Philosophy is defined by its etymology (Love of wisdom). — Nickolasgaspar

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

He is making speculations based on his personal goals and emotional needs. This is known as religion or magical thinking. — Nickolasgaspar

It might be that the worst form of magical thinking is the fantasy that one is free of it. The battle against magical thinking may itself be 'magically' motivated.

Do you think your aren't acting from 'personal goals and emotional needs'? Why do you want the truth so bad? Is knowledge valuable in itself or is science just a tool to get us what we want? Are you sure you don't just want to gloat above the poor fools who aren't as enlightened as you?

I only demand a meaningful use of the method for the production of frameworks that have real intellectual value — Nickolasgaspar

What is this value? Why all the fuss? Why the fear of magical thinking? Can you prove that magical thinking is bad? If not, it seems your fear of magical thinking is just magical thinking?

I'm down with critical thinking, I magically tell myself. I just think its only really exciting target is itself.

Have you not realized that I'm analyzing and criticizing the concept ? The real work is done not by repeating well-known mantras that fit on bumper stickers but down in the weeds with the details. So far I'm just picking up a garden variety scientism in your posts. I say that as an old atheist who thinks that even the 'self' and 'consciousness' are inventions, pieces of technology, culture not nature. — jas0n

-Again you dishonestly bring up scientism when I already have stated that Science is not the only source of epistemology and science can not answer everything (i.e. question of meaning and value).
So if you repeat this strawman you will prove your dishonesty to me and that your strawman is more of a ad hominem.

The real work is done by putting together bits and pieces of facts and reason without polluting them with unfalsifiable metaphysical assumptions!
You start by making unfalsifiable claims like.
-" In other words, the ultimate reality is not something seen, but rather the ever-present Seer. "
-How do you know that the ultimate reality differs from the reality we can observe. What are your objective facts that lead you to that conclusion?
How do you know and can prove this ever-present seer(whatever this deepity means) and on what evidential grounds to you equate an unobservable ultimate reality to a made up ever present peeping tom??
I can go on exposing all those unfounded deepities which prove my point on the pseudo philosophical nature of your statements.
YOU assume things that you NEED to prove. They need to be part of your conclusions not your presuppositions.
Making declarations that suit your narrative is an irrational and its more of a theology than philosophy

You start by making unfalsifiable claims like.
-" In other words, the ultimate reality is not something seen, but rather the ever-present Seer. "
-How do you know that the ultimate reality differs from the reality we can observe. What are your objective facts that lead you to that conclusion? — Nickolasgaspar

Are we on the same planet? I am criticizing the concept of the pure witness in this thread. If you can't see that, you are lost in a private dream. Take a breath. Go back and read. Or don't.

I can go on exposing all those unfounded deepities which prove my point on the pseudo philosophical nature of your statements. — Nickolasgaspar

'Deepities' is the best thing you've contributed so far.

If you haven't looked into Popper, I encourage you to look into my other thread. Observation statements are philosophically nontrivial. Sellars also sees in his own way what Popper calls the swamp on which our knowledge is built. — jas0n

-You keep going to the extremes. From Observation statements(almost deductive tautologies) to metaphysical presuppositions and magical claims.
You do understand that there is a huge middle ground where philosophy lies, right?????
Science and Philosophy on Naturalistic principles is successful because it takes risks in its predictions because they product of induction/abduction.
You should ALSO arrive to probable conclusion from what you know!!!
Instead you start from things you don't know and you push a narrative as if it was right.
How on earth can you ever say that your conclusion is wise...thus Philosophical.
Sorry sir but your sophistry is part of theology and superstition, not philosophy.

Your claims following your opening lines gloriously prove that:
-"Things that are seen come and go, are happy or sad, pleasant or painful—but the Seer is none of those things, and it does not come and go. The Witness does not waver, does not wobble, does not enter that stream of time."
Zero skepticism for the made up agent or its qualities!

Are we on the same planet? I am criticizing the concept of the pure witness in this thread. If you can't see that, you are lost in a private dream, sir — jas0n

-And what is the wise conclusion that is produced by criticizing this made up concept sir?
How this conclusion can add in our understanding, inform and affect our lives and expand our wisdom.
Metal gymnastics of concepts that are isolated from reality don't offer wisdom.
In this case it only sneaks in supernatural ideology since pure witnesses do not exist(as far as we can tell).

.

And what is the wise conclusion that is produced by criticizing this made up concept sir? — Nickolasgaspar

It's a concept related to one you depend on. As I went on to suggest.

