But our moral sense can also judge domination moral norms as right and even obligatory, such as extreme cases in the middle east of killing one’s daughter to “protect family honor” because she eloped with a neighbor boy the family judged unsuitable.

The thing to remember is that the selection force for the biology underlying our moral sense is the reproductive fitness benefits of the cooperation it motivates. That reproductive fitness benefit is what encodes the same partnership and domination cooperation strategies in our moral sense as is encoded in cultural moral norms. — Mark S

This is nothing but a groundless assumption. If we have evolved to be loving and compassionate, then why are we not all loving and compassionate?

This is a category mistake. Characteristics of objects "in general" are not publicly available. What is publicly available is particular instances or circumstances. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are distorting what I've said. Of course each observation of an object of sense is particular, and the details of those observations in general are publicly confirmable. If I say "This car is made of steel" this assertion can be publicly checked and confirmed or disconfirmed. If I say " This thought I'm having is about a car made of steel" this assertion is not publicly checkable and cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed. That, in a nutshell, is all I'm saying.

If you disagree with what I've just written then say why; I'm prepared to listen. If you don't disagree then we have nothing further to discuss it seems.

I disagree with both of your approaches for different reasons. I agree with your critique of Janus' position, as it has been stated in this thread. — creativesoul

Same goes for you: if you disagree with what I wrote above, then explain why.

This sounds to me as word play. The red thing or pain and the speaking about the "redness" or the "pain-ness" is simply to highlight the quality we see or feel. If I say "look at how beautiful the ocean looks
today" - I'm highlighting the various aspects of the ocean, which includes blue-ness. But if you want another term, then I'm happy to say blue. — Manuel

So you think we experience redness in addition to red or painfulness in addition to pain? The point I'm making is that Dennett doesn't deny that we experience red or pain; I think he's arguing against the reification of those experiences as redness or painfulness, causing us to imagine something additional to the experience of red or of pain.

I don't think the naive argument works so well with experience as it does with naive realism in terms of how the world is.

I think the way we experience consciousness is the way it is. However, if you want to find out how the brain produces this property, you can do neuroscience of psychology of perception. Doesn't alter at all our experience in the least. — Manuel

Naive realism says there is a world of objects "out there" independent of us, which is a reification of the concept of persistent and invariant objects which follows naturally from our visual and tactile impressions. Naive experientialism says there is an inner world of qualia, which is a reification of the concept of felt qualities of experienced visual and tactile impressions. I don't see much difference between the two reifications: one "outer" and one "inner".

You say "the way we experience consciousness", and I think the only way we can hope to get any idea of how we experience consciousness, as opposed to how we naively think about it is via meditation. And my experience, and the extensive literature about meditation tells me that consciousness is non-dual, and that there is no "we" experiencing it at all, which means that our naive intuitive, dualistic views don't capture the nature of consciousness any more than our naive dualistic views of reality capture the nature of reality.

I mean, if you were correct, there would not be SO many articles arguing against Dennett's view, including Searle, Block, Zahavi, Tallis, etc., etc.

So either he is being deliberately tricky or he can't explain his views well. He explains his views well, so I think he's being tricky. — Manuel

I'm just talking about how I read Dennett, not about how others read him. Only Dennett could say who is reading him more accurately, or maybe even he could not, since the subject is so murky through and through.

Perhaps try watching this video of Dennett explaining why he thinks the distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness is misguided, and then see what you think:

Perhaps there are no "correct" views of consciousness, since consciousness is non-dual and all views are necessarily dualistic. In that case the whole debate is just the airing of different perspectives, all of which are under-determined and inadequate.

For what it's worth I am no materialist...or idealist...or pragmatist...I don't hold any metaphysical views...but I do think some things make more sense to say than others do in the dualistic context of our discourses and arguments.

There's scientific evidence that we are natural born dualists, very interesting literature with experiments done by Iris Berent in The Blind Storyteller, that seem to give good evidence to this view. — Manuel

That sounds interesting, but I don't think we need scientific experiments to confirm the dualistic nature of human thought; all we need to do is look at language.and its formalization in propositional logic.The dualistic nature of human thought says nothing about the nature of reality in my view.

