Thanks for this waste of time, Mikie. Very well done.

Yes, these are expressions of thought - they form a crucial part of it - that part that connects to the quite obscure aspect of non-linguistic thought with linguistic thought, but it is the linguistic aspect that gets discussed virtually everywhere — Manuel

Yeah good, Nice.
I agree that this is what happens, outside minds. But, as noted earlier, this is simply an insufficient argument. On some accounts, less than half of people even experience linguistic thought. This is actually, specifically, and clearly, a support for my position: These people can speak about their thoughts despite having no corresponding mental language (ie, their mentation is not linguistic - not 'there is no mental language per se' - it could be a language of feeling, or otherwise (as discussed by another poster earlier)).

The linguistic expression of thought is direct, it comes from my brain and I articulate to you that aspect of thought which is capable of expression. — Manuel

It doesn't come from your brain. It comes from your linguistic faculties (larynx, tongue etc..) as a symbolic representation. Again, if you call that Direct, that's a side-step of convention. Fine. Doesn't really address the issue here, though. It's 'as good as', but it isn't.

We don't know enough about unconscious brain processes to say if non-linguistic thought is, or is not, language like. — Manuel

I disagree. We have (arguably, more than half) of people describing non-linguistic thoughts. We're good. And we know the results. It doesn't differ from expressing linguistic thoughts in any obvious way until the speaker is interrogated.

I have used thought in saying that it has likely has a non-linguistic basis, but this amounts to saying very little about it. — Manuel

I would say that's true. I'm unsure this says anything about either our positions. Thought may be, at-based, non-linguistic but clearly some significant number of people think in language, and some don't, as contrasted against each other. Either by convention, or logical necessity, they can't be the same thing.

You really enjoy pushing the idea of discomfort. — Manuel

Because it is, to me, clearly the reason for your position. You ahven't addressed this, and so I'll continue to push it until such time as an adequate response has been made. This isn't 'at you'. This is the position I hold. It seems coherent, and I've not yet had anyone even deny it. Just say other stuff.

I've said several times Kant's point — Manuel

And if Kant was wrong? As many, many people think?

we directly perceive objects — Manuel

In the language you are using, I have to accept this because this does not suppose any kind of phenomenal experience and so doesn't adequately describe all of what matters.
But If what you're saying is the eyes directly receive the light, I accept that.
You'll notice that nothing in this is the object, or the experience, or the subject. So we're still indirectly apprehending. Hehe.

Indirect would be something like attempting to find out a persons brain state if they are paralyzed — Manuel

No idea what you're talking about here so I wont comment. There are several unnecessary aspects to this.

They will tell you they are directly identifying an object by its colors, even if colors are no mind-independent properties. — Manuel

Convention rears it's head again. You're also describing a process of allocation. That isn't apt for the distinction we're talking about. I could definitely tell a biologist they are not directly perceiving the distal object of a phloem. What their response is has nothing to do with our discussion. Your point is taken, but it speaks to conventions.

I explained to you why your question was ridiculous and unanswerable because it was based on the false premise. — Metaphysician Undercover

Unfortunately, thee question was based on your premise to show why your position was absurd. I noted this. The reason the question is absurd (it is, I have agreed twice with that position) is because of your claimed position. It's really hard to not just sort of chuckle and leave this here. I am not really that interested in relitigating that. I am happy to leave this as a disagreement we're not yet ready (as a pair) to nut-out.

And if you are thinking that because goods come into contact with human minds, they must come into contact with a human mind, to be a good, then this is faulty logic. That would imply that goods are only created through contact with human minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

They clearly are. Not by contact with human minds. That is incoherent. 'Good's are literally an invention of human minds. You have not presented anything that remotely borders a reasonable argument otherwise. You have asserted that these Goods live somewhere else. Yet, there is no suggestion as to where. Just sort of poetic dancing talking about functional aims of particular aspects of the world.
They are states of affairs and give us nothing toward an ought, unless you take up the free miracle i offered: That 'The Good' consists in achieving certain, necessarily arbitrary, aims, which are valued by the S carrying them out. There is nothing more to this, on the information you and I have put across. Nothing you've put forward indicates, even sparsely or weakly, any other source. So, that's where I am.

