So we have things without identity, which we cannot say that they are not the same as anything else, because this identifies them according to sameness. — Metaphysician Undercover

I've never said there were thing without identity. To speak about difference or selection is not to speak about any thing. We are talking about logical concepts. The expressions given by objects being distinct. We aren't talking about existing things here.

The point is, more or less, than the identity of a thing is wider than merely empirical manifestation or idea. I am different to everyone else. A truth not defined by a a decision of will (e.g. "I now think the distinction of Willow the poster on ThePhilosophyForum" and it happens) or particular empirical distinction (The distinction of Willow is defined by their location in time and space, what other people observe of them, etc., etc.), but given necessary by logic. I am a distinct thing-in-itself. A non-voluntary difference. A "selection" in which I, nor anyone else, had any choice.

A strawman. There was no claim of exhausting your experience at all. Indeed, I outright said the opposite: what shown in experiences is only a map; it cannot be exhaustive of experiences.

That's what it means to know something: to have a model which is not exhaustive of the world. My point this is no limit on what may be known.

If I know what you are thinking of feeling at sometime, the point is I have a map of a tiny part of you and the world. The failure of the map to be exhaustive doesn't prevent it from telling me your upset. I can know that perfectly well.

OK fine, you want to talk about selection which is not selection at all, it is something different from selection. So what is it that we are talking about? — Metaphysician Undercover

How logical distinctions are defined. How is it there is difference between myself and the computer screen? Why is one me and the other one not? I'd say "selection" is used because it refers to the presence of one difference over another. If we consider the uniform (e.g. substance, the world) which has no distinction), any distinction that occurs is but one possibility over many.

How come within the unity the world, I am distinct from my computer monitor rather than not? Why are those logical meanings "selected" rather than not? What makes it so that I have a different meaning than the computer monitor?

You act like you don't know what I'm talking about, but I don't think this is true. I think you are aware of what I'm talking about and want to say it's impossible. What I think you want to say is that logical distinction depends on the act of experience. That for selection to occur, for difference to be defined, it has to be performed by an act of will.

So while my usage of "selection" is not yours, I suspect you think your usage of "selection" is the one which applies to the topic we are discussing.

Isn't that identifying why free will is irrelevant to selection? What could be further from free will than the non-voluntary? Something we cannot control, that presents without our decision, without our choice: to be different, to be the distinct actor who gets to make a choice between distinct outcomes.

We did not choose to be those who make choices. We just found ourselves like that. Non-voluntary difference.

My point: if nothing acts to make a selection, then there is no selection, just like if our subject is "going to the store" and nothing acts to go to the store, there is no going to the store. — Metaphysician Undercover

I know that's your point. Mine is that that doesn't make sense. Selection, as spoken about in this thread, cannot be an action. It's incoherent. Without a defined difference, there is no-one to act and no actions to take. The point here is the definition of "selection" you are using cannot apply.

Much like when someone attacks the notion of a transcendent first cause God on the grounds there is no evidence or empirical form. Your usage of "selection" just doesn't get the topic of discussion and so fails to speak about it.

For sure, but what does that have to do with the knowledge is question? If I know you're upset by the suffering in the world, the fact that your experience (your "private" experience) and my experience (my "private" experience) are other than the map (knowledge that you are upset) has no negative impact. I know suffering upsets you perfectly well.

Since it is only the map which tells, the fact it's not the territory has no impact on its ability to say something. Anyone may know anything about another experience. They'll just never "be" that experience.

The self is an expression of an existing difference-- the meaning of a individual subject who is distinct from all other things. It cannot be reduced to say everything is one. In a sense it is noumenon, the living of an individual distinct from all other states. (all other states of the world are, similarly, noumenon in this way.)

Representations of self is a bit of a different question. They are ways of thinking or understanding the self. The first paragraph of this post, for example, is a representation of self. It's a concept or knowledge about the self, rather than the self itself. I might be giving an accurate description of the self, but that representation isn't the self-itself. (as a contrast, I could misunderstand the self, I could be a solipsist, and the self-itself would still be so. I would still be a subject distinct form all other things. I just wouldn't realise it).

There are many representations of the self, some accurate, some false. In this sense we might say they are "reflected." By understanding the self in some way, we have an image relating to self-itself, some which are distorted (e.g. "everything is me" "there is no self") and some which are not (e.g. "I am an entity distinct from everything else" ). Sometimes representation of the self is an image of this difference, other times a representation of self lacks that image entirely.

Can you answer how meaning in the self relates to meaning in the world — Punshhh

I'm inclined to say it never does but it always relates. The tricky thing about selves (distinct individual subjects) is they are defined in themselves and given with the rest of the world. Where do I come from? How is that the immanent comes to be expressed through me?

Well, we could say it's because of the various other states of the world with their particular immanent expressions. As I am, I am the product of many different other causal states with particular immanent expression (e.g. humans, mother, father, education, culture, etc., etc.), all of which were given to make me as I am.

