Then where does the fascination with certainty come from? — Reformed Nihilist

You may want to read Dewey's The Quest for Certainty. He thought the fear of the uncertainty of life led people to seek something certain. What they felt was certain came to be though superior to the world in which we live and our lives in it, which are subject to change. The practical became separated from what was considered "ultimate reality." Knowledge became something separated from practice and conduct. It became something apart from the world, unattainable. Something like God, I would think, or a kind of replacement for God.

Looks like I managed to cut myself off. People may want to take a look at Dewey's The Quest for Certainty, in which he explores the fascination with certainty and explains why he feels its been harmful.

Speaking for myself, preaching to the choir. I'm myself a diehard non-Cartesian, "Academic" skeptic (um...) falibiliist.

I feel like there is a step of logic missing between that premise and conclusion.

Is this a fool's errand? — Reformed Nihilist

:up:

We're stowaways on Neurath's Boat adapting to its ineluctability (the real) after having overcome the jones for certainty (the ideal).

It feels as though if we cannot establish a foundational inerrant truth to build our knowledge upon, then somehow by extension all claims to truth are equal, knowledge is impossible or meaningless — Reformed Nihilist

Been that way for millennia, so...this:

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~pthagard/Articles/metaphors.pdf

No, it was Peirce alright. — Ciceronianus

Cool. I love the notion and phrase "sham doubt", but often think it was one any one of Pierce, Quine or Russell, and can never seem to find an easy reference, so I'm sometimes hesitant to bring it up for fear of getting the attribution wrong.

the attempt to create/discover some fundamental bedrock of certainty upon which we can build a foundation for all knowledge and wisdom. Some singular truth that is irrefutable and inerrant from which we can derive the other truths of the universe. It's a little analogous to the search for a fundamental indivisible particle, upon which all matter must be bult on. — Reformed Nihilist

The focus of this thread is solving 'First Philosophy' and thus becoming certain of it. I have done it, and can even match the philosophical logic to it's confirmation by science! Of course, I build on the work of others. I derive the necessary permanent existent of the simplest and only thing, later found to be the quantum 'vacuum' and its overall quantum field, the elementaries made from its fields' quantum level stable arrangements due to the fields' inherent wave nature. You can probably work it out. It's simple, just as the basis of all has to be.

I'm torn here. On the one hand, I want to suggest that before you run a victory lap for having solved metaphysics, maybe you want to present your idea for criticism. On the other hand, while it's an inference based on a small amount of information, I suspect that what you have to say will be entirely uninteresting and unconvincing to me. I guess I'll leave it up to you while letting you know that your post comes across as lacking not just the social humility that be a turn off to people (I sometimes lack that), but more importantly the intellectual humility that allows people to take you seriously as a thinker. Leastways, that's how it looks to me.

On the other hand, while it's an inference based on a small amount of information, I suspect that what you have to say will be entirely uninteresting and unconvincing to me. I guess I'll leave it up to you while letting you know that your post comes across as lacking not just the social humility that be a turn off to people (I sometimes lack that), but more importantly the intellectual humility that allows people to take you seriously as a thinker. Leastways, that's how it looks to me. — Reformed Nihilist

Normally, yes, but there is cause to celebrate and be sure when the philosophical logic matches the most successful theory in all of science! It's no time for humility. Don't fall for "how it looks", although that may work for the run-of the-mill claims, but not so for me or the conclusion that quantum fields exhaust reality that such as Carlo Rovelli finds in one of his books after carefully ruling out other absolutes that have fallen by the wayside..

I'll put a general post together soon, right after dinner, as you would be very interested, indeed, in First Principles/Philosophy. Let us be as positive as we can be, for those finds are rare to come across.

Let us be as positive as we can be, for those finds are rare to come across. — PoeticUniverse

Sadly, claims to such finds are not rare at all, and to date all I have encountered have be vacuous.

Sadly, claims to such finds are not rare at all, and to date all I have encountered have be vacuous. — Reformed Nihilist

Yes, indeed, as I too have had to refute over the last thirty years and more.

Here's the promised gist:

Since there is something, a lack of anything is out, plus there is no sequence in time from nonbeing to being because ‘Nothing’ has no time, nor anything else, nor can ‘Nothing’ have any properties, so nor can ‘it’ be. ‘It’ isn’t, and so that’s the end of ‘it’.