But if it is not grounded in a state of affairs, it is nothing! — Astrophel

This isn't an objection. It's just a possible outcome of the discussion. One which I think holds.

Getting from a state of affairs to a claim about what action ought follow from that isn't something you've established here. You've merely asserted there's a grounding in states of affairs, and then popped off to shop around your ethical values without establishing any move from one to the other. I have merely rejected that you've done the above. Which you have not. You have indicated that your view of ethics is not in line with your own reasoning.

You just said that the pain of a toothache (I think it was) is invented! — Astrophel

I did not do so. This is a rather extreme misinterpretation I find it hard to understand. I have put forward the empirical fact that the pain exists in your mind, and no where else. You don't deny this, but still for maintain the positions which it precludes.
Pain has a causal relationship with your physical body. Nothing in this suggests the 'toothache' is invented, other than the language... More below, in some sense..

"well, not to bother so much. It is after all, all in your head." Do you realize the patent stupidity of such a position? — Astrophel

Hmm.. I don't think my position and reasoning says any such thing. The pain, in your scenario exists in the person's head. That is a fact, not an inference or a 'position' that I hold uniquely somehow. It is a basic, clear reading of the facts of how pain works (again, unless you are a strict physicalist and claim that pain IS the firing of c-fibres in response to overstimulation - So your final two lines of this post are likely because you haven't grasped what I'm saying clearly). Further, I can't ascertain what your case would show. That someone is insensitive? Sure. Feeling pain sucks. Doesn't mean it exists anywhere but the mind. Mental anguish is the same. Where does that live?

And the argument that shows without a speck of doubt that IF, in a given ethical situation, this value dimension is withdrawn, THEN the ethicality vanishes!. THIS remains untouched in your thinking so far. You have to deal with this. The essence of something is that such that the thing is no longer what it is if this were to be removed. — Astrophel

This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. What i can glean from this is that you have not adequately read much of what I've said, I don't think. I have tried above to clarify what I see are two points of serious misunderstanding:

1. Pain is a mental phenomenon - this doesn't seem debatable, whether caused physically or not; and
2. I am not suggesting injuries exist in the mind. These are two separate things you seem to be conflating.

Regarding the apparent loss of ethics, on my view, I have dealt with this multiple times. There is no ethicality unless a Subject arbitrarily decides to invoke their values as a motivator for action. And that is a totally fine thing to do, given we have nothing to say it isn't.
In that case, there are clear ways to act in in-line with one's values. But that initial move from 'is' to 'ought' is entirely arbitrary. There is nothing outside the mind of the person thats what should be done, without that mind understanding and agreeing to some aim.

(i think (and it was aimed at me lol)) He's speaking conceptually. You can swap in any specific mythological event and the reasoning he's using still holds. It's necessary to rely on the Abrahamic implications to make sense of it.
'God' could be anything, including some type of Pagan Gaia-ism. The concept of God isn't that wide, really.

I still all cop-outs on my view, though. Doesn't really matter what goes there unless it's an empirical description of what actually caused the event.

I don't recall saying that thoughts are statements. — Manuel

You didn't. I didn't intimate you did. Sorry if it came off that way. I am telling you that they aren't as a premise for a further comment on what you did say. Hopefully that is clearer as I go through this response..

Statements are an expression of thought, it's the only kind of thought we have acquaintance with, whatever else goes on prior to articulation, call it thought, call it mental activity, is not something that can be expressed and it is even doubtful it is open to introspection. — Manuel

100%, we're in the same boat. This is exactly why I noted you answered your own question. You have described, exactly, and with great clarity, why both communication and phenomenal experience are indirectly achieved. Nice (yes, I am being cheeky here).

You are telling me that I am not conveying my thoughts — Manuel

This is straight-up false. I am saying you are not directly transmitting your thoughts to me for my review. I have, no where at all, intimated that your communication isn't an approximation of your thoughts. I think I actually said that outright, but cbf'd going back to quote it here. Seems pedantic.

