The 'desire to know' is clearly advantageous in potential control of one's life, even from the trivial povs of 'being respected' or 'self confidence'. — fresco

Yes, it can be but that does not mean that one desires to know in order to control her life. It may be the case that one sacrifices control of one's life in order to follow the evidence.

And I suggest 'objects or processes of aesthetic value' always have an element of organizational complexity associated with them which by definition involves 'control'. — fresco

Making music or art need not be for the sake of control. It is often the other way around, one exerts control in order to make music or art, but as every accomplished musician and artist knows once the technique is mastered one must relinquish control. The sheer joy of play is an end in itself.

Okay...define 'knowledge' without reference to 'prediction and control'. — fresco

Tell me what the paleontologist expects to predict and control. Seems a little late for that.

There are some who desire to know in the same way that others desire to create music or art or poetry. There is for them nothing pragmatic about it. It is, rather, aesthetic or spiritual, a sense of wonder.

Definitions — Amity

I am reminded of Arthur Koestler's definition: "the systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose."

I am saying that the act of constructing such scenarios is part of a cognitive process which is particular to the needs of humans In their quest to 'predict (or retrodict) and control' what constitutes their 'lives'. — fresco

Well, it does seem to be particular to humans but I don't buy this stuff about predict and control as it pertains to all endeavours to know.

What is self-explaining (meaning 1) but cannot be explained (meaning 2) is a conjuring act.
— Fooloso4

I have no idea what you're talking about. I said precisely how God is self-explaining. Please read what I posted. — Dfpolis

It is really quite simple. You have not provided an explanation (2) for the existence of God, you simply assert that God is self-explaining (1). You are claiming that an explanation (1) is:

the fact(s) that make some state of affairs be as it is. — Dfpolis

and that in the case of God:

the explanation is the thing in question — Dfpolis

and:

So for an infinite being, what-it-is would be identical with that-it-is. — Dfpolis

This is not an explanation (2) it is an unsubstantiated claim, creatio ex nihilo, of an infinite being made to explain (2) what cannot be explained - being. It amounts to saying it must be because otherwise there is no explanation for what is (2).

First, you are begging the question by assuming that all reality is part of the universe. — Dfpolis

The question is whether the universe requires God. It seems evident to me that what is part of the universe is actual. If you are going to claim that there is something that is not that is the explanation for what is in the universe then the burden is on you to demonstrate its existence.

Most cosmologists, even though they are naturalists, believe that there may be other universes, with other laws (the multiverse). — Dfpolis

Is the multiverse infinite in the sense you are using the term? If not, then the same problem holds - it would not be self-explanatory. If the multiple universes are separate then the existence of one has no effect on the others.

The laws of nature restrict what is physically possible, but they do not restrict what is logically possible. — Dfpolis

And what do you think follows from that? If something is logically possible that does not mean that it is actual or has any bearing on what is actual.

Third, things that happened in the past are possible in virtue of having actually happened, but they are not actual because they no longer exist. — Dfpolis

This is muddled. If something were not possible it would not have happened. There are things that are possible that are not actual, but what is actual cannot be impossible.

We cannot extrapolate from our limited acquaintance with limited things to a universe that is limited.
— Fooloso4

Yes, we can. Because whatever changes has to be limited. If it were not, it would be all that it could be, and so there would be nothing for it to change into. — Dfpolis

The inability to change is a limit.

Thanks.

I suppose that what reminded you of this is the idea that things are not in the mind in the sense that the actual physical object is in the mind, but as I read it Aristotle is not claiming, as Wayfarer is, that world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles.

We cannot 'know' anything about the 'ontological status' of the entities we conceptualize other than they are 'useful' in our epistemological quests to 'predict and control'. — fresco

What reason do you have to doubt the abundance of evidence of life before man? Do you doubt the fossil record? Radiocarbon dating? Do you think the dinosaurs are products of the imagination?

In what way is a paleontologist on an epistemological quest to 'predict and control'? The desire to know is not the desire to predict and control, although that may be one motivation and end.

