But true sentences can correspond only to made-up abstractions — bongo fury

Not quite. Abstractions are not "made-up." Objects are intelligible, they can be understood. They are also are conplex, having many aspects, many notes of intelligibility, that can be understood. By becoming aware of objects, we make what is potentially known, what is merely intelligible, actually understood. The problem is that our brains have limited working memories, and cannot fully represent even what we sense. So, we chose to fix on some aspects, some notes of intelligibility, to the exclusion of others. That is abstraction, i.e., attending to some things and ignoring others. What we attend to is there, not made up. It is just not all of what is there.

The question of truth is the question of adequacy. Is our vision of reality, incomplete as it is, adequate? If it is, it is true. If it is not it is misleading and false. Whether or not it is adequate will depend on our needs. A vision adequate to one need may be inadequate to another.

I just encountered your post, and began your paper. I found it well written and open to most of the problems you face.

You write, "what do I mean by the use of the word consciousness and of its derivative, conscious?

In simple terms, I am referring to the internal subjective awareness of self that is lost during sleep and regained upon waking."

I think you are confusing two concepts here. One is subjective awareness of contents, the other, what might be called "medical consciousness," which is full realized in a responsive wakeful state. Medical consciousness is objectively observable, and, I would suggest, part of Chalmers' easy problem. Subjective awareness is found also in sleep, in our awareness of dreams, and its modeling is Chalmers' hard problem.

You might want to define, or at least exemplify, "high level" so that we have something more concrete to reflect upon.

"As we shall see later on, the existence of phenomenal experience is unfortunately not explained by the theory presented here. However, I believe all aspects of the content of that experience are explained; which I think is a significant enough achievement to celebrate."

Perhaps, but that does not warrant calling it entitle a theory of "consciousness." It is merely a theory of neural data processing, sans awareness.

A theory of consciousness needs to address the problem discussed by Aristotle in De Anima iii, 7, i.e. how does what is merely intelligible (neurally encoded contents, Aristotle's "phantasms"), become actually known. It is not enough that we have elaborately processed representations, however extensive the domain they model. We also need to be aware of the contents so represented.

Further, it is not clear that any purely neural model can adequately represent the contents we are aware of. Consider seeing an apple. One neural state represents not only the apple acting on our neural state, but also the fact that our neural/sensory state is modified. There are two concepts here, but only one physical representation. Yes, one may say that each concept has its own representation, but that does not explain how the initial representation gets bifurcated.

Let me be clearer. Organisms interact with their environment, and reacting to incident changes in their physical state (input signals), respond in what evolution molds into an appropriate way. This requires no concept of an external object, of an apple seen. All that is required is that, given a set of input signals, our neural net generate an adaptive set of output signals. There are no other signals telling us that it is not a purely internal change eliciting our adaptive response, but an external object.

So, as there is only one physical representation, how do we bifurcate it into a concept of us being modified, of us seeing, and a concept of an object modifying us, an object being seen?

Unless your model can explain this kind of one to many mapping, I think it is unfair to say that it provides an adequate explanation of the contents of consciousness, let alone of awareness of those contents.

You are welcome.

I forgot to respond to the rest of your question. I suppose that one reason is that I try to be philosophical on this forum, rather than theological. Since you seem interested in learning about the tradition, I will say a bit about it.

Augustine rightly, I think, divides humanity into two cities, the earthly city, whose citizens are motivated by self-interest, and the city of God, whose citizens are committed to the common good. While many might identify the city of God with institutional Christianity, I think this is a misunderstanding, for many so-called Christians are concerned only with their own welfare, and many non-Christians are fully committed to the common good. So, citizenship in the cities is not based on our doctrinal commitments, but on our commitment to doing good and avoiding evil.

This same division is discussed by the 19th c. utilitarian moralist, Henry Sidgewick, who was unable to find a utilitarian reason to prefer one ethical stance to the other. Aquinas sees the division in terms of our "intentionality to God," which has also been called our fundamental option. Again, this should not be projected into the space of doctrinal division. Rather, it should be seen in light of Aquinas' identification of God with Goodness and Truth -- in which "God is good" does assert that He has the property of being good, but that God and Goodness are identical. Thus, intentionality to God, is intentionality to Good, regardless of doctrinal commitments, even commitments to atheism.

In this framework, no one is "sent to hell." Rather, hell is self-chosen alienation in a timeless state of being. It is the very thing one chooses in opting for selfishness over commitment to other beings as well as one's self.

Mystical experience is a shift of awareness, like the shift in how Rubin's vase is seen (as a vase or as two faces). There is no change in the reality apprehended, but only in how it is apprehended. If God maintains the cosmos in being, then God maintaining the cosmos is identically the cosmos being maintained in being by God. (They are just different ways of describing the same reality.) So, by a shift of intellectual focus, we can move our awareness from the cosmos (or our self), to God. Doing so is the basis of mystical experience.