You are knee-deep in metaphysical assumptions that you haven't even noticed yet.

Don't worry. The machines work whether or not you believe in them or understand them.

In this case it only sneaks in supernatural ideology since pure witnesses do not exist(as far as we can tell). — Nickolasgaspar

So the idea of the pure witness is basically just...consciousness. If you want to ghost story to attack, consciousness is a good one. Religion is such an easy target these days.

Now you are saying something, theorizing, and I think you are on to something. The 'pure witness' is a version of eternity. It is what is always there. It is like 'God' in that it makes experience possible. The mystical version offers spiritual comfort in the obvious way. 'You are really a deathless universal awareness.' The metaphysical version is part of a machinery that conquers time, allows us to discuss the form of all possible experience, provide the space where pure-exact language-independent and culture-independent meanings live, safe from the ravages of time and relativism. Kant and Husserl didn't want to only be talking only about nerdy European white dudes in this or that era. They needed the very essence of what it meant to be human and rational. And so it seems do you, with your implicitly universal notion of 'Philosophy.' As Marx might tell Stirner and that kid in the The Sixth Sense might tell Bruce Willis... the ego is a spook ! The ghostbuster is a ghost... — jas0n

1. The 'pure witness' is a version of eternity.
-so you are trying to validate a made up supernatural agent with an idealistic concept that we can not be sure if it is possible to begin with? Both concepts do not offer philosophical foundations.

2.It is what is always there.
- So you assume observing capabilities to what is always there. You need to demonstrate it ...not assume it. If not your foundations are pseudo philosophical.
You are polluting the narrative in order to introduce...wait for it....

3.It is like 'God' in that it makes experience possible.
-And we are finally at the crux of all this pseudo philosophical salad of assumptions and speculations.
The good old "magic does everything".
Again I will inform you that you are not in the correct forum. YOu need to be posting in a Theological forum.
What makes experience possible is you existing, not having your sensory system deprived of stimuli and your brain up an running and not deprived from metabolic molecules(food and oxygen).

The mystical version offers spiritual comfort in the obvious way. 'You are really a deathless universal awareness.' The metaphysical version is part of a machinery that conquers time, allows us to discuss the form of all possible experience, provide the space where pure-exact language-independent and culture-independent meanings live, safe from the ravages of time and relativism. — jas0n

-None of the above are legit philosophical ideas. They are comforting beliefs dressed up was philosopy.
Again I will state the important point about Philosophy.
The Philosophical Method is an exercise in frustration, not the pursuit of happiness.
Making up answers and assuming things you don't know ease our anxieties so you should be skeptical of your assumptions.

...on her breast is inscribed: you will die. This is her only remedy. Who still believes in doctors? I prefer the poet who is a fart in a steam-engine – he’s gentle but he doesn’t cry – polite and semi-homosexual, he floats...

https://391.org/manifestos/1920-dada-manifesto-feeble-love-bitter-love-tristan-tzara/

.

The Philosophical Method is an exercise in frustration, not the pursuit of happiness.
Making up answers and assuming things you don't know ease our anxieties so you should be skeptical of your assumptions. — Nickolasgaspar

I agree w/ the last part...or do I? I mean I always assumed I was after the truth....

I'd say what really matters, to me and maybe everyone, is feeling, feeling, feeling. Some philosophers have suggested that concept doesn't grab the absolute, that maybe art is better. And some religious thinkers have put feeling first. In my opinion, that's the cleanest route. Let it be called 'feeling.' Or, if it's ineffable, don't even start to argue for it. — jas0n

Reason is still king. Religion must not be a matter of feeling only. St. John's command to "try every spirit" condemns all attempts to make emotion or inspiration independent of reason. Those who thus blindly follow the inner light find it no "candle of the Lord," but an ignis fatuus; and the great mystics are well aware of this. The fact is that the tendency to separate and half-personify the different faculties—intellect, will, feeling—is a mischievous one. Our object should be so to unify our personality, that our eye may be single, and our whole body full of light. — Dean Inge, Christian Mysticism

Well you know I love concepts on this side, but 'emotion and inspiration' is tricky there. I tend to understand inspiration as having more than just emotional content. To me inspiration is the unity of concept and emotion. I can recall a particular peak experience. It was feeling and concept together, a sort of grasping the world as a harmony. So I would have said maybe that the world was God was harmony or something.

