All I'm saying is this complexity too signifies nothing. It isn't an indicator of something more going on. — schopenhauer1

We agree here. 'Life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. ' What is this nothing? An infinitesimal pinprick in the balloon that makes it all an 'absurd' brute fact for the intellect that wants a bulletproof 'why-it-all-happens.'

At the same time we are drenched in somethingness, and the 'nothing' above is just the impossible outside of this somethingness grasped intellectually?

Thus Maturana makes the point that ' a predatator stalking its prey' is meaningful for human purposes, but in the animal,world in which 'self awareness' is debateable, there may be no separation of roles, merely the automatic conjoint behavior we might call 'a chasing'. — fresco

I understand this, but in order to make the point you are holding some kind of content fixed and viewing it through different schemes. I agree that 'what is the case' or reality is experienced through the 'lens' of this or that impersonal conceptual scheme. For one conscious entity, reality may be a system of 4 objects. For another conscious entity, a richer system of 4000 objects, not including the original 4.

But we humans seem have some sense of 'what is the case' or 'state of affairs' or 'reality' that makes assertion possible.

The level of 'rationality' required to discuss these matters is transcendent of classical logic with its 'law if the excluded middle'. Such rationaliy is well known in QM, which would take us right back to the Bohr reference. — fresco

I don't think this does away with the difficulty. I admit it doesn't matter much practically. But since I enjoy the challenge of trying to get clear on the issue, I must object to this as handwaving and not proof.

Re: your common sense view, I suggest you consider replacing 'objects existing whether perceived or not' by ' expectation of functional persistence evoked by the abstact persistence of a naming word'. — fresco

I see why someone might want to do that, but now we just have a new kind of object, a new noun, an 'expectation.' So...objects are expectations. This is idealism, no? I'm not anti-idealism, but I am trying to cut through the confusion.

Note that I also object to some simple reduction of objects to the physical. Like objects are 'really' atoms, etc. We can experience the same object in different modes and thru different theoretical lenses. We can view the object as an expectation, but we already have a pre-theoretical sense of the object that makes that metaphor possible.

Exactly. The construction with a high degree of consensus is actually that "fact" refers to "state of affairs." — Terrapin Station

Yeah, I think we agree here. Our difference might be (correct me if I am wrong) that I don't equate what is this the case with the 'physical.' (I see that the physical is strongly related, but I don't think a satisfying reduction of world to any other concept is possible.)

I think it's in this sort of key, if you like, that philosophy, as distinct from science, considers 'the nature of being' - not as an attempt to arrive at a putative first cause in the sense that science would demand or require, through an analysis of the mass and scope of the Cosmos, but more of an intuitive insight. (That article, by the way, made much of Heidegger's indebtedness to taoism.) — Wayfarer

I like this. While some philosophy has sought first causes, etc., for me some of the best has just brought what we 'already know' into focus.

And I agree about Heidegger and Taoism. There's nothing new under the sun. That's an exaggeration, but the more I read the more I discover the continuity and repetition. I found Heidegger's basic thought in an early version (the first) of Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy. It was a one paragraph summary that set up his life's work. It was freaky. Since I've never seen it quoted, I'm guessing it just slid by many of the pros. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Lectures-History-Philosophy-Hegel/dp/0198249918

This is one reason I'm against intellectual hero worship. It's aboutthe ideas. I care what X 'really' meant to the degree that I believe that X was on to something real and important.

How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another. — Wittgenstein

To me that's a beautiful attitude, and that's one reason gods have many faces. Anonymity like TPF's returns us to an quasi-oral culture in which ideas can dominate.

If this work has a value it consists in two things. First that in it thoughts are expressed, and this value will be the greater the better the thoughts are expressed. The more the nail has been hit on the head.—Here I am conscious that I have fallen far short of the possible. Simply because my powers are insufficient to cope with the task.—May others come and do it better. — W

it must require absolutely enormous skills and intellect to try and do that. And at this time, as is often discussed, mathematical cosmology is beset by a number of enormous conceptual problems which I know I can't even understand. — Wayfarer

I think the math is what we can understand and yet the relation of the math to ordinary consciousness is maybe especially difficult these days. I haven't given QM much thought since I looked into it years ago, but I remember it being strange. We seem to be reduced the 'silence of algorithm.' As I hinted at with @leo, some of our explanations are metaphorically incoherent. A wave and particular? But they still work as functional relationships between measurements.