“The elusive subjective conscious experience—the redness of red, the painfulness of pain—that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion."

Ok, he doesn't mean that, he means that consciousness is not what we take it to be. Then he is using the word unlike most people - including scientists - use it, so the onus is one him to give a clear definition of what he's talking about. — Manuel

Right, but I don't think he is denying that we see red or experience pain. He is rejecting qualia which, as he says, an additional 'thing': is the redness of red, the painfulness of pain; these are reifications of post hoc conceptualizations, not something we experience. We experience red and pain, not the redness of red or the painfulness of pain.

Do you think most people think of consciousness in these qualia-type terms? Even if you think they do, do you think they experience consciousness this way or just unreflectively think of it this way? Also Dennett is quite clear that he is rejecting the folk-conception of consciousness, which is naive in a very similar way that naive realism is naive. You could even call it naive realism about consciousness, where that which is reified is not objects of the senses but qualities of experience.

I think the main reason people reject Dennett's philosophy is that they think it rules out spirituality, meaning personal transformation and altered (non-dual) states of consciousness, but I don't see why that would necessarily be the case at all.

Oh, and I agree with you about Janus' 'straw Dennett'. ;-) — Wayfarer

:rofl: My "straw-Dennett": that's a rather rich irony considering you haven't even read Dennett, and you seem incapable of hearing reasonable accounts of his views from those who have read him that don't agree with your anti-Dennett campaign.

Right on!

We've been through that umpteen times. He does not deny it straight up, he says something like 'of course, I don't deny the existence of mind, but.....' - and then what comes after the 'but' amounts to denying the existence of mind. — Wayfarer

According to my reading of Consciousness Explained (which I have read, although a while ago now) Dennett's argument does not amount to a denial of the existence of mind, but of mind as it is often still naively conceived by "folk"; as a kind of ghostly substance.

If Dennett seeks to eliminate anything I think it is qualia, not mind. And I tend to agree with him on that point, because I don't see that there is a separate quality to experiences in addition to the experience, even though on reflection it may seems as though there is. On the other hand experience is most certainly qualitative, and this is similar to saying that mind(ing) is a necessarily embodied activity, because all qualities are, in one way or another, felt bodily.

You seem to be, and to have long been, on some kind of moral crusade against Dennett and other materialist thinkers, whereas I have no objection per se, although I see all metaphysical views as being under-determined and inadequate to lived experience. I do object to views such as that animals do not feel anything, but materialism has no reason to assert that, and Descartes who apparently did assert it, was no materialist. Anyway, since we have been over this many times, we are just going to have to agree to disagree on that point.

Yes, I was aware that Dennett studied under Quine and then Ryle.

BTW, I skimmed 'The Consciousness Deniers' and I could find no quotes from "the deniers" themselves which show that they actually are denying the existence of any kind of consciousness, which is telling. I'm no fan of Galen Strawson; I think his father was a much better philosopher.

Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett take the next step of saying it's something that doesn't exist at all. — Wayfarer

I think they see mind as an activity of the body, "minding"; more verb than noun. I wonder if Dennett and Ryle have no feeling for animals, or deny that animals feel pain and pleasure.

I read Concept of Mind so long ago (maybe thirty years but it's still on my shelves somewhere I think) that I don't remember much about it other than it's rejection of the idea of a "ghost in the machine":

Dennett, as I read him, does not deny the existence of mind, he just thinks it is not what we naively, intuitively take it to be.

Descartes had good reasons to posit res cogitans, — Manuel

Spinoza, his younger near contemporary, was smart enough to realize that there was no good reason to propose mind as substance.

I think there is a general desire in social beings to cooperate, because it is obvious that getting along with others will be more beneficial than not getting along with them. So, I see this as the pragmatic dimension of morality.

I think there is an equally, if not more, important affective dimension; the moral sense. The moral sense is based on love, for those closest to one, and general compassion for others.