"think" to have any practical meaning at all. — Manuel

You have just used thinking/mentation with a practical meaning other than this, and linked it to why it is not identical, or even similar, to you conveying an expression of your thought through the air (or whatever) to me, another mind. So, this, on your own terms, is false. I agree.

is something that cannot be provided, as even the subject matter is extremely obscure. — Manuel

It's not what i require. THis is what meets the standard of 'Direct' in any other context. No idea why this one requires some massaging of that to make people comfortable. ONly discomfort with concluding that we do not directly communicate thoughts could require that weird side-step (on my view). Happy to hear another reason. One hasn't been presented so far.

it seems as if you have defined thought in a way in which it must be indirect. — Manuel

No. I have observed thought, and it is indirect. I haven't defined thought at all. It is not possible you to directly transmit your thoughts to me, by any method we know. I already had the definition of Indirect loaded up, by virtue of having encountered the word in thousands of other circumstances. I have applied it here. And the result is obvious. It's not my idea. It's not my interpretation. It is using plain language as it is used elsewhere, in this context. If there's some special definition of Direct which includes indirectness, all good. But, you can see where that's going.. surely. You've not actually addressed the supporting discussions, I note, which are the empirical facts I am consistently mentioning, but are being ignored in favour of idea-fiddling.

If so, then I think you would need to add that one does not have access to ones own thoughts, because when we express them, we are leaving out what matters. — Manuel

This does not make any sense to me. My thoughts are accessible to me directly as they exist as the entity which can review them. They are one-and-the-same. You, another mind, are not. That's all we need.

I take it that mediation and directness (or indirectness) are different things — Manuel

This is misleading. mediation and indirectness are analogous. Very, very strongly so. Something cannot be mediated, and direct.

then nothing is direct. — Manuel

What do you mean by 'nothing'? I am close to agreeing with you, but this doesn't make a huge amount of sense. Any mental activity within the same mind is a direct apprehension within that mind. Every-day use of 'direct' is still apt for most things we experience. I just simply don't see a problem. If this is the case, this is the case.

But then indirectness loses any meaning, there is no contrast to it, for even speaking about directness is indirect. — Manuel

No, it doesn't. It would (on that account) lose practical application - like Unicorn leather.

No. We only have our concepts and our mode of cognition to interact with the world, there are no other avenues available to us. — Manuel

so use them! rather than doing what you're doing which is apparently:

1. Describing in clear detail the indirect nature of X and Y;
2. Agreeing that we agree on those facts; and
3. Claiming that we have to use the term 'direct' because there isn't a sufficient example of 'indirect' despite you having used that concept to describe X and Y.

To me, this is a non sequitur of the kind that would normally have me asking some perhaps less-than-professional questions about how you make that move. I am still waiting on how that's hte case, though, from several previous iterations of the question about how the empirically indirect can somehow magically be direct when discussed by Philosophers.

"Closest we can get?" The only thing we get. — Manuel

You're conflating about seven different discreet things that should be teased apart here, so I don't take this as applying to any specific claim i'm making.



I think you were probably wrong, despite that being an accurate description of some of the exchanges. Some, thought, have been directly on that exact topic. It's just that we don't all agree with you.

It's interminable because you've made your conclusion and have moved on. Those who disagree with you continue to toil while you sit outside drinking lemonade, shouting epithets once in a while. Which is fun. But not indicative of being right. We keep moving...

Fair enough. It conveyed to me what you're trying to get across. Defer to you if it doesn't work given its your thread and ideas.

I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary? — Tom Storm

I think Bob picked up on this above.

Given I am responding to you, rather than the conceptual OP, Happy to banter on it. Im unsure how something which can't be "worded" could be foundational for other language, than that which refers to itself.
Comfort, for instance, is linguistically, the opposite of discomfort (or, restated, opp. of contentedness). It is conceptually reducible. But where's the language for that? I posit that the actual status of comfort, or discomfort, are not amendable to being 'worded'. But we have words which refer to our speaking about them (the phenomenal 'them', rather than the expression of the feelings involved).

Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol.

So, no? Not sure where you're going here.

With the exception of Hank Johnson, I agree but I disagree this matters.

The issues they are supporting the claims with are just mild, uninteresting conservative principles stated as if bigoted. That is, in fact, the same play. 'deplorables' also comes to mind. Nothing they've said is honest, it is massaging statements under assumptions about underlying beliefs. It's the same play.
The other thing to keep in mind is that largely these comments are actually about hte administration, and by extension its adherents. This is the way we pretend is reasonable to look at ridiculous shit Conservatives say too, It seems to me.

