That is Descartes' point. He knows he is because he thought. — Lionino

How did he know he thinks?

What are you certain of?
— Truth Seeker

That I know nothing. — Lionino

You know that you know nothing. Therefore you know something.

It is OUR existence. Freedom, that is. — Astrophel

Isn't OUR existence devoid of freedom? Everyone on earth came with no choice of theirs. According to Heidegger, we are all thrown into the world by chance. Having biological bodies mean you are not free either. You must eat, drink, sleep, breathe ... in order to keep the life get going, while getting older. Then the body you have been carrying all your life suddenly will give up on you one day for certain, whether you wanted or not. That is no freedom is it?

Freedom is a relative concept. One is free only in certain conditions, movements and actions and thoughts. It is a limited concept too. But existence is definitely not free.

It does not mean that at all. I can imagine an alien in my room but it is not real. The computer I am typing this message on is real. — Truth Seeker

How do you prove an alien in your room in your imagination is not real? How do you prove the message you have been typing was not a part of your life dream? Is life real? Could it be a long dream in a dream in another dream ...?

As I said, in all three possibilities, I am real. My sentience is known to me. My sentience is real to me. My sentience is not in question. — Truth Seeker

OK.  It is good that you accept that at least your sentience is real.  But looking at your 3 possibilities on the existence of yourself.  

1.  If you are a soul without a body, then how did you even type the above posts?  I am pretty certain (I could be wrong, because anything is possible in this world) that you must have a body with 2 hands and 2 feet, and 1 head with 2 eyes and all the rest of it.  For you to have typed up the posts and sent them out to the forum, you must have a body for you to sit down on your chair, or stand with your 2 feet with either a phone, pad or computer to read and type the message.  I cannot imagine anyone can carry out even the simplest task with a soul alone without a body.   Therefore it proves you have a body.

2. You are a soul in a body?  This is possible, if and only if you believed you have a soul residing in your body.  Some people don't believe souls exist, and some do.  You can ask yourself, if you believe in the existence of the soul.  Only you can answer that question for yourself.  If you do, then yes your soul might be living in your body.  If you don't believe it, then it doesn't exist. Soul is a matter of your belief and faith.

3. You are a body without a soul?  This is also a possibility.  A living body doesn't have to have a soul in it, if souls never exist in the first place.  It would be wrong to believe that you are a body with a soul in it. You are likely just to have consciousness and mind, but not soul.

The existence of the soul is not a problem of epistemology or philosophy of mind.  It is rather a topic in philosophy of religion.   There is no way anyone can prove the existence of the soul in scientific, physical, biological or material ways.  It is a matter of faith and belief.  Therefore it depends on your belief on its existence or nonexistence.

For the problem of the universe, you listed 5 possibilities. But I think it can be reduced to 2 possibilities.

1. The universe is real.
2. The universe is not real. (It is simulation, hallucination, dream or illusion.)

From my reasoning, the universe is real from all the evidences based on the coherence of its operations rooted in the cause and effect principles.    The sun is rising every morning without fail, and nights come after days, spring comes after winters, I hear the news of people getting born and people dying every day, I can see that everyone on the earth is getting older everyday, and heading for their own deaths one day. 

 But there are also mysteries and unknowable antinomies in the universe viz. How did the universe start? Does God exist?  Who was the first person on the earth?  Is there life on another planet or star?  Is there after life? What is the next lottery jackpot number?

The fact that there are some mysteries and unknowable things in the universe doesn't mean that the universe is not real. It just means that we don't have enough information or evidence for our questions due to the limitation of our reasonings or lack of data.

Would Sartre contend that freedom is a product of our biology ontologically speaking? It would seem that he would not because he believed in radical freedom. I do not know what is your opinion? — Justin5679

Isn't ontological freedom a misnomer? Ontology doesn't have anything to do with freedom. Ontology deals with the issues on existence i.e. what is to be existent or non-existent? viz. Does God exist? Does soul exist? Can nonexistent object exist? ... etc etc.

Freedom is a property of actions, motions and thoughts.
X is free to move, do, go, carry out, decide ...etc.
Y is free from contamination, illness, breaking, mistake, death ...etc.

Isn't ontological freedom an inappropriate combination of the words? Maybe Sartre had some argument for making up the combinatory concept. If he had, could you further elaborate on it?

