"Life" might be nothing more than an ongoing, self-esteeming story certain ephemeral, coprophagic arrangements of matter are telling themselves. :flower: — 180 Proof

I like the "ephemeral", the "coprophagic" not so much.

If you were offered the chance to live forever as long as you ate nothing but shit would you take it?

They see in essentially the same way as we do. To see non-dually would mean to entirely lack the ability to distinguish anything. A tree, for instance, couldn’t be distinguished from the ground or the sky or any part of its surroundings. There could be no tree/not-tree duality, right? — praxis

I don't believe animals parse experience in terms of subject/ object.

To see non-dually is to see without the discursive overlay. Distinguishing things is not disabled by that. I can see a tree without thinking in terms of a tree/ not-tree duality. I don't have to separate a tree from its surroundings in order to see it.

I don't think it is accurate to assume that if someone has no experience of the numinous they are not interested in what people think it is. — Tom Storm

I haven't assumed you are not interested; I did include the "if".

Just briefly, what do you mean by practice or incentive? — Tom Storm

Practice is to let go of thoughts and incentive is desire.

Ok. I don't think I have any idea of the numinous but I get your general point. I suppose I wonder how long does one sit in this 'letting go-ness' and where does it take you? Are you suggesting perhaps some kind of meditative experience with some eventual form of enlightenment?

This notion that - all experience is, primordially, prior to subject and object and all the linguistically generated dualities that flow on from that - seems to be arrived at through conscious judgment and rationality. — Tom Storm

If you have no sense of the numinous then what to do? If you want to let go, then you must practice, but you would need incentive. It takes you to where you already are. But it's not important if you're not interested. What could it matter, if it doesn't matter to you?

The notion is arrived at via experience. But it also makes sense to ask what the experience of animals might be like given they would seem to have no linguistic overlay.

Nice. — Banno

:lol: You've sinned (missed the mark) yet again; you're headed straight for hell! Or maybe you're already there, since it must be hellish for you having to force yourself to participate in something of so little value or interest to you, such as these threads. Remarkably, despite your oft-declared lack of interest and disdain, you seem to have made more posts than anyone else. :chin:

Yes, I think the mundane is exalted when the creative joy of living has been sucked out by the internal dialogue, by seeing ourselves as somehow set against life or life set against us.

Being wedded to the view that duality is sin and non-duality is virtue is extremely dualistic, and unrealistic, isn’t it? The best we can do is merely reduce anxiety by quieting our minds. To see non-dually is to not see at all. — praxis

I haven't said anything about sin as vice or the opposite of virtue. I explicitly stated that I was talking about sin in terms of "missing the mark". Missing the mark in this context means being caught up in views and failing to see things in their numinous light. The best you can do may be reducing anxiety, and that is a necessary beginning, but you have no warrant for believing it is just the same for others.

Of course there is always a linguistic overlay to our seeing, but that can be put in abeyance with practice. Maybe try some psychedelics to get you started. Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all?

Maybe I have you wrong but isn't this the kind of dogmatic position you were speaking against earlier? What do you mean by seeing the world non-dually? Do you mean holding a monist ontology like idealism? — Tom Storm

See my response to praxis above. I'm not taking about holding any ontology, but rather about letting go of all ontologies and concerns about ontology in order to experience the numinous; to see that all experience is, primordially, prior to subject and object and all the linguistically generated dualities that flow on from that.

The problem is that some assumptions lead us toward understanding, while others lead us toward misunderstanding. Since understanding is what is desired over misunderstanding, it is appropriate to say that some assumptions are correct and others incorrect. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your assumptions lead you towards your understanding and mine mine. So you are already assuming that there is a correct understanding, meaning your reasoning is circular. Note, I am not saying there are not more or less correct understandings in relation to empirical matters or the effectiveness of practices, but I'm speaking here specifically about discursive metaphysical understandings. How do you know there is a correct metaphysical understanding and how would you identify it as being correct?

:up: There's quite a lot in what you say there, most of which I agree with, but I have to go do something now, so a more comprehensive response will have to wait.

