My view is that we justify our beliefs in a variety of ways, including sensory experiences, which directly relates to knowledge by acquaintance. For example, you might ask me after I say the orange juice is sweet, "How do you know the orange juice is sweet?" my justification is, "I tasted it." I think it's clear that we use sensory experience as a justification for many of our beliefs. — Sam26

Right, we can use knowledge by acquaintance to justify our beliefs, but that which we know by acquaintance is not of itself a belief - that in turn needs to be justified. That one sees a pink tree - be it illusory or not - is not a belief at the moment experienced. Hence:

but justifying the belief that one is in pain seems way out of place. Why? — Sam26

Awareness of being in pain is not of itself a belief. Its a datum, for lack of better words.

Haven't read the entire thread, so excuse me if I've overlooked where the case was made for the contrary, if it was.

I think Wittgenstein's point is that having a pain (or other sensation) is not something that one can come to know or to learn of, and so it does not constitute knowledge. In order for it to be (learned) knowledge, one would need to be able to guess or speculate whether one was in pain and then be able to confirm or disconfirm it. If it makes no sense to doubt whether you are having pain (when you are having pain), then it makes no sense to be certain of it, either. — Luke

Agreed, and this is the whole point of this thread. — Sam26

There is such a thing as knowledge by acquaintance: knowledge of what one is familiar with strictly via direct experience. Others can doubt your knowledge by acquaintance (you could be fibbing). You can, with some extensive effort, come to doubt that your knowledge by acquaintance is not illusory (is it a hallucination?). But one can never doubt that one is acquainted with that which one is acquainted with (that I see a pink tree might be a trick of the mind but the pink tree momentarily seen is seen by me all the same, and I know what it looks like: pink, for starters; in this example, one knows of the pink tree strictly by acquaintance).

Just as it makes sense to say when someone else doubts, “I know what I saw”, so too can it make sense in some such cases to affirm, “I know I’m in pain”. For instance, “I get you want to move the sofa, but are you forgetting that your sciatic nerves went out and that you’ve been in a lot of pain,” retorted with, “I know I’m in pain, but I’m going to move the sofa anyway.”

And this knowledge of “being in pain” isn’t JTB or some variant but, instead, one’s direct awareness of oneself being in pain; hence, a variant of knowledge by acquaintance.

Fair enough. :wink:

I’m pretty sure that most Buddhists don’t claim to be their bodies. — praxis

Such an astute observation … like point out that water is not dry. And what does this have to do with what I've written?

But for the record, nor have I yet encountered any Buddhist who claims that they are inexistent. If you’ve come across any such in your readings, please point them out to me.

The butterfly tattoe on my left arm is a pretty unchanging essence. — Thunderballs

Unless the tattoo is brand new, it has faded a bit over time, hasn't it? Hence, it has changed. You may be referring to the tattoos overall form, but given sufficient time that too will change.

and its doctrine of no-self. — praxis

A convoluted topic. There is good reason to affirm that anatta does not deny the self, at the very least in early Buddhism. But, maybe more importantly, anatta signifies an absence of unchanging essence in any phenomena … much including bodies. Hence, to the same degree one were to interpret anatta to signify absence of selves, one would likewise need to affirm an absence of bodies, this so as to be consistent. Thereby implying the Eastern notion of emptiness. As in "form is emptiness".

To affirm “you are your body” can thereby be as contrary to anatta as something like “you are your soul”. As to bodies not having an unchanging essence, neither do selves (or even souls) require an existentially unchanging essence in order to be.

I get you but don't know what a BIV-scenario is. Sounds kinda naughty... — Thunderballs

:lol: Ay, that it is.

If I'm to take you seriously, BIV is short for "brain in a vat" hypothesis. Hence the naughtiness factor.

Love is as real as the dick in my pants. — Thunderballs

I think one can stipulate that love is even more real than genitalia. Haven’t fully thought this through yet, but, as an example, in a BIV scenario the reality of one’s dick would be illusory whereas the reality of one’s love would remain unscathed. Would take some unpacking but an, “I think love, therefore I am” kind of thing. (From some degree of self-love that keeps us kicking, to love of truth or of reality that gets us to question things in the first place, etc., if not love for another.) Cheeky, but I think it might work.

Getting racy around these parts. :blush:

Real love of the amorous kind. To trade notes, I liken it to a dance driven by a common ethos between two selves which make a well enough fit in both their techne and pathos. And, barring grave mishaps that can ruin the dance along the way, these two find increased convergence into one via the inter-path/course they partake in. All this conditional on both being there for each other when it counts. Or something along these lines.

Still curious to hear @Benj96's take on what real love would consist of.

Evolution has no need for love. Well no need for love between partners at least, maybe maternal and paternal love towards offspring yes, but as for partners all that is called for is sexual attraction/ lust. — Benj96

When it comes to the heuristics of biological evolution there are in large two strategies that apply to most species consisting of sexes. When viewed from the vantage of males, colloquially expressed, one heuristic is to fuck anything that moves without giving a shit about the offspring. Some, even most, will die and some will live, but the greater the quantity of offspring the greater the number of offspring that survive and the greater one’s acquired biological fitness. The other is to invest in the welfare of one’s offspring so as to maximize the survival of all, thereby increasing one’s biological fitness. Here, one as male cares about what female one mates with, this so as to produce optimal offspring. And this caring about the other which one also finds attractive correlates with what we often identify as the emotion of romantic love.

