Something I've contemplated is whether or how God could "fit" in a human mind. A simpler analogy would be with a spiritual guru. We can't know the guru concretely or in fact until we have become the guru and posesses his insights as are own. Before that moment there is the hope or expectation of such a moment. But it's like a empty negation. "I know there's is something I don't know (that the guru knows.)" But how is this knowledge established? How does the guru have authority before he is understood? The point is that he's not fully real for the disciple until he is contained in the disciple as an insight or realization.

Reasons are just explanations for things, which can be merely casual. It follows the PSR, and if that's true, then all things need a reason for their being. Such as a red ball that's in the middle of a forest needs an explanation, or as something as vast as the sun needing a reason for being there casually and contingently. Even if we don't know the epistemological reason for why things are why they are, and how they got there, the fact remains that they must have a reason - the opposite would mean it's reasonless. Which to the Thomistic is absurd. — Marty

I can't take the PSR as an axiom. Perhaps it's just an implicit acknowledgement that explanation depends on the projection of necessity. But of course top-level necessities are contingent (why exactly these necessities or laws?), unless one hands them to God, but then God is contingent, unless ...?

As to the totality, maybe that's equivalent to God as Being.

I can agree with all of that. That's more or less what I get from "all is vanity" in Ecclesiastes. "A futile chasing after the wind," etc.

I think it is all a distraction from what really matters. What really matters is that you come to see what will change your life and take you away from holding worldviews; this is the meaning of life and there is no formula: it is different for each one. — John

Yes, I agree. I don't know if we can escape having some worldview, but I think it's useful to escape the worldview that there is a single, correct worldview. Every life is different, so it's reasonable to think that every successful worldview (dialectically evolved) is going to be different. We can affirm a plurality of strong or successful worldviews and trade ideas-as-tools as different but equal "kings." It's like master-to-master, peer-to-peer or adult-to-adult (transactional analysis) communication.

I'm very glad someone else sees what I'm getting at. (I fixed my typo, too.) One might say that the idea of non-fantasy is a fantasy, but the distinction itself melts at this point. (It's distinction necessary to "common sense," but you see what I mean.)

So you are coming more from a philosophical defense of a radically simple God? That's a fascinating idea. I think it's a respectable position. I just can't enjoy it myself as an explanation. I experience it as an implicit giving up on explanation. I do think that existence as a whole ("the totality") is necessarily inexplicable, since I see explanation as deduction from postulate necessary relationships, and there's nothing to put the totality in relation to. I'd be tempted to identity this totality with God. Though I totally reject that the scientific image is this totality. Instead, it would just be one more part. From this "pantheistic" perspective, there is nothing that is outside of God, that is not God. I find this poetic, but it doesn't have much use morally. It just associates "God" with the grandest conception I know, namely reality without an ounce subtracted or pronounced unreal. Practically, of course, we need the notion of objective or physical reality. But this is a useful reduction of the totality, in my view. And for me any other notion of God would be swallowed up in this God as Totality.

On the second point, I more or less identity with a generalized instrumentalism. I don't like scientism and I don't really believe in the metaphysical quest. We forge "mind-tools" and use "mind-tools." So it's a vision of man's intellect as an evolving system of myths. We keep the visions-of-reality as tools when they work for us. We try to fix them or change them when they stop making us happy. (By this light, everything I've said here is just itself as vision-of-reality as tool, and my theory of adaptive myths is itself an adaptive myth, an instrument or a meta-instrument.)

I like it. I'm a big fan of Popper, btw. Something I didn't mention in the OP was the postulation of unseen entities. That's very important. But I thought I'd focus on the "projection" of necessity. Of course the assumed uniformity of nature figures into this.

Great theme.

People "hide" from reality, so to speak. Hence culture, art, religion, self-improvement television shows, fictional literature, etc. We try to hide under the bed sheets and make our own little world. A "reality tunnel" to use a more scientific and contemporary term. Humans seem to be the only animals that have existential crises, or are able of abstract thought so advance that philosophical/scientific discussion of the nature of abstract thought is even possible. — darthbarracuda

I think people can be said to hide from one image of reality (or myth) in another image of reality (or myth). The unmediated "real" reality seems like an empty negation to me. I understand of course that a community will speak of a shared myth as a reality and then explain others in terms of hiding from this reality in an unshared myth or fantasy. So the irreligious man is hiding from God from the perspective of the religious man and the religious man is hiding from scientific objectivity from the perspective of the irreligious man. My point is that hiding is relative to the commitment of the one who accuses someone else of hiding.