So I don't deny the conceptual problems. Indeed I think we get conceptual problems in philosophy by trying to work in the subject-object paradigm as if in a quasi-mathematical 'ideal' language. In short, we know how to use 'I' and 'physical' and 'mental' and so on in everyday life. But we can't pin them down and do armchair 'math'/metaphysics with them. For me the great newer philosophers have pointed out the artificiality of various theories that we take for granted, like the water we swim in. We are trapped in metaphors and/or paradigms until we're exposed to the creative revelation of an alternative. (Which might just be a remembering.)

Heidgenstein make/makes a strong case against that approach. (I think Wittgenstein and Heidegger powerfully reveal one another at their best, something I learned from Lee Braver.)

Sorry..no time to reply in detail. Read my comment above above about Russell's Paradox for a reply to your 'fact about facts'.
Back later. — fresco

Well I do look forward to talking with you. Your posts are fascinating and I even enjoy your arrogance (says one god to another.)

I like naive realism. It gets the human experience right for the most part.

The naïve realist theory may be characterized as the acceptance of the following five beliefs:

There exists a world of material objects
Some statements about these objects can be known to be true through sense-experience
These objects exist not only when they are being perceived but also when they are not perceived. The objects of perception are largely perception-independent.
These objects are also able to retain properties of the types we perceive them as having, even when they are not being perceived. Their properties are perception-independent.
By means of our senses, we perceive the world directly, and pretty much as it is. In the main, our claims to have knowledge of it are justified." — Wiki

It's almost a description of common sense. Other 'isms' add a useful complexity to the model. Heidegger's 'ready-to-hand' versus 'present-at-hand' is brilliant. And we can think of the schemes that divide the world into just this or that system of objects 'preconsciously.' And we can think of those schemes or paradigms as evolving, dying, being born via new dominant metaphors/frames.

But all along we talk about reality, what is the case. We inform and disclose the situation, a situation that is implicitly shared --else who are we talking to about what? What could we have to say to one another and about what if we aren't strangely located in the same place? The world isn't a ball of mud. It isn't even a system of objects. It's 'here' and we are 'in' it together, talking about it. Any system of objects is 'in' this world with us. And, as Heidegger stressed, this 'in' is not a spatial relationship. We are just using a spatial metaphor as we try to express the elusive ground of expression.

The metaphorical blind spot is a much harder thing to communicate, but it's certainly understood in at least some philosophies much more clearly than in others; — Wayfarer

I have no objection to this. You yourself use 'metaphorical' here.

Anyway- there is an end the implied infinite regress that you hint at. But it's not something that can be grasped discursively, as it were - that's one of the points of non-dualism — Wayfarer

Let's say you are right. In any case, your end of the infinite regress is indeed transconceptual and/or metaphorical. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that. I'm just saying that 'explanation' no longer feels right. It's a lurch into the esoteric and into the Mystery. That's fine. But doesn't this exit the game of reason ? I'm not saying that people ought not exit the game of reason. Not at all.

I guess I resist the attempt to have it both ways. Sometimes it's as if you are blaming science for not being mysticism. Yet the whole point of science is perhaps precisely to keep everything exoteric, testable, as clear as possible. The mathematical models are difficult, but (as Conway and Kant said) math is the stuff that we do understand.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/103758/pythagorean-theorem-proof-without-words-request-for-words

For what it's worth, I do think accepting science changes a culture. Politics replaces religion. The vertical dimension is still there, but it is reframed. In a godless, scientific world the 'religion' is moral progress and/or the preservation of the good old ways. And I think with you perhaps that educated people are largely godless these days. We have cultural Christians, etc., but we are mostly of this world, the one we can touch and see. It's this worldliness that I find more important than the 'isms' of a few intellectuals.

Facticity is basically about the human preoccupation with prediction and control which are aspects of another psychological construct we call 'time'. — fresco

I'm with you on the centrality of prediction, control, and time. I'm mostly relate to what you write. I'm really only arguing with you about a finer point. Our differences seem to be mostly cosmetic.
There's just one issue perhaps at the root of my quibbles.

I'd like to hear what you think of the phenomenon of 'world. '

3. "World" can be understood in another ontical sense—not, however, as those entities which Dasein essentially is not and which can be encountered within-the-world, but rather as the wherein a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. — link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology

It's this 'wherein' that serves as the 'real' or 'living' thing-in-itself, I suggest. All the confused mind-matter babble is maybe dancing around this 'wherein' that grounds communication in a way that we find hard to specify.

The constructivist view of 'facts' is basically an anti 'naive realist' stance, which recognizes that 'facticity' can be negotiated and shifts over time. — fresco

I hear you. But isn't this view itself presented as a fact? (Or is it only edifying? A cheerleading for open-mindedness?) I've been reading A Thing of This World, which is great. It starts with Kant and moves to Derrida and weaves a narrative that largely focuses on those 'shifts over time.' Nevertheless, it's a theory about the 'filter' that still depends on some sense of reality beneath it all. With Kant we have a static impersonal conceptual scheme. After Kant we get dynamic schemes. Folks try to go beyond dynamic schemes (beyond the scheme/content model), but I'm not so sure that this can be done well.