So, given that Something has no alternative, it is everywhere and continuous because it cannot have any spacers of ‘Nothing’ in it. Because it is continuous and never created, it is partless and is thus the simplest state, for a composite cannot be fundamental. As having no parts, the Something is unbreakable into parts as well as being unmakeable from parts, thus it cannot be generated or go away; so, it is eternal, as being ever, and so there isn’t anything else but it. It is permanent. See also ‘Parmenides’, who shocked the philosophic world, and still does, about the One.

The Something cannot be still, else naught would happen; so, we can assign movement to it as a truth, thus it is energetic. Since the elementary particles are lightweights, so does it follow, too, that the Something is a lightweight, just as it has to be, as the simplest state.

Forms from it cannot be new and different from the Something, thus forms such as elementary particles can only become through arrangements of the Something. Since the elementaries are rather persistent, there is a way that these lumps of Something can be made to be stable. We see that they occur at certain rungs of energy levels and not others, which we call quanta, so again, there is something inherent that allows for these steady formations. We see that all the elementary ‘particles’ of a type are identical, this further indicating that they are woven of the same cloth.

Since electrons or photons sent even one at a time through two slits makes an interference pattern, they must have a spread out wave nature, indicating also that they are not pinpoints. While we refer to them as elementary particles, they, of course, are secondary, and so they are elementary only as ‘particles’.

Look up QFT (Quantum Field Theory)!

To continue the philosophy, we can now refer to the Something as the Permanent. What it forms are mostly temporaries, the entire universe, even, although photons don’t seem to decay by themselves and ought to be all that’s sparsely left at the End of the Universe as forms.

Being of necessity, having no alternative, the Permanent requires no creation by ‘God’. Just as we see in the universe, the progression up to now went from the simple to the composite to the more and more complex. Not even the tiny proton can be the First, for it is a composite of quarks.

The Permanent ‘lesser’ simplest makes for the ‘greater’ temporaries in terms of complexity, yet the ‘lesser’ always wins, in a way, because it ever remains, for the ‘greater’ complexities don’t last. Even the elementaries can get annihilated. Still, the Permanent is boring, as we knew the TOE would be, while the temporaries can be interesting.

The religious template of the lesser always having to come from the greater was always a doomed notion, lest an infinite regress ensues, for one, and this is not seen, for two, and the Permanent is of necessity, for three. The notion of ‘God’ fails.

The Permanent is strictly physical because the secondary quanta that are physical are directly the quanta of the Permanent.

We now also know that there needn’t be just one universe, for the permanent ever remains and so it could make another universe. Thus, the Big Bang came from it and not from an impossible ‘Nothing’.

I propose that the Quantum ‘vacuum’ is the Permanent, for its modes of excitations would be what gives rise to the elementaries.

Note that Newton’s absolute time and space have fallen, as well as the notion of the ‘particles’ making the fields. What’s left as fundamental is what is being described here.

We can model the Permanent Quantum ‘Vacuum’ as spacetime points that ever move, these points forming a continuum that we can readily call a field since there is a value at every point. The sums of these harmonic oscillations form a wavering field, each point tugging at the next. In short, the wave nature gives rise to the formation of stable quanta.

A complication is that there are 25 quantum fields modeled, one for each entry in the standard model, these fields all atop each other, some of these fields interacting with other fields, making for one large mathematically complicated overall field. Further mathematical complexity arises from the wanna-be ‘particles’ that don’t have an energy quantum, these being the unstable ‘virtual particles’ that form and go away rather quickly.

Victor Toth says, We decompose a quantum field into harmonic oscillators, since that’s what the field does, with its moving points, though a Fourier-transform, each point now as a quantum harmonic oscillator whose energy comes in quantized units.

The lowest energy state is not zero when we sum for all possible values so we get an infinite result.

When a theory is renormalizable, there’s a mathematically sensible process to discard the unwanted infinities but still account for finite differences, which are responsible for observables. We may sum energies to some finite cutoff value, and use it to compute physically observable values;
in the limit of the cutoff going back to infinity, the physical prediction doesn’t change.

