Do you think he can understand 'if a is the case then b must be the case'?

I don't know...his writing in English seems good enough for poor comprehension not to be a plausible explanation for his confusion. He doesn't seem to want to even consider the good explanations for why he is mistaken he has elicited.

It seems he will try anything to avoid facing the fact he is mistaken. He is either not acting in good faith or he is more obtuse than I can imagine

No I wasn't citing anything, just applying ordinary logic.
IF I must exist in order to think (or do anything else for that matter) then it follows that there can be no thinking or anything else done by me if I don't exist.
It doesn't follow that if am not thinking or doing any other particular thing, that I don't exist.

Whether or not 'I think therefore I am' can be logically proven is irrelevant. It cannot be disproven by the spurious entailment you adduced.

I guess that's a possible explanation. But the meaning seems clear. To put it another way:

'If I am thinking I must exist'
It follows that
'If I don't exist I am not thinking'.
It doesn't follow that
'If I not thiing I don't exist'

P = I think, therefore I exist.
Q = I don't think, therefore I don't exist.

P - > Q
Not Q (Q is FALSE)
therefore Not P (P is FALSE) — Corvus

You have this wrong. The logically entailed negation of 'I think, therefore I exist' is 'I don't exist, therefore I don't think' not 'I don't think therefore I don't exist'.

It's a rookie mistake you're making.

IIRC Maimonides puts forth a sort of radical negation of this sort, in that things simply cannot be predicated of God. However, Maimonides still allows that God can be known as cause, and of course God can be known via revelation. So, it's a somewhat similar idea, but I think it hangs together better because people experiencing miracles have warrant for their beliefs, it's just that their finite predicates have no grip on the infinite. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that all warrants for propositional beliefs (beliefs based on observation or reason) consist in "finite predicates". As I already said, I think individuals' faith-based beliefs, beliefs based on some feelings or experiences, are not rationally justifiable, if 'rationality' here is understood as being in a kind of Kantian sense, "pure reason". On the other hand, in Kantian, and other senses, people may well have practical reasons to hold faith-based beliefs, so I'm not arguing against that.

Don't worry about it, have it you own way...I think you are simply wrong and I've given reasons why I think so...but I have no confidence that you will admit it, so I don't want to expend any more time and effort.

We've already been over this. Parents are observable entities, god is not. It's a weak analogy.

Yes, I was aware of that Pierre. Thanks for the Searle reference; I wasn't aware of his take on perception.

You could say that knowing God is unknowable is knowing something about God. But for all we know God is merely an idea, the idea of an infinite, unknowable being. So, of course we know what our idea is, but that is all we could be said to know, something about the nature of our idea of God.

We have no way of knowing whether revelation comes from God or merely from the imaginations of people.

AmadeusD and Janus debate the coherence and implications of claiming that objects "present themselves" to us in perception. They discuss whether this implies a form of animism or agency on the part of objects. — Pierre-Normand

I think it comes down to different ways of speaking about it. Taking vision as paradigmatic, we can say that objects are presented, made present, to us via reflected light and no sense of agency need be invoked.

I made the point early on that the 'indirect' parlance is one way of looking at it and the 'direct' is another, and that there is no fact of the matter. It is a false dichotomy. It is remarkable how many pages of argument can be generated by people imagining that there is an actual fact of the matter regarding whether perception is direct or indirect,

Your discussion of objects "presenting themselves" in perception is intriguing. I think Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, which was a major influence on Merleau-Ponty, could be relevant here. Husserl argued that perception involves a direct intuition of essences or "eidetic seeing." This view seems to support a form of direct realism, albeit one that is very different from naive realism. — Pierre-Normand

To Janus: Husserl's notion of eidetic intuition is intriguing, but we might worry that it reintroduces a form of Platonism or essentialism that many find problematic. A more deflationary account of essences as abstractions from experience could be preferable. — Pierre-Normand

This might be an interesting avenue to explore, but I didn't have anything to do with Husserl or essences in mind.

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false. — Leontiskos

That people might say they know something about God does not entail that they actually know anything about God. They would need to be able to explain how they came to know things about a purportedly immaterial, infinite entity.

What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument. — Leontiskos

Even to a very young pre-rational child the parents are entities the child can see doing things, so the analogy fails, since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity.

I'd say that's a pretty reasonable doubt. — wonderer1

:up:

Right, same difference. And by the same sort of reasoning, the child cannot say that their parent fixed their bike. — Leontiskos

The child might have seen the parents fix the bike. Or has been told by the parents that they fixed the bike, this time and every other time that it needed repair. There is no problem with understanding how a material entity (a parent) can do things to another material entity (a bike) so the analogy is not a good one.