Obviously a big call, but what I have in mind is very like what is described by avidya, in Eastern philosophy - it’s usually translated as ignorance, but I think something like spiritual blindness is more apt. It’s kind of like ‘sin’ albeit more cognitive than volitional - that ‘we don’t see the world aright’. (I’ve long thought that the fact that it became entangled with dogma about sin is one of the things that prevents us from seeing it.) Hey I know that’s bound to be controversial but I can’t help but see it like that. — Wayfarer

I see ignorance as consisting, not in holding one view rather than another (except in the empirical context) but in being wedded to some (necessarily dualistic) view or other. For me sin, or "missing the mark", consists in not seeing the world non-dually.

Philosophy delivers only contextual truths, and there are as many possible assumptions to begin from as there are philosophies. — Janus


Isn’t that cultural relativism? I know it’s very difficult to adjudicate betweeen the thousands of systems of ideas out there but some must resonate, and some decision must be made as to which. — Wayfarer

Right, I do think that ethically speaking, at least, there are right and wrong views, "right" views leading more to social harmony and "wrong" views more to disharmony, so I am no relativist in that domain. When it comes to aesthetics and even more so metaphysics, I am more of a relativist, as I see no criteria that can serve decidability.

That said, the best metaphysical view, for me personally is the one that resonates most strongly, and serves best to inspire and motivate praxis, aesthetically and metaphysically. But I don't expect that my preferred ideas will, or should, be preferred by others, so in that sense I am a relativist.

Yes, there is always the illusion of progress bolstered by the obvious progress of the sciences, but philosophy is not like that in my view. The idea of progress inherent in (and kind of contradictory to the spirit of) Hegels' philosophy is its weakness and possibly why both Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard reacted against it.

It seems to me that those who get "persnickety" are those who "have a dog in the race" and/ or are uncomfortable with uncertainty. I think uncertainty is, spiritually speaking, a blessing, because it makes for humility.

I wouldn't say that the calculation performed by a computer was material, even though it is the result of a physical process. Indeed, it seems to me to be rather misleading. — Ludwig V

:up: I think the application of "material" or "immaterial" in an imagined absolute sense to computations is a category error. It's like saying, for example, "the tree is or isn't spiritual".

:up: :up:

But going back to the rock interacting with the tree, I would like to at least ask the question how it is that physical properties obtain without perception. What is it that interaction between non-perceiving objects is like? And you see, this IS where this direct/indirect/ideal becomes kind of "personal" for those who care about metaphysical theories. As I said before, I think informs the perceiving interactions. — schopenhauer1

We can only say what interaction between what we think of as non-perceiving objects is like for us. Personally I find metaphysical theories interesting in that they explore the possibilities that are (coherently or incoherently?) imaginable to us. I think that is worth exploring just for its own sake; it's aesthetic interest, if you like.

Beyond that level of interest, I don't care about them: I have no more objection to physicalism than I do to idealism, because I don't see any "ism" as ruling out anything important or as capturing the nature of reality, or as being more or less important for the ongoing evolution of humanity.

I could be a physicalist, an idealist or an anti-realist and still be fully committed to meditation, the arts and personal transformation, provided I didn't take the views I might entertain as being the most plausible so seriously that I couldn't let them go, and they consequently interfered with my peace of mind.

I can't relate to crusaders of philosophical correctness on any side of the argument; I think that is a deeply misguided and arrogant project. Although I don't agree with Hegel's notion of absolute knowledge, I think his treatment of the history of philosophical ideas as a progressive (not in the sense of "progress" but as analogous to the musical idea of a chord progression) dialectical unfolding presentation of what is imaginable to the human is right on.

:up:

That is to say, the human, bat, and slug are experiencing a "real" tree, but each one "constructs" (and there is the indirect) the tree differently. — schopenhauer1

I don't know about @Banno, but I think @Isaac would agree that different organisms perceive the tree differently. Organisms' perceptions are affected both exogenously and endogenously.

Personally, I think the whole direct/ indirect parlance is inapt. It's just another example of being bewitched by dualistic thinking. From different perspectives 'direct" and 'indirect' are both OK, but the idea that one or the other is "correct", in anything but a contextual sense is misguided in my view.

Philosophy delivers only contextual truths, and there are as many possible assumptions to begin from as there are philosophies. The idea that some are "correct" and others not, tout court, erroneously fails to acknowledge the different presuppositions in play, and the reality of talking past one another on account of that.

I don’t think it’s a contradiction but I’m unwilling to work out exactly why it isn’t. The main point is that what you call a transformative process of liberation, others would call a purely negative effort to clear up some deep confusions. Getting our house in order so we can all get on with whatever it is that we already, with no input from philosophy, regard as important in our social and spiritual lives. It is in this sense that some critics have labelled him as basically conservative.