I know nothing about second order cybernetics and cannot comment.

I'm not questioning scientific method, what I'm doing is questioning the sense in which it conveys or results in or approaches an ultimate truth. Which is, I believe, the purport of the above-mentioned Allegory of the Cave — Wayfarer

If you accept facts then I assume you accept the fact that the world existed prior to man. But if you accept Forms then those facts are just images. And yet in the Theaetetus, the Platonic dialogue about knowledge, there is no mention of Forms. In the Republic, a dialogue about the politics of the soul that requires the mythologies of the poets to be replaced by a philosophical poetry, the Forms play a central part in the education of philosopher; but if one takes the image of image of that education seriously then it is only those who have actually ascended from the cave who know anything about ultimate truth. The image of the cave we read about is just another image on the cave wall.

This reminds me of De Anima where Aristotle says: "In a way, the soul is all things." — Valentinus

Can you provide a reference?

The point I'm trying to make, is that there is an inextricably subjective pole or aspect of all experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, that is self-evident.

This applies even to the objects of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer

The object is what the analysis is about. The analysis is subjective in so far as (a) there can be no analysis without a subject to analyze, and (b) the analysis is limited by the state of our understanding, our instruments of observation, our methodologies and models, and so on. The object, however, is not subjective. Further, the analysis is not subjective in that it is not independent of the object. (See below on carbon dating). It cannot ignore or contradict the facts as we know them.

This realisation has been more or less forced on science by the conundrums associated with quantum mechanics. — Wayfarer

We simply do not understand quantum mechanics.

Even the scientific picture of the world, which I am not suggesting is fallacious, is still a construct or representation — Wayfarer

Yes, a picture, in so far as it is a picture of something, is a representation.

Could I suggest that in saying that, you're positing 'mind' as 'something within the individual' - my mind, or your mind, — Wayfarer

You could suggest that but it is not what I am saying and does not follow from what I said.

... world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles, we have a shared world of meanings and common facts within which we all dwell. — Wayfarer

I cannot accept the notion that world arises together with mind. There is solid evidence that the earth was here prior to any mind that we know of. And here is the claims about the subjectivity of science becomes problematic. Radiocarbon dating works because we know the half-life of the carbon isotope C14. The decay is independent of any subject. It is in this sense objective.

In whatever way we may be conscious of the world ... — Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences p108

This begs the question. The issue is not our consciousness of the world but whether the world exists independent of our consciousness. Husserl avoids addressing this question via the epoche or bracketing of the question, that is, putting it out of bounds of his investigations.

I avoided "cause" because I'm not writing in ancient Greece. — Dfpolis

Aquinas did not write in ancient Greece

I am perfectley happy with either "fact" or "state" of affairs as long as no confussion arises. — Dfpolis

The point is you are using the term in two fundamentally different ways - (1) fact(s) that are not dependent (God/infinite being) and (2) all other facts which are dependent on (1).

Your argument is ... and that the infinite being needs no explanation because it is infinite.
— Fooloso4

That is a complete misstatement of my position that everything that is, has some underlying dynamics/explanation. It you are going to criticize, criticize what I actually say. — Dfpolis

What you said is that God, i,e., the infinite being is self-explaining.

An uncaused cause.
— Fooloso4

Thank you for illustrating why I did not use "cause" -- by misstating of my position. — Dfpolis

How does your argument for a self-explaining God differ from Aquinas' first cause, an efficient cause, an uncaused cause?

Before going to college I did not know in what ways I would benefit from it. I could not have made a prudent decision based on my lack of knowledge.

The entities and systems which they conceptualize. — fresco

Are there entities that are not part of a system of human interaction? Are entities mind dependent? Is the mind interacting with itself or with entities that are not products of the mind? Is there nothing but the mind generating a world ex nihilo?

