Sure, folk say silly things. (....) Relativity was not in conformity with our observations. — Banno

You mean...like that little gem? As far back as the historical record shows, this has always been relative to that. How and in what manner this is relative to that may have been at the mercy of era-specific investigation, but all that does is affirm the condition. It’s common knowledge SR wasn’t demonstrated as empirically valid for 35 years after its theoretical possibility was conceived, but thanks to 707’s and transistors, that kind of relativity immediately conformed to our observations of clocks.

That so many caveats have to be made for "the world being as it appears" is evidence the world is decidedly not as it appears. — Marchesk

Absolutely. And the greatest caveat is.....in which sense of “appearance” is the world to be taken? Appear as “instill an affective presence”, or, appear as “looks like”.

If the former, the world cannot be other than as the entry it makes into our senses, the doctrine stipulating the passivity of direct perception, insofar as perception itself makes no judgements respecting the objects it receives, and henceforth easily translates to the world necessarily is as it affects the systems receiving it.

If the latter, and because “looks like” implies a non-passive attribution, the world is nothing but that which is actively represented by and within the systems that receive it, the doctrine of indirect realism, which translates to the world necessarily being as it appears as representation, but not necessarily as it appears as an affect.

If there is no distinction between senses of appearance, and given that the human cognitive system is representational, it follows necessarily there can be no distinction in the means for the acquisition of our knowledge. And if there is no difference in the means of our knowledge, it becomes impossible to distinguish whether it is the world as it affects us, or the world as our cognitive system represents the world to itself, that is responsible for the mistakes we make with our knowledge, as its ends.

Ironic as hell, isn’t it, that everything I just said, is rife with caveats. (Sigh)

Having rejected the classical insight of 'nous' and made all knowledge subject to empirical validation......

Pretty sorry state of affairs if you ask me.

..........This is why we nowadays insist that what is real must be situated in space and time (‘out there somewhere’......

Used to be external, or material, was that which is situated in space and time, while the real could be situated in time alone, from which reality in and of itself, is conceived in accordance with the definition, that which exists in a determined time. This allows equal representational validity for planets and judgements.

.........although physics itself seem now to have overflowed those bounds)...... — Wayfarer

Yep, and just like that, what with mental states being brain states, and the observer problem, physics has to come to grips with what the metaphysician always condoned, that the real being internal as well as external, is logically consistent, hence theoretically feasible.
—————

Evolution is a natural processs, but it has generated beings who are capable of seeing beyond the bounds of biology. — Wayfarer

And even if there are those who insist animals are gifted with rational thought, it begs the question, as to whether they think in accordance with rules. If such cannot be proven to be the case....and it cannot because it cannot even be proven that humans inhere with that methodology..... animal “thought” reduces to mere reactive/repetitive instinct. And the human can propose this without contradicting himself, on the one hand because his own at least reactive instinct remains with him, albeit below the consciousness of his mental acuity, and on the other, because his rational thought is direct, dedicated acquaintance, which can never suffice for second-order suppositions. That all brains work the same is nothing but clandestine anthropomophism.

Of course humans are on an intellectual pedestal. We put ourselves there, and that should be the end-all of the discussion.

Worthy read, yes, so.....thanks for it. I particularly favor Part III onward, myself.

But I have to ask....what does the paper say to you? You are historically an analytic-type, the premier tenet of which, is the notion that metaphysical propositions are not so much true or false, but generally meaningless. Yet the opening paragraph in the linked paper specifies that they are not, being “too serious to be shrugged aside”. Odd, I must say, that the thesis, as “too serious to be shrugged aside” as a ghost story, appeals to that very same pejorative conception as the ground for justifying it.

Inquiring minds want to know.....were you already familiar with this article, or did you do some research in order to comment, however clandestine such comment may be, on my “every change is succession in time”?

But even setting that aside, where in the levels of “logical decidability” does your response to it: “the floor changes from the living room to the bathroom”, fit in? And did you see, did it occur to you, that your floor changing response sustains the author’s anecdotal missive, “...It is curious that some anti-metaphysicians have relied on some instantiation criterion of empirical confirmation without realizing that this lets in a host of untestable metaphysical doctrines...”

