This concept of self, outside temporal causality, is also beyond human comprehension. — Elrondo

I am curious which part of Sartre you are drawing that representation.
In Transcendence of the Ego, there is a source prior to the Cogito but it is not presented as outside of temporal causality. Quite the opposite of that, actually.
Also, regarding that book's reference to the self being beyond comprehension, it is presented more as a limit of personal experience than as a Kantian type of limit to any further understanding.
Sartre is pointing toward a boundary between the conscious and the unconscious. One cannot directly experience the unconscious by the way they are defined as separate. But it is not beyond perception as a reflection of other people.

Well, for myself, I never listened to Krishnamurti as a giver of direction. I was galvanized by his question of whether I had thought anything on my own. And his follow up question of how I would be able to tell if it was my thought.
I never got past that lesson. If I had, maybe I would view his words in another way. But as it is, I am still working on the first assignment.

The possibility comes from our experience with ourselves as what cannot be gotten away from. We keep showing up in every movie. I am trying get some space between that experience and any particular "thought" or "belief" that refers to it.
Let me express my observation in a different way. If the skeptic is to question if they know what they are in the habit of thinking as known, why accept the proposition that their experience of themselves as a conscious person is information about their existence that is more "real" than something else? How did we learn to compare things? Is that also "given" in that primary experience of being stuck with ourselves?
Not that I can tell. Your results may vary.

Where did it come from? — creativesoul

Big question, probably requiring more than one discipline to address.

It can be observed that solipsism, the Cartesian thinker, etcetera, all start with the experience of oneself as the beginning of knowledge because that experience is what is given to oneself by default. They equate the immediacy of that necessity with a datum as used in the context of their understanding of the world. The idea being that, if there is a map and a territory, this immediacy is the one location that can be declared impossible to get wrong.

The isolation being imagined is only possible becaue they transpose a use of language that can only arise in the intercourse of life into a conversation where it has no referent.

The absence becomes a pin in the map.

One can approach the matter of "identification" from a number of ways. I am fond of the following from Zhuangzi:

" Kai-shi then replied, "I have heard my master say that they who skillfully nourish their life are like shepherds who whip up the sheep they see lagging behind." "What did he mean?" asked the duke. The reply was, "In Lu, there was a Shan Bao, who lived among the rocks, and drank only water. He would not share with the people in their toils and the benefits springing from them, and although he was now in his seventieth year, he had still the complexion of a child. Unfortunately, he encountered a hungry tiger, which killed and ate him. There was also a Zhang Yi, who hung up a screen at his lofty door, and to whom all the people hurried (to pay their respects). In his fortieth year he fell ill of a fever and died. (Of these two men), Bao nourished his inner man, and a tiger ate his outer, while Yi nourished his outer man, and disease attacked his inner. Both of them neglected whipping up their lagging sheep."

It was based on our values and we no longer know what those values were. — Athena

While I share your dissatisfaction with the shallow quality of many of our present forms of life, I don't think it is only about leaving one kind of education system for another or agree that all the changes in our society are a mistake.

Athens and the beginning of U.S had the good and the bad bound up with each other. The institution of slavery was the most obvious evil but there were many others not always easy to describe. "Ages of Gold" throw long shadows.

The good and the are all tangled together today in our time as well. The rise of "nationalist" hate groups is not just about failures to communicate values, although it certainly is also about that. The growing number of people who embrace the normalcy of diversity is a real threat to certain other peoples' form of life. Those "other people" kept relatively quiet when they figured the game would always be rigged in their favor.

I also want to reiterate how our education and means of production are involved with each other. Expressed another way, the way we work and what is taught are bound up with each other. A significant change in one is talking about a significant change in the other.

Hopefully, something smarter than the speculator in you will take over command at that moment.

Or if your prefer the thought from a dead French guy:

"Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Anyone who has studied anything can easily see that. — hks

But then you could just also be overly sensitive — hks

These are good examples of employing references to a person in lieu of addressing their arguments or requests on their own grounds.