Of course I agree with questioning the 'inner light.' But that just takes us back to where I already try to live, in the space of a thinking that turns back on itself, that understands itself to be essentially transpersonal. The ego (as opposed to the body) is a convention. And this is something 'I' try to articulate in detail, while responding to and incorporating criticism, an endless task....

I'm reading some of that Dean Inge text just to reconnect with a classical presentation of the subject. I read some of it years ago when I was studying comparative religion. He has a Platonistic bent which I didn't appreciate at the time, but I do now. He goes on to say:

Mysticism is not itself a philosophy, any more than it is itself a religion. On its intellectual side it has been called "formless speculation." But until speculations or intuitions have entered into the forms of our thought, they are not current coin even for the thinker. The part played by Mysticism in philosophy is parallel to the part played by it in religion. As in religion it appears in revolt against dry formalism and cold rationalism, so in philosophy it takes the field against materialism and scepticism. It is thus possible to speak of speculative Mysticism, and even to indicate certain idealistic lines of thought, which may without entire falsity be called the philosophy of Mysticism. ...The real world, according to thinkers of this school, is created by the thought and will of God, and exists in His mind. It is therefore spiritual, and above space and time, which are only the forms under which reality is set out as a process.

Those kinds of motifs can be traced back to Plotinus and Proclus.

//ps// I will also acknowledge that Inge had some pretty reactionary and repugnant political views, but his scholarship in this subject matter was peerless.//

I agree w/ the last part...or do I? I mean I always assumed I was after the truth.... — jas0n

This is really hopeful. Questioning our presumptions is the only way we can

So the idea of the pure witness is basically just...consciousness. If you want to ghost story to attack, consciousness is a good one. Religion is such an easy target these days. — jas0n

-No it isnt'.
Consciousness is a biological phenomenon. Organisms with a sensory system and a central process unit (brain) have the ability to process environmental and organic stimuli, produce emotions and affections, reason then in to feelings,meaning and purpose through their ability of symbolic language and arrive to conclusions, choices and decisions.
All those mechanisms and their connections to the Ascending Reticular Activating System and the Central Lateral Thalamus are observable, quantifiable and provide loads of information on how our conscious states arise and how they affect our biology and behavior.
This is the process that we label as consciousness in the real world.
By using the same word to refer to a vague ghost substance you just produce an Ambiguity that doesn't help our conversation. Maybe you could provide a description from your observations about this ghost and how I can reproduce the same observations.

It's a concept related to one you depend on. As I went on to suggest.

You are knee-deep in metaphysical assumptions that you haven't even noticed yet.

. — jas0n

You don't get it....how can you demonstrate that this concept you say it is related to an other thing that I depend on?
How can you DEMONSTRATE this contingency?Objectively!
I don't really need metaphysical assumptions . I have Pragmatic Necessity. i.e. I don't need to assume anything for the metaphysical ontology of a, lets say a wall. From Pragmatic Necessity I have to accept my emotions and feelings produced when crashing in a wall ...head first.
This informs my future actions. if my actions keep those feelings away (avoid pain by avoiding walls) then we can objectively say that I was informed wisely by them.

This is not true for your god like artifacts.

-"Don't worry. The machines work whether or not you believe in them or understand them"
-correct but that is part of my argument....I am the one that argue for Empirical Regularity, External Limitations detected by our Experiences and Pragmatic Necessity independent of our metaphysical biases.

If I cry out: Ideal, ideal, ideal, Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom, I have given a pretty faithful version of progress, law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men have discussed in so many books, only to conclude that after all everyone dances to his own personal boomboom, and that the writer is entitled to his boomboom... the authority of the mystic wand formulated as the bouquet of a phantom orchestra made up of silent fiddle bows greased with filters made of chicken manure.
...
The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us in a banal kind of way to the opinions we had in the first place...
...
But supposing life to be a poor farce, without aim or initial parturition, and because we think it our duty to extricate ourselves as fresh and clean as washed chrysanthemums, we have proclaimed as the sole basis for agreement: art. It is not as important as we, mercenaries of the spirit, have been proclaiming for centuries. Art afflicts no one and those who manage to take an interest in it will harvest caresses and a fine opportunity to populate the country with their conversation.

https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Tzara_Dada-Manifesto_1918.pdf

This is not true for your god like artifacts. — Nickolasgaspar

I have a rotary phone and it's not plugged into the wall or anything but I can talk to God on it. My nurse likes to pretend I'm just imagining things, and I pretend to agree to spare her feelings, because she is scared of not being scientific. But me and God laugh together like mad when she leaves the room.

