Most questions of metaphysics are just people telling stories to each other to try to ground the 'mystery' of life in some kind of foundational meta-narrative. — Tom Storm


This seems to apply to what many want from philosophy. Other issues seem drier to me, more like a mathematics with concepts which is aesthetically driven. — Pie

For me, philosophy is not concerned with establishing a meta-narrative, nor with establishing normatively correct rationality, but with getting the life back into life.

As Janus, @Banno and I have all been arguing (I think) the matter is about what could have been, and the temporal aspect makes a difference. Here we are saying that our uncertainty about the present is low, but our uncertainty about hard determinism is higher. We know what is the case, but we're not so sure that it was pre-determined and so could never have been otherwise. — Isaac

:up:

I thought the very basis of modal logic is that contingent truths, which cannot be false (obviously) could have been false (which means could be false in other possible worlds). — Janus

Almost everything you say there makes sense to me, so I am not sure if you were thinking it contradicts anything I had said. I thought I had already covered the "possible world" caveat with the above.

"Necessarily" always includes our world because it always includes all possible worlds. "Possibly" is explicitly non-committal on whether our world is the one described. If aliens are known to exist here, they are known to be possible; they may even be necessary, who's to say? But if you claim their existence is contingent, you're explicitly not claiming that in addition to existing here they don't exist here; you are claiming there is a possible world (maybe nearby, maybe accessible, whatever) in which they do not. Again: in that world, they do not; in this one, they still do. "Possibly not" just isn't about the facts here being different here. That rather misses the whole point. — Srap Tasmaner

That's the way I understood "necessarily" also. When you say "they (aliens) may even be necessary", though, I encounter a difficulty: I assume you can't mean logically necessary, so are you signalling that you are allowing that there may be a physical necessity that must obtain across all possible worlds, just some possible worlds or just this world?

If "aliens exists" is true then "aliens exist" is not false.

"is not" does not mean "is not possibly". ¬p does not mean ¬◇p.

Again, see the valid modal logic: — Michael

Right, if "aliens exist" is true then "aliens exist" is not false, and it could not possibly be false without negating "aliens exist" being true. So. as long as "aliens exist" is true then, "aliens exist" could not possibly be false.

But, in any case "aliens exist" could have been false. I think it's easier to parse this stuff in plain English, and in accordance with common usage. If modal logic yields something contrary to common usage, then there must be something wrong with the modal logic.

No, it's just saying something like "aliens exist" is not necessarily true, therefore it's possibly true and possibly false. — Michael

But that's not different from what I'm saying. So, "aliens may or may not exist" is an epistemological, not an ontological, statement; ontologically speaking aliens either exist or they don't, and if "aliens exist" is true, then "aliens exist" cannot be false (unless conditions changed such as they became extinct), not in this world at least.

You're introducing temportal logic. Temporal logic isn't modal logic. — Michael

I thought the very basis of modal logic is that contingent truths, which cannot be false (obviously) could have been false (which means could be false in other possible worlds).

That it is necessary that p is true is that it is not possible that p is false. — Michael

If p is necessarily true it is not possible that p could have been false. If p is contingently true is it is not possible that p is false, but it is possible that p could have been false.

I don't think you've answered the question.

I agree that any contingent p is not necessarily true. But what does "necessarily true" mean? Does it mean could not be false or could not have been false?

The counterintuitive conclusion is that I could be wrong in believing that something is true even though I know that this thing is true. — Michael

I think it is "could have been wrong" not "could be wrong" the latter is a contradiction.

How may a full understanding of knowledge be gained, subjectively, intersubjectively and objectively, especially in connection with the opposition between mysticism, imagination in contrast to the understanding of empirical science? — Jack Cummins

To my way of thinking mystical experience and insight, which I think is a very real phenomenon, is so personal that any particular faith or beliefs that grow out of that experience cannot be inter-subjectively tested or justified.

For me, mysticism is on par with ethics when it comes to being a philosophically valid field of inquiry. — Pantagruel

I agree somewhat with this, although I would put mysticism more on par with aesthetics. For me, the moral dimension of ethics at least can be understood in the more pragmatic terms of fairness and commitment to social harmony.