I suggest that we just look at the structure of communication. The notion of world or 'what is the case' is elusive and yet seemingly always with us. Representational thinking dies hard.

But anyway, the polemical point I am working towards is that while naturalism is concerned with what can be explained, metaphysics is concerned with what explains us. It is 'upstream', prior, anterior, or something like that. — Wayfarer

For me the issue is bigger than naturalism. It involves the structure of human cognition. The blind spot of science is the blind spot of religion is the blind spot of philosophy. Then grasping the contingency of the world is also 'the mystical' for some people. Or it's not mystical but just good philosophy.

How is 'what explains us' going to avoid being itself a brute fact? Will we then get 'what explains what explains us' and so on? The usual device is to give the explaining object some kind of weird properties like being prior to time or transconceptual or works-in-mysterious-ways. Now people can take these things as they like, but I find it hard to call such a thing an explanation. I tempted to talk of metaphor or myth as a plush rug under which we can sweep the brute fact.

good character, although it might have corollary benefits and be scientifically explicable, it is infinitely important to me and my life, regardless of any honor, repute, or flattering narrative I may receive. — Merkwurdichliebe

I very much respect this. The good stuff is 'beyond' externals (recognition.) Or at least I am tuned in to the image of a 'superman' who has this kind of purity and independence. When I occasionally chastise myself, it's usually for descending into some kind of pettiness or vanity. It's hard to find the right words for. I don't think the perfect words exist. But we have truly noble characters in our stories.

Returning to the 'monkey see, monkey sometimes do' theme, I suggest that the mere presentation of a noble character is more than half the work. Our philosophical heroes are new possible identities for anyone they come into contact with. And we don't have to adopt them wholesale. We just expose ourselves to lots of noble/lovable personalities and they rub off on us. We synthesize something for our little lives. And our adjustments to our time (if we succeed) might then rub off on others.

From this point of view, literature /TV is a central source of life philosophy. Most if not all of the vital ideas appear there.

Some type of people think that by "mining" existence- that is to say, by knowing/mastering all the minutia of life (minutia mongering), that we are somehow fulfilling a higher goal of some sort. — schopenhauer1

Maybe. But no one on this forum is standing in for that position. Try to zoom out for a moment. Are you sure you aren't constructing a target out of thin air? Or what if we all already agree with you in terms of this reclusive target? I'm an atheist who thinks all value is mortal, finite, etc. Am I on your side or am I still too attached to the 'animal' value of gadgets, art, food, and sex?

For example, if I show you a really complex and extremely detailed math formula or proof, and then go about solving it, and then applying it to some world event that it maps to, I must be doing something of meaning because of its very complexity and its use in a functional application. I have mined the information and presented it and solved it and used it in a complex tool. That in itself must mean something. The very fact of my understanding and solving the complexity or that I advanced a functionality. — schopenhauer1

Wait a minute, please. If you create something useful, OK. That's value. That's interest. If you create something beautiful or cute, that's value. But complexity alone wouldn't have value in itself. Maybe if I were your father-in-law I'd think well hopefully he'll grow up and apply that IQ in the real world.

But I can also imagine crazy people with endlessly intricate fantasy systems that no one wants to look at or study. The world is full of noise. We love geeks for their ability to cut through this noise. Complexity is what we don't like. If you aren't filtering or processing it, then who cares? If your filtering/processing is potentially generalizable to something that Mr. X and Mrs. Y wants done, then it's 'meaningful' in the boring way.

The hard stop for me is foisting challenges and suffering onto a next generation. — schopenhauer1

Well I don't really take a position either way. It would be a game of 'If I were king.' People are going to do what they do. Life is short. I can't control this world. I ride my little piece of it like a bull that I know will eventually throw me off.

So I don't say 'life is good' as if I'm defending one metaphysical/scientific thesis against another. I don't claim that life is good or bad at all. I hustle like many others to protect and expand what I have. I just got a memory foam mattress. Those things are nice! I've got 2 pets and a S.O. I get paid for intellectual work. I'm in good shape. Whatever I say about Life I must say from this detailed situation which is not life in general but my life. That's why it's hard to be convincing with evaluations of life in general. You end up trying to tell depressed people that it's not that bad (which could be radically mistaken) or happy people that it's not that good (when life can indeed be paradise for long periods of time.)

