If there are no perfect circles in nature, then I guess Pi does not exist out there as an actual ratio—I mean it is an idealised ratio. Maybe the same for infinitesimals and the square roots of negative numbers, even negative numbers themselves as well as imaginary numbers.

I don't know—I could be talking shit.

Are they "out there", like apples and trees are? That's the actual "existence debate", — Arcane Sandwich

"Apples and trees"—a number of apples and trees—how many? So of course, number is out there if apples and trees are. So, number is out there—are numbers out there? That's a different question, no? Is 5 out there over and above all the collections of five objects? Is 5 out there in the sense that digits and numerals are—as written or spken?

I didn't mean those conditions specifically. I just used them as things that are sometimes very different from one person to another. You and I are not always simply interpreting things differently. — Patterner

We have much in common physiologically speaking. I seems to me that the greatest divergence consists in the ways we each interpret the general nature of experience.

As you mention Wittgenstein you might be interested in this snippet: — Wayfarer

Quite in keeping with the theme of the original post, I would have thought. — Wayfarer

I'm not seeing the relevance.

The self, as Wittgenstein understands it here, is a metaphysical subject, not a physical or psychological entity. This self is the necessary precondition for the world to appear but is not itself a part of the world. — Wayfarer

If you are going to cite, I'd suggest you would do better to cite the original source.

Anyway, I'll leave you to your interminable search for authority.

You're trying to sell them, but their poor quality ensures that only the addicted are buying.

What do you make of that? — Arcane Sandwich

The agnostic part makes sense. As someone with materialist leanings I acknowledge that I cannot be absolutely sure that idealism is not the case; that there is not a cosmic consciousness that holds every little invariant detail that we experience in place. Idealism just seems to me the less plausible of the options. But it is a part of intellectual integrity to admit the defeasible nature of all our theories, even scientific theories.

I don't buy the kinds of arguments like @Wayfarer makes; that we cannot coherently speak of things existing in the absence of percipients. I think such arguments are tendentious at best and profoundly mistaken at worst. I agree with Meillassoux that correlationism is incompatible with the conceptual coherence of thought about the Arche fossil, which is to say it undermines the coherence of paleontology and cosmology.

It's a long time since I read After Finitude, though. so it seems a bit vague to me now, and I never got the idea of the necessity of contingency.

This isn't the first time our conversation has made me think of things like aphantasia and anaduralia. I don't know which of us lacks this or that ability that the other has, but we experience life very differently. — Patterner

I don't think it has anything to do with those conditions. It's just different interpretations is all.

My point in that other thread is simply that it is meaningless to say that of anything that it exists outside of or independently of any perspective, which I don’t think your patiently-explained butterfly effect (forgive the conceit) actually addresses. Outside any perspective, there is….well, you can’t say. That’s the point, and it’s a simple one. — Wayfarer

It's a simplistic point, not a simple one. We can perfectly coherently say that things existed before human beings existed and will exist after they are extinct. You can say that we can't know what that existence is, because all we know of things existing is via perception, but that would be to conflate our knowing something to exist with its actual existence.

You can stipulate something like 'to exist is to stand out for a percipient' and of course on that definition nothing can exist absent percipients, which is basically what you are doing insisting: on your stipulated definition being the only "true" one. But that is a trivial tautology, and it is also not in accordance with the common usage of 'exist'. So, in Wittgenstein's terms, you are taking language on holiday.

Why would you think that it would be exempt? — Metaphysician Undercover

Exempt from what?

This is in stark contrast to the attempt to hide the subjective influence which results from the aforementioned attitudinal illness. — Metaphysician Undercover

I doubt anyone with a sensible attitude wants to deny that science relies on the senses or that perception is conceptually mediated or that scientists, being human, may have their biases. What else do you think the "subjective influence" consists in?

Both Husserl and Heidegger held respectable posts at universities. Not to mention Hegel, who I have no doubt Bunge would have criticized for indulging in philosophical confabulations.

