You should allow little breaks.

.from which the deduction of the self must have already been established, insofar as there must already be that to which the understanding of “we” belongs. Hence the presupposed necessary singular subject. — Mww

While I haven't explained how we broke away from the collective awareness, the plurality, to self-consciousness, I'm telling you that there was no reasoning or deduction that went into it. Rational thinking of the "I" did not happen before when there was only the "we". When Descartes, for example, wrote the meditation, he wasn't starting from the beginning of self-awareness. Descartes, after all, was operating in the modern world, where our knowledge was already sophisticated and advance.

Can’t have an understanding without that which understands. That the self to which understanding belongs, represented as “I”, is only a speculative metaphysical determination of pure reason. — Mww

Yes, I admit we're both struggling and grappling with this idea that humans didn't begin thinking in the "I" tense. It's hard to understand that we didn't have this. What we did have in the primordial understanding of everything was the "we".

The only comparison I could think of is an animal which has every faculty of awareness -- the pack, the surrounding, where to get food, the hunt. Except, no self-awareness. If this animal sees its reflection, it would not think, "That's me". That animal could only think in terms of the pack, the many, its family.

:up:

Sadly, naturalism has some harsh words against freedom of thinking. To the followers of naturalism, freedom is only an illusion. Some of the reasons given are : it's only biological, it's a collection of nerves and cells, and it's physiological. Among them: Stephen Hawking and Alex Rosenberg.

But the placement (where freedom resides) of their contention is, to me, misplaced. To them, because of our biological constitution and the chemicals that come with it, we are only given the illusion that we have the freedom in thinking.

I think this is again the reductionist and mechanical views of metaphysics, which I disagree with.

.

:up:

Hah! Indeed. Thanks.

Here, I pasted a passage from the book:

The freedom which therefore cannot be encountered in the operari must lie in the esse. It has been a fundamental error of all ages, an unwarranted inversion (hysteron-proteron), to attribute necessity to the esse and freedom to the operari. The converse is true: freedom lies in the esse alone, but the operari follows necessarily from it and the motives.
From what we do we know what we are. On this, and not on the pre sumed liberum arbitrium indifferentiae, rests the conscious ness of responsibility and the moral tendency of life. Every thing depends on what one is; what he does will follow therefrom of itself, as a necessary corollary. The consciousness of self-determination and originality which undeniably ac companies all our acts, and by virtue of which they are our acts, is therefore not deceptive, in spite of their dependence on motives.

But its true content reaches further than the acts and begins higher up. In truth it includes our being and essence itself, from which all acts proceed necessarily when motives arise. In this sense that consciousness of self-determination and originality, as well as the consciousness of responsibility accompanying our actions, can be compared to a hand which points to an object more remote than the one nearer by to which it seems to be pointing. In a word: man does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily.
…
Consequently, my exposition does not eliminate freedom. It merely moves it out, namely, out of the area of simple actions, where it demonstrably cannot be found, up to a region which lies higher, but is not so easily accessible to our knowledge. In other words, freedom is transcendental. And this is also the sense in which I should like to interpret the statement of Malebranche,3 la liberte est un mystere, under whose aegis the present dissertation has attempted to solve the problem set by the Royal Society.

esse = essence or nature
operari = action

Except understanding itself presupposes a necessary singular subject, which couldn’t be any other that an “I”. “We” only indicates a multiplicity of singular subjects, doesn’t it? — Mww

So then the one thing we could deduce from it is that there was no understanding of self prior, since there was no understanding of singular subject. It's a primordial phenomenon that there was no "I" consciousness. It's hard to wrap one's head around it but that's what philosophers have posited.

I'm not sure Descartes declared we had free will. — Philosophim

No, he didn't. Not in the sense you're thinking. But he demonstrated in cogito that our thinking can be.

What does freedom mean to you? — Philosophim

I am in the group that believes there is free will in thought. Like I said in my OP, we tend to focus on action -- that our actions are determined. But if these philosophers posit that thinking is the springboard to action, and that there's freewill in thinking, let's start there. Aristotle's insistence on deliberation as future-oriented thinking implies the freedom of the will. We think of possibilities, we think of different scenarios, and we think logically. For example, there are truths (principles) to discover. If we do not have that freedom in thought, we would never discover these principles. Apparently, he believed that we could.