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

When it comes to religious belief there can be no empirical evidence or inter-subjective confirmation. So faith is, in relations to these kinds of evidence, belief without evidence. But people may believe on the strength of experiences that in themselves seem to them to constitute good evidence for their faith; and if that is not wrongheadedly put out into the public arena as something that seeks to convince others, then it will draw no critique.

:up: Yes like you I do sometimes see actual pictorial type images, but they are fleeting and it's usually when I'm dreaming, half asleep or under the influence of some psychoactive.

I guess if you've never had it, you never know you don't. I'll ask her. — T Clark

Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "mental Image"? I can visualize quite complex structures and maps, but it is not like staring at an actual static picture or map or an actual object. How is it for you?

I think the problem is more intractable, given the unpopularity of the viable ameliorations, ("ameliorations" because "solutions" would be too unrealistic at this stage it seems).

I posted this in the "glaciation" thread:

Universal cooperation is a pipe dream. Also the idea that we can quickly de-carbonize is a fantasy it seems. The "political" part of the problem is the promulgation of impossible targets, but also, the unwillingness (due to the perceived unpopularity) to promote the idea that we (in the "developed" nations) should all use much less energy; drive much smaller cars, use public transport, do without air-conditioning unless absolutely necessary, stop traveling overseas, choose locally grown foods etc. — Janus

This explains very clearly the problems involved with trying to de-carbonize rapidly.

What he says needs to be done can happen only through universal cooperation, which is the panacea that will cure far more imminent threats than global warming. — Hanover

The solution remains more political than scientific. Most of Europe is aligned, but not so much the US, and surely not beyond the West. — Hanover

Universal cooperation is a pipe dream. Also the idea that we can quickly de-carbonize is a fantasy it seems. The "political" part of the problem is the promulgation of impossible targets, but also, the unwillingness (due to the perceived unpopularity) to promote the idea that we (in the "developed" nations) should all use much less energy; drive much smaller cars, use public transport, do without air-conditioning unless absolutely necessary, stop traveling overseas, choose locally grown foods etc.

This Explains very clearly the problems involved with trying to de-carbonize rapidly.

No pressure of course...

I agree. I'd say (with my philosopher hat off) 'of course raw feels exist' and those 'raw feels' include an empathy that finds itself mirrored in pets. — Pie

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." C S Peirce

I agree with all of that. — Pie

Cool, so it seems reasonable to think that people's experience of pain is similar at least to the extent that they generally find it unpleasant and seek to avoid it. The lack of hard data, to me points to the private nature of pain, When I talk of "private meaning" I don't mean private semantic meaning, but pre-linguistic affects that it seems reasonable to think we have in common with animals.

I agree we have and can have no "hard" data. We know at least that people associate the word 'pain' with the word 'unpleasant'. We know people don't like being in pain. We know people feel pleasure, and that they sometimes seek it. We know people may take drugs for this reason, and that, generally speaking, they would not take drugs if they thought they caused pain, In fact we know that people take painkillers for just the purpose of eliminating it.

C'mon, give me something to disagree with...

What you say seems to 'anchor' meaning in something private. — Pie

I don't think linguistic meaning is anchored in something private, but is enabled by both private feeling and experience as well as public expression.

We are so convinced we feel the 'same' pain (while insisting that pain is private?) because of the routine use of 'pain' public life. — Pie

You can't feel my pain; that is obvious, and in that sense pain is private. We all feel pain, or at least most of us do if our neurological machinery is "normal", and we all behave similarly and say similar things when in pain, so it seems reasonable to think that the experience of pain is not so different for different people. But we can't be certain, just because each individual's pain can be felt only by them. Do you disagree with any of that and if so, which part and why?

it's misleading (so Wittgenstein seems to imply) to think of 'pain' having its meaning anchored in the ineffable. I connect this with Saussure's structuralism. Signs get their meaning positionally, — Pie

The word "pain" would mean nothing to someone incapable of feeling pain. Your feeling of pain is not accessible to me. The word "pain" in its public usage gets associated with people saying they feel unpleasant sensations, and because we all feel our own (and only our own) unpleasant sensations, we get a sense of the meaning of the word 'pain'.

