the gods lay at the foundation of all there is. — EugeneW

All this does is presuppose the reality of gods, for which proven empirical justification is lacking.

Why don’t we just say a better knowledge of the universe is provided by better knowledge of the phenomena in it?

Know the gods and you know the universe. — EugeneW

How would one know the gods, and even if one did, how would he know the gods would give knowledge of the universe? Why wouldn’t a god just say...hey, figure it out for yourself, you think you’re so smart, with your fancy inventions and all. I mean, c’mon, man. You’ve FUBAR’ed that beautiful planet I gave you, now you want me to give you free knowledge?

I got better intelligences to work with than you puny-assed humans.

Phenomenoa lay at the base of knowledge. — EugeneW

Theology is a firmer base of knowledge — EugeneW

So...phenomena lay at the base, but theology lays a firmer base.

How many degrees of firm are there? What’s the firmest possible base of knowledge? How is the firmness of a base determined?

Paint, meet corner.

Your accounting, or sourced from secondary literature?

Perception is the sense awareness of the environment that starts within the mind and then pushes outward. — chiknsld

Sense awareness....to be aware by means of the senses? If to be aware means use of the senses, how can awareness begin in the mind, which has nothing to do with the physical senses?

If the senses cause us to be aware of that which is already out there in the environment, why would the mind push out what just came in?

What is it that the mind is pushing out? Action? What’s going on between that which comes in by means of the senses, and that which gets pushed out by means of the mind?

I'm so glad you came to save the day. — Constance

Ehhhh.....the man’s life’s work was at stake. I was duty-bound, doncha know.

You are ignoring the qualifier..... — RussellA

And this is why I absolutely detest the ghastly stupidity of language games. DETEST, I tell ya!!

“As much as he wanted....” Exactly how much is that, anyway? WFT kinda qualifier would “as much as” be, without a quantitative measure to accompany it? Without a how much to go with the “as much”, who the hell cares about as much as he wanted? He wanted, however much it was. Which he didn’t in the first place. So of course “as much as” can be dismissed as a qualitative categorical condition and the falsity of the proposition stands unassailed.

There’s no mountain to be made from this molehill.

is not "catastrophically false". — RussellA

Ohfercrisakes.....that he wanted to deny it is every bit as false as he did deny it. He equally never did either.

Butting in......

Space doesn't bend; things bend IN space. — Constance

Agreed, re: gravitational lensing. There are no mathematical expressions with space qua infinite containment, as a variable, which there must be if space moves, which it must if it bends.
(“Well, gosh, Mr. Bill. Where did the space go that was above the rock before I put the bucket there?”)
—————

Causality as an intuition is taken AS causality in play, in context. — Constance

Maybe....taken as causation in play.
—————

the moment you try to talk about it, you place it in the dubious hands language and analysis. — Constance

At first, maybe just language; to talk about indicates an analysis has already been done from which follows the dubious transcription into language. Subsequently, dubious analysis would then be of the initial language.
—————

Kant wanted to deny metaphysics — Constance

This is catastrophically false, but none of your co-respondents noticed nor cared, even though every single one of them is fully immersed in it, so.....you got off scot-free. Almost.

Butting out.....

Any idea what OM means? — Agent Smith

This garden universe vibrates complete.
Some we get a sound so sweet.
Vibrations reach on up to become light,
And then thru gamma, out of sight.
Between the eyes and ears there lay,
The sounds of colour and the light of a sigh.
And to hear the sun, what a thing to believe.
But it's all around if we could but perceive.
To know ultra-violet, infra-red and X-rays,
Beauty to find in so many ways.
Two notes of the chord, that's our fluoroscope.
But to reach the chord is our lifes hope.
And to name the chord is important to some.
So they give a word, and the word is OM.
(Edge, Pinder, 1968)

Doesn’t answer the question, but cool as hell anyway.

Agreed; there is a body between. I was objecting to “we’re a body”, which I take to be a misconception. A categorical error of equating the mere representation of a metaphysical object of pure reason, with a concrete spacetime reality.
————-

where we think there should be a divisor. — Metaphysician Undercover

The explanatory gap?

The mental resides in matter. Like charge in an electron. — EugeneW

It would seem that way, yes, as an analogy. Or some quantification of the same sort. But if charge per se, because all matter contains electrons, you must also say the mental is a property of matter generally, as charge is a property of electrons generally, which gets you into all kindsa philosophical trouble.