Let’s just call me confused. Might be my fault, but it seems to me you’ve always presented yourself as anti-metaphysical, yet this article presents metaphysical sentences is a more favorable light than you’ve allowed them. And if you’re not an anti-metaphysicalist, how did you not approve my “change” comment, but rather, attempt to refute it with propositions entirely insufficient for doing so?

Anyway......interesting read, especially the latter parts.

OK, thanks.

I’d think differently about only two things, for sure, the remainder being nonetheless informative.

I suppose you could call them noumenal objects (I didn't think of this at the time and it's certainly not something Kant would have said. — Wayfarer

Nahhhh....he would have called them transcendental objects. “Them” being numbers. For us, with our discursive understanding, noumenal objects are incomprehensible.

We can't see the world as it really is, because there is no way it 'really is'. — Wayfarer

Because of the kind of intelligence we are as humans, we think there must be a way the world really is. We just aren’t entitled to the irreducible certainty of our knowledge of it. Quantum tunneling aside, it behooves us to respect objective reality as given necessarily, and the practical ground for all objective reality resides in the empirical conception of “world”.

Again.....thanks.

All good.

Realist with respect to universals.....universals are real? In which sense? What kind of real?

I’m not sure what I think about them, so.....just wondering. Brief overview will suffice, if you’re so inclined.

Hmmmm.....Ol’ Rene was right after all; there is a demon. What else but a demon would be so callous to send me a thought wave manifesting in me as thinking thought waves are the stupidest thing I could ever imagine, then deceive me into doubting I ever thought it.

Amplitude modulation presupposes a carrier. If thoughts are the modulation, they can’t be the carrier, which is the inherent characteristic of FM, so where does the carrier come from?

I saw where you mentioned him elsewhere, but hadn’t seen for myself until this.

Good stuff, by which I mean....it meets with my unabashedly entrenched cognitive prejudices. But he is a theologian, and a post-modern at that, so, boo!!! Advocating the reinstatement of reason to supplant the cultural supremacy of empiricism, so.....yea!!!

Minor point, if I may: this.....

“....And not only is human knowledge entirely encompassed in, and limited to, sense-experience (a point which Kant, while reacting against Hume, admitted like Hume)....”

....is wrong.

“....But as this process does furnish real a priori knowledge, which has a sure progress and useful results...”
(CPR, A6/B10)

But I’m sure, somewhere in his corpus, he espouses in more detail what he means by it. You know....the ol’ “dogmatic slumber” thing? Pretty inconsistent to react against, then at the same time, admit to, the very thing reacted against.

All that aside, thanks for the reference.

as a practical matter I see the tree. — tim wood

Yep. Better hope so, especially if you’re on an intercept course with one.
—————

Can you see a way reason gets there faster with more? I cannot. — tim wood

The idea that reason doesn’t get you there faster is quite likely what Hume meant by his “constant conjunction” phrase......Enlightenment Brit for, this is generally because of that, so if you know this, you don’t need to reason about that. So in his mind, reason doesn’t usually do anything faster (than habit itself, that is), and often reason doesn’t do anything at all.

But just because we are not conscious of reason in action doesn’t mean it isn’t; reason doesn’t turn on and off depending on experience. Reason is thought and the conscious human thinks constantly. But reason obviously doesn’t work as hard, and we don’t think as much, under the conditions where habit seems to be the case, or, which is the same thing from a metaphysical point of view, when an antecedent experience reflects back on intuition. Psychologists call that mere memory, but we don’t care about them, right?

So experience (habit) tells you to use a wrench on that frozen nut, but “faster with more” pure reason tells you to put an extension on the wrench for that added Archimedes leverage principle to play. But only that one time, of course.

Now, as to things present to your senses of which you know nothing at all about, not only is reason faster and more, it is only.

I've a Swiss army knife, if needed, for the beans. — tim wood

Which is to say.....right tool for the right job (?)

Hey.......

One of my very favorite opening salvos in philosophical discourse, Hylas to Philonous:

“....I was considering the odd fate of those men who have in all ages,
through an affectation of being distinguished from the vulgar, or some
unaccountable turn of thought, pretended either to believe nothing at
all, or to believe the most extravagant things in the world. This however
might be borne, if their paradoxes and scepticism did not draw after them
some consequences of general disadvantage to mankind. But the mischief
lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed
to have spent their whole time in the pursuits of knowledge professing an
entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are
repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted
to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths, which they
had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable....”

