It looks like we’re at an impasse.

As you reaffirm grounds for doubting that we can ever be aware of each other’s intentions/will, I again reaffirm that our interactions—including our capacity to in any way communicate on this forum via words—is in part always continent on our ongoing awareness of each other’s intentions/will. And, at this point, I don’t much know what else to add to the conversation.

I’ve not addressed your statements of not believing in freewill because I’ve so far found the issue of the will’s metaphysical freedom to be irrelevant to the issues at hand—though, of course, as with most everything, it is in some ways interconnected.

Also, (for what its worth) wanted to mention that in my own experience the official term for lack of belief in freewill is one of “(causal) determinism”, this being an incompatibilist stance.

Lastly wanted to mention that--to my mind at least--you seem to be spot-on about my own internal will/intentions in regard this this issue of will’s metaphysical freedom: I due uphold that both (limits-bound) freewill and (a less then absolute) causal determinism co-occur, and my intentions are those of arguing in manners that conform to my current beliefs regarding the reality of freewill. To me this is due to our innate abilities of awareness regarding other’s will/intentions; and is not a mere coincidence.

In relation to the mystic this and mysticism that discussion, and in the vein of Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy:

Is anyone attracted to the aesthetic truths of the song “Into the Mystic” by Van Morison then a person whose underlying aesthetic and related beliefs are mentally disordered, aka insane? Or is one’s likening of this song’s theme only a brain fart? Wait, maybe even something more substantial, such as a brain defecation. Conversely, would liking of this song be due to the biologically determined, evolutionary functionality of understanding and relating to propositional attitudes expressed by statements such as, “we were born before the wind”?

Besides, what are the psychotic rants of bona fide mystics such as William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” supposed to mean anyway? And I quote, “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour …”. A more irrational convulsion of category errors can hardly be imagined! It’s like, what?

With all due sobriety and sincerity though, myself, I prefer to admire the Mystery Men. They are mysterious too, yes, but I, personally, find it much easier to relate to most of them—including that guy played by Tom Waits who as a weird scientist only manufactures weapons of mass disruption. (to be used strictly for good, of course)

To those who quite understandably don’t know, Mystery Men is the single greatest superhero movie of all time, imo. This being a self-evident fact, QED.

If it doesn't exist already, I can put together a trout/turkey in about 1/2 hour. There's a store down the street that sells both. I don't know any nearby source for lions or eagles. — T Clark

Dude! The local zoos! But then the bribery required for it would likely be astronomical.

Hell, and I’m actually a tree-hugger empathizing environmentalist who disdains bribery, including when legalized in the form of government lobbying ... so … never mind.

What counts as a simple is utterly dependent on what we are saying. — Banno

Wouldn’t they likewise exist if we weren’t to say anything?

Turducken is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, further stuffed into a deboned turkey. [Wikipedia]

If Turducken exists, then a trout/turkey must. QED. — T Clark

So, then, griffins exist too? QED?

Do they taste good too or are they less filling? Ya know, as far as exotic foods go.

(my offbeat sense of humor … no, I don’t actually believe that hawk-lion soup is less filling)

To your direct question first, I'm afraid the answer is no, although I realise such a fundamental shift in axiom might end this otherwise fascinating conversation. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a compatibilist, so I don't even really believe in free will, but I certainly don't think morality requires it. All I'm interested in is how to guide people's behaviour to help bring about the society that I firmly believe all people (of sound mind) would want to live in. — Inter Alia

And you maintain that this interest is devoid of your intention/will? I find it hard to believe that you do.

The discussion is so far pleasant to me as well. Been thinking about it and I can’t overcome the sense that you’ve been equivocating the meaning of “will/intention/volition” in you previous posts—to paraphrase, in some stating that there is a multiplicity of intentions/wills in each being and in other stating that there is no will. Because of this, I’m having a difficult time making out what you mean.

Yet this reminds of a case in point scenario: the interpreted meaning of words we use to express beliefs is itself contingent on our appraisals of the speaker’s intentions. As one example of this, whether the speaker is sincere, very subtly sarcastic (such that we don’t notice while others do), or (successfully) deceptive in what they say is not contingent on the phenomena commonly available to both speaker and interlocutor; instead, it is at least partly contingent on the non-phenomenal intentions of the speaker (and, partly, the abilities of the interlocutor to discern these intentions). BTW, unpleasant (or, at least at times, unethical) as the latter two possibilities of sarcasm and deception are, they nevertheless do occur in some human interactions. As another example: Whether “senses” in the one phrase, “good senses are quintessential to a moral life,” addresses a) “the physiological senses via which perception of phenomena occur”, b) “the intellectual capacities for understanding—which was once termed as nous in Ancient Greek, form which the term noumenal is derived”, c) “pragmatic worldviews otherwise expressed as perspectives of common-sense”, d) “the capacity for interpersonal emotive faculties such as those of empathy, i.e. for feelings (but not of the tactile kind) which are interpersonal (as in, “I feel you”)—or e) even a conflation of all these previous meanings—will be fully contingent on i) what the speaker/writer intends by the word “senses” and ii) what the listeners/reader interprets the speaker/writer as intending by expressing this word.

Other examples are possible.

