Comments

  • A Question about Consciousness


    Are you in agreement with Putnam and Husserl, re: the representational human cognitive system, or are you using them just as some informational response to the OP?
  • An inquiry into moral facts
    Oh fercrissakes!!! For any private moral consideration whatsoever, if the state of it is supposed, the conditions for the state of it is necessarily presupposed, and propositions with respect to those conditions, are irrelevant. Only syllogistic propositions or mathematical formulae have truth value; moral inclinations are neither, hence do not.

    “Is it true you ought not to kill that guy?”
    “Hmmm...lemme think. I ought not to kill that guy, so you want to know if it’s true I ought not to kill that guy? What kinda stupid question is that, anyway? I ought not, but it might be not true I ought not? If it’s not true I ought not, how in the HELL did I come up with ought not in the first place? And if that fool did dirty to my daughter, even if I ought not kill him, I might just do it anyway. So it turns out that dumbass question is moot no matter the consequence of the inclination behind it; I ought not kill the guy whether I let him go with a stern talking-to, or put him in the ground.

    ....Yeah, and besides all that, considering the contrary, if it is the case that I ought to kill that guy, then it must be the case that I ought possibly to kill any guy, from which follows possibly I ought to kill every guy, which makes me wonder....how lucky are you to be here asking me stupid questions?

    ....Maybe I was wrong in coming up with ought not.”

    (Sigh)
    ————

    But as far as I'm aware that we ought not kill isn't a recognisable physical stateMichael

    Correct. Hence, the contingency of a mere “ought, rather than the universality intrinsic to empirical conditions.
  • An inquiry into moral facts
    ......myself as well as to you.Banno

    Ever one but not the other? Ever one before the other? What if “we” do not analyze, but it is only each “I” that does? Therein, perhaps, lay the transcendental subject, which in turn facilitates the subjective condition itself.

    What is gained by describing it as subjective?Banno

    Describing is tacit acknowledgement of limitation to specific time and membership. Whether a gain or not, depends on discourse.
  • What are thoughts?
    "Thoughts" is the name we give to our inner experience when we have to put it into words to communicate with another person.T Clark

    My sentiments as well. Has there ever been an occassion, in the everyday course of your private rational machinations generally, you ever said to and for yourself alone, “I think.....”?

    I’m guessing.....never.
  • An inquiry into moral facts
    After spending some time with it, I cannot find any value at all, and find it instead confused.tim wood

    Yeah.....about that: all from THN 3.1.1, 1739......

    “....It would be tedious to repeat all the arguments, by which I have prov’d, that reason is perfectly inert, and can never either prevent or produce any action or affection....”

    .....and four paragraphs later.....

    “....It has been observ’d, that reason, in a strict and philosophical sense, can have an influence on our conduct only after two ways: Either when it excites a passion by informing us of the existence of something which is a proper object of it; or when it discovers the connexion of causes and effects, so as to afford us means of exerting any passion....”

    .....from which we see how easy it must have been, to be “awakened from my dogmatic slumbers”.

    So there must be something about never producing any action, that is different from affording us the means for producing an action. Either way, reason cannot be both inert, and at the same time, influential.
  • An inquiry into moral facts
    We were no longer simply a creature, but a creature who could ask ‘what am I?’, and ‘what is this world I find myself in?’Wayfarer

    How else to answer his own questions, then to have the conditions for it already resident within himself?

    It’s because we became independent arbiters of what is good.Wayfarer

    Yes, but that is not the same as becoming independent arbiters of what good is.

    We are no longer merely creatures, we did become independent arbiters, but those evolutionary predicates don’t invalidate the notion of a moral sense as a pre-eminent condition of the human creature.

    My two pfennigs....
  • Descartes didn't prove anything
    I think therefore I am not physical?Rxspence

    That I am not physical, is true, but it isn’t true because I think.
    ————-

    "I" is a perceived being.
    It is not a logically deduced or proved by reason being.
    Corvus

    To be perceived implies the use of the senses. “I” am never available to any sensibility, even my own. “I” am a perceived being is therefore false. And impossible besides.