To change our whole way of thinking about things as "yours" and "mine"; now that would be real progress! — Janus

Hmm. Well I like this idea when applied to ideas. But I'm skeptical about the transcendence of private property. There are just too many jerks in the world.

The constraints of survival are enough. — schopenhauer1

Enough for what or who? We don't have to dwell on this point if you'd rather not.

Some people that understanding the complexity of a subject must mean one is inherently providing value. — schopenhauer1

Fair enough. My theory is that any indicator of intelligence signals value. Even if the IQ is currently being 'wasted,' it's still evident in the grasp of (the wrong kind of) complexity.

The technology created from the complexity must bestow virtue for the technologist, and the fact that we can comprehend such complexity itself bestows virtue. — schopenhauer1

Fair enough. But why wouldn't we consider an inventor virtuous in some sense? We love the inventor for making something useful or pleasant. We love the composer for the music produced, etc. For those who aren't going to hang themselves, this stuff is genuinely valuable. So we value those who give us these things.

I just have ordinary valuing in mind, as in not resenting their getting paid for intellectual property rights, etc. Or having respect for someone who was clever and creative. Loving our best fellow monkeys the most is true religion, or so some thinkers have said (in other words).

I think Nietzsche was making the point that folk psychology is historically/geologically embedded in human understanding and natural language, and we all inherit it by birthright. The whole thing with the Ubermensch was to overcome the dominant illusion of folk psychology, and to create your own. — Merkwurdichliebe

I think I know what you mean here and agree.

The superman is fascinating. I think of 'Him' as a twisted Christ image. What I take away from Nietzsche is ultimately the presentation /celebration / defense of some classic 'masculine' virtues. Now I love Nietzsche, but I am skeptical about creating one's own values. How do we decide which values to create or keep if not by the values we already have?

I would say if a discovery is valid in itself, it will stand regardless of the character of the physicist or philosopher. Furthermore, I think that many discoveries in both philosophy and physics required a particular character to stumble upon it. I believe Galileo, Newton, and Einstein were known to be quite unique characters. — Merkwurdichliebe

That's a good point. Yeah, I guess even the physicists needed a certain character to see the world in a new way.

And I agree a philosophical discovery can stand even if the philosopher loses respect as a person (Heidegger is an obvious example).

Yes, but remember I am actually critiquing this argument of meaning in complexity, technology, and science. — schopenhauer1

I guess I am demystifying the use of 'meaning.' A few people might indeed build it up into something transcendent. But I think this is the exception. In the same way a few people might build science up into scientism. And someone can make that their windmill.

So maybe it's a vulnerable target but not a challenging target. Is sex or food a 'bastion of meaning'? I don't know. Depends what you mean. I see that 'all is vanity' and men die just like dogs. OK, Preacher, but what now? Laugh with Democritus perhaps. Or hang ourselves. Or do the first while it's possible and then the other when it's not.

I think I mostly see the world as you do but I can't embrace the transpersonal value judgment or the project of trying to build this negative value judgment into something more. I'm down with grim thinkers. I don't mind the grimness. I just don't believe in some essential badness or goodness of reality/experience. It's different for everyone, but also there is enough similarity to be moderately intelligible to one another.

In light of what you say here, you are not agreeing with Wayfarer that we have "fallen away" from those insights which you see as belonging to human nature, though. — Janus

That's true. I don't believe in the fall. @Wayfarer is our resident reactionary. While I do like some of the old school thinkers, I'd really miss 'Heidgenstein' and many others.

I see the falling away as consisting, not in the advance of naturalism over supernaturalism, but in the increasing objectification of ourselves and nature, due mostly to the creeping capitilization, monetization, commodification and propertization of the natural world, and the concomitant widening gulf between ourselves and nature — Janus

I relate to what you say, but I do think there's a connection. Does culture die into civilization? I for one can no longer experience reality in the same way as an atheist. It's all a 'dream.' The species itself will pass eventually. And there's the issue of the 'other.' It seems that groups are constituted by an exclusion.

I can think this abstractly and do as the others do, pay my rent, try to be 'good' in various ways. The hustle is haunted by a laughter from the back row or the balcony. It's those two old men from the muppets. Sometimes I forget my next line and join them.

This is the one problem which is little addressed in philosophy, but which I think is of the most vital significance, and it is an ethical problem, a problem concerning phronesis, concerning how best to live. The life of the modern consumer is, our lives are, becoming increasingly unsustainable, neurotic and tragic and this most important of all questions is the very one which almost everyone ignores, preferring to distract themselves with self-indulgent fantasies of physical, intellectual or supernatural control, self-cultivation and achievement. — Janus

Well I can relate to all of this. In school I took some philosophy classes that were all about the baldness of the present king of France. And that kind of philosophy is a bore, at least for me.

