If we want to discuss a myth, it would be better to choose a true myth: Prometheus, Mary's virginity or the creation of the world according to the Mayas. — David Mo

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/prəˈmiːθiːəs/; Greek: Προμηθεύς, pronounced [promɛːtʰéu̯s], possibly meaning "forethought")[1] is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of humanity from clay, and who defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to humanity as civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a champion of humankind[2] and also seen as the author of the human arts and sciences generally. — Wiki

He sounds like an enlightenment hero, doesn't he?

For the Romantic era, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomised by Zeus – church, monarch, and patriarch. The Romantics drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, the Satan of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the divinely inspired poet or artist. Prometheus is the lyrical "I" who speaks in Goethe's Sturm und Drang poem "Prometheus" (written c. 1772–74, published 1789), addressing God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. In Prometheus Unbound (1820), a four-act lyrical drama, Percy Bysshe Shelley rewrites the lost play of Aeschylus so that Prometheus does not submit to Zeus (under the Latin name Jupiter), but instead supplants him in a triumph of the human heart and intellect over tyrannical religion. — Wiki

Is this not enlightenment humanism personified? And is this not our currently dominant hero myth? In a less spiritualized version, we have capitalism's entrepreneur. The enemy is religion, tradition, the mediocre masses, resistance to innovation, etc.

The punishment of this titan is the punishment of the bold individual who wanders from the safety of conformity and the punishment of the community that leaves behind the comforts of its gods and traditions. Today there is plenty of fear about where our technology is taking us. There is also the sense of spiritual loss of some kind.

Therefore, living metaphors have a power of provocation while stale metaphors lead to conformity. — David Mo

A truly stale metaphor is no longer recognized as a metaphor. The idea of literality (itself a dead metaphor!) is contrasted with metaphoricity. We tend to think of metaphors as mere embellishments, not recognizing that dead metaphors that were once optional now function as a kind of pre-interpretation of the situation that steers us sometimes into dead ends. Deconstruction is to some degree about heating up these old metaphors so that they are fluid and alive again. We can experience the past in its contingency, as choices in foundational metaphors that could have been made otherwise.

Mary's virginity — David Mo

This myth isn't so easy to interpret. One of the safer interpretations is that Mary represents the unselfish love of a mother, with the virginity intended to exclude the greed in lust.



There are riskier interpretations that I won't go into here. I will gesture toward works like Love's Body, a book that fuses Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian theology. I understand this book as belonging to the quest for self-knowledge, though of course it's not empirical science. I don't think it has a genre, but I do think it's a first rate book of something like philosophy but more willing than most philosophies to leap into the depths.

Paul Robinson writes that Love's Body "makes quite clear that psychoanalysis was only a stage in Brown's development toward a rather curious (and radical) brand of religious mysticism. The very concrete body of Freudian psychology has been absorbed into the Mystical Body of traditional Christian theology. To be sure, Freud remains an important authority, and there is a racy (and confusing) display of sexual rhetoric. But the erotic language is largely metaphorical; as Brown himself says, 'Everything is symbolic...including the sexual act.' — link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love%27s_Body

https://books.google.com/books?id=Va0wDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

I guess I like the 'mysticism' that isn't afraid of but even learns from the masters of suspicion.

The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.
...
We can begin, I think, to make sense of these paradoxes if we think of the Oedipal project as the causa sui (father-of-oneself) project, and therefore in essence a revolt against death generally, and specifically against the biological principle separating mother and child. — Brown

...

What are you talking about, what is your point, and how does that have anything to do with the title of this thread?

Your manners could use some work, but nevertheless I'll answer you. I like Dewey's general approach (other names might work as well.)

Dewey’s pragmatism—or, “cultural naturalism”, which he favored over “pragmatism” and “instrumentalism”—may be understood as a critique and reconstruction of philosophy within the larger ambit of a Darwinian worldview (Lamont 1961; MW4: 3). Following James’ lead, Dewey argued that philosophy had become an overly technical and intellectualistic discipline, divorced from assessing the social conditions and values dominating everyday life (FAE, LW5: 157–58). He sought to reconnect philosophy with the mission of education-for-living (philosophy as “the general theory of education”), a form of social criticism at the most general level, or “criticism of criticisms” (EN, LW1: 298; see also DE, MW9: 338).

