the interpretation of sense data as phenomena, is understanding. — Mww

That could be technically correct. My goal is more general, and it would be to say that to construct something (whether it is a phenomenon or through understanding) is to bring into being something which did not exist as (now) thought (representation, image, object, etc.).

The sticky point for others (not anyone in particular) is that they'd say objects exist absent us. I agree that something exists absent us and before us and will continue after we die. But what we call it and how we categorize that is the issue. I think physics does manage to pierce into the mind-independent structure of things.

Which satisfies the notion that mere construction of thought, while complete in itself, is never enough to obtain a systemic end. — Mww

If I follow, I agree. Sounds to me like you are speaking about something like the unconditioned, which fair enough, is granted. But I may be misinterpreting.

You know how we treat “world” as the collection of all possible real things? Why not treat “mind” as the collection of all possible human mental operational constituency? If we do that in the same non-contradictory fashion as we treat “world”, all possible human mental constituency is not a limitation to interpreting sense data, in the same fashion as “world” is not a limitation to any particular which is a member of its collection. World and mind are general conceptions without operational functions belonging specifically to them. — Mww

Possible real things? What about numbers? Those are quite pesky.

The world, as I understand it, is what there is. Yet the most reliable evidence we have for it comes through mathematical formulations which, don't seem to have worldly existence. Or maybe as Tegmark says, the world is mathematical.

To get a better idea of what you are proposing, if you could give an example of something that's not a "personal mental operational constituency", maybe I could better follow. For example, you can say, everything we think of is mental, but X is not, because X is part of the world. Otherwise, I don't quite follow.

If there is no interpretive function in the senses, no determinations as data or information are at all possible from them, which makes the notion of “sense data” empty, from which follows it cannot be sense data that the mental system interprets. — Mww

Not the senses, what we construct from the senses. Our organ's structure sense-data, we then attempt to comprehend what is given to us through our native faculties.

Why is that a human seldom allows himself to acknowledge that rote instruction regarding what he knows, and purely subjective deductive inferences regarding what he knows, is possible only from that singular mental functionality capable of both simultaneously? — Mww

That's an interesting path to follow. Strictly speaking, I think we grow (innate) knowledge, not learn, which implies getting something which you never had in any way prior. But we could get side-tracked here.

Ironically enough, the same applies to materialism, but we don’t care about that, insofar as there’s no legitimate need to confuse ourselves twice, so we grant the material world and concentrate on what to do with it. — Mww

Actually, my main concern here is to attempt to clear up the misleading thinking that says, "matter can't think in principle", which is an assertion not based on evidence.

Then there are those who say that ideas are these crazy things that need to be reduced or explained away in some future science.

Once that's cleared up, I don't know what the debate is even about. It seems to be a preference of words.

You can pick - there's no limit. Well, maybe not moral philosophy, I find that stuff a bit dull for the most part.

but it would depend on what is meant by "mental construction". We are not aware of how our perceptions are pre-cognitively constructed. The predominant neuroscientific view seems to be that our perceptions arise as the kind of "tip"―the part we can be conscious of―of the "iceberg" of neuronal process. When we refer to something as mental, is it not usually a reference to things we can be aware of? If so, 'mental construction' as opposed to 'brain process' or 'brain model' might seem inapt. — Janus

Yeah, it gets tricky. On the one hand, there's something there independent of us. I think most would agree save for vanishingly few idealists (again I know only of one - Collier). On the other hand, if I say what remains is brain or a nervous system, then I am smuggling in what I am trying to show exists absent me.

We can, without going too speculative reasonably imagine that some intelligent alien species may carve out a different kind of organs (or parts of organs) and call that a brain.

As for the definition of mental- that's very hard. I think what you say is how it's used. I'd add unconscious processes to this, but this would make me idiosyncratic.

The point is that if the brain is doing things we cannot be mentally aware of, then that would seem to indicate that it is a mind-independent functional organ or structure.

It is true that we, on the basis of neuroscientific study, ascribe the functions, but it doesn't seem to follow that those functions are not real independently of our ascriptions. In fact the obverse seems more plausible. — Janus

Yes. We may be talking at cross purposes here. And maybe as you suggested we'd have to settle on what a "construction" means. I take it as, whatever the mind does when it interprets sense data.