The genius of Aquinas's insight that God's essence is His existence is that it gives us an intelligible reason why God requires no extrinsic explanation. — Dfpolis

You might think it genius but as you said in the OP, thinking something does not make it exist. So too, for the same reason, one cannot define something into existence . Aristotle saw that the cause of being cannot be a being. Aquinas, in line with the belief in a Creator, avoids the problem by simply declaring that there is an uncaused being that is the cause of other beings. A being that is (existence) because to be is what it is (essence).

You are attempting to put old wine that has turned to vinegar into new bottles. Once again:

You use the term explanation to mean:

the fact(s) that make some state of affairs be as it is. (We may or may not know these.) This is the sense I am using.
— Dfpolis

You avoid Aristotle's causal language but do not side-step the problem. What distinction do you make between the fact(s) and some state of affairs? You said:

Proofs show us how to assemble facts we already know to see something we may not have noticed.
— Dfpolis

Your argument is that there are these facts because of some other fact(s). There are finite beings because there is an infinite being, that the infinite being is the "explanation" of finite beings, and that the infinite being needs no explanation because it is infinite. In Scholastic terms you make the distinction between contingent beings and a necessary being. A first cause. An uncaused cause.

The same tired old argument. — Fooloso4

Humans are the judge of 'interaction'. — fresco

The interaction of what?

There would appear to us to be 'transient systems' of interactive 'entities' ... — fresco

Could there be any interaction within these systems if these entities were human constructs?

It provided him with powerful images to be used in the re-election campaign. — Amity

Sure, but I do not know how beneficial or harmful it is with those who have not already decided to vote for him. But then again, we do love spectacle.

On the contrary, I have asserted we SHOULD reject 'existence' not mediated by human understanding because 'existence' is a human concept like any other. — fresco

Is there anything other than human constructs?

As far as I am concerned, ' where concepts originate from' is just another vacuous endeavor played by ' aspiring 'realists' desperate for 'axioms'. Biological understanding of languaging as 'behaviour' needs no such 'axioms' (Maturana) — fresco

It is not a question of where concepts originate. You are right that biological understanding of languaging as 'behaviour' needs no such 'axioms', that is the point!

For me, this one amounts to 'naive realists' squirming on the uncomfortable hook arising from Kant's point about the inaccessibility of noumena and the subsequent ditching of 'noumena' by later phenomenologists. — fresco

That there were dinosaurs that roamed the earth long before man has nothing to do with the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena or with phenomenology. Mediated understanding does not mean we must reject the existence of what is not mediated by human understanding.

Obviously, an 'objective world' is useful picture ... — fresco

Here again you introduce concepts that are not at issue. The universe prior to or in the absence of man or consciousness is not an objective world. The concept of an objective world stands in relation to the concept of a subjective world.

... such 'pictures' are always human constructs... — fresco

Of course the pictures humans construct are human constructs! That there are only human constructs is a human construct, a picture that some have difficulty seeing passed.

I agree with Freedland that it is not enough just to laugh at him, but there are benefits to laughing at him. On the one hand it is cathartic, on the other it deeply wounds him. He desperately wants to be taken seriously. He always has. Early on he was shunned by the rich and famous, the "beautiful people". He has spent his life, his father's fortune, and money he borrowed and stole in order to accepted into their exclusive society. Nothing could be worse than to be laughed at for his efforts. But the scorn did not dissuade him, it only made him try all the harder.

Having stumbled into the presidency, he now wants to be a world historical figure. The mocking and ridicule feeds his insecurity, but again he doubles down. The Fourth of July military spectacle did not accomplish what he hoped it would, it did not bring him the kind of admiration he seeks to legitimize himself. It is not enough that his followers adore him, the numbers are too low, no matter how much he might inflate them. We should not take too much comfort in this, however. It will only spur him on.

One way in which I have defined philosophy is as what the philosophers do.

From here we begin to read a select group of philosophers and discuss what we have read.

I'm taking a Pragmatist (Nietzschean) perspective that there is no way of seperating 'description' from 'actuality'. All we can ever have are 'descriptions' which vary in functionality according to context. — fresco

Describing is a kind of doing, but it is not the doing of what is described.

