Comments

  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪baker
    :up:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Addendum to ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842289

    Give an example of a ‘philosophical statement’ which is not a proposition which references the world in any manner. — Bob Ross
    Really? How about ...

    Forms-of-life regulate, or constrain, language-games played-created within them (e.g. exchanging "philosophical statements"). All truths are relative. Transcendental categories of reason create experience. I think, therefore I am. Consciousness is fundamental reality. God is the ground of being. Atman is Brahmin. The highest good is the Form of the Good. To be is to be perceived. Mathematical structures are real. A brain-in a-vat has no way of knowing whether or not it's a brain-in-a-vat. Things-in-themselves are unknowable. Observation collapses the wavefunction. Souls are eternal. 'A = A' is a necessary truth. Only ideas are real. God, or Nature. There is only one substance with two properies: mental & physical. The many emenate from the One. God did it. Nothing does not exist. The only constant is change. Definitions have use-values, not truth-values. The nothing noths. There are also unknown unknowns. All values are arbitrary: nothing matters. One can only live forwards and understand backwards. Philosophy is the art of learning to die. The wavefunction does not "collapse" which implies ... many worlds.

    ... etcetera. :roll:

    Metaphysics is the attempt at determining ‘what things are’. No?
    No. It's more like an "attempt at" deducing concepts and interpretions of "what things are".
  • What is real?
    I had never heard that term [immanentist] before. — Gnomon
    To jar your memory, an excerpt from a reply to you, Gnomon, on an old thread "What is Metaphysics? Yet again" ...
    Anyway, you're familiar with negative theology, aren't you? Well, my negative ontology (aka "immanentism") is more or less the same but applied to reality (in general) rather than just to g/G (in particular). — 180 Proof
    Simply put, an immanentist rejects 'transcendent ideas / values / entities' as rationally unwarranted (i.e. wholly subjective). Thus my short list of notable philosophers ...
    Epicureans & Stoics, Kynics & Spinozists, Nietzscheans & Peircean-Deweyans — 180 Proof
    & all other anti-supernaturalists, or anti-antirealists. :mask:

    Addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842279
  • What is real?
    Sometimes it's claimed that perfect versions of what we experience within the Universe are beyond it, or God ... — Ciceronianus
    It seems to me folks are still making fetishes of their fallaciously reified hasty generalizations (à la Feuerbach et al). 'Homo religiosi', no? Man the Idolator (idealizer, ideal/idol-reifier ). "Bewitched by language" (or Meinong's Jungle) – no doubt an atavistic cognitive illusion/bias prevalent with "beyonders" of all varieties that's stubbornly immune to philosophical reflection, etc. :zip:
  • The Mind-Created World
    Thanks for your feedback! — Wayfarer
    :up:

    First point - when you say 'the world' here you refer to 'the totality of experience', right?
    Incorrect. By the world I'm referring to 'the totality of facts' (re: TLP, 1.1-1.21).

    ... this is an argument that the mind is both unitary and transcendental.
    Then why not instead title the thread

    "The transcendental mind-created common experience of the world"?

    ... the reality of first-person consciousness is apodictic, cannot plausibly be denied.
    If X is true by definition (i.e. apodictic), then X is merely abstract and not concrete, or factual. Given ubiquitious and continuous (i.e. embodied) multi-modal stimuli from environmental imbedding, sufficiently complex, functioning, brains generate recursively narrative, phenomenal self models (PSM)¹ via tangled hierarchical (SL)² processing of which "first-person consciousness" consists. That these processes are also voluntarily as well as involuntarily interruptable, Wayfarer, demonstrates that the "reality (that) cannot be plausibly denied" is primarily virtual. :sparkle:


    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model#Overview_of_the_PSM [1]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop [2]
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪Bob Ross
    Philosophical statements are not propositions about the world. Again, metaphysics is not theoretical. You unwarrantedly assume that such an inquiry attempts to determine 'how things are' and then criticize it for failing to do so. This (mis)conception of metaphysics is the actual problem you're having with metaphysics, Bob. And your 'antirealist' (mis)conception of science is inadequate as well insofar as natural sciences consist in models of phenomena, which are not remotely what you keep calling "models of experience" (e.g. Neo-kantian "symbolic forms").
  • What is real?
    How [to] justify a search for "the real" outside of Nature, beyond the Universe? — Ciceronianus
    Has any thinker ever demonstrated that the whole of reality-nature-universe has a boundary in space and/or time (to provide grounds for assuming there is an "outside, beyond")?