I think those senses of meaning are roughly the same, because each person's experience of pain is plausibly roughly the same, but it also seems reasonable to think that each person's sense would be associated with various experiences and feelings, and thus be uniquely individual also, or so it seems to me.

which implies that meaning is public. — Pie

I think the beetle implies that there are private meanings; significant nameless images and feelings, also, that cannot be made public. That is according to my own experience. But we'll probably have to agree to disagree about that

The beetlebox is his own little joke on the ghost, on its epistemological-semantic nullity. — Pie

Regarding the beetle in the box: I don't think W denies it, but sees it, in its ineffability as dropping out of the conversation. The others cannot show me their beetle and they can't tell me about it either. So the beetle becomes irrelevant, but the fact that there is a beetle is most significant. Not all of being in the world with others partakes in "disclosedness".

Sorry to offend. I guess we just understand Heidegger very differently. — Pie

No need to apologize; no offense taken. I'm just a bit impatient at times is all. I imagine Derrida would agree there is no privileged reading of Heidegger (or any text).

That's precisely the view I was describing as 'Cartesian' (or 'Lockean' or 'Kantian'). It takes the subject as more real or present or certain than its objects. — Pie

I'm not saying the subject is more certain than it's objects ("objects" that is taken as "being sensed"). Being in the world consists entirely in sensations and images (including the sense of one's own body in an environment. The body cannot, except in thought, be separated from the environment. But the locus of "my" experience is right here being the body in the world.

This is covered in Heidegger in the notions of 'being in' and 'being with'. We are always already being in the world and being with others, but we are not being the world or being others; we are being dasein as "mine".

Heidegger is clearly not constructing the world from the 'I' below. — Pie

Right, the world is constructed (in the sense of experientially constructed) by being in the world with others. As Dreyfus often points out Heidegger allows that, in the "present-at-hand" sense of thinking about the world there is a universe which is prior to being in the world, but he sees that notion as secondary to, and derivative of the bodily experience of "ready to hand" being in the world with others

Sure, but that's still an 'internal perspective' on the issue (your prerogative, obviously), talking of the sensations as more present than the objects associated with those sensations. — Pie

We only know those objects as images and sensations. The objects are present "in" the sensations and images. Of course we also think of them as independently existent, which is also natural enough given their persistence, and invariant commonality. I think these are nothing more than habits of thought, useful enough for everyday purposes. Can we tease out a non-contextually "true" perspective re external objects, or are all perspectives just more or less fit for purpose?

The ghost I joke about is mostly just the guy behind all the sensory monitors, alone in the skull's control room, who grasps the world primarily as spectacle. I see it as a powerful part of the tradition. The other part of the ghost is the elusive X featured in the hard problem. — Pie

I agree that is a kind of caricature; but it's not how I think I, and I imagine we, experience the world. I think the "hard problem" is misguided if it is taken to prove the separate existence of mind as a non-physical "res", because we have no justification beyond prejudice for thinking that experience could not possibly emerge from what we think of as the physical matrix. For that matter I think the idea of the physical as a "res", a 'brute' material substance, is also misguided if taken to be more than just a perspective within its proper limits. These ideas of substance are derived from the experience of materiality, of tangibility, and I see no reason to think we know anything beyond that fact of experience.

Anyway, thanks for questions that have led to further clarification of my thoughts on these issues

However, I see no reason to believe that bat experts have knowledge about how thought and belief emerged, simply because they are bat experts — creativesoul

Right, I didn't have that in mind either.

Cheers.

Starting with Descartes, the subject becomes the center, and the subject, as the first true being, has priority over all other beings. Contrary to this priority of the subject, Heidegger's goal is to show that there is no subject distinct from the external world of things, because Dasein is essentially Being-in-the-world. Therefore, Heidegger puts together the separation of the subject and the object by the concept of "Dasein" which is essentially a Being-in-the-world. However, Being-in-the-world does not mean that it is like a piece of chalk in the chalk box. Being-in, as the most essential and existential characteristics of Dasein, signifies the expression of such terms as "dwelling," "being familiar with," and "being present to."