Your answer doesn't address the question at all. There is a science of perception. The point is that the hard sciences, including the science of perception, obviously deal with how things appear to us, and i doubt anyone who has thought about the matter at any length would deny that. My question was as to how including considerations of the subject (however that might be conceived) would improve the methods and results in sciences such as chemistry, geology, ecology or biology.

Others on TPF know the Tractatus a lot better than I do, but I think he meant something more than merely "not truth apt" or "not confirmable." I think it's closer to "incoherent" or "illusory." And he wasn't just thinking of ethics and religion, but also of certain supposedly bedrock metaphysical truths. In any case, what I meant by "inexpressible" was more like "unsayable save by metaphor and indirection."
— J

I am no expert either, but I understood that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein was concerned to make a distinction between what can be propositionally claimed and what cannot. I think that for him a coherent proposition just is a proposition which is truth-apt. — Janus

I wonder whether you have a response to this, or have you lost interest.

The date Bunge gives there seems imprecise, since much of the philosophy he is higly critical of, such as existentialism and phenomenology, considerably predated 1960.

I don't know about you, but all my feelings seem physical, visceral, bodily, to me. Even mental associations, such as I may experience when reading, looking at artworks, listening to music or thinking about someone I love, evoke feelings I can only understand and describe as bodily.

How about highly pathetically a very poor reader?

But not a physical feeling. — Patterner

What else could feelings be but bodily?

Not necessarily. I don't think subjective experience and self-reflective awareness are the same thing. If there's something it's like to be the entity, to the entity, then all the physical things and processes that make it up are not taking place "in the dark". — Patterner

Does it just mean that the animal feels something then?

Are we really self-reflectively aware or are we just playing with language?
— Janus
I don't understand how this works. If we program computers to play with language in this way, if ChatGPT does it, would it falsely believe it is self-reflectively aware? It seems like pretending to be conscious. — Patterner

ChatGPT doesn't play with language in the sense I mean. It is programmed to sample vast amounts of relevant language and predict the most appropriate sentences to any question as I understand it. It doesn't claim to be self-reflective either.

Others on TPF know the Tractatus a lot better than I do, but I think he meant something more than merely "not truth apt" or "not confirmable." I think it's closer to "incoherent" or "illusory." And he wasn't just thinking of ethics and religion, but also of certain supposedly bedrock metaphysical truths. In any case, what I meant by "inexpressible" was more like "unsayable save by metaphor and indirection." — J

I am no expert either, but I understood that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein was concerned to make a distinction between what can be propositionally claimed and what cannot. I think that for him a coherent proposition just is a proposition which is truth-apt.

Hence, for those involved, they were corroborable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We don't know if the reports of those events are reliable, so for us they are not corroborable.

They aren't corroborable for us, at least not in the direct sense that we can go back in time to the Sinai and see the Pillar of Fire traveling alongside the Hebrews and the Glory of the LORD filling their tent. At the same time, this is also true for virtually all historical facts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Strictly speaking that is true. But we think the gospels were written many years after the events, which would make them less reliable than many historical documents, especially in cases where there are multiple accounts of, and cross references, to events.

If the question is: "why can't we take them seriously if we disregard what they are saying as being true in the sense in which they claim it is?" then IDK, that seems like the definition of not taking them seriously. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We can take works seriously as poetry, as allegory, as being revelatory of more or less universal aspects of the human condition, and hence as being inspiring, insightful. Think about Dante's Divine Comedy, for example, or Homer's Odyssey—can we not take those works seriously without believing that the events described therein are accurate descriptions of real events? What about the whole Greek mythical pantheon?

When the Patristics claim that we are deluded and enslaved to sin until we turn our mind to God, that this alone is our true telos, etc. etc., it doesn't seem possible to say "well that's just a sentiment for their times," and still be "taking them seriously." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Apart from taking them seriously in terms of their literary merit. we can take such worldviews seriously in acknowledging that they felt real and important for those who held them, without believing them to be true ourselves. I'm not seeing the problem you apparently do.