Sorry Amadeus, I have no idea what your talking about. — Metaphysician Undercover

I would think that the case, so all good.

Sorry Amadeus, I have no idea what your talking about. All you have done is made incorrect assertions. First you said that my supposition is erroneous, so I corrected you on that. It is not erroneous, but debatable, as suppositions often are. Now you are simply asserting that my position makes not sense.

Well, of course my position makes no sense to you. You dismiss my supposition as erroneous, without bothering to debate it. So be it, continue to live in your narrow-minded world. — Metaphysician Undercover

You accepted my position immediately after rejecting it. You also agreed it was debatable If it was erroneous. And you're just asserting it both isn't, and that I dismissed your position. You are flat-the-heck-out wrong.

I don't know how to deal with people who are dishonest, and then push that on others. The fact that you felt the need to attempt to insult my intellect is just icing on that cake. You just ignored my question. You didn't do what was asked. And now you seem to think that's on me. Could you perhaps explain how any of this makes anything close to sense?

Where else? — Astrophel

It is literally, figuratively and metaphorically in your mind. It is not in your c-Fibres. It is not in your ankle bone. It is not anywhere outside of your body. It exists solely in your mind.

If you reject this, I don't know what to say. That's an empirical claim, not a philosophical one. You could then make the Philosophical move of saying "I am a strict physicalist" and we could move forward.

No one but you is talking about miracles. — Astrophel

You all require miracles and pretend you don't. I have actually been very clear about this. The fact that no one is mentioning it supports my claim about their positions.

If you can't do this, then you are simply being, as I said, disingenuous. — Astrophel

I've done it multiple times (including specifically in that post, where i mentioned it). That you're not engaging with it isn't up to me *shrug*.

But the engine that drives the whole affair is this caring about something, and the value in play. And this value is solidly IN the world. If I am enraged, or someone is pulling my fingernails out, this is real. I mean, what could be more real that this? And the moral obligation not to pull someone's fingernails out is grounded in just this dreadful reality. — Astrophel

I say: No, what hte hell, Its literally in the mind of the actor. There is no value 'in the world'. Value is a function of cognitive judgments. I agree, this is philosophy, and if yuo want to settle for one free miracle, that's fine. My point is this is not acknowledged

I can't make sense of such statements as I indirectly state my thoughts in my sentences. — Manuel

Your thoughts aren't your statements. They are not identical. You are factually not directly conveying your thoughts. That is the nature of speech. I am entirely lost as to how you could call it anything else. It factually isn't direct, so your use of 'direct' must be a matter of your preference. This is why i keep coming back to "Why the discomfort?", That something isn't satisfying doesn't make it untrue.

I wouldn't call it an indirectly expressed thought — Manuel

But, it's not the thought. It literally is not the thought. You cant claim a direct transmission of your thought. That option isn't open.

Why is something heavily mediated indirect? — Manuel

You've answered your own Q. This is exactly like asking "Why is something that has been made not-dry wet?". It serves as an analytical statement, essentially.

If I follow that route, I am going to end up saying I indirectly mediated my view of this thing. — Manuel

I'm not quite sure this is apt, but linguistically, yes, this is true. You do not directly access anything about which you think, other than your own thoughts. You can directly represent a thought to yourself (say, going from considering an equation as written, to it's imagined geometry). But you cannot directly represent your thought outside your mind. Direct means there is no mediation. NO way-points. NO stops along the way. That is not hte case either with receiving external data to create a phenomenal experience or in communicating thoughts. They are necessarily indirect.

What DRist are claiming is that indirect processes(factually) give us Direct.. something (access to objects, communication, whatever). The term Direct in this sense is 100% convention and has nothing to do with describing hte facts. AS this thread has made extremely clear at every single opportunity presented to it by these exchanges.

