You realize that in most of these threads, we keep falling back into virtually identical discussions. (Good ones, when I don’t interrupt.)

This makes sense, to me, because we have remained people the whole time too.

But we keep discussing:
- our language, as it
- comes from a speaker, and as it
- references a thing in the world.

I mean every word in that last sentence.

Many OP’s start from “laws in the universe” or “ways to philosophize” or “what is belief” or so many others, and we are back to grappling over language, speakers, and the world.

The same moving parts of all inter-personal relationships, at all times.

Is it only these three? It’s always these three, but am I missing more than these? Everything else we say seems to involve one or more of these three.

I should admit this is off topic, but the reason I post it is to notice it seems to be one of our only topics.

I think aesthetics have an influence on the ideas that are produced, rather than being a byproduct. — Moliere

Yes, but I would say, if the ideas are the focus, the ideas can reshape the aesthetics as much as the aesthetics might have pushed one towards a certain idea.

get a deeper understanding of one another's perspectives. — Moliere

I agree. Although I hope it doesn’t prejudice the way we view each other.

Just because someone is drawn to Nietzsche, but repulsed by Aristotle, might mean nothing more than they don’t really understand one (or both) of them. It might not mean they are anti-essentialist.

All of the aesthetic aspects to philosophy are by-products.

The ideas are the products.

If all the place settings were different from each other, I think we would all agree the table setting was disordered. But if they were all the same way, we would see some order on the table. But there is no absolute law that says “forks on the left”.

The middle part here is, order on the table has a component dictated by the world (if each place setting is however/random them the table will show no order), but if we put all of the forks on the right and build repeatable settings, we can show an ordered, pleasing table.

I saw a beautiful thing once.

Then I saw another, different thing, and I thought it was beautiful too.

Two different things. But I said the same thing about them, namely, “beautiful.”

Then someone else showed me a third thing saying “if you like those first two things, you will think this third thing is beautiful too,” and they were right, they did show me more beauty. How did they know what I might find beautiful?

Beauty itself, then, for me, becomes a philosophical idea.

I do philosophy to hear other people say something I might say myself but haven’t yet found the words (these are explanations), or to learn something new about the world (descriptions, theoretical experiences).

It’s the ideas that matter. — T Clark

Or, what he said.

Why are you more drawn to particular philosophers, schools, styles, or problems? — Moliere

I wonder if anyone can really answer this. We all like to think we know what makes our gut our gut.

But a particular philosopher? I find them all partially satisfying and partially unsatisfactory - which cashes out to, meh, I better consider as many as I can.

When it comes to philosophy, and similarly straight science, when I see something true, something rings true, and is beautiful to me just as well. When Copernicus said “so the sun is the center” I’m sure he would say he found something as beautiful as it was true.

I suppose there is a certain satisfaction with answering a question. Like finishing a puzzle, or completing a game (victorious or not). Any type of resolution, is actually pleasing to experience. I think philosophy shows promise as an avenue of bringing me satisfaction. Sort of “all men by nature desire to know.”

My current sense is that man is absurd, utterly adrift and blind in the chaos of life, paradoxes are the most viscerally real phenomena that I experience, and I don’t know shit about the world, but nevertheless, philosophy brings me hope, for that satisfaction I lack.

Some of the posts around here are why I do this thing.

It’s also practice for building and deconstructing arguments.

Why else place the fork on the left? — Moliere

Maybe because the person is left-handed. Not “just” because I looks pretty to someone.

As long as I emphasize your statement thus: "I don't just make order up"

Sure. — Moliere

Ok good. We are coming together. We are forming the much celebrated consensus.

I would say, we are forming this consensus both because we each know how to make things up really well, AND because they reflect something true and ordered in the world.

So if we have consensus that we don’t “just” make order up, we have consensus that there is “order in the world”. We draw on observations that we can point to, each of us separately and both of us together, in the world, and from those, fashion an ordered description.

"Nature is ordered"

and

"There are Physics" — Moliere

Yeah.

I don’t just make order up. I learn how to make order up from nature because, there is a physics to things, because nature has an ordering to it. It has other things as well, like disorder, and I don’t always see the physics…

All of Nature is Ordered" or "There are Laws of Physics" — Moliere

I take out the “all of” and the “laws of”.

My end result is, order I observe. I am educated to make maps from two teachers: the world AND people who use maps with me. Not just people who use maps (otherwise they couldn’t be “with me”, like I cannot be with astrologers because that stuff makes no sense at all to me and Incould show you why all day.).

People who take astrology seriously are able to do all the things you just said: Hear and respond and understand one another in a perceived orderly manner.

But I'd be hesitant to draw the conclusion that the astrologists have found order in the world. — Moliere

That actually also demonstrates my point. I agree astrologists are kidding themselves, both or all of them that can create logical chains of astrological reasoning. I believe this because of the world and the evidence I can show you from this world; we can show how astrologers are kidding themselves. Without the order in the world, we can’t do this. Without order in the world, why would you be hesitant to accept what they think they are saying provided a reasonable, coherent, functioning, map? Astrologers made some map applicable to the world and that keeps “order” as you would have it, out of the world and only in the words and descriptions we fabricate? They are a better example of where you think order only resides - in our descriptions (like astrology).

