The ground is not beneath thought, it is the thought itself. It's "beneath" other actions-- e.g. the rejection of people, punitive measures taken, whether or not one realises power the are expressing over others. Power is not a predetermining force. It's an expression of freedom.

When one makes an argument, dismiss an idea, expresses power, it is done in collusion with freedom. The question of vetoing action is meaningless because the expression power is done with what people have freely chosen.

If I, for example, think of criminals as not people, but of objects who have brought their own suffering on themselves, it's the choice I have made. I am making the argument with my freedom, to (supposedly) make explicit the nature of criminals and what it means for them to be punished.

I want and have chosen to think in this manner. My freedom is directed to thinking this and expressing power in this way.

One is always free to veto any instance of these power inducing thoughts (by free will, anyone could choose to think otherwise), but the point is people are not doing so, and are so expressing power in that particular way.

One does not have to explain away truth as a myth in order to understand and avoid bad effects of power, ignorance and so forth. — jkop

No-one is doing so. What's being argued is that arguments express power. Whether true or false, right or wrong, the argument has an impact in the world. When we make an argument about truth, we aren't making an isolated statement which amounts to the entirety of the world. It also has impacts on what we think, on what ideas people choose to reject or accept, on the ways people are treated based on how they are understood.

The myth of "The Truth" is not truth. It is the idea of a single True idea being relevant or governing the world, such that if we talk about it, we have thought of everything that's important.

Like, when you say, for example, that the power expressed by an argument is irrelevant. That's a myth of The Truth. You've reduced, by choice, the horizon of our knowledge to only that particular argument. The idea it is, for example, important to consider the way you argument impacts on society, on how people are affected by the way you are arguing, is rejected.

In seeking Manifest Density, you will pillage and destroy indigenous communities, for nothing accept that argument is important. When running your factory and seeking profit, you will abuse your workers because the only truth that matters is maximising your profit. The history of human societies it littered with instances of abuse and ignorance chosen in favour of The Truth. Recognising it as a myth is critical to avoiding bad effects of power. It's how those in power avoid getting caught-up in their own visions and enacting destruction on those they rule.

One Foucault's major points is that an argument (or discourse) is itself an expression of power.

When we argue a case we do violence to other ideas, cordoned them off, make them unacceptable, believe they are meaningless and cause other to reject or denounce them within their own thoughts-- it's the ground of thought which sets-up the violence committed against particular people (e.g. the mentally ill, the criminal), to a point where it cannot even recognised as an act or violence and power), such as thinking the punishment of a criminal is just "inevitable" or that someone with a mental illness cannot make truthful (or "reasoned" ) comment or have honest motivation.

It's this awareness of power you are struggling with. Your problem is really not that Foucault somehow rejects truth or says some nonsense like "there is only power, not truth" (though your argument may claim that, as you can only think in terms of true/false, rather than a wider context of what is valued and how power is expressed), it is that he dares make power explicit.

If someone uses Foucault's method, they will know the context of the world and knowledge is bigger than whatever truth you are describing. They might go, "Well, yes that is true... but if we act in a way where that truth is worshiped, it will cause X,Y and Z violence against theses people, so we should reign in our excitement..."

The myth of The Truth no longer functions. We are cursed (blessed?) to recognise what our understanding, culture and actions do to others in the context of power. The blindness to the violence which accompanies our understanding of others and the world around us is lost.

That's why I say your opposition is political. You literally don't know what's being argued. You haven't read it. You don't engage with the concepts being talked about. In you opposition, you use the charge of "obscurity", and you own unwillingness to engage with their argument, as an excuse to say their arguments or wrong and meaningless. I mean what the fuck even is that?

Does one go to a doctor, rocket scientist or quantum physicists and say: "Unless, you can give my a full account of how everything works in simple terms where I don't have to do any study, everything you say about your field is untrue or meaningless"? It's anti-intellectualism of the highest order.

I never said that he would just reduce knowledge to discourse. — jkop

You did. That's why you've been asserting he is so terrible. All along you have been accusing Foucault of taking aways the relevance of truth, as if his arguments turned knowledge into just a matter of who was talking and who as power, such truths were no longer relevant to reasoning or thinking.

This is nonsense though, for author's like Foucault are hardly that obscure.

Reading Foucault, it's not hard to understand, for example, that he's not just reducing knowledge to discourse or power.

Indeed, one of his major points is how there's is much to know outside of a discourse and expression of power-- those in power act to suppress this knowledge such that no-one is able to think it. Such argument is not of a man who thinks there is no truth. Nor is this hard to understand reading his work.

A lot of the "obscurity" charge thrown at post-modernism is more about the politics of the reader than what a post-modernist is saying. Much post-modernist argument is dedicated to unravelling world defining narratives of power. (e.g. Foucault's challenges to the structures of power, rejection of Western superiority, challenges to gender and sexuality identity, etc.). A lot of people charge it with obscurity not because it's that hard to understand, but rather because they are desperate postion it as meaningless.

And I would say that's what you are doing here. You find it unacceptable that post-modernism would dare challenge the narrative of Reason's superiority and benifit, so you want grant it can be saying anything at all.

I'd argue he didn't. We can't perceive the "thing" of causation because it is not a seperate state or actor in the world.

If I drop a rock, for example, I see an opening hand and a falling rock, not a "causation (whatever that might supposed to be)." Hume is more or less pointing out there is not some seperate object of a "causal force." There's nothing more to a causal relationship than certian states which occur together. When we observe causality, it's these correlated states we are aware of.

Hume is not really putting causation beyond observation, but rather pointing out it's only ever states of the world which do it.

To observe a cause and effect is nothing more than being aware of states which bring each other about-- we observe the cause of an opening and and the effect of a falling rock. There is no seperate object, force or rule acting upon the hand and rock to make this causal event occur.

(so Hume is really in agreement with TGW: we see things causing other things all the time. It why we don't see "causation." Things themselves do it all on their own, so we see them as causes and effects, rather than observing "causation." )

Or maybe, you know, I'm drawing out the notion of radical contingency Hume uses against the notion of a continuing causal force.

