Comments

  • Cosmos Created Mind
    metaphysical naturalismWayfarer
    By which you mean exactly what?

    (I ask because you've unjustifibly opposed 'mind-independence' (ontology) which you've conflating with a caricature of physicalism (epistemology))
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    My objection: it's irrelevant that our descriptions of objects is mind-dependent- because it's logically necessary that they be so. What is relevant is whether or not the descriptions MAP to reality (i.e. it corresponds).Relativist
    :100: :up:

    What physicalism wants to do ... Physicalism forgets ... That is precisely what physicalism does ...Wayfarer
    ... and as if 'mind' itself is not physical (i.e. a mind-independent property).




    .
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    Well, I was responding to this ...
    nobody has been able to give a clear and distinct definition to the termProtagoranSocratist
  • What is the Significance of 'Spirituality' in Understanding the Evolution of Human Consciousness?
    I am influenced by Jung's understanding of metaphysics. It combines a Kantian understanding of the limits of epistemology with ideas from Eastern thi[nk]ing of the nature of consciousness.Jack Cummins
    Sounds like Schopenhauer's philosophy.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    :up:

    What's wrong with this?
    I think of metaphysics as a synoptic, rational study of fundamental questions...180 Proof

    e.g.
    https://bigthink.com/thinking/4-hardest-unsolved-problems-philosophy/ :chin:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    ‘Does the moon continue t exist when nobody is looking at it?’ Einstein asked Abraham Pais.

    Why do you think he asked that question?
    Wayfarer
    The question is unwarranted (like 'Cartesian doubt'), so why it was asked is philosophically trivial. In a scientific sense, however, Einstein's question exposes the absurdity (i.e. category error) of speculatively extrapolating – as (scientistic quantum-woo) idealists/antirealists tend to do – properties from unmeasured quantum states to interacting (i.e. measured) ergo decoherent states such as "the moon" – after all, strawberries do not get their flavor from 'strawberry-flavored subatomic particles'. :smirk:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Afaik, no one here has made any of the claims you're "arguing" against.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Demonstrate how "cognition" is "more fundamental" than whatever is (i.e. nature) that embodies "acts of understanding".

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1027879
  • What is the Significance of 'Spirituality' in Understanding the Evolution of Human Consciousness?
    The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. — Carl Sagan, 1980
    ... does not separate us from what is and what will beAthena
    Like atomism: we and the universe are fundamentally the same 'atoms swirling in the void'. Spinozism too: natura naturata (modes) are ontologically inseparable from natura naturans (substance). :fire:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    physicalism treats “the physical” as the fundamental ontological primitiveWayfarer
    I don't see any examples on this thread of anyone using physicalism as an ontological category. Your stipulation (as usual) is a red herring, Wayf. Speaking for myself, I know of no other standard as reliable as "the physical" either for truth-makers of non-formal truth-claims or for constraints on non-formal speculations. Btw, my "fundamental ontological primitive" – necessarily presupposed by every discursive practice (i.e. embodied cognition) – is anti-supernatural / non-spiritual / not-transcendent (i.e. the natural (e.g. vacuum fluctuations)).

    Physics is grounded in such irreducible acts of understanding.
    Nonsense. "Physics is grounded" in useful correlations with natural regularities or processes. For example, Newton didn't even know what gravity was and only that a mathematical constant happened to work in his model of celestial mechanics. The following are some of the fundamentals of modern physics which even physicists do not (yet?) understand: quantum gravity, the nature of space time mass energy, matter-antimatter asymmetry, the beginning and end of cosmogenesis, etc.

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

    So when you insist that everything is “physical,” you are making a metaphysical assertion, not a scientific one ...
    Well, since no one has made such a "metaphysical assertion", Wayf, your statement is, at best, just another non sequitur.

    More fundamentally still, cognition...
    More nonsense. Demonstrate how "cognition" is "more fundamental" than whatever is (i.e. nature) that embodies "acts of understanding". A 'Machine in the Ghost'? (pace Bishop Berkeley)
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    I agree that we are born not so much with innate knowledge but with innate ability.