Lust/sexual attraction applies to both types of males, just differently.

Needless to add, this is an (over?)simplification. And it does ignore what type of male females choose and the whys to these choices in terms of female biological fitness. But it generally holds for humans. So called players almost always fall into the characteristics of the first heuristic; whereas those who lose an important part of themselves with the loss of their partner tend to fall into the characteristics of the second. Most humans, of course, are a mix between these two biological extremes.

As was expressed by @Hermeticus, many wild animals have evolved toward the second heuristic; this, naturally, hence without there being “social constraints or contracts” in need of upholding. Wild canids all tend toward monogamy, often life long, in the form of Alpha Mates of equal value around which extended families or packs pivot. Geese are another notable, commonly known example. At any rate, there is a place in biological evolution for romantic love: again simplistically expressed, it on average results in quality of offspring - rather than quantity with lesser quality.

That aside, here taking my cue from the title, what does the phrase “real love” signify to you?

I get what you're saying, but unless one assumes that all life is endowed with language, then language appeared at some point in time after life appeared. — javra

I think that such a starting point should only be seen provisionally, and as an artificial imposition on what is otherwise a dynamic flux. — baker

First off, I am sympathetic to your views. In entering into the realms of primacy, which is a metaphysical issue, I do hold a non-materialist slant on things. So this colors my world view. And the topic is not something worthy of this thread's theme. But to address the issue of language having had a beginning:

Language. Are we by this term intending “words and their grammatical use” or “communication of meaning”? Certainly all animals use “body language” to communicate meaning, often enough, this between species. A solitary cat will raise its hairs and spit; a solitary rattlesnake with rattle its tail; etc. All this done to communicate its private intentions of action that are not yet action - and thereby intimidate - and, often enough, this again to animals of other species which, more often than not, understand (or "get") what is being communicated. Arguably, to communicate is to make common that which is otherwise not. It can be intended and thereby voluntary or involuntary (such as how sweat can unintentionally communicate one’s fear).

Did Neanderthals speak with words. TMK, we don’t know. Nevertheless they exhibit being endowed with a great deal of complex meaning in their placing of flowers into the graves of their dead - from the meaning of flowers, to that of graves, to that of a potential spirituality. Though we don’t know whether they had words, we can only sanely infer that they communicated complex enough meaning to each other.

Once we get into interpreting language as “communication of meaning” and further into plain “communication” we can further abstract language to be the imparting of information from one form to another via any type of interaction. And then we can get into propositions such as, “the hammer communicates its force to the stone which it hits”. And so would crystals, prions, bacteria, and so forth.

Now, again, I’m sympathetic to the gradualism of evolution when looked at from afar. But when evolution is looked at up close, it holds mutations that result in punctuated evolution, if not punctuated equilibrium then punctuated gradualism. Unless the rate of successful mutations is constant, punctuated evolution necessarily unfolds. Just as there logically was a mitochondrial Eve from which Homo Sapiens as we know it resulted, so too I logically find the necessary occurrence of a mutation-driven punctuation in the evolution of communication that gave birth to the grammatically correct languages which we now know of.

So, due to this line of reasoning, I do maintain that there was a start to language in the sense of "words and their grammatical use" - a beginning that is ontic rather an artificial imposition on what otherwise is.

As to agency, I’m of the view that it is intrinsic to life, all life, differing only in magnitudes and the quality that ensues from such different degrees. In the history of biological evolution, mutations (and the novel genetic instincts that mutations can bring about, which can affect not just body but cognition) do not subvert agency in my view, but merely facilitate its degrees of presence. Hence, in simplistic manner and imo: a mutation brought about the cognitive degree of agency (this alongside the needed biological workings of the body that may have already been sufficiently present) required to create, aka invent, words. But as I first commented, this issue of agency working in tandem with biology is a very different topic than that of the thread. And I have little to no interest in debating it for the time being. Merely wanted to give my perspective.

Besides, rare as they might be, novums - new features - perpetually occur, thereby the evolution of any living language, and how are novums not invented? - javra

But most things that seem new are actually made of old, already existing things. — baker

Here I find an equivocation between that addressed and its constituents. Genotypically, a mutation is "actually made of old, already existing things" but the phenotype the mutation brings about is utterly novel. So too do I find with the novums of language. For example, the letters of novel words will be old stuff, but the new words and what they gradually come to convey to a populous will be utterly novel. As one concrete example of this, there is "meme" (coined in 1976, and today a common aspect of the English language). A good example of a recently invented word.

Additionally, I notice you say "most". What do you make of the exceptions?