Whether will (intention) is metaphysically describable as “free” or not: How does one justify any interpersonal interaction if the issue of intention is to be completely done away with? (… this both on the part of all others and on the part of one’s own self—as in, one’s own momentary intention to further interact in a pleasant discussion)

I’m hoping this subject matter might better pinpoint our own stances in regard to will/intention.

Can anyone interested—be they Humean, Kantian, or some other—explain how the stance of “innate instinct for causal relations” differs from an “a priori understanding for causal relations”?

To me, not only is there no contradiction, but they’re one and the same metaphysical stance; only that the latter Kantian stance gives a detailed metaphysical account whereas the former Humean stance only gives a generalized, superficial metaphysical account (I remind everyone that genetics and the like were not know in Hume’s time, hence “innate instincts”, while commonly used to describe animal behaviors, were not yet understood in the neo-Darwinian sense of modern cultures).

Otherwise asked: While the Kantian stance is justified in in-depth manners and the Humean account is only offered as the only consistent explanation which comes to mind, how is an a priori understanding of the cognitive faculties as regards causation not itself an innate instinct of the same cognitive faculties?

(To be clear, I personally uphold a Kantian metaphysics when it comes to causation but also find that Kantianism only builds upon Humean understanding in at least this one regard.)

You may not like this evaluation: But I'll say it anyway:

That there is no mathematically precise denotation of when particles of sand become heaps of sand is, by all evident accounts, a solid given. So it can’t then be intrinsic to that observed.

When do accumulating particles of sand take on the cognitively perceived/understood unitary functionality of a heap? There is an in-between fuzzy zone where individual humans (to whom the concept of heap applies) will strongly disagree. Yet, most all humans will agree on extremities: that one particle of sand is not a heap and that a hundred thousand particles of sand structured in a certain way does constitute a heap of sand.

But this resolves the objective presence of heap-ness via the common consensus of a given cohort of minds. It’s Kantian like in its appraisals. Yet it still holds to issues of (perceived/understood) unitary functionality as delineating individual wholes … and, by extension, individual identities.

It’s my current take on the Sorties paradox at any rate.

------

Just read Qurious's post. So, I find myself in agreement with this statement:

Anything we consider separate from something else is only separate within the scope of human perception. — Qurious

... with the following amendment: within the scope of sentient awareness, inclusive of both a priori and a posteriori understandings (rather that strictly human perception, this as defined by the functioning of the physiological senses)

That still fails to explain how we came up with the concept of causality. Saying that it's a habit of mind is not explaining how the concept could form.

And since Hume was an empiricist, he has nowhere else to go. — Marchesk

It’s been a while since my reading of Hume, and I’m not about to reread his works to present this. And yes, given my heavy alignment with Darwinian evolution, I may have misinterpreted his writing at the time due to this bias.

On a few rare occasions, Hume drops this bomb-word of “instinct”. Long-term memory sometimes being faulty, till I find out otherwise I’ll uphold what I remember: on even fewer instances he mentions this (you’ve got to place him in his proper time) rather heretical hypothesis that we humans share instincts with lesser animals. (I bet some will find it heretical even today on this forum.) And I recall his explanation for why we develop habits of (causal) association being just that: its instinct.

… OK, for what it’s worth just found this one summary online after a brief search:

Section IX of the Enquiry is a short section entitled "Of the Reason of Animals." Hume suggests that we reason by analogy, linking similar causes and similar effects. He suggests that his theories regarding human understanding might then be well supported if we could find something analogous to be true with regard to animal understanding. He identifies two respects in which this analogy holds. First, animals, just like humans, learn from experience and come to infer causal connections between events. Second, animals certainly do not learn to make these inferences by means of reason or argument. Nor do children, and nor, Hume argues, do adults or even philosophers. We infer effects from causes not by means of human reason, but through a species of belief, whereby the imagination comes to perceive some sort of necessary connection between cause and effect. We often admire the innate instincts of animals that help them get by, and Hume suggests that our ability to infer causal connections is a similar kind of instinct.

From: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/understanding/section9.rhtml

This often (but not always) occurring competition of vying intentions in one single mind is very well explained by David Hume in his Bundle Theory of the Self. It’s a theory I’ve deeply abided by since I first read his works back in University days. Yet one must recognize that health is greatly dependent on there being a unitary functionality of mind, of the mind’s total bundle of intentions. The further one deviates from this, the unhealthier the mind is (typically) appraised to be. While this is a very complex issue, I do modify Hume’s theory to include a singular first-person point-of-view—the “I” its often labeled—which at times engages in its own chosen intentions and which—I would argue—is itself, at least in part, a dynamic, unified composite of the mind’s lesser intentions. It’s a big topic though, at least for me.

In terms of how we would then use will/intention to judge ethical issue, we’d judge what the first-person point of view either actively choose (here, between alternatives) or else engages in (here, by not rejecting its unconscious mind’s intentions—e.g. emotions which goad—but, instead, becoming unified with these intentions; e.g., one feels pangs of envy and, instead of rejecting them as wrong, one then becomes envious and acts out due to so being).

At the end of the day though, this enters into an entirely different topic: that of how the mind works. So we can find a working common base, are we in agreement that ethics is contingent on the presence of will? If not, please furnish examples where this is not the case, so I may better understand.

