Reason: (simplified) that set of Laws/Dynamics/Process/tools including such as Logic, cause, linear movement, justification used to arrive at and settle upon a belief which is adopted as true (as opposed to so arriving/settling/adopting by way of alternative means such as convention, or fantasy).


Do you really think God, soul, monad are Real I.e., not constructed by Minds over time?

And on that note, Reason is constructed by Mind through its "membership" over time. Like Language was so constructed. In this sense "evolved" . That is, not deliberately constructed. Or do you mean to suggest that both Reason and Language are Reality pre-existing, independent of humans; inherent to the Universe?

If it is the latter, then I can see how epistemology and metaphysics are separate, because knowing is the process of discovering Truth.

But if, as I suspect, it is the former, and both Reason and our truths are constructed, then epistemology and metaphysics are entangled as yet another process/outcome of such conditions.

Finally, as for "physical things," I accept prima facie that they are Real; albeit your periodic table is a human construction; an example not of physical things in Reality, but of how we construct that in human Mind.

What do you mean by the Real world? Physical things? Is Reason a thing outside the Real World? What things are real (not as in, accessible to our perception--but ultimately real) and not physical? And with respect to such--if you think they Really exist--whence their cause?

Why?

Because I'm suggesting Reason is constructed; knowledge is constructed. And truth for humans, the only species that cares about truth, is not known as in discovered, but rather, constructed. Epistemology and metaphysics are entangled: both so called Truth and how humans pursue/access Truth are constructed by the Minds busily doing so.

Things in the world have causes. — Lionino

Ok. Do you think there is a cause for Reason? Or are some things exempt from the need for cause? Or, back to the original question, is "cause and effect," itself, a "thing" caused?

Yes.

The precise exercise doesn’t fit as well for the Subject as it does for Free Will. But it's the same finger pointing at tge same moon.

For something to be true, there must be a reason why it is true — Lionino

If the quoted statement is true, what is the reason?

Isn't Reason itself the reason (I.e. the rule internal to Reason that there must be a cause)?

I think epistemology and metaphysics are entangled. We think about truth and know truth, and all of our conclusions thereof, because both are constructed within the same framework: our Minds, and for us, there are no metaphysical conclusions known without both knowing and concluding having first evolved as constructions.

I really like what your exercise reveals for me.

C is the only one with any functional value. If free will didn’t exist C would revert to B. So yes, it is better to live as though we have free will; and besides the deep digging of philosophy; that is exactly what we do.

Could that reasoning be the mechanism, buried from conventional awareness, which "makes" free will seem to be real when there are strong opposing arguments?

Can you now reverse your exercise and bring it back to Pascal's original? Do we believe in God because it is functional, and thus a form of Reasoning like or unlike Pascal's caused such a mechanism to evolve in human Consciousness?

Can we go other steps further and suggest we believe in an individual Self, the Subject "I" because it is functional, and thus a form of Reasoning like or unlike Pascal's caused such a mechanism to evolve in human Consciousness?

And so on?

In other words, are all thing we "find ourselves" almost naturally or inescapably believing in (like God, Free Will, Self Consciousness, objective reality, morality, etc) even when there are strong reasonable opposing arguments, believed because they are functional and a mechanism for such belief evolved over time for that purpose?

Would the bulk of us be better off cutting the crap, and going on as if God, Free Will, and My Self, are Real, leaving the crap to a small minority of obsessive philosophers?

So... if a philosopher arrives at a hypothesis of the Absolute Being of all beings; and derived therefrom, a corresponding morality; a strict deontology, she is no less offensivel than an adherent to a religion who subscribes to an Absolute God and a corresponding morality? It's not strictly the idea of God that is abhorrent, but adherence to any Absolute because of the threat such adherence brings to morality? Just trying to understand what it is that is truly offensive to reasonable minds who often raise morality as the problem with belief in (an) Absolute. Neither of which I am necessarily advocating for.

Persuasive! Mulling it over. Thank you

And yet, out of/in reaction to Hegel, emerged, arguably, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, existentialism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, Marx, and Marxism, the understanding of dialectic, and so on and so on. I agree it is all idle talk if it is simply absolute Truth one is after. If it is, like everything human, stabs at the shadows in the dark cave, with the motive of coming up with useful artifacts, it is not idle talk, but rather, one of our many forms of science.

