It also gives me the feeling of someone backed up against a wall rather than someone in control of the situation so to speak. — Agent Smith

As I see it, scientists and philosophers are both constrained by facts and the way their beliefs and hypotheses are expected to fit together. An exalted submission is perhaps involved in the pursuit of objective knowledge. As someone put it once, freedom is just living by norms that make sense to you (the right kind of prison).

But reality does contain extended things. It's a self-evident fact my reason presents to me, so the burden is on you to disprove it.

I have two self-evident facts of reason. The world contains extended things, and you can't divide things forever. Therefore you can't divide extended things infinitely.

It's on you to prove that wrong, and you can't just say "it isn't" to either of my premises, because they're self-evident facts of reason. — Isaac

Excellent and succinct parody, which'll probably leave no scratch (I speak from recent experience.)

That's not an argument. Explain why an extended thing could not be divided. — Bartricks

It wasn't intended to show that, but to show that there are different reasonable ways of thinking about it. In other words your blanket mantra "reason tell us" is a vacuous nostrum.

Nothing Democritus - and it is Democritus, not Democritius — Bartricks

Now you're reduced to pointing out typos?

Your "students" have my sincerest sympathies. — 180 Proof

:lol: OMG, it's the lecturer from Hell! This thread has become the 'comedy relief sandbox'.

Well, I will wait until you can provide an actual refutation of the self evident truth of reason that any extended thing will be capable of division.

Well, I will wait until you can provide an actual refutation of the self evident truth of reason that any extended thing will be capable of infinite division. — Bartricks

Why would I bother trying to refute something that does not seem self-evident to me, just because you claim it seems self-evident to you? On the contrary I would be wasting my time, wouldn't I? In such a situation we could not but talk past one another. You'll say I can't see what is self-evident, and I'll say that you can't see what's self-evident (that neither the infinite divisibility nor the finite divisibility of extended things is self-evident). Where will that get us?

Well, I will wait until you can provide an actual refutation of the self evident truth of reason that any extended thing will be capable of division. — Bartricks

Perhaps without realizing it, you are coming off somewhat like the theist who knows God 'directly.' It also makes no sense to refute a self-evident truth, since no inference is involved, just glowing and divine intuition.

No doubt, words both of us can profit from in circumstances such as this ...

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. — Mark Twain

This thread has become the 'comedy relief sandbox'. — Janus

:up:

That's how I'm taking it. It's fascinating, such complete incorrigibility.

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. — Mark Twain

:lol: :up: Brilliant!

That's how I'm taking it. It's fascinating, such complete incorrigibility. — Pie

Yep, it's pretty unique.

As I see it, scientists and philosophers are both constrained by facts and the way their beliefs and hypotheses are expected to fit together. An exalted submission is perhaps involved in the pursuit of objective knowledge. As someone put it once, freedom is just living by norms that make sense to you (the right kind of prison). — Pie

On second thought, the reason philosophers tend to grab at anything within reach, the closest object as it were, when doing philosophy (of mind) is due to the fact that they (we) are by and large ignorant, we're in the dark and it shows.

That said, the efforts are laudable and there maybe a grain or two of truth in what is essentially fumbling (for the keys) and stumbling (towards the door with the sign TRUTH).

Bonam fortunam o philosopher! We must presss on, we must!

Yes, reality is numero uno, but coherence is the next best thing!

the reason philosophers tend to grab at anything within reach, the closest object as it were, when doing philosophy (of mind) is due to the fact that they (we) are by and large ignorant, we're in the dark and it shows. — Agent Smith

Well said !

I try to know when I don't know, and this is largely a matter of discipline, because

With a hot pad under my ass I can play the braggart or the buffoon as good as any man, no matter what sign he be born under. — H. Miller

I view what Brandom is doing as something like fixing Descartes' starting point. I don't start as a ghost in the machine, but I do start after Socrates, which is to say as a philosopher among philosophers, all of us subject (ideally anyway) to 'the force of reason', and only to that force (not [directly] to gods or states, etc.) If you ask me to prove this, because you refuse to take it on faith, then you support my point by challenging it.

the efforts are laudable and there maybe a grain or two of truth — Agent Smith

Influenced by the pragmatists, I look to our practical/technological power as a species and think that we have more than a grain or two of truth or knowledge or whatever you want to call it. Various neo-Kantians accepted the existence of a science as a fact and went on from there. I think they were correct to do so. That doesn't mean we can't articulate what's going on better and better, etc. And it doesn't mean we aren't in the dark or talking nonsense as we get farther away from practical life in our talking (so I sympathize with the idea that lots of metaphysics is pointless, not even wrong.)

It is because you are wed to a false worldview- one not endorsed by reason, but convention — Bartricks

No. I double checked the label (the one which, of course, is attached to all our thoughts) and it said 'intuition', not 'convention'.

Not quite fully satisfied though (because I knew I was speaking to an Actual Philosopher) I checked the small print telling us where our beliefs come from (which again, as us experts know, is attached to all our beliefs), and it said 'made in Reason'.

So yeah, I've done my due diligence. Definitely an Intuition, and definitely From Reason.

Have you double-checked yours? Because your belief that extended things ought to be infinitely divisible sounds a bit like a Convention to me. You know you have to turn the beliefs upside to see the label properly, right?

Excellent and succinct parody, which'll probably leave no scratch (I speak from recent experience.) — Pie

Thanks, though I suspect the far greater parody is being played on us by @Bartricks himself, who'll reveal, on his 6,000th post, that his contributions were all a work of performance art lampooning the self-assurance of cult religion... It's very deep.