Yet, it is also true that I was an inseparable part of making all those events. If I never existed as a baby, I could not have been born. If I didn't make the choices I did, might exist differently (i.e. with a different immanent expression) than I do today. Any of those casual relationships also relies on my presence, how I react to them in the moment, to define how I exist and my particular immanent expression at any time. Despite my existence (and so particular forms of immanent expression) being set by the states around me, the presence of those state alone cannot be said to give my particular immanent expression (a certain meaning).

In the sense in transcendent beliefs, the idea that one's meaning is created, enforced, constituted or grounded on a force outside the self, there can be no relation. One's meaning cannot be expressed without themselves. Beyond that, I'm not sure it makes much sense to speak of how does the meaning of self relate to the meaning of the world.

The question appears to pose the idea that meaning comes to us without ourselves. As if we could look out into the world, notice the presence of some meaning, and it would somehow define our meaning without ourselves being present. It seems more or less driven by the question: "How do I gain meaning?" or "What part of the world will give me meaning?" Almost treating the question of meaning as if it were an empirical inquiry-- "If only we can find the theory of meaning, then will be able to control the world so it has meaning."

But meaning is infinite. We (and the world) are never without it. Even in the deepest depths of despair, people and the world still mean something, they still matter. Suicide is not driven by meaningless ( "what happens doesn't matter" ) but by meaning ("life is too horrible to allow it to continue" ). In this sense, nothing gives meaning. It always is.

The relationships of the world and self to meaning aren't interesting for providing a way to obey meaning when we have none. Rather, they are interesting for attaining particular immanent expressions within the self. What to I need to stop feeling horrible, to stop despairing, to flourish, etc.,.etc.; it's about obtaining a contented and ethical self. Sometimes this is transcendent belief and it works well.

With respect to knowledge though, the transcendent belief tells a falsehood. It mistakes one's own success (flourishing, finding contentment, etc.,etc.) for their absence. To make itself inciting, it tells the falsehood it's the world has no meaning and needs it to become meaningful.

The result is people making arguments and thinking like Wayfarer. An understanding where nihilism reins (the world is, in-itself, meaningless) and the transcendent belief is a requirement to add meaning in the world. It simultaneously reads the everyman as discontent and then proclaims itself to be the only solution to their problem. In this respect, it functions as a self-serving generator of anxiety. The person who was content with their life, but has never really given much thought to spiritual or philosophical matters, is suddenly assaulted by the proclamation they are meaningless. A practice not concerned, in terms of understanding, with the individual's flourishing and contentment (that would be "heathen" focus on the self) but rather increasing and maintenance of that particular transcendent tradition.

My approach is considered "evil" for this reason. Not because I argue there ought not be belief in the transcendent or that it doesn't work, but rather because I make the transcendent unnecessary for meaning. Since I say meaning is infinite, so that the world cannot be without it, the transcendent has nothing to do. Such beliefs are merely one way people might be contented or flourish. They could do so in many other ways, just as well. A plurality that the transcendent traditions find abhorrent, even secluded mystical ones.

If one cannot say: "If my tradition was wiped out tomorrow, people in the world could still flourish and the world is meaningful. All that is lost is what I love, practice and consider valuable," then they are guilty of believing this transcendent illusion, that the meaning and of the world and everyone in it is dependent on the practice of their tradition. (and in this respect, it's not just religions and mystics which do this. We see plenty of it in wider philosophy, science, etc., etc., too).

That we have a private experience that cannot be mapped? — schopenhauer

I find this question to be a little be strange. Is not the point of the map that it is secondary, only a representation of a territory which is some other state? If so, doesn't that make all experiences maps?

In that case, I don't think the "private experiences question" makes any sense. The supposed failure of knowledge, not being the territory, was never attempted in the first place. Knowledge was always only a map (i.e. something known, not the existence something). The controversy about "private experiences" seems to be a storm over nothing. If experiences are only maps, knowing what someone is thinking or feeling is no more difficult than anything else. One just has to have that particular map (e.g. this person is sad). Access to the privacy of experience (i.e. being that experience) isn't needed for knowledge.

Hence the illusion of transcendence-- that's just immanence. Sometimes people call or think this immanence is "transcendence." The thinking of the concept of the transcendence can be the expression of immanent.

Within the transcendental narrative, the concept of transcendence becomes attached to the expression or a meaningful life and so the concept comes to represent the immanent expression. People mistake immanence (the expression of the transcendent concept) for the presence of an outside force which defines meaning.

You right about life (the transcendent concept is an expression of meaning), but wrong about knowledge. You won't describe the transcendent for what it is. You maintain and defend the distinction of transcendence as a force or presence. Transcendence is immanent, not the other way around.

I think this comes out in your reading of self too. With respect to the self, my point is the opposite. All is not within the self at all. The immanence of prayer is not everything. Someone who communicates with the transcendent in prayer is not everything and they are certainly not thinking about the whole world. To think as if one were a solipsist is to make a grave error.

