Well said. What we can't seem to avoid is a faith in 'properly critical reason' itself. That to me is the implicit humanism in philosophy. What do we mean by reason? It's a rich concept.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance.
...
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. — Kant

appeal to intuition is effective an appeal to one’s own authority and so an appeal to faith. — Pfhorrest

I agree that an appeal to intuition is appeal to faith. But I agree with Kant that enlightenment is the courage of thinking for one's self. What is it in the self that is not intuition? It's basically concept or language, which is intrinsically a public phenomenon. So the person that reasons properly cannot be the lonely ego. This lonely ego is itself 'spoken by language' or a sign within the system of public signs.

Language is nothing other than the realization of the species; i.e., the “I” is mediated with the “You” in order, by eliminating their individual separateness, to manifest the unity of the species.
...
[T]he urge to communicate is a fundamental urge – the urge for truth. We become conscious and certain of truth only through the other, even if not through this or that accidental other. That which is true belongs neither to me nor exclusively to you, but is common to all. — Feuerbach

So basically we have a tension between the adult/enlightened ego that thinks for itself and the rejection of mere opinion founded on merely private intuitions. We do accept valid private reasoning, but my suggestion is that this validity is public, and that therefore reason isn't essentially private --even if it needs particular human brains as its 'hosts.' We are, it seems to me, the supremely social species, with an eerily liberated ability to use signs to organize our environment, including our symbolic environment.

What does it mean when Sartre says that Being-in-Itself "is what it is," whereas Being-for-Itself "is not what it is and is what it is not"? — charles ferraro

The chair is a chair. When I look at the chair, it fills my consciousness. 'I' am that chair, and yet I'm not. What am I besides that chair? I am the witness of various objects and yet none of them. But I am nothing other than those objects. So I am all objects and yet none of them. Even the 'I' is an object for the witness. So is the concept of the 'for itself.' The idea of a subject, of consciousness, is actually troubled by this thinking. Being and consciousness are one.

And yet we know that it's somehow a picture show in an individual skull.

I've never seen this tension satisfactorily resolved. We have two starting points and interesting work from each point.

A contagious meme! Dennett would approve. — Wallows

This to me is the second, secret purpose of philosophy. It's not just about truth. It's also creative enterprise, a form of poetry. It's not non-fiction, exactly. It instead creates reality, installs new software. I think we live 'in' language, 'in' a field of shared concepts. And we can modify this 'field,' but usually only in small ways. The 'geniuses' (like Wittgenstein) seduce us with there memes. That seduction feels like a revelation of the real, and to some degree I think it is, but it is also a construction of a our shared conceptual reality. We swim in an ocean of signs. As 'spirits' we are chains of signs that talk about themselves. Something like that...

Hmm, but I like being a philosophical celebrity, don't you? xD — Wallows

Oh yeah, I am trying to squeeze out a fresh meme now and then. But I like anonymity too. A nice compromise is launching a meme and see a few people assimilate it into the personality / system.

I want to be contagious. And yet I was never really here.

Aww, the mods are in a foul mood it seems. Once again, moved to The Lounge. — Wallows

I don't think it matters much, as long as the conversation is permitted to continue. I never pay attention to the categories. Like never.

All appeal to authority is fideistic. — Pfhorrest

I like this theme. I've been writing about the patricidal fraternity of reason, which is an indulgent way to describe the good philosopher as eschewing appeals to authority, and in fact point out and negating such appeals.

The supernatural only demands fideism because there is no evidence possible from which to reason about it. — Pfhorrest

I think I know what you mean. The supernatural offends the 'fraternity' as the prototypical absent father, appealed to in the real world by viceroys or sons whose authority derives from an imagined proximity to this father. And this father can also be a secret 'trans-conceptual' 'knowledge.'

In politics, especially on the atheist left (which I mostly claim), the authority is a set of dangerously vague concepts.

"Fashion" is a concept I never did entirely get. The whole industry is probably worth maybe a trillion. — Wallows

Well I guess I'm a peacock. But I like to work with the most understated, classic elements. A person just projects competence and self-respect when they are dressed carefully. And what one doesn't do is perhaps more important than what one does.

I'm just opinionating here, but I do indeed believe in the 'language' of clothing. And in my book one can err by spending too much. For me the game is nailing it via taste. In same way that bad cooking can always involve too much salt, fat, or sugar...so can bad dressing involve excessive expenditure. But all of this is relative. If a person is rich and hangs with the rich, they may need a suit that costs 2K. Background is 'part' of foreground. IMO we have to account for context. And this applies even to intellectual fashion.

One 'has' to learn to see one's self from the outside, in context, to be good at a certain kind of game. Now whether that's a worth game is another issue. But I personally love clothes that are just so. But that applies to other objects in life. I like the idea of living art. I like the idea of necessary life tools also being beautiful.

Hmm, grocery stores are the best, as are malls. You can see the invisible hand working its magic thereabouts. — Wallows

Nice contrast. I do like H&M. Lots of there stuff is too...something. But occasionally they really nail it, and it's a good price. But I scoff at diamond stores. Even Apples stores. My older iphones are good enough. And yet I need the monied to keep buying the latest. I depend on other lifestyles for my own.

