A coceptual map of the Critique of Pure Reason.

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Welcome to the Forum. Regretttably, I feel this post is unmitigated nonsense, but perhaps others might see it differently.

I will respond with an exposition of the transcendental nature of the Self from the Upaniṣads. While is true that there are many cultural divergences between Kantian and Indian philosophy, his notion of the transcendental subject of experience is plausibly comparable to the ātman of Vedanta.

Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman."

Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object.

"Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense.

Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further. — Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad

In respect of the question posed in the OP, it might be recalled that the 'knowledge of the external world' was the subject of an often-quoted passage in the Critique of Pure Reason, to wit:

It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof. — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B519

Bear in mind that in the context, Kant was addressing his philosophical predecessors, including Berkeley, who famously stated esse est percipe, and Descartes whose cogito argument stated that knowledge of one's own being was the foundation of all certain knowledge. I think they were the kinds of sceptical challenges he was referring to.

As is well known, to rebut this scepticism, Kant argued that knowledge is not grounded solely in sensory experience (empirical knowledge), nor exclusively from logical reasoning (rational knowledge). Instead he shows that the understanding is a function of the unavoidable way in which the mind structures the stream of sense-data according to the categories which are innate to the intelligence. Referring to "a priori" (knowledge that is independent of experience) and "a posteriori" (knowledge that is dependent on experience), Kant claims that space and time are not solely objective in nature, but rather grounded in the forms of intuition which are inherent in the structure of cognition. Accordingly he claimed that while we can never know objects as they are in themselves we can know them as they appear to us (the phenomenal world). But I think it's fair to claim that this does not reduce empirical knowledge to illusion or fantasy. Kant was an empirical realist, but not, in today's terms, a scientific realist, because he would obviously dispute the tenet that the objects of knowledge are truly mind-independent. But the distinction between Kant's transcendental and Berkeley's subjective idealism is quite a subtle matter. I think Kant's might be described as being a kind of 'qualified realism' - that what we see really is there, but that it's also inexorably dependent upon the eye with which we see it. That 'things conform to thoughts' was the Copernican revolution of Kantian philosophy.

My take is that the subjective nature of time and space are the cornerstone of the framework. But I don't think he claims that these are 'merely' or 'only' subjective, in the sense of being peculiar to the individual. Rather that they are grounded in the human mind, so, if you like, a kind of 'universal subject' rather than an individual ego. This is where Kant's 'transcendental apperception' is significant ('experience both of the self and its objects rests on acts of synthesis that, because they are the conditions of any experience, are not themselves experienced'). It's an antidote to the kind of hyperbolic objectivity that science is inclined to foster (many argue that it culminates in a kind of hyperbolic subjectivism, although I don't agree with that.)

//ps// and also Hume's scepticism should be mentioned which was principally scepticism of the knowledge of causal relationships. This was the subject of Kant's answer to Hume which is a unit of study in its own right.//

You'll notice I deleted my answer which was made on a whim, although now you've responded I will explain what I meant, which was simply that survival dictates that you better believe there are unseen objects, else you run into them and remove yourself from the gene pool.

Hume is asking you what make you to believe in the existence of the things that you are not seeing. — Corvus

I did a term paper on Hume, way back in the day. If you could provide a reference to where he says this I'd be interested, because I don't recall anything like that.

What Hume did argue, is that we could not perceive causal relations between events. But that's a different matter.

I mentioned the essay What do organisms mean? by Steve Talbott. As the theme of this essay is directly relevant to this OP, hereunder a summary:

Talbott contrasts the language of physics, which adheres to strict, invariable mathematical laws, with the language of biology, which is imbued with meaning and intention. Physical laws do not require interpretation, they are fixed and deterministic. However, the biological world relies on what is termed the "because of reason" – an understanding that goes beyond mechanical interactions to include purpose, adaptation, and intentional action. Biological entities don't just follow physical laws; they interact in ways that create and respond to meaning, shaping their identity and function in relation to their environment. (Hence the adoption of biosemiotics.) This dynamic, expressive interaction is likened to language, where context and intent are essential. The biologist, therefore, must consider the full tapestry of meaning, which encompasses aesthetics, intention, and wholeness, to understand organisms fully. This approach rejects a purely mechanistic view and emphasizes the interconnectedness of all living things within a "community of meaning." The text suggests that biology's true challenge is to reconcile its language of meaning with the underlying physical laws, moving beyond a dated language of mechanisms to one that acknowledges the rich, interconnected fabric of life.