Set within the larger picture of Darwinian evolutionary theory, philosophy should be seen as an activity undertaken by interdependent organisms-in-environments. This standpoint, of active adaptation, led Dewey to criticize the tendency of traditional philosophies to abstract and reify concepts derived from living contexts. As did other classical pragmatists, Dewey focused criticism upon traditional dualisms of metaphysics and epistemology (e.g., mind/body, nature/culture, self/society, and reason/emotion) and then reconstructed their elements as parts of larger continuities. For example, human thinking is not a phenomenon which is radically outside of (or external to) the world it seeks to know; knowing is not a purely rational attempt to escape illusion in order to discover what is ultimately “real” or “true”. Rather, human knowing is among the ways organisms with evolved capacities for thought and language cope with problems. Minds, then, are not passively observing the world; rather, they are actively adapting, experimenting, and innovating; ideas and theories are not rational fulcrums to get us beyond culture, but rather function experimentally within culture and are evaluated on situated, pragmatic bases. Knowing is not the mortal’s exercise of a “divine spark”, either; for while knowing (or inquiry, to use Dewey’s term) includes calculative or rational elements, it is ultimately informed by the body and emotions of the animal using it to cope. — link

Note that your mind/body dualism is included here.

Another questionable philosophical habit is talk about the isolated consciousness, the forlorn ghost in the machine.

Dewey rejected both traditional accounts of mind-as-substance (or container) and more contemporary schemes reducing mind to brain states (EN, LW1: 224–225). Rather, mind is activity, a range of dynamic processes of interaction between organism and world. Consider the range connoted by mind: as memory (I am reminded of X); attention (I keep her in mind, I mind my manners); purpose (I have an aim in mind); care or solicitude (I mind the child); paying heed (I mind the traffic stop). “Mind”, then, ranges over many activities: intellectual, affectional, volitional, or purposeful. It is

primarily a verb…[that] denotes every mode and variety of interest in, and concern for, things: practical, intellectual, and emotional. It never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. (AE, LW10: 267–68)

As Wittgenstein (entry on Wittgenstein, section on rule-following and private language) pointed out 30 years later, no private language (see entry on private language) is possible given this account of meaning. While meanings might be privately entertained, they are not privately invented; meanings are social and emerge from symbol systems arising through collective communication and action (EN, LW1: 147). — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/

In case it's still not clear how this bears on the thread, subject-object talk is not necessarily fundamental. We don't have to take it that way. Or, if we want to, it's better perhaps to think of social organisms in an environment. Inquiry for such organisms is not usually a pure knowing but rather adjustment and transformation that is as much deed as word. And even the word is used not just for representation but primarily as part of the creation and transformation of physical and social environments.

A big fan of Dewey, Richard Rorty, is also worth mentioned.

On Rorty's account, modern epistemology is not only an attempt to legitimate our claim to knowledge of what is real, but also an attempt to legitimate philosophical reflection itself—a pressing task, on many accounts, once the advent of the so-called new science of the sixteenth and seventeenth century gradually gave content to a notion of knowledge obtained by the methodological interrogation of nature herself. — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/

In other words, philosophy has been trying to save its own reputation against a background of undeniable technical progress. How is it that all the technology works without the permission or endorsement of the epistemologists? Who cares these days what philosophers think? In my view philosophy is still valuable, but perhaps only philosophers still believe that philosophy is some kind of master discourse that polices all the rest.

My broader point is that superstition need not involve the supernatural. I expect that we'll agree on this point. But here's an example:

The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism assumed the heritability of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism).[1] Lysenko's theory — jjAmEs

May be it is a matter of language, but I wouldn't say that the Lysenko case was about myths or superstition. It was ideology mixed with pseudoscience and totalitarianism.

At the same time the quest for cognitive purity (rigor, accuracy, etc.) looks like a repetition of a myth structure. — jjAmEs

I don't see the connection. Seeking something in the knowledge that it is not fully attainable is the principle of all intent. The problem lies in what you are looking for: reason or myth.

s this not enlightenment humanism personified? — jjAmEs

This is the Wiki version. For the Greeks, Prometheus meant punishment for the excessive pride of those who think they are smarter than the gods. Well-deserved.

