"doesn't mean that the word's meaning isn't of the world."

Not sure I follow. We construct the word, based on stimuli given by objects. We name it something, "apple". Is our word referring to what that stimulus is in the world (photons, reflection and absorption of light, etc.) or are we referring to the object?

We are referring to the object usually. Is the object part of the world? Parts of it, sure - other parts are constructions. It's not trivial to tease these apart for me.

we can think of words as already of the world, as practices engaging interactively with it. — Joshs

How does that account for differences in how languages have very different sounding, looking, written words for the same object?

The word varies, the object does not.

I am not reading it as closely as you are, I am reading, but somewhat more akin to a hard novel than a proper reading of a philosopher due to having to save that mental energy for other material. So, take my comments with a grain of salt, or several of them.

As I read what he is saying, it's that we likely make a mistake when we take a word to necessarily refer or signify necessarily to an object of some kind.

There seems to be a lack of necessity between our using words like "red", "book" and so on, and assuming there has to be something in the world which is "captured" by these words. But we seem to act as if this does happen; that a "book" is necessarily means that thing made of think wooden pulp with letter in it.

If this is part of what he is saying, then I think that's correct.

What's unclear to me is why this would be particularly "queer", to think or use some mental process of some kind. I say this because it's just as queer to think that we need mental content as to say that we don't need it, or that we can see the world without eyes, and rely on echolocation instead.

In short, anything I can think is bound to be "queer" by those standards. And in a sense, it is queer.

But I would point out that there actually is a way to how identifying and naming objects works, and that is word—thing (flower; though yes the word is not the flower), but that is exactly why we want it to work that way in every case. — Antony Nickles

Is this a factual claim?

(in each of the above pencil cases, they are NOT “ostensibly the same thing”, though the words are). Though, of course, if the circumstances are looser, you still play some part: in identifying a banjo or grouping it as a general string instrument (p.2 (though not in interpreting what identifying is, or how it goes wrong). — Antony Nickles

Yes, in the example he uses, different aspects of a pencil are being examined or looked at.

But when I say, “THIS is a pencil” after you show me your new mechanical pencil, and as I bring out what I take to be the ultimate pencil, you may take this as condescending or true, but how are the underlying facts and how this situation does what it does here dependent on us? — Antony Nickles

I take it that pencils don't exist in the extra-mental world. So, if I show you a mechanical pencil or you show me an ultimate pencil, the issue remains similar to my mind, we are speaking about pencils.

What he is saying is that the image could be mental or physical, like a patch of the color. That the physical patch of color serves the same purpose as the “mental” image of color (that it is mental is inessential). — Antony Nickles

I am not seeing the difference in terms of mental or physical terms. If the framework is presented as ostensive vs non-ostensive, then that makes sense.

Also, it is this wanting to be “sure” at all times that you express which Witt is saying creates the need for the object (fears its “lack”). — Antony Nickles

This is fine. I think he is correct if he is arguing that this "certainty" cannot be attained, which is what I think he is getting at.

He is not “removing” mental content; he is beginning to show that we unnecessarily picture it in the framework of an object (as a thing we can be as sure of as seeing a flower), while pointing out there is a larger, pre-existing world out there than us, and also picking at the feeling that we must have it or we “lack” something, which he says later turns into something we feel we “cannot” do. — Antony Nickles

I look forward to that part. It sounds like a critique of the given in experience, which I agree with and makes sense.

I'm doing this to show an actual involvement, to not lazy my way out of at least some of this.

1) I am foggy brained right now but will attempt to reply to what I think is interesting.

2) I am assuming that the pages you mentioned are the ones that show up in the document you shared.

First, a comment on a few things you said, then a quote I take form him, to see what I end up with.

One other point is his discussion of method, which a lot of this book introduces and explains. He says we can be “cured” of the temptation (to need objectivity) by “studying the grammar [ workings ] of the [ an ]expression”. As if, when we saw each things’ different rationality, we would let go of the desire to impose the framework (and standard) of an object. — Antony Nickles

My question is, who is the one who is looking for this "objectivity"? Philosophers? Ordinary people?

Maybe if someone holds on to a variety of a referential doctrine in which a word "flower" literally "means" that thing we see in our garden, then I can see his point of this being a misleading way of thinking about words.

