I don't care how many upvotes that post gets.
I still don't understand what's the objection.

I wonder if it is possible to become wise by learning from the foolish? After all, with discernment, watching a fool and what happens to them can be very instructive in learning what not to do. — Tom Storm

Ah, you are forgetting one principle -- this is parallel to what you're saying "how do you know there's an error in a process?" You know there's an error when you've seen the correct result from that process and now another person using the same process did not arrive at the same result.
You could only learn from the foolish if you know the difference.

I still think you’re clearly wrong. — T Clark

I don't share your sentiment. One who does not work hard on learning at all is uneducated and could not be wise.

Of all the personal qualities that a person can have - intelligence, character, integrity, experience, wisdom, temperament, maturity, personality, virtue - what wisdom and maturity have that set them apart from the others is distance, dispassion. They’ve seen everything before. I was thinking for a minute that maybe wisdom and maturity are the same thing, but that’s not right. I guess it’s more that maturity is a prerequisite for wisdom. Wisdom stands back and sees everything at once, how everything fits together, what’s going to come next. — T Clark

Well said. This is what I have in mind.

You’re seeing education as something quite different from traditional book-smart or university-style learning. I imagine it is possible to be wise in some areas and foolish in others. — Tom Storm

No, I'm seeing education as not just schooling and formal instruction.

That’s ridiculous. I think it shows, perhaps, a lack of wisdom. — T Clark

"Uneducated" to me means no formal schooling and/or no instruction from the wise people.

I think that's right in the sense that a fish doesn't actively experience water. It's too fundamental. On the other hand, water is an essential part of its lived experience, and if you take it out of the water, it definitely knows the difference. — Baden

Ah, but the analogy doesn't work. We can't take ourselves out of consciousness or perception and know the difference. Our vantage point is a given. We will not be able to position ourselves other than where we are in terms of awareness.

When my teenage daughter got in trouble with the law, she had to go into counseling and the counselor told her she learned better. She most certainly did. But the teen years are a form insanity. — Athena

Good for her. Yes, in a way teen years are a form of 'insanity'. The overriding principles are recalcitrance and insubordination.

What follows then is an attempt to explore a form of brokenness in or in our relation to this non-positional awareness, and, by extension, the other. — Baden

I don't agree that we even experience this brokenness just because we cannot go beyond our perception and explore the consciousness not as an object.
I don't think we feel "incomplete" or there is the lacking. Of course, I am not a Sartrean follower. So, maybe something to explore.

Can an uneducated person be wise? — Tom Storm

No. That said, there are many ways to educate ourselves. I don't mean academically. Reading, listening to other reputable people, and watching the actions of those you respect.

Does wisdom usually belong to one or two specific domains, or is it a broader category of integrated practice? To what extent does it involve practical skill, moral awareness, or both? — Tom Storm

Wisdom is whole. So, a wise person should have wisdom in all aspect of their life -- practical skills and moral awareness.

How important do we think wisdom is in our lives, and do we agree with contemporary thinkers like John Vervaeke that we “suffer a wisdom famine in the West”? — Tom Storm

Very important. I don't mean being a sage. Vervaeke could be right. Anytime someone points to the west, they mean the insatiable appetite to amass great wealth and conquer whatever it is to be conquered. At the expense of wisdom, there is suffering as a result of this behavior.

So I cannot depend on my understanding to know the true state of being in the world.

Therefore, "perceive" in "to be is to be perceived" cannot refer to the understanding but only to the sensibilities. — RussellA

I should say that this is not a good understanding of perception. Also, your conclusion doesn't follow.
Just because you might have perceived erroneously that Mary is bored, it doesn't follow that you cannot depend on your understanding. This moment, you thought she was bored, and it turned out she was not. But there are other things you perceived of Mary that you could be right.

But my point is that your childhood influences don't always wither away. — Hanover

No. But you have to admit that as an adult absorbing all kinds of learning from your environment, that the childhood teachings we learned have been modified. And this is what I meant. It could happen that the values you learned as a child have been beneficial to you as an adult and so that's what you follow.

There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.

However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained. — BC

Good. You tried to assert what you truly were, a gay man. But in doing so, you were aware that your values were not necessarily at odds.

Then I don't know how to answer your puzzle.

However, I may perceive Mary is bored because she is wearing bright clothes and you may perceive that Mary is not bored precisely because she is wearing bright clothes.

If perception refers to understanding, the situation becomes very unclear. How can anyone know what is in the mind of God if everyone's perceived understanding of the same situation is probably different. How can anyone ever know Mary's true state of being.