Steve Talbott emphasizes that biological processes and entities, while obeying physical laws, are imbued with an 'inwardness' or 'meaning' not found in inanimate objects (this is the origin of the hard problem). Meaning in biology does not necessarily equate to human consciousness but is a form of directed nature seen in cellular processes and organic behaviors. Biological systems, from the molecular to the organismal level, are governed by a "because of reason" that is more qualitative and less deterministic than the laws of physics.

The text also touches on the concept of causality, distinguishing it from the laws of physics. It argues that causes in biology are more context-dependent and less predictable than physical laws, which are more invariant and universally applicable. Biological organisms are complex systems where multiple factors and processes interact in a dynamic and meaningful way, and this complexity cannot be fully captured by simple cause-and-effect explanations. Furthermoe organisms are invariably situated in and conditioned by an environment, which to all intents can be disregarded for the purposes of physics.

Finally, the text challenges the traditional materialist view in science, which neglects the qualitative aspects of life and inwardness of organisms, and suggests that understanding organisms requires acknowledging and studying these qualitative aspects. It calls for a biology that not only respects physical laws but also appreciates the rich, meaning-laden interactions that characterize living beings. This involves recognizing that organisms are more than mere machines and that the because of reason is fundamental to understanding biological processes. The text implies that biology may offer a more foundational understanding of the world than physics because it deals directly with life and meaning, which are closer to our own experience as living beings.

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean

Newton's influence seems less clear to me because the idea of sui generis forces that act at a distance allowed for all sorts of ideas that included purpose. You had purpose coming from vital force as its own essential unique type of "fundemental force," and all sorts of "scientistic mysticism" in the late 19th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I meant that Newton’s laws of motion were universal not in the sense of explaining everything - gravity being the obvious omission - but in unifying so many hitherto disparate phenomena under a single set of laws. That was the context in which physics starting to be seen as paradigmatic for all science and indeed all knowledge. ‘All I see’, said one of the Enlightenment philosophes ‘are bodies in motion’.

Furthermore that the predictions of the physical sciences were independent of context. That is where the big difference is found with biology in which every process is contextual.

:clap: Agree!

@180 Proof I'm pretty clear about what I'm attacking, but you're not at all clear about what you're defending. I'm criticising the effects of scientific materialism on modern philosophy, specifically, the tendency to view the world and or the beings in it through the lens of mechanism, as this OP set out to do, and which, I note, you also criticized. That this tendency is widespread in modern culture, generally, is hardly something that I've invented.

Of those philosophers you mentioned, only Marx and Sartre were arguably materialist, but Marxist economic materialism is a different thing to the kind of mechanist materialism I have in mind, and which the OP represents. Schopenhauer and Kant were both trenchant critics of materialism, as were Bergson, Husserl, Cassirer and Wittgenstein.

My critique of scientific materialism is that it is based on extrapolating the scientific metholody for which classical physics was the paradigm to the wider domain of philosophy and wisdom about life in general. And this is a pervasive tendency deeply embedded in modern culture, as many of those same philosophers you have mentioned also attest. As Ray Monk, Wittgenstein's biographer said, 'His work is opposed, as he once put it, to "the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand." Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it "scientism," the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.'

As do I. So why my posts provoke such a never-ending stream of vituperation from you is not at all clear to me, but it is exceedingly tiresome, and the least productive and useful aspect of my participation here, so you will forgive me if in future I fail to response to your needless provocations.

) Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Bergon, Peirce, Husserl, Cassier, Wittgenstein, Adorno, Sartre et al? — 180 Proof

None of those are examples of the kind of materialism I had in mind. If I could be bothered, I could produce a list of those who were.


But I can't be.

your usual litany of cherry-picked quotations — 180 Proof

You want cherry picking? Here's some for ya:

You think that the idea humans are machines is a metaphor, but I tell you as a scientist, the vast amount of information we have about the human body says we are as mechanistic — Restitutor

The human body with skin pulled back is obviously mechanical with muscle, bone and tendon obviously arrange to maximize the efficiency of mechanical tasks — Restitutor

Laypeople really have no idea (sorry laypeople). — Restitutor

How neurons work is no less mechanical, — Restitutor

science would suggest that even the brain is deterministic, — Restitutor

Please understand, you do not have enough of a scientific background to understand how mechanistic science has shown the human body and all “life” to be — Restitutor

Science is screaming at us that the fundamental nature of existence is mechanistic — Restitutor

Of course, nobody actually *thinks* this stuff. 180 knows better. :lol:

You mean "modern thought" which includes being espoused by (philosophers like) Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Bergon, Peirce, Husserl, Cassier, Wittgenstein, Adorno, Sartre et al? — 180 Proof

No, much narrower than that. Modern thought as in the accepted wisdom, what the man in the street thinks. And please spare me your antagonistic cynicism.

