Ooo a Discord server, nice! Will join later today. The other philosophy servers on Discord aren't bad per se, but the topics I've seen covered are quite limited.

A TPF one would probably suite me. Good plan B.

Sure thing!

Do animals have rational thinking? Do animals have communication skills? Is intuitive thinking rational or maybe something better? — Athena

I suppose a bare minimum has to be symbolic representation akin to something that arises with language use. Animals do not have language, if by "language" one has in mind propositional knowledge.

There may well be other aspects to thinking that are not related to language, but we don't know what they are. We are back to speaking about these things through language. So, until we have some proposal as to what non-linguistic thought is, we are stuck.

As for communication? Yes, they do, and they seem to be highly efficient at it. Look at bees or birds or dolphins, they have some amazing capacities for communication that we lack.

Intuition is somewhat hard to describe. I don't think it's better than non-intuitive thinking, just different. Though we should keep in mind that our intuitions can be quite wrong.

To clarify and or get rid of certain words or tendencies that prevent discussion from advancing.

This applies to a lot of metaphysics and a part of epistemology.

But as for ethics or aesthetics, I don't think ordinary language helps much, because we are dealing with facets of life which we have less depth of insight. And when there is lack of depth of insight, what we can say about it amounts to very little:

Why should we be just?

Why should we not do evil?

Why is this beautiful?

These questions have answers which don't give much depth of insight. They tend to be rather trivial but are nonetheless crucial issues for life.

If so, then it is a sensible approach. It would be hard to believe that ethical or aesthetic considerations could be eliminated.

I don't know Austin's claim. I was replying to your comment.

Austin's argument is about what he sees as the misuse of particular words in philosophy. He is not making (or does not see himself as making) arguments about 'realism' (naive, indirect, or otherwise) per se. — cherryorchard

Sure - words can be problematic in philosophy. People get stuck discussing words rather than ideas all the time, so there is room for "ordinary language philosophy".

But there's also the temptation to treat all philosophy or almost all of it, through this lens which is a way to sidestep issues rather than deal with them.

It's up to each one to see if the topic under discussion is or is not an issue concerning the misuse of language.

Manuel, would you agree that Austin is wrong about indirect realism becoming meaningless due to a lack of contrast? I think an example of that kind of breakdown in meaning is the kind of idealism where one says everything is ideas. That makes the concept of idea meaningless because the very stuff that once gave the word meaning, that is physical stuff, has been redefined as ideas. If everything is ideas, the concept of idea becomes meaningless. — frank

I have not read Austin.

If the claim is that if everything is indirect, then nothing is because we would have no notion of what an alternative could be, or something along those lines, then I think that's right.

We have to experience some things directly to say that are something we don't experience directly, and the other way around.

I'm not sure it would apply to idealism, because we already know of alternatives to it. With the case of realism or indirect realism, it's a bit trickier.

This would depend on what type of panpsychism one envisions. The panpsychism I am familiar, Galen Strawson's, does include incomprehensible (to us) subjects of experience, but it's not to be viewed in terms of something that thinks or wills- it's a very, very, basic type of phenomenon, quite rudimentary.

Other forms of panpsychism many be more extreme, but I don't know them in depth.

You are right, I don't understand a lot of animism well, and I will take your word that it mirrors say, something like what William James argues for. Which is fine. It's not my persuasion, but it's a legitimate view.

As for Hoffman himself, it's somewhat hard to say, since he says we don't evolve to capture truth at all. That's seems to me more excessive than the current science indicates, including the science Hoffman uses to defend his views.

These merely reflect the respective impact on me, which of course is the only thing I can say.

Politics:

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

The Great War for Civilization by Robert Fisk

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste by Philip Mirowski

Philosophy:

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality by Ralph Cudworth

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

Novels:

Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

This forces me to leave our portions of books which I would otherwise recommend, such as Hume's Skepticism with Regard to the Senses which is a chapter, or Richard Burthogge's An Essay Upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits which I did not read in complete form, or indeed Kant's Solution of The Cosmological Idea of Totality in the Derivation of World Events from Their Causes,Possibility of the Causality through Freedom... Eludiation of the Cosmological Idea of A Freedom... or even essays, such as Chomsky's What Can We Understand? which I consider the most important essay in epistemology/metaphysics.

Same thing with fiction, I have to leave our portions of books, such as the first half of Michael Cisco's Animal Money, or the short stories of Borges, etc.

And I'm sure I'm leaving out stuff that I would kick myself for forgetting. But it's kind of inevitable.

It's almost impossible to write such a list, but it's an interesting exercise.

I mean, I don't think we can become the thing in itself either, at best we can perhaps say some negative things about it, or we can use "as if" (or "like a") language to speak about it, as Plotinus does.

But I don't think we will ever get more insight than that and furthermore, I fully understand why some may think this may a complete waste of time or effort (not that you are saying this.) But I find myself and always have been, extremely attracted to and fascinated by this idea.