I think they’re pretty much right but I also think Wittgenstein is great. — Jamal

I agree, the "purely negative effort to clear up some deep confusions" is precisely what I understand to be philosophy's "transformative process of liberation". I can speculate that Wittgenstein may have meant that philosophy leaves the world just as it is, in the sense of not adopting any metaphysical view about the nature of reality, and I would agree with that.

I see philosophy as a propaedeutic to spiritual transformation, to learning to see non-dually. Still, I would say that although philosophy cannot effect a far-reaching spiritual transformation, it can help to liberate us from being concerned with "views", just as Nagarjuna's dialectic is intended to do, and that that counts as a "transformative process of liberation"; albeit merely an intellectual one.

As I understand it, his deep project was about the meaning of being, so wouldn’t that entail an “understanding of how things can come to be as they are”? — Jamal

I guess it's a matter of interpretation: to me an "understanding of how things can come to be as they are" suggests some kind of causal account of the genesis of the world, and I don't think Heidegger was concerned with that. Of course I might be mistaken, and I could be persuaded to change my mind by being presented with anything he wrote which would suggest otherwise.

I think it can be coherently argued that the principle problem of philosophy is precisely learning to perceive truly. This does not only apply to the hypothetical tree, apple, or coffee cup which is the perennial stand-in for ‘the world’. If you go back to the beginning of philosophy (with Parmenides and the Eleatics) the understanding of how things can come to be as they are is the fundamental question. I *think* this is what Heidegger was attempting to revive with his question of ‘the meaning of being’. — Wayfarer

With "learning to perceive truly" do you mean something like 'learning to see richness instead of paucity'? I don't understand Heidegger as ever being concerned with the "understanding of how things can come to be as they are".

In Being and Time (as I understand it) Heidegger is attempting a phenomenological analysis of what it is to be a human being; an analysis which ultimately fails in my view, and I think in Heidegger's own view (which explains his "Kehre" or "turning" to poetic instead of analytical language).

Correct, though if I was a good realist, I’d add in evolutionary fit regarding why this empirical world and not a bats, or a slug, let alone interaction without animal perception. — schopenhauer1

I don't understand this comment; can you explain?

I have two modes that I haven’t quite been able to reconcile. One is my Anglo mode, in which I’m a plain-speaking direct realist, and the other is my sort of phenomenological, sort of Marxian, quite traditional, wannabe Hegelian mode, in which philosophy has ambitions as grand as you’ve set out here. From the latter point of view, Wittgenstein’s statement that philosophy “leaves everything as it is” is an abomination. — Jamal

Wittgenstein cannot have really believed that "philosophy leaves everything as it is" since he saw it as a therapeutic, transformative process of liberation from reificatory thinking, of "bewitchment by means of language".

But this is trivially true regardless of one's metaphysics. — Janus


Oh, that's good. Shoudl save plenty of paper, then. — Banno

Really, what are you using paper for? In any case, I'll take that as a statement of agreement

Realism holds that the sentence "the tree has leaves" is about the tree, and not about the perception of the tree, or our beliefs about the tree, or any other relation between ourselves and the tree. That the tree has leaves is true if and only if the tree has leaves, regardless of what we perceive or believe. — Banno

But this is trivially true regardless of one's metaphysics. The idealist or anti-realist can equally say that "the tree has leaves" is about the tree not about anyone's perception of the tree. So, you're presenting a strawman; you are doing the misunderstanding, while incorrectly imagining that others have misunderstood you.

The absurdity of what you are claiming as the thinking of idealists and anti-realists is shown in the actual sentence you want to impute to them: "my perception of the tree has leaves" as if it could just as easily have not included them. Your interlocutors are not as stupid as you, stupidly, like to think.

Got it. Well, I think his idea of "immediate intuitions" are "unmediated" awareness of sensory input, it's not necessarily an accurate picture of the external world. — schopenhauer1

I think it pays to remember that there is no "accurate picture" of an external world, except relative to the context of our collective representation: the empirical world.

I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”. — Jamal

Right, we perceive things as they really are for us, not as they really are for an ant or an aardvark. It's the idea that we see things as they really are "in themselves" (meaning as they really are independently of any and all percipients) which is absurd.