    The only possible means for “I” at all, is by logical deduction. In humans, all logical deduction is only possible by reason. But “I” am not a being at all, so whether or not a being logically deduced or a being proved by reason, is moot.
    ————-

    Beware reification.
  • On existence


    Well....good luck, and have fun with it. Get to the bottom of whatever it was that smacked right into your face.
  • On existence
    My English is apparently outdated.god must be atheist

    Nahhh.....I took it as you intended.
  • On existence
    being able to read through the opening post and following what it says.god must be atheist

    Oh, I wouldn’t admit to following, as much as I’d admit to reading. I’m pretty sure its author will agree.
  • On existence
    B is "A then C" or "not A"Samppa Hannikainen

    “A then C” implies change, but “not-A” carries no implication of change. “‘B’ is ‘A then C’” doesn’t seem to hold the same truth value as “‘B’ is ‘not-A’”, insofar as the former’s is contingent on the instances in the change from A through to C, whereas the truth value of ‘B’ as ‘not-A’ is given without contingency, hence can be called given necessarily, which is one of the Aristotelian Three Laws of Logic.

    ‘A then C’ cannot be ‘not-A’ immediately, because ‘not-A’ must first be A, a contradiction. By the same token, ‘B’ cannot be ‘A then C’ because B must first be A, an impossibility.

    I gather the “A then C” is an exposition of the transformation of implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge, from your opening thesis? If so, how does A, as the existential condition of B, transform into C? It looks like ‘A then C’ is the existential condition of B, which refutes your major premise, re:
    A is an existential condition of BSamppa Hannikainen
    —————

    The "existential condition" is "A". I will go ahead and call this "existence".Samppa Hannikainen

    Fine, but now, by simple substitution, you have “existence is the existential condition of B”. Like...in order for there to be B, B must exist. A tautology if there ever was one, I must say.

    Harkens me back to the old adage...old meaning Enlightenment-era German idealism...existence cannot be a predicate. Having an existential condition for B presupposes B, otherwise there is nothing to condition, so qualifying B with ‘existence” doesn't add anything to B it didn’t already have.
    ————-

    And it is BOTH "defined and undefined" in a very precise way that is described in the forming of the condition B as "Content" of condition A.Samppa Hannikainen

    If A is always true, and A is the condition for B, then isn’t B exactly as true as A permits? And if that is the case, isn’t B then defined by A?
    ————

    I’m wondering....does this enterprise of yours resolve from your research into the analytic/synthetic propositional dichotomy? If not, meaning all this is just off the top of your head without that specific research, I might direct you to it, if only in order for you to see the familiarities between it and yours.
    ————

    One last thing:

    The truth value of "E" ("not A") will always be false, no matter from what viewpoint it is evaluated. The truth value of D however is by definition "variable".Samppa Hannikainen

    Where in the HELL did D come from??? If E is ‘not-A’, is D ‘not-B’?

    I’ve become lost in the letters.
  • On existence


    The human cognitive system is inherently complementary, so your intrinsic/extrinsic condition is a valid representation. Nevertheless, I think that from the fact the explicit arises because the implicit is given, it does not follow necessarily that such arising is experienced as consciousness.

    I would have been happier if you’d called the original an absolutely necessary condition, rather than a kind of knowledge. All knowledge is reducible, so in effect, you’ve left yourself open to falsification by allowing the basic premise grounding your entire treatise to be too weak. In other words, a proper critique of the constituency of “knowledge” may not even permit it to create consciousness, so your major premise is shot to hell.

    I don’t see how to avoid the same difficulty carried by the claim “...implicit knowledge" transforming into "explicit knowledge". That transformation is experienced as "consciousness"....”, which implies consciousness is an experience. All kinds of conflicts with that, I’m afraid.
    ——————

    no system can describe itself through the language of itself.Samppa Hannikainen

    Except you, as a human system, just did exactly that. As do each and every single one of us, iff so engaged.