I said that my thoughts ,feelings and bodily sensations are what is most immediately present to me, and I should have made explicit that I think this includes the experience of being in the world. For me subjectivity just is being in the world, but being in the world is a bodily sensation. If I close my eyes, I don't see the world, If I am deaf I don't hear the world, if I has no sensation in, or proprioception of, my body I would not know how my body was disposed in the world. If I die my world disappears with me.

Of course I experience the world as being external to my body and that is why I say that there is no reason to doubt the externality of the world, looked at from that bodily perspective.
So I'm not claiming there is any "I" that is, or could be, experienced as being somehow separate from being in the world.

Descartes famously emphasized that subjective reality is better known than objective reality, but knowledge of the objective reality of one’s own existence as a non-physical thinking thing is nearly as basic, or perhaps as basic, as one’s knowledge of the subjective reality of one’s own thinking.

I don't agree with Descartes as this represents him. 'Non-physical" doesn't mean much unless interpreted as "not an object of the senses". We know our own existence as body, not as some "non-physical" self. I agree with Heidegger's idea of the "mineness" of being in the world, of being with others. This "mineness" is what I have in mind when I speak of subjectivity, not some attenuated, ghostly "I".

The question then is why reject the external world? — Isaac

In my view, rejection of the external world is absurd, and solipsism is absurd. I find the idea that I could be the only mind in the universe, not only implausible, but completely untenable. That said, I also acknowledge that what people find plausible depends on their foundational assumptions. if people "flatten everything out" such that they assess plausibility only in terms of what they believe is absolutely certain, then I can see how they might adopt solipsism.

They can argue that only their own mind is immediately present to them, and therefore either that it is certain that there are no other minds, or that it is at least more plausible that there are no other minds, or minimally that they cannot know there are other minds, so the safest thing is to live with that conclusion; which of course they will fail to do. It seems a ridiculous performative contradiction to me, but then what do I know?

I think we can have some sense of whether they are justified...or what are controlled experiments for ? We decide what counts as justification after all. Normative. — Pie

Controlled experiments are the province of science, not philosophy, in my view.

I'm familiar with Kant's version, and I have little argument with it; but I don't think he has the same thing in mind that you do.

But obviously you can do you. I just don't see why you bother with debate given what I take to be almost an irrationalism. — Pie

You're not listening. I am open to criticism, but any criticism will be parsed through my own critical filter and accepted or rejected depending on how I judge its plausibility. I want to improve my ideas, but I don't judge them against some notion of normative rationality. I like hearing other express their views and make their arguments, but again they are always assessed by me according to my own particular understanding of things. I would like to think it is the same for others.

No offense. But by my lights you do. The key point (what I refer to) is the emphasis on the internal as the given. — Pie

"The internal"; my thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations are what is most immediately present to me. Your thoughts, feelings and sensations are present to me only insofar as they can be conveyed by what you say about them: if you are being honest. If you are lying or hiding your thoughts and feelings then I may have no idea; unless I feel your actions are giving you away, and I could be wrong about that. None of this has anything to do with Descartes.

For some of us, getting it right is the job. Objective is good. — Pie

For some of us, right: I can agree with that. Perhaps for all of us, we only believe what we feel we have gotten right. But the feeling of getting it right in areas where getting it right cannot be precisely determined is an individual matter. It's also a private matter: someone might say they feel they have got it right, but be lying.

But I would like to have true beliefs, justified beliefs, reasonable beliefs. — Pie

I would say we very often don't, and cannot, know if our beliefs are true or justified, and we can only know they are reasonable if they are consistent with our preferred set of starting assumptions.

I still think it's either a bad metaphor or a dilution of 'faith' into something insignificant. If everybody is X, no one is, because nothing is picked out. — Pie

I think that is a non sequitur: if everyone is human, then no one is...?

But who would say otherwise ? Is the Enlightenment to be understood as more of a prison than a release ? — Pie

Depends on how you look at it. I'd say it's a mixed bag. Is scientism better than religion? I think the notion of normative rationality is a form of scientism; the idea that philosophy can and should emulate science.

Given your seeming 'Cartesian' leanings — Pie

I don't have Cartesian leanings, so I have no idea what you are referring to. It seems to me that you are tendentiously interpreting what I say through a Cartesian lens, all the better to dismiss it by.

