:up:

Note I said "seriously believe"; belief serious enough to count preparing for the life to come as the most important matter in life. It's pretty rare, at least as far as my experience goes. Anyway I agree with you; all one needs is compassion and a conscience to be an ethical person.

It's pretty rare, at least as far as my experience goes — Janus

Yep. Got ya.

If it exists it has a position. We ought to be able to point to it. — NOS4A2

So your experience doesn't exist? Or are you saying it does have a position?

I’m afraid I’m terrible at math. What would the Markov blanket be in biological terms? — NOS4A2

Here - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519319304588?via%3Dihub

As for materialism, I reject it on these grounds: — Wayfarer

These aren't grounds.

From the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries onward, Materialism has steadily grown into the dominant worldview of Western civilization. — Peter Sas, Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

...is just an historical fact.

Materialism has exerted an enormous – and very harmful – influence in our culture. — Peter Sas, Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

...is wildly speculative, and flat out unsupported.

The most important cultural consequence of scientific Materialism has undoubtedly been modern individualism — Peter Sas, Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

...no grounds here either, just again, wildly speculative and unsupported opinion.

egoism, greed, exploitation, feelings of inferiority, hatred, abuse, violence… These are all thoughts, feelings and behavioral patterns that originate in the conviction that I – as this person, with this body and this mind – am nothing more than this individual being — Peter Sas, Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

...is just completely and demonstrably wrong. Without a shadow of a doubt these psychological traits are prevalent no less in the deeply religious than they are in the deeply secular.

Utter, utter bullshit. You cannot expect anyone to take seriously the idea that "greed, exploitation, feelings of inferiority, hatred, abuse, violence" are eliminated by a worldview that accepts a non-physical dimension to existence. Have you come across the Catholic Church at all?

In this view, the physical world really does exist outside that but in a manner which is by definition unknowable — Wayfarer

In what way does materialism deny this possibility?

Less formally the impulse is that if idealism is true, and hence only minds and mental phenomena exist, then all that can be true must be apparent to a conscious mind. — Banno

I think it more accurate to say that if idealism is true then all true statements of the form "p exists" are apparent to a conscious mind, which doesn't require Fitch's paradox to show as it seems to be quite explicit in the idealist's position.

The problem with the more ambiguous conclusion that all true statements are apparent to a conscious mind is that without clarification it would appear to cover such statements as statements about the future, counterfactuals, mathematics, and so on, which personally I believe can be true even if they do not correspond to some entity that exists (e.g. a counterfactual can be true even without actual parallel worlds, predictions can be true even if eternalism isn't the case, mathematics can be true even if mathematical anti-realism is correct, and so on).

Less formally the impulse is that if idealism is true, and hence only minds and mental phenomena exist, then all that can be true must be apparent to a conscious mind. — Banno

I think it more accurate to say that if idealism is true then all true statements of the form "p exists" is apparent to a conscious mind, which doesn't require Fitch's paradox to show as it seems to be quite explicit in the idealist's position. — Michael

Actually, thinking on it more, even this might not be correct. Consider the statement "there exists more than one mind" (or even the more specific "there exist n minds"). Such a statement is about minds and mental phenomena, unproblematically has a truth value (unlike counterfactuals, predictions, and mathematics), but can be true even if it isn't apparent to a conscious mind.

This makes no sense at all. You’re saying that some third thing is required for the two apples to be separated. Then what separates the two apples from this third thing? — Michael

You don't seem to have apprehended what I said in the other post Michael. The apples are things. What separates them is not a thing. The point I am making is that it cannot be a thing. You've simply assumed again, that it is a thing. It's not a thing, and it cannot be a thing or else there would be three things, not two, and then more things to separate those things, and the infinite regress you mentioned. The logic of mathematics would be rendered useless if that which separates two things from each other was a third thing.

However, something must separate the two things from each other, or else they would be only one thing. And, the logic of mathematics would be rendered useless in that way, as well. As I explained above, that which separates them cannot be a third thing. Therefore we need to employ a dualism to understand the existence of independent things. Aristotle resolved this type of logical dilemma with hylomorphism, a type of dualism.

