If people are attracted to threads due to number over responses that is a sad sad sad situation. Makes no sense at all to me. I look at threads based on topic not popularity and assume literally everyone else does too … why wouldn’t they?

You need one or the other in general. A ‘focused’ dialogue can quickly become one that that misses the forest for the trees whilst one with more participants becomes little more than a free for all.

To go into a bit more depth … if someone insists that something someone is saying has nothing to do with the topic it could just be that they are missing the chance to take an alternative approach. What can seem like far off the beaten track can be key to the fundamental question at hand.

With ‘Participants’ too many lines of inquiry can cause confusion and what was once a dynamic discussion between 3-4 people turns into a muddled mess following several different themes/lines.

With 3-4 people involved less guarding of focus breathes life and exploration into the discussion. With more and more people the focus needs to be rigid to avoid confusion … but imo this will result in a severe lack of exploration.

I disagree with Focus and Participation.

I can tell by your attitude you are not at all interested in discussion so bye bye

I do question the ‘survey’ that states that over 50% are living pay check to pay check btw. Sounds a little obscure how they acquired this data.

I was suggesting that the government should award automatic investments for low income. Given the inbuilt aversion to social care in the US I imagine things won’t change anytime soon. The battle for social care in the UK is pretty scary too … but at least there is a semblance of it there still.

Yes, I am ignorant about US. If the majority of people in the US are literally living to pay check to pay check I imagine the US economy will collapse soon enough. I do know that the richest nations have the largest degree of poverty compared to its counterparts. That is the nature of economic growth.

Read exactly what I said and consider the context it was written in and how I repeated what I meant.

Do you think some kind of scheme should be put into place to help minimum wage workers in later life? I do. Maybe open up a pension/saving scheme to set up like I said? Good idea or bad idea?

Minimum wage is your starting point, that is the issue. Also, why just 30 yrs if you are assuming minimum wage? On minimum wage from 20 yrs old I would go for 50 yrs (which would be about $300,000+).

I understand that people do not appreciate what compound interest can do if left alone over decades. All that said, it would be good if minimum salaries came with some kind of automatic pension investment rather than just having those with a greater disposable income to benefit more easily longterm. How would this be implemented though … tough question. I do not see skimming off the top as being a optimal way forward.

My point was that it is not that hard to get to a million NOT that difficult to do for most people. Of course if someone lacks ability to get a job above minimum wage their entire life then that sucks. Some people are not capable but MOST are.

It is always the case that the richest countries have the poorest people sadly. It was the same for the British Empire. Now the minimum in UK is far better than US I imagine.

What are you talking about? You think putting 5% of your income into funds is only possible for people with a “small fortune”?

All you seem to be doing here is proving my point that people are not educated about how to manage their money. Start in your early twenties and you will be fine. Just takes a little discipline and forward thinking. Very, very few people today are completely unable to put aside something on a monthly basis.

Money is accumulated by working. You just have to set aside a little and put it into savings. That is how people become millionaires. It is not really that difficult if you start young.

The ‘enraged’ people are usually those that want more (envy the super rich) rather than feel pity for those that have less in my experience.

A large issue is simply lack of education. The opportunities are their but so many just had no idea they were available then feel annoyed by those that took advantage of a opportunity they were not aware of. Better to learn, take it on the chin and soldier on and do the best you can rather than scream ‘not fair!’ at billionaires.

If you cannot beat them join them. You just need to start early and be disciplined. If you start too let then teach your kids how to manage money.

Simples.

Noumenon is only in the negative sense NOT the positive sense.

In simple terms there is no referent. That is basically the thrust of the point Kant was making in COPR.

To reveal delusions.

ALL definitions need to be - and are - incomplete. The useful ones are consistent.

If you wish to define ‘reality’ as this or that it is fine by me as long you make it clear and distinct from what you regard other views of ‘reality’ being. Otherwise you will get accused of shifting goalposts to suit any point you are trying to express.

Ethics is just a way to say something is ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ with the facade of conviction.

You can live and act and there will be consequences. You can ignore the consequences but that will not matter to reality only your perception of your intentions and actions.

Choose how to deal with the data presented. That is what you have. Fin

I do find that many are too quick to pigeonhole someone as like x or y, or too ready to argue about what some philosopher said or meant … that is a scholarly side of philosophy.