‘Course, everybody else with their own important truths and their own idea for plain and commonly received principles, will say just about the same thing.

Do you think there’s anything in Berkeley we can use today?

Chomsky??? Really.

Boys and girls.....here’s proof of what not to do if you want to be understood in your speech acts. Now, please, don’t bother asking me what to do, because that would be tedious and would require you to actually put some effort into examining your own lingual gymnastics. Sorry.....you’re on your own here. Heaven forfend that there were but a definitive treatise, ready-made and theoretically complete, logically consistent........culminating in the most classic understatement of recorded human history: if your conceptions don’t relate to each other, you be nothin’ but flappin’ yer jaws even if the other guy is statistically cognizant (gasp) of each and every word you be speechifyin’.
——————

But the floor changes between here, where it is wood board, and the bathroom, where it is tile. — Banno

I went to bed last night; the bathroom floor was covered in tile. I got up this morning, the bathroom floor was still covered in the same tile.

I sympathize with your position, in that the world is all that can be the case. Thoughts are in my head, my head is in the world, therefore my thoughts are in the world. Nevertheless, my thoughts cannot be treated like basketballs are treated, so we must come to grips with that rather obvious monkey wrench.

Moving on.......

I think that is precisely what analytic philosophy attempts to do: analyze and bring to light the logic of thought. — Janus

Agreed, but I submit the formal predicate logic they use to deconstruct thought, is not the Aristotelian syllogistic propositional logic used to construct it. Apples and oranges?

I'd like to see this filled out: an example, perhaps. — Banno

What need does an example serve, when the truth of a proposition lays in the fact the negation of it is impossible. If a proposition must be either true or false, and the falsity of the proposition is impossible, the truth of the proposition is given necessarily.

The only way to falsify the proposition, is to change the definitions of the conceptions contained in it. But that’s cheatin’ dammit!!
——————

It's just making noise. — Banno

Again with language. By definition, one cannot enunciate incomprehensibly. Incomprehensible speech is still speech, even if it is impossible to understand, re: Swahili to a 10yo Finlander. Feynman could have spoken to me in our common language but with his kind of terminology and I wouldn’t have understood half of what he said, but I wouldn’t dare claim he was merely making noise.

you spoke (....) of the world as a "euphemism for whatever there is on the input side of our senses"; but for the analytic tradition (...) the world is that of which we make true statements - the world is all that is the case.

IS this difference at the root of our disagreement? — Banno

Truth be told, the root is in language use itself, and the supremacy I think falsely allotted to it. Case in point.....it may be that the world is that about which true statements can be made, but it does not follow from that, that the world is all that is the case merely because true statements are possible because of it. It is also possible, after all, to make true statements having nothing whatsoever to do with the world, re: change is successions in time.
——————

things about which nothing can be said — Banno

As well, I think this needs qualifiers, insofar as there is nothing about which it is impossible to say anything, from your admitted analytic prospective. There are things that if anything is said about them, such saying will be irrational, nonsensical, absurd, meaningless, and so on, but theses are still somethings that can be said.

Things about which nothing can be said, on the other hand, this from the non-Anglophone continental tradition, is that to which no thought has been given. And THAT is what gives ordinary language use its secondary status.

I know.

But let's not pretend we have the answer where there can be none. — Banno

Agreed, that this can be both dangerous and foolish. Is this a general cautionary statement, or have you witnessed an occasion where such pretension is evident, and refer me to it?

I think there’s some confusion here, things aren’t relating to each other. I was talking about my gripe with analytic philosophy, in that it answers questions logically by breaking them down, as Banno says, but I hold that questions should have been constructed logically in the first place, if it be granted the human cognitive system is itself a logical enterprise. It follows that breaking the question down doesn’t have near the explanatory power as would breaking down the logic under which the question was constructed. And because logical constructions are metaphysical without regard for language, which has only to do with expressions representing such constructions, the disassembly of that logic should be metaphysical as well. Nothing can be re-stated that hasn’t been re-thought.