My point is just this:

Whether 1) there is the world and its order as it presents itself to me, (which is my position), or 2) there is the world as I present myself to it (as map that I make, which is your position), but either way, 3) there is still always you or me and the ordered world (every position includes ordered descriptions and worlds); So therefore, no matter how you slice it, 4) there is the order of the world.

That itself is order in the world. 1 or 2 through 4 are not true ‘in a sense’ - they are true in all senses, because of the world.

I am not merely making up “there is you and me, and we are in the world.” The world itself has dictated this, has ordered this be a coherent statement and valid and true, to us both.

It is all we ever speak of, and can ever speak of, if we are to make sense of what each other says.

pragmatically deliver some results — Tom Storm

See, you speak of order in the world . Results (things in the world, that we point to), that are pragmatic (according to some reasoning, some ordering, some practical relationship to them). So you are speaking of a world and speaking of order (pragmatic) in the world (results are in the world, not merely an agreement). Maybe you said it for nothing more than to conjecture, but that small, pregnant quote assumes the existence of a lot that you are trying to say is not there.

this would be true in a sense. — Tom Storm

Senses of truth, and therefore senses with no truth. In these few words. Whole worlds between us, to observe and which serve as judge for what senses can be said are “true” and what senses are not.

But we are only able to make “sense of your metaphorical sense of “center” because of the way the world is, and the possibilities that we can see in it. For instance, we have to now say that this sense of center is metaphorical only:

the Earth is the center of the universe…in all our priorities and values. And this would be true in a sense. — Tom Storm

True, but only in a metaphorical sense of “center” because, the earth as a ball of mass does not relate to the sun and planets and stars as a “center”, or there is no physics to speak of. If you want results in a practical sense, place the sun as more central, not the earth. And if there is a math that holds earth as “center” and completes a description of the “earth in the world” for practical purposes not just metaphorical ones, we still have to look to order in the world to show how the map of new math maps to it.

There is a reason it makes sense to use the word “sense” when talking about “true in a sense”. It is true in a sense of the world you are pointing to by the ordering of your words. In other words, your words will only make sense when you “senses of truth” because we can both also point to something in the world that is ordered to your words (or that you can order to your words).

I guess my point is more basically, whether we put the order in the world or it is just there, we can’t escape finding order in the world. So why bother resisting “order in the world”? Look for it. Make your words make sense as descriptions I would also make because we are in the same world. (Which you do, but don’t seem to see the ordered world in it.)

Another way to ask the question the OP is trying to pose:
Do we impose order on the world only (because we surely do that), or does the world impose its own order on us as well? Does the world educate us as we observe it? Or do we inform the world or simply overlay an invented map that magically functions to be readable by other map makers? (Loaded question but you know where I stand. I say that means you know something about the world, with me in it.)

we make too many assumptions. I find it fascinating to contemplate how much of what we call reality may be co-created, a product of our experience. — Tom Storm

I agree assumptions are what we must be looking for the most when we ask questions. You said “co-created”. That implies two sources of creation. I think that is accurate. Our minds are full of co-creations. I am just as fascinated by how much we contribute to the creation as some co-creator does.

I am interested in your response to this, because this speaks of both elements in the co-creation:

X says “Ptolemy was wrong, the earth is not the center of the universe.”

Y then says: “I see that too, because I see the day happens because the sun is fixed and the earth spins on an access.”

X then says: “yes, and the spring moves to summer and fall and winter because the spinning earth revolves all the way around the sun at varying distances and angles.”

Y then says: “So the sun is at the center.”

So where is the source of order here? Both men could claim it was a new consensus they were ordering. But they are both pointing to the sun and the functions of a solar system. Each separately pointing to separate aspects of the sun’s relationship to the earth, but each extending and agreeing in an orderly fashion. They are not pointing merely to each other and building a coherent map. They are building a map that is coherent because it mimics the order they are pointing to in the world. — Fire Ologist

we can see predictive success as a contingent outcome of practices of inquiry, experimentation, and consensus, but not as proof of any intrinsic order in nature. — Tom Storm

How about we take out “proof of any intrinsic”. Throw that baggage away. Nothing proven. Nothing certain. Nothing intrinsic discovered. And just say “order in nature.” Why is “order in nature” such a bugaboo? Why mist consensus always be given priority over that which is agreed upon?

we noticed something that fits with our notion of orderliness — Moliere

That speaks of “something” noticed, and separately, “our notion of orderliness”.

Two separate directions to inquire into.

Why are the regularities I care about regular?

Because we went looking for them — Moliere

So this now clarifies further that the regularities as we think them to be regular, are only regularized because of our thinking, not because we’ve “noticed something” or “noticed something that fits” or discovered orderliness in the world.

So are we noticing something, or not? When saying “orderliness” are we ever basing it off of something seen in the world, or only merely constructing it?

Let’s start over, again.

Is there order in nature?
We can easily say the orderliness has been rigged by us the order makers.

But is that how communication between two people actually works? We can’t point to something in the world and rename it every time we point. Orderliness must have a world component to it to function as ordering. Pointing over and over to the same thing and renaming it would be one way of disorganizing the world.