    Anyway....well-thought, overall. Good job.
  • A tricky question about justified beliefs.
    However, intuitively, we can say that Tom is more justified than Sam.Curious Layman

    By what right can we say that?
  • Phenomena: subjective and objective.
    To the hull of whose thought a lot of barnacles have attached themselves.tim wood

    ....only to slow the ship, or veer it from its plotted course.

    Kant didn’t treat of phenomena beyond undetermined representation, because he didn’t have to. Those following, in so treating, whether philosophical progress or mere professional opportunism......ehhhh, for each student to decide for himself.
  • Phenomena: subjective and objective.


    I understand you yourself have used the Pinkard reference as an indirect source for the quoted passage, so the Prussian Academy pagination system won’t apply. If it did, in B152 you’d find, as Pinkard himself should have, the last line of the quote to read “...without the aid....”.

    It matters as far as textual accuracy is concerned, but doesn’t effect your comment all that much.
  • There's No Escape From Isms
    If rejecting isms requires a suffixTom Storm

    My point is that it doesn’t. The common rejoinder is, well, hell, dude, if you reject fanaticism, you’re automatically an advocate of anti-fanaticism. To which I say......horsefeathers.
  • There's No Escape From Isms
    Any conception can be rejected merely by re-thinking the conditions for it.

    While re-thinking is the exchange of conceptual validity, which is an entailed judgement alone, re-thinking is not necessarily conceptual substitution, which is a separated cognition incorporating its own conditions.
    (Re: I can easily think some concept does not belong to its cognition, without ever thinking which concept does so belong.)

    Therefore, rejecting an -ism, which at the same time explicates rejection of the concept appended to it, does not necessarily require another —ism and its appended conception be substituted for it.

    It follows that the statement, “rejection of -isms is itself an -ism, and hence contradictory”, is false.
  • Cosmology vs. Ontology vs. Metaphysics
    All inquiries are subsumed under metaphysics, for the excruciatingly simple reason that it is humans doing the work. The sciences may describe the conditions under which there are questions to ask, but it is metaphysics alone which determines what form the questions are given.

    So, yeah, there are meaningful differences, easy to dismiss but impossible to ignore.
  • Reason, belief, ground, argument.
    The “stop baiting” warning should carry over here.

    Would it set a record, that the same group of children are responsible for the closing of two separate threads, at practically the same time, and for the same reason?

    (Sigh)
  • Descartes didn't prove anything
    But you prove/"prove" it intuitively, the question of is some a priori judgment true or false, is judged by intuition.Antinatalist

    Close enough. We’re saying about the same thing.

    I made a mistake, nonetheless, in that judgements don’t have truth values, as such. They stand, a posteriori, as the correctness of the relation between an object we sense and the object as it becomes known. Or, in the case of mere thought a priori, they stand as the validity of the relation of conceptions to each other.

    Best to bear in mind the perspectives involved. When there are two distinct and separate cognitive systems in play, they are required to conform to each other in order to facilitate the possibility of productive communication. When either system operates on its own, for its own purpose, to its own end, there is no communication, the system is confined to itself internally. The difference is language, necessary for the communication between multiple systems, not even present in each singular system in its internal operations. So when it is said a judgement is true, what it meant is that the proposition composed and presented externally to represent the internal judgement in one system, conforms to the internal judgement in the other, from which his composed proposition would have been congruent, had he been the speaker rather than the listener. In effect, it is the proposition that holds truth value, and then only because a judgement has been made on the validity of the relations in the proposition given by one system, to the relations in the internal judgement of the other system, with respect to it.

    Are we having fun yet?
  • Descartes didn't prove anything
    I was thinking that perhaps reasoning about a priori judgments is itself intuitive.Antinatalist

    In that case, all we’re doing is exchanging the general form of the judgement, with particular matter that can be used to verify or falsify it. We are still reasoning about an intuition and not reasoning about an a priori judgement, the validity of it being a consequence. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the judgement, requires us to reason to the physical construction of the representations contained in the concepts of point and straight and line, such that the judgement is shown to be true.
  • Descartes didn't prove anything
    So you think all a priori judgments are reasonable and discursive, but there is no intuition at any level.Antinatalist

    No intuitions, at any level? Yes, there are, at the empirical level. The sensible level, of real things, represented in us as phenomena. There is no knowledge of real things of experience without representations by intuition, just as there is no knowledge of abstract things of thought without representations as concepts.