This is how a myth can represent one thing and its opposite. It depends on what you want. This is not objective knowledge.

May be it is a matter of language, but I wouldn't say that the Lysenko case was about myths or superstition. It was ideology mixed with pseudoscience and totalitarianism. — David Mo

I like this definition.

Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth. — link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

To me religion fits in with that nicely, including the 'religion' of the enlightenment (which is my 'religion' or ideology.) Where we perhaps differ is that I understand my position to be an invested or founded position. I adopted the ideology of those who want to transcend ideology as much as possible. Why truth? Why objectivity? Why rationality? Why skepticism? What image is pursued here? Prometheus, etc.

Many critics of religion (like Dawkins) understand religion as pseudo-science (which is a correct diagnosis in many cases, though the definition of ideology above is perhaps better.)

Chapter one, "A deeply religious non-believer", seeks to clarify the difference between what Dawkins terms "Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion". He notes that the former includes quasi-mystical and pantheistic references to God in the work of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and describes such pantheism as "sexed up atheism". Dawkins instead takes issue with the theism present in religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.[13] The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book.[14] He maintains that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific fact about the universe, which is discoverable in principle if not in practice.[15] — link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion

A truly stale metaphor is no longer recognized as a metaphor. — jjAmEs

"Ruby lips". It is a classical (hackneyed) metaphor. Metaphors are metaphors. New or old. It is a matter of form.

This is the Wiki version. For the Greeks, Prometheus meant punishment for the excessive pride of those who think they are smarter than the gods. Well-deserved.

This is how a myth can represent one thing and its opposite. It depends on what you want. This is not objective knowledge. — David Mo

Of course myths are far more flexible than E =mc^2. As for objective knowledge, what is the measure of that? In my view we respect science primarily because of its technical miracles. Not everyone understands or endorses mainstream science, so we can't rely on a unanimous vote. Can we objectively say that J S Bach is a good composer? Many would be tempted to say no. But I'm not so sure about a radical boundary between physics and aesthetics. In both cases we depend on community consensus, even if (of course) we imagined something stronger.

"Ruby lips". It is a classical (hackneyed) metaphor. Metaphors are metaphors. New or old. It is a matter of form. — David Mo

Do rivers have mouths? Do needles have eyes? Do you see what I mean? (Is meaning literally visible?)

Metaphor itself is a dead metaphor.

The English metaphor derived from the 16th-century Old French word métaphore, which comes from the Latin metaphora, "carrying over", in turn from the Greek μεταφορά (metaphorá), "transfer",[8] from μεταφέρω (metapherō), "to carry over", "to transfer"[9] and that from μετά (meta), "after, with, across"[10] + φέρω (pherō), "to bear", "to carry".[11] — link

A metaphor is a carry-over or carry-across of structure. It makes sense to me that we would point out one pattern or structure in terms of familiar patterns or structures.

Then idea is a central metaphor, a visual metaphor.

The word "Idea" originates from the Greek, and it is the feminine form of, the word εἶδος (Greek eidos: something seen; form, shape; related to idein "to see," eidenai "to know" [2]). "Idea" meant at first a form, shape, or appearance and implied the "visual aspect" of things in classical Greek.[3] — link

This concern with metaphor isn't just one internet rando's pet.