If I say something and you hear it. And then you respond to what I said and I hear it as logically following the order that I started. And then I say something else in response to your response and you hear it. And you hear it as logically following the orderliness you were following/building - haven’t we both found orderliness in the world in our eyes that read words and ears that hear sounds? The world is still functioning as the conduit for the orderliness we fabricate. Why does THAT function? What is a communication between order-makers in itself? It seems to me there must be some sort of orderliness IN THE WORLD, apart from we order-makers, in order for our fabrications to function as communications. We can’t forget there is an internet connecting us here, for instance. That is order in the world, we’ve fabricated but then let loose in the world, necessary to sustain order, regardless of how crazy I might go off the rails when I post here. We can fix the world and order it, because the world can contain order in itself.

may not map onto something — Tom Storm

That is a massive, pregnant statement. Maps (amazing figments) that map onto (by impossible epistemological processes) something (like ‘reality’ for instance, or something else - incredible).

Don’t we have to be able to map onto things at all just to determine whether something does or does not map onto something in particular? Why would you think you can question whether our maps are maps of reality or not? The answer is, because mapping has to do with connecting our minds with the world. There wouldn’t be a map to wonder if it connects to the world without a mind AND a world. We may be wrong about the world, most of the time, but we can’t be wrong all of the time and make any sense to each other, because we are all still (forever only) dealing with the same world.

there's two views here that might seem antithetical.

The one is that there are ordered laws of nature, and they are there becasue god said so.

Now this is not much of an explanation, since whatever way the universe is, this view explains it.

The other is that the universe just is this way, that there is no reason for it being this way rather than some other. — Banno

First I would note that whether the view is “because god said so” or because “just is this way”, neither is much of an explanation “since whatever way the universe is, this view explains it.”

So let’s throw away the “why” of it. Who cares how or why order comes to be for now. Let’s just focus on “is there order” at all? And regardless of the motivation or reason for this order, where is this order found?

I don’t see how you retain science, physics, even math and language, without some sense of order existing apart from minds, in the world. Perhaps “order” isn’t the best word for what is in the world. And I agree “laws” in the world apart from minds doesn’t make sense. But do we have no use for observation and merely listening and sensation to discern order and educate the mind? And again, if there is no ordered conduit between two minds, communication must fail. But it occasionally succeeds.

Let me cash out what I’m trying to say:

X says “Ptolemy was wrong, the earth is not the center of the universe.”

Y then says: “I see that too, because I see the day happens because the sun is fixed and the earth spins on an access.”

X then says: “yes, and the spring moves to summer and fall and winter because the spinning earth revolves all the way around the sun at varying distances and angles.”

Y then says: “So the sun is at the center.”

So where is the source of order here? Both men could claim it was a new consensus they were ordering. But they are both pointing to the sun and the functions of a solar system. Each separately pointing to separate aspects of the sun’s relationship to the earth, but each extending and agreeing in an orderly fashion. They are not pointing merely to each other and building a coherent map. They are building a map that is coherent because it mimics the order they are pointing to in the world.

We may one day learn this was all wrong too, that there is no such thing as a sun, but then, the reason this new description might be understood by X and then followed by Y who extends it with whatever follows, would be because of new evidence to point to in the world. We can’t avoid the world completely and discount its own order, nor discount our ability to map our minds to it as much as we map it to our minds, and further, call all of our communications between minds about the world “world-order-fabrications” using the world as conduit to communicate.

Maybe we are order makers because, we, haling from the universe, are like the universe which has order in it.

But there are vastly many more ways to appear random than ordered, so order begs for an explanation, since it is prima facie unlikely given a non-informative prior. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Order is prima facia unlikely, given a non-informative prior.
I’m not sure I follow “a non-informative prior.”
Are you talking about a teleological cause? Meaning without telos or any prior information, (since in this argument, the descriptive information comes after the moving thing described) ordered movement is unlikely?

I don’t think I’ve gotten that far yet. I think that can be true or not as a separate question.

Order may be unlikely without the answer to why the order is there, but I think I’m still just confirming that the order is not only in my description, but drawn from that which it describes, namely, the world.

All I know so far (or all I am assuming here in the argument) is that there is order in my description and my description is of the world. And I am asking at this point, is the order in my description so ordered because it is a description of an ordered world. I don’t know where the order in the world comes from (yet), and don’t think I need to know (yet). I just know where the order in my description comes from, namely, the world.

I'm pleased — Banno

I’m please you’re pleased. :cool:

At the risk of completely ruining this moment, how would you respond to this question:

When the descriptions we make actually work, that is, work to describe something to another person, where does the order come from in that scenario?

It seems to me it must come, in part, from the world being described. Which brings me back to Kindred’s question: wherefore the order?

Edit to add:
I actually care more about “what is the order” than “why is the order”, and am more interested to say “that there is order in the world, and I’ve described it.”

Isn't what we call a "law" here just a description of how the planets indeed move? — Banno

A law is a description. Good.

the answer to "why are there laws of nature?" is just "Becasue that's how we describe what happens". — Banno

That follows. We make the descriptions, and can call them ”laws”. Good.

But then, doesn’t the question just become “why do we describe things, in the way we describe them and not some other way?”

Kindred reframed his question to the question I think you just begged.

