I think that is precisely what analytic philosophy attempts to do: analyze and bring to light the logic of thought. — Janus

Agreed, but I submit the formal predicate logic they use to deconstruct thought, is not the Aristotelian syllogistic propositional logic used to construct it. Apples and oranges?

Ah. You think "change is successions in time" is an example of a true statements having nothing whatsoever to do with the world!

But the floor changes between here, where it is wood board, and the bathroom, where it is tile. There was all this stuff, post Kant, about time being one of several dimensions.

But we don't want to go back there. Nothing will be gained.

Might be time to move on.

one cannot enunciate incomprehensibly. — Mww

And yet colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

You could learn what Feynman meant, as you could find a translator for Swahili or Finnish.

Then does "the world as it is in itself" make any sense? — Banno

Yes it does, as an horizon, and as the necessary hypothesis for empirism.

Chomsky??? Really.

Boys and girls.....here’s proof of what not to do if you want to be understood in your speech acts. Now, please, don’t bother asking me what to do, because that would be tedious and would require you to actually put some effort into examining your own lingual gymnastics. Sorry.....you’re on your own here. Heaven forfend that there were but a definitive treatise, ready-made and theoretically complete, logically consistent........culminating in the most classic understatement of recorded human history: if your conceptions don’t relate to each other, you be nothin’ but flappin’ yer jaws even if the other guy is statistically cognizant (gasp) of each and every word you be speechifyin’.
——————

But the floor changes between here, where it is wood board, and the bathroom, where it is tile. — Banno

I went to bed last night; the bathroom floor was covered in tile. I got up this morning, the bathroom floor was still covered in the same tile.

I sympathize with your position, in that the world is all that can be the case. Thoughts are in my head, my head is in the world, therefore my thoughts are in the world. Nevertheless, my thoughts cannot be treated like basketballs are treated, so we must come to grips with that rather obvious monkey wrench.

Moving on.......

If anyone already noted this, then my bad - I did not see it in reviewing the thread. If I missed it, please point me back to it.

What I did not find was the completely simple and obvious observation that the answer to whether we see the world as it is (really is, or as it is in itself, or any other way), is properly answered by saying we do not see the world at all, ever, and never have and never will. For the simple reason that what we see is light. And that's just the start of it. Berkeley covers this and more in his dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

Hey.......

One of my very favorite opening salvos in philosophical discourse, Hylas to Philonous:

“....I was considering the odd fate of those men who have in all ages,
through an affectation of being distinguished from the vulgar, or some
unaccountable turn of thought, pretended either to believe nothing at
all, or to believe the most extravagant things in the world. This however
might be borne, if their paradoxes and scepticism did not draw after them
some consequences of general disadvantage to mankind. But the mischief
lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed
to have spent their whole time in the pursuits of knowledge professing an
entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are
repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted
to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths, which they
had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable....”

‘Course, everybody else with their own important truths and their own idea for plain and commonly received principles, will say just about the same thing.

Do you think there’s anything in Berkeley we can use today?

Me, not so much. You: in complete faith and trust you read further than the excerpt.

At the least a meta-message, if you will, of some of the hazards of casual or common thinking that can take us Wylie Coyote-like out beyond the edge and over the abyss itself. Or more simply, when the ground is suspect, that it's good to pay attention to one's feet and where they're put. It's interesting too that it can take - require - uncommon thinking to mark the metes and bounds of the common.

So while Berkeley won't help me with opening a can of beans, still rather him - I've a Swiss army knife, if needed, for the beans.

I've a Swiss army knife, if needed, for the beans. — tim wood

Which is to say.....right tool for the right job (?)

Yes, so (anticipating) I'm satisfied that as a practical matter I see the tree. Impractically or some other-wise, no.

And in the light of the moment, I'm fascinated by the purely a posteriori aspect of right tool right job. Can you see a way reason gets there faster with more? I cannot.

as a practical matter I see the tree. — tim wood

Yep. Better hope so, especially if you’re on an intercept course with one.
—————

Can you see a way reason gets there faster with more? I cannot. — tim wood

The idea that reason doesn’t get you there faster is quite likely what Hume meant by his “constant conjunction” phrase......Enlightenment Brit for, this is generally because of that, so if you know this, you don’t need to reason about that. So in his mind, reason doesn’t usually do anything faster (than habit itself, that is), and often reason doesn’t do anything at all.

But just because we are not conscious of reason in action doesn’t mean it isn’t; reason doesn’t turn on and off depending on experience. Reason is thought and the conscious human thinks constantly. But reason obviously doesn’t work as hard, and we don’t think as much, under the conditions where habit seems to be the case, or, which is the same thing from a metaphysical point of view, when an antecedent experience reflects back on intuition. Psychologists call that mere memory, but we don’t care about them, right?

So experience (habit) tells you to use a wrench on that frozen nut, but “faster with more” pure reason tells you to put an extension on the wrench for that added Archimedes leverage principle to play. But only that one time, of course.

Now, as to things present to your senses of which you know nothing at all about, not only is reason faster and more, it is only.

just because we are not conscious of reason in action doesn’t mean it isn’t; reason doesn’t turn on and off depending on experience. — Mww

As a philosophical conception, Empiricism means a theory according to which there is no distinction of nature, but only of degree, between the senses and the intellect. As a result, human knowledge is simply sense-knowledge (or animal knowledge) more evolved and elaborated than in other mammals. And not only is human knowledge entirely encompassed in, and limited to, sense-experience...but to produce its achievements in the sphere of sense-experience human knowledge uses no other specific forces and means than the forces and means which are at play in sense-knowledge.

Now if it is true that reason differs specifically from senses, the paradox with which we are confronted is that Empiricism, in actual fact, uses reason while denying the power of reason, on the basis of a theory that reduces reason's knowledge and life, which are characteristic of man, to sense knowledge and life, which are characteristic of animals.

Hence, first, an inevitable confusion and inconsistency between what an Empiricist does -- s/he thinks as a [hu]man, s/he uses reason, a power superior in nature to senses -- and what s/he says -- s/he denies this very specificity of reason.

And second, an inevitable confusion and inconsistency even in what s/he says: for what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, - sense-knowledge in which room has been made for reason without recognizing it. A confusion which comes about all the more easily as, on the one hand, the senses are, in actual fact, more or less permeated with reason in man, and, on the other, the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

I saw where you mentioned him elsewhere, but hadn’t seen for myself until this.

Good stuff, by which I mean....it meets with my unabashedly entrenched cognitive prejudices. But he is a theologian, and a post-modern at that, so, boo!!! Advocating the reinstatement of reason to supplant the cultural supremacy of empiricism, so.....yea!!!

Minor point, if I may: this.....

“....And not only is human knowledge entirely encompassed in, and limited to, sense-experience (a point which Kant, while reacting against Hume, admitted like Hume)....”

....is wrong.

“....But as this process does furnish real a priori knowledge, which has a sure progress and useful results...”
(CPR, A6/B10)

But I’m sure, somewhere in his corpus, he espouses in more detail what he means by it. You know....the ol’ “dogmatic slumber” thing? Pretty inconsistent to react against, then at the same time, admit to, the very thing reacted against.

All that aside, thanks for the reference.

You're welcome. (As an aside, for some reason I am very drawn to many Catholic philosophers. I don't feel at all attracted to the religion as such, although I sometimes envy them their faith. But it seems to me that modern Thomism is the only intellectual lineage that really has preserved the 'philosophia perennis' as it appears in Western culture. Plus the elements of Christian Platonism that are preserved in Catholic mystics, such as Eckhardt. I noticed Maritain because of his book 'Degrees of Knowledge', which says that there are different kinds of knowledge pertaining to different levels of being; that has been my primary interest in philosophy. Also because Catholic philosophers are generally realist with respect to universals, as am I. Maritain has the added advantage of being generally assigned to the left of the political spectrum and so avoids the tendency towards authoritarianism which is also an aspect of Catholicism.)

All good.

Realist with respect to universals.....universals are real? In which sense? What kind of real?

I’m not sure what I think about them, so.....just wondering. Brief overview will suffice, if you’re so inclined.

Well, my very first post on these forums, about three forums ago, and about ten years, was on the reality of number and their relationship to phenomena. I had had an epiphany (or so I thought) about why ancient philosophy so highly esteemed the reality of number - it was because they don't come into or pass out of existence, and they're not composed of parts, whereas everything in the phenomenal domain does. It seemed startlingly obvious once I saw it. So the post went on:

Obviously we all concur on what a number is, and mathematics is lawful; in other words, we can't just make up our own laws of numbers. But numbers don't exist in the same sense that objects of perception do; there is no object called 'seven'. You might point at the numeral, 7, but that is a symbol. What we concur on is a number of objects, but the number cannot be said to exist independent of its apprehension, at least, not in the same way objects apparently do. In what realm or sphere do numbers exist? 'Where' are numbers? Surely in the intellectual realm, of which perception is an irreducible part. So numbers are not 'objective' in the same way that 'things' are; but they are nevertheless real.

And, to repeat again, 'the same for all who think'. So from that, I derived the notion that some ideas, such as natural numbers, are real, but not existent. In Kantian terms, I suppose you could call them noumenal objects (I didn't think of this at the time and it's certainly not something Kant would have said. But 'noumenal' means literally 'an object of nous', as distinct from 'phenomena' which is 'object of sense'. Again, you find this in scholastic dualism, and hardly anywhere else.)

The post went on:

I started wondering, this is perhaps related to the Platonic distinction between 'intelligible objects' and 'objects of perception'. Objects of perception - ordinary things - only exist, in the Platonic view, because they conform to, and are instances of, ideas. Particulars are simply ephemeral instances of the eternal forms, but in themselves, they have no actual being. Their actual being is conferred by the fact that they conform to ideas. So 'existence' in this sense, and I think this is the sense it was intended by the Platonic and neo-Platonic schools, is illusory. Earthly objects of perception exist, but only in a transitory and imperfect way. They are 'mortal' - perishable, never perfect, and always transient. Whereas the archetypal forms subsist in the One and are apprehended by Nous: while they do not exist, they provide the basis for all existing things by creating the pattern, the ratio, whereby things are formed (which is made explicit in Plotinus). They are real, above and beyond the existence of wordly things; but they don't actually exist. They don't need to exist; things do the hard work of existence.

So the ordinary worldly person is caught up in 'his or her particular things', and is thus ensnared in illusory and ephemeral concerns. Whereas the Philosopher, by realising the transitory nature of ordinary objects of perception, learns to contemplate within him or herself, the eternal Law whereby things become manifest according to their ratio, and by being Disinterested, in the original sense of that word.

(Incidentally the first and by far the best response to that post was from 180 Proof.)

So, I think *this* is the basis of metaphysics proper. I don't know where I got that idea from but it was certainly not from anything I studied at school or University; I think it was a kind of intuitive leap. But I began to understand, if only dimly, why it was that ancient philosophy was suspicious of the sensory domain, which is, for moderns, the only domain that is real. And those ideas are what was preserved in scholastic realism. You may recall that passage I linked to on Eiriugena some time back - he 'gets' it. But it became lost in the later middle ages, and is now well and truly gone.

Phew. Long post. Although I can stil claim it's related to the op. We can't see the world as it really is, because there is no way it 'really is'. It is constant flux, becoming, appearance only, and moderns search frantically, and futilely, for what about it is permanent and real.

OK, thanks.

I’d think differently about only two things, for sure, the remainder being nonetheless informative.

I suppose you could call them noumenal objects (I didn't think of this at the time and it's certainly not something Kant would have said. — Wayfarer

Nahhhh....he would have called them transcendental objects. “Them” being numbers. For us, with our discursive understanding, noumenal objects are incomprehensible.

We can't see the world as it really is, because there is no way it 'really is'. — Wayfarer

Because of the kind of intelligence we are as humans, we think there must be a way the world really is. We just aren’t entitled to the irreducible certainty of our knowledge of it. Quantum tunneling aside, it behooves us to respect objective reality as given necessarily, and the practical ground for all objective reality resides in the empirical conception of “world”.

Again.....thanks.

[Kant] would have called [numbers] transcendental objects. — Mww

I started on the Prolegomena section on mathematical objects but haven’t made much headway with it. I was recommended Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought which I think I need to read first. (Too many books, as always.)

Because of the kind of intelligence we are as humans, we think there must be a way the world really is. — Mww

Having rejected the classical insight of 'nous' and made all knowledge subject to empirical validation, we reduce ourselves, as Maritain observes, to animal cognition. We’re just an advanced hominid, so there’s no reason to think we could grasp a transcendental truth nor any scientific means of describing it. This is why we nowadays insist that what is real must be situated in space and time (‘out there somewhere’ although physics itself seem now to have overflowed those bounds). I notice in a promotion from New Scientist I was reading just now, that there's an article titled 'How evolution blinds us to the truth about the world', which is a theme that is increasingly coming up.

Agreed, but I submit the formal predicate logic they use to deconstruct thought, is not the Aristotelian syllogistic propositional logic used to construct it. Apples and oranges? — Mww

It would help if you could explain how you see them differing.


Who claims that animals cannot, within the limits of their cognitive capacities, understand the ways of things? Is it not the case that whales and chimps understand more than sheep and cattle? That's intellect; it's ridiculous to say that animals do not have have various intellective capacities. It;s just that we can do even more courtesy of language.

Redundant

t's ridiculous to say that animals do not have have various intellective capacities. — Janus

Guillty as charged. Read up on the sad story of Nim Chimpsky.

it's ridiculous to say that animals do not have have various intellective capacities. — Janus

Typo corrected above.

Read up on the sad story of Nim Chimpsky. — Wayfarer

I am familiar with that story; what is your point re that?

noted and corrected. But, to press the point, language, speech and rationality are all connected. H. Sapiens evolved those capacities, animals did not. I understand that in current culture, this is not a politically-correct view. We're told that the notion that humans are 'above' animals is a relic of Christian cultural imperialism. On the other hand, the notion that humans are continuous with animals does seem to license a lot of animal behaviour on the part of so-called civilised cultures.

As I see it it is only a matter of degree, and the advent of symbolism which was enabled by language. I believe animals are capable of basic rational thought to varying degrees. I've seen it quite clearly in dogs.

Example: I would throw the ball onto the verandah for my Jack Russell: he would search the verandah first and if the ball wasn't there, because it had gone over the handrail as it sometimes did, he would immediately conclude that it must be down below on the lawn and proceed to search for it there.

As to animalistic behavior in humans; there is tons of it and also tons of behavior no self-respecting animals would indulge in.

I believe animals are capable of basic rational thought to varying degrees. I've seen it quite clearly in dogs. — Janus

As soon as you assert 'something is the case', you're doing something that no animal does. But you don't notice that you're doing it, so you can't see why the dog is any different. As per the Maritain quote above, 'Empiricism...uses reason while denying the power of reason, on the basis of a theory that reduces reason's knowledge and life, which are characteristic of man, to sense knowledge and life, which are characteristic of animals.

Hence, first, an inevitable confusion and inconsistency between what an Empiricist does -- s/he thinks as a [hu]man, s/he uses reason, a power superior in nature to senses -- and what s/he says -- s/he denies this very specificity of reason.'

As soon as you assert something is the case, you're doing something that no animal does. — Wayfarer

No non-human is human, nor can do what only humans can do. But if you define many phenomena in that way, then you handicap more general insights. I, for example, have seen dogs and cats do amazing things - which without too much trouble match up with human thinking. And of course you will be hard pressed to prove they cannot, without recourse to restrictive definitions.

I, for example, have seen dogs and cats do amazing things - which without too much trouble match up with human thinking. — tim wood

Only a human can say that.

As to animalistic behavior in humans; there is tons of it and also tons of behavior no self-respecting animals would indulge in. — Janus

If a culture thinks that we're no different to animals, then it follows. Of course no animal would be consciously evil as humans can be, but that's because they're incapable of reflecting on courses of action or imagining different outcomes. Although animals can engage in extremely violent and destructive behaviour, it's not self- conscious in the sense that human actions are.

Humans are biologically hominids, related to the other great apes, descended from earlier life-forms - I'm not questioning that. But, like Alfred Russel Wallace, I question the efficacy of 'Darwinism applied to man'. But the way I see it, is that when h. sapiens evolved to the point of being language- and tool-using, story-telling, meaning-seeking beings, then their horizons expand beyond the biological. To deny it is the basis of biological reductionism a la Dawkins and Dennett. But that's not to invoke 'special creation' or anything of the kind. Evolution is a natural processs, but it has generated beings who are capable of seeing beyond the bounds of biology.

As soon as you assert something is the case, you're doing something that no animal does. But you don't notice that you're doing it, so you can't see why the dog is any different. — Wayfarer

Obviously dogs can't assert that anything is the case ( in spoken or written language). But they can certainly think things are the case; thinking which is asserted not verbally but behaviorally. For example dogs hear a familiar sound and think you have arrived home.

My current dog (a kelpie/ cattle dog/ border collie cross) only has to hear the word 'chickens' to conclude that I am going to feed, let out or put away the chickens. He is obsessed with the chickens and will spend all day watching them, or of they are out, "rounding them up". As soon as came here at the age of one year he understood that he was not to hurt them even though I was told by the person I got him from, when I asked how he was with chooks, that he didn't know and couldn't guarantee he would be OK because he had not come into contact with them (he was sold because he is a "failed" cattle dog).

If a culture thinks that we're no different to animals, then it follows. — Wayfarer

Nonsense, all animals are different, including us. We are the self-reflective animal (well, potentially anyway) so we can do things others animals cannot, and hence bear responsibilities which other animals cannot.