Our ability to conceptualize has led some to believe that everything we do must be conceptual or the result of conceptualizing. It is in order to correct this, to start from the other direction, from where concepts originate, that Wittgenstein quotes Goethe.

I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but
not ratiocination. (On Certainty 475)

Our language-game is an extension of primitive behavior. (For our language-game is behavior.) (Instinct). (Zettel 545)

Instinct first reason second (Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology 689)

The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions. (On Certainty 287)

But when we imagine ... we're picturing ... that is still an idea ... — Wayfarer

The existence of the earth prior to man and what we imagine or picture or form ideas of what that was like is not the same.

'Agents' doing 'deeds' are concepts privileging one side of the interaction. — fresco

Your description is conceptual, but the description is not the doing.

So, hidden humour played a serious role. As in the competitive Superiority Theory ( same article ) ? — Amity

I don't see it that way. It is not that the irony or humor is hidden but that it is just not seen. For us, though, it helps to have certain things brought to our attention that we might not be aware of if all we knew was what we read in the dialogues. Aristophanes' The Clouds, for example, is about Socrates and philosophy.

I do not know about the competitive Superiority Theory, but Socrates was clearly superior both intellectually and morally to many of his interlocutors. The twist though is that many of them thought of themselves as superior. The Theaetetus, for example, is funny because he thinks he is instructing Socrates about piety, but he is clueless. The dialogue ends and it is not clear whether he caught on and confronted his ignorance or if in his ignorance he went on and prosecuted his father as he claimed the gods wanted him to do.

Fine if we discount the fact that 'before' and 'after' are also parochial human constructs. — fresco

I think it may rather be the case that theories of time are the constructs and time as we experience it and what occurs in time - getting older, for example, are pre-cognitive events, which in time we developed concepts of.

We were born into a world of concepts which WERE of our own making. — fresco

We are born into a world in which there is light and noise and motion and, if we are fortunate, a breast to latch onto, although the nipple of a bottle will do.

As Goethe said, and Wittgenstein quotes approvingly:

In the beginning was the deed.

Concepts come later.

I would like to talk about humour in philosophy. Seriously. — Amity

Plato is said to have slept with a copy of the works of the comic poet/playwright Aristophanes under his pillow. Aristophanes was serious and funny.

There is a connection between Socratic humor and irony. Many of Socrates' interlocutors were unaware of the irony of Socrates' responses, which makes it doubly ironic. One must see both that it is and why it is ironic. In the same way one must be able to see both that and why some of his responses are humorous.

Aristophanes appears in Plato's Symposium, where wine and love are mischievously at play. Humor is a form of play, and like other forms of play, there is competition. Here the competition involves making the best speech on love during a drinking competition. It is also a competition between a comic and tragic poet, between philosophy and poetry, and between Aristophanes and Socrates.

Not a very funny post, I know.

It does not help you case to equivocate on the two meanings of "explanation" (verbal vs effective) that I carefully distinguished. — Dfpolis

What is self-explaining (meaning 1) but cannot be explained (meaning 2) is a conjuring act. What is self-explaining but by which you cannot explain anything is empty. It amounts to saying that nothing in the universe can explain itself (1) and so there must be something else that explains what is in the universe, but can't be explained (2) and does not need explanation (1 and 2).

You claim that:

There are logically possible acts that the universe cannot do. — Dfpolis

All that is actual is possible, and our concern is with what is actual, that is, the universe as it is, was, and will be. Any imagined possible acts that are impossible within the universe have no bearing on the universe as it is.

In addition, we do not know the limit of what is possible within the universe. We cannot extrapolate from our limited acquaintance with limited things to a universe that is limited.

If there are facts with no underlying dynamics/explanations ("brute facts" that "just are"), then the logic of science fails. — Dfpolis

The "logic of science" works quite well without recourse to an a priori first cause, or in your terms, without something that does not require an explanation because it is self-explaining.

