Okay, you got one thing right -- causality. But did you read what Schopenhauer wrote (I posted a passage in this thread). See where the necessity lies -- not in the thinking.

As to the definition of the naturalism as a philosophical view, please read up on the definition. I think you're missing the main point of naturalism. Yes, it is nature - but I want you to think in terms of philosophical argument. — L'éléphant

What I gave you was a philosophical argument. The thoughts I presented issue from a phenomenological perspective on freedom, which takes the matter into the structure of the given experience of the free act. Acts are not free when they are practiced and done without explicit intention, like typing these words. So where does the issue of freedom in experience even arise at all? is the first question.

Schopenhauer, of course, gives a clear account of what determinism says. Writing about deliberating over future actions, he considers:

I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife............. This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: I can make waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed)- I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond. (F, 43)

That is, we are no more free than a flowing water to determine our future. Rorty put it like this, in the context of the epistemic relationship with the world: I no more have "knowledge" of the affairs around me in the traditional sense than a car's dent has knowledge of the offending guardrail. Thinking like this (Rorty's pragmatist position; and he was no naturalist at the level of ontology and epistemology analysis) entirely undermines talk about will and decision making (It also undoes any attempt to validate science's knowledge claims. That is, at this basic level of analysis. Otherwise, science is just fine, as analytic philosophers, inspired by grandfather Kant long ago).

But then there is Schopenhauer's "higher view":

the empirical character, like the whole man, is a mere appearance as an object of experience, and hence bound to the forms of all appearance ) time, space, and causality and subject to their laws. On the other hand, the condition and the basis of this whole appearance is his intelligible character, i.e. his will as thing in itself. It is to the will in this capacity that freedom, and to be sure even absolute freedom, that is, independence of the law of causality (as a mere form of appearances), properly belongs. (F,
97)

Yes, we are now in the world of noumena. How do we account for this? If I may depart from Schopenhauer on this, the problem lies in the radical distance Kant puts between our empirical selves and our noumenal selves, the latter being some impossible postulate. If you want to look closer into the anatomy of a free act, the only route is through phenomenology. Freedom reveals itself in the analysis Time and the event of pulling away from the seamless flow of determined actions. For this see what I wrote earlier.

I don't think this is the "thinking" we're talking about in this thread. I gave examples of Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer's idea of freedom in thinking. It is rational thinking. And we don't always think rationally, of course, such as in your example above. The point of freedom in thinking is, we do have it at our disposal if we are so inclined. There is deliberation, there is decision, and there is future possibilities. That's what they mean. — L'éléphant

You wrote, "The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain."
If this is where the issue begins, then this whole affair of biology has to be understood at a more basic level, where the true argument of this "naturalism" lies. Naturalism is grounded in the apodicticity of the principle of causality. I mean, no one is going argue that decision making is a "natural" affair without understanding what it is in naturalism that decides things in the matter of human freedom. Nature is in turn what, exactly, that makes the case? It is this underlying causality that rules the determination of all natural events. Otherwise, naturalism simply begs the question: why is there no freedom in a natural world.
So you see, if you're talking about nature, the brain and neural transmissions along axonal fibers and on and on, and freedom, the matter instantly turns to causality. What else? Talk to a naturalist about reason, then. This will be a reductionist position: all reasoned thought is reducible brain functions. Then you are back to causality. The fight of freedom contra determinacy has its final argument here.
I move from this, on to an analysis you are ignoring, for reasons I cannot understand. Perhaps it is because it is unfamiliar. The argument presented above is grounded in a phenomenological method of thinking. The fluid continuity the lived life of a person is mostly the kind of think in which freedom doesn't even step in, for we don't usually freely act. Most of what we do is rote behavior. When it DOES become a matter of freedom, it is the kind of thing I described.
to say we "have it," that is, the freedom of thinking, if we are so inclined, simply begs the naturalist question. How is being so inclined make it free? Just the opposite, one would argue, for "being inclined" to do something would make the inclination the prime mover, not the agent who is so moved.

I didn't proof read. Left off here above:

.....have no argument, no justification, no explanation. We cannot say we really understand such things at all, for they are givens, in the fabric of the world. Transcendental.

I made two posts in this thread about the critics who argue against the idea that we have freedom in thinking. The naturalists, or followers of naturalism, argue that we don't have freedom in thinking, like Descartes, Aristotle, and Schopenhauer implied or directly wrote about. Instead, it is only an illusion brought about by our biology, the nerves and cells and chemicals in our brain. When we think, we think in such a way that our thoughts are produced by the environmental stimuli acting on our nerves and cells and make us believe that it is our own voluntary thinking from which our thoughts are produced.

And I said this is question begging coming from the naturalists because they started off by claiming because of our nerves, cells, and chemicals, our thoughts are only produced by nerves, cells, and chemicals. — L'éléphant

A determinist will argue that the principle of causality has no exception, notwithstanding the weirdness of quantum physics; and here, physics do know either, but they certainly don't deny effects have causes. This is an apodictic impossibility, that is, one cannot even imagine a spontaneous event (natural events presupposing this, so they are not the true ground of determinacy)--- that is how strong causality is. But the rub of determinism: We don't really know the nature of this intuition behind ex nihilo nihil fit. We call it causality and we acknowledge the apodicticity (trying to imagine an object moving by itself), but this is not an empirical concept, and so it is not contingent, its justification is not derived from something else, some logical argument. It is its "own presupposition". That is, it is a given, this, call it a "pure intuition" that cannot be spoken really. This make the determinist's position indeterminate, for intuitions as intuitions have no
Then there is freedom, a very rare event, for most of our lives are lived thoughtlessly, like when I drive a car and open a bottle: all automatic, spontaneous events, these fluid movements we go through without question or intrusion from analysis. If you ask me, those guys who stole the car, got drunk and killed ten people on the highway were anything but free in their actions. Even as they began their adventure of debauchery, and reviewed the law, the consequences, the danger, this was not sufficient for freedom, for the struggle to decide was a matter contained within the inner tensions between possible actions. Had their been more motivation on the side of care rather than carelessness, they wouldn't have done it. So why was there stronger motivation to do it? There must be in that entangled personal world of each a very extensive causal analysis, so complex untouchable by analysis, really.
Then what is "real" freedom? Real freedom lies within the mechanism of withdrawal, I can be argued, for when I turn the key to the ignition, and nothing happens, I withdraw from the engagement. There is the moment of indecision, of "indeterminacy" that is instantly filled with possibilities regarding the battery, the engine, who to call, and so on. But to fail to fill this indeterminacy with possibilities, herein lies freedom, for there is an absence of the sufficient cause putting effect in motion. The question is, how is this indeterminacy possible? It should not be possible. You can call it a mere illusion of indeterminacy, and insist that the moment before ideas are set in motion is always already filled, just not explicitly, yet. But then, Real freedom stands apart from any motivation. There may be in the background emerging potentialities, but there is no "standing in" and one of these.
The concept of human freedom rests with this indeterminacy. Probably the most pure form of this is seen in the concept of kriya yoga. But in our daily affairs, when we stand in conscious wonder about what we do, who we are, why we exist and so on, we are free of motivation. Doe this make us a spontaneous cause? Not exactly. But the freedom that can stand apart from the motivation to act, think, etc. conceives of possibilities from a stand point of diminished determination. But causality is apodictic, and there can be no room for "diminished determinism". Therein lies the issue.

So, going back to the “I” of consciousness, it turns out that the “I” is not primordial or primitive in our view of the world. It is the “We”. The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. The plurality of existence which is embedded in our brain. So, experience, therefore, was not due to having the consciousness of self, but having the consciousness of the “we”. And we’ve somehow achieved freedom of thinking by arriving at the ”I” or the self. By differentiating ourself from the collective “we”. — L'éléphant

It is a good approach to an analysis of the self. The self is fashioned after a model of plurality, witnessed in the world of others. This idea has a history and I think it was Herbert Mead who is most famous for it. So when I observe myself, my behavior, feelings my own thoughts, I am working within a structure of social organized affairs: I AM the "other" of a conversation, as I witness myself.

This makes sense, but it does lead to a deeper issue, which is the digression toward the determinative self, the final self that is not the social model, but the one experiencing the social model. Here is where you approach Descartes: the cogito says "I think" and this is supposed to be the end of the line, the definitive self that is not epistemically assailable. The "we" is an empirical concept, and internalized model; Descartes cogito is not contingent like this. Of course, "I am" is an empirical concept, too! So we can see where Descartes has his limitations; but then again, it can be argued that this "I am" is existential, a true presence "behind" the utterance, which is called for since the transcendental ego does show up: Even if "I am" is an empirical social construction, "who" is this actual witness that can stand apart from the role playing?

A rebuttal to the naturalistic view of mind -- freedom in thinking is only an illusion - is this: how do the adherents of naturalism determined this "illusion"? Did they arrive at this conclusion through the brain processes? In that case, their conclusion is also an illusion.

They cannot assert that we do not have freedom in thinking because their conclusion is begging the question. — L'éléphant

The illusion? What do you mean? What question is begged? Not that I disagree, but how do you frame this?

Just wondering how many forum members are prepared to say there are no thoughts. Thanks for playing! — ZzzoneiroCosm

It is at first, a simple question confirmed by the presence of thought in the asking of the question itself. The trouble rises when you want to reduce thought to something that is not thought. This reduction, however, presupposes thought.
If you want to say there is no thought, you are going to have to live with a contradiction. Thought cannot be reduced.

And logic doesn't need to do so, as it is a concept generated by a self-perpetuating, and concept generating brain. And again, A=A. It does not matter if our methods do not know how to square that, it is already the case. Question begging is only applicable to non-correspondent claims of truth. Correspondent claims are not subject to our need for an answer to "why?" And never will be. — Garrett Travers

The concept of a brain is itself an empirical concept, and empirical concepts like brains and beetles do not constitute a basis for tautological reasoning. Brains are "accidents" meaning they don't have to be by design of logic, and with analyticity (though there is that paper by Quine that denies even analytic propositions are true that because different terms are not identical. In fact, the notion of identity itself suffers from this). You will have to deal with Descartes then Kant on this.

A=A does not get you anything. You're thinking on this doesn't really count as thinking.

you have still not explained what you think the mind is if it isn't a function of the brain. — Garrett Travers

THAT would be an massive post. I'll tell you what, though. I would give you a propaedeutic on the way this goes if you would simply provide an answer to the simple question, how does anything out there get in here? It has not gone unnoticed that this has been presented several times and been entirely ignored. It is pivotal. If all is so patently clear to you one this matter, then this should be easy.