Mary's "to be" can never be known if "is to be perceived" means perceived in the understanding. — RussellA

But "bored" is not the only perception you might have with Mary. Did you perceive her as standing in front of you, or looking out the window, or talking to someone else. And did it occur to you that your understanding that she is bored might be erroneous?

What is the way out?

The way out must begin with a refusal to search, but it cannot be a purely negative act. Narcissus must rebuild the other into its internal mirror through creative acts that confirm the symbolic social embeddedness of the self and so performatively deny its neurotic / solipsistic denial. It is a return to humility through working not to be the dream of God by creating new dreams for God that may substitute for the sacrifice of the self. Narcissus must become the dreamer, not the dreamed, and must make his dreams real. He must be, in Sartrean terms, a useless passion, but nonetheless a passion and a socially mediated one, that yet creates its own unique, and, ultimately, desirable story of self. — Baden

Not a fan of the topic of Narcissus. To me what he had was a disease of the mind, not the lack humility, if this is the diagnosis. Symbolically, when it's already a disease, a procedure is necessary to be performed, not an analysis to be laid out. He was left to die alone. No sage could save him.

As I have said before, the self is a 'modern' coming of age, for in the primitive times, it was always 'the other' that primitive humans had looked at, not themselves. It was a process to have finally arrived at the self, the recognition of the self -- a very long time. It was also not experienced by a handful of people, rather the whole village. It was not self-love that brought us to the self-awareness, not narcissistic, rather it was the beginning of wisdom.

There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. There is actually a point in the life of children when the influence of the outside world, social media, advertising, outside friends takes precedence and may replace the teachings of good parents. This should be taught to parents and educators alike.
So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts.

how are you getting those probabilities? — flannel jesus

Though your explanation of the rules of this puzzle.
The islanders can know the number (sans himself) the number of blue, brown, and green eyes. Isn't it?

I am unclear as to the meaning of "perceive" in "esse est percipi", "to be is to be perceived". — RussellA

The claim "esse est percipi", to perceive is defined and explained clearly in many of the philosophers' passages. Berkeley's is no different -- to perceive is to use the 5 senses and of course the understanding of this perception.

Does it mean perceive through the sense, as in "I perceive a red postbox" or "I perceive a loud noise" or does it mean perceive in the mind, as in "I perceive she is bored" or "I perceive the cause of the smoke was a fire"? — RussellA

Yes, in all of those senses. For example, in I perceive she is bored, you can correctly make this claim because you have interacted with this person multiple times and you've seen how this person acted in different ways. We show and hide our emotions.

Today, my understanding of reality is described by Physicalism, where particles and forces are fundamental to the reality of the world. — RussellA

There is no violation of perception in this case. I agree.

Berkeley did not believe in what today we call Physicalism, as he believed that everything in the world, whether fundamental particles, fundamental forces, tables, chairs or trees are bundles of ideas in the mind of God. — RussellA

I don't know if that's the correct interpretation of Berkeley's understanding of perception. I believe @Wayfarer has covered this multiple times already.
I think you must be conflating physicalism with "matter" which we call substance that is independent of tangible things and perceptible qualities. It's been understood here in this thread by several posters that is the case with "matter". So, while matter is being included in the physical, its definition is what the contention is about.

I also like really like that red and the shape is intriguing. This is a bit more sombre. — Baden

Interesting paint, Baden. As you said, is a bit more sombre and that shades of green, purple, gray, etc... makes me feel a bit of anxiety for being lost there.
A representation of a lonely winter day in a hidden forest. — javi2541997

. It looks very like a painting, but it's actually a photograph. I used a long shutter speed and moved the camera to get the effect (rather than use post-editing / Photoshop etc). This method doesn't always work, but in this case it was meant to express pretty much what you felt. — Baden

I felt neither sombre nor lonely winter. The moment I saw it, it reminded me of asparagus -- I'm a veggie monster, so there you go. A still life.
Notice how it ignored the roundness of the asparagus stalks.

If I were one of the islanders, I would just use the probability because my need to get out of the island is more important. So if I risked guessing that I had blue eyes, then the probability is 100/200, if I counted 99 blue eyes. ( I am not including the guru here so I also guessed that there's only one guru and her eye color is green).
If I counted 100 brown eyes, and I guessed that I am brown-eyed, then the probability of me being a brown-eyed is 101/200, which is roughly the same as the probability of blue-eyed.
But if I guessed that I was neither blue-eyed or brown-eyed, then the probability is 1/200. Which amounts to a very small chance that I was neither blue-eyed or brown-eyed.
In conclusion, I would pick that my eyes were blue if I counted 99 blue eyes.
Because if my eyes were red, then that would put me in a unique position as the guru.
The guru is the only one with a unique eye color.