Kindred reasked:

why does the universe behave in an orderly way? — kindred

So now, we can say we make laws out of descriptions. There appears to be some kind of structure to these descriptions we’ve made. Call them law-like, descriptions. Why are these descriptions orderly, or, describing something a certain way to function as descriptions?

Does the law cause the movement — Banno

I’d say no. The movement causes the description, or law. But either way, why is the law OR the movement described, orderly?

This is still unanswered. Next step is still precarious..

why are there laws in the first place — kindred

This asserts “there are laws” and asks why.

Are there laws of nature?

…more inclined to say that there are regularities in nature that we pay attention to — Moliere

This asserts two things: that there are regularities and that we pay attention to these regularities.

So could laws just be language about the regularities that grab attention? In other words, aren’t you basically assuming the same thing Kindred assumes, but calling it “attended to regularities” as opposed to “laws”? Once you write about a regularity, aren’t you codifying the regularity into law? Laws are words about regularities.

So you answered your own question in a way by asserting there are regularities that grab attention.

It means my politics cannot be described in zeros and ones. Big deal. — jgill

I’m pretty sure “liberal” can’t be described in zeros and ones.

I am politically nonbinary. — David Hubbs

So you are not exclusively conservative and not exclusively liberal, but either at different times? Or you are those plus libertarian with some monarchical tendencies, at all times? Do you also believe you can fool all of the people all of the time, and are running for office as an independent? What?

Do you discern the speaker's intent differently if they are liberal or conservative? — David Hubbs

So despite what they said, they are in fact liberal or they are in fact conservative? Or they are in fact "politically non-binary" (whatever that cashes out as) but with a heart of a conservative, or a liberal?

Yes. In that case I would know they are lying. — Leontiskos

Exactly.

The formal argument is just an aid to get truth into the mind. — Leontiskos

So if philosophy seeks 'thinking well, and what it is important to think about,' formal argument is a tool to confirm or aid thinking well, but it is the truth, in mind, where any import might arise. We don't ever find importance in a perfect tool, until the tool is being used and produces truth.

the "Anna Karenina Principle," based on the opening of Tolstoy's novel: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in his own way." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, another point that will stick. Good stuff.

That one concept is what I needed to flesh out that 'the damned dissolve into multiplicity' more.

It made me think of modern liberalism's knee-jerk forgiveness of sin by homogenizing multiplicity. There are more minorities or poor people in prison because they are all just victims of a system that is against them and not each in unique circumstances perpetrating unique vices and individual choices. So liberalism might agree with a sort of unifying Anna Kerenina Principle, but use the principle to misjudge individuals, misjudge what is good about these individuals and misidentify where the good comes from (ie. 'he only stole to care for his family and because he had no choice'), all to twist public policy.

Proper Christian love thus ‘dispossesses’ itself of its object in more than one sense. Not only does it seek to see and know the object without passion (without self-referential desire), it recognizes that the true being of the object is always in relation to something other than the beholder prior to the seeing or registering of this particular other by the beholder. Thus there is always some dimension of what is encountered that is in no way accessible to or at the mercy of this particular beholder. It is in acknowledging this relatedness to a third that a relation of love involving two finite subjects becomes authentic and potentially open to the universal.

But if the relation is one of my eros communing with the eros of what I love – desiring the desire of the other, but not in competitive and exclusive mode – the possibility of that ‘eucharistic’ interrelation noted already is opened up to us.

This is on another level. Rowan knows his love. Love entangles desire, possession, non-possessing beholding, the wholly other, and a recognition of all of these going on in the beloved as well.

Christian philosophy cannot really be expected to do without "sin" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. However, along the lines of some existentialists (ie. Camus and the "absurd animal"), I think there is a sort of non-sectarian way of viewing sin as a somehow less religiously off-putting brokenness. Human beings are something, but something that IS broken. We live, but with a certain festering wound. We have a nature, plus something unnatural (or better, minus something), and that is our nature.

In the end, it is sin, or sin causes this natural/unnatural condition that is man. And I wouldn't want to be asking you to hide this truth (and so, lie). So maybe this has to remain "Christian philosophy" (which I would also call theology, or under its umbrella). It would probably take significant effort to truly sterilize the theological from essays like yours, and may also impress relatively few additional admirers of its content.

I only mention it because in many parts you are walking this tightrope between the secular and theological already, and I think the thesis overall regarding the deflation of reason straddles the line completely intact (meaning, you don't need God or sin to demonstrate and compare reason as ratio only versus reason as intellectus that includes ratio, and will).

A process is the interaction of two or more causes (colors) that produces a (single) output. — Harry Hindu

I think you are thinking about the terms of the analogy too literally. The blue paint would represent all kinds of different inputs. The yellow paint represents the processing of the imputs, and the green is the output. We aren’t mixing paint anymore; we are using the concept “mixing paint” as an analogy for generating output by data processing. But it was your idea, so maybe I just don’t follow how blue, yellow green will be enough to analogize data processing if you use up the blue and the yellow to both represent input data. If you want blue and yellow to both be different data inputs, it seems to me you need more elemental pieces be added to the analogy to take those inputs, process them and cause outputs, so my simpler analogy doesn’t actually work (unless maybe you use it as data input blue, processing yellow, data out green.)