When you desire something, that is because you misperceive the object of your desire as the object small a. Often, it appears to be a shard of the glory you lost when you underwent your traumatic experience, whatever that was. Nevertheless, all this talk of lost glory is usually located strictly within the coordinates of the constitutive fantasy of your subjectivity, not in the facts of external reality. — absoluteaspiration

I've always been fascinated by Lacan & yet ambivalent. But I like the idea of the impossible object. I connect it to a distance effect. From afar, the real object looks like the impossible object. If only we could get that thing, often her, all is well. But maybe we get her. But then we discover that she isn't her. I also think of cats chasing the red dots projected by a laser pointer. Or the green-ness of the grass on the other side of the fence, caused by or painted with an impossible green by that fence.

For Lacan, 'it is not enough that the analyst should support the function of Tiresias. He must also, as Apollinaire tells us, have breasts'[13] – must represent or incorporate the (missing) object of desire. — Wiki

This is another theme I like. The analyst is like the sage or the guru. He depends on a distance effect. The analysand is the young seeker who must find something behind the obvious. I think of the fathers and sons. The son becomes a father precisely when he abandons the idea of the father. So the 'elite' in this case is a patricidal fraternity. This fraternity (of critical reason) does not and indeed cannot exclude anyone directly. But entry costs the death of the father-son complex. The son gives up on the existence of the secret, and the false father gives up on his claim to possess it. And all of this spiel is only bearable or sensible within the fraternity (or sorority if anyone prefers, since the human is not essentially sexed. Reason's only genital is the tongued mouth.)

To me the secret symbolizes an immediate access to truth, perfectly present to a perfectly distinct ego. The isolated ego gazes directly at the impossible object. But to me it seems that the isolated ego is a superstition encouraged by our possession of distinct bodies. The ego is 'made of' a public language. It is voice speaking an essentially alien language, at a distance from itself, unable to say exactly what 'it' means.

These signs defy clear classification into subjective and objective, blurring the boundaries of Substance from within. — absoluteaspiration

I think you are getting at the same thing in that quote above. The ego as consciousness is a voice, a string of signs. The fantasy or ideal is that some kind of meaning of perfectly interior, and this perfect interiority is also the fantasy of the pure ego. For a perfect philosophy to be possible (a time-conquering theory of existence), we need meaning that is completely detachable from signs and their frailties, the necessary possibility of their recontextualization and semantic drift. Doubting with Zizek the end of inquiry, I think instead we'll never know who we are.

Well, my point is that there's nothing unique about being rich or coming to that status. — Wallows

I think I know what you mean. And there's truth in that. But isn't there also truth in 'a fool and his money are soon parted.'? I've seen people squander tens of thousands of dollars. Others would use a small inheritance to invest, etc.

How-so? Teach me! I wanna be rich too! — Wallows

Ha. Well I've never been much of a coin collector, though I am good at spending them slowly. I love grocery stores. As mundane as they are, so much of one's philosophy is manifest there.

How did you reach that notion of ideal community? — absoluteaspiration

To answer playfully, from you & Zizek.

We do the only thing we can do, censor our fantasies and brutally formalize where we stand. — absoluteaspiration

Who is this 'we'? Surely you speak not only to share a mere opinion but to make a case to all reasonable and decent people.

In other words, the only answer is dedicating oneself to the Cause of emancipation. — absoluteaspiration

The only answer for...reasonable people who are swayed by you & Zizek. And if 'we' work toward emancipation, we are incarnating or installing the ideal community so that it is actual.

It's not my original idea, this ideal community, though I do experiment with paraphrases. What is it to be rational? What is it to be unbiased/objective? Humanism is latent in post-religious philosophy and science. 'Reason' is the 'holy ghost' is intimately connected to an ideal community (of saints scientists/philosophers). Isn't it also latent in the Cause of emancipating others? Surely we aren't emancipating only one kind of human being but all human beings. The idea that race, gender, nationality is a merely surface is an expression of humanism. The 'tribe' is expanded to all rational beings. Those who resist this expansion of the tribe are racists, sexists, fascists, etc. And those who appeal to supernatural authorities are 'irrational' or 'reactionary.' It is we humans who determine our own fate, via a universal human reason distributed through all of us. That's why you and I have to give an account, give reasons, for our beliefs. Not I, but reason in me is worth listening to.

Who says that a community within those parameters is ideal? — absoluteaspiration

This is what all the fighting about. It's the clash of groups with different notions of the ideal community.

Zizek says that the "end of inquiry" is itself an impossible fantasy. — absoluteaspiration

I agree with Zizek. I was speaking fast and loose. But what I'm aiming at is describing the goal of 'being on the right side of history.' This is all tied up with the myth of progress, scientific and moral.