Edit: I am having difficulty locating our disagreement, apart from your insistence on separating a material and spiritual world. — Banno

Such a separation (dualism) is necessary for the reasons I explained to Michael, above. Without such a separation (and the ensuing law of identity, which requires that each of the two aspects is real), logic is left impotent.

That's because you're still criticizing a strawman version of idealism. — Wayfarer

I believe that a proper representation of idealism places the ideal as prior to the material. Most forms of idealism do not deny the reality of matter, they simply affirm that matter is logically dependent on mind. This is the real issue of modern metaphysics. The laity tend to place matter as first, assuming that mind evolved through some form of emergence. But this illogical position renders the entire universe as unintelligible (cosmological argument being the ultimate demonstration), so the higher educated tend to adopt some form of idealism. You'll see idealism as the most common perspective of physicists, placing the wave function (ideal) as prior to the material object (particle).

But Wayfarer has presented converse arguments such that those who espouse materialism are afraid less they be obliged to face the reality of a spiritual or transcendent world - they refuse to countenance such things out of fear of having their world overturned. And I think this is probably right, too, in many cases. — Banno

Why the fear? The logical necessity is that we must accept the reality of that second aspect of reality. It is a "logical necessity" not because it is demonstrated as a logical conclusion, but a necessity because it is required for logic to be applicable. If logic is rendered impotent, then what are we left with as the means to understand reality? So we must accept that which you fear, the reality of dualism, and get on with the enterprise of understanding reality. Why live in a veiled world of self-deception, simply because you fear reality? Release your fear of God, and accept Him into your heart. Denying Him out of fear is nothing but self-deception.

However, something must separate the two things from each other, or else they would be only one thing. And, the logic of mathematics would be rendered useless in that way, as well. As I explained above, that which separates them cannot be a third thing. Therefore we need to employ a dualism to understand the existence of independent things. Aristotle resolved this type of logical dilemma with hylomorphism, a type of dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand what this is saying at all.

we must accept ... dualism — Metaphysician Undercover

....

Release your fear of God, and accept Him — Metaphysician Undercover

Ridiculous. Even if we are forced to accept dualism (which we're not), what the hell has the protagonist of a traditional folk story got to with it?

Derrida appears to be saying that there are rules of interpretation that apply to his work. I could make up a different rule of interpretation "All works mean exactly what the author says they mean and nothing else". As a rule, it couldn't be clearer. So why do we not apply that?

Or worse — Isaac

"All works should be read backwards and the sense of them taken from whatever meaning remains in the reversed text". Again, crystal clear as a rule, no one would be in any doubt as to how to follow it, yet it's a rule which apparently Derrida thinks is wrong. So on what ground are some rules right and others wrong? — Isaac

There are discursive contexts which are more or less stable , more or less consistent. Thus an event as experienced by someone can be more or less ‘true’ to a given context.
Can we call the more stable discursive contexts ‘rules’? Even if we allows ourselves to do so, this is not the basis of Derrida’s philosophy. Even within stable ‘rule-bound’ contexts, temporality is the fundamental ground. And what is temporality?

Temporality assures that every moment transforms one’s entire past. The entire world , with its rules, objects, facts, is now slightly changed as a whole every new moment.

Derrida articulates this in different ways, with different terms. One of these terms is iterability.

"The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and hence that it bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual "element" as well as between "elements", because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence; it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence..(LI53)."

Is the above , is deconstruction, a fundamental ‘rule’ that we are meant to ‘apply’? Does it clash with alternate ‘rules’ that other philosophers offer?

quote="Isaac;712468"]All works mean exactly what the author says they mean and nothing else". As a rule, it couldn't be clearer. So why do we not apply that?

Is this an alternative to Derrida’s thinking, or does it presuppose it? Yes, all works mean exactly what an author says they mean and nothing else. But what does intention, as meaning to say, ‘do’?