If we're looking at intent, then we have to try to figure out what they really thought, and unless you can show Descartes knew the dogs felt pain, you can't condemn him for that harm in the same way as someone who didn't know. — Hanover

This reads to me like apologist garbage. If Descartes did as it is said, he was a psychopath, lacking any compassion or real wisdom. Perhaps he couldn't help that, but it is impossible to admire such a man.

I always found his philosophy absurd anyway, so I have no conflict over whether to think his behavior should disqualify his philosophy. Is it that his philosophy explains his behavior, or that his total lack of compassion explains his philosophy?

In China an annual dog-eating festival is held and the dogs are tortured, beaten and burned alive apparently. And this was (at least in part) a Buddhist culture. I find this, and what you have reported about Descartes, almost impossible to contemplate. I think many people simply lack any compassion. The human race is one sick breed on the whole!

I find the idea that classical music or Jazz have "ended" or that philosophically interesting art is no longer possible simple-minded, presumptuous and absurd.

On what basis do you conclude that we can make valid scientific conclusions about the similarity in the rocks but not about the similarity in the internal perceptual organizations? — Metaphysician Undercover

The similarities in objects of the sense can be pointed to as can the observable structural similarities in perceptual organizations: the structure of eyes, of optic nerves, of brains.

The observations are only made by those participating in the performance of the experiment. Therefore the observations are not publicly available. — Metaphysician Undercover

Empirical observations in general, any observation concerning the characteristics of objects of the senses are publicly available. These observations are definitely confirmable. If I am with ten people, looking at a red apple with a yellow stripe, I can ask all those people what unusual feature they see on that apple and predictably they will most likely all agree it is the yellow stripe.

If I am entertaining a particular thought and I ask you what I am thinking you cannot tell me. That's the difference between private thoughts, feelings and sensations and publicly available objects of the senses. I shouldn't have to point this out to you since it is obviously the case, as attested by everyday experience.

Of course there was the influence of the psychedelic era, which also had its beginnings, along with a culture of other illicit drug use, in the late forties and fifties. The radical shift in the Beatles music (and many others) was arguably due to their encounter with LSD and TM. Of course these influences can be found also in acoustic music, but the very existence of electronic enhancement of instruments was already at work in both electric and acoustic music. .

The Beatles music and rock and pop music generally was not, and still is not, all that innovative harmonically speaking and most of the songs remain in the four to five minute format. Jazz is far more innovative harmonically as is Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy for a few examples, not to mention Shostakovich, Schoenberg, Bartok, Ives, and many others.

Whether the Beatles were, over their career, more innovative than Radiohead is hard to measure. What metric would you suggest?

The Doors first eponymous album was released earlier in 67 than Sgt Peppers, and so was Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow. Sure, Rubber Soul and Revolver were earlier still, but I think the greatness of the Beatles lies in their songwriting (which is also arguably in large part down to the "fifth Beatle": George Martin.

Whoa! That’s Ken Kesey/ Merry Pransters kinda heavy, right there, insofar as both pro and con are in the same query: con…novelty isn’t in the object at all; pro….novelty is certainly an object of judgement.Boys and girls woulda had a blast with that one, methinks, trippin’ down the highway.

Still, things change. The hippies then for the rights of free spirit, the woke dipshits now for the pathologically stupid over-sensitivity regarding Ms. Green M&M’s wearin’ thigh-high boots.

(Sigh) — Mww

LOL, good point!

Yes, so the fact that our observations of external things can be confirmed down to the "minutest details" only proves that your and my internal self are the same down to the minutest details. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not at all; it speaks to the fact that our perceptual organizations are similar enough, and that the minutest details of external objects do not depend on who is observing them.

When a scientist performs an experiment, only those present have access to observe the "objects" which are observed. Scientific experiments are not publicly available. — Metaphysician Undercover

Some observations may be available only to those who are trained to know what to look for and what they are looking at, but all scientific observations are publicly available in principle.

I think you argue just for the sake of it or for the sake of winning; you don't seem to be interested in what is the case..