What's crucial to understand that there is an agenda, and objective to be reached with the actions.

We have to understand that the act of propaganda is used by a multitude of actors. — ssu

"Propaganda" and "agenda" are words that aren't used by the government or nation or state -- only the critics used them. Because they are politically negative charged ideas.

This argument that freedom happens in the thinking (the act of thinking) is not just articulated by Descartes and Aristotle, but also by the likes of J. S. Mill. But Mill used the society or group as the location to bring out this proposed freedom by the individual.

Yes, that's a good one. I also remember reading about talking to plants make them thrive more. This is a scientific experiment conducted by qualified experts, so I will not argue against its validity.

Another findings -- babies in the womb benefit from music and mothers talking to them. Again, I don't know how valid this finding is .

Are you arguing our brains do not change as we age leading to greater wisdom with age? — Athena

I'm not sure I understand this point. Please clarify as to your reaction to what I said regarding the change in wisdom.
My point in my previous post was: the enlightenment happened. Now it's our task to examine what lasting effects did enlightenment provide? Because you seem to say we should bring back the enlightenment -- it isn't an organization or an institution that could be established again. And why do we need to bring it back? It doesn't look like it had a lasting effect if we're still unhappy with the state of affairs.

The renaissance -- you're thinking that the search for scholastic knowledge, rediscovering of the ancients writings, and other arts and politics ideas are sought or willingly craved by the greater population. No. It didn't work that way. The thinkers, the historians, the scholars were the ones. They were what they were before the renaissance and because of that, this renaissance thinking happened.

My practical question for this thread, is why do Anti-Metaphysics Trolls, waste their valuable on-line time, trying to defeat something that they assume to be already dead, and although perhaps a ghostly nuisance, cannot by their definition, make any difference in the Real world? — Gnomon

I'm thinking cause they're choleric -- easily irritated. So, your posts are doing their job just fine.

Theories of Preception :
The four main bottom-up theories of form and pattern perception are direct perception, template theories, feature theories, and recognition-by-components theory. Bottom-up theories describe approaches where perception starts with the stimuli whose appearance you take in through your eye.
https://philpapers.org/browse/the-causal-theory-of-perception — Gnomon

Yup! Interesting. Thanks for the link.

Emission theory (vision) :
Emission theory or extramission theory (variants: extromission) or extromissionism is the proposal that visual perception is accomplished by eye beams ... — Gnomon

:grin:
Yeah, this is the superman theory of perception. Where we give off beams from our eyes and we see objects behind walls.

:shade:
This is exhausting. Why do I feel like I'm in the dating scene again? Cause this is the convo you get when you're in one. Just letting you know that.

Okay, what's the connection of this clip again?

I can't read minds. I'm not telephatic. If you want something from me, you need to tell me in words.

What doesn't compute? Spit it out!

What is it?

I continuously think about these things and I just want to know other people's perspectives. If there is a chance to be relatively happy and cause minimal suffering in the world through living like a monk why would we not do it? Is it because temporary/materialistic pleasures (new cars, fancy computers, good food, sex) ARE NEEDED for some people's happiness? Are things like music and movies/stories/art needed for your happiness? If these things were not available in the world and everyone meditated, socialised, volunteered and lived simply all day, there would be MUCH less non-human and potentially human suffering AND we could still possibly attain happiness? — Troyster

You probably need to draw the line between what you call ascetic (monk living) and living with just the basic necessities, which many ordinary people are able to do. I have already mentioned my own experience in another thread, but I will repeat it again here. I lived the bare minimum when I stayed away from the city and the grind -- I was still wired, meaning connected to internet and phone. It was great. That is, if you don't have to worry about bills. So it is realistic to think of living happily (no anxiety and worries).

:razz:
Good one.

Objective reality must exist independent of subjective reality. Just because we do not or cannot perceive it, does not mean it does not exist. — Gnomon

I think it's incorrect to say here "just because we do not or cannot perceive it". We do perceive objective reality, but it's only a perception. So, we really do not know objective reality. What we do know is our perception of it.

Now some would try to be sleazy about this by saying, then how do you know what you're perceiving is the objective reality and not something else? Good point! So what is that "something else"? Don't answer this directly.