For it's quite strange to think about what the mind's place in the world is. If we weren't "meant" to know about the world (as Zapffe thought), whence do we come from? If we don't "belong" in the universe, then why the hell are we here? Zapffe (and Schopenhauer) thought that the universe was "inadequate" to satiate the human consciousness (we get bored and restless), and they both put this phenomenon in the more metaphysical way, as if it were a cosmic principle that consciousness is listless and apt to boredom. — darthbarracuda

I think Schopenhauer and Zapffe are just offering two more (relative) "fantasies" to hide in. But if all myth is adaptive (as I see it), then there's only an adaptive myth ("hiding is bad") from which to accuse it. The "bleak" existentialist view can itself be described as wishful thinking. Its complicated charm is that is appears too bleak to be an "escapist" fantasy. But it seems to be built on a heroism of intellectual courage. "I have the guts to look the Void in the eye." There's also the "assassination" of every authority in this view, so that the individual becomes a mortal god on earth (a twist on the incarnation myth). "Only the damned are grand." Boredom is the vice of kings along with contempt for anything higher. I posit that we want to feel like "kings."
We are seduced by myths that glorify us. (And this myth glorifies me as the possessor/co-creator of a glorious meta-myth.)

The point being made here is that it's quite strange that consciousness, in all its infinite depth and contradictions, is even possible in the first place. It's so strange that I think it rather impossible for it to have evolved from unconscious matter. I hesitate to say this, since I have sympathy with naturalism, but the utter ridiculousness and weirdness of consciousness makes it seem as though there is a wider metaphysical narrative going on here (Neo-Platonism or Buddhism anyone?) — darthbarracuda

I think it's strange, too. I just really don't know. But then I have a theory of explanation that suggests that maybe I can't know. It seems that we judge the postulated necessities used to explain things in terms of accurate predictions and esthetic appeal. There's something about the totality (consciously experienced) that seems to exceed any little string of concepts that are always only embedded in it. It's like trying to explain the whole in terms of a part. The "whatness" of my experience remains what it is. What can I do with an explanation, a string of words? I'd say that there's something that exceeds metaphysics, an overflow. But (damn it!) I'm just hiding in my myth, right? From the perfect and eternal truth of consciousness somehow available to that consciousness, if only it has the courage?

Nobody's anthropomorphizing God unless by that we mean that he has a divine intellect. — Marty

Respectfully, what is the use of prayer then? Why should God send his only son to die? If we take human-like motives away from God, I can't see how he's not only the way to have a teleological world. Even then, don't we need desire of some sort? Why create the world in 7 days? If physical explanation is postulation of necessity, then the explanation of actions tends to be in terms of feelings. So I'm sort of stuck here. But then I might be called a correlationist. "The trail of the human serpent is over all."

Radfems and co. often berate the Men's Rights movement, and the Men's Rights movement often berates the Radfems and co. It's an endless series of fear-mongering and strawmen. — darthbarracuda

Exactly. I see the same spirit on both sides. In my view the individual does well to transcend the temptation of this morbid solidarity. "Fear is the mind-killer."

First, I respect your position and appreciate your directness and politeness.

For sure it's gendered, but that's the point: to avoid instances where women's voices are overwhelmed by men who think they know what's best for them. — TheWillowOfDarkness

While I don't quite agree with men not being classed as feminists, the argument alludes to something important about our motivations. Why is it so important, for example, for men to be at the front of the march? If the women are up their advocating for their rights, why does the man have to be lauded as a feminist hero? Is not enough to have women speak it? — TheWillowOfDarkness

I can understand the desirability of female leadership. But I can't get behind "men cannot be feminists" at all. I think one can derive a strong and appealing feminism from individualism alone.