I’d agree there’s an inside and an outside, but not that “we’re a body between” them. Problem is, as always, that the physical must be responsible for the mental.....somehow. Or maybe it’s just the more parsimonious to suppose it is, otherwise, what we take for knowledge is even more suspect than it already is.

I think you have actually laid consciousness on the table. — EugeneW

Rock and a hard place: you won’t find consciousness, insofar as to so claim is reification of an abstract conception, but to say that of which the body is conscious is not to still be contained in the body, is a logical contradiction.

Physics and metaphysics share an Uber. One sits in the front, one sits in the back, they don’t talk, and they pay their own way. All they have in common is the ride.

Ehhh....not to worry, until it becomes as bad as....

“....How should the minds that in the freshness of youth have been strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism, be still capable of following (...) profound investigations? They are early accustomed to take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach some thought....”
(W.W.R., I, Pref.2, 1844)

....Arthur’s verbal castration of poor ol’ G. Dubyah F., or at least his followers, which is the same thing.

Anyway, I’m merely a pacifist spectator, maybe with a clandestine affirmative nod here and there.

I don’t have the era-specific expertise required for direct support herein, but the expertise.....or maybe just the favoritisms......I do have, being taken from the same general arguments as yours, offers support indirectly. What I mean is, for a great deal of what you’ve said so far, I can find references from subsequent metaphysics that supports it.

For whatever that’s worth.....

Metaphysics chooses worn-out words, such as the absolute, infinite, nonexistence, which do not display a trace of original coinage. — lll

“....To coin new words is a pretension to legislation in language which is seldom successful; for this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate distinction of which from related conceptions is of great importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or, for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary, carefully to preserve its peculiar signification, as otherwise it easily happens that when the attention of the reader is no longer particularly attracted to the expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of other words of very different import, the thought which it conveyed, and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it....”

Reification. Or, misplaced concreteness. Knowledge is not an existence.

Ok. Thanks, it was fun. For awhile.

“....The mathematician, the natural philosopher, and the logician—how far soever the first may have advanced in rational, and the two latter in philosophical knowledge—are merely artists, engaged in the arrangement and formation of conceptions; they cannot be termed philosophers. Above them all, there is the ideal teacher, who employs them as instruments for the advancement of the essential aims of human reason. Him alone can we call philosopher; but he nowhere exists. But the idea of his legislative power resides in the mind of every man, and it alone teaches us what kind of systematic unity philosophy demands in view of the ultimate aims of reason. This idea is, therefore, a cosmical conception, by which I mean one in which all men necessarily take an interest. (...) Even at the present day, we call a man who appears to have the power of self-government, even although his knowledge may be very limited, by the name of philosopher....”

Gotta be a lesson in there someplace.

A system predicated on prediction and trial and error....
— Mww

Reason doesn’t always have a choice in the matter. — Possibility

Irrelevant, insofar as ‘predicated on’ as a general methodological necessity is not the same as ‘recognition of’ a particular exception. In the case of QM, reason merely conveys that for which a certainty is impossible, under the strictest of conditions reason itself provided, in accordance with observation. Humans, as such, don’t function in the quantum domain, and I’m a big fan of staying in my own lane, so.....
—————-

Pain is a basic biological signal that our predicted distribution of effort and attention (affect) in a particular situation is currently insufficient in some area. — Possibility

Yeah....no. Here’s me, walkin’ down a public road, mindin’ my own damn business, hummin’ Jimmy’s solo bridge in Stairway to Heaven.......punk-assed banga jumps out of the bushes, whacks me in the noggin, relieves me of my Rolex. So the pain of embarrassment I felt in the loss of my watch is the signal that I paid too little attention to making it and my wrist inseparable? Or maybe the pain of the lump on my head signals that I made too little effort in formulating an escape from a situation for which there was no antecedent reason, insofar as the situation itself was a complete surprise?

This is what I meant by guessing games. If such-and-such is true in one case, but not in another, there must be something logically underpinning them both.

Pain, or pleasure, is a basic signaling parameter. Period. All they in their various degrees do, is inform of a relative exception to a given rule, and it’s up to reason to figure out the particulars related to it. Anything else is mere anthropology or (gaspsputterchoke) empirical or clinical psychology. Of which the proper speculative metaphysician treats as the proverbial red-headed stepchild, while the “vulgar class”, as Berkeley would say, or the “vulgar understanding” as Hume would call it, think them as some major importance in the governance of the fundamental human condition.
———-

Understanding awareness in non-conscious entities is how we improve the accuracy of relationships and interaction with our environment and the universe. — Possibility

Surely you didn’t mean to say I can improve my relationship with a swimming pool if I only understand my diving into it doesn’t cause it any pain. Or, on the other hand, my relationship with the pool improves if I understand it appreciates me diving into it because that is one way the pool was meant to be treated. Your assertion can certainly be interpreted like that.