They are also examples of arguing on the basis of authority in so far as the removal of such authority from your interlocutor dispenses with their claims without having to do so oneself. This quality is exemplified by the following:

I don't need to give it my best shot. Aquinas has already done so. Have you heard of him perhaps? — hks

Look, I don't want fill up these pages with meta-dialogue. I will say no more about this.
Have the last word, if it pleases you.

Peace out.

The manner in which a physical state is said to produce a mental state is where the two models diverge.
There is the general distinction between form and matter, where the principle of action is said to be from the form itself. Socrates is constantly saying things like: "Physic does the work of the physician and carpentering does the work of the carpenter"

There is also the context which the attunement of the musical instrument appears, namely whether the soul is immortal or not:

"The body is held together at a certain tension between the extremes of hot and cold, and dry and wet, and so on, and our soul is a temperament or adjustment of these same extremes, when they are combined in just the right proportion. Well, if the soul is really an adjustment, obviously as soon as the tension of our body is lowered or increased beyond the proper point, the soul must be destroyed, divine though it is---just like any other adjustment, either in music or in any product of the arts, although in each cease the physical remains last considerably longer until they are burned up or rot away. Find us answer to this argument, if someone insists the that the soul, being a temperament of physical constituents is the first thing to be destroyed by what we call death." Phaedo 86 b

To argue that mental states are irreducible attributes of brain states is to stand on this side of the argument. When the brain dies, so does the soul. One of Socrates' argument for immortality is to see "mental states" as not being dependent upon corporeal premises:

"Well, said Socrates, this does not harmonize with your view. Make up your mind which theory you prefer----that learning is recollection, or that soul is an attunement." Phaedo 93 c

The rest of the arguments, including the one I quoted initially, are directed against the analogy of attunement as what a soul does. Adding "brain states" to one of the elements being controlled by the soul is putting the possibility of mind as coming from two sources that have been framed to be incompatible by definition.

When I said I was comfortable with the "physical" model, I didn't mean to say that it was the last word or explained everything. I am saying it is consistent with its own premises. I am objecting to overlaying this model upon Socrates' because the action doesn't give itself enough problems. It dismisses what it doesn't want to include and includes new things without their introduction requiring any work. I am not dismissing the difficulty of seeing mental states as physical and something else at the same time. This approach looks too easy to me.

Let's assume a brain state is physical and that a mental state is non-physical. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can assume those things but that is exactly what I am trying not to do. I am comfortable with considering the world where all mental states are attributes of physical states. It hurts my brain to imagine how I get from that frame of reference to a position where I can say what is "non-physical."

Now, try to reduce the non-physical mental state to some further non-physical source, like the soul, like Socrates does, claiming that the non-physical soul is required to produce the physical brain state. — Metaphysician Undercover

Socrates didn't know about brain states. His observation that the soul contends with other parts of a single life during its experience does not make those other parts not "life". The heart beaten by Odysseus is alive along with whatever is hitting it to get the heart on board with a larger plan.

Seeing this transposition of agency in the context of what Socrates was saying with a schema outside of his assumptions makes me wonder if there is a better way to approach the subject.

Yes.
As per your suggestion, I am trying to focus on the first seven remarks

I was referring to the definition of property dualism that I quoted above from the IEP :

""Property dualists argue that mental states are irreducible attributes of brain states. For the property dualist, mental phenomena are non-physical properties of physical substances."

In this context, what does it mean to distinguish the non-physical from the physical? What is being separated?

Reading the full argument prompts me to observe that responsibility as something that we practice every day has less to do with "making one the way one is, mentally speaking" and more to do with trying to influence other people, events, and the condition of things. Our influence can change outcomes in that regards but usually not in a way that we can own as coming only from our will. As Taoism observes, it can be the result of disowning events.

We do not apprehend the “red,” “apple,” or “five” as separate concepts when they’re uttered in the manner given. — I like sushi

I read that line as saying we are not checking if the words correspond one to one to "objects" as they are represented in the Augustine quote. Their "separateness" is a different matter. The point of the statement being to observe the practice of "checking" in this matter to other possible ways to understand what is being said.
Wittgenstein is trying to get us to think about the matter as an assembly of habits.

