It's a graphic way of making a sound point.

Bernardo Kastrup says you can get a computer to run an exquisitely-detailed simulation of kidney function, but you wouldn't expect it to urinate.

Aren't beings simulations themselves? — Lionino

No, on Cartesian grounds - even if everything I experience is illusory, there can be no doubt that I experience it. A simulation is rather like an illusion, but both simulations and illusions occur to an observing mind. The mind itself is not part of the simulation, but what the simulation appears to.

Yes, but there is also the idea that understanding requires training the mind - or maybe even reconstructing it. (I mean, by meditation, of course). — Ludwig V

:100: That was known, at one point in history, as 'metanoia', although that is now usually translated simply as 'repentance', thereby blurring the distinction between insight and belief. Originally it meant 'mental transformation' or something like a cognitive shift.

An online edition of the text with side-by-side translations can be found here.

:clap: Thanks for those, happy to have someone here that recognises the issue. I find the details very difficult due to my lack of background in formal logic and mathematics. But I'm familiar with the SEP articles and have refered to Platonism in mathematics article.

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences. Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge.

--

As the epiphany comes to the mathematician or the scientist, it seems to come from nowhere, the discursivity of thought in the underpinnings of realization unnoticed. — Astrophel

:100: Great post! One of my early favourite books of popular philosophy was Arthur Koestler 'The Sleepwalkers' which contains many accounts these kinds of serendipitous discoveries in the history of science.

consider Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine" thought experiment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't the problem with that is that it is entirely artificial? And does a simulcrum of 'true happiness' or 'true virtue' possess either happiness or virtue? Isn't a convincing fake still fake?

And if the real things of interest are Forms, it's not immediately clear why being in a simulation should hurt our ability to discover truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because forms are attributes of beings, not of simulations.

//your subject will be, as a matter of definition, 'a dweller in the cave'.//

I will say, apropos of the thread title, something that is becoming clear to me is the consequence of the rejection of the idea of there being final causes. As I understand it, this was one of the casualties of Galileo's science - as it should have been, in the case of physics, with the obsolete notions of bodies having their 'natural places'. But there's another sense of final causality, the end to which things are directed, and that applies to biology in a way that it does not for physics.

//probably another thread//

Well I guess the answer to that is 'read the book'. It's a follow on from Braver's A Thing of this World, which @Joshs has recommended, but I'm struggling to get around to it, being in a perpetual backlog of things I ought to read.

Oh, and as to how to delimit 'the transcendent' - very good question, I would say. 'Ethics are transcendental' does appear at the very end of TLP, in fact that and the sorrounding aphorisms are about the only ones which appeal to me.

Are we talking about truths, or a method that is self-confirming by its very nature as method? — Joshs

What drew me to the question, was 'what is the nature of number?' Without going into all the background, the idea that struck me was that numbers are real, in that they're the same for anyone who can count, but they're not material in nature. They exist in a different way than do objects, they're only perceptible to an intelligence capable of counting. And mathematics is also fundamental to the success of modern science. But it turns out to be a contentious debate. Naturalists generally disparage the 'romance of maths'. Another article I have on my links list is about the 'Indispensability Argument' for mathematics.

Mathematical objects are in many ways unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way. Indeed, it is difficult to see how we could use our senses to learn about mathematical objects. We do not see integers, or hold sets.....

....Mathematical objects are not the kinds of things that we can see or touch, or smell, taste or hear. If we can not learn about mathematical objects by using our senses, a serious worry arises about how we can justify our mathematical beliefs.

For some reason, this strikes me as faintly comical. But it also says something about the stranglehold of empiricism on philosophy.

To me, this all ties into realism about universals, questions about the nature of reason, the Greek and medieval philosophy of the rational soul, and questions about the nature of meaning, and how it is grasped. They are themes I like to explore.

Incidentally, looking around for more info on Lee Braver, I found his book Groundless Grounds, from the abstract of which:

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are two of the most important—and two of the most difficult—philosophers of the twentieth century, indelibly influencing the course of continental and analytic philosophy, respectively. In Groundless Grounds, Lee Braver argues that the views of both thinkers emerge from a fundamental attempt to create a philosophy that has dispensed with everything transcendent so that we may be satisfied with the human.

As you might guess, given the content of my posts, I tend to recoil from the very idea.