The Philosophical Method is an exercise in frustration..... — Nickolasgaspar

......which disappears as soon as the limitations of it are realized. A central metaphysical idea.

Making up answers and assuming things you don't know..... — Nickolasgaspar

.....serves no purpose, as opposed to making up answers and assuming things that do not contradict that which is known, which does. A central metaphysical idea.

What makes experience possible is you existing..... — Nickolasgaspar

.....which is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient. The mere fact of existence does nothing to explain that by which experience obtains. A central metaphysical idea.

.....start from things you don't know and you push a narrative as if it was right..... — Nickolasgaspar

Speculative metaphysics starts with things known, and uses that to arrive at logical arguments for that which is sufficiently explanatory in keeping with internal consistency and non-contradiction. Right or wrong is completely irrelevant with respect to proper philosophy, insofar as no one possesses the rational authority to know he is philosophically wise, while he may very well think himself to be.
—————

.....criticizing the concept of the pure witness.....
— jas0n

(...) this made up concept....
(...) concepts that are isolated from reality don't offer wisdom....
(...)our understanding — Nickolasgaspar

If a made up concept isolated from reality, what is this “our” of which you so readily speak? In the affirmative, have you not displayed your own wisdom in not denying the validity of that very same made up conception, in the proper use of a derivative of it? And in the negative, how wise would you be, to deny the validity of that made up conception, when it is impossible to express your denial without using it? Understanding is itself a made up conception, which does nothing more than represent a speculative human cognitive faculty, while leaving open a congruently speculative methodology for its operation.

Caveat: I would have said critique rather than criticize, but that’s just another one of those split-able hairs.
————

The metaphysical version is part of a machinery that (...) allows us to discuss the form of all possible experience, provide the space where pure-exact language-independent and culture-independent meanings live, safe from the ravages of time and relativism.
— jas0n
-None of the above are legit philosophical ideas. — Nickolasgaspar

I would have worded it a little differently, but still, I submit that’s exactly what they are.
—————

Without knowledge you can never be sure of how wise your conclusions are..... — Nickolasgaspar

Knowledge is always contingent, from which follows the surety of conclusions is just as contingent, which makes explicit I may be wise now regarding something I know but unwise later regarding that something I once knew. Wisdom resides more in judgement of difference, a logical relation writ large, than the knowledge of differences themselves.

Reason or better Logic is an essential tool for wisdom to be possible. — Nickolasgaspar

Exactly right. While wisdom resides in judgement, that wisdom is possible in order for it to be contained in judgement, is predicated solely on reason and logic, the real world being merely the occasion for the exercise of them. All three of which are antecedent to knowledge, or, which is the same thing, knowledge presupposes all three of those strictly human a priori capacities.

Point/counterpoint.....

......which disappears as soon as the limitations of it are realized. A central metaphysical idea. — Mww

-unfortunatelly people try to address their frustration by going over those limitations. (Magical supernatural claims). Removing frustration is not part of metaphysics. Metaphysics job is to provide frameworks that can be evaluated. The end of frustration (and not always) comes after the end of this evaluation.(falsification/verification).

.....serves no purpose, as opposed to making up answers and assuming things that do not contradict that which is known, which does. A central metaphysical idea. — Mww

those are not opposed practices. Making up answers without epistemic foundations is bad metaphysics...independent of our assumptions.

.....which is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient. The mere fact of existence does nothing to explain that by which experience obtains. A central metaphysical idea. — Mww

-First of all you are promoting a red herring. We are addressing necessity. Sufficiency in the case of experiencing depends on the biological hardware.
Accusing existence for insufficiency in relation to a property that isn't shared by all existing things (experiencing their world) ...is like accusing your tuna sandwich for immoral judgments on slavery.

Why do you keep repeating this deepity "A central metaphysical idea."
everything with said are rooted in epistemology.
Existence is necessary for experience...that is a knowledge claim.(epistemology).
Existence is not sufficient for experience...because rocks exist........that is also a knowledge claim.

-"

Speculative metaphysics starts with things known, and uses that to arrive at logical arguments for that which is sufficiently explanatory in keeping with internal consistency and non-contradiction. — Mww

"
-We agree on that...the question is are you following that? do you start with the most credible and available epistemology ?


-"Right or wrong is completely irrelevant with respect to proper philosophy, "
-Correct! Cherry picking your epistemology or ignoring it all together is what renders our philosophy...pseudo.