We experience a world, not a brain. On that we agree. But how can there be an explanatory basis for this? You will have exceed the limitations of the positing of a brain as the sole material counterpart to the phenomenal world we experience.

This is correct as far as any known evidence has ever been concerned. — Garrett Travers

Then make it happen. See the question above. I'll get you started: There is my cat on the sofa. I know this. Now, explain the epistemic relation.

I don't regard it as an issue. It is propositional, and all propositions are created by words that are created and coherently understood before being placed in the proposition. Synthetic a priori is a mental distraction from a non-problem. "Some items are heavy." Every one of these words means something understood by all people in experiencial or emotional valence before being placed in the proposition. Let me demonstrate: Some x are X. See how that doesn't meaning, or truth value corresponding to anything with out the x values. Ah, except where the other words that are presnt have meaning. So, SOME x ARE, in fact, X. "Some are" has meaning, because they had meaning before being placed in the proposition. — Garrett Travers

Well, that is ...entirely not Kant. The Kantian matter has to do with the apriority of judgments made about the world of objects. How is this possible, he asks, that I know objects in space to conform to the laws of geometry, which are apriori, when understanding about the world only yields aposteriori affirmations.
You don't know what this is about do you.

Notice how this isn't any form of argument? It's the rational metric being removed from phenomenology in accordance with modern neuroscience which is the issue. The brain accrues data, data that is used to navigate the world in pursuit of its basic function of achieving and maintaining homeostasis. If that isn't where you start from phenomenological as regards thought, you aren't using a rational metric, you're using dogma. — Garrett Travers

You think like this because you don't know what it is. A "metric" would be a standard of determination. This would require judgment and content. Phenomenology does not conceive of the world with the same content. It looks, rather, to the broad intuitive field of "givenness" that goes unexamined in scientific work. Take time. Spacetime is now a popular concept, but it is based on measurements of objects in motion relative to one another. Ask about the phenomenological concept of time that is in the structure of the perceptual act that registers the world logically prior (meaning one cannot conceive of these measurement being possible unless this more fundamental condition were in place) to empirical measurements and you are in an altogether different set of paradigms for analysis. Time is an essential past present and future of the given moment in which the perception occurs. I see my cat, but this is not a perception simpliciter, but an apperception whereby the past issues forth content that entirely qualifies the future anticipation; but then this future looking event is never past nor future as the past presents itself as an adumbration of what was past and the future a present anticipation. Certainly, the analysis here suggests that there is only one palpable account of time, and this is a "present" givenness. Simply put, past and future are never experienced, only their vestigial remains in the one timeless reality, which is the timeless present. This has a long history called nunc stans. Absolutely fascinating the way this works if you read through the literature. Start with Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety.
This is something close to what Wittgenstein picked up from Kierkegaard and Augustine. Read his Tractatus. An interesting follow u[ on this is Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. Of course, the most powerful work on phenomenological time is Heidegger's Being and Time.

Look, you don't read philosophy, and you don't have a clue about any of this. Why bother pretending you do? Just give it a rest. Phenomenology takes a lot of work. In the beginning nobody gets it.

I'm out, really. :smile:

Cute. Kant's philosophies are immoral and I wish nothing to do with them. Of course I've read, I reject him. And the sun is of itself so, irrespective of if you've been lost, that was clear when you said brains don't produce thoughts. It is not deniable that the sun is of itself extant in accordance with the strictures of reality, just like every other star, in all of the billions of galaxies, also of themselves so and universally present long before we discovered them. But, you can't keep asserting as much while the plants photosynthesize inspite of such non-arguments. — Garrett Travers

Oh, well you've read Kant. Why didn't you say so. I would have to resort to materialist assumptions like brains thinking of brains, which was only done for your sake, to show that even prior to any talk about phenomenological analyses, the material assumption gives a perfect reductio. You know, brains conceived exclusively in brains can only produce things that are in and of brains. You have to show how one gets "out" of the brain to a perspective that is independent of the brain to affirm brains as a scientist would desire. It is just like Wittgenstein's argument: logic cannot explain its own generative source, for it would require logic to do this. Question begging.

Understand in this something really quite important, and almost always missed: We are still dealing with a world, and when the skull cap is removed and the surgeon who wants to keep you conscious so as not to remove important tissue, and is asking questions as the probe touches the interior, and the probe goes here, and you have a sensation of a smell, or a memory, perhaps, and so on. There is NO DOUBT whatever that the brain is connected to our mental awareness. No one doubts this. The question is not about this. It is about a reduction of mind to this. If mind were reducible to brain activity, then all that is in the mind is localized in the brain. Period.

But you know Kant?? Well then how do you solve the issue of synthetic apriority?

No, it's quite the opposite. Their based on the ideas being familiar, and being rejected because they aren't correct. And don't bring up science as a standard, you were just called out for disregarding known science, that's not something you care about. It's in writing above numerous time, anybody can read it. — Garrett Travers

I haven't once disregarded science. I claim you have done this. See the above. And see the latter part of what I wrote: The difference here is between science on the one hand, and the intuitive foundation of science on the other. These are not the same kinds of inquiry.

No, they are amenble in the world as data integration and concept generation to embody behavior in association with them. Very different, more scientifically consistent idea. — Garrett Travers

So then, this analysis of data integration and concept generation, you're talking like Kant. Isn't this the way all knowledge is? No, not scientific. Phenomenological. Because this is an analytical notion that attempts to explain the intuitive playing field of cognition, and this is presupposed by science. Phenomenology, of course, is a construct, in the Kantian sense, if you like, I mean, there is something intuitively plausible about Kant's "concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind." make no mistake, you have just landed your foot into a different body of paradigms altogether. Time to bring in Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and so on. Good luck!

The human species. There's about 3.5 billion years of biological history, and about 2-300k years of human. That definitively ends your reality synthesis, Kantian mysticism that never made sense to begin with, and was predicated on Christian influence, which isn't philosophy. But, you know that. — Garrett Travers

You have this all wrong. You live in a world of first order mundane beliefs built on top a reality you can't acknowledge because you haven't done the reading. If you think Kant was a mystic, then you have my sympathies. It's like calling day night. Hmmmm...you really haven't read this have you? I mean, people who have don't talk like this. Kant is the very most emphatic opposite of this. He was censured for not being like this.
Not that I am a Kantian at all. His ethics is all wrong. But did you call him immoral?? What ??! Tell me, how is his metaphysic of Morals immoral? You can't just throw outrageous things out there and...what did you expect?

Very true, about the most reasonable thing you've said so far. Paradigms of belief, just like logical validity, in no way imply knowledge of truth, systems of accurately accruing said knowledge, implementing it, or any other rational metric along which we could analyze such a thing. In fact, as Kuhn has mentioned, it is exactly the paradigms themselves, and the cultures they generate - which is actually what that was all about - that inhibit scientific progress, in the same way and for the same reason they inhibit philosophical progress, which science is a direct derivation of. — Garrett Travers

Remember, Kuhn was a Kantian. "Accurately accruing" begs the question, obviously. What is accurate apart context, and what is contextual in science? The rational metric you need to discover is called phenomenology. Again, you are working in a set of values that ignore foundational matters.

No, it isn't. Dealing with it has 'a' pragmatic element, it is not exclusively relegated to such a label, as your post-modernist teaching would have you attempt. Meaning, you are only 1% correct about this assertion, as you have done yourself in by another reduction fallacy. You'll understand in time. — Garrett Travers

No, look: pragmatics is not about the practical applications of things. You need to read more closely: it is a "property" if you will, of language itself. Pragmatism is an epistemic concept: to know AT ALL, is to know pragmatically. Such reductive fallacies must refer to the understanding that when we talk about things we work within a matrix of interpretation, and this means that even when we make our theories about, say, the pragmatic nature of language, we are as well working within pragmatic possibilities. This makes any attempt whatever to speak foundationally question begging, true. But, as Heidegger said, circular thinking is inevitable, but the important thing is where the working paradigms allow thought to go.
You work with science's paradigms and you are under the misguided belief that these are philosophically determinative. They don't. It is a common error made by those who only read science. But really, it is like explaining geometry with animal husbandry. Nonsense.

I don't have any issue with this assertion. However, there is no conclusion actually implied by the truth of it that is relegated to a single aspect of viewing the very complex manner in which humans accrue data, and generate concepts for better navigation of the world within which they are suspended. Broaden your analysis. — Garrett Travers

You broaden yours. Philosophy is the broadest perspective. You need to see that when a person gets "broad" in her perspective, other lesser perspectives are suspended. Physics does not care much about pottery, but physics is IN all of what pottery can be because its purview is much greater. Physics is subsumed under philosophy in just this way. But such is the way of impertinence.

The reason why this seems strange to you, is because you are concluding with just "Pragmatic" as an essential. You're not an automaton, there is nothing simply pragmatic about you, or any other human to ever exist, or any other system to ever exists. That's what's messing you up, fellow. And no, there's no such thing as exhausting the account of what is real. You are talking about complexity beyond human reckoning. Complexity of which can be shown to be astronimcal, exponential, adaptive, self-contained, and self-emergent. — Garrett Travers

I agree with some of this, though being an automaton is off the mark; it's not about human freedom.

The problem, however, does reveal itself here: You think the inexhaustible nature of what stands before an inquirer lies in the extension of science's paradigms into a future of evolving thinking. I am telling you that in order to grasp what is before the inquirer that eludes science foundationally is already there, at hand, in the world, and to access this and realize the dimensions of its epistemic possibilities, you have to perform the Husserlian reduction to acknowledge the intuitive ground of all things. Eugene Fink lays this out nicely.

Which is absolutely brilliant, I love the process myself. I'm fully committed to it. But, if you are really thinking, which is self-contained to your brain and senses, which can be used to verify things, and matter how many people we get on the subject, how many advanced tools we build to investigate, the only evidence that emerges as existent is that of material entities and systems, operating under universally understood pretenses, and arranging themselves in ways most closely approximating homeostasis; if that's the case, which it is, then thinking beyond the point of verification, or potential verification that one may strive for, is NOT philosophy, it is mysticism. — Garrett Travers

No, I don't think it is self contained in my brain. That is what you think. I put that out there to demonstrate a reductio ad absurdum that issues from the assumption of materialism. You see, you cannot produce meaningful knowledge claims out of this.
And I love science. But when I say it is not philosophy. See where I've said this many times. Mysticism?? and Kant is immoral, and...you can't talk like this and call yourself reasonable informed person.

