At base, I vehemently disagree with Moliere there - fundamentally 'the work environment' is not an object of ethical value. It is functional, to my mind. What one does in that environment, though, is obviously ethically-informed and in that sense I'd need some detail about what behaviour or structure you're having a go at.. — AmadeusD

Seems to be hedging your bets -- what one does in the environment changes the environment, such as when one builds a house. The work environment is not a neutral thing that will always-and-forever exist -- it can be changed, and has been changed.

What ends up being "functional" depends upon what we want.

Ever ethical?

Never has been. ;)

The work environment can be fixed and improved through organizing with your fellow workers, because that's all workers really have to gain power. i.e. unions.

But that won't address international inequality, for instance, and given that capital -- work -- is internationally linked that's an important part of judging whether it's fair with everyone.

Now... how to convince my younger me that this is so.... :D

It's pleasing to me to have some consonance between us.

I'm concerned primarily with the experience of it all - if a direct realist says "I see things as they really are", I don't see that as some opportunity for a semantic argument, to me it looks like an unambiguous statement about their visual experience - my visual experience matches reality as it really is. And, for entirely non-semantic reasons, I think it's false. I don't think I'm saying it's false because I mean some obscure thing by the word "see", I think it's false because I think our visual experience is simply not reality as it really is. It's something else. It's a construct. It's a construct that's causally connected to reality, but it's not just reality-as-it-is. — flannel jesus

Either you're experiencing reality as-it-really-is, OR your experience is something subjective and crafted for you by your brain. — flannel jesus

Why not neither? Must we choose one or the other, or could we suspend our judgment here?

The process of smelling, or seeing, or whatever, involves physical interactions with real things, and I'm a realist so I think those things are real and those physical interactions really happen. And then I think when that becomes an experience, that experience isn't just raw-reality-as-it-really-is, it's an experience concocted for you by your brain. — flannel jesus

I think, in order for this to make sense, you must at least be able to talk about real things in addition to experience. Perhaps, in a round-about way to grant the point for philosophical purposes, we could say individual experience does not have an accessibility relation to reality, but language does and this is what allows us to speak truly on the matter -- that is, through language use we have a direct realism through successful reference.

That's not raw-reality-as-it-really-is -- but it's real, and one step, and it's what allows us to talk about real things and real experiences as distinct categories in the first place.

On my view friendship is of a higher value than sex, and it would be helpful if we valued friendship more than we do. — Leontiskos

Yup! I make friends for life -- some of them have even been lovers where we've parted ways because we weren't good lovers, but we continue to be good friends. It seems that the love of friendship and familial love has out-endured romantic love, and where romantic love flourishes friendship seems to be a strong part of it.

Thinking now it seems a bit silly to exclude romantic love. My thought was more with respect to a broadening of the notion because of how wonderful my connections have been -- they are the people I love and they love in turn, and it's not romantic or sexual at all.

Lately I've been going through a tough patch and they've been very supportive, and so I was thinking about how this kind of love is valuable and wanted to pay my respects to it in a way.

I call it anarcho-Marxism.

I suppose what I like about Valentine's Day is how it's only slightly attached to the old traditions, while being "unserious" enough to be reinvented. I'd prefer another holiday for friends and family, since I think love is more central there, while a romantic holiday could be something else. Something like every Saturday.

And bearded men on clouds don't work on me either. — Jamal

yet ;)

In a highly technical sense I'm Morman because I was baptised at the age of True Responsibility and Knowledge of Good and Evil: 8, and have yet to bother excising my name because it's just a hassle.

But I certainly don't believe their stuff, and haven't really found another religion that seems much different except that it's older and so the motives of their founders are harder to discern.

For the most part I think religious sexuality is so far out of date that it's not worth salvaging, because for the most part I think the family form and proper sexual etiquette are the main things preserved in churches.

"speak my language" was pretty careless on my part, among other things :).

Mostly it was an off-hand thought about language and animals and W.

Heh. Naw, dolphins and whales.

For boys, not so much. — ssu

:razz:


Love is important.

I am a man and like the idea of a holiday celebrating love.

We ought not bring it to the level of the nonsensical politicians? They have other objectives than love.

As long as they speak my language, sure.

Just hasn't happened yet.

The aliens in the ocean seem to be speaking, though.

From a tower, perhaps, but what if the ball hits a number of pegs along the way?:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8713/causality-determination-and-such-stuff/p1

I think it's at least reasonable to suppose that the reason we can predict such things is that we're really really close to knowing what's going on in a general sense, but every particular has more to it than a generality. That is -- it's statistical, just 99.99999999 etc whatever you want to say close.

EDIT: And, to be fair, in practice I don't think I've seen anything beyond 5 or 6 sig-figs. Statistics are regularly a part of science in practice, even though the textbook problems give this impression of analytic certainty. That's mostly for the students benefit, whose already learning too much.

Oh yeah. I liked that paper because it gave me something to think through weaknesses in the parallel -- I also made the comparison fairly early on and came across that paper in an effort to push against it and feel out its dimensions.

There's a lot in common: the centrality of ethics, for instance, as well as the limitation on knowledge in light of the ethical and logical, ala

That makes sense to me -- The purposes of philosophy differ between them.

I couldn't find a free version -- I wish I could because when I read this I had access, but no longer do. Alas, as a counter-point to the notion I enjoyed this paper: On Interpreting Kant's Thinker as Wittgenstein's 'I' -- would have read it before posting but there's a possible clue for thinking through the thought from the opposite side.