    You might see the problem here. Nothing given from concepts alone can tell us about the world of objects and nothing from intuition alone can tell us about abstract things, like beauty, justice, moral obligation, even though experience is rife with examples of them.
    ———-

    if you radically doubt everything, you doubt also science etc.
    And I don´t think such a doubt is a rational way to view life.
    Antinatalist

    Agreed. Radical skepticism prohibits knowledge.
  • Descartes didn't prove anything
    My hard statement is that all knowledge is based on intuition.
    — Antinatalist
    ....which rejects a priori judgements.
    — Mww

    Perhaps so, but what is the relation between a priori judgments and knowledge? Just asking (what you think).
    Antinatalist

    What I think:

    All empirical judgements are intuitive, hence contingent; all a priori judgements are discursive, hence necessary. Knowledge from intuitive judgements is experience; knowledge from discursive judgements is reason.
    ———-

    ......without any intervening arbitration.
    — Mww
    I agree. If you mean, that he didn´t found any new logical truths.
    Antinatalist

    Yep, that’s what I mean.
    —————

    It is mystery what this "I" is.Antinatalist

    Not for the hard sciences, for the most part finding no empirical reason to acknowledge the validity of it. Brain states, recyclable neurotransmitters, variable ion potentials and all that jazz, doncha know. And not for speculative epistemology, which grants that the “I” represents the unity of the manifold constituency of consciousness. But then, metaphysics is a mystery in itself, so....there is that.
  • Descartes didn't prove anything
    My hard statement is that all knowledge is based on intuition.Antinatalist

    ....which rejects a priori judgements.

    If we assume classic logic in general to be true "I think, therefore I am" is analytically true.Antinatalist

    ...which is necessarily an a priori judgement.
    ——————-

    I don´t think that there´s any serious arguments against Descartes, I certainly think that he proved logically his existence for himself.Antinatalist

    People do think of it that way. But here, in the sections following the section in which ”Cogito... is posited, is found “the first and most certain...”, which is congruent with your “analytically true”. So Descartes himself didn’t logically prove anything, per se; he merely espoused something as impossible for him to not know immediately, without any intervening arbitration.

    “....I have often noticed that philosophers make the mistake of trying to explain things that were already very simple and self-evident, by producing logical definitions that make things worse! When I said that the proposition I am thinking, therefore I exist is ‘the first and most certain thing to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way’, I wasn’t meaning to deny that one must first know what thought, existence and certainty are, and know that it’s impossible for something to think while it doesn’t exist, and the like....”
    (Principles of Philosophy, I.10., 1644, in Cottingham, Cambridge, 1985)

    Even so, the serious argument....assuming there is one..... revolves around exactly what existence, and thereby what kind of existence, Descartes was so sure of. All he said about “....I am”, is “...we can’t suppose that we, who are having such thoughts, are nothing....” (ibid, Sec 7). He is saying what I am not, but doesn’t say what I am, only that I am.

    My interpretations only, of course.
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    Perhaps I should have said a theory of everything , that everybody agrees onPop

    Yeah, a TOE usually implies physical properties, whereas you stipulated a theory sufficient for explaining how one could be “truly self-aware”. I only responded as I did because my self-awareness is theoretically conceivable, but for me to imagine a sufficient a posteriori TOE, is not, under the same conditions.
    ——————

    I think, in present times this a priori knowledge would be DNA data forming brain structure.Pop

    That’s fine. A physical theory predicated on observation with the same translation problem as extant metaphysical theory predicated on transcendental logic. The former starts at the top but cannot deduce the necessary mechanism for the human condition of “seemings”, while the latter begins at the bottom with “seemings” but cannot infer the internal mechanisms sufficient for creating them. Kant didn’t try to reconcile these, and neither does a DNA-based theory, with respect to a priori knowledge. Still, at this stage of the game, even a DNA-based theory of fundamental human nature remains metaphysical, insofar as repeatable empirical proofs are unavailable.
    ——————

    Most of my knowledge is derived from outside of philosophy.Pop

    As is mine; as is everybody’s. Nevertheless, knowledge derived from is very far from knowledge acquired of.