Colors are the effect of prior causes — Harry Hindu

Just to be clear, in my analogy, the green represents any all colors perceived. I don’t think the analogy contradicts anything you are saying about how perception works; in fact I think it analogizes what you are saying.

I'm not sure that I would say that we perceive colors. We perceive the characteristics of the causal chain by way of the effects it leaves - color. I would only say that we perceived color when we start thinking about thinking — Harry Hindu

So I like what you are saying here. I think you are getting at use and definition of the word “perception” which I will consider/look in to further. But I think the end result here would be a better description of what the analogy analogizes; what you are clarifying about perception doesn’t mean the analogy is not a good one. Sense perception connects subjects to separate things being sensed. The perception itself (what is analogized as green) is internal, so you may be correct in saying we don’t perceive color because color IS the perception itself, not that which is perceived. I like the reflexivity aspect here worth pursuing.

I actually think there is a whole separate process called “Reflection in Mind” (or “thinking” or “self-reflection”) that the analogy may apply to, where blue is the (for lack of a better term) “flection” and green is the “re-flection” which has now been influenced by the act of reflecting (the yellow bit). But so haven’t thought this through yet (obviously, using words like “flection”). Maybe the blue is the consciousness (similar to any animal with sensation), the green is reflected consciousness or self-consciousness, and the yellow is the act itself upon the consciousness that generates the green self or the green reflection. Working on it.

Really great piece of work here. Well-written, substantive, and intriguing to me. I don't have any deep criticism to offer (but have some thoughts below). It speaks for itself well. In that vein, and in agreement with your observation that "it is better for everyone when this knowledge is attained by anyone," here is a sort of abstract of the knowledge that has been attained by me. My highlights from the essay:

…this deflation of reason—and of man’s “intellect,”…

One can hardly rejoice in a calculator…

…Modern conceptions that make both love and knowledge an entirely internal affair.

For Dante, man’s rational soul, far from being a mere tool, is central to what man is and how he “lives a good life.” Second, reason plays a central role in Dante’s conception of self-determination and human freedom. Finally, whereas today we are apt to see “love” as something irrational, and perhaps just one element of “a good life,” Dante sees love as the central thread running through the human experience (and indeed the entire cosmos).

Knowing involves a union of knower and known.

“carnal knowledge,” with all its erotic connotations, gets far closer to the older view than the sterile formulation of “justified true belief.”

…fundamentally an encounter with the other, not the conquest of the other by the self. It is not the “grasping” and “possession” of the other…in the modern ethos, but rather a union, an offering of the self to the other as a gift…

Yet this knowing does involve an internal dimension, a penetration of the self by the other. To know [ ] requires “knowing by becoming.”

…in Dante’s context, ratio refers specifically to discursive reason, the step-by-step thinking by which we move through arguments, or plan future actions. In Hume’s Treatise for instance, it is obvious that this faculty is primarily what Hume takes as encompassing the whole of “reason.”…

…Intellectus is the faculty of intuitive understanding; it is contemplative, receptive, and rooted in insight… The acquisition of human knowledge begins and ends in intellectus, but proceeds by discursive ratio…

…the intellect capable of both ratio and intellectus was itself just one of two components of the “rational soul,” which was composed of intellect and will.

This collapse of three distinct concepts into one word [‘reason’ as ratio] is itself a sign of the deflation…

His initial despair at finding himself lost is lifted when he spies the sun lit hill above him (a symbol of goodness). He knows where he needs to go. The Pilgrim possess synteresis, an innate knowledge that the good is preferable to evil (and truth to falsity). However, as he attempts to climb the hill under his own power he is forced back...

…a misordering of loves. It is to fail to know things as they are, to be attracted to the worse over of the better. This condition arises when the rational soul (intellect and will)—the part of man that can know and desire the Good as Good (28)—is subjugated by man’s lower faculties.

Free, rational beings, by their very nature, must possess a capacity to disfigure themselves in this way. Otherwise, they would lack agency. To be truly self-determining, they must turn themselves towards the Good, transcending their own finitude with the aid of grace, whereas a turn towards finite goods is a turn towards “nothingness.”

Rather than seeking the Good on account of its goodness (because it is known by the intellect as good), the damned allow their desires for finite goods to triumph over the pursuit of the necessary telos of all rational creatures

Hell is much more diverse than Purgatory and Paradise. It has more divisions …This is because the damned pursue multiplicity rather than the unifying First Cause and First Principle. Rather than seeking the Good on account of its goodness (because it is known by the intellect as good), the damned allow their desires for finite goods to triumph over the pursuit of the necessary telos of all rational creatures (the Good and the True, sought as such).

To seek finite, material goods is to seek goods that diminish when they are shared. The pursuit of such goods sets up a dialectic of envy and competition between men.

sin, which drives us downward and dissolves the person in multiplicity, … love, which unifies the person, and ultimately the entire whole cosmos.

…it is through the shedding of vice and attainment of virtue that we become free.

Finite things are good precisely to the extent that they reflect the divine light. Hence, finite things are all stepping stones…rungs on a “ladder up to God.” …finite goods are meant to be used, not enjoyed for their own sake. To descend down the ladder in order to possess one of its rungs is thus a confusion of what is truly most worthy of love. This is a failure of the intellect to recognize worth, or of the will to follow the guidance of the intellect.