What has this to do with afterlife outcomes? We know, and so experience, what we choose to attend to. Those who attend only to themselves have chosen not to seek the one thing that can satiate human desire, and so wind up "in hell."

I am not well versed in George Fox's teachings or the practices of the Society of Friends. I am familiar with mystical experience as a transcultural phenomenon, and with Christian, and to a lesser degree, Buddhist teaching on the subject.

As one trained in physics, I had acquired a strong prejudice against mysticism, when I chanced to read W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy, which gives an empirical case for the reality of mystical experience. I concluded from his work that mystical experience is a real mode of knowing, key to understanding a lot of philosophy that makes no mention of it, but not a way of being informed.

While not central to mystical experience, one aftereffect is the quieting of fear and desire -- even among atheists (e.g. Bucke, as explained in his Cosmic Consciousness). So, I see it as quite relevant to the question of quietism you raise.

Thank you for the clarification. While I am a Christian, Aristotle was not.

It seems to me that we should not pin the discussion of a goal to the perspective of any one philosopher, but rather gather insights where they may be found.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is only one unchanging moral principle: "Do good and avoid evil." — Dfpolis

A vacuous truism Kant's (rationalistic) 'categorical imperative'. — 180 Proof

Aquinas accompanies the Synderesis Principle (Do good and avoid evil) by an analysis of the nature of good and evil. If he had defined "good" as "that which must be done," and evil as "that which must be avoided," the SP would indeed be circular and vacuous. As he does not, the principle is sound and meaningful.

While Hillel HaGadol was wise and leaned, his maxim does not explain the nature of the good or relate it to Elohim. Aquinas' analysis does.

Aristotle starts his Metaphysics by sayng "All humans by nature desire to know." It is not the role of philosophy to sow confusion, but to truly satisfy our natural desire to know. When we know, we know that there is a God who is the ultimate cause of all reality and that contemplation of God quiets the mind.

I would like to know what is un-relative(absolute moral?)moral?And what is relative moral theories?I am a Christian then I need to know those to practice the absolute moral. — nguyen dung

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is only one unchanging moral principle: "Do good and avoid evil." While good and evil are objective properties of acts, they are properties that depend on the circumstances of the act. For example, it is evil to kill unjustly, but what makes a killing unjust depends on the circumstances. If is unjust to kill an innocent person, but it is not unjust to kill someone who is trying to kill you or another innocent person.

In the same way, Jesus taught that the whole law and prophets come down to two laws: First, love God with your whole being. Second, love others as yourself. This is a different way of saying what Aquinas said, for to love someone is to will their good, and oppose evil to them. And, again, what is good or evil for a person depends on circumstances. Feeding a person is good if they need to eat, and bad if it will make them obese and unhealthy.

Relativity (and quantum observtion) is fully compatible with Aristotle's understanding of reality. He tells us that continuous quantity is measurable., and that time is the measure of change according to before and after. Because quantity is measurable, quantitative reality not an actual number pre-existing measurement, but something a measuring process can be applied to, to produce an actual number. If we use a different measuring process, say measuring in a different frame of reference, then we have every reason to think we will get a different measure number.

The same applies to quantum measurements. Their results do not pre-exist the measuring process either, but are the result of the interaction between the system we are measuring, and our measuring apparatus.

You're really flip-flopping on this issue. First you say that theory must be accurate or else complete fiction — Kenosha Kid

I never said any such thing. In fact, I have said that Newton's theory, being adequate in the classical domain is true in that domain.

And now you're back to theory being law itself. — Kenosha Kid

No. I am using the description to identify an the of reality it seeks to describe.

Quantum field theories do not have 'laws'. — Kenosha Kid

I suggest that you reflect on your willingness to make categorical claims that every physicist recognizes as false. QFT conserves charge, momentum and energy among other quantities.

In light of your lack of qualification, there is no point in responding further.

How was Aristotle wrong in your view?

Don't concern yourself with Kenosha. He knows virtually nothing about how advanced physics works.

And which laws are they? — Kenosha Kid

Those of quantum field theory, e.g. the Dirac and Klein-Gordon equations.

First result is: https://www.quantamagazine.org/there-are-no-laws-of-physics-theres-only-the-landscape-20180604/ — Kenosha Kid

I am truly unimpressed. I already said you are confusing the laws of nature with the laws of physics. The fact that you have no more than a title is a sure sign of intellectual slackness.

Propagators are not laws. They are tools. — Kenosha Kid

They are a mathematical mechanism used to represent the mediation of Fermion-Fermion interactions by Boson fields -- in other words, to describe the laws by which quanta interact.

