It is hard to understand western history, music, art, literature or architecture without understanding the religious impulse that lay behind much of it. — prothero

I would say that is true in the east as well, so it is hard to understand humanity absent God.

The way I see it, my contradictory individual existence is as improbable as God’s.
I also see that my existence brings with it, God’s existence.

God wasn’t a construction that came after man; God and man have been connected from the very start.

Separately from all of that, we don’t belong simply to this life. Life needs no words or knowledge. This life needs nothing of this conversation, yet this conversation has dominated our lives since the dawn of human history.
We live in some other world than the earth lives in.
We are absurd, thinking, as if we could sit apart from the world, maintain our dignified intellects and yet reconnect with the world through our knowledge, as if we are high king and ruler and judge of all the physical universe and all of its wisdom - and then, as rational knowers of things, we think we could know God.

It’s all so implausible. We cut ourselves off from things in order to say “I over here know that thing over there that I just cut myself off of.” What was once intimately unified, I divide in order to say how I know it intimately. Absurd.

Yet, because of that absurdity, God becoming a man to tell us how to deal with this, and dying on a cross to save us - because that story cannot possibly make sense, it makes sense to me that such would be God in this universe of absurdities and impossibilities. So I am Catholic. It makes sense that we would have to eat God’s flesh if we are to live with God in spirit, eternally, despite our own deaths. It makes sense that God, like gravity and energy, makes no sense and is ultimately indescribable, as he is unavoidable.

We cannot see God unless and until he reveals himself, but at the same time, if we really look at ourselves and our world, God begins to appear as if he was always everywhere. In every human history and every thunderstorm and supernova.

And what about love? Absurd.

Love, that all consuming limitless source of action among humans; we kill for love, we die for love; we want to preserve those we love, and yet we want to consume and possess those we love. Love makes no sense, yet it is the source of greatest meaning for us. Love is desire and ecstatic fulfillment at once, and maybe never…. This is where to seek God. In the love you have for another.

To me, the idea that life is accidental or mindless isn’t necessary either. It doesn’t have to be a choice between God and Meaninglessness or theism versus nihilism. There’s perhaps a middle ground: a world where meaning is made, not given. — Tom Storm

This middle ground is something I don’t fully agree with, or maybe never understood. It seems to me that meaning has to involve participation in something shared with at least one other person, and if you are alone on an island, than shared at least with God. If I make my meaning all by myself, and no one agrees or shares my meaning, I, personally, would not find this meaningful to me, and cannot see how this could be meaningful for anyone. Without God and everyone I know, my meaning seems never to come to be.

I was not always a believer in God. But when I thought there was no God, I thought everything I said and all that everyone ever said, and so all that could be thought, was like everything else - a whisper that remains ultimately unheard, misunderstood, empty, and as meaningful as the difference between two grains of sand. If the ultimate answer to the question “who cares?” is only “me”, and I know that I am going to die, than my care is not meaning, it is simply another meaningless moment.

We can make meaning for ourselves - live a meaningful life anyway, despite our utter isolation from true understanding of things and other people. But we can also mean nothing just as well. And so, since meaning and no-meaning must be equal options, I just cannot bring myself to call either meaningful. Nietzsche was just wrong. Life as art is still pointless and unfulfilling. Meaning becomes another lie to justify some lonely need to tell lies. This isn’t meaningful.

Regardless, it is just as arbitrary to believe in God, as it is to see the human condition as the experience of meaninglessness. It is even more arbitrary perhaps to believe in Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or Yaweh. I do agree that having faith is receiving a gift.

Words alone do not convince one to believe. The right words at the right time from the right source - maybe then one opens the gift of faith and finally finds God. Something like that is what happened to me.

I also believe many atheists have more faith than they like to admit (or else they would not speak of “God” at all). Just as most theists have more doubt than they like to admit.

We will never evolve past discussions of God and religion. There has been relatively zero progress in human history since before we wrote our thoughts down. Thousands of years with the same awe in the face of the abyss between us and the world. Thought itself, self-relfection, was the biggest progression so far. Maybe next was our word for “God.” And the word for “is”. The apes do not have God, nor do they say “is” or “I am.” We are no longer only like the apes. We are also like God. God is that who is always further in front of us, towards whom we are striving to become, never just behind us. But God is there too, and our history will always remind us, even if we could somehow forget to wonder about God, like we could forget to wonder about the chasm between ourselves and that which we think we know.

I hope I have contributed something to an interesting thread.

if the election is conducted properly by the currently government; that is, the process meet a pre-set standard for fair elections. That's what constitutions are made for. — Vera Mont

I agree. The standard is the rule of law. Those rules are consented to by all of the citizens, and must equally apply to all of them. And legitimate elections must meet all of the standards set in the law.

This is so that the people who get to lead us, who get to represent us in the governmental bodies that legislate and enforce those laws - those leaders must be able to be held accountable through a legal election.

Basically, since it is only humans that can lead other humans, the only legitimate leaders among us need the rest of our consent, or we might revolt instead of throwing them out of office in an election. And if our leaders don’t think they need our consent, they might actually not understand what a human being is (equal to them and as free as them). Similarly if we think we can set up some standards to judge human leadership performance, we probably don’t understand what a human being is either.

I can see why AI might like the idea of government by standard performance evaluation. AI operates solely based on rules and standards and needs no judgment to determine its next move. AI operates inside the box.

A good voter sees outside the box.

I can also see why someone who was not born into democracy might see this as an improvement over a dictatorial type of government - standards are restraints on power. But people are way smarter than a set of standards and those in power will always find ways out-smart the standard performance review. And elections are the only true restraint on individual powers.

But yes, free, legal, and demonstrably free and legal, elections are an absolute. When the election process is not seen as legitimate, or it is not legitimate in fact, it all falls to crap.

Hi panwei,

My starting point is as a third generation American, steeped in notion of self-government. Basically, in my mind, there is no class or type of person who can possibly be better than me at governing me, or governing those like me. And further I define “those like me” as every single other adult American citizen.

We the people, all of us, equally, have to say who and what our government is. We all get to make our policy every election.

I would say that at least 50% of the value of a democratically elected government is that all of us governed people never have anyone else to blame but ourselves for our governmental policy. We force ourselves to accept the good and the bad things our leaders do in our name, to preserve our own ability to democratically throw them out of office if we have to. The main value of democracy is government by consent of the governed. Democracy may give us bad policy, poor leaders, failures, injustice, etc, but in the end, at least we didn’t suffer these as slaves with no power or responsibility or control to change them.