The self is defined by the opposite, by being a difference from everything else. No matter what we do, we'll only be and know a fraction of the world. My point wasn't that all was of the self, it was specifically, that the act of prayer was of the self, meaning it was not an act involving a transcendent force.

For selection to be an action of something is a contradiction. For someone to take some action, difference needs to be already defined, else there is no one to take the action and not action to take. Selection must occur regardless of states of the world, else the different meanings expressed in the world would not be defined.

In this way you misread my analogy to God. The subject of the inquiry is not "nothing." It is selection. Just as someone says: "But what is it that causes God?", I am asking: "What causes selection?" In both questions, the subject (God, selection) is treated as real and I am asking what thing acted to make it so. For either question, "nothing" is a truthful answer because there is no thing which causes either.

For sure, the point is to think about the transcendent concept to the exclusion of everything else. Pray think and value God (the transcendent in this case) rather than about anything found in the world. In doing this one "communicates" with the transcendent, feels the wonder, awe and real truth. As far as this goes, it works.

However, it is all you. You are the one that feels. One "communicates" with the transcendent not by speaking to it, but feeling the presence themselves. This is reflected in how many people say one has "to be open to it" for "communication" with the transcendent to occur. It's a person existence that matters, what they feel, which defines the presence of this communication or not.

God does not any action upon someone to think this way. They have to do it, a question not of God's existence, but of the worldly state of the individual. If someone is in the state of rejecting the transcendent the communication of prayer is impossible.

As a "real" state (or rather an irreal state--a thing of a realm someone may know conceptually or interact with), the transcendent is an illusion. The communication of prayer is entirely worldly, a particular way of thinking and valuing of an individual (e.g. "for the treasures of heaven, not the possessions of the world" ).

That's they very illusion I'm talking about. Prayer is lived. It is not transcendent at all.

I'm not talking about the allure of a conceptual saviour. The issue isn't some imagined safety and victory through a particular concept. It is, rather, a blindness to oneself; a failure to understand that the absence of "intellectual concern" is a practice of one's life rather than something "beyond."

The transcendent is a conceptual notion. A concept of living as opposed to "intellectualising," which is mistaken for the presence (or noumenon) of life itself. An ideality-- "If I think 'outside the intellectual,' then I will access life rather than mere knowledge"-- as if having the concept of what's beyond knowledge amounted to living. It's not true. The transcendent is only another concept.

Now this is not to say those who have the concept of the transcendent do not live. Many people who hold the concept of the transcendent live well. They, however, do so through their lives, not through a transcendent force. In the act of prayer, one lives beyond knowledge, is enacting a practice which other than mere knowing.

The story of the transcendent doesn't get life wrong. Those who believe it really live beyond knowledge. Rather, it gets knowledge wrong. It tells a falsehood about ourselves in relation to knowledge. It confuses the distinction between knowledge and life as a problem for knowledge and understanding, as if life ought to be knowledge.

In this respect, the transcendent does not respect life. It gets treated as a question of knowledge. As if living were about having a transcendent concept rather than being a state of existence. Here the function of the transcendent becomes clear: it is a tool for assert a hierarchy within knowledge, belief, values and cultural practice.

Everyone is by definition more than knowledge. No matter who someone is, they are a state of the world rather than just a representative concept. Quite literally everyone lives, not matter the time or place. The way the transcendent works is by denying this. If someone doesn't have the transcendent concept, then they supposedly failure to live. Not question of harm of ethics, but a literal view that those without the transcendent don't even count as life.

If someone is greedy and burdened by an endless quest for more possessions, they are supposed to be stuck "intellectualising," so obsessed with the idea of possessing more, that they do not live in the world beyond concepts. The transcendent is then posed as a solution to this, as THE remedy to become a living being--e.g. "Stop thinking about those possessions. Value the transcendent instead. Then you will live."

But it's not true. The truth is the greedy person with a horrible life is no less "beyond knowledge" than any contented person. That's why the solution to the greedy one's problem cannot simply be saying: "Well, I am content." It takes more than a concept. They need exist in a contented state.

So the truth there are many more ways to solve the greedy person's problem than the proponent of the transcendent would have us believe. The issue is not that the greedy person lacks life, it's the ways they are thinking and acting which are damaging. Any outcome in which those practices are avoided will work. In some of them, they would even keep a focus on material possessions.

The transcendent is a falsehood. What it says we need isn't true. We always have life beyond knowledge. Problems we encounter may solved in many more ways than with the transcendent concept. No doubt transcendent belief can function as a solution, but is tells a falsehood of how it does so. It's always us living, not a realm of beyond.

My impression is that it speaks about selection in similar terms as the transcendentalists, as some sort of force acting to create, to show what immanence means in those terms. What's the ground? (under my reading) Nothing. It's actually giving an answer in terms of that question, rather than just claiming its incoherent.