"Through the possibility of repeating every mark as the same, [iterability] makes way for an idealization that seems to deliver the full presence of ideal objects..., but this repeatability itself ensures that the full presence of a singularity thus repeated comports in itself the reference to something else, thus rending the full presence that it nevertheless announces"(LI29)). ...the possibility of its being repeated another time-breaches, divides, expropriates the "ideal" plenitude or self-presence of intention,...of all adequation between meaning and saying. Iterability alters...leaves us no room but to mean (to say) something that is (already, always, also) other than what we mean (to say) (Limited, Inc,p.61)." "The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition(p.53)."

According to the above , we can rightly assert that what we write means exactly what we say it means and nothing else, We can absolutely believe this. And yet , this assertion does not clash with the underlying deconstructive ‘mechanics’ that make the assertion possible and give it its meaning. In making such an assertion we are implicitly but not explicitly deconstructing our intention.

And what about this alternative?

"All works should be read backwards and the sense of them taken from whatever meaning remains in the reversed text". Again, crystal clear as a rule, no one would be in any doubt as to how to follow it, yet it's a rule which apparently Derrida thinks is wrong. — Isaac

The same situation applies. One is offering a crystal clear rule. And Derrida does not deny this. He is simply trying to show that when we look closely enough within the terms’ of an intended meaning that is ‘crystal clear’ we may notice that it’s crystal clarity continues to be the same differently , not just in terms of how it is interpreted by those other than the creator of the rule , but also by the rule-creator. To mean a rule is to mean something slightly other, more, different than what we meant to legislate, in the very act of intending it. This doesn’t destroy the rule. It is its condition of possibility.

There is no counter example you can think of that cannot be submitted to such a deconstruction, which of course does not make any of your examples ‘untrue’
or Derrida’s deconstruction more true.

Derrida is pointing to what it is that makes intention, meaning , rules both operate and not operate at the same time.

So your experience doesn't exist? Or are you saying it does have a position?

I’m saying if it exists it has a position. You told me it exists but where it is doesn’t matter.

Markov blankets are not necessarily spatially extensive membranes; they are just a set of states that separates internal and external states.

The epidermis, then. The epidermis is in direct contact with the tea cup.

The subject is third-person when referred to in the third person. — Wayfarer

And it stands to reason that the subject is first-person when referred to in the first person (you and I). The point being that a subject is an object - a person. The perspective from which one refers to a subject does not matter at all. I just don't understand your issue of reification of the subject when you are the one that has defined a subject as an object, or a thing.

Other people are only known via our "first-person" experiences - which is typically visual, auditory, tactile information. Our own self is known via our attention looping back on itself in attending itself, or in attending the information as information and not attending what the information is about like other people or the world.

What is an experience? Would it be fair to define experience as the information of the subject/object/person relative to the world?
— Harry Hindu

I don't know if it can be defined as that, but certainly experience implies the subject for whom, or to whom, it occurs. — Wayfarer

Well, you are the one that linked the subject (an object as a person) with experience. I thought you had an idea of what you were talking about when using the term, "experience". If you don't know what it is then how can you say that it implies the subject for whom it occurs?

There are discursive contexts which are more or less stable , more or less consistent. Thus an event as experienced by someone can be more or less ‘true’ to a given context. — Joshs

I grant that, but stability and consistency of contexts is hardly the 'hard and fast' judgement is it?

But what does intention, as meaning to say, ‘do’? — Joshs

If intention as meaning to say does something, then it becomes an empirical matter, no? We should be able to sense the effects of this action on the world.

He is simply trying to show that when we look closely enough within the terms’ of an intended meaning that is ‘crystal clear’ we may notice that it’s crystal clarity continues to be the same differently , not just in terms of how it is interpreted by those other than the creator of the rule , but also by the rule-creator. To mean a rule is to mean something slightly other, more, different than what we meant to legislate, in the very act of intending it. This doesn’t destroy the rule. It is its condition of possibility. — Joshs

This sounds just like Ellis on intention. We're talking about the way people make rules and intend them. He's saying that the world is such that rules cannot be made without meaning something slightly other than we meant to rule on. A fact about the way the world is. I'm quite content with Derrida's claim here, but it is clearly a claim about the way the world is. a normal everyday factual claim.