One need not be a Sufi to take Rumi seriously, but it hardly seems like one can be an atheist. Likewise, an atheist might find much to enjoy in Dante or Plotinus, but they have to at least allow them the courtesy of being deluded and wrong in order to take them seriously. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The point is that we don't and can't know whether any of these claims are true or false because they are not empirically or logically confirmable. If I feel drawn to such claims and feel in my heart that they are true, that's fine for me, but it's never going to be sort of thing that must be compelling for any unbiased judge.

How exactly does this differ from any empirical claims? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It depends on what you mean by "empirical claim". Direct observations are obviously corroborable, whereas claims to have experienced God are not

This denotes a very particular approach to the tradition Wayfarer is talking about though. One cannot take a Meister Eckhart, a Rumi, or a Dogen as simply conveying "novel and perhaps inspiring experiences" and take their claims seriously. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why not? They are just men speaking about their ideas and experiences. What they say about their experiences, their ideas, their faith cannot be a definitive justification for anyone else to believe anything. Unless you are appealing to authority? I take their words as seriously as I would the words of any poet whose works I believed to be of high quality. I don't have to strictly believe what is being said in order to be affected, even inspired, by it.

Well, isn't it reasonable to ask why it is? Granted, in some cases the answer will be obvious, but surely not always. The sorts of thing Wittgenstein had in mind as being inexpressible are hardly obviously so. — J

I guess it depends on what you mean by "inexpressible". I take Wittgenstein to mean not expressible in a way that what is being said can be confirmed or disconfirmed. He applies this to ethics and aesthetics. For example, I can say that Beethoven was greater than Bach, but there is no determinable truth to that. So, do you think that by "inexpressible" he means "not truth apt"?


.

If something cannot be definitively said it just means it is beyond the limits of discursive language. What more couls added?

Arguments for God based on personal experience are arguments to the best hypothesis. That's why it's unreasonable to expect anyone else to treat my belief as knowledge. — J

Yes, and I'd also add that there are different generally socially accepted criteria for what counts as "best explanation" in different societies and times and milieus.

Ok. It's just that the words 'personal transformation' sound a bit more serious than just amusing oneself. — Tom Storm

I think we are being transformed all the time by our experiences. We can also take a more conscious hand in that transformation via various practices—the arts, meditation, spending time in the wilderness, running and even sports. There are many kinds of cultivation.

What troubles me is the presumption to knowledge - justified true beliefs - in the absence of a coherent way of providing a justification.

Which of course leads into the discussion of what is to count as a justification... — Banno

I think when it comes to matters of faith personal experiences may serve as justifications for one's own (but certainly not anyone else's) beliefs (although personally I prefer to draw no conclusions).

Justification of direct knowledge is not intersubjectively possible, in any sense analogous to the way empirical and logical justification is. So, it looks like I'm an empiricist and a logical positivist, which I'm not really in the fullest sense. I'm with Wittgenstein in thinking that the most important aspects of life cannot be definitively spoken about—they can only be alluded to. It's handwaving all the way down, but for me there is a great deal of beauty to be found in some hand-waving.

It's likes the arts— leads nowhere except to novel and perhaps inspiring experiences.

My general opinion of Wayfarer is that we agree about most things, but that he adds more than is needed; where silence is appropriate he keeps talking. But this is becasue he wants to show us something more, presumable thinking that we (I?) don't already see it. Maybe I don't. — Banno

I am interested in much of what @Wayfarer is interested in too. but not in the fundamentalist way. In other words, I don't believe in the possibility of the direct knowing of transcendent truths, which he does, but I do believe in the possibility of personal transformation, as in altered states of consciousness; I just don't make any assumptions as to what is the significance of altered states in any ontological or metaphysical connection.

Because of that I am labeled a "positivist" and summarily dismissed.

:up:

You're talking epistemology here, not ontology or metaphysics.