And yet they strut and prance as if their naivete were in fact sharp insight. That is what is most objectionable. — hypericin

True that!

The central claim of direct or naive realism is that we perceive things "as the are". Apples look red because that's really how apples look. This is called naive because I think we all start from there, we intuitively take this for granted as children. In some people this perspective is never abandoned, and they try to buttress this unchallenged intuition with philosophical arguments. — hypericin

The idea that we perceive things "as they are' seems incoherent to me. But that is indeed the naive assumption; that our eyes are like windows through which we look out onto a world of real objects. Naive realists like @Banno don't seem to be able to let go of this primal picture.

It would be wrong to interpret him as saying that we just see things in our heads. — Jamal

Our heads are just collective representations like the rest. We don't experience things as being in our heads. but as being outside.

So, we could say that things are not in our phenomenal heads, but are in our noumenal 'heads'.

Kant was a direct realist. The external world is the “empirically real” and the tree is an empirical object that we experience “immediately”. See the “Refutation of Idealism”. — Jamal

As I understand Kant the empirical world is real only in the sense of being a collective representation.

Yours is pretty ordinary at the moment. — Banno

I'm actually quite gratified to hear that you consider my words to be ordinary; I'd be horrified if you found them interesting, just as I'd be concerned if I began to find your commonplace assertions interesting.

If I take the direct route to town, it still takes five minutes; I don't arrive instantaneously.

Are we directly affected by the light reflected off of objects? What would it mean to say we are indirectly affected by light?

And I agree that is a question that can be asked of all philosophy. Do you think philosophy, in the sense that it is being "practiced" here is anything more than an amusing pastime?

Does the camera, producing the photo, directly perceive the tree? — bongo fury

Do we seriously entertain the possibility that cameras perceive anything?

Pfff. — Banno

:rofl: That so encapsulates the image I have of your character.

All philosophy is word play. — Banno

Yes, it is. Some wordplay is more interesting and some less.The wordplay varies according to what starting assumptions are made. There is no right or wrong answer, just two dogmas shadowboxing the world with their images.

Experientially considered perception seems direct, but scientific analysis of the organs of seeing show that it is a process. Does that mean it is indirect? Depends on interpretation, I would say.

I don't think it's possible to get to a clear view of this, since we are embedded in what we are trying to gain a "god's eye view' of. And further, what difference would it make as to what view one holds?

This thread has given me a good laugh. both sides of the debate are so convinced they are right and neither side of the "debate", seems to realize that nothing more significant than playing with words is going on here.

But that's not the same as being arbitrary — Ludwig V

Right, I did say "more or less arbitrary". The point is not that we don't know anything, but that any attempt to show that we do know is subject to skeptical critique. Knowing is easy; it is trying to show knowing that you know which brings all the issues.

One reason I like to post here is to see criticism of what I think. — Art48

A worthy motive!

So, substance is a theoretical construct; it's something we assume to exist as the bearer of properties. But we don't directly experience substance.

Of course, we don't directly experience protons, quarks, etc. either so maybe the phrase "just a word" is unjustified. — Art48

I agree that substance is just an idea (or set of ideas). Our thinking is dualistic and pairs of ideas that go together are relational like substance and attributes or substance and modes, or negational like being and non-being, substantial and insubstantial and tangible and intangible.

Common sense may say that “Substance is Just a Word” is a deepity. I want to argue it is not: that in a substantial sense (pun intended), substance is just a word. — Art48

If nothing is left, then substance is indeed just a word, a word that refers to nothing in the real world. “Substance” becomes a linguistic shorthand for a set of properties: red, sweet, of a certain shape, mass, etc. Therefore, it’s a word, no more. — Art48

The OP seems confused; the above excerpts assert that substance is just a word. Then he presents a "counter-argument", but refutes that with a "response" that concludes that substance is just a word.

So, the difference is in the mode of existence of both apple’s properties, not in some imaginary substance which one apple possesses and the other does not. — Art48

That's the way I read it anyhow.

True, but the OP also says that substance is just a word, which suggests just one non-cogent meaning. The components of the word seem to indicate an etymology meaning something like "stand under" which suggests essence or being. A quick search yielded this:

substance (n.)

c. 1300, "essential nature, real or essential part," from Old French sustance, substance "goods, possessions; nature, composition" (12c.), from Latin substantia "being, essence, material," from substans, present participle of substare "stand firm, stand or be under, be present," from sub "up to, under" (see sub-) + stare "to stand," from PIE root *sta- "to stand, make or be firm."

Latin substantia translates Greek ousia "that which is one's own, one's substance or property; the being, essence, or nature of anything." Meaning "any kind of corporeal matter" is first attested mid-14c. Sense of "the matter of a study, discourse, etc." first recorded late 14c.

Oddly enough (or perhaps not) 'understand' seems to suggest something very similar, but the etymologies don't seem to have anything much in common.

You are presenting an Aristotelian understanding of substance. Spinoza argued that there cannot be more than one substance. In ordinary parlance substance just means some kind of material. In chemistry the elements are considered to be substances and so are their combinations, the compounds. So an apple would consist of several substances.

I'm sorry, I'm not ready to venture on articulating general criteria. It's a very complex topic and I have never seen anything more helpful than very general remarks.

Do you have something specific in mind? — Ludwig V

I'm trying to point out that the notion of justification is vague and that judgement in particular cases that beliefs are justified is therefore more or less arbitrary, so as a general principle justification fails at its purported task of providing a criterion for differentiating between what is knowledge and what is not.

Assuming that reality is non-dual I don't undertsand that to mean it is either one or many, which would entail that it is neither differentiated nor undifferentiated and that those dualistic categories do not apply.

The universe/world/moon/whatever is a featureless, undifferentiated and meaningless aggregation of matter-energy which is only differentiated into separate objects, with features and locations - which comes into being - in the mind of the observer. — Wayfarer

That's a more or less imaginable picture, but how do you know, how could you know, it captures the character of reality? How could we make sense of the idea that something utterly undifferentiated and featureless could give rise to the vast and complex universe we observe?

Particles are easy to envisage - look at a pinch of salt, or a handful of sand. The original atom was indivisible, the model of atoms and the void a binary comprising absolute existents and absolute non-existence. Very simple. The modern landscape is considerably more layered than that. — Wayfarer

Well, yes all that much is obvious, but it doesn't change the fact that physicists still think in terms of particles. Democritean atoms are as easy to envisage as excitations of fields, and both are envisaged in terms of macroscopic analogs, like billiard balls and bodies of water. But neither are commonsense objects, since we cannot imagine how an object that exists could be indivisible .

Now we have electronic fields, fermionic fields, gluon fields and Higgs fields. but all those fields are understood to be related to their respective particles. And we have the fundamental quantum foam where existence and non-existence merge; still a binary. All our thinking is binary, there is no escaping that.

But it has a specific function and serves an essential purpose just as much as a pen does if not more so.

As I say I still think the no design position is equally as speculative as the design position and also unfalsifiable. — Andrew4Handel

The "no-design" position is the natural selection position, and sure it is speculative. Is it falsifiable? Popper didn't think so, and then he did, if I recall correctly. I can't recall the details of his change of mind, but you can look it up if you're interested.

The problem I have with the "designer" idea is that it is definitely unfalsifiable, and it involves an entity, which is not observable, and processes of which we can have no idea, so it would appear to be of little or no use to the speculative understanding.

Also the recent explosion of human technology in a short period shows that what is said to take millions of years to evolve can be created in a few years with intelligence. — Andrew4Handel

The recent explosion of human technology is arguably mostly down to the fortuitous (or not) discovery of fossil fuels in my view.

No I meant the physicists. What would the wave/particle duality be without the particle? How would entanglement be thought of without particles? What would the excitation of a field be, if not a particle? What would the so-called "particle zoo" be without its animals?

But as an autodidact, he can be a bit cocksure. — Tom Storm

Cocksure ballsups? :grin:

A computer has numerous purposes and not one specific purpose and apparently unlimited potential. A pen can be used to sign a check, write a novel or draw a picture or to scratch an itch. — Andrew4Handel

Computers were designed to compute, and their development has enabled many different manifestations of that basic function, but it is still the basic function and is what computers were designed to do.

Same goes for the pen, it was designed to write; the fact that it can be used for other purposes is irrelevant.

The no design position to me is more of an interpretation than anything falsifiable. We know the heart has a function because when it fails you get very sick or die. — Andrew4Handel

It does not follow from the fact of the heart having a function that it was purposely designed to have that function. As far as we know the heart and its functions evolved.