It a bit like answering the question "What causes God?" Yes, we can say that such a notion is incoherent. But saying "nothing" is also truthful.

How is selection important if nothing selects? Why not just dismiss selection as an incoherent concept of transcendentalists? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, because selection is important. It's means differences between things. Without out, there could not even be absence, for it would amount to a difference. An absence of selection is incoherent.

Here we can see the nihilism of idealism too. Why is selection only important if something selects? How is difference not important is it is just selected? Does being selected by nothing somehow mean a selection hasn't occurred?

That's why we not ought to say selection is an incoherent concept of transcendentalists. It would amount to denying any difference in the world, assuming "selection" is used as it has been in this thread.

Yep. Pomo in a nutshell. — apokrisis

No, that's the argument of those who desire the simple structure. Yours. The position unwilling to see, for example, harm and suffering inflicted upon the world. One which takes instances where some part of the world is damaged, destroyed or dismissed and quotes it as "pragmatic" or the "rule of nature."

It's an unwillingness to admit the world's own responsibility in defining itself, an inability to see how presence of the world amounts to one outcome occurring over any other. Instead of being honest--e.g. "this part of the word has a terrible impact on some people, but we must accept that to achieve an ethical outcome," you treat it as some inevitability of nature, which has nothing to do with how us or the world behaves.

What could be more chaotic than chaos? And yet what do we now know that has simpler generative rules?

So the wheel has turned again (while philosophy hasn't been watching) and the time reads "post-post-structuralism".

The rules down't affect the chaos. Rules are an expression of chaos-- these particular states follow this rule... until the states change or disappear. Those rules are a guarantee of nothing. Not a constraint, but a creation of chaos. At any time they might alter to something different. Chaos (which we might call "vagueness" ) produces expressions of form and rules (states of the world which work (or do not work) to various concepts of rules we have).

In other words, you do it backwards. You take what is only logical and never exists (vagueness) and say it's what they world is prior rules. With the other hand, you take what does exist (things which express form) and equate them with only the logic (form, semiotics, crispness), as if presence in the world was defined by logical concepts rather than states of existence.

The wheel has certainly turned from "post-modernism" in the sense of "no such things as truth, (though it's debatable how much that was actually position, as opposed to a strawman)" but philosophy is not bilnd to it. A lot of it found within post-modernism itself, which is really about many truths handled in terms of themselves.

Postmodernism isn't vague. Just needlessly obscure sometimes. The lack of structure is its insight. Things stand on their own rather than being pre-defined by something else. Structure is an expression, not a constraint. The "inability to pin it down" has nothing to do with what it's saying (or not saying), but rather the desire of people to reduce the world to a structure, just as you are doing here.

Often what people want is not answers, but the illusion of solution to problems or fears, a structure which supposedly reveals what will be, such that we can say particular outcomes are guaranteed or some sort of horrible problem is avoided.

Above all, post-modernism says the world is messy, sometimes horrible and frequently containing unavoidable problems of horrors. It's a complexity which the lovers of structure cannot stand.

This ties into the "vagueness vs crisp." For the lover of structure, the crisp is the enemy. If the world is full of discrete states, then they stand on their own. There is no particular instance of logical structure required to make them so. The appeal of the "vague" world is to those who want it to be empty without a particular concept of structure. It forms the idea thing necessary confirm to that structure or are else impossible.

I don't know if I call it persecution per se, but the do take a strong stance against participating in religion. They form a cultural force which would like humanity to eschew religious belief to one degree or another. In terms of their approach to creating an ethical society, they don't say: "People believe what you want, so long as you're not doing XYZ harm," let alone advocate the respect and prominence that people like Wayfarer want to give to religious belief.

In some respects, they "New Atheists" are more political, concerned about the prevalence of religous belief, than atheist. Some of their arguments against deities are too weak, particularly around falsification and the idea of an "invisible God."

(the bus advertisement is a actually a pretty good demonstration of this. Notice it's not really based on the question of God's existence or coherency, but rather on an idea that belief in God is damaging-- something that just creates unnecessary worry or prevents enjoyment of life).

Strikes me to be a feature of immanence.

When selection is transcendent, it's a form which makes selection, which sets the limit of the world or state--e.g. my rectangular screen is rectangular by the form of the rectangle. It's made rectangular by the form, as if from was actor which moulded the formless world.

With immanence though, form cannot be this defining actor. Since forms are expressed by existing states, rather than acting as their foundation, no form can make a selection. My screen is rectangle, but it cannot be the form of a rectangle selects that limit.

I'm only have a very casual familiarity with Deleuze, but here is seems like "eternal return" is used to fill the place form no longer can. It strikes me as sort of an absolute freedom, an infinite, distinct from all states and present regardless of form. I'm inclined to read it as sort of saying nothing-- no state of the world, no logical expression of form-- selects.

