I came across this, claiming that Trump wants to eliminate taxes for those earning under $150,000 per annum, which I find surprising but hard to believe will ever be implemented:

It doesn’t take long to learn that counting to 7, then continuing the count by another 5, gets you to a total of 12. From there, you easily see those two counts can never ever get you to any other number but 12. — Mww

That's right. Counting begins with objects. Fingers and toes, grazing animals being hunted, heads of corn or whatever. Calculating was practices with an abacus. It's all based on experience of actual things,

. In other words, he did NOT need the experience of destroyed crops, nor, insofar as he was the first ever, did he need the experience of other existent enclosed spaces, to know with apodeictic certainty, not so much how many lines do enclose a space, but how many do not. — Mww

Enclosure I would say is a very simple idea that we learn for example by experiencing our own bodies. Opening and closing our eyes, our mouths and our hands.

I rather think reason is certainly not a thing, and I think reason as certainly being disembodied, insofar as there is no place in any possible body in which reason as such is to be found. Nor any other abstract theoretically-constructed intellectual faculty. — Mww

by 'thing' I meant 'process' not 'perceptible object'. Reasoning goes on in the brain and is felt in the body in my view, and in that sense it is perceptible. We know when we are reasoning about something even if only inwardly. We visualize what we are reasoning about or hear an inner voice, or at least I do.

Sorry mate, I don't know what you mean.

That makes sense. I've never thought that randomness will be any help for justifying belief in libertarian free will, because the tiny differences that might result from quantum randomness would not seem to be significant enough to lead to a different decision, Quantum indeterminism still seems to result statistically in macrophysical determinism.

And in any case even if those random quantum fluctuations were significant enough to lead to a different decision, we cannot be aware of much less control those fluctuations in vivo and hence cannot reasonably claim that our will deserves any credit for them.

Understanding may construct a priori cognitions concerning possible experience, true enough, re: motion is necessarily change in time but not necessarily change in space (think: rotation). But principles and mathematical axioms, on the other hand, are the transcendental constructs of reason alone, hence, while they may certainly condition possible experience, insofar as their proofs reside in the domain of empirical knowledge, they are not conditioned by it, contra Hume. — Mww

It seems that such understandings are based on thinking about and generalizing from experience. Thus, we are said to know a priori what characteristics anything which qualifies as experience must have, in accordance with the most general characteristics all our past experiences are revealed by analysis, to have had.

When you say that principles and mathematical axioms are the transcendental constructs of reason alone, I am not sure what you mean. Those principles, it seems to me, at their most basic are abstracted from reflecting on an analyzing our experiences, and then once established may be elaborated in accordance with the entailments implicit in them, entailments which are discovered progressively by doing (experience) as seems to be the case with mathematics.

So, I don't see reason as a disembodied thing that can stand alone.

Do you believe there are any "a priori cognitions in general" which do not have their genesis either in experience or in rules that are at their basis derived from experience and then elaborated to discover further entailments (as mathematics seems to be for example)?

That's merely empirical, not transcendental – in Kant's system (CPR); your statement doesn't make sense, Wayf. — 180 Proof

Exactly, ideas about the brain and whatever it is understood to do is part of an empirical understanding, not a transcendental.

I'd be interested if you could succinctly explain the difference between the two.

That knowledge-of is a construct of mind. — tim wood

Just as regarding knowledge-of in a Kantian way is true, but not-so-useful. — tim wood

Right, that knowledge is had only by minds is a vacuous truism, and hence "not so useful".

What about this rock question however: are there rocks in existence when they are never seen? — Gregory

Why wouldn't they be? As to Kant, he didn't question their existence, what he questioned was our ability to know what they are "in themselves". Kant acknowledged that they are something in themselves (that is they exist in themselves) but he said we could not know what that existence in itself is. But this is true by mere stipulation, is therefore true by definition, a mere tautology.

It's "not so useful".

you would have to be perfectly the same too. But I think you already factored that in.. — flannel jesus

Yes, that was what I had in mind: all conditions being exactly the same including oneself.

It's actually not so much about it being impossible, but rather that it doesn't seem to give us free will in any meaningful sense if it is possible — flannel jesus

What I meant with that is if in that 'rewind' scenario we could not make a different choice, then libertarian free will would seem to be ruled out by definition, since any consistent notion of libertarian free will requires that we could have made a different choice. The idea being that our will would not be determined by conditions but would be in some unfathomable sense causa sui.and sui generis.

For what it's worth, although I haven't read the article, I believe I get the argument, which seems very simple. If it were somehow possible to repeat a situation in which I made a certain choice and everything in that situation was exactly the same in every possible way, libertarian free will would entail that I could, this second time around, make a different choice.