OK, thanks for the clarification. As to logically inferred innate mechanisms that account for, and thereby justify, belief in realism, one can take a Kantian approach or—if a strict materialist—can strictly focus on consequences of biological evolution. In the Kantian approach, sentience holds within it aprior understanding of causation in the abstract, thereby facilitating belief that things causally continue to be even when not perceived or thought of. In a strictly evolutionary approach, were intellect-endowed sentience (sapient or otherwise) to not have evolved unconscious aptitudes for discerning how things continue to be when not perceived or thought about, the given sentience would perish; lifeforms would either be, for example, quickly killed by stealthy predators or predators would quickly starve to death. This cognitively evolved set of skills then became more pronounced in human beings--the most aware/intelligent lifeforms currently known to our own selves.

I presume you could find objections to one or the other accounts, or a need to further embellish and clarify them so as to convince those who are doubtful of realism. Nevertheless, both accounts provide that which has been now asked for: logically inferred innate mechanisms that account for belief in realism.

I am not sure that there is anything that favours the evil demon hypothesis over Realism. But we are presently looking for some reliable source for the belief in Realism, and this question has no bearing on that. — PossibleAaran

Yet, to me, this is the pivotal issue for any philosophical skeptic.

Please indulge me for a moment: To thoroughly distance myself from modern day equivocations of what skepticism is I a long time ago choose to label my stance of philosophical skepticism one of “radical skepticism”. You see, when one is skeptical about everything—i.e., holds that no proposition can as of yet be demonstrated to be perfectly secure from all possible error—the very notion that “one is skeptical about” this or that in particular becomes aberrantly nonsensical. To a philosophical skeptic of the ilk I’m describing, one becomes dubious of something, not skeptical of it—for to such person not everything is dubious though everything is appraised via skepticism (in the inquisitive sense addressed). Likewise, for another example, there can be no such particular thing as a “skeptical hypothesis”--for all hypotheses of the philosophic skeptic are equally skeptical—including that of “I think therefore I am”. Of course, due to prevailing modern day connotations, this label of radical skeptic again became misconstrued as the position of one who is bogged down in the mires of irresolvable doubts. Bullocks. But I’m back to labeling myself a philosophical skeptic and going against the flow when it comes to what this signifies. Point being, a (philosophical) skeptic by logical consistency cannot be skeptical about any particular thing. They can only have various degrees of doubt/uncertainty regarding any particular thing—and this because they hold certainty regarding others. (For that matter, only non-skeptics every claim to be skeptical about this or that—and guess where they pirated this term from. And next, as Wayfarer commented, they go about calling themselves skeptics.)

Thanks for entertaining my views so far. My basic point here being, if you present the possibility of an evil daemon as nullifying the truth to realism on grounds of philosophical skepticism, for this to be in any way rational from the vantage of philosophical skepticism, there must be justification for why the presence of an evil daemon is to be deemed credible.

Otherwise, this has nothing to do with issues of philosophical skepticism.

My first thought is that a (living) trout-turkey wouldn’t make a functional, i.e. purposeful, whole and, thus, could not exist. The head would be equipped for swimming and the body for walking, etc. Everything that we take to be a whole, however, holds a unitary functionality. From rocks, to tables, to living beings. So two items placed together would not constitute an new whole unless the composite now held a unitary set of behaviors—be these entropic or negentropic. Molecules, like individual proteins, are thereby wholes constituted of lesser wholes (atoms).

Thank you for your answers. We’re in accord about not everything thought of being necessarily true. This, then, includes the thoughts of an evil daemon (bogeyman?) messing around with you.

What makes realism more plausible than an evil daemon? One element to this is as follows: Conviction in realism is how I and a majority of the world’s populace—both greatly and poorly educated (education being a separate issue from that of intelligence for me)—navigate the world most pragmatically, for it facilitates an optimal flourishing of awareness in regard to worldly givens. The evil daemon hypothesis, however, presents a lack of reliable predictability as to what will be, and posits no way of reliably establishing what is—and, because of this, is debilitating to the living of life.

My former, yet unanswered question to you was “what justifies the favoring of an evil daemon as true at expense of realism being true?” An answer would now be appreciated.

--------

The title of this thread is “what is scepticism”. In your reoccurring arguments you overwhelmingly favor Descartes’ branch of skepticism, even though in your OP you thoughtfully point to different branches of belief that likewise go by the label of skepticism.

To me, Descartes warped the notion of philosophical skepticism from one of it being a path toward greater wisdom—cf. the Ancient Greek skeptikos, “thoughtful, inquiring”; Platonism standing out as one Ancient Greek example of this—to one of it being a ridiculous, endless stream of debilitating doubts in search for some inexistent grail of absolute certainty.

All philosophical skeptics throughout history were other than the typical modern strawman of “someone overcome by irresolvable doubts”; all philosophical skeptics that I am currently aware of held certainty of varying strengths in relation to how the world works, and all were realists.

BTW, Cicero, a philosophical skeptic, favored Stoicism in his “On the Nature of the Gods” … if this is of any interest to anyone. One point to this being a further illustration that philosophical skepticism is not about the rejection of plausible claims on grounds that they cannot be proven with absolute certainty. Cicero, it should be said, was religious … epitomizing a very distinct relation to that of philosophical skepticism and the commonly upheld dogmas of Abrahamic faiths.