W bosons. Z bosons. Gluons possibly. — Kenosha Kid

I am getting tired of this. You do not know what you're talking about, The particles you mention are extremely massive.

They are immaterial because it would be a category error to ask what the laws are made of. — Dfpolis

Quantum fields. — Kenosha Kid

No. Quantum fields are subject to the laws of nature. The laws themselves have no extension that can be measured, while quantum fields do. To have extension is to have parts outside of parts, but the laws of nature do not have such parts.

In modern physics, the concept of physical law is archaic — Kenosha Kid

Baloney. If you think this is true, provide a reputable reference.

Instead, you have interaction fields. — Kenosha Kid

Bosonic fields, like all physical fields, are subject to the laws of nature. They correspond to the propagators (Green's functions) in the equations describing the laws of motion.

That is, they have properties, state, dynamics, etc — Kenosha Kid

Indeed, they do. Most also have mass and all interact gravitationally. The laws of nature have no mass and have no gravitational interactions.

Laws evolve. — Kenosha Kid

There is no evidence of this. What has evolved is our understanding off the laws. You are confusing the laws of physics, which are approximate descriptions, with the laws of nature they seek to describe.

This is a fallacy. If you want to make God laugh, start a sentence with 'Science will never'. — Kenosha Kid

It is not a fallacy to say that if a theory contains no term x, it will never have a proposition containing x as a term. For example, Euclidean geometry has no mass concept, and so you will never deduce from it alone that something has mass.

If you think about it, the idea that physics is materialistic is nonsense. physics has a menagerie of particles, but it also has immaterial laws. They are immaterial because it would be a category error to ask what the laws are made of. The laws are discovered in nature, and so they are not human constructs. Nor are the laws our descriptions of them, for to describe something that does not exist is to spin fiction.

In the same way, humans have physical operations and intentional operations. We effect changes to the world, not by only by raw physical movement, but by intentional movement. As there is no primitive in natural science that corresponds to intention or awareness, no matter how we inter-relate the basic concepts of natural science, we will never construct a theory that concludes "and therefore there is awareness."

It is the same human being, a unified being, that performs both physical and intentional operations. Duality does not exist in nature, it arises in the mind. We separate the physical and intentional in thought, but it is not separated in nature. I decide to go shopping and effect that decision by walking, riding or driving to the store.

Every act of knowing has both a known object and a knowing subject, but when we do natural science, we decide to fix our attention on the known object to the exclusion of the knowing subject. As a result, and by choice, science has no data on subjects as subjects, but only as objects. As it has no data on subjective awareness, it can draw no conclusion about it. Failing to recognize this gives rise to the so-called "hard problem of consciousness." Of course, it is not a problem at all, for it has no possible solution. Instead, it is the result of forgetting that we left the relevant data on the table when we started.

So, we live in a world in which some acts are physical, some intentional, and many both physical and intentional. Separating physicality and intentionality in our mind is no more a warrant for dualism than our ability to separate the sphericity from the rubber of a ball in our mind is a warrant to say the ball is made of spherical stuff and rubber stuff.

It's ultimately a question of whether you can feel something while not believing you feel it! — fdrake

Of course, you can not believe what you are experiencing, for example, look at Descartes. He knew he was in his chamber, but chose to doubt it. The problem is that knowing is being aware, while believing is committing.

Looks rather a lot like an inference to me! — fdrake

"I am not in pain now" is not the same as "I have stopped being in pain now." The first is compatible with never having been in pain, the second is not.

Thanks to you as well.

Just because we can use our ability to count to describe a situation does not mean that those in it must be able to count. All they need do is see that scarcity is not sufficiency or abundance, and reflect on the nature of the difference.

The point of focusing on how we count was to point out how much of our conceptual apparatus (and not only that but other practices as well) must already be in place to do it. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, counting requires that we have developed the idea of number, but that is not difficult. All we need is for our mate to be happier when we bring home 2-3 birds or melons instead of one.

that's the cardinality of the set of sheep they have. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, it is, but you don't need to generalize from a flock concept to a set concept to count them. All you need is an ownership concept -- my sheep or our sheep. I learned to count at 3-4, long before I knew about sets and cardinality.

There's no counting without both the mental constructs — Srap Tasmaner

We should not equate instruments of thought, like concepts and judgements, with constructs, which imply we have added constructive elements. If you want to say we've added elements we did not find in experience, you have to do more than say we have used concepts.

What point were you making with the example of shepherds? — Srap Tasmaner

I was responding to why shepherds count sheep, not all possible sets of sheep.

Philosophy moved on a bit after Aristotle. And after the Tractatus. — Banno

Yes, but moved on does not mean rightly moved on.

It's pretty hard to refute this action view — JerseyFlight

It's been around since Aristotle.

