Thoughts don't exist, the brain does. — Garrett Travers
No more than, for example, traffic lights "cause" drivers to step on the breaks or the gas. Simply put, they are only signals which inform habits, and when circumstances warrant they can be overriden (ignored), unlike "causes" which cannot. — 180 Proof
Since you spoke approvingly of phenomenology, I was asking where you thought it fit in Gerson's schema where 'Platonism' or 'Naturalism' are the only possible approaches and the attempts to find 'rapprochement' between the two are a fool's errand" — Paine
Since you spoke approvingly of phenomenology, I was asking where you thought it fit in Gerson's schema where 'Platonism' or 'Naturalism' are the only possible approaches and the attempts to find 'rapprochement' between the two are a fool's errand" — Paine
So then, Socrates, if, in saying many things on many topics concerning gods and the birth of the all, we prove to be incapable of rendering speeches that are always and in all respects in agreement with themselves and drawn with precision, don’t be surprised. But if we provide likelihoods inferior to none, we should be well-pleased with them, remembering that I who speak as well as you my judges have a human nature, so that it’s fitting for us to be receptive to the likely story about these things and not search further for anything beyond it. (29c-d).
As for all the heaven (or cosmos, or whatever else it might be most receptive to being called, let us call it that) … (28b).
I have been looking for a way to acknowledge Nagel's narrative of how the scientific method came about without accepting that it restricts all of its possible outcomes to descriptions of physical stuff isolated from all other physical stuff. Models have to agree with phenomena. — Paine
Maybe there should be a discussion devoted to Gerson. He seems to be a big man on campus here. — Paine
Plato cannot be situated on either side of Gerson's schema. — Fooloso4
Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients were correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism."Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."
When you say Carl Sagan said, 'cosmos is all there is', and by that, he means the cosmos as discerned scientifically," is Sagan truly reducing phenomena to what can be proven in a model? — Paine
There’s a limitation built into science, [Giorgi] explained. What we usually think of as science is physical, or natural, science—an empirical discipline that originated in the study of the physical world. When natural science uses the same quantitative and experimental approach that rendered physical phenomena intelligible to try to make sense of human phenomena like culture, psychology, or religion, it falls short.
But why?
“Because human beings are different from physical objects,” he stated matter-of-factly. “They have consciousness!” [which is exactly the point made by the Hard Problem argument.]
Humans live in a realm of meaning, values, ethics, and purpose, Giorgi explained. And that is not made intelligible in the same way the physical world is. Approaching humans with the same assumptions, methods, and goals that worked on atoms, galaxies, or cells is like using a hammer to pound in a screw—it is just not the right tool for the job.
Giorgi is a proponent of an intellectual tradition called human science [which I mentioned previously, 'geisteswissenschaften'], which originated in late 19th-century European philosophy with the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. Human science was developed by a long progression of esteemed thinkers, including some of the most innovative and heavy-hitting theorists of the Western philosophical tradition, such as Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone deBeauvoir, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur. Phenomenology comes from human science, as does modern hermeneutics (the study of the nature of interpretation), and the tradition has influenced a wide range of fields in the humanities and social sciences.
Recognizing the shortcomings of applying a natural science approach to human beings, these thinkers developed a science specifically tailored to the task. Like natural science, human science seeks knowledge that is secure, replicable, and verifiable. But it starts out with nonmaterialist assumptions, and it uses different methods—qualitative rather than quantitative ones.
Do you think of it as a garbage-in garbage-out scenario? — Paine
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. — Richard C. Lewontin, Billions and Billions of Demons - JANUARY 9, 1997 ISSUE NY Review of Books
Yeah, that's how I see it: "traffic lights" are just (semantic) signals, not (physical) causes.In the case of traffic lights, the traffic lights going red are anecessary condition[signal] for stepping on the brakes. It's not a sufficient condition because it can be overridden, and for other reasons as well. You can drive through the lights anyway. Is that right? — bert1
Okay.That is to say, were it not for you being hungry, you wouldn't eat. But it can be overridden. This falls short of a cause in your thinking, yes?
Right.On the other hand, the causes of your eating cannot be overridden. Is that right?
'Maintaining homeostasis' is the physiological (ergo physical) complex of causes of hunger (effect) that then signals – stimulates reflex-like – 'eating'. It's only the signal/stimulus, IME, which can be overriden (superceded or blocked) by other signals/stimuli.Is that what you have in mind as the cause?
Every thought is made of exactly that sort of fleshy matter. — Michael Sol
The thought exists in the material world in a very real, very particular, dynamic configuration of synapses and neurons in your brain. Every thought is made of exactly that sort of fleshy matter. — Michael Sol
Similarly, you cannot show me a Process, cannot even Conceive of one that does not employ the creative powers of some mysterious being who operates outside of the causal Universe. — Michael Sol
Argumentum ad populum fallacy. "People agree" may be a consensus, Count, but that's not corroborable or ostensible evidence (i.e. truthmaking).I believe the truthmaker for phenomenology would be that people agree that its descriptions of internal mental life are accurate. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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