My rectangular monitor is and necessarily expresses the form of a rectangle. It's defined out of the world. From the moment this monitor was finished (i.e. existed in the sense we are talking about), it was rectangular. And it is necessarily rectangular until that state changes (e.g. it's smashed out of shape).

In this respect, I'd read "eternal return" quite literally here. Selection always returns. No matter what is (or is not) a difference is defined. Expression of form is necessary. I'd say it's almost a combination of the two you are asking about: that which selects (eternal return-- "nothing") and that selection is necessary.

I'd say the point of this distinction between existence and facts is to avoid the confusion of that very distinction. What exactly is the difference between ontological and epistemological fact? Is something that is known (e.g. a dinosaur) different from the state that exists (e.g. a dinosaur)?

"Ontological fact" is a distinction without difference. We use it to refer to states of existence we talk about, states of existence we know. -- "Dinosaurs were an ontological fact."

It's no different to saying: "I know dinosaurs existed."

In the context of the relationship of knowledge to existence, this is rather important. It means we are still treating the question of unknown existence as if it was known-- no wonder it always appears bizarre to say an unknown existed.

The point of seperating existence and fact is to disrupt this confusion. Dinosaurs existing is a fact. We know about it. What the "ontological fact" and "epistemological fact" distinction is trying to do is incoherent. If we are speaking about something, it is known. "Ontological" and "epistemological" fact cannot help but be one and the same.

To seperate between existence and fact is a different. It doesn't bring with the baggage that what exists must be unknown. Dinosaurs both existed and are fact (as someone now knows about them). The fact a state is unknown at some time is no longer understood to mean a state is never known.

Thus, for example, we can say that prior to being discovered by humans, no-one knew about dinosaurs for millions of years. Their existence is no longer dependent on someone knowing about it. In our understanding of the facts, we are aware dinosaurs existed without people knowing about them.

More like that which is beyond particular description. God clearly is a concept in that sense, an infinite which cannot be reduced to any description. The mistake is to ask how God exists or what God does. God is infinite and so cannot be any such state. Such finite and discrete description cannot be accurate to God or do God justice.

In terms of the finite, existing states, God cannot be. It would be to be what God is not. God is the real that the finite cannot be. In this sense, God cannot exist by definition.

By the definition ("something known or proven") of a fact given earlier, the question doesn't make sense. Since no-one knew about the state in question, there was no such fact at the time. --e.g. dinosaurs existed, but it was not a fact. At least until some entity knew about them.

Prior to discovery or knowledge, there is no fact to be anything.

The problem is it is that which renders your quest incoherent. To seek knowledge of noumenon is to consider in conceptual terms, to seek to reduce into an experience of knowledge. You are trying to make into the intellectual, to create a situation where the awe and wonder of the noumenon are reduced to a particular conceptual space.

It's the promise of the transcendent-- think in this way and you will be better, not by living, but by merely thinking in conceptual terms.

The transcendent is an attempted conceptualisation of the noumenon. God transcends our failures. In knowing God, we (supposedly) become changed, live a better life. An idea of the transcendent sits as a beacon, the thought of living a better life, always beyond our living. An awe inspiring promise of our own improvement-- just sit back and think of the transcendent.

But it's a deception. The better life beyond us is one we never own. Improvement in living comes down to our existing, not the transcendent promise. We need to live it, not just think the idea of being better.

The distinction is between knowing (representation) and existing (presence, living).

Knowledge of the noumenon is not impossible because of some hidden mystery the mind cannot grasp. It impossible because the noumenon is literally not knowledge. Knowledge, which is a state experience, is always a step away from the state it is awareness of. Even in within our experiences.

If I remember what that I was happy yesterday, it's is a different state to the happiness I lived. I know the representation of how I lived yesterday. I am not living the happiness of yesterday.If someone was know the noumenon, knowledge of something (e.g. my memory of past happiness) would have to amount to living or being it(e.g. the existence of the past state of happiness).

The logic of our experience, common sense, says such unknown facts must exist, but how can it be intelligible to say that they exist if there is no mind or consciousness for which they exist? — John

The truth of logic doesn't take an existing mind. God is non-existent. A realm outside space-time, outside existence, which remains true no matter what. The infinite of meaning is so without existence. For example, the unknown world everyone is dead. This doesn't exist at the moment. It will never be known to anyone. Yet, it still means.

One of the pitfalls of this discussion is misunderstanding "say." We forget we are people who exist and a speaking about something we don't know. It is certainly intelligible for us to talk about this. In this respect, the unknown world is still for us. Who the unknown world means to, and so is amounts to us talking about something, is already answered. It matters to us. We are saying they exist. To say their is no mind and consciousness for which theses unknown things exist is to ignore our own existence. The unknown world doesn't need someone to know it or live through it to be for someone. It just needs someone to be aware of it and speak about it.

Such reasoning is based on a flawed premise. Just because someone doesn't know what you are thinking in a moment, doesn't mean that no-one can. There are other times, other people, who might know what you are thinking. And you have other thoughts which someone might know.

