I am not sure that using the term 'thing' introduces any further clarity than the word 'reality'. When you say that the topic is verbal, I would argue that a lot of it comes down to language and its limits, as Wittgenstein suggested as constituting the 'limits of one's world'. — Jack Cummins

You can substitute "thing" for "phenomenon" or "act" or even "realization". The issue here is that we have ideas - quite clearly. What is gained by asking how "real" these ideas are? In distinction to what, or what's the alternative view that renders ideas to be problematic?

Also, I am aware that substance dualism is far less dualistic, but even that involves interpretation. That is why I go back to the initial issue, asked by Berkley, as to whether ideas are mind-dependent. I am also aware of the relevance of the perspective of phenomenology. But, even that doesn't explain consciousness itself and whether that is the source of both what is termed as mind and matter in the dualistic split of human thinking. — Jack Cummins

I am not following. Who has claimed that ideas are not mind-independent? If you could point out that person, I may be better able to follow.

I only ask that someone tell me what property or aspect in matter renders "thinking" impossible. I have not seen a convincing reply yet. But I could be missing something.

A thing is, a thing may be, or a thing is not. We plainly have ideas. Using the word "real" beforehand does not render the topic under discussion more clearly. It probably introduces more obscurity than anything.

If ideas are not mind dependent, then what could possibly be mind-dependent?

This whole physicalism vs. idealism discussion is mostly verbal. Until someone can clearly say when matter stops being matter, or ideas stop being ideas, we are not doing anything.

It's kind of like discussing if cows and animals should be lumped together or kept separate.

Consciousness surviving the body? If you are dualist, perhaps.

I don't see good evidence for consciousness absent a body, never mind consciousness being realized absent a brain.

If panpsychism is true, then maybe there is some very (but very) obscure way in which you could argue that something experiential remains as a fundamental aspect of the universe.

But this "consciousness" is so foreign and alien to what we understand when we use that word, that it is in effect, indistinguishable from the ordinary view that (human) consciousness vanishes.

Do existence and journey represent two different modal methods of discovery?

Does science culminate in the presence of a thing understood?

Does art culminate in the experience of an enduring point of view? — ucarr

Yes, different ways (methods) and different ways of understanding what is revealed in experience.

One is more intuitive, the other theoretical. But it's all the same world. You could consider the world as a kind of humanities (we appreciate and are puzzled and want to give it some meaning) - it's just that different people go about it different ways.

The issue is the assumption, they need not follow. The sciences ask how questions all the time: how does relativity connect with quantum mechanics; how do neurons connect in such a way that experience arises?

Likewise, the humanities ask "what questions" frequently. What do human beings do when they are left in isolation, what do people think about X and Y, and so on.

We can say that quantitative aspects are quite fundamental to the sciences, this much is true and is a curious thing about them.  

I suspect that the humanities exist in part to fulfill roles science simply cannot. Something about us being innately creative creatures gets expressed in all kinds of manners which are very hard to make sense of in scientific terms. We should be grateful for this, or we would have no arts.

Yes, there seems to be a bit of the common move of setting up the "view from nowhere," as a strawman foil here. You see the same thing in deflationary thinkers like Rorty as well. The old "we cannot achieve 'the one true ahistorical, perspectiveless view of truth,' thus truth is inaccessible," as if there is no middle ground. Yet it's not like my brother and I cannot both know our parents simply because each of our knowledge of them differs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly.

Rorty once called it (according to Dennett) the "vegetarian version of truth". Okay...so? truth is truth, vegetarian or omnivore. Maybe, and likely, there is more out there than we know, sure, but what we know is not false for that reason.

Or no luck is required. It has become common to think of logic and reason as being the sui generis products of mind, something "constructed" or something like that. But if there is a certain logic to the world, a Logos, then it should not be surprising if minds correspond to it. Rather it would be impossible for it to be otherwise. And the world certainly appears to have an intelligible order. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a bit hard to say. I can imagine an intelligent species with reason, that can't find such a logos, so they could settle for a creation myth, as we used to do back in the day.

But, it could be that given reason, we should be able to find some kind of order. Maybe. I'm more skeptical of this, but it's possible.

Yes, at the very least, our experiences are part of the world.

They can, if you are not careful, turn you (pun intended) into a Heideggerian!