Do ordinary people think this? It's not clear to me.

He calls them here “interpretations”, not meant as ‘perceived’ differently, but taken to apply to a different context, under the associated kinds of facts that matter (to the related criterion) in that circumstance.

The already-established associations (criteria, practices) are the reason why we do not usually make a separate decision (unless and until we do; his example: “interpreting before obeying” (p.3)). The example of getting the red flower is evidence that with “the usual way” we don’t have any reason to deviate from or reflect on our life-long patterns (like searching, and matching colors), as we do in politics, and philosophy. — Antony Nickles

If you have a different interpretation of what is ostensibly the same thing, say, these words you are reading right now, or maybe the crying tree outside my window, how is this not a different perception?

I don't see a difference between interpretation and perception, in so far as differing interpretations lead to different perceptions.

This is how I am reading you now and is just to see if we are on similar pages of thought or not.

Ok, on to what he says that I find interesting:

" ... he went to look for a red flower carrying a red image in his mind, and comparing it with the flowers to see which of them had the colour of the image. Now there is such a way of searching, and it is not at all essential that the image we use should be a mental one. ...

[an option is] ...We go, look about us, walk up to a flower and pick it, without comparing it to anything. To see that the process of obeying the order can be of this kind, consider the order "imagine a red patch". You are not tempted in this case to think that before obeying you must have imagined a red patch to serve you as a pattern for the red patch which you were ordered to imagine."

Not essential, the image? Hmmm. Perhaps it is not this way exactly. It's not as if "red flower" produces an extremely intense red image in my mind. It's relatively weak (in terms of intensity at this moment), but if I lacked it, I'm not sure I'd get a "red" flower, rather than some other flower (yellow, blue, etc.).

Yes, we can go in a non-reflexive mode, as we do when we get into a routine in which we do things without explicit thinking, and here you can do all kinds of things. But I think these are moments in which we are already familiar with what we are doing. If I get a red flower without explicitly thinking about the red, then in all likelihood I did it unconsciously, because I am accustomed to getting red flowers all the time.

I can't see removing all mental content being useful here at all, IF that's even what the issue may be.

I'll do better next time.

Which is fine. But the task is to say what is unique to physical stuff alone, which cannot include mind.

The problem is in arguing why the physical cannot be mental without it turning into stipulation: the physical is not mental because physical stuff cannot be mental stuff.

You'd have to show how this could be possible. That's the problem. And it's far from trivial.

But OK, please let me know what you think of this baby step. Even if so called concrete things turn out to be other than as they appear, perhaps also evasive, etc. Are they not yet, all of them together, bodies, trees, oceans, and rocks, something physics explores differently than it does the ideas which appear to shape our experiences and are not constructed out of matter. I get that we have dreamed that they might be, but if we are being fair, a thought might require matter to generate it, but once projected and gone, it is gone. Because it never really was. — ENOAH

Physics does not explore oceans, trees, rocks, that belongs to oceanography, arborists and geologists respectively. If we are going to use physics in applied form, then we do an abstraction to apply it to things like rocks. Ocean movement and trees are way too complicated for physics.

We can't use physics to study ideas. That's in part because these are different domains: physicists study the simplest things and ask difficult questions about these. Ideas or at least, the consequence of some ideas might fall on the psychologist, even though they deal with behavior, strictly speaking.

The issue is: are our ideas different in kind to the nature of the stuff physics says there is?

Here I am probably and outlier. Physics tell us a bit about the structure of matter but leaves its intrinsic nature untouched.

I think we just don't know enough about the nature of matter in general to say conclusively if there is a difference in kind between our ideas and physics or not.

Not I think therefore I am, but rather it thinks therefore it exists...but what is it? Whereas body lives, therefore it is. The latter can at least be shared with the rest of the universe. It is this oddity, Mind, that only humans seem to have, and that has 'fooled' us 'narcissistically, into wanting it to be special, more real, the being within the being etc — ENOAH

Ok. So, it's kind of like trying to push down or put into context that in having minds, we are not "extra special" and so those features of the world that lack mind - which you are calling body - are "me", more so than this mysterious mind, which is misleading.

