "information". I have referred to the world as being a relationship between causes and their effects. Effects carry information about their causes and information would actually be that relationship between causes and their effects.

As beings in and of the world, our minds are a process of a certain frequency relative to all of the other processes. This relativity between minds and the world are what creates this visual representation of objects. Causal relationships that are very slow in changing relative to how fast our minds process it appear as stable, solid objects. Causal relationships that have higher frequency of change appear as blurs, or aren't perceived at all (think of how reptiles are lethargic when they are cold, and how they perceive the world would be different than if they were warmed up. Their minds process information faster and faster change would appear to slow down.) Our own minds have subjective perceptions of time based on our own mental states. In other words, our minds stretch these causal relationships into what we call space-time, and these causal relationships are the fundamental units of reality.