If that is impossible, then libertarian free will cannot be the case, by definition. It follows that that free will means simply 'acting according to one's nature'. Since we don't create ourselves, this seems the most sensible notion of free will: that is a compatibilist notion.

For us God is a belief, positive or negative. Or a name for a kind of experience. So, what I said could be translated as "the belief in, or experience of, God may be sufficient for madness but is not necessary for madness".

Only if you relegate madness as a domain of God... — DifferentiatingEgg

To reverse the usual formulation: God may be sufficient, but not necessary, for madness.

:up:

Does that mean it was intended to be so. God fooling with our minds?

What's it matter? We're grasping pi... — DifferentiatingEgg

It probably doesn't matter because, as you say, and as @Banno said, we grasp the concept.

Interesting thing is that while we cannot know everything, there is (arguably) nothing in particular that we could not know. — Banno

True. Nothing that we know about anyway.

Do you mean Banno is alright just as he is now?

Memos? I thought it was @frank mentioned them.

You're right, we can perhaps know some things completely. But we cannot know everything. so 'everything' should have been there instead of "anything completely".

I shouldn't think you would need a memo.

Wasn't it already obvious that we could never know anything completely? Pi is not the lynchpin it seems, just another symptom of our limitations.

:up: Yep, seems on the money to me!

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — 180 Proof

:up:

Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me. — Wayfarer

What difference to you would it actually make if it was "for real"?

OK, I get it now. My disposition on this is similar to yours—I don't find myself concerned about oblivion either. The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me?

The Wetsern idea of the eternal life in heaven that awaits the good or the eternal life in Hell that awaits the evil is at least, if believed, rationally motivating. That said the Buddhist have their own hells to motivate the believers, but if it is not to be you who will suffer in them, it would seem far less rationally motivating.

But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure. — Banno

Do you mean something like influences we might have had on others, or our works that survive us or our physical components reconfigured after dissolution? I take it you are not referring to consciousness.

Yep, so I guess for some the idea of being out of the game will be disturbing, even though when you are out of the game nothing will disturb you because there will be no 'you' to be disturbed.

Exactly...eternal oblivion is not to be (rationally speaking at least) feared. Perhaps it can be, on an arational level, troubling because the idea of our own non-existence is difficult to grasp.

I think that difficulty, at least in part, is involved in the idea of death being a deprivation of experience.

I'm certainly with you in thinking I would not much like what seems likely to come after, if not before, my own death.

I agree, yet I do think death, as opposed to being dead, is very much part of our lives. We experience the death of loved ones, including our beloved animal companions.

And thinking of death in a broader sense, we experience the loss of our mature capacities and faculties. We all face the posibility of an agonising, or at least an unpleasant, death, meaning not 'being dead' but dying.

Yes, and I see little reason to doubt that people in general will not vote for anything they think will have a negative effect on their prosperity, aspirations or accustomed lifestyle.

:rofl: Coming from you I'll take that as a compliment.

Ho Ho Ho, off to fantasyland we go...

I agree; "universal subjective field" is something we can say, but we don't really know what we are talking about, and so it has no explanatory power. It's a kind of confabulation, hand-waving.

Thanks Tom, I appreciate your comment, but I'm afraid I cannot agree that Wayfarer's position or idealism in general is well-argued. The arguments always seem like, as I say above, mere hand-waving.

So your description of the "field of consciousness" is apt becasue it does not match the definition of "field"...

Others seem to think that this works. But you will have to forgive me if I continue to be sceptical. — Banno

I think it's fair to say that 'field' is used in many contexts: different disciplines in science and the humanities are commonly referred to as fields. The philosopher Markus Gabriel presents an interesting pluralistic philosophy where the central concept is "fields of sense", and he mans by that something like 'fields of sense-making'.

That said a magnetic field, gravitational field, quantum field or grassy field are understood to be real, concrete entities, whereas the metaphorical application of the term 'field' to various disciplines including probably "visual field" or 'the field of consciousness' are kinds of abstractions which are easily reified.

You make that clear. At least I try and articulate a philosophy rather than hanging around just taking potshots at other contributors, just for the sake of it. — Wayfarer

Rubbish, I say what my views are and defend them, with a great deal more argument than you do. Most of what you do consists in quoting your "authorities" instead of presenting your own arguments. And the fact that you think my questioning of your views consists in merely "taking potshots" just shows how superficial and lacking in any critical dimension your thinking is.

perhaps Husserl's prejudice
— Janus

:roll: — Wayfarer

I don't share your reverence for authority figures, and I said "perhaps" because it's a while since I read Husserl, I don't want to assume that your interpretations of his views are the correct ones and I have no interest in researching his work in order to determine whether or not they are. Life is too short.