If it is true that "human disposition is an attribute of brain states", then there doesn't seem to be any purpose to maintaining a dualism. Nothing is just dumb unformed matter any longer.
Using an "idealist" model may be useful for some things but this sounds like a misuse of it.

You seem to be thinking that things are beautiful independent of an individual's assessment. I don't agree with that. "Beautiful" is one of the terms we use to describe things that appeal to us. — Terrapin Station

It is a term we each apply to what appeals to us. But "beauty" is also something that happens to each of us, an experience that can be compared with other peoples' experiences. One could agree with your statement as a matter of judgment but not think you have exhausted all there is to be said about it.

Thanks for that text. It completes the thought I was trying to have.

I particularly like this part:

My infancy did not go away (for
where would it go?). It was simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could not speak, but now a chattering boy.

It resonates with Wittgenstein's examples of learning a language.

The US military and US industry were joined at the hip post WW2. It would be odd if there were no cross pollination. I may have overstated, though. My info is anecdotal. — frank

There certainly was cross pollination. Eisenhower was warning about their integration and he had been in enough places to see the depth of it. I am only contesting the claim that the culture comes from a single source.
It should also be noted the "Prussian system" was not created ex nihilo but came out of responses to many forces, not the least of which was having their hind parts kicked by Napoleon. Napoleon's use of a citizen army was only possible because of the social structure that came before him. And so it goes until we find the first chicken and egg.

What's your association with product management, if you don't mind my asking? — frank

One of my jobs is project management. I learned it initially through working in construction as a part of taking on responsibility for site supervision. When I started to learn planning as a discipline in itself, I became increasingly aware that the industry methods being used had their own genealogy.

Familiarity with military life coupled with an interest in history. Prussian military organization was consciously adopted. It's a tool for managing a large operation. It was adapted to American industry by people who saw its advantages while serving in the military. — frank

It is true that the model of the General Staff developed by the Prussians was adopted by the U.S. military in the early twentieth century and employed by Pershing during WW1. But the development of management over huge projects has more to do with the industrial revolution itself rather than a cultural imitation of military organizations. When one considers the development of project management through the efforts of Taylor and Gaant, it looks like the influence of culture went the other way.

The National Defense Education Act was to last 4 years, but instead of returning to our domestic education or what some would call liberal education, the change has become permanent and it has been strengthened despite some believing our constitution prevents the federal government from controlling education. — Athena

The language of the act specifically excludes control of curriculum:

"Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution or school system."

In regards to the shrinking influence of "liberal education", isn't that more directly related to the struggle between Specialization vs. Generalization that pits the demands of our means of production against the desire to broaden and enhance the lives of individuals?

His [Eisenhower's] warning has not been well understood and some believe talking about it is only conspiracy talk. — Athena

I am not familiar with the warning being received as "conspiracy talk", unless you are making a reference to someone like Chomsky who sees the owners of industry manipulating every system at their disposal for their benefit. Eisenhower wasn't imputing a malign motive to either the state or the capitalists. He was pointing at how the complex perpetuated itself and tended to expand if let unchecked. Your observation is more "conspiratorial" than Eisenhower's remarks.

It is essential to the understanding of this subject that we all understand the US also adopted the German model of bureaucracy and this became a huge shift of power when Roosevelt and Hoover worked together to give us Big Government (fascism). — Athena

If you are going to look for the DNA of modern bureaucracy, it is more profitable to look at France.
They had developed a professional civil service and a system of state finances while the Prussians were still busy telling other Prussians to get off their lawn. The French system was so well established that Alexis De Tocqueville wrote a book on how the revolution didn't actually change it: The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
The first real explosion in the role of Bureaucracy in the U.S. was after the Civil War what with all the management problems that appeared with conquering indigenous and rebellious people in ever expanding new domains.
The equation you make between Big Government and (fascism) is something you are assuming and trying to prove at the same time.

