I quoted what he said about idealism verbatim. If you missed it go back and have another look. Note the distinction he makes between subjective idealism and Kant - 'Kant's sense of "transcendental"' - and Kant's is still an idealism. — Wayfarer

Okay, it would have been better if I had said, "shouldn't be taken as supporting idealism in a broad sense or radical sense.

Still, what are your thoughts on using idealism as a rhetorical ploy, along the lines of Stephen Law's "Going Nuclear"?

There are approaches within psychology which argue that
‘mind’ is not an inside set off against an outside, but an inseparable interaction, a system of coordinations with an environment in which what constitutes the perceiving (the inside) and the perceived environment ( the outside) are defined and changed by their reciprocal interaction. Because as individuals embodied and embedded in the world we are already outside ourselves in this way, there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others.
Mind is thus treated no differently than organism , which has no true ‘inside’ given they it is nothing but a system of interactions with an environment it defines on the basis of its normative way of functioning. But neither is there a true ‘outside’. So this modifies Wayfarer’s idealism somewhat into a play better the ideal and the real in which neither side has priority. — Joshs

I hold a somewhat similar view, however I'd say there is a lack of nuance to the following:

...there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others. — Joshs

I wouldn't use the adjective "radical", but there certainly are distinctions between our perceptions of ourselves and our perception of others. Furthermore, understanding the bigger scientific picture, allows us to recognize and take such distinctions into account in a more informed way.

Sticking specifically to perception, the way we hear own voices is typically through bone conduction. Similarly, the way we see ourselves is typically mirror imaged. Now of course these days we can take out our phones and record ourselves on video, and to a degree mitigate those differences between first and third person perception, but there are all sorts of such distinctions to be recognized.

What do you think of Thompson's comment towards the end of the video, about idealism being a philosophical crutch?
— wonderer1

Not sure, since he didn’t have time to elaborate. How do you interpret it? — Joshs

I think it suggests that Thompson thinks that the matters he brings up shouldn't be taken as supporting idealism.

This is more of a stretch, but perhaps Thompson also recognizes how Stephen Law's Going Nuclear is of relevance in the case of many who profess idealism, and use idealist arguments to feign philosophical sophistication and to avoid the apperance of losing arguments.

How can we trust reason and logic, given that we have no way to assess them without using them again? How can I trust my brain, since I have no way to assess it without making itself in charge of making the assessment, without giving it the responsibility of assessing itself? — Angelo Cannata

Unless one has fallen into the black hole of solipsism, it really isn't so difficult if one is willing to get out of the philosophical armchair. You can give the responsibility of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your cognitive faculties to a psychologist trained to makes such evaluations. You can study the workings of brains and perceptual systems to develop a more nuanced understanding of the various degrees of reliability of human cognitive faculties.

Depending on health insurance it may not be cheap, but you can take a WAIS test (or whatever the equivalent is where you may be) and get some relatively fine grained detail on the subject of your idiosyncratic constellation of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

Perhaps you aren't alone with your armchair? :chin:

Often these authors write their arguments and perspectives in the midst of the high winds of modern empirical science, and they have the proper corrective force when they are in conversation with modern empiricists, but yet their force is not properly calibrated for speaking to those of us who are not coming from that perspective. — Leontiskos

:up:

No, I am 188cm tall with a five pack, the top two blocks of my abs fuse into one. Sorry for posting a picture of one of your flatmates. — Lionino

:monkey:

I was just testing out my hypothesis, that you really didn't know what you were talking about when you said:

This is the very last post I ever write in reply to you. — Lionino

Thanks for playing. :lol:

Radar is not a pulsating machine gun shooting bullets (matter) & spaces (absence) at a target. Or is it? — Gnomon

Are photons a new concept for you?

In that case, the normal default is you side with the OP's accusation and expect the accused to answer it. If the OP is of course lying or unfairly accusing, feel free to point out where the OP's accusations fail. But it should be specifics, not general. — Philosophim

LOL

I'm afraid life has given me an inability to take OPs so seriously, on the basis of them being OPs.

I recognize Christoffer as having a lot of insight that can be learned from. I can understand you wanting the conversation to go the way you want it to go. However, to my mind that doesn't seem too relevant to whether Cristoffer's posts bring value to the thread.

Of course, I may have seen too many OPs claiming I was in league with the devil, and so it is just me thinking you are kind of control freaky.

But if what we need is healing then it's important to note we usually need help with that, and thinking about it isn't the same as talking about it with a therapist or a trusted friend, and philosophizing about it -- well, only do that when healed. You have more important things to do than philosophize about it when you're hurting. — Moliere

:up: :up:

Antifa mugshots. It seems that outside ugliness does seem to motivate inside ugliness — I don't see how the inverse is so much the case, especially when so many of these people are deformed. — Lionino

Damn, you've gone and busted my irony meter.

Amazing thread though.

I'm curious, are you short? You come across to me like a short guy.

