Of course myths are far more flexible than E =mc^2. As for objective knowledge, what is the measure of that? In my view we respect science primarily because of its technical miracles. — jjAmEs

Flexible? The interpretation of a myth is practically subjective. Everyone finds in it what he has put in it. Scientific objectivity is something else. It rests on a series of reasonable assumptions: intersubjectivity and prediction specially. That's why it achieves a consensus that the interpretation of myths cannot achieve. Jung and Freud will never agree. And they come from the same stem.

A truly stale metaphor is no longer recognized as a metaphor. — jjAmEs

"Ruby lips". It is a classical (hackneyed) metaphor. Metaphors are metaphors. New or old. It is a matter of form.

s this not enlightenment humanism personified? — jjAmEs

This is the Wiki version. For the Greeks, Prometheus meant punishment for the excessive pride of those who think they are smarter than the gods. Well-deserved.

This is how a myth can represent one thing and its opposite. It depends on what you want. This is not objective knowledge.

My broader point is that superstition need not involve the supernatural. I expect that we'll agree on this point. But here's an example:

The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism assumed the heritability of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism).[1] Lysenko's theory — jjAmEs

May be it is a matter of language, but I wouldn't say that the Lysenko case was about myths or superstition. It was ideology mixed with pseudoscience and totalitarianism.

At the same time the quest for cognitive purity (rigor, accuracy, etc.) looks like a repetition of a myth structure. — jjAmEs

I don't see the connection. Seeking something in the knowledge that it is not fully attainable is the principle of all intent. The problem lies in what you are looking for: reason or myth.

I did not know all of this. — Noah Te Stroete

I recommend you to read the complete report. I think that AI is one of the most impartial sources of information about Human Rights. I don't say it is perfect, but it is the best in the best of possible worlds.

See my posts above. I would like to hear your thoughts on this. — Noah Te Stroete

What would you think if a foreign power forced you to give up half your home to take in a Yemeni refugee family? How would you behave if your child was beaten by Yemenis for protesting? Think about it.

The genocide of the Jews during World War II was one of the most (if not "the" most) horrible genocides of the 20th century. Not only the Nazis but many conservative people collaborated with it. Sometimes with an intensity that surprised the Nazis (the Croatian Ustashi, for example). But nothing like this can be expected in contemporary Europe or America. Zionism was an ultra-nationalistic response that came especially from the refugees of Eastern Europe. It was not in the majority before World War II. And now Zionism has other different roots that must be related to US policy in West Asia. This is not a question of justice, but of power.

I’m not saying that the Israelis are entitled to that land. But then again, could you blame them? They are always the first group to be persecuted when societies decay, so it was a logical place to settle (however bloody the takeover was). Palestinians are likewise as a group prone to prejudice against Jews and may or may not have welcomed such a large influx of a despised people. — Noah Te Stroete

Palestinian violence against the Jews minority (at the beginnings of the 20th century it was very minority) starts with the proclamation of the State of Israel.In any case you cannot claim for a right that supposes equal violation of the rights of other people.

Wars change borders and put people to leave their homes. That's just what wars do. — ssu

Some attempts (with more or less success) to annex land through war in the 20th century come to mind. Hitler and the Eastern territories, Morocco and the Western Sahara, Saddam Hussein in Quwait, Russia in the Crimea... If you want to say that the occupation of Palestine by Israel is on the same level as Hitler, Putin, the Sultan of Morocco or Saddam Hussein, we agree. But I wouldn't follow that line.

Is It? Every day? You have to give reasons for your argument, — ssu

May be this quotation makes you an idea:

New legislation entrenched discrimination against non-Jewish citizens. Israeli forces killed more than 290 Palestinians, including over 50 children; many were unlawfully killed as they were shot while posing no imminent threat to life. Israel imposed an illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip for the 11th year in a row, subjecting approximately 2 million inhabitants to collective punishment and exacerbating a humanitarian crisis. Freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank remained restricted through a system of military checkpoints and roadblocks. Israeli authorities unlawfully detained within Israel thousands of Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), holding hundreds in administrative detention without charge or trial. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, remained pervasive and was committed with impunity. Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes and other structures in the West Bank and in Palestinian villages inside Israel, forcibly evicting residents. The Israeli justice system continued to fail to adequately ensure accountability and redress for victims of grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. The authorities continued to deny asylum seekers access to a fair or prompt refugee status determination process; hundreds of African asylum-seekers were deported and thousands were threatened with deportation. Conscientious objectors to military service were imprisoned. — Amnesty International Report

The real ethnic cleansing happened during the war in 1948. Atrocities did happen like with Deir Yassin massacre. — ssu

Deir Yassin was only the most shocking massacre against the Palestinians. A Zionist historian, Benny Morris, documented some 360 cases of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. In many of these cases, villages were later destroyed to prevent the return of their inhabitants. They became "absentee owners" in one of the most cynical laws of the State of Israel.