As I explain earlier, essences specify possible acts, while existence makes powers operational — Dfpolis

This is what you said:

Essence, what a thing is, is the specification of its possible acts — Dfpolis

A thing cannot be what it is if it is not. Nothing is possible for what is not. Essence separate from existence is an abstract fantasy.

Naive realists think that what we humans call 'the physical world' has nothing to do with the active perceptual needs of us as a species. — fresco

Drop the labels and maybe we can make some headway. Labeling someone a "naive realist" and then attaching naive realism instead of what someone actually says is not productive.

Our "active perceptual needs" do not create the world ex nihilo. We are each of us born into a world that is not of our own making. It was here before any of us were and will be here after all of us.

You use the term explanation to mean:

the fact(s) that make some state of affairs be as it is. (We may or may not know these.) This is the sense I am using. — Dfpolis

You avoid Aristotle's causal language but do not side-step the problem. What distinction do you make between the fact(s) and some state of affairs? You said:

Proofs show us how to assemble facts we already know to see something we may not have noticed. — Dfpolis

Your argument is that there are these facts because of some other fact(s). There are finite beings because there is an infinite being, that the infinite being is the "explanation" of finite beings, and that the infinite being needs no explanation because it is infinite. In Scholastic terms you make the distinction between contingent beings and a necessary being. A first cause. An uncaused cause.

The same tired old argument.

Well someone on this forum mocked me for it. — Corra

I think it quite amusing when someone who is evidently uninformed mocks someone else who is trying to sort things out. They make fools of themselves. Try not to let it bother you. Your detractor is wrong in thinking it is a modern misconception and that the guidelines by which one lives equates to a lifestyle.

You really had to take a deep look at yourself. — Corra

Socrates frequently cited the Delphic maxim: "Know Thyself". You are on the right track.

I have not said that God is unexplained, but self-explaining. — Dfpolis

Then your "proof" would be superfluous. And yet the only explanations I have ever come across are failed human explanations, including yours. Your appeal to intuition is a dodge and circular - God is only self-explaining to those to whom this is intuitively evident. I would assume that your infinite God could explain itself to everyone without your help!

With regard to your distinction between essence and existence, what is the essence of what is not?

How do you explain the claim that if a being exists, its explanation must exist? There is nothing self-evident about this claim. Science does not explain existence in toto. It explains some things in terms of others. That there is anything at all is not something that science explains. Your claim that an explanation means the fact(s) that make some state of affairs be as it is does not explain those fact(s). To claim that the fact(s) are self-explaining because without the fact(s) we can't explain anything does not show that the fact(s) exist. It may be that at some point we reach the limit of explanation.

If you think that you have not posited an unexplained God then you have failed to follow your own failed proof.

Premise 6: A finite being cannot explain its own existence. — Dfpolis

This is where you should have started and ended. Positing an unexplained God as an explanation of what cannot be explained is conjuring.

I just looked up the ancient definition of philosophy and that is the love of wisdom. So daily life has nothing to do with philosophy. So glad I researched that. — Corra

But it does. The desire to be wise includes the wisdom of how to live well.

I do not think that Wittgenstein's hinge propositions are intuitions. They are what stands firm and around which other things are taken to be known. They are not grounded in intuitions but are accepted within a system of claims, beliefs, and practices.

I also do not think that Wittgenstein regarded Moore's "here is a hand" and such as hinge propositions. Nothing hangs from or turns on them. They are examples of when language goes on holiday.

It is difficult to say to what extent Wittgenstein's views toward ethics changed after the Tractatus because it is not something he said much about, which is perhaps indicative of his having not changed his mind. In the 1929 Lecture on Ethics he maintains the inclusion of aesthetics. Two points follow: First, ethics is not a matter of language games, there are no ethical hinge propositions. Second, if one holds that moral intuition is based on self-evident propositions then Wittgenstein's view is not that of moral intuition. Ethics/aesthetics, as he claimed in the Tractatus, are transcendental. I take this to mean both transcendent, that is, beyond the limits of the world, and transcendental in the sense of the condition for the possibility of moral/aesthetic awareness, experience, and understanding.