Something exists absent us but calling it a "brain" assumes that what we are carving out is a "natural kind", that is the way nature carves itself absent us. This seems to happen in physics, in biology the different framing of other creatures arises, I think.

What about ontic structural realism? It's true that we rely on our perceptions to reveal structures to us, so we know them only as they appear to us. This does seem to leave the question as to what they might be absent our perception of them. That question cannot be answered with certainty, but then what questions can? To my way of thinking it is more plausible to think that our perceptions reveal things about what we perceive, but that there remain aspects which we are incapable of perceiving. So, I don't see it as black and white―I don't see it as being the case that we can know nothing about things in themselves. — Janus

I prefer epistemic structural realism - that applies to physics. Does it apply to chemistry or biology? I'm more skeptical here. If limited to physics, then I think we have no substantial issues to clear up.

Likewise, dude. I learn a lot.

I use the words "metaphysics" and "epistemology" as narrowly as I can. For metaphysics I mean the world. For epistemology I mean aspects of knowledge.

In this respect I don't think there are "substantial" distinctions between mind and matter, or anything else. No more so than seeing and hearing are metaphysical different.

In some respects, it's harder to think of a bigger difference between seeing something and hearing something. But we would not say these are metaphysical distinctions, these are differences in how we interpret the world. It's the same world but interpreted in vastly different ways.

So, dualism would be a distinction in how we organize the way we think about the world.

Damn, I did not know. The exchanges I've had with him were serious and substantive, but I didn't read all his posts or follow him at all. Good to know.

All in all- and yeah it sounds like I'm being a "teachers pet" - you folks do a fine job moderating here.

While res extensa and res cogitans as such may have run their respective courses, don’t we still argue a form of intrinsic metaphysical dualism to this day? Even dropping out the notion of substance still leaves two ideas categorically different from, but necessarily related to, each other.

But I’m an unrepentant dualist in this more-modern-than-me age, so what do I know. — Mww

I wouldn't deny that we think in dualist terms - maybe mistakenly, maybe ingrained as a kind of "folk psychology" (incidentally I hate that term, it makes it sound as if folk psychology is not useful or primitive, whereas it's the way we experience the world) - but I do deny it as a metaphysical distinction.

You may want to say "property dualist" - and that's fine. I can see the appeal. But then I also see the appeal of a multi-faceted monist, which is to say, dozens of types of properties - electricity, magnetism, liquidity, plasma, etc. - all would be different properties of the same stuff.

Either is fine, and here the domain is very tricky and up to choice.

Ehhhhh….I would be far less generous: it’s pathologically stupid to deny the existence of that external thing, the forceful contact of which is sufficient cause for a displaced appearance, subsequently cognized as a farging bloody lip!!! (Sigh) — Mww

I agree, it is stupid. But the discussion here is framed as if "idealism" and "materialism" - whatever they are - are somehow opposites. As in if we allow that ideas construct the world then matter does not exist. Or alternatively, if matter exists then ideas are these obscure mystical things. Back in Descartes time views like that made sense - there was a clear intelligible difference between res extensa and res cogitans.

We don't have that distinction along those lines anymore. Descartes was being scientific, to argue along his lines today is to force a distinction that does not look clear at all.

Obscure. Historically, British philosophers were empiricists, or at least pseudo-Kantian dualists. Who did you have in mind? — Mww

I've been reading the English Platonists. Known back then but forgotten today. The one I had in mind was Arthur Collier - who did deny the external world in his Clavis Universalis. Extremely unconvincing if you ask me, just repeated denials.

. Not to mention the serious trash-talkin’ ol’ Arthur laid on him and “those ridiculous Hegelians” in general. You know….that ubiquitous cognitive prejudice we all suffer to some degree of another. — Mww

Absolutely. I like Raymond Tallis' quip here, "Hegel is above my cognitive paygrade." He may have some interesting ideas somewhere, but that explicit and conscious verbosity and obscurity is repellent to me.