But seriously, something about society (or governments specifically) prohibiting us something which is not justified, is always going to be alluring.

Kind of like that image of a person in a room next to a red button which has a sign reading DO NOT PRESS. What do you think most people would do?

Yep.

I believe Hoffman gets along quite well with Kastrup, so I don't think he has specific problems with philosophers. He has issues with philosophers who to him, don't make a valid argument.

Something like they (the philosophers who disagree with him) don't understand how science works, because we accept the best theories as true or good approximations to truth.

I'm forgetting his exact wording on this, but I don't find his rebuttal forceful. He accepts that evolutionary theory says something (true) about the world, ergo some of our theories are true.

But then there's the whole issue of evolved to discover what kind of truths? Truths about the constitution of the universe? Very unlikely. That must be some kind of lucky accident that we are able to form theories that apply to the universe.

Of course, there's also "folk psychological truths": if I kick a stone, it will move a bit until it stops. It's just that the theory is incomplete as an account of the universe, but perfectly fine for day-to-day affairs.

Philosophy is what the philosophers worry about. Issues that have not been made into a science, or issues in science that have not been so systematized.

And many issues that could well never be a science. So, it's quite a lot.

Simple definitions are hard and maybe impossible (aside from math and stipulations). Not for "philosophy", but virtually every word.

It's uncertain that what was red yesterday is the same red as today, and it doesn't appear that there is any fact of the matter. This is Kripkenstein.

One way out is to say that we're all dreaming the same dream. We really can read one another's minds. This is just to bring up how the problem ultimately comes from our worldview, that says we're each locked in to private worlds. See what I mean? — frank

Sure, "ordinary" everyday objects are extremely complex, consisting of many physical, chemical and sometimes even biological processes which seldom repeat in an exact same manner.

That's made more difficult due to our own eye, brain, internal state, emotions etc. Such that it may be impossible to say that the red bottle I see next to me is the exact same red tone I saw a few seconds later. Yesterday is even more difficult. But we approximate and tend to say that yes, this red rose is the same color I saw yesterday.

Sure, the dream analogy works fine. Heck, even a wacky (contradictory) solipsism: we are all solipsists, in a way.

To your question yes, it's internal. The "external aspect", if one wants to make this distinction, would be to speak of wave-lengths and photons, which themselves don't have color.

If we don't have the same experiences, couldn't we still behave as if we do? Each of assumes this, but it never shows up in social interaction. This would mean that the truth conditions for "It's red" are external. I think the issue I'm talking about applies to all the senses. — frank

We do behave as if we had the same experiences even if my red is someone else's blue. But the color is not external to anyone, or any creature for that matter.

We, in our manifest image or folk psychology, act as if red belonged to things (roses, blood, etc.), but this belief, if taken literally, is false.

We may want to convey the redness and blueness, but what we actually do is exchange the word "red', "yellow", etc. and assume that by using "red", you see in your mind what I see in mine, but we can't be certain it will match.

I don't think we have good reasons to doubt that they are the same, or at least, very similar.

Is it a problem that we don't know if the world induces the same subjective data in each of us? Is that unverifiable? What we know for sure is that "red" plays a part in social interaction. — frank

It could be a problem is you choose to take it as a problem. We usually don't. If someone is in pain, say we can see a person is missing a finger or they got hit by a car, we take it to be serious and reason that if the same thing happened to us, we would react in the same manner.

Sure, we can't know for certain (anything in the empirical world) if my red is your blue. But strangely, this issue is rarely (if ever) brought up in regard to sound. If I hear someone sing a song I like, no matter how out of tune it may be, then I will be reminded of the song and think to myself ah yes that's Led Zeppelin or whatever.

So, we assume they are hearing the same song as us. I don't think sound is qualitatively more important than sight so far as our senses go. That is, I don't see why color should be a problem, but then sound is not.

And yet all we have in our brains is neurons firing. Somehow that give rise to both the "subjective affects" and the "objective properties". If we see red as pure quality, and ballness as simple quantity, we are still left with the deeper fact that all that is happening in our heads is neurons firing. Just in different corners of the brain, as we can tell from the damage we can do by plunging something blunt into the "colour centre" as opposed to another spot that is the "object recogntiion centre". — apokrisis

If you push most people hard enough, I think you could get them to say that even those things which we consider "objective" cannot be proven to be so, so everything does end up being some phenomena in the mind/brain.