If cognizant organisms did not operate with some basic logic, then a predator could be attacking them AND not attacking them at the same time. Given that those conditions have different response procedures (be they automatic or not), their mind has to, one some level, treat the condition binarily. It's logic, however basic. — Ø implies everything

In the case of ravens using cars to crush nuts, why think it is a matter of logic rather than pattern recognition? (Which is a more basic aspect of neural network behavior than is logic) How do you know you aren't projecting?

In the case of your quoted statement, I'm thinking fight or flight responses aren't something I'd see as a particularly good example of logical reasoning, but more as evidence of the machine inside the ghost. Again, the question of projecting logic, on something more complex than simple logic, comes to mind for me.

The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it. — Wayfarer

That seems a rather silly thing to say to me. A rather significant element of my lived experience is based in knowing that in many cases that there is a huge amount that can be said about it.

What is the point of such a binary statement?

Can you give me a reason to think that it is not a case of Going Nuclear?

I just believe it's a lot more than what most people have done, and I am lonely and disappointed that I have no one to share it with. You are right that there are no immediate material benefits from this. Humans are social creatures and do all of their great accomplishments in groups. If I can't convince other people of what I'm interested in, then I still have only my own 2 hands to work with, no matter what vision I have in my head. — Brendan Golledge

My view is that we are all social primates who are born ignorant and are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant, and finding opportunities to simply be a mensch among mensches is more than enough.

That said, it seems to me that some ability to lead others to recognize wisdom is a rather important mensch skill. The notion of being an ubermensch seems counterproductive to such a goal from my perspective, because for me, understanding of our mere humanness plays a hugely important role in recognizing what influences others.

I can brag too. On the forum I was hanging out at before coming to TPF, there was a sort of multithreaded and multimedia event which lead to myself and other atheists being seen as Christ-like (by a religiously skeptical but also very much hopeful universalist retired biology professor) and a Presbyterian minister referring to me with the line, "Zen Mind is embracing the traffic, and finding a way to groove with it in your own way in order to both be a part of it and transcend it." Most important to me, is that these events brought home to a rather fundamentalist Christian that I as an atheist recognized him as a loving brother.

So what is it that you want to share, and what is it that you are ignorant of, that keeps you from being able to share it?

For my part, you can check out my forum mix tape.

The blind spot keeps us from recognizing these things. — Joshs

What do you think of Thompson's comment towards the end of the video, about idealism being a philosophical crutch?

I'm afraid it's you who is confused. There is no such thing as "the 'is' of equality". That's just a misconception. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your lack of recognition of the distinction, doesn't eliminate the value that the distinction has, for those who recognize the distinction.

Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents.
— Janus

From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it. — Wayfarer

We are outside the minds of other people. Do you think that we can learn about the workings of other people's minds by observation of their behavior? Doesn't your statement amount to saying psychology is impossible?

So how does the physical brain generate consciousness or awareness? — Corvus

Physically.

If you want to consider the question seriously it will involve studying a lot of science. However, I suspect you just wanted to do philosophical performance art, by asking a non-serious question. Am I right?

From a philosopher's perspective, I feel Sean Carroll, exemplary science communicator and all around gentleman that he might be, is a poor philosopher. Prone to just this kind of error: — Wayfarer

I'm not sure what you see as the significance, of how you feel about it.

Can you provide a quote by Carroll, that you see as exemplifying the sort of error you are talking about?

I'll add this:

Neuroscientists usually investigate one brain at a time. They observe how neurons fire as a person reads certain words, for example, or plays a video game. As social animals, however, those same scientists do much of their work together—brainstorming hypotheses, puzzling over problems and fine-tuning experimental designs. Increasingly, researchers are bringing that reality into how they study brains.

Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synchronize-when-people-interact

This position, 'the soul is a harmony' is very much similar to the modern physicalist position which apprehends ideas, concepts, mind and consciousness in general, as something distinct from the physical body (as the harmony is distinct from the lyre), but insists that these are dependent on the physical body as properties of it, or emergent from it, like the harmony is dependent on the lyre. — Metaphysician Undercover

Beautifully said! :pray:

That can't be right, for today's physics will be different tomorrow, and physics does not tell us anything about the mind or brain, only that they are at the very bottom, made of the stuff physics describes, but that leaves a lot of stuff out. — Manuel

For a scientist's perspective, here's Sean Carroll:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/

From my perspective, in light the huge variety of technology working as well as it does these days, it would seem rather ludicrous to think that physics of tomorrow will be much different in a pragmatic sense. The fact is, modern technology involves having gotten an awful lot of things pretty much right.

Isaac Asimov's essay, The Relativity of Wrong, is well worth reading in considering this topic.

Honestly, people. How do you expect to be taken seriously when you can't get the most basic facts straight?? — Patterner

:rofl: :up:

All the clever sensible people who wouldn't ever join a cult surely neglected their responsibility to educate their fellow citizens rather better than they have done, because clearly those people are not capable of educating themselves. — unenlightened

Not all. There are some on this forum who have put significant time into educating our fellow citizens, since well before Trump came down the escalator. It seems to me, that painting things in such black and white terms is likely to incline people to a fatalism you don't want to see.