What counts as a thing, is an ostensible reality with intrinsic unity, i.e. an Aristotelian substance. The unity of an organism is not a mental construct. Each part of it serves the good of the whole independently of whether we think it does. A three-legged sheep is wolf bait.

I'm nonplussed here. It's precisely because it is conditional that it is fundamental. If you would play chess, then this is how you must move the bishop. Doing otherwise is not playing chess — Banno

Fundamental means that we are at the absolute starting point. The consequences of chess rules can't be a starting point, because the rules themselves are more basic -- the starting point from which we derive the consequences.

I said quite a bit about these topics in my immediately preceding comment.

The basic act of knowing is awareness of present intelligibility. Intelligibility is usually present via sensation, but in mystical experience it is present in our very act of existence.

It is usual to think of ourselves as separated from what we sense, and spatially, that is usually true. Dynamically, it is a gross error. We sense objects because they act on us, and we can detect and neurally encode those actions, forming neural representations (which the Scholastics called "sensible species"). From the object's perspective, our neural representations are its action on us, its modification of our neural state. So, our neural representations are identically the object's action on our neural system. So, dynamically, sensing subject and sensed object share the same being: its action on us is our representation of it. We might call this "existential penetration."

But, as I discussed earlier today, sensations are not thoughts. We may have, and respond to, sensations without a hint of awareness. It is only when we become aware of the neurally encoded content that it becomes knowledge. As long as it is only a neural state, it can be no more than knowable = potential knowledge. Nothing that is merely potential can operate, and so what is merely knowable cannot make itself known. To become actually known, the neurally encoded content needs to be acted upon, and it is our awareness (Aristotle's agent intellect), that does this. When we turn our attention, or awareness, to some content, to some present intelligibility, it becomes actually known.

Again, there is a dynamical identity: our being informed is identically the object informing us. "The object informing the subject" and "the subject being informed by the object" are just two ways of describing the identical event. So, we are not (dynamically) separate from our objects of knowledge, but partially identical to them. Our knowledge of the object is the object informing us.

Am I wrong in inferring that you are striving in the direction of properly basic belief? — JerseyFlight

Basic, yes. Belief, no. Beliefs are commitments to the truth of some judgement, and so acts of will. Knowledge is awareness of present intelligibility, and an act of intellect.

So if there are n things on the table -- I can't even set up the question neutrally! -- we say there are n things on the table, not 2n, because we don't count all the sets as things. — Srap Tasmaner

It is because sets are not things, but mental constructs (ways of grouping elements in our minds). Primitive shepherds counted sheep by tying knots in a string. (Similarly, in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the attack was synchronized by untying a knot each day.) Why count sheep and not relations or sets? Because shepherds are not generally interested in possible relations between sheep, but in the number of sheep they have.

I am suggesting that how we think about things is driven by our interests. Some are practical, but some are theoretical -- we just want to know.

But then we're back to this not being something a child could conceivably figure out through the exercise of natural reason but only in a context where the conceptual apparatus is already in place. — Srap Tasmaner

That is why we teach children mathematics, rather than letting them discover it from scratch. Children want to please us, so they do as we ask.

This is why your use of "awareness", glossed as "infallible knowledge by acquaintance", troubles me. — Srap Tasmaner

I would define awareness as the actualization of intelligibility. It is infallible because it is inseparable. Aristotle points out that before we know, there is an intelligible object (something which has the potential to be known) and a subject with the potential to be informed. One act, that of awareness (aka "the agent intellect"), simultaneously actualizes both potentials. There is no becoming known without a mind becoming informed -- and vice versa. Because only one act is involved, there is no possibility of an intervention preventing success. It is the union of object and subject in their joint actualization that is the basis of knowledge.

Judgement is quite different, for it invariably involves at least two acts: (1) the separation of certain notes of intelligibility from the whole (abstraction/concept formation) and (2) the recombination of at least two concepts. So, there is the possibility of an intervention preventing success.

However that side of the story works, a lot of the conceptualization of our experience is taking place below the level of awareness — Srap Tasmaner

I would deny the very possibility of concepts below the level of awareness. The concept <apple> is merely someone thinking of apples. It is not a thing, but an act. We can't think without being aware, because to think is to be aware of certain contents.

Of course, the mind is more than awareness. There is a lot of physical data processing going on, and most if it, we are unaware of. We form neural net connections underpinning Humean associations, but associations are not judgements. I may associate an orange moon with a citrus, but that does not cause me to think that the moon is a citrus.

So, I would say that a lot of association is taking place below the level of awareness.

The way you distinguish knowledge from judgment — Srap Tasmaner

I am not distinguishing knowledge from judgement. All knowledge is awareness of intelligibility. Some awareness is mere acquaintance ("I know the house on the corner"). Some knowledge is awareness of identities, i.e. judgements (we see that what evokes <Socrates> is identically what evokes <human>).

