If God exists and He is the creator of this world, then — Walter

If you could prove your premise "If~", then it would help clarifying your conclusion "then"~.
Does God exist? Is he the creator of the world? Please prove them.

Are you talking about things like whether it rises to the level of conscious awareness, and whether it includes things reflection, etc.? — Pantagruel

Not sure, but it was my question to you from your earlier post.

Ideas are both rooted in and grow from the soil of experience, as does language. The idea of equality is both the experiences of inequality that suggest it to the moral mind, and the expressions of tolerance, respect, etc., which it engenders. — Pantagruel

Remember your earlier post?

I would think it follows from this that God is His act to actualize A and hence, A is necessary. That would mean that God does everyting out of necessity. — Walter

But what did God actually do? Do you have any evidence that God had done something?

So you divide the world into apparent and ultimate reality. So, you are not denying the biological sensibility independent world as non-existence. Yes, that sounds reasonable.

Ideas are both rooted in and grow from the soil of experience, as does language. The idea of equality is both the experiences of inequality that suggest it to the moral mind, and the expressions of tolerance, respect, etc., which it engenders. — Pantagruel

Experience can be a vague concept too. What is your definition of experience? Can you experience experience?

I would point out there is a grey area where experiences become ideas. Do you see experience as fitting one of the categories? — Punshhh

I think experience can be abstracted as ideas, but experience itself is not ideas. Ideas are the mental entities which has been abstracted in thoughts.

What is it about the cat which enables this behaviour/experience, to an highly sensitive degree?
Is the cat thinking and if so, is it all thought, or is there a cut of point? — Punshhh

Cats appear to think, but it is difficult to grasp exactly what or how they think about due to their lack of linguistic capabilities. We can only infer their thinkings via their actions, and it usually appear to be intelligent. But it appears to be also animal instinct and evolutionary nature too.
I am not 100% sure if we could say what cats think could be classed as same class or category of human thoughts, therefore cats have ideas. If they do, then it is intelligent in animal world, but very limited compared to what human minds do.

You don't defeat a charge of circularity by going in a circle again. — Pneumenon

Which part was exactly going in a circle?

There is but energy in the forms of frequencies and vibrations not all of which we experience. Objects are energy forms in the way of manifested objects because that is the way we experience given energies. Our given apparent reality is a relational fact, relative only to the biology perceiving it, in other words, energy affecting biology, biology being effected, and projecting apparent reality, a biological readout, not unlike that of a calculator. — boagie

Does this mean that what exists beyond our biological sensibilities doesn't count as the part of the world? Should only the objects which are possible to be experienced by the biological senses be the world and part of the world? Is that your point? If it is so, then we might have to drop all the scientific knowledge as non-reality which belongs to not this world, but in some possible world. That would be a strange world.

"Okay but, what if you experienced nothing, but you were so traumatized by it that your brain blocked it out?" you may say.

In this case, there is no world, but you are unaware of that. Therefore, as far as you are aware, you have never experienced the world not existing, and your reason for believing in the world is justified. — Beverley

But a sceptic might say, how can I be 100% certain that my beliefs, memories and awareness are accurate? There are possibilities that the beliefs, memories and awareness could be wrong.

The mitigated sceptic would say that he is not denying the existence of the world, but he is not sure if the awareness, memories and beliefs of your perceptions could be somewhat different or wrong from what you took to be the case. He would then ask to prove that your belief, memories and awareness are 100% free from the possible illusions and errors.

And there is another issue, which the sceptic might demand you to clarify, and that is the definition of the world that you claim to believe in to exist i.e. does the world that you believe in to exist, include the whole universe with all the celestial objects such as the stars, planets, the blackholes, the galaxies, comets and also the all the micro biotic entities such as molecules of all the plants, animals, fishes in the sea etc plus all the people in the world, and the countries on the earth as well your town that you live in ... etc, or is it something totally different from all these?

Hence my characterization of an idea as part of an overarching performative context, versus some kind of abstract noumenal entity. — Pantagruel

If I pinched you, and you screamed "ouch", then your utterance of "ouch" is not the idea of "ouch". It is a motor-system response, which is the biological nature.

However, if you thought about the word "ouch", and trying to find what would be the equivalent meaning of the word in Chinese, then it would be an idea of "ouch".

are you saying we are also doing away with the editors, publishers, scholars, and reviews of the references and citations? Because those were what it took to create those books. — L'éléphant

In case of the online information such as from WiKi or ChatGPT, the editors, publishers, scholars ..etc source information can be unknown or vague. And also the quality and accuracy of the information could be a bit suspicious too.

I prefer relying on the information from the traditional printed books and articles for the clearer information of the source, editors, writers and publishers.

So, I don't understand the question. And are you also including in your question the copyrights? Is authorship also obsolete? — L'éléphant

I would think the copyrights issue will always be with us. If you wrote something, and published it, then you wouldn't want someone quoting them without acknowledging your authorship or asking for your permission to quote or use them for their uses, would you?

Yes, I can understand philosophy and history retaining their value over years. Science and math change much more. — jgill

Yes, It was my best buy from eBay last year costing around $50 including the delivery of the 8 volume TEP set.

Subjective ideas - Ideas when one thinks, imagines, recalls ...etc. The content of the subjective mental state when one thinks about something. Ideas are the elements in the propositions and judgements, but not the propositions or judgements themselves. So when one claims "The sun is bright today.", the sun, bright, today are separate ideas in one's mind, which composed the proposition.

Objective ideas - The ideas and information which exist in the public, be it known or unknown such as the number of people who have ever lived since the start of human civilisation. The number of grapes produced in Europe for the last 100 years. The total number of stars and all the celestial objects in the universe. These information / ideas do exist in the universe, but humans don't know them. They are the objective ideas.

Platonic ideas - In Plato, ideas were used to describe an object in visual perspective. Ideas are also all the universals in the world of ideas. The ideas are the real existence lasting forever, not the material objects which will soon perish.

In British empiricists like Locke, Berkeley and Hume, ideas were equivalent to perception itself. So perceiving an idea of apple meant, having an idea of apple. And also having an idea of the apple meant to be able to describe the apple linguistically.

There are different types of ideas.

1. Subjective
2. Objective
3. Platonic

We have wandered far astray the original point and this statement of yours isn't a rebuttal. If anything, it makes my point but tacks on an critical ad hominem for some reason. I'd suggest dropping it. — Pantagruel

I recall that you started the deviation by putting down "the idea idea", then claiming the word of ouch reflects the idea of ouch, which fell off the cliff of the topic. :chin: :wink:

Sounds illogical? The essence of language is the yoking together of sign and idea. The onomatopoeiac function highlights this connection where the word becomes a symbolic projection or extension of the sound. Chirp. If the word "chirp" could be uttered by a bird, it would be exactly what it is. And, presumably, it would also represent the mental state that evoked it. By your reasoning, nothing represents an idea.

Ouch. — Pantagruel

You are in deep confusion on the utterance of Ouch as a motor reaction of the verbal expression as a representation of the mental state. Your utterance of Ouch was from the motor reaction which was a pre-mental state unless it was a premeditated act.

That is not what Synthetic(Olcott) means. — PL Olcott

Then what is the formal definition of "Synthetic" in expressions? Are expressions correct here? Should they not be propositions or judgements?

But I didn't say it was the idea, I said it accurately reflected it, in the same way that (saying) the word "ouch" accurately reflects the idea of "ouch" because it is a manifestation the content of the idea (ouch). — Pantagruel

The word "ouch" reflects the idea of "ouch" sounds illogical. Words are uttered by the speaker, and it has no ability to perform reflection or consideration. They are passive entity. How does a word reflect an idea?

But what I was trying to say (before I ended up writing rather a lot about light waves!) was that if we can see images of objects, there MUST be objects/physical things around us, that are either emitting their own light, or reflecting light emitted from other objects. This would seem to prove that there are objects around us.

Hopefully this all makes sense, and I haven't over complicated things :/ — Beverley

Great post.  Thank you for your substantial post on the light and wave reflection mechanism for visual perception.  It is a good argument with no complication at all.

Yes, things exist, and we know they exist by perceptions.  As soon as we open our eyes in the mornings, the world appears to us in our sights.  

Some sceptics would demand to prove the world exists, because it might not.  They were the extreme sceptics who believed that things don't exist. the world doesn't exist, and if it did, we cannot know or prove that they exist.  Of course, their claim is wrong.  Things and the world exist.

But the academic sceptics would say that the world exists, but what are the grounds for our belief in  their existence?  or How do we justify our belief in existence?  So it is not total denial of the existence or knowledge, but attempting to find out the nature of our belief in the existence.

Do we believe in the existence of the world and objects by just visual perception alone?  Or do we need more than what we see to believe in the continued existence of the world and objects in the world?

Wouldn't that be syntactically correct? The word ouch accurately reflects the meaning of the idea ouch. The word idea...etc. — Pantagruel

Nope. Ideas can mean mental images too. And even when an idea is a word, they are different. Words would be for speaking or writing. Ideas are the contents in your thoughts. Word can mean ideas, but words are not ideas themselves.

Synthetic expressions are expressions of language that also require sense data from the sense organs. Example: "I see a cat in my living room right now". — PL Olcott

Synthetic expressions are to add new knowledge or information to the expressions, but the example expression doesn't seem to add any new information or knowledge. Because it seems just reporting your visual sense perception.

"Your cat played with a mouse in the garden this afternoon". That would be more like giving you new knowledge that cats can play with mouse (not catching attacking mouse).

Heinlein's "fair witness" merely refrains for forming conclusions based on sense data when
there is a pause in the continuity of the sense data. — PL Olcott

Heinlein's "fair witness"?? Is it a Philosophical term or idea of something? I did some google search on it, but it came up with some pop arty gibberish.

Unless and until finite strings are assigned meaning they remain meaningless gibberish. — PL Olcott

Why did you write down a meaningless gibberish?

The word idea accurately reflects the meaning of the idea idea. — Pantagruel

Why did you write the "idea" twice? "the idea idea"? Why did you do that?

I was having the idea of the tree which was cut down this summer. The tree no longer exists in the world. This afternoon I was able to have "the idea" of the tree as an image, when it was standing in the field. I cannot call the image of the tree nothing but an idea of the tree.

So, at night I open the book, and start reading it. Due to the darkness I must switch on the light before reading it. With no light on, there is no vision. It is total darkness. I cannot even see the book. It is just total darkness. When the light is on, the book is visible. I can read it. In this case, was I seeing and reading the book, or was I seeing and reading the reflected light from the book?

It is. And rational-idealism is an idea that can be virtuously circular. Materialism isn't. Metaphysical materialism is "autologically unsound." — Pantagruel

Yeah, I see what you mean. It would be like saying Experiencial Empiricism.
But here we are talking about just "Idea". It is convenient to name all the building blocks in the minds as "Ideas". If not, what else would be a proper name for it?

A tree I have cut down this summer, has gone from the sight. But I still can remember how it looked in my mind. So I can say I have the idea of the tree, which I cut down. Without the concept of Idea, I wouldn't know what I would call that mental image of the tree which has gone forever from the world.

They can't be continually updated, like Wikipedia. They cost $. — jgill

I own an Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (MacMillan) published in 1960s, and it is still very useful, readable and feel up-to-date. I don't see a need for update of them. But suppose, for the other subjects, it could be different situation with updating.

Blind people know that cats exist. — PL Olcott

Do they know how cats look like?

That cats exist is an axiom in the verbal model of the actual world. — PL Olcott

"That cats exist." is a statement, which needs verification to be true. It is only true if and only if the cats exist in the actual world of some place (in your living room, or your kitchen) at certain time duration T1 - Tn.