Panpsychism could be a solution, but animism less so, though as you point out they can be similar. The issue as I see it is that panpsychism only considers the (conscious) mental aspects of reality, either explicitly denying or overlooking the non-mental aspects of reality, which by far outnumber those things we consider "mental".

If you believe knowledge is inherently relational (as I do), then I don't see an alternative interaction. At least none that I can detect using our human intelligence.

Maybe God or angels - or, if you want to be less poetic and more naturalistic, an extremely intelligent alien species - could have an intelligence utterly above ours, which may include other ways of knowing.

Or maybe it's impossible. Hard to say.

Running with the phenomena-noumena thing, you can know how something interacts with you at least, yes?

Say, you may interact with an apple-an-sich, which might at least tell you something about the apple, namely about your interaction therewith. Or, you may interact with a neighbor-an-sich, which might tell you something about the neighbor, namely how the neighbor interacts at least. — jorndoe

Yes, I believe it does, but we don't know how. As in, once you remove all senses from our experience of an object, I think something remains, which itself is not only our unification of properties to create a phenomenal object.

Some have tried to read it this way, say Cristoph Koch, he says something like there was the "sun-in-itself" the "planets in themselves" etc., but that is problematic, imo.

For you are already presupposing a great deal about an object by saying it's an apple (in-itself), that suggests that no matter what creature would arise, an apple as an entity in the world. Different creatures might well pick up different properties.

If we expect apple-omniscience/certainty, then we're over-demanding.
In terms of (phenomena-noumena) epistemics, what would be required (perhaps expected) to know a ding-an-sich (without interaction)? Becoming das-ding...? — jorndoe

Ah. There are different views here.

Kant doesn't think there are any - with a somewhat problematic (but very interesting) exception: free will. It's due to a kind of causality which is not solely a naturalistic one.

Schopenhauer would say the thing in itself is will, roughly energy, which we feel when we move an arm or a leg and pay attention to what we are doing. He would say that this is akin to what other objects in themselves would probably feel like too, if we could feel them. But we are still removed from it due to our cognitive apparatus.

Plotinus, much older, speaks of the One, which we can only speak in an "as if" manner, very interesting and quite reasonable.

There are other options, but none that come to mind that straight out say this is how we know a thing in itself. Of course, there are probably exceptions I am missing.

Reading some parts of The Philosophy of Redemption by Phillip Mainländer.

He has some interesting ideas in his Analytics and Physics, but his Big Idea, shown in the Metaphysics ("God" chose to kill himself rather than continue living) section verges on complete embarrassment. His argumentation is paper thin, and I'm surprised he has a few followers...

I had higher hopes for him, but I suppose I'll take out of it a few bits here and there.

Yes, good. If I understand correctly or roughly, sure we can think what we please and face no contradictions (save logical ones) and we could go on thinking we are grasping something which is not, noumena for instance. Of course, for us, and our mode of thinking, if we leave this out of the picture, then something seems to be missing intellectually.

This of course does not guarantee we are (or are not) getting at something and then there is the point you raise in your last sentence that we can't find a representation which consists of an object in itself.

I think your interpretation of Kant would be called a "deflationary" one? Maybe.

Edit: this is for my indulgence. The explicit Kant discussions stops here.

Alright. Maybe we are leaving Kant maybe not or maybe we are talking about S. now, it doesn't matter much, the topic is what's interesting to me:

We have representations. All our knowledge is representational. This necessarily implies that what we experience is an interaction between a subject and an object. Knowledge is relational. No relations, no representations, no knowledge. But we don't want to say (at least I don't) "no things" remain.

Objects exist and have a way of existing. We only know how objects exist as representations. Objects must have a way of existing that is not reducible to us alone. They must have a way of being, independent of us, in virtue of which they exist independently of us.

If this is false, then we have to deny astronomy, paleontology, geology, etc.

My final twist here is that, astronomy, geology, still do not tell us about noumena. Nothing can, outside this intellectual feeling we have that something like that ought to exist in some manner.

What is wrong here?

Objects are relations all the way down, insofar as they remain intelligible for us. Given from the principle of cause and effect, it is only incoherent for us when we look for one of those without the other connected to it. So…don’t look there. — Mww

Well, I may have been either tainted or mislead, but for better or worse I have taken in Lucy Allais interpretation of Kant so if I removed this aspect for my interpretation then my understanding of Kant would almost entirely collapse. Which is quite plausible.