I have in mind the platonic idea of god as an absolute substance, content, form, quality. A sun around which all objects revolve. An unfalsifiable, unchangeable criterion for the true, the real and the good. This idea is abhorrent to me because it is conformist, restrictive and violent in its sanction of blameful
moralisms. — Joshs

What if the pursuit of "God" as so defined, is akin to the pursuit of Being, or the Being of all beings? Is it truly the idea of God that is abhorrent, Platonic or otherwise? Or, is it what we have done to that via the corruptible vehicle of so called religion? I.e., the former, an absolute criterion for the true and real; the latter conformist, restrictive and violent in its sanction of blameful moralisms.

An Apartheid state is a state with a racially based law system in peacetime, not a foreign military occupation imposing martial law to indigenous people. — neomac

I can accept that. But if they are both (potentially) racist, and oppressive, then so? What is the significance so great that it merits differentiation in the context of these discussions? That is, besides just that "analytical minds must repel classifications based on overstretched associations of ideas." Is Apartheid objectively more culpable than Colonial Occupation and the imposition of Martial Law against, and for the purposes of subjugating, indigenous people who are all painted with the same brush on the basis of their ethnicity?

Thank you for clarifying, and sorry for my recklessness. I know far too little about Berkeley to justify my claim above. I was admittingly using it as a stepping stool.

When you differentiate Mind and consciousness, I'm not saying I disagree. But when you have a second, can you provide me with a brief explanation. Do you mean human Mind and Human Consciousness? Are you being technical as in Mind is the proper subject of psychology and consciousness of metaphysics? And in my post, if I, as I believe, am referencing one, which one am I imprecisely or unknowingly referencing. What is Berkeley's focal point regarding his inqury into Reality for humans? Mind? Consciousness? The Brain? Or, (some privileged, none of the above) Being? Again, I'm seeking information. If and when...

At the end of the day, they're both human made.

Let's look at it, not from the Ominous Subject of God. Let's whiddle it down and see how they're both made up Narratives, each equally stubborn in its attachment to itself (I say, a built-in attachment but that's for another discussion).

Whiddled down, they both reveal their Fictional natures, stopping short of Truth, necessarily incapable of surpassing the final leap which inevitably settles at belief. (And this applies to theism/atheism).

Take. You believe, not necessarily that Jesus of Nazareth is God, but even if it comforts you to dilute the myth, and say, that he preached love your enemies to the poor and was executed by Rome. You don't know that for certain, but it was revealed to you by the Christian Bible, has been input into you since childhood, and seems to have been adopted by enough people that it is safely a convention. It is still mysterious and you don't fully understand it, but still you took the leap, even if opposing Signifiers reawaken the Dialectic from time to time.


Now take. Water is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. You don't know that for certain, but it was revealed to you by the Scientists, has been input into you since childhood, and seems to have been adopted by enough people that it is safely a convention. It is still mysterious and you don't fully understand it, but still you took the leap, even if opposing Signifiers reawaken the Dialectic from time to time.

Ah, but the Science Narrative demurs, our belief is supported by observation and can be tested by experience. Maybe not everyone can or has tested it, but we have authorites which confirm it.

And so too does the Jesus camp. Our belief is supported by witnesses and can be tested by experience. Maybe not everyone can or has tested it, but we have authorites which confirm it.

And it is only because we stand from within the Science Narrative that we reject religion's right to make all of the same claims. From Religion's perspective, using their tools and definitions, their claims are tested everyday and prove to be true.


Yet all along, both are wrong. Neither is ever proving to be true. Both are constructing opposing Narratives out of tools particular to each, but in common, uaing the same Mind, and its same structure, Language; and, both require at the very last instance of the Dialectic, a settlement, and a leap to belief in that settlement as if it were True (thats built-in--by its evolution. But for another discussion).

And why should it be any different when we get way up there at God? Theism/Atheism, they're both Fictions, and Philosophy should at least, recognize that, just as it should recognize it in Itself. Afterall what is Logic and Reason, but made up tools constructing Narratives which can never be called True.

Test it. If you think anything I've said is true, isn't it because you believe it? And If you think anything I've said is untrue, isn't it because you believe something opposing?

At the end of the day... breathe. And let them each present their cases for belief.

But for God's sake, let them each present their cases.

I think Berkeley was (unwittingly(?)) referring to human Consciousness. For human Consciousness:

"to exist is to be perceived." — Corvus

; anything not perceived in/by Human Consciousness, does not exist for Human Consciousness.