I was more interested in discussing what philosophical skepticism logically signifies rather than debating against an endless stream of arguments about hypotheticals which can neither be disproven nor proven with absolute certainty—i.e., with perfect security from all possible error. This because, to my knowledge, no proposition can be successfully demonstrated to be perfectly secure from all possible error. Not even Descartes’ “(I doubt, therefore) I think, therefore I am” … nor the proposition that absolute certainty is impossible.

This, again, is not to deny that certainties of varying strengths always occur. The inductive conclusion that absolute certainties cannot be demonstrated, though not itself an absolute certainty, is nevertheless considered by me to be a (less than absolute) certainty of superlative strength. For another example, to doubt is to doubt what is real; thus, it is to in itself be in possession of certainty that something real is.

At any rate, if you seek solace via some promise of an absolute certainty—be it that realism is true or that some evil daemon concept one is momentarily entertaining is false—I’m not one to be of service in this regard.

I wonder if I really believe what I just said. I might. I need to think about it some more. — T Clark

Cool. I'll take a breather too.

"Objective reality" is a name we give to a set of perceptions, observations, ideas. — T Clark

Objectivity—the state of being objective—holds multiple definitions (confer with Wiktionary, for instance). One of which is that of being just/impartial and, hence, unbiased. Objective reality is then either a repetition of synonyms (objective objectivity; the really real) or, to my mind, the affirmation of a reality not clouded by, hence impartial to, hence independent of, personal preferences (etc.).

All the same, how does the logic I’ve previously expressed not hold?

(Should clarify: since, as previously illustrated, to uphold a lack of objective reality is an instance of contradictory reasoning—one where both X and not-X occur at the same time and in the same way—it is a fallacy of reasoning.)

Hold on a bit there. Change the referent from one of perceivable world/reality to one of logical inference. As regards logical possibilities, either a) there is an objective reality or b) there isn’t. Here, the law of excluded middle holds … and A and B are contradictory positions—so only one of the two can be true. All this has no bearing on what this objective reality actually is; one can be strictly spiritual about it (such as in upholding the neo-Platonic presence of “the One”, for example, as being thee only true objective reality) or strictly materialistic about it (upholding the vacuum field as the true objective reality? or at least something to the like … pick your stuff). Nevertheless, the same logical conundrum holds all the same: either we dwell within an objective reality (that is even when not perceived or thought of) or we don’t.

So, now, there’s an unavoidable contradiction to claiming the absence of an objective reality: to uphold the absence of objective reality is, in and of itself, to affirm what reality consists of when objectively appraised … i.e., is to uphold the presence of an objective reality.

Therefore, I’m quite comfortable with the logical conclusion that we dwell within an objective reality … details of what it actually is here set aside, it nevertheless is.

Hello. I’m having a hard time understanding your position, at least as things currently stand.

Taking things one step at a time, as regards intention: My reading of your post(s) leads me to presume you disassociate intention—i.e., volition, or will—from sentient action … be these actions of the body or solely of the intellect (e.g., the planning out of bodily action). Action devoid of will, to me, equates to inanimate, entropy-driven (this at least at the macro scale) activity. Were a large bolder to hit a loved one due to extreme wind, I do not find the bolder culpable precisely because the bolder did not will this to be. Where a human (to me, a will-endowed being) to hurl a large bolder toward a loved one, I would then find the human culpable precisely because the human did will this to be.

How can ethics—of any variety: virtue ethics or otherwise—be upheld when the element of volition/will/intention is not considered paramount to the issue?

As a more precise example, to me, a will to anything, happiness and/or flourishing included (i.e., will to eudemonia) necessarily holds will—hence intention—as a prerequisite. Eudemonia in the absence of will to me is nonsensical. If there’s belief that eudemonia does not require will for its being, how then does one make sense of eudemonia in the absence of intention to both better optimize it and maintain it?

I’ll address issues such as those of forethought in light of both short- and long-term durations after I can better understand, hopefully, this perspective of ethics not grounded in intention/volition/will.

You posit the evil daemon to be inconsistent to realism—the latter, by your definition, being the stance that one or more things can hold presence when not perceived or thought about.

To understand your “skeptical” point of view better:

Does the evil daemon hold presence when not perceived or thought about?

Secondly, is everything that one thinks true (here, correspondent to what is real)?

BTW, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to answer your questions when mine are not first answered … since I’d have little if any understanding of your own stance.

good discussion. — Sam26

Ditto.

We differ on how much of a person’s behaviors we deem to be intentional. Acts of passion—I think they’re legally called—could be deemed acts of lack of thought that hold harmful results. The guy who kills his significant other when finding them cheating is, thus, to me, guilty of an immoral act due to his choices—regardless of how guilty he feels afterward. To some lesser degree, a heated argument while driving could be considered an instance of these acts of passion. Again, I personally find the individual culpable for the ensuing harm due to the choices made and, thus, the intentions held. In the case of the driver, the car could have been pulled over, for instance—especially once the argument gets out of hand. Still, I again acknowledge it’s a murky area. To concede a little, at some unfortunate instances a momentary lack of attention (say, when reaching over for a water bottle while driving … minor instances of non-attention which we’ve all been involved in at one point or another) can result in a lot of harm (like a kid just then running out into the street before you chasing after a ball).

I’m personally OK with there being a difference of opinion in relation to how much of this ought to be considered intentional (by which I mean volitional). I again was nitpicking.