What you are criticizing reminds me of Epicurus. And I mentioned in another post the goal of feeling free and standing tall --of getting some distance from the rat race and Instagram's Vanity Fair. I'm talking about a state of feeling complete and unhurried, of being able to affirm the world and feel some gratitude for one's life. Some of this is a practical matter, but an unwise person can't even enjoy their free time when they have it.

Where I can't follow you is the inclusion of 'self-cultivation' on your list as a kind of vice or folly. And 'fantasies of achievement' are only as bad as the details of the fantasy. Obsessing over fame or great wealth is ugly, but what about the goal of finding a more suitable way of making a living? Of working with or for better people? Or of living within one's means and not being the slave of debt? Or having the discipline to eat healthy food? Ethically produced food?

I think happy people are usually invested in a suitable project or set of projects.

A true philosopher see the usefulness of the useless. I think one thing that makes philosophers special is that they are so paradoxical. — Merkwurdichliebe

Nice. I agree.

And if we consider psychology to be intermediate between science and life of the subject, then this is probably where systems philosophy and philosophy of life overlap. — Merkwurdichliebe

I like this too. Nietzsche is a great one to consider. Is he a great 'folk' psychologist? I think so. I don't see how thoughtful people can avoid some kind of unofficial and slippery psychology as they try to make sense of the world. At the very least we have to wrestle with ourselves and be on the lookout for rationalization. And we have to model others in order to predict them, make them happy, destroy them if way breaks out. Folk psychology looks central to human life. Status play, etc.

And I think seeing the world aright' is as much a matter of character as it is of logic. But logic pertains much more to a scientific understanding, whereas good character, although it might have corollary benefits and be scientifically explicable, it is infinitely important to me and my life, regardless of any honor or repute I may receive. — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree here too, I think. A physicists can be an asshole and his discoveries don't lose value. But some philosophical discoveries seem to be made possible by this or that character.

Perhaps we often start with intuitions that something is the right or wrong way to go and then find reasons and make a case. Or, as Popper would have it, we get an idea of the way things are first and only then can put it to the test. At some point our identity becomes entangled in being brave enough to expose our views/identities to the fire. The philosopher is different from the prophet in this way. The philosopher prides himself or herself on continuing to listen to reality (and other people.)

Life philosophy essentially turns you back upon yourself, and forces you to examine and reflect upon your own life/existence. I might argue that the more exposure one has to the traditions of philosophy, the better the self examination. — Merkwurdichliebe

This is true. But I personally find that turning back into my own depths just led me back out to the wide world. 'I' am only a vessel. The 'I' is the candle and not the flame. This isn't science but a metaphorical framework, a 'spiritual' statement. So it's not I but Christ science, art, and philosophy thru me that matters.

My prejudice is that the cool people meet 'in' science, art, philosophy, and religion. Our higher selves intersect there. (For me religion these days is just blended with the others I mentioned, but I respect those who get their kicks in traditional ways if they respect my unorthodox approach.)

Life philosophy doesn't care about whether or not the speaker's opinions have any relevance to the world. It cares about the speaker himself, and what importance such opinions as: 'the world sucks' or 'the world is golden', have for the speaker himself. — Merkwurdichliebe

I hear you, but I think there is an entanglement.

I've noticed that depressed/anguished people tend to be self-obsessed or at least not that interested in anything impersonal. A 'true' philosopher takes the impersonal personally.

This has very little relevance to the physical or logical structure of the world, or any philosophical explanation. But for you, in your life, it has great importance. — Merkwurdichliebe

That's a good point. But why is that irrelevance relevant to you? From my POV we both share a similar interest in something that is bigger than us, the structure of the world, the way things are.

We are doing a kind of psychology. So what I take seriously is important information for me as I try to understand the world. In understanding the world, I need to understand why I take understanding the world seriously. (Nietzsche's will to truth, etc.)

I must register and consider my standpoint as part of the inquiry (to avoid bias if possible, etc.). Having no standpoint perhaps only means that one has been careless/oblivious in this regard. We have to work through our standpoint perhaps.

And what if 'seeing the world aright' is as much a matter of character as it is of logic? How does one prove that it is good to feel free and stand tall? Prove that self-possession is virtuous? What virtue do we target as we take understanding the world seriously? Where does practical utility shade off into 'spiritual' passion?