The "you" which continues to exist in the dream state, is still Human Consciousness.

The you in deep dreamless sleep, is not "you" but the Real Organism which exists in Nature, independently of Consciousness, which "you" have displaced with your experiences constructed out images which must be perceived to exist.

That "you" the one presumably in deep sleep never goes out of existence, but for the dreaming or waking human, that Real You is overshadowed by the shadows in the cave; that is, by things (which must be) perceived.
And, to tie it back to the OP, math is one of those things, restricted to human Consciousness and, therefore, only "real" insofar as constructed and perceived.

In the logic thread I proposed "logos" for the logic-like function of the world. I wonder what a good term would be for "the apparently mathematical in nature?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't logos the beginning of everything humans experience, and therefore not inherent/imbedded in Nature? (And I'm not referencing so-called St. John). Isn't math, computer science, the periodic table, grammar, logic, the rules of Football, and so on, just numerical or other modified formations of the original word, Language? I say, in the beginning of the becoming of human Consciousness and History, was, the "word," all strictly human things were made by the word; and without the word was not any thing human made that was made.

then how do we come to the common agreement on these values and properties — Corvus

If you're hinting that a hypothesis of Mind constructing all meaning is negated by the fact that there are universals we all agree to, that question would most potently address the issue if you're premise is that our common agreement, even respecting these so called universals, is sufficient evidence of their Truth. The fact that we already know our common agreement is not necessarily True, supports rather than negates the chance that we can and do come to common agreement on meanings which we simply constructed.

Further, your comments make sense, and I cannot fault you or your questions, there are complexities that I did not address. For instance, not only does our common agreement not negate the fact that we are agreeing upon Fiction, even in universals, but, that, I submit is one of the very ways our constructions are adopted as belief: I.e. by convention. The meanings are constructed following an autonomous process regulated by evolved Laws and dynamics, and oversimplified, what gets settled upon as believed follows criteria like functionality, Reason, convention, sometimes fantasy, like religion, hope etc. And I'll stop here, apologizing for my necessary brevity.

but that doesn't seem to be a warrant for the solid consistent foundation for any sort of rational and consistent universal principles, which tends to suggest the strong hint of possibility of the meanings and truths committed into unreliable relativity. — Corvus

Firstly, unless I've misunderstood: yes, relativity. So? But as for unreliable, no. Mind (both individual and History) tests every belief through a dialectical process. Belief is that settlement or "synthesis" which is most fitting. Even so called universals are still meanings once constructed, continuing to evolve. . The so called universal principles, are not universal. They suit only the hosts of Human Mind.

What is the evidence for "I am" is a fiction? Are you not you are? — Corvus

What is the evidence of an "I" period? Let alone an I that is, and is a Being within the being. I only is in Language. My Body provides obvious evidence of its own Reality, without the need of a Fictional construction, a nevessary mechanism in Grammar and thus Mind. That,
i.e. the human animal, ought to have been the given; the pre-reflective, a priori, noumenal, etc. Truth. Not our ideas about it. If "I" isn't the so called being requiring evidence then why is it that "I" was the Subject of Descartes inquiry. And where did he locate the "I" ? In thinking. And what structures that thinking? Language including its laws and dynamics such as grammar/logic, meaning, difference, Dialectic, convention and belief.

Apology once again for the clearly simplistic reply to your complex points on a complex matter which should take up more mental preparation/organization and space than can justify in this communal context.

Sensory-motor embodied enactivist approaches to perception and consciousness are based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception — Joshs

If Descarte's Real Self is an “I am,” a being within Being, unwittingly Fabricated and Fictional; and if—standing upon the shoulders of those, like Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, recognizing the Fiction of a being within yhe being, and resolving it with not a being within, but a disclosing of being, a becoming—Merleau-Ponty took the Real Being all the way to recognizing the Reality of the Body, but never getting over the obstacle of becoming, stopping short at I can.

I think we are heading in the direction of liberating Body from its misplacement; emancipating the Real-so-called-Self, once and for all, from the Fictions of both being within and becoming, and understang that it is not I am, not I can, not “I” anything wherein Being is accessed. Being is just the “is”; and one step more, to be precise, since “is” is an artificial “capturing” of Reality by Language, like a photograph, re-presenting, a construction of the Being within or of the Becoming, Mind; the Real self is just “Is-ing.”

Sensation—seeing, hearing, external feeling/touch, smelling, tasting, internal feeling/mood, image-ing—are is-ing.