We're in it as much as it's in us. That's my claim, anyway. — Pie

I don't disagree with this. I fully acknowledge that having language opens up new avenues of experience. Recall that all I've been arguing is that there is private experience, and that language can never capture the whole of experience, not so much because it is ineffable (although I think that is part of it, since parts of experience cannot be captured by language at all), but because it is too complex and subtly nuanced. To argue that experience is impossible without language would be to argue that every animal on Earth bar us does not experience anything at all; and I find that thought absurd.

I take serious issue with the very notion of what-it's-like regardless of the candidate under consideration. It's not like anything at all to be me. What sense does it make to expect there to be something it is like to be a bat(or a crow)? It's a flawed approach with no clear target. — creativesoul

Taken literally it is a ridiculous question: how can it be like anything else to be me, or any individual, animal or human?

But in common parlance it just means "how is it" or "how does it feel". How does it feel to be you? Does it feel good? Sometimes? Mostly? Does it feel terrible or unpleasant sometimes? So what is it like to be a bat? How does it feel to be a bat? What kind of experience(s) does a bat have? We don't know, but we might be able to take a guess, a more or less educated guess, no? Don't we imagine a chiropterologist might have a better idea than we do?

Can we control the thoughts that our minds spontaneously produce? When we write, the words just come to us, don't they? Can we control whether or not particular words occur to us before they've occur to us?

We do want to be machine men. Was it not you who introduced folk psychoanalysis, calling Brandom and Sellars 'anal', railing against a paradoxically up-your-arse concern with justification, in defense of the soul's imagery ? — Pie

No, I was saying that I personally find Brandom and Sellar's approaches too anal, too concerned with "getting it right" in some objective fashion. I said that my concern is that if you follow that path you will disappear up your own arse, and then corrected that to "disappear up the public arse".

Why should we worry about settling beliefs rationally in the first place if there weren't so many candidates to choose from ? — Pie

I'm not worried about that. I'm here to present my views and hear the views of others, and see if they seem plausible or interesting to me; that's all. I'm not here to thrash out some normatively mandated consensus, because I think think rationality is only a matter of consistency with what follows from the essentially groundless starting assumptions we all make on the basis, not of cogent argument or observation, but of what seems most plausible to us personally; in other words rationality mandates only validity, not soundness once the boundaries of the empirical realm have been crossed.

I think free speech is crucial, so don't count me an enemy of diversity simply because I seek the best beliefs like everyone else. — Pie

You're assuming that there are "best beliefs"; the same for everyone: I don't share that assumption.

Or do you insult reason to make room for faith as well as an unleashed animality ? — Pie

I don't "insult reason"; I just don't seek to corral it. I also think we all indulge in faith of one kind or another, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

And that means the need a common-public language to be in together, which is to say [also] a common-public world for that language to be about. You left out normative rationality. The first two requirements (arguably just one language-world) are those for any kind of communication. — Pie

Of course there is a natural normativity at work in that we all use the same words; albeit in different combinations. The only normativity I see as being appropriate and necessary to rationality is consistency and validity (conclusions following from premises) as I already said.

I think this is the natural way to think of it. But I take it to be one of the great discoveries of philosophy to have flipped things around. This flip, this revelation of the priority of the 'we' before the 'I' and the 'external' to the 'internal'...I take to be what's great in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. As I see it, one is one before one is someone in particular. Everyday Dasein is Anyone, tribal second nature incarnate. — Pie

I think this is the natural way to think of it. But I take it to be one of the great discoveries of philosophy to have flipped things around. This flip, this revelation of the priority of the 'we' before the 'I' and the 'external' to the 'internal'...I take to be what's great in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. As I see it, one is one before one is someone in particular. Everyday Dasein is Anyone, tribal second nature incarnate. — Pie

Of course there is way in which that is true. But I disagree when it comes to diversity of ideas; our cultures should not be straitjackets. I think Heidegger was very concerned about authenticity, about living one's life and thinking one's thoughts in accordance with individual experience, judgement and resolve, not following "das Man"; not doing and thinking "what One does".

I've read some anthropological work that suggests that hunter/gatherers (ironically) honour the autonomy of the individual, even children, more than modern western culture does. That said, of course we, in fact all people who live in societies and communities, are all, more or less socially conditioned. So I don't deny that the range of human experience, the range of possibilities open to us are determined to some degree by culture and language, and also by geography and circumstance.