You know, there is something about this kind of thinking that I find compelling, though not quite as you put it. You and I are, after all, the world, and the logos as any of its expressions is what the world is doing through us, so the ascription of the logos to the world, as what the world is and does, is not an improper anthropomorphism of sorts, as many would claim. I grant, it is hard to make this intuitive connection, because we are all so used to thinking of the world as, as you say, boundaried, we forget that there is some foundational genesis of all that is (See Eugene Fink's Sixth Meditation, e.g.; though here, it is a differently conceived). "Cosmic reasoning" may be pushing it, for I don't think the world of other things, trees, tables and desktops, is apart from language, rationally constructed, and that there is an "ordering" or "choosing" going on in the underpinnings of the world. WE are, however, what the world does and is and cannot be separated, so there certainly is a "becoming" in the world through us, these agencies of rationality and meaning; the world is becoming (but here we run into postmodern concerns I will not bring in) — Constance

I think I may be able to boil this down to a single question: Are what we linguistically call “the basic laws of thought”, thinking here primarily of the law of identity and of noncontradiction, existentially fixed and, hence, universally applicable? Or, are they simply the byproduct of biologically enactive cognition, such that they do not govern reality at large but merely serve as an evolved instrument relative to (some?) life via which we interpret those aspects of reality we can filter through these principles of cognition?

If existentially fixed, then, imo, cosmic reasoning.

Dogs experience the world, and in this there is an "innocence" that we should envy, but our intelligence is something we (and hence the world) are doing that is qualitatively unique, something new that our evolving condition manifests. What Sparky cannot do is think explicitly, and cannot separate language from immediate affairs, can't wander off into a corner and wonder. Wonder takes thought to new boundaries as it brings in questions of existence and experience that have no answers, but around such questions there develops a culture inquiry. — Constance

Yes, I agree.

Thank you for addressing the example I gave. Since you claim it to be plausible, you didn’t give me much to argue against, for I too find it quite plausible.

BTW, do you by “homunculus” simply intend a euphemism for “consciousness”? The little person within the total person that itself has a littler person within, and so on ad infinitum, is not something I can fathom anyone believing in.

At the moment, don’t have much interest in arguing one way or another about the reality of consciousnesses. But I thought I’d ask, since I am curious.

:smile:

Should someone let the lofty one know? I think it even more interesting were s/he to discover it for themselves.

Interesting! :wink: :razz:

Religion will do that to you. — Noble Dust

Yea, true, but only when it consists of following infallible folk. At any rate, doubt that Wittgenstein took himself to be such, though I can't say as much about some of his adorers.

Maybe if I can find a fuck to give, I'll reply to you. — Banno

Cute. Especially seeing how you put in the effort to reply. :lol:

No worries, but to evade the circularity that could manifest in arguments, I did give two examples regarding the meaning of color that could be addressed by anyone if they were inclined to engage in an honest discussion regarding what I posted. A wink to @Banno.

In case it's pertinent, I browsed through the thread and read it. Your discussion with Cheshire centers on what color the term of a color references: the meaning of a term. Whereas what I'm addressing is what colors themselves symbolize and thereby mean: the meaning of a color.

OK, not fully, just the latter parts regarding French grey. Should I have? But I'm still interested to hear about how you reply to the two examples I gave regarding color's meaning.

Metavalue and metaethics - the Good - refers to the possibility of an ideal relational structure (ie. logic) to this interweaving of energy and quality (in relation to an embodied rationality). — Possibility

How so?

If logic is not front and centre, then it’s the system you embody in order to describe what is. — Possibility

This I duly agree with.

Nuh.

Have a read of Philosophical Investigations. Especially the first forty or so paragraphs. — Banno

No, and I'm so far not inclined to. Have you read the two examples of color's meaning which I just posted?

Well ... a per my initial post to you, in equating meaning to what an agent intends by a symbol, this being (intra-)subjective, I then also find that communication is inter-subjective, consisting of an accord between different subjects in what they individually intend by symbols.

In short, a language does not strictly exist in my head, no. Yet meaning - or, what is intended via symbols - does.

As one example, the pain or pleasure I might at one moment associate with a given color due to my own idiosyncratic experiences - with this color momentarily leading my thoughts to a certain outcome of affect and, in so governing my thoughts' intentionality, granting this color a momentary meaning to me - will be a fully private occurrence. That the color orange momentarily means putrid to me on grounds that it vividly reminds me of an orange I one ate that was spoiled will be a meaning of the color orange that is fully private to me.

Its just that when it comes to language, there is a conformity between a) what an individual intends via a symbol and b) the commonly agreed upon understanding of what is to be intended via a symbol which pertains to the cohort (a) is a part of. This general conformity - whose limits can on occasion be tested - is necessary for communication.

So for example, that the color red means passion or love when on a rose or a heart will be an intersubjective meaning relative to those who understand red to so symbolize in the given contexts - a meaning that resides in the head of each individual and which is commonly agreed upon.

If someone else has a different "intended meaning of tree", does that prevent communication? Usually not. Meanign is not a thing in your head. — Banno

Usually, but not necessarily. Suppose someone intends the generalized idea of cat by the use of "tree". We'd likely call them other than perfectly sane, but that's beside the point of what constitutes meaning.

