Simply that appearances can deceive, after all

Somethign on which we do not disagree. But it would be an error to conclude that therefore we are, or may be, always deceived.

So I'll join with .

As you say we theorize that there is something, some configuration of particles or energy or whatever, more or less invariant which gives rise to human perceptions of a particular tree. — Janus

No. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's a common misinterpretation of all predictive coding models, they're models of how information is processed, nothing to do with the physics of the universe. They're not making any ontological claims.

The term 'external states' (which has caused an immense amount of confusion here for some reason) refers to that state of a node in an information diagram. Like {on/off} or {high/low} something like that. So, whilst I dislike bridging cognitive systems theories and social constructs, it would be something like that external nodes must be in some state (contain some data) that is at least moderately consistent because our inferences about the state of those nodes from our internal nodes yields fairly predictable changes when acted upon.

That the tree is made of atoms is still all inference. It's not 'tree = internal, and 'atoms' = external.

The tree as it is in itself as opposed to the tree as it appears to us is a voherent logical distinction — Janus

No, I don't believe it is because you've used the term 'it' (as I pointed out earlier). For the 'tree-as-it-is-in-itself' to be anything it must already be inferred (no less than the 'tree' was in the first place). It's existence is no less a product of our perception.

this is just a diferent way of thinking and talking about it than your preferred way, but neither way is priveleged in the sense of presenting any matter of fact; they are simply two different ways of thinking. — Janus

As usual with arguments like this...

"thisis'nt just a different way of thinking and talking about it than your preferred way, and one way is privileged in the sense of presenting any matter of fact; they are not simply two different ways of thinking."

Can one assume that the above 'way of thinking' is, by your own theory, no more privileged than the one you espoused from which it is derived, by negation? Just a different way of thinking, yes? Equally valid.

it would be an error to conclude that therefore we are, or may be, always deceived. — Banno

Absolutely. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the nature of language is such that we cannot possibly be always deceived - against what truth would we measure that deceit?

Much as Wittgenstein pointed out in On Certainty. Being deceived is already participating in a language game - and so being deceived is participating in a world, and involves other people.

But it would be an error to conclude that therefore we are, or may be, always deceived. — Banno

Being deceived is already participating in a language game - and so being deceived is participating in a world, and involves other people. — Banno

See…this is where guys like me get lost in the modern shuffle.

I pointed out the error in the one case, where the initial condition was an idea but you forced in a proposition, supposing something of the one would apply to the other, re: negation. Now, you’re doing it again, in this case the initial condition is appearance, but you forced in language, supposing something of the one would apply to the other, re: deception.

As if that wasn’t enough, if being deceived is to participate in a world, and there is nothing whatsoever for any human to particulate in except a world…..why in the HELL is it that we may not always be deceived, if the guarantee of the truth of NOT being deceived relies on the very participation that may deceive us?????

So, you’ll allow me to be justified in quoting you….

quote="Banno;789928"]It remains that much of your post could not be understood, and what could be understood was, as argued, wrong.[/quote]

I pointed out the error in the one case, where the initial condition was an idea but you forced in a proposition, supposing something of the one would apply to the other, re: negation. — Mww

I do not understand what this is about.

Which case? What was the initial condition? What was "forced in a proposition"? Did you mean "forced into a proposition"? Which something "of the one" applies to what other?

I do not understand what this is about. — Banno

C’mon, man. Don’t do me like that. The “which case?” is your discussion with , re: , then repeated in kind with , re:

You chastised me for not having an interest in clarifying my account, but I’m faced on the one hand with having it discounted as wrong, making clarification of it moot, and on the other, having the occasion for its relevance repeated, making my account superfluous, hence its clarification irrelevant.

Here’s some proper philosophy for ya:

The Platonic riddle is chock full of propositions representing ideas, which to you, and anyone generally, are only appearances;
At the time, during your perception of the riddle, the world in which you are a participant, is utterly irrelevant;
At some time, between your perception of the propositions constituting the riddle, and your response constituted as “pumice is a stone”…..there were no words. Not a single one.

As soon as one realizes no words are ever spoken that are not first thought, all language philosophy loses its stranglehold on our intelligence.

I gather that you are using "idea" in some special way. For the rest of us, an idea usually does have some propositional content - so we speak of the idea that..., where the ellipses leads to something at least statable. Ideas are not obviously problematic, a view contrary to what you say here:

An idea is a “problematic conception”, a singular representation of the understanding, for which the intuition of an object belonging to it is impossible, or, the representation of an object inferred as belonging to it, does not relate, re: the idea is unintelligible. — Mww

...in an ugly sentence with a half-dozen sub-clauses.

I can't tell if you are continuing something of the abortive discussion with Janus. @Wayfarer is never so obtuse.