No doubt Hume begins with the notion of causal forces as constant and continuing, but he quickly rejects it in radical contingency. Since anything may happen at anytime, the idea there are causal forces which must continue falls. Causation is just a partcular correlation of states.

This is where radical contingency makes everyone so anxious. It turns all causal relationships into a coincidence. Yes, the sun was caused to rise this morning, but that was nothing more than the whim of correlated states.

Hume's main point is against "continuation" is causal forces, at least in the sense of an outside force beyond the flux of finite states. He rejects the idea of acting causal force which moves the pieces of the world. For Hume, any causal relationship is just a concurrence of particular states themsleves.

It's not bullshit though, for Hume didn't say the sun wouldn't rise. He said it might not. Such a possibility is perfectly coherent with a world in which the sunrises every single day!

Hume never denies there can be a world which always follows the same rule. If that's what the world does, then that's what happens. Just because anything and everything else is possible, it doesn't mean it happens.

Under Hume, the definition of what the world does moves from the idea (e.g. the rule which constrains possible to form what happens), to the world itself. The sun can always rise tomorrow, but it takes the existence of that state every morning, not a rule. Rules become expression of existing states (i.e. the behaviour of states), rather than constraints which limit what states could be-- even as the sun rises every morning, any other state was possible. Actuality doesn't undo the truth of possibility.

Conjunction doesn't need to be constant at all. In terms of a cause, it only needs to happen once. Let's I find this object. It's the only one of its kind. If I pick it up it will be destroyed and l result in the death of all life on Earth. Is there no causal relationship here? Well, no. There is one. If I refuse to pick up this object, the death of all life on Earth will be avoided.

"Rules" tend a little be different. In the above instance, for example, the rule of killing all life on Earth is only relevant for one brief moment. Unless, that relationship repeats in future times, there is no danger to picking up the object. While there is a "rule" to any instance of a cause, we don't talk about them in this sense because then we wouldn't have any use for them going forward.

So for our usual notion of causal "rules," we need repetition-- e.g. I know I will be alive tomorrow, and the sun will rise, so I can do X,Y,Z, plan my day, respond to how the world repeatedly affect me, etc.

We tend to confuse this repetition of conjunction with a constant. Instead of realising that the rules are only how the world is behaving at the moment, that it's a repetition which might never have been and could end in the next moment, we think they must necessitate what happens.

It's ourselves which are the primary concern here-- if a conjunction is constant, then we can't be wrong, the world will always turn out how we expect and, perhaps most importantly, we won't be dead. I mean just imagine what it would mean if we could just "pop" out of existence tomorrow: I might be dead and would have no way of preventing it!!

The desperation to deny radical contingency, to claim it doesn't make sense with a meaningful existence, is our pretence that we are not the sort of thing which could just cease tomorrow, which might be wiped out on whim. In saying, "But the sun MUST rise tomorrow," we really are telling ourselves the lie that we cannot die, that we are beyond the possibility of death or non-existence. We are simply too afraid to accept we might not be (which is quite silly when you think about it, for that one might not exist, does not mean that one will).

"What are the chances?" is an entirely irreverent notion in this context. Since radical contingency deals in logical possibility, rather than probability, there is no defined chance to anything. Possibility isn't causal. There is no means or standard to define what's going to happen or what's more likely to happen.

In fact, considering the world itself, we might say there is no chance at all. For given the casual states themselves, the is only one outcome: what exists. If we ask, for example, "Why does the sun rise rather than not. How come it the rules of the world didn't change to day?," there is no answer. That's just what happened. There is no chance this sun would do anything else, even though it could have.

I was addressing the following and its relationship to the defence of Kant:

But, to return to your initial question, about why philosophers often believe odd things - I think the dialectical/historical narrative, however crude, helps explain a bit. At worst, he at least makes clear how radical Hume's treatment of cause and effect really is. Like: ok, you can agree with hume and you can agree with newton, but how are you going to reconcile the two? This is a valid and difficult question. (newtonian physics still holds more or less good to this day, doesn't it? It's just a little too baggy and restricted to certain scales?) — csalisbury

My point being this defence of Kant only works if you are already bringing his prejudice. Kant's silliness (and the silliness of many other philosophers) is the assumption of a conflict between radical contingency and the presence of meaningful existing states.

With nothing to reconcile between the two, Kant's question and subsequent reasoning isn't valid or difficult. It's just a laborious process of trying to work a way out of an empty conundrum of his own creation.

I think the very notion of tension or conflict is the silliness.

In the face of radical contingency and the patterns of causality, the automatic assumption is there is some sort of problem. Why? How come we automatically assume these are inconsistent with each other. Why can't the world just do something, express a particular meaning, fit a particular rule, for as long as it does? What if there is nothing that needs reconciling between Hume and Newton in the first place?

Hume is right: anything might happen. Newtown is right: the behaviour of many states reflect his rules. The conflict only occurs if one tries to make Newton's laws function in terms of logical necessity, as if everything and anything must always follow them and there was never any other possible outcome.

Discard that assumption (which is antiscientific, as it tries to say what they world does without reference to observing it), and there is simply no conflict between Hume and Newton.

Not exactly.

I do think Hume externalises it inappropriately. Like Kant, he sort doesn't recognise that (our use of) concept and pure logic is a knowledge of our experience. That, in effect, any instance a priori knowledge or relation of an idea is, also posteriori or matter of fact.

Hume has an important difference though: he doesn't treat logical necessity as a requirement for coherency. States of the world are contingent and that works with meaning. It doesn't create any sort of problem defining how the world works or how people might agree. Universals aren't needed to define truths of the world.

While Hume doesn't quite get that any instance of knowledge is experience, he does get that the world doesn't have to follow some particular rule to be coherent-- hence it might be or do anything, even if its entirely absurd to how we understand the world.

Though, as TGW has noted in the somewhat recently, Hume, with his all scepticism, quickly becomes uninteresting. While he might be right about the world being contingent, it's also true that whatever exists at a moment has a particular meaning or significance. So obsessed with saying what might happen, Hume sort of doesn't acknowledge what does.