-"insofar as no one possesses the rational authority to know he is philosophically wise, while he may very well think himself to be."
-Again...... not the statement in question. "philosophically wise" refers to the conclusion.I am not addressing that. I am pointing people's insistence to skip basic steps of the method (Epistemology, Physika".

and here is an example of the problem I am talking about. you stated.
-"If a made up concept isolated from reality, what is this “our” of which you so readily speak? "
-not my problem. The side making the claim needs to provide the epistemic foundations so that we can accept this claim in his premises.
If he is unable to do that then he is practicing pseudo philosophy. Its not my fault that his assumption is unfounded.
Its like me going around dismissing your arguments because I am an all knowing agent with my knowledge source being ....isolated from reality so and you can not verify or falsify it.

You did so well in your previous paragraph.(Speculative metaphysics starts with things known, and uses that to arrive at logical arguments for that which is sufficiently explanatory in keeping with internal consistency and non-contradiction.)...but for a weird reason you fail to see why his "isolated concept" doesn't follow the path you described??
why is that?

And in the negative, how wise would you be, to deny the validity of that made up conception, when it is impossible to express your denial without using it? — Mww

- is this a serious argument? Our ability to reproduce a concept plays no role to its validity lol.
This is not how we evaluate claims of hypothesized concepts. We check the epistemic foundations. If they are absent then presupposing it in an argument renders the argument unsound. This means that me need to reject the conclusion.
I don't know why this is so difficult for you...you literally described the process.

I would have worded it a little differently, but still, I submit that’s exactly what they are. — Mww

Yes I know what you believe, the important question is why when a concept is epistemically astray

Knowledge is always contingent, from which follows the surety of conclusions is just as contingent, which makes explicit I may be wise now regarding something I know but unwise later regarding something else I know. Wisdom resides more in judgement than knowledge. — Mww

-Again...this is what you keep saying but you fail to practice when a concept isn't founded on knowledge....see your "concept isolated from reality".(as if you know that such a state is possible...an additional unfounded assumption in rescue of the first.)

Exactly right. While wisdom resides in judgement, that wisdom is possible in order for it to be contained in judgement, is predicated solely on reason and logic, the real world being merely the occasion for the exercise of them. — Mww

-Correct...but are you aware of a Non real world where we can not exercise them???? This is the problem with pseudo philosophy....it pollutes really good syllogisms!

All three of which are antecedent to knowledge, or, which is the same thing, knowledge presupposes all three of those strictly human a priori capacities. — Mww

-Obviously the dude who stated that has never studied other animals.

I have a rotary phone and it's not plugged into the wall or anything but I can talk to God on it. My nurse likes to pretend I'm just imagining things, and I pretend to agree to spare her feelings, because she is scared of not being scientific. But me and God laugh together like mad when she leaves the room. — jas0n

-I have a program written in Atari basic that allows me to copy paste claims (like yours) and accurately informs me about their truth value. Yours failed...so I will reject it.

Since it is isolated from your reality you will need to accept it.....according to your reasoning of course!

-I have a program written in Atari basic that allows me to copy paste claims (like yours) and accurately informs me about their truth value. — Nickolasgaspar

//////////////////
“Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty,” Schlegel writes in Lyceumfragment 42: “for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated.” The task of a literary work with respect to irony is, while presenting an inherently limited perspective, nonetheless to open up the possibility of the infinity of other perspectives: “Irony is, as it were, the demonstration [epideixis] of infinity, of universality, of the feeling for the universe” (KA 18.128); irony is the “clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos” (Ideas 69).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schlegel/

True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free) as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm

Another common error. People confuse Chronicling with Philosophy.

People confuse Chronicling with Philosophy. — Nickolasgaspar

To be seen is the ambition of ghosts, and to be remembered is the ambition of the dead...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_O._Brown

....indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have "ultimate and actual" opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every "foundation." Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—this is a recluse's verdict....

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm

I am speaking of a paper flower for the buttonholes of the gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitchen of grace, white cousins lithe or fat. They traffic with whatever we have selected.

https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Tzara_Dada-Manifesto_1918.pdf

your comments don't help this conversation or your points.
You need to decide. DO you recognize the importance of epistemology in philosophy or are you willing to cherry pick the cases where you can "do with out".

Since it reasoning value is isolated from according to your Yours failed informs me about their I will epistemology in recognize the importance You so you DO willing to cherry pick the cases where you can comments or your points Atari basic that allows me to copy paste claims need will need to accept it of course written in you your of to decide philosophy or are you (like yours) and accurately I your reality have a program don't help this do with out conversation reject it truth