As soon as one realizes no words are ever spoken that are not first thought, all language philosophy loses its stranglehold on our intelligence. — Mww

It seems your thoughts are to remain inexpressible. Then we have no grounds for supposing that you even have thoughts.

We'll have to leave you to your solipsistic brilliance.

No. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's a common misinterpretation of all predictive coding models, they're models of how information is processed, nothing to do with the physics of the universe. They're not making any ontological claims. — Isaac

Exactly, just as the idea of the tree-in-itself makes no ontological claims other than that our perception of a tree does not exhaust its nature or show us what it is in itself, and these are actually epistemological, not ontological, claims. When I mentioned microphysical configurations it was just an example of the sort of thing that might be thought (think Democritus as the primal example) not any sort of claim as to what things in themselves are. It's a fact that we don't, and cannot, know, since all we study are appearances..

For the 'tree-as-it-is-in-itself' to be anything it must already be inferred (no less than the 'tree' was in the first place). It's existence is no less a product of our perception. — Isaac

No, it is simply inferred to be an unknown "something" that gives rise to the perception; "it" is simply a placeholder.

Can one assume that the above 'way of thinking' is, by your own theory, no more privileged than the one you espoused from which it is derived, by negation? Just a different way of thinking, yes? Equally valid. — Isaac

All views about the ultimate nature of things are just different ways of thinking. We can equally say that the tree which appears to us is, in itself, just as it appears or that it is not just as it appears. What is a fact is that we don't know.

I'd suggest giving up on Banno; he does not discuss in good faith, is only concerned about winning the argument, or protecting his naive, simplistic views, and rarely tries to engage with what anyone actually says and thinks, if it differs from his own view, preferring to characterize it as 'empty, 'obtuse', 'unintelligible' and so on in order to appear to attain the illusion of a higher ground from which to dismiss it. More of a politician than a philosopher.

Absolutely. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the nature of language is such that we cannot possibly be always deceived - against what truth would we measure that deceit? — Isaac

It's not a matter of being deceived, but of being under-informed, and of acknowledging the limited scope of what we do know.

More of a politician than a philosopher. — Janus

HA!! I was thinking more Lucy to everybody else’s, except a scant few, Charlie Brown. Destroys the game by yanking the football, then thinks it a win.

It is fun, though, seeing how far apart the response is, from what the response is aimed at.

Stand by for the inevitable rebuke.

Hoho, yes it's better to take it in a jolly and generous spirit as fun, of course.

It is fun, though, seeing how far apart the response is, from what the response is aimed at. — Mww

It can be, but I just lose my patience sometimes...which is admittedly my own failing.

Truth and falsity are relative to convention. Truth values can also be eliminated from discourse, if one is willing to abandon the idea of shared belief referents.

E.g, if i judge my earlier beliefs to be "false" on the basis of new evidence that I obtain, then I am taking the referents of my present judgements and my past beliefs as being identical, in order so that I can speak of the new evidence as falsifying my earlier beliefs.

Alternatively, I could consider the new evidence as constituting a new referent of my present judgements , in which case I consider my earlier beliefs to be obsoleted by the new evidence, rather than being falsified by the new evidence.

Alternatively, I could consider the new evidence as constituting a new referent of my present judgements , in which case I consider my earlier beliefs to be obsoleted by the new evidence, rather than being falsified by the new evidence. — sime

Yes, nice point, what we count as evidence for beliefs is always based on presuppositions as to what should count. If beliefs change while presuppositions don't, then falsification is presumed to have occurred. If presuppositions change then the context within which the belief finds it sense changes, and the old context and the beliefs that go with it are now obsolete.

, prior to Kant there were various approaches to philosophy that tried to derive metaphysical, and even physical, facts from first principles by mere deduction. Kant's Antinomies might best be seen as a nascent version of the realisation that logic, on it's own, does not lead to any conclusions.

The Antinomies derive from the logical simple that if you posit P you can also posit ~P, for any proposition (sentence, assertion, statement...) P. Mere deduction cannot get us to the truth of P or ~P, we have to tie them in to the world in some way - usually some sort of observation is required to tell us how things actually are.

And the same goes for the various abstract physical theories to which Hossenfelder objects. So the widespread – indeed, pop – acceptance of multiple universe interpretations of quantum stuff remain quite unfounded, despite winning at the Oscars. One would think it accepted science, but of course it isn't, and I think Hossenfelder's lack of enthusiasm for what is in the end a misapprehension of her field of expertise is justified.

But there ought be a place for what we might call speculative physics, just for the fun of it, as Janus says, but also because it has folk playing with beautiful mathematics – as you have shown in your diagrams – and that in itself may lead to testable ideas. Consider Dr. Higgs.

It's just the ever-present temptation to jump to a conclusion, to believe one has the answer before the arguments are finished, that is to be avoided.