There's truth here, but it does attempt to get to the bottom of things. The greatest piece of art in human history was designed for exactly that reason, the LHC. The problem there is, if the univeres is tauological in it's nature of emergent truth, which it is, the odds of us being able to break that universally set paradigm may be out of our reach, as a stricture of reality, which so far has proven to be the case. So, we'll have to go from there. That being said, no amount of mystery can, or will ever be an argument for a reality that hasn't been observed, understood, philosophically explored with both correspondence and coherence together, and applicable utiliized. That's all there is to that. — Garrett Travers

Did you say the universe is tautological? Wittgenstein said something close to this, one could argue, when he said that all facts are states of affairs constrained by logical structures. He has been, on this, considered a phenomenologist and a Kantian of sorts.
Apart from this it is bewildering. Unless you refer to the hypothetical deductive method which looks at possibilities for future discovery to be deductively predelineated: all there is to discover is possessed by what is known by analytic discovery. Analytic philosophers seem to hold something like this. But that ship has sailed, wrecked and sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Again with the reduction. It's fucking up your entire worldview, man, no kidding. NO, not true at all. The person that posited the idea of empirically, rationally investigating reality, as an ethical code, to avoid fear of bullshit mysticism, was in fact, not just a philosopher, but the philosopher whose legacy brought us out of mystic science, and into empiricism. That would be none other than Epicurus, to whom humanity in it's current form, owes so much to. Science, inductive investigation, was FOUNDED as ethics, my friend. You seriously need to take your training to this point, stash it away, and begin investigating where philosophy really comes from, and why Plato and Aristotle were miserable failures in practice in competition with Epicureanism, just as Christianity was. Problem there is, mysticism has this way of murdering those it can't take in open intellectual combat. — Garrett Travers

No, it's not about Epicurus. Your quaint references to philosophy's history are no match for just asking. My views here are about metaethics, and if you think Derrida is not plausible, because you haven't read him, then metaethics will send you screaming. First, you have to read G E Moore's Ethica Principia, then Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics, and parts of his Nature and Culture, then John Mackie, then of course, Heiddgger, then Levinas. Look, you're not equipped for this. And put mysticism out of your mind. this is just a pejorative reaction you have to unfamiliar thinking. You work from a position of deficit: you really don't understand anything that is being put before you.

Keep in mind that thinking about what someone said as recollection is not thinking.

Then never say to me, or anyone elseif you desire this statement to EVER be taken seriously, that I need to stop incorporating it into my philosophical analysis, which is exactly what you did, and was in fact a disregard of science that I will let slide this one and only time, as you seem to be willing to correct yourself. — Garrett Travers

No. See my comments on the distinction between doing science and bringing inquiry to bear on the intuitive foundation that science presupposes. Don't just ignore this. And you don't have a philosophical analysis. Not yet, anyway. You have to make that qualitative leap into philosophy.

Empiricism is a philosophical tradition. It works in a vast network of highly complex, evolutionarily evolved organic systems of computation and control by way of elctromagnetic and chemical interactions that it is self-emergently designed to conduct to achieve homeostasis of the body its body. It happens to be the most complex system in the known universe. Here's a good source to start with, plenty more where that comes from too. What one is seeing are computational representations of data accrued through evolutionarily designed means of perception that correspond to objectively existential elements of reality that have developed as the result of achieving greater and greater homeostasis as a species in accordance with environmental and sexually mutative pressures placed on the species through the course of 3.5 billion fucking years of the most intense system generating and destroying crucible fathomable to ultimately give rise to a brain powerful enough to ask just that very question you did before receiving just this very answer from a being just like that individually represents that which is constituted as the Pinnacle Predator of this world, respectively: The Human Being. — Garrett Travers

I am aware of all of this. I have taken lots of courses in empirical sciences. No kidding, lots.
But you have to make an effort. When I say philosophy is radically different from this, you have to at least be curious. Take a look at Husserl's cartesian Meditations, see if it makes sense to you.

More reduction reduction reduction. There's no such fucking thing as "Just," and damn sure not in regards to biological systems of such complexity and sophistication as to be incomprehensible. You're not going to get away with this kind of statement with me. Broaden. Your. Analysis. For your own sake. — Garrett Travers

See for "broaden" above. I have been down this road many times. When an interlocutor starts using fuck a lot, it means s/he's exasperated, which compromises objectivity. There is only on e reduction that makes the qualitative difference: the phenomenological reduction, or "epoche" of Husserl. You don't know what this is and this is the reason why you can't even begin to make sense of any of this. You have my sympathies, but then, it is up to you to find out.

So what? That's the truth of things is so what. Nothing more. And any attempt to derail this conversation from this recognition on your part is going to be met with swift opposition. — Garrett Travers

I mean, how is it tautological? I don't say that it's not, I just want you to explain it since there is more than one way to understand it. Ethics has it s existential grounding in something that is not tautological, e.g.

You had me to this point right here. The sun is undefined as an entity that plays a specific role in the universe with or without observation? This, simply, is not, and will never the case. The sun is not the word, or the group of characteristics we have used to build coherence around the word used for its identification, but is most certainly itself so, and of itself so; and will likely outlast human existence, just as it preceded it. — Garrett Travers

You lost me at "it is most certainly itself so" I'm beginning to suspect you haven't read Kant. to understand the world philosophiclly you have to read philosophy, and this begins, I will hazard, with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. You're objections, all of the, are simply based on this kind of thinking being so unfamiliar. You have never turned your analytical gaze to the intuitive foundations of science.

No, I dismiss it as I aught to, as it is a fallacy of reduction. What "IS" is beyond langauge, or any language affair, even if it has a linguistic dimension for us to analyze, it is not confined to it. If one claims it is a dimension of assessment, you have an ally in me. If one fallaciously claims that it IS a language affair, then I'm gonna have to remind you that language was use to identify what IS as a self-evident IS in the universe before we came along. And IS, more accurately, is an entity in a vast number of systems that are also not linguistically dependent or confined. And that such an assertion is also a reductionist fallacy. — Garrett Travers

But as I recall you were amenable to the suggestion that objects in the word were a synthesis of intuition and concept (this is Kant).
Before "we" came along? What could this be about?

What would Thomas Kuhn say about this? Before we came along, people lived in a paradigm of belief. Paradigms are evolving dispositions to believe. These have no grounding in some absolute about the universe that labels things according to the way we believe. Our beliefs rise up and address the universe up in historical paradigmatic terms, and work to deal with it. "Dealing with it" is pragmatic. That ancient person grunted at a rock was not saying, "my look; there is, let[s call it a rock, and notice its extension in space and inertial state sitting there." S/he was saying give me the rock! Or, Rock there. Paradigms of understanding are built up in time out of this kind of thing. But that shining thing in the sky ONLY A FAMILIARITY. The sun was THERE and this thereness never evolved. Telescopes and microscopes give us more detailed thereness and logic (keeping in mind, logic itself is "there" only in familiarity) is good for solving problems. But the basic pragmatic attitude never asked foundational ontological and epistemic questions until "WE" came along. THAT was paradigm shift.

The question that presents itself is this: If my understanding is essentially pragmatic, just taking up what is there, familiar, and making food and shelter and eventually making surgical needles and cell phones, does this exhaust an account of what is real?

This is where thinking takes a turn, asking questions like this. The quest for the nature of what is real, what exists, what being IS, is philosophy. It is a paradigmatically distinct set of values for inquiry. Sui generis, once you get through Kant to Husserl. The basis of the question "what is real?" exceeds the boundaries of empirical investigation, because there are questions there that are, if you like, begged in science: Science does not explore the intuitive foundation of being in the world. It only deploys paradigms that are grounded in utility and familiarity.
Principle of philosophy's prerogatives is ethics. Science has no interest in ethics for a very good reason. It cannot examine ethics empirically.

Hmm. Um, No. That's exactly the kind of thing that someone who didn't want to venture into objective territory in philosophy would say: "This talk of established neuroscience has to stop."
Not just no, dude. Fuck no. If dismissing science is what you'd like to do, then go talk to a mystic — Garrett Travers

It is not dismissing science, as I said, Science is fine; we love science. It is merely realizing that there are questions that do not belong to the domain of inquiry of empirical science. Einstein would tell you this. He read Kant when he was thirteen. He knew the difference.

Nope, no evidence suggests this. And boy, did I get the feeling you were going in this direction with your ambiguous rambling about nothing. You are not correct. Thinking is not something that comes before the production of thoughts by the brain that produces them via the most complex data computational networks in the known universe. Such an assertion isn't even entertained in neuroscience, it's absolutely laughable. Disregard of known science fallacy, and a bad one. — Garrett Travers

But neuroscience is an empirical account. Of course, we "see" the brain there on table. But explain how this works. What are you seeing when you "see"? How are you, in the familiar language of material science, NOT seeing just neurobiological entities?

Think hard about the opacity of the brain and ask yourself simply this question: how does anything out there (on the material model of the world, something Neil DeGrasse Tyson would accept) get in here (pointing to your head)? You can ignore this question, but note that the term 'ignore' is the grammatical basis of ignorance. This is the kind of thing the church did to early scientists.

This conclusion is the result of us only recently understanding that all of our actions are computationally informed by senory data accrual and assessment as conducted by the brain through its functions. Everything you said leading to this is the result of numerous years of data collection building conceptual frameworks through which you navigate reality. The Tao, in other words, is not something you are designed to speak about, but to explore experientially and build waysto speak about,including speaking itself. — Garrett Travers

The "ways" you are talking about are already in place. It is called phenomenology. You will find it is Husserl, Heidegger and lots of others, but its essential insight lies in Husserl's Ideas I and II; of course, he stands on the shoulders of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Frege, and everyone else, frankly. Read Kierkegaard and you find the core thoughts of Heidegger and Sartre and Jaspers and Levinas. It is an quite an undertaking looking into all this, which is why those whose educations were glued to the sciences, anyone who has attended high school, really, do not have access and are bewildered by the seemingly extravagant claims. You are what you read, and Kierkegaard is far, far off the beaten track of what is read in the West. He has to read to be appreciated. But, like Derrida, no one reads him. They hear about what he says and dismiss it. Similar, I think, to how modern physics would be received by the medieval mentality.

But I am NOT kidding about this. If you want to approach grasping what Lao Tsu had to say, read Eugene Fink's (Husserl's assistant) Sixth Cartesian Meditation.