Corollary I: Hence it follows that God is the efficient cause of all things that can come within the scope of the infinite intellect. — Ethics

You are missing this key definition. Spinoza is talking about the infinite intellect here, not finite states of the world (i.e. "efficient causality" as is commonly used).

It's made clear a couple of propositions down:

PROP. XVIII. God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

Proof.—All things which are, are in God, and must be conceived through God (by Prop. xv.), therefore (by Prop. xvi., Coroll. i.) God is the cause of those things which are in him. This is our first point. Further, besides God there can be no substance (by Prop. xiv.), that is nothing in itself external to God. This is our second point. God, therefore, is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. Q.E.D. — Ethics (Gutenberg)

You have not understood Spinoza, John. You're cherrypicking his thought to confirm what you think he should be saying.

Spinoza is sort of both.

He's dual aspect becasue he holds the attributes of thought and extension. His philosophy is also a a sort of neutral monism because Substance is an infinite expression, which is neither the attribute thought and extension, so both the mental and physical are of the same realm.

I'd say that's why he's silly. The British Empiricists already explained (or described) agreement-- people experience, share an idea, observe the same thing, etc.

Kant's philosophy is driven by the denial of people, as if it were not enough for agreement to be defined by existing. He wants agreement to somehow to be defined by something other than ourselves, as if the world and our understanding were defined by this outside viewpoint or standard.

In this respect, he's really a follower of Descartes. Instead of treating our (contingent) experiences as trustworthy, he doubts them. Rather than accept agreement and awareness of as a function of our experiences, he asserts we needs some necessary force for the outside to avoid the problem of doubt. Kant is motivated to explain agreement because he doesn't think we can do it by ourselves in the first place.

...that's just deism. It is direct conflict with Spinoza philosophy.

Substance isn't a casual state. God does not exist and act to create states of the existence and the form. Rather God is a logical expression, the infinite which existence never without, expressed all the time. When Spinoza says "God causes," he's talking more like a manner of "final cause," of necessary logical expression, of the infinite which nothing is ever without, only he recognises it as a necessary truth rather than an action of the world which creates meaning where there was none.

If the cosmos were "massively contingent" it would be unintelligible, so we can put that one to rest, I think. Does time flow or do things move (change) in time? The idea that the future "already exists" seems unintelligible. But from the point of view of eternity, all that is past, present and future is eternally present. "Already exists" suggests a before and after though, and yet there is before and after only in time, not in eternity. None of this stuff is decidable by science, though; it is all metaphysics — John

Spinoza's philosophy is dedicated to showing the opposite, to how the necessity of eternity isn't at all opposed to the contingent and the possible. The future might always "already exist," but is still need to be made. To get there events still have to occur and people have to make choices. Without those entirely contingent moments, the future which "already exists " would never arrive.

In terms of states of the world, is all decided by "science." All the events that occur are a function of the existing states themselves and their relationships. The possible outcomes which are actual are defined by states of the world, by their causal relationships, by the states of the world and how they interact.

Wittgenstein sort of culminates an analytical approach which removes the world. Everything is turned into a (language) game, where no philosophical problems bear upon the world or logic.

He's, of course, superficially correct: if anyone is fooled, it's in their language. They lacked the right way of speaking to avoid the problem. If only they had thought a different way, they wouldn't be haunted by a conundrum.

It just doesn't get to the substance of any philosophical problem. Yes, one can get themselves out of any problem by speaking the right language, but it's really just ignoring it. One hasn't really answered the question of what's right, wrong, coherent or incoherent, etc. They've just spoken a language in which the problem doesn't register.

All instances of knowledge rely on a tautology of self-defintion. I'll reverse the question to show you what I mean.

How do you know, for example, that the noumenal isn't present in front of our eyes? How it is that you know noumenal is not empirical? How do you (and Kant) know you have perfect knowledge of the noumenal such that you can be sure it isn't present empirically?

Um... it's the infinite.

We know the knowledge is perfect because, if it were anything else, it would be a contradiction.

To suggest the infinite might be more or something other would mean defining it by finite terms. We would have to claim there was content to the noumenal, such there was someway it appeared other than "the infinite."

You're missing the point.

The problem is Kant suggesting there is something about the infinite which cannot be known. There is no "insofar" to speak of. The infinite is perfectly knowable in viewpoint.

His "mystery" is based on assigning the infinite something, actuality, it doesn't have.

What you are saying amounts, in Spinozistic terms, to saying that there can be no substance, but only modes.

I'm not going to waste my time arguing against your empty assertions. — John

No... it means Substance is not a mode. When a mode appears, it is not an appearance of Substance. If it were, it would mean Substance had sudden come into being, had been subject to change, rendering it finite.

I can understand why you say an actuality must be an existence, and why it must be " a finite moment" or "a state with a beginning and end". I think you are equivocating actuality with an actuality. An actuality will begin and end, for sure. but actuality never ends. When I say 'viewpointless actuality', I am not speaking about an actuality, but about actuality itself. — John

Can't you see how this is the problem? Actuality is not actual. It never exists. Being infinite, it is a logical expression rather than a state of the world.

I'm not equivocating an actuality with actuality. My point is Kant does so at the base of his philosophy. Instead of talking about viewpoints and knowledge in terms of themselves, he takes an abstracted view , the "veiwpointlessness" of logic and actuality and treats them like an actual state-- producing this notion of the actual infinite viewpoint finite beings cannot access.

The notion of an empirical actuality includes the idea that it must be knowable from viewpoints. The notion of noumenal actuality includes the idea that it is unknowable from any viewpoint. Kant is actually saying something quite similar to Spinoza, because the latter understands that God (infinite substance=noumenal actuality) is knowable only in the modes that express his attributes. Beyond that there is literally nothing to know. — John

It is not only the actual, finite or empirical which must be known form a viewpoint. By the definition of knowledge (someone who knows something), the infinite must be known from a viewpoint too. This is the difference here between Kant and Spinoza.

Spinoza understands that God, actuality or Substance, is not actual. He knows it is infinite. It's not some "undefined mystery" at all. The question of "what does is mean to be infinite?" is recognised as incoherent because the infinite cannot be any "thing" at all-- it's simply not an actual state to be known. It never "bes" anything at all. The "mystery" Kant claims cannot be defined.

And this is where it becomes tricky, because realists want to say there is a tree there; but you obviously don't count yourself as a realist. I, on the other hand, say that in one sense (the empirical) there is a tree there, even when it is not being witnessed; but I would also that say this is actually a purely formal sense. In the other sense (the noumenal) there is no unwitnessed tree there, but there is actuality (not an actuality, mind) which will reliably appear as a tree should a witness appear. — John

On the contrary, I do count myself as a realist. Perhaps more strongly than just about anyone else. The problem with opposition to realism, and Kant's philosophy, is it doesn't recognise the logical status of the actual. Forms (i.e. logical expression of actual states) are not only present to my mind. They are an expression of the-thing-itself. For any actual, it's significance in logic is its own.

Our viewpoint is not need to logically define the form of any object. By the-thing-itself, any actual state is it's own viewpoint. Not in the crass sense of someone's mind or experience (which is actually a different viewpoint altogether), but by the logic of the-thing-itself.

A state being actual no longer depends on a different viewpoint. Idealism and correlationism are not taken out by empirical proof, but by the logic of the thing-itself. Since any state is defined in-itself, is a finite viewpoint, it does not rely on any other for definition.

To the existence of any state, witnesses become irrelevant. In any case, it only takes the state itself. For the idealist or correlationist to say, "But it can't be without us (a different viewpoint), there to define its presence" is just blatantly false. They are confusing our viewpoint (in the sense of a finite state) with any other viewpoint. Selfhood means no state needs any other to be defined. Any state expresses its form without reference to any other viewpoint.

Thus, existing stars, planets tree, rocks, mountains, atoms, electrons, etc. without anyone experiencing the form.

In the other sense (the noumenal) there is no unwitnessed tree there, but there is actuality (not an actuality, mind) which will reliably appear as a tree should a witness appear. — John

If the actuality is "appearing as," it is a finite state. It is literally to argue the noumenal takes on an empire form (a tree) when witnessed. That's a contradiction. The noumenal can make no such appearance.

The "reach of a viewpoint" is what it is possible to conceive from within the viewpoint. That is analogous to any actual situation where what it is possible to see from your viewpoint consists precisely in everything you are able to see. — John

But that's the problem with his approach. To the reach of a viewpoint, possibility is irrelevant. My viewpoint is what I do conceive, not what I might.

In terms of possibility, the argument is false. At any given point, a person might know anything. There is no instance of knowledge which is necessary to people or beyond their capacity. If I, for example, know my birthday and do not know your birthday, it is not the only possible outcome with respect to my present viewpoint. I could have know the reverse. I might have known both. I might of known neither. I just didn't.

The limits of my viewpoint don't define what I might know, not even in reference to itself. It's not the limit or what I'm able to know or see, but rather the limit of what I do know and see.

Of course we must think there is a viewpointless actuality, but we cannot really imagine what it is like, because all imagining is from some viewpoint. Kant points out that noumenal actuality cannot be "like anything", because it is viewpointless, and everything we know is viewpointful. — John

No, we don't. Not at all. We can begin by being exact and honest: a viewpointless actuality is impossible. Any actuality is a state of existence, a finite moment, a state with beginning and end. Any instance of actuality must be a viewpoint (including all instances of knowledge), whether it be of the empirical or noumenal.

To know means to be a viewpoint.

Noumenal knowledge is, therefore, impossible. Not just to us (as Kant claims), but anyone. Since any instance of knowledge amounts to a viewpoint, there cannot be knowledge which is beyond them, be they of ants, humans, gods or anything else.

Noumenal actuality is rendered incoherent because there cannot be knowledge (of any kind) without a viewpoint-- there is literally nothing to know, and so, in failing to know the noumenal and being unable to know it, a viewpoint isn't missing knowledge (or the capacity for knowledge) at all.

If we are talking about the reach of our viewpoint, what exactly are we talking about?

Kant treats it like we are asking about how knowledge is possible, but I think the question is pretty clearly about knowledge which is actual. Only in the context of the actual does "knowledge outside viewpoint" work, where it refers to stuff which may be known by is not actually present to a viewpoint. The limit of are viewpoint can only be actual because we are talking about a state of ourselves. We are making about where we end, not what we might know. Actual knowledge (and a viewpoint) is never a possibility.

The way Kant argues is sort of boxing at shadows of this own creation. Instead of calling out the nonsense of viewpointless knowledge in the first instance, he treats it like a coherent possibility to debunk. Kant's move against "viewpointless knowledge" was to overturn notion of the hidden "unknowable" realm which could affect ourselves. His split phenomena and noumenon is used to show this. If something we to affect our experience, it must be empirical, must be of our viewpoint and knowable to us. There no empirical force of another realm that's beyond the possibility of knowledge.

Only Kant actually sort of believes what he's attacking. His argument begins not with viewpoint, where the contraction is obvious (how could something be known without someone who knows?), but with the absence of viewpoint. Instead of talking about people who exist or do not exist with knowledge, his inquiry goes straight to where there are no viewpoints at all, to abstractions of possibility and logic, which he then treats like the rules which define how knowledge works.

The outcome is a philosophy which can't talk about knowledge as it exists. Knowledge is understood as a question of what abstracted rules make possible, rather than a feature of a living and existing viewpoint. It means the conception of things outside a viewpoint is lost. Anytime someone tries to talk about actual knowledge, and that there is more than a present viewpoint, the Kantian's will object it doesn't make sense and we must really be talking about the possibility of knowledge. Kant is ignorant of the existence (or actuality) of viewpoints and what that means.

More like he pointed out "argument" or "reason" was actually a functioning of rhetoric and power all along. In many contexts, we told ourselves we dealing with truth (biological essentialism, logic of identity, religions, gods, the technological utopia of modernism etc.,etc.) when it was actually a myth of hierarchy, performed to assert power over others. Under Foucault, the illusion that "truth" or "reason" is something more than rhetoric, word play, charm, bribery or populism is broken.

In dealing with the world and logic, thinkers like Foucault direct us move away from that illusion, to gasp our knowledge not by whether it is "Reason" or The Truth," but in terms of the world and expression itself. Both "Reason" and "The Truth" are empty in terms of knowledge. They don't identify any state of the world or talk about any true logical relationship. All the do is act as a marker for what ought to be believed under their own terms-- much like how "It's God's will" functions in religious cultures.

That's the benefit post-structuralism brings. We no longer confuse our idol of Truth for what is true.

I don't think so. It doesn't make sense to say possibility is justified because it is not a truth which means anything in ethics. Anything is always possible. Even in the world where no evil is ever committed, it's still possible. At any point, someone could have chosen to behave in an evil way, only in this world they didn't. Possibility isn't created by action, so it's beyond question of whether it was just to make.

It's how free will is consistent with causality. Even if you a God who chooses to create everything as it is, you aren't responsible for defining the actions of your creations. Since they are not you, are not God's thoughts, demands or actions, they have freedom. In the world being something other than yourself, there is freedom and possibility. You did not create it and you do not have the power, even in your omnipotence or power as the act who creates the universe, to override it. No matter what you cause and know, possibility and free will are present.

Most of the time, arguments about the evil God and the responding free will defence do not actually respect free will at all. The former mistakenly think God must be able to, with his omnipotence, for a world which is necessarily perfect, as if God had the power to remove not just evil but also the possibility of evil. On the other hand, the latter just use free will as an apology for allowing evil to exist, as if knowingly creating someone who causes evil is morally pure simply because they made their own choices.

Both these arguments make errors, but it's actually the argument God is evil that gets closer to the truth in terms of ethics. Imagine you are the government and the wealthy, with excess resources and the power to direct them to create more resources and social well-being, yet when they question coms about what you should do you say: "Ehhhh, I'm just going to nothing. That riff raft just keeps making bad decisions. If only they would make the right choice, direct themselves properly, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they could be prosperous like me." It's utter libertarian bullshit. Just because people have free choice and could harm themselves by making a bad choice, it doesn't somehow make it moral to allow suffering to occur, if you have means and ability to prevent it.

Free will is God's indictment. With possibility and free will, God's causality does not necessitate our actions. God can knowingly create whatever God wants without violating freedom. In Gods omnipotence and omniscience, God could cause whatever world God wanted, including word in which people only use free will to choose good. Or a world in which there are only people who freely choose to follow God. Or a world in which resources are more common, regenerate easily, limiting the destructive impact of competition on the life which uses them. Or a world in which people are not damned for choosing to follow God. None of these would violate possibly or free will, yet God knowing chose not to do them and calls it good. Evil.

That's a strawman. My point was the presences of the experiences are undoubtable. One may still doubt the content of experience is true. Here the point is not that our knowledge or experiences are always accurate, but that they are present. Such experiences are a required object before we even approach the question of whether they show as what is true or not. Just like the presence of oneself and experience of oneself, the presence of any other experience cannot be doubted. They are present before we get to the question of whether an experience shows what is true.


Experiences without awareness of the self are not dubious. They are common. Indeed, most of our experiences are exactly that. We don't go around saying: "I am" all day. That's only a specific experience we sometimes have, particularly when we are reflecting (which is why philosophers often mistake it for the extent of our awareness. They get caught thinking we must always be reflecting philosophically). Most of the time, what we are aware of does not include ourself at all: red, car, tree, ball, toast for breakfast, "GOALLLLLLL!!!!!," "Mum!," "Dad!," "Hungry," pain, etc. Having the experience of being one person alone, of the self, is actually fairly rare. Not because it is wrong or somehow mistaken, but rather because we are most often interested in other things.

No doubt there is a person having all these experiences, but it is not realised in the given experience. To be aware of the self, to think "I am," is a different instance of experience. To have an experience which is your own is not necessarily awareness of yourself.

Only people like substance dualist using Descartes' cogito make the error of thinking being a person must amount to awareness of oneself. Why? Well... the presence of anything except the self experience ( "I think, therefore I am" ) is rejected. To them, it incoherent to consider the presence of a person without such an experience, for personhood and mind are equivocated with an experience of self-awarness. There literally can't be any people or minds unless someone is thinking about the presence of their self.

The problem isn't applicable just to physicalism. Dead is dead. It's true of minds, of identity, of logic.

The identity of life isn't just a "physical" question. To consider literal reincarnation, as in someone actually being someone of past life, one has to violate identity and logic, to claim the mind of another time and place is the same one as now. It's not just bodies and atoms which generate the issue. The mind itself is of a particular moment and identity.

These questions are not hard or difficult, at least in the sense of knowledge or reasoning. Indeed, they are perhaps some of the easiest question. It doesn't take much study to know you are a different person to others. Even the reincarnation narrative itself-- past life vs new life- has this embedded, such that a present life is understood not to be the life which went before it.

No doubt you aren't interested in answering these questions, but that's why your discussion of such issues is terrible. You simply aren't interested in the topic itself. You don't want that knowledge. You'd rather just have an understanding that whatever awe-inspiring belief or idea you are talking about affecting relevance.

It sort of runs back to the question of meaning. Mysticism and confirmation bias pivot around a need for meaning, a sort of expectation that one's own life or world (be it mental or physical) needs to be filled with meaning from the outside. It's not enough to be oneself, so there must be forces from the "beyond" which deliver sense or meaning. One picks an idea or something (God, First Cause, Karma, past lives, etc.) to act as a "meaning maker," to turn the meaningless itself into something worthwhile. In the approach, there is not a critical bone. It's only interested in the affirmation of the given idea that makes meaning.

A critical look at these sort of claims and they collapse. Take karma or the account of consequences intentional action. Is it true? Well, by what happens in the world, clearly not. Good people have terrible things happen to them. Bad people have great things happen to them. No doubt, in many cases even, people reap what they sow, but the world clearly doesn't work in the exclusive way karma or the account of consequences intentional action would have as believe.