So your experience doesn't exist? Or are you saying it does have a position?


I’m saying if it exists it has a position. You told me it exists but where it is doesn’t matter. — NOS4A2

I didn't think I'd have to tell you your experience exists. Do you think it doesn't?

The epidermis, then. The epidermis is in direct contact with the tea cup. — NOS4A2

Yes. But your experienced tea cup (the one you act on, talk about, point to, describe, remember, locate, plan about, name, reach for... The one you just referred to with the words "tea cup") does not cause the responses in your epidermis. Something else does. If this weren't the case it would be impossible to be wrong. It's not impossible to be wrong, therefore your construction (no matter how generally accurate) cannot actually be one and the same as the causes of the data from which it is constructed.

Therefore there are, by necessity, at least two nodes to consider. The tea cup of your experience (and mine, and the rest of the world - we construct these things together), and the hidden states which such a construction is an attempt to model, predict and modify.

From the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries onward, Materialism has steadily grown into the dominant worldview of Western civilization. — Peter Sas, Critique of Pure Interest (Blog)

Of course. I think it is quite evident. My experence with dozens of discussions I have had related to the the material/physical vs immaterial/non-physical world, as well as a poll and a couple of discussions I have launched in this medium, show that "materialism" wins by 5:1 (80%)! And, consider that this occurs in the philosophical community (taken as a whole). One has to also add the almost 99% materialistic scientific community in the equation ...

Release your fear of God, and accept Him — Metaphysician Undercover

Is this a kind of preaching?
This is a philosophical medium, not a religious one. And the above statement does not sound at all like a philosophical one or belonging to any kind of philosophy, including Philosophy of Religion, i.e. Theology.

He's saying that the world is such that rules cannot be made without meaning something slightly other than we meant to rule on. A fact about the way the world is. I'm quite content with Derrida's claim here, but it is clearly a claim about the way the world is. a normal everyday factual claim. — "Isaac

Whether it’s a normal everyday factual claim depends on how you are understanding it. The way I understand it , it doesnt function the way that claims about things normally function. For one thing , it is not a propositional statement. Heidegger spent a whole career introducing a new way to think about the word ‘is’, such as S is P. So I would say what Derrida, in following Heidegger, is doing isnt a claim about the world but an investigation into what has traditionally been ignored by normal everyday factual forms of assertion. I could easily demonstrate this by having you elaborate on what you understand normal everyday factual claims to have in common.

I exist. I experience. But it doesn’t follow that something called “experience” exists.

Yes. But your experienced tea cup (the one you act on, talk about, point to, describe, remember, locate, plan about, name, reach for... The one you just referred to with the words "tea cup") does not cause the responses in your epidermis. Something else does. If this weren't the case it would be impossible to be wrong. It's not impossible to be wrong, therefore your construction (no matter how generally accurate) cannot actually be one and the same as the causes of the data from which it is constructed.

Therefore there are, by necessity, at least two nodes to consider. The tea cup of your experience (and mine, and the rest of the world - we construct these things together), and the hidden states which such a construction is an attempt to model, predict and modify.

I don’t think it would be impossible to be wrong. There are other things in the environment, including ourselves, that can prohibit or impede our understanding, like narcotics or physical disabilities. We can experience those in tandem with the tea cup. It raises a good point, though, that we do not just experience isolated objects like teacups, but the environment in general.

I don’t yet see the necessity in evoking construction or representation until a construction or representation can be found. Construction implies something is constructed, that this something is visible, and that there is something or someone to view it. Maybe they have some sort of explanatory power, but don’t you think it would be better to eliminate these figments in favor of trying to understand the extant features of the world?

I exist. I experience. But it doesn’t follow that something called “experience” exists. — NOS4A2

I exist. I dream. Do dreams exist?