Or to provides a way to avoid facing, what it is to be human. — wonderer1

Yes, it could be that too. Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. Fantasy and confabulation may be ineliminably central to humanity, We, or at least some of us, may need to fantasize and confabulate transcendent things in order to make life bearable.

I don't see how we really have any alternative. — Tom Storm

No do I.

Which is why I often think that we approach so many of our values and beliefs aesthetically. We recognise a kind of aesthetic, poetic truth and, perhaps, mistake it for something more. — Tom Storm

Totally agree. I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human.

If feels a little like a stalemate. I wonder if there will ever be a breakthrough, some new science, some new philosophy? — Tom Storm

It's hard (for me at least) to see how such a thing would ever be possible.

The logical conclusion of these two sentences is, "Therefore, we cannot say that there is a God who does things." — Leontiskos

No, the logical conclusion is that we cannot, with rational justification, say that there is a God who does things. I have no problem with anyone saying that they believe there is a God who does things, provided they acknowledge that their belief is based purely on faith (as it must be since we know nothing of immaterial entities doing things).

"God did it" is a bad explanation, therefore God cannot be said to do things.
Or more simply:
"God did it" is a bad explanation, therefore God does not do things. — Leontiskos

The last part is what I was disagreeing with, which I would have thought was clear. If there were a God that did things, whether or not we can explain how he did them is irrelevant. If we want to say that there is a God who does things, on the other hand, believing we have rational justification for such a claim then a cogent explanation would be required. But such an explanation is impossible since we have no idea how an immaterial entity could do things.

And so from theological thinker and philosopher David Bentley Hart we get this: — Tom Storm

That passage reads to me like reificatory 'theo-babble'. I can relate to the feelings some of the words evoke: devotion, passion, love, a sense of divinity, fullness of being, the truth of being, consummation in boundless delight—William Blake wrote about these feelings, and also many another mystic.

These are evocations of very human, very poetic, feelings. But there is no rational warrant to draw any metaphysical or ontological conclusions therefrom as far as I am concerned.

So, I agree they don't explain anything, and they don't point to anything beyond the human potential to feel such things. But that just aint enough for some people.

The very notion of nature as a closed system entirely sufficient to itself is plainly one that cannot be verified, deductively or empirically, from within the system of nature. It is a metaphysical (which is to say “extra-natural”) conclusion regarding the whole of reality, which neither reason nor experience legitimately warrants.” — Tom Storm

Of course, the closedness of natural systems cannot be proven, but I can't see that we have any reason to think otherwise. Not only can we not prove such a thing to be wrong, we cannot find a shred of evidence that it might be wrong. We cannot but treat nature as a closed system because that system is all we can know. How could science incorporate something unknowable into its methodology? Methodological naturalism is not merely the only game in town, it is the only possible game in town.

Has any more sophisticated writing about god like this ever resonated with you. — Tom Storm

Some mystical writings have resonated powerfully with me, but I understand such resonance to be a matter of feeling, not of rationality. It is perilously easy to fall into wishful thinking. All that said, I see nothing wrong with people having their own personal faiths, but I think it's important in respect of intellectual honesty, to call a spade a spade. These faiths cannot be rationally argued for, but there are many who don't want to admit that.

But what is the argument, here? Is it, <If we cannot say how X has done Y, then we cannot say that X has done Y>? — Leontiskos

I haven't made that argument. That said, if we cannot say how X has done Y, and there is no empirical evidence that X has done Y, what possible justification could we have for claiming that X has done Y? And note I haven't said we should not believe X has done Y if we feel somehow convinced of it despite lack of evidence or modus operandi, but that would be a belief supported by faith, not by reason.

What I believe on the basis of faith or feeling can never provide justification for you to believe it. Your own feelings or faith are the only non-rational justification for your own beliefs. So, one should never make argumentative claims based on feelings and faith alone lest one embarrass oneself.

I would not go that far. Reason can easily overstep its bounds, while still maintaining its principles, and this is why some supernaturalist accounts are logically consistent but still should be rejected. — Bob Ross

I haven't criticized supernaturalist accounts on the basis of failures of "pure reason'. To say the accounts are logically consistent is only to say that they do not contradict themselves. You can say all kinds of nonsense without contradicting yourself.

My criticism was made on the grounds that supernaturalist accounts that claim to be explanatory are really not so, because they present no clearly understandable causal series of events and conditions. No mechanism of action in other words.

I agree that it can often be very nebulous, but this is a straw man. Sophisticated theists have very detailed metaphysical accounts of God. — Bob Ross

I don't think this is true at all. Can you cite an example? How could theists have a "sophisticated metaphysical account of God" when God is generally considered to be unknowable?