That flies in the face of the fact that humans produced langauge as the result of experiencing reality over vast swathes of time and determining for themselves that having reliable communications between in-group members maximized homeostasis and well-being. So, langauge generation is in fact a form of primitive empirical scientific development. Langauge is presupposed by a reality that requires the necessity of its development on the part of conscious individuals who have determined its utility through inductive data accrual. — Garrett Travers

That part right there, "Langauge is presupposed by a reality that requires the necessity of its development on the part of conscious individuals who have determined its utility" I take to be well said. I am a pragmatist in that I follow Dewey, James and Rorty (though this does NOT mean I abide by all they say). What is a pragmatist's concept of language? It works! The best I have come across is the hypothetical deductive method which is simply a characterization of the scientific method: what is something like, say, nitro glycerin? It is, "IF you toss it across the room, Then it impacts and explodes." A very crude illustration, but it makes the point. All knowledge is of this nature, for the world is given to us in time, and time is a conditional structured affair (if...then), the meanings from which that emerge are, per Dewey, "consummatory".
But if this is the way meanings of terms emerge (imagine how an infant learns language like this, associating word sounds with objects, and so on. IF this sound is made, Then this "red" is designated)) then where is it in language's essential pragmatic nature to produce a-pragmatic meaning? The actualities of the world, the affectivity, the aesthetics, the struggles and delights, the "existence" these constitute, remain analytically untouched by the machinery of problem solving. Pragmatics is only foundational for our pragmatic relations. But falling in love is not reducible to the language pragmatics that deals with falling in love. There is, in fact, a vast horizon of intuited "world-ness" that has nothing at all to do with this, and herein lies the beginning of phenomenology.

Not this philosopher, not until it is clear that something beneath reality, or above it exists. If your philosophical explorations are not correspondent with reality, then they are useless, irrespective of how much coherence you build around themlogically, theoretically, or linguistically; just ask the string theorists, whose theory has now been dispensed with by the scientific community for just that reason. — Garrett Travers

"Beneath" is just a metaphor. It is there, always already, but ignored, largely because people don't take an interest in Continental philosophy. Of course, science is everywhere and most think now that this is philosophy. It's not.
It is phenomenology. A "getting back to the things themselves." The claim is that when you're doing science, you don't address questions about what lies there in the world that is taken up for science's paradigms to deal with. Take Time and space. We know about spacetime and how Einstein changed our thinking, but does his spacetime deal at all with the basic temporal intuitions that had to be in place PRIOR, as a presupposition, to thinking about spacetime? Of course not. He knew this, for he had read Kant when he was 13. Apples and oranges, these two approaches to an analysis of time. The phenomenology of time goes back to Augustine.

All one has to do in response to this type of gaslighting nonsense, is repeat the question back to them until they answer the question themselves. And then explain to them that "that," is a word used to describe a self-evident fact of reality that can be used to achieve greater outcomes in association with one's self-directed goals. You'll not be hearing anymore of that shit from them thereafter. — Garrett Travers

Ouch! I knew you would appreciate Derrida. But he does have a point and it goes back to Ferdinand Saussure's semiotics, structuralism and other places I've never been. Derrida is not reader friendly, but then, neither is Einstein, except to those who understand. One has to be prepared to read him, and I am not saying I am so wonderful at this. I have read it though, and its not nonsense.

Nutshell: You have to accept that when you talk about something, the words you use are completely without meaning on their own. If I say "cow" and you would need the English language to understand it. But what ELSE is there you need to understand? A lot. "Cow" doesn't come to us free of context, as if to know X is a cow is some stand alone acknowledgement. You must admit, such an idea is absurd. You have this long history of cows, stories about them, endless references and jokes about cow fill our world, and are there, attendant to any given occurrent cow encounter. Context is what gives the world its possibility for singularity in thinking; context is implicitly there along with the picture of the cow, the song, the casual reference, and on and on; these are all THERE always, already there. They "make" what a reference IS. A single reference to a cow is not single at all.

Rorty liked Derrida. He also thought Heidegger was one of the three most important philosophers of the last century.
Derrida says, among many many things, that in this matrix of intra-referential meaning, analysis cannot make its way OUT of this to actually get to the thing we get milk from. The referring is always bound up in the "difference" of the concepts in play. I say hi to you on the street, but what is hi in our understanding but a long history of language and culture acquisition?

Long story short, Read his Of Grammatology

A fair point, as far as general perception, but not 100% accurate. The things is itself so. The sun does not require your explanation. It stands in defiance the human concept of "what for?" Becuase it says so, that's why, and such is logically the case with all objective phenomena, and all logical validity. A=A, tautologically, and it does not care that such does not make sense to anyone. — Garrett Travers

The sun is not the sun without explanation, I mean, without the language that says, there is the sun. Once I was an infant child, blooming and buzzing the world was. Had I been born feral and survived, I would still relate to the sun, somehow. It would be part of my acquired pragmatic relations. But there would be no question, no symbolic meanings that could be put to logic to make for determinations about what it is. It's this "what it IS" dimension is a language affair. I think you don't appreciate this as much as you should.

The presence of pain is the production of the exact same computational system that produces consciousness, and thereby all known concepts in the universe used to navigate it: the human brain. It doesn't transcend it, it IS it, just as language is thought, or consciousness, or desire. It is all the same system of systems, producing these phenomena in accordance with the data retrieved from the reality within which it exists, and existing in unrivaled sophistication and complexity as realities greatest known productive achievement. — Garrett Travers

No. I am talking about that sensation of pain, not the way we talk about. And this brain talk has to stop. You think that thought is produced by the brain, but in order to conceive if this, the thinking comes first. This is worst possible case of question begging one can even imagine. Look, it is not that there is no correlation between brain events and manifest thought and behavior. That there is is obvious. The problem is when you try to reduce the latter to the former. Analysis reveals it is the other way around: the concept of a brain is FIRST conceived, then applied interpretatively to that three and a half pound mass. No thought, no talk at all of brains, mass, neurons and axons.
Also, just try the opacity test: consider that the only access to a brain is "through" a brain, and a brain is NOT a mirror of nature, at all. (Rorty wrote a book denying this). It is as opaque as a fence post,or a rock.
Having said that (which will resist your every attempt to deny it) we do have to deal with the apparent "sight" we have of affairs around us. Alas, this will not go well for science.

Again, this is why saying "philosophy looks to presuppositions for possibility," is inaccurate. Logical analysis is only a singular framework by which to navigate the truth of reality, and oddly enough, do you know what reveals to us? I'll show you:

If P then Q
P
_________
therefore Q

All logically valid propositions are distinguished a tautology of true premises, leading to a true conclusion. Logic itself demonstrates that reality and truth are of themselves so. A=A is both factually correct, and logically fallacious. Brains think because they do. Evolution created species because it did. You and I are speaking online because we chose to. Speaker speaking about speaking??? See how that line of inquiry doesn't make sense when you think about it? — Garrett Travers

Logic demonstrates reality and truth are OF themselves? Truth is propositional. Only propositions can be true of false, strictly speaking. But reality, this is another mater altogether. A=A is logically sustainable, yes, and it is a tautology. Why logically fallacious and what has this to do with it?
Saying brains think because they do is simply ignoring the problem stated above. Evolution? this is an empirical theory. Quite respectable, of course, but irrelevant. Philosophy is not an empirical science. It examines the presuppositions of science.
Speaking speaking about speaking actually makes the point: Language is an interpretative medium, and even as I write these words, I am working within a framework of meaning that is OPEN. Language is not a closed system; think of all we do and say as Thomas Kuhn thought about science: paradigms are inherently open, waiting for revision, and their is no finality to this, no Hegelian God at the end ot this process; or, if there is, it would take a God to finalize for what is "final" would have to reveal eternity itself).
Truth is Made, not discovered (This IS the pragmatist's pov.).

That's why you don't expect such a thing. What I expect science to do is reveal to me through inductive art the nature of the reality that is self-emergent. It has done this marvellously from a full perspective of the scope of the art. — Garrett Travers

Self emergent? But how do we characterize what is emergent? Saying something is an emergent affair is still dealing with an intuitive givenness which is what is presented. If you're a pragmatist, you are still going have accept that the calling something emergent is merely a pragmatic construct. The understanding constructs meanings that make for an essentially pragmatic epistemology. What you KNOW is the working of it, the success taking a certain meaning AS this thing of state of affairs. But knowing what it is in the way you would like to claim: One no more KNOWS this tree is a tree than dented car fender KNOWS the offending guard rail (that is lifted from Rorty). This brings the matter too the intuitive, a-pragmatic horizon of affairs mentioned above. This is philosophy: dealing with that which is foundational, or better, as foundational as possible.

Because the logical framework developed to determine what tautologies were are exactly the framework with which you asked the question. Furthermore, because such a property is an intrinsic characteristic of that which exists. However, belief is just a concept itself. You will be made to accept reality, irrespective of whether or not you believe it, and it will tautologically dominate your every thought and motion. — Garrett Travers

You seem to think that because thought is a rule governed activity, our affairs in the world can produce nothing but tautologies. If my every thought and motion is tautologically dominated, then so what? It is like saying every symphony is dominated by music theory. Listening to music is NOT music theory. (Nor, I should add, it logic truly logic. After all, 'logic' is a particle of language that is there grounded in utility and familiarity with the world. Its generative source remains a mystery).

Logic is itself a, self-generated concept. It cannot be expected to account for self-emergence. By proxy, because nature is self-generated, it is also impossible to understand it from within itself as a conscious observer created by it, to develop a way in which to break this universal law. Thus, exploration is the only path open to us for answers on anything. — Garrett Travers

Certainly. Logic will not be second guessed, and it is massively boring to inquiry as a mere system of moving parts. But then, logic is NEVER given to us like this. It is always given as an interest. Logic thus called is an analytical abstraction from analyses of judgment and thought (Kant). It is not the case that there is such a thing as logic. There are no actual conditional propositions, e.g. This is just a token of speech.

Common sense is not what is useful. That concept has been behind the justification of many, many things that were either incorrect, or evil. Reason is your tool. Common sense is an ambiguous term that means nothing and is often employed by people to insult you. — Garrett Travers

Or it can be taken as the way things are generally understood in everyday living. Husserl calls this the "naturalistic attitude". It is what we all have when we take out the trash, do our taxes and study physics. Then there is the phenomenological reduction which withdraws from this mundanity and studies its intuitive foundation.

Apple is a symbolic representation of a coherent enough amount of data accrual on a given percept, or group of perceptions reinforced by emotional valence and correspondence. This is a cognitive process. The "apple" is an abstraction from genuinely accrued data on the part of the brain. The existence of the apple presupposes its capacity for perception in conscious beings. In other words, your premises are correct, but your conclusion is wrong. It is the exact opposite. — Garrett Travers

I apologize in advance for all the writing. Too much time on my hands these days.