    Carrying this idea forward, we could say that we are not born with an innate knowledge of space and time, but have an innate ability to recognise space and time in our sensibilities. In today’s terms, we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense.
    RussellA
    :100: :up:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    I surmise that you have no rational justification for your claims, and you have rationalized your position by blaming me for failing to grasp what you're saying.Relativist
    This seems to me to aptly describe @Wayfarer's m.o. (and that of some other TPF members of the woo-of-the-gaps gang).
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Obviously, 1st person experience is central to a first-person perspective. It's also the epistemic foundation for understanding the world. But it seems an unjustified leap to suggest it is an ontological foundation - as you [@Wayfarer] seem to be doing.Relativist
    :100:
  • What is the Significance of 'Spirituality' in Understanding the Evolution of Human Consciousness?
    Spirituality and the issue of fantasy is important.Jack Cummins
    I tend to agree but for different reasons from the ones you give. From your 2020 thread How important are Fantasies? ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/515011
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    purpose of 'existenceJack Cummins
    How do you know existence has "purpose"? What is that "purpose"?
    a person's construction of 'reality
    If "a person" is real, then s/he belongs to "reality", therefore s/he cannot "construct reality".
    'beyond' the physical
    By "beyond" you mean like math or poetry?
  • What is the Significance of 'Spirituality' in Understanding the Evolution of Human Consciousness?
    I am asking about the nature of intuition and reason and such approaches to understanding?Jack Cummins
    I don't think "intuition and reason" are "approaches" but rather are presupposed by "understanding".

    What is the significance of the symbolic approach, mythic understanding and how are these bound up with the idea of consciousness and its emergence in the historical development of human consciousness?
    Their "significance" is linguistic, or discursive. (See E. Cassirer or G. Lakoff.)

    What is human 'consciousness' if it exists and consciousness as qualia?
    From an evolutionary perspective, in a nutshell: (non/human) "consciousness" seems to function as arousal, alarm and/or self-awareness.

    What does 'consciousness' represent in an understanding and how is this based on the seat of consciousness as a basis for understanding the nature of reality?
    "Understanding" – that "the nature of reality" is unconscious – is presupposed (i.e. embodied) by "consciousness".

    Spirituality [dis-embodiment / more-than-embodiment] can be regarded as fantasy...
    Yes, or hallucinatory. :sparkle:
    .
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    what lies beyond 'physics'Jack Cummins
    An inquiry into – speculation about – 'what (the synoptic results of) physics means for understanding existence' ...
  • Are humans by nature evil
    ... what harm is there to engage in genocide, enslavement, and anything else for that matter?Outlander
    C'mon, this same rhetorical question / rationalization has been invoked "In The Name Of God" by countless priests & princes at least since the Bronze Age (ergo theodicy, teleological suspension of the ethical, Deus Volt/Inshallah, ends justify means, just following orders, etc). :mask:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Philosophy has always grappled with the 'meaning of Being', explicitly or otherwise.
    — Wayfarer

    I'd say it's more the case that it has grappled with the meaninglessness of being

    You're not thinking philosophically, but like an engineer.
    — Wayfarer

    And in saying that you're pontificating like a fool.
    Janus
  • Are humans by nature evil
    With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
    — Steven Weinberg

    More bigoted baloney.
    T Clark
    :smirk: Denial is a hell of a drug ...

    "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
    ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées
  • What Are You Watching Right Now?
    When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it — memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis 
    (remembrance of a guest who tarried but a day) — the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then.

    Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

    The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.
    — Blaise Pascal, Pensées

    :smile:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Given that the experiential cannot be given an explanation then suggests that there is no blindspot - which would only be emphasized if one can give computational / information-processing account of the meta-problem of consciousness (i.e. give an account of information processing limitations that cause intelligent information processing agent to hit a brick wall when it comes to accounting for certain things that it perceived or processes). The blindspot is then only apparent if you think that explanations can do more than give predictive or relational accounts and should be about God's eye perspective; but they simply can't ...Apustimelogist
    :up: :up:

    Surely nobody can describe the feeling of pain such that another on hearing that description will know that particular pain ...Wayfarer
    :roll: Wtf: map (description) =/= territory (pain).
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    I had thought that the "2 world view" and the "2 aspect view" were competing interpretations in Kant scholarship.Janus
    No doubt derivations from Descartes and Spinoza, respectively. I read Kant as contra the latter (re: "pure reason") and yet inconsistently far more the former (along with Plato's "Allegory of the Cave").
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    The so-called "natural attitude" just consists in the refusal to submit one's thinking, experience and understanding to any dogma, and the "interpretive/ methodological" application "to science, historiography, law, pedagogy religion, etc." is simply the extension of that free-mindedness to the human disciplines.Janus
    :fire: Well said!
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    ... physicalism [naturalism] is the attempt to apply the same mindset to philosophy.Wayfarer
    This is caricature. Paradigms like physicalism are not applied "to philosophy" but interpretively / methodologically to experience, science, historiography, law, pedagogy, religion, etc.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    The subject reality of existence is ine[lim]inable.Wayfarer
    Only for subjects.

    Cogito ergo sum.
    Neither proves nor explains anything. And given that there aren't rational grounds to "doubt everything", The Cogito only makes explicit (its) presupposed (non-subjective, non-mental) existence.

    Also, you missed this, Wayf ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1026327
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    No doubt (like sin, miracles, angels/demons, ghosts & the afterlife (e.g. resurrection, reincarnation, spirit world)), "God¹ exists" nowhere else but in the minds of religious believers and other magical thinkers. :sparkle:

    ¹five-sided triangle (empty name)
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    So, in other words, "the mind" is mind-dependent. :roll:

    # First, Mind (consciousness, thoughts, feelings) is not an entity, but a process.
    # Secondly, Mind (power to create imaginary ideas) is not physical
    Gnomon
    "Non-physical power/process"? More fatuous nonsense. :lol:
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    So, in other words, you're just making shit up like "the ground of metaphysics".. That's Reddit bs, son.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    :eyes:
    ... the ground of metaphysics
    — Sirius

    Explain how and why "metaphysics" requires a "ground".
    180 Proof
    Put up or shut up, son.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    Heidegger, who thought the great final transformation of humanity would come from the rise of Germans to world power, manifesting their potential to live in authenticity. He also believed all Jews would have to die in order for this grand vision to be realized. That's why you'll find in the book Mikie referenced a nod to the 'inner greatness of National Socialism.' That book is partly famous because it contains Heidegger's attempt to cover up his attachment to the Nazis.frank
    :up: :up:

    The infinite & indivisible substance of Spinoza is a bare substratum, which can never be actual in of itself, since it lacks determination altogether.Sirius
    Obviously you've not studied Spinoza's work.

    An undetermined being violates the [Parmenides] unity of being & intellect...
    So what? Hume dispenses with this "axiom" (more recently Q. Meillassoux's anti-correlationism).

    ... the ground of metaphysics
    Explain how and why "metaphysics" requires a "ground".

    Kant [ .... ] he was far more intelligent than Spinoza.
    :roll:
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    The whole is infinite and eternal (nature); its constituents and their configurations are finite and temporal (physics). Logical relations – entailments – between the whole and subwholes naturalists compose as rational mandalas. Thus, 'contemplating, without explaining or justifying, the current best explanations for nature' is how I understand m e t a p h y s i c s (as practiced by e.g. Laozi, Democritus-Epicurus, Spinoza ...)
  • Why Not Nothing?_Answered
    [M]y goal is to make a metaphysical statement true.ucarr
    :chin:

    E.g. 'a priori the real negates all unreals (i.e. impossible objects/worlds)', no?
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    This point bears repeating (reposting):
    So, I "believe" naturalism is true - basically I see no good reason to think anything unnatural exists. This is not an expression of certainty - I'm open to having this theory challenged and defeated. But the mere possibility it is false is not a defeater. — Relativist

    @Wayfarer @Gnomon @bert1 ... @T Clark et al
  • Are humans by nature evil
    Great book. :up:
    Kill them then?Metaphysician Undercover
    That's evil, sir!
  • Are humans by nature evil
    And how do we get evil people to do good things?Metaphysician Undercover
    We don't. :mask:

    More bigoted baloney.T Clark
    Yeah, but which happens to be true.
  • Are humans by nature evil
    ... history ["the bronze age"] has devised ways [religions] to make us homicidal [scapegoat "them"].ENOAH
    "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." ~Steven Weinberg
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    I think that many religions understand that they are an issue of faith, not something evidence, which is comes back to my point here.ssu
    And your point is?