Point/counterpoint. All in good dialectical exercise.....

This wanders too far afield.

A system predicated on prediction and trial and error cannot be as efficient as one predicated on pure logic, given the excruciatingly simple premise that reason doesn’t like a guessing game, or that which can be reduced to it.
————

I have no idea how to connect pain with prediction error.

Prediction: let’s try this. Error: Crap!! I’m now aware that didn’t work!! I felt pain. To feel less pain, try this...try this...try this....where does it end? It ends in no pain, of course. Shall we add sheer luck to prediction and trial and error?

OK...so.....why didn’t it work? Was it because of its logical structure, or because of its qualitative aspect? Or even on the other hand... did it work because of one or the other? If both...equally, or more of one than the other? And if it doesn’t matter, why were they there in the first place?

How was logical structure/qualitative aspect determined, anyway? Or were they given, and in which case, by what?

In subsequent circumstance, under sufficiently congruent conditions, to fall back on prediction or trial and error is absurd, insofar as experience makes them obsolete. So why employ them at all, if they only work once? Sometimes we need something that which works infallibly, all the time.
————

Prediction and trial and error have their place, just as logical structure and qualitative aspect has theirs. Just not the same place.

I don't see any reason to take for granted traditional ideas of thought, mind, sense, or consciousness. — Xtrix

I don’t either. Take for granted, that is.

But ya gotta admit.....seeing the numbers in your head, or not seeing a reason, is just the same form of conceptual misappropriation as awareness vs consciousness.

So....we are aware of an actual sensation but also conscious that what we are aware of, could be anything, so has a level of potentiality.
— Mww

It COULD be anything - it CAN be narrowed down (...). It’s where conceptual structures - predictions based on the relation of actual sensation/affect to past experience, knowledge, language, values, etc - come into play. — Possibility

Yes. Close enough.

As for numbers, laws, etc - these are conceptual structures that we develop an understanding of through a potential correlation of quantitative knowledge with qualitative experience. — Possibility

Again, true enough.

it’s just more efficient with prior knowledge of logical structure. — Possibility

What if conceptual structure is itself logical? If it is, then the efficiency we have is all we’re ever going to have, and there wouldn’t be any prior knowledge that isn’t already structured logically.

And if conceptual structure isn’t logical, indicating there is more efficiency to be had, what does the logical structure look like, and how would we know it as such?

To be aware is to be informed by relation to ‘other’; to be conscious is to be aware at the level of potential; to sense is to be aware at the level of actuality. — Possibility

This works for objects of perception, for real objects in the world which affect our sensibility. We know this from the fact we sometimes are affected by objects but don’t know what that object is. So....we are aware of an actual sensation but also conscious that what we are aware of, could be anything, so has a level of potentiality.

But that doesn't account for conditions of consciousness without awareness, of which there are two. One is being conscious of that for which there will never be an awareness at the level of actuality, or that of which we will be potentially aware at the level of actuality iff we ourselves cause it to become an object of perception. The former is, of course, our feelings, and the latter is things like numbers, laws, possibilities, and so on.
————-

To think is one method of processing information from this level of potential. It isn’t the only one. — Possibility

What is another one? That isn’t the least anthropomorphic?

You’re sensing either way. — Xtrix

If you can add any set of random four-digit numbers together in your head, you are thinking without sensing.

I is strange that you talk of thoughts and awareness as if they are objects (nouns). — Harry Hindu

And it is a dialectic non-starter to fail to grasp that talking about a thing is the only way to objectively represent it. Of course I talk about thinking in terms of nouns. How else would I?

As for the rest....(Sigh)

It seems that both awareness and thinking are integral parts of consciousness. — Harry Hindu

As I said: an unabashed, unapologetic dualist’s personal preference regarding an organized cognitive system. I can think a thing without its being present, but I am immediately aware of a thing upon its being present. Being conscious of thoughts is not the same as being aware of objects, hence being aware of thoughts says nothing more than being conscious of them.

Besides....if it doesn’t really make any sense to say I am aware of my consciousness, or conscious of my awareness, then there is sufficient reason to distinguish the roots and derivatives of one from the roots and derivatives of the other.

You guys are making a mess of OLP.