From SEP - George Berkeley:

Berkeley defends idealism by attacking the materialist alternative. What exactly is the doctrine that he’s attacking? Readers should first note that “materialism” is here used to mean “the doctrine that material things exist”.

Thus, although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world, a world of ordinary objects. This world is mind-dependent, for it is composed of ideas, whose existence consists in being perceived. For ideas, and so for the physical world, esse est percipi. — RussellA

I think this needs further explanation. There's a difference between saying "there is no material world for Berkeley" and "matter cannot be, because we cannot perceive it" (matter to be defined here philosophically as physical and fundamental). When something is called fundamental, it is complete in its own right and could be perceived. Some matter are actually imperceptible and "exist" only in theory. Quarks are theoretical objects that are inferred or concluded from other perceptible objects. Berkeley's idea of 'fundamental' is an object that is complete -- the subject doing the perceiving, an apple, trees, and ocean, and the Earth.
Is matter, stripped of all the perceptible qualities and can only exist parasitically on other objects, a perceptible object? I understand by asking this, I am committing an error -- but please humor me.

Here's my list of limitations of this puzzle:

1. The guru spoke "I can see someone who has blue eyes" when speaking in front of the islanders. The crowd I imagine has a mixture of blue and brown eyes. So, what is the point of the guru's comment? The guru spoke only once in many years and this is the sentence?

2. Can the islanders not know by counting how many islanders present and how many blue eyes and brown eyes? ( I get it that each one of them will end up counting 99 and 100) But is it just us who know this fact?

3. In what context is the "on what night" the islanders leave? Do we respond, the first, the second, the third, and so on?

Thanks for the summary of the unfolding of the enlightenment period.

By contrast, the word objective, in its modern philosophical usage — “not dependent on the mind for existence” — entered the English lexicon only in the early 17th century, during the formative period of modern science, marked by the shift away from the philosophy of the medievals. This marks a profound shift in the way existence itself was understood. As noted, for medieval and pre-modern philosophy, the real is the intelligible, and to know what is real is to participate in a cosmos imbued with meaning, value, and purpose. But in the new, scientific outlook, to be real increasingly meant to be mind-independent — and knowledge of it was understood to be describable in purely quantitative, mechanical terms, independently of any observer. The implicit result is that reality–as–such is something we are apart from, outside of, separate to.

This conceptual shift took decisive form in the work of Galileo, Descartes, and John Locke (against whom most of Berkeley’s polemics were directed). Galileo proposed that the “book of nature” is written in the language of mathematics, and that only its measurable attributes — shape, number, motion — belonged to nature herself⁴. — Wayfarer

Berkeley was part of the enlightenment movement, Descartes was prior to the enlightenment.
Berkeley was right to denounce realism and the objective reality because the root source of it was imbued in mysticism and mythology. (Hint: the Anglican religion did not and does not subscribe to mysticism and mythology). The pre-socratics were considered "scientific" in the sense that they refer to "nature" as something apart from the observers. But in doing so, (1) they had to employ a lot of mysticism and mythology. Without Physics, we wonder how and why they were described as scientific.
(2) Add to it the naive realism -- a belief that advocates that we see is what actually exists out there. It does not allow any doubt as to the verity of our perception. And we know we also do not subscribe to it.
(3) Finally, a mechanical world where only numbers, shape, motion ignores the observers entirely. We belong in the world, as tangible, perceptible objects that have a central doing in existence.

Good job writing this OP.

I'm interested if meaning can be constructed in noise. — hypericin

Noise without intention and a look back to build up what's ahead is just...noise.

I like the OP a lot. I responded to another thread a while ago regarding language before coming to this thread.
As a proponent of human agency and intentionality, I find the overwhelming, even aggressive, defense in favor of the AI having the human mind, or on equal footing with the human mind, a bit treacherous. WE are the default mind. Our mind is the model to which they look up for approval. Imitation is the best compliment.

As Chomsky noted

It is quite possible — overwhelmingly probable, one might guess — that we will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology.”*
— Language and Mind (1968) — Wayfarer

I enjoy the sarcasms of the philosophers. They are always nuggets of truth.

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever? — hypericin

No interpretation. It's not a language.
Language, and what you wrote about is an appearance of a 'language', has logical steps and intentional word/sound connection. Behind any language, there are minds that want to express an idea or ideas.

An adult fruit fly’s brain is much more complex, however—and most importantly, the small insects share 60 percent of human DNA, as well 75 percent of the genes that cause genetic diseases, per a statement. As such, understanding the fly’s brain in such detail could hold implications for connections in human brains—and the neural pathways that lead to certain behaviors. Fruit flies, like humans, can get drunk, sing and be kept awake with coffee, suggesting similarities in our brains." — Philosophim

I've abandoned the word 'complex' a long time ago because I could not make any of my argument stick just by attaching this word. Similarly, I have avoided using percentages of human DNA to strengthen my argument.
If flies cannot evolve and adapt, then they will remain a fly.