You tell me your observations of your internal self, and I compare them with mine. — Metaphysician Undercover

Problem is your and my "internal self" are different "objects", whereas our observations of say an apple can be confirmed down to the minutest details.

How is this different from sense observations. How can you know that your senses are accurate? — Metaphysician Undercover

As I said earlier accuracy is only measurable within a context where all observations can be compared in detail.

I don't say that the fact that we can see whether our "internal" observations match up in kind is trivial: that is what enables phenomenology, and I have respect for that discipline. But there is a difference between phenomenology and the empirical sciences because in the case of the latter the objects of observation are publicly available,

Yea, aesthetic judgement...which raises an interesting question: could novelty, a novelty inherent in the object itself, ever be considered to be a coherent aspect of aesthetic judgement. The beautiful mountain, for example: it's been there for millions of years, so there is no inherent novelty there, but perhaps to see its beauty is to see it anew each time; the singularity of each aesthetic experience.

I mean since scientific observations are publicly available whereas consciousness is not publicly observable it's hard to see how it could work. — Janus


There is no basic problem here. All that is required is good honest observations, and this is fundamental to science anyway. — Metaphysician Undercover

The difference between "good honest observations" of subjective experience and scienitifc observation of the external world is that the latter can be checked and corroborated, while the former cannot. How could I know your observations of your own experience are "good and honest"? That would involve a leap of faith. How can I know that even my own introspection is accurate? What could it be accurate in relation to? Accuracy is an inter-subjective idea. A similar issue arises for empirical observations when attempts are made to render them absolute.

It seems to me that if consciousness wasn't publicly observable, then what in the world would it mean to say that someone is conscious? You seem to imply that consciousness is only that which I alone can access. It would have to be at the very least both private and public. The public part being that which allows us to access the concepts and ideas associated with what's happening to us privately. — Sam26

The behaviors we associate with being conscious are of course public, no argument there. On the other hand, only I know what I am conscious of at any time, unless I tell others. But then they have no way of knowing whether I am being honest.

Of course, since we all privately experience being conscious, talk about being conscious is manifest publicly. I'm also not denying that there is scientific investigation of consciousness in terms of brain imaging to find out what parts of the brain are active when people are asleep, eating chocolate, viewing various kinds of images, or what people report when certain areas of the brain are electrically stimulated, and so on. But none of that captures the subjective qualities of experience; they are private. cannot be adequately described and are perhaps unique to each of us in their living particularity.

So, I disagree with you when you say there are only the outward signs of being consciousness, which by implication suggests that there is not inner experience. You might know that in your own case, but how could you possibly know that in the case of others? And I'm here to tell you that my own experience says you are wrong about that. Of course, for you to believe me will be a leap of faith: I could be lying to you.

I probably should have used the word 'innovation' instead of 'originality'. What I was trying to highlight is the difference between finding your own vision or voice and being formally innovative. The 20th Century enjoyed a tremendous flurry of formal innovation in the arts. Compare this with the history of Chinese or Japanese art, for example. The lack of great formal innovation in the latter does nothing to diminish the quality and vision of the work.

Every time I write a poem or draw or paint a landscape I experience seeing and feeling something new; something I "have not already experienced elsewhere". Every moment I experience something I have not already experienced elsewhere unless I am drowning in an internal dialogue that constantly regurgitates common cliches That is authenticity, and it is of course, in the particular, if not the general sense, innovative.

This is why the endless recycling of a style of painting produces increasingly weary, played-out emotions. The works become more and more mannered, self-conscious, calculated. — Joshs

It depends on what you mean by "style". If you mean 'genre' then I disagree. Landscape and figure as genres, for example, despite their prior formal evolution into the so-called "abstract" are still alive and full of potential as ever. Works become "mannered" when the signature styles of well-known artists are slavishly imitated.

Know any 1970 rock songs that duplicate the sounds of 1946?

Crawling King Snake first recorded in 1941 by Big Joe Williams in 1941, and by the Doors in 1971. I believe many other examples can be found. I think you are over-simplifying and ignoring the revolution in innovative possibilities brought about by the electrification of instruments and the invention of the synthesizer.