Regarding emancipation, dedication to the Cause leads to salvation in the purely negative sense that you'd hate yourself if you didn't do it. — absoluteaspiration

A person could also hate themselves in retrospect for 'wasting' their whole life trying. I'm not taking sides in some simple way. I'm just speaking at a certain distance from the idea. As I mentioned, some of the people who think Trump is Nero Christ believe that they are the good guys. They are dedicated to the Cause of draining the swamp. They are also soldiers of emancipation & truth, in their own eyes.

I really don't want to speak as a prophet. I still don't know who I am, except as the person addicted to not knowing who they are. But that's just it. Dissolving into the Cause looks a little like death to me. ' best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.' And let's consider Zizek himself. He is capitalism's finest product, an old, fat man who can dazzle the youth with his strange brew of dirty jokes and seventh-order talk. But I love the guy. He's a great symbol for us. I think that he knows more than he lets on. And actually he tells the truth in jokes. He's a monster. The world is just raw material for him. Revolution is just a motif for him as a composer of ideas and attitudes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gK-CzCHug

I relate to very much to Zizek in this video. Life is a monster's dream.

if meaning and language dont exist then im not using them and therefore its not self refuting to say they dont exist. — OmniscientNihilist

Aad aroim fsgomsrgb sdfpmsefvmoksfgbfsv ?

what am i using? something else nobody seems to have found yet. because:

"false knowledge is a greater impediment to truth then ignorance" — OmniscientNihilist

To me it's your false knowledge (your 'omniscience') that impedes your movement toward something truthier than your current position. As I read the situation, you're going to keep working that shtick until you give up on winning recognition with it and/or get bored. You'll even start using capital letters. The self schemes to spread its memes.

Where we agree is that 'ego' is a blinding force. The young, vain spirit tries for the shortcut, reaches for the bogus absolutes. This patricidal approach makes sense. It's almost impossible to carve in interesting mask until you've studied hundreds of them. That's the old man's primary advantage. He's fat with ingested personalities. He's tried the shortcuts and knows them better than the current shortcutters do.

But maybe we're just dying monkeys passing the time with spiritual/intellectual cosplay.

If we we're to level the playing field for all participants, then the formerly rich would once again end up being the rich, whilst the poor-poor. — God

Responding to this thought: I personally think that a certain type of person will tend to gather coins. That doesn't make them better or worse. Even among us relatively poor people we see those who are more careful with their money than others, those who trade free time for wage-labor and the reverse. And we are also dreamers as a species.

Some people are more clear-eyed about practical matters than others. Freedom allows us to do stupid things, go into credit card debt for stupid objects that we don't need, etc. So freedom + property rights will indeed lead pretty quickly to the rich and the poor.

But, as I said, I'm all for taxing the rich and working against severe inequality.

I don’t think any real socialists villainize the rich as people, rather they figure that everybody is doing what they can to get ahead, and criticize systemic or institutional factors that give further advantages to those who are already ahead. — Pfhorrest

This sounds like the rational approach. At the same time I think we're only rational at our best.

Makes me wanna puke, if anyone actually believes that. — Wallows

No, to me those are different thoughts. My point is that it's easy for poor people to brag about their greatness of soul. At the same time many poor people 'worship' fame and comfort and travel. Basically we humans are often full of shit. So the real test is what we do with power or money or fame when we get it.

When people hate 'the rich,' it's not that far from hating women, men, blacks, Catholics, Jews, etc. Basically the risk is always that we're hating a cartoon that sketches some part of ourselves that we don't want to see and therefore project elsewhere. (An old, basic idea.)

forget all that talk of "meaning" — OmniscientNihilist

I can't, and neither can you, else you'd have no role to play here. Like the rest of us, you need a foil to shine against.

the word doesnt stand for anything. — OmniscientNihilist

Well it does and it doesn't. But these grandiose one-liners don't clearly stand for anything. If you want to develop your mask, I suggest looking into pragmatism. It also likes to 'dissolve' problems by conspicuously being 'uninterested' in them.

language is nothing but sounds and shapes that get associated to recorded sense data in the mind — OmniscientNihilist

That's a terrible theory, easily and long ago refuted. You need the concept of language in order to (implicit) deny concept itself. Consider the possibility of your own vanity. I understand the appeal of 'nothing is true' and 'it's all lies/confusion' positions. They don't require one to have read much, since they negate the value of books from the outset. But perhaps it's an anti-intellectual position that hopes to sell itself as the supreme intellectual position.

Maybe we're all dying, pretentious dogs. But we mostly die slow, and it's fun to talk about talking.

If those who 'hate the rich' could be 'magically' made billionaires, it would be fun to see what they would do or not do with those billions. While I think we poor nobodies should tax them big time, I also think there's some silliness in hating them for their wealth alone. It's easy for poor people to talk a big game. Resentment/envy is 'obviously' a possibility.

In short, I agree that lots of the ultra-rich are probably good people or OK people. And of course many of them do give millions away.

the above is caused by the below — OmniscientNihilist

I don't want to hijack the thread with this digression, but I will add one more point. What you don't give an account of is the transformation from an inferior perspective to a superior perspective. We both agree that ego or self-love is involved in distortion. This is in fact a old idea. 'Objective' means unbiased. But who is it that sees without distortion? The 'true self'? And how is this 'true self' connected to the community at large?