The enemy to our democracy is not over there, it is internal, and the only way to defend our democracy is in the classroom. — Athena

I agree wholeheartedly. How that is precisely the case is a subject of much disagreement.

Er, you were the one saying one proof was better than another. Asking for a defense of that opinion offers you an opportunity to explain why.

Your reply to the request asserts other opinions that you are also not defending. You demur by claiming they are self evident. So far, you have not produced anything to shift in any direction.

The insulting tone could be seen as an ad hominem argument but that is not quite right because your claims are a not a rebuttal to anything I have claimed.

Nothing has happened yet.

Perhaps you could relate how you consider that proof to be superior to others. You, after all, are the one claiming such a superiority.

You express a lot contempt for certain ideas and people but I haven't seen you put much skin in the game yourself by defending your assertions. If you just want to stay on sidelines, perhaps you should adopt a less combative tone.

Well, in English, it is:

""When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly
moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was
called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out.
Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the
natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of
the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice
which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or
avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their
proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand
what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form
these signs, I used them to express my own desires."

From this description, Wittgenstein says:

"In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands."

I see how this correspondence is indicated in Augustine's text. But It is striking to me how the references to gesture, tone, and context are brought into the narrative as part of learning the meaning. It reminds me of Wittgenstein. In this vein, I wonder if Augustine would have agreed with the observation:

"Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between
kinds of word. If you describe the learning of language in this way
you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair",
"bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of
certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as
something that will take care of itself."

There are stronger proofs of God. We do not need the ontological one. — hks

Give it your best shot.

I follow your explanation about the soul being prior to harmony. I am confused how the "attunement" discussion relates directly to versions of duality. In Phaedo 94c, Socrates says:

"Well surely we can see now that the soul works in just the opposite way, it directs all of the elements of which it is said to consist, opposing them in almost everything all through life. and exercising every form of control-- sometimes by severe and unpleasant methods like those of physical training and medicine, and sometimes by milder ones, sometimes scolding, sometimes encouraging--- and conversing with the desires and passions and fears as though it were quite separate and distinct from them. It is just like Homer's description in the Odyssey where he says that:
Then beat his breast, and thus reproved his heart,
Endure, my heart, still worse hast thou endured."

I don't see how this exposition on the character of the soul relates to "attributes of brain states."

Regarding the IEP article, it does a good job of describing the differences between how substance is described in Spinoza and Descartes but doesn't reflect Spinoza's emphasis on our limits to explain causes or investigate them.
I will look for a short bit of Spinoza that touches upon this.

This website describes the term this way:

"Property dualists argue that mental states are irreducible attributes of brain states. For the property dualist, mental phenomena are non-physical properties of physical substances. Consciousness is perhaps the most widely recognized example of a non-physical property of physical substances. Still other dualists argue that mental states, dispositions and episodes are brain states, although the states cannot be conceptualized in exactly the same way without loss of meaning."

That page includes comparisons with other arguments.

Perhaps you could say precisely which text confuses you.

Your approach makes sense.
Thank you for taking on the task of organizing.

Okay, joe b, that put your question in more context.
Is there something you are reading that uses the phrase: property dualist concept of mind?
Is there something about the "rejection" (if it is that) you would like to talk about independently of the previous question?

Is this question being asked in relation to specific texts that you have been asked to read?

Spam

We don't need to frame philosophy in terms of propositions that eschew a poetic charge. — macrosoft

Maybe we don't have to frame philosophy that way. I have some sympathy for Socrates pouring cold on the idea. He did it in the context of forming an ideal curriculum for teaching children.But he was also challenging people who knew by heart what was being proposed to be separated. Their agreement to the argument as given didn't mean they were agreeing to remove narratives written into their lives with indestructible threads. It is kind of an argument that removes its strongest points of justification if the proposed action is taken.
So, I don't have a good answer to your good question. I do have a few questions left in me.

Your point is well taken that what Spinoza was saying by "substance" cannot be easily associated with contemporary meanings. I am only adding the observation that his idea was also at odds with his contemporaries, including a certain guy from France. I read Spinoza as also directly challenging Anselm in regards to "what can be conceived." I will save that argument for another day.