What is mental, but not knowledge, is concepts. To think <oranges> or <uincorns> is not to know anything, as no relation to an object is implied.

Personally, I've had knee pain for a long time and can usually tune it out. When it goes away, I learn that I was in pain then but adjusted in a manner where I didn't feel it. But at the time before it went away, I would not have believed I was in pain. Seems like the presence of sensations very much can be inferred, but perhaps only after a transition in their intensity. — fdrake

Let me suggest that there is a difference between having a sensation, and being aware of it. We get uncomfortable sitting a certain way, and change our posture without a moment's thought. Some people can, as you suggest, tune pain out. Aristotle's point in De Anima iii, 7, is that sensory representations (nerve signals) are intelligible, but not actually known until we attend to them (in his language, actualized by the agent intellect -- which I identify with awareness). So, having a sensation does not automatically mean that we have a cognitive experience.

1. How does a fluent adult speaker of a natural language perceive things as categorized in the terms of her native language, or in terms of the conceptual apparatus common perhaps not just to speakers of her native language but to many other people, or even all people? — Srap Tasmaner

I hope I'm responding to the point you are interested in. We each have what I call a "conceptual space," a set of concepts that we know and use to understand experience. As an American trained in physics and read in Aristotle and Aquinas, I have a different set of concepts than someone raised in a Chinese or Indian cultural tradition. For example, I don't use a Chi concept, or have an adequate concept of nirvana. I lack many concepts current in analytic and in continental philosophy. Yesterday I added <Stove's Gem> to my conceptual space.

A two days ago, I sent in the final corrections on a paper defending the compatibility of evolution with classical theism. In it, I defended the legitimacy of alternate taxonomies, with alternate species definitions. Because reality is complex, and abstraction attends to some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others, we can form different species concepts (different universal ideas), given the same data. (At least 26 different definitions of "species" have been proposed in the biological literature.) This is not nominalism, because we're not assigning categories arbitrarily (without an adequate basis in reality). Rather, it is moderate realism, because we're using different features to form alternate classification schemes, so that each scheme's concepts have an adequate foundation in reality.

We tend to project our experiences onto our pre-existing conceptual space, seeing them in terms of familiar concepts. Sometimes we recognize that none of our concepts fits our experience, and so we form a new concept --articulated in a new word, or a new use of an old word. Thus, language grows.

We can learn other people's ways of conceptualizing the world. E.g., I learned physics, abstract mathematics, evolutionary biology, mysticism and a number of philosophical theories.

2. How does a pre-linguistic child learn how to do this? — Srap Tasmaner

I am not well-read in Piaget or more recent child psychology. My working theory is that children learn to associate sounds with experiences. I remember that one day my mother was talking to me in the dinning room, and it suddenly dawned on me that there was a "me" inside listening and that is what she meant by "you". I think I was 3 or 4.

3. How did mankind begin doing this? — Srap Tasmaner

I wasn't there. So, I would be giving pure speculation. I suspect gestures and shared goals played a large role.

I do think how children learn has a bearing, as children grow up to become us. Take counting and mathematical abstraction. After children count enough different kinds of things, they see that the relations of the numbers do not depend on what we count (abstraction) but on the act of counting alone. This is the basis for learning arithmetic.

If one violated the unspoken condition that one is playing standard chess. — Dfpolis

...in that case, the rule isn't wrong; rather the action goes against the rule. — Banno

Then, the rule is incomplete, because it does not state its condition. Further, since it is conditional, it is not fundamental.

Perhaps it would be better to say that our new knowledge of subatomic structure supplements our knowledge of what it is to be solid; it does not supplant it. — Banno

The problem is that "solid" is equivocal, as it can be understood in two ways. First, pragmatically, as meaning that our tea service will not fall through it -- and this is justified by experience. Second, mathematically, as meaning that no magnification will ever reveal anything fundamentally different, which is not justified by experience. So, the error is extending our claims beyond their experiential basis -- and that happens quite often.

We are not wrong to say that the table is solid, and yet mostly consists of the space between particles. — Banno

That is not what "solid" usually means. When things have lots of empty space we say they are porous.

we might be able to look at how the way we use words such as "solid" forms a foundation in language, and hence in science. — Banno

Yes.

This is right; and to it we might add that experience here is not just the experience of the individual, but the experience of those around her... — Banno

I think we pretty much agree. Language is a primary instrument of our being social animals, and science is a social endeavor.

Abstraction from what? — Srap Tasmaner

Abstraction from the sensory representation, aka the phantasm.