Gotta admit to that myself. Band comes along, love their music for three or four albums….then they change style.

For re-inventing, probably can’t top the Beatles. Drippy girly AM pop in ‘63 to FM album Sgt Pepper in ‘67….massive musical offset. — Mww

Yes, sometimes changes are not for the better. I know people who can't stand the post OK Computer Radiohead (a band I think have been at least as innovative as the Beatles). For me, though, the quality of music is not measured in units of innovation. As it is said, there's no accounting for taste.

I think our perception of originality in music (or whatever art form) is often just a projection unto the external world of our own experience of being exposed to new music. As we age, new music or art seems less original because it doesn't match our past seminal experiences of newness. We tend to chase that first "hit" of a perception-altering musical or artistic experience in the same way an addict chases that first high. This leads to this sense of disillusionment that characterizes your commentary, I think. — Noble Dust

:100:

But an undue emphasis on "authenticity" will do exactly the same thing. — Banno

All it means is not imitating others for effect or seeking to appear original. If you don't do those things and work simply to improve you will find your own voice or vision. That's all I mean by authenticity.

Good example!

Maybe the quest for novelty is one of the faces of the 'creative destruction' that characterises modern culture. — Wayfarer

:up: An authentic voice or vision will always be new, even if not formally innovative. Seeking novelty for its own sake paves the road to mediocrity.

:up:

I don't buy the idea that music and the arts in general are stagnating because everything has already been done, or we're not coming up with revolutionary worldviews The idea that there must be a continual evolution of new forms in art and music grows out of a simplistic view of quality in the arts being a matter of originality. Authenticity is more to the point; meaning finding your own voice or vision rather than imitating or comparing yourself with others. There is not endless scope for formal originality, but there is endless scope for authenticity.

Look at the history of Chinese or Japanese painting for example; little formal innovation, but centuries of great work nonetheless.

This is the dilemma for artists; success often comes with a market that demands what it has become accustomed to. One of the best bands around today, in my view, Radiohead, resist this and are constantly reinventing themselves.

The more serious issue is that of explanatory frameworks. You and I have often discussed that, and I seem to recall you often saying that science is really the only credible public framework for such discussion, with other perspectives being designated 'poetic' - noble and edifying but essentially personal. But then, I guess that's part of the cultural dilemma of modernity, of which Chalmers and Dennett are two protagonists. — Wayfarer

The question that comes up for me is whether "explanatory frameworks" can be true or false or merely "edifying". Even in the case of science where what would count as an "explanatory framework" would be theories and disciplines like Darwinian Evolution, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Organic and inorganic Chemistry, Microbiology. Biology, Geology and so on, the intelligent claim seems to be, not that they are necessarily or proven true, but they are workable and provide the best explanations for observed phenomena to date.

Then you have "soft sciences" like Psychology, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Ethnology and so on. These too can be more or less workable, so it's not just a matter of them being "poetic". And the epithet 'poetic' in my view is not at all deprecatory, because I think poetry and the arts in general, at their best are profound expressions of the human imagination, and are much truer to subjective experience than science could ever be. Remember the etymological genesis of 'poetry' is poesis, which means 'making'.

So, for me poetry and the arts, which would include the writings of mystics and sages, are the most important expressions of human thought and imagination, while science, although it also has a creative, poetic side, is largely driven by instrumental concerns.

Nice obituary; I haven't explored Richard Bernstein's work at all, but it sounds interesting.

:up: Basically, it seems he's a very talented, smart, long-haired hippie.

I will also re-iterate that I think the 'hard problem of consciousness' is not about consciousness, per se, but about the nature of being. Recall that David Chalmer's example in the 1996 paper that launched this whole debate talked about 'what it is like to be' something. And I think he's rather awkwardly actually asking: what does it mean, 'to be'? — Wayfarer

:up: The only issue I see with Chalmers proposal regarding a "new kind of science"; and that the subjective nature of consciousness might be understood and explained scientifically is that there doesn't seem to be the remotest idea of what such a science could look like.