If I said, because of mediation I indirectly saw a flower indicates to me that there is a single proper way to see a flower, but this is false: knowledge is perspectival and relational. — Manuel

Why would it indicate that? If there is not a way to directly apprehend something (i.e literally have it enter you mind without mediation) that doesn't mean we just give up and say ah well, closest we can get should be called Direct then. That is shoddy thinking, frankly. Somewhat cowardly, in the sense of retreating from the facts. If the case is that your communication is mediated and therefore indirect, we can then just call that direct and get on with it outside of day-to-day living(ie, this discussion is outside of that)

I certainly don't accept naive realism; nor do I know of any scientist who does. — Manuel

Well, that's a start(on, entirely, my terms hehehe). Penrose and Searle appear to. Anil Seth, C. Koch among others also appear to. It looks like Searle has been mentioned already.

I am aware. Was something other than that to be conveyed by your reply?

fwiw I entirely second reading Kant and Hume. Ignoring Corvus and I's exchange, we both think that's a good idea - so, it probably is :P

I think i'd need to adjust this to "I am certain it is reasonable to think that xxx" about the past. .

evident benefits from saying that communication is indirect. — Manuel

This is not a consideration in this discussion. If it is, it is. Benefits are not relevant to whether something is the case.

We agree on mediation but disagree on how mediation plays into a direct/indirect framework. — Manuel

I don't understand how its possible disagree, without being plain incoherent, that something heavily mediated is indirect. The definition of direct seems to preclude a mediated system to be claimed as direct from one end ot the other.

Because its clearly story-telling.

So what is this caring about? It is the palpable revulsion I have when I get within ten feet of them, that's what. Ethics is "made of" this existential counterpart to caring. — Astrophel

See? It's probable we're not disagreeing. But there's no way to ascertain some objective ethical consideration without arbitrarily deciding what is worth caring about. There's an inference that one can be ethically 'wrong' which begs the question as to what 'wrong' is.

Perhaps. But that seems unlikely given the 2020 result for Biden.
Unfortunately.

All words are reductive, but concepts don't need to be. I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here.

I take this to be an avoidance. So, can you answer it with the 'where' rather than a reference to it?

we find a moral imperative — tim wood

What? Where are you getting that?

Absolutely. I chose this in my first batch of Phil books (i ordered about 12 at once) before starting Uni because I assumed I would never get to it otherwise. I've found that many, many post-grads and MPhil-holders have this on their shelf, but have not got through it.

Low and behold, my first two assignments are partially based around it. A few sections are readings for the paper hehe. And on that note, I found out I got an A for my first writing assignment last night. Nice.

See, you even knew that the good is not something which could be pointed to. Therefore I am justified in dismissing your question as an act of deception, and you, as the fool who thought that they could get away with such an obvious deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand that you are refusing to engage with what you have obviously understood:

Your position makes no sense. Which is why that question is obviously absurd. You can't have cake and eat it too.

Rather because it is practically efficacious in many ways, for me, for others. It works, and this seems to be the bottom line, but there is still a more basic question yet again: why should one do what works? — Astrophel

There is no good answer to this question. I have read the remainder of your reply, and i appreciate it. But this question just doesn't have an answer unless you stipulate an arbitrary aim. By way of brief extension..

Ethics' essence lies in this existential primordiality, the pure givenness of the world. — Astrophel

This, to me, is prevaricative poeticism. There's nothing in this statement. It is just empty concepts. Nothing gives me any reason to think Ethics exists, at all, outside of Human deliberation.

I'm not so sure you're right here.

"The president is sort of like [Joseph] Goebbels."
'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black' - Biden

I think that's worse than calling someone a Nazi for no good reason.

"Trump is compared to Hitler because he demonizes immigrants and refugees, denies science and facts, and promotes hate and division." - Ocasio-Cortez,

"The President is an open racist, a bigot, and has repeatedly showed strong shades of Hitler in his policies and actions." - Omar

"Trump's authoritarian tendencies and attacks on minorities are reminiscent of Hitler's tactics." - Sanders

"Americans elected an authoritarian, anti-immigrant, racist strongman to the nation's highest office... Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again followers are older, less educated, less prosperous, and more white than the population at large."
“Americans, particularly black Americans, can’t afford to make that same mistake about the harm that could be done by a man named Hitler or a man named Trump,” - both Hank Johnson.

"Trump is a dictator in the making, following in Hitler's footsteps with his racist and xenophobic policies." - Tlaib


"What he has done and what he is doing goes to the Joseph Goebbels playbook. The big lie. You say the lie over and over and over, again and again, and it becomes the truth." - Cohen

You can think these are reasonable opinions for a lay person, but they are clearly inappropriate for elected officials. But, defense of them abounds.