While the basic features of phenomenological consciousness – intentionality, self-awareness, embodiment, and so forth—have been the focus of analysis, Continental philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida go further in adding a linguistically creative dimension. They argue that metaphor and symbol act as the primary interpreters of reality, generating richer layers of perception, expression, and meaning in speculative thought. The interplay of metaphor and phenomenology introduces serious challenges and ambiguities within long-standing assumptions in the history of Western philosophy, largely with respect to the strict divide between the literal and figurative modes of reality based in the correspondence theory of truth.
...
Derrida, from the outset, will call into question the assumption that the formation of concepts (logos) somehow escapes the primordiality of language and the fundamentally metaphorical-mythical nature of philosophical discourse. In a move which goes much further than Ricoeur, Derrida argues for what Guiseseppe Stellardi so aptly calls the “reverse metaphorization of concepts.” The reversal is such that there can be no final separation between the linguistic-metaphorical and the philosophical realms. These domains are co-constitutive of one another, in the sense that either one cannot be fully theorized or made to fully or transparently explain the meaning of the other. The result is that language acquires a certain obscurity, ascendancy, and autonomy. It will permanently elude our attempts to fix its meaning-making activity in foundational terms which necessitate a transcendent or externalized (to language) unified being.
...
For Arduini, figurative activity does not depict the given world, but allows for the ability to construct world images employed in reality. To be figuratively competent is to use the imagination as a tool which puts patterns together in inventive mental processes. Arduini then seems to recall Nieztsche; anthropologically speaking, humans are always engaging in some form of figuration or form of language, which allows for “cognitive competence” in that it chooses among particular forms which serve to define the surrounding contexts or environments. Again, metaphor is foundational to the apprehension of reality; it is part of the pre-reflective or primordial apparatus of experience, perception, and first- through second-order thought, comprising an entire theoretical approach as well as disciplines such as evolutionary anthropology (see Tooby and Cosmides).
...
The Continental theories of metaphor that have extrapolated and developed variations on the theme expressed in Nietzsche’s apocryphal pronouncement that truth is “a mobile army of metaphors.” The notion that metaphorical language is somehow ontologically and epistemologically prior to ordinary propositional language has since been voiced by Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida. For these thinkers metaphor serves as a foundational heuristic structure, one which is primarily designed to subvert ordinary reference and in some way dismantle the truth-bearing claims of first-order propositional language. Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology does away with the assumption that true or meaningful intentional statements reflect epistemic judgments about the world; that is, they do not derive referential efficacy through the assumed correspondence between an internal idea and an external object. While there may be a kind of agreement between our notions of things and the world in which we find those things, it is still a derivative agreement emerging from a deeper ontologically determined set of relations between things-in-the-world, given or presented to us as inherently linked together in particular historical, linguistic, or cultural contexts.

The role of metaphor in perception and cognition also dominates the work of contemporary cognitive scientists, linguists, and those working in the related fields of evolutionary anthropology and computational theory. While the latter may not be directly associated with Continental phenomenology, aspects of their work support an “anti-metaphysical” position and draw upon common phenomenological themes which stress the embodied, linguistic, contextual, and symbolic nature of knowledge. — link

https://www.iep.utm.edu/met-phen/#SH1b

Of course myths are far more flexible than E =mc^2. As for objective knowledge, what is the measure of that? In my view we respect science primarily because of its technical miracles. — jjAmEs

Flexible? The interpretation of a myth is practically subjective. Everyone finds in it what he has put in it. Scientific objectivity is something else. It rests on a series of reasonable assumptions: intersubjectivity and prediction specially. That's why it achieves a consensus that the interpretation of myths cannot achieve. Jung and Freud will never agree. And they come from the same stem.

Scientific objectivity is something else. It rests on a series of reasonable assumptions: intersubjectivity and prediction specially. — David Mo

I like science. But why do we call those assumptions 'reasonable'? Reasonable for you and me, but not for others. Without its technical results to back it up, it would be one more set of norms for conversation. To be clear, I'm for science and against superstition. So the issue is what grounds science, what lifts it above other ideologies. For me it's an instrument that works, prediction and control. And it works even for people who don't believe in it, which sets it apart from myth. I'm not worried about dark matter. Nor am I the least bit attracted to some God of the gaps.

I think we trust tools that get us what we want. Science through technology is the most reliable wonder-worker that most of us have seen. (Others claim to have been given golden tablets by angels and son on, which is more impressive, but I don't believe them.) For me pseudo-science is what imitates the style of science without actually working. Tech is the test.

straight outta here.

I'm sure you can find some writers out there who deserve that kind of lampooning. At the same time, the 'pomo' caricature also serves as wishful thinking for those who just find certain philosophers too difficult (or more likely want to be spared the effort of even trying to read them.) Personally I'd be embarrassed to find the quotes below too difficult.

In order for my "written communication" to retain it function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability...structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved (whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to cite the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable--iterable -- beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.
...

What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise, trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful [mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate, from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory, trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
— Derrida

Soc. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
...

Soc. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
...

Soc. Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power-a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?

Phaedr. Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?