I much prefer when people use their own words as often as possible rather than relying on philosophers as a crutch.

Bias is not always bad.

A woman talking about women’s experiences is certainly biased … but that is what we need to move towards an actual understanding. A man talking about women’s experiences is biased too. They are potentially both just as bias as each other here depending upon the context of the discussion of women’s experiences.

Needless to say I think women can offer more about the experiences of women than men ;)

Point being … why would anyone seek to eliminate bias? If possible this would make the item useless/unintelligible I feel.

Kant refers to ‘time and space’ in way as to express our faculties as needing them to paint a picture of the world on.

We cannot think of anything without time or space.

The most useful part of his text (for me) was how he discerned noumenon and phenomenon. It is so obvious that many misconstrue what he meant here - to the point that philosophers still argue about it today for some reason! ..l maybe I a wrong though :D

Note: Keep in mind that Kant argues for numerous opposing positions in Critique and you will often find people using quotes to back up one argument of their own that Kant himself refuted elsewhere in this particular text.

Our sense of the passage of time is also illusionary most of the time ;)

A rainbow is an illusion. Prior to our understanding of refracted light we would make up some other explanation. Regardless of what a rainbow is or how one is formed it is an illusion in the sense that something appears to be there but is not there. And the obvious stick in water illusion too.

All experience is not an illusion.

Experience happens. Illusions and delusions are part of experience. Once we recognise a delusion it becomes an illusion. That is all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words

Yeah. I get the ‘terminology’ just think it is dumb and historically such demarcations turn out to be mostly due to the need to fund research or push a certain theory. Needless to say there are uses in diagnosing some cases but there are also hazards when the distinctions are somewhat arbitrary in part.

The strong version posits that language determines thought entirely and that we can only perceive and understand things that we have words for in our language. In other words, without specific words or linguistic structures for certain concepts, those concepts cannot be fully grasped or expressed by speakers of that language. — Wayfarer

That sounds ridiculous to the extreme. There are instances of people without language that are able to form thoughts, plan ahead and act out. Animals also exhibit this behaviour.

Feral children, if too far gone, are unable to grasp some aspects of language simply because they have not developed in a world like ours and so struggle to understand things like tables and chairs because they are creatures of forests, mountains and hills. If switched around we would fail to appreciate a number of their subtle behaviours in the wild because we are not wild animals.

A set world view (cosmological view) dictates the items we communicate and to suggest that it can or could be the other way around appears utterly preposterous to me given what I know about humans. I do understand that some people struggle to think in anything but words. Some people even state they cannot conjure up mental images.

To be generous here I guess it is possible for some people that struggle to conjure up mental pictures to fall further towards the belief that language is needed to create concepts. Also, it depends a lot on how ‘language’ is being defined. Such definitions used by some can leave gaps in their explanations. Wittgenstein’s use of language was one such instance where premise is the conclusion … that is not to say that his exploration is not fascinating though!

Everyone is on the spectrum, hence ‘spectrum’.

I think Janus summed it up pretty well. The phenomenological perspective is NOT concerned with existence it is concerned with ‘experience’ only.

If we are talking about mapping out the world, with language or vice versa, then doing away with the ‘world’ (bracketing it out) allows us to examine the mechanisms/items/aspects/‘moments’ (for want of a better term) of conscious experience.

fair enough … it might be worth looking at the phenomenological approach maybe? Especially when talking about our experience, knowledge and perceptions of the world in context of individual perspectives.

In terms of phenomenology they are NOT the same thing at all because phenomenology has no concern for what is real/existent in any material/physical sense.

People are strange.

Yes, but they are not the same.

I was responding to someone else.

I can say you are wrong and provide reasons if I wish to. We can then go back and forth for a while … eventually we can agree upon definitions and how they are used in certain contexts. If we cannot agree on terms then we will miss the spot.

In general our terms are universal enough to allow for meaningful conversations. Sometimes misuse, or alternative uses, will slip by unnoticed.

When it comes to terms like ‘objective’ used in a colloquial sense we have little trouble understanding what is meant. In fields such as epistemology, sciences or fictional stories the term shifts to suit the medium.

Paradigm shifts will disrupt communication as we have to foster new ways to explicate new ideas/experiences.