The illusion is the shallow notion that someone not knowing what you are immediately thinking amounts to no-one ever knowing what you are thinking. It's tricky illusion too. For anyone defending the idea experiences must be "private" in terms of knowledge, it especially mesmerising because there is an immediate reaction to think of anything at all, which an opponent usually doesn't know.

What you have is not proof of a secret inner world, but rather a description that you happened to think something and another person didn't know what it was. All it says is they didn't know that thought. It doesn't show no-one could ever know it.

The point is more or less that Colin's enlightenment is simplistic-- all you have to do is feel God. Questions of what is ethical, work to discover or produce a good outcome, keeping logical rigour are all irrelevant. Just "feel God" and you will be wise. A distinctly reductive and simple account of what it means to understand, relate and respect yourself and the world.

Our experiences do not defy knowledge. The supposed inaccessibility of the "first person" is a myth. I can know when someone is happy or sad, what they are thinking or feeling, in the sense knowing what they living. It's no more difficult than knowing about a rock in front of me.

In either case, I have an experiences which is a showing of something else-- a rock, a person's feeling, respectively. Knowledge wise, experiences aren't "private (i.e. outside what it is possible for someone to know)."

I'm not so sure. You are closer than you might think. Sometimes what you say about God not being a finite entity is approaching his insight. The problem is you, despite realising that God is not really a question of a miracle worker, still consider God in finite terms.

For you God is still effectively a casual force, a force or presence which enables the world, which makes the world and it meaning rather than not. In the way that matters (i.e. the presence of the meaningful world), God is still of the world. For you it is like the world of the finite forms we encountered is and illusion, but it is the world which is really God-- we become wise by recognising our existence is given by the infinite, rather than merely being finite.

Spinoza sort of speaks from the infinite point of view. In terms of God (the infinite), the finite is an illusion. The world is not real at all, meaning it is entirely separate and so not caused by the infinite (not even a transcendent one, not even in meaning) of God. Our world is only ever finite and so cannot be of God. To say our existence is given by God is a contradiction. It would be to turn God into a finite actor.

Anyway, this is probably getting too far off topic, so I should probably leave it here.

The misreading of Spinoza makes me sad. He's and acosmist ( "God is real. The finite is an illusion- and so never God") not a pantheist ("The finite is God").

He's not specifically talking about slave/bondage stuff though. The point is about the subservient way women are presented in most porn, where they are just a body to be used for male desire In this respect, some slave/bondage porn is actually better than a whole lot of mainstream stuff. What's at stake here is not who's said to be in charge, but rather whether an instance of porn considers the viewpoint and desires of the women involved.

Just playing devil's advocate here, the feminist would argue that these women don't know what's good for them. Indeed a lot of feminism seems to revolve around this aesthetic of the female nature and assuming every other female also wants to be this way. When in fact some females are okay with objectification. Feminists chalk this up to be the result of the Patriarchy, and it is the Patriarchy that is not allowing women to think for themselves. — darthbarracuda

Not exactly. It's true that many women agree and participate in Patriarchy, but this is not surprising given the culture they are raised in and that it is sometimes beneficial for them to engage in this culture. Following a surrounding culture can get people things whichcannot obtained any other way.

The problem is this has nothing to do with objectification. Objectification is a question of thoughts and actions which ignore a person's agency and reduce them to a tool for achieving another's desire. It's almost impossible to objectify oneself. Short of asserting other people can do whatever they want with you, that you are only there to be used for their desire, one does not objectify themselves.

In this context, objectification is gravely misunderstood. Many think it is the question of the mere presence of a body, the women showing skin or dressing up to look "nice" the stripper showing a naked body to others or someone choosing to let the public observe their sexual behaviour. It's not. The objectification comes from other in these instances. Those who cannot not think beyond the idea that the person in front of them is a tool for their desire.

With respect to the topic of this thread, objectification is an action of others.

The stripper doesn't objectify herself by stripping. People watching might do that. Others might record her and do that, either by not having consent to do so and/or by presenting the recorded material the a culture of objectification. It is others who consider her only an object for sexual consumption. Their actions are the issue, not her naked body or that people are feeling sexual desire.

To say: "but she objectified herself. She wanted me to reduce her to a sexual object" is nothing more than a denial of responsibility and ethical culpability. The objectifier's act is masqueraded as the existence of the woman, to make the action of the objectifier invisible.

If porn objectifies women, then dildos objectify men. If we can all come to an agreement that sex has an inherent "domination" and "subjugation" nature, no matter how intimate, then we can move on. — darthbarracuda

It's actually that very idea that blocks understanding objectification. In thinking of obtaining sex as a question of "domination" and "subjugation," one considers it an act of power in which the other person has no role. Everyone is seeking to possess everyone else and not giving the thoughts and desires of other people every respect.