As Wittgenstein and others make clear (though the realization is much older than that), meaning is a public or shared phenomenon. The individual brain is (to overstate it) incapable of meaning, since languages evolve among groups of human beings. The group is primary, and yet language/meaning obviously also requires the individual, living brain. What I like about Derrida is his investigation of the idea of a 'pure meaning' that lives 'behind' the 'dead' symbols and sounds we say that we use to 'transmit' this 'meaning.' Where you and I and he seem to agree is that meaning is a 'mystical' concept. The idea that God is spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and truth is connected to the idea of pure meaning. And the idea of pure meaning is connected to the idea of a pure ego or subject that gazes on or has direct access to this pure meaning. (Note that 'subject' and 'meaning' are themselves signs caught up in this game.)

To me it seems that Derrida shows how this framework breaks down, despite its initial plausibility. The pure subject and pure meaning aren't really there. And yet they are at the heart of the philosophical mission. Timeless truth must be unstained by the exteriority of signs, ultimately independent of the 'flesh' of language, merely using it as a vehicle.

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche — OmniscientNihilist

I love the old artilleryman. But sometimes people also deceive themselves in terms of aphorisms like those. Conspiracy theory is full of that stuff. The first are actually last, despite appearances. People who don't recognize my brilliance are simply afraid of the truth! Yeah, that's it. Or.... Let's really extend the suspicion. Let's suspect especially the suspicions that flatter us. As you say, ego is indeed a factor. Vanity is my favorite sin.

ego prevents people from seeing themselves for what they really are. which blocks true knowledge of what the mind is and how it works, which prevents the construction of A.I. — OmniscientNihilist

An maybe 'ego' also whispers to us about some true nature that isn't really there. As far as AI goes, I actually know something about the field. And it's not really that exciting. Read some papers and see if it delivers that mystic feeling. IMO it's just another version of the angel/alien archetype. A techno-myth.

if you cant bulid a mind yet, then you still dont really understand it — OmniscientNihilist

Perhaps. And what's your reason for saying so? That we understand only what we make? And does that inference require an understanding of the mind? 'We understand only what we can make.' OK, prove it. Support it. You saw on the branch you sing from. What is the foundation of your authority or insight?

I don't claim to have a finished, bullet-proof theory. I suspect that such a theory is impossible. I challenge you as someone who pretends to be in on a secret.

explain what the mind is in substance and how it works in process — OmniscientNihilist

Thanks for responding.

We're already here doing that. Feel free to look at my past posts and debate this or that point. I like Derrida. I think he might be your cup of tea also.

meaning is meaningless — OmniscientNihilist

Alksdf 34 kawdf!!!!!@lm asdfm35 34 $#.

when people talk about meaning its like talking about superman. sure you can talk about it but its not actually real. the smart thing to do would be to break meaning down into what it actually is. explain the processes of the mind and how they work. — OmniscientNihilist

Explain using meaningless mystical meanings, I suppose? These 'people' you mention...are they all philosophers but your own supreme, omniscient, mystical self? Or ain't that what we bodies are engaged in here? Explaining the mind, thinking about thinking.

Pretending to doubt everything is all too easy, as are three word epigrams that project profundity. I don't mean to insult you but only to challenge you.

Theorem: The attempt to represent Substance with perfect objectivity necessarily fails.

Proof: The mind tries to use its memory as a map to represent the territory of the field of perception. The problem is that the conscious being is one element in this field. If the mind tries to represent itself representing itself, it runs into an infinite regress like two mirrors facing each other. Even if the mind were a perfect cartographer, it must necessarily represent the point where it represents itself by a metalinguistic symbol that stands for something like "self-description goes here". If it does not, it gets stuck in an infinite loop until it runs out of memory and returns an error. QED. — absoluteaspiration

I like this part. 'Objectivity' is a little tricky, though. To be objective is to be unbiased, to see not with personal eyes but rather with the eyes of the implicit ideal community. To see as one ought to see, to see through the eyes of the end of inquiry.

That aside, it's great to frame the problem in terms of the impossibility of the representation of representation itself.

"If only we had an X state, we'd basically have peace," is a fantasy of peace without having to love the monstrous Neighbor whose very existence gets under your skin. Since antagonism is the result of deep problems immanent to the very constitution of the subject, these statements are structurally fallacious. — absoluteaspiration

I think this is good too. We project/splinter our own contradictions in order to hide from the crack in our cores. The crack is contingent, we want to believe. Some stable arrangement is at least possible. But the monstrous neighbor is actually inside us, the part we try not to see. We hate the monstrous neighbor for disturbing our dream of having a uncracked face.

We openly acknowledge the irreducibly monstrous dimension of the Neighbor and love him anyway because we must.

In other words, the only answer is dedicating oneself to the Cause of emancipation. With this final gesture, pride's spine is finally shattered, but no God remains to guarantee humility's reward. — absoluteaspiration

I can't follow you here, though it's well presented. I can't love the neighbor. I can't hold that occasional love fixed. Nor can I believe in the shattering of pride, but only in the transformation of its object.