You can say that I would only note that you are mentalizing the body with properties which are not clear it could possess absent minds - me-ness and being "central".

I would add that it is very far from evident if we can say that the stuff physics describes "bodies" of being made up of, fundamental particles and quantum phenomenon are like or unlike minds. It's very obscure, and I don't think it's a trivial answer (if one can even be given at all).

Because there is no language accessible to precisely express the point, these metaphors might be helpful, although also tricky.

In my metaphor Mind doesn't point, it's the finger (body) which points. Mind isn't even the thing it is pointing to. Mind is the direction in which it is pointing. That is how mind is empty. And in that sense is the body 'more' real. The finger is more real than the direction in which it is pointing. — ENOAH

Yep, it is hard to talk about this stuff, for sure. Here's how I see it, I don't think it's true to say that "fingers point", because they don't. People point, using fingers and many other gestures. A pointing finger absent an interpreter like us, is quite meaningless, so far as I can see.

Ah, ok, so the finger is "more real" because a kind of more "concrete" feeling, as bodies appear to have.

Well, I'd say that "concrete things", things that can be touched with our hands, are almost absent in the universe, especially if you consider how many things exists which we cannot touch, which is almost everything.

The issue is that body is being treated here as if you are attempting to give properties to bodies which belong to them, independent of what we attribute to them (nervous system, synapses, etc.) and somehow saying that this makes it "more real" or more concrete or something along these lines.

I'm not sure what this amounts to. A body being more real than mind is a sentence I can't make sense of.

As for the mind being an empty thing, something that merely points, I don't think this is factually true. That is, the very fact that it even points to something is already an activity the mind has. So, it can't be empty in this way.

I suppose the question to ask would be, what are you attempting to prove or what would be advanced or made clearer by supposing that body and mind are so different?

Isn't that inescapably the case? Some adopted by convention for various reasons, including, as you say, proof; some fringe applications of the terminology, and not adopted. That is a mammoth question, I know. My point brings me back to what is the body? Not a thing to best access with knowledge, but rather the thing we are [isolated from knowledge]. — ENOAH

We could, if we so choose, go back and use Descartes definition of body, which is extended substance. And mind would be non-extended.

The problem is that we now know that a body is not an extended substance, it no longer holds.

What should be done is to say which are properties unique to bodies and how these properties cannot be mental in any way. Then you could have an argument.

Incidentally, this is for philosophy. In ordinary talk, when we are talking to other real-life people, we use "body" and "mind" rather loosely, but it serves the purposes of the everyday.

That's not what we are doing here, which is being technical and trying to get at what a body is. As I've said, I don't think we know what it is.

That would have to be proved, not stipulated.

Or you can make the terminological choice of putting things this way, which is fine.

I suppose some kind of answer to this would arise if you look at our closest genetic creatures, namely primates.

There have been studies done on different kinds of them, and they show varying levels of cognition. They can solve some problems, but nowhere near close to what we can do.

You mention another issue which is problematic to this day, thinking. We don't know what it is, nor what it consists of in. When we attempt to say something about it, we are separating several cognitive components that may be deeply intertwined.

Yes, language is a very important - perhaps a crucial component. But when we go on to speak of non-linguistic thought, here we are really lost and have been for thousands of years.

Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura

Yes. That's in line with 'my' point. [because knowing is make-believe]. We cannot know what body is We can only be the body is-ing. — ENOAH

It's not that we can't know. Maybe we in principle can't know, that is yet to be established. We may never know what a body is. It's also possible that we may someday be able to postulate what a body is, and then we can formulate body problems.

Hence attributing a "x-ing" activity to a body, suggests there are other "x-ing" activities that are not body.

At some vague length of time, that real natural process evolved into an autonomously moving system, with its own laws etc., not just admittedly already mediated sensation, but sensensatiin displaced by a working world, a system of triggers and responses, by nature empty fiction; though displacing everything, including primitive sensations and feelings. — ENOAH

I think a lot of these issues arise from taking the given for granted: C.I. Lewis and Raymond Tallis discuss these topics very lucidly. As it stands, the issue of sensations being more true or real can be misleading, to my eyes anyway.

where does body stop and mind begin? — ENOAH

I think there is good evidence that indicates that we don't know what a body is. If we don't know what a body is, then I don't think it makes much sense to say that a mind is a thing distinct from a body, or an additional stuff to body.