    Given that any such search is only possible for us in media res (not from the "outside" or "beyond"), assuming some transcendent "outside, beyond", like searching "up" on a 2D plane, is both nonsense and imaginary (à la jabberwocky ... which, unfortunately, @Gnomon takes literally).
  • What is real?
    [re @Gnomon & Herr Heidi] Creating new words is not an issue so much as misusing or redefining words commonly used, thereby promoting confusion and uncertainty. — Ciceronianus
    :100:

    I would equate Nature with the Universe. We are parts of Nature. Our interactions with the rest of the world (including other humans and animals and objects) are parts of Nature--they take place in the Universe. What we create become parts of the Universe when they're created (just as anthills are parts of Nature/the Universe). It happens our interactions with the rest of the Universe encompass language and culture; they're not separate from the Universe; they take place in it.
    :fire: :up:

    We immanentists agree on that much at least – i.e. Epicureans & Stoics, Kynics & Spinozists, Nietzscheans & Peircean-Deweyans!
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    For example, I define it as "the study of that which is beyond the possibility of experience". — Bob Ross
    To "define ... that which is beyond" seems patent nonsense to me. Also, "the possibility of experience" amounts to an anthropic / subjectivity-bias (contra Copernicus' mediocity principle & Peirce's fallibilism). Typical idealism.

    Anyway, a summary of what I've written so far on this thread. To wit:

    IME, metaphysics has always been the reflective study of the most general prerequisites (i.e. ontology) for rationally making sense – interpreting the paradigm changes, research programs & provisional results – of physics (i.e. the counter-intuitive, defeasible study of nature (i.e. ontics)).

    In other words, metaphysics describes what also must be the case and not be the case in order for 'whatever we think can or cannot be the case' to be soundly explainable. Metaphysics, however, does not explain, or determine, whatever is or is not the case. Thus, it is the name of "the book that (deductively) follows from the book on nature." Study nature; then reflect on 'what makes it possible to study nature' (not merely to have 'subjective experiences') – Aristotle surpasses his teacher Plato here – this is metaphysics, or where ("first") philosophizing begins ("in wonder").
  • The Insignificance of Moral Realism
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    Yes, in praxis, no doubt, other positive goals can be useful; I think what I've presented on this thread hints at a prolegomena to a future minima moralia. :smirk:
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Wayfarer
    Well written and clear OP, but I'm not persuaded by the case you're trying to make, sir. To my mind:

    (1) In order for Mind to "create the world", Mind must be unitary and transcend – be independent of – the world;
    and (2) by independent what is implied is alien to individual minds which are immanent to – entangled with, inseparable from – the world;
    and (3), though the world populated by individual minds (subjects) exists, only Mind is real – exists even when the world of individual minds (subjects) does not exist (i.e. before the world was created and after the world dissipates);
    and (4), because Mind transcends the world, individual minds (subjects) in the world cannot have corroborable evidence of Mind – including that the world is/was created by Mind ...

    ... therefore (5) Mind functions only as a creator(god)-of-the-gaps placeholder, or implicit appeal to ignorance, such that the thesis "Mind creates the world" amounts to nothing but an unparsimonious just-so story.

    So tell me, Wayfarer, what I get wrong here and/or why my objection fails.

    addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841677 :eyes:

    NB: Maybe someone has already pointed this out, but the definitions of "physicalism" and "naturalism" in the OP do not correspond, IMO, to how most physicalists and naturalists use the terms.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪Bob Ross
    :roll:

    Spoon-feeding ain't my jam, Bob.
  • What is real?
    *BAM*
    What you [@Gnomon] were doing was making false claims. I don't know why you would consider that to be a valuable contribution to a philosophical discussion.

    Harry Frankfurt has a different name for what you refer to as "addressing a philosophical question":     — wonderer1
    :clap: :100: :lol:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Can you please define what you mean by ‘metaphysics’? — Bob Ross
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/840954

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841463

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841753

    Because, to me, metaphysics is ‘“beyond” premises’
    Non-rational metaphysics (i.e. supernaturalist, mythical, subjectivist, etc) is neither classical nor modern.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪wonderer1
    :up:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪T Clark
    :cool:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Would you say, then, that metaphysics is informed by physics, and never vice-versa? — Bob Ross
    No. Yes.