Soc. I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.
— Plato

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html

Note that in an argument against writing, the metaphor of writing is employed. 'Graven in the soul' implies that the soul is itself a tablet, a text. That's the beginning of a deconstruction. The higher (speech) ends up depending on the lower (writing), ends up being a mere form of the lower. And speech is subject to the same principle of iterability as writing, though a present speaker can always pile on more words in explication of those already spoken, which are themselves subject to the same law of iterablity and (generalized) writing. Wittgenstein's arguments against private language aim at making a related point. This is not to deny but to complicate the presence of meaning in the individual mind as kind of governing metaphor that can lead us into confusion or simply block other aspects of meaning (its sociality, for instance.)

The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not only with one’s sources and riches, but also with one’s discourses and their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning. As a result we must entirely reverse the traditional idea of the author..the author is not an indefinite source of significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition and recomposition of fiction. — Foucault

Here is a different spin on the same idea. The author is authority that helps us hide from the ravages of time in the form of the drift and ambiguity of meaning. I prefer Derrida's more neutrally toned presentation, but Foucault is obviously not some unreadable phrase generator.

Here's something from the New Age generator:

Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a flowering of the high-frequency. We dream, we believe, we are reborn. We exist as supercharged waveforms.
Nothing is impossible. The goal of vibrations is to plant the seeds of life-force rather than suffering. Inseparability is the knowledge of fulfillment, and of us. Today, science tells us that the essence of nature is being.

Have you found your path? If you have never experienced this quantum shift through non-local interactions, it can be difficult to self-actualize. It can be difficult to know where to begin. Humankind has nothing to lose. Throughout history, humans have been interacting with the solar system via vibrations. We are at a crossroads of potential and dogma. Dogma is the antithesis of being.
How should you navigate this magical totality? Indigo Child, look within and enlighten yourself.

Although you may not realize it, you are Vedic. — link

https://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

It's as crude as the one you linked to, a nice substitute for actually trying to understand a particular 'New Age' text.

Here's another one that generates one-liners.

Nature is a reflection of an abundance of timelessness. — link

http://wisdomofchopra.com/

well as we've drifted so far from the OP then I'll keep playing along.

Note that in an argument against writing, the metaphor of writing is employed. — jjAmEs

I would interpret this as a statement of Plato's attitude towards written texts generally. He says:

when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves. — Plato

This is why a great deal of what Plato taught was traditionally understood not to have been written down at all. And you can see why, in such important matters - because they're so prone to misinterpretation, 'they cannot protect or defend themselves'. His Hindu contemporaries philosophical teachings were likewise called 'upanisads' - meaning 'sitting close to', i.e. indicating a spoken or silent teaching between guru and chela.

Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a flowering of the high-frequency. — link

You're right, that's nonsense. I tried to read up on Penrose's theory to this effect but couldn't make head or tail of it. The new age quantum philosophy I relate to is simply Heisenberg's take on physics and philosophy and its successors. Which actually has quite a lot of bearing on the OP.

The only interesting, pragmatic and meaningful context to talk under the theme of subject/object, is the mind-body problem and basically two questions: — Zelebg

An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.

The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).
— Andrew M

In saying this, you're assuming the reality of the object outside your judgement of it. — Wayfarer

Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance.

This is what makes your approach more like Locke's. And that is understandable, as Locke's is very much a kind of common-sense realism. — Wayfarer

Except that Locke's primary/secondary qualities distinction is, itself, a Cartesian carryover. It's all about figuring out whether qualities belong to the subject or the object which presupposes the dualism in question.

In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense.
— Andrew M

That’s fine, no problem. No matter how one goes about labeling his mental machinations, he is still obliged to demonstrate how such machinations become knowledge, and indeed, common knowledge, such that any congruent rationality understands him. If you claim something about some ordinary object, you then have to explain how it gets its very particular name, and also explain it such that it is possible for me to give it the same name. — Mww

OK. By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).

When Alice points at a tree, she is not pointing at an object-of-sense or a representation, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name "tree". Now Alice both senses the tree and represents it conceptually, but note that I'm describing Alice's cognitive activity there, not the tree.

Alice has a specific cognitive system such that the tree has a specific form for Alice (which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree). Even she herself has a specific form for Alice. Thus she can also observe herself pointing at the tree. She is in the scene that she is representing conceptually.

This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here. There is just an object that exhibits a specific form in relation to another object that it interacts with (or, in the case of self-reference, observes to be itself).

This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.