Mind is part of body and body is part of the world.

That may well be interesting. I'll be sure to read some and give my opinion and/or ask for feedback, etc.

Ok, let's me take it piece by piece, see if I follow.

I am understanding virtually everything uniquely experienced by humans to be only experienced in the first place because over millenia (generationally transmitted) our once simply organic sense 'organ', imagination, overproduced and the images 'intended' to be used for conditioning responses, e.g. a roar means run, evolved, eventually into language, and out of that, or around the same time, human Mind. — ENOAH

That already has some important mental components, which, though appear to be given (that is, self-evidently "there"). If correct, then by already stating that a sense induces a creature to run, or attack a prey, or indicating mating season, you have built in a sensation as representation. Sensations "by themselves" are just noise, photons bouncing off objects, molecules hitting our nose, etc.

The "run", "see prey", etc. Are already transformed.

It's not clear at the outset, that a sensation caused us to develop language, it appears to be a genetic mutation that spread to the species very quickly.

The triggered feelings and actions, and effects on the body and nature are real; but the coding, Mind, and the so called experiences, really just empty structures having evolved into the linear form, Narrative, requiring a Subject, a dialectic, the illusion of truth, for what is just a structure, belief, one of the neverending settlements of dialectic, these are what I call fiction--maybe exagerratedly out of an overzealousness about the understanding (not invented, found in/ constructed out of everything heading its way)--the point is this. — ENOAH

So, we get feelings directly, no mental component is involved, but somehow when it comes to mind or intellect, then we do add this component.

But if we look at animals, who lack language, they don't merely take a flash of light, or a moving bush and stay still, they react to it in a manner which is appropriate to the situation, they may run, or freeze for a moment, but this is interpreting what is going on, this has some mental properties.

Only if they did nothing, and did not react to stimuli, could you make a case that there is just senses and nothing else, as I see it.

Reality, the feelings and actions, the sensations unfiltered, and drives, including bonding, are not [meant to be: meaning is exactly what is constructed, hence the brackets] experienced that way, fictionally, in linear narrative form attaching to the Subject. The body, Reality, is not in knowing, the becoming narrative, a fiction, but in being [the] body. — ENOAH

Here is the issue again, sensations are not unfiltered. If they were unfiltered, we wouldn't have them.

You can say that with human language, we do add meaning to things, but I don't see that as being less "real" than sensations. It's a faculty we have, that other animals lack.

Hence sensations and "narratives" are both constructions of the occasion of sense. Again, a sense of burning, is particles moving quickly, but creatures react far more richly than the stimuli would lead is to believe.

On the (admittedly weak; but ultimately, all we've got) prima facie presumption (which has been mistakenly rejected) that what we sense is a real world.

I would submit that it is our constructions which have seduced us into thinking our senses cannot deliver reality. We are not born with any 'reasons' to doubt that they do. It is our perceptions which displace/distort our senses; our emotions which d/d our feelings; our ideas which d/d our [intuitive] imaginations, etc — ENOAH

I am of the opinion that what we have access to are representation (or notions or anticipations) on the occasion of sense. There are "real", as real as anything could be.

Whatever may be the ultimate cause of these representations, is beyond our knowledge.

So, I think the senses do give us access to reality. But that reality is a notion, which is the only reality any creature can have, as I see it.

Even so, I don't follow what you are saying about mind or self being more fictional than body.

That's the grand old problem of the self. It could be an illusion, of course. It may not be one, also possible. We don't know enough to establish this one way or the other.

But I do agree that we cannot detach mind from body, as if it were a spirit animating otherwise dead matter.

Now, you say that "I" is a construction, which, is in a sense true: everything we analyze is a construction, including what we call our "body".

Nature does not distinguish.

I don't quite see how mind could be "more fictional" than body.

That's fine and a lot of it true. However, it seems to me to be the same issue Descartes pointed to back in his day. He had scientific and religious reasons to make such a distinction.

We no longer (of very few of us do) speak of substance dualism, of a body being a substance and the mind being another different substance. We speak now of the so called "hard problem", which is that we can't explain in scientific terms, subjectivity in essence.