    Self-organization is a good place to start. Metaphysics has already been there with consciousness, perhaps DNA will get there eventually.
  • Descartes didn't prove anything


    Descartes’ proof took the form of truth insofar as its negation is impossible. Technically, he attained apodeictic certainty under very strict conditions, which is sufficient for proof for the validity of those conditions.

    Generally speaking....correct, not a proof, for it lacks necessity while obtaining sufficiency. But a proof for the manifold of all instances of congruent conditions? Why not?
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    To be truly self aware, I think, one needs a theory of everything to compare oneself against. We don't have thatPop

    Can it be said that to be truly self-aware means to recognize, itemize, hence understand the necessary grounds of one’s mental activities? And can it be said that a theory of everything would limit itself to the exposition of those grounds, sufficient for any human, rational self to compare against?

    If so, I submit Kant’s tripartite critique fits the requirements.

    Keyword, of course....theory.
  • Graylingstein: Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty


    Good on ya!!!

    You got awarded a “reasonably coherent”.

    When we perceive the world, we perceive parts and the relationships between those parts.RussellA

    The standard human representational cognitive system. Some can’t live with it, nobody can’t kill it. Best then, to understand it, ne c’est pas?
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    I wonder what your definition of metaphysics is?Pop

    Not a definition, per se, more an understanding, found on page three.
  • Reason, belief, ground, argument.
    I find presiding over all reason.tim wood

    As do I, the exceptions being accident or pure reflex.
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    I think you should at least do some reading.FrancisRay

    Yeah, but that presupposes an interest, and at my age....and my seriously ingrained predispositions....is solely lacking. But, on the other hand, I wouldn’t dare deny others their own interests.
  • Graylingstein: Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty
    Prima facie, this is at odds with General Relativity. But that's not what is of import here...Banno

    No, it isn’t important at all:

    “...If we confine the application of the theory to the case where the gravitational fields can be regarded as being weak, and in which all masses move with respect to the co-ordinate system with velocities which are small compared with the velocity of light, we then obtain as a first approximation the Newtonian theory. Thus the latter theory is obtained here without any particular assumption, whereas Newton had to introduce the hypothesis that the force of attraction between mutually attracting material points is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. If we increase the accuracy of the calculation, deviations from the theory of Newton make their appearance, practically all of which must nevertheless escape the test of observation owing to their smallness...”
    (Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pt 2, Sec. 29, 1916)

    It's just that our understanding of space has moved on considerably since Kant.Banno

    Yeah, no biggie. Calling space a gravitational field is merely another language game, innit? Proving gravitational fields are warped by massive bodies doesn’t prove space is a property of objects, which is sufficient reason to permit Kant’s exposition of space as a pure intuition “...by which the experience of objects is possible....” to stand unmolested. That the coordinate system for the location of objects must be relative to something, and that something being called space, is not refuted or even impinged upon, by GR. Notice as well, if you will, Kant made time, itself a “pure a priori intuition”, just as necessary for the experience, therefore the relation, of objects, as did Einstein, albeit not necessarily Euclidean, with his “spacetime continuum” (ibid, Sec. 27)

    Not denigrating progress in science, mind you, just defending its metaphysical origins.
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    There are no excepions to the rule. negation are always required.FrancisRay

    YEA!!!! Glad you see things my way. Now....lets you and me knock some sense into the rest of the world.......
    —————

    The point is not that there is some way around this limit, but that we can know more than we can think.FrancisRay

    Annnnnddd......that shot our wonderful agreement all to hell. Dammit!!!