The men in the "ally" group are far from embarrassing. They are secure enough in themselves to let women have authority in this context. If the women say they want to speak about something, they let them, without getting angry that they aren't the voice or authority of the moment. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I shouldn't be too hard on these guys. I like the sensible feminism that permeates the people I'd call "cool." I'd call myself a liberal with a sense of humor. I'm pro-woman, pro-gay, pro-trans, and yet I don't do more than vote in that direction and treat everyone kind with kindness. But I wouldn't show up to support bitter, divisive voices. Rolling Stone published that false story abut gang rape. There's a morbid desire for outrage that is counterproductive. As "rape" is smeared around carelessly, I am less eager to take accusations at face value. There are some man-hating crazies out there. They are not my friends. For the same reason that woman-hating crazies aren't my friends. It's the same crazy I object to in both cases. It's the "Alex Jones" spirit. There's a dark "second religiousness" among lots of liberals. The words "racist" and "sexist" are used without precision or empathy in a way that reminds me of crude religion. From this perspective, the world is run by the devil (the old rich heterosexual white man) and those not with me 100 percent are necessarily "sinful" (racist and/or sexist and/or X-phobic).

Finally, solidarity movements are two-edged. If I am a woman, do I have a duty to all women? To women as a concept? Must a black man fight for the abstraction of all black men? This is the subordination of the individual in terms of gender or race. I do not feel a duty toward whiteness or maleness generally speaking. It's only when I'm attacked in such terms (indirectly, as the gender or race is attacked) that I slip into solidarity thinking. I understand the temptation, but isn't the point to get beyond such ultimately anti-individual identifications?

Pf. It doesn't even matter, I'd believe in it even if it was false, that's how beautiful it is. As Socrates said about the afterlife, I will say about this - I may be wrong, but at least I will go to the grave with hope and love in my heart, and if death does indeed end all, what better way to meet it than carrying this beauty in your heart. — Agustino

I respect this approach. I think we are "seduced" by narratives and find "reasons" when we meet others seduced by other narratives. Or that's a narrative I find seductive. Perhaps you'll agree that "proofs" of God shift the conversation away from the power of the narrative of JC and toward the narrative of logic or pure reason as the king of kings instead.

Thanks for the feedback. For the most part it seems that most theists want an anthropomorphic God. He should think and love, just as we think and love, but do it better. I can understand that metaphysically inclined thinkers may focus on God as a solution to an intellectual problem. When I was religious many years, I looked toward God for both reasons. I could talk to an infinite, benevolent intelligence directly, and I has a kosmos that made sense in human terms (God's love, which could only mean something to me in terms of human love).
I do think there are reasonable ways to believe in God. Some theists are maybe erroneously disrespected because it is assumed that they are making empirical assertions or doing metaphysics. Sure, maybe they are in a secondary way while primarily concerning themselves with a feeling that things are fundamentally good. I myself like to invoke "the gods" lyrically, such as in "the laughter of the gods."

My claim was simply that people are separated in such a way as not to brook, ultimately, complete understanding of one another, and a kind of soft, empirical solipsism prevails, because there is no universal place in which everything comes together and no one world that can be explained by a single field of interacting mechanisms. There are, in other words, gaps that can't be filled. — The Great Whatever

I relate to this, for what it's worth. We strive toward such a universal place, but the smallest unit of meaning is, in a sense, the unique personality as a whole. And what is explanation but postulated necessity that's cashed as a rule for action, in order to produce pleasure and avoid pain?

Humans seem to think in dualities - biological/psychological, nature/nurture, inside world/outside world' etc. - while these dualities are always somehow connected or even intermingled; at least related. I myself am convinced that all dualities can also be viewed as pairs (of opposites) that somehow complement each other and form a unity. Though that is just a little alchemical theory, which may be totally irrelevant here. — Wilco Lensink

Actually that's a classic them in philosophy. Hegel comes to mind.

Modern philosophy, culture, and society seemed to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions, such as those between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self and Other, freedom and authority, knowledge and faith, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute Idea" (Science of Logic, sections 1781–3) or "absolute knowledge" (Phenomenology of Spirit, "(DD) Absolute Knowledge").