…love is what motivates everything we do.

‘There are, as you well know,
two kinds: the natural love, the rational.

Natural love may never be at fault;
the other may: by choosing the wrong goal,
by insufficient or excessive zeal.’

…an attraction to the “worse over the better,” involves a projection of goodness onto what lacks it. This is a failure of the “rational love” that is conditioned by the intellect. It is to love things more or less than they are worthy of being loved.

Dante does not subscribe to a simplistic notion where things are simply “good or bad” in themselves. The intellect must guide the person precisely because goodness is defined in terms of proper ends…

…another important element in the pre-modern vision of reason. For Dante, man cannot slip into a dispassionate state of “buffered reason” where he “lets the facts speak” whenever he chooses. We are either properly oriented towards Truth and Goodness or we are not;

…man’s intellect and will is subject to the pernicious influence of the unregenerated passions and appetites until “the rule of reason” has been positively established.

Repentance represents a self-aware reflection on our own thought processes and choices, the ways in which they fall short, and a renewed commitment towards the pursuit of “what is really true” and what “is truly best” for their own sake.

Man’s rationality is emancipatory… It is only by questioning what is “really true” and “truly good” that man moves beyond his current beliefs and desires, and so transcends what he already is…Without this capacity of reason, we cannot turn around to question if the ends we pursue are truly good, and so we cannot properly align our loves through a turn to repentance and healing.

…the damned who appear to possess something like the Humean notion of reason. The damned are motivated by inchoate desires…

what puts sinners in conflict with one another. The pursuit of what is “truly good” and “really true” unifies us with others. Knowledge of the true and the best is not something that diminishes when shared.

Endnote:
John of Damascus’s matter of fact claim that: “neither are all things unutterable nor all utterable; neither all unknowable nor all knowable. But the knowable belongs to one order, and the utterable to another; just as it is one thing to speak and another thing to know,” to see that labeling both modern and pre-modern views “correspondence theories” papers over a great deal of difference.

My thoughts:

1. I agree with Leon (and Wayfarer I think), and had to think around this idea to move past it: "Utterances are acts, yet it is substances—things—that primarily possess being, and so it is people (and God) who primarily possess truth." I think you addressed this in your reply to Leon, but I mention it again because I think it should not just be restated, but expounded upon. It gets at something that is essential to understanding what truth is, and that modern thinking avoids. Truth is being, known in the person. Things have being regardless of whether any person knows them (perhaps only because God knows them, but that may be another topic). But the truth of things is in the person who knows these things. (I don't know if I said this clearly, nor that I didn't get this idea from you anyway, but I think this one-liner deserves more attention.)

2. Here is another concept that I wished you spoke more about: "Hell is much more diverse than Purgatory and Paradise. It has more divisions …This is because the damned pursue multiplicity rather than the unifying " and "sin, which drives us downward and dissolves the person in multiplicity." Driving this home with more analysis and concreteness seems would really hammer home the fact of the modern deflation and flattening of what we know and how we know. I don't have much to offer (which is why I wished you said more!) but this struck me as an important insight again, deserving more attention.

3. Last comment, and I have no idea how to accomplish what it asks, but if you could somehow secularize the language of the piece, I think more people could receive it, and even internalize the points and allow themselves to really challenge "modern" sensibilities and notions of reason. The piece needs the concept of sin. The piece needs the concept of God. But perhaps for sin it could refer to stunting one's own growth, or turning against one's self and self-defeating acts, or taking ignorance as if it was knowledge, or pride as something to be proud of... Instead of refering to "sin" refer to limit and the as yet unperfected (unpurged)... maybe? For God, my only thought is what you often said, which is "Good" or "Truth" and "Beauty" and "Love", so maybe just use them more.
It's not that such a revision would improve the piece, just essentially not turn away many who, I think, would benefit from really reading it.

Last point, just the other day my father and I were talking about dying and going to heaven, and discussing how precisely an individual is "called by name" by God and saved as that unique individual, and yet, perfected and made ready to be in the presence of God - how am I still "me" and yet "perfect as my heavenly father is perfect"? How is it that, in paradise, I will "sin no more" and yet still be me? Even the angels can sin, so why will I never again choose to do so, and yet still be me? You address this:

He must, in a new term Dante coins for the poem, be “transhumanized.”(49) This is not a knowing we can strive for. We can only prepare ourselves to accept it as a gift. Thus, Dante’s most important lesson to us might be that such a gift can only be accepted freely. That is, it is only when we acknowledge our rational appetites, our desire for Goodness and Truth, that a proper ordering of our loves and true freedom is possible.

I'm going to print your piece out (in a large font for the old man's eyes) and share it with my father. He'll like it for many of its insights, but this great reference to transformation, Dante's "transhumanized," will be inspiring. Defeating vice, championing our appetites, and striving for virtue, with practice and much grace, will allow us to grow, and grow into a, God willing, perfected version of ourselves, that has no mind for vice, and humbly remains fixed on the Good and the True. So each of us remains the individual, particular person God loves and calls by name, but can become the person God intended us to be, the person that recognizes that our sins have only interrupted and stunted and defeated who we actually are. (See I don't know how not to say "sin" and "God" either, so good luck with that comment!)