At any rate, is intention not something in your head?

No, that's not at all what "meaning is use" is. Quiet the contrary, the meaning is found in the place of the words used in the language game being played. Meaning is essentially social.

Contrast "The meaning of the word is whatever I say it is" with "The meaning of the word is the part it plays in the language game being played". — Banno

Can there be use devoid of intention?

I find that to mean X is to intend X. The meaning of "tree" I cognize at any given time is what I intend via the use of the symbol - hypothetically ranging from aspects of divinity like the tree of knowledge of or life to fully profane generalized ideas like the biological workings of a lifeform (no, I'm not Abrahamic). What another might mean - intend - by "tree" is relative to what they as other individual agency intends. There then is intersubjective, or shared, intention. The atheist and the spiritualist will both minimally intend by the symbol "tree" the generalized idea of something endowed with roots, a trunk, and branches. But this shared, hence social, intention is yet constituted of individuals' intentions ... a plurality of intentions that find accord.

Unless you subscribe to a kind of biblical "and then God gave man language", you're always looking at matters of language as someone who is birthed into and thereby embedded within, at the very least, one language.

I assume that just like there is unbroken evolutionary continuity that spans through time to our present state, from our ancestors who lived in the sea to ape like creatures to H. sapiens, so there is unbroken evolutionary continuity of language, where at each t + 1 we use what was already there at t and make other things out of it (but which cannot rightfully be called "new"). It's not recycling, but it's also not invention.

I don't see how the "which came first" question can be asked meaningfully. — baker

I get what you're saying, but unless one assumes that all life is endowed with language, then language appeared at some point in time after life appeared. (One could even extend this form of reasoning prior to life: if bacteria have language, do self-replicating protein molecules like prions have language, how about crystals, rocks, atoms, and so on.) In this line of reasoning, language appeared out of non-language at some point in time.

Besides, rare as they might be, novums - new features - perpetually occur, thereby the evolution of any living language, and how are novums not invented?

You're looking at things from the perspective of one who is birthed into and thereby embedded within, at the very least, one language, and from this vantage I of course agree with you. I looked at the "which came first" question a bit more literally in the ontological sense. And I understand if we disagree on that.

(But it seems that the actual question that such inquiries are trying to answer is something like, What came first: use or definition?) — baker

Going by the Humpty Dumpty quote ( :up: , btw), shouldn't this be: What came first: use of pre-established symbols or the intentional creation of symbols we use?

Hence, the "which is to be master" part: words that create the limits of concepts with which we think or the agency to express concepts we choose to think via words.

Something I learned many moons ago in my psychology of language class. From Wikipedia:

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language. — T Clark

If we change "perceptions" to "experiences", and if we understand experiences to be strongly entwined with all manner of conceptualizations which over time become ingrained into the way we experience, then I think this hypothesis of linguistic relativity makes a good deal of sense.

While there are basic concepts that can safely be assumed common to all beings and hence languages - such as the roundabout concept of other(ness), or the dichotomy between thing(ness)/noun and activity/verb - think, for example, of the vast chasm between Western and Eastern concepts which in English go by the term of "emptiness". Such as in statements like "heightening your own realization of emptiness". There's a great divide in conceptual understanding here, and a plethora of entwined connotations that result in generalized meaning that get lost in translation. And, were one to be in no way exposed to Eastern thoughts, one as typical Westerner would almost certainly hold no experience whatsoever - regardless of how marginal - of what a philosophically educated Easterner's experience is in relation to reality at large.

Then there are languages and cultures we are fully unacquainted with, many an individual tribal culture for instance. A typical Westerner cannot experience reality in the animistic ways that many an individual from such tribal cultures do - in large part due to the differences in languages used to engage in internal thoughts regarding reality.

I love German. I think being able to speak it a little opens me up to concepts and ways of thinking. On the other hand, I think that's the weak version of the Whorf hypothesis, i.e. some ideas are easier to express and come more naturally in one language vs. another, but it's possible to translate. Or, you can just steal the word. — T Clark

Yes, but this already presupposes that some individual which so translates or steals words holds multilingual understanding, hence knowledge of two or more languages. Were the other culture's language to not be known by a given cohort, this cohort would not have recourse to the concepts uniquely captured by the given other language.

:grin:



I agree with your thoughts on Sparky (and kin).

As to logos and reason, to add some further comments, we moderners have lost the likely animist notion of reason that used to be pervasive with the ancient notion of logos. We nowadays abstract reason as something that (all too often, only elite) sentient beings do in their intents for figure out what is. Whereas, to my best understanding, logos used to address reason as that which in any way determines, or else sets the boundaries or limits of, that which is; e.g., all four of Aristotle’s causes were of themselves reasons for, and, hence, would have been elements of the cosmic reasoning for what is (to the Stoics if none other). What we think of as causation, then, used to be an integral aspect of the logos, i.e. of the cosmic reasoning.