Instead, ask back "Then why posit perception at all if we're not gonna settle on something being perceived?". So, now we are forced, and rightly so, to take the path of least resistance -- CAUSAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION.

There is no perception without the perceiver who is in fact part of objective reality, and there is no perceiver without a cause to it being a perceiver. You know, instead of a perceiver, maybe a vegetable like turnips or eggplant?

In the current state of the term ‘propaganda’ it is a fair assessment to state that ‘propaganda’ in colloquial terms is general framed as something intrinsically tied to patriotism/nationhood?

If this is a fairly reasonable statement then is propaganda then to be assessed as ‘negative’ in that it is a means to manipulate and spread falsehoods? — I like sushi

There are two different mindsets here. One, those who call out government programs and public statements as propaganda are the anti-manipulation group. They believe that anything coming out of the government's proverbial a$$ is propaganda that is designed, as you said, to manipulate and spread falsehoods. The other mindset is the public officials themselves, or their cohorts and supporters, whose work tries to avoid being labeled propaganda because of again, of the image it projects -- manipulation and falsehoods. So, the term propaganda is only used by the anti-nation or anti-government.

To answer your question, is infinity necessary? Infinity is what we could only point to whenever we talk about the beginning of everything.

What is the history of Infinity? I know it exists at least for the sake of math, but has anything ever been to indicate that anything about it goes on forever? — TiredThinker

Infinity was first posited by Anaximander. The apeiron as the first principle is boundless. The first principle meaning the "beginning of everything". So, beginning here doesn't mean a start (a bound), rather infinity is the beginning and we couldn't posit anything prior to infinity.

FWIW, belief in telepathy has been around for a while. It is the process of sending out thoughts to another person without the use of technology or other channel to transmit the message. Of course, face to face, this is easily done as body language is real and could be read like a written note.

But what happens if two people doing telepathy are far apart, and not seeing each other. Then they're doing extrasensory communication, the mystery of which we haven't figured out. (This is what my OP is suggesting). Nonetheless, we all do it. If anyone said to you they don't believe in it, then that's bullshit as everyone had wishes in their brain at one point in their lives.

The law of attraction is not extrasensory because it involves two or more people seeing each other and having the perception that is required for the LOA to happen.

This question, this one, this one, this one, this one, or not to forget this one or this one. All asked within 2 weeks. Conspicuous! Seems a popular subject. Why would that be? — EugeneW

Yeah, true. That's suspect -- all within 2 weeks. But, again, I think the allure of physicalism/materialism is that it is easy to grasp, and therefore easier to talk about. You have a strong foundation with physicalism. I mean, at least the rebuttal you're up against are manageable.

That's him there, riding a unicycle while juggling. — Wayfarer

Nothing impressive. I've seen jugglers on bike circling around a tight circular platform.

Is it that the focus given to physicalism is due because it is truly central to philosophical discourse, or is it just an accident that occurred by coincidence due to the interests of the forum's userbase? — Kuro

I can only take a guess. Physicalism/materialism is an interesting view in metaphysics and philosophy of the mind -- it is anti phenomenology and idealism. So given this brief description, your argument could take you very far as there's enough material (no pun intended) there to support your argument.

You lack faith, that's why.

In my case, I wasn't even feeling religious when I uttered that for a friend. I did that out of frustration. I couldn't reach the dude. And he was living on the 24th floor. In another country. So what to do? Send the message "Be strong!" through the air, par avion.

And hoped that it reached him. (That has nothing to do with anything, but just being human).

I want to say is, we went into the Age of Enlightenment when enough people got old and had the ability to communicate with each other in large cities. Leasure time and the ability to own books and write letters would be vital to this. The Enlightenment could not happen before these advancements. It sure could not happen when the life expectancy was 35 or 45 years because people died before having enough knowledge to be enlightened. — Athena

I reject this. Sorry, Athena. Books and writings came about because of enlightenment, not the other way around. And no, the life expectancy at 35-45 was overblown. There are many philosophers and historians in the ancient times that lived through their 70s and 80s.
It's been written that the causes of the age of enlightenment happened in small advances in science and other field of studies, until it became a movement and reached wider audience.