One thing to consider is that traditional philosophy is not necessarily forward-looking, as the ideal to which it aspires might be provided by ancestral wisdom or revealed truth, and the passage of time represents a 'falling away' rather than 'progress towards', so negating the very idea of 'progress'. — Wayfarer

This is a good point. While I do believe that philosophy progresses in various important ways, I also believe in something like human nature. We've been talking to ourselves for a long time now, and it's plausible indeed that some of the most vital things that we can hope to grasp have been grasped and recorded again and again. I relate this to the intersection of religion and philosophy, and I am hardly the first to do so.

The more I live, think, and read...the less original I realize myself to be. But this isn't a source of pain. Because the insights are good even if I can't claim them.

this is meaningful in itself. — schopenhauer1

It's amusing. Lots of other pleasures fade as we age. Our knowledge organ is reliably erect. When my mind 'eats' a book, I don't feel sluggish. Our personality expands, a swelling microcosm. For many of us (and I think you'll relate) it becomes more amusing to talk among 'oneselves' than with others who don't have much appetite for thought. I count at least 3 dudes in my skull. You may have heard of them.

For me 'facts',are human constructions with a high degree of consensus. — fresco

You can go that way, but it leads to some counterintuitive conclusions. If most of us disagree with you, I suppose you haven't stated a fact.

And maybe it was once a fact that the world was flat or that God created the world in 7 days.

It seems easier to say that people tended to believe X, etc.

I do get it, though. I have played the pragmatist ontological-epistemological edgelord. I still think that I was right in spirit. But there are sore spots in the position. Because you are trying to give us the facts.

But this ontological relativity is a matter of conceptual flexibility, and does not support claims against the objective character of judgments of existence.

In the investigation of nature, we refine our terms against the grindstone of experience, and let the world speak for itself with our language. — Cabbage Farmer

Well said. I agree.

the greatest problem is thinking there is a real problem to begin with. — Merkwurdichliebe

Well said. This is how I take my Heidgenstein. The old masters did deal with genuine life problems, though, I would say. So your critique applies to a certain kind of obsessive digression that happens when folks get lost in dictating an ideal language.

I like Popper. He seems like an honest philosopher. From my general acquaintance to him, I would call him a systems philosopher. — Merkwurdichliebe

Thanks. I like Popper too. I like his character and style.

By "systems philosophy", I mean anything that tries to make sense of the world independent of my existence. The world is the focus, and I am only incidental. What I have to say has little importance, what matters is what can be said that can pass through an immense amount of scrutiny unharmed, and again, it does not matter one lick whether I can actually say it or not. — Merkwurdichliebe

OK. I can totally relate to this. Yes! My mere opinion is...who cares? Serious thinking is aimed at what is good for us. Or what is true. So 'the world sucks' or 'the world is golden' may be informative about the speaker but that's about it. Any child can say how things should be. I'm interested in how things are. [To be real, we also like to project our choices as the right choice. 'One ought to be like me' is sewed into our lining it seems.]

I'm very much in agreement with 'what I have to say is of little importance.' That's my gripe about sloppy relativism. People who aren't just goofing around are trying to reveal reality, what is the case. It's the deep structure of communication, this revelation of what is the case. Philosophers are to truth candidates as health nuts like me are to their diet. I don't want to believe everything I hear or eat whatever is put in front of me. I am serious about my mental/physical health. So, yeah, things should pass through intense scrutiny.

But this scrutiny takes different forms. Monkey see, monkey sometimes do. The system in question is not necessarily proved or refuted within language (logically). I suggest that we sometimes adopt what we see as a option, give it a try, and then keep, abandon, or transform it. Agreeing with Popper, I'd say that creativity is at the heart of science and philosophy. So the result is a fire-tested poetry, and that fire can be life as much as logic.

You have always been in my heart, even when I sinned. :pray: — Merkwurdichliebe

Thank you, son of Adam. I only invented sin to urge my mini-me creations to think as I do (to feel less lonely up here.) I can't remember why I created this world, but I don't regret it.

Naturalism is very much focussed on finding natural explanations for causal relationships - causes, effects, and causal patterns or laws. So, any form of transcendentalism, be that Christian, Platonist, or another variety, will always insist that such explanations must be limited or incomplete, by their very nature. — Wayfarer

I hear you, but I'm not sure that you are addressing my particular concern. Can the world as whole (which would include any god or principle) be explained? How do we avoid either infinite regress or brute fact at the apex ?

I'm not anti-religious. It is true that I understand religion in terms of myth and metaphor, but I also understand myth and metaphor to be central to human cognition and feeling. I did believe in God in the traditional way in my youth, and I vague remember the world and the secretes of my mind being watched by their creator. Now I'm grimmer and freer. I can forgive mortality largely by identifying with those who will replace me and those that I replaced. The same secrets (myths, metaphors, concepts, images, music) are revealed again and again. We are born in confusion and (if we're lucky) learn to stand free and tall. For a little while. And this 'for a little while' chases us away from our pettiness and vanity.