Once so conceptualized, its an easy inference to the conclusion that speaking – the determining of what is, can be, etc., via symbols wherein the being(s) in question produces, or causes, the determining symbols – is itself one aspect of the logos which animates reality. But then so too could be construed a dog’s bark, for instance; the dog’s production of a sound which can symbolize, and serve to determine in others, the dog’s emotive state of mind and associated intentions. At any rate, from this vantage of cosmic reasoning, it can be important to remember that lego, from which logos is derived, can mean “I put in order” and “I choose” in addition to “I say”. Logos then, can be interpreted as the cosmic ordering which chooses what is … and which expresses itself (hence “speaks”) via this ordering.

We moderners are inclined to view reality as mechanistic in manners fully devoid of agency, even to the extent when pressed that our own sense of agency is but illusion. Ancient logos pertains to a worldview wherein agency pervades the cosmos.

However, all that having been said,

But it is not reason that is front and center; it is value. Metavalue and metaethics. That is, the Good. — Constance

Couldn’t agree with this more – be it from a modern or ancient pov regarding reason, or anything in between. But then, some further thoughts:

If there cannot be any reasoning that is not dependent upon metavalue, upon the Good, then can one find any alternative conclusion to that of the Good as metavalue in some way determining all reasoning? (for clarity, I take it we both understand the Good to not be a personhood)

However, it may not be possible to class my examples of holding up a number of fingers, and an object and asking what colour it is, as automatic, or habitual. — Metaphysician Undercover

Think of the movie "Rain Man", a movie based on real cases of autistic savants. The guy could instantly visually discern complex numbers. Though I'm no savant, when you hold up two fingers, I don't need to count them analytically to discern they are two rather than one or three. I discern, hence know, this instantly. Same with discerning yellow from red. It's automatic. Placing what one discerns into language on occasion does require conscious deliberation that may not take very long at all. But the discernment can very well occur innately as that which one experiences in manners devoid of conscious thoughts regarding what is.

Obviously we need more distinctions then simply conscious judgements and non-conscious discernments, because we have to account for all sorts of different habits, both innate and learned. — Metaphysician Undercover

We conceive of things differently. What I directly observe as a first person perspective I consciously discern instantaneously (relative to the conscious experience) on most occasions. It's only when there are uncertainties of what it is I am observing that I then analyze alternatives so as to arrive at a conclusion - or else change my focus. These uncertainties are most often emotive, stemming from the subconscious. But my apprehension of these uncertainties as a first person perspective is a conscious experience.

I don't assume any division between consciousness and sub/unconsciousness as though they were two separate entities. Rather consciousness to me is again a unified plurality of subconscious agencies that interacts with, among other things, subconscious agencies it is not momentarily unified with. One's conscience and one's emotions that seek to influence one's behaviors (e.g. pangs of anger, or envy, or romantic attraction, etc., which one as a consciousness is antagonistic to) are two examples of such subconscious agencies of one's total psyche. Lots to explain here, but to keep things relatively simple, one's conscious experiences are perpetually constructed from, so to speak, one's subconscious activities of mind. I can infer that my subconscious mind might make deliberations whose concluding verdicts are then kicked up to the level of consciousness, but at the level of consciousness what I experience most of the time are instantaneous (conscious, rather than non-conscious) discernments. These conscious discernments are of course greatly influenced by past experiences, from memories that can be consciously recalled to habits of behavior to associations regarding pleasure and pain in relation to certain stimuli, and so forth. But there are mostly held subconsciously. Nevertheless, consciously they manifest automatically as part of the very process of consciously experiencing.

I think you would agree that there is a big difference between the response to a flash card, and the response to the tap on your knee when the doctor tests your reflexes. And as well, a big difference again between the reflex of your knee, and the behaviour of the ameba.

I believe that the difference lies in the mode of anticipation. I think that the different systems of living beings have built into them different anticipatory mechanisms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here's what I find wondrous about ameba: they need to successfully anticipate the behaviors of their prey - and this differently from how they successfully anticipate the behaviors of their predators - if they are to live. So I can't place the total organism of an ameba as having less complex anticipatory mechanisms that the knee jerk you refer to.

That said, I continue to maintain the mainstream view that the physical future can only occur after the physical past. — javra

I think you ought to consider that there is no such thing as "the physical future". — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't assume the block cosmos of eternalism. I so far give my ontological beliefs the label of presentism, for lack of a better term. But the details are complex (e.g., laconically, and for all intended purposes, the past is yet static due to causal reasons that are conjoined into the realities of the present - and it is remembered as having been physical, hence "the physical past"), and, besides, I did say I'd drop the subject of time.

That said, although we'd both agree that there currently is no physical future, would we nevertheless agree that there will be a future physical present as a consequence of what occurs in the present? If so, as shorthand, I termed this future physical present the physical future.

Restating my affirmation to be more in line with my own presentist beliefs: What will physically be can only occur after what once physically was.