And who are we emancipating for what? Freedom dreams of a binding cause, dreams an escape from itself. The ecstasy is in the violence of continual transformation. 'I'm set free to find a new illusion.' I glut myself at the museum of masks. My face is a hole is a mouth for personality. It vomits back its half-digested fare as a new work of art, mostly unsuccessful, mostly 'guilty' of a machine-like predictability. 'I' am mostly a loser in the war against cliche and the quest for surprise and novelty. Zizek himself works at being a strong poet (Harold Bloom).

Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues against mystical attempts to alter states of consciousness. Instead, he says we should "censor our dreams" and engage in emancipatory struggle as the only road to salvation. — absoluteaspiration

This 'road to salvation' is one more version of the dream, one more myth. And isn't this an old myth indeed? Stop dreaming and fix the world, you fakers! But we wake to dream. Hand me the remote control. Quotidian reality is insufficiently dense. Zizek is a lovable madman.

Another problem here is the vagueness of the struggle. Even the GOP thinks it fights for freedom. 'Everyone' claims to work for Freedom or Justice or Fairness. Hence the utter triviality of chirping about them. When, however, we get to details, then get to boring, old-fashioned politics, which ties to find compromises at the intersection of incompatible abstract pseudo-absolutes.

Just to be clear, I liked your post and my response is meant to be friendly. Forgive any aggressive tone, please, as just being in the movement of the ideas.

Can't elaborate on my response. There is no human experience with 'infinite' unbounbded/without limit entities. Cantor was an illusionist, who fooled many people. That's it. — sandman

Well the though police aren't going to kick down your door for thinking so. Nor will they harass you for denying the theory of special relativity.

Personally I think you are caught up in a conspiracy theory here. And conspiracy theory (one of the great if disorganized religions of our time) seduces by presenting itself (deceptively) as the opposite of credulity. You imply that basically all mathematicians are fooled. This is a belief in something highly unlikely that you are unwilling to justify except in terms of an amateur's hunch. What I think you're missing is that all of this metaphysical jazz is what you are bring to the situation. Math is dry and technical. It is philosophically agnostic. Individual mathematicians may have metaphysical beliefs, but those beliefs don't play a role in proofs.

Cantor didn't prove something 'magical' about the 'real world,' even if he himself thought so. Or at least mathematicians are not at all bound to experience Cantor's work like that.

They aren't asking the questions I asked myself and others when I did believe and sought clarity. — Harry Hindu

Indeed. I started from belief, brought up a certain way. But, as Zizek jokes somewhere, it's the believers that the faith should watch out for. Because the believers, if they are possessed by the philosophical urge for clarity, will actually think about those beliefs. And that's when they fall apart.

Politics is just another form of religion — Harry Hindu

I agree, and I think this should be obvious. But the confused concept of the supernatural obscures how religion organizes group activity in the real world in the same way that a politics based on unquestioned secular concept/ideals does. Transcendence, justice, freedom, fairness, etc. Their force remains, even if one withdraws a traditional religious imagery from them.

I consider myself apolitical. — Harry Hindu

I relate to this, though it's complex. As a philosopher, I feel that I must be, in some sense, apolitical. I need distance from the fevers that insist on taking this or that 'magic word' for granted, as unquestionable, as an absolute. At the same time, I still vote for the lesser evil, knowing, however, that my vote is highly unlikely to make a difference. I worry far more about how I spend my money and treat others within my tiny little piece of the world.

Most, if not all, political discussions are based on subjective emotions and devolve into an emotional shouting match based on this idea that we are different when we aren't. We are made to think that we are thanks to those elitists in the nation's capital who manipulate citizens into pointing the finger at each other rather than at them where the blame for how things are belongs. — Harry Hindu

I think sometimes how simple the situation is. All the working people, the vast majority of us, could just tax the rich more. But the culture war distracts and seduces us. I think this is because: Once a person attains a certain level of material comfort, they tend to prioritize symbols of virtual superiority. You mention that we are made to exaggerate our differences. While I do think our tendency to do so serves the elite, I also think it's a natural tendency, a natural human vanity. We need an out-group. Perhaps the essence of any group is not what it includes but what it excludes.

Many athiests have simply swapped one Big Brother for another. — Harry Hindu

I agree. Behind it all, I see humanism, even if it doesn't go by that name. Feuerbach & Stirner offer a portrait of the conflict at its birth or rebirth. And I too, a philosophy-loving atheist, am also a humanist. So, from my point of view, our position is an internal criticism. I 'accuse' (with a triple smile) some of my fellow humanists of being insufficiently self-conscious.

I was quite struck recently by how the shadow of Nietzsche runs through the fringes of his ideas - but I’m likely reading something into that point as I’ve looked reasonably closely at some of Nietzsche’s stuff. — I like sushi

I find the shadow of Nietzsche in this quote.