As far as quantum physics is concerned, one simple point is that made by both Bohr and Heisenberg - physics reveals nature as exposed to our method of question, not as she is in herself. That leaves ample breathing-room for philosophy. — Wayfarer

Of course, but philosophy has no atmosphere to breathe in when it comes to the ineffable—it's the realm that myth and poetry and religion attempt to fill, and we do well to remember that our imaginative creations are just that, and refrain from participating in the hubris that leads to fundamentalism.

Notice that question from Pigliucci - 'what kind of existence does it have?' That's the underlying question in this whole topic. — Wayfarer

You will say it doesn't have any kind of existence but is nonetheless real. And that just begs the question: 'Real in what way?' which is just a repeat of the question 'What kind of existence does it have?'.

Without any application, it's all just playing with words.

I'm always too busy reading (and writing) to bother spending time telling you exactly what I've been reading. other than to say fiction wise I've read several of Cormac McCarthy and Murakami Haruki and a little Albert Camus and a good deal of poetry and some philosophy.

A very shallow analysis
— Wayfarer
:grin: If you like. You insist on telling us, at great length, about the ineffable. Fair enough. I'll continue to point out that you haven't, thereby, said anything. — Banno

That's it. Nothing has been said, although plenty has been shown. :wink:

He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away. — Banno

:lol: Although it's really more like: He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd come to stay.

:100: As I have pointed out several times science performs a methodological epoché in the opposite direction to the epoché of phenomenology. But this falls on deaf ears. I have repeatedly asked @Wayfarer to explain how the idea of the subjective would be helpful in the pursuit of any of the hard sciences. He does not even attempt to answer, but rather just ignores the question.

The sequence of natural numbers is a human construction. But although we create this sequence, it creates its own autonomous problems in its turn. The distinction between odd and even numbers is not created by us; it is an unintended and unavoidable consequence of our creation. — Objective Knowledge, 118

I don't entirely agree with this. The characteristics of the natural numbers—oddness, evenness, divisibility and primeness—are clearly shown in the ways groups of actual things can be divided up. I do agree, though, that once these characteristics are formulated as rules then the characteristics of extremely large numbers—numbers too large to be worked with by arranging actual objects in order to discover such characteristics—follow logically.

Are you denying that there are great numbers of empirical objects? Anyway, Happy Christmas regardless to you too.

That's completely irrelevant to the point that number is empirically instantiated

Where else would we have gotten the concept of number other than from the things around us?

I’m not criticizing individuals but ideas. In this case, empiricist philosophy which can’t admit the reality of number because of it being ‘outside time and space’. If you take that as any kind of ad hom, it’s on you. — Wayfarer

You said "Makes empiricists nervous". Empiricist philosophy can consistently admit the reality of number as instantiated in the things we encounter every day. You know, for example, like ten fingers and ten toes...

What I do say is that material objects are perceived by the senses and so can’t be truly mind-independent, because sense data must be interpreted by the mind for any object to be cognised. — Wayfarer

Right you're saying the cognition of the objects is mind-dependent, and I have no argument with that since it is true by definition. But it doesn't seem to follow that the objects cognized are mind-dependent.

What interests me about the passage I quoted, is that mathematical functions and the like are not the product of your or my mind, but can only be grasped by a mind. — Wayfarer

Again I have no argument because it is only minds (and in a different sense hands and other implements) that grasp. It seems undeniable that a differentiated and diverse world is given to the senses, and that we experience that world in ways that are unique to the human, just as other animals presumably experience the world in ways unique to them. So, it seems to me that we are presented with number, that is numbers of things, and we abstract from that experience to conceptualize numbers.

The underlying argument is very simple - it is that number is real but not materially existent. And reason Platonism is so strongly resisted is because it is incompatible with materialism naturalism on those grounds, as per the passage from the Smithsonian article upthread, ‘What is Math?’: 'The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous.' — Wayfarer

This is where I disagree; for me number is real and materially instantiated in the diversity of forms given to our perceptions. I don't "resist" platonsim, I simply don't find it plausible. It seems to me you try to dismiss disagreement with platonism by psychologizing it, by assuming it somehow frightens those who don't hold with it.