If something exists and is knowable, then it has a determinate form and, therefore, it has an essence. We can know essences to a greater or lesser degree. If clinical depression exists and is knowable, then it has an essence, and the definition from the DSM is attempting to set out that essence. The idea that some words have equivocal senses is an ignoratio elenchi, unrelated to the question of essentialism. — Leontiskos

Suppose that rather than things having essences, our minds recognize certain 'signatures' in things. Is there a good reasons to think that 'there are essences' is a better way of understanding things than, "our minds recognize patterns'?

Fear of religion. — Wayfarer

This is just slinging rhetorical shit, at those you see as part of the social band you are opposed to.

Since our brains/minds seem to be capable of believing anything, true or false, having some grounding in the physical basis might keep us from getting off track. — Mark Nyquist

:up:

Hey nice cherry pick :up: — Wayfarer

Picked especially for you. :grin:

If you haven't read him yet, you might find interesting the writings of the naturalist philosopher of mind Owen Flanagan who has studied and appreciates Buddhist meditative practices. — 180 Proof

Yes, The Problem of the Soul is good.

{See https://inquiringmind.com/article/3102_20_bodhi-facing-the-great-divide/ for a ‘modern traditionalist analysis) — Wayfarer

It looks to me like the article got the following part right:

The weaknesses of Classical Buddhism are typical of other forms of traditional religion. These include a tendency toward complacency, a suspicion of modernity, the identification of cultural forms with essence, and a disposition to doctrinal rigidity. At the popular level, Classical Buddhism often shelves the attitude of critical inquiry that the Buddha himself encouraged in favor of devotional fervor and unquestioning adherence to hallowed doctrinal formulas.

And I think it does bring up some decent questions. First, why wasn't this solution hit on earlier? It is very effective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd think a lot of the right factors had to come together. Off the top of my head:

1. Warm blooded for faster and more stable brain performance.
2. A highly social species that could greatly capitalize on language and culture.
3. Bipedal locomotion that freed up forelimbs for carrying things.
4. Hands suitable for tool use.

Those four factors alone would weed out a large majority of all animal species that have ever lived on Earth.

I can't see any mileage in arguing about what the words mean. The best one could do in a situation like the one we are in is to make an agreement about how to use the words and then deal with any substantial issues. — Ludwig V

:up:

Something that seemingly can't be reinforced too much.

Yeah, I would say*, you and the computer you were typing on yesterday have extension along the temporal dimension of spacetime.

* Well, in a philosophy conversation anyway. :wink:

They are in a 'present' related to their reference frame, but that is a subjective notion of "present" that breaks down when trying to understand the bigger picture.

And no, I haven't been considering time travel, other than the time travel we are all doing continuously, as far as I can tell.

There is a lot to this....

In the physical world we should use presentism

The physical world is the basis for our mental worlds.

In our mental worlds we should use eternalism.

Philosophy isn't always clear or you have to look closely to see what applies and context. — Mark Nyquist

Being a physicalist monist, the idea of a mental world independent of the physical world doesn't resonate for me.

I recognize that we are apt to have deeply engrained presentist intuitions, and for practical purposes we more often than not make use of a presentist perspective. However there are practical cases where the STR needs to be taken into account, such as GPS technology.

I guess I don't know how to make sense of your statement here.

The only claim I am making is that presentism isn't compatible with STR. Yes, there is a lot of context to consider.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presentism/#RelaPhys

Counterargument is bold in the extreme. It seems to require that we simply overturn the best physics on the basis of metaphysical arguments. Perhaps we could take this line (but it seems a very challenging route. The arguments for presentism (those stated in §2, for instance) look somewhat underpowered when it comes to delivering that result. The way in which counterarguers have typically tried to proceed, then, is by giving independent motivations for rejecting the special theory of relativity (both Crisp 2008 and Monton 2006 may be read as doing this). An interesting way to pursue this project is to argue that STR is to be rejected on scientific grounds, rather than for some purely philosophical reason, suggesting that another scientific theory (Quantum Mechanics, perhaps) requires absolute simultaneity. This is the approach taken by Tooley (1997: 335–71), though in defence of the growing block theory rather than presentism. Nonetheless, the orthodoxy remains strongly opposed to this kind of approach.

Presentism works. — Mark Nyquist

If you deny relativity.

It is as if we were saying our emotions analyzed our emotions, no? — NotAristotle

I'd put it as... Our cognitive faculties can recognize and logically consider our emotional reactions. No, I wouldn't say our emotions can analyze our emotions, but I don't know what it would mean for emotions to analyze something.

The predictive system can study itself? — NotAristotle

Why not?

You don't want to answer them, OK. But that weakens your case. — RogueAI

One would hope, only in the minds of those as subject to fallacious thinking as you are. But what ya gonna do? :chin:

E pur si muove.

So it's impossible for certain conglomerations of plumbing to be conscious? Which systems of valves, pipes, pumps, etc. are possibly conscious and which aren't and how do you know? — RogueAI

Why would I want to waste any more time, trying to explain the physical working of things, to someone who denies there is any physical working of things?