According to Hegel, the main characteristic of this unity was that it evolved through and manifested itself in contradiction and negation. Contradiction and negation have a dynamic quality that at every point in each domain of reality—consciousness, history, philosophy, art, nature, society—leads to further development until a rational unity is reached that preserves the contradictions as phases and sub-parts by lifting them up (Aufhebung) to a higher unity. — Wiki

This is a side point, but it's my understanding that Einstein generalized Newton.

As Galilean relativity is now considered an approximation of special relativity that is valid for low speeds, special relativity is considered an approximation of general relativity that is valid for weak gravitational fields, i.e. at a sufficiently small scale and in conditions of free fall. — Wiki

Speeds were low enough and measurement was fuzzy enough so that Newton wasn't seen to be 'wrong.' Instrumentally, Newton was right indeed. He helped us get what we wanted. The "better" equations might have been inconveniently complex and slowed things down practically. I like time separate from space. I suppose we are wired that way.

I agree completely that observation is not the basis of laws. I agree with Popper ("critical rationalist") and Rescher (methodological pragmatist) that we postulate necessity. We dream up a mathematical-conceptual "myth" of how things must behave. Observation is a way to test such a myth. The scientist as "poet" or "myth-maker" is primary. That's my understanding. He just has to be willing to let his dreams die if they don't work. Our theories "do our dying for us." (Popper) The "problem" with God as empirical object is that He would have to be "fleshed out" so that measurements-to-be-expected could be deduced from his nature and compared favorably with actual measurements.

I think you might like Rescher:

I recall well how the key ideas of my idealistic theory of natural laws - of “lawfulness as imputation” - came to me in 1968 during work on this project while awaiting the delivery of Arabic manuscripts in the Oriental Reading Room of the British Museum. It struck me that what a law states is a mere generalization, but what marks this generalization as something special in our sight -- and renders it something we see as a genuine law of nature -- is the role that we assign to it in inference. Lawfulness is thus not a matter of what the law-statement says, but how it is used in the systematization of knowledge -- the sort of role we impute to it. These ideas provided an impetus to idealist lines of thought and marked the onset of my commitment to a philosophical idealism which teaches that the mind is itself involved in the conceptual constitution of the objects of our knowledge. — Rescher

Thanks for the info. It's a great idea for a thread. I hope others participate.

Still more feminists will tell you that by definition you cannot be a feminist, because as a man and have been raised in a system where because of your privileged gender you have been ingrained in, benefited from, and contributed to the ongoing and systematic oppression of women. You can be an "ally" of the feminist movement, and as such you must constantly ask yourself whether or not you are in a position of privilege which might deprive a woman of that same opportunity. At feminist rallies this means marching at the back of the crowd, or at least not at the front; it means not occupying a speaking role at feminist events (and other events in larger society) when instead a woman could be given that opportunity. — VagabondSpectre

This sort of feminism is so nakedly sexist that it cries out for satire if not condemnation. I'm embarrassed for the men who show up under such conditions. We have here, it seems to me, the idea of a "gendered" idea. It's an attack on gender privilege that assumes gender privilege as its MO. It's just like women being ask to cover their heads in church not so long ago, for another arguably gendered idea. Thankfully this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Or I just know cool women who treat the men in their lives as they expect to be and are treated: with kindness, as equals. A**holes come with both kinds (or all kinds) of genitals just around the taint, of course.

Good point. Perhaps the issues are mixed. The scientist derives authority from the great Cause. I like science, but it's a little creepy how science functions as a master-word in the minds of those who hate math, for instance. Is it because truth is holy or because technology works "miracles" or ...? The experiment is personified in that statement you quoted. Creepy. Funny, too.

Oh, then we're in a similar situation, since I have a fellowship. My only job is to show up and get good grades --and eventually pass some qualification exams. In 2 years, I'll have to lead recitations or be a research assistant, though.

So are you something like an engineer? Or a person who works for the energy company who knows the market and helps them plan?Not trying to pry. I'm just always curious about all the paths out there in the real world, having chosen my particular fork in road and occasionally wondering what the road not taken had to offer.

Exactly! Maybe it's good for their work, but maybe the awareness that one is being tricked messes with the data.

I'm not familiar with study-leaves. So it's economics with a focus on energy? Or something o' that?

Nice! I watched that movie on the electric shock guy (Sarsgaard was the lead). It makes one a little suspicious of the tricks up psychologists' sleeves.