And yes ol' Arthur's roasting is sublime.

Yeah, I agree with that framing - it is quite sensible and ought to be factual- but it apparently sounds contentious for some reason. Some people get uncomfortable with the idea of mental construction, as if objectivity is thereby rendered suspect or inexistant.

The issue that arises here, then, is whether there is an external world or not. I don't know of any idealist - save for one, an obscure British philosopher - who denies the existence of the world. But I don't understand Hegel, nor am I compelled to read him.

My criticism here is that If materialism is true, then the brain is not merely a "mental construction" even if our models of it, and perhaps even our perceptions of it, are mental constructions (idealism) or brain generated models (materialism). — Janus

It may be more than merely a mental construction, but it is at least a mental construction, or we would have no way to perceive or model it. I presume you know Russell's quote on this topic, and he was not an idealist. But what he says is factual as far as I can see.

According to materialism, there would be some mind-independent functional structures which appear to us as brains, and what we experience as thoughts are on the level of the physical brain, neuronal processes — Janus

Who ascribes these functions? We do. What does a brain do? It produces consciousness, but it does many things which are unrelated to consciousness which are equally important. Why privilege consciousness over many of the other things brains do?

On the other hand according to idealism, the brain is merely one among all the other ideas which are taken by materialists to be mind-independently real functional structures, but are really, through and through, mental constructions.. — Janus

You have mentioned structures several times. I can understand epistemic structural realism in physics, but above that, say in biology and so on, I don't quite follow what you are saying.

At least you are framing something which can be discussed that materialism means mind independent structure and that idealism denies that. That's a big improvement over usual conversations on these topics.

This talk of idealism vs. materialism pops up all the time, but it is rarely defined. Or if it is, the definitions seem to me to be unsatisfactory.

Roughly speaking:

Idealism: everything is a product of mind.

Materialism: everything is made of physical stuff.

What is this supposed clash? Is the mind not coming out of a brain? Is the brain not a mental construction based on sense data?

So what prevents one from being incompatible with the other? That matter can't think? That's factually false and is relying on old (but justified at the time) Cartesian intuitions.

Or alternatively that mind is above matter? What does this even mean? I find no meaning in this assertion. The problem that can be posed is the problem of the world, either it exists absent us or it does not. That is a legitimate question, because it can be meaningfully debated.

Another question that can be meaningfully debated is how much of the world is a construction of the mind. But the alleged rift or incompatibility between idealism and materialism is merely verbal.

Yes. It becomes a very big "meta" problem - hallucinations get clocked in as facts (this is already happening) and other AI's use the hallucinated data as fact, amplifying its abundance and stretching its reliability.

They're slated to run out of trainable data next year, until paywalled sources open up.

I don't know man, the tools are impressive in many ways, but being forced to use it in everything can't be good. One has to imagine that this will have massive negative ramifications down the line...

To make the question more direct and concrete, what philosophy writing will make your writing survive better through the ages, what philosophy writing will receive little in the way of fame, praise, or hostility? — ProtagoranSocratist

It's hard to predict. Hume was basically ignored until after his death, he was known mostly as a historian. Not too disimilar from Leibniz who was marginalized and mocked - save a few exceptions like Kant or Schopenhauer- until Bertrand Russell brought him back from the trenches of history with his book on Leibniz.

We have Plato because we got lucky, somehow his body of work survived. I believe we lost 2/5's of Aristotle's writings, and we have almost nothing of the books he wanted to publish (in dialogue form), which were said to be "rivers of gold".

We have fragments of the pre-Socratics, again luck.

Herbert de Cherbury, one of the central antagonists of Locke, probably the one who caused him to write part I of his Essay, was because he was reacting to Cherbury. Ask if anyone knows about him today. Getting a copy of his book in English is difficult, to say the least.

Peirce we have because James and Dewey mentioned several times in writing and some people decided it was worth ordering his notes, otherwise we'd have mere articles.

C.I. Lewis, the person who brought in the term "qualia" into contemporary philosophy is barely known and he's quite interesting.