As to not seeing the world as it is prohibits seeing my own body as it is......with respect to empirical knowledge, this is quite correct. My foot, e.g., is the same kind of perceptual sensation and I cognize my foot as an experience just as I perceive, represent, cognize and experience the oak tree down back. But the quality of the foot as MY foot among feet in general, is very far from the quality of the one tree among trees in general, from which follows the certainty of knowing very much more about MY foot than feet in general. Still, no matter how much more I know about my foot, I am not authorized to say I know my own foot as it is in itself, without contradicting the entire system by which I base the possibility of my empirical knowledge. For then I must admit my foot is not represented to me as a phenomenon as is every other object of my perception, and I then successfully defeat my own experiential methodology.

Now......the importance of “quality”......

Ehhhh.....none of that interests me.

Starting from causative relations between objects and then trying to explain consciousness on top of this IS the problem — Joshs

Yeah, I’m fine with that brief. Personally, I would then ask, if science solves the hard problem by relating the physical mechanisms of brain to the metaphysical mechanisms of subjectivism......what has really been accomplished? I rather think no one will care, except the scientists.

Now, can we write a definition of "identity" that allows us to treat either one of them as an individual object? — afterthegame

No. 10m separation identifies an unoccupied space, but does not identify the objects the unoccupied space presupposes. No definition of identity is required for the treatment of objects.

The fact that black ball is given as means for identification in that universe is irrelevant, because there is nothing else in that universe to use the identification, hence the definition of identity is not necessary in the treatment of objects.

If the claim is that an observer outside the black ball universe uses the object’s given identity as black ball, then the entire scenario is irrelevant in itself, because the observer has already identified the spatially separated objects as two black balls, which makes explicit he has already defined identity sufficiently to himself, in order to attribute “black ball” to each of those objects.

It cannot be said there are two black balls, then fail to account for them. If there is no account, it cannot be said there are two black balls. Then the whole thing becomes an exercise in irrationality.

We cannot speak of the world as it is in itself. Then how can it have any significance? — Banno

True, but it does nonetheless. The significance being, the setting of limits of human knowledge, the limits being, not the world, but ourselves.

So far I've taken "see" to be roughly understood as "perceive". But it might mean something like "discern". — Banno

It doesn’t. To discern is to understand, to comprehend. Perception doesn’t think, and comprehension doesn’t perceive.

What I've writ so far is along the analytic tradition, breaking the question down into pieces and seeing if, by finding answers for each, we can answer the original question. — Banno

Well, there ya go: your analytical way finds answers to questions, the other, and dare I say all the more fundamentally significant, way seeks the conditions which must have been involved, in order for questions to even be asked in the first place.
—————-

The idea is that there is a world that stands outside our perceptions of it, and hence is outside of our capacity to discern. — Banno

Yes and no. The idea is, and yes it stems from transcendental idealism if not other doctrines as well, there is no world for a human other than the world of his perceptions, but rather, the idea is, whatever that world is, is not necessarily represented by his knowledge. It’s just shorthand for the notion that the world doesn’t tell us about itself, but we tell ourselves about the world. The world is as it is, for it couldn’t logically be otherwise, but nevertheless, we just can’t claim knowledge of it as it is, but only as we understand it.

The direct realists say the world and our understanding of it are on a one-to-one correspondence, but that is of course, provably not the case.

So change your evil ways, dump those analytic bovine droppings, and join the real philosophers!!!!

My hunch is that the so-called easy problem of consciousness at a mechanistic level is equally as difficult as the so-called hard problem at the subjective level. They might even be the same problem. — Wheatley

Interesting read here, in that they may be kindasorta equally difficult problems, but they are certainly not the same problem: http://cogprints.org/1617/1/harnad00.mind.humphrey.html

So how many scientific laws should we need in order to understand the philosophically pure general law “all objects are extended in space”?

Science: researching the laws of the world......yes;
Philosophy: the science of general laws......yes;

You can’t get to a general from a manifold of particulars, but you can get from a general to certain particulars relative to it. So it would seem the general comes first, and if so, it is without scientific law, which implies the general must be pure thought. Then, the science laws of the world consequently either support or refute it.

So the OP is backwards: pure general laws come first, and understanding the world piece by piece by means of the science laws found in it, follows from the pure general law which grounds them.

No science is ever done that isn’t first thought, accidental causality being the singular exception.

The whole realty/appearance distinction. — Marchesk

Yeah, the subtleties and intricacies that make it so are usually overlooked, or dismissed outright, by the common sense realist opposition, because there are no empirical proofs for that distinction.

can we imagine a place without time? — TiredThinker

No problem for me at least. Just imagine no recording or measuring of change.

Because we have reliable, repeatable, valid sensory experience of the world, we can say we see the world as it is. — Bitter Crank

I’ve always been under the impression that’s exactly the opposite of what “as it is” implies, which technically expands to “as it is in itself”. Because of the very limitations of our experiential methodology, and the cognitive system inherent in humans in general by which such experience is given, we can only say we see the world as it appears to us, as it seems to be as far as we are equipped to say. Which is the off-hand source of the metaphysically-induced invention of qualia.

Does the world appear to us as it is in itself, is the question with no positive proof, but pure speculative epistemology says it is not, nor can it be. Just for fun, throw in energy conversion losses, and even the scientists should agree.

For whatever that’s worth.......

reality is exactly what we perceive......

Agreed.

......“Ah, but it is always incomplete”.....

Correct. We never perceive everything possible to perceive.

.......tell me the idea of ​​a complete reality that can be presentable to anyone. You cannot.....

Correct. The idea of a complete reality is given by itself, but that the object given by the idea is therefore presentable in its entirety, does not follow from its mere conception.

........showing itself only in certain aspects is proper to all reality, that is the structure of reality.....

Ehhhh.....error of equivocation: for reality to show itself implies intention, which cannot belong to entities having no conception of purpose. Negating the error then leaves the structure of reality undefined.

......Things that present themselves in all their aspects at the same time only exist ideally.....

That which is ideal does have all its aspects present in itself simultaneously, but cannot be a thing that presents itself as existing. The two familiar ideal conceptions, complete in themselves, are space and time, which do not exist in themselves but are merely sound logical conclusions.

.....the ideal cube that you draw on the paper shows six sides.....

No, it does not. It is possible to illustrate a three dimensional object on a two dimensional plane, but an ideal can never be a mere illustrated replica of an object in general.

.......So only this non-existent cube has six sides at the same time.....

No it does not. It is first a contradiction, insofar as non-existence has no extent in space nor duration in time, and second, cutting of the paper makes explicit the third dimension is in the construction of the cube, not the drawing of it.

.......That aspect of the cube that I perceive is the aspect that the cube can show me. It cannot show that same aspect of itself to an earthworm.....

Categorical errors of relation and modality: it is absurd to suppose an object common to differing perceptive physiologies or cognitive sophistication, changes itself in accordance with the system examining it. It is pathologically stupid to then suppose any one cognitive system has the apodeictic means to relate itself to another system diametrically opposed to it. It follows that, e.g, claiming an earthworm sees a cube, is unintelligible (relation), from which follows the claim that the cube presents itself, is empty (modality).

.....Only a human being can see this. Another animal will see it in yet another way.....

To see “this” or to see “it (this) in a different way” is a strictly human qualitative distinction, which suggests it is the capacities of the receiver of the impression, rather than the source of the impression, which generally determines various effects from common cause, but without any sense at all, of what the effects actually are. To claim an earthworm does not perceive as we perceive, is tautologically true, for the simple reason its negation is impossible. Hence, expositions on it are superfluous.

.......This is one of Kant’s mistakes, he thinks that all of these are limitations of our knowledge — Rafaella Leon

Nothing you’ve said is sufficient to prove a mistake. Not to say there isn’t one, but nothing this comment is in response to, serves the purpose of demonstrating it.

I don't see why the mere arrival of the observer should change the way the world is in the way you suggest, so that it is now dependent on his views, however misguided they may be. — Daemon

What the world was before us is different from what the world is with us, because of us. That does not say anything about what the world depends on. World still is, just is different.

The way the world is as it occurs to a human, is simply how he describes it to himself. That is the same as him saying the world is as he says it is. I mean.....what other choice does he have? He is necessarily stuck with his own cognitive system, so that system is what he must use when he says stuff about the world.

The interesting question is, if no-one can see it, is there a world as it is? — Echarmion

That actually is quite interesting. The world as it is does not necessarily imply observation of it. Just sitting there, all by itself, whilin’ away the hours, chillin’. Seems like that would be the world as it is. But then, what’s to say the world is just sittin’ there, all by itself? Takes an observer to come to that conclusion.

We’re left with nothing but the logic of it:

Good logic: we’re here now along with the world, we weren’t here before but the world was, so there was definitely a way the world was. If we allow the world to be as it was except now we’re in it, the world can’t be the way it was. But it can still be the way it is.

Bad logic: Now we’ve contradicted ourselves, if it is the case that the world as it is doesn’t imply observers, which are the only way to tell the way the world was is different than the way the world is.

Reconcile the bad logic by just saying the observer is the only difference between the way the world was and the way the world is now, therefore however the world is, is because that’s the way it occurs to the observer. Or, which is the same thing, the world is as the observer says it is.

Doesn’t mean he’s right; just means he’s the only one who can say, the world being merely something for him to say things about.

But I think the original concept of 'the unconditioned' is broader than that. — Wayfarer

Agreed, atomism was the extent of empirical reducibility, the unconditioned having far broader extent than mere individual substance.

So the 'unconditioned' was the source of 'the conditioned' - this was the concept of To Hen, the One of Plotinus, which morphed over time into the 'Divine Intellect'. — Wayfarer

Yep.....just like that. The fundamental principle therein carried over undiminished into 18th century German continental idealism, which relocated the source of the principle while maintaining its authority. It was upon internalizing the subject, that human thought itself could assume the former domain of the external, at least in a logical sense, in that attributes could now be associated with it, just as attributes used to be given to material substances in the world. And attributes imply functionality....and we’re off to the epistemological rodeo.
—————-

”....Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects cannot be part of reason's own nature or be produced by reason out of itself. They must exist independently of individual human minds....”

Again, I understand that this type of Platonist reasoning is generally out of favour, but it seems intuitively sound to me. — Wayfarer

Unless humans all operate under the auspices of the same rational methodology, in which case, all humans are naturally imbued with, if not the same intelligible objects, then at least the form to which intelligible objects must adhere. “2”, “II” and “द्वौ” are each intelligible objects subsumed under and representative of the unconditional “quantity”. Quantity has no representation of its own, no schemata by which it is necessarily conditioned, hence cannot be itself an intelligible object.

Woefully inadequate for the physicalists, the pure empiricists, rife with explanatory gaps as it may be, but they don’t have anything better, so......same as it ever was.

Do you think there's much awareness of 'the unconditioned, the irreducible', in most current philosophical discourse? — Wayfarer

In philosophical discourse.....not that I know of. But then, I don’t hold a lot of respect for current philosophical discourse anyway, so the idea might be out there somewhere and I never bothered looking for it. Still, the notion is, using your term......archaic. Archaic adjacent, more like.

Everydayman is sort of aware of it, in principle, insofar as he invents a placeholder for the unconditioned, taking the form of transcendent entities of one kind or another. When he isn’t aware of it at all, but the principle still holds, is whenever he asks the why of a thing, followed by the why of whatever answer he just got, etc. Or when he wonders, what if.

I had in mind as irreducible, Aristotle’s logical laws, Kant’s categories, Rene’s sum. I’m sure you might have some irreducible concepts yourself. Be surprised if you didn't, assuming you grant the validity of the idea.

As in some fact or statement that cannot be false that we can be absolutely sure of. I'm not so sold on why we would need such a thing — khaled

Not so much in support of capital T truth, which I hold as impossible both from inductive inference and the limitations of our own system of knowledge acquisition in the obtaining of it, but to justify something we can be absolutely sure of, and that is the unconditioned, a deductive inference that can’t be reduced further without self-contradiction, from within the same system. When we have that, whatever we build on it stands a better chance of being the case.

Why bother with “people that try to go for it”? Especially if you know they’re not going to get there?

I would say it's unavoidable that we must use reason at least to a certain extent and in some way. — Gregory

The conscious and otherwise rational human thinks constantly, and reason is thinking in accordance with rules. Except for pure reflex or sheer accident, reason is unavoidable. What we reason about changes over time; what we reason with, hasn’t changed noticeable since our attaining h. Sapiens evolutionary status.