The same is true in my above example, you know that if you don't pay sufficient attention to the road you can cause bodily harm to another, but you ignored this important point. — Sam26

Nitpicking here. To me this example presents a choice between two alternatives. One alternative is that of paying attention to the road, which you know to be ethical, at expense of short-term loss of ego’s pride (or something to the like). The other is that of focusing in on an argument at expense of being attentive to where you’re driving. The individual, given the presence of this choice between now momentarily sensed alternatives, is culpable for the decision made. This is so strictly due to the willed intention to pursue the second alternative at the expense of the first. So we find the individual at fault for vehicular manslaughter on grounds of what the individual intentionally chose. As you say, same enough with drunk driving, or with talking on mobiles while driving, etc.

I think something without intention would be running over a person due to a momentary instance of vertigo, or epilepsy, etc., that was unforeseeable. While proving that such was the case can be exceedingly difficult, were it to in fact be proven to have been the reason for the momentary lack of attention given while driving, would the outcome then still be considered an immoral act by the driver? Here, there was no conceivable intention on the part of the driver that could have been alternatively acted on which would have prevented the accident.

Likewise with a blown tire that deviates the car’s trajectory.

I agree with most of what you've stated.

However, these are separate and distinct from immoral actions which can happen regardless of intention. — Sam26

Can you exemplify something of this nature. I can't think of any example right now.

Intention although important is not always the deciding factor. One can have good intentions and yet still commit an immoral act, as in accidental harm that should or could have been foreseen. — Sam26

Say a person is clumsy and accidently knocks over a book on the coffee table while walking. Do we blame them for so doing? Of course, if the item is both one of great value to us and becomes destroyed in being so knocked over, many of us would feel heightened degrees of anger at the occurrence and, some, will then readily blame the individual for the outcome.

I’m not claiming that this isn’t a murky area for both philosophy and for law. I do however maintain that where there to be intention in so knocking over the item, regardless of the item’s value to us, the scenario would now become drastically different. So I yet uphold the importance of intention to ethics.

There is also an important point here, that is, that all immoral acts have the property of harm, but not all moral acts lack harm, some do some don't. — Sam26

I find myself fully agreeing with this. I should add: especially when "property of harm" encompasses intention to do harm.

Under my ethical view, person A has harmed person B, so person A has committed an immoral act. The harm can be objectively established, the act of pushing the man to the ground. — Sam26

Hmm, think of the same scenario of perceivable behavior but with a different set of imperceivable intentions: Person A violently shoves person B to the ground (this being the exact same act with an identical degree of harm upon person B in crashing to the ground) but, in this version, the act is performed with the intention of saving person B’s life from the assassination attempt of person C. The discernable outcome of harm (and of a saved life) remains the same; the sole difference now is in the private intentions with which the act of shoving person B is performed by person A.

Here, I presume, we’d both uphold the same outcome of harm to person B in being violently shoved to the ground to be a moral act on the part of person A—this solely due to a different intention, and not in outcomes of harm.

To me, then, the justification for ethical or unethical behavior does not reside in the behavior and its outcome but, rather, in the realm of willed intention in carrying out any given act. Though, I again acknowledge, typically the two (the intention and the physical act) are associated; hence, we typically discern the imperceivable intention(s) of another via the perceivable behaviors that they engage in.

And if it can be determined that no harm was done, again, it's not immoral. I don't see how any act can be deemed immoral if it doesn't cause harm. I would say that it's analytic to any immoral act that it causes harm. The harm has to be done to an individual or individuals (e.g. a society). — Sam26

As a general rule I agree. Still, as regards intention and the outcome of harm in relation to the philosophy of ethics:

There’s the abstract, hypothetical scenario of a bad/evil intention inadvertently resulting in a good outcome for the individual(s) toward which the intention was directed. The question then being, was the willed act moral, immoral, or morally neutral?

I grant that this occurring would be exceedingly rare. As to concrete examples, the only one that now comes to mind is as follows: person A violently shoves person B to the ground out of malice resulting from unjustified envy; unknown to either, person C a moment prior shot a gun with intention to assassinate person B (insert bad/evil reason for the attempt to assassinate person B here); due to being shoved to the ground, person B’s life has been saved (say, for which person A then takes credit for). Has person A engaged in moral/good behavior?

One can also present the converse where the intention is wholly good but inadvertently results in a bad outcome.

I'll admit that I presume we all have a guttural answer to both, that the bad intention makes the person guilty of wrong and the good intention makes the person not guilty of wrong. To me this speaks in favor of innate awareness of right and wrong in relation to will, from which action is commonly upheld to proceed.

Which questions can be answered by Realism? Can they also be answered by Idealism, the dream hypothesis or the evil demon hypothesis? If so, in what sense are the Realist answers superior? Does the superiority of its answers entail that Realism is more likely to be true than the alternatives? — PossibleAaran

As one example, were a single light in the home to no longer turn on when I flick the light switch, the realism of an external world would indicate that there is something physically amiss with the light switch, the respective lightbulb, or with the wiring that dwells in between. The real problem might not be perceived nor thought of at first, yet the web of causal relations which such realism affirms facilitates my being able to discover what is wrong so as to resolve the problem. Other hypotheses, such as a Cartesian evil demon (or the materialist counterpart of being a BIV), could be conceived as alternatives to the reality of an external world. Yet, devoid of upheld belief in the very same external world, these alternative hypotheses would at best only encumber my ability to remedy the stated problem. This then can be expanded to why electricity operates the way that it does, to the question of where the electricity in my home originates from, etc.