    We can know more than we can think, but “...I can think whatever I want (provided only that I do not contradict myself)....”. If there’s no limit to what I can think, but I can know more than I can think......how in the HELL does that work????

    Must be aggravating, talkin’ to folks who can’t see the other side, huh?
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    Consciousness is a convoluted thing indeed.....Pop

    Perhaps consciousness is only as convoluted as the myriad of metaphysical systems under which it is viewed. Favor a system, find consciousness in it, define its parameters or its logical relations......done deal.

    .......This is why I prefer to call it self organization.Pop

    That’s fine, we all have our preferences. Self-organization carries the implication that consciousness is some sort of cognitive faculty susceptible to reason, but I rather think consciousness is the quality of the manifold of that which is reasoned about, which makes consciousness passive rather than the active self-organization implies.

    Much as red-ness is the quality of the state of being red, fit-ness is the quality of the state of being fit, so too consciousness is the quality of the state of being conscious.

    “....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; in other words, the thought, "These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me," is accordingly just the same as, "I unite them in one 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....”

    Given this (favored) rendition of what consciousness is, the rest of your comment can be seen as otherwise, re: we have no consciousness at birth, consciousness has nothing whatsoever to do with perceived truth, consciousness doesn’t evolve over the course of a life time (although the aggregate of its contents certainly does), it does, on the other hand, remain faithful to the established self, because it is the established self.
    —————

    makes for some interesting psychology.Pop

    Ehhhh.....psychology: the pure metaphysician’s arch-enemy.

    Metaphysician: I’ll tell you how I think.
    Psychologist: I’ll tell you how you think.

    In the immortal words of Darryl Hall.....I can’t go for that, oohhhhnooooo. (Grin)
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    involved in too many conversations to pursue it far.FrancisRay

    Understood.

    A negation is always required for a thought or concept.FrancisRay

    Yep, seems that way.

    But there would be a way out.FrancisRay

    If negation is always required for thought, but there is a way out, such that negations are not always required, then some system must be possible that is not a (human) system of thought.

    I’m beginning to find that out. Amazing to me, how many people don’t know what it is to think, or, knowing that, choose to re-name it and thereby justify their insistence that that’s not really what they’re actually doing.
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics


    Relevancy is a judgement, dependent solely on understanding. You find irrelevancy in the questions I ask, not from the understanding from which they arise, but from the understanding by which they are received.
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    Go find a sensei or guru and learn to meditate.180 Proof

    Yeah.....no I’m not going to do that.

    And there’s your sufficient reason for claiming “if you’ve never tried you’ll never know”, which is the most pathetically empty phraseology ever.

    (Sigh)
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    Maybe meditation is clearer than "mystical exercise".180 Proof

    Ok. I understand that clarity. Thanks.
    —————

    Relaxing the learned fixations on thinking / speaking / believing via dualities (i.e. binary opposites) by meditating on paying attention without using dualities to categorize our experiences (and, thereby, our expectations).180 Proof

    Can I say that reduces to....Relaxing (...) fixations on thinking (...) by meditating on paying attention?

    And at the risk of seemingly picking nits, can I say that reduces further to....relaxing by paying attention?

    Pardon my predispositions, for in those alone, your proposition becomes a performative contradiction, insofar as I see no logical means for meditation that does not necessitate human thought. How is paying attention accomplished under the auspices of meditation, that is different than paying attention by mere cognitive faculties?
  • Graylingstein: Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty


    Pretty good synopsis, I must say. There are some fundamental contentions, but they don’t detract from the general picture, and certainly wouldn’t matter in the least, to someone rejecting the system itself.
  • Philosophy and Metaphysics
    Advaita "nondualism" is a mystical exercise.....180 Proof

    My lack of experience causes me to ask....what is being exercised, and that exercised mystically?

    My experience, on the other hand, mandates that if this is mystically exercised, than necessarily, that is not, creating a dualism of its own.

    Do you agree with the validity of a unique metaphysical doctrine of non-dualism?