Perception, takes sensation and in imperceptible time displaces it with meaning. Not discovers Real meaning. Where does the meaning come from? We construct it out of available Signifiers stored in memory operating in accordance with an evolved set of Laws and Dynamics, following sometimes lightning speed dialectic, and settling at belief, also a mechanism of the Fictional structure seen by us as Truth.

us being a 'different kind' from other animals is simply the same pattern repeated in nature again and again. Having an intellectual or consciousness gap between other animals does not mean we are separate from them. — Philosophim

I agree.

In fact we do share Real Consciousness with all other organisms once you remove the uniquely human experience of Mind from the equation.

Real Consciousness is an organism presently and actively aware-ing ("its"--- there is no "it") be-ing ("in" ---there is no separation of organism and world) the environment, having evolved for survival. A human aware-ing others for avoiding, consuming, mating and bonding. A plant aware-ing wetness and sunlight for growing towards. And so on.

If that is the extent of Real Consciousness why then the inquiry into Mind, Being, Reality? That is our "fall." The pursuit of knowledge over living (Genesis reference may not be coincidence but I am not claiming divine revelation either).

Because out of humans aware-ing Consciousness emerged the astronomical surplus use of Images for survival, therefore, over eons Language and an autonomous system of constructed Consciousness emerged. With that, meaning displaced survival as the drive. Constructing meaning in Time, or becoming, displaced being present. And much more I won't get into now.

But this Fictional Consciousness emerged, Mind; one which we construct and cling to at the expense of the Organic Reality our fellow creatures enjoy. And from that, our human made suffering, and the corresponding need to construct meaning to apply to our environment, incuding, inter alia, the Subject I, difference, Reason, and the linear Narrative form.

Hence what is Mind? It must be, we conclude, by necessity of the structure itself (Mind), something which extends beyond the brain. It must be a privelged Reality, which animals don't have. When really we have their Consciousness, and what we call Mind is a Fiction. And so on.

Either way, spirit or brain function, this function of wondering what my mind is, can only result in the embarrassment of looking for my glasses while wearing them; nowhere in sight can I possibly appear, because in everything I look at, in the looking itself, I am already there, and still I wonder "what is there?" — Fire Ologist

:up:

And, ironically, the "what" of the "what is there [wondering]" is the Language of the wondering.
But
The what of the True Being, that which we are truly after but ignore, even malign (see Plato; see everyone thereafter in search of Spirit or Soul; and their treatment of fles/body) does not wonder, is the "language-less" "wonder-less" organic Being, not in any transcendent substance, or substance grounding, or behind; not, like Mind, in the becoming, the always constructing itself, regulated by Time and the linear Narrative, but simply in that Organic Being's be-ing, in its is-ing; in its aware-ing; in any and every present participle verb it "partakes" in. Take one step beyond is-ing, and you have left that and "entered" the make-believe world of Mind, Time, and becoming etc etc

thinking of nothingness as though it was a thing - — Fire Ologist

We are trapped by the ghosts of philosophy past. Per Hegel, nothingness is indistinguishable from indeterminate being,
And
As both nothing and everything are that to which no thing can be added or taken away, they too are indistinguishable.
Sounds a bit "mystical," eh? Thus, is it that the East is too mystical? (As some might surmise) Or is it that while metaphysics might be accessed through reason, where principles like Logic can be applied ( "x" can br either/or; not both, etc) the pith and substance of Truth and any ontology of Reality (as opposed to/beyond Mind) cannot be accessed through Reason?

My mind is the activity, and not some fixed thing. My mind is becoming a mind as long as some mental construct is being constructed — Fire Ologist

Agreed, and further, Mind is, and only is, those constructions operating..., etc. And, thus, Mind is ultimately a fleeting, empty, Fiction accessible by its own means and tools, like reason. The "fixed thing," we are actually after, Real Being, is only accessible beyond Mind. And who knows? Maybe there is some light to be extracted from the east.

Thank you. Informative. And I agree with you about Plato, ultimately. I am being hyperbolic owing to my appreciation for silence. . . And yet, I chatter on driven by my autonomous desire to know, and my autonomous desire to make known.

Having read your thread, I like your take.

My earlier comment about epistemology was in jest, and yet that seems to have been your read on these Daoist "parables."