Either way, I know that everyone with my eye colour knows exactly what I know, and so knows that if every person commits to the rule: "if the n people I see with X eyes don't leave on day n then I will leave on day n+1 and declare that I have X eyes" then everyone will leave the island having correctly declared their eye colour. — Michael

Except that there's a possibility that one islander is a red-eye.
So that islander can count that there are 201 islanders total, assuming no one has left yet. They can deduce between the blue and the brown, but not if there's a third/fourth color.

Or idealism - that mind is somehow fundamental, which is hardly accepted by academic philosophy at all. But in any case it's a more complicated problem than it seems. — Wayfarer

There's no causation in any principle of idealism.

As for mental causation, what if I were to write something that caused you to become agitated? Would that not constitute an example of mental causation that has physical consequences such as increasing your pulse? — Wayfarer

Then I would say that's not causation at all. Offensive gestures do not result in causation, but in deliberation in which a moral agent can think through the situation and decide to ignore the offenses.

↪L'éléphant


What was it? — fdrake

A lot of that was rather misuse of his true field of study -- philosophy. But he had well-rounded disciplines.

What is the point in laying out moral edicts that are so abstract and impractical when the layman already has a fairly solid intuitive grasp of how to act ethically based off sheer compassion and, for want of a better term, "common sense"? — Dorrian

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That's why a deliberation like this below is necessary.

The idea of formally codifying the principles and issues involved in (an individual) making moral choices is reasonable and beneficial. Not because doing so leads to prospective derivation of moral decisions (which the OP criticizes and I agree with this criticism), rather that once the particular circumstances and details of a situation are known, those principles can be used to arrive at the optimal outcome. — LuckyR

A real "scales dropped from my eyes" moment was learning that Foucault was part of some marketing classes. — fdrake

:smile: You should try looking up his field of study in college.

We’ve all been influenced by propaganda — from the news to education— but the advisement industry is a particularly effective and often overlooked source of indoctrination. I — Mikie

You must not have taken a formal course in marketing to say this. The theory of marketing says exactly that advertising is to persuade or convince the public to buy this or that particular brand. Whatever image a business wants to sell, they have all kinds of posturing to make it happen.

Although, the landlord can kick you out if you break the terms of the tenancy contract or simply not renew it at the end of the contract in which case you would have to move. — Truth Seeker

Will you just shut up about this literal translation of everything that's being discussed here?
Obviously, fulfillment in living arrangement includes with it the long-term sustainability of having your own place. If you're getting kicked out, evicted, thrown out, then you still do not have a permanent habitat.

Many people would feel utterly unfulfilled without their steak, bacon and fried chicken, so I'm not sure what dietary choices that do not contribute to ill humour or health are doing here. — Vera Mont

Due to my own doing, I no longer look at food for pleasure. I find it cumbersome to eat a multiple-course meal. In fact, at times, I find organizing the meal cumbersome or eating multiple things on the table too much work. So, I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to preparing my meals.

Imho, I think, in order to live every (or most) day(s) in a "fulfilling" way, one has to learn how to enjoy – satisfy oneself with – boredom and being alone by unlearning the habit (vice) of "purpose" – social statis-seeking / ambition. Without purpose, there's no "now what?" (i.e. dukkha, angst). — 180 Proof

Wise words. Most people would never understand this.

Prove it. Tell us what time is first. — Corvus

The duration of time that it took you to respond to my post coincided with the beating of my pulse, in seconds.

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist. — Corvus

Therefore, time exists.

Yeah, let's tackle this. Please provide some passages.

Having a permanent place to live is not essential. I and billions of humans don't have a permanent place to live. Lots of people pay rent instead of owning a house or flat. — Truth Seeker

lol. :smile: Okay, sorry if you misunderstood my comment. I meant, as opposed to homelessness or at the mercy of whoever has an available couch. Renting is a permanent place to live. You have the right to be there.

For me, this system of morality is less about metaphysical constructs or universal truths and more about guiding decisions to become the best version of yourself. While I hold personal beliefs that the judgment of actions is universal—shared across humanity—I also believe that to fairly judge an action, one must set aside the circumstances and intent and evaluate the act itself. — ZisKnow

It's good when one has an idea of what morality is. But I notice that, there is much less in the way of explaining the reason for contrasting the practical morality/consequentialism against the universal moral principles. Because to me, they are not in the same realm of deliberation. For example, the 'will' does not point to a concrete object that we can use when making an argument in favor of the harm principle.