Discussion on stoicism and their thoughts on death? — pursuitofknowlege

Could you please summarise the key points of Stoicism's concept of death and their thoughts on it? Thanks.

Whatever exists is whatever is not imaginary. I experience my sentience. This is how I know it exists. — Truth Seeker

Again this is a solipsistic statement, which is not saying much meaningful. Does it mean that if you imagined something, then it cannot exist? If you stopped imagine something, it must exist? Things exist regardless of your imagination.

That has not changed. What is 100% certainly real to me is the experience of me being conscious. I could be a solipsistic soul without a body. I could be a soul in a body. I could be a body without a soul. In all three possibilities, I am real. By "I", I mean my sentience - the actual experience of what it is like to be me - nanosecond by nanosecond. Not all truths can be proven but that does not make them any less true. For example, I can’t prove to you that I am conscious but that does not mean that I am not conscious. You may think that I am a philosophical zombie but I assure you that I am conscious even though I can't prove it to you. Just as you are conscious even though you can't prove it to me. — Truth Seeker

Your post seem to be filled with contradictions. You state that your certainty is 100% due to your experience of you being conscious. But then you say that you could a solipsistic soul without a body, or you could be a body without a soul. You don't even know what you are, but how could you claim that you are 100% certain of your consciousness? If one is true then the other is false. Which one is truth for you? They cannot be both truth.

Everyone knows that you cannot prove the content of your consciousness directly to other minds. But we can all infer the other mind and the contents of the other minds' consciousness by the linguistic and behavioural expressions and actions they take.

I still have no way of knowing whether I am a solipsistic soul without a body or a soul in a body or a body without a soul. — Truth Seeker

What has happened to your confidence of 100% certainty of your sentience?

Real is whatever exists. For example, my sentience is real because it exists. — Truth Seeker

What do you mean by whatever exists? How do you know your sentience exists?

What are you certain of? — Truth Seeker

I am certain of the fact that I typed this sentence.

I am not completely certain about whether I am a solipsistic soul without a body or a soul in a body or a body without a soul. — Truth Seeker

Confidence is one's feelings and emotions on something. If your ground for certainty is based on your own feeling and emotion of confidence on your knowledge, then all your knowledge seem prone to be fallible.

Truth is whatever is real. From my point of view, my sentience is real. — Truth Seeker

What is real?

Certainty is the confidence I have about my knowledge about what is real. — Truth Seeker

What is your confidence on your knowledge? For instance, does God exist? How did the universe begin? Are you confident on all the answers on these questions?
If your confidence was just your feeling, then can you be confident on the certainty?

Could you define what "truth" and "certainty" is? That would help clarifying what you have been asking in the OP.

I notice that this is an old OP, so maybe you might have already done so. But just to refresh memories, defining the key concepts and confirming would make sense.

I am not, but I know many Greeks. I think they would stand by that there is nothing different between Greek's and English's 'true', etymology nonwithstanding. — Lionino

If truth is something that is unconcealed, that sounds like an implication for the existence of truth in the empirical world. Truths are hidden in the world, and you have to look for the truths, and disclose them from the hidden into your mind.

That view certainly contrasts the belief that truth is a product of perceptions and reasoning in human mind.

These seem like concepts of truth to me. Maybe they hadn't developed certain vocabularies about truth that modern philosophy has, but... if they agree with one statement about the world and disagree with another one, does that not imply at least a most basic concept of truth? — flannel jesus

The question had been raised due to the comment in Szaif's article. But I also believe that ancient Greek had concept of Truth. It was just Szaif's point that the ancient Greek's concept of truth was much different from modern concept of truth mainly due to the peculiarity of the Etymological origin of truth. I was wondering if that comment could be further elaborated and proved with some evidence by a native Greek folk.

I suggest you ask a Greek linguist instead of me. — Lionino

I thought you could be a Greek, but don't appear so.

Whatever. OK I will not try any more clarification with you. I hope you will understand the points, and learn about it.

Soul is supposed to be a separate entity from body, and acclaim to survive after death of body, I understand. But mind has no physical entity. It just operates in the form of mental activities demonstrating reasoning, imagining, believing, using languages etc.