Sex is not a question of inherent domination and subjugation. Ethically, it is a question of choices and respect. One has sex when someone else wants to, not just when they want to. A question not of dominance and subservience, but of sharing.

To the understanding which only considers our knowledge, sure. In the sense you are describing, the thing-in-itself and phenomenal correspond to the realms of know and not knowing respectively. The noumenal is outside the "phenomenal realm" in this sense. It is what our representation can never be, what knowledge cannot be.

The problem is that phenomena are more than knowledge. The red cup I see is not my representation of the red cup. It's it own state. It exists. To say the phenomena of the red cup only involves what I know is outright dishonest. It's not the state of my knowledge. It's a thing I know about.

And for sure this is a positivistic notion, but that's the point. How can we say there is a thing without posing a presence? Something does need to be located. One cannot have a thing-itself-without a thing-itself. An existing phenomena, whether we know about it or not, has presence.

In "Being" a thing has location, not an empirical spacial one per se, but a worldly one. If my experiences exist, then there are things-in-themsleves are present, they are located in world. The noumenal is worldly (but, as per its definition, not representation).

The understanding of "phenomena" most often attributed to Kant is deficient. It only talks about what we know. It fails to consider what exists and how that extends beyond our experiences.

Yes, this is true, but only in relation to phenomenal existence; phenomenal existence is never exhausted. But it makes no sense to say this of an emptily purported noumenal 'existence', because we have no contentful idea at all of any such thing. — John

But that's exactly what my argument is pointing out as incoherent. The thing-in-themselves are part of the phenomenal realm. My computer, itself, exists. My body, itself, exists. My experiences, themselves, exist. Things in themselves exist-- the phenomenal realm is wider than representation. The purported noumenal is in the realm of existence. All subjects within the world are there in terms of themselves. My knowledge of a state is not the existence of that state.

This is why transcendental idealism falls into substance dualism. It would have us believe that the noumenal is outside the world. As if what was beyond our experience (existing states, thing-in-themsleves) were not within our world. Rather than recognising I know a red cup (representation) which is also a state of existence (a thing-in-itself), it claims the world in which I live only contains my experience and that the thing-in-itself lies in a different realm.

In terms of representation, yes. Which is the issue with the idea with using the thing-in-itself as a measure of how much we know about someone. To say we "can't really tell anything about anything" because we don't have access to the thing-in-itself is incoherent.

The idea knowledge is "tainted" by our perspective is to literally ignore what it means to know something about a state. We have people saying I can't know a red cup is a red cup because I only have access to my representation, as if the thing I experienced was somehow not what I saw because I don't have a representation of the red cup in-itself.

Within anti-realism there is a great irony. The world is meant to be of the perspective (representation), but it is exactly that which it denies. The red cup is, supposedly, only me, with what the "really is" hidden away in the thing-in-itself. Anti-realism literally asserts the oxymoronic idea that things of the world are really outside perspective.

In terms of the thing-in-itself though, it is not oxymoronic at all. This is how the subject defies reduction. No matter what is said about any state it is always more than representation. Itself, rather than merely the experience or representation of someone who is aware of it. And if we are interested in the distinction of the thing-itself from representation, this is exactly what we are trying to say. Otherwise, we are collapsing the-thing-itself and representation into each other or outright saying there is no such discintion.

Yes but on this account "to be itself" is not to be anything at all; and so seems somewhat oxymoronic. — John

More specific to the discussion of metaphysics and the mind and body, this is undoubtedly the reaction of positions like idealism, for they only locate things in representation. For something to be "more" than experience is a contradiction to the idealist-- it would mean things exist without being represented in a mind. The idealist must reject the presence of the "thing-in-itself." It can never exist.

In other words Kant only did half the work. He posed the "thing-in-itself" and "representation" to eschew the idea of things mattering to us outside representation, as if we could have knowledge that wasn't our experience, but in doing so, he placed that which is beyond experience outside the world.

So rather than recognising the thing-in-itself and representation as a distinction between existence and representation in experience, many following misunderstood the "thing-in-itself" as a measure of knowledge, as if we must get outside our perspective to really know what's going on in the world.

But that's a question which doesn't make sense. To ask whether we know supposes there is something in representation to understand about the thing-in-itself. As if we could have something experience which gave us details.

Since the thing-in-itself doesn't have any detail in representation, there is no quality or detail to ascribe or describe. Any such detail would be our representation, and so not knowledge of the thing-in-itself at all. There no other content to it. The thing-in-itself can only be the thing-in-itself, else we are reducing it to some representation.

From this, we know anything(thing-in-itself) can only be itself. We know that anything being more than itself is incoherent. To say we "cannot know whether there is anything more than the thing-in-itself" is to ignore what we know in the distinction between representation and the thing-in-itself.