Or perhaps better: Language as we know it in our complex symbolic dealings in logic and math, is not qualitatively distinct from what Sparky does when retrieving toys and such. — Constance

Very much in agreement here. I like to think of it as there being no metaphysical division between human cognition and that of lesser beings ... only a gradation of magnitude. Principles of thought such as that of identity and of noncontradiction may not be cognized by lesser animals (nor children) but all life makes use of them to the extent that life experiences and then both acts and reacts relative to that experienced. Its hard to properly justify this, though it seems self-evident to me. And this degree of cognition, of course, becomes exponentially greater in adult humans in large part due to our capacity to manipulate symbols to a vastly greater extent, with human language as the prime example, so as to further abstract from more basic concepts. At any rate, enjoyed reading your views.

As an aside, having skimmed through some of this thread, as with @Alkis Piskas, I very much equate "the Word" not with human language but with Heraclitus's, and later the Stoic's, notion of logos. Heraclitus's can be confusing, but the Stoics more directly equated the logos to the Anima Mundi, the operative or animating principle of the world. Here, to keep to the previous examples, Sparky is as much of the logos as is his human caregiver ... as is anything that is part of the cosmos. I know, its a more mystical-ish reading of Genesis 1, but "In the beginning was the logos (the Anima Mundi and all it entails)" makes sense to me, whereas "in the beginning was the one linguistic term produced by some omni-this-and-that person" ... not so much. While I get we're not strung up on mythologies:

No language, no logos, for language is the bearer of logos, — Constance

I find that: no logos (e.g., no Stoic anima mundi, including its metaphysical laws of thought), no human language, for human language is dependent on such things as laws of thought which are themselves intrinsic to the logos / the anima mundi.

These being my own passing musings.

I'm beginning to see that you and I have completely different ideas as to what constitutes a "conscious judgement". — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for the reply. Yes, what you term "conscious judgement" I would term "conscious discernment". To me a discernment can be automatic from the pov of consciousness whereas a judgment is an act of judging, which in turn is the process of forming an opinion, which takes time to come to a conclusion. But there is no fixed set of rules for use of linguistic expressions in cases such as this. Yes, I think more intelligent lesser animals can make conscious judgments as I've just described the term, and, more so, that all animals can make discernments. A favorite example of mine: ameba (which are far simpler than animals) can discern predators from prey - but in my lexicon I wouldn't say that ameba can make judgments about what is predator and what is prey.

So if time did have a start, then the perspective which places the future as before the past is the true perspective because there was necessarily a future before there was any past. — Metaphysician Undercover

But was there a future before there was any present? Personally, I find that whether time had a start is unknowable in principle. Still, I think I can understand what you're expressing. If so, I find that there is in this statement an equivocation between that which is physical and that which is, for lack of better words, metaphysical. For instance, an ultimate final cause can only be metaphysical, and, when hypothesizing the reality of such, here we can simplistically express that such predates all that physically is, including all physical past. That said, I continue to maintain the mainstream view that the physical future can only occur after the physical past.

Those examples, time slowing down, and time speeding up, are really more evidence that we do not experience time. If we do not pay attention to the clock we quickly lose track of how much time has passed. Then when we try to make the judgement as to how much time has passed, simply by referring to what we remember as having happened, we are very wrong. Gotta go---where has all the time gone? — Metaphysician Undercover

I can remember being bored out of my wits while in after-school detention without being allowed to look at any clock, and that one hour going by very, very slowly for me. But I'll drop the subject.

Safe to say, Sparky has no conceptual knowledge. — Constance

Do you mean by this “knowledge by acquaintance of abstract ideas” or “propositional knowledge”. I of course agree they don’t have the latter. But, in the example I linked to, to categorize items by function and by shape demonstrates an acquaintance with abstract ideas, i.e. the awareness of concepts. Outside and inside are themselves abstract ideas addressing a relation between an enclosed space affixed to a relatively opened space and the directionality between these. But I think the example I linked to carries more weight. I by examples such as this conclude that language is not necessary for the apprehension of concepts.

A thought: no, your dog does not understand "no". Understanding what another says means there is agreement between both parties, and a dog's received meaning has no conceptual contextualization. Humans say this word, and the prohibition is wrapped a body of associated thought. Not so with Rover. Rovers "no" does not register symbolically because she has no language. She does have, you could argue, associated experiences that make the "no" familiar and is conditionally connected to punishment and reward, the same as us. But "to understand" the word, well, dogs don't have words. — Constance

How then do you explain a dog's ability to recognize the names of 1022 items, replete with a capacity to "categorize them according to function and shape"? Less extraordinary, border collies are notorious for knowing such things as their left from their right in herding sheep per the instructions of their caregiver. All this requires a good deal of conceptual contextualization regarding what sounds symbolize - with no language production on their part.

Heck, my own dog recognizes the difference between "go inside" and "go outside", be this the house, a specific room, or the car. A very abstract idea that is very relative to context. And this without any formal training; hence, no formal punishment and reward.

We might look the other way too, toward "time speeding up". You can see that these two roughly correspond to the way I divided a). For the active participant with a vested interest, each detail matters, so time slows down, but for the passive observer who just wants to see it all and do nothing about it, time speeds up. — Metaphysician Undercover

Forgot to address this part:

Do you then not find this slowing and speeding up of time to be experiential in nature? What is commonly termed "time perception". I'm asking so as to clarify where we stand on the capacity of experiencing time. Again, not philosophical time which can only be an abstraction obtained via inference but lived time as it's innately experienced.