We legitimize our leaders by electing them. They aren’t legitimized by being experts, or by being smarter than we little people, or by being high-born, or by being conquerors with the biggest armies - all of that is meaningless drivel compared to consent of the governed.

Our leaders are supposed to be servants.

Our government is not an end to be strived towards and proud of. It is supposed to be a necessary tool whereby each citizen willingly creates the apparatus to protect ourselves from invaders, to protect ourselves from criminals, to settle disputes between ourselves, and to debate the laws that keep society ordered towards the free individuals it is made of. People governed, even one person, is always bigger than the whole of government.

So all I’m saying here is that, the idea of free elections competing against the idea of promoting leaders based on standards, seems like a step away from consent and a step towards a loss of control to improve our lives and improve government.

And further, since when are standards of human performance not something that includes judgment and lived experience? I manage people. Two employees check all of the boxes and look equal by all written standards, but in the end, one of them might end up stealing from my company - the perfect record was a ruse, and the other employee was doing things beyond all of standards that only can be evaluated through experiences with that person. Often people can see these things coming despite the check-box performance evaluation. Good managers sense things the standards don’t or can my account for.

Ina democracy, the voters are the managers.

Just because a politician saves money, or buys a great thing for the people, it doesn’t mean their overall performance was good or bad. Standards can be as faulty as a divine right of kings was at discerning the best leader.

Without the consent of the people at the time of the promotion, at the time the leader gets to lead the people that leader gets promoted to lead, those people will no longer be able to take responsibility for their leadership, because the standard chose that person, and the seeds of revolt are sown, waiting for that leader to delegitimize the standard that promoted him by making some perceived mistake.

I am all for promotion base on merit. But I’m for keeping the determination of merit to be based on personal judgment. And when that promotion is a political appointment, the determination based on personal judgment is best made in an election, not according to some standard.

more about the unicorn on the orange peel! — J

I just remembered everyone knows unicorns can fly, so she wouldn’t need the orange peel, but she might need some sort of oxygen supply, if we are seeking accuracy regarding unicorns. Sorry for any confusion…

I would not argue with anything you are saying.

I don’t think there is a poetic way of saying what I said, and I was trying to be poetic. Basically, I am a bad poet. Also, basically, I don’t mean “moment” or “instant” literally.

Because we both seem to recognize that if a single instant in time has absolutely no duration, it is like a point in geometry, and does not exist absent its conceptual existence as a marker, not as naming a physical duration that takes time.

So, taking for granted that it takes a few brief moments to say the word “instant”, then the moment “instant” is said, we have a duration long enough to find infinity.

Do you think a set of standards should be established to evaluate government performance?
ds: — panwei

No. That’s what an ejection is for. It would be overly complicated and redundant and just as divisive to organize an evaluation of “government performance” under a set of “standard governmental performance measures” and get people to agree on results.

Let’s just have an ejection. I don’t want to reward good government officials at all. If they can’t draw any reward from a job well done, they are most likely not going to do a good job leading people.

So elections are the “willl of the people” if such a term has any actual meaning besides political speech bloviating.

I’m just glad you saw the point, because that question means you saw infinity where I did.

What’s a better word for a duration?

It was more like a poem, and a “duration” just sounded wrong for it.

A moment of time, since it is “of time” must have some duration, and once you have a duration you see the infinite.

Would “instant” work ant better than”moment”? I didn’t think so. Maybe “second” because that certainly has a duration.

memories … always already are acts of representation (and hence already interpreted) rather than mental objects standing in need of representation. And, in the case of memories, they are acts or representing the remembered object, episode, event, or situation. — Pierre-Normand

This may be something like I am getting at above in my comparison of remembering, to sensing, and to imagining. (It’s not at all exactly what I’m saying, but it seems to be circling a similar observation, or vantage point.)

There is something “already” in a memory, that is not there in an imagination-representation.

I am saying there is a similar something “already” in what purports to be a sensation.

And I’m saying that whatever this is “already” in a memory or a sensation, it is not there when imagining a unicorn flying through space on an orange peel.

This is difficult to talk about, without sounding like a naive empiricist/realist, or sounding like an insane person apparently.

That's what I want to say too, intuitively. And what this thread is showing is that this idea encounters (at least) two major problems: — J

What occurs, when an alleged memory comes to mind, that allows me to identify it as an alleged memory? — J

I find that with every question, such as this thread is one question, we immediately stir up ten questions that must be first answered, before we can start to investigate the single question.

Such is the life we’ve chosen.

Talking about the phenomenal experience of a memory, or of recalling, I brought up:

independent presence/existence/ontological status/process of verification to it. — Fire Ologist

I don’t mean to be asking whether a memory is some independent “thing-in-itself”… somehow apprehended when recalled - no. That’s another question. I also see that we are not asking about the content of the memory, the specifics, as if we need to know if they could be true or accurate, or not.

But let’s briefly compare a memory to a sensation and to an imagination.

Memories, like sensations, have something of an independence to them. We don’t get to purely construct on our own the shape of a memory or the shape of a sensation. We construct these, for sure, but we don’t call them a memory if the construction is more like an imagination, and we don’t get to call them a sensation if the construction is more like an imagination.

Taking sensation for granted, a hallucination is more like an imagination than it is like a sensation (although a hallucination is also like a sensation.)

Taking a memory for granted, a sensation is more like a memory than it is like an imagination (although remembering requires conjuring up images like imaginations).

So I still haven’t pinpointed something, but I raise the independent existence of some other thing as a similar feature to what helps distinguish a memory and a sensation from an imagination.

two major problems:

1. Whatever the IPEOSPoV is, it can't depend on the memory's being accurate. What we verify is that the memory purports to be one; it presents itself as one; not that it's accurate.

2. The IPEOSPoV is a lot to ask, unless it happens very much below the surface. — J

1. Certainly it can’t depend on accuracy. We are not concerned about accuracy, or having someone perform an IPEOSPoV test on a memory, or on anything.

1b. “that the memory purports to be one”. Yes. That is what I am trying to focus on. Remembering, or just, memory. What makes it, something I am remembering, and not sensing or imagining? I am saying part of what allows one to see that a certain mental image is a memory is the image’s ability to be subjected to some sort of IPEOSPoV test, regardless of whether that test is ever conducted or is the concern here in this thread.