I mean since scientific observations are publicly available whereas consciousness is not publicly observable it's hard to see how it could work. And you seem to be making pretty much the same point. So, I see the whole notion of pursuing a scientific investigation of first person experience as being a fool's errand. I think it should be renamed "the impossible problem" because the idea that it is a problem is a category error. We shouldn't expect science to be able to investigate and understand everything about human life, so it's not a failing of science so much as a failure to understand the limitations of science.

The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Even when we all die, that fact will remain. That's the age of the universe, before we arose (maybe new theories will change this estimate or render it obsolete).

The Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth, the distance remains a fact, irrespective of us.

Now the colour of the sun, us seeing it rising in the East and setting in the West, the warmth we feel form it, and so on, these things will not hold up, absent us. — Manuel

I guess the question here for me is how meaningful is the idea that facts, which are given in anthropomorphic terms, will remain when we are gone. Where will they remain? This is a little like your question about where numbers are, except I think I'm coming from the opposite angle, so to speak. Your question seemed to assume that numbers must "be somewhere", since they don't seem to be mind-dependent.

I want to question the idea that they really are mind-independent, or even that time, change, diversity, identity and so on, are mind-independent. But the flip-side would be also to question the idea that the mind and mental phenomena are matter-independent, and further, to question the idea that there is any distinction between matter and mind apart from our human dualistic mode of thinking.

So, in short, I want to question the idea that anything "holds up, absent us". This would be to say that there is no-thing absent the conception of thing, but that what remains would not be nothing at all. This is in line with the idea that the real is neither something nor nothing, that those categories pertain only to our thinking, not to human-independent "reality". That's about as clear as I can make it, I'm afraid. I agree with Kant in that I'm not confident that it can be made any clearer.

but materiality or form are a bit more dubious. — Manuel

I think form or shape is an inevitable category of understanding. Materiality refers to constitution, which also seems to be an inevitable concept if different materials are encountered.

I don't see why, say, a city would have to be a part of the cognitive architecture of another creature. A house? Maybe - at least territory, based on examples we see here on Earth. — Manuel

Perhaps not, unless it was a creature that builds cities, I guess. Again though, I'm not claiming that the same entities we conceive would be conceived by all symbolic species.

Take a look out your window, or next time you're out in a park, with plenty of trees and bushes around. Ask yourself, "how many objects are there here?" It soon becomes evident that we have a problem, we have a multiplicity of objects, but do we know how many? — Manuel

Yes, I agree, we have a multiplicity or number of objects, but we don't know how many. Apart from the practical problem of actually counting them what do we count as an object or entity? (Note the word 'count' here as also meaning 'to qualify').

With the example of the tree, we understand it to be a wholistic self-organizing organism, so I think roots, truck, branches and leaves all count as parts of the tree. But what about the Mycorrhiza (fungi) that attach to the roots symbiotically? They are generally not counted as part of the tree, even though they might die along with the rest of the tree if you poisoned the tree.

I have to go out now, so I'll try to respond to the rest of your post later, Manuel.

I mean, having an intelligent symbolic creature like us, possessing exactly the same cognitive framework would be pretty wild. Which doesn't imply that it would be impossible. — Manuel

It would be pretty wild and I agree it may not be impossible. The thing is that I was suggesting that any intelligent symbolic creature would think in terms of identity, materiality, multiplicity, diversity, number, form, pattern, similarity, difference and so on, not that they would see, for example, the same entities we do, or describe them as having exactly the same boundaries. (We are not that definite if we are asked to define the exact boundaries of things, in any case).

Are they nowhere? Language is in us, that's true. Numbers too, otherwise, we wouldn't know about them. The difference here being that math applies to the nature of things - physics, chemistry and so forth - which suggests strong elements of mind independence. We can't say the same thing about language use, I don't think.