Mind dies when the body dies. It doesn't survive bodily death at all. Hence the two are different. They cannot be the same. Existence of soul is mostly believed by the religious people, which I am not. But then belief and faith issues are subject to change in during the course of one's life.

Ah, the good ol' head in the sand approach. The existence of Christians is groundless rumour or opinion.


There are people on this forum who don't believe mind comes exclusively from the brain. Take your head out of the sand and look around. — flannel jesus

The religious folks believe in the existence of souls, not the minds with intelligence reasoning and intuitions. You are conflating the two. They are totally different things in nature.

so do you agree or disagree with that text from me that you quoted?

If you disagree, then what standard definition of "everyone" makes true the statement "Everyone knows consciousness emerges from the brain"? — flannel jesus

I was just pointing out and making clear that your insistence that "Everyone knows mind emerges from brain is wrong." I believe that your claim was wrong.

For the other folks you claim to exist who don't believe that mind emerges from brain, I am not sure. I have not met any of them in my whole life. So I am taking that claim as a groundless rumour or opinion.

"Everyone knows consciousness emerges from the brain" is an untrue statement for any standard or colloquial use of 'everyone'. — flannel jesus

When someone says "Everyone turned up this morning." You can't say he was wrong because Elvis Presley, Immanuel Kant, Joe Biden, Vladmir Putin and Xie Jinping also didn't turn up.

From Everyone knows P, you can't induce some particular group of people or individual also knows P.

And I guess that's why you want to call it an "indirect experience", while I'm kind of inclined to just not use the word "experience" for it - I mean, I would if we were speaking colloquially of course, conversationally, but in this conversation I feel pulled to not use the word 'experience' for things other than those raw things we experience. — flannel jesus

Everyone knows P. In that sentence "Everyone" has no existential instance even in logic. It is a universal quantifier pronoun for further inducing any existential instances if needed. All along you have been barking at the wrong tree claiming it is wrong. It is not a correct way of seeking truth.

Anyway, you still have not answered the question where does mind come from, if it is not from brain.

that's right, explaining it in "logical terms" from you didn't work, because your only definitions of "everyone" were either (a) not normal at all and completely arbitrary, or (b) left the claim untrue — flannel jesus

∀xKp = Everyone knows P (has no existential instance)
∀x∃(X1 .... Xn)Kp = Everyone in the class, group, I know, I met, ...Xn knows P (has existential instance)

Therefore the universal quantifier pronoun "Everyone" has no existential instance on its own in a sentence. Existential instance only emerges with further limiting quantifier connected to the universal quantifier. You have been barking at the wrong tree in all your posts.

Greeks did not have theories of truth like we have today, but many philosophers back then talked about what truth is. How can they not have a concept of truth? — Lionino

Talking about true things and truths doesn't verify that they had real concept of truth. It just means that they were expressing their psychological state or intention to indicate that they agreed to something, they feel something is right, or they have unconcealed something from the hidden.

First you said it means unconcealed, now this. Which one is it? — Lionino

Unhidden and unconcealment was the Etymology, and concrete existence opposed to mere appearance or beliefs is Epistemology.

What today's concept of truth? — Lionino

Today's concept of truth is vastly broader with the modal logic, fuzzi logic and dynamic, epistemic logic ... etc etc and Science has many different concept of truth too.

Greeks knew that "the sky is blue" is true and "the sky is green" is false. — Lionino

The sky is blue is not always true. The sky is black at nights, and grey in cloudy days. The sky is green is true if you wore a green sunglass and look at the sky. Hence, the sky is blue is only true when the sky is blue. The sky is green is true when you wear a green colour lensed sunglasses and look at the sky, or through the green glass of the window.

That "true" does not match "alithís" is a mootpoint, — Lionino

That sentence is false.

It is also difficult to translate "truly" into the Greek word "alithinos", for the reason I brought up above. It is also difficult to translate "demokratia" into the English word "democracy". Despite not having read the article, I don't think Jan Szaif's point is that Greek had no word for truth. — Lionino

Truth in ancient Greek meant concrete existence opposed to mere appearance or beliefs. In Plato truth was not available in the material world, but truth belonged in the world of idea. Aristotle's truth was truth deducted from his syllogism. They had no idea of verified truth from observation and experiment.