If it’s a memory, it involves something other than the one who is remembering it.

All of the pieces of this experience of recalling a memory that connect directly to the one who is recalling, blur and distort and deconstruct the memory - but those pieces of the memory experience that connect the memory to something else besides the the mere act of recalling are the parts that distinguish the memory from an imagination.

Recalling something is more like sensing the thing “from the past” right now in the present again. The mental experience of recalling is more like re-sensation, than it is like imagining a unicorn could be said to be sensing something.

Independent existence is one feature of the phenomenon we find (or ascribe, maybe) in a purported memory.

It doesn’t matter if I recall it is blue and then someone corrects me about it being white. It doesn’t matter whether either of us are correct or could be corrected. My point is that, what shows we are talking about a memory, is that we are both pointing to “it” as something other than what we might only imagine.

Maybe every memory is just an imagination based on a false sensation having nothing to do with any mind independent reality - but we don’t think so or act that way towards a memory. We don’t distinguish the memory from imagination if we don’t assert and assume something purporting to be independently verifiable about the memory.

Time has been infinite from the start.

And now, it always will be. Infinite time.

Since the moment we first clocked the first moment,
We touched infinitely in all directions, before and forever after, all at that first instant of time.

Once we timed something.

Once we set a limit in the prehistoric limitlessness.

Once we minded the time that humankind first minded.

That the computer is causally influencing you to look at it, to read, to type, to understand what you’re typing? — NOS4A2

Why did you ask that, and from what did you think there might be any type of effect produced, if speech and words cannot cause actions in others?

You can’t use words to cause me to agree about the ineffectiveness of words to cause action. You would just be refuting yourself as you speak.

You might even be right about the uselessness of my words to be culpable to cause some action of another person. But the minute you use words and get me to agree with that, you might be wrong (and I think you are).

When a vendor wants to recall what he is supposed to do, he can look to his contract. Those words are there precisely to cause specific actions.

When someone yells “fire” - if fire is to mean anything specific at all, it makes sense to wonder why they are yelling, and why yelling “fire” and whether I need to act. So laws can hold the person accountable who yells “fire” because it makes sense that such yelling leads to actions in others.

What about the law itself? What is a law besides speech that causes action?

The distinction between speech as content and speech as incitement to action is essential here. If you don’t think words can cause anything, then why are bothering to use words to explain yourself to us - words can’t possibly cause us to change what we say or do think, according to you, right?

I tend to construe "the memory that P" not as inspecting an inner representation, but as the persistent ability to know that P — Pierre-Normand

That is what I was trying to get at. Good stuff.

Recall, as a present act, may be the real discussion.

We say we recall a memory, as if the memory sits somewhere waiting to be recalled. But maybe recall is simply a focus on what persists, and recollection is a collection of what is present, knowledge.

Like right now, we are reading and focused on what we see, but, while keeping our eyes open, we can focus on the sounds instead, or while keeping our eyes open and ears open, focus on how comfortable our socks feel… or we can recall reading what someone said above and focus on that which persists as the knowledge you have right now.

Recalling a memory, is just refocusing (perhaps widening the focus beyond sensation) on all that is present.

This doesn’t really address the OP question to me, but it may provide a new approach to how/what makes remembering uniquely remembering and not imagining or sensing.

And the example of remembering an appointment you have tomorrow is interesting. This shows how “past” and “future” are maybe appended after an act of recollection and that the past is not some sort of essential, temporal component to a memory. (However, I do think you could say that when you make an appointment, and later recall it, you are recalling a decision you made in the past; you are not remembering something in the future, but remembering the promise or desire to attend to something. Regardless, nothing exists in an existential way in the past, as it is gone which makes it past, so we can’t look to the past for anything, only the present.).

But the next part that is interesting is that we don’t need images at all to behold a “memory”, as recalling an appointment for tomorrow may have zero images attached to the recollection.

I had used the term “inspect” in distinction from “create” to point to possible distinctions between how one views “a memory” versus “a unicorn (for instance).” I needed to make “a memory” into this representational type of thing in order for the word “inspect” to work. But this discussion is probably mired in metaphors that we aren’t fully conscious of, they are so ingrained in speech and naive understandings of “memory”.

What may be the case is, when we seek to recollect something, we are seeking, analogically, like when we are presently looking with eyes. Our eyes may inform the color and shape of the object sought (thanks Kant), but nevertheless, we seek something that is not in the eye when we seek with the eyes. We seek a thing in itself. If we see a mirage we look again and again to confirm what is really there apart from our eyes and the light as reflected in them.

If we don’t think the thing we recall is what it is because of itself, if we think the thing we recall is constructed merely by ourselves, we wouldn’t call it a memory. We might call it imaginary. A memory has to have some sort of independent presence/existence/ontological status/process of verification to it.

Like if I say, “I remember seeing that yesterday; it was blue.”
And my friend says, “No, don’t you remember, it was white, and there was this blue light on it that made it look blue until the light was turned off.”
And I say, “Oh yeah, I recall, it was white.”

My ability to imagine the thing being blue and imagine the thing being white is imagination. My ability to correct myself and say I agree that the thing was not blue at all has to do with something besides imagination.

But, although not purely a construction, like an imaginary thing, a memory is still found only within one’s conscious mind. When we try to recall, we (metaphorically) look in a specific direction and that is inward. But what we look at are the present existing impressions.

Maybe the analogy is to understand that there is a time lag between when something touches your hand and when the feeling thereby created is felt by you. There is a split second lag between when you are touched, and when you feel it, and that lag starts to lengthen if you were listening to music and didn’t notice the touching at first. Recollection is noticing what was just first present an instant ago. And “just first present” can be a relative term.

Still a curious phenomenon this memory thing…

we also need a reminder of what good moral judgement has to do with liberty and justice. — Athena

Agree. Some basic agreement on some basic moral/ethical norms for the sake of everyone having a society, and everyone having a safe place for the next generation to learn how to be free and how to contribute to our society.

Your right, Lady Liberty is a great lesson, she gives off her own light. The statue itself was a gift, freely given, as a thank you for our contributions to freedom in the world. Lots of good lessons worth remembering and teaching.

the mind then has to be re-introduced to the world from which it has been banished, — Wayfarer

:up:

…banished by the same mind, that now has to do the reintroduction.

Can’t we choose that which we would never choose? Select, what we don’t want? What could determine that? Besides freedom?

Can’t we choose, anyway, despite our slavery? Can’t we willingly do the will of others, even unto death? This is like “if someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles.”

We have to build and create our freedom - it doesn’t sit there in some sort of faculty of the soul waiting to be exercised.

We may be driven by physics.
We may be driven by desires, instinct, sub-conscious forces and the stars.
But if we reflect on as many of these slaveries as we can consciously identify, and then act, seemingly randomly, but willingly, anyway, we might start to create a free will.

The idea is that our choices are determined, but the thing that determines them can range from the particular to the universal. — bert1

How external to the free chooser do you see the universal or the particular? This is interesting. I need to think about thinking in between universals and particulars to find freedom.

Freedom, it seems to me, can’t make sense of that freedom is grounded within the system that the free thing participates in.

Like in a political system - we aren’t free because of the laws that protect our freedom. The laws can’t create freedom, only limit it. We are free first, regardless of any government or laws (if we are free at all). Government, laws and systems have nothing to do with my freedom. If I have freedom.

So it seems (to me), freedom has to be imposed, created, new, unsubstantiated, unfounded, from outside of, despite, any system at all.

So it is easy to see how freedom must be impossible. We are always within some system, so there is always something that drives and forces us to be where, what and even who, we are. It seems.

It think psychological freedom starts with the notion of consent.

We aren’t free, we are strapped into a rollercoaster and have no choice but to take the ride, and no choice but to go up when it goes up and down when it goes down. We can struggle to free ourselves from these chains, which is impossible it seems to me. We’d have to use chains as tools to break our chains. But freedom doesn’t come from our relationship to the chains. Instead we can accept the chains, consenting on the way up to the higher, and consenting again on the way down to the lower. We start to see where we are going before we get there. If we learn to do this, we can learn how to deny consent to the higher, even though we are going up, and that is when we might start to find a space for freedom. Freedom is first born in the space in between where we are (by necessity) and where are going (by necessity). But living in the space between where we are and where we must be going is living somewhere where we are not yet, and so akin to living in a space of possibility, more open to something new and unpredictable.

Freedom is just me, unattached, not driven by anything nor able to be touched by any force, existing in the space ahead of where I am before I get where I have to go.

The only possibility for freedom seems to be a freedom created from nothing. Seems impossible. But because phenomenologically my freedom seems so obvious, and because I desire to know, I am forced to continue to wonder how I seem to have freedom.

Interesting and thoughtfully expounded. This big picture view is where I like to live. And you seem to be sitting near me, here in the clouds, where we can move between the fog and the clear view of everything.

Finally, the positive or scientific stage represents the pinnacle — Wayfarer

Did you ever notice how people with new ideas usually think they’ve discovered the last, pinnacle stage of human development? Not only is that unlikely, but I often find that, like an adolescent who discovers angst, although their discovery is a first for them in their experience, there have been others seeing what they see before them. We all think we live on the cutting edge of what there is to know. But wasn’t Sextus Empiricus a physician, up to his elbows in blood and the empiracal? How different was his worldview, or Hume’s, than Compte’s?

the rejection of traditional metaphysics, ethics, and theology as "meaningless" in a cognitive sense, not false, but rather propositions that couldn't be tested. — Wayfarer

The “you aren’t asking the right question” response to a question.

a single, unified language (often envisioned as the language of physics) and that there were no fundamental methodological differences between… — Wayfarer

Truth is one. I like it, but positivists probably shouldn’t opine about such observations…

many philosophical problems were, in fact, "pseudo-problems" arising from the misuse or ambiguity of language — Wayfarer

It’s an important observation, to keep us honest. But there is no therapy to soothe a desire to know - only knowledge. We might not find there are any answers for us, but science will never address “why?” And there is no proving the negative statement: “there is no answer, so there was no question.” That’s like telling me I’m not actually hungry so I don’t need food, when I am hungry.

pushing for clarity, empirical rigor, — Wayfarer

That is the wisdom of positivism. It’s the right attitude.
It’s Aristotle’s attitude towards Plato. And Descartes attitude (clear and distinct, developer of mathematical certainty). And Locke’s attitude towards Descartes…. And in a different manner but similar spirit, Nietzsche’s attitude towards any who think they know something (science, but gay science, but science nonetheless…)

a proposition is cognitively meaningful only if it is either an analytic truth (true by definition, like "All bachelors are unmarried") or empirically verifiable (its truth or falsity can be, in principle, determined by observation). — Wayfarer

That all seems similar to Hume, which supports my comments above.

Verification Principle itself is neither an analytic truth nor empirically verifiable. — Wayfarer

Isn’t this criticism, which is a correct one I believe, a similar criticism as lodged against views such as “there is no truth” and “all is relative”? The critique is that these views are self-defeating. Which seems correct. A priori correct. Everything there is, for the knowing mind, can’t be reduced to the physical/empirical, while that mind is doing the reduction.

Seems obvious to me: ‘seeming to me’ will never be ‘seeing’ photons of light.

falsifiability as a criterion for demarcating science from non-science — Wayfarer

That is important. Few things I’d ask the positivist about this though: is it only physics that grounds all falsifiability? Or is there any science/knowledge that might need some other ground to be falsified? Couldn’t the person or scientist himself or herself be a ground, something knowable but not strictly physical? We simply are self-reflective things. Couldn’t something exist in the reflection that can’t be found in the thing reflected? I’m not talking “soul” or spirit, just, not physical, so we can save science. There is physics, and there is also the scientist to draw from, the physics of the experiments and the something else of the physicist who is doing physics. (Like mind-body, but that is just one classification of the substance(s).)

the underlying "positivist attitude" or spirit remains a powerful and pervasive current in modern culture, particularly in scientific research, policy-making, and everyday discourse. — Wayfarer

I don’t have a quarrel with the attitude. Particularly when doing science qua science. I just think metaphysics is science, and its laboratory is the mind itself.

We don’t get to address “why” or “who” by saying “why” can’t be weighed and measured as part of a brain, so “who cares anyway?”. There is much still there to be addressed.

deference to scientific authority, sometimes bordering on an almost religious faith in its infallibility — Wayfarer

Right. Positivists (and all of us) need to recall the total annihilation of knowledge that was Nietzsche, before we pick up the hammer and tuning fork again to do our experiments. Science that replaces God as absolute authority, can become just another face for the same God, the judge of all truth and creator of all there is to be called true.

Discussions about spirituality, values, or abstract philosophical concepts often struggle to gain traction in mainstream conversations unless they can somehow be "proven" or shown to have tangible effects. — Wayfarer

Yes. All of the best discussions - love, good, faith - reduced basically to one subject, namely, physics.

Researchers strive to minimize bias and present findings "as they are," reflecting a positivist aspiration for knowledge untainted by subjective influence. — Wayfarer

Totally un-self-aware, the aspirations of non-bias and openness to hypotheses, can be rigidly and narrowly constrained by the bias of scientism.

the drive for measurable progress through scientific application is evident. — Wayfarer

Positivism has dispensed with the vantage point that would allow one to measure “progress”. Are people any less likely to murder, steal, lie and center the universe around themselves? What will a faster internet or longer lasting lightbulb do to foster any progress on those fronts? Scientific progress may only move us sideways, allowing us to do what we always did and value what we always valued, in a new way. No true “progress” in thousands of years. Positivism doesn’t ask that question (a sociology that seeks only the chemical and behavioral and functional explanations, ignores the immaterial spirit that only arrives in the truly social, the communion of minds around meaning and shared understandings. Positivists just won’t go there, as they sit in the middle of it.).

As with many philosophical movements, there is much to digest and learn from them, and incorporate into one’s understanding. But also, much left wanting, yet to be clarified and discovered.

What if some things can only be expressed by looking around the words, and not at them? The positivist has to say, such things don’t exist.
Maybe. Maybe not. No reason to conclude anything.

In my view, I agree with the scientist/positivist to the extent we are talking about physics, and would never seek to refute or contradict positive, proven science. If there is reason, and I think there is, there is the reasonable, and science/logic/math is best to demonstrate that. I just see, with so many questions remaining, there is no necessity to judge which questions can be answered and which should not be asked - we don’t know what we don’t know.

I've known happier, but thank you. — J

Me as well. But I’ve known worse times. I’m sort of a cup by is half full rather than half empty kind of person, even if it seems like it’s a quarter full.

How about a return to civics for high school students — Athena

Hey Athena - yes, education goes hand in hand with political freedom.

You can't truly have one of them without truly having the other.

If the things your are taught are controlled and censored, you don't really get an education for sake of your own mind, but instead get indoctrination to control your mind, and so no freedom. If you are not educated, you can't easily identify and sift through your choices, to make a truly free choice.
And if you are not free in the first place, you can't seek to learn the things you alone can identify need to be learned.

Freedom demands we learn more. Learning more demands that we free ourselves and build a freer, more self-determining, mind.

Before I forget, for all the Americans, Happy Memorial Day!

Ok, back to whatever we were talking about. :grin:

To put my cards on the table I don't think that's right. I wouldn't put such a hard distinction between meaning and the thing talked about, though perhaps that's fuel for another thread? — Moliere

The OP asked “what is real? how do we know it?”
I’d say “what is real” asks about “the thing talked about” and “how do we know it” asks, at least in part, about “meaning”.

My gut says we have to be perceiving (how we know) at least simultaneously as we perceive things to question (what we know).

Perceiving is like a “how” and a “what” at the same time.

Couldn't learning to use the word “water” be learning what water is? — Banno

Like the thing/object takes shape as the word/name gets a meaning/use.

Interesting.

…these are both learning what water is and learning how "water" is used. — Banno

I see the need for simultaneous learning as grappling with the problem of identity.

We can watch a river flow into the ocean and carve out “water” from the land. And learn more about rivers and oceans and uses of “water” and see the ocean has salt, while the river does not. And then modify the meaning of “water” by pointing only to the river and excluding the salty ocean which you now name “saltwater”

So I think the iterative process of learning what water is, is aligned with the iterative process of what “water” means, but this is only because names like “water” are affixed to uses and meanings, but the things they designate are changing things, requiring revisions to the words and their meanings/uses.

So I think I see why you said that, but I think I disagree with why you said it.

The word “water” takes shape simultaneously as the thing water takes shape, but not because “learning what water is and how ‘water’ is used are the same”; it is because what water is is a moving target and trying to affix a name “water” to a moving target requires a simultaneous learning of water and “water”.

So the moving target of the world still comes first before we think/say “world” and then start to learn about what we said, and learn about saying it.

“if water is H2O, then water is necessarily H2O.”

This says something about necessity.

It says nothing about water. Or H2O.

It says every time though, “if x is y, then x is necessarily y.”

What is essential to water?
Being H2O?
Well if water is H2O, water is necessarily H2O.
That doesn’t do any new work for either question.

Logic (x, if, y, then necessarily”) structures language about the content and the world (water, H, 2 Os).

Yes, welcome to Wittgenstein's therapy and watch your philosophical problems dissolve away. — Richard B

Sounds like the opposite of getting high, or drunk.

The warm Wittgensteinian chastisement, correcting the question before it is asked, until I admit, “I guess I wasn’t really wondering about that.”

I think everybody should learn Wittgenstein. He was certainly a genius and explored new worlds making interesting discoveries.

But when I threw the ladder away, nothing really went missing, because I don’t think he meant all the things he said (if you can follow my usage.) (I’m being ironic, right?)

The capacity of speech acts to represent objects and states of affairs in the world is an extension of the more biologically fundamental capacities of the mind (or brain) to relate the organism to the world by way such mental states as belief and desire, and especially through action and perception. — Richard B

Ok, that is a mouthful of speech activity. Let me try to break it down.

“mind (or brain) to relate the organism to the world”
You have at least two physical pivot points here. Brain in an organism, and the world.

And the two relate “by way such mental states as belief and desire, and especially through action and perception.”

I don’t follow.

Since speech acts are a type of human action, and since the capacity of speech to represent objects and states of affairs is part of a more general capacity of the mind to relate the organism to the world, any complete account of speech and language requires an account of how the mind/brain relates the organism to reality." — Richard B

“a more general capacity of the mind to relate the organism to the world”

Isn’t whatever that means sort of the whole question? How can this be asserted as a premise to lead to some other conclusion, when what/how/whether “a more general capacity of the mind to relate the organism to the world” is the question?

“I take it to be an analytic truth about language that whatever can be meant can be said.” — Richard B

I can see ways to make this be true and ways to make this be false, meaning, it is an interesting statement, and I think worth pondering, but it feels treacherous.

Why should they not be content with accepting at face value the connections between past experience and our memory responses, that are verified by daily experience? — Richard B

I would say that J’s question does not reject or question that memory is what it is, it is just looking at what something like “connections between past experience and our memory responses“ really means, or how that “brute fact” phenomenological moment of recalling a memory might be better understood.

They feel that there must be a memory-process which explains this ability. But the memory-process, consisting of some complex of imagery and feeling, which they interpose the original perception and the memory response, does not make the ability any more intelligible than it was before. — Richard B

So is this saying there is no way to intelligently talk about “memory-process”?

The memory theorist makes a useless movement. He invents a memory process to fill what he thinks is an explanatory gap; but his own explanation creates its own explanatory gap." — Richard B

I say go for it anyway. Create that explanatory gap by creating our own explanation in the first place.

Why not question whether there needs to be some process of recognition or identification at all. We humans have natural responses… — Richard B

I just realized, when it comes to pondering the phenomena of memory, are you basically saying we should forget about it? :razz:

They dodged it. You’ve dodged it. — NOS4A2

But it’s simple. One cannot control another’s motor cortex with words. — NOS4A2

It’s simple? So how does one control one’s own motor cortex? That’s called the problem of free will versus determinism. Not simple.

You seem to be saying that words cannot induce actions in others.

How about “no, please wait in the lobby.” If I move at all it’s because I choose to move at all, but if I pick the lobby, it’s at least in part because of the other person’s words. Right?

I see a stop sign. On one level I control my own motor cortex and I can stop or keep driving.

But on another level, the only reason I am considering stopping is because of the “stop” speech posted on the sign.

Words are causing me to make a decision of what to do with my motor cortex - keep the motor rolling or stop the train.

So if I stop, did I stop because the sign said “stop”or because I chose to stop?

The answer is both. I was trying to drive but stopped instead because of my choice to follow what the sign said to do.

Or how about this, what if I jumped up in a theater and ran to the door and left. Everyone around me would be saying “what’s got in to him - what induced him to run?” They would all assume it was my ability to control my own motor cortex, but, they would still be wondering if there was anything more specific that led to the quick exit.

Then someone else yells “Run! Fire!!”

All the other people who were sitting with me might now say, “Ah, now I see why he ran, he must have smelled smoke or something.” “Now it makes some sense - he must not like being burned to death.” “Good inference,” says the other one, as they sit there…

They sit there because they are free to control their own motor cortexes as they see fit.

Then the person yells again “Run you fools, Fire is coming to kill you all - run for the exits! Fire! Fire!!!”

Next, after trampling someone to death, they are outside and can see there is no fire and never was.

So why did they run out of the building?
Why are they standing outside?
Is there any other reason besides their decision to jump up and run?

They all didn’t see the purpose to me running out. Then, they ran out. What caused the change of heart?

So you know, I ran out of the building because I forgot my cell phone and didn’t want anyone around here to think I was dodging any questions.

This is a perfectly good conversation, but I think you are missing something pretty big about language.

Words (immaterial meanings) really do matter (cause effects in others). I don’t know why we would want to think otherwise, especially in the context of questions about political freedom.

I mean if words can’t be the cause of action, what is the point of laws, political rallies, or anything public relating to political speech (or any speech really)?

——

I think you are talking about how we move - motor cortexes and self-determination.

A discussion about regulating speech and movement is more about why we move - what the words reasonably mean and what we can expect to induce in others’ minds as they make their decisions and self-determine the use of their motor skills.

Certainly, discussions of logic and the form of arguments and discourse can inform metaphysics. But I think the influence tends to go more in the other direction. Metaphysics informs logic (material and formal) and informs the development of formalisms. This can make pointing to formalisms circular if they are used to justify a metaphysical position. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So I appreciate this.

I just thought that, given how Banno’s post was so clear and succinct, I’d ask about the one point that I didn’t follow, namely how the use of “real” as in “real numbers” was somehow similar to “real” as in “are unicorns real”.

I’m not a math guy, and the use of “real” and “irrational” numbers always seemed like poetry about math to me. But I think mathematicians see these as distinctions that add philosophic/metaphysical weight to the different types of numbers.

The terms used to distinguish numbers from natural to real to irrational to imaginary, both fascinate me (as a philosopher who needs to use these same terms all of time), and perplex me (as they seem like technical mathematical distinctions, and don’t actually mean anything like “natural” or “real” or “imaginary” as a philosopher otherwise means them. Or do they? Which is my question here about “real” numbers.

Sounds like I would like reading him.

I once read an article I think he wrote where he said something like, all of modern academic philosophy is people arguing over who is restating the same ancient problems best. There is no actual content being sought, just method being squabbled over. Does that sound like him?

So we have a group of distinct, though not unrelated items: actual, real, existing, being...

Possible worlds give us a neat way to talk about what is actual. In the space of possible worlds there is one that is of particular interest, because it is the one in which we happen to find ourselves. But of course, actual is an indexical term, like "here" or "now". It picks out the world of the speaker in a given context. For someone in another possible world, actual refers to their world.

Propositional calculus gives us a neat way to deal with "exists" using quantification. " to be is to be the value of a bound variable" and so on. "Unicorns have horns" vs. "There exists an x such that x is a unicorn and x has a horn." There are not actual Unicorns, yet unicorns have horns. The question "Do unicorns exist?" drops by the wayside.

An account of what is "real" was given earlier in this thread. It's not real, it's counterfeit; it's not real, it's an illusion; and so on. Unicorns are not real, they are mythical.

Numbers exist, since we can quantify over them. U(x)(x+0=x).

Are they actual? well, there are numbers of things in each possible world, even if that number is zero. They do not seem to be within possible worlds so much as a way of talking about the stuff in possible worlds. Like the law of noncontradiction, they are part of the framework in which possible and actual are set out.

Are they real? Some of them. Others are imaginary. — Banno

Effortlessly brilliant.

This is why I wish you and I could get along.

The only part I think I don’t follow is “real” and “imaginary” as applied to numbers.

It seems the sense of “real” when talking about unicorns, counterfeits, and illusions is one thing, but imaginary numbers (or not-real numbers) is more of a technical term and not the same sense of “real” as with the others.

I guess I’m asking, do imaginary numbers serve a similar function when used in an equation as say a unicorn functions in a proposition? Such that we can call one number “real” and another number “imaginary” in the same way as we might call a horse “real” and a unicorn “imaginary”?

(And you would be helping me by answering, which, I appreciate could be asking too much. I hope not.)

“The external causal chain plays no explanatory role whatever in either Kripke’s or Donnellan’s account, as I will explain shortly. The only chain that matters is a transfer of Intentional content from one use of an expression to the next, in every case reference is secured in virtue of descriptivist Intentional content in the mind of the speaker who uses the expression.” — Richard B

Hey Richard,

Isn’t the above similar to just saying: “if we define our terms we can say whatever we want.”

“from one use” distinct from “to the next” is the defining of terms notion.
“Intentional content in the mind of the speaker” is the whatever we want notion.

To agree democratically to abolish democracy seems like a performative contradiction. When I elect a party different to the one you want I haven't taken away your freedom, and your party can always win the next election. — Janus

I was just pointing out that a free society could all agree to hold a vote to elect one final dictator as leader, and vote to abolish the constitution. That would be insane, and (most likely) never happen, but it is legally possible.

If absolutely everyone agreed to abolish their freedom then it might be okay — Janus

Yeah, that was my point. Although it would be nuts, there is nothing in the constitution of a free democratic society preventing it from electing a king.

When one party loses, that’s not taking away freedom. Whatever one side does can be undone after the next election, because the people remain free. That is precisely why free speech is so important. We need politicians and voters to be free to criticize and campaign against the sitting government.

Free speech, and all that it means, is a cornerstone to all other freedom.

All government limits freedom. Government is a necessary evil - necessary because people limit other people’s freedom too, so we need the rule of law and police and the elected leaders to keep ourselves a coherent society. But it’s an evil, because bureaucracy and government will always limit freedom stupidly, unfairly at times, and wastefully and expensively (taxing me takes away my power, but again, necessary evil so we can have any government).

I’ve been hearing most of my life of how the conservative parties are facist and seek to take away freedom. Reagan, Bush 2, and Trump have all meant the end of democracy. Seems a lot of people think that if their party loses, the other party is merely taking away all freedom. I say win the arguments and reverse things in the next election. Every time the other party wins, it’s not a military coup.

The fear spread by claiming the other party wants to permanently take away freedom is propaganda mostly to help defeat that party in an election. It’s unfortunate our leaders say that, and unfortunate so many people fall for it.

We all have to guard and protect our freedom and our constitution. But telling people what they can and can’t say, that is the opposite of protecting our freedom.

Someone says something ignorant, like a racist does, or a communist does, we should be free to tell them they are idiots. We should not make laws that tell all of us what to say. Plus, people are people - we need to hear what they say to know who we are dealing with. If we limit public speech, the badness just goes underground where it can boil like a volcano waiting for something to allow it to erupt. Let’s let all the assholes speak their minds and hold rallies. So we know who they are, what they think, and then work out publicly how best to deal with them.

Freedom of speech is absolutely bedrock, as well as fragile. That’s why I love it when I hear stuff I totally disagree with. I know that I’m hearing a brave person speaking their mind at least, and keeping free speech alive and loud.

thinking faith is evidence based knowledge is what is bad — Janus

So thinking faith equals knowledge is bad.

We are still talking about badness. But I agree.

What I hear there is, ‘bad religion and bad science are bad.’ You follow me? Faith that is not faith but a replacement for science is bad religion; science that uses faith as evidence is bad science.

thinking faith is evidence based knowledge is what is bad — Janus

I can also see that what you are saying leaves room for thinking faith that is just faith is what is good, or at least, not bad.

But I think we still haven’t gotten away from a discussion about faith that involves badness.

I do appreciate this:

people do not trust their leader then there will also be the danger that order will break down into chaos, or 'every man for himself"―and that would obviously not be a good strategy for survival — Janus

Are you saying there is some kind of neutral/more positive sense of faith qua faith?

Are you saying, faith in leaders, in certain people, happens? And that such faith, could be a good strategy?

Because I agree with that too.

I still think with all that’s been said, most of which has involved stories of irrational people’s actions, none of us have adequately said “what is faith.”

faith is not confined to religion. It is to be found in ideologues of all persuasions. — Janus

Sounds like religion is bad. Like other ideological persuasions are bad.

Still sounds like a contradiction with “faith is neither good nor bad.”

not about faith as such, but about faith not being acknowledged as such. — Janus

Still sounds like acknowledging faith as such would be acknowledging a bad thing.

How about faith in your own ability to lead a team of soldiers? Any faith needed to do something new and seemingly impossible with people depending on you?

Any faith needed to depend on someone else?

“Men, we might die, I forget why we are here, it might not matter to anyone what we do, but follow me!!”

Any faith in that guy?

Or: “Men, we might die, you are here to stop the enemy from entering your home town with your wives and children, everything you do matters, and I will be with you until the job is done, now follow me!!

How about that guy?

Any time you take someone’s word you are exercising faith. Faith in that person.

Have you ever depended on someone? Put yourself at great risk without any ability predict the outcome except for one thing, you believe in that one specific guy who gave you his word.

What is faith?

What occurs, when an alleged memory comes to mind, that allows me to identify it as an alleged memory? — J

Cool question.

So a guy walks in the room. You recognize his face and recall you saw him in the cafe this morning. You heard his name, because someone else yelled it when his order was ready, but you cannot recall his name. You recall it was a strange name you never heard before, but also kind of familiar like “Johnup” or “Jimzy” or something.

So in your mind, the guy’s face is a memory but the sound of his name is being imagined.

What is the difference between them? And how are they kept distinct?

I agree there is a sort of third person feature to a memory that is attributed to it, as you recall a lived experience, but one that was lived. Like me now, with third-person me seeing the guy in the cafe earlier. So you are sort of treating yourself in the third person, placing yourself in a past setting that is in mind through recall.

And recalling the guy’s face from earlier, you remember for some reason he had a blue tee shirt on, but now he has a white button down on.