Yeah sure, but if we want to make something clear to us or to others, we use language, if we don't articulate to ourselves what we are thinking, we can't say anything about it much less express it to other people. — Manuel

Hmm. Again, im not so sure (literally - i'm unsure, lol). Many things are much better understood by demonstration. Including many thoughts. "I was thinking..." *proceeds to demo a dance move apt for the pair's choreographic aims*. I just see too many exceptions while accepting that some form of "I was thinking.." is generally required. In any case, I take this process as indirect.

But then you'd count what goes on prior to articulation as thought and expression as a form of mediation — Manuel

I do, heh.

But since we have no other way of discussing thought, I don't see how we progress here. — Manuel

We accept that communication (of thought) is necessarily indirect. I don't see why that's so unsatisfactory, myself.
I suppose 'progress' would depend on whether you take an 'idea' to be different to a 'thought'. Thoughts are specific instances of ideas, surely. I just don't know if that adequate teases out separate concepts for each.

Technically correct, especially the "having a thought about". I directly see a flower as given to me, a human being, not a tiger nor an angel. — Manuel

I reject the 'direct' here, but you knew that. Otherwise, I hear your formulation and agree that both of our views seem to align on that.

There is no access to objects absent mediation, but I don't think mediation is equivalent to "indirectness". If we remove mediation, we are left with a mere postulate. — Manuel

*if* that's the case, then that's the case. That is, to my mind, clearly indirect on any conception of the word 'indirect' that I am aware of, and is coherent. I just don't have any discomfort with it! I can't understand that discomfort others have with concluding hte above (obviously, assuming it were true).

That seems congruent with this claim: — Wayfarer

INterestingly, Parfit was well aware of Buddhist thinking on this. Appendix J of this book, Reasons & Persons, is called 'Buddah's View'. I'm not there yet, though, so i have nothing to offer i'm sorry.

the 'I' is implied rather than articulated. — Wayfarer

Right, that makes sense. Perhaps this folk were on to something in the end.

Which is why I say that Descartes' error is not in the basic intuition of being, but in the 'objectification' of the thinking subject as 'res cogitans', a thinking thing — Wayfarer

This strikes me as insightful. Explains probably why I, currently, am a basically a hard reductionist about personal identity. I believe this is where Parfit is taking me, also. Identity is not what matters, it is the relation between

flow of experiences — Wayfarer

in each instance, constituting what Parfit calls Relation R that matters in life. Seems reasonable.

The key is that the apple itself and the patterns of light it reflects toward me are not just external facts that I'm inferring or approximating through an internal representation. Rather, they are environmental realities that I am actively making use of, and attuning my visual experience to, through the exercise of my embodied skills. — Pierre-Normand

I think this is, fwiw, one of the clearest, best things I've seen on this. Thanks for that. Really concise and illustrative.

I don't think your two concepts are at odds anyway. The first sentence about those patterns of light being 'external facts' and the latter of about them being 'realities' speaks to me the exact same thing twice over. Suppose i'm wrong, though:
My objection is that all of this could be true, and your perception be indirect. Consider.
You can, for instance, put your hands through those rubber-glove-through-the-wall thing to perform surgery, say. You can even have your patient visually removed, and access it via only a mis-sized image on a screen which is slightly discoloured compared to reality, and has been, in minor ways outside of the portion of the image in which your patient's body sits, altered in terms of shape, contrast, alignment etc...It is almost certainly the case you are wearing gloves 'directly' on your hands, and then through the gloves in the wall. You might also have earphones in. All of the data you need is heavily mediated, on any account really, through other physical matter and changes of medium. I've described a situation where nothing you get is accurate to the reality.
You can still successfully perform this surgery. You do not need direct access to information to use it reliably and effectively, I don't think. This may be why i have no trouble at all with IRism.

I don't think it's either from my reading of that chapter.

It seems that what Parfit is trying to do is simply point out that there are thoughts, without ascribing them to any one thinker. There obvious is a thinker, but this confirmation of thought doesn't also confirm identity for 'the thinker'. I did only read this in the last two days, so I might be way off. It accepts the subjective, while only confirming the objective (that there is a thought - to whom it belongs, or from whom it comes is only a necessary implication).