'Experience' names a ghost. I don't deny it's utility in ordinary language, but I question its epistemological use in more careful talk. — Pie

I think it's more plausible that we all understand what "experience" means (in our own unique ways of course, although most likely roughly enough the same to understand one another) just because it is obvious to anyone who reflects on their own experience that we do have experiences. It is (sufficient commonality of) personal experience that underpins public usage, not the other way around, in my view.

Concepts, koncepts, khancepts, conecepts. Mww already tried this. — Pie

More attempted dismissal by lame ridicule? I thought you were concerned with rational argument. @Mww already "tried" it, and it failed...to do what... convince you? Big surprise! Try convincing the theist there is no God... You will never convince the dogmatists to go against their beliefs, or one who pays attention to their own experience,,,by mere "rational" argument. And this is for quite different reasons in the two cases.

Cling if you must to your ontology of secret things, but you must propose and defend it publicly (with words that don't mean whatever you want them to mean) to play philosopher rather than mystic. Try the game yourself. What is necessary for the concept of a philosopher to make sense ? — Pie

I know there are secret experiences, so I don't have to defend anything. I actually don't care if you agree with me or not; I'm just reporting my own experience; you can (and no doubt will) think whatever you like about what I report; it means little to me.

And that's the problem with this normative rationailty ideology: it's a horrible idea, it's the fantasy of the machine men, the thought police and the political correctiphiles. It's a misapplied transposition of Kant's categorical imperative: the 'rationality normalizing imperative'.

People will always have differing worldviews: it's a phenomenon of natural diversity. The Peircean notion of the truth asymptotically approached by the "community of enquirers" is a sick fantasy; another sad attempt, like many religions, to devalue and stamp out our animal natures.

What is necessary for a philosopher to make sense? To speak coherently and in terms that anyone prepared to make the effort can understand,,,although obviously not necessarily agree with.

Absolutely. But if there's a part of your mind that you're not consciously aware of then it suffers from exactly the same problem that the external world suffers from, for the solipsist. It can't be proven to exist. So it's inconsistent for the solipsist to use it's existence in a theory explaining how the external world might not exist (and yet they can still be wrong). If the external world is doubted because it can't be proven, then so must the unconscious mind be. — Isaac

True, if solipsism is defeated by my lack of omniscience then it is defeated simply by the fact that I don't know what will happen in the future, or even simply the fact that I don't know whether solipsism is true. The epistemological solipsist could retort that what I experience could be explained by either the existence of an external world or unconscious dimensions of my mind, which could be thought to place both hypotheses on equal footing.

This is just saying that the solipsist could be wrong about solipsism. That's not my argument. My argument is that the solipsist cannot be wrong about anything else, if they are right about solipsism. — Isaac

If nothing exists other than my mind, and I am not conscious of all its contents, then I could be wrong about some things.

Once you see it, the self-contradiction will be so glaring that you'll be amazed how cozy you were with it for so many years. — Pie

I think you're falling into some kind of dogma. Sounds ilke you're speaking about religious conversion. And with all this talk about "little ghosts" and "pineal glands" which has nothing to do with what I'm saying,I really have no idea what you are talking about. So nothing to respond to.

I speculate that it's the very background theological bias I'm criticizing that's tempting my opponents to insist that concepts must be crystalline and perfectly definite to be public. That's like thinking the Charleston (the dance) is perfectly definite or that there's one exactly right way to perform a song. — Pie

Again this has nothing to do with what I've been saying. I'll try again; concepts are not public; usages of them as expressed in communicative language are. It is always individuals that understand concepts, and they each have their own unique understandings which is the result of natural diversity and the diversity of experience and circumstance that brings with it different associations and affects, none of which can be separated from the understandings they are associated with, and all of which is private unless publicly expressed. And even then, no public expression can capture all of an individual's private experience.

Now admittedly I am basing this on my own understanding of my own experience and extrapolating to assume that it is more or less the same for others. I don't know this, just because their experience is private and inaccessible to me except to the extent that what they tell me is accurate, but this just goes to reinforces the point.