I think you agree that while for the West, epistemology represents the intellectual desire to know (even the "how we know")which is prevalent since Plato seemingly ignored Socrates and went on in a futile pursuit of knowledge.

While Zhuangzi was more "Socratic." For Zhuangzi, the exercise is fully practical. You cannot know, so be always open to the endless changes (I.e., the existential possibilities), like an uncarved block.

Thank you. I've never seen that "extended" (?) version. Zhuagzi, the Father of epistemology!?

I'll check out your thread!

Maybe the "walk through" mysticism from Western Philosophy is being done "backwards."

Maybe the approach could be to reflect on the concepts of import (to a given individual) from the western perspective (since same is unavoidable, like thinking in English is to me), and then, from there, find the parallels in Eastern traditions.

One eg., upon my own reflections, I come across the problem of Mind and conclude, on my own, from within my western narrative, that Mind might not have any corresponding Being, or Reality, "driving", "grounding" or "behind" it, and that it might just be structured by empty signifiers. Comparing that to eastern philosophies, I find the principle of Sunyata (emptiness of Reality). While I believe that the Mahayanists might have gone too far, and that Sunyata applies only to the constructed reality of human experience, yet still, there is a workable parallel.

We are all humans, East and West, drawing upon the same nascent constructions input into all of us, and developed collectively throughout the generations. It wasn't just Schopenhaur who first incorporated the East into Western philosophy. I may not be best suited to demonstrate this, but I feel it is not unreasonable for an historian of philosophy to find what is traditionally thought of as eastern patterns weaved through western thought and vice versa, since the presocratics, and likely much earlier.

Your "obstacles" 1 to 3, (which I know you are exposing and not endorsing) are ways in which we "deliberately" construct barriers out of prejudice. For instance,
1. "test" it? arguably the east has a better test, doing, i.e. yoga and meditation. If mind's conclusions are admittedly questionable (hence, phenomenology), what better test than to silence mind?
(I am not prepared to endorse meditation as any certain test, just saying we could open ourselves to that if we are seriously pursuing Truth and not just fetishizing it and or its pursuit)
2. "physical world?" arguably sitting in meditation for the purposes of silencing the chatter and perceiving the world through the Body for a change, is exactly approaching reality through the physical world. What is more empirical than what your body tells you without interference of concepts?
3. "subjugation of mind to soul?" Firstly, that is the problem I see with western metaphysics in the traditions of Plato, Descartes, Hegel etc. Moreover, Mahayana blatantly denies the "soul." The subjugation part, the so called goal to reach Satori/Kensho or Moksa, is intended to liberate you from the mundane chattering of the Subject Self. Descartes tried to do the same but got stuck in the chattering and gave privileged status to the Subject Self, I (see Heidegger's ontic, everyday vs ontological Being, which I think, he ultimately remains in the ontic everyday, but that's another discussion). And so on...

Understood

every language we know of has words for one and two and some, just like all have words for live and die.
https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/natural-semantic-metalanguage/what-is-nsm/semantic-primes — Lionino

Thank you.
But for your reference to be effective in demonstrating what appears to be your position on this, you'd have to accept that all of the primes are inherent in Nature and none are derived from post-lingual human constructions. Are you? Some of those primes seem to be questionable as to their "ontologies."

To answer briefly,
1. 'nature" in whichever way we define/understand it through mind, is included as one of the fictions. I cannot know that Nature is real. It's just that I think most philosophical pursuits of the problem make it worse when they focus on MInd/Form/Spirit/Dasein as real when for every other member of our universe, it is Nature alone that is "present". Descartes, after his impressive acrobatics, concluded I think...But he started in the place which poses the problem in the first place, not the presence of his breath, but in the re-presentation of his thoughts. The "I" thinking is already a fiction.. He should have concluded, Body breathes, Body is.

2. Sankara, though closer, also got lost in the fiction with the necessity of Brahman to "oppose" maya. "Oppose" is only necessary in the system regulating Mind. And yes, how do we even dare to speak of a Reality vs Mind when, as you say, there isn't knowledge of the Absolute, since we end up with no grounds for the fiction/reality distinction? We cannot speak. Speaking belongs to the Fiction. I am not suggesting that our "access" to the reality, like everything else, be mediated through the Fiction. I am suggesting that the Reality cannot be "known" in the sense that we understand knowledge. If we "want" to "access" Truth or Reality, as distinct from our constructions, we must, and can only, do so in be-ing. Don't expect me to be able to answer the question further, because, as it turns out, I'm already just reconstructing fiction. But if anything, don't look to Sankara, don't even look to Mahayana epistemology and metaphysics. Look to Zazen, not Zen philosophy, but the actual sitting in Zazen.Maybe that process allows for brief, timeless (because free from the construction of time) "moments" of Real be-ing.