Ha! Well, I really like bringing the conversation down to earth sometimes. I wish you luck on the downloads. My internet slows down occasionally (or just jams) and I find it annoying as hell. What are these conference papers? School? Work?

It concerns the question of what, if anything, caused the laws of physics to be as they are. ( It might not be an intelligible question at all, but that is not the point here.) — Wayfarer

That makes sense, because I'd expect a physicists to derive the existence of said laws from still more general laws. But the the question might be a pseudo-question is possibly of great relevance here. The whole God-as-cause approach might be flawed from the beginning. If the explanation of X is deduction of X from postulated necessity, then God-as-cause would have the same problem as the most general laws of physics as well as not giving us much to deduce and test against experience. If as if squeezing God into a "scientistic" paradigm is confessing defeat from the first step. If God needs such justification, then such justification is the real God, or something like that.

1. if some God of theism could create something out of "nothing", as it were, then nihil fit ex nihilo is already violated, and we might as well dispose of the principle, in which case said God is an extraneous hypothesis — jorndoe

One might also ask where this God comes from. Did he spring out of nothing. No. That violates nihil fit ex nihilo. Was this God always here?

if gods/God can be atemporal (changeless, "outside of time", or something), assuming that makes sense, then we might suppose any such "origin" of the universe — jorndoe

Exactly.

I miss LGU at the moment. If God is the sort of object we can reason about this way, he might as well be some superior extraterrestrial lifeform for whom we are seamonkeys. If God is Love, or something like that, then He is already incarnate, already here. Feuerbach comes to mind. I find it implausible that some "pure mind" without anything like human body would we something we could chat with and pray too. I've tried to imagine the disembodied human mind. The problem is that sensation and emotion (and therefore value) are so bodily. A disembodied mind has nothing to do, nowhere to be, no passion driving its thought.

Talked about group actions in one class, outer measures in another, and cardinal numbers in an independent study. Stopped by Kroger on the way home and bought Kefir. I love Kefir, probably drink too much. It's half protein, half sugar. It's the sour milk of the Great Mother. I got home and the woman had cooked a chicken. Ripped off a leg like Grimlock, having texted "On my way. Grimlock hungry!" Later: unsalted roasted peanuts, honey, rolled oats, and lots of ground flax seed in one of those screw-top plastic containers. This is a great for leftovers if you're a savage who doesn't care much about plates and bowls. Just screw on the lid and refrigerate. After an old-man nap, I looked through yet another book about Heidegger. Couldn't really enjoy it. Both Heidegger's and the authors fault, I suspect. Googled "radical instrumentalism," not sure whether anyone else used the phrase. They do. Found some alright stuff. I even found the thread I started on page 4 or thereabouts. That was fun. Took a walk with the wife, one of the things we do when the world quiets and cools down at night. She actually interrupted the writing of this. A little sweet talk, some lap-sitting, and the exchange of good nights, thoughI'll be up till 5AM.

So let me see if I have this straight, the position you're arguing. It is useless to seek self-evident axioms, as there is no such thing, because meaning is context dependent. Therefore we should only use mathematical axioms, as apokrisis suggests, which have crisply defined, and fixed meaning within a mathematical system. This entails that anything which is logically possible is also true. — Metaphysician Undercover

What I'm saying is that the "atoms" in these axioms are not so atomistic. They are nodes in a network, or rather they are nodes in billions of similar but differing networks. Math works by fixing meanings more or less exactly. I know the definition of a continuous function, for instance. I can enlarge what I know about continuous functions in terms of other defined objects via a normalized method (a formalized logic, although used informally ). So the meaning evolves as relationships are deduced, but there's is no disagreement about this evolving meaning. It's the meta-law that proof is the law.

But for me philosophy is the supreme example of an abnormal discourse, even if one of its central fantasies is exactly the normalization of discourse --to define itself or science or rationality, etc. It's a permanent revolution, though. One doesn't play by the rules of the epistemology that one is trying to replace. Aren't "great" philosophers those who reinvent philosophy's self-image and method? This is largely done in terms of seduction by metaphors and narratives ("showing the fly the way out of the bottle") and not really so much in terms of refutations in a "word-math." Rhetoric partly succeeds by appeals to logic -- I won't deny that. But language seems too soft for the sort of "word math" that I associate with lots of traditional metaphysics. We can argue from shared investments and assumptions, but this mass of investments and assumptions is a mess. I'm not saying we can't do it at all in a useful way, but I do look at utility as a epistemological principle. "The smallest unit of meaning is a personality as a whole."