All of modern philosophy, in the original sense of a universal ultimately grounding science, is, according to our presentation, at least since Kant and Hume, a single struggle between two ideas of science: the idea of an objectivistic philosophy on the ground of the pre-given world and the idea of a philosophy on the ground of absolute, transcendental subjectivity - the latter being something completely new and strange historically, breaking through in Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Psychology is constantly involved in this great process of development, involved, as we have seen, in different ways; indeed, psychology is the truly decisive field. It is this precisely because, though it has a different attitude and is under the guidance of a different task, its subject matter is universal subjectivity, which in its actualities and possibilities is one. — Husserl

If 'psychology is the truly decisive field,' then I think Nietzsche is decisive psychologist. The 'pre-given' world is structured by 'lies' (false but useful identities).

Here's another quote from Husserl that touches on our discussion.

According to our clarifications, the ultimate self-understanding here allows us to say: in my naïve selfconsciousness as a human being knowing himself to be living in the world, for whom the world is the totality of what for him is valid as existing, I am blind to the immense transcendental dimension of problems. This dimension is in a hidden [realm of] anonymity. In truth, of course, I am a transcendental ego, but I am not conscious of this; being in a particular attitude, the natural attitude, I am completely given over to the object-poles, completely bound by interests and tasks which are exclusively directed toward them. I can, however, carry out the transcendental reorientation - in which transcendental universality opens itself up - and then I understand the one-sided, closed, natural attitude as a particular transcendental attitude, as one of a certain habitual one-sidedness of the whole life of interest. I now have, as a new horizon of interest, the whole of constituting life and accomplishment with all its correlations - a new, infinite scientific realm - if I engage in the appropriate systematic work. In this reorientation our tasks are exclusively transcendental; all natural data and accomplishments acquire a transcendental meaning, and within the transcendental horizon they impose completely new sorts of transcendental tasks. Thus, as a human being and a human soul, I first become a theme for psychophysics and psychology; but then in a new and higher dimension I become a transcendental theme. Indeed, I soon become aware that all the opinions I have about myself arise out of self-apperceptions, out of experiences and judgments which I - reflexively directed toward myself - have arrived at and have synthetically combined with other apperceptions of my being taken over from other subjects through my contact with them. My ever new self-apperceptions are thus continuing acquisitions of my accomplishments in the unity of my self-objectification; proceeding on in this unity, they have become habitual acquisitions, or they become such ever anew. I can investigate transcendentally this total accomplishment of which I myself, as the "ego," am the ultimate ego-pole, and I can pursue its intentional structure of meaning and validity.

By contrast, as a psychologist I set myself the task of knowing myself as the ego already made part of the world, objectified with a particular real meaning, mundanised, so to speak - concretely speaking, the soul - the task of knowing myself precisely in the manner of objective, naturally mundane knowledge (in the broadest sense), myself as a human being among things, among other human beings, animals, etc. Thus we understand that in fact an indissoluble inner alliance obtains between psychology and transcendental philosophy. But from this perspective we can also foresee that there must be a way whereby a concretely executed psychology could lead to a transcendental philosophy. By anticipation, one can say: If I myself effect the transcendental attitude as a way of lifting myself above all world - apperceptions and my human self-apperception, purely for the purpose of studying the transcendental accomplishment in and through which I "have" the world, then I must also find this accomplishment again, later, in a psychological internal analysis - though in this case it would have passed again into an apperception, i.e., it would be apperceived as something belonging to the real soul as related in reality to the real living body. — Husserl

On one hand I'm the transcendental subject, which is to say being itself. I am the world entire, or its frame or stage or the light that reveals it.

On the other hand, 'I' am the 'dream' inside a particular object in this world, a particular skull.

I can focus 'through' either perspective, but (it seems) never forget my dual nature for long.

Because my views are not universal is the reason that I bring the topic up, so that I can get to see the views of others at least in this forum, and understand why such people have their specific views. — chromechris

That to me is just about the perfect reason to do so. While I do have specific views, studying philosophy leads to place of having views about views about views. It expands the mind by challenging that mind to make sense of (and organize) such wild disagreement and variety.

A God to me seems like a slave owner, who by virtue can never be overcome. The existence of a God to me seems immoral. Do any of you see the existence of a God immoral based on what I just explained, or is what I am thinking nonsensical? — chromechris

You are talking good sense. The typical presentations of God are indeed absurd/immoral, and not only because of the one reason you bring up. Personally I'm an atheist, but theidea of God seems especially important to humanity (including me) and gets processed in all kinds of ways within the philosophical tradition.

It's my impression that crude understandings of God (such as are often taught to children in religious households) are rare among philosophers. I suspect that atheists are even in the majority.

Basically two different bijections are possible. — TheMadFool

I'm guessing that an infinite number of bijections are possible. We can flip segments of length k and proceed as before. This works for any k >= 2.

For instance, let k = 3.

Then f = { (1,6),(2,4),(3,2),(4,12),(5,10),(6,8),...}.

Note that a function is itself just a set of ordered pairs (satisfying a condition that ensures an unambiguous output).

But all we need for equivalence, by definition, is a single bijection.