The question to me is one of why uphold something like the Cartesian evil demon rather than an external world? I.e., what justifies the upholding of such a conviction?

Tangentially, to be more explicit about my understandings of idealism and realism, granting that these terms hold different meaning to different people:

The umbrella term of idealism does not equate to any particular subclass of belief which can be so classified, such as that of Berkley’s immaterialism. One can, for example, uphold a real, physical, external world as effete mind within an idealist system. Charles Pierce is known for so upholding. Thinking of more Eastern perspectives which we would likely term idealist, one could alternatively choose to uphold the external world to be a waking dream that is—in one way or another—resultant from the unconscious processes of all individual minds (the philosophy of Jung here also comes to mind) … yet even when so doing, and when presuming it to be the veil of Maya for one example, the external world would yet be real in the sense that it occurs in all its causally linked intricacies even when its intricacies are not perceived or thought of (what occurs at quantum levels, for instance … or, better yet, what occurs behind your back when you're neither looking nor pondering the matter).

On the other hand, realism, as I interpret you to have defined it, can well apply to both idealistic and materialistic systems of belief, as well as to anything in between—with the leading disagreements here concerning what is fundamentally real, upon which all other reality is founded. For example, it is common knowledge that Plato, an idealism-leaning philosophical skeptic, was a realist. It seems logically sound to me that Buddhists, by virtue of upholding Nirvana to be, are all realists--regardless of possible divergences as concerns other aspects of ontology—for Nirvana (and the four Noble Truths) would yet be even if all sentience were to somehow be, or become, unenlightened (in the Eastern sense of this term) … in other words, the Buddha didn’t invent an axiom of Nirvana but, instead, discovered Nirvana's existential presence via enlightenment (this, of course, in Buddhist worldviews). Materialist realism is, of course, yet another variant of realism—one that strictly upholds an underlying physical reality (here thinking of QM, the vacuum field, etc.). In all cases, there are one or more things postulated to be even when not perceived, thought of, or talked about by anyone.

Kuddos for a well thought out OP. As you mention, Skepticism as term and denotation carries with it a multitude of often divergent meanings, each endowed with its own bundle of understandings. Many paradigms—be they adopted or rejected—thereby become expressible via this one word.

In relation to the OP’s questions, as for myself, I liken philosophical skepticism with the simple, commonsensical affirmation that no one is ever perfectly infallible. It doesn’t prove the unmitigated certainty of any belief—regardless of whether these are positively or negatively affirmed. Instead, it endows the intellect with tools via which emotively held, non-contemplated absolutes (or, in this sense, dogmas) become replaced with beliefs upheld on grounds of their greater quality of justification—justified beliefs that then, in turn, become emotively lived until even more coherent beliefs may be established through similar noncontradictory justifications. So, as I interpret it, the stance opens up the doorways of the intellect, of cognitive perception, to most everything holding conceivable alternatives—and the alternative one upholds to be true, this at expense of all other alternatives then being judged false, becomes so upheld due to coherent reasoning—and not, for example, due to blind bias (again, dogma in this sense of the word). In other words, it makes one more perceptive by comparison to the tunnel vision of not mentally seeing the alternatives that otherwise can be discerned.

BTW, to me this stance has no bearing on the possession of knowledge … not unless one denotes knowledge as something that is directly or indirectly equivalent with some epistemological absolute: be this absolute certainty, absolute justification, absolute awareness of what is true and/or real, etc. To me the lack of epistemological absolutes does not then signify the lack of reliable epistemological givens. It is only in this equivocal sense that phrases such as “I know I know nothing,” can make any sense to me.

As I have been thinking of it the last few days, Scepticism is a problem for Realism - the view that there are objects which exist even when no-one is perceiving, thinking or talking about them. — PossibleAaran

That there factually is an external world can well be upheld by a Skeptic on grounds that it is the most cohesive means of justifying most of the whys and hows that apply to any particular experience of the external world. This especially when considering issues of causation.The reality of an external world, in other words, can be well upheld to provide the greatest explanatory power to the greatest number of questions that could be asked of something experienced to pertain to an external world. Still—in contradiction to some of my good natured nemeses here about—for a Skeptic to uphold the factual reality of an external world is not for him/her to also necessarily uphold that the external world is metaphysically primary to the metaphysical reality of psyche; i.e., just because individual minds are subject to the physical external world does not then entail that physicality is primary to psyche at metaphysical levels of reality (nor does the latter alternative entail theism).

Basically wanted to mention that this was a nice OP and add some comments. If I’m replied to, though, it might take a while till I answer in turn.

My best reply to your post:

In relation to sameness being a property of temporal continuity: A guy builds a toy ship made up of legos. His wife gets upset at his wasting of time with the toy ship and smashes the ship to bits. Many years later he builds himself the same ship out of the same lego pieces. It will be deemed the same ship by its builder despite there having been no temporal continuity between instantiation A and instantiation B. Therefore, temporal continuity is not necessary in order for sameness to hold presence.