Just a note: I've seen the SJWs out there on one end of the spectrum and followers of Milo ("Feminism Is Cancer") on the other. They need one another to sustain their interdependent conspiracy theories. Both can point to other as the confirmation of their "worst fear" (or dark desire, if only to inflate the Mission). But there's also a reasonable feminism that may not call itself such that's basically just individualism. If you can do X competitively, gender (and race, etc.) shouldn't be an obstacle. True, there's a sort of chivalrous "make fun of Dad" meme, but I don't take it too seriously. The fact that (white) men universally approved targets could also be read in terms of continued dominance. Special protections seem to imply inferiority, at least on some level. What's odd is that providing a "victim card" may only decrease "performance." Ready made excuses are quite the temptation. Those without the "privilege" of the card might be more privileged in some sense than they were before.

Much of what humans do - the majority, in fact - consists of a game where they seek social status while pretending to do other things. The "social justice" movement is nothing more than this; advertise to everyone else that you have the right opinions in order to increase your status. — Pneumenon

Reading this, I'm surprised you weren't more open to what I was getting at in Sophistry: The Obscene Father. I don't know how to quantify the game you mention, but the structure of this game is fascinating. And perhaps you'll agree that it seeps into philosophy and into your very description of the game. Indicating awareness of the game is a move in the game. This gesture too.

I agree with everything that you said. I'm just trying to point out how sensation-emotion exceeds the same concept system that organizes it or is its intelligible structure. There's the concept of red and redness itself, that I can't point to without the concept. Maybe there's no-thing outside the essence-system, but that system floats in sensation-emotion.

None of this addresses the issue of instrumentality. After the high of meditation, the happiness of reading a book on Zen, one must exist to exist to exist. One bears the burden of existence. The idea was brought up earlier about compassion. If taken to the extreme, we do acts of compassion to do act of compassion to do act of compassion. We do science to do science to do science. We entertain ourselves to entertain ourselves to entertain ourselves. We go to sleep, we wake up and fill the void with whatever keeps our attentions on the surface. A superstructure of laws, physical environs, and social ties already in place from 100s and thousands of years of civilization- all to keep us going for no reason. — schopenhauer1

Hi, Schop. I'm a big fan of the orginal Schop, so maybe I can jump in here. I think we do "pleasure" just to do pleasure. Full stop. But that's almost a definition of pleasure. On the other hand, the "spiritual urge" (in my view) does fixate on a project as its object. We complete that project, experience narcissistic pleasure, and the project evolves. I definitely see the restlessness of the human spirit. But if the cycle of desire-satisfaction-boredom is mostly pleasant, I don't see a problem. Unless we fixate on the "spiritual urge" on an "infinite" project like a Reason beyond these finite, temporary reasons that do in fact take up much of our time. So what's the problem with instrumentality? In the name of what absolute can we judge the absence of an absolute? And does the reject of instrumentality itself function as an instrument? I see "reason" as the tool of irrational desire, more or less, so I'm always looking for desire's object. Without accusing it (which would be a role I could play), I see role-play and hero myth at the heart of metaphysics, which is like a genre of poetry in its way.

Loy says that much in Western culture tries to overcome or ameliorate that sense of lack through consumerism or the pursuit of power, pleasure or wealth. But all these attempts are ultimately futile, because they can't address the real source of the feeling of lack, which is that the self has no real basis in reality, so our lives are spent trying to stablise or reify something inherently unstable and fleeting. — Wayfarer

I like this. It's a hell of lot like Sartre's "man is a futile passion." It functions as a maxim that makes us wary of the quest for "closure" or immortality that may just be a mask of the desire to die. Norman O. Brown liked to put life-death (as a unity) on one side and immortality on the other. The desire to "substantiate" the self is perhaps the desire to die. In Gilgamesh, the gods drown humanity in a flood for disturbing their sleep, not because humanity is wicked. The gods are undead.