I will also mention that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are prime examples of terms that have universality in one context but not in another. 1+1=4 is wrong, yet when it comes to ethics what is or is not ‘wrong’ can yo-yo back and forth within an individual perspective when new items come to our attention.

If we both see a dog in the street and one of us says ‘look at that dog’ we know what is meant. Objectivity in this sense in an object of understanding.

If you ask ‘what are you doing tomorrow?’ No one will fail to understand. What they can fail to understand are subtle inferences and reasons for asking/stating certain things.

It is bootstrapping if this kind of lingo is used completely out of context.

Intentionality (phenomenological) is not concerned with objectivity in any measured sense.

There seems to be a common theme hitting the threads recently around the idea of ‘knowns’ and ‘unknowns’. I find it hard to stomach reading someone talk of ‘objective’ and ‘intersubjective’ as if they are synonymous … if they are why use both?

Arguing with ‘bracketing out’ in the first place is probably where the bootstrapping would make sense. Seems to be a lot of crossovers here in terminology that are clouding my understanding of what is being said.

This is kind if a misuse of the original intention of this kind of terminology.

To talk of ‘intersubjectivity’ in relation to ‘reality’ is kind of a contradiction if one understands the intent of phenomenology.

I am saying quite the opposite: there is an ontology that stands behind, with, and in, all knowledge claims, rendering them epistemically non arbitrary. This is the point. — Astrophel

If you can elaborate this a little more I would like to hear it. Note: plain language would help if possible.

I like the pragmatism about this. But does it follow that when distinctions encourage or even enable exploration, you are in favour? For example, I can distinguish between questions that I know the answer to and those that I don't know the answer to. Arguable, that distinction enables me to explore. Really, quite useful. — Ludwig V

Context matters. The further we abstract ideas and thoughts from experience the less tangible they become. Specialisation is useless if such ‘specialisation’ lives in its own terminological frame wholly separate - or rather seemingly so - from more mundane matters.

Categorisation is a symptom of a particular pedagogy that, given the practical evidence, seems less than optimal and more or less a mere force of habit. Finland is a prime example of how general problems are more fully understood and tackled by students in multiple ways effectively rather than simply looking through one myopic lens.

The only things we know with ‘absolute certainty’ are items contained in abstract realms (ie. 1+1=2). Outside of abstractions there is no ‘absolute certainty’.

I came to the conclusion that what is observed is necessarily apparent because it can be brought into question NOT because we know it with ‘absolute certainty’.

In a more general sense the primary question of philosophy (posed millenia ago) is ‘How should I live my life?’

Such a question is BS to some because they just ‘live’ whereas for others it is intrinsic to their being. Some people question things and others do not.

So to call ‘meaning’ a bunch of BS is kinda silly. There are large swathes within the philosophical field that good numbers of people would not bother with where others choose to loiter. In some sense it is a bit like saying ALL science is BS … in truth there are areas within scientific interest that are more readily useful than others seem to be.

You may notice that to a chemist ‘chemistry is everything’ yet to a biologist ‘biology is everything’. Biased of preferences is a human condition. I am more or less for doing away with distinctions when they inhibit exploration.

What do you mean by ‘truly know’ as opposed to ‘know’?

You are correct. The epistemic and ontological distinctions are of convenience.

Sadly people like Heidegger used this problem to talk meaningless twaddle :D

Yes. That is like saying phenomenal phenomenon. In terms of Kantian lingo anyway.

In science phenomenon is just something we experience and then try and understand.

Language is also a nuanced term. If we are talking about how language is learned it is fair to say spacial and temporal position matters just as much as, if not more so, than categorising similar elements/ideas/experiences.Furthermore what we experience has emotional context always - be this through needs, wants or questions.

The World is essentially our language NOT some ‘experience of’ The World. Consciousness is ‘experience of’, as in experience of some ‘thing’. Verbalising/labelling the ‘thing’ (phenomenon) is another step. A table is a table because you understand it as such not because it is a table. A table to an ant is not … maybe some creatures other tha humans grasp the purpose of a table BUT that said it is likely only a human item not a universal item as it serves a human function not a universal one.

Other items, such as trees, will likely be ‘understood’ by other animals in roughly the same manner, but by something like an ant … no way.

The world of phenomena and human experience? — Tom Storm

They are the same thing.

Some people probably never think about some ‘real world’ they just live life.