What kind of a faculty is it? — Gregory

.....is fraught with circularities and inconsistencies, for it is a natural condition of humans to think according to rules, yet it can be none other than human reason which sets the rules to think in accordance with. The human doesn’t even know how his thinking comes about, he has no clue how his own brain operates with respect to his reason, or even that it does. He cannot use Nature as a definitive guide, for he must still think about what he gleans from Nature, again in accordance with the rules he himself constructs for his thinking, while he can, on the other hand, use Nature only to inform him if his self-constructed rules oppose each other. If they do, he must still use his thinking to construct new rules with respect to Nature, but constructing new rules is still thinking according to rules.

We find, then, after the dust of inquiry settles.....reason, not the faculty but rather, the method, is that which seeks for the unconditioned, the irreducible, in effect some semblance of certainty, and thereby that which minimizes the opportunities for rules to oppose each other. Reason the faculty then becomes that which grants that the rules are proper for the use to which they are directed.

Reason....the purely speculative method of rule construction and use.

Or not. Your rules may vary.

Now that is very old-fashioned view, some would even say archaic. But that's what I am arguing. — Wayfarer

Very old-fashioned view indeed. Which just goes to show they got the basics put down right early on. No matter what the human learns about, the internal system by which a human learns, hasn’t changed at all.

I've since dropped "mental", and "state of mind" from my account. — creativesoul

You mean from your “Mechanics.....” account as it stood three years ago? Evolution of thought is not unusual of course, but B.) of mine, above, is from 2 days ago on the Qualia thread, so “mental” is apparently still in play in some cases.

But yes, I see “mental correlations” evolved textually into “correlations”, which is why I thought to ask if they remained tacitly mental. I didn’t want to just assume so.

I disagree that "The snow is white" is as simple as it looks. — Marchesk

Yeah....don’t need no thinkin’ no mo’. Just listen to what yer tol’...poof...snow is white.

A.)

1. All thought/belief consists of mental correlation(s) — creativesoul

B.)

Belief is not a mental state, on my view. — creativesoul

I’ve examined that part of your corpus that appeared interesting to me.

Are mental correlations mental activities, and do mental activities reside in an agent, such agent being considered to be in possession of a “mind”? If not, where does the activity of correlating reside?
———

C.)

thought/belief is any and all mental correlations drawn between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or the agent's own state of mind. — creativesoul

Agent’s state of mind......ok, yes, state of mind presupposes mind, so agent considered as to be in possession of mind is given. But that still doesn’t say where the drawing of correlations themselves reside.

To say belief is the correlation, from C.), and because the correlation resides in the belief of which it is a constituent, per A.), and because belief is denied as a distinct mental state in itself, per B.), there appears to be a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Granting, then, that such gross fallacy is not the case, implies the activity of correlating resides not in the belief itself, so it must remain that belief resides as the consequence of the correlating, from the process of elimination. If the correlating resides in the mind, the consequence can be said to reside in the mind, which makes explicit belief must be some condition the mind resolves itself into. Another way to say “condition the mind resolves into”, is to say “a state into which the mind attains”, from which follows incontestably, “a mental state”.

It appears belief is a mental state after all, and if all that is a valid deductive inference, in that the agent that is actively doing the correlating in order to bring himself to a mental state in which is found a belief, and the remaining aspect of such mental correlation involves the empirical reality of the ‘objects’ of physiological sensory perception, it seems sufficiently demonstrated that a subject/object dualism must be given necessarily, for it is quite impossible to correlate to a belief without an object to which the belief is about.

Furthermore, in keeping more with A.) than C.), even if there is no empirical object present, belief in general, as a mere mental state in itself without being about anything in particular, is an object of the equally general mental correlations which would be required for belief to be a consequence of. This denotes what we would understand a belief to be, as opposed to understanding something we believe in.

I’m not onboard with your rendering of consciousness....
— Mww

(...) Here's where I differ with Kant.....

In order to know that A is not equal to B, we must know what both consist of, because knowing that they are not equal requires comparison/contrast between the two. — creativesoul

None of that has to do with the Kantian philosophy pertaining to consciousness, even if it does have correlations to Kantian philosophy pertaining to empirical knowledge.
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Can we at least agree that there is a difference between our bodies and our reports thereof? — creativesoul

Absolutely. I’m going to insist I’ve satisfied the criteria for establishing the difference. Because it seems I’ve failed miserably at it, and in the interest of proper dialectic, the onus of enlightenment is on you.

Your body is not an account. Your account is most certainly in the world. — creativesoul

Ok.