As you can see, I am no expert. — Astrophel

Maybe, but your posts are quite interesting, and, like mine, eclectic.

Consider that non dualism only makes sense when played off of dualism — Astrophel

It takes some doing to get a feel for non-dualism. I first discovered Advaita (Hindu) before delving into Buddhism. I will say that non-dualism is a very subtle idea - once you get a grasp of it, elements of it can be found in the Western philosophical tradition, but the origins are very different. It's very much tied to meditative awareness as a different mode of being.

There is a strange threshold one gets to reading phenomenology, where the "nothing" get a lot of attention. — Astrophel

That's where there is some convergence with the Buddhist principle of emptiness, śūnyatā. Very deep topic, but I will say that 'no-thing' is not quite the same as mere absence or lack. In any case, there are scholars who work on the crossover between phenomenology and Buddhist philosophy. It was a theme in The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, et al.

There have been quite a few essays written on convergences between Heidegger and Zen Buddhism although I don't know of any to recommend.

Heidegger's dialogue with a Buddhist monk is here.

If the concept of number emerged at some point in cultural history , was this a necessary or contingent event. — Joshs

Well, the qualifications of necessary/contingent generally apply to facts, don't they, rather than events? And the discovery of arithmetic, mathematics and geometry was not a single event, it occured over thousands of years, and is still on-going. But the basic point is, I take it, that basic arithmetical principles are true in all possible worlds, as the saying has it.

(One of the posts I often point to is What is Math? Smithsonian Institute Magazine. It explores the ideas I find interesting about this question, in particular the pro's and cons of mathematical platonism. The representative Platonist is one James Robert Brown, an emeritus professor, who's book I subsequently sought out. But alas, many of the arguments are really too difficult to understand for someone without a background in maths. But there's one gem of a quote in that essay, which I think unintentionally exposes the source of much current hostility towards platonist ideas: 'Platonism", as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?")

Please notice that further research revealed that this was not true. I'll put a note on the OP.

I think Buddhists, Hindus (not everyday Hindus praying to Ganesh) are the most advanced people in the world. — Astrophel

I believe the important philosophical perspective they bring is that of non-dualism. The modern world, cosmopolitan as it is, is then able to consider these perspectives through dialogue with its representatives. (Heidegger seemed aware of this, there's a televised discussion between him and a Buddhist monk on the Internet, and quite a bit of literature on Heidegger and Eastern thought.) I'm also aware of the well-grounded criticisms of Buddhist modernism but nevertheless the Eastern tradition can help cast light on many deep philosophical conundrums of the West.

(Also I will acknowledge that whereas your approach seems defined in terms of the curriculum of philosophy, mine has been eclectic, as I encountered philosophy in pursuit of the idea of spiritual enlightenment. Consequently I am not as well-read in the later 20th C continental philosophers as others here, including yourself, although I'm always open to learn.)

Without language, where is the "I" of an experience, mundane, profound or otherwise? — Astrophel

Well, sure! But teasing out the implications of that, actually treating it as a discussion in analytic philosophy, may also cast some light. There is that which is beyond words, ineffable, 'of which we cannot speak', but we can nevertheless can try and develop a feeling for what it is, and where the boundary lies (rather than just 'shuddup already'.)

nature only becomes exact, only becomes number, when we turn our attention away from what we actually experience in order to count. — Joshs

Sure. My contention about number is a simple one: they are real as constituents of reason but not materially existent, and I think that says something important.

They placed some dogmas outside the realm of reason, and in doing so ruined reason and faith. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In Theological Origins of Modernity, Gillespie places the origin of this tendency with the Franscisan order who insisted that God was was not bound by reason, an attitude was anathema to the Scholastics, who tended to see in the workings of reason a mirror of the divine intellect. He says this tendency makes God capricious and wholly unpredictable and unknowable and that this 'theological voluntarism' is also characteristic of Islam.

I was particularly exercised by what appeared to be Heidegger's nostalgia for scholastic philosophy and by doubts about how far it is reasonable to apply modern philosophical ideas to what are much more like religious texts rather than what we would think of as philosophy. — Ludwig V

Something I'm often grappling with due to my preoccupation with ideas arising from spiritual traditions. I think there is something of an implicit barrier in modern philosophy against ideas and indeed ways of thought that are deemed too close to being religious, and that also is a barrier against a considerable amount of pre-modern philosophy in the West.