    ... for how could an abstraction from experience necessarily pertain to that which is beyond it?
    Inferences from factual, or natural, axioms (i.e. physics) are sound. Inferences with "beyond" premises (e.g. magic, myths, ideals), whether or not they are valid, cannot be sound. Metaphysics is rational, at best, and itself is never theoretical (i.e. explanatory of nature). E.g. 'interpretations' of QM are metaphysical (re: ontology), not epistemological (i.e. predictive, or conclusive)³ – in Aristotlean terms they 'come after (i.e. categorical generalizations from, or (as per Collingwood) absolute presuppositions of)¹ the physics'. This is why Spinoza's scientia intuitiva¹ (holistic, nondual) follows from common ideas³ (objective) which in turn follow from inadequate, or imaginary, ideas² (subjective) – the latter two e.g. as per Peirce/Dewey. Of course, there are other 'interpretations of metaphysics' but I find them either less rational (i.e. unsound, anachronistic)² or irrational (i.e. invalid, faith-based / idealist / subjectivist aka "X-of-the-gaps").

    ↪Manuel
    :up:
  • The Mind-Created World
    ... a style of naturalism that acknowledges the irreducibility of the first-person perspective. — Wayfarer
    As a philosophical naturalist I'm unaware of any "style of naturalism" wherein "first-person perspective" is reducible to ... just as e.g. living organisms are not reducible to their constituent phenomenal subsystems (e.g. biochemistry, biophysics, wavefunction, etc) because organisms are emergent complex phenomena. 'Ontological reductionism" is a mere caricature of methodological reductionism and thereby a rhetorical objection to scientism.. Also, though naturalism is presupposed by natural science, naturalism itself is not natural science. This so-called "extended or transcendental naturalism", Wayfarer, sounds like another quasi-Kantian solution is search of a problem – tilting at windmills. :sparkle:

    :chin: Maybe I should read the OP ...
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    :cool:
  • Bannings
    :up:

    Shameless recidivists – too good for Reddit and not good enough for TPF – what are they gonna do? :smirk:
  • Culture is critical
    fence.

    ↪180 Proof :up: Is that the best icon we can muster for "Right on, Brother!"     — Vera Mont
    Apparently – *Raised FIST*, Sistah! :cool:
  • Culture is critical
    I am not worried about AI being anti-human. I am worried about us being anti-human. — Athena
    I Agree. :100:

    Modes of "us being anti-human" (driven by material & symbolic, often manufactured, scarcities):
    • over ten millennia of pathological dominance hierarchies (aka "civilizations" ... "hegemonies")
    • consisting of enforced class-caste exploitation (e.g. imperialisms, monarchisms, (democracy-in-name-only) republicanisms, totalitarianisms)
    • policed by indoctrinated sexual, racial/ethnic, tribal, sectarian descrimination (e.g. colonizing genocides / ethnic cleansings, mass enslavements, patriarchies & apartheids, 'strategic neglect' policies, anti-democratic economies, etc)...

    Intelligent machines (AGI) can do no worse than what we humans have done and continue to do to each other (and our biosphere-descendants), and possibly intelligent machines might do much better than we can by, to begin with, eliminating and/or exponentially more equitably – humanely – managing resource scarcities. I suspect that we "anti-human" humans will only ever learn to be pro-human (in every practical and psychology sense) once we have been sufficiently removed from the evolutionary conditions – facticity – of scarcity that is constitutive of our "anti-human" atavisms. I'm convinced that the most likely prospect for pro-humanizing the human condition itself is, though quite risky, by machine intelligences automating global civilization ... before we anti-humanly off ourselves (through action or inaction) as a species. Appeal to a classical / liberal 'humanism' that never worked well enough to be adopted globally is just an empty utopian nostalgia for what never was and will never be on that basis alone.
  • What is real?
    T.L. Austin
    — Gnomon

    J. L. Austin, you mean.     — Ciceronianus
    Exactly @Gnomon's modus operandi, counselor. And the rest follows ... :smirk:

    Perhaps you're using words like "nature" and "real" in a peculiar manner, though.