Of course, Benny Morris did not use the word "ethnic cleansing" because he was happy with this kind of treatment of these people who were savages, he said, and deserved to be locked up in cages.

Yeah, the Israeli Jews’ discrimination and oppression of the Palestinians is awful, but what are they to do with a population that wants to expel them? — Noah Te Stroete

Every colonized people tries to drive out the colonizers. The Sioux did not want their land to be overrun by white settlers and the army. Who dug their grave? The Sioux or the invaders?

Racial discrimination exists in legal form in the US, primarily to protect historically disadvantaged and oppressed minorities, often to the objection of those not provided what is considered special advantage. Israel is that to the Jews. — Hanover

Israel applies discriminatory policies against the Palestinian minority in its territory and against the population it controls in the occupied territories. That is not compensatory discrimination.

How is Israel different? — ssu

The difference is that the "return home" cases you cite were not made to the detriment of the existing population there. Israel "went home" by expelling the Palestinians and making the remaining ones second-class citizens. And that discriminatory policy is increasing every day. That is racism.

On the other hand, if you want to compare Israel with all the aberrations of the past I think we will agree. But I think it is a bad policy on your part.

Could you make a case for that assertion? Some thinkers have argued that analogy is the core of cognition. — jjAmEs

I agree that taking a myth literally is superstition, almost by definition. I do wonder whether some people project a certain reading of myths on others. Was Euler a fool? How about J. S. Bach? — jjAmEs

There are two things that confuse me in your comment:

Analogy and metaphor are not synonym. Metaphor is a special kind of analogy. Therefore what kind of analogy need to be precised. If analogy means a relationship of identity or likeness between two different objects, I agree. It is a mental procedure that is in the basis of many kinds of knowledge: commonsense, philosophy or science. It is induction. But this process must be complemented with other logic and inductive methods if it want to be rigorous. Analogy in itself can be correct or fallacious. You can find if it is one thing or other only by means of a subsequent elaboration.

Rorty is obsessed with updating the language. He reduces the philosophical value to novelty or antiquity. He thinks that what matters is to be fashionable. No wonder he talks about living and stale metaphors. Anyway, he's right about that. Stale metaphors become commonplace. Therefore, living metaphors have a power of provocation while stale metaphors lead to conformity. This does not mean that one is objective and the other is not. It is just that one sets thought in motion and the other is scholastic.

I'm crazy about Bach. If the Holy Trinity exists, Bach is in the upper corner. I'm sure he is. But I don't think music is a good example for myths. It's too abstract compared to narrative myths. And I don't believe in the causal relationship between the form and content of music. If we want to discuss a myth, it would be better to choose a true myth: Prometheus, Mary's virginity or the creation of the world according to the Mayas.

I’m impressed you know the name, — Wayfarer

I did a project on him when I was a student. At first I found it fascinating. Until I realized it was pseudo-science and mysticism in camuflage. Anyway, he continues to be stimulating.

Eliade was actually very fashionable in the postmodern wave. Now he's fallen into oblivion. More or less.

The Israeli claim for expansion of their borders is based upon acquisition of land by war, which is the same basis that the US claims its right to its land, and is a matter of fact the way much land has been acquired over time. I don't know why the Israeli land acquisition is particularly interesting to the world from a moral perspective... — Hanover

It is interesting because we believed that we lived in a civilized world that respected the rights of individuals and saw violence as an illicit way of gaining power and wealth. We thought that colonialism, in which any strong nation could expel, steal and kill the indigenous people (treating them as sub-humans) and keep their goods was a thing of the past. In short, we believed ourselves to be more humane than our ancestors.

Thanks to the state of Israel and its international patrons, we realized that we were quite naive. Decent, but naive.

Fair enough, but note the metaphor of light/darkness. — jjAmEs

I'm not against metaphors. They impact and can suggest orientation for practice or knowledge. But they do not explain, define or clarify. They can be a hypothetical starting point for knowledge, never an end in themselves.

Not Eliade, please.

So our ideology involves the notion of being lifted up above the superstitions that kept us in a gape-mouthed, childlike state. So runs the myth, perhaps. — jjAmEs

What are superstitions if not myths? Myths about Jesus Christ, myths about the Aryan race, myths about the Nation, the Spirits... and so on. Myths are tales. They don't reason, they narrate and proclaim. If you refuse to analyze stories with reason, if you allow a story to be the fundamental source of thought and action, your story becomes a superstition.