It follows from the idea that people are attempting to communicate sonething when they use words. If what you are talking about doesn't exist then what are you talking about?

Does a walk exist? Does a cartwheel exist? Does a backflip exist?

Our language no doubt attempts to abstract actions from the extant being that performs them. But at no point should we take this to mean there is an actual, existing distinction between doer and deed. They are like the morning and evening star, one and the same.

I just don't understand your issue of reification of the subject when you are the one that has defined a subject as an object, or a thing. — Harry Hindu

I never said that. Plainly from the perspective of a subject, myself, other beings appear in some sense as objects, but we do not regard other beings as objects, which is why we refer to them with personal pronouns rather than as ‘it’ or ‘thing’. (For that matter, reflect on why humans and some of the higher animals are called ‘beings’.) Philosophy has long been aware of the paradox that we ourselves are subjects of experience, but are also objects in the eyes of other subjects.

The basic principle is found in Indian philosophy, in the Upaniṣads, where it is stated that ‘the hand cannot grasp itself, the eye cannot see itself ’ ( Source). It’s also been articulated in phenomenology. Here’s a reading on it.

Most forms of idealism do not deny the reality of matter, they simply affirm that matter is logically dependent on mind. This is the real issue of modern metaphysics. The laity tend to place matter as first, assuming that mind evolved through some form of emergence. But this illogical position renders the entire universe as unintelligible (cosmological argument being the ultimate demonstration), so the higher educated tend to adopt some form of idealism. You'll see idealism as the most common perspective of physicists, placing the wave function (ideal) as prior to the material object (particle). — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree. I don’t know if it’s the most common, but it’s certainly strongly represented amongst them.

I don't understand what this is saying at all. — Michael

See this

, There's a reason that Wiki article stops at the seventeenth century. Logic moved on.

Maybe but at least it explains the reference.

Is this a kind of preaching?
This is a philosophical medium, not a religious one. And the above statement does not sound at all like a philosophical one or belonging to any kind of philosophy, including Philosophy of Religion, i.e. Theology. — Alkis Piskas

In case you didn't notice, it was a response to Banno's expressed fear of having to face the reality of the spiritual world. Banno will not read an argument which gives validity to any theological ideas, because of this fear.

But Wayfarer has presented converse arguments such that those who espouse materialism are afraid less they be obliged to face the reality of a spiritual or transcendent world - they refuse to countenance such things out of fear of having their world overturned. — Banno

having to face the reality of the spiritual world. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting. Does idealism in your view necessitate the reality of a spiritual world (as opposed to a reality where mentation is everything)? I can see how it might support some forms of spiritual belief, with suppositions and additional work - what kind of spiritual world does idealism establish as real?

fear of having to face the reality of the spiritual world... — Metaphysician Undercover

That's why I keep a copy of Thomas Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, on my profile page. It really is worth reading. (Nagel is a professed atheist.)

The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life. — Thomas Nagel

Interesting. Does idealism in your view necessitate the reality of a spiritual world (as opposed to a reality where mentation is everything)? I can see how it might support some forms of spiritual belief, with suppositions and additional work - what kind of spiritual world does idealism establish as real? — Tom Storm

I do not think that idealism establishes any specific type of spiritual world as real, per se. What it does though is give us the principles required to understand the priority of the spiritual over the material.

The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life. — Thomas Nagel

I don't see why the idea that the relation between mind and world is something fundamental would presuppose religion. I have no idea what the connection might be.

It seems obvious that the ways that things uniquely appear to humans is a function of both the things themselves and human physiology, which means that the relation between (body/)mind and world is fundamental.

Things don't appear the same to other animals, but it is the same things that don't appear the same to different species, and this would not change whether the things were ideas in the mind of God or mind-independent existents, as far as I can see.

On the other hand, is there any logical contradiction in the idea that God might have created a world of mind independent existents and many species of percipients with the faculties to perceive those existents? Perhaps He would do that so He doesn't have to keep everything in mind all the time. the lazy prick! :wink: