it must require absolutely enormous skills and intellect to try and do that. And at this time, as is often discussed, mathematical cosmology is beset by a number of enormous conceptual problems which I know I can't even understand. — Wayfarer
I think it's in this sort of key, if you like, that philosophy, as distinct from science, considers 'the nature of being' - not as an attempt to arrive at a putative first cause in the sense that science would demand or require, through an analysis of the mass and scope of the Cosmos, but more of an intuitive insight. (That article, by the way, made much of Heidegger's indebtedness to taoism.) — Wayfarer
How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another. — Wittgenstein
If this work has a value it consists in two things. First that in it thoughts are expressed, and this value will be the greater the better the thoughts are expressed. The more the nail has been hit on the head.—Here I am conscious that I have fallen far short of the possible. Simply because my powers are insufficient to cope with the task.—May others come and do it better. — W
We don't experience the same world, there are a lot of similarities and a lot of differences. — leo
I think the call for the pitchforks might have more to do with a certain kind of temperament than whether one subscribes to realism or not.
The more natural response for an intellectually curious realist would be to investigate why the new person thinks differently to the others given that they're all interacting in the same world. — Andrew M
Personally I have mostly encountered intellectually incurious realists, who believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, who ridicule and dismiss those who believe differently as cranks, adepts of pseudoscience, believers of supernatural bullshit, brain diseased, delusional, too stupid to see why they are wrong. — leo
But the mind-independent framework has a lot of intractable and unsettling problems. In that framework we cannot explain how we can experience anything. We never see things as they are. Free will is very limited or inexistent. Why do these things bother us so much? Maybe because they are not an accurate representation of existence. These problems go away if we stop assuming a mind-independent reality. — leo
Indeed. Personally I have mostly encountered intellectually incurious realists, who believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, who ridicule and dismiss those who believe differently as cranks, adepts of pseudoscience, believers of supernatural bullshit, brain diseased, delusional, too stupid to see why they are wrong. — leo
I think you are forgetting how familiar we all are with wishful thinking and its dangers. While it is sometimes geniuses who are thinking differently, perhaps that's the exception. — g0d
If we stop assuming that our senses give us access to some reality "out there" independent of us then we don't have to deal with this conundrum.
— leo
But then we cannot explain how it is that we all experience the same world of things, given that our experience tells us that our minds are not directly connected at all. — Janus
Earnest philosophy presupposes a reality about which the philosophers can be right or wrong. Or am I wrong? And if I'm wrong, what am I wrong about if not reality? — g0d
The superman is fascinating. I think of 'Him' as a twisted Christ image. What I take away from Nietzsche is ultimately the presentation /celebration / defense of some classic 'masculine' virtues. Now I love Nietzsche, but I am skeptical about creating one's own values. How do we decide which values to create or keep if not by the values we already have? — g0d
(↪Merkwurdichliebe there's 'the reign of quantity'). — Wayfarer
So the idea that one could exist in and for oneself alone is, I think, a fantasy. — Wayfarer
which covers an enormous range of things — Wayfarer
As for N.'s 'death of God' - I think that really means the death of the ability to believe, as man has outgrown the myths and tropes which sustain the belief. But whether or not you believe in God, He is, by definition, not something literally subject to death. (Totally different topics however.) — Wayfarer
the ability to believe — Wayfarer
That would be a great topic, and very incendiary: "Masculine virtues contrasted with feminine virtues". I propose g0d or Janus make the OP. — Merkwurdichliebe
You brought up the notion of inproving one's own character by 'seeing the world aright'. — Merkwurdichliebe
And in the context of life philosophy, in which objective truth is irrelevant and my life is preeminent, the creation of my own values (in the context of improving my character) is of the utmost priority. — Merkwurdichliebe
each individual must discover/create the values in his own life and apply them in his living of life. Yet, there is no basis for prescribing correct character, neither through consensus nor scientific knowledge - that is called ideology, and it is a very frightening proposition. — Merkwurdichliebe
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s7-3Now if we stop at these absolutely empty forms which originate from the absoluteness of the abstract ego, nothing is treated in and for itself and as valuable in itself, but only as produced by the subjectivity of the ego. But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains. To admit or cancel it depends wholly on the pleasure of the ego, already absolute in itself simply as ego. Now thirdly, the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself.
Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming one’s life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc., – by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential, so that I only become essential myself in my own eyes in so far as I have immersed myself in such a content and have brought myself into conformity with it in all my knowing and acting. When the ego that sets up and dissolves everything out of its own caprice is the artist, to whom no content of consciousness appears as absolute and independently real but only as a self-made and destructible show, such earnestness can find no place, since validity is ascribed only to the formalism of the ego.
True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free)[52] as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical. — Hegel
I cannot rely on any ideological formula for correct character, and if I do, I am not determining my own character, I am mimicking what is prescribed by another. — Merkwurdichliebe
The paradox is that I attempt all this as a blind man, with no clue as to what constitutes correctness of character or how it might be attained to. — Merkwurdichliebe
But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory. — Nietzsche
Which is true as far as it goes - but what does it leave out? How to arrive at detached and sagacious judgements regarding anything that *can't* be described in terms of quantitative analysis? — Wayfarer
This is that amongst the many attributes of a Buddha is Yathabhutam, 'seeing things as they truly are'. I think there is a parallel concept in Stoic philosophy. Anyway, in traditional philosophy, this requires the attributes of sagacity and detachment, of being able to view things detached from any sense of self-interest, desire or aversion. Now, modern scientific method was also aiming at this, with the crucial distinction that the means by which it chose to arrive at this judgement were purely quantitative (↪Merkwurdichliebe there's 'the reign of quantity'). And that's because of Galileo's emphasis on the superiority of dianoia (mathematical knowledge) which he derived from Plato (not forgetting that one of the key figures of the Italian renaissance was Ficino, who first translated Plato into Latin.) — Wayfarer
And, whatever anyone's motives are, there remains the issue of the merit of the arguments. — Andrew M
The only explanation for this other than that doorways etc. really are where we perceive them to be is that our minds, including animal minds, are all connected in some indiscernible and unimaginable way. If the latter explanation is what you want to go for then I think you need to posit God or a universal mind or something along those lines. But then you also need to provide some reason why we should think that to be a more plausible explanation than the idea that things simply exist in their own right. — Janus
Is this even true of realists who like philosophy? Of course there are rude people around. — g0d
We only never see things as they are if we insist that reality is hidden. You claim there is an apple in the cabinet. We both check and it's gone. Then we theorize about what happened. What can't we call that apple real? Must we call its molecules real instead? Why aren't those molecules just another aspect of the same apple? — g0d
For me the issue is that you imply that the theory of mind-independent reality could be wrong. Wrong in relation to what? — g0d
I'd say the rudest are the professional physicists, they base all their reasonings and career on the belief in an objective reality, they consider themselves to be uncovering and probing the fundamental constituents of reality, — leo
If only you saw that apple, and no one else can find a reasonable explanation for its disappearance, then you might start being seen as delusional, as not being able to discern reality. Was the apple real? Well to you it was. To everyone else, you imagined it. — leo
Self-contradictory. But the self-contradiction doesn't exist out there in relation to another mind-independent reality, it is a mind seeing a self-contradiction. — leo
Mask is lens. — g0d
There are plenty of things that used to be considered real that aren't considered real anymore, and plenty of things that didn't use to be considered real that are now considered real. There is a lot that shows that what we call reality is socially constructed. — leo
I gave some reasons in that post https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/298936 , you might have missed it. — leo
But we have to consider that the human mind in a biological sense, and also in terms of the kind of minds we have due to a common culture and language, means we do indeed perceive the same objects and in some sense the same world, even though 'the act of perception' is something that requires the mind. — Wayfarer
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