That which sits before me as an apperceived phenomenon is thing of parts. as you say, it certainly does have "symbolic representation" which is pragmatically taken up all the time. The point here is that once this representation is exhaustively reviewed for what can be taken up in language, there is a residuum of what is not language. I would call this an aggregate of sensory intuitions, but then I have to wary of bringing such a notion to heel like this, for 'intuition' is itself a particle of language. So there is something of a performative contradiction in talking about it all, and I find myself in Wittgenstein's intentional dilemma in the Tractatus: to speak of what cannot be spoken in order to say just this. I claim that this is also a way to deal with the Toa that cannot be spoken.

That's exactly what it is, if by sensory field impression you mean the brain accruing data through the use of its plethor of instruments designed by nature to do so. — Garrett Travers

No. I am saying that in order to talk about brains and sensory fields one does this through language, and so before empirical science even begins, there is this presupposition of language. This makes language the foundational.
Of course, this is not at all do deny science, which is absurd. It is simply saying that there is more fundamental order of analysis.

Everything in the macroscopic realm is an aggregate of atoms of varying types, irrespective of experience or knowledge. — Garrett Travers

Of course it is. But then, philosophy proper goes beneath this, into the world of assumptions talk about atoms works through.

Where is defined by relativity, which also does not require conscious recognition, but only an individual domain of influence as a result of its existence in relation to other phenomena across time and space. An atom is defined in space by its relation to other atoms in a given domain, with or without your recognition of such. — Garrett Travers

This sounds like you agree that space is at the level of basic questions, indeterminate. That is what I am saying. Everything, I want to say, is like this. There is this game deconstructionists play that gets very childish sometimes; it is the "what's that" game, the point of which is simply to show how language can only refer to other language. Try defining something by accessing the "thing itself" and you will find yourself deep in language. The trick, if you will, is to bring the understanding OUT of the language that is used to talk about things. Turns out that this cannot be done because the things one is trying tot talk about are, as things, of-a-piece with the language, and language is this historical phenomenon, its "paradigms" in constant play.

No, it's just a conceptual tool, like math, used to validate correspondence and build coherence. "Cup" is a symbolic mapping of a perceived objective phenomenon to an applicable/actionable group of potential behaviors. The more applicable/actionable that potential behavior becomes, the more coherence is built around that original conclusion established via correspondence. — Garrett Travers

I think this is right. Seems so. But what of the world-that-is-not-language? Take value. My kidney is speared through, the pain is intense. This pain is not a language event. We can talk about it, obviously, but the "presence" of pain as a actuality transcends the spoken possibility. This, I would add just to make matters worse, is why I am a moral realist: the pain of this affair intuitively speaks through moral language. (A tough issue, granted).

No, it is your brain exploring an idea for applicable/actionable actions associated with your current perceptual understanding of such an abstraction. It isn't performative, you aren't pretending to explore this, I am witnessing you explore it. Exploration is a data accrual function of the brain, not performance. Performance would be you showing me what you can accomplish as a result of the framework you've built through that data accruing exploration. See what I'm saying? — Garrett Travers

Well, in itself to utter "X is a to be taken up not as language" is itself taking X up as language. That is all that means.
But I don't disagree with what you say above, or something like it. I simply say that this is not a basic analysis. Philosophy looks to presuppositions that make the above possible. Note this: when we talk about brains, observe actual brains and study them, the perceptual/cognitive that in the very act of gathering data is itself as opaque as an object can be: a brain. Brains talking about brains? Nothing could be more question begging that this.

See? Exploration, not performance. Perhaps "that which cannot be spoken" is itself a conceptual framework worth exploring for validity that is clearly not established with a feasible amount of coherence, eh?

"Is it?" "Perhaps?" "it." "around it." "pointing." All expressions of exploration on a currently incoherent concept in your brain. Perhaps, you've already demonstrated to yourself that you are capable of speaking on any given topic. That's a cool idea to play with. — Garrett Travers

Without a feasible amount of coherence. Right you are. This is the way scientist would talk, along the lines of, We are on the cutting edge of discovery and our collective paradigms ("conceptual frameworks") are realizing something true about the world.
I agree with science. But science does not address its own preconceptions. I cannot, and its not its job.

Yes, if it is in fact true. But, the truth of tao cannot be assumed to reach a conclusion, as that beggs the question: how do you know the tao is true? And if the truth of tao is already assumed, then so is its objective nature relative to reality. Cool how logic works. — Garrett Travers

And if we were dealing with something that could be reducible to what can be spoken, logically framed, then all this makes sense, but it misses the point of Taoism. Taoist "truth" is not propositional. And when you speak, your utterance automatically binds and conditions.

I should quickly add that I don't care much for this old Taoist saw. Language is to me an open vessel. God could appear before me and I could the next day tell you just what happened. Communication, however, depends on agreement: you, too would have to have had something similar in your experiences for me to make sense, but it is not language and logic as such that stands in the way. If there were something better than reason, reason would discover it. But importantly: this works because language never did "speak the world" as if the actuality of the world were IN the language. It interprets the world. Language is hermeneutical.

The Taoists are just telling us to shut up and stop interpreting because your are missing something in the presence of Being.

Bingo. One thing you'll learn about valid propositional logic, that are also true, is that they are tautological in nature, and cannot be true without such. Here's where things get real fun. For example, A=A is a tautology, meaning it is unfuckwithably true. However, it is also begging the question, thus it is a logical fallacy. Objective reality is arranged in a self-evident manner, logically, as well as functionally. The key is to identify emergent characteristics of reality through induction. — Garrett Travers

Yeah, I get this. Wittgenstein said this, and I took logic courses once upon a time. The question begged is, of course, why should I believe tautologies? There was a paper by Quine I read once, The Two Dogmas of...anyway, as I recall, analytic propositions fail to account for connotative distinctions. Something like that.. But Wittgenstein made the point best: logic cannot determine its own generative source, for it would take an act of logic to do so. Question thereby begged for any and all logically formed propositions. He, like Kant, condemned thought to its own devices, and this is absolutely right, but it is also rather vacuous since it says nothing at all about content. There could be hidden realities. powerful, profound, and logic would not flinch. Identifying emerging characteristics, content, is, as you say, key.

All real philosophy is. The fake philosophers would have you believe that reality is a misapprehension, that logic outweighs factual emergence, and that you aren't capable of deriving an ethical code of morality from the facts of that reality within which you exist. I exist to demolish these false conceptions where ever, and whenever I encounter them outside of individual exploration for the sake of exploration itself. — Garrett Travers

Not sure what fake philosophies you have in mind. I do realize that reality is a term that has serious problems providing context for making it clear. If you are a physicist and tell me you are making discoveries about the nature of reality in, say, string theory, I will nod in appreciation. I do understand.

But if you ask a philosophical question about those findings, you will find yourself deep in questions.

You think accurately, friend. The position of that bank doesn't give a shit about whether or not you can mathematically, or linguistically prove its position and existence, it stands there to mock any attempt you may fail at to attempt to do so by declaring itself to your lying eyes. — Garrett Travers

Good common sense. I use this common sense 24/7. Then I think about what common sense stands on and things become problems. That's life.

Indeterminate as a premise, does not follow to the conclusion that spatio-temporal existence is to be negated. That would be a fallacy from ignorance. It is basically making an argument that is predicated on no clear premise, which does not produce a tautology characteristic of that which is true in terms of logic, or induction. — Garrett Travers

Negated? No. Not this. Recontextualized. When is an atom not an atom? When I am not talking about atoms, but something else that makes talk about atoms irrelevant. Meanings are bound to the ways we talk about things.

Does saying something establish its own validity at a certain level of understanding? I think they call that begging the question, eh? — Garrett Travers

More at a performative contradiction.
To speak is to imply that which you speak of can be spoken (nothing you can sing that can't be sung, sort of thing). But the tao, this is a concept that is "about" the unspeakable world. One cannot "say" an apple, rather, one speaks about it, contextualizes it, and without a context, it is not an apple at all. Nor is it a sensory field's impressions or an aggregation of atoms. Nor is it even "there" (where is there if not contextualized against a "here"?).
So there is something very interesting about our being able to on the one hand have our understanding bound to language and logic, and on the other, apprehend the world not-as-language. Of course, my not-as-language utterance is itself a performative contradiction.
Or is it? Perhaps in speaking about that which cannot be spoken I am not speaking "it" at all. But I am speaking "around it," "pointing" to it.
Question begging? How would this problem be cast as QB? to say the true tao cannot be spoken assumes that it CAN be spoken, and so this is an unproved assumption because it is unprovable, and it is unprovable because it is a contradiction.
All philosophy is question begging, eventually, down the road of explaining what is meant. But then, this is true of all claims whatever, as well. I say the bank is across the street, but can I give a determinative account of what "across from" means? It is a spatial designation that has to be in space somewhere, but being in space somewhere is always indeterminate for space itself is indeterminate.

Quietism sounds like the Christian/Catholic response to meditation. Only the latter is generally not explicitly about God, the meditator "yields" the ego's desires to something greater, all the same. God, after all, is a terrible nuisance in metaphysics, and it closes doors, often, because the body of religion around it is dogmatic. I'll take the holiness and put aside the metaphysics. This at least purifies the concept to something immanent and unquestioned, but of course, the term 'holy' is left self sustaining.

You wrote, "Ah, so you are misunderstanding my point about unnecessary suffering. Unnecessary in the fact that, unlike most of life where you do indeed have to worry about not doing X to prevent Y, and weighing various outcomes of harm.. This is a case where you (the parent) can not create ANY harm for another person.".

You assume that the unborn child does not exist, therefore, there can be no harm for the other person because the other person does not exist yet. One cannot have moral regard for nothing. Is This it?

I'm going to stop you right here, because it actually doesn't. There are some things due to the special nature of procreation vs. already existing people that make the decision different. — schopenhauer1

I'm listening

Why can't circumstances change depending on the situation? This is a ridiculous characterization of how my argument is stated. You have a chance to not create harm onto a future person. I am saying this non-action is the most ethical course. Don't create the harm. — schopenhauer1

I just don't think you understand your own argument. Children to be don't exist, true. Parents can bring these into being; it is a choice. True also. It is an imposition on the possible child of suffering. True. But this future possibility regarding the well being of others (however they may be conceived) is something that applies to all actions we take. Parenting is a future-looking affair, just as buying shoes or making charitable contributions; I mean, in all we do our affairs are like this. Parenting is thus one occasion of forwardlookingness and so the matter turns toward not simply parenting, but to the very structure of experience itself, which is inherently forward-looking.