Not quite sure I'm understanding the distinction you're trying to make. Can you expand? — Reformed Nihilist

Well, you yourself used the word foundation (or ground - same thing). That foundation doesn't have to take the form of an indubitable fact, like Descartes' cogito. It can be a system, a method. The important thing is that, according to this view that you question, the edifice of philosophy must have one and only one foundation.

Then again, it might also be the case that in simply having a perspective, intelligent species cannot, as it were, get out of a perspective to view nature from a "view from nowhere", as Nagel puts it, to see how things are without an interpreting mind of some kind. — Manuel

The flip side of having a perspective - shaped by one's temperament, living circumstances, life experiences, exposure to ideas - is that this perspective forms the ground of our being and our knowledge, whether or not we are aware of it and can articulate it as a philosophy. So perhaps, dither as we might, we can't help but gravitate towards some center, like a person stranded in outer space can't move away from wherever their center of mass happens to be.

Metaphysics:
1. Causality
2. Ontology
3. Identity & Change
4. Necessity & Possibility
5. Space & Time

5 basic ideas that underpin our view of reality (and beyond).

I (identity & change) have to know what exists or doesn't exist (ontology), how what exists are related causally (causality), whether things have to be the way they are (necessity & possibility), and last but not the least where and when it all plays out (time & space).

It feels as though if we cannot establish a foundational inerrant truth to build our knowledge upon, then somehow by extension all claims to truth are equal, knowledge is impossible or meaningless, and it's simply an "anything goes" situation, where the truth is whatever you decide you want it to be. I feel like there is a step of logic missing between that premise and conclusion. It feels a bit like saying "there's no foundation that is impervious to natural disasters, so you can't build a house" or "all houses are subject to possibly being ruined by natural disaster, so you may as well build anywhere". — Reformed Nihilist

I think logic is exactly the thing that requires absolutes. The less logical part of you is happy to engage the story of your life without knowing where the bedrock is. Love is the bedrock. Or envy, regret, lust, etc.: the pungent emotions of here and now, that's your launch pad, not particles or what have you. From this vantage point, absolutes are peripheral, fading into the horizon.

I believe what you are describing is more epistemology, the study of knowledge, then it is metaphysics. I'm in a great discussion with Bob here https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9015/a-methodology-of-knowledge if you want to look at an epistemology that takes certainty and attempts to apply it rationally to an uncertain world.

Hi @Reformed Nihilist, good to see you :) I would take an approach rooted in the history of philsoophy, which other posters also have done in this trhead. Philosophy started with the question what was really real, what, if all the fleeting and temporal was stripped of from this world, would remain. Parmenides argued for an unchanging abstract whole, Heraclitus argued that what was real was change itself.

This discussion, only fragmented delivered to us set the stage, because we have a paradox here. If what is really really real is an unchanging hole than why does everything exhibit one quality, namely that of change. If movement itself is realy real, how is movement possible withou something fixed relative to which there is movement? Philosophy has tried to come to grips with that paradox, Plato's dualism, Aristotle's attempt at reconciliation in the 'this here', the medieval philosophers who turned to God as the source of that which moves and Descarte's turn to the subject. Certainty is one of those concepts that emerged in trying to get to grips with this paradox because when we have something certain we could define every other thing, concept or experience relative to it. - Whether we were dealing with things, concepts or experiences, was itself dependent on the epoch in the history of philosophy one finds itself in. - Subject and object, essence and substance, phenomena and noumena, all those terms emerge from that endeavour.

As Joshs and Ciceronianus pointed out, philosophy moves and changes. I do not know about the analytics, but the continentals have by and large abandoned the quest for certainty. Joshs would say it was Nietzsche probably, I would say it was Hegel, who lay this quest to rest. There is no 'thing in itself', there is only 'the movement of the concept', the articulation of ever new and according to Hegel more sophisticated ways to try to resolve the ancient paradox. Partly building on this notion, partly out of a counter reaction to it, phenomenology emerged. We have learned something however from this history. Like you state for science, truth in philosophy depends on an "intricate webs of probabilistic relationships". Truth is 'preliminary', the best we have at the time, 'vorläufig' as they say in German, it stakes its claim in advance and has to retract when something better comes along.