Depends, there's a whole school of thought which uses the "noumenon" as an excuse to say we don't reallu know anything, as if our experiences not being the thing-in-itself meant we don't really know the thing. To this, I would object in the strongest possible terms. It's substance dualism or "magical woo (in a wider sense, I take this to mean: "presence, force, state or action outside the world" )," where our experiences are considered of a seperate realm and having nothing to do with what exists.

As a distinction between existence and representation though, it works perfectly. What is,at stake is not knowledge, but the role of knowledge in existence..

The distinction means representation or ideas cannot form existence. No state can be dependent on experience because that amounts to reducing an object to its representation.

No matter how accurate a representation (e.g. "Willow is a poster on ThePhilosophyForum"), it's not enough to define existence. Experiences cannot give existence. No matter what is know, it takes more than that idea to form existence.

Recognising subjects is sort of the ultimate refutution of idealism. Idealism is a reductionism: anything I might encounter (supposedly) given by my representation. Without that experience, the state (supposedly) cannot be.

To a lot of philosophy, recognising the subject is strange indeed, for it's constituted by denying the subject-- idealists say states are given by representation, substance dualist dismiss that subjects exist, etc., etc.

For anyone other than the materialist, the subject is sort of the enemy. If the rock (as opposed to "the world" ) in front of me is more than my representation, I cannot claim it depends on my representation or knowledge. For anyone who thinks discourse is the be all and end all of existence, the subject cannot be part of the world. It must be put beyond the world, either in some disconnected transcendent realm or by not having a presence at all.

You seem to want to accuse me of making up new terms which have no bearing on arguments of the past. I am not. My point always been focused on the errors of substance dualism. You appear to saying I'm using terms differently, so the positions, such as substance dualism or idealism, cannot be mistaken. As if because what I'm saying isn't really "materialist," it doesn't show that positions opposed to materialism are incoherent.

To this I say you are not paying attention to what I have argued. My initial was a statement directly opposing substance dualism: minds are states of the world, not something of another realm. You objected this was only an "obvious truism." How can this be so when a major, quite possibly the major if we go by Western philosophical canon, metaphysical postion on mind and body explicitly denies minds are part of the world?

Regardless of whether we call this postion "non-reductuve materialism" or not, it's still calling out the error of substance dualism. It's still identifying that the materialists (regardless of any errors they make) are correct to object to substance dualism putting minds outside the world.

It more or less the opposite. A subject is what is NOT discourse. That which is more than any experience. Existence (thing-in-itself) which is never any representation (experiences).

Talking about it isn't a problem. In talking about the what's more than experience, we aren't claiming our discourse as the thing-in-itself. Subjects are still so regardless of whether we talk about them or they speak to us.

For sure, I don't know. I haven't heard it say anything to me, but then I may not know everything about the ping pong ball. It might be screaming out to me in some language I do not understand. Perhaps part of sound of the paddle hitting the ball is a crying for me to stop.

But that sort of a little beside my point. A subject is defined by being more than experience of it. It's not a question of consciousness, sapience, sentience or communication. Anything that's more than an experience of it is a subject, concious or not.

I know... but that's exactly the issue. For the materialist is interested in the mind being material. As a non-reductuve materialist, the point is the mind is a thing in-itself, a state of the world which is a mind. That obvious truism is what the materialist is seeking to say-- the mind is a state of the world, not some "mystery" or "magical woo" or "distant realm without relation to anything else." To be real (existing) and not reducable to matter (not any of those empirical forms we experience) is exactly this obvious truism.

Even the reductive materialist is attempting this. Why do they equate the mind with the brain? Well, they are trying to point out minds are states of the world, bound up with all other interacting objects and subjects. The reductive materialist just accepts the dualist myth that minds experiences cannot be states themselves, so they resort to reductionism to try and grasp the worldliness of minds. Since minds themselves cannot exist (as per substance dualism), they must be an "illusion" with something else really going on (brains).

I'm not dealing in platitudes here. My argument is asking that we take the existence of minds seriously, that we understand that minds exist, rather than trying to say they are given by something else.

I'm saying all objects are subjects. The inability of our knowledge to be "exaustive" is only restricted to people or experience, it's true of every state if the world. There is no state which is also the experience of that state. To be an object, a state which may be experienced, can only entail being more than an object, else existence (thing-in-itself) is reduced to our experience (our representation of a thing).

So any unknown object must also be an unknown subject-- any unknown thing, like anything, is more than any representation of it. When I talk about an unknown object, I speaking about something which is more than my experience of not being aware of something.

I'm not conflating the subject and object (i.e. object=subject). The point is that any state must be an object AND a subject. Fictional entities aren't an issue because they don't exist. They.aren't a state of the world. (unless we are talking within the context of their fictional world, in which case they are both subject and object).

A mind. An existing state that is a mind. Not a brain or body, but the states which are the existence of instances of awareness and thinking.

Abstraction is just our representation and discourse. Any time something is thought about, we are using an abstraction of what we know. My thought of a hand is not a hand. It's my thought. I've abstracted the hand-- what is not the hand expresses a meaning of the hand.