Found an interesting paper that, according to the Izmirli definitions, would count as a Modernist philosophy of mathematics that is simultaneously social constructionist:

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM AS A PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS:RADICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM REHABILITATED?Paul ErnestUniversity of Exeter

OK so it's more specific than anything I've laid out.

I accept a distinction now, but I don't think I'd follow Heidegger in saying normal science is not-thinking, and revolutionary science requires philosophical thinking -- or something along those lines. "What is the difference between these crafts?" is hard to answer.

Sometimes philosophy and science works in concert, but sometimes they're orthogonal to one another such that a change in philosophical belief will not result in a change in scientific belief, or vice-versa. So not so much at odds as simply different in what they do.

The stick is bent.

But it's not really bent. in that way.

For reals, you can pick up the stick yourself!

I believe it is and isn't -- just depends on how you want to say things, but doesn't depend on the light, the water, or the stick. Language is tricky.

I'm a bit tempted to say the Big Building Thing is causally related. Why build a bigger monument? To show up the other one!

I suppose my thought is that "perception" can't separate us from the real in the manner I perceive indirect realists to say.

at this point I just want you to say which indirect realist you're talking about. I don't believe in indirect realism. I also don't believe in jesus, in comparison. Why the hell should I bother with it?

Certainly.

you did ask, though -- and I answered. And I think, at this point, we've given the blogger enough fodder to blog upon lol.

Seems to follow the logic of indirect realism -- there's an intermediary between reality and you, whatever that is. Acknowledging that there's a difference between the real and perception gives conceptual ground to say something like "your perception of perception is what you need to know to say anything", and so on up the chain if you understand my meaning. You can slip in as many layers of "reality" as you like in the notion to justify whatever you want, in spite of your senses.

According to these definitions I'd not qualify is either, yet I certainly believe reality doesn't care about my beliefs, at least.

I'm not tempted to define realism in opposition to idealism, for instance. And what I paused at most is notions of cause in relation to perception -- I think a realist is open to non-causal relations, as long as they are real.

And obviously there's a difference in meaning, but surely we can parse it together here?

The argument that dislodged me from my belief has already been alluded to. It's the infinite regress argument. Suppose that we're only indirectly aware of reality. If so then how are we aware of our perceptions? Aren't we a step away from those too?

If so then I think we're committed to a homuncular fallacy.

But for the realist without these in/direct commitments, we can say these interminable temptations are just puzzles.

Ah.

Indirect realism is a halfwayhouse between transcendental idealism, and materalism. It wants to be neutral, but can't be because it's incoherent when you try to make it work.

That gets back to asking you for an argument: what argument do you want me to address?

I fall all the time, so no worries about it.


Going back to your original comment: I meant I'm fine with making a distinction between direct and indirect realism. What I believe is that it doesn't hold up as a theory of realism though.

I'm granting the distinction to you to go ahead and make a point, while acknowledging that I'm not on board with it entirely.

Sure, I'm open to that.

Not the same as saying the distinction is foolish, tho.

For myself I think I'm cautioning against a tempting philosophical sleight-of-hand.

I'm committed to saying I'm a realist, of some sort, but the indirect/direct realist distinction is foolish, I think.

What are the underlying beliefs you think are the same?

Makes sense.

I'll say I started out as an indirect realist.

But I'm not googling, only reflecting and conversing. As far as i'm concerned you can define it how you like, if you believe it.

What do they say, according to you?

i'm sitting in a chair at the moment. I'm typing on a keyboard. I perceive these both as I do them. That's basically what I'm thinking.

But what if the statement about minds and perception are the same as whether or not our physical bodies really physically touch other physical bodies?

I don't think @Banno misunderstands indirect realism, only disagrees with it. As do I.

(remove the serran wrap from you face! you have nothing to lose but your false ideas! ;) )

I read this a few times over.

I'm fine with granting Descartes to Nietzsche, ala Heidegger.

I'm tempted to say this supports my notion that science and philosophy are distinct.

But I'm uncertain. If I missed something I'd appreciate a clue.

Golly this was 7 years ago: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/512/reading-group-derridas-voice-and-phenomenon/p1

That's where I'd start because @Joshs mentioned Husserl's understanding of mathematics and Derrida is critiquing Husserl's interpretation of the sign from the deconstructive perspective -- at least if we want to generate thoughts from a text roughly in line with the ideas of the thinkers, though we'd have to apply some interpretive leaps from Derrida to Husserl in conversation.

At least as a thought.

After that -- I think the certainties of mathematics can easily be accommodated to the uncertainties of a given post-modern philosophy. The interesting bit is how you do it, and I agree it's interesting but you're asking a question that's hard without more textual fidelity, imo. Though a historicist would say that.... :D

Not too surprising, I think. At least if I'm right that science and philosophy are different, and math is science.

Gotcha. And surely I don't mean to denigrate the attempt -- I've been scratching my head about how to respond and that's still the closest thing I had in my mind.

A riskier response, in generalities: I'm always open to philosophical broaches of sciences by scientists or laypersons with knowledge of the particulars. As such I don't mind a few silly vaunts into the territory of 2+2=5 -- we can all think through it and feel our way to a conclusion so there's no need to think this sacrosanct or silly if a person with knowledge is exploring, though we certainly don't need to believe it's true either. It could just be interesting and that's enough, though I know I can't make five eggs out of a double of two eggs.

But I've come around to denying Quine and thinking philosophy is different from science -- so I'd say postmodernism is philosophy, and mathematics is science, so the relationship is a bit open to explore and depends upon particulars.

Yup.

Just finishing up episode 20, but I empathize with your:

Novak has allowed his genial progressive positivity to get the better of him. — unenlightened

A bit Panglossian at times -- not that it's bad to hear, but I have my doubts.