Therefore even if they had a word aletheia which is closest meaning for todays word "truth", it wasn't identical meaning to today's concept of truth.

Absolutely, the way I was using was like practical magic that affects the world, but the broader category of yes. — schopenhauer1

:up: This is an interesting topic. It seems to prove that humans had both irrational and rational aspect in their mental states from the start of the history. Presumably in the ancient times, the irrational aspect has been more dominating in life.

With the discovery of reason and logic by the ancient Greek philosophers, the rational aspects have grown and balancing the two. However, we can still see much irrational part of human psyche taking over the human life which had been more predominant and hidden aspect of human consciousness in the deep structure biologically and mentally.

Anyways, long story short, superstition is a core component of the human psyche is the claim. — schopenhauer1

Can all religious faiths and practices be classed as superstition?

3. Ancient peoples coherently talked about their mental states.
4. Ancient peoples did not coherently talk about their brain states. — RogueAI

Which ancient peoples do you mean? Any particular names in the history of philosophy?

It is called existential experience. You know you exist ?right? It is simply the experience of your existence. You are experiencing it you can't deny it. It is simply that experience. If you are not aware of it then I suppose you might have to wait for an existential crisis to happen. Then you will be aware of your existence. — Abhiram

Initially when you were describing about the being, I thought you were talking about some other being than yourself. But from your post above, it appears that you must have been describing you yourself as a being encompassing

physical reality , space, time and thought with it. Like an intertwined whole with several distinguishable parts which cannot be separated — Abhiram

Is it correct?

Thus time and space are essentially different from the intellect but nevertheless in consciousness just the same. Please refer to Sections one and two of Transcendental Aesthetic. — Pez

Interesting.  German speakers would definitely be more advantageous for reading all the German philosophical textbooks in German.  Once I tried to read CPR in German, but my German was too basic.  I was able to translate the texts ok, but the progress was far too slow, which was the reason for abandoning the reading, and went back to the English translated CPR.

Reading in English is not bad at all, because there are so many translations and commentaries for almost every non-English textbooks available, but sometimes you might feel that some important meanings could be lost from the original texts in translations.  It is especially the case with the difficult original texts such as CPR.  I ended up getting 3 copies of different translated copies of CPR. English is not my main language, but much better than my elementary German in readings.  

But for your point on Kant's time and space is not intelligence, but intuition,  is interesting.  I agree with the point.  Because Time and Space can never be clearly understood or perceived by mind as distinct and concrete entities.  They are definitely the internal perceptions in that Time and Space can be guessed and felt in thoughts, but they can never be accurately and precisely understood by reason.  Hence, it makes sense to say that Time and Space are types of intuition, and they can only be intuited in mind. I wonder if it would make sense to say that Time and Space is the foundation or precondition of consciousness.

I was reading Kant intensely a few months ago, but recently I got so busy in daily life, I have not read anything for a while.  I will be getting back to reading either Kant or Hegel for a change, so some Philosophical logic or even Mathematics, when things get quieter here.

So trying to explain in logical terms didn't make any difference. Well good luck in keep demanding admittance of wrong from anyone you engage in discoursing.

How can anyone converse normally with you who cannot understand what "everyone" means in ordinary language expression, and demanding admittance of wrong?

It seems clear that you lost your plot. It is a waste of time posting to your replies. All the best.

What ordinary definition of 'everyone' is it true for? — flannel jesus

No point telling you when you refuse to understand anything.

You don't believe it. You know it to be false. You're just being dishonest. — flannel jesus

How can a sophist and sceptic know the other's mind? You still haven't answered where the mind comes from.

I don't think thats the case. There's no ordinary definition of 'everyone' for which it's true. — flannel jesus

You are being a sophist as well as sceptic.

Don't admit you're wrong then, just don't say it again because you know it's untrue. — flannel jesus

I will say what I believe as true. You cannot say to others "Don't say it".

I understand it perfectly well, it's just untrue. — flannel jesus

All I was saying was that your judgement seem to be based on your inability in understanding the ordinary language expression.

"Everyone knows X" - I disagree with this claim.

X and Everyone knows X are not the same claim. I can agree with one and disagree with the other. — flannel jesus

You are free to disagree, but it is not done thing to demand admitting wrong from anyone.