Karma or the account of consequences intentional action function as heuristics, accounts linked to practices, where the goal isn't knowledge or understanding of the world as it is, but rather to learn specific ideas and practices. In this case, what's important is to learn to act kindly towards others, to help and assist people, rather than the opposite-- the fact they are telling falsehoods, that there is no necessary relationship between how you behave towards others and how you are treated, simply doesn't matter. It's about learning the ideas and practices of being kind and helpful towards others.

The "meaning maker" always works like this, an affirmation of an idea, belief or practice, such that no-one is left in the dark of their inadequacy, meaninglessness or immorality of self. In terms of logic and understanding though, it quickly becomes a problem. Since these the "meaning maker" is developed and defined as the only way out of inadequacy, it cannot be subject to any sort of rejection or dismissal, to do so would be leave only a world of nihilism. When the time comes to pick out the mistakes or shortcomings of the heuristic, it point blank rejects it, for it would mean the collapse of the belief and it function and saviour.

Consider the account that intentional actions always have specific consequences. In terms of knowledge about how actions play out in the world, what does this give you? What more does it say than, for example, the truthful description that much of the time people reap what they sow, but on some occasions people get away with being horrible or that good people end up failing? It does nothing more than generate the awe-inspiring illusion that the world is always just or benefits people who are good. The image of being saved which doesn't allow any sort of correction, for it would mean losing it's role as saviour. If people can behave badly and benefit from it, there is no longer inspiration to the account that intentional actions always have specific consequences. My life and world will no longer necessarily be just by engaging in the belief or practice. Meaning is no longer made.

A lot of your issues with "eliminative materialism" aren't really about it's claims about the meaninglessness of experience. They actually have a wider scope, to the rejection of "meaning maker" heuristics and the problem of meaning. You are really concerned about The Death of God, not merely materialists who deny consciousness or nihilists who reject meaning. As such, you are actually turned against a wider range of metaphysics and description of the world than you think you are. Any time there is a critical description that challenges the affirmation of a "meaning maker" heuristic, you will reject the criticism, continuing to assert was identified as mistaken. Knowledge would destroy the "meaning maker."

The point is there is no reduction, no (supposedly) irreducible primary to which everything is reduced.

Truths are beyond a singular primary. Its objectivity is not formed by squishing everything into it, but rather by all sorts of different truths expressing it.

Rather, there are many irreducible primaries, sometimes in conflict, all at once-- it's not an irreducible primary that counts for everything, but merely a truth we might talk about. It's not an all encompassing viewpoint at all. There are viewpoints to which there is no truth at all. There are viewpoints where everything is reduced to an idea.

That's more or less why you would struggle with postmodernism. It's point is (a) truth is not the sum of its parts at all, but a unique entity, which often co-exists with others, sometimes even to apparent contradiction-- to use your 1 does not equal 1 example: it might be true that 1 is 1 but it is also true that, for example, a person may think: "1 does not equal 1" at the same time.

The modernist account which reduces the world to a single abstracted idea or truth is mistaken, and produces a myth that there is nothing else but that idea.

Where modernism reduces everything to the objective without a viewpoint, the postmodernist points out any instance of (a) truth amounts to a viewpoint. In a sense, subjectivities, viewpoints, are objective and not even contraction or conflict can take them away.

Not true. Physicalism has no problem with "past life" memories. Under it, they are particular emergent experiences. Entirely possible.

The real issue physicalism would have is the misuse of evidence and the confirmation basis. More or less the sorts of arguments you have made in the thread, where you treat past life memories as if they are more than that, as if they cross time, space, logic and identity to literally be a person who lived in the past.

Again, the issue is not that there can't be evidence (people may have memories or experiences of what happened to people in the past), but it is people like yourself misunderstand and misuse it, to make these supposedly significant claims, when it's really just awe at your own thoughts or feelings.

Not so. It's what you do now that counts. Otherwise, that's fatalism. — Wayfarer

You're missing the point. I am not my past self, so the consequences relevant to it don't have impact on me. Thinking of myself as a past life reincarnated doesn't have can't alter anything that's been caused to my present through karma. The moment where it might have mattered (i.e. my past life chooses to do something to avoid horrible consequences for my future life) has gone.

That's your job. Your claim is attempting to use evidence to show what has happened in the world is more consistent with reincarnation than clairvoyance. Otherwise, you claim is confirmation bias-- you're assuming the evidence shows what you prefer, rather than respecting what it does show.

I will say though, I don't think there is an effective distinction. A person is a living being in time, a body and experiences present at one point and not another. Both are define by a new body and the presnece of particular experiences. In these terms, the clairvoyant who believes themselves to be a new iteration of a former life is indistinguishable from someone reincarnated. Each is, in the present, a body and particular experiences (memories of an earlier life, a belief it was them, etc., etc.). There is no criteria which can specify how these states are "really a past life" or not.

We might say that, in this sense, reincarnation is only a sort of illusion. For any new life, past life cannot make any sort of difference. I, in the present, cannot control what I did in a past life (and how it impacted me in the present).

Let's say karma and "reincarnation" are true. To my past life, this is relevant. How I act then will determine whether my future life is pleasant or not, so if I want to have a great future life, I ought to behave back then.

For my present though, it doesn't make a difference. I'm stuck with results of whatever folly or wisdom my past self had. To my new life, it doesn't actually matter whether I'm someone else reborn or an entirely new person. Either way, I'm stuck with what previous lives caused for me, whether they were myself or someone else, be it through karma, bombs or poor nutrition, etc. Reincarnation is really just a particular way of understanding the identity of new life, nothing more than a personal experience that one's identity is the same as a life which went before.

Look, Stevenson's books are evidence, they include enormous amounts of documentation and witness testimony, all of which attest to the veracity of children with past-life memories. How much of that ought I to reproduce? 100 pages? 200 pages? — Wayfarer

This is the confirmation bias John is talking about. You aren't critically checking your own hypothesis. When the evidence also its perfectly well with another account (clairvoyance), rather than accept it and further refine your method to specifically check for reincarnation (and find the evidence which demonstrates it), you just proclaim how your claim must be true because of the evidence.

A thousand billion pages of these accounts wouldn't be enough to show you claim because the problem is with your evidence. It doesn't show reincarnation to be the only theory consistent with the evidence.

The thing about the cogito is that it is really a doubting and rejecting of experiences themselves. We have more experiences than just the cogito.

Red, the movement of an arm, the approaching truck, the dragon bearing down, are all undoubtable experiences too. Their presence is what allows Descartes to about their accuracy. We can't speculate about whether we really see a dragon if there is no sight of a dragon. "I think therefore, I am " is mistaken. It should read: "I experience (whether that be self, red, a moving body or dragon," therefore I am having that experience." Descartes makes the mistake of abstraction our present self away from our experiences, such that the presnece of all an individuals experiences are beyond doubt. Our thoughts and self are actually present in the same realm as anything we are are aware (e.g. the present experience of a dragon shows a real dragon bearing down) or not aware of (e.g. when the experience of a dragon is an "illusion" and the person cannot see what's really there)

This error of abstraction has dire consequences when talking about things like self, free will or the mind. They all become abstracted out of the world we experience, as if the world we see around us had nothing to do with our self, free will or mind. We form this notion observation, awareness or measurement of the world are incomparable with self, mind and free will. It creates the "hard problem."

If we avoid the mistake of abstracting the mind out of the world, the sorts of problems you are talking about never arise. To measure and report data about, for example, the reactions of the body doesn't violate free will, self or the mind. Since free will, self and the mind are all, themselves, material they are not mutually exclusive with measurements or observations of them world.

Free will is an excellent example. How exactly are you going to decide what to have for breakfast without your body? It's literally impossible. If you are going to move to the pantry, get out the cereal rather than the bread, pour it in a bowl, immerse it in milk, you need your body-- there must be observations, measurements, chemical actions, electrical signals in the body, etc. if you are to make that choice. All those are undoubtable experiences that constitute the making of the choice to eat the cereal.

There needs to be a justification for why we ought to doubt something that is so close and personal and accept something that is further away from our immediate experiences. If we're not willing to believe in our most close experiences, what reason do we have to believe in things that are further away? — darthbarracuda

This is exactly what substance dualism does and how the myth of the "hard problem" is created. It denies our personal experiences, of body, of measurement of the world, which undoubtably occur with out awareness of self, mind and free will. Unwilling to believe these close experiences, the substance dualist is then caught denying anything further away (i.e. other states which casually relate to the existence of our minds) and, finally, our minds themselves (i.e. that minds just don't "make sense," that they are a "mystery," that they have nothing to do with world).

That's the problem though, for the nature of evidence is is to suggest, not prove. If we take the accounts at face value, they no more suggest reincarnation then this type of clairvoyance. Now you want to say that, given the evidence, it's reincarnation that suggested over an equally supported theory of clairvoyance. That doesn't work.

The article from which that passage was quoted acknowledges this point. However, even if that is so, the possibility of there being cause-and-effect relationships between two apparently separate lives, casts doubt on the dogmatic assertion that there is 'no evidence' for such causal relationships. — Wayfarer

So how about you listen to it! :)

The question of possibility and evidence are distinct. It's always possible that there are casual relationships between apparently separate lives. This fact doesn't specify whether there is evidence or not. It cannot cast doubt or lend support to questions of evidence because this true regardless of whatever evidence we might have-- even if we have, for example, evidence which shows no such causal relationships occurred at a particular time, it's still possible they might have. The question of evidence can only be dealt with by whether there is evidence or not.

Your argument doesn't make sense here. I mean does Stevenson have evidence consistent with casual links between apparently separate lives? If so, you have falsification of the assertion there is no evidence for such casual relationships. Assuming we take Stevenson's claims at face value, there is not just about last on assertions there is no evidence, for we know assertions of no evidence are wrong.

What I find particularly amusing in all of this though, is just how irrelevant reincarnation is to the question of causality and its significance. Even a careless investigation of causality reveals no-one lives separate lives. New life (whether it be someone else or your own) is always emerging and being affected by the actions which went before it. We don't need reincarnation to tell that how you behave now will affect future life.

Reincarnation is an incredibly selfish notion. It almost supposes that, if the care and respect of future life are to matter, it simply must be your life. So much energy is spent speculating or defending reincarnation, as if the meaning of ethics and respect for future life depends on it, when the simple presence of future life is enough to define that need.

The point is it not evidence of karma. In such a case, there is no specification or relationship of earlier life compared to later life. Here the only consequences of causality shown is people remember events from an earlier life. It doesn't show, for example, that treating others better will mean your future life will be better. All it shows is that someone with particular memories of past life has been caused.

And, say it is 'some kind of clairvoyance'. How would 'some kind of clairvoyance' be any more or less credible? What does that add? — Wayfarer

Well, it casts doubt on reincarnation. These experiences might just be a new person's knowledge and memory of someone else's life, which they mistake as their own. It's not really about being more or less credible, but rather that an instance of such clairvoyance is indistinguishable from reincarnation by the evidence.

The problem is it doesn't show any casual relationship with respect to the past and future experience.

If we accept those instances are as they are claimed, it only shows people have knowledge or memories of a life. Knowing who someone is, where they lived, what happened to them isn't the causation of future experiences based on what happened in the past. It's an experience of the present.

People use the free will define as an explanation of how God is good and must remain hidden, but there is literally no difference in terms of causality. Whether God is hidden or not doesn’t change either God’s knowledge or God’s action in causing this particular world over another. For God to appear to us, for example, is no less “coercive” with respect to causality than getting some people to believe through a threat of eternal damnation.Either way, people are caused, and a present with a situation (scripture telling of God, God presenting in for to them) where they must make a choice with their free will.

In any case, God knowingly creates a system of forces which results in people who choose to follow or not. With respect to God’s causal and moral responsibility, it actually makes no difference whether God is hidden or not. Either way, God knowing creates people who will be damned for eternity rather than not (when God could have easily done otherwise).


The free will defence is a contradiction. It’s used to account for a situation free will makes impossible. Free will absolves causality from being responsible for the logical definition of of an act. An action is not the responsibility of that which caused the person who acts (e.g. God, a parent, etc.), but of the individual themselves. Within deterministic causality, they freely chose to act in this way. When will is free, causality no longer predetermines any act, no matter how it was caused. If there is free will, any causal act (including God’s) cannot violate it. God may know of and deliberately cause anything without violating free will (as God does in creating this particular world).