If the datum is raw, unconceptualized, it's going to be useless for knowledge that's supposed to be inferred from it. If it is already conceptualized, then it's not independent. — Srap Tasmaner

Baloney!. I already explained that, by attending to various notes of intelligiblity, we actualize various concepts. What is intelligible is knowable, not known, and so neither conceptual nor propositional. Further, I explained in general how, in attending to our representation of Socrates, we can actualize not only a substantive notion, <S>, <Socrates> (tode ti = this something), but also a predicate concept, say <human>, and finally, that recognizing that both <Socrates> and <man> derive from the same representation justifies us in judging <Socrates is a man>.

You may object that we need several instances of humans to develop the concept <human>, but more experience is not inference. And, if we didn't recognize the humanity in each independently, we couldn't see that it's a common trait. Rather, more experience helps us clarify which notes of intelligibility are best included in the concept we choose to use. Perhaps we will learn that you don't need to be white to be human.

You really need to read De Anima iii, 7, and perhaps Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic or Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or the Degrees of Knowledge.

Remember above you did end up reaching for an infallible foundation after all — Srap Tasmaner

Not for truth. The infallibility of awareness is not propositional. It is judgements and propositions that are properly true or false.

Is this knowledge conceptualized? — Srap Tasmaner

No. It is awareness without abstraction. Abstracting, which forms concepts, leaves data behind and sets the stage for misplaced concreteness.

Is it "I'm experiencing that" or "I'm experiencing the red triangular facing surface of an object"? — Srap Tasmaner

Once we start applying prior concepts, we are making a judgement <This is an instance of that>, and so open ourselves to error, because there may be more to <that> than what we are experiencing. But, we don't need concepts enhanced from other experiences to judge this experience -- or even named concepts. All we need to do is abstract notes of intelligibility from the whole and then predicate it back to the same whole.

I read the SEP article on Sellars' section on epistemology.

"(1) There must be cognitive states that are basic in the sense that they possess some positive epistemic status independently of their epistemic relations to any other cognitive states. I call this the Epistemic Independence Requirement [EIR]."

"(2) Every nonbasic cognitive state can possess positive epistemic status only because of the epistemic relations it bears, directly or indirectly, to basic cognitive states. Thus the basic states must provide the ultimate support for the rest of our knowledge, which I call the Epistemic Efficacy Requirement [EER]."

"Sellars denies not only that there must be a given, but that there can be a given in the sense defined, for nothing can satisfy both EIR and EER. To satisfy EER, a basic cognition must be capable of participating in inferential relations with other cognitions; it must possess propositional form and be truth-evaluable. To meet EIR, such a propositionally structured cognition must possess its epistemic status independently of inferential connections to other cognitions. No cognitive states satisfy both requirements."

I am proposing that we are infallibly aware of whatever we are aware of, but that this awareness is not proportional knowledge. Let's use Aristotle's terminology and call the combined sensory representation we are aware of a "phantasm." If the phantasm as a whole properly elicits a subject concept, <S>, and the identical phantasm properly elicits a predicate concept <P>, we are justified in judging <S is P>. (The copula "is" betokens the identity of source.) While the datum (the phantasm) is not a judgement, by abstraction and identification (division and reunification), we can use it as the basis for sound judgement.

As Aristotle points out, to make justified inferences, we need to find middle terms (aka connections). Thus, if we judge <S is P1> and <P1 is P2>, we may conclude <S is P2>. What this means, it is that a phantasm capable of eliciting <S> is also capable of eliciting <P2>.

This account seems capable of satisfying both EIR and EER. Or, have I missed something?

The question is how you are to give knowledge a foundation you acknowledge is non-epistemic — Srap Tasmaner

I take it that you mean non-propositional by non-epistemic.

perilously close to traditional empiricist foundationalism, which is a mistake. Read "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." — Srap Tasmaner

"Perilously close" means "different from." I'll look at Sellars' argument, but I am pretty sure it doesn't work against my position.

(3) The features of the object of knowing included in our judgments are those features adequate to our needs. — Srap Tasmaner

This isn't my conclusion. What I'm saying is that knowing only how reality relates to us (and not exhaustively as it is) is not a problem, because we only deal with reality in relation to ourselves.

What you tell them is, for their purposes, true, even though for other purposes what you are telling them may be false.

But this is not what (1) claimed. This is

(1') We are committed to the truth of some judgments we can prove are false. — Srap Tasmaner

That is not what I said, nor is it implied. Still, it has some merit.

What in (1) I am following Aristotle's observation that we cannot prove everything. So, we must accept some things as given. Reflecting, what we accept as given is what is given in experience.

Raw experience is infallible, because whatever we are aware of is what we are aware of. Still, there is a difference between being aware of something (knowledge by acquaintance) and making judgements. Since we are infallibly aware of whatever we are aware of, there is no question of its truth, but there is a question of the truth or falsity of judgements. That question derives from abstraction.