Multiplicity and numbers are different, though they have some elements in common. — Manuel

We think in and of numbers, just as we think in and of words, but both numbers and words are collective phenomena. As you seem to suggest the difference is that numbers enjoy a rule-based relationship with phenomena, whereas words do no obviously do so. On the other hand nouns, for example, denote entities of various kinds, and I think that grammar reflects the logic of experience. The obvious ostensible difference is that numbers can be used to calculate, but language can also be used to deduce. Things may not be as straightforward as they seem and there's maybe a huge subject there to inquire into.

Multiplicity and numbers are different, but is multiplicity and number different? We can say the world consists in a multiplicity of things or in a number of things; is there a difference in the two statements? We can talk about specific numbers. I guess.

Attaching to mind independent aspects of the world, does not imply something being beyond us, it implies mind independence. — Manuel

I'm not quite sure what you mean here.

That other animals see things differently than us doesn't seem relevant to my point that it seems reasonable to think that any symbolic-language competent species would form concepts of multiplicity, identity and the other examples I gave.

This is because the other animals we are familiar with are not symbolic language users.

The biggest issue is, where are the numbers? And why do they work so well in physics? — Manuel

Why should we think that numbers must be somewhere? As to why they work so well in physics, who knows? How could we ever know the answer to a question like that? We do know that nature appears to possess quantity and multiplicity, but does that say anything about nature beyond how it appears to us?

haha that's quite a use if the word presumption. In truth I think there's a lot of Interplay between "fact", "belief" "hypothesis" and "presumption" over long times — Benj96

I agree there is interplay, but I'd say that facts, beliefs and hypotheses are all dependent on presumptions and not, ultimately, the other way around.

As to what seems most plausible, I don't think we have general consensus, and even if we did have majority consensus should we consider that a definitive guide to anything beyond the context of human understanding and knowledge?

I also agree that changing scientific paradigms have rendered previously accepted presumptions outmoded.

I agree with you that mathematics is not the same as an ordinary language insofar as it is a system of strict rule-based operations and calculation.

That said at least the basic operations can be expressed in ordinary language. For example "two time two equals four".

I'm not too sure about your point that languages are human-based whereas math is not. I think the logic of existence, identity, difference, similarity, multiplicity, form, matter and object, just to give a few examples, would be just as universal as the logic of mathematics for any symbolic language competent species

Numbers are concepts, I would say, represented by numerals, just as words are concepts represented by script or sound,

Number is perceived as multiplicity. We also perceive similarity and difference, although none of these are concrete objects, obviously.

I don't think here is a sensible place to rehash Wittgenstein's arguments. Suffice to say a bland assertion that words do refer doesn't suffice as a counterargument to the claim that they don't. — Isaac

Nice cop-out!

But math doesn't depend on objects. — Manuel

It starts with objects, but once you have an abstract symbolic system it, like language, no longer does.

True, our culture is characterized mostly by instrumental reason; thinking along the lines of maximization of personal advantage and the pleasure/ pain dichotomy.

By the way, it's good to see you back here wasting your time with the rest of us. :grin:

Pay attention. Do what seems to need doing in the moment. — Vera Mont

Yes, no strict formula, but rather the exercise of a capacity, of what Aristotle called phronesis, usually translated as "practical wisdom".

All that we can reason about in ways that seem to make sense are subjects that are amenable to binary thinking: some examples are cause and effect, motivations and action, form and matter, substance and attribute, self and other, necessary and contingent, hot and cold, dark and light and so on for countless other pairs. Our reasoning is not restricted to science, unless 'scinece' is taken in its broader, original sense.

Things are known only in the reasoned sense if there be identified a knower and an object known. If you include the relation between the knower and the known, then we really have a triune process as Gurdjieff, Hegel and Peirce, in their different ways, have indicated. But another way to think about it is that the process itself becomes another thing known by knowers.

A word can't be defined as a thing. That's the whole point of Wittgenstein's argument against reference. We use the word pain, it does a job, it's not pointing at a thing. — Isaac

If someone says they are in pain they are, if they are not lying, referring to a pain that they feel.

The ontology of mathematics. Can it be said that 2+2=4 was true prior to the universe and after its predicted collapse? That's difficult, but, the truth of this claim appears to be independent of the universe. — Manuel

It's true in virtue of the meaning of the words "two", "plus", "equals" and "four". It can be empirically tested: select any two pairs of objects, put them together and count to see if the result is four. It always seems to come out that way. Perhaps when the laws of nature change and objects start spontaneously disappearing, then it will no longer hold. Then we will say two plus two would have equaled four if one or more of the objects had not disappeared. :wink:

Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Natural Rule (I made up): Do unto others as you actually do unto yourself. — James Riley

Compassionate Rule: Do unto others as the best evidence indicates they would wish you to do unto them.

The only caveat would be that you ought not to act in ways harmful to others, even if all the evidence indicates that they would wish you to do so. This just means, for example, that compassion does not entail that you should support others in their self-destructiveness.

Like most things in life ethical treatment of others is more art than science, and thus difficult to capture in a formula.

Good to see you again, James.

It is also presumptuous to assert that the ideas of self-sufficiency and other- dependence are coherent outside the context of human thought and understanding. — Janus


Not sure if it is presumptuous. All physical phenomena and occurrences are fundamentally presumptions by humans - in that "presumption" is a behaviour of sentient/conscious beings that can "presume".

That doesn't mean presumptions are incorrect. If we take scientific method as a source of proof of presumptions - then some presumptions (theories, hypotheses etc) have been proven to exist regardless of individual/personal subjective experience.

In that case some presumptions are facts and others are yet-to-be-proven beliefs. — Benj96

You seem to be arguing that presumptions are not presumptuous if they are consistent with and coherent within our general set of presumptions which constitutes our general understanding of "all physical phenomena and occurrences", and, if so, I agree.

The presumptuous move is to assert the coherence of our presumptions outside of that context. So, it is not a matter of "correct or incorrect" except within the familiar world which is constituted by our common set of presumptions.

Hilary Putnam makes the argument that if the basis of our valuative, ethical judgements is an evolutionary adaptation shared by other animals then it is as though we are computers programmed by a fool ( selection pressure) operating subject to the constraints imposed by a moron ( nature). — Joshs

The characterizations of evolution as a fool and nature as a moron are foolish and moronic in my view.

And those prejudices cannot themselves be a product of blind evolution. — Joshs

The idea of a "blind evolution" is tendentious and a presumptive artefact of mechanistic thinking.

“Without the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy we have no world and no facts, not even facts about what relative to what. And these cognitive values, I claim, are simply a part of our holistic conception of human flourishing. Bereft of the old realist idea of truth as "correspondence" and of the positivist idea of justification as fixed by public "criteria," we are left with the necessity of seeing our search for better conceptions of rationality as an intentional activity which, like every activity that rises above the mere following of inclination or obsession, is guided by our idea of the good.
If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny with out falling into total self-refuting subjectivism that they are objective (notwithstanding their "softness," the lack of well-defined "criteria," and so forth), then the classic argument against the objectivity of ethical values is totally undercut.” — Joshs

Since the world is a collective representation, I don't see why we should be "bereft of the old realist idea of truth as "correspondence" and of the positivist idea of justification as fixed by public "criteria,". Of course these ideas are relative to our collectively represented world, not some "absolute" world that stands "behind" that.

What seems to be most difficult to understand is that the real (not the collective representation we know as world) is not represented by our conceptions; our conceptions only find their sense in relation to the inter-subjectively constructed world we think about, refer to and understand in dualistic terms.

I call the noumenal, that of which we cannot speak, the real whereas Kant refers to it as the transcendental ideal. For me this is kind of arse-about because it is the empirical which consists in ideas, while the transcendental real transcends all our ideas. Experientially, it is that which is closest to us even though we cannot subject that experience in its "livingness" it to our conceptions.

Rationality simply consists in self-consistently thinking in dualistic or binary terms; black and white, yes and no, true and false, is and is not, exists and does not exist and so on. It is part and parcel, built into the very foundations, of the empirical world of objects and entities and their properties and relations.


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It is also presumptuous to assert that the ideas of self-sufficiency and other- dependence are coherent outside the context of human thought and understanding.

So, where does that leave us?