With regard to moral intuition, I think it promises too much and disregards what seems to be the more likely basis on which we may form moral intuitions. Many today may hold it as self-evident that slavery is wrong, but if so then were slave owners blind to what is self-evident or did the choose to ignore it? Or closer to home, are the disagreements today over abortion and equal rights based on the failure of one side to see what it self-evidently true? Any answer to that question will have each side claiming the blindness of the other.

And this brings us back to hinge propositions. Moral judgment and deliberation are based on certain things that are, like hinge propositions, not brought into questions but are accepted. This does not mean that they cannot be brought into question. Sometimes they are. But if and when they are it is always in relation to other things that are not at the same time questioned.

If this sounds like a form of relativism that is because it is. Wittgenstein says in On Certainty:

140. We do not learn the practice of making empirical judgments by learning rules: we are taught
judgments and their connexion with other judgments. A totality of judgments is made plausible to
us.

141. When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a
whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)

142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and
premises give one another mutual support.

152. I do not explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover them
subsequently like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not fixed in the sense that
anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility.

305. Here once more there is needed a step like the one taken in relativity theory.

While I do not think it is particularly helpful to define philosophy since the assumptions, goals, and practices differ widely, if pressed, I would suggest that it can be understood as free, reflexive inquiry. As such we find both systematic philosophies and methodologies as well the critique of systems and methodologies. Although it is free inquiry philosophers have not always been free to inquire or make the results of their inquiry public, and so until quite recently philosophers had to write circumspectly. And so, what they say outwardly often does not represent what they actually thought, and what they did not say should be heard.

Descartes, for example, took his motto from the Roman poet Ovid:

He who lived well hid well.

He appears in a very different light when this is born in mind. Very much at odds with what appears on the surface.

The Historical Jesus in Context, edited by Amy-Jill Levine.

. The desire to know for the sake of knowing
— Fooloso4
is inherently a pragmatic quest in that knowing is transformative interaction. The desire to know is the desire to adaptively reshape. — Joshs

When my son was very young he was fascinated with dinosaurs. There was nothing pragmatic in his desire to hear about dinosaurs, to see pictures of them, to learn their names, and size, and the period in which they lived. Some people never loose that fascination. There are some who desire to know in the same way that others desire to create music or art or poetry. There is for them nothing pragmatic about it. It is, rather, aesthetic or spiritual, a sense of wonder.

That it is not a productive science is clear from a consideration of the first philosophers.It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thus the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders); [20] therefore if it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy, it is obvious that they pursued science for the sake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility.The actual course of events bears witness to this; for speculation of this kind began with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied. Clearly then it is for no extrinsic advantage that we seek this knowledge; for just as we call a man independent who exists for himself and not for another, so we call this the only independent science, since it alone exists for itself. — Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b

We dont want to and don't need to know how things 'really were' before we existed. That is a nonsensical notion. When we theorize about the past, whether cosmological, biological or cultural, what we want to know is what we can do with this understanding right now in relation to our current goals. — Joshs

The only thing that is nonsense is this claim. The desire to know for the sake of knowing without regard to utility has motivated man for as long as man has been capable of inquiry. Plato acknowledged and addressed the well known claim that philosophy is useless. To this day there are those who claim that one or another mode of inquiry is useless.

You may not want or need to know how things 'really were' before we existed but there are many scientists who devote their lives to such questions. How those questions are answered changes over time but changes in our understanding of the past does not change the past.

My approach is to try to stand next to the author and see what he or she saw. — Dfpolis

But our distance intervenes. I suspect that no matter how close we get, or rather, no matter how close we think we get, there will still be a great deal that stands between us in terms of our views, concerns, and understanding of ourselves and the world. I think that no matter how close we may get Aristotle remains foreign.