In any case, this is the section which I find interesting:

"Accordingly the understanding limits sensibility, but without therefore expanding its own realm. And inasmuch as the understanding warns sensibility not to claim to deal with things in themselves but solely with appearances, it does think of an object in itself. But the understanding thinks it only as transcendental object. This object is the cause of appearance (hence is not itself appearance) and can be thought neither as magnitude nor as reality nor as substance… Hence concerning this object we are completely ignorant as to whether it is to be found in us-or, for that matter, outside us… If we want to call this object noumenon, because the presentation of it is not sensible we are free to do so… [it only serves] to mark the bound of our sensible cognition…”

(A 288-A 289, B 344- B 345)

When he says this object is the cause of appearance (transcendental object) I take it that he does so because he thinks that, if an object as appearance consisted of relations all the way down, things make no sense. In a previous page he says:

"It is startling, to be sure, to hear that a thing is supposed to consist altogether of relations. Such a thing, however, also is mere appearance and cannot be thought at all through pure categories..." (A 286. B 341-342)

I mean, then we also can't understand an object consisting entirely of relations either. Ugh.

It is more intelligible (to me) to say a thing (as appearance) consists of relations. But the ultimate ground of these relations we do not know. They must play some kind of grounding role, which we cannot know.

As you can see, I don't know how to cite him properly.

Positive or negative noumena don’t matter; each is noumena as far as understanding is concerned, and since understanding is the problem-child here, the exposition of its flawed or illegitimate functionality is paramount. Besides, positive or negative noumena have to do with intuition anyway, in which either there is a kind of it we don’t have, re: that kind which can develop its representations given merely intelligible existences, or, there is that kind we do have, re: that kind which develops its representations only because there are real existences. — Mww

Hmmm.

But he says

"If, on the other hand, by merely intelligible objects we mean merely objects of nonsensible intuition - objects for which, to be sure, our categories do not hold and of which therefore we can never have any cognition at all (neither intuition nor concept) - then noumenon in the negative signification must indeed be admitted..."

(B 343)

Then he goes on to say this is the "problematic" concept of the noumena. And now I have trouble finding his comments on "positive noumena". But he quite likely has in mind Leibniz and his monads.

This is quite more laborious that I thought, though I should have known...

In any case, let me try to zone it in.

hence the grounding relation of appearances is known to us. Cause and effect: for every sensation as effect there is necessarily a thing which appears, sufficient as a cause of it. — Mww

I see a green tree. The cause of it is photons hitting my eye, then my brain does something we-don't-know-what then I see a tree.

But, what causes the photons? And then we keep going down and down.

So, what we are doing is describing relational structures at a certain level of complexity. Mind you, even describing photons and eyes, we still are entirely ignorant as how could photons lead to any phenomenon.

Anyway, have at it. I suppose the best we can hope for is some kind of agreement on like two topics. Wild.

Out of fear of forgetting to do what I wanted to, let's just go straight into it. I don't know if it is appropriate to this thread or no.

So, Kant speaks about "things in themselves" and these are the ground of appearances. We do not know how this grounding relation works, only that it must be so, otherwise objects would relations all the way down, and that's incoherent for us.

On the other hand, Kant speaks of noumena. He is quite clear on noumena in the positive meaning of the term, these are the things traditional metaphysics was discussing and never managed to advance.

Positive noumena could including things like Leibnizian monads or Cartesian souls - maybe even Platonic Ideas. We have no idea if this knowledge is possible and how it could possibly be like.

Since this is so, we best leave noumena in the positive sense behind, it's like arguing over words.

The issue, as I see it, is Kant's description of noumena in the negative sense. He says it may exist, but we can't be sure, it's a kind of limit to speculation.

But yet: 1) He shows no such hesitation when speaking about "things in themselves" and 2) in the practical domain, he has recourse to speaking about noumena to account for freedom!

Why not do this to things-in-themselves? Or rather, why would he even bother saying there are things in themselves, but there may or may not be noumena in a negative sense?

In short, I don't see why Kant couldn't have merely said there are things in themselves and noumena in a positive sense and put aside noumena in a negative sense. It seems excessive to me.

These are my impressions, and I probably misread many things.

My brain is fried. I dunno how I am typing right now. Yeah there's some stuff in what you quoted from which is potentially problematic from my perspective. But not today.

You will not bait me..... :halo:

We may need to chat about this one day. Not too too long in the future. But not right now, I Kant.

It's been a lot of work. :cry:

:cool:

What "debate"? You haven't even stated the proposition in contention we're supposed to either be for (thesis) or against (antithesis). Please clarify ... — 180 Proof

:100:

Quantum physics merely makes Newton's observations much more evident; Newton (nor Locke and Hume and Priestley) could not understand gravity. We don't understand gravity. We understand quantum physics even less.

But the topic I think, should not be prima facie too difficult. One should state what matter is and why is cannot include mental stuff, or the opposite.

If this can be done, then we can proceed. If not, then the issue seems to lack clarity, it is a proposition posed in a question-like format, but it has no answer.

This is done to avoid Descartes formulation of the problem, which most people don't accept in the manner he did at his time. Of course, in his time it made sense to be a dualist.

Ah. That old debate.

I can say my usual spiel, but I fear I may have discussed it too much already. In a sentence: There is good evidence to believe that Newton showed that we have no intelligible concept of "body" or matter so the distinction between mind and matter cannot be sensibly posed anymore.

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...