That does not mean this preliminary truth can be put forward willy nilly, it has to be acceptable according to the rules of the game played at the time, the 'economy of truth'. Some articulations are taboo, some just fail in the conffrontation with our bodily experience, some get forgotten because we are busy dealing with something else. Truth making, meaning making, is a social affair and the second order rules of argumentation decide what is accepted as true and under what conditions.

See his essay Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.

:up:

For the sake of discussion, consider an alternative schema for, let's call it, 'a metaphysics for agency':

ontology – what is necessarily not (never) the case such that whatever remains (possibly the case) is ineluctable?

^^axiology – which priorities, values, habits, norms are optimal for (this) ontology?

epistemology – how can we make (this) ^^axiology practical, or apply it to culture, politics and daily living?

^^axiology includes aesthetics, ethics & logic.

Thoughts?

For the sake of discussion, consider an alternative schema for, let's call it, 'a metaphysics for agency':
ontology – what is necessarily not (never) the case such that whatever remains (possibly the case) is ineluctable?

^^axiology – which priorities, values, habits, norms are optimal for (this) ontology?

epistemology – how can we make (this) ^^axiology practical, or apply it to culture, politics and daily living?
^^axiology includes aesthetics, ethics & logic.

Thoughts? — 180 Proof

A metaphysics for agency, huh? Logic, empirically constrained (axiology + epistemology)...a bit (too) scientific for my taste but is there a choice?

metaphysics of agency, huh? — Agent Smith

You misread me, Smith. Not "metaphysics of" but metaphysics for ...

...a bit (too) scientific for my taste but is there a choice? — Agent Smith

Hardly "scientiific" compared to this

Metaphysics:
1. Causality
2. Ontology
3. Identity & Change
4. Necessity & Possibility
5. Space & Time
[ ... ] — Agent Smith

I replied to this with the same misgivings, IMO, more applicable to scientific concerns than addressed to philosophical (existential) aporia.

I did what I could to parse your question. I still feel a scientific approach (empiricism + logic) is the best option we have: simple & least likely to be controversial (unobservables taken out of the equation with one gentle stroke). The less we depend on imagination (possibility), the better it is, no?

The less we depend on imagination (possibility), the better it is, no? — Agent Smith

I'm not a positivist and I agree with Einstein's sage insight that "imagination is more important than knowledge" (pace Plato re: banishing (silencing) "the poets"). Predictions, after all, are deductions of explicit (and implicit) possibilities, no? Science without (or with "less") fact-based imaginings (e.g. conjectures, predictions, prepared experiments, criticisms, etc) is nothing but religious wankery (woo). Besides, while possibility entails conceivability, conceiveability is not bound by or restricted to following bivalent logic or making grammatical sense that, respectively, excludes impossibilities or nonsense; so, in ontology, I'm referring to the former sense of possibility (modal) not the latter (fantasy).

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Sure, it's not as if denying a personal experience or even a kind of bias in philosophical orientation, will help you see things more accurately. I mean, in some cases it might, many times though, one reaches ones point of view through personal experience.

I just don't see how we could even go about trying to find a perspective-less view to see things as they are in a natural state, not affected by any representations. But then are there "things" left at all?

It's very obscure territory.

I'm not a positivist and I agree with Einstein's sage insight that "imagination is more important than knowledge" (pace Plato re: banishing (silencing) "the poets"). Predictions, after all, are deductions of explicit (and implicit) possibilities, no? Science without (or with "less") fact-based imaginings (e.g. conjectures, predictions, preparing experiments, criticisms, etc) is nothing but religious wankery (woo). Besides, while possibility entails conceivability, conceiveability is not bound by or restricted to following bivalent logic or making grammatical sense excluding impossibilities or nonsense; so, in ontology, I'm referring to the former sense of possibility (modal) not the latter (fantasy).
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. — 180 Proof

Well, when you put it that way, imagination does have merit; nevertheless, I feel it's more trouble than it's worth. As for science needing imagination, what about Occam's razor (do not multiply entities beyond necessity)? I see the principle of parsimony as a deliberate attempt to rein in our imagination which otherwise would cause a whole lot of confusion.

That said, consider me a convert to your religion, I'm on board with respect to the general thrust of your argument.