YEA!!!!

I consider ‘awareness’ to be a more general term, with ‘consciousness’ referring to a more complex level of awareness. — Possibility

Me too. To be aware of the possibility of a thing, then to be aware of the thing, proves the thing. To be conscious of the possibility of a thing, then to be conscious of the thing, validates the possibility but does not necessarily prove the thing.

I reserve awareness in reference to sensibility, but consciousness in reference to understanding. To be aware is to sense; to be conscious is to think.

humans didn't begin thinking in the "I" tense. It's hard to understand that we didn't have this. — L'éléphant

I’m ok with that.

Rational thinking of the "I" did not happen before when there was only the "we". — L'éléphant

While I’m hesitant to accept this, I won’t reject it either, without some proper argument to judge it by. I might go for rational thinking of “I” didn’t happen when there was only beings of similar kind, all running around the countryside and stuff, making babies, staying alive, before the advent of systemic pure thought. But when you say “we”, the inception of rational thinking must have occurred, if only as a conception of a discriminating relation between similarly existing things, as determined by one of them.

But I sorta get your point. Maybe I’m over-analyzing.

Actually, I was working from this....

We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. — L'éléphant

....from which the deduction of the self must have already been established, insofar as there must already be that to which the understanding of “we” belongs. Hence the presupposed necessary singular subject.

So then the one thing we could deduce from it is that there was no understanding of self prior.... — L'éléphant

Correct. Understanding, in and of itself, does not immediately give the self, but as soon as there is something understood, in this case “we”, a subject to which that something relates, is presupposed. Can’t have an understanding without that which understands. That the self to which understanding belongs, represented as “I”, is only a speculative metaphysical determination of pure reason.

Or so the story goes...
————-

“Freedom is transcendental”, Schopenhauer, 1839;
“There does exist freedom in the transcendental sense”, Kant, 1781.

S thought so, K thought so first. And everybody knows....first rules!!!

Just sayin’.....

Don’t mind me none; just musing.....

Did Descartes actually demonstrate freedom, or did he rather posit that freedom was “...sensed within ourselves...”, and is hence “...self-evident and transparently clear...”?

we’ve somehow achieved freedom of thinking by arriving at the ”I” — L'éléphant

In Descartes, there are two ways of thinking, in which “...will has a wider scope than the intellect...”, so, yes, true enough.

The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. — L'éléphant

Except understanding itself presupposes a necessary singular subject, which couldn’t be any other that an “I”. “We” only indicates a multiplicity of singular subjects, doesn’t it?

Interesting topic, at any rate.

(is physicalism) truly central to philosophical discourse — Kuro

Of course not. It is possible to engage in philosophical discourse that does not have physicalism as its subject. Physicalism is central to a philosophical discourse iff physical objects are contained in its predicates.

Maybe we are our body then. — EugeneW

Under the most serious empirical reduction, we are only our bodies, or, we are nothing other than what our bodies facilitate. Then all the possible questions arising from such a declaration start trippin’ all over each other, and we end up with the gigantic mess that is human reason itself.

”Everything we think, do and refrain from doing is determined by our brain.” — EugeneW

How could it be otherwise? Except for sheer accident or pure reflex, is there anything a human does that isn’t first thought? Does it make any difference to that necessity, that even if he is not conscious of it, it didn’t happen? Does it make any difference, that because, re: Hume, we are habitual creatures, the brain isn’t still in control of those very habits?

Parsimony suggests, and survival mandates, that the brain is in fact both the sole origin for, and the complete arbiter of, human activities, further sustained by logical negation, insofar as without a brain, it is absolutely impossible that a human does anything at all.

Dick Swaab shows that we don't just have brains: we are our brains.

This is nonsense, in the sense that it makes no sense. — EugeneW

The problem is “we”. That the human being is his brain is nonsense, meant to indicate that all a human being can ever be is his brain, which is, of course, nonsense. To reconcile the nonsense, it must be granted, first, that a human being is a rational intellect, second, that rational intellect is predicated on logical relations, and third, that all the terms in a logical relation are mere representations of brain function. Granting those conditions, “we” arises as a logical representation of brain function across the range of human beings, as opposed to “I” for each human being, and the nonsense disappears.

But then, the rabid materialist will insist the disappearance of that nonsense just instills another, albeit different, one, and we arrive right back to that gigantic mess of human reason.

Same as it ever was.....