You get the idea. There are equal examples of people who were famous back in the day but are now relegated as historical curiosity. Just write what you find interesting, hope others like it. Not much more can be done. Much treasure has to be looked for, just as there is a lot of junk.

The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño

I guess that this may have been mentioned. One thing is AI use in this place. But damn, it's everywhere. I had to get an extension to block it from always appearing in Google searches. Getting "answers" from secondary sources (the AI using the primary source) can only lead to more "mutations" increasing errors.

AI use can be perfectly fine. But there is something to be said about too much of it all the time.

There must be a connection to certain trains of thought, otherwise we wouldn't be able to think or reason. How much of these thoughts are based on connective tissue of a previous thought as opposed to having thoughts floating in the imagination (to borrow Hume's framing) is impossible to delineate.

As for a cause- that may be different. Hitting a billiard ball causing another billiard ball to move is quite reliable, but to argue that, say, thinking about climate change leads to depression reliably, while true, is vastly more complex. There are many more variables as to what constitutes depression than the regularity in which a ball causes another ball to move.

True - though he admitted he did not have the gift for writing that Hume or Mendelsohn had.

Some of his writing in his Prolegomena is much better than his Critique material, but only in instances.

I am saying that outside of ordinary use of these words, we have no technical definitions of "believing", "knowing" or "thinking". Unless you argue that knowledge is justified true belief, which is unconvincing.

Having said this, on ordinary usage, belief and thought are different. A belief may be true or false. It has a residue of faith to it as well.

A thought may be many things and need not correspond to anything external, as in thinking about a flying mountain, which whatever else it is, is hard to argue is a belief.

That's a wonderful quote. And he's quite right.

Well - some philosophers of certain traditions seem to me to speak gobbledygook (the postmodernists: Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Kristeva, Guatarri, etc.) so no amount of more writing - or less, would help much.

Welcome to the forum!

As for premise 1: Epistemically, belief and thought are identical.

This needs clarification. What is a belief? What is a thought?

As far as I can see you have stipulated that they are identical but have not given an argument as to why they are identical.

Once you tell us what they are then maybe we can proceed to argue about these topics.

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro

Yep! That was quite a performance - on many levels. Hadn't read a book quite like it ever.

I'm glad you are enjoying it. When you finish shoot me an @, I'd love to get your impressions. There's a lot to it.

Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee is probably your best bet. He covers most of the great figures quite accurately in great, easy to grasp prose. I can't think of a better introduction.

His book on Schopenhauer is also very good and will help build more critical thinking skills.

Beyond that, there's a lot of stuff, it depends on what you like. Russell's History of Western Philosophy, though uneven, is a great reference.

Once you see a topic click, you can read intro books, lectures or just begin to read the classics. I think it's important to note that you never really finished with Plato or Descartes or Wittgenstein, it's a lifelong thing. So don't pressure yourself in mastery of the subject. It comes with time and changing perspectives.

Shout out to T Clark for mentioning The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern science by Burtt. Knowing a bit about the history of the time period helps A LOT. What may seem silly to us now, was perfectly reasonable for the time, given what they knew. That's also a good book for the early-modern period in philosophy, which contains the most important figures outside of Antient Greece. It's a great book too.

Dude that books is nutssss.

LLMs are still fancy autocomplete. — Simon Willison

:up:

That's pretty accurate so far as I can tell.

For this place? Absolutely. It degrades conversation, but as Jamal pointed out, that is already banned. Having a specific thread that uses LLM's is fine- it can contain the fire.

I can't give a sermon as to why using them is bad, as I use them - though never here or in any thread or conversation. But I get it and I think it's wise to point out the issues with such things.

One problem is that it is harder to avoid this stuff. It's even hard to use Google now, because the damn AI bot answers instead. As to how crazy this can get, we don't know. I suspect it won't be as bad as alarmists say - because these things are not intelligent, we are - or use to be.

So far, this website has managed to do quite decent work monitoring this stuff- but an outright ban is probably impossible by now.

I didn’t have my glasses on when I saw your post and I read that as “Naval Explosives.” I thought that was an interesting choice until I reread it, this time wearing them. — T Clark

That can happen!

All this is quite subjective, needