The cauliflower case is directly out of Heraclitus, label it 'relational' if you like. The problem is old, the solution is nowhere in sight. — magritte

Please post this on every thread

But, again, if your main aim is to say that all of them are simply subjective or social myths, then sure, their differences can easily be exploited for that argument. — Wayfarer

I believe you are putting too much negative weight on subjective or social myths. Even if we regard them (authority/doctrine) as art, they are no less significant to the believer. And it is the believer, and the believer's belief that is of concern - not what the believer believes in, but that he believes.

Just to be sure it is clear empirical data, although they may be directly known by observation don't count as direct knowing in the sense I mean; I am talking about "inner direct knowing" in the sense promoted by Zen Buddhism for example). — Janus

Empirical data, not that which is collected and quantified into objective knowledge that we can all agree upon , like the acceleration of gravity, but in the philosophical sense of direct experience, immediacy, existence in and for itself...that is what I assume you are referring to, more or less.

let me add, belief in a particular system is not the same as faith. The difference: the former holds credibility in that it is subscribed to a priori- it is speculative; whereas the latter as it were, requires spontaneous renewal - it is the Latin word for "the fact is now".

Please explain how direct knowing that yields inter-subjectively corroborable beliefs is possible. — Janus

I didn't say it was possible. I don't see how it is, other than through tyranny and oppression. I said it can be rationalized, and yield the highest degree of rationality to those ready to receive it. Remember that rationality can actually be the most illogical shit ever invented, but it is still rational - meaning that it coheres within its own system.

As I have said the case with science, logic and the empirical is different, because the corroboration can be achieved with an unbiased observer. — Janus

What these have, which art and religion lack, are methodology, but digging deeper than methodology, the latter lack a purpose: that is to yield objective truth, which is qualitatively opposed to subjective truth.

I actually used to think as you do — Janus

I used to think like you. I in all honesty don't believe that thinking (regarding direct knowing) is rationally supportable, and I think I have good reasons for thinking that. — Janus

First of all, no one uses repetition in philosophy these days, excellent work. :up:

Secondly, I disagree. Direct knowing is easily supported by rationality. By objective evidence, not so much. Your "good reasons for thinking that" should be evidence enough. Lol

I'm just enjoying a nice conversation between the best two philosophers on T P F. There is much to be gained from this debate.

you completely lost me with your reference to 'genocide'. — Wayfarer

It was a good attempt at a bad joke

the very idea that humans can directly know the nature of reality is itself an article of groundless faith, no matter how "enlightened" a person, or some tradition, finds that person to be. Intellectual honesty demands that this be acknowledged, and yet it so seldom is by adherents. — Janus

Nice! :fire:

‘persuade me that these traditions contain anything real, beyond the subjective edification they have on believers'. That's the argument this is not worth having. I'm not going to attempt to change your mind on that, I can't see any point. If you do change your mind, then it's something I would be more than happy to discuss. — Wayfarer

I know you don't give up that easily.

By "real", they would theoretically yield some kind of objective edification - is genocide not persuasion enough?

religious faith (and faith generally, since we don't know anything at all with absolute certainty) has an important place in human life.

My argument with Wayferer is just that he won't admit the difference I am pointing to, insofar as he wants to claims that religious experience yields inter-subjectively determinable knowledge, and yet is unable to say how that could be possible. — Janus

Awesome topic!

Many assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. — David Loy

We can remove every superstition from our belief, but the only superstition that matters is the belief that there is a "way the world really is" ("for everybody" I might add)

gold and bitcoin will be the major winners — Baden

Don't forget that masked bandits are the biggest winners...they are completely unrecognizable.

I think the paper's a battle on all fronts — fdrake

That is a lot of work simply to discredit an already lame term that nobody ever uses, not even the lamest philosophers (I should know, I have an army of lame philosophers following me here at TPF, spewing the lamest shit ever passed off as philosophy). My sincerest aplopogees.

And that is why Idealism is not used in science. — Philosophim

Idealism permeates every relevant scientific discovery. In fact, all scientific speculation (what is know in the scientific method as "hypothesis") would be impossible without appeal to idealism.