I think we're talking empty. Perhaps if you propose a myth that can replace reason we can discuss the issue more specifically.

Why is contingency anguishing? I think it's fear of the future. — jjAmEs

You don't need to go to the far future. Contingency causes the anguish of the present and the next immediate moment. If everyone - including myself - is so unstable that they can be what they are now and a thousand other things without any control, where is the sense of the world? What is my reason for trying to act in one way or another?

This is the impetus for any kind of necesity inside or outside this world. Laws of nature or immortal gods. May they bless us or may they crush us, but may they exist.


This is a little off-topic, is it not?

You say you don't like gloom. But isn't a certain gloom natural enough now and then in a godless world? Along with a certain ecstasy? — jjAmEs

My choice is to seek clarity among the darkness, not to add more darkness to the darkness.

And on myths as bad science...myths and rituals are richer than that. And I suggest that the non-philosophically religious get something from it, something anti-gloom and optimistic. — jjAmEs

What I'm getting at is that religious myths are suggestive and flexible enough to be read more or less literally. This interpretative continuum makes it hard to reduce all religious thought to bad philosophy or bad science. Much of it is wisdom writing, psychology and sociology in narrative form, etc. And then myths are just pre-rationally potent as incitements. — jjAmEs

There are optimistic and pessimistic myths. Cruel, submissive, rebellious or stupid. Some express the best human wishes and others the worst. They are usually the product of power societies and prescribe relationships of domination. What kind of wisdom can claim one thing and its opposite?

Myths are not bad science. Myths are ideology. They can suggest at best. They can never explain.

What is the 'clearing power' of explanation? — jjAmEs

Explanation subsumes the contingent (individual) in the necessary (universal). Take these words in a relative sense if you like.
Of course, explanation has practical and emotional consequences as you say. The former are evident: science is the most resilient example. The latter are less evident: contingency is anguishing. We have two options: we mitigate contingency with satisfying explanations or we face it. The former leads to positivism. The latter to existentialism. Take these words in a wide sense again, please.

For believers, God is not unknown, or not primarily unknown. — jjAmEs

This is my point. Believers may affirm that they know God, but when obliged to clarify what they understand by God they stray into a world of contradictions, negations and darkness. When sincere they fall in God's silence, existential anguish or negative theologies. Therefore, if God is the Nothingness of rational thinking it can't explain nothing. From nothing nothing proceeds -parodying Parmenides.

Obviously I am atheist also. I don't like gloom.

Can you provide any quotes to substantiate this claim? — Janus

I can, but it would take too much time for an obvious issue.

For the moment, consider this:
Galileo: the world is a book written in mathematical language.
Descartes: the essence of things is mathematical.
Heisenberg: the world of quantum mechanics is Platonic.
Einstein: he begins with Machism and positivism but finally rejects his concept of empirical meaning.

It seems that the idea that scientific explanation is contrary to intuition is the same as saying that it is opposite to the world of appearances... for many scientists. They adhere to the classic distinction between primary and secondary qualities. What is seen is subjective (qualia) and unobservable scientific objects are objective.

If it helps you in any way:

The belief in a external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world of 'physical reality' indirectIy, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means" (Albert Einstein: "Clerk Maxwell's Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality" (1931), The World as I see lt ).

'To explain, explicare, is to divest reality from the appearances which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4). — jjAmEs

If such a maximalist concept of explanation is adopted, nothing is an explanation.

In a less maximalist way, to explain is to include the unknown within the known. Thus, science explains by including the particular within the universal, the perceived within (as a case of) the law. And particular laws under more general laws.

If science doesn't explain, what does explain? Do religious myths explain? Are they to some degree a kind of science of human nature, expressed in metaphors? — jjAmEs

Metaphors don't explain. They suggest. Obviously, religion is the opposite to explanation because reduces the known to unknown. It is a pseudo-explanantion because uses the form of an explanation, not its clearing power.

It's true there are several versions of scientific realism, but I doubt that many scientists would deny that they are dealing with the world as perceived by humans. — Janus

From what I know of some scientists who write books the idea that they are describing the world of sensations is not universal. Some of them (many?) think that they are dealing with the real world that it is not the world of appearances. For example, the doctrine of two worlds (micro and macro) is a commonplace in the Copenhagen version of quantum mechanics.