N = {2, 4, 6, 8,...,1, 3, 5,...} — TheMadFool

Note that sets are not ordered. {1,2} = {2,1}, for instance. The order is in the bijection. And, as you know, the easiest bijection is $f(n) = 2n,$ with inverse $f^{-1}(e) = e/2.$ The alternative bijections mentioned above probably have complicated algebraic forms, despite the simplicity of the idea behind them.

As you can I see can form a pairing (1-to-1 correspondence) between E and the even numbers in set N like so: (2,2), (4,4), etc. and that leaves the odd numbers without a corresponding pair in the set E. — TheMadFool

What you say is a contradiction. A 1-to-1 correspondence is a bijection. As I understand you, you are presenting $g : E \to N$ such that $g(e) = e$. Because odd numbers are not in the range of g, this function is not a surjection, though it is an injection (1-to-1). A bijection is simultaneously a surjection and an injection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijection

Please consider that there are uncountably many functions from E to N. One can use a diagonal argument to prove this. Assume not. Well clearly $f_k(e) = ke$ is a countably infinite family of functions. So the functions from E to N are at least countably infinite. So by our assumption (in pursuit of a contradiction), we can arrange the functions from E to N in an countably infinite list $f_n$. Then we define our diagonal function $f(e) = f_e(e) +1$ where the $f_n$ is the nth function in a merely countable list of functions from E to N.

Since $f(n) = f_n(n) + 1$, it differs from every $f_n$ at $n$ and is not on the list, despite being a function from E to N. Contradiction! The point of the list $f_n$ was to catch all functions from E to N. Hence our assumption that such functions are countable is incorrect. And they are at least countable, so they must be uncountable. Or you can interpret this as: since any possible listing allows for its own diagonal function not on that list, no listing gets them all (providing a bijection from N to the set of those functions.) Every listing casts a shadow or has a blind spot. We just slash diagonally to get something not on the list.

It's not surprising that you can find one such function that isn't a bijection. I'm guessing (someone feel like proving it?) that the probability of picking a bijection randomly is 0. Is the subset of bijections countably infinite? Sounds like a fun question.

This then is used to "prove" that the set E is equivalent to set N — TheMadFool

Keep in mind that this is just one kind of equivalence. It only has as much metaphysical weight as a philosopher feels like giving it. Mathematicians can all agree that X is proven without having to agree on what that means outside of mathematics. 'There exists' has a formal meaning. If $x \in \Bbb R$ and $x \ne 0$, then $\exists y \in \Bbb R$ such that $xy = 1$. That's an axiom. It's a rule that allows you to put a new piece on the board. Despite the intuitions and applications that quietly drive the 'game,' the game itself is 'safer' than that. Computers can, in theory, check proofs. In practice this is not often considered necessary or desirable.

It's like learning a language. Once you learn it, lots of proofs are easy to judge for their correctness.

Indeed. I have also studied those other results, especially in Kleene's Mathematical Logic. When I was first exposed to cardinality issues, I was, frankly, amazed and seduced. And I was myself guilty of raising objections I wasn't qualified to raise, too impatient to do the work required. Though I eventually did the work and saw the futility of merely intuitive/metaphysical approach. A person should probably write (at least) a few hundred proofs before philosophizing much about mathematics.

FWIW, I do think self-reference is one of the centers of philosophical opportunity. (Strange loops!)

Here's another quote.

The difference between empirical and transcendental subjectivity remained unavoidable; yet just as unavoidable, but also incomprehensible, was their identity. I myself, as transcendental ego, "constitute" the world, and at the same time, as soul, I am a human ego in the world. The understanding which prescribes its law to the world is my transcendental understanding, and it forms me, too, according to these laws; yet it is my - the philosopher's - psychic faculty. Can the ego which posits itself, of which Fichte speaks, be anything other than Fichte's own? If this is supposed to be not an actual absurdity but a paradox that can be resolved, what other method could help us achieve clarity than the interrogation of our inner experience and an analysis carried out within its framework? If one is to speak of a transcendental "consciousness in general," if I, this singular, individual ego, cannot be the bearer of the nature-constituting understanding, must I not ask how I can have, beyond my individual self-consciousness, a general, a transcendental intersubjective consciousness? The consciousness of intersubjectivity, then, must become a transcendental problem; but again, it is not apparent how it can become that except through an interrogation of myself, [one that appeals to] inner experience, i.e., in order to discover the manners of consciousness through which I attain and have others and a fellow mankind in general, and in order to understand the fact that I can distinguish, in myself between myself and others and can confer upon them the sense of being "of my kind." — Husserl

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/husserl2.htm

This is great quote, rich with ideas. To me all of this points to what it means to be in a language. We know that individual humans are mortal, that 'consciousness' depends on a living, fragile brain. And yet this 'consciousness' is much like a voice. And this voice speaks an 'intersubjective' language, which makes a 'subjective' interrogation possible in the first place.

Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. .. The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.
— Feuerbach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm

In other words, language or reason is 'God.' It's all quite messy, because intersubjective language is strangely grounded in particular mortal bodies. If we look in a mirror, we see a singular ape gazing back at us. But as we talk to ourselves we use a language that is not our own.