If you meant "Cats exist." in general terms, then it would be a tautology. The word "Cats" contain the concept "exist* as a property already.

If we use Robert Heinlein's "fair witness" standard of truth you can not be sure that a cat is in the living room the moment after you have no sense data from the sense organs confirming this. — PL Olcott

Does he disregard justified "belief" as a ground for truth?

but a die-hard materialist would consider this circular reasoning. — Pneumenon

The circular reasoning is also an idea.

this reminds me of Descartes's. "I think, therefore, I am." He uses something non-physical, such as thoughts, to prove something physical, himself. Therefore, even if he is mistaken in what he thinks he is (he may not realize that he is a brain in a vat), he cannot be mistaken in thinking that he exists, in whatever form. — Beverley

Descartes' certainty of knowledge comes from his doubting. Without doubting, no knowledge. Whenever there is a reason to doubt, don't hesitate to doubt before coming to conclusions.
It must had been a philosophical methodology for acquiring truths for him.

so we can use a non physical thing, light, to prove a physical thing, the object. — Beverley

I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore the world exists. Yes, it seems to work.

For us to see anything, light must reflect off a physical object. Even if you are in the desert and seeing a mirage, what you see is still the result of light waves being reflected off physical things, if only air particles. I think this makes sense…. — Beverley

What we are seeing is the reflected light, not the object itself, and it does give possibility of illusion with the visual perceptions. Therefore scepticism comes handy even in the practical life let alone philosophy. Yes, it does make sense.

Having never seen a actual cat one can still say that cats are animals. — PL Olcott

Can one know what cat is without ever having seen an actual cat?

The only way that you can verify that a specific event is occurring at a specific location
right now generally requires that you are seeing this event occur. — PL Olcott

Having seen the cat in the living room, I could come out of the living room, shut the door, and I can still say those statements from my memory without seeing the cat.
"A cat is in my living room right now." or "There is a cat in my living room right now."

Synthetic expressions are expressions of language that also require sense data from the sense organs. Example: "I see a cat in my living room right now". — PL Olcott

Could it be the same meaning as
"There is a cat in my living room right now." or
"A cat is in my living room right now." or
"A cat exists in my living room right now."?
Above expressions don't require sense data?

But it seems to me that the underlying motive here, whether it enters into specific discussions or not, is a discomfort with ideas because they're immaterial. And we wind up trying to pull an immaterial rabbit out of a material hat, over and over again. It mirrors the issues with the intentionality of the mental. — Pneumenon

Isn't all thoughts ideas? Even the idea of "Getting rid of ideas"?

The print book encyclopaedia are dead ducks. — jgill

Why do you believe so?

I know that the elite heads of universities are allowed to plagiarise, but I don't think us common people are given the same leeway. — RussellA

Regardless whoever they are, quoting the published original works, books, commentaries or articles, without clearly marking or adding the information of the source could be regarded as an act of plagiarism.

I agree with Corvus that you should be giving attaching paragraph numbers to your quotes. As I am using a different translation to yours, sometimes it can take me 15 minutes to find the source of your quote. — RussellA

:fire: :100: :up:

all is energy, frequencies, and vibrations, why do we assume that objects unlike color and sound really exist? — boagie

Good question. They are invisible and inaudible, because they exist beyond our bodily sensibility. However, they can be felt or measured and read by the means of the instruments.

by surmising you have the capacity to research what you don’t know, or do know but find disagreeable. And if we stick with Kantian metaphysics in its practical sense, me doing your work for you….or any of the members of the audience, however scant their number….is disrespecting myself. — Mww

It is not for me or for my understanding. I did read your posts, and also have referred to various academic publications on the topic, and already have accepted their point of view on the topic.

It was about the other people who might be reading your posts. There were a few times when I was not sure where the quotes were from, or whether you were saying something about some other things or whether you were mixing the quotes with your own writings.

I am now used to it, but the other readers might be unsure on what you are quoting and writing about with no indication where the quotes came from, and what they are about. It was just a suggestion. :)