I just lose my patience sometimes — Janus

“…. As impartial umpires, we must lay aside entirely the consideration whether the combatants are fighting for the right or for the wrong side, for the true or for the false, and allow the combat to be first decided. Perhaps, after they have wearied more than injured each other, they will discover the nothingness of their cause of quarrel and part good friends….”

My understanding of Kant's antinomies is that they aren't mere undecidable alternatives, but necessary contradictions. Cue for example the singularity of the beginning of time giving rise to "how did it begin?" which presupposes a time before time. And likewise, the idea of 'beyond space' that supposes both a finitude of space and the space beyond it. Limits of thought, therefore. One cannot think outside the box of spacetime. One has to invent 'another space' — Riemann space or Hilbert space, or some such.

↪Gnomon
, prior to Kant there were various approaches to philosophy that tried to derive metaphysical, and even physical, facts from first principles by mere deduction. Kant's Antinomies might best be seen as a nascent version of the realisation that logic, on it's own, does not lead to any conclusions. — Banno

I am not a Kant scholar, and I had never heard of his list of Antinomies (logical contradictions) until I read the article quoted in the OP. So, Kant's authority is not a concern of mine. The list was just a convenient outline for an open-ended philosophical discussion on the inherently meta-physical topics of "Transcendence & Cosmology". The browsing questions are inviting considered opinions, not final answers*1. I doubt that we will ever "deduce" any full-stop ultimate conclusions about "Transcendence" or "Metaphysics". But we may refine our personal worldviews with such abstractions, sifted through fine-grained philosophical argumentation.

However, since you mentioned it, how else would you derive "metaphysical facts" apart from "mere deduction"? Are such non-physical necessities empirically observable & testable? What is a "metaphysical fact" anyway*2, other than a consensus opinion drawn from collective reasoning rather than experimentation? I suppose you are expecting that "conclusions" drawn from a pattern of "metaphysical facts" would be merely confirmation of prior personal beliefs? So, as with all such abstract or ideal topics, a modicum of skepticism would be advisable. But a complete ban on metaphysical speculation would be the death of philosophy.

A list of opposing concepts, exclusive of middle ground, logically neutralizes itself. So any useful conclusions would have to come from the inter-relationships between those extremes. Therefore, your comment that abstract Logic alone (sans concrete instances) cannot lead to practical knowledge, goes without saying. Besides, as Hume noted, Reason serves at the pleasure of the passions ; so philosophers must learn to control their own base motives. This forum is a school of hard knocks for self-serving egos. :smile:

*1. Transcendental Cosmology :
PS__In the next post, I'll provide some ruminative commentary & questions on Kant's Antinomies, as they relate to Transcendental Cosmology. What are your thoughts on existential Transcendence?
___original post

*2. What is an example of metaphysical facts? :
Examples of metaphysical concepts are Being, Existence, Purpose, Universals, Property, Relation, Causality, Space, Time, Event, and many others. They are fundamental, because all other concepts and beliefs rest on them.
http://getwiki.net/-Metaphysics

It's just the ever-present temptation to jump to a conclusion, to believe one has the answer before the arguments are finished, that is to be avoided. — Banno

Yes. hasty generalizations are to be avoided in rational argumentation. Ironically, such leaps do occasionally occur, even on a philosophy forum. But, how can you know when the "arguments are finished"? In formal Logic, conclusions are supposed to necessarily follow from the indubitable premises presented. But on this amateur forum, such mathematical logic is rarely presented.

Transcendence & Metaphysics are inherently doubtful, and must be supported by reasoning instead of experimentation. And in this thread, absolute final facts cannot be expected to compute from the informal "ruminations" and open-ended questions of the OP*1. I'm aware that many, if not most, comments on this forum are implicitly defending a sentimental personal worldview, instead of abstract Truth. So, speaking of antinomies, your admonition should apply to devotees of both Physicalism & Metaphysicalism, both Materialism & Idealism, both Naturalism & Transcendentalism. :cool:

Where is that quoted from?

Yes, the antinomies are intrinsically aporetic; and I think that is so on account of the way space and time are visualized.

It's just the ever-present temptation to jump to a conclusion, to believe one has the answer before the arguments are finished, that is to be avoided. — Banno

For me the lesson of the antinomies is that there is no possible non-paradoxical answer; and this reflects an inherent limitation of dualistic thought.