All that being said, it remains indisputable that whatever is external to the brain absolutely cannot be the same as whatever is internal to it, which makes explicit some form of representational system for human knowledge of objective reality is indisputably the case. Such must be the ground of any epistemological/cognitive theory. — Mww

So the dualist internal/external distinction is just what I'm disputing here. What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing. The tree has no intrinsic representation, it instead has a form for Alice (which may or may not generalize to other human beings and sentient creatures).

An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.

How do you arrive to that conclusion?

This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here.

So the dualist internal/external distinction is just what I'm disputing here.

Referring to internal/external distinction as "dualism" makes potential point of confusion with substance/property dualism. It’s unclear if you yourself are not confusing the two.

What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing.

Of course, because you forgot to include internal/subjective perspective. For example when Alice is sleep waking and dreaming she is pointing at a tree, while in fact she is pointing at a truck that is about to run her over.

Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance. — Andrew M

But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'!

In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue. You're instinctively presuming a realist position, against which you're then criticizing what you understand as Kant's distinction between appearance and reality. In your view, 'everyone knows' that the world is real, populated by really-existing objects independent of our perception of them. But this is what is being called into question.

↪Andrew M
An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.

How do you arrive to that conclusion? — Zelebg

By thinking about how the term mind and other related terms (like thinking) function in everyday communication. The answer is that it's a way of talking about intelligent activity. From earlier in the thread:

Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible. — Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker

See also Gilbert Ryle's critique of Cartesian dualism.

Referring to internal/external distinction as "dualism" makes potential point of confusion with substance/property dualism. It’s unclear if you yourself are not confusing the two. — Zelebg

Substance and property dualism are specific expressions of dualism. You can find different expressions of dualism in Plato, Locke, Kant and others. Internal/external or subject/object is a more general characterization of dualism:

A subject is a being who has a unique consciousness and/or unique personal experiences, or an entity that has a relationship with another entity that exists outside itself (called an "object"). — Subject (philosophy)

↪Andrew M What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing.

Of course, because you forgot to include internal/subjective perspective. For example when Alice is sleep waking and dreaming she is pointing at a tree, while in fact she is pointing at a truck that is about to run her over. — Zelebg

Yes, there are lots of ways things can go wrong. And so we make ordinary language distinctions between being awake and dreaming.

We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.

But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'! — Wayfarer

Well I guess that's that then! It's all an illusion... ;-)

In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue. You're instinctively presuming a realist position, against which you're then criticizing what you understand as Kant's distinction between appearance and reality. In your view, 'everyone knows' that the world is real, populated by really-existing objects independent of our perception of them. But this is what is being called into question. — Wayfarer

Yes, you're calling it into question. But why? And what's your argument? I describe my model above - what problem does it have?

We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.

We either experience qualia or we don’t. What do you say?

In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue.

Why would anyone raise such idea as a serious issue? Issue for what exactly?

But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'!
— Wayfarer

Well I guess that's that then! It's all an illusion... ;-) — Andrew M

Not a mere illusion. Things have a degree of reality.

This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others. — Andrew M

But it's based on a implicit realism which is itself a mental construction - vorstellung, I believe is the German term for it. And besides - it's a model, and where there's a model, there's a mind!

Why would anyone raise such idea as a serious issue? Issue for what exactly? — Zelebg

For philosophy, of course. I found a pithy aphorism in a book about Kant that was referred to up-thread:

Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason.

(Kant, Refl 3716, ca. 1764 – 68)

Quoted in Pollok, Konstantin (2106-02-07T17:28:15). Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason, Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason.

There are external properties, like location, direction, and shape, that can be investigated objectively. That is empirical science. No problem here.

Then there are internal properties, like sensation, emotion, and cognition, that can, or can not, be investigated objectively, and this question is the problem.

Are you trying to say there is another problem? Do you offer some answer to the problem question I pointed at? Are you making some other point, what is it?

By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on). — Andrew M

The very epitome of a dualistic nature: focus towards immediately presupposes focus from. The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it?
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When Alice points at a tree, she is not pointing at an object-of-sense or a representation, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name "tree". — Andrew M

If you had said.....when Alice points to a tree, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name “tree”.....I would have only slightly less inclined to find fault, for even that modified assertion still asks....where did the name “tree” come from, or, what form does convention take, such that “tree” falls out of it as a direct, and apparently necessary, correspondence between pointer and....er...the pointee?

Nevertheless, the minor objection is still the question....what could Alice possibly be pointing at, if not an object that impresses her senses? Perhaps the hyphenation has some meaning, but I don’t see any difference between object-of-sense and object of sense. There is no contention in saying she is pointing to the object itself, which must be something she senses. Otherwise.....why bother with the act of pointing, or indeed the act of speaking, at all? There is just as little contention in saying she is NOT pointing at a representation, because all representations, are internal to the human cognitive system, no matter which system one uses to explain himself.

At any rate, usually Alice pointing to tree is chalked up to experience, insofar as Alice already knows the thing she’s pointing at is conventionally named as “tree”. The major objection then becomes, just because we are told why she points the way she does, because of something she knows, does not tell us anything about how she arrived at the correspondence required between the pointing, or talking, she does physically, and the understanding she does mentally, such that the pointing and the understanding don’t contradict each other. What is being asked here is, and what convention of naming things reduces to, is, what happens to Alice between being told “this is a tree”, and her comprehension of what she’s being told?
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Alice has a specific cognitive system such that the tree has a specific form for Alice (which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree). — Andrew M

Ok, so this is the attempt to answer the question of conventional naming.

.......Alice has a specific cognitive system, certainly;
.......such that the tree has a specific form for Alice, maybe;
......which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree, incomplete.

Form as in what objects look like, or form as in general characteristic of a class or group of objects. If a tree has a specific form for Alice, how does Alice tell one kind of tree from another? If Alice can tell one tree from another, it cannot be merely from the form “tree” that facilitates such separation, but would seem to require a form for each and every single aspect of difference. The interconnectedness of the root system of aspens absolutely cannot be derived from the mere form “tree”.

The maybe arises in particular in the fact that things Alice can intentionally point to or talk about may not have a form as does the tree. Alice can certainly point to examples of injustice, and talk about beautiful things, but she is only talking about things under certain conditions. Alice can talk about time, but she’s gonna have a hellava lot of trouble pointing to it.

And the incompleteness arises from the very simple question.....where does the form reside? How is it possible to determine with apodeitic certainty, that forms reside in the objects, or that form resides in the cognitive system from which identity and representation of objects is given?

I wouldn’t be so bold as to make a positive claim in that regard.
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Even she herself has a specific form for Alice. Thus she can also observe herself pointing at the tree. She is in the scene that she is representing conceptually. — Andrew M

I grant Alice has a form for herself, which has been called, among other things, the transcendental object, or transcendental ego, the “I” of subjective activity. But the “I” is never used in pure thought, and only becomes manifest in communication as an explanatory placeholder.

I don’t dispute your rationality, one can think whatever he wants, but I nevertheless categorically reject the notion that Alice observes herself, or that she is in the scene. Way too much Cartesian theater for me.

And Alice isn’t in the scene as much as she IS the scene.
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This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here. There is just an object that exhibits a specific form in relation to another object that it interacts with (or, in the case of self-reference, observes to be itself). — Andrew M

This may be the case, for a third party observer. I can see that Alice and the tree she points to are both objects. There is no internal/external distinction because they both are external to me. But they are still objects from the perspective of me as a subject in the form of a third party observer. It is still me (subject) seeing or thinking them (objects). This does nothing whatsoever to prove the non-duality of Alice with respect to her tree.
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On Gilbert Ryles:

He is correct in saying Descartes attributed the mind/body problem to the category of substance, when he should have attributed it to the category of relation, such being promulgated long before Ryles. But that does nothing to extinguish the problem, but simply relocates it to a theoretically more sustainable realm. Nowadays, we have the knowledge that justifies “mind” as being just a seeming.....what it seems like to the normal average joe.....rather than what the brain is actually doing, the knowledge to which folks back in the day didn’t in the least have access.

Be that as it may, those same average joes don’t give a crap what their brain is doing, when it comes to wondering why things are the way they seem. As long as that happens, there is going to be a mind/body, subject/object dualism. WHAT it is may be argued, you or anybody from the analytic domain and me or anybody from the continental, from now til doomsday, but THAT it is, is indisputable.

On Wittgenstein:

Who????