As for science needing imagination, what about Occam's razor (do not multiply entities beyond necessity)? — Agent Smith

That's why I qualified imagination with "fact-based"; eliminate the fact-free stuff first, then the stuff that doesn't follow logically as a possibility, etc.

That said, consider me a convert to your religion[speculation], I'm on board with respect to the general thrust of your argument.

:ok: :smirk:

I just don't see how we could even go about trying to find a perspective-less view to see things as they are in a natural state, not affected by any representations. But then are there "things" left at all?

It's very obscure territory. — Manuel

I take this quote to be referring to the notion of objectivity, and it's in regard to this notion that I'm replying.

Well, first off, being myself biased by my own inclinations of thought, the notion of objectivity as "an awareness devoid of a point of view (hence, devoid of selfhood)" for me sort’a converges with the Neo-Platonic notion of “the One” or the Buddhist notion of “Nirvana”. Focusing on the Neo-Platonic notion of “the One”, it is taken to be the (absolute) Good and, as a derivative of this, to embody (for lack of better terms) absolute fairness. Again, not as a deity, for here there is selfhood, but as a completely selfless awareness.

At any rate, my own uncommon metaphysical proclivities aside, here’s my main point:

Complete objectivity for us shouldn’t be interpreted as the practical impossibility (but maybe not impossibility in principle) of obtaining “awareness devoid of perspective or point of view” but as the ideal of an absolute, completely unbiased fairness in one’s judgments - this regarding anything that is judged: issues of human justice (e.g., law), issues of what is and is not real (e.g., science), and so forth.

If this ideal of objectivity, i.e. of nonprejudicial fairness, would be forsaken … well, our relative fairness toward each other (ethics) and in respect to truths (epistemic appraisals of what is real) would go out the window.

Mentioning this because I am, um, biased in favor of objectivity as something which there ought to be more of. Again, not in the absolute sense - which to me would equate to being identical to “the One” or some such - but in the relative sense of the term … Come to think of it, as can equally be said for the ideal of goodness, i.e. of being good.

Basically don't like the bashing of objectivity. :grin: But I'm not saying you were doing this.

It can be a difficult topic. I don't have a problem with the notion of objectivity, namely giving reasons or looking for causes that can be found in nature. What causes something to heat up? The molecules speed up in the object, creating heat. That's an objective property of the world.

As for the idea of "the One", perhaps this can be illuminating in certain instances for the individual capable of having these experiences.

My intuition is not so much that we can't be objective, we can in many instances, but I tend to believe that there is a deeper cause for phenomena which cause things in nature, which we cannot conceptualize. I think this grounds the relations we see, but we don't know or understand the nature of this relation.

Which is why we always keep asking "why" questions.

As for the idea of "the One", perhaps this can be illuminating in certain instances for the individual capable of having these experiences. — Manuel

Personally, I'm doubtful that anyone can. Ecstatic experiences that get close to it, maybe, sure, but - as a personal belief grounded in, granted, imperfect reasoning - not full identity as "an awareness devoid of selfhood, hence literally devoid of ego, hence any type or degree of point of view, hence any conceivable boundary or limit". Experiences are, after all, bounded or limited. That mentioned, to me the idea has a certain logical ring, or appeal. In part having something to do with the ancient Greek notion of logos, as in an anima mundi rather than a literal word. But I'll let that can of worms be.

Which is why we always keep asking "why" questions. — Manuel

:up:

The question would be, if these experiences actually tell you something deep about the world or something deep about the mind, which is a part of the world, sure, but not the world itself, in a way.

These issues of loss of ego, I think I can understand them, I've been close to having such experiences. They were quite powerful when I had them, but, I cannot imbue them with more significance than the moment I had them, in terms of me saying something like "the world is essentially spiritual" or "seeing the mind of God" or how fleeting everything is.

I think people can confuse the moment of the experience with some deep truth. But, I may be wrong here.

I think people can confuse the moment of the experience with some deep truth. — Manuel

I'm in full agreement. Happens all the time for all types of experiences, mirages as one example. But, to be fair, Neo-Platonism (or Buddhism, for that matter) isn't about "I've had an experience so there you have it". It's about attempts to coherently comprehend an entire cosmology in a manner that makes sense. This to say, I think way too much weight is placed on the experience factor in these or similar enough philosophies. But that's just me.