I understand that some will not be satisfied with this, because it means that the whole drama happens 'within' humanity --that our deities are forged in our own imaginations to fulfill our hearts' desires. Maybe our experiences as individuals are just that different.

Hi, I've always wanted to talk to g0d. — Merkwurdichliebe

Word on the street was that my return was still expected by a few here and there.

The fact that philosophy is very difficult, in a very peculiar way, might give the impression that it yields some very sufficient and directly practical results. — Merkwurdichliebe

Right. And in a way it has, through its 'child' science anyway. And with science there was a shift from anthropomorphic explanation toward quantitative description ---from 'why' an object fell (it 'wants' the ground, etc.) to how it fell (its position as a function of time.)

criticisms by philosophers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard: that the "famous wise ones" were constructing these towering edifices, which however astoundingly breathtaking, had no application to life. — Merkwurdichliebe

From my point of view the towers were given false foundations. Their actual foundations were in the blood of the culture. Proofs of god are like 'mechanical' supports of a metaphorical framing that don't bear the weight of the structure. Kierkegaard liked to pick on Hegel, and some of Hegel is indeed exhausting. Yet the spirit of Hegel's system is pretty clear (a grandiose humanism and/or 'religion' of progress). Perhaps he offered a certain kind of personality the illusion of a proof that their gut-level attitudes. So while I relate to what you say, I think the central metaphors are applied (in the great wise ones who still had a vision of the world) and it's just that some of their justifications for their attitudes/metaphors were bogus.

There is a great contrast between systems philosophy, and philosophy of life. The former depends much more on scientific understanding, a coupling of hard evidence with hard logic. Ehile the latter is quasi-religious, refocusing all importance directly upon the individual's existence. — Merkwurdichliebe

That makes sense to me. I guess I've mostly looked into the classic 'vision of existence' philosophers. Where do you put Popper in this scheme?

I'm not sure what you have in mind, but my initial prejudice is that your 'systems philosophy' sounds more like science than philosophy. I can imagine, however, that making sense of QM would be a good example of what I'm understanding by 'systems philosophy.'

The demand to know what you are doing is not. — Wayfarer

Just for context, I'm pro-philosophy and anti-scientism.

My point is particular. I've tried to sketch why I think it is impossible on principle to explain the world as a whole. This is not at all to say that particular metaphors or myths aren't extremely valuable. It matters very much how we frame the world or existence.

'Life is about creating yourself' (Bob Dylan). That's one nice frame. Existence is a character building exercise. That's another. Existence is a roller coster ride. As I see it, these are explanations of the world or existence but cognitive approaches. Why is life about creating yourself? Or transcending your small self? Or collecting gold coins? Or becoming famous?

This is a great description of philosophy. To me it sounds like a lot of fun. I don't get why some people get so hostile and uptight about it, speaking extemporaneously of course. — Merkwurdichliebe

Hi. Yes it is fun. For me it was at first the result of some anguished, serious thinking about God and the justice (or injustice) of human existence. But eventually it became a beautiful kind of thinking that went for the depths.

In the other thread I was dismissive of a certain kind of philosophy, but I do that 'in the name of' moving on to this kind of issue. I think we already know how to speak and listen. The 'problem' is usually one of 'will' or character. We fail to understand X because we are emotionally closed off and/or haven't had a similar experience and not because we lack a theory of language.

I guess others might hate on philosophy because it's just difficult or insufficiently directly practical?

I mean firstly I'm not too sure we even can "grasp the whole". Certainly not if you mean rationally or discursively grasp it, and what other kind of grasping is there? — Janus

I understand your hesitation. All I meant was something mundane. I simply mean considering all of reality as one thing. Sometimes people use 'the world' this way. Of course we can never know everything about the world, but we can think of it 'as' a world.

From this point of view explanations are IMV relationships between intraworldly entities. The world itself is just there. Any god or principle that would explain the world is part of that same world as I intend it.

Grasping this (at least for me) only sharpens the world as a sort of closed system brute fact. But it's wildly open 'on the inside.' I realize this may just be my idiosyncratic perspective. I have found things in certain philosophers that were along these lines, but it's hard to be sure on such a slippery issue.

I think we become convinced that the question cannot be answered once we grasp the difference between the "space of reasons" and the "space of causes" to invoke Wilfrid Sellars. Explanations in terms of reasons, which are ultimately explications (not explanations, mind!) of motivations or volitions, and hence functions of feeling, are appropriate in one domain, and explanations in terms of causes are appropriate in the other. — Janus

OK, that's helpful. I'd say that theme is a big part of my view but (just to clarify) maybe not the center. For me the question was revealed as I wrestled with religious issues long, long ago and discovered or came to believe that theology was a kind of mechanics.