I agree. I was maybe a little sloppy. Thought is like distinction itself, cutting the totality into self and non-self for instance. But also cutting the totality into thought and non-thought, I suppose. That's probably why I focus on feeling-and-sensation, which plays a better "other" to thinking than the thing-in-itself (an empty negation, whereas we know feeling and sensation).

Thanks for your reply. I'm still not clear on how you see the value of your ideas. As a pragmatist, I "market" my own words as potentially useful marks and noises. I forge tools. I also identify with the goal of being a "strong poet" in Harold Bloom's sense. I want to put some valuable twist (maybe just in tone or emphasis) on what is otherwise synthesis of my influences more or less for the narcissistic pleasure of having done so. In short, it's a creative act. I mention all of this to show that I'm happy to answer the same sort of question I'm asking. So, anyway, how would you "market" yourself? It's a goofy word. But if you wrote your philosophy in a book, what type of consumer would benefit and why? I can't see how sharing abstract thoughts doesn't imply some dialectical movement in personality. If no one needs to saved in fact, perhaps they need to be saved from the illusion that they need to be saved, etc.

What I have in mind is the assumption that you can just pick out individuals and throw them into different contexts freely. But what if that identity was contextual? — apokrisis

Oh, then we're on the same page. Math is charming because it escapes this mess by fiat. But away from math identity is tangled in context. "No finite thing has genuine being." (Hegel). The concrete reality (the complete reality) is singular. To understand a blade of grass fully is to understand the totality itself. Essences are describable as nodes on a network, utterly interdependent. The same thing applies to sentences. Meaning appears to me to be radically holistic. We would like it to be more atomistic so that we could normalize metaphysics. We can't get the metaphysical/philosophical axioms that MU mentions because meanings are context dependent. That's the temptation of taking propositions modulo actions. If two different strings of marks and noises function the same way as rules for actions, they are equivalent. This is just a normative rule of thumb. But this is why I'm not excited about metaphysical issues as they become distant from values or useful "framing" metaphors. The "language is a tool" metaphor (as opposed to "language is a mirror") is basically for me anyway the essence of pragmatism. We don't ask if a tool represents accurately. We see if it does what we want done. As we are fairly certain of our desires, it offers a streamlined epistemology.

Quite, we are not aware of what this maths is, what it is showing us about what exists, existence, or how it comes to exist(etc.etc...) — Punshhh

I hear you. Lots of math has some kind of intuitive reality for me, but it's a big step from that more or less inter-subjective intuition to metaphysical statements. We also understand the "manifest image" and measurements of length and time. So science can earn our trust as a prediction machine. To me the scientific universe is a mathematical image. We place ourselves in that image, but that image is also within the much richer totality of our lives. From this perspective, any sort of reduction of all of experience to some facet of experience is nakedly absurd. It completely reason to talk about whether the universe of the scientific image is infinite or not. I'm just saying that there doesn't have to be any metaphysical investment in the question. What I'm getting at could apply to any sort of reduction, not just to the scientific image. Every metaphysical or physical theory of the totality is still just an idea in the still-untamed totality that exceeds and contains it. Every map is part of and smaller than the territory. Yet the utility of statements may depend exactly on talking and acting as if the totality has been tamed and mapped. So I'm just poking a breathing hole in the paper sky, perhaps.

Probably the closest to what I tend to think is that the world is constituted by spirit that manifests in the form of thought in interaction with material, or something like that. So, extending that thought, neither thought nor material, but spirit, is constitutive. The Holy Trinity? — John

This where metaphysics gets exciting and bold. If "material" is our idea of that which is not idea, it's a sort of doomed thing-in-itself. So there is no material, just the concept-systems common-sense but apparently confused attempt to point outside of itself. But there is nothing outside the system, especially if we think of essences as inter-dependent. The essence of a cat involves the essence of a mouse and so on. So the distinction between thought and object is threatened, at least in our high-flying more-logical-than-practical speculations. So the concept-system rechristens itself "spirit," having transcended this subject-object a distinction, although this distinction is a necessary rung on the ladder or a moment that cannot be skipped (since being is dialectical). Then we have an unstable spirit falling forward into its cognitive dissonance and finally (if one can believe this far) "absolute knowledge" or end of cognitive dissonance and hence of falling forward.