And in all my experience of simple awareness, I never experience one thing as before or after another thing, this is always a conscious judgement I make upon reflection. It may be the case, that within my evolved intuitions, this capacity has not been developed, as important, yet within your evolved intuitions it has been developed, so you have intuitions which judge before and after subconsciously, while I have to judge this consciously. — Metaphysician Undercover

Awareness can greatly differ between individuals, yet I still take this quote with a grain of salt. Maybe we're using words differently? By "conscious judgment" I understand deliberation between alternatives that one then settles on in the form of a conclusion. This deliberation often takes significant time, such that by the time a deliberation is made regarding what is observed, that observed (and deliberated upon) has usually already transcended into either the far reaches of short term memory or else into the first instances of long term memory. But, by then, a plethora of new observations have already occurred. Where each such novel observation to require conscious deliberation to discern, one would never be able to react more or less instantly to a stimulus. Such as in turning one's head automatically milliseconds after hearing an unexpected loud boom ... one that distracts one from all the deliberations one engages in. Here, this loud boom would serve as one sonic event. And one would know that one turned one's head after one hears the boom - rather then before - in manners devoid of deliberation, I would assume.

In my experience of simple awareness I find a continuous stream of differences, changes, things which are distinct from each other, in many different ways, but I do not seem to have any awareness of how they differ from each other, they are simply different. So without conscious judgement I do not recognize one thing as bigger than another, as greener than another, louder than another, or before another. I do not even distinguish the end of one thing and the beginning of another thing because I do not even separate things. These are all judgements which require associating words with what is happening, and for me this requires conscious judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't help but think of how lesser animals discern comparative sizes, colors, loudness, and which events occur before others (with this discernment being requisite in, for example, both classical and operant conditioning) without associating words with what is happening. As adults we're accustomed to using language for many if not most activities, yet certainly we were able to discern the items listed when we were pre-linguistic children - otherwise we could not have learned what words signify. Again, although awareness can greatly differ between adult human individuals, I can't help but take what you here say with a grain of salt.

Still, I'll take your word for it if in your reply you maintain the same.

Referring to your divisions here, I do not see a clear separation between a) and c). Whenever I am actively partaking in an event, (a), there is always a view toward what I intend to bring about (c). — Metaphysician Undercover

While this muddles the picture, the same can be said regarding how almost all occurrences of both (a) and (c) are contingent upon what takes place within realms of (b). As one simplistic example, one cannot anticipate that the sun will rise again tomorrow without memory of the sun's activities in past days. The same applies to predicting what another person will do. And so forth. Anticipation is conjoined with (long term) memory.

That said, my ability to influence occurs within realms in which I am actively observing; plans of what to do in case of X, Y, and Z so as to satisfy intent i, are themselves formulated, changed, and maintained by the conscious mind within realms of (a). So, while I agree that all conscious activities that occur during (a) extend toward (c) in one way or another - this being the theme of intent-driven determinacy regarding what occurs within (a) (to not say "within the experienced present") - I yet find a clear distinction in that (c) hasn't yet happened physically whereas (a) is happening physically (and, to complete the list, (b) has already happened physically).

[Edit: for clarity, "hasn't yet happened, is happening, and has already happened physically" strictly relative to one's immediate awareness of occurrences - rather than relative to one's abstract ideas regarding the ontological nature of physicality and time. And I get that I'm repeating myself in expressing "immediate awareness/experience of," which I know you find contentious. Hence the feeling of going in circles ... ]

There would be more to say but, here again, there is use of a temporality which we so far disagree upon.

However, I can make a clear division within a), between actively participating, and observing. This is like the difference between playing a game, and watching a game being played. The two are very distinct, and I think a division is called for here. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, but then, granting this basic distinction between consciousness's receptivity and consciousness's activities, do you yet agree that they both occur within (a)? Consciousness's activities are pervasive throughout consciousness's receptivity: from turning our gaze to analyzing what we see, these are all events that intertwine what we passively observe with what we voluntarily do as consciousnesses at any given moment.

BTW, I qualify this with "consciousness's" because perception is, as you've previously commented on, creative from the point of view of the subconscious mind, and is therefore an activity in and of itself when looked at from the perspective of a total mind. Arguably, an activity that holds its own sub/unconscious intents - with these being involuntary from the pov of consciousness.

What I think we might do is remove any temporal references from our description of "the experienced present", which are loaded with third person prejudices and biases, which we have learned from others, rather than directly from personal experience, and start from a clean slate. Do you agree that when we are experiencing the present, we are experiencing things happening, like events? And do you feel as i do, an inclination to interfere with, change, and even create, things happening? If so, we might proceed to look at what motivates and supports such an inclination. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not sure how to proceed. An event is not eternal but has a beginning and an end, with the former preceding the latter; otherwise expressed, with the beginning occurring before the end and the end occurring after the beginning. Again, I find this intrinsic to awareness when addressing specific, concrete events - and not something ascertainable only after inferences are made. And to address befores and afters is to address temporality.

Then there are a) events (in the plural) I sense myself to be actively partaking in - even if only as an observer - some of which I feel myself capable of changing to some extent were I to so want, b) events that I can remember which have already transpired and which I sense myself to no longer have any capacity to affect, and c) events I can for example foresee happening or that I intend to bring about through some form of effort. But here, again, I find the experiential nature of what I can only term "time": the progression into (c) with (a) and with the perpetual passing away of an ever-changing (a) into realms of (b). Experiential because I don't need to put it into language or infer it in order to immediately experience it. Temporal because I can only linguistically describe (c) as the future (b) as the past and (a) as the (lived, experiential) present.

So I don't know how to remove all temporal references from what is directly experienced nor from activities one engages in.

BTW, have you never experienced time slowing down for you when, for one reason or another, you paid extra-close attention to details (e.g., a first kiss or a near car crash) - and, conversely, time speeding up for you when you were so engaged in some activity that you hardly payed any attention to the environmental details you'd normally take into account (e.g., an enthralling festivity or an intense preoccupation with a hobby)? This relative to the time clocks keep.

As to "true agency", in a slip of the tongue where the conscious mind intends X and the subconscious mind intends Y, which of the two if any hold the "true agency" of the whole? I say both hold (true) agency to the degree that agency occurs, each in this case being a discordant aspect, or part, of the whole psyche.

But, as with our discussion of our awareness of time, I find that you are quick to superimpose ontological principles obtained from inferences upon what we consciously experience. Nothing wrong with that, only that it diverges from the perspective which I'm doing my best to work with, which is as follows: That we (as conscious minds, i.e. as first person perspectives) experience what we experience is the strongest form of certainty regarding what takes place that we can obtain; everything which we (as first person perspectives) infer - including about why we experience what we experience - is of a lesser degree of certainty. And, implicit in all this, we can only hold a first person perspective awareness.

Going back to the principle topic of the experienced present, that we experience a present that is neither memory of former present times nor extrapolation of upcoming present times is an occurrence of the strongest degree of certainty. That this experienced present is specious, fictitious, illusory, etc. is a conclusion drawn from inferences made by the conscious mind that wells within the experienced present which, as conclusion, is less certain than that which is experienced - here, namely, the present moment. And, furthermore, a conclusion that requires there first being an experienced present which is then to be labeled "specious, or fictitious, or illusory".

All the same, because I feel like we're going around in circles in regard to the experienced present, I'm tempted to let things be for now.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I think that "experience", like "intention" is a property of a whole being. These two terms express something which cannot be said of a part, but refer to aspects of the unifying feature, which makes parts exist as a whole. This I think, is one reason why we say that the sum is greater than its parts, there are properties which cannot be associated with the individual parts, and can only be associated with whatever it is which unifies the parts to make a whole. . So we can say that the whole being, as a being, experiences, but it doesn't make sense to say that a part of a being experiences. And also, I think it would make sense to say that a living being which doesn't have consciousness, like a plant, still experiences, but it doesn't make sense to me to say that the subconscious part of a conscious being, experiences. This has to do with what type of things we can attribute to a part, and the type of things we can attribute to a whole, and the reason why a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe (?) this plays a significant role in how we diverge.

By subconscious experiences (which I grant is not a mainstream usage of terms) I in part am address things such as this: When we forget an item, ask ourselves "where did I place it" with our inner voice, and then consciously experience an intuition regarding where the item is that reminds us, it is not us as a consciousness that knew of the answer but aspects of our subconscious mind that informed us after we as consciousness sent out a request to our subconscious mind to be so informed. It is the subconscious mind's agency (here simplistically abstracting a unified subconscious) which informs us as consciousness - and not our conscious agency. In this example is inferred that aspects of our subconscious mind hold an awareness of what we as consciousness desire to know, along with a subconscious awareness of the answer that we are momentarily ignorant of consciously - and this inferred awareness of the subconscious can be termed the non-conscious experience of one total psyche, or sub/unconscious experience. Same can be said of one's conscience, which is aware of what one as consciousness is aware of but informs (or even goads) one as consciousness of alternative avenues to that which one as consciousness intends; one's conscience then being another example of a subconscious agency that can be inferred to experience.

To me consciousness is a unified agency composed of an ever-changing plurality of subconscious agencies. (With some subconscious agencies, such as one's conscience, not being unified with it; minimally, while a conscience is sensed by a consciousness.)

So, to me consciousness is exactly one part of a total psyche - which consists of parts in addition to that of consciousness.

I grant that this is a complex subject, but I'm not sure how to proceed from here if we in fact disagree in regard to what conscious experiences and conscious intentions entail.

At any rate, by the experiential present of consciousness I, again, am not referring to a total psyche, but to strictly consciousness as a first person perspective - which holds first person awareness and which infers about matters such as the mechanisms for its first person awareness.