That you can't prove we aren't nonphysical.

I don't think you can prove that we aren't physical.

"We can by inductive reasoning" just is "the future will resemble the past". It's re-stating, not explaining. — Banno

:up:

My guess is he's running a scam.

Perhaps there's already an AGI and it's starting a pro-ai psyops campaign to influence public opinion in message boards like this. — RogueAI

I was just asking out of curiosity.

Yes, the text was created by AI because I asked it to. To explain the way I have a conversation with it. — BelegCZ

I guess I'm curious about why you use it. Is it because English isn't your first language and using AI makes that easier? Is it because you use it pervasively to save time? Or why?

I've noticed that where I work, AI likes to say "I hope this message finds you well." I guess just knowing that's coming from an AI makes it sound self-conscious and hollow.

Like the OP, this post appears to be AI generated.

You say all of this, along with whatever other processes are taking place, is a description of not only things like receiving sensory input and distinguishing wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, and receptors on my tongue distinguishing molecules that have made contact, but also seeing the color red, and tasting the sweetness of sugar. More than that, it's a description of my thoughts. — Patterner

You can initiate a fight or flight response by deciding to think of something scary. Maybe that would be an argument that a description of how neurons communicate isn't a description of thought.

You can also get a dose of adrenaline by making yourself hyperventilate. Don't do it in the middle of the night though, because you won't be able to sleep afterwards.

:up:

No, it does not fail.

There are different subjects in your premises. Zeus is a deity, and its characteristics are based on Greek mythology. It is the subject of a "myth", nothing close to something real.

Meanwhile, Michael or Javi is real, because you are causing me to feel certain experiences. There are some chances that you might appear in my dreams, because the source of your existence (at least in what I consider real) is based in my experience of interacting with you. Then, you exist.

I have never experienced Zeus, nor did I dream with him. I think it is pretty obvious the cause: his source of existence is missing.

However, the source of your existence is obvious to me. — javi2541997

This touches on an aspect of belief that Davidson focuses on: that no belief exists in isolation. Each of your beliefs is part of a web of inter-related beliefs. Your belief that Zeus is not real is a component of your cohesive worldview, it's ultimately bound up with everything else you believe, such as that strawberries are plants and clouds are made of water vapor. This web or field of beliefs, along with the concept of truth, essentially is your rationality. It can be updated, but not all at once, so in a sense it's self stabilizing.

And now you put your rationality to the job of determining its own foundations and effectiveness at delivering you reliable information. You're asking the eye to see itself. As always, it will go to work trying to give you the explanation you seek. That's what it does. It follows the Law of Explanation, which is that everything must have one, including the Law itself.

If someone suggested a referendum, wouldn't Putin just send them to the front in Ukraine?

:up:

And crucially, none of this rescues us from Hume’s problem — Banno

This. If anything, abduction is a description of the problem.

Probably Putin wouldn't perform this referendum, but the fact of his refusal will make the Russians experience a cognitive dissonance, they will start understanding that Putin lies to them. — Linkey

They probably already know that.

How about the USA cedes territory to Russia? — Michael

We could give them South Carolina.

I disagree. He's not a naive realist, and he's not a realist in any other ordinary way, but I don't think he believes that reality is constituted by the mind. — Jamal

Ontological anti-realism isn't the view that reality is constituted by the mind. You're thinking of Dummett's anti-realism.

Ontological anti-realists wouldn't try to settle the debate about whether the mind or the body takes precedence. Sometimes it's the kind of skepticism we find in Wittgenstein, which is that we don't have a vantage point from which to rule on the question. In continental philosophy, it's dialectics: that mind and body are thesis and anti-thesis. What's the synthesis? The Absolute, which was once another name for God. The fact that the Absolute inherits shades of divinity contributes to the illusion that it's something static. The only thing we'll ever know about the Absolute is the experience of following the contours of the mind, which is dialectics. It's very cool to be reminded of that.

Add to that his commitment to aspects of reality denigrated or ignored by other philosophers: the particular and contingent, and suffering — Jamal

I'm struggling to fit Adorno into my philosophical landscape, and this is another thread to it: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche all orbit around suffering, primarily with the aim of accepting it as part of life: and not just an unfortunate part, and definitely not a result of capitalism, but rather the primary engine of the psyche. Does this trivialize or denigrate suffering? Actually, I think it does. The philosophy of acceptance needs to be tempered by actually facing it.

But Adorno believes this knowledge of our mediation can reveal mediation's crimes and misdemeanors. — Jamal

Absolutely. Pun intended. :smile:

Speaking of change, a cool thing to do is compare Adorno's conception of emancipation to Heidegger's, then think about how very different their approaches to dialectics were. Adorno and Heidegger are at the poles on both philosophical and political spectrums, so you can walk through how they relate to each other dialectically, and the whole thing subsequently swirls down the drain. Just kidding.