Kant's Antinomies might best be seen as a nascent version of the realisation that logic, on it's own, does not lead to any conclusions. — Banno

Kant’s constructivist foundation for scientific knowledge restricts science to the realm of appearances and implies that transcendent metaphysics – i.e., a priori knowledge of things in themselves that transcend possible human experience – is impossible. In the Critique Kant thus rejects the insight into an intelligible world that he defended in the Inaugural Dissertation, and he now claims that rejecting knowledge about things in themselves is necessary for reconciling science with traditional morality and religion. This is because he claims that belief in God, freedom, and immortality have a strictly moral basis, and yet adopting these beliefs on moral grounds would be unjustified if we could know that they were false. “Thus,” Kant says, “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” (Bxxx). Restricting knowledge to appearances and relegating God and the soul to an unknowable realm of things in themselves guarantees that it is impossible to disprove claims about God and the freedom or immortality of the soul, which moral arguments may therefore justify us in believing. — SEP

Some notes:

If you take Kant seriously about all of this, then his perspective has some very important implications. One is this: whatever scientists discover, through whatever methodologies they employ, will never be an understanding of reality itself. At best, science will be the project of describing in painstaking detail the world of appearances (what Kant called the empirical world) and constructing helpful conceptual models for engaging with it in ways that, we might say, decrease the frequency with which we are surprised. — Eric Reitan

(That is why Kant can describe himself as both an empirical realist and a transcendental idealist; there are two perspectives, one of which is almost always rejected, or not recognised, by naturalism.)

And

Both (Schleiermacher and Hegel) thought that Kant had missed something important—namely, that the self which experiences the world is also a part of the world it is experiencing. Rather than there being this sharp divide between the experiencing subject and things-in-themselves, with phenomena emerging at the point of interface, the experiencing subject is a thing-in-itself. It is one of the noumena—or, put another way, the self that experiences the world is part of the ultimate reality that lies behind experience.

So: the self that has experiences is a noumenal reality. Both Schleiermacher and Hegel believed that this fact could be made use of, so that somehow the self could serve as a wedge to pry open a doorway through the wall of mystery, into an understanding of reality as it is in itself. — Eric Reitan

Transcendence & Metaphysics are inherently doubtful, and must be supported by reasoning instead of experimentation. — Gnomon

The crucial point that is largely lost in Western cultural traditions is the idea - although it's not an idea - of self-realization in the philosophical or spiritual sense. It is very difficult to define and so plain-language philosophers will always use this to argue that it is meaningless, which is a big part of the problem.

Suffice to say that Asian culture has maintained the connection between philosophical analysis and praxis - you see that very clearly in Tibetan Buddhism but it's also true of other Asian Buddhist schools, such as Zen and Tendai. It comprises an insight into and realization of the unity of being and knowing - to put it once again in rather Aristotelian terms. But this insight can't be captured or described in propositional terms, as it is something that has to be actualised. The crucial error in Western culture is to attempt to reduce it to propositional knowledge on par with (but inferior to) empirical or natural science.

Karen Armstrong has traced those developments in her book The Case for God (which is not a text of religious apologetics although of course a lot of people won't be able to see it any other way). See her OP, Metaphysical Mistake.

how else would you derive "metaphysical facts" apart from "mere deduction"? — Gnomon

As you say, that depends on what is to count as metaphysical. The term is used, and misused, quote broadly.

By way of an example, in the Popperian school ideas are metaphysical if they are not falsifiable. So the conservation laws, being neither provable by mere deduction nor falsifiable, are metaphysics. For Watkins this is no more than an evaluation of their logical structure, but others will take this as an insult, not wanting anything in physics to be metaphysical. The conservation laws are not derived only from logic, but from experimenting and theorising over considerable time.

Each of Kant's antimonies looks to me to have been re-framed, and for the better, in the years after his demise. So the idea of a time before the big bang has been compared to the idea of a place south of the South Pole; And what counts as a simple is very much dependent on the task at hand rather than any absolute.

All good stuff. I'm not that interested in saving Kant from anachronism, and I agree that it's the doing that is of value. But I disagree with "...whatever scientists discover, through whatever methodologies they employ, will never be an understanding of reality itself"; because "constructing helpful conceptual models for engaging with it" is exactly understanding reality itself. The muddle of the thing-in-itself protrudes unhelpfully into the discussion.

Limits of thought, therefore. One cannot think outside the box of spacetime. One has to invent 'another space' — Riemann space or Hilbert space, or some such. — unenlightened

Yep. The discussion is re-framed so as to move on.

I disagree with "...whatever scientists discover, through whatever methodologies they employ, will never be an understanding of reality itself"; because "constructing helpful conceptual models for engaging with it" is exactly understanding reality itself. — Banno

:down:

:razz:

Right, the logical distinction that is being lost, or ignored, is that between 'reality in itself' and 'reality for us'. We can only ever know the latter, but we cannot but think that there is also the former, even though it can never be anything determinable for us.

In one sense it does "drop out of the conversation", on account of its never being able to be a definitive part of our discourses, but in another sense it does not drop out of the conversation, because the fact that there is "in the background" so to speak, the unknowable, is an inherent and ineliminable aspect of the human condition.

:clap: