I have a question. If a person believes redness is essentially a linguistic trick, how does that work?

If the toddler sees someone point to an apple and hears them say "red", doesn't the child need to have an experience of redness to associate with the word? — frank

I don't know what you mean by linguistic trick. Red is the name of a color.

What is an experience of red? How does she know it is an experience of red? By comparing it to another experience of red? Does the toddler also have an experience of apple? Are these two different experiences?

I would say the toddler sees this thing she learns is called an apple. She at some point also learns her colors. Being told the apple is red might be part of that process. It might go something like this: she is shown various things - "red wagon", "red shirt", "red crayon", "red apple." Rather than an experience of red I would say she is shown things that are red.

why do we assume that there is one mind per skull? — j0e

I am of two minds about this.

In determining whether, and stating whether, a law exists legal positivism makes no claims regarding whether it is right or just. Whether a law exists doesn't depend on its merits. — Ciceronianus the White

It seems to me that determining whether a law exists is rather straight forward. Interpreting and applying the law, not so much.

If we look at legal practice things are not so clear cut. Consider "penumbra", legal activism, and stare decisis.

I thought you might find interesting. From The New Republic:

To understand the emergence of Trump-supporting Straussianism, it’s important to realize that this group is very different than the Straussians who were influential during the Bush administration. After Leo Strauss died in 1973, his followers divided into two factions, creating the infamous “Crisis of the Strauss Divided.” And the best way to understand the divide between West Coast and East Coast Straussians is through the quarrel between Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom, who were the respective heads of the rival schools.

Strauss encouraged his students to form tight relationships since frank and intimate conversation among friends was the heart of philosophy. Jaffa and Bloom were very close in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1964 they co-wrote a book, Shakespeare’s Politics, dedicated “to Leo Strauss our teacher.” But over time Jaffa became involved in grassroots activism in the Republican Party, authoring the famous lines that Barry Goldwater uttered in 1964, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” As he became involved in right-wing activism, Jaffa gravitated towards social conservatism, praising the religious right, appearing on Pat Robertson’s show, and emerging as vocal homophobe (he argued in 1990 that “sodomy is, in the decisive respect, as morally offensive as incest and rape”). This put him in collision with his former friend Bloom, who was a closeted gay man. In a nasty review of Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind (1987) published in the Straussian journal Interpretation, Jaffa wrote that through AIDS “God and nature have exacted terrible retribution” on gays. Bloom died a few years after Jaffa wrote those vile words. Some friends, notably the novelist Saul Bellow, claimed that Bloom had died of AIDS, although this is disputed. What is undeniable is that Jaffa put a homophobic jab in his review with the intent to hurt his former friend.

The disputes between Jaffa’s West Coast Straussianism and Bloom’s East Coast Straussianism can be discussed along philosophic lines: Is America, as Jaffa believes, grounded in ancient philosophy or was the American founding, as Bloom would have it, built on the low but solid ground of early modern philosophers like Hobbes and Locke? Does the survival of America depend on the virtue of the people, as West Coast Straussians believe, or in the maintenance of constitutional norms, as East Coast Straussians believe? But the dispute can also more easily be understood in terms of the familiar social divide in the Republican Party. West Coast Straussians are the grassroots activists, grounded in social conservatism and ultra-nationalist in foreign policy. Sociologically, East Coast Straussians are more aligned with the party elite, and tend to be found in Washington think tanks and serving as career bureaucrats.

Another way to frame the divide is on the issue of regime change. Strauss, like Plato, was fascinated by the founding of regimes, and his students clearly believe that the key to politics is to have power at the moment of creation. For the East Coast Straussians, regime change is a matter of foreign policy, as witness the failed attempt to democratize the Middle East by force under Bush. For the West Coast Straussians—perhaps shaped by Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided, a seminal and brilliant work on Abraham Lincoln as a revolutionary thinker—regime change begins at home.

In a 1959 critique of the book in National Review, Willmoore Kendall prophetically argued that Jaffa’s celebration of Lincoln could give license to celebrations of new Caesars who claim to be avatars of the popular will. Readers of Jaffa’s book, Kendall warned, needed to be wary...

...lest Jaffa launch them, and with them the nation, upon a political future the very thought of which is hair-raising: a future made up of an endless series of Abraham Lincolns, each persuaded that he is superior in wisdom and virtue to the Fathers, each prepared to insist that those who oppose this or that new application of the equality standard are denying the possibility of self-government, each ultimately willing to plunge America into civil war rather than concede his point.

Kendall was wrong on one point. He feared that an America too beholden to the ideal of equality would see a rise in political extremism. But with West Coast Straussians supporting Trump, we see that Jaffa’s license to political extremism can be used just as easily by those who oppose equality—and Kendall’s warning of a new Caesarism has been fulfilled.

https://newrepublic.com/article/137410/pro-trump-intellectuals-want-overthrow-america



I would add one thing. Some of Strauss's most notable students, Stanley Rosen and Seth Bernadette for example, perhaps influenced by Socrates, stayed out of politics all together.

Where the law applies equally to all, including members of the controlling authorities, it's possible to contend that the laws govern us all. — Ciceronianus the White

I want to follow up on this. Earlier you said:

The law is a system of rules adopted by or which were adopted by a controlling authority or authorities in a nation or society ... — Ciceronianus the White

If the controlling authority, however improbable we may hope it is, decides to reject the law as it is now written and practiced and institute new laws favorable only to its sovereignty, ignoring the rights and well being of its citizens, then this would be entirely lawful. In so far as that is the case legal positivism seems to rest on the assumption that might makes right and justice is the will of the stronger.

That is a reference to 'metanoia' is it not? — Wayfarer

It is not, as or as I know, a term used by Plato. Here is the passage.

" ... the power to learn is present in everyone's soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul until it is
able to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, namely, the one we call the good." (518c)

The reason I have not yet responded to you is because our debate caused me to feel the need to do some research first: — Todd Martin

I am always glad to hear that.

it seems to have inspired Republican American politics of the late 90s — Todd Martin

I think that was an interesting development. Students of Strauss split between those who stayed out of politics and those who became politically active. They are often referred to as East Coast and West Coast Straussians, although it is not a strictly geographical split. The west coasters centered around Harry Jaffa, Claremont College, and the Claremont Review. They are generally well read and argumentatively capable, but I have nothing positive to say about their brand of conservatism.

So, it's very unlikely. — Ciceronianus the White

This assurance is not as comforting as it once was. There are those with considerable influence who are right now working to get the states to call a convention.
https://www.commoncause.org/resource/u-s-constitution-threatened-as-article-v-convention-movement-nears-success/

So doe this mean that when the US Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law ..." this really means it shall not do so unless or until it can if it so chooses?

I prefer to think that we are a nation of lawyers — Ciceronianus the White

With that thought in mind I will have trouble sleeping tonight.

I think the claim that we here in God's Favorite Country live in a nation of laws, not men, is founded on the belief that laws, once adopted, apply equally to all people that are citizens of our Glorious Union, including members of the "controlling authorities." — Ciceronianus the White

Yes. The laws themselves are, of course, the laws of men - by men for men. (I use the term 'men' here because it is how the quote is phrased).

What I am questioning is the notion that laws are:

... adopted by a controlling authority or authorities — Ciceronianus the White

This implies that the controlling authorities, whoever they may be, can by fiat make or change whatever laws they see fit. There is a sense in which this is true, providing they have to power to do so. And if they do so, us law-abiding citizens have no choice but to comply.

"Logos" is a Greek word meaning reason, the controlling form of the universe made manifest is speech. — Athena

What the Greeks understood by 'reason' is not what the term came to mean for us through modern philosophy. Anaxagoras said 'nous' (mind or intellect) orders the cosmos. Reason is a Latin term, from ratio, used to translate the Greek dianoia, discursive thinking. It differs from noesis, a kind of direct apprehension or seeing with the mind.

What the logos meant for Heraclitus is controversial. When he says: " ... all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos ...", he might mean that the Logos is the guiding force or he could simply mean that what he is about to tell us is the way things are, the truth. Preceding this he begins: "Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time …".

It should noted that the Greek philosophers, in imitation of the Greek poets, placed the authority of what they said not with themselves but with God or the gods.

In the Phaedo Socrates says that he had been drawn to Anaxagoras' claim that Nous orders all things, but was disappointed to learn that he gave only physical explanations and did not say why things should be the way they are, that is, why it is best that they be this way. Socrates was left on his own to discover what is
best, that is, his "second sailing", his recourse to speech.

It is not divine reason made manifest in speech, but rather, human speech attempting to know what is best.

I like Socrates ...

However, I place my fealty first with the land (physical) into which I was born, expanding it then to the Earth, long before I arrive at any tender feelings for the State. — James Riley

There is an irreducible tension between Socrates and the city. His fealty is to philosophy, the examined life. It was in this sense trans-political. Beyond that it is difficult to say where his allegiance was. The problem with thinking his allegiance was to the regime is that it had undergone upheavals and changes in his lifetime. It did not remain the same regime through all those changes. The same problem arises with the law. Having said that, however, it does seem that he was loyal to the city and its laws.

The law is a system of rules adopted by or which were adopted by a controlling authority or authorities in a nation or society ... — Ciceronianus the White

How does this square with the claim that "We are a nation of laws not of men"?

... he did have a concept of a higher authority. We use the word "God" for the higher authority. We could use words like logos ... — Athena

I do not think Socrates had a concept of a higher authority. He had a concept of "what seems best". He used the word 'logos' to mean to speak, to discuss, or give an account. What seems best is what follows from deliberating together, the stronger argument. It is important to see that the result of such deliberation is not absolute. Socrates reminds us of our ignorance. We are human, not divine beings.

I forget this one: Plato's Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul, by Mitchell Miller.

I read it some years ago. He pays careful attention to the details of the dialogue, which is to say he does not treat it like a discourse or doctrine. It is a Socratic dialogue. Socrates called himself a physician of the soul. At the heart of the discussion of Forms in the Republic there is a turning of the soul.

He also wrote on Parmenides proem. I just found this. https://philarchive.org/archive/MILPAT-4v1

Miller's interpretations do not suffer from the anachronisms often found in modern interpretations.

[Edit: I read the paper. Given the complexity of the subject matter I thought it was very clearly written. I don't know if this is the kind of thing you are looking for though. Unlike Hedley it does not address Parmenides' legacy.

Peter Kingsley has some interesting things to say.

But when that meaning, however inadequate, becomes the worldview of a culture and all institutions and values are built around it for many centuries there may be a magnificent price to pay for its diminution or cessation. — Tom Storm

Nietzsche said something to the effect that creators destroy.

In some ways Nietzsche and Socrates are the same in that they undermine the foundations of their society. In Socrates case too, things were already on shaky grounds.

But the creation of a new worldview owes more to Plato than to Socrates. So what does Nietzsche create and what is left to "the philosopher of the future"? His answer is he creates creators. [Edit: This is from Zarathustra. I don't have time now to find it in the text] He frees the philosopher from the shackles of the past.

When you say that Nietzsche is not anti-science, do you have this group of postmodernists in mind as being truly anti-science ? — Joshs

I don't know.

Do you know of any philosopher who is actually anti-science in the way you mean it? — Joshs

Perhaps Wittgenstein. Although it may be more of an attack on scientism.

So you’re saying apprehension of a universe is not a matter of adequation or correspondence with an independent reality but of construction? — Joshs

I don't know where you got that from anything I said. I am talking about the significance of Zarathustra's "good news" - God is dead. How the death of God relates to the problem of the meaning of life.

Would you say that for Wheeler
the universe is participatory in a materially causal way or in a valuative way?I realize that ‘value’ would have to be fleshed out in relation to notions like intentionality and goal-oriented normativity. — Joshs

Wheeler said "everything is information". Does that fit somewhere in your categories?

I am not arguing that Nietzsche's views are compatible with Wheeler's or some other scientist, but that it would be a mistake to think he was anti-science.

Yes, the notio that the universe is a place Nietwe exist ‘within’ is a realist notion, which I think Nietzsche is implicitly critiquing in the quote I sent you. — Joshs

You seem to have missed the point of what I am saying. The desire to find meaning in the universe is not a linguistic quest. Nietzsche denies that such meaning can be found in the universe. Hence my statement: "The universe has always been meaningless." Whatever meaning we find is a meaning we create.

I can’t imagine any phycisst who would subscribe to Nietzsche’s claim below: — Joshs

I think there is first and foremost a difficult interpretive challenge here. Just a few quick points.

The quote is from Beyond Good and Evil Chapter 2 "The Free Spirit", (36). He begins: 'suppose' or 'assuming' or 'if we assume'. This assumption is followed by a question: "are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is “given” does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or “material”) world?"

In other words, from the supposed given: "our world of desires and passions" he makes the attempt to understand the world.

There are some noted physicists including John Wheeler who defend the notion of a participatory universe.

What is there outside of the meaning of the term? — Joshs

For those who seek meaning in the universe it means, but is not limited to, questions of purpose, significance, and our place in it.

Yes, and this means he denies that the aim of science should be the attainment of truth, which amounts to a direct critique of modern physics and most sciences outside of perhaps a few branches of psychology. — Joshs

As I understand it, Nietzsche denies transcendent, absolute, unchanging truths. Some contemporary physicists do as well, although others treat the laws of nature as eternally unchanging and immutable.

↪Fooloso4
The universe has always been meaningless.
— Wayfarer

Then how are we able to understand the meaning of the word ‘universe’? — Joshs

Wayfarer was quoting me so I'll respond. The problem is not with the meaning of the term. I suspect you know that.

I am not well versed in the subject of the philosophy of law, but I would think there is a distinction between the law as it is written and the question of what the law should be, that is, the law as it in interpreted and the task of the law maker. But this distinction is not always so clear cut. There are interpretive differences which cannot simply be resolved by pointing to what is written or precedent. There are accusations on both sides today of judicial activism.

What is missing from the speaker's knowledge is evidence for their belief. — RussellA

The evidence of their belief is the fact that they are able to distinguish a red post-box from all else.

But we are now just repeating ourselves.

We are not talking about the various uses of the work 'know'. We are talking about skepticism. How is it that when:

The person can know that the publicly accepted word for the colour of the post-box is "red" - though it could have been "rouge" or "rot".

The person can also know their own conscious experience of a particular colour. — RussellA

the skeptic is still justified in asking for the reason they know it? If the person is able to distinguish between a red post-box and a green post-box or for that matter a red post-box and an aardvark then what is missing from their knowledge that justifies doubting it?

You previously said:

If they had said "I know that the actual post-box is red, not just my sense-impression", the sceptic is justified to ask them for what reason they think they know that the actual post-box is red. If they cannot give a suitable reason, then the sceptic had justification to ask. — RussellA

but now:

A person can know several different things at the same time.

The person can know that the publicly accepted word for the colour of the post-box is "red" - though it could have been "rouge" or "rot".

The person can also know their own conscious experience of a particular colour. — RussellA

So which is it? Does a person know it or is the skeptic justified in asking for the reason they think they know it?

Nietszche does not deny science. What he denies is the:

metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests
— Fooloso4

Which amounts to the same! He explicitly denies the idea of 'natural order' or 'natural law' as an anthropomorphism.

The total character of the world...is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for ". — Wayfarer

The quote is from The Gay Science Aphorism #109. It should be read in context. What he warns against is regarding the universe as a machine. He says:

"The astral arrangement in which we live is an exception; this arrangement, and the relatively long durability is determined by it, has again made possible the exception of exceptions, the formation of organic life."

What he is denying the the passage you quoted is "our aesthetic anthropomorphisms" and an eternal order to the universe. The natural sciences are possible because of the relatively long durability of our astral arrangement. But we should not conclude that what may be the case in our little part of the universe must be true everywhere.

He goes on:

"Let us be on our guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man! It is altogether unaffected by our aesthetic and moral judgments! Neither has it any self-preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also knows no law. Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses."

The denial of natural laws is the denial of a lawmaker and a universe that obeys.

"There are no eternally enduring substances ..."

He ends by asking:

"When will all these shadows of God cease to obscure us? When shall we have nature entirely undeified! When shall we be permitted to naturalise our selves by means of the pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?"

I've discovered some books on it (e.g this. — Wayfarer

I took a look at what was available to read on Amazon. The only thing "Look Inside" reveals is the forward by Hedley on the legacy of the Parmenides. There is an introductory essay of readers and interpreters. I wonder what he has to say about the problem of interpreting Plato. Hedley sees the dialogue as the legacy of Parmenides as interpreted by Plato. That legacy includes the influence on Socrates and Plato. And this raises the question of why Plato's Socrates continued to talk about Forms after this encounter with Parmenides when he was young.