It's a philosophy forum. I write about philosophy. — Wayfarer

You write about your conception of philosophy imagining it to be "philosophy proper", and not very cogently at that in my view.

It's not an assumption, it is a philosophical observation and nowadayds with ample support from cognitive science. — Wayfarer

Nonsense you don't know they're not "out there"...how could you when such knowledge is impossible in principle according to your own arguments?

Right! 'The question doesn't matter'. And yet, you continually defer to science as the arbiter for philosophy. — Wayfarer

That's bullshit too. I'm always saying that much about the human cannot be understood adequately by science. The only areas I would say that science has something to contribute to philosophy would be metaphysics and epistemology. Certainly not ethics or aesthetics.

The great irony is that you are always saying I don't understand your position, when I do very well since I used to hold a very similar position myself, whereas you constantly show by your misrepresentations of my arguments that you either don't understand them, or else deliberately misrepresent them.

But notice that Husserl says that consciousness is foundationally involved in world-disclosure, meaning that the idea of a world apart from consciousness is inconceivable in any meaningful way. That is the salient point. — Wayfarer

This is again your own and perhaps Husserl's prejudice. I can readily conceive of a world absent consciousness. Of course, my consciousness is involved in the conceiving, but that is a different thing, an obvious truism. What you say is stipulative, it is not a logical entailment. You have no business stipulating to others what they can or cannot conceive of or what is or is not meaningful to them. It's dogmatism pure and simple.

But you have long since made up your mind, going on what you say. — Wayfarer

I don't think the question is of much importance, my views are not "hard and fast" but I know what seems most plausible to me at my current stage of understanding. You on the other hand seem absolutely obsessed with it and rigidly attached to your views. I've seen no change as long as I've been reading your posts.

It's virtually all you talk about (apart from your political concerns), continually repeating the same mantras. I don't know what motivates that, but I'm guessing that for you it's a moral crusade, and if so, i think that's misguided.

Anyway, we've been over this same old ground too many times, so I think it would be best to desist from now on, since it never goes anywhere.

Everything we know about reality is shaped by our own mental faculties—space, time, causality, and substance are not "out there" in the world itself but are the conditions of experience. — Wayfarer

You are blithely assuming that. How do you know it's true?

In what does that causality inhere? — Wayfarer

From the point of view of science that question doesn't matter. It may well be unanswerable. Whatever the explanation, the fact is clear that we understand the physical world in terms of causation, which includes both local processes and effects and global conditions.

'At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.' — Wayfarer

As I read that he's just pointing out that the so-called laws of nature don't explain anything—they are merely formulations that generalize observed regularities. 'The Law of Gravity" doesn't explain anything it is just a statement that gravity always obtains and does not explain why gravity obtains. Newton was puzzled by such 'action at a distance'. Then Einstein came along and spoke of spacetime as a real existent thing that could be warped by mass, leading to the gravitational phenomena we observe. But again, this does not explain what mass is or why it warps spacetime or how we can visualize three dimensional space warping into a fourth dimension.

Science doesn't explain everything. It might even be said it doesn't really explain much, but it's the best we have, and it's really just an extension of ordinary observation and understanding. Of course, when you consider all the sciences it does form a vast and mostly coherent body of knowledge and understanding. We can understand how things work without needing to understand why they work the way they do in any absolute sense. The search for absolute knowledge appears to be a vain pursuit.

The Husserlian approach, and the phenomenological approach in general I am fairly familiar with on account of a long history of reading and study. It is rightly only concerned with the character of human experience, and as such it brackets metaphysical questions such as the mind-independent existence of the external world. Whether phenomenology yields any useful or substantive knowledge is a matter of debate. If Husserl makes absolutist metaphysical pronouncements based on how things seem to us, then for my money he oversteps the bounds of cogent reasoning. In any case I don't have much interest in phenomenology anymore since it didn't for me, to the extent I studied it, yield any knowledge I found to be particularly useful or illuminating.

Science for me offers a far more interesting, rich and complex body of knowledge. I'm not concerned with questions of 'materialism vs idealism' or 'realism vs antirealism' because I think these questions are not definitively decidable. I have views which are based on what I find most plausible, but I acknowledge that there are not definitive criteria for plausibility, which are not based on the very presumptions which are in question.

Apart from an interest in science and the arts, my main interest is the cultivation of critical thinking. That's the only reason I post on here—to hone those skills as well as my writing skills in general.

Something that is not in question. — Wayfarer

What is your explanation for that?

species, language-group, culture — Wayfarer

don't suffice.

But you also say that those reasons are individual, that they're subjective, that they're matters of individual opinion. — Wayfarer

Do you seriously want to deny that there are differences between individuals, that people may do different things for the same reasons and the same things for different reasons?
— Janus

That's not relevant. — Wayfarer

Well then what was your point?