What if unicorns are just really good at hiding?" You need some evidence, or its not a point of discussion. — Philosophim

As a proponent of the existence of unicorns, you would be tasked with finding and showing where they actually hide.

What is physical is matter and energy.
There are living brains, which are chemically self-sustainable, active, and produce neuronal activity, and dead brains, which don't. — Philosophim

But dead brains are made up of matter and energy too. Shouldn't we be capable of a fairly easy brain transplant if such is the case?

True. Same for idealism though. — frank

Absolutely. But there is a disproportionate amount of physicalists to idealists out there. Especially on TPF. Given that, I have no problem sounding like an idealist when conversing with a physicalist, but I certainly do not want to sound physicalistic when dealing with a hard line idealist.

Materialism is waning. But the pendulum just keeps swinging. — frank

Lol.

I think he meant that physicalism morphed into something its earlier adherents would have rejected. Remember Newton's cohorts wanted to reject gravity on the basis that it was mystical. Newton gave up and retired to his basement in the face of the dogma. — frank

To be fair, I am always talking about all forms of physicalism simultaneously. But to your point, you are correct, physicalism, like all ideologies ages with time, and given it's close relation to scientific advancement, it has aged faster than most.

It's not the Red Army, its just a useful category.
— frank

Lol. It is from the materialists I've dealt with. But it is a useful category, I give you that — Merkwurdichliebe

On further consideration, I must point out the distinction between physics and the physical sciences as a category of knowledge, and physicalism as a philosophical ideology. With that in mind, physicalism is no more useful than zoroastrianism.

He has said that, though, that Physicalism 1.0 died with the acceptance of electromagnetism. — frank

You are saying, that he said, in so many words: physicalism, in proving itself, ate itself alive.

But I don't see materialists backing down, what gives?

It's not the Red Army, its just a useful category. — frank

Lol. It is from the materialists I've dealt with. But it is a useful category, I give you that

due to its [physicalism's] history of subsuming whatever we came to accept as real (in a bodily sense), has lost its original meaning? — frank

Also, it didn't hit me at first, but think you should give yourself credit. That is an interesting and novel idea. Could you explain more what you mean?

But isnt Chomskys point that physicalism, due to its history of subsuming whatever we came to accept as real (in a bodily sense), has lost its original meaning? It's the few flat earthers among us that feel the need to get dogmatic about anything. — frank

First of all, I love dogmatism. Sadly, it is a dying art as the world becomes increasingly wishy-washy, yet it will always be practiced because there will always be people dumb enough or crazy enough to try.

I don't think he was saying that it has lost its original meaning, but that it is an all consuming paradigm. It assimilates or eliminates though it's own methodology, there is no dialectical compromise, everything is to be made physical, first and last, and anything that we can reasonably fit in between is fair game.

Seven, with the sense of equilibrium. — Olivier5

Equilibrium as in physical, or mental balance? Do you correlate introspection/reflection and equilibrium with a particular organ (e.g. seeing with eyes or feeling with skin)?

You access these (reflexively) through some sense, in my view, through self-awareness, rather than directly. — Olivier5

That is where we differ. Self-awareness is immediacy itself, and not a faculty that mediates existence. Self awareness is what relates directly to its faculties of sensing, perceiving and thinking, and through them it relates indirectly to things that are sensed, perceived, and thought. Hence the inadequacy of self-awareness (as recognized by Nietzsche) - how much is there that we do not sense, percieve or think...infinitely more than we do. So much for the human endeavor for knowledge...luckily we can still seek self knowledge.

"...Any intelligible theory that offers genuine explanations and that can be assimilated to the core notions of physics becomes part of the theory of the material world, part of our account of body. If we have such a theory in some domain, we seek to assimilate it to the core notions of physics, perhaps modifying these notions as we carry out this enterprise."
[~Noam Chomsky)

Physicalism, such as the kind you naturally assume, is the default philosophy of the culture we live in; 'presumptive materialism', — Wayfarer

Interesting point. The dominant trend does not appear to consider itself as an ideology (despite that is exactly what it is), somehow it regards itself as incontrovertible and self evident. It is very dogmatic, bordering on what I consider religious belief. Of course most advocates for the physicalist ideology do not seem willing to go all the way, rather holding onto metaphysical ideas without properly assimilating them into the materialist framework. When, with genuine philosophical vigor, one honestly examines physicalism for what it is, it definitely loses its luster.