I think it has something to do with Socrates "second sailing" (Phaedo 99d). After the criticisms of the Forms Parmenides says that one who does not “allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will “destroy the power of dialectic entirely” (135b8–c2). In his search for the causes of all things he undertakes a second sailing, a turning away from what the eye sees and toward speech, logos. In other words, contrary to the myth of Forms in the Republic, the Forms are not discovered through transcendent mystical experience. They are that which for each thing must remain the same if there is to be dialectical speech.

Ultimately Nietszche is impelled to not only deny God, but also science, because science originates with the acceptance an order, and Nietsczhe is compelled to deny that also. — Wayfarer

Nietzsche did not kill God. He traces God's death back to the Enlightenment.

He does not deny science. What he denies is the:

metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests

The modern world is a flatland as far as values are concerned — Wayfarer

But this is not Nietzsche. A hierarchy of values was fundamental to him. It is both the depths and the heights that can be achieved that mark the higher man.

Man created the myths of creation and purpose. Man created meaning. The universe has always been meaningless.
— Fooloso4

That is a belief, also - practically the defacto belief in today's world. But a belief nonetheless. — Wayfarer

I agree.

Rather than argue the correctness of my position I will indicate why I find it more compelling. It is an intellectual challenge. I cannot, of course, say how successful it will be, but it seeks to find explanations rather than accept the answers given, namely the work of intellect or consciousness or God, that do not really provide explanations for how things work.

When I was first introduced to philosophy I was enamored by the idea of Forms. Some years later I came to see them as images themselves, part of Plato's poetry that was intended to replace the myths of the gods.

... left us with only the uncertain resources of our will with which to combat the infinity of meaninglessness that the universe now threatens to become. — David Bentley Hart

The resources of our will are all we have ever had. With these resources man invented God. Man created the myths of creation and purpose. Man created meaning. The universe has always been meaningless.

The three metamorphoses of the spirit in Zarathustra is about doing this again and again. Rejecting those values that no longer promote our health and replacing them with new ones. Over and over again. The eternal return of the same.

Hello my old friend.

I think the larger question that informs your inquiry is that of the intelligible order and the intelligence that is its author.

I am going to offer a very different view, that of self-organization, bottom up rather than top down. The observed order is accidental in that things could have developed differently and nothing prevents further development in very different directions. Intelligence is a contingent and emergent feature. The laws of nature are not fixed, their stability temporal.

With Nietzsche context is always important. "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him ... Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

The death of God can lead to either the last man or the overman.

Nietzsche is often accused of being a nihilist This is wrong. From "The Uses and Abuses of History" through Zarathustra Nietzsche battled against nihilism. He does not reject value. It is for him of fundamental importance. The invention of new values, which he sees as necessary in our time, is only possible with the death of God.

Was Nietzsche correct that the ‘death of God’ would usher in a time of meaninglessness and bloodshed? — Tom Storm

Nietzsche is not talking about something that is yet to happen. God is already dead. A time of meaninglessness and bloodshed could describe much of history.

No - they will both paint it red. — RussellA

But you previously said:

When someone looks at a post-box and says "I know the post-box is red", what they really mean is that when looking at the post-box they have the sense impression red. — RussellA

and then:

For example, one person may see red and another person may see green.

Therefore, the colour an observer sees is a function of the observer and not of the light travelling from the object.

Therefore, it is not that the actual post-box is red, but rather we observe the post-box as being red. — RussellA

So, the person sees green yet knows that the post-box is red despite his sense impression not because of it.

Now it may be that she has learned that her sense impression for green is what other people call red. The problem is she is still able to distinguish between green and red post-boxes. If someone painted the box green would she see it as green or red or some other color? In any case, she is able to make a distinction and that distinction must have something to do with the color of the post-box.

You also said:

Therefore, the colour an observer sees is a function of the observer and not of the light travelling from the object. — RussellA

In the dark we cannot observe the color. Isn't this because what the observer sees has something to do with the light travelling from the object?

Therefore, the colour an observer sees is a function of the observer and not of the light travelling from the object. — RussellA

What color is the mailbox in the dark?

For example, one person may see red and another person may see green. — RussellA

Does this mean that if I them to paint the box red one will do so correctly and the other will paint it green? Or is there no correct here?