. If you collapse this distinction, then you lose the indirectness — Luke

You for sure do not. You are speaking purely about linguistic conventions here and not what they pertain to. There is a clear distinction between a shadow and that which causes the shadow, but on your view, your interpretation of the shadow is direct perception of the object that caused it.
Could we at least agree this is plainly wrong? If we do agree, then distinction doesn't matter. This would just be a sorities problem if it did, and we'd have literally no answer.

Phenomenal experience is empirically analogous to a shadow here(well, in the abstract objective consideration of what a Shadow physically is). It is caused (actually, less directly than a shadow) by the activity of light in conjunction with both an apparent object, and your sense organ (eyes). The experience is none of these things. That we, in our minds, do not note the conjunction and process preceding phenomenal experience does not actually involve a distinction obtaining. We have nothing to distinguish. We have only the experience which consists in the phenomenal experience. The 'perception' isn't something we are aware of.
If you take the above re: shadows seriously, you can't make the move you're trying to make about phenomenal experience. It is the same distinction, but you're saying it's not there in the one case.

Supposing you think a Shadow is a direct and reliable way to come to know an object/objects, how could that be? And how do you then apply that phenomenal experience?

I would simply assume your second sentence was a lie ;) It is more likely that this is true, or that I have a mental lapse, or that I am day-dreaming, than is the possibility of God doing those specific things, in response to this thread.

You may enjoy Rob Amster.

However - I would say that if you can’t say something without referring abstractly to other up to date known facticities circa 2024, I applaud your efficiency but laud the lack of a Socratic method ;)

And a forum… just seems the right place for the Socratic method. — Metaphyzik

Unless I am totally misapprehending your meaning... Nice, heh.
Don't be put off. The insistent know-alls are few, in my experience. I'm still in the same boat you are (though, I'm not playing catch-up. Just playing).

I admit that. — Fire Ologist

Ok, Cool.

but because of the words that were communicated — Fire Ologist

I reject that. Someone's incredulity, or lack of knowledge isn't a reason to come to a rash conclusion. Novel situations don't, in the vast majority of cases, Have people invoking concepts they don't understand. Even less so, 'God'. I note you said this wasn't required. But what else is someone going to invoke? If they don't know what God is, in the Testamentary sense, there shouldn't be any way to invoke it.

It was as if the voice knew just what to say, precisely in a way that the person could know something new, maybe even change his life (hopefully for the better). — Fire Ologist

This is putting me in mind of some film I've seen wherein there's a character capable of saying to someone exactly what they need to hear, at exactly the right time to change their mind. It's not the Adjustment Bureau - its something where this aspect is part of the plot but I think it might include time travel? Ah, I wish i could remember. It was recent, and smacks of Nolan. *sigh*.

"Good" truly transcends the context of human society, because human beings are only a small part of life on earth, and we're all integrated. — Metaphysician Undercover

The moral good and bad is supposed to transcend all differences of social context. — Metaphysician Undercover

'Supposed' is the operative word here. And that supposition is erroneous. Point to the Good, sans human interaction?
It literally doesn't come into contact with anything but human minds. 'Good' does not exist outside of human expectation. I think the futile, millennia-long attempt to confer on that word some objective meaning would show this fairly well.

:up:

Not sure. But there are also elected officials who think people can change sex, so meh. It's all a carousel of stupid.

Being a Democrat appears to anti-Democrat bigots as a conflict of interest. — Relativist

Being a conservative, to an anti-conservative, is tantamount to being a literal Nazi.

Its a big carousel of stupid.

Again, refer to Parfit treating this exact issue as you all are treating it:

Because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a thinker is a separately existing entity. And, as Lichtenberg suggests, because we are not separately existing entities, we could fully describe our thoughts without claiming that they have thinkers. We could fully describe our experiences, and the connections between them, without claiming that they are had by a subject of experiences. We could give what I call an impersonal description." — Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III

I thought it did. But if God doesn't blip the radar, I get it. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, i think you've intuited how i'd explain that response.
The issue is what reason would that person have to invoke God? I can see none.