They probably translate the verb anschauen (or Anschauung as noun), that is, "intuiting" in the context of "real" sensual-empirical cognition here and now. Sensible intuition is receptivity, something "passive" where material is given. — waarala

It seems that "Anschauung" doesn't have an easy translation:

Space and time being Anschauungen, Kant argues that they are of the same kind as the sense-data of knowl edge, that they are inherent in our nature. Thus Kant maintains :"Sensations are the products of our sensibility, and space and time are the forms of our sensibility. " The word Anschauung has been a crux interpretum since translations have been made from Kant, and it is quite true that no adequate word to express it, exists in English. (WHAT DOES ANSCHAUUNG MEAN?,The Monist, Vol. 2, No. 4 (July, 1892), pp. 527-532. Editorial note)

In any case, the notions of sensible intuition and intellectual intuition share in Kant the quality of being immediate, that is, non-deductive. This is why the translators' option of unifying them under the same generic root (intuition) seems convenient. And in fact it has become the norm in translations from the languages I know.

The translation of intuition (Anschauung) can be very deceptive. It seems that Kant uses intuition (as a German word) only referring to intellectual intuition. — waarala

From B34 onwards I have found more than fifty occurrences of the term "sensible intuition" in the English version of Cambridge University Press, 1998. Which German term are they translating?

Kant says we cannot prove the world exists in itself independently of our perceptions of it, but we are certainly able to think that it does (although obviously not how it does); so Kant is not questioning the independent existence of the world in itself at all, but the independence of the world as experienced. In other words he is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears). — Janus

Scientific realism is not a single doctrine. There are several scientific realisms ranging from dogmatic realism to cautious realism. I would say that the most widespread version today is: Scientific theories are an approximate description of reality. What "approximate" means is not easy to say.
In my opinion - after Kuhn - approximate can be interpreted as a refinement in predictions and measurements within a given paradigm. This implies that we must identify objectivity with prediction and intersubjectivity, which is not evident in itself in all cases.

Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. — Mww

So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? Or is it the result of applying a logical (non-x) category to things in general? I would say that "nothingness" is a metaphysical idea when you turn a logical relationship (negation) into a substance: "the" nothingness. Perhaps the same can be done with "the" Invisibility. Parmenides started with that - it is said.

Actually, it might be a metaphysical error to use the templates of space and time WITH sensible material, because metaphysically, space and time don’t have any sensible material conceived as belonging to them. — Mww

We speak of things that happen IN time but it would be more exact to say that we measured things with time. Time without events and observers would vanished.
Relativity prevents us to consider that time is absolute? Is it not so?

Dewey's criticism of Kant is based on the fact that he does not take into account the pragmatic aspect of knowledge. I think it's relevant. It seems that he considered his theory as a new Copernican turn. He forgot about someone who had already claimed the priority of praxis over theoretical knowledge: Marx. Of course, Dewey was not going to quote Marx even if he knew him. You don't do that in the United States.

If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? It seems that praxis has to take into account reality's potential of adversity. I think pragmatism lacks some dialectics. It conceives of science as an ongoing success, rather than a contradiction between success and failure. That is the objective reality that escapes pragmatic optimism. And this is the subject's emergence.

Intuitions. — Mww

In Kantian terminology I'm using now, intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.

You are probably using "intuition" in other sense.

The notion that every shape corresponds to a different form is not necessarily what platonism entails. Form doesn't mean shape. For example, the 'form' of a wing (or 'flight') might be realised as a bat wing, aeroplane wing, and bird wing. — Wayfarer

Aristotle criticizes Plato because his concept or idea/form implies an infinite regression. If the idea is what the various individuals have in common there is a bat form and a flight form, and a black form, and an animal form, and a big ear form, etc.. And, what is worse, a form of what the idea of animal and the idea of life have in common, and a form of what they have in common the idea of what they have in common... The infinite chain can only be broken if an empirical resource is introduced: abstraction -as you did. But this is Aristotelian, not platonic.

In that process of amplification there is a fundamental divide between system and record which invalidates the assumption that the objective representation in the record corresponds to an objective state of the observed system. This amplification is a thermodynamically irreversible process. — jambaugh

In plain English: there is no objective knowledge of subatomic particles -respect some relevant variables. Or there is an alternative theory to quantum mechanics (which I do not know).

I do sometimes wonder if the very idea of templates originated with the Platonic forms. — Wayfarer

They had something in common insofar as Plato was also anti-empiricist. But Plato thought of ideal molds for every single thing. A logical problem of infinite multiplication of forms. Kant is thinking of universal molds (if you like) limited to the main categories of thought. The rest are sensations. A heresy for Plato.