Recall Neils Bohr’s often-quoted aphorism, ‘physics concerns what we can say about nature’. — Wayfarer

Everything we can say about nature is just what we can say about nature, so I don't see why physics should be any different.

Physics concerns what appears to us as most fundamental, so to speculate that there might be something more fundamental is not really saying anything substantive at all. There is perhaps no limit to the non-substantive things we could say or at least the limit would only be the imagination, but are such non-substantive imaginings really of any importance for our understanding of the world and our place in it?

I don't think that one needs to limit themselves to what is scientifically peered reviewed or easily replicable. However, every example I have heard seems, to me, to be better explained naturalistically — Bob Ross

I would go further and say that all explanations based on reason are naturalistic. "God did it" is not really a cogent explanation. Even if it were accepted as an explanation, there is no detail, no step-by-step explication of just how God could have done it. None that can really make any rational or experiential sense at all to us in any case.

Of course, a theist can say they believe God did it regardless, and that's OK provided it is acknowledged to be a matter of faith. Even the Catholic Church accept the evolutionary account for example, and it's not at all clear what part they think God played. When it comes to the Big Bang, there is no explanation for any prior to the very beginning. Theists can say God did it, but that doesn't add anything to the actual explanations of how the process from BB to now unfolded.

Thanks, that much I could see. The part I couldn't get was how that ties in with a purportedly frequent complaint that QM is not complete. Are any theories complete (and consistent)? Anyway, I just don't see what matter has to do with the question of completeness. That said, I'm very open to being schooled on this.

Good point. — jgill

Can you explain why? I'm not seeing it.

Of all those choices, this is provably closest to the case, but you know….that leaves us with phosphate and calcium ions, nanovolts and picometers that think. Or, a brain full of nothing but extended substances that don’t think.

We are well and truly screwed, ain’t we? (Grin) — Mww

We are screwed in the sense that we don't know much. We have a conception (rightly or wrongly) of brute, dead, insentient matter, and we have a conception (rightly or wrongly) of godly, living, sentient mind. And we wonder how the former could produce the latter, we just can't imagine how it could be.

I tend to favour the idea that mater is not as brute, dead and insentient as we might think (although I certainly don't mean to suggest pantheism), and that in favorable energetic configurations it can become living and sentient (I'll leave the "godly" for the botherers). :grin:

Note: the 'mater' was a typo, but I left it in as it and matter ("material") apparently share a common root, along with 'matrix'. It's the mother of all ideas, or a "mother" of an idea. :wink:

Interesting, thanks. Descartes simply assumes that extended substances cannot think and that thinking substances are not extended. I think Spinoza's solution, that there is only one substance with both attributes, works. Descartes allowed two substances, Spinoza only one, but Aristotles' conception was of many substances, all extended and some thinking and some not.

Science is normative in the sense that there are methodologies to follow and peer reviewing of work. Really, all aspects of culture are normative.

On the other hand, scientific theses and results are judged as good or bad on account of whether they are consistent and coherent with the whole body of scientific understanding and whether they work, i.e. whether they have useful applications; so, science is preeminently pragmatic.

what advantage is gained by affirming something as real without the possibility of demonstrating it? — Mww

:up: I don't see it as a matter of advantage, but rather simply as affirming what seems most likely to be true. But to be sure what seems most likely to one may not seem so to another.

OK.

OK. I was speaking more generally about intelligibility of things. Heidegger's "ready to hand" or Gibson's less human-centric "affordances" for people and the other animals seems plausible. Things are first and foremost intelligible in terms of their uses, their significance for living.

Only because beings such as yourself are able to interpret them. — Wayfarer

You seem to be saying that things are intelligible because intelligent beings find them to be so, and that seems kind of tautologous or else one-sided, depending on how you might interpret the saying. Of course, you cannot have manifest intelligibility without intelligent beings finding intelligible things, but it could be said that things were potentially intelligible even prior to the advent of intelligent beings.

I probably go further than you in thinking that even though it cannot be demonstrated, it is plausible to think that space, time. energy. entropy and causation are human-independently real given what a remarkably coherent synthesis the sciences present. But I also acknowledge there is no definitive measure of plausibility, so...

Right, we have things we know are real, by definition, like the everyday objects and entities we all deal with every day, and then we have those things like time and space and causation, which may or may not be human experience-independently real. I don't have a problem with the idea that there may be real things which we cannot deomstrate to be real.

As such, causality/causation is no more than a metaphysical explanatory device representing either the progression or regression of real things in relation to each other.

Yea? Nay? — Mww

I think causation is understood in terms of energy exchange. I would say it is real, although it cannot be directly observed. Perhaps energy differentials can be measured, and the exchange of energy and causal processes inferred from that.