Especially if it involved a talking bush. — Fire Ologist

:lol:

Now those those standard good qualities are bad. — Astrophel

Even simple matter like definitions are up for grabs — Astrophel

With you so far, and no objections..

This is a big philosophical problem. — Astrophel

Still with you, and clearly that's an interest for several hundred hard-working writers.

because the value put at risk is not reducible to what language can say because its meaning doesn't come out of language — Astrophel

Yes it is.
Yes it does.

It is palpable, in your face reality, this "thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to." One can imagine choosing one bad alternative over another for one has greater utility, as it goes, but what makes the both bad is inviolable. — Astrophel

Except clearly, there is no consensus on this and it has changed over time. If you want to claim that the vast majority of history has been Ethically "wrong", I would have to chuckle.

So, if the language of Ethics is 'good' and 'bad', lets say, prior to their enunciation and being understood to agents (i.e justification) ... it is useless. And Im fine with that. There is no such thing as absolute good and bad. Im fine with that.

What terms? — Manuel

"these terms" being that we're insinuating (as a jumping-off point) that Telepathy is 'Direct'. So, in these terms that we're discussing, without being 'directly' privy to the person's thought, without mediation, in real-time, there is no direct access. Without telepathy, I think the same - but, that relies on telepathy to be the 'direct' version, in some sense hence 'in these terms'. In some other terms, thinking - then translating to words, then editing, then sending, might be considered Direct but I'd reject that.

I mean you are expressing your thoughts right now by posing these questions. — Manuel

Which is, quite plainly, not a direct transmission of my thoughts. They ahve been sculpted into English words, for TPF. They are not, in any way, a direct access to what I am thinking. Im unsure I grasp how this can be considered the case...

that is, non-linguistic thought, but we don't have a clue on how to do that. We end up expressing our thoughts with words. — Manuel

I am unsure you are being generous here. Some, and on some accounts, most people do not think in words. They have to translate, essentially by rote learned language, their thought to be intelligible to others. So, it's not clear to me that it matters whether we think linguistically, to define thought. I do think it nearly impossible to define 'thought' though. There's no way to extricate each thought from the other, so is it just a mess of mentation? Oy vey.

You could present to me an image of a flower, and say, I was thinking about this, and point to the flower, indicating a kind of visual thinking. But I take that your "thinking about", was about the phenomenon flower, but it must be expressed linguistically. — Manuel

I take your point, but insert a previous objection (which, coincidentally, appears to be where you land despite taking flight from a different perspective):

There is no way i was thinking 'of that'. I probably was having a thought about that. But i couldn't be thinking that. It is external to my thought, and cannot be identical with it. Also, was I thinking of the photo, or the flower (this is irrelevant, but quirky and worthy noting)? Any way you slice this, my thought is indirectly of any given external thing, and my utterance to you is representative of my thought. It strikes me as bizarre that people are so resistant to this obviousness. It's not really a matter of 'certainty'. There is no room for 'uncertainty' about those relations, given the words we have invented for different relations.

"thinking about" is adequately vague enough to ensure that what I'm putting forward holds, at least thus far. If you're claim is actually that when I say "I was thinking of this" I am, in fact, trying to tell you that this thing here was my thought, I would say that's not right. I can't quite tell though, as your passages go from the latter to the former.

you wrote something down, you weren't thinking about these things. — Manuel

I would have been thinking, in terms of content, some swirling collective of thoughts, dispositions, intentions and attitudes that would actually inform you of how i wrote these passages. Not what I intended them to represent.

or something along these lines. — Manuel

Would you accept that 'along these lines' could be "You're not telling me what you're thinking. You're telling me what you intended me to get from you, about what you were thinking"? This seems to me to be the case. And this also allows me to slide closer to concession. If this is the claim, I might need to concede that this is, in fact, what I get from you when you tell me X. But then, the thought you're conveying isn't the thing you wanted me to know. Its about how you're going to tell me about it :P :P

Sure, but why would you in this case? — Manuel

This is important because, you ask a good Q - what reason would I have? Well, plainly (given the quote you've used) to show a hole in your position :)

In the event, I am not lying to you. My point was that now that I've mentioned it it's clear you can't be sure. Nothing I say could ensure the veridicality of my claim (well, short of .... duh du du duhhhh... Telepathy!)