    What Austin and others were doing (including Wittgenstein) was pointing out that the misuse of language_--the contrived use of it--leads us to make unwarranted conclusions and sends us on expeditions without purpose.
    :clap: :100:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you are saying ‘metaphysics’ is the over-arching means of determining ‘physics’ ... — Bob Ross
    No, definitely not. By analogy, for instance, the rules – generalizations abstracted from design (logical) space – for valid moves in chess (e.g. metaphysics) are not "over-arching means of determining" winning strategies for playing chess (e.g. physical theories).
  • Would time exist if there was nothing?
    "Would [not nothing] exist if there was nothing?"
  • What is real?
    ↪Gnomon
    It must be kept in mind that Austin is not doing metaphysics even when he's analyzing the linguistics of purported 'metaphysical statements'. He's like a medical secretary addressing technical jargon used to describe brain surgery. I don't see any problem with answering the OP's question in the clearest terms possible as I/others have tried to do (in this thread and elsewhere).
  • What is real?
    Illusions are real.
    Hallucinations are real.
    Fantasies are real.
    Copies and forgeries are real.
    Appearances are real.     — unenlightened
    :smirk:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    I'm simply saying that science is no improvement on philosophy/religion when it comes to the big questions — EnPassant
    And I'm saying your statement is nonsense because science is not used to address "the big questions" so it can't be even "no improvement" on them. That 's like saying: "Well finally that bachelor has stopped beating his wife." :roll:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    Well, how has science answered the big questions such as the ones I pointed out? — EnPassant
    :roll: I guess you do not understand the point I'm making ...
    Of course science only solves empirical problems and does not answer philosophical questions [ ... ] you make a category mistake, EnPassant, when you criticise science for not doing philosophy ... — 180 Proof
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪EnPassant
    :lol:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Overall I think it's a mistake to dismiss metaphysics. — Wayfarer
    :up:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪EnPassant
    Of course science only solves empirical problems and does not answer philosophical questions.

    Philosophy, as Wittgenstein points out, only describes how we use concepts (by which to interpretively frame 'experience') whereas unfalsified theories in science are used to explain – model the conditional causal relations of – transformations from one physical state-of-affairs to another. AFAIK, (fundamental) sciences are hypothetico-deductive (i.e. experimental) and not merely inductive (i.e. experiential) as per Popper vs Hume, et al. It's philosophy, in fact, that "explains nothing" about the world (i.e. existence & reality) but instead non-trivially interprets whatever we think we know about the world, etc.

    "The big questions" are, at best, conceptual lenses (prisms) through which we orient our lives, loves & livelihoods. IMO, you make a category mistake, EnPassant, when you criticise science for not doing philosophy and/or employ philosophy to undertake scientific tasks.
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪EnPassant
    Clarify what you mean by "explain" in this context in order to better grasp your claim that "science explains nothing".
  • Are there any jobs that can't be automated?
    Given what you know about robotics and machine learning, do you think that there are jobs that can't be automated? — Josh Alfred
    At least one: "god" – (the) omni-providential agent.

    Are there one's that are going to be harder to automate than others? What are those jobs?
    None after AGI has been achieved (i.e. post-Singularity).
  • What is real?
    ↪wonderer1
    :up:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    To be precise, science explains nothing ... — EnPassant
    Well, to be even more precise, scientific theories cannot explain everything and whatever they explain they can only do so approximately.
  • The universe is cube shaped
    The universe must have some kind of fundamental level of existence. In other words, it can't be reduced beyond a certain point. — AlienFromEarth
    My candidate for the "fundamental level of existence" – the constitutive, dynamic ground state – is planck events (i.e. vacuum fluctuations / field excitations). As far as metaphysic goes, IMO this "fundamental physics' corresponds to the Democritean void (or natura naturans of Spinoza).
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    A metaphysics is not a piece of evidence or a collection of facts to be compared against scientific claims. It’s the meta-framework within which scientific claims, facts and evidence are intelligible. Change the metaphysics and we don’t ‘disprove’ a science’s facts, we change their sense and relevance. — Joshs
    I'd only add 'to the degree "the meta-framework" is rational' (i.e. soundly inferential, coherent & self-consistent).

    ↪Mww
    :up:
  • Culture is critical
    To me, that describes what true spirituality is, when it is directed against injustice. — universeness
    A post from an old thread Ethics in four words ...
    Flourish By Minimizing Harm.

    Liberty By Minimizing Injustice.     — 180 Proof
    Ethical & political, respecticely.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    Metaphysics is a discipline; imagination is a faculty. — Mww
    :up:
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