If, on the other hand, there is no quantity in reality, then this will entail the fact that there is no plurality of coexistent psyches: with this directly resulting in solipsism - wherein the one solipsist by unexplained means "fictionalizes" everything, quantity very much included. — javra

Solipsism--only one psyche exists (in Reality)

What about the position that psyche--including its constructions--doesn't exist at all in Reality? Nihilism? No. Nature exists in/is Reality. Mind is a system "reflected" in the organic body, which functions as it does because it evolved, inter alia, a logic that it must be real. But it is not. So no one mind only; but rather, no mind. Just the be-ing body.

And we intuitively "know" this. If we didn't, there wouldn't be these challenges in philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics including ontology.

Bear with me then, I might need to think it through. But it seems, that while I recognize the contradiction of submitting Mind cannot know Reality, but only construct a (Fictional) reality, still I'll state a hypothesis about Reality, at least as I understand that fiction.

Is the so called real world, Reality, and not the world I am submitting we construct in Mind? And if so is Reality devoid of representation, as you are suggesting?

Isn't it devoid of representation by so called definition? Isn't Reality present, by "definition" (the past has vanished, the furure has not happened). Reality is necessarily that which is, and not that which is re-presented? The instance of re-presentation is the irretrievable loss of presence, and Reality.

And you might say, I meant that within Reality, representations exist, the lion's roar, etc. But the simplest way to adress that is we run from a lion's roar, its a drive, a bird is attracted to another's "dance," it's a drive. The representation status is a construction of mind. While the so thought of, "real world" of Mind may have math and representations, and we are inescapably attuned to that, Reality does not anywhere have representations and math hiding in it somewhere, waiting, like everyone from Plato to Heidegger have said, to be gleaned out by us through some real process of becoming. We are not a special species with a God given spirit (who else then, but God?) called consciousness. Consciousness is a structure of Fiction, in perpetual construction of Fiction with effects on Nature through the human body and human culture.

We're that super weird conceited ape who somehow evolved its internal sense of imaging and memory, into an autonomous System which has taken over our organic aware-ing. So much are we attuned with that system that we invent theology, create civilizations, and math too, and insist that they are real, that uniquely we discovered them in Nature, instead of proudly admitting we made them all with our brains.

Quantity only exists in Nature because we displace Nature with quantity, etc. Think of quantity without reference to any form of representation, but on its own, in its allegedly pure and essential form as it supposedly inhabits Reality. You can't, that's absurd, right? The very thinking utilizes representations. Then why do we shy away from acknowledging that our uniquely human Conscious experiences are structured by representations and as such, they are not ultimately Real?

Dumplings!

Sorry:up:

There are eastern philosophies which work, but the fact that they start from the assumption of God, gods, deity, Western philosophy just doesn’t go there, or reduces it to some peculiarity of the human mind. — Punshhh

Let's be fair to Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. The former, no god. Tge latter, no more religious a god than Hegel, or arguably, Heidegger.

Have a good day at work.

Hence, to my mind, the only way of appraising all maths as strictly within us and thus as having nothing to do with the quote unquote "real world" is by appraising the "real world" to be fully devoid of quantity. — javra

If you replaced the word math, with symbols, or representations, would the above also hold true for you?

A quick addendum, and I'll leave it.

One of the ways we arrive at truths, as you know, is by convention. This is a powerful structure for triggering the settlement commonly called belief.

I don't know about you, but when it comes to math beyond a Senior highschool level, I cannot test my beliefs, and must rely on convention.

If you were in the same boat, (l accept likely not,) and you and I agreed, Math has some essence of The Truth of The Universe to it, what the hell would we even be talking about?

And, my point is not what you think. It's not to say we should stay out of things we cannot be certain about. My point is tgat is what we all do, necessarily, all the time.
We construct Fiction, and settle upon the functional places, whether because of convention, reason, or fantasy; all of them also Fictions.

Short reply:

Unless I misunderstand, (in which case, sorry) a pathological insistence that Darwin cannot be applied to Mind is only evidence of folly, or at best dogma, not evidence that it cannot be.