I wouldn't call it a metaphysical explanatory device. If it is real, it is a physical process.

What you say seems to imply that you think that seeing a particular colour and that particular colour are the same thing.

I have asked you several times if this is so and you haven't given a straight answer. If that is what you think I don't count it as clarity but as murk.

If you refer to a dualism of aspects as opposed to a dualism of substances then I agree.
You seem to count as real only that which the senses apprehend. My point earler was that on that criterion causation is not real.

No, you are missing the distinction between "not attended to" and "not conscious". Think of looking at a painting. You are aware of the visual gestalt of the whole painting, but you can only attend to an aspect of it, maybe the main theme of the painting. Then you can choose to focus on other details. — hypericin

How do you know you are aware of the "visual gestalt of the whole painting" simultaneously? I mean you can probably fix your gaze on the edges that contain the painting and thus say you are aware of the whole painting, but you will not be aware of all the detail contained within those edges or perhaps much or even any of it while you are attending to the containing edges. I'm not convinced I can even attend to all four edges at once.

Sure, you can scan it and become aware of the various details, but for me 'attending to' just is 'being conscious of'.

I’m sticking with the notion that my senses will never be given my neural events, from which follows I can never represent a real-time, first order neural event as a phenomenon. As for every single possible real object ever given to my senses, every single one of them will be represented as a phenomenon. Thoughts are represented, but as conceptions, not as phenomena, and this is sufficient to mark the validity of the distinction between the real of things, re: neural events, and the not-real of abstract conceptions, re: thoughts. — Mww

Right, we are "brain blind" in the sense that we cannot see neurons at work. But we cannot see cells, molecules, atoms or electrons at work and yet we count those as being real and causal. For that matter we cannot see causation itself at work either.

For me, thoughts inasmuch as they can be objects of awareness are phenomena. We call them mental phenomena. It seems odd to me to say that thoughts are causal and yet not real. You say

what the brain does in its manufacture of our thoughts, in no way relates to what is consciously done with them. — Mww

But I would say our thoughts are products of real causal brain activity just as what is consciously done with them is. Otherwise, the grim specter of dualism looms with all its problems and aporias.

Perceptual experience represents the world, to conscious awareness. We are aware of a gestalt of perceptual experience, and can choose to attend to a tiny slice of it. — hypericin

Right, so those parts of sense which are not attended to, not conscious, are not representations, but are presumably unconscious physical, neural effects.

I was referring to perceptual experience as representation. I changed "representation" in the quote to perceptual experience for clarity. — hypericin

Right, but it depends on what you mean my "perceptual experience". Presumably the body/ brain is affected by the environment constantly via the senses, with only a small part of these effects becoming "perceptual experience" if we do not count anything as being perceived which is not attended to, however minimally.

After all, we receive a torrent of representative perceptual experience all the time, and most of it is unreflected upon. Only a small fraction receives attention, and anything like linguistic content. — hypericin

If most of the data is never brought to consciousness it does not seem apt to refer to it as "representation"; who is it being represented to?

Representation without language and knowledge is still perceptual experience. But language and knowledge without representation is just language and knowledge. — hypericin

Since language and knowledge are inherently representative, I can't see how we could have language and knowledge without representation.

Doesn’t that just say neural events are real? No one doubts that, but no one can map from such physical neural event to a metaphysical abstract conception with apodeictic certainty, either. — Mww

The only certainties we have (barring global skepticism) are empirical and logical. To me, because it seems most plausible, because we seem to have no cogent reason to doubt, that thoughts are neural events, then I count them as real and causal. I think apodeictic certainty is overrated, but that's just me I guess.

No straight answers or arguments or anything interesting, so nothing to respond to...

I’d eliminate abstract conceptions having affect/effect from being real. — Mww

What if abstract conceptions only have effects if they are actually thought, and every actual thought is a neural (i.e. real) event?

Am I being that unclear? My point is not that perceptions are of many things. My point is that perception is not just "seeing an object", you have to at least conceptually recognize both phenomenal awareness and object awareness. — hypericin

I see no reason to believe that objects in the environment do not appear more or less the same to animals and children as they do to adult humans. it seems reasonable to think that becoming familiar with objects in the environment would make them to stand out more clearly as "gestalts".

For humans becoming familiar with objects includes naming, conceptualizing them as particular kinds, at least at a rudimentary level. We "carve up" the world conceptually, but we do not do so arbitrarily, the nature of the things that make up the world are the primal constraint on that process of carving up, or at least that seems to me what is most plausible to believe, as there seems to be no other way to explain how it is we all see the same things down to very precise details.