Way didn't say that "modern science" is nihilistic, but "modern thought". — Gnomon

Insofar as modern thought takes science to be the arbiter of reality, and insofar as science construes the world as solely consisting of objects and relations, then plainly it posits a meaningless world. It is of course true that that is something of a caricature, but then again, it’s also not far from the facts of the matter.

Does that include qualia? — Apustimelogist

Isn't 'qualia' just a bit of philosophical jargon for 'quality of experience'? And the difficulties it causes merely due to the fact that the physical sciences are wholly quantitative? After all the point of physics is that its objects can be represented precisely in terms of mathematical quantities, but there's no provision for qualities of experience in that model. Which is the source of the whole argument. Secondly because the physical sciences are concerned with what exists independently of any mind, so they 'exclude the subject' as a matter of principle; but then wish to account for the subject as an epiphenomenal or emergent illusion generated by the objects of scientific analysis.

Personally I tend to shy away from Karl Rahner; — Dermot Griffin

I wasn't promoting him, in particular - I just found it an interesting perspective. But I am very interested in various schools of neo-Thomism, transcendental included, although they're very difficult to study.

Ideas clearly exist — Sirius

But do they? That's the question I'm raising. The point I'm making is that they exist in a different way than do phenomenal objects. As I said, the only way to communicate an idea is to explain it to someone capable of understanding it, and as you yourself say:

Cognitive content depends on the existence of a mind which can comprehend it — Sirius

But whose is the mind on which those facts depend? In what sense does that exist? And if it does exist, then why can't any empirical evidence be adduced to demonstrate it?

As you conclude, this 'mind' corresponds to 'an impersonal God' (although the 'impersonal' caveat might simply serve to defray the accusation of defending religious apologetics.) But fathoming that mind is another matter. That mind is not 'out there somewhere', it is not a phenomenal existent. So in what sense can it be said to be real? I think you're actually coming up against a pretty profound philosophical issue with deep roots in the tradition.

Forgive the length of the quotation below. It's from Dermot Moran's entry on Scotus Eriugena on SEP, slightly edited by me, and I provide it, because it's about the only source I'm aware of that makes this point in modal metaphysics. Note in some passages I've substituted 'to exist' for 'to be', to support the polemical point.

Eriugena proceeds to list “five ways of interpreting” the manner in which things may be said to exist or not to exist. According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to exist, whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature”, transcends our faculties are said not to exist. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to exist. He is “nothingness through excellence” ¹

The second mode of being and non-being is seen in the “orders and differences of created natures” whereby, if one level of nature is said to exist, those orders above or below it, are said not to exist:

For an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher.

According to this mode, the affirmation of man is the negation of angelic intelligence and vice versa. This mode illustrates Eriugena’s original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of existence into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to exist in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a certain way, then angelic intelligences do not exist in that way.

The third mode contrasts the being of actual things with the “non-being” of potential or possible things still contained, in Eriugena’s memorable phrase, “in the most secret folds of nature”. This mode contrasts things which have come into effect with those things which are still contained in their causes. According to this mode, actual things, which are the effects of the causes, have being, whereas those things which are still virtual in the Primary Causes (e.g., the souls of those as yet unborn) are said not to be.

The fourth mode offers a roughly Platonic criterion for being: those things contemplated by the intellect alone may be considered to be, whereas things caught up in generation and corruption, viz. matter, place and time, do not truly exist. The assumption is that things graspable by intellect alone belong to a realm "above" the material, corporeal world and hence are timeless. — SEP, John Scotus Eriugena

My bolds. I think this reflects the hierarchical metaphysics of the 'chain of being' (scala naturae) which later fell into disrepute with the 'flattening' of ontology which characterises the advent of modernity. I think it stands for something real, but not empirically intelligible.

One of my arguments in OP is the well known indispensability argument offered by Quine-Putnam — Sirius

But what prompted that argument? Why were they obliged to defend the importance of mathematics in the first place? According to the IEP entry on same,

In his seminal 1973 paper, “Mathematical Truth,” Paul Benacerraf presented a problem facing all accounts of mathematical truth and knowledge. Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But, our best epistemic theories seem to deny that knowledge of mathematical objects is possible.

So, what are our 'best epistemic theories', and why do they deny that such knowledge is possible?

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. Even geometric figures are not the kinds of things that we can sense.

This is just the point I'm making about sense in which number exists.

It goes on:

(Rationalist) philosophers claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.

My bolds. According to our 'best epistemic theories', mathematical insight should't be possible - because it contradicts naturalism! We are, after all, evolved animals, right? Nothing like that anywhere else in the animal kingdom! Hence Quine and Putnam's convoluted argumentation to defend something that should never have been called into question in the first place, but which seems to contradict the naturalist orthodoxy of the Academy. As SEP puts it,

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.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.

(I would have more to say about the nature of the one mind you're proposing but it's already far too long a post so will come back to that.)

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1.This type of dialectic is encountered in apophatic theology, see for instance God does not Exist and What is the Ground of Being?

"Purposelessness," as some sort of "bedrock idea" seems to me to be more a historical - philosophical moment, starting with the decline of idealism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and letting up more recently. What's the rock solid argument for purposelessness that doesn't rest on the idea that all phenomena can be explained in terms of (apparently) purposeless smaller parts? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I locate it earlier, with the division of the world into mind and matter, the Cartesian-Galilean paradigm that characterises early modern science. I already cited this quote but will continue to refer to it as it succinctly describes the issue:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36

Recall that in the heady days of early modernity the new sciences, initiated chiefly by Newton, were thought to be universal in scope, to apply to every kind of phenomenon without exception. Modern scientific materialism, still being carried forward by Daniel Dennett and other materialist philosophers. I daresay the original poster, who seems to have gone dark, holds to some version of it.

It seems to me like the most common scientific response to largely philosophical claims about the essential and apparent meaningless and purposelessness of "the world" has been to shrug, say "well that's just philosophy," and to go right on assuming purpose exists in theories. Only is biology does this become a flash point. Physics and chemistry don't deal with things that seem to have purposes and the social sciences don't seem to take the "no purpose" claim seriously (how could they?) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Biology is the science of life and as we ourselves are living beings, it encompasses the study of h. sapiens. But it too easily becomes reductionist, not by eschewing purpose, but by bringing it under the headings understood by biology - chiefly concerned with survival and propogation, the 'four f's' of evolutionary biology. After all, biology is hardly concerned with the reasons for existence in any sense other than the functional. That's what biologists were trying to differentiate with the invention of 'teleonomy' to describe 'apparent purpose' and differentiate it from 'actual purposes'.

There's a philosopher of biology, Steve Talbott, who's essays I encountered in The New Atlantis. He's an elegant writer on reductionism in biology, one example being What do Organisms Mean? He provides an account of the different kinds of reason - the reason of physical causation, and the reasons that underlie human motivation ('the "because" of reasons'). He then argues that the latter kind of reasoning - purposive reasoning - underlies biological processes from the very outset. That the whole metaphor of mechanism and mechanistic cause and effect when applied to biology, fails to do justice to what organisms are (hence the title!)

The problem has more to do with how it's projected or sold as a goal to everyone, which included myself. I firmly believe it's incredibly unhelpful and even harmful to become a Buddhist for the purpose of attaining nirvana. It's akin to studying maths to win the fields medal or solve one of the 7 millennium problems. I can almost guarantee disappointment to anyone who does this. — Sirius

It's 'projected and sold' to those who want to it to be, of which there are many. Of course it's true that because it is conceived of as the answer to all human problems then it morphs into the most precious of all commodities and something that everyone would want. But there's an obvious vicious circularity in that which anyone who seriously engages with such traditions will hopefully see through. That is the subject of one of the early popular books in Western Buddhism, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trungpa

I think the whole mindset of 'getting' and 'how to attain' and 'when are we going to arrive there' are part of the problem. You're right in saying that if that is the motivation, then it's a fool's quest. But often, spiritual conversions and epiphanies happen through loss and suffering, more than through the desire to get somewhere. To refer to Trungpa again, he describes that as 'balanced disillusionment' - like, not falling into the pit of despair, but understanding the futility of many of the things we had formerly deemed worthwhile goals.