Neo-platonism is very much concerned with that. So too were the gnostics, although as you say, Plotinus was critical of them, but from our perspective both sides might seem to have much more in common than either of them do with us today. — Wayfarer

For sure. And I brought up Spinoza partly because he is part of the exclusion or prison escape you are talking about. Not because he shares something essential to the the others that I could prove as a matter of principle.
It is more along the lines of checking out who Dante put in the pagan lobby in the Inferno. Nice crowd.

I understand the limitations of your regard regarding Schumacher. It is similar to my regard for Ivan Illich. I don't agree with Illich for many particular reasons (maybe most of them) but love him for what he took upon himself to struggle with.

I agree with the points made previously by the others but want to focus on the idea of buying power. On the one hand, consumers have an incredible power over any provider of goods by simply not purchasing from them. The principle of boycotting certain products is a way to diminish influence but is not a replacement for it. The other options may be more palatable for whatever reason but they are not in the business of challenging any of the elements that make the business possible.
So "I" can stop giving money to certain owners but that doesn't, by itself, provide any leverage over how things are made and for what reason.
Capitalism is not going to sort out that limit through itself. That can be observed without promoting any particular solution to the problem.
For what its worth, even hard core free marketeers like Hayek have noted that it cannot replace the civic life, per se.
At the very least, I think the argument should be on the other foot. The burden of proof is on those who claim a system of exchange can replace all other methods of deciding what happens next.
Being told to freely select what has been offered doesn't sound like an alternative to much. How is it separable from: "we had choices during the process of conditioning and that made us feel free."

Your rhetorical question is a meaningless taunt.

This conversation between you and Terrapin Station interests me, in that I had to learn how to listen to some music while others felt like I had been expecting it without knowing that I did. I have become leery of a lot of comparisons because my primary goal is the experience without qualification. A desire for immersion.
So, many of the things I value most highly are avoided most of the time because I am not ready for them. I need a grammar lesson for some things but I cut it off if interferes with my exposure to it.

Whoa, couldn't we start over again with a new thread with an agreement of how much to read as a start?

It has been a few years since I read it and my knees hurt when I try to jog.

Thanks for the reference to E. F. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed. I had not known about it and will give it a read.

The "'topography of the sacred' along with the diagram reminds me a lot of Plotinus mapping out forms of experiences. It also reminds me of some of the Gnostic "maps" that Plotinus opposed.

On the matter of " Cartesian anxiety", it may be worth considering that Spinoza wrote his Ethics with the intent of belaying perplexity of this kind. Not just in saying that all substances (including our minds) are in God but by noting that men can only see will and intent as a means to an end whereas it is very unlikely that God suffers the same limitation. Along the same lines, Spinoza distinguishes looking for causes of finite things as necessarily looking for something outside of the caused thing where infinite things cause themselves.

In this register, Descartes would have to be infinite to be the source of verification he claims he is.

What I learned from my previous reading group was that participants will get bogged down with terminology and understanding is hard achieved with two or more people talking past one another. — Posty McPostface

Story of my life. All of them. :cool:

The format of how comments appear here make that development difficult to overcome. Along with the natural disgust humans have for each other.
Maybe, as a matter of courtesy, a second thread could be set up alongside the first. The primary one would just be for direct attempts at wrestling with what the author says as given, the second one would be for all other activities and complaints about what have you.

No cats, though. I insist.

When considering your appeal to a change of procedure, it may be helpful to consider why some say "none of the above" won't be showing up on the menu of available alternatives.

They will make choices that will be of benefit to them, and discard choices that make them worse off. Therefore, over time, they themselves will be able to steer society to a point where the common good has been maximized, if – and only if- they have the power. — romanv

One of the observations made by communitarians such as Ivan Illich is that power to change an environment involves not becoming a tiny cog in the forces of production. From his point of view, changing representation, supporting the continuance of useful skills, permitting desirable forms of life are bound up with changing how we make and exchange things.

I don't share Illich's optimism but he does a good job of representing what optimism looks like.