Thanks for all of the good work you do around here. Your voice is important.

I think your nephew makes Socrates sound like a moron.

The labeling is not all that important to me, but I don't think it's helpful to ignore the difference between what is clearly technical work and what isn't. Call it all "philosophy" if you want, but you'll still need some terminology for that obvious distinction. — Srap Tasmaner

One could say, if we want to say what we are doing is philosophy, if we want to label it ‘philosophy’, we must do better.

But, I see the more substantive point. The distinctions being made here are the important point, and where someone wants to overlay the label or official domain called ‘philosophy’ isn’t itself the real point. Like for example, it’s all philosophy, sure, but good philosophy will stand apart (maybe with subtlety at times only recognizable as such by good philosophers) and is worth its own distinguishing terminology.

Now, there are still differences between the three sorts of paragraphs you find in a math textbook, the English, the mathematical, and the transitional. Not all of them exactly *are* math, but all are necessary to math and for math even to be a thing.

And so I think it is with philosophy. It's not really a matter of formalism at all, but more like the distinction in a legal opinion between the actual decision, the language of which is binding on parties, and obiter dicta, — Srap Tasmaner

So would you still have to say?:

There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking.
— Srap Tasmaner — Fire Ologist

There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking. — Srap Tasmaner

So wouldn’t one have to do some philosophical work before one could draw that conclusion?

Could you be wrong here, and there is some degree of philosophical work buried in the thread?

Or is the point that, even observations like this one (namely, that this thread and Williamson’s afterword contain no philosophical work), are not properly ‘good philosophy’ until we can expressly show and see the work that goes into them? (Not meaning to call your observation improper philosophy, or maybe you are actually okay with that for purposes of this thread.)

…information processing…Blue and yellow the input, mixing them together is the process, and green the output? — Harry Hindu

Good one, although I’d say blue represents the input, yellow represents the processing, and green represents the output…It could work.

What color is the paint when the lights are out? We don't see paint. We see light. — Harry Hindu

That is a question of sense perception, specifically sight. That’s the first analogy. And your question is the whole point of the analogy. We don’t see things like paint and “the color of paint” without the influence of the eye. We have to remember, the colors in the analogy represent concepts, not actual colors. So, maybe the answer is, there is no “color” absent the eyeball and brain that receives light and processes it. Once processed, we perceive the color now constructed by the brain as the light reflected off of some object, now “seen” as whatever color our eyeball can make of whatever light it receives. Right?

Unless your question is simply what are the physical moving parts of sight - in which case the blue paint is meant to represent all of the elements in the world that contribute to sensation. So for sight, the blue paint represents the object with light bouncing off of it just before the moment it hits the eye. Once the eye (and brain) receive it, yellow is mixed in. Then, what we are conscious of is something reconstructed out of the light reflecting off the object (blue paint), the eyeball and brain and all of that processing (yellow paint), forming “what we see” (always now particularized by the influence of the yellow paint, which makes it a new particular vision, of green).

So really your question of what color is the object without light does have an answer; it has no color, because what color is requires light (specifically reflected light) as one essential ingredient for whatever color to emerge (the second essential ingredient being the particular eyeball, represented as yellow paint).

You could also ask, what color is the object without the lights on and no eyeball, and we again have to say no color, because color is what eyeballs create as a sensation. Or what color is empty space that reflects no light (what is the color of no objects)? Again, no color. What we see is represented as green paint analogously; this doesn’t happen until light reflected (blue paint analogously) hits our eyeball (yellow paint analogously).

How will time end?

Will it?

I see time-space-matter-motion as aspects or points of view that are all the case now that there is more than one thing. Many things in existence, means, time-space-matter-motion, to be crude about it. Where there is one of these, there must be the others. There is no time without matter in motion through space. And there is no motion without some matter moving through space over time. And there is motion. And there are things in motion.

So the question of the end of time is also will motion and the things that move stop moving or cease to be things?

Yet in that darkness sleeps infinite seed, — PoeticUniverse

As one of Kant’s antinomies, we essentially can’t rationalize the “before time” or “end of time.” We can’t conceive “no time “ with our minds and not be generating the time it takes to conceive of anything; even nothingness forever is compounded for “ever” after simply nothing.

I just think that all means we can’t talk about the end of time without sounding like a poet or a mystic.

Many, it seems, would rather stay silent in the face of the non-rational. Maybe prudent, when trying to avoid sounding like a fool, or a poet, or a mystic.

What if it will take forever for time to end?

Is that a rational question?

Personally, if I could be so foolish as to sound like a failed mystic and a failed philosopher, for a moment, (and I certainly could), let’s see if I can speak of eternity. I see eternity as both the wrapping around before the beginning and the end of time, at the edge of time, just as eternity runs through every instant.

Or, put another way, Now, is as good as the very end of time. Now is the pinnacle, end result of all history that has gone before right now. And also, now is the beginning of time. Right now, is the instantaneous moment upon which all that we call the “future” will rest.

Now, is all time, eternal. (Time is actually more like the construct, a watch. A measuring stick.) All that actually exists is Now. So there is no end or beginning of time, because now is always the end and beginning of time. The real raw material we have to deal with is eternity, which resists capturing with words, until we call it “a moment in time” and construct enough duration to wonder about the past and future ends.