The tone and perspective are secular, the problem is similar in most respects.

The issue, if I understood you correctly, is merely a linguistic one. What we choose to call "mind" or "body" and what is it that you want to include (or exclude) in the definition. But I don't see any logical problem in saying that mind is part of a body.

Or alternatively, that body is perceived through mind. I don't see a dualism here.

You don't hear people saying there is a body gravity problem or a biological mental problem. Which you could choose to make a problem quite legitimately.

It depends on the level of specificity you want in an answer. Corpses are human bodies, no? Do corpses have minds or experiences? It would appear not. So, the one can exist without the other.

Likewise, it is at least conceivable that one's consciousness could exist outside the body, or be transferred to other bodies. Personally, I think that conceivability is a very weak standard for possibility, since we can often conceive the impossible as possible due to not understanding what we are talking about, but at the very least the two don't seem as essentially linked as say, a triangle and its lines.

---
Anyhow, I think the better arguments for the existence of incorporeal souls' existence outside the body tend to rely on a very particular metaphysics, and presenting them in a coherent manner is going to require extremely large detours into concepts like vertical reality, the nature of being/God, Logos/logoi, etc. But when people try to copy these arguments into the context of prevailing contemporary metaphysical assumptions I think they almost always fall incredibly flat, and I don't think they can be justified as part of a philosophy of nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The corpse example does not say much. I mean, if the body is dead then the mind is dead too. You would have to show how a mind can exist outside a corpse, which is crucial evidence that is missing. That would be a very strong indication that mind and body are different categories.

Conceivable, yes. But very weak, as you say.

You could attempt to give a naturalistic account of mind being separate from body, without going into Platonic metaphysics. You could say that the laws or habits of mind are, in principle, different from the laws of physics and heavenly bodies. Maybe that's true. Maybe not.

But I don't think we know nearly enough about body to say that the mind cannot be a body modified in a specific way.

I limit myself to monism, and I call it "materialism", but it can be called "naturalism" or "mentalism", it doesn't matter much. I very much admire the Platonic tradition, and I think it has a lot of value, but it also needs to be modernized a bit.

Those are all very, very different positions; but you said it like they are all claiming the same thing. — Bob Ross

Not really. Not in this specific case. They are using different words to signal the same general thing: what we have access to are out mental constructions, not external objects.

The very idea that objects cause these “anticipations” (or more accurately: representations) is itself subjected to your own critique; which you seem to have overlooked. — Bob Ross

This is what is being discussed in effect: when we speak about "ordinary objects", we are actually speaking about representations (notions, anticipations) and is what any example we can use to illustrate any point consists of.

The only "help" I can see this offering, as opposed to thinking that we see are objects themselves, is that conscious experience is what we are most confident exists in the universe.

We complicate things considerably if we say that we are confident that objects (which ground) our representations also exist. It's a postulate, which I think makes sense, but now we have to worry about "proving" representationsin addition to objects which stimulate these representations.

The latter is extremely obscure to analyze with much depth.

What is a body? Can you specify when a body "ends" and a mind "begins"?

I can't. Either mind is part of body, or body is part of mind. The point is the distinction needs to be made as to what the difference between these two are - IF it can be stated.

So, asking am I my body is problematic.

Quite. For all we know the cup could have vanished from existence, or turned into a basketball or anything you can imagine. Quite unlikely, but we can't say for certain - at least I can't.

But to claim the cup remaining were I last put it proves it exists, no more proves that because I can see an oasis in the distance on a hot sunny day, they must exist in the world as well.

It is easier on the brain. I personally can't get over the fact that what we take for granted (almost) completely is precisely what we put into the object. It's so counterintuitive, goes against every fiber of my instincts that I can't believe it. Yet it must be true.

one can trust their experience enough to know that (1) they exist — Bob Ross

Well...

One thing is to state this within an everyday context of tables and chairs and going to work and going to sleep and the whole routine thing. This is the given.

But in the empirical world, there are no certainties, only grades of confidence. They can be quite high (I know what I am experiencing at this moment) to medium (I don't know if that person is pretending to be in pain) to low (am I dreaming?).

You can't prove objects exist. We take it for granted for the sake of convenience, but the proof is not established. It may sound excessively skeptical, but is nonetheless a serious issue.