Another cool thing, regarding change, is to rethink how Hegel figured in Marxism. Somewhere along the line, I got the impression that Marx was more a student of Feuerbach than Hegel, so a project would be to revisit Feuerbach's way of turning Hegel on his head, vs. Adorno's.

And more change: We presently live at a time when extremes of right and left are weirdly allied. What would Adorno say about that?

I might go back and reread with those questions in mind. ND is very dense and mysterious, so a little more staring at the page might be good. :razz:

Sometimes knowledge enters philosophical consideration in the form of a propositional attitude. The SEP says it well:

Propositional attitude reporting sentences concern cognitive relations people bear to propositions. A paradigm example is the sentence ‘Jill believes that Jack broke his crown’. Arguably, ‘believes, ‘hopes’, and ‘knows’ are propositional attitude verb and, when followed by a clause that includes a full sentence expressing a proposition (a that-clause) form propositional attitude reporting sentences. Attributions of cognitive relations to propositions can also take other forms. For example, ‘Jack believes what Jill said’ and ‘Jack believes everything Jill believes’ are both propositional attitude ascriptions, even though the attitude verb is not followed by a that-clause. Some philosophers and linguists also claim that sentences like ‘Jill wanted Jack to fall’, ‘Jack and Jill are seeking water’, and ‘Jack fears Jill’, for example, are to be analyzed as propositional attitude ascribing sentences, the first saying, perhaps, something to the effect that Jill wants that Jack falls, the second that Jack and Jill strive that they find water, and the third that Jack fears that Jill will hurt him. But such analyses are controversial. (See the entry on intensional transitive verbs.)

Having a successful theory of propositional attitude reports is important, as they serve as a converging point for a number of different fields, including philosophy of language, natural language semantics, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and epistemology.

In this article, we examine attempts to deal with a puzzle about propositional attitude reporting sentences that was first posed by Gottlob Frege in his 1892. Subsequent literature has been concerned with developing a semantic theory that offers an adequate treatment of this puzzle. We present the main theories and note the considerations that count in their favor and some of the problems that they face.

1. Frege’s puzzle — sep article on propositional attitude reporting

I recently did a thread in Frege's puzzle, but I'd be happy to revisit it if anyone's interested.

Knowledge applies in a wide variety of language games and we can expect its definition to be adjusted to suit each context — Ludwig V

Yep.

Our primary disagreement seems to be concerning what type of existence things like society, economic systems, and ideology, have. You claim these to be objects, i claim them to be concepts. I've shown willingness to compromise. I'm ready to allow that they are material objects, under the principles of Marxist materialism, whereby concepts are material objects. This way, these things can be concepts as I claim, and also material objects, as you want them to be interpreted. — Metaphysician Undercover

Adorno was an ontological anti-realist. He wouldn't take the concept, as you're using the word, and materiality to be anymore than a dichotomy that plays out in one kind of dialectical story. What's implied by dialectics is unification. When you realize that ideas and materiality are two sides of one coin, the image of dissolution of the division appears to the mind. Giving a name to the outcome of this dissolution, and then reifying it, is positive dialectics.

In other words, try to remember that "dialectics" is in the title. That is the framework for all that follows.

But I just finished The Magus by John Fowles yesterday and it's vying for the top 5 spot - it's astonishing — Manuel

So is the French Lieutenant's Woman.

OK. Then can you tell me anything about the other meanings? — Ludwig V

There's know that and there's know how. Sometimes it's know of. In some cases, it might be a combination?

I know how you feel.
You should know better than to eat wild mushrooms.
I didn't know which path I should take.
I want to know what it's like to jump from an airplane.
How do the migrating butterflies know the way to Mexico?
I love you more than you'll ever know.
Frank doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

I don't think it's really necessary to build a formula for each usage. Do you?

I wonder what the thoughts are of the members of this forum on this subject. — dclements

This article touches on some of the concerns: Population decline's effects on global economy.

South Korea is often held up as an example of negative growth that has passed the point of no return (where the present population no longer has the means to reverse negative growth.) The challenge is adapting to a no growth economy, which is foreign territory for a large chunk of the human population. AI and robots to the rescue?

But how does negation occur? — NotAristotle

It's part of the dialectical process.

JTB amounts to a procedure for working out whether some random belief is actually knowledge. — Ludwig V

I think it's just an expression of one of the meanings of "knowledge."