Taken separately, the Subject and the Object are abstractions that have neither “objective reality” (Wirklichkeit) nor “empirical existence” (Dasein). What exists in reality, as soon as there is a Reality of which one speaks — and since we in fact speak of reality, there can be for us only Reality of which one speaks. What exists in reality, I say, is the Subject that knows the Object, or, what is the same thing, the Object known by the Subject. This double Reality, which is nonetheless one because it is equally real in each aspect, taken in its whole or as Totality, is called in Hegel “Spirit” (Geist) or (in the Logic) “absolute Idea.” ...But the term Begriff can also be applied to a fragment of total revealed Being, to a “constituent-element” (Moment) of the Spirit or Idea (in which case the Idea can be defined as the integration of all the Concepts — that is, of all the particular “ideas”). Taken in this sense, Begriff signifies a particular real entity or a real aspect of being, revealed by the meaning of a word — i.e., by a “general notion"; or else, what is the same thing, Begriff is a “meaning” (“idea”) that exists empirically not only in the form of an actually thought, spoken, or written word, but also as a “thing.” If the (universal or “absolute”) “Idea” is the “Truth” or the Reality revealed by speech of the one and unique totality of what exists, a (particular) "Concept” is the “Truth” of a particular real entity taken separately, but understood as an integral element of the Totality. Or else, again, the “Concept” is a “true entity” (das Wahre) — that is, a real entity named or revealed by the meaning of a word, which meaning relates it to all other real entities and thus inserts it in the "System” of the whole Real revealed by the entirety of “scientific” Discourse.
...
The concrete Real (of which we speak) is both [the] Real revealed by a discourse, and Discourse revealing [the] real. And the Hegelian experience is related neither to the Real nor to Discourse taken separately, but to their indissoluble unity. And since it is itself a revealing Discourse, it is itself an aspect of the concrete Real which it describes. It therefore brings in nothing from outside, and the thought or the discourse which is born from it is not a reflection on the Real: the Real itself is what reflects itself or is reflected in the discourse or as thought. — Kojeve

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/kojeve.htm


I "got high" on this book. And yet we always come back down to the distinctions of common sense and the gap between subject and object. It's as if the meta-physician is a poet. We abandon very little of the "gut-level metaphysics" that sophisticated metaphysics relies on for its construction and appreciation.

That's a great post. Thanks.

But I do have a little point. We have these mathematical models, almost like "video games" or simulates that spit out the right predictions (they agree with observations). So we trust them, as we should, given the success so far of that approach.

But it's almost as if we have a little prediction box in some corner of the intersection of our "total" human realities and we point to that box as the real universe. I'm not saying that it's not wise to act-as-if for certain purposes, but from one perspective it looks like a little prediction machine. This is just a "map is not the territory" sort of comment, I suppose.

Oh, that helps. It sounds like you don't want the future to bear so much on the present, or the projected, hoped-for self to bear on the present self.

For me the "I am here to do X" isn't about logical but mythological necessity. I'm positing a "general structure." It can take complex forms: "I'm here to figure out that I'm not here to do anything in particular." Or "I'm here to learn to live without fantasy in the unvarnished real." What especially interests me is the "dialectical" self-modification of this mission. So "I am here to find the truth, even if it hurts" might lead to questioning of the will to truth, in pursuit of the truth about truth. This is all oversimplification, but I think we find role-play in ourselves in others if we keep an eye out for it. This isn't bad unless we are invested in the role of being beyond role-play. Movement (intellectual as well as physical) seems always to be in a pursuit of value. While bodily values are pretty constant, it seems that intellectual values change with the belief system as a whole.

I'm still not exactly sure if you embrace the truth as a value in itself or as a tool for leading a better life. Do you view your metaphysics as a personal solution? That may as a byproduct help others? Or is it presented as a sort of scientific finding? Or as just another perspective? I'm very in to these questions of exactly what the philosopher is up to socially.

Thanks. That was a great answer. I'm not saying that all difficulties are permanently abolished, but it was a nice clarification.