God has a face. God speaks. God gives reasons. For this reason people are often satisfied with the idea of a human-like creator. But I wanted to know then (when I still believed enough to care) why God made the world as he did (and condemned most people to eternal torment.) I wanted to understand the nature of God. If this was obscure to me, then I was left with brute fact. If I could understand the nature of god, then I'd 'be' god, except trapped in this little dog without the omnipotence. But even God can't explain why there is a world, if he is imagined to be human-like. (I'm not a believer. This is just how the situation was first framed for me back then.)

Attaching a face to a first principle puts questioning to sleep. Our familiarity with human reason-giving obscures that the personality of the first principle is now the brute fact. It wins us over in an animal way. But the question isn't answered. Nor is it revealed as a pseudo-question, since it is paired with a pseudo-answer. It's when a person imagines the structure of any possible answer ...and sees that that structure is incapable of scratching the itch...that the question is finally revealed as a lyrical cry.

Thanks for clarifying
.

If we claim that we are made of physical entities, then we ought to explain how these give rise to experiences, and if we can't then there is something missing in the idea that we are made of physical entities, as it isn't an idea that fits the very fact that we experience. — leo

Just to clarify my position, I'm a skeptic when it comes to the metaphysical interpretation of 'physical entities.' I just posted some quotes from On Certainty in another thread that pretty much capture and indeed influenced my attitude.

It is just a how, how is it that physical entities that make up our body can give rise to experiences. It is not a why in the sense why is there something rather than nothing. — leo

Are the issues not related though? How does gravity work? If you name some particles, then how do they work? In some cases we have intuitive pictures. I see that. In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff suggests our embodiment as the source of the literal as opposed to the metaphorical. If 'control is up,' then what is up? It has a bodily meaning for us. We move our heads in a certain direction.

As far as how someone could explain how experience/mind is related to the physical, would it not be some vaguely intuitive analogy and a function relationship? Between words and readings on measuring devices? My current thinking on the matter largely evolved from trying to think what kind of an answer could possibly satisfy me. Beyond a kind of bodily intuitive understanding, we seem to have analogy and quantitative functional relationships.

A separate issue is whether an everyday distinction between mind and matter can ever be stretched into some stable, detailed theory.

Exactly, and what kind of "depth" should we expect over and above our usual physical explanations? Do we have any actual intellectual justification for asking for such "explanations"? — Janus

I'm glad that you also see the issue. I must say, though, that for me it felt natural to come upon this question. It's like climbing the causal nexus for more general principles to (one hopes) some kind of first principle that truly satisfies and then realizing that there 'cannot' be such a first principle.

So the 'why' is a 'cry,' a kind of birdsong. Is it our glory to unveil this pseudo-question? In some ways it allows us to see the whole as a whole from the inside, and yet we have to grasp the whole as a whole in order to see the futility of the 'question.'

Personally I prefer to entertain what is deeper in the way of feeling without making incoherent demands for rational explanations of it (given that documented attempts to do that never seem to stand up to scrutiny). — Janus

I can relate to this. The rose is without reason. Yet we depend on careful reasoning to maintain our garden. Depth of feeling is 'why' we bother, what we strive toward.

Anyway, I think we agree that the demand for a certain kind of explanation is incoherent. I do think it's a high altitude thought that only comes perhaps from trying to articulate it as a genuine question.

What is a physical object? We know how to use the phrase when we aren't doing philosophy. But I'm 'spicious of its potential for untangling the mind-matter knot.

I found the quotes below illuminating.

Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch ... Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
...
But can’t it be imagined that there should be no physical objects? I don’t know. And yet “there are physical objects” is nonsense. Is it supposed to be an empirical proposition?—And is this an empirical proposition: “There seem to be physical objects”?
...
“A is a physical object” is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn’t yet understand either what “A” means, or what “physical object” means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and “physical object” is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity, …) And that is why no such proposition as: “There are physical objects” can be formulated. Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn. — On Certainty

Is it not similar with 'mind-independent reality'? Let's make it mundane. I think my wet shoes were downstairs for the last few hours, even though I haven't thought of them until now. I guess I can try to imagine how they exist in the absence of life as I've known it (human and animal.) But I'd be slow to build a system on such questionable imaginings.

Yes! — Banno

So you agree? That's refreshing. It seems so simple, and yet the alternative is so tempting. Or it was once long ago. And still is for others. Though perhaps I'm just trying to play the same game in the next Mario world.

I remember those are pearls that were his eyes that the present king of France is bald.