I think that we have to "bite the bullet" and assume that there is something out there, which is independent of us. Whatever that something may be cannot solely be a product of my mind, for if it is in every single instance a mental thing, then I see no way out but idealism, of a Berkeleyan variety.

Neurons firing, no doubt. But plenty of other things go on inside brains that aren't neurons alone, which probably play a deep role in how our minds work.

The idealists will complain that this leaves consciousness under-explained. The realist will dismiss it as instead an irrelevent complexification to them.

But because both camps agree that science should stay out of philosophy, at least they can agree on that.

Meanwhile, the science rolls on at a good lick. Sharpening our understanding of how things are. — apokrisis

They can say that, but I'm not sure it makes much sense. One can do science without an explicit philosophy and one can do philosophy without an explicit science. But to say that because one should only stick to one or the other seems arbitrary and pointless to me.

It is forgotten that say, for Plato and Aristotle there was no distinction between science and philosophy. Nor was there one for Descartes, Hume or Kant.

It's after Kant that such distinction begins to be made explicit. However, I don't think "science alone" suffices for every or even most questions we have. It may have the best supported and reliable data set and theory but leaves plenty out too.

Correct. Red is not a property of extra-mental (or mind-independent) objects but is a subjective affection which arises from a combination of our innate cognitive capacity and the powers (or properties) objects induce in us.

One can argue that this applies to all our senses. I think this is probably true, though the issue does get murky when it comes to touch. Not that we can't lose it, we can, and then we don't feel the objects we interact with, but the "extension" or solidity of the objects is very hard to "think away".

"If it be Inquired how it comes to pass, that sentiments and notions, which really are not in the things that are without us, do yet appear as if they were, and consequently that they seem to be Objects? It must be Answered, that this arises from the very nature of cogitation it self, and of the cogitative faculties; and that both Reason and Experience do evidence, it must be so.

...Reason sheweth that it must be so; for as we are conscious that we have a perceivance of Objects under certain Images, and Notions, so we are not conscious of any Action by which our faculties should make those Images and Notions; and therefore being sensible that we are Affected with such Images, and Notions, so long as, and no longer than we do attend to things without is (which things are therefore called Objects) and not being sensible that we are so by any Action from within our selves it cannot but appear that we are Affected only from the things without us, and so, what really is only in our selves, must seem to come from those things, and consequently to be really in them."

- Richard Burthogge

I'm not sure I follow.

Why would you assume that (mere) sentience gives you enough to be able to form beliefs (or thoughts) about anything?

Maybe you have a particular idea or definition of sentience that goes beyond what we usually take the term to mean, awareness. Awareness does not give you belief. You need something like understanding and reason, which are substantially more complicated than sentience to have beliefs.

At minimum I'd think you'd need to have explicit propositional awareness that something is the case (or not the case).

So far as we know, other animals tend to be concerned mostly with immediate surroundings and they also have instincts which guide them to do certain things: look for a mate, migrate to another part of the world etc.

To talk of an extra-worldly being must go significantly beyond environmental concerns and instinctual behavior.

But again, if you have a broader definition or conception of sentience, maybe more could be said.

Not really. I mean, there is a kind of pragmatic approach which is that if you treat others well and do good things, people will tend to be nice in return. But that's just the way people tend to behave.

If it's some higher concept such as a kind of universal justice, no. I've seen great people go through some really brutally harsh situations and I've seen criminals live quite comfortable lives.

There's going to be exceptions to almost everything and even treating others well isn't a guarantee that they will be nice back, but only increases the odds that they may be nice back. But anything can happen.

Thanks!

How does it compare to M&D (aside from the differences with po-mo) in terms of entertainment and fun factor?

Read:

Select Discourses by John Smith. Some good stuff wrt innate ideas and a little bit on things in themselves.

Clavis Universalis by Arthur Collier. An actual idealist, rational instead of empirical (Berkeley). Some good arguments whose form anticipates Kant's antinomies. Besides that, really unconvincing and rather boring.

Reading:

Scepsis Scientifica... An Essay of the Vanity of Dogmatizing by Joseph Glanvill

Tooks a break from Richard Burthogge's Philosophical Writings but will now continue. Close to finishing him. It's a crime he is not much better known. A mix of Locke and Kant, genius even.