The non-conceptual is whatever isn't conceptual, which comes down mainly to two specific overlapping meanings: (a) it's what philosophical thought is properly directed towards, also known in ND as what is heterogeneous to thought—i.e., particular things, like physical objects, economic systems, works of art, etc.; or (b) it's whatever eludes conceptual capture. Sense (b) is equivalent to the meaning of the non-identical. — Jamal

I agree with this.

But I see that as a consequence of the basic concept<->(non-conceptual) object relationship. A good way to think about that is to see the non-conceptual as the thing in itself, if you can imagine this to be immanent to experience, decoupled from Kant's formal apparatus, and potentially determinate. In my opinion, Adorno is as Kantian as he is Hegelian, and often more so. You see it especially here. — Jamal

I interpreted Adorno differently. I don't want to drag the thread through parts of the text that have already been covered, but just to explain, these passages made me think Adorno was using or alluding to the specialized meaning Hegel gave to the word concept:

If dialectics has however become inescapable, then it cannot remain glued to its principle like ontology and transcendental philosophy, as a pivotal structure, however modifiable. The critique of ontology does not aim at any other ontology, nor even at one which is non-ontological. Otherwise it would merely posit an Other as what is simply and purely first; this time not the absolute identity, being, the concept, but the non-identical, the existent, facticity.
…
The idea of something immutable, identical to itself, would also thereby collapse. It is derived from the domination of the concept, which wished to be constant towards its content, precisely its “matter”, and for that reason is blind to such. -- ND pg 151, 154

I think the content of the concept is live cases of dialectical thinking, a dynamic flow of thought comparing and contrasting oppositions. An easy example of what Hegel meant by concept is Heidegger's Dasein. Though Heidegger treats it as something static, it's arrived at by a journey of thought that involves subjective and objective poles. Dasein is an example of positive dialectics where it appears we've reached some higher truth about Being and now we can cast aside those poles that had starring roles in the preceding journey. Adorno is saying that this casting aside of the content of the concept creates an illusion.

So it's true that the non-conceptual is particular things, like physical objects. Dialectics tells us that physical objects can't have some substantial existence independent of the "I" but we experience them as separate. That sense of clear separation is part of the journey of dialectics. So it's not just physical things that make up the non-conceptual. Your independent, unique self is also an example. Dialectics says you can't be an independent thing. But that's part of the mechanics of thought. It's a mistake to try to toss it in the trash.

The concept is the union of opposites, the union of subject and object. The nonconceptual is the disunity of same.

When I was reading ND, this is the meaning of "concept" I was thinking of. If you were using a different meaning, we would come up with very different interpretations of Adorno.

CONCEPT (Begriff). Also translated (by Miller) as 'Notion'. The verb begreifen incorporates greifen, to seize. For Hegel, a concept is not (as it is for Kant) a representation of what several things have in common. Per Inwood, concepts are for Hegel not sharply distinct from the 'I' or from objects, nor from one another. When Hegel speaks of the Concept, he sometimes just means concepts in general, but he also uses it to mean, per Solomon, the most adequate conception of the world as a whole. Per Geraets et al, the Concept refers to the movement of logical thinking in its self-comprehension. Solomon suggests that for Hegel the Concept sometimes has the force of 'ourconception of concepts', and that it may also refer to the process of conceptual change, since for Hegel the identity of concepts is bound up with dialectical movement. Inwood suggests that Hegel sometimes assimilates the Concept to God. Kainz glosses the Concept as a 'grasping-together of opposites'. — UC San Diego

If knowledge is just confidence in one's belief, then one's confidence/conviction that one knows would suffice, that can't be correct. — Sam26

I didn't say knowledge is confidence in one's belief. I said we use the word to express that we're confident. The reasons for that confidence vary.

Instead of trying to provide a definition for knowledge, think about how the word is used. The next time you catch yourself using the word, stop and reflect on what you're trying to convey.

It makes sense to say the man thinks he knows, but he doesn’t. This is something we see all the time: people confuse what they believe with what they actually know. The key difference is that conviction alone isn’t knowledge, and sometimes the evidence that seems to support a belief doesn’t really justify it. — Sam26

I don't think your conception of knowledge is going to stand up to a skeptical challenge. At any time, we may be mistaken about our justifications. So, to nail the jello to the wall, how do you determine if the evidence in front of you is sufficient for knowledge? I say you have no way to do that. You only use the word "knowledge" to signify confidence in your beliefs.

A side issue is that I knew the man was there to kill me because I created the dream specifically to confront certain fears. I knew he was there to kill me in the same way I know the bishop goes diagonally. Life is frequently like this, but realizing this requires grasping the extent to which we live in our own dreams.