So the free will defence of God is actually based on denying free will. It desperately wants to put all the power in God’s hands, to make the casual acts of God logically necessary, as if they were predetermined and didn’t have to deal with other beings with their own being and agency. The move is a self-serving one, made to put God beyond other possibilities and moral responsibility for actions.

If what God does is logically necessary, God had no other ways of acting— it’s the only way to resolve the problem of omnipotence, omniscience and God’s nature of being necessarily good. All other (and possibility moral better!) courses of action must be logically incoherent, such that they don’t constitute a possibility that an omnipotent being could have easily performed instead.


Rather than being a defence against the argument God is evil, free will is really the killing blow. If there is free will, then what God knowingly causes does not take away the fact people choose. God may be resolved of the responsibility of defining the evil acts of humanity, but this also means how God acts does not violate free will. Being omnipotent and omniscience, God could have easily chosen to create only people who would choose to follow God’s authority. Or chosen not to burn people who did not follow God’s authority for eternity.

The freedom of will is what defines the moral abhorrence of this God.

It's about hierarchy, not loyalty per se. Conservatives care about maintain a particular hierarchy, which is why purity and loyalty (to that hierarchy) register as important.

Progressives demand loyalty and purity too, just not to the hierarchies the conservatives demand.

In this respect, "loyalty" and "purity" are usually about partaking in objectification as much as avoiding them. They are used to justify who can be objectified and harmed-- the impure, the traitor, the criminal, the unnatural, the savage, etc.-- who are the monsters who deserve no protection or respect.

Regarding my "weird shit", you seem to have gone off on some tangent and projected lots of your own ideas onto it. There doesn't seem to be much point in trying to explain it further, other than to point out that your interpretation of the situation is wildly off the mark. That I am not in love with the person mentioned, and there isn't anything tragic going on. Have you not in your youth been a "fool", or regretted the one that got away? Come on be honest now? — Punshhh

What is there to regret if it was not love? The foolishness of youth is loss younger self couldn't anticipate, a path someone turns away from because it's too hard, too much work, interfered with their other desires it much or wasn't popular at the time, even though there was something more worthwhile their in the long run.

In these 23 years, how can you say you have lost anything if you did not love her? Are you one to have relationships and a soul mate without love?

Perhaps you are being honest about not loving her (whether then or now), but it would make you profoundly dishonest value. I would mean your regret was a status play, one where you are in love with the idea a relationship with this person or having a soul mate, so you are regretting you didn't take your chance to meet this abstracted standard of perfection.

"Universal love" often works like this. In most instances, it a play for status-- if only I find universal love, then I will be perfect, will be the best, will break out of the ignominy of my worldly existence.

In this sense, universal love is a lie. Love is given by people to other people. It's defined by it is anything but universal, as it is care and respect for a specific person. Those who love everyone do not love universally, and it's what makes them wonderful-- no matter who you are, they specifically have your back, help when you are in trouble, etc. To be loved universally is an oxymoron.

We've been tricked by our own abstraction. Universal love, in sense, takes the significance of being loved by someone and pretends it can be given by no-one, as if love was an infinite with didn't requires anyone else or anything of the world. It's myth which destroys our ability to describe those we love and those who love us.

Our understanding of love becomes a solipsistic pretence, where we think love is only about our own beliefs and feelings, about finding the universal, accessing the transcendent, attaining Nirvāṇa, getting the hottest wife, possessing the perfection of having a soul mate, etc., rather than any person we care about. The selfish desire to have a perfect idea or belief overpowers concern for the people and world around us.

Our notion of what amounts to the material world, yes.

Dennett is sort of caught between his own rhetoric, which still sounds like eliminativism on many occasions, and the dogmatic substance dualists who are only interested in saying there is a problem with the existence of consciousness. He gets misread as arguing an outright contradiction ( i.e. "minds exists" "the experiencing subject is an illusion" ), by people such as Nagel and Wayfarer, for they are more interested in creating a problem of meaningless than what is being argued about consciousness.

That's why "purpose" is a red herring and the subject of much wasted energy amongst philosophers and critics. It's nothing more than a reduction or art or work to a particular concept, a sort of status game where someone's creation of effort is lauded for an idea considered relevant​ or cool.

Art is not a purpose. It's a living action or presence, not some mere plan or intention.

It's not about the "observed." This issue goes to the logical significance of the subject. Substance dualism puts the concious subject beyond the world. Supposedly, my states of experience aren't instances of existence, without a coherent beginning or end in the world, without origin or source. In others words, substance dualism argues there are no concious subjects in the world. Experiences are beyond the world, there is no mind (i.e. concious entity) present or resulting from the world.

The mind of the substance dualist (the "illusion" under Dennett) is destructive to the subject. Why? It takes all relevance from our actions. When the mind is of the world, it forms states of ethical consquence. How one thinks and acts has an impact on others. What I do causes experiences in others, so in my thoughts and actions I am always impacting on others in the world.

Under substance dualism, there is no such responsibility. Since minds have nothing to do with the world, what I do cannot impact on them. I might as well bash someone's head into the ground repeatedly-- it's only a body after all. It can't cause anything in the mind of another, can't destroy any subject's mind in death. The fact this person stopped experiencing the world, doesn't see their family and friends, etc., is just a "mystery."

It's the substance dualist who denies being to the subjects of the world. Blinded by the absence of an "observed" conciousness, they want to treat experiencing subjects as something not of the world. They deny are presence as subjects of the world, as beings who are impacted by the actions and thoughts of others. In their hasty reducionism, the substance dualist has failed to consider that states of existence might sometimes be more than what appears to the eyes and ears.

When I say conciousness is material, I DO NOT mean some other state-( e.g. brains, particles, Venus or Mars). I mean that conciousness itself, the states of experience which don't manifest to sight, sound, touch, taste, etc., is material. Material states are not only what one sees through a telescope. Some material states are "nowhere."