Or is the point of doing philosophy to say "Ennui Elucidator" instead of "bored speaker"? — Banno
...then the solipsist must be using the words differently - playing a different game. — Banno
So have they shown that they alone exist, or just redefined "self" to include us? — Banno
What is it to have a proof here? In what way are you compelled by logic? There are those - myself amongst them - who deny that this is a cogent argument. Why are you compelled, but not others? — Banno
Some theologians and philosophers were not as convinced as Leibniz and Thomas Aquinas that conceiving of God as incapable of doing what is logically impossible was not imposing limitations on him. Some later nominalists argued that not only physical laws, but also mathematics and ethics had been established by God through free decisions whose reasons are unknown to us and that those decisions could have been different from what they were; omnipotence, they thought, is not "omnipotence to some degree," since that concept is, in fact, absurd.
God simply decreed that two contradictory statements could not both be true and that two and two were four and that fornication was bad. But he could have decided to decree otherwise, and if he had, the Law of Contradiction, mathematical truths, and moral norms would have been different than they are.
We cannot imagine such a world, of course, but we cannot affirm, merely due to the poverty of our minds, that this would have been impossible for God; We must not measure the power of God with the standards of our weak and finite intelligence. — Kolakowski
(...) if this doubt (Descartes's) could once be justly raised, it would be straightway insuperable, it would always confront Descartes himself and anyone else, however evident the assertions presented by them — Leibniz
This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses, is a malady, which can never be radically cur’d, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chace it away, and sometimes may seem entirely free from it” — Hume
"The a prior structure of the world" includes "how the brain works" so this question seems to me premised on a false (Platonic-Cartesian-Kantian) dichotomy.“Does logic reflect some given, a priori structure of the world, or does it merely reflect how the brain of us humans works?” is beyond the realm of any possible experience. — Amalac
This all seems to go back to Kant: since we cannot know or experience the “thing in itself”, we are trapped in the egocentric predicament. — Amalac
"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." ~Ibn Sina, d. 1037 CE"different creatures, different ways of experiences, different logic"
Do these creatures see the whole world different? Or is a circle still a circle even for them? — Mersi
:up:But if a philosophical argument reaches the conclusion that "there is no reality", that alone is sufficient to reject the argument. — Banno
"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." ~Ibn Sina, d. 1037 CE
But if a philosophical argument reaches the conclusion that "there is no reality", that alone is sufficient to reject the argument.
— Banno — 180 Proof
What is to count as a simple depends on the activity in which one is engaged; tables and atoms are equally valid starting points, with the choice dependent on avoiding misunderstandings in a particular case. — Banno
What is real, what exists, is what serves to allay misunderstanding. Tables when you are having coffee, wood when you are doing carpentry, atoms when you are doing chemistry. What has primacy is dependent on what one is doing. — Banno
it's simply not true to say that there is a table because you see a table. I'd go as far as to say that we flat out know that to be false. Your world (that of tables, cups etc) is 90% made up, at any given time, entirely phenomena, no substance. — Isaac
Why assume (commit a category mistake) that anyone would try to use a logic which regulates making "decisions in everyday life" for domains which "no longer correspond to experience"?That will not affect the way we make decisions in everyday life, but how justified is it to approach this part of reality, in which certain logical axioms no longer correspond to experience, with a logic that still presupposes these axioms? — Mersi
I have not rejected or implied rejecting anything; I've only pointed out that the LNC ineluctably corresponds with first-order facts of the matter. Systems of logic which eliminate the LNC are only useful for contrary (or not) higher-order interpretations of the facts of the matters. In other words, dialethia is derived from – supervenes on, or presupposes – alethia. The topic at issue, Ennui, concerns 'the relation of logic to experience' and not the relation of logic to "contrary interpretations" of experience.Some dialethia may be true and some may be useful (especially as an epistemological stance when evidence supports two contrary positions). Why reject them out of hand ... — Ennui Elucidator
if something in front of me looks like a table, feels like a table, and can be used like a table, then it is true that there is a table. You can argue that it's an illusion but you would have the burden of proof. — Olivier5
the table is 100% phenomenal for me, as everything else. I don't see that as a problem, more as a law of perception. — Olivier5
Of course the table is composed of smaller elements. How could it NOT be? But there is absolutely no reason to see the elements as more "real" than the whole. Truth is not small. Reality is not hiding in atoms. — Olivier5
For proof see...well almost every paper on the neuroscience of perception since the late nineties. — Isaac
This is a platitude but everything, including neuroscience, is a "joint social object". Tables are not the exceptions here, they are like everything else.The table is joint social object. — Isaac
You are confusing empiricism with naive realism. Empiricism is a principle without which there would be no science, including no neuroscience, so you are professionally bound to respect it. And confusing empiricism with illusion is a road to nowhere.You seeing the 'reality' of it as entirely and correctly whatever it appears to you to be is very much a problem,
In English, please. Also you may wish to connect this neuronal talk to the issue at hand, i.e. the reality of tables.your second layer of nodes can only infer their properties from your first layer because the signal from them originates outside of the Markov Blanket. — Isaac
But if we share the same logic with these beings regardless of the experience we have, the question arises as to where logic comes from? — Mersi
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