Universal concepts are derived from abstraction, but they may not be the result of abstraction alone, but also of construction -- combining associated data from different experiences. Concepts are universal because each of their instances is capable of evoking the same concept. But, it may be that the aspects (notes of intelligibility) one object that evoke a concept are not the same as the aspects of a different object that evokes the same concept. For example, we have may have seen Jane nude and know she is female, and Kathy made up and dressed in a skirt, and think she is also female. Perhaps, Kathy is a transvestite or transgendered, and biologically male. Then we have erred in judgement.

How did we err? Not by a mistake in awareness, but by miscategorizing -- by attributing to Kathy aspects we did not experience and she did not have.

We need to reflect on how we make experiential judgements and what justifies them. If the identical object that evokes the concept <tiger> also evokes the concept <sharp teeth>, I am justified in judging <the tiger has sharp teeth>. This is fully justified as long as my concepts do not carry the baggage of other experiences, but, almost invariably, they do. It is this associative baggage that is typical the source of false judgements.

It is, then, theoretically possible, but very difficult, to make reliable experiential judgements -- because the habit of association, while corrigible, is typically unconscious.

So, back to (1) and (1'): It is a fact that we can't prove everything. So, we have to commit to things we can't prove, but that does not mean that we can't analyze them and root out sources of error. Of course, we don't root out all our errors. So we wind up being committed to things that can be proven false. Still, there is hope. As social animals we can expose our assumptions to others with different life experiences and perspectives, and so root out further errors. One way of doing this is to value the reflections of previous generations enough to hear them.

Your claim is that there is no requirement to take into account the contexts in which the judgment is false; — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think I claimed that. If we're to be serious thinkers, we need to reflect on the limits of what we know.

we only think there is such a requirement because we imagine a context in which we have knowledge not relativized to our needs, "objective" knowledge, which would therefore be exhaustive. — Srap Tasmaner

And so, impossible for human beings. This is the error of making divine omniscience the paradigm against which we judge human knowing. All we need to do is be humble and admit, that while we know many things, we don't know everything about anything.

(iii) What we leave out are features of the object of knowledge irrelevant to our needs. — Srap Tasmaner

Not quite. What we actually leave out (in coming to know) is what does not interest us, and hope that what does interest us is adequate.

(iv*) Therefore if we leave out a feature of the object of knowledge, it must be a feature irrelevant to our needs. — Srap Tasmaner

No, which is why I did not accept your (iii). Still, this often happens in practice. Critical evidence or lines of reasoning may be ignored because we have "made up our minds" -- which means we have closed our minds.

What are you leaving out is that you know what you are telling your students to be false. — Srap Tasmaner

No, it is not false. That is the point. It is an adequate to what they will deal with. If you do measurements in the Newtonian regime and compare them to the equations, you will find no discrepancies. The scientific method will never give us absolute truth. It may, and often does, give us a theory that represents our observations adequately.

What we say is never exhaustive. Every discourse is limited. Even the most "objective" news stories include some facts and exclude others. If these inclusions and exclusions are made in good faith, we place no blame. Still, the story is (and has to be) intrinsically imperfect. So also is it with teaching, journal articles, books and so on. We will accept these imperfect discourses as true if they do not lead us into error -- if they are adequate to our needs.

what you are telling them is true "for all practical purposes"; it is an approximation, and will serve in the contexts in which they will make use of it. — Srap Tasmaner

That is the very nature of science. The so-called "theory of everything" (TOE) is a theory of everything but 96% of the stuff. Darwin's theory of evolution knew nothing of DNA transcription errors, toolkit genes or punctuated equilibrium. Our best understanding of quantum physics contradicts our best understanding of gravity. We accept these theories not because we think they are metaphysical truths, but because they provide adequate accounts of the aspects of reality we apply them to. That is why naturalists who treat them with religious reverence are so foolish.

(a) Because it will not matter to them that it is false, relative to their needs it is true. — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps you are having difficulty because I haven't made it sufficiently clear that I don't see truth as a univocal concept. That is, "truth" does not mean the same thing in every context. Instead, "truth" is analogically predicated by an analogy of proportionality. What that means is that the requirements for being true are proportioned to the needs the truth is intended to meet. If we're doing metaphysics, we want it to be exceptionless, but if we're building a bridge, a set of reliable equations adequately modelling the conditions to be encountered are a true description -- in fact, one that corresponds to the relevant domain of reality, even though it may not correspond to irrelevant domains.

The complete formulation would be "P is true in context C", or "P is true relative to needs N" or something like that. (b*) imagines there is truth relative to no particular needs, that there is (I can't resist) "needless truth" — Srap Tasmaner

I think this is close. I am not sure that there actually is "needless truth."