This excerpt for me comes off as strangely confusing. — Lionino

May well be! After opening the thread, based on the quote in the OP, I then went searching for further sources, confirmations and disconfirmations, and that is one that I found. The broader point, of the frequency of inhumane treatment of animals by scientists, I'm sure remains intact.

Animals are machines.
Humans are animals.
Therefore, humans are machines. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the problematic legacy of Descartes is the depiction of res cogitans as a 'thinking substance', which is an oxymoronic conception. By objectifying the mind, he renders it susceptible to the image of 'the ghost in the machine' which, of course, was a popular criticism. Descartes' dualism in some ways like an economic model or an allegory which has tended to be misinterpreted as an actual hypothesis, leading to the absurd notion of 'thinking things'. Deeply problematical idea in my view, and has become one of the deep foundational problems of modern culture.

Agree with your analysis. Note: I too had corrected the record in this thread by doing some further reading culminating in a post a page or so back:

A little further reading reveals the suggestion that the previously-mentioned acts of 'hammering dogs to boards' was actually carried out not by Descartes but by pupils at a college influenced by Cartesian ideas. However the same source also notes that Descartes was interested in vivisection and anatomical examination of animals alive and dead. Another source says that the report about maltreatment of dogs was written long after the events and may not be trustworthy.

It seems to me that on further reading, the story about Descartes appalling treatment of dogs is apocryphal at best, but that he certainly was interested in vivisection, not least because of his theory that the mind and the body interacted via the pituitary gland.

But, as far as the story that opened this thread is concerned, unless someone has better information, I'm somewhat relieved to report that it probably is not true. — Wayfarer

And also the blog entry reproduced in this post.

Truth is made, not discovered. — Astrophel

Can’t let that go by. I’ll refer back to that quote I mentioned the other day

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it.” — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm,Tyler Burge

I see no reason to doubt it. The basic facts of arithmetic and logic are not made up but discerned. I think confusion arises from treating objects as mind-independent, when all our judgements about objects are contingent on sense-experience. But then, metaphysics proper never understood objects as being mind-independent in that sense. Yes, we construct the object from experience, but there are real objects, or at least objects which are the same for all observers - ideas, in other words. And as for basic arithmetical facts, they are not objects at all, but the operations of mind, and also invariant from one mind to another. Whereas it seems to me that you have adopted an attitude of unmitigated relativism.

In respect of intelligibility, what it meant in pre-modern philosophy was precisely the identity of thought and being. I’ve started to understand this through a text I’ve gotten hold of, the title of which says exactly that, Thinking Being, Eric Perl. I had previously been familiar with the Platonist expression ‘to be, is to be intelligible’, but couldn’t understand what it meant. This book has helped with that.

In any case, I don’t agree, truth is not made, or simply made. Truth includes and so transcends both object and subject. I’m totally on board with Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy, but I also don’t believe it implies that kind of relativism.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh? And, on that note.....

It turned out I was wrong about that. The actual story concerned students at some medical faculty who were convinced by Descartes' philosophy that animals don't feel pain, and flayed them alive, which then got mis-translated as something Descartes did. It wasn't Descartes himself, which I did note that at the time.

Not sure what is being asked. I mean, what aspects of physical processes would, if absent, not in some way degrade the subjective experience? — noAxioms

When you say:

It presumes that human consciousness is a purely physical process (physicalism), and thus a sufficiently detailed simulation of that physics would produce humans that are conscious — noAxioms

This runs smack into the 'hard problem of consciousness', which is that no description of physical processes provides an account of the first-person nature of consciousness. Put another way, there are no subjects of experience modelled in physics or physical descriptions, physics is wholly concerned with objects.

//another way of putting it is, if it's a simulation, then who is subject to the illusion? A simulation is not what it appears to be, it is comparable to an illusion in that respect. But illusions and simulations only effect a consciousness that mistakes them for being real.//

It presumes that human consciousness is a purely physical process (physicalism), and thus a sufficiently detailed simulation of that physics would produce humans that are conscious — noAxioms

Which aspects of physical processes correspond with subjectivity?

It's true, there would be no fools gold, were there no actual gold.

I would explain my position further but it would be a complete digression from the thrust of this thread.

And at the end of the day, he'd be lionized. :lol:

CNN reports that Donald Trump is running on the platform of defending January 6th, promising to release those jailed for ransacking the Capital if he is elected.

Are a majority of electors really going to endorse the January 6th assault on the Capital as a legitimate political protest? He's turning the election into a referendum on whether Biden really won. Sure a percentage of Republican voters accept that he didn't, but that percentage in no way comprises a majority of the electorate. Trump only won 60% of the vote in many of the primaries he carried, meaning there's a large percentage of Republican voters who won't vote for him, let alone the swing vote and independents. On top of all that, he's declaring that if he isn't elected, 'it's going to be a bloodbath'. 'IF I DON'T GET WHAT I WANT EVERYONE IS GOING TO SUFFER!!!' How can that amount to a winning strategy?

Is that so? Sobering. Anyway, probably not the place for this discussion, I just had the urge to draw JGill's attention to that article. (Oh, and there's also the infamous incident where he allegedly threatened Karl Popper with a poker.)

See this. Originally published and endorsed by the UK Wittgenstein Society.

:clap: Fantastic ideas, if you have the literary chops I'm sure it would make a riveting read, although I daresay difficult to craft.

the elevation of man's ideas to divine status. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's one of the themes of Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie, which I mentioned.

But when I think about what preceded it, I do not find myself longing to return to the Good Old Days. — Ludwig V

Quite. I'm not pushing for a return to a golden past. It's more along the lines of a forgotten wisdom.

Language is pragmatic, and has nothing to "say" about the world. It is a tool for discovery. It "stands in" for things in the world. It is not that enigmatic terms like ineffability, ultimate reality, nirvana, the sacred, the holy, and so on are nonsense. — Astrophel

I think Buddhism is far better at mapping these ideas of what can and cannot be said - much more so than 20th century philosophy, although to explore it would be beyond the scope of the thread. Suffice to point to the 'parable of the raft', an early Buddhist text, in which the Buddha compares his instruction to a raft, thrown together out of twigs and branches, necessary to cross the river, but not to be clung to as an ultimate. I think it contrasts with the absolutism of Judeo-Christian culture. Anyway, that's a major digression as far as this thread is concerned, I won't pursue it, but thanks for your replies.

I will let one of the logicians tackle that one!

Well, it's on the right track, although it's highly truncated, isn't it? Agree that Feser's articles are useful on the subject.

Regarding potentiality and actuality, there's a Wikipedia entry on that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality

I'm interested in Aristotle's idea of 'potentia' as things which might exist, but are latent or potential until they're actualised. It describes the 'domain of possibility', which is different to things that can't or will never exist. See the article for further discussion.

hmmm. I kind of see what you mean but I think it's tangential to their main point. There is a preview available via Amazon, that might cast a bit more light on the book's aim.

I can't see it as being relevant to pure mathematics. It's more about the tendency towards objectification and quantification dominating our worldview. It's basically a criticism of 'scientism'.

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience, Evan Thompson, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser - published 5th March.

I wonder if there should be (if there isn't already) a thread on (dare I say it) alternative accounts of god which are not personal or anthropomorphic? — Tom Storm

Good idea, although on a secular forum, it's rather like tossing bits of bloodied meat into the Piranha River. ;-)

In addition to Leontiskos' suggestions above, I found a rather good text-book excerpt on the topic, see here (.pdf).

BTW for some light entertainment I'm sure anyone interested in this thread will like this trailer:

Derrida and his criticism of Heidegger is the "final" critique, isn't it. — Astrophel

It might be in some worlds, but not in mine.

What is it we are liberated from? Knowledge assumptions that clutter perception. What is knowledge? It is essentially pragmatic. To know is to enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world. — Astrophel

The over-arching issue of modernity, and of human existence generally, is the illusion of otherness, the sense of separateness and apart-ness that is part of the very condition of being born. As you suggest, Zen has bearing on this - which is why, I think, Heidegger acknowledges it (in the well-known anecdote of him being found reading one of D T Suzuki's books and praising it. Recall that Suzuki was lecturing at Columbia University during the latter half of Heidegger's career and was a contemporary. There was also a considerable exchange of ideas between Heidegger and the Kyoto School.)

But Zen is an exotic tradition and can't simply be assimilated or appropriated by Western culture, while Heidegger, as I understand it, wished to maintain the philosophical dialogue within the bounds of the Western tradition. But nevertheless the convergence of phenomenology and existentialism with Buddhist praxis has become a factor in current discourse (mainly through publication of The Embodied Mind but also in other works.)

Anyway, I've spent some time with Japanese Buddhists, and the point of their culture is precisely to 'enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world' but to do so whilst fully mindful of both its transience and its beauty. They have ways of understanding the centrality of 'the unmanifest' (mu) without absolutizing it. That is what their culture is, being able to maintain that, and it's still largely lacking in Western culture, and one of the main reasons the West has turned to Zen as a meaningful philosophy.

Agree you're not preaching positivism, but the 'all metaphysics is bad metaphysics' comes dangerously close. Many depictions of metaphysics in modern philosophy are poisoned in my view.

I think the idea of meaning being defined by social practice causes particular problems for nominalists. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That essay, by Hochschild, is about the momentous implications of the defeat of Aristotelian realism for Western culture. History being written by the victors, we tend not to be able to see that, because of course nominalism is true. It is foundational to modern culture.

Here's a rather abstruse idea but bear with me. I've noticed that there's a topic in history of ideas, under the heading of 'the union of knower and known'. If you google that phrase, nearly all the returns are about Thomism, Averroes, and other medievals. Of course a very large and abstruse topic, but the gist is this: that in classical metaphysics, and in hylomorphic dualism, the ability to 'grok' the Forms, which is the sole prerogative of reason, is an antidote to the 'illusion of otherness' that I mention in my reply above. It is a holistic vision, which is very much the thrust of that Hoschschild quote. Metaphysics, in that context, is not a dry textbook of scholastic definitions and dogmas, but a grounding vision, a way of being-in-the-world, but one that has been long forgotten, on the whole.

There's a copy of Secular Philosophy online here. I wouldn't recommend the book, the title chapter is the only one of interest in my view, the remainder are essays on various topics.

(Technically, I think Barfield was an 'anthroposophist', a follower of Rudolf Steiner, who broke with the Theosophical Society. I have his Saving the Appearances in my pile of unread books ;-) )

I frequently refer to that book, particularly the chapter Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which I have reproduced online for the sake of discussion. His arguments in that chapter for the sovereignty of reason are important and can also be related to the 'argument from reason', which is significant especially because Nagel himself doesn't defend belief in God.

As to the plight of contemporary philosophy, I have benefitted greatly from one of the first books I read when I started posting on forums, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. There's a useful abstract here which also contains links to other reviews. (I suppose Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is of a similar ilk.) But then, I started reading philosophy as part of a youthful quest for enlightenment, my overall approach is more influenced by theosophy (small t, I was never a member of the Society) than philosophy proper. The main historical narrative that I'm following are the reasons behind the philosophical ascendancy of scientific materialism. I find *some* convergence with themes in postmodern philosophy, but I'm not well read in it, or in modern philosophy generally - my undergraduate honours were in comparative religion.

What is generally considered to be real is of course not out of the realm of human experience and judgement. — Janus

:up: Couldn’t have said it better.

so the idea here is this: True, reality ha(s) an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole, but reality is phenomena. All phenomena. Anything posited beyond this is just bad metaphysics. Where is the justification to invent realities beyond what is given? — Astrophel

You're familiar with the 'myth of the given'? It critiques the view that knowledge is based on a foundation of given sensory experience, saying that all perception is conceptually mediated; that is, our understanding and interpretation of sensory data are always shaped by our prior knowledge, beliefs, and concepts. So there can be no pure or immediate knowledge derived directly from sense data. I don't see how that can be avoided. And your reference to 'bad metaphysics' sounds like A J Ayer!

Sorry about that, got caught by an editing glitch. I was only going to add that the image of 'our father in heaven' is ubiquitous in ancient religions, as I think I've said before, the name 'Jupiter' is an adaption of the proto Indo-European 'dyaus-pitar', which means 'sky-father'. (A 'pagan' deity but nevertheless what many have in mind.) But then for a great part of its history, Biblical religion was addressed to illiterate agrarian and farming communities, and had to be presented through myth and allegories that this audience would understand. It's anachronistic in our post-industrial technocratic culture. The mystical stream within Christianity is somewhat detached from that, which is why the mystics often skirt with, or even are accussed of, heresy.