Thanks, though I suspect the far greater parody is being played on us by Bartricks himself, who'll reveal, on his 6,000th post, that his contributions were all a work of performance art lampooning the self-assurance of cult religion... It's very deep. — Isaac

Nice theory!

He also tempts me to think he's a bot in his apparent failure to assimilate and respond to criticism. I imagine a bot that looks for a few keywords to choose between a small set of responses. I enjoy the insult responses most, because these are occasionally creative and surprising.

Influenced by the pragmatists, I look to our practical/technological power as a species and think that we have more than a grain or two of truth or knowledge or whatever you want to call it. Various neo-Kantians accepted the existence of a science as a fact and went on from there. I think they were correct to do so. That doesn't mean we can't articulate what's going on better and better, etc. And it doesn't mean we aren't in the dark or talking nonsense as we get farther away from practical life in our talking (so I sympathize with the idea that lots of metaphysics is pointless, not even wrong.) — Pie

I couldn't have said it better mon ami, I really couldn't have!

As you are already aware, philosophers are, how would you say it?, frontline personnel - I compare them to explorers and as we all know, explorers are the ones who take all the risk - losing an eye, even dying are part of the job description - operating as they are in what in the game universe is known as the fog of war. Hic sunt dracones comrades, hic sunt dracones. Careful now, careful! :snicker:

He also tempts me to think he's a bot in his apparent failure to assimilate and respond to criticism. — Pie

Ha! I think AI has moved on. It takes a human to be quite so dogmatic!

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD) and colloquially known as split personality disorder,[7] is a mental disorder characterized by the maintenance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states.[3] The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps beyond what would be explained by ordinary memory issues. The personality states alternately show in a person's behavior; however, presentations of the disorder vary. Other conditions that often occur in people with DID include post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders (especially borderline and avoidant), depression, substance use disorders, conversion disorder, somatic symptom disorder, eating disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and sleep disorders.[3] Self-harm, non-epileptic seizures, flashbacks with amnesia for content of flashbacks, anxiety disorders, and suicidality are also common. — Wikipedia

:snicker:

As you are already aware, philosophers are, how would you say it?, frontline personnel - I compare them to explorers and as we all know, explorers are the ones who take all the risk - losing an eye, even dying are part of the job description - operating as they are in what in the game universe is known as the fog of war. Hic sunt dracones comrades, hic sunt dracones. Careful now, careful! :snicker: — Agent Smith

Nice ! This squares with Nietzsche in the sense a 'moral pioneer' (this is the stuff that scares people and gets Spinoza in trouble) and with Popper in the sense that metaphysical theories sometimes ripen into science...so it's a bad idea to hide from everything that's ambiguous (like a stereotypical positivist who thinks anything fancy is nonsense.*)

*A healthy dose of positivistic skepticism is not so bad though.

It follows that minds are not extended things. — Bartricks

How can something that has no extension be able to have states, as in the states of mind? Are they states of an expanse-less thing? Try to imagine that.

It seems like this forum needs functions for drawing out what one is describing including venn diagrams.

How can something that has no extension be able to have states, as in the states of mind? Are they states of an expanse-less thing? — Daniel

I do not know what you want by way of an answer. Our minds are immaterial: that's what the argument from indivisibility appears to show. And our minds have states. So, the evidence is that immaterial things have states. I do not owe an account of 'how' that could be the case - it clearly 'is' the case.

Furthermore, when it comes to some sensible object - a piece of cheese, say - it makes sense to wonder what it might feel like, or taste like, given that one can see it (or of something one is only touching, it makes sense to wonder what it might look like). But it clearly makes no sense to wonder what it thinks like.

So, it seems that our reason represents sensible objects to be things that have states such as shape, and size and colour and so on, but not mental states.

And when it comes to our minds it seems to make no sense to wonder what they look like, or smell like, or taste like, or what colour they are. And so our reason seems to represent those things that have mental states positively not to have sensible states.

Try to imagine that. — Daniel

I imagine you have a mind. And you imagine I do. When you imagine that, what colour and size and texture do you imagine my mind to have? None,yes? You imagine a thing that is in a state of thought, rather than something that has sensible states.

I imagine you have a mind. And you imagine I do. When you imagine that, what colour and size and texture do you imagine my mind to have? — Bartricks

And the question of the year award goes to Dr. Bartricks. Most excellent, monsieur, most excellent.

Allow me to attempt at an answer. The mind isn't an object like a mandarin which is orange, roundish, and rough to touch. It's more like walking (function) and has none of these properties. Nevertheless, the mind, for this reason amd this reason alone, can't be considered nonphysical. Plus, pick up a Gray's anatomy book and turn the page to ambulation - you'll get an idea of how walking is divided into, well, parts, the swing phase is one such part.

I imagine you have a mind. And you imagine I do. When you imagine that, what colour and size and texture do you imagine my mind to have? — Bartricks

Small and dark with a thick fibrous skin and many prickles, like a somewhat browned off horse-chestnut still in its outer covering.

Small and dark — unenlightened

I went to an Alternative Health Fair with a friend who spent £20 (at that time about half his weekly welfare benefits) on a 'kirlean' aura photograph together with character analysis. It said he was a very warm purple and rather too trusting and gullible. Typical Aquarius, of course.

I went to an Alternative Health Fair with a friend — Cuthbert

The only alternative I've found to health is sickness; and a pile of horseshit at £20 is pretty alternatively invigorating even at todays' prices. A fair that does what it says on the tinfoil hat.

Solvitur ambulando. — Diogenes

If the mind is divisible, show me the pieces its divided into!

If the mind is divisible, show me the pieces its divided into! — Agent Smith

Cognitions, subcognitions and metacognitions.