I think that is to greatly underestimate the intelligence and intellectual honesty of those you disagree with. I could do a similar thing by saying that people believe in platonism because they are afraid to admit and face the fact that this life is all there is. But I don't say that because I respect different opinions, and because dismissing arguments and worldviews on psychological grounds is shallow thinking. I don't claim that all platonists are stupid or afraid.

The evidence that justifies our mathematical knowledge is of the same kind as the evidence available for empirical knowledge claims: we are given these objects.And, since they are given, not subjectively constructed, fictionalism, conventionalism, and similar compromise views turn out to be unnecessarily permissive. The only twist we add to a Platonic realism is that ideal objects are transcendentally constituted.

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them. (p. 13).

It is in accordance with my intuitive understanding. — Wayfarer

It doesn't sound like your view. since you are always arguing that reality is entirely constructed by consciousness, and that it is meaningless to speak of concrete things having an independent existence. It is clearly stated in this article that they do have an independent existence, and I think the implication there is that the non-arbitrary way in which consciousness models objects is the best evidence we have for their independent existence.

My claim is only that a) truth and falsity are properties of truth-bearers, that b) truth-bearers are propositions, sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc., and that c) propositions, sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc. are not language-independent. This then entails that d) a world without language is a world without truth-bearers is a world without truths and falsehoods.

It's unclear to me which of a), b), c) , or d) you disagree with.

If you accept a), b), and c) but reject d) then you are clearly equivocating, introducing some new meaning to the terms "truth" and "falsehood" distinct from that referenced in a). — Michael

To say that truth and falsity are properties of sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc seems fine to me. To say they are only properties of those seems overly restrictive. 'Truth' like 'existence' is a word that refers to a concept. Concepts are mind-dependent, but what they conceive is not necessarily.

Do you think animals that lack language have beliefs? If so, do you think those beliefs can be true or false?

Yes, the world of abstracta is conceptually irreducible to the world of sensations, perceptions and feelings and the world of energy and matter. Each world is, conceptually irreducible to the other two. If that were not so, we would not have the three worlds

Those kinds of ideas are all generally Platonistic. — Wayfarer

Popper's "Third world" differs from Plato's world of forms in that it is entirely an artefact of language and culture and is thus constantly changing. This is in contrast to the changeless world of Plato's forms. Also, for Popper the first world (the world of lifeless physical matter and energy) is real in its own right. The second world (the world of sensations, perceptions and volitions) is the world of pre-linguistic animals. And the third world is the symbolically mediated world of abstracta— of concepts and theories.

The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. — Wayfarer

The form of idealism you advocate doesn't seem to posit anything at all, which leaves it looking totally vacuous.

You just keep asserting the same thing over and over—the very thing which is at issue. Forget about truth for a moment. The salient question I asked which you failed to address was 'if existence is mind-independent, is being prime likewise mind-independent?'.

If all you are saying is that any number we write down is either prime or not, even if we don't know the answer, then I agree and have never claimed otherwise. — Michael

That is all I'm saying. It being prime and it being true that it is prime are exactly the same. No proposition need be uttered. Same as with the existence of gold.

Now the tricky part: we can say (although some don't) that existence is independent of minds. Can we likewise say that primeness is independent of minds? If it is, does that necessarily entail Platonism? Or?

So the relevant discussion concerns whether or not platonism about truthbearers is correct, or if we should adopt a non-platonistic interpretation that allows for a distinction between truths in a world and truths at a world, and I am firmly in favour of the latter. — Michael

It seems to me your thinking is too black and white. If there are countless prime numbers which no one will ever identify, then we can write down extremely large numbers and for any number we write down it will be true or false that it is prime, even if we don't know the answer. If the truth about the primeness of those countless numbers precedes their being enunciated, then what is it that determines that truth or falsity. It's a different case than with concrete particulars because the latter can be observed in order to find out whether what we thought about them prior to knowing the answer is true or false.

This is a difficulty for the idea that truth is simply a property of propositions, but it doesn't follow that Platonism is the answer. Maybe the question cannot be answered, but even so that doesn't remove the difficulty..