I have pursued Buddhism as a personal philosophy to some extent and for sure, in my youth, I felt that enlightenment was something you could reach out and touch, that it would be like one of the anecdotes Alan Watts always tells, you'd hear something or see something and aha! I saw through that fairly early, and my interest and commitment has waxed and waned, but it doesn't revolve around 'attaining Nirvāṇa' or the failure at so doing. One vedantic term for mokṣa is sat-chit-ananda, सच्चिदानन्द, generally translated as 'being' (sat, satya, 'what truly is') 'consciousness' (citta, heart or mind, consciousness) 'bliss' (a common suffix on Hindu names). And 'bliss' ought not to be overlooked, it is not reserved for the precious few that have reached the end of the journey, it is part of the 'true nature' which is 'obscured by adventitious defilements', and more than just an intellectual description of what Hindus must be talking about.

If you want me to be completely honest. I have felt and do feel the diminishing returns thanks to my depression. Sometimes l wish for death to overtake me. I don't want to live, nor do l want to die. — Sirius

And you have no interest in being free from that? Or is it you don’t believe it’s possible? Do you think that condition is a factor in your judgement as to what constitutes Nirvāṇa?

Therefore , an all encompassing mind necessarily exists — Sirius

I want to flag an objection from the perspective of one sympathetic to the Platonic intuitions behind this post. And that is the sense in which it can be said that such an all-encompassing mind exists. Because it seems clear to me that whatever exists is composed of parts and has a beginning and an end in time. To challenge that would require proving the existence of something that doesn't exhibit those attributes, and I cannot conceive of such a thing. Everything I am aware of, that exists, exhibits these attributes.

You might say that intelligible objects, such as logical principles and real numbers, don't come into or go out of existence, nor are composed of parts. And that is true - but do they exist? You can tell me they do, but to demonstrate them you would need to explain them to me, and I would need to understand them. But they certainly don't exist as do rocks, trees, and stars. They are real as elements of rational thought, but they're not phenomenally existent. And I'm of the view that 'what exists' pertains to or describes the domain of phenomena.

I noticed this passage from Bertrand Russell's discussion of universals:

Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. ...We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.

This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, The World of Universals

I sense this is close in meaning to your OP, and something I fully agree with. The problematical part, is the meaning of the word 'exists' in this context, so also of the existence of the mind which comprehends such relations. Which is not to say that such a mind does not exist, but that it must necessarily transcend the distinction between existence and non-existence, a distinction which characterises everything that exists.

One will sometimes encounter the terminology in philosophical theology of God as 'beyond being' - and I think this is what this expression is driving at, although strictly speaking, the expression ought to be 'beyond existence', as there is a distinction, albeit one not commonly made, between 'being' and 'existence'. What is necessarily so, cannot not be.

However I then asked Bing AI the same exact question — Alkis Piskas

that's because BingAI is connected to the Internet, and ChatGPT is not. I've tried Bing, and also Bard - actually in my current work contract we're assigned Office365 with the bingbot built in, but it's exceedingly annoying, and crammed into a narrow vertical strip on the side of the browser. And generally the whole Microsoft Edge/Office 365 environment is about as crowded as a Tokyo streetscape. Meanwhile I asked Bard to help out with some investment calculations the other day, and it got them hilariously wrong. So for now I'm a ChatGPT4 fan (yes, I pay the money ;-) ).

I suggested that we dispose of the notion of concepts and replace it with the notion of beliefs. — Banno

But I would have thought that a concept would have some kind of correspondence with an empirical or intellectual object. It seems more determinate to me than a belief - ‘oh, Mary believes that vaccines are dangerous’ is a belief, but I’d hardly call it a concept, would you?

In terms of my views on soteriology if, for example, a Buddhist, lives in accordance with his tradition I do believe that by Gods grace he is being saved because there is something in Buddhism that promotes living a good life. — Dermot Griffin

Karl Rahner proposed the (rather scandalous) idea of the ‘anonymous Christian’:

"Anonymous Christianity" means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity. A Protestant Christian is, of course, "no anonymous Christian"; that is perfectly clear. But, let us say, a Buddhist monk (or anyone else I might suppose) who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.

Perhaps that is because there is actually an anonymous, or at least, universal Christ, who has manifested in other forms, although I suspect that idea would be much more congenial to a Hindu than to a Christian.