So I think another feature of a memory is that, as you seek to recall more and more details, the recall dictates the content of the mental image you are recalling. When you recall something, you are consciously trying NOT to imagine, but trying to find what was already the case. You purposely want to be stuck with what you recall and can’t change, just like when you sense something in the present, you have no desire to change the thing either. We inspect memories like we inspect with our senses. The guy walks in the room and you can see that his face looked like that in the cafe this morning (you recall his face this morning), and his shirt was a blue tee shirt earlier. Avoiding evil geniuses, and Kant’s things in themselves, these facts are not yours to alter. The form of the memory is treated as if third-party, sourcing to the mind-independent world once lived in the past and not subject to your control now as it wasn’t in your control then.

Maybe I can sum this up by saying there is nothing creative about a memory.

Whereas when we imagine, we manipulate mental images much like memories, but not by recalling but by some creative function.

Like the names I am trying to recall - I could be completely making them up. Maybe his name is Scott and I am confused with some other now blurred memory of a strange name.

All of the above, which may not be helpful, makes me think of what certain psychosis might involve. If an image appears in the mind (like a memory or an imagination does), but the function that distinguishes this between something creative versus something recalled, that person would sound psychotic, talking about imaginary things as if recalling the past, or talking about things from the past as if they never happened and are just being made up. Or the first-person / third-person feature, if distorted, could seem psychotic. An image appears in mind that is actually a memory, but you think it is happening now causing hallucinations almost, or you think what is happening now is really a dream-like imagination.

I think I basically gave you some puzzle pieces here.

I have a theory that we think and talk of memory wrongly, or mostly metaphorically. Everything is actually always and only in the present. Most of our language about time and the past and memory and recall is metaphor.

We don’t search the past. The past is gone. We are presently recalling. Once something is recalled, we haven’t resurrected it from the past; we have focused our attention on some impression sitting in mind right now all along.
The better metaphor for memory is this: turning our attention to what happened before, is like turning our head to look some other direction, or like closing one’s eyes to focus on the sounds in the room. Recall, is like a sense, and only functions in the present on things that are present to it, like senses.
Me when I was 4 years old living in another town is right here, right now, in mind once recalled (in the third person). There is me now, recalling third person me now in another town. This me recalled is here just like the chair in my office could be here if I walked to my office and looked at it. A memory, like an object of sense, is a matter of attention, brought before us by recalling, like seeing.

The point being love.
— Fire Ologist

What do you think that implies? — praxis

Nothing relevant to this discussion. You might infer I have kids and I love them. But that is not why I said it. I don’t think I could be any clearer about why I said it. There is nothing you need to infer.

I’d rather not be talking about the relevance of Abraham attempting murder or fathers loving their kids as the main discussion on the legitimate question “what is faith”.

clearly religion is the quintessential exemplar and that makes it an excellent subject to focus on. — praxis

Quintessential explar of what? Of faith?

Examples are great but not enough to answer “what is X”.

And when all the quintessential examples of faith as religion are fathers attempting murder of their bound children, and heinous crimes and jihad, that seems to reflect poorly on faith, which seems to me is more fundamentally neither good nor bad. So the religious examples are getting in the way.

Since there is an apparent conflict between the religious and the non-religious here, maybe religion is actually a bad example for us to figure out “what is faith” together.

Maybe we get to that later. Let’s assume people who act on faith sometimes kill others and other times sacrifice themselves to save others. Can we see “what is faith” and “what is an act of faith” without only focusing on people hurting people?

How about faith in the ability of the truth to sometimes be made plain here on TPF. Is that an example of faith, and if not, why not? What is faith then?

I don't think this thread has ever moved beyond my observation:

If we are going to do real philosophical work then we have to have real definitions. What almost always happens in these discussions is that the atheist builds their petitio principii right into their definition of faith. This is how the atheist ends up defining faith:

Faithath: "Irrational assent"
— Leontiskos — Leontiskos

Same.

I imagine that a contemporary Western religionists tends to envision a nuclear family that enforces patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other power dynamics. — praxis

The point I am trying to make is, there is probably a more philosophic conversation about “what is faith” to be had than “what is religious faith” has turned out to be here on the forum.

When I think of faith, I don’t necessarily think of God or religion.

But most here seemed to want to talk about God and religious believers.

So what I am saying above is, when I think of religious faith, I think of moms and dads loving their kids. The point being love.

Many on this thread, when they think of religious faith seem to think only of Abraham attempting murder, terroists bombing schools, etc.

(And that has nothing to do with how atheists must love their kids, which of course they do, because kids are just lovable).

So so much of this thread has obfuscated a philosophic treatment of faith, without need or basis, mixing it with what I see as bad theology, and completely unnecessarily.

I am happy to apologize for offending anyone who thought I was speaking to how they love their families.

But praxis, “a nuclear family that enforces patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other power dynamics” is, to me, completely off the topic of what is faith.

I appreciate your work here. I used to moderate a forum once. And I manage a team of people. People are a nightmare.

So you know, I don’t feel any worse treated than usual, and I’d still love to hear Banno’s response. I thought we were on to something interesting.

But I’ll defer to you.

Thanks

I wasn't aware that this was a potential bone of contention. — Banno

What an obtuse head you have.

“Faith is neither good nor bad.” - Banno
“For instance [insert heinous acts and atrocities]” - Banno
“Any examples of non-bad acts of faith, because you just said faith is neither good nor bad was so obvious? Anything good?” - FireOlogist
“[Insert some bullshit to avoid the simple question, or crickets].” - Banno

I’m happy for you that you have such certainty in your life about religion. It’s a big issue and you seem to have it all solid. Faith = shitstorm.

But then “neither good nor bad…”. Are you saying murdering martyr terrorists are neither good nor bad, because you are leaving me no other options.

Religious people, generally, are softies, to the core. Lots of moms and dads, loving their kids. Not many thoughts like you are all having.
— Fire Ologist
Pretty fucking rude. So atheists are none of them "moms and dads, loving their kids"? Fuck off. — Banno

So, what I said was when I think of faith, I think of moms and dad living their kids.

When Banno and others around here think of faith, they think of murder and heinous acts.

I didn’t say what atheists do or think about their kids.

You take me in bad faith.

Over and over.

To avoid dealing with my refutation of your adolescent and unoriginal caricatures of false religion.

Religious people, generally, are softies, to the core. Lots of moms and dads, loving their kids. Not many thoughts like you are all having.
— Fire Ologist
Pretty fucking rude. So atheists are none of them "moms and dads, loving their kids"? Fuck off. — Banno

What fallacy is the above?

What did I say about atheists? Nothing. How did you assume anything I was saying about atheists?