[T]he I, the self in general, which especially since the beginning of the Christian era, has ruled the world and has thought of itself as the only spirit that exists at all [must be] cast down from its royal throne. — Feuerbach

Our attachment to the single subject (which is not without its reasons) tends to (IMO) lead us by the nose away from our embedded-ness or distrbutedness across the community, possessed as we are by its language (even largely created as selves by this inherited language.) At the same time, we value objectivity and altruism. So we know without knowing how connected we are, but philosophy has still had a love affair with the lonely ego. But this makes sense, since philosophy often erupts as religions die, and therefore within a pluralism that throws us back on private 'spiritual' resources.

Anyway, this suggests a problem with trying to ground science on the intuitions of a subject. The subject itself is constituted, unless we insist on fixing that subject according to the mere limits of a human body, which misses precisely what is essentially human in us --our participation in language.

This is perhaps the easiest diagonal argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument

One can still ask philosophical questions about the 'frame' or set rules that makes this argument possible (set theory and classical logic), but the argument itself is beautiful and mind-opening. Because I call it beautiful or mind-opening, I do imply that the argument has intuitive content. But the argument doesn't depend on this intuitive content.

Sure.

Starting from the fact that we don't know the answer to the Continuum Hypothesis. Which tells us quite plainly that we still don't understand everything about mathematical infinity. — ssu

Right. And then one can think about constuctivism, finitism, etc. Or whether math is ultimately justified within a culture by its application. Its 'internal' justification (proofs) aren't necessarily why it is trusted or esteemed, especially as proofs get too complex for non-experts.

On forums I see those who appear to have no training approaching it 'metaphysically,' seemingly assuming that mathematicians themselves do it this way. But that misses what's essential, that it's a game with rules. It's agnostic about things outside those rules, even if particular mathematicians philosophize.

Wittgenstein showed that philosophy, yes in it's entirety, consists in language on being on holiday. And that's it really. It supposedly ends in quietism. — Wallows

It seems to me that only a certain kind of philosophy is subject to that accusation. Philosophy often seems to operate at the strategic level of human affairs. People wrestle with where we should be going, what kinds of arguments or people should be trusted, etc. It wrestles with whether 'I' should volunteer for the next war or have children or stop reading philosophy and learn to code. How is this more 'on holiday' than asking a bus-driver to pull over or telling a kid not too talk with her mouth full?

Strangely enough it's the philosophy just adjacent to Wittgenstein's (language-obsessed stuff) that seems most subject to the accusation. I love Wittgenstein, but still...

As you said, human thought is only familiar with things having boundaries. — sandman

What is the 'closure' of the concept of an integer? I'm sympathetic to intuition-ism and constructivism, but I don't agree about this familiarity only with boundaries. The concept of 'for each' is quite natural to us. A proof by induction does help us intuit a truth about an infinite set of numbers.

This isn't to deny that certain problems can crop up. But finitism, for instance, has its own problems.

This is contradicted by:
1. Random sampling of integers results in an average of 50% even E, 50% odd D.
Statistics can be verified in the real world, and is useful in applications of probability.
2. In the above example, removing E from N leaves D, removing E from E leaves nothing, so where is the logic? An odd feature of this example is the appearance of the same integers in both sets.
The 'bijection' for example 1 defines y=2x, as a mapping from N to E. The results are not about the size of sets, but the definition used for mapping. — sandman

No. Sorry. The equivalence is defined as the mathematical existence of a bijection. Mathematicians are well aware that they are different sets. And 'statistics can be verified in the real world' is anything but an obvious truth --assuming that it has a definite meaning in the first place.

While some mathematicians have little interest in philosophy and may ignore fascinating questions, they aren't slouches when it comes to actual math. Pure math is about as squeaky clean as it gets. The game has rules. What the game means when held against the 'real world' is a non-mathematical question. And the rules were established so that math wouldn't be a sloppy philosophical conversation.

A set without limit (infinite) is not measurable, since boundaries enable measurement. — sandman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_(mathematics)

In mathematical analysis, a measure on a set is a systematic way to assign a number to each suitable subset of that set, intuitively interpreted as its size. In this sense, a measure is a generalization of the concepts of length, area, and volume. A particularly important example is the Lebesgue measure on a Euclidean space, which assigns the conventional length, area, and volume of Euclidean geometry to suitable subsets of the n-dimensional Euclidean space Rn. For instance, the Lebesgue measure of the interval [0, 1] in the real numbers is its length in the everyday sense of the word, specifically, 1. — Wiki

The measure of Q is 0. But Q has no boundary on its left or right (on the real line.) It also has infinitely many elements.

My math is at high school level so bear with me. — TheMadFool

What's wrong with my argument? — TheMadFool

Others have pointed it out. I second their criticisms. This is, however, a fascinating subject, and I also second the notion that you should pick up a book on it. There is room for philosophical criticism of the assumptions involved, but I don't see even room for invalidating relatively trivial results. If one learns the game, then such results are trivially true within the game. Whether this or that game is better in various sense is another question.

Don't be a fool (or an asshole) is the whole of philosophy; the rest, like the Rabbi says, is commentary. — 180 Proof

I like this.