In relation to meaning being identical to phenomenal information: There’s a phenomenal object A and a phenomenal object B. Object A is the same relative to itself. So is object B. The relation of sameness remains unaltered in relation to objects A and B, this despite both objects holding different phenomenal properties of information. Hence, the relation of sameness—in this case, as a cognitive abstraction that one can hold awareness of—is not itself identical to any particular phenomenal information that may be discerned as being the same relative to itself.

I’ll be taking a leave of absence, though. It was good debating with you, even where we don’t agree—such as on this issue.

A materialist would say that the mind is made of the same stuff "out there".

An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".

Then aren't they both saying the same thing? — Harry Hindu

For all practice purposes yes (unless either the materialist or idealist is off his/her rocker and has lost touch which reality). The reason for debate between the two schools of thought, however, isn't about practical issues, but about metaphysical issues, each school of though holding is own spectrum of metaphysical possibilities. As one example, the spectrum of possibilities regarding how existence of awareness ends (if at all). Despite this difference of perspectives, both ought to know darn well that bullets in the brain is not a good thing.

Tell us what it could mean [...] — Janus

I am but a little tyke, and have big aversions to debating with authoritative nobility. Sorry, yous.

I do not believe that different subjects ever share the same meaning unless the meaning is within the physical object which is shared between them. — Metaphysician Undercover

To try to avoid a back and forth of endless opinions, I’ll offer a more metaphysical argument.

As per Heraclitus’ flux, we can never be privy to the same phenomenal information twice. Where, then, does the very apprehension of sameness in relation to that perceived fit in?

We can never perceive the same river in terms of the same phenomenal information. Yet we can nevertheless acknowledge that what we perceive and interact with is the same river over time, or that we as multiple subjects do in fact perceive the same river at the same time.

To emphasize: where does the meaningful understanding of “sameness” come from, then? For it certainly cannot be obtained from our raw awareness of phenomenal information; the latter is never the same. On the other hand, to presume reliance on abstract reasoning to explain the presence of this innate meaning of “sameness” by which phenomena is interpreted is foolhardy. One can try to do so if they think they can: this merely through the use of phenomenal information perception devoid of any prejudice of sameness. To keep this brief, you then also deny that toddlers can hold notions of sameness (e.g. the same parents); and that any form of meaningful sameness can be held by animals (e.g., the same caregiver)—and this is to boldly deny reality.

I am not here addressing the linguistic concept of “sameness” which can be analyzed by adults like any other mental object. I’m instead addressing what is the inherent means via which we can perceive sameness (same river, same apple, etc.) in a world in which no phenomenal information ever remains fixed or repeats with identical attributes.

For the record, so far my hypothesis is that sameness is a Kantian-like a priori property of awareness—itself as property being a meaningful understanding regarding what is and what can be, one with which we are birthed with. Be this as erroneous as it may, however, the very awareness of sameness cannot itself be derived strictly from physical information—else one will debate against the very notion that everything phenomenal is in perpetual flux.

To use the currently popular definition of information on this thread, awareness of “sameness” is a difference that makes a difference, and is thereby an awareness of information. Yet sameness, though it can take innumerable phenomenal exemplars, is of itself a meaning that is other than—and a priori to—the phenomenal information which we discriminate as either “the same” or “different from”.

It is also mental information which we all share in common by virtue of being human, and—again—is not an intrinsic aspect of physical information (which is forever changing).

All this being a more metaphysical means of arguing that not all meaning is identical to phenomenal information.

Abstractions can only be expressed as "concrete particulars of physicality"; what can they be apart from that? Even when you think an abstraction, the thinking of it would, according to current neuroscience, consist in a concrete particular neurological process.

Is something being a "product of mind" somehow different from it being a "product of brain"? If so, what precisely would that difference consist in? — Janus

This is a bit of a merry-go-round. Communication of an abstraction via concrete physical particulars is not the abstraction that is being communicated via concrete physical particulars. Else there is no difference between a) abstractions and b) concrete particulars.

As to brain and mind, if you find no difference between the two, we do not have enough common ground to debate with. To entertain your question as poignantly as I currently can, decomposed rot of organic matter can be a product of brains but not of minds; the imagining of this can only be a product of minds but not of mind-devoid brains.

To so much as even entertain a relation between brains and minds is to first acknowledge the reality that there is a difference between the two. Very sardonically stated: I can hardly wait to be explained how hallucinations, too, consist of physical information (this via the exact reasoning you’re just proposed so as to uphold that all abstractions are of physical information) … such conclusion being a literal lack of sense.

Lastly, there in fact being a relation between a mind and a living brain does nothing to establish what ontology of mind is real—physicalism being only one such possible ontology of mind amongst numerous others.

No, I’m assuming that abstractions a) are not concrete particulars of physicality and b) are products of mind. How are they not?

How can an abstraction be communicated or understood except in physical terms? If you think it could then perhaps you could offer an example. — Janus

My question isn't about the communication of abstractions, such as we are now engaged in, but in relation to the abstractions themselves: how are abstractions physical?

Imagined abstractions are always abstracted from, and imagined in forms derived from, the physical world; the experience of the physical world is the source of all our imaginations and abstractions. — Janus

It's a presumption not yet evidenced to be true in all possible cases. A telos, for example, would be abstract, non-physical information not itself abstracted from the physical world. A different argument to that of this thread, though.