I'm interesting in how marketing seems to have superseded sophistry in taking false arguments and adding scientism, technology, research and public relations psychology to the mix. — Tom Storm

Big time!

In truth, this has been a horrible whore of Babylon, constant, endless mutilation, and attack, and I can't withstand it any longer. I'm really begging for them to stop at this point...

All over with completely, 100%. — Wosret

If you need help, will you reach out?

Life is always a transition from one phase to the next, always in pursuit of righteousness. — Hanover

Okay I get that. Thanks.

Nothing much, just dancing and attempting to raise the true savior of my world. Tis the noble stoat. — Wosret

Yeah, I dig stoats.
Check this out:

The Enlightenment is about universal knowledge and raising the human potential. That is a wonderfully romantic idea, isn't it? We are working towards more humane wars and the possibility of no wars. Putin doesn't see things this way, but I think NATO does? If global warming made the winters in Russia more pleasant, perhaps that would improve our relationship with Russia? Not all things about reason. Emotions are important too. — Athena

I agree, reason without emotions is a machine. I don't know about Putin. I think what's happening is a bloop and a blast --

Enlightenment gets thrown about a lot in the forum. I never really paid much attention to it. But now, I have the following definition for you. Let's see what is enlightenment:

The Enlightenment, a philosophical movement that dominated in Europe during the 18th century, was centered around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

So, it looks to me like enlightenment is from a bygone era where people didn't have separation of church and state, tolerance, progress, liberty, fraternity, constitutional government. Why do we keep on praying for enlightenment? It doesn't make sense to ask for this now as we do have these things in our society.

What you should be asking is, what did enlightenment do for us? Well, do you feel that the enlightenment affected how our society is in any way? I think you don't think it has had any effect at all. And it's not like we can point to it and identify it using scientific evidence. Yet, here we are, always saying "If only we have enlightenment, Putin would not have done what he did." Who knows! Maybe Putin is the most enlightenment individual on the planet right now. I don't know. I'm just needing some perspective because enlightenment is really about individualism. Well, Putin is being "individual" with his decision.

War is here to stay. I don't really understand how people could not understand this. Why do you think countries stockpile on weapons? Nine countries with nuclear weapons spent almost 73 billion dollars in one year alone. What's the purpose of this spending? So they could put them in museums? Or sell on Ebay? No. The weapons are made for killing.

What's going on with you?

What kind of writing is this? Fiction or non-fiction?

Thinking is very hard. Articulating the problem explicitly allows one to contend with it more readily. Pleas and prayers are the first step to facing the problem head on and bringing the power of rationality to the fore. Meaning, when we feel a situation is hopeless often we just need to break it down into smaller problems and attend to the one/s that are easiest to articulate. — I like sushi

Oh big time!
I forgot about this -- writing down your thoughts on paper.

Or, you can choose to believe every thing is where it is for some purpose and live your life that way. — Hanover

Humans give meaning to the universe. We assigned emotions to things.
Are you saying that the most basic unit of physical existence coming together to form the moon and the stars, did so for some purpose that has nothing to do with humans? Or do we interprete the existence of objects as we perceive them?

(Oh, and by saying this, did I just switch my thinking to subjectivity?)

Because to say there is meaning to the world, the universe, means that there is objective reality. Oh yeah, I noticed that the two notions -- meaning and objective reality -- haven't been put together in an OP in this forum. There are OPs that talk about objective reality, and then OPs that talk about meaning. But never together -- or could you point me to those OPs?

I think it's time we explore the connection of those notions. :)

Boredom has a bad reputation, and people generally don't think of it in terms of suffering. In fact, it seems perverse to think of boredom as kind of suffering. It seems to be the privilege of the rich and the idle. — baker

Good point. Boredom afflicts many people in the low economic status. And yes there is bias that goes on about boredom. If you're poor, you can't complain of boredom because "why don't you go out there and find a job or find a way to enrich yourself just like how the rich people do it."
It's almost like poverty or low income trumps all other attributes of a person: gay and poor (you're poor); single mother and poor (you're poor); stupid and poor (you're poor); intelligent and poor (you're poor). There's an oxymoron that goes on in "intelligent and poor" that some people would argue about.