In other words, conceive of all that you could possibly do. Each that you conceive will be something of consequence and there are no exceptions to this, whether is is deciding about bringing children in t he world or pay8ng your taxes, there will be a "cost" in negative utility. If your argument is right, then we have no right at all to bring into the world any suffering., for suffering is inherently bad and all choices would be inherently bad due to this negative utility.

Your take on parenting is arbitrary, for the logic of it penetrates all that we do.

An argument from analogy for original sin:

1. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy et all (serial killers) were all sentenced to death and they were all evil.

2. Every one of us is sentenced to death (we're mortal)

Ergo,

3. Every one of us is evil.

4. This evil we're all guilty of is called original sin in Christianity. — Agent Smith

Christians will call this a transgression to God (See Luther's Smallcald Articles). The evil here is qualified in this way.
Also, this is affirming the consequent, a fallacy in logic. You are saying we are all sentenced to death BECAUSE we are evil: if you are evil you will be sentenced to death, we are sentenced to death; therefore we are evil. Is this your thinking?

If one is already born, one cannot but help but create suffering (this I deem as necessary suffering). For example, creating a lesser harm to prevent a greater harm.. However, in the case of procreation, none of it is "necessary" to perpetrate onto another. You are not preventing a "person" from a greater harm, as they don't exist, you are simply creating unnecessary harm from the start. — schopenhauer1

Look, it's a given that when you have children, they will not have a life free of suffering. This is not heaven. But your argument analytic in that is moves from the concept of suffering to its analysis of that which is inherently to be avoided in actions. This is true, this does follow and you will never get anything else out of the concept of suffering as such, other than the injunction not to do it.

But if you treat the concept of suffering as a maxim for taking action, you will thereby be obliged to kill yourself now in the most merciful way. You will conclude that any suffering whatsoever defeats any possible justification for allowing the existence of something.

So that is the question then.. Are the parents obligated to create "happiness" if they are creating "unnecessary collateral damage". Of course I think it is always wrong to create unnecessary collateral damage for someone else, as this will be the state of affairs if they exist. It is not wrong to not create happiness as this brings about no negative/bad state of affairs for anyone. — schopenhauer1

It's a dreadful argument. Always wrong to create unnecessary collateral damage? Living and breathing is creating unnecessary collateral damage. Time itself is unnecessary collateral damage, for time is constructed in the Hypothetical. My next banana contributes to an exploitation of third world people. Writing these very lines could give you a heart attack. The future itself does not exist, and each creative act is a hypothetical leap. You can't simply talk about parents bringing children into a dangerous world. That is arbitrarily, for this is only one occasion of hypothetically anticipating affairs.

What is a "good" property? Is positive electrical charge a "good" property? — litewave

Finally, someone put the proverbial finger on this. Arguments are only as good as their definitions. You can't go on about the GOOD unless you have in place a defensible df. Here, it is God's goodness. But wait, do you have something in mind here for God's df?

The question begging is awful, like swirling clouds confusion. Talk about God has to get back to basics, conditions logically prior to fancy proofs.

Its a lousy (Laozi) statement after all! I'm sorry, I couldn't resist the pun — Philosophim

No, not lousy. Does saying something deny it its own validity at a certain level of understanding?

What does Beckett say? — Agent Smith

I must go on; I can’t go on; I must go on; I must say words as long as there are words, I
must say them until they find me, until they say me (The Unnamable)

Interesting thought experiment to try this at home: Observe the thoughts that are yours "in production". Consider: are we being ventriloquized by history? Where is the generative source?

We're responsible for what we do with our thoughts. — 180 Proof

But in that responsibility, we think.

“1. Omni-benevolence entails permitting the most perfect world possible to obtain.

2. Necessarily, if God is omni-benevolent, God will permit the most perfect world possible to obtain

3. The most perfect world is one with no imperfections, to which its perfection could not be increased.

4. God is perfect- and necessarily omni-benevolent & omnipotent

5. Therefore a world where God alone exists is perfect by definition, since nothing can increase or add to its perfection.

6. The world where God alone exists is a possible world.

7. Therefore God would necessarily permit a world where he alone exists to obtain.

8. A world where God exists alone does not obtain.

9. Therefore God does not exist — spirit-salamander

Essentially saying what point would their be to creating anything outside Himself if He were already perfection itself. Not a far throw from Leibniz, no? Trying to reconcile imperfection (moral imperfection, that is, the only kind that really exists) with perfection. You know there is a bad premise in there and you have find this. But wait, they are ALL bad premises. Just bad metaphysics: You assume to talk of God as if the term could fit in a definition. Omni benevolence? What is this, the will to do good absolutely. What is the Good? This is the moral good, not the contingent good like good shoes. What is this absolute good such that were we to conceive of God's omnibenevolence we could call it a desire to do this kind of thing?
And not just omnibenevolence, of course. Omniscience. Hell, I am omnibenevolent in my WILL to do nothing but good. So God knows WHAT the good is, where I do not. The Biblical Job's God haunts this thinking: Who are you to question God?

I see your point that they are clearly different aspect with different proposes. But where I disagree with you is in the fact, you shared, that religion finds out truth. I guess this is exactly where Kawabata made the debate. For him, probably literature is the only available matter where we can pursue freedom because we are opened to write/read whatever we like.
But, in the other hand, religion tends to be dogmatic, because you would not see religious books of killing God, loneliness, suicide, etc... — javi2541997

I don't think about popular religion here, just as I don't think of bad reasoning when I think of Kant. what people do with religion is an entangled business, a lot of which has nothing to do with religion as such.

But it is a very good question, that regarding the truth of religion. What can religion be reduced to once all of the arbitrary entanglements are put aside? Science takes care of the facts, so to speak. Religion takes care of the affectivity of our existence, something science cannot do since affect is not observable. I mean, we can, of course, witness its presence, but there is a dimension of affectivity that which is not observable, and that is its good and bad essence. Put me in screaming pain and after the sciences give all due analyses, there is a residuum of what altogether defies analysis. As Wittgenstein put it, it shows itself, like logic, yet resists analysis because the bad of the screaming pain is not a construct. It is simply a given, a "presence" that language may reveal to us, but its language values do not exhaust what it is.
In this, it is metaphysical, but then: there is no metaphysics that is not "made of" the stuff in our actual presence.
Religion begins here, in the primordial scream, fist clenched raised to heaven. Or, in the bliss of being in love that seeks foundational consummation. Literature can "show" these to us.

One might say that philosophy is simply a rigorous form of literary narrative, which has gone astray in its metaphysics, just like religion.

Someone may notice, that we can't even say that "God is incomprehensible" because we couldn't say anything about God himself ("can't say anything about things-in-themselves"). But aren't we then admiting that "God is something we can't say anything about". That's still something said if not about God himself then about our conception of God, isn't it? But by saying "X is incomprehensible", "X is something we can't say anything about" etc., I'm already using and/or creating a conception of X and if that's the case, then how I was able to use/create a conception of something I can't understand?

How do I know that I can't comprehend God? — Zebeden

All this talk about ineffability and things in themselves creates a problematic division that leads away from the substantive issue. One has to first deliver the matter from metaphysics, and think of metaphysical themes to be something that something grounded in things before our very eyes, simply ignored. Ask, the question about God, what is it material basis? By material I mean in the world available to experience. Of course, the answer is joy and suffering. these drive our ethics as well as our religion as well as our pragmatic lives...let's face, value-in-the-world is what gives meaning to everything, especially God. We fall in love, get scorched by fire...well, heaven and hell!

But then all of this grand human drama is played out against eternity, and I mean this is our reality: we do not have a foundational generative account of all we experience. It is simply given, the presentation and its depths unseen. Our world IS eternal--what else? finite? Where does finitude begins and infinity end? But this mystery is immanent, not remote and metaphysical.

Our finitude is the illusion, if such a concept has meaning here, for no event can ever be divided from eternity, no imagined possibility can conceive of this. It is an apodictic truth. Talking about Kant's noumena? Where can noumena possibly have its epistemic prohibitive border laid? Does the concept at all allow for that-which-is-not-noumena? Ask, what is the thing in itself? and I add: what is the appearance/representation in itself? Noumena follows ontologies everywhere.

This means out affairs ARE eternal. The implications of this are what God is all about.

When it comes to a beautiful face it seems obvious that it is beautiful, but the longer I look at it the more plain and normal it starts to seem. An ugly face gives a much stronger more visceral repulsive feeling. Perhaps a beautiful face isn't so much beautiful, but undefinable and plain and we intellectually add in our minds more than is actually there? — TiredThinker

Consider the difference between happiness and gratification. the latter comes and goes. The former is abiding. Beauty possessed by an object is, I think, a contradiction to this, for the beauty of the object is a finite rapture, happiness reduced to objectivity, not merely a gratification (which we associate with food, sex, amusement, and so on).

There is something about the rapture of beauty this reminds me of Hegel: to see the beauty is to recognize something profound with yourself, something, I would add, that exceeds the desire to a measure that refuses to be finitized.

When Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) was honoured with the Nobel Prize of literature, he said: literature will defeat religion. This statement made a good debate among Japanese readers and philosophers back in the day that they wondered what Kawabata was considering about.

It is not the first time where through books or novels religion is criticised. Poets or writers, when they wrote their plays, sometimes suffered the consequences or even were banned by church.
This is why somehow literature is also seen as a good knowledge tool against sacred texts and so.

Why do you think Kawabata said literature can defeat religion? Is it related to promote a better educational system or the pursue of a free state of knowledge through books?

Note: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1968 was awarded to Yasunari Kawabata "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind." The Nobel Prize in Literature 1968 — javi2541997

Better put perhaps: literature Is religion. How so?

Just some thoughts: Let's call literature a kind of mimesis, to borrow from Aristotle, of a praxis, which simply means it imitates life. But not only imitates, does so poignantly, with an eye to something about our "dramatic" human situation--"its tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral..." (Polonius). so in literature we do not get simply the affairs of life. We get an affective erudition of life played out before us so that we can stand apart and wonder. What Dewey would call a consummatory performance played out in the author's imagination. What has this to do with religion?

Much philosophy fails in that it concerns itself exclusively with an abstract mimesis called propositional truth: what is in the world and what are the conditions for knowing it? Religion, mostly, is an abundant muthos, affectively satisfying, but caring little for propositional truth. Literature, however, displays both, contains both: wonder and truth.

\

(What are you talking about?) — 180 Proof

While it may be true that being poor in the country is less stressful than the city, at least it sounds intuitive true, you still sight the virtues of being poor. Listen to the hyper wealthy talk casually about poverty, and you will find exactly that kind of dismissiveness. Jeff Bezos and his ilk are especially flippant about what is in fact a living nightmare, being poor that is.
However, putting aside how this kind of thinking plays into the hands of a wealthy person's rationalization, my happiest days were when I was, well, free of the bondage of possessions.

I am rather on the other end of this.

Philosophy does not show us how to live. It's not a what to do? kind of thinking, but a what Is it all about? kind. But no doubt, philosophy as a method is absolutely essential to producing an enlightened mind, and this has the crucial role of delivering us from bad thinking, bad metaphysics, indefensible ideas. But it is mostly a critical enterprise, tearing down irrational institutions. It gives us the ability to think critically at the basic level of things, which is certainly useful, but this kind of thing turns to specific areas of involvement, and once a person sees how an argument works regarding, say, human rights and third world exploitation, then more sound moral thinking displaces messy, parochial thinking. An examination of how well an idea stands up under scrutiny is, of course, a very common thing, and philosophy, the method, steps in, bypassing extraneous incidentals. A "philosophy of" some particular area follows along these lines.

But philosophy proper is all about moving away from particular areas, and into the threshold thinking at the level of the most basic assumptions that are presupposed in all things. Having a philosophical outlook on many things is obviously a good thing, but this is not philosophy proper. It is just an extension of the particular. Talk about the philosophy I have of cooking for large parties is not the philosophy of the presocratics through postmodernism.

You take me far too literally. I'm saying that calling Heidegger philosophy incarnate is like claiming Jesus was the Word made flesh. It's a substantial, I would say greatly exaggerated, claim. To that claim (which I think preposterous) I made a response which I thought responded, sarcastically, to such a claim, noting that philosophy incarnate was also in that case an unrepentant Nazi. — Ciceronianus

He should have denounced the Nazis. Beyond this, I don't see anything substantive.

Well, we all know that, do we not? If not, in what sense don't we know it? I think you're looking for some kind of a religious or mystical revelation. — Ciceronianus

Not for me to say what people see when they spend a lot of time second guessing the nature of the world. The world is, after all, structured by those very ideas that are assailed in deep scrutiny. In a letter Husserl wrote, he told that his students were turning toward religion to come to grips with the phenomenological reduction, which is a method of doing phenomenology that suspends most knowledge claims in order to get at the "thing itself". Husserl, then, was not himself very religious.

Taking this reduction to its ultimate expression, and this gives you meditation yoga, which is an complete suspension of all explicit knowing and experiencing (though underlying, there must be a construct of the self to constitute agency, I would hazard. What is NOT so constituted , a transcendental self, is entirely another matter). The Abidhamma speaks of profound intuitive revelations. Not a popular life's choice these days.

For me, sure, the more the familiar is made unfamiliar, whcih is what questioning things like this does, one is left with an openness that was closed in the tyranny of ordinary affairs, to borrow a phrase. The world is seen differently, perhaps radically so.

Well, he was an unrepentant Nazi, and you say he was great, so in what way is the statement untrue? But of course it's a silly reply to a silly statement, i.e. that he's an "embodiment of the entire history of philosophy"; philosophy incarnate, as it were, philosophy made flesh as Jesus was the Word made flesh. — Ciceronianus

Ad hominem fallacies go to the person rather than the argument. Everyone knows this. And then the straw person argument that because Heidegger embodies the history of Western philosophy, he as untenable as Christian metaphysics. Curious. Why not simply look at the discussion and figure it out?

So you want to know the mechanics of cognition, what happens when we think? — Ciceronianus

Me? I want to know what it is to be a existing person in the middle of reality, "thrown into" a world of suffering and joy. I mean, thrown in this qua thrown. Popular theories do not touch this. Evolution, for example, tells you nothing about this. It simply gives a justified account of how it got here, which no reasonable person disagrees with. No, the question is philosophico-theological. Justifications here are apriori, so we look at, say, pain, its presence. What IS this AS pain, not as a science would simply contextualize it. It is first a descriptive matter.

But you seem to be saying that we can't know what it is to know, in abstract, and without context, without relations, etc. If that's the case, we don't disagree. — Ciceronianus

Well, there is nothing without context. Nothing abstract about this. Take my cat on the couch. Nothing abstract about my knowing she is on the couch at all. Now, ask what does it mean to know something at all? How is this any more abstract than inquiring about how brakes work, knowing full well how to use them? Asking how knowledge works is an inquiry that in no way steps beyond the boundaries natural inquiry.
So I am saying an inquiry into the nature of knowledge is not an abstract matter at all.

THIS takes the matter full swing towards the egoic center, where the much sought after justification for P finds its home, and P is US all along. — Constance

Just to add, Dewey is a part of my thinking only. As is Witt, Heidegger and the rest. So don't take to the letter anything I say as I USE them, to be a representation of what one might encounter in some expository course. Husserl, for example, and intentionality, I present here as a problem.

There may be a typo or two up there

Yes, and also the world's greatest unrepentant Nazi. We've been over this before. — Ciceronianus

its a vacuous reply. A fallacy that is so obvious it has a name: ad hominem.

What is, and what for that matter is "the basic level"? — Ciceronianus

I gave you an example: I know what an apple is in a ready to hand way, but I don't know what it is to know something in this way. This knowledge relationship, what is it? What are concepts and how they relate to the world? Affect we call emotions, but emotions are certainly not concepts. And on and on. Philosophy is about basic questions. It is not how fast light travels, but what it means make a claim of any kind at all. You could say, as Dewey does, it is basically about experience (edging toward idealism, but, as with Heidegger, idealism is a thesis that comes AFTER the most basic inquiry. The most basic puts the relationships and meanings first, for these are first encountered, logically, that is, prior to any thematic undertaking (what is this or that as such, simpliciter?)). Phenomenology is a descriptive account that asks very simply: prior to our categorical knowledge (sciences, everydayness) there is already there, in place, a foundation for this. As you say, the wax example: this is not how we think about wax and there is nothing in the way wax turns up in our sciences, in our conversations, this question about the "existence behind the appearance" has no referent in the world at all, a complete fiction. Heidegger completely agrees, and his discussion of Descartes is a refutation. It is not this metaphysics of the object, it is what is there in the clearest way describable. Where this comes from is Husserl. You might want some day to look into his Ideas, Cartesian Meditations, and others. Husserl gets it from Brentano.
Empirical science is the greatest! That is, for what it does, and it does not do philosophy.

Do you know what it means to not know what it means to know what something is? That would seem the pertinent question if that's the case. Presumably, that's something you know now. Please explain why you think you don't know what it means to know what something is, and what you think it would be you would know if you did know what it means to know what something is. — Ciceronianus

Because knowing my cat is on the couch is different from knowing what it is to know my cat is on the couch. Simple. My car stops when the pedal is pressed and I know this. But I don't know the analysis of this: talk about brakes, brake fluid, pressure, and so on, is very different. This is because braking is, if you will, a thing of parts, it is analyzable.

To make a very long story short, the entire matter turns finally to ethics/aesthetics. You ask "what you think it would be you would know if you did know what it means to know what something is and the key to this lies in value, or metavalue, and discussion in metavalue, metaethics, metaaesthetics (meta here means an thematizing of the analysis of the nature of value; ethics and aesthetics are inherently value affairs: e.g., no value, no ethics) are where the final inquiry must go. The analysis of knowledge is inherently an analysis of value (that's Dewey), and it is value that is the existential core of meaning in the world. Knowledge ABOUT something, my cat or stocks' daily yield, is reducible to an ontology of value and cognition, and cognition, assessed in itself, bears no actual. Or: epistemological analyses utterly fail because there is no foundational dimension; they always begin with the relation, and relations are justificatory and justifications are discursive such that the foundation is always at a distance from t he affirmation sought: P is always on the other side of S. This is why Husserl is so important: that Cartesian bit about res extensa is out the window, but the immediacy of the Cartesian center is not, for it is here where, and I disagree intensely with many on this, our existence and existence itself is disclosed. Existence IS value. That is Dewey, even if not in so many words.

THIS takes the matter full swing towards the egoic center, where the much sought after justification for P finds its home, and P is US all along.

There's need to be insulting. I may be aligned to Dewey, however, who knew this and wrote of it before Heidegger. — Ciceronianus

Heidegger is radically different. He is an embodiment of the entire history of philosophy as he critiques and rejects many of its central claims. The pragmatic event, for example, is not what defines understanding, and affect is not sidelined as incidental merely, but given full examination and fit into an inclusive phenomenological concept. Dewey, from my readings of Nature and Experience and Art and Experience, along with marlinal readings in education and elsewhere, is still fixated on general concepts familiar in nature and material accounts. This is not at the basic level.
Heidegger is more like the Greeks, Husserl, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant combined. The pragmatic end, his ready-to-hand is, in my thinking, well complimented by Dewey and the hypothetical deductive method; but Dewey is seriously deficient in describing the world at the basc level. For all I know, Heidegger read Dewey prior to Being and Time. He also read the Greeks. It doesn't matter.

The question I would ask, myself, is--When and in what circumstances do we, or anyone else, ask "What is a pen?" Or for that matter, "What is a cup?" I think the answer would be only in very isolated, contrived, artificial circumstances. The context in which such "questions" arise is significant, and when we ask them we're playing something like "Let's Pretend." Let's pretend, in other words, that we don't know what a pen or cup is, or whether they differ from us.

That should suggest to us that these aren't real questions; we have no doubt what they are, nor do we have any doubt that we're not pens, or cups. Why ask them, then? I'm inclined to think this is one of the non-problems which are fabricated when we accept dualisms and the concept of an "external world." — Ciceronianus

Well, that's hardly fitting. I mean, asking what a pen is at the level of basic questions, is just an example of the openness of inquiry of all things at this level. It is not about fabricated dualisms, but about the world and what is THERE in authentic inquiry. That is all. It's a matter of observing the world at the level of basic questions. Just that. I see a cup,I know what it is, but I don't know what it means to know what something is. Now I am in the philosophical mode.

This is a second order of thinking, a reflection on meanings as they are given, not at all unlike what science does when it makes its way through the openness of established paradigms. We know how this works, but we, I mean the general thinking, do not know how this works philosophically: questions about the presuppositions of our knowing, about the presuppositions of science and everydayness.
So then, why bother with this? You can't say philosophical questions are not real questions and this is because they issue from the world, not our imaginations. Ancient cultures did not invent and hand down to us the incompleteness of all knowledge claims. Such a thing is a solid fact of our existence. All you have to do is follow through on inquiry. Consider that you can take Einstein's time and space, ask him how his observations of the world make it into perceptual schemes at all, and he will have nothing to say. He's a physicist, not a philosopher. But then Kant''s Space, Hegel's Time, Heidegger's Being: these are not definitive, but neither is science. They DO give extraordinary insight into the nature of the inquiry and give paradigmatic theories that are AS spot on as plate tectonics or chromosomal theory, given the nature of their field.

Which takes us to metaphysics, that which nearly ALL of 20th philosophy, on both sides of the Atlantic, have attempted to tear down. Philosophy does not make cell phones. It is interested in foundational truth, and even if this is impossible, it reveals, in the process of discovery, that the real, foundational questions are not at all what we thought when we were just reading scientific journals. It opens inquiry at the threshold of knowledge.

There is a wall between philosophical understanding and the general pov. A wall of unfamiliarity. One does have to read to know that it is interesting at all.

Descartes made I distinction I don't. — Ciceronianus

And speaking of Descartes, think of that wax of his: do you think a self, an "I" is reducible to what the was is reducible to in his famous analogy?

I'm not a disciple of any philosopher, though I favor some over others. I'm not even a disciple of my daemon, Marcus Tullius Cicero. And certainly not of Descartes, whose dualism was rejected by Dewey. I think Dewey also rejected the distinction you seem to make, separating the practical from the "ontological." — Ciceronianus

That is promising. Nothing worse than the dogmatic adherence to what someone said. Less interested in this, much more in how this serves my own evolving thoughts.

There's no "in there" or "out there." There's "here." There's no "external world" nor is there an "internal world." There's a world in which we live as participants in that world. — Ciceronianus

Then you are very much aligned with Heidegger and others. Of course, then you have to deal with the object as an analytical problematic. Here is my pen. At the level of the most basic inquiry, what IS it? Science has a lot to say, but this is not the most basic level. If it is stated that the pen has mass, e.g., we see that "having mass" is not as if the pen is some kind of eternal penness being intimated by the pen. Where did this designation come from? Of course, the sound 'pen' is what is being tossed around, but this sound is entirely arbitrary; it could have been anything. Then we have the concept (think structuralist Saussure), so how is it that concepts work? This is a thorny matter discussed for centuries, but out of this one thing is clear: Concepts are epistemic, objects are, traditionally, anyway, ontological. No way around it: Were are bound to include the epistemic IN the ontology.
Pragmatists do this, of course, regardless of the language that makes this into a complication. My pen is an event in time, for the epistemology, the apprehending of the pen, is an event. This requires an analysis of time, events, beginnings and terminations, and apparent fluidity (James' Stream of Consciousness, e.g.), meanings, aesthetics/ethics, and all that is IN primordial time. I think the pragmatists are right! Just incomplete.

I'm saying the philosophical conception of an "external world" and an "internal world" is misguided and confusing. I think this is what Dewey says, as well. We should speak of certain activities and things, what they are, what they do, as different parts of the of the same world, but should not speak of them as if they take place in isolated realms. I'm critical of the view there is an "external world" apart from us, which we merely observe and react to, somehow, though excluded from it. — Ciceronianus

But then, there I am, and there this cup is, and there is no denying that there is some "space" (space: more than one kind) between us; I mean, I am certainly NOT the kind of thing a cup is: A cup has presence, visible features like other things. I, on the other hand, don't have any of this. I am not an object to see; I have no presence, there, like a cup on a table. Nor am I a brain with a body. I can see brains, brain matter and its magnification, but to see my "I" is impossible, for the observational event to affirm this would presuppose the very "I" that I would be trying to affirm.

This is not to argue that there is no compelling reason to believe there is a brain/consciousness relation, obviously. It is merely to say that observation as such cannot achieve observational perspective on the generative source of an observation. This idea has a long history in philosophy. You can INFER that consciousness IS what consciousness observes in the world of objects, but this simply dismisses ad hoc that problematic mentioned here.

But I suppose it is the fact that we cannot exist without that portion of the rest of the universe with which we interact which makes me wonder why we're inclined to separate ourselves from the rest of the universe in this fashion and in other respects. We're living organisms and like other living organisms we've been formed by our interaction with each other and the rest of the world over time. As we are part of the world, the idea that we are incapable of knowing what other parts of it really are doesn't make much sense. If we didn't have that knowledge, we wouldn't exist. — Ciceronianus

Ciceronianus....are you being serious? You are a pragmatist. Knowledge is pragmatic, not ontological. Knowing other parts, as you say, is a matter of knowing how to deal, solve problems, but issues about knowing the external world are ones that respond to the Cartesian claim that there is res extensa "out there" as opposed to res cogitans. Are you a res extensa proponent? If so, you are no disciple of Dewey, James, et al.

What is an argument over the nature of value? Step it out if you have time.

I take the view that there is no capital T truth out there to be found. Humans make truth. Utility seems to me to determine the traction or value of any given narrative. How well does it work for us to meet our goals. — Tom Storm

If I have time? Sorry, but yes, I do have time. I like writing about this because it reminds me of what I actually think. Hope it's not too long.

Any analysis imaginable, if taken to the very end of its logical output, turns to value, for in the end, once all concepts have been exhaustively examined there will remain the question that all along has attended the entire enterprise: what was the point of all this analysis? The question of what good the whole affair is hovrs over all that is done. If it were finally and definitively determined that God does exist, what good would this proposition be? God, after all, is not about the successful positing of a creator Being of infinte power; no, all along it has been about us, our desire for something wonderful beyond all reckoning, and a deliverance from suffering. Bring on all of this, and God just disappears as pointless.

All possible endeavor vanishes into the air if there is no value in what is done, and thus, value deserves first place in our philosophical priorities, for all that would compete for this position beg the value question. I see no way around this: the human enterprise, call it, is not one that seeks truth, for truth is propositional-- only sentences bear truth and we are certainly not struggling to achieve the greatest sentence possible. Rather we are looking for the greatest experiences possible, that is, the greatest joy, bliss, rapture, the deepest and most profound, with all the superlatives one can think of thrown in. Find this, and then construct the true proposition: this is just fantastic! and you have found yourself in greater proximity to what is sought after.

So this love affair with truth has to end: truth, in the end, is contingent on value. Trivial truths, like the bath water being too cold or there being 12 inches to a foot, are facts, and facts have no value as facts. (Of course, the pragmatists are right: talk about facts qua facts is just an abstraction, for such things do not exist. A fact is "of a piece" with the structure of experience itself, and value is there in the fact-value event).

Value needs to be given its due: what IS it? This piano sonata is beautiful, a splinter is painful, this study is interesting, and so on. It first has to be understood that this kind of thing is utterly pervasive. We don't have valueless experiences (Heidegger does an extraordinary examination of this kind of thing in his "deficient modes of Being with" in his Being and Time. This guy is an amazing philosopher.). So when we speak of value, we are not referring to this experience ot that, but to the entire stream of experience itself.

As to what it is, this needs analysis. Value is the existential core of ethics. No value, no ethics, or aesthetics. If no one cares about anything, then no one can be harmed or delighted, hence, no prohibitions or rules that would govern these. Then, value itself: Take a radical example: being scalded by boiling water. This has two dimensions, the incidentals: the hot water, the sensate vulnerabilities, the anatomical experience making systems, etc.; and the pure phenomenon of pain, which is evident and irreducible. The incidentals are variable. It could have been that a couch fell on your head or your were stabbed in the liver and the ethical dimension would still be there, so the incidentals are dismissed as nonessential to a determination of the nature of value. Something certainly caused the pain, but the pain is the essential feature, not the couch.

Finally: consider that there are two kinds of good and bad. there are contingent goods and bads and these are very common. This is a good coffee cup because it's easy to hold, has good thermal qualities, etc. The "goodness" is contingent several things. But note how this goodness works: this is a good knife because it's sharp and balanced and so on; but then, if it is going to be used for Macbeth, you don't want a sharp knife at all! Someone could get hurt, and now what was good is now bad, just like that. That is contingency.

The other kind of good and bad is non contingent, or, absolute, and this is where value finds its analysis. Take the pain mentioned above of being scalded. There is a "bad" in this pure phenomenon of pain that cannot be diminished in any possible way. To illustrate this, consider a scalding and other lovely tortures of someone for an entire weekend. Then consider any possible way you might ethically choose to inflict such torture on someone. Perhaps a solid utilitarian choice sits before you: do this or thousands of others, children, in fact, will suffer not for a week, but for a thousand years! Now, I think there is a very good argument here to choose against the thousand year alternative, but note: unlike the sharpness of the knife, the contingent nature of its goodness easy undone by circumstances changing, the torture for the weekend is not at all diminished in its "badness", as dumb and awkward as that term sounds.

One has to look, I hold, long and hard at this claim. thik about the difference between being tortured and its badness, and the sharp knife and its badness for the use in Macbeth. These are very different meanings of BAD. There is nothing even imaginable that can diminish the pain's ethical dimension, its badness; therefore, this badness is an absolute, (notwithstanding the problematic of explaining absolutes. There is more argument to this, but I have given the essentials) .

They do sound interesting but I don't know if I'll ever read them, life is short and books are many. (But glancing at Marion's wiki entry, I read something that immediately resonates, "We live with love as if we knew what it was about. But as soon as we try to define it, or at least approach it with concepts, it draws away from us. — Wayfarer

They are working outward from Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl, for me, made a profound discovery. Of course, this is something that had been in place for centuries in the east, but Husserl revealed how this could be broached in the otherwise prohibitive tradition dominated by Christian metaphysics, rationalism, empiricism, positivism, and other isms.

But then that is within a domain of discourse where such expressions are meaningful, there's a shared understanding of what these experiences are. — Wayfarer

Certainly. Shared experiences is what makes language possible. I only want to say that it is not right to say something is beyond language. The only thing beyond language is the ability to explain language, which would require language to do so. But so what. Language as a possible vehicle to explain things is open and free. It always has been.

That is the area of hermenuetics, the interpretation of texts. It's a topic within Buddhism itself, because of doctrinal disputes that arose in the early part of the tradition. Some of the Mahāyāna Sutras (e.g. Ārya-saṃdhi-nirmocana-sūtra) purport to present the 'definitive interpretation' concerning various difficult or disputed points of the earlier tradition. In any case, the central concern of all the schools is with realising that state of enlightenment. — Wayfarer

I observe a blade of grass. Now where is the basis for interpretative disagreement? It lies within the language that was there prior to the observation. One does not enter into observation and inquiry without already having been enculturated. It is those pesky extraneous affairs and "traditions" that obtrude into the saying what something IS that undoes the purity of the event. In this, Hegel was right, I suppose: it will take time and dialectical struggle to work this out; but then, this IS the conversation humanity has to be having with itself.