If not Kant himself, then his predecessors are on the right track, the world is representation (Kant, Schopenhauer), notion (Burthogge), or anticipation (Cudworth).

We can then say we have high confidence that our notions are real things in us. But as to the objects which cause these anticipations, we know very little if anything.

A disaster. It may grow much bigger, maybe beyond the Middle East.

Iran is firing misses at Tel Aviv

So now we move to Lebanon, which, given the current dynamics at play, and explicit and overwhelming support by the Biden administration of Israeli evil, was, in hindsight inevitable.

It's lamentable that Nasrallah was murdered. He was, till the day of his death, willing to cease the attacks on Northern Israel, in exchange for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Quite a reasonable view. Now comes someone who will be much harsher and less sensible.

And more mass death for everyone.

It's just my perspective, you could end up liking it and finding it convincing. His aesthetics might be good. If you want to, give it a go. It just didn't live up to the hype in my areas of interest, with some exceptions to be fair.

Edit: more details.

His analytics were quite shaky and dubious.

His physics were ok, some interesting stuff in it.

His metaphysics were pretty bad.

The main bulk of the work, aesthetics and ethics, I did not read, as these aren't my cup of tea, but I can't say if it's good or bad.

Human language is countably infinite because:

its alphabet is finite
every string in human language is of finite length — Tarskian

But it isn't.

But it isn't true.

But it isn't true, manifestly.

But it isn't true, manifestly you can go on forever.

But it isn't true manifestly you can go on forever and ever.

And I told him "But it isn't true, manifestly you can go on forever and ever."

We had a discussion, and I told him ""But it isn't true, manifestly you can go on forever and ever."

etc.

How do you know that what you believe in is true if you can't express it?

Oh man... they are torture... But once you find the good stuff, then you get top tier idealism.

Yes, they should, though Burthogge is not a Cambridge Platonists. He has certain strong Platonist elements.

Thanks for giving them a shot- as always if you have something you think I'd like, I'd be happy to take a look.

:victory:

Damn! On Amazon for MUCH less: 8 dollars for the Kindle version. Don't know how much it would be in Australia.

My paperback was around 30 bucks, while not cheap, is worth it given it's a rare reprint type of thing.

Also, there is a free version of the book online:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A30630.0001.001?view=toc

It's quite readable. But I'm with you on preferring to read philosophy in physical form, for the most part.

Correct! :cool:

You know of Cudworth and More. Music to my ears. :cheer:

Yes - His Treatise though not his True Intellectual System.

And also Richard Burthogge - extremely, extremely interesting - An Essay Upon Reason. A mix of Locke and Kant. Superb.

Other forms of consciousness are not even hypothetical, we have all kinds of animals which, according to all available evidence do experience the world in a very different way.

But as for shifts in human consciousness - well, so little is understood from a scientific perspective, that speaking of "evolution" of consciousness may be premature.

But possible. For us right now? We likely won't see a massive change. But, who knows?

Ah. Maybe. It's hard to say.

Full sense meaning being experts or elite at something? I mean, very few, there is an important genetic component to consider when talking about elite level anything.

But I think the of a highest ideals "in all areas of life" is probably not possible. Or if it is, it is very very rare. Unless you have in mind something else.

Yes, that did come out much more literal than it should have. It's a metaphor, not literal, meaning, we can see how certain activities are reflected in the brain, we can see a certain patterns between a person doing one thing vs. a person doing another and what that reliably may trigger.

But what we don't know is how we do X rather than Y. For that we don't have a way to do research.

It's been a while since I read Metzinger - very interesting from what I recall.

As for Hume, yes, but he was analyzing the self in so far as it could be subject to empirical investigation, meaning his system.

But he was very clear that his system concerning the self was "very defective". and concluded, lamentably that:

"In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz., that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou’d be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding."

How useful is this area of brain research to the debate between free will and determinism? — Jack Cummins

It might be interesting or useful if choices were made by brains. But choices are made by people.

We have learned a bit about the strings and the pulling of them but are completely in the dark about the puppet master.

Do you think that self-mastery is possible? — Jack Cummins

Sure. At least, I don't see what is problematic about self mastery.