I think the concept is about how the mind works, so it's dynamic. It's about standing the thing against a backdrop of its negation, like the black dot exists because of its non-black background. But the mind can never reach a state of conceptual completion. I think @NotAristotle is right: the nonconceptual is the negation of the concept. It's an aspect of the way the mind works, not a material thing pinging the senses which the mind passively takes on as concepts.

Imagine you're inhabiting a character in a dream who is running from the mafia. You're hiding in a cabin in North Dakota, but a man enters your dwelling and you know he's there to kill you.

The concept of knowledge is in play here, and it mostly signifies confidence. It's just turbo-charged belief.

It wouldn't make sense to say it's an opinion, because the mafia threat isn't a matter of opinion. It wouldn't make sense to say the character knows it, but it's not true. So we could add on truth.

I did kill the guy in the dream. I didn't have any choice.

Why does Donald Trump have to be such an idiot?

And you are correct, overcoming the individualism of Kant, Hegel and subsequent writers is an issue. — Banno

:up:

I noticed. — Metaphysician Undercover

:cool:

QUESTION: Since the social whole changes, isn't Adorno himself just another relativist, but on a bigger scale? Is there a difference between the relativism of truth and the historical situatedness of truth? — Jamal

AP would say you can't have individual truth in the first place because that would defy the private language argument. Truth has to be social. Wittgenstein suggests that truth is relative to worldviews, but avoids being hypocritical because he says that philosophy is a ladder you toss once you get to the top. Once you realize your philosophy is self-consuming, you go off and do something else.

@Banno might argue that Davidson's On the very idea of a conceptual scheme helps us navigate the diversity of conceptual framework versus the solitary playing field we're apparently placing all these views on.

I actually did a post graduate course specifically on Hegel's dialectics of being. The professor refused to give me the mark I needed, even after I defended my thesis in person. It seems like there is dogmatic principles concerning "the correct" way to interpret Hegel. — Metaphysician Undercover

I guess I agree with your professor.

I think the point is that "synthesis" in the Hegelian representation, is the subject of the intellect, and it is wrong. to make the representation work, requires that we do violence on the concept, falsely represent it. Synthesis falsely represents the 'logical' evolution of the Idea, as something free-floating, independent from the material world, manipulated by human reason. However, as experience demonstrates to us, the Idea does not evolve in a logical way, that is due to influence of "the irrational", which is the true reality of the material world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is all pretty thoroughly incorrect. You could start with just understanding Hegelian dialectics.

A reason to think about negative dialectics in the first place is the failure of Marxism to accurately predict events. Many people put everything on the line, only to be disappointed. Imagine that NASA planned a manned mission to Mars, demonstrating enough confidence in apriori principles of geometry that people's lives are risked. But then during the mission, something goes wrong that reveals that they didn't understand the world at all. It was like that for some Marxists. They hadn't been slightly wrong. They were completely wrong. Psychology could be brought to bear to answer how this happened, but what Adorno focuses on is something that should have been obvious from reading Hegel: synthesis is not subject to the intellect. It's not that it's wrong, it's that the mind only deals with a dismantled world. Synthesis, especially the Grand Synthesis isn't something available to us for making blueprints of human history. But as Wittgenstein experienced: grasping that there's a point where the questions must stop is fleeting. The hunger to know and predict takes over. We end up overreaching in spite of ourselves.

Is negative dialectics potent enough to teach us humility? To reconcile ourselves to partial truths? My answer is: of course not.

Here we must ask if John's understanding of mathematics is relevant to the mathematical truth of his utterance:

From the perspective of the mathematics community other than John, the answer is clearly no; for whether 2 is a prime number is not decided by John's understanding of prime numbers but by a computable proof by contradiction written down on paper and simulated on a computer, that bears no necessary relationship to the hidden causal process of John's neuro-psychology, even if the two are correlated due to John being a trained mathematician.

On the other hand, from the perspective of John, who isn't in a position to distinguish his personal understanding of mathematics from our actual mathematics, the answer is clearly yes. So we have two distinct notions of truth in play: Intersubjective mathematical truth, for which the truth maker is independent of Johns judgements whether or not his judgements are correlated with intersubjective mathematical truth, versus what we might call "John's subjective truth" in which the truth maker is identified with the neuropsychological causes of John's utterances. If John is a well-respected mathematician, then we might be tempted to conflate the two notions of truth, but we shouldn't forget that the two notions of truth (causally determined versus community determined) aren't the same notion of truth. — sime

I don't know what you mean by "John's subjective truth." S is either true or false. Having a limited, subjective perspective just means there is fallibility that, for instance, Laplace's demon wouldn't have. John and Laplace's demon have the same conception of truth. John has to live with the possibility of being wrong. The demon obviously doesn't have that problem.