This sounds reasonable enough, but if we want eventually to come back to (b*) and define "truth (full stop)" as "truth relative to human needs", we will engage in further abstraction, but what will we compare humans to? Is abstraction enough to get you there, or will we compare humans to other animals, and then be forced to talk about the judgments of animals? — Srap Tasmaner

I think we are justifiably anthropocentric, because the problems we have to deal with are human problems -- not that we should not value other species. It is just that we can never know what it is like to be a bat.

Thank you for taking so much time reflecting on my post.

The knowledge of what was adequate, can you say that that was ONLY based on knowledge? No gut feeling? — Ansiktsburk

Choosing what to do is a moral decision -- based not on absolute certitude, but on moral certitude, i.e. on what is generally true, given what we know. So, my assessment was based on knowing what most engineers do. Certainly, some will go on to highly specialized work, in which advanced physics is needed, but, as I said, they will take other courses to prepare.

If you're visually impaired, I could record the OP and send it to you privately. Otherwise, you'll need a text reading app.

Interesting. In the article, to be fallible is to be capable of being false, wrong; hence it speaks of fallible foundations. I followed the usage. — Banno

Perhaps the title was confusing, but in the body I only said humans are fallible.

in what way could the foundational rule, that the bishop moves only diagonally, be wrong, or false? — Banno

If one violated the unspoken condition that one is playing standard chess.

Is that different from what I said? — apokrisis

You seemed to be arguing that the knowing self is a construct, not an experienced reality. If so, then yes, it is different.

My point is that this is something that has to develop. Every newborn has to go through the process of discovering its own hands as something “they” control. — apokrisis

Of course. And, it takes time to develop a set of concepts to reason with. Still, I would not say that most of our concepts are "constructed." They are abstracted, which means that they actualize some notes of intelligibility in our perceptions to the exclusion of others. We have to accumulate experience to learn which abstractions are most useful in dealing with the world.

Yes. Stove's gem. IS that closer to what you have in mind? — Banno

I just looked up Stove's Gem, as I had not heard of it before you mentioned it. From the little I could learn in a short time, I agree with Stove that instances of his Gem are fallacious.

While we can and do know our thoughts, primarily, our thoughts are not what we know, but means of knowing.

Given the title of this thread, that would seem to be the issue: in what way could the foundational rule, that the bishop moves only diagonally, be fallible? — Banno

Rules can't be fallible, for they do not think. It is thinking subjects that can fail to think correctly. We can make routine mistakes, or suffer the devastation of Alzheimer's. As we use our brains to process data, and brains are subject to trauma, we are all to the possibility of error.

Should we consider these failures? A purest might. Or we might just consider these as alternate forms of chess. — Banno

I return to the conditional nature of such rules, "If we are playing chess, ..." If you remove the condition, the rule looses its force.

I would argue God would arrange truth as well although he would have full knowledge, I wonder if you might argue differently though? — Judaka

Classical theism, as represented by Aquinas, sees God as entirely simple and immutable. So, God does not elaborate positions over time, nor does He design, then execute. Rather, God sustains all existence in a single act and knows it by knowing His sustaining act.

I think that we deal with an intellectualised version of reality, which is mostly based on rulesets which function epistemologically but do not fall apart regardless of it corresponds with reality. — Judaka

I would find examples helpful in understanding your position. I am thinking of science as your "intellectualised version of reality," but see new evidence as falsifying old theories. So, I don't quite understand what you're saying.

I think when something works well to help us to navigate a complex issue and it is useful then that should be sufficient. — Judaka

Yes, it is "adequate to reality," and so close enough to be taken as true. When we aren't concerned with practice, but just want to know, pragmatism fails us.

A fully relational view of knowledge makes the psychological observation that the "we" who observes is a construction, not something already given — apokrisis

What is experienced, here the knowing self, is neither constructed nor assumed. Acts of knowledge are self-reflective. Every act of vision informs us not only about what is seen (its objective object), but also that we can see (its subjective object). Similarly, acts of cognition not only inform us about the object of our attention (its objective object), but also that we are informed (its subjective object). There is no knowing, no being informed, without a subject being informed. You may not wish to admit this, but I can think of no cogent objection.

So of course it is taken for granted that we do exist - as creatures modelling an actual world — apokrisis

Do you even realize how incoherent your position is? Without knowing subjects, there is no agent capable of "modelling an actual world." We model by positing relations between concepts that can only exist in knowing minds.

If you think concepts can exist mind-independently, or that we could model without being knowing subjects, then on what basis do you believe this? Surely it cannot be on the basis of evidence, for, ex hypothesis, you can know no evidence. In fact, we can do nothing as there is no we -- not even a single I.

But it also then makes the point that the model is "self-interested" in its knowledge. — apokrisis

Models are not subjects, and so can have no knowledge or interests.

There is no point in commenting further on the consequences of this incoherent theory.

No. It is foundational to chess. — Banno

OK, but chess is not foundational to reality. The purpose of philosophy is not to understand chess, but reality.