Man, that’s a lot of templates. If there are an immeasurably large number of possible experiences, each one with its own template......where’d they all come from? — Mww

I was thinking about Kant's theory of knowledge: space, time and categories. We build objects with them. Other "templates" are more particular and a posteriori.

The ‘mind’ exists just as solidly as a ‘cat’ exists. The point is they are both referential - convenient and frugal - communications of shared experience. We know they are shared because we wouldn’t be able to ‘refer’ to them otherwise. The hard physicalistic position of ‘mind’ isn’t there but brain is, is a pointless stance. — I like sushi

It doesn't seem obvious. We get the direct perception of a cat. The "mind" is an abstraction that comes partly from introspection and partly from similarity. I mainly call my own production of ideas "mind". Then I infer the mind of others by comparing my own behaviour with the behaviour of others. This comparison may not be the result of conscientious reflection, but it works this way.

"Mind" and "cats" are very different objects. For-itself and in-itself, you know.

Conspiracy: the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal. — Cambridge Dictionary

Conspiracy is in the nature of states, large corporations and other centers of power. State secrets, intelligence services, hidden lobbies, etc. Power justifies secrecy with different excuses: efficacy, self-protection, etc. but when some of these conspiracies are revealed we can see that they are bad or even illegal and against people in general. They usually serve to the groups of power.

Less democracy and more conspiracies. Given the significant amount of secrecy in today's democracies, everyone can draw conclusions.

I suppose the expression conspiranoia is legitimate to point to some fantastic conspiracy theories that only serve to hide the real conspiracies.

What would the world look like if we didn’t? I’m not sure what you mean by a structure. Is it that we assume, e.g., atomic structure, because experiments support it? — Mww

According to the image of a template it can be assumed either that the world is chaotic in itself and only the template provides shapes or that the template matches some shapes that are independent of it.
Suppose you apply a Daredevil template to a sheet with many superhero images and other informed stains. You only see the Daredevil image and think that only he is on the sheet.

Or there are only informed spots on the sheet and the template selects the ones that fall under the Daredevil template.

It's hard to decide. I'm inclined to the first idea on the basis that actual facts are not as simple as Daredevil and it would be something of a miracle if a complex reality could coincide with a priori without constant irruptions of chaos. I recognize that it is not a definitive reason.

The objective description of phenomena is necessarily relative to the mode of observation we actualize. — jambaugh

No such reality exists as such and yet things still happen. — jambaugh

I do not understand your terminology: if the description is relative to (measure?) it cannot be objective.
If there is no "fundamental objective reality" I do not understand how an objective description of it can exist.

In my ignorant opinion, what quantum mechanics shows is that a complete concept of reality in the classical sense must be abandoned. Ramón Lapiedra, a relevant Spanish physicist (see: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/49476176_Ramon_Lapiedra), calls it "a reality with gaps". It seems to me very appropriate.

Yes, but only from our unique perspective. We cannot project our sense of necessity if it arises from our own reason. If that were the case, we’d be effectively telling the Universe how it must be, rather than us merely trying to understand how it is. — Mww

Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world. We only know what fits our template. That is, the order that constitutes the phenomena . And we ignore what falls out of it. But without the empirical stuff no design could appear under our template.

An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world. This has been asserted to some Kantian empiricists and brings Kantism closer to a kind of weak realism. In this case, we would trap some structures of the thing itself, and only lose those that escape our template a priori.

Truly Kantian or not, it's suggestive.

Besides, any criticisms a non-academic would have really is quite toothless. — Mww

Jorge-Luis Borges, the most ignored-by-Swedish Academy -this is a price in itself- of Argentinean writers, said that he had read the best verses of his life in mediocre poets. I'm in. Why not you?

Rather than viewing the self as one of several entities in the world, Kant envisioned the thinking self in a sense "creating" the world - that is, the world of its own knowledge — mask

Rather, Kant asserts a compromise between the world and the self. The self provides the order of our knowledge and the world the substance. He was right about that. Man is more than just a thing among things. He is the thing that gives meaning to the world. A thing for himself, too.
As you rightly point out, Kant still thinks in terms of human nature. An absolute equality. By the way, the foundation of democracy. But in doing so, he neglects the individual-social, innate-cultural dialectics. A priori knowledge imposes itself on individuals, but is transformed by an a cultural a priori. It is not the same in the Sumerian cities as in the Second French Empire.

That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary. — Mww

Kant: The senses provide subjective and contingent knowledge. We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way. Necessity and universality come from reasoning. Reasoning tells us that what we see is a unity, the thing. Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity.

In a certain sense, child psychology has proved Kant right: children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations, but by giving them an order. This concept of order comes from maturation, not from the accumulation of sensations.