In Buddhism, ‘the Buddha’ is more like an archetype than a specific individual. It is true of course that the Buddha that we know of historically, ‘Buddha Shakyamuni’, was a particular individual who lived and taught in Maghada around the 5th c BCE. But according to Buddhist lore, he was but one of the many (in fact countless) Buddhas that have been born and will be born on this and other ‘life-bearing orbs’ over the ‘aeons of Kalpas’.

It seems to me that we might love someone, but not love everything about them. So, to some extent, Plato and Augustine seem to get something right. At the same time, we love people for who they are, in spite of their flaws, and so it seems like the personalist account also gets something right as well. To me, love seems to be about wanting the best for a person, but also a sharing in that goodness through a transcendent union. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Something that comes to mind is that list, very popular at weddings, of the seven kinds of love in the Greek language (as mentioned above) -

Platonic/Philia Love. ...
Pragma/Enduring Love. ...
Familial Love/Storge. ...
Romantic Love/Eros. ...
Playful Love/Ludus. ...
Self Love/Philautia. ...
Selfless Love/Agape...

They all have different qualities, and also different kinds of objects. I would have though connubial relations would be best thought of in terms of a combination of pragma and eros with a dash of philia. The love of divine union you mention I would categorise with agape. I had the idea that in Plato's symposium Eros symbolises the love of the soul for the forms so was rather less erotic that what we take Eros to mean (although I don't know if I'm correct in that.)

But also consider there are many feelings one has for one's partner other than love - maybe irritation, annoyance, admiration, approbation, and all kinds of other feelings. I suppose 'enduring love' is something that is not always felt as an emotion at all but is more like an underlying condition or conviction. But I think it is worth careful reflection because not everything that goes on in the name of love has much to do with love, actually.

Still, for someone with Broca's aphasia, this sort of technology could be life changing if it can be made suitably portable. — wonderer1

:100: That's pretty well what the Cold Fusion video stressed also. But it has implications for philosophy of mind, yes? It shows that the ability to infer images from brain activity doesn't really amount to 'mind-reading' (impressive though it might be.)

Have a read of this NY Times OP, makes some very interesting points about all this.

Which is to say that Scientism is a great deal more optimistic about the possibility and accessibility of scientific knowledge? — Leontiskos

Hey don't get me wrong, I'm very bullish about science and technology. But there's a missing dimension, without which it might easily loose its moral compass. Look at the turmoil that's engulfed OpenAI - don't know if you've been following, but the charismatic young CEO, Sam Altmann, was suddenly sacked by the Board last Friday, then there was a staff revolt, they all threatened to follow him out the door and join Microsoft, and he was re-hired as of yesterday. The issue? Allegations that he was putting profits ahead of ethics in product development. And it's a legit concern! On the other hand, though, I'm a big fan of ChatGPT, I've been using if, mainly for philosophy research, since Day 1, and it's incredible. The depth of conversation and nuances are really remarkable.

But then, also bear in mind that Aquinas saw no conflict between Science and Faith, unlike the Protestants. This is where I'm suspicious of the motives of Luther and Calvin. There has to be a world where both faith and science can co-exist, instead of the former feeling constantly threatened by the latter. But likewise, it is essential that the objective sciences recognise the limitations of objectivity. We're all participants in existence.

I think the relevant difference is that scientism holds to scientific truths, and these really are demonstrable from natural reason, whereas faith-propositions (and fundamentally the axioms, the articles of faith) are not. The error of scientism lies in holding that the truths of the hard sciences are the only truths. — Leontiskos

On a deeper level, surely the 'corruption of the intellect' due to man's fallen nature is a factor? There's an interesting scholar, Peter Harrison, who's book The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, 'shows how the approaches to the study of nature that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were directly informed by theological discussions about the Fall of Man and the extent to which the mind and the senses had been damaged by that primeval event. Scientific methods, he suggests, were originally devised as techniques for ameliorating the cognitive damage wrought by human sin.'

'Scientism' would recognise no such thing, as it's plainly a theological rather than scientific conception. But it's also the sense in which 'revealed truth' has epistemic as well as simply moral implications. 'Fallen man' does not 'see truly' so to speak, because of that corruption. (In Eastern religions, the term is 'avidya' rather than 'sin' and has a rather different connotation, in that it's associated with the corruption of the intellect rather than the will, which is especially the case in Reformed theology. But there are overlaps.)

I didn't read details ... Is ChatGPT's response any good? — Alkis Piskas

I think so. I've had many insightful interactions over the last twelve months - on Kant, Schopenhuaer, C S Pierce, organism v mechanism, whether the cosmological anthropic argument is a transcendental argument, the nature of the wave-function in quantum physics....the list goes on. Of course you never should take any of it on face value, necessarily, but it's amazingly helpful.

Scientology? — wonderer1

We're discussing here a system which is trained by recognising responses and inferring similarities between them and further responses, and which by so doing can re-construct images from neural activity. But there are much more subtle elements of mental operations which I don't think could be susceptible to such a representation - basic ideas, like 'the same as', or 'greater than'. Of course even simple calculators can recognise such relationships between numbers, but the general idea, which a human will understand without any particular difficulty, would be impossible to represent pictorially - so how could be be captured by those means? And the mind is constantly using those comparisons and judgements in its activities.

So in your estimation, "much of modern thought" lacks purpose? — 180 Proof

I notice a connection between reason and purpose. That the reason for something being, or happening, also implies its purpose. That is what is implicit in Aristotle's 'telos', and conversely the rejection of telos or teleological principles, implies 'purposelessness'.

Vocal jazz excellence

I seem to remember that Nietszche had quite a lot to say about nihilism, which he ascribed to the dominance of scientific rationalism and the empty promisses of enlightenment rationalism among other things. And nihilism is precisely the sense of there being no purpose, no meaning, no raison d'etre. And then the New Left also had something to say about the instrumentalisation of reason - that reason, instead of being understood as a kind of animating principle or logos, was now simply means to ends, the discovery of effective causality, the prerogative of individual subjects, and so on. And on a popular level, the upsurge of mindless entertainment, drug addiction and many other social ills can be ascribed in part to the absence of a sense of purpose.

Don’t feel any obligation. I just gave it as an example.

China had a two-child policy for a long while. But then, they're a totalitian regime, you can be put in jail for saying wrong things about The Party.

In any case, the reproductive urge is almost impossible to suppress. The odd thing is when electric power is introduced to a poor country, the birthrate falls. It's odd, because you'd think that improved living standards, which electric power will introduce, might introduce a more relaxed attitude to having children. But no - apparently the underlying psychology is that in a very poor country, the odds are many of your children will die, so the good ol' evolutionary algorithm will kick in to ensure the odds of the success for your particular genotype. So even people whose only occupation is picking over rubbish tips or foraging for edibles in fields will have children, and nothing you can say is going to stop that. There are much deeper forces at work than can be constrained by mere civil laws.

Besides - imagine the bureacracy it would spawn! The Department of Childbirth.

Hey can you try this one again?

https://chat.openai.com/share/967940e0-886c-4fd6-b919-ebe16a002d7e

I clicked on it in a virgin browser window on my desktop machine, it opens. On iPhone it seems to go to OpenAI login. Thanks.

Hey, Throng, welcome to thephilosophyforum. Intriguing post. (Oh, hey, I looked up your membership page, 8 years eh? Anyway...)

I checked the links you mentioned. They both lead to https://chat.openai.com — Alkis Piskas

I thought I had created links to specific interactions. I didn’t realize you would need to log in to review them, sorry. I’ll look into that, it’s a definite down-mark if that is so.

I agree with your point about the fact that this technology does not support physicalism. It is able to infer images on the basis of huge amounts of processing power and computer memory. I wonder how it could interpret a simple idea such as ‘greater than’?

I may be opening a new can of worms neurons here. But, I wonder if AI mechanisms --- emulating brain states --- can reason*1 (infer novel ideas), or do they just compute (add & subtract via parallel processing) — Gnomon

I would say the latter. Reasoning requires something else - like motive, for a start. Curiosity would be one. Distress might be another, or seeking advantage. Note the connection between reason and purpose, which was implicit in earlier philosophy, now called into question in everything, hence the nihilism of much of modern thought.

And he’s coming back! https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/tech/openai-altman-returns-hnk-intl?cid=ios_app

Well, yeah, as I already said, the Sam Altmann sacking seems like something right out of streaming media, billions of dollars and many big players. Meanwhle Elon Musk self-immolates on a funeral pyre of his own adolescent silliness.

The 1946 computers couldn't sing — BC

I might have meant 1945....ENIAC wasn't built until 46....