All the same, how is an abstraction physical information? This even when in fact abstracted from physical information.

All mathematics deals with number and quantity and without physicality there can be no number or quantity, so... — Janus

1 imagined abstraction of some non-physical world (e.g., a heaven or hell) + 1 imagined abstraction of some other non-physical world = 2 non-physical givens consisting of non-physical information. Unless one upholds an epiphenomenal physicalism, there is no physicality involved in this equation—especially since what was counted were abstractions and not concrete particulars. (This will hold even where these abstractions do not correlate with any actual state of affairs—maybe even more so.)

That's right, my argument is that all interpretations are subjective. Because of this, no two interpretations are the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem though, is that the same word has different meanings dependent on the context of usage. — Metaphysician Undercover

Going back to why you uphold this to be so:

Here again, we have the issue of "the 'same' meaning" assigned to different phenomenal information. As I explained, I take this to be contradictory. If the two distinct phenomenal occurrences really had the same meaning to you, you would not be able to tell them apart, because it is by virtue of differences in what each of them means to you, that you distinguish one from the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your core argument again is that for the same meaning to hold presence nondifferentiable phenomenal information must be apprehended.

So I don’t yet understand how your arguments can support the reality of different subjects sometimes sharing the same meaning.

No two subjects will ever experience identical phenomenal information at any given time, this because each will be a unique first person point of view (nor will the same subject ever experience two identical bodies of phenomenal information during the entirety of its lifetime—but I’ll drop this second line of argument for now as regards stable meaning over time).

Then, how does your argument not result in a solipsism regarding the body of meaning that any individual subject holds?

Seems to me this very conversation would then be nonsensical as a conversation since no meaning whatsoever would be common to us (i.e., the same relative to each of us). For starters, we perceive the phenomenal information on what I presume to be our individual screens differently—and our understanding of the phenomenal information’s meaning will furthermore be dependent on vastly different contexts of experiential historicity (which can theoretically impart both vastly different connotations and denotations to the phenomenal information observed).

Here again, we have the issue of "the 'same' meaning" assigned to different phenomenal information. As I explained, I take this to be contradictory. If the two distinct phenomenal occurrences really had the same meaning to you, you would not be able to tell them apart, because it is by virtue of differences in what each of them means to you, that you distinguish one from the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Looks like we might be addressing different things in reference to meaning.

It seems that by the same arguments you’ve articulated, no two languages could share any meaning whatsoever, since the two languages are utterly different in their phenomenal information—and, as your given argument goes, for them to share the same meaning is for whatever so shares the same meaning to be indistinguishable phenomenally. But this would result in the conclusion that all translations are fully untrue in their correspondence to any meaning conveyed in the original language.

I’ll argue that meaning itself has multiple layers such that, for example, the core meaning to “yes”, “da”, and “si” is identical to itself while there is additional meaning which, for instance, endows recognition of the specific language utilized to express the core referent of meaning. This, then, is noncontradictory to the reality of language translations (granting exceptions where meanings may overlap but will not be the same in different languages).

What's to be shocked about? If it's only that the world at atomic scale operates differently than how we are used to seeing it at human scale, I don't see that as shocking at all. — T Clark

If you’re into the metaphysics of causality at all, there is no way that this experiment will not be shocking. Again, it’s about the reality of causal mechanisms, not about theories of such.

As to it being “out there somewhere”, consider that the cellular level, even large proteins (enzymes and the like) have been shown to exhibit quantum effects—never mind individual molecules of nucleic acids (genes). And we are made up of cells, body wise [ edit: as is our our neurally plastic brains ... a part of our body ]. But of course, they don't appear to exhibit these effects when we observe these cells under a microscope and, I’d argue, not to the cells themselves as living systems. But it's a very fuzzy borderline.

Courtesy of PBS:

I think the concept of hermeneutics fits nicely with this idea: We each have our own meaningful self interpretations while partaking in a common "essential" hermeneutical way of being human. — bloodninja

Though I'm not yet well versed in this branch of philosophy, having browsed up on it, I very much agree.

You could make an argument that DNA constitutes 'man's essence', insofar as there is one. Were a single piece of human DNA discovered by another advanced civilisation on another planet, they ought to be able to infer almost everything about the creature the DNA comes from. And h. sapiens, being a species, can't breed with other species. — Wayfarer

I’ve my issues with the notion that DNA (all chromosomes) can be translated into phenotypic characteristics of body and mind merely via analysis of the genome. For starters, a genome depends on interactions with environment to develop into a phenotype. So far, despite the big hoopla of mapping out the human genome, I’ve been evidenced right on this. And, I don’t know but I’ve been told: well, according to one professor’s shpiel, human DNA is similar enough to chimp DNA that it’s very likely one could get a hybrid going (if so, whether it would be mule like or not, i.e. capable of biological reproduction, is not known … hopefully for obvious reasons). Needless to say, though, there’s quite the behavioral divide which prevents such a thing from naturally happening, on both sides I’d add. Not even bonobos and chimps reproduce, due to their own behavioral divide, and the more peaceful bonobos are notoriously sexual things.

Anyway, had a new thought about the essence of Homme—one I think you might also be OK with: we are, as someone aptly named our species, by in large alike in our relatively large magnitudes of sapience/wisdom. Quite the ego-boost, come to think of it; our human essence: wisdom.