I still don't understand the unity they talk about. — EugeneW

“....For the empirical consciousness which accompanies different representations is in itself fragmentary and disunited, and without relation to the identity of the subject. This relation, then, does not exist because I accompany every representation with consciousness, but because I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations. The thought, "These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me," is accordingly just the same as, "I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them"; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious....”

Unity here is the identity of the thinking subject in time, in juxtaposition to that of which the subject is conscious over all times. The problem is, psychology wants the subject to change because of his experiences, and cognitive neurosciences wants to deny there even is one, but pure metaphysics wants the subject to remain despite his experiences. In other words, it matters not what I think or what I know, I am still, and always, me and me alone.

Reification is the only reason for the hard problem; when treated metaphysically as a qualitative condition and not a thing, both the hard and the problem disappear. But then, metaphysics has its own problems, so there is that......

Anyway....one iteration of the unity they talk about, and perhaps the ground of all subsequent iterations.

I saying no more than "it is what it is" (...) seems unimpeachable. — Janus

That, and its negation, “it couldn’t be anything other than what it is”. Both unimpeachable, in that they are tautologically true. Which makes them pretty much worthless.

Equally useless, I might add, is the worthless sophism in the form, “that there is a reality is itself an assumption”. But that’s a ‘nuther whole ball of wax, right there, best left to waste away.

so if consciousness is thought as fundamental then the brain and its sensual body is a structure of consciousness, designed by consciousness to focus itself in order to experience otherness. — Janus

Yep, under the presupposition of universal consciousness, re: Anaxagoras, or universal will, re: Schopenhauer. And others, probably.

It's assumption all the way down, when it comes to (traditional) metaphysics, that is any absolutized claim about the nature of reality. — Janus

Depending on the chronology of “traditional”. Some metaphysics doesn’t make absolutized claims about the nature of reality, i.e., that there is one necessarily, isn’t a claim about its nature.

Nevertheless, I would agree metaphysics as a rational doctrine predicated on pure logic, is assumptions all the way down. The premises are assumed, or at least subjectively given, and hopefully the employment of empirical conditions for justifying the conclusions, doesn’t bite us in our smarty-pants.

Physicalism and idealism are two such claims. — Janus

Plain ol’ idealism. Idealism in and of itself, re: Berkeley. Ok, sure. Surely not though.....er....you-know-who.

My point was only that a scientist could start either from the presupposition that the brain produces consciousness, or that it receives consciousness, and perform exactly all the same experiments as are being done in neuroscience. — Janus

Actually.....having thought about it overnight......if consciousness is external, then it affects the brain. If consciousness is internal, the brain is its cause but at the same time, only affects itself........

......which makes the brain affected either way, and affects being that upon which experiments are presupposed.....

(Enter silly little lightbulb thingy here)

.....speculatively projected metaphysical or ontological implications of empirically grounded cognitive science are another matter altogether..... — Janus

Ahhhh....I see. What you meant by grounding presupposition? I was going there myself, with “the philosophical admissions of the cognitive scientist himself”.

Call it....close enough?

I think that all accounts, all kinds of accounts, are reliant for their coherence on their contexts and the grounding presuppositions..... — Janus

Couldn’t be any other way, could it.

I would even go so far as to declare, saying that philosophy, and he who merely poses as a philosopher, rejects empirically grounded cognitive science with respect to brain operation and demonstrable functionality, is a case of pathological stupidity.

No one denies that the absolute necessity of the brain has been established, yet everyone acknowledges an irreducible sufficiency in its manifestations, has not. Questioning the completeness of scientific investigations is very far from rejecting that which is antecedently proven from it. While the cognitive philosopher can say, “if this, then this, from which that is given”, the cognitive scientist can only say, “because of this, then this, but that is not given”.

At the same time, the utter completeness and internal self-consistency of purely logical cognitive metaphysics, mediately denies to empirical cognitive science the possibility of attaining such complete certainty, merely from the sheer quantitative and qualitative complexity of the system being empirically investigated. In fact, the philosophical admissions of the cognitive scientist himself, may propose that his science may even get in its own way, when the irreducible certainty it seeks may reside in a domain impossible for it to investigate, a difficulty not met in cognitive metaphysics, which has the system it investigates immediately presented to it in its entirety.

The pathologically stupid don’t recognize that science is more apt to reject metaphysics simply because its tenets do not lend themselves to observation, yet metaphysics cannot reject the tenets of empirical science, insofar as those tenets provide the necessary causality for the paradigm in which metaphysics operates.

Science builds and maintains the road, metaphysics uses it. Simple as that.

Rhetorically speaking.....