I consider introspection as a sense. — Olivier5

Then, I suppose, you don't subscribe to the five senses tradition. How many senses have you identified?

Do we have direct access to anything?

Yes. To our own sensing, to our own perceiving, and to our own thinking. Everything else is always experienced indirectly - that is to say, anything that can be apprehended through those faculties must be mediated from what it is in-itself, to what it is for-me, viz. a sensation, a perception, or a thought.

Sweet Jesus! It started with him, not since him! — tim wood

That's what I said, its obvious that if it started with him, it has been "since him". I thi k you are thinking too much. I'm glad Reagan's dead.

I suspect you also know something about your own mental phenomena, and this knowledge is based on a capacity for introspection. The distinction between knowing and sensing is weaker than you seem to think: you know because you sense. — Olivier5

I know about my own mental phenomenon from introspection, reflection, abstraction, but never has it become directly accessible to my senses, or anyone else's for that matter.

The distinction between knowing and sensing is about as antithetical as it gets. To quote Leibniz: "Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses, except the mind itself."

And yes, mental phenomena are subjective by definition. But MRI of brains can detect emotions, so self-reporting is not the only tool we have to study these things. — Olivier5

Either way, self reporting or MRI scans, neither give our senses direct access to mental states.

exactly, knowing is not a perceptual faculty, but seeing is. We can point to red and argue over a thing's redness. But to argue whether you yourself are angry, impatient or happy is absurd - all evidence is indirect. And to point to your knowledge of you being angry, impatient or happy, well that is a matter of your word, there is no way for me to perceive what you know, especially what you know about the mental events you may be experiencing.

no, I'm goofing around. It's a strangelove quote. Incredible how relevant it is today, isn't it?

You cannot perceive your own mental events? That's odd. — Olivier5

Mental events, like thought or emotion, nope. I can't even think of which perceptual faculty might be responsible for apprehending a mental event. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

That sort of complacency will let the commies in.

Or in other words, it's ok to chop your own head off in a world without commies, but not in one where they lie in wait. — Punshhh

I didn't want to do it, but you are forcing me to say:
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

anything that doesn't apply to elephants and atoms? — Olivier5

What do mental states, elephants and atoms have in common?
~They are objects of perception.

How do they differ?
~Nobody has ever perceived a mental state.

What you say is not specific to perception of of mental phenomena, it applies to elephants and atoms too. And yet scientists go somewhere that has not been 'gotten' by studying their perceptions of elephants and atoms. So there's a gap in your logic. — Olivier5

Perhaps there is ellipsis in my reasoning, it doesn't change the fact that scientists would have to go beyond perception to study perception as such, and since that seems to be impossible so far, we are mired in perception - not a world of being, but a world of appearances - hence "gotten".

What's the difference? — khaled

Absolute fact is still a relative truth

The field of aesthetics is endlessly fascinating, whether it's about sound, visuals, tactile stuff, the way all of it mixes together with ideas and emotions, cultural influence, and philosophy. Yes, it's very complex. Nobody ever said it wasn't. — frank

All attempts to explain the aesthetic sphere of life amount to mere vanity. It's complex but insubstantial. Science comes closest to giving us anything objective to rely on. Still, all scientific knowledge is based on appearance - as it seeks to tell us how things appear, and scientific fact is only an approximation of the truth (of how things are in themselves).

It's all been steadily going downhill since Reagan. Nothing in our present field of view remotely indicates the slightest desire to alter direction. I see nothing short of radical violent revolution as a viable means for actual reform in the government. Unfortunately, judging from the current attitude of the youth in America, it is likely such a thing would propel the US into a Soviet-esque nightmare. Shit is bad, and ain't nothing Biden or Trump can do.