See, a failed mystic and/or bad philosopher. Darn those antinomies.

But if you are talking about whether the universe will eventually break apart and will it simply fail one day to support any forms of existence besides a pile of rubble? Maybe.
That won’t be the end of measurable change and motion and time, just the end of anything that could take measure or identify some form to measure any such motion. Like stillness, but for forever. Maybe.

But I agree, I think it makes sense that physically there is a cycle. Like Empedocles - things come together and break apart in an endless cycle between love and strife (he was definitely a cult leader). Or Aristotle - Generation and corruption. Or the eastern thinkers’ conceptions of eternity. Or Christianity, where an eternal God made space and time for us to visit eternity, in due time.

I have to say I don’t know what it means to say “the end of time.”

Did you keep the palette at three colors only to represent a relatively simple idea? How are the “moving parts of other areas and concepts and systems” affected?

Bigger palette? — Mww

I found it pleasing how well the analogy captures sense perception, and, I think, Kant’s observation.

I also find it interesting how the picture of such a simple mixture explains more than one more complex idea; something so simple not only capturing one complex idea, but many more ideas.
I think it helps align the basic parts of Nietzsche’s Apollonian-Dionysian theory of spirit, and the moral act of a person, but not as directly.

Bigger palette might do some work, but analogies can only take you so far. And Kant and sense perception and Heraclitus are what make the analogy, not the other way around.

I thought it was neat when I thought of it. Frankly I figured someone else probably thought of it before and that by posting it here someone would tell me who already wrote that.

I also think you can squeeze Plato’s Allegory of the Cave into it (blue being the man in chains, green being the shadows, and yellow being the light against the puppets), but if you need an analogy to understand an allegory better, you probably are being led too far astray from the human experience Plato was really trying to speak about. But it is another interesting picture reflecting the simple mixture of two colors of paint. At least I thought so.

Our intelligence functions on representations, from which follows our knowledge is not of things as such — Mww

Intelligence functions = yellow.
Representations = green.
Things as such = blue.

Still no?

Why wouldn’t Kant agree we live in green world, behind the phenomenal veil that our mind construct, keeping us separate from things in themselves?
— Fire Ologist

He would agree with that, I’ve no doubt. — Mww

First….we have no way of knowing the blue self of a thing. It is only ever blue because we say it is;

Then…the yellow as category belongs to understanding, hence is not the OP’s yellow analogous to the senses…, — Mww

The analogy to sensation is one thing, and the colors represent the things of sensation.

The analogy to Kant is taken as another thing entirely.

So if you agree Kant would agree with this:
“we live in green world, behind the phenomenal veil that our minds construct, keeping us separate from things in themselves?”

Then it makes sense to me Kant would agree the analogy holds:
Blue represents noumena.
Yellow represents subject.
Green represents phenomena. We live in green, experience is all green, never blue. Not even yellow, which is just conditional framework and not “phenomena” nor “thing”.

who would think of themselves — Banno

elite, pretending — Banno

vanity of self-anointed "deep thinkers," — Banno

Isn’t all of that off topic? That’s psychology that can apply to any type of philosopher or non-philosopher.

——-

He is showing us again what is beautiful in philosophy, and what isn't. — Banno

I think he shows what he sees as most beautiful in philosophy, but does not show what isn’t. He just characterizes it as ugly. Maybe that is a function of him not using names for the ugly philosophers.

What is philosophy for?

That's the question that will decide what you think philosophy is, and how you will do philosophy. — Banno

:up:

I’m quite in love with dissecting minutia, in high hopes of philosophizing with clarity and precision, — Mww

As an analogy to Kant:

So blue represents the thing-in-itself that we can never know in its blue self; yellow represents the categories of mind that construct or allow for our experience; and our experience is all green phenomena. — Fire Ologist

How does it not work? Upset all apples and carts.

Why wouldn’t Kant agree we live in green world, behind the phenomenal veil that our mind construct, keeping us separate from things in themselves?

The systematic philosophers people continue to read generations after their passing are the ones that stand up to such scrutiny, if not quite entirely then more than enough to credit their discipline. — Srap Tasmaner

Also beautiful.

The fact that what you just said is the case, and I think it is, means to me that the qualitative difference between what the analytic tool-makers do (essential to scrutiny), and what the system builders do, is important in itself. It is something to consider and develop. We can’t expend all of our efforts on only one or other. Either one, when taken alone, loses at least some, if not all of its value.

philosophy is thinking well about what it is important to think about.

There are two elements or moments there, and maybe they can't be fully disentangled, — Srap Tasmaner

Beautiful. Shining.

Previously, the two moments seem to have been tagged thinking well, and making shite up.

Once we find non-human minds, this is going to get very interesting. — AmadeusD

If we do.

But once we do, aside from tons of interesting differences, my sense is they will have to have the same ultimate questions and problems with these concepts. I don’t think there is a God who can sort things out any differently. It’s the fabric of personhood and moral existence. IMO.

in high hopes of philosophizing with clarity and precision — Mww

Always.

The ways to philosophize thread(s) seem to be about one way to be clear and precise.

But always hoping for clarity. Either the analogy works to depict Kant’s idea, or it doesn’t. I think it does.