And, yes, Mind is ultimately empty. It is not Natural, but being empty, it ultimately is not Real, either. It's a Fiction made of fleeting images, applied as Signifiers to code the Body to feel (not as in emotions, as in those organic process which we organically sense) and act. Not dualism or physicality, but a qualified physicalism: Body/Nature real, Mind exists as a separate "entity" but is Ultimately empty and fleeting.

And as for how does it displace Nature? That's exactly what it does. There was a now mythical, time when a human might have looked at an apple and seen what a (mythical) equally intelligent animal sees. But you and I cannot see apple without it being structured by the chains of Signifiers, images in your memory, structuring that experience for you as seeing an apple. In Nature I.e. in Reality, you or that mythical animal wouldn't see apple; as a Real Being, you would just be be-ing; not seeing apple, just see-ing, an incessant present, not chopped up by the structures of Mind into successive objects and moments of time.

In fairness to this post, our experiences, all of them including MATH, as amazing as they are, are Fictional constructions which, in effect, displace Reality. There's no essence, Spirit or being behind Mind, nor its constructions. You already are that Being, as a living body. We just want it to be the Fiction that's real. We want it to be Mind. Hence everything from Plato to Hegel.

Ha! Fascinating. Thank you. Cannot draw conclusions from a glance, but I'll read further. I wasn't aware of that hypothesis.

Maybe unwittingly I am (like I said, need more info) but I think I'm going deeper. Not just cultures are influenced by their linguistic structures, but Mind, collectively, and particularly, is structured by (very loosely) lingustic-like structures. Our "reality" is those structures displacing our natural organic aware-ing.

To be admittedly simplistic, I hear "terrorist," (call that a Signifier) and like Pavlov's dogs it triggers other Signifiers, which following a dialectical dance, trigger organic feelings, which trigger more Signiers which form ideologies, triggering more Signifiers, triggering choices and actions. (I rushed that)

To view either side in this tragic conflict the way a given individual does, they necessarily have to have been triggered to that position by a series of Signifiers, not by anything appearing to them organically in Nature, not presumably by any revelation from a god etc.

I'm not judging that "fact" about Mind, in any way remotely nihilistically. It works amazingly. To wit, people generally eat, and we landed on the moon.

I'm just throwing some new Signifiers into the fire, certainly because (so-called) I had been triggered by Signifiers input in (so-called) me.

I'm suggesting if we are interested in being authentic in our approach to it, be conscious of the structures operating in Mind triggering feelings, pleasure or pain, causing you to fixate on ideology and make dysfunctional choices.

Constructed out of what? Or is it creation ex nihilo? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Short reply: Constructed (like everything else displacing Nature with Consciousness) out of images stored in memories, developing over maybe hundreds of millennia by the same or a similar Darwinian process familiar enough that it requires no describing. What is functional is adopted and input then revised by future generations , so far, reaching the extremely functional stage it has today.

No, not ex nihilo, yet, ultimately empty and nothing. A useful Fiction, like the rest of Mind and its constructions.

Why not that?

Agreed. I like your example regarding circle.
I wish I was proficient enough in math to dig deeper for artifacts of math's artifice. But I chuckle at where it may have taken off: this idea that Math pre-exists our constructions.
When Plato has the slave draw the triangle proving forever the pre-existence of that Form. As if the slave didn't figured it out because he was born into a culture that had triangle constructed as a useful signifier.

Rock on! :meh:

It goes beyond philosophy in the strict sense in that it relies on religious, or theological traditions, which are adopted as a framework on which to construct one’s enquiry. — Punshhh

Or is it that they (these mystical schools) have profound philosophical roots, only to have been reconstructed as religious, by the so called religious? What influence did the gods have on Socrates? Christ on Hegel or even Heidegger?

Or, even if the chronology is backward, and what started as religion, evolved into profound philosophy; why should that discourage serious philosophical enquiry?

Either way, it's possible that Western Philosophy "proper" (with some exceptions) only avoids these schools because of prejudice concerning connections with religion. And that, to the former's detriment.

In spite of our desire to the contrary, Philosophy is not some universal, pre-human absolute. Just as Philosophy defines everything else, it defines itself. Why should it necessarily be restricted by the walls it constructs? Or, to get to the pith and substance of your statement, which I am taking the liberty of (mis)interpreting, why shouldn't philosophy explore the mystical? Does it really restrict itself to Truth? Or is Truth necessarily arrived at through reason?