The world with God and the world without look exactly the same. And it doesn't look good in either version. Make of that what you will...

Yeah, what you describe looks to me like the most likely scenario. It's very bad. Insane even.

One is kind of at a loss for words to see these two guys being the candidates. Well, we shall see what happens now...

Oh sure. Vote for cow manure over Trump, that's easy.

But what an embarrassment. Trump is just garbage, and Biden is senile. Hard to believe that out of so many people, these are the two that are forced on to the voters - though this applies more to Biden than Trump.

In any case, this performance will hurt Biden. Let's hope there's time for a miracle.

Mostly at the end of explanations - in so far as we believe we are close to reaching this level. It's almost never satisfactory, in my experience, but we cannot keep going down a further explanation "down" rabbit-hole.

One must assume there are facts of the matter about many topics. And nature must be some way, rather than some other way. Or if "must' is too strong, then we have to say nature is, currently, this way.

It means a basis in something other than semiotics/language/convention. That doesn't leave much except for physics.
I mean, there is quantum physics, where there are these fundamental particles/field-disturbances. Those are pretty dang objective 'things'. It's when you start collecting them together into sets of multiple particles, where physics has little if anything to say about where the set of particles is bounded. Mathematically, any subset is as good as another, so there's no correct answer to 'what one subset of particles is this particle a member?'. Absent a correct answer to that, there doesn't seem to be an objective 'object'.

Note that I switched to 'objective' there instead of 'physical', which is dangerous because the word has connotations of 'not subjective' and has little implication of 'not subject to convention'. — noAxioms

Yes, there is always going to be a potential issue with any word we choose, but from my perspective the whole "physical" argument is so often repeated as if a substantive distinction is being made, I don't think that's the case.

There could also be issues with "objective" as you mention, but I think we should take it for granted that we are always speaking from a human centric viewpoint, we don't have an alternative, so in that respect it is less controversial.

I agree that plenty of our distinction are made by convention, you can use a knife as something to cut fruit and vegetables or you can use it as a weapon, or a pencil sharpener.

However, these conventions follow certain restraints: we could group together two books and call those two books taken together to be one single book (as an object), but there are quite practical reasons for treating books the way we do.

So yeah, conventions are always at play, what's curios is that they don't seem entirely arbitrary either.

Maybe. But since we are by and large visual creatures and we cannot well visualize how physics at the most fundamental level would look like, it's hard to see such a view spreading.

Who knows?

you have a mechanistic universe, which is part of our present worldview — frank

Yes. That is correct as a matter of intuition, or folk-psychology. It's built-in the way we interpret things.

Things like universals, ideas, abstract objects, etc. become ill-fitting phantoms . They aren't addressed by physics because they don't count as real in the sense an atom is supposed to be. So this worldview says the real is physical. It's contrasted to unreal ideas. — frank

Something like this seems to be the drive between such thinking. It's kind of curious then, when you consider what our most accurate physics says what an atom is, has nothing to do with the intuition that leads us to believe that atoms are these visible concrete things, that make the world up.

And atom is far from that, and perhaps should be considered more of a kind of "cloud" of activity, which is so far removed from anything we can visualize it starts to look like an idea of sort, which is NOT to say that the atom itself is an idea.

It's just Plato back again, right? — frank

Plato... I suppose it depends on how he is interpreted now. If the interpretation is that we have a single perfect idea of a horse or a tree, then that's too strict, imo. If he is interpreted more softly as ideas are the mediation through which we experience the world, that is better.

But yes, on the whole.

I mostly agree. I would merely add that if we keep in mind that what we are constantly dealing with are mental constructions, this should not be surprising that a lot of what we interact with is a matter of convention.

I would only quibble with the topic of a "physical basis". Does that mean a basis in physics? Well physics will tell you little about ordinary objects. Novelists and ordinary people may say more about these things.

If physical basis means something else, then I would like to know. Until someone can present a convincing argument as to what "physical" must contrast with (and why is this so) we may do away with "physical" and speak about "objective basis" of objects.

Well, there's a lot to say in favor and against of suicide. But, at a very fundamental level, if you don't have control over when you end your life, then what do you have control of? Why even speak of rights?

I think there are several situations that are worse than death. And many more that are better.

What age makes the break off point by which we can say: "I've lived 62 years - that's more than most intelligent creatures will ever get." Or "I'm 62, I've still got plenty to look forward to."?

What accounts for those cases in which a young person commits suicide or an old person is more energetic and excited for future prospects? These are all questions that can be discussed for a very long time, and answers will vary depending on personalities, viewpoints, etc.

As for the issue at hand, as I understand the issue, once the person is dead it is no harm or evil on said person. This is quite irrespective of how much they could have lived regardless of accident or an unfortunate situation.

The issue then is how those who are still around feel about him/her. I don't see how we can imbue anything "after the moment of death" with anything like feeling bad for this person. It's a problem for us.

But you could insert an exotic religious belief that complicates the matter.

My question is more about 2- the potability problem. In the DR, if it is known that the water is not very safe to drink without gastrointestinal problems, due to high rates of microbes, why wouldn't there be a country-wide initiative by political factions/politicians to rehaul the whole system? — schopenhauer1

I assume that it isn't enough of an issue such that it merits being taken care of. If the current system works for now, then that's how they'll do it. I don't think it's a massive issue for most tourists, so if they don't complain en masse, then there is little incentive to do anything.

Keep in mind that many governments in these countries tend to be significantly more corrupt than developed countries (generally speaking) such that any public initiative actually taking off and working, is a semi-miracle.

In short, there is (currently) no incentive to worry about potable water. It will become an issue when it is too late.

All of this is speculation.

I think that kind of depends on where you stay. We get lots of tourists going to the beach, if you stay at one of those resorts, the water would be good enough for teeth brushing, but not for drinking. For most other things, it usually safer to drink bottled water.

Last I heard, the capital here, Santo Domingo, will run out of water by 2050 if growth continues at the current pace, which is a lot. I suspect 2050 is kind of optimistic, honestly.

Not good in Brazil, nor in Mexico, nor here, nor in almost any place in the world. By the looks of it, the water crisis will be much exacerbated if nothing massive is done by governments.

Hey schopenhauer1. I am not from Brazil; I live in the Dominican Republic.

I do recall recently reading that Mexico City is not at all far from a severe water crisis. But I do not know much more than this.

No. Unless they are primarily focused on ethics and wishes to show how one's beliefs lead to a change in behavior.

That aside, it's a (near) complete mistake to associate the person who does philosophy with the philosophy itself. By that standard we wouldn't read anyone.

Most of the big names were either racist, sexists, imperialists, etc. I don't think past people should be judged by the standards of our time.

Apologies for the obscure formulation. But you interpreted correctly. Mainly granting the given in experience much more value or force than it merits. Because on closer investigation, a lot of these so called "empirical" things, turn out to depend on the a priori mechanisms we have. And we then attribute to objects things which don't belong to it.

It's an extremely hard topic that does not have empirical evidence by way in which a demonstration could be given that would settle the issue. So why bother when we have all this things we can check?

Of course, you and I will disagree and think that they are granting too much to the given which (actually) belongs to the subject. But then that's why we are around and will continue to be around for quite a bit more.

By non-systemic you mean non-systematic? If so, I think that it merely has to do with the fantastic advance of the sciences, by which one can spend one's whole career studying the neuron of a squid, without knowing much more about biology.

We no longer have people who are capable of knowing all the sciences very well - including mathematics, which makes serious system building extremely difficult.

As for your second question, that would be my guess.

He interprets the people he reads very well. Not only Hume, but also Locke and Descartes and Leibniz and others. Good stuff.

:scream:

Nope.

In defense of Hume! Against his mis-interpreters!

It's near the very beginning of his Prolegomena.

Wow, I got one point over you on Kant. This made my day.

:cool:

And he is correct.

Well, this is pure speculation. If nothing else, metaphysics teaches at least about how philosophers go about building mental structures which they believe latches on to the external world.

On a slightly more positive note, it does tell us quite a bit about "folk psychology/science".

Finally, it could be that one system is "closer to truth" than another one. But we have no possible way of finding out which one is correct. There is something here to be said about "common sense" here, of which your guy said:

"It is indeed a great gift from heaven to have plain common sense. But this common sense must be shown in practice, through judicious and reasonable thoughts and words, not by appealing to it as an oracle when one has no rational arguments to offer."

That's not trivial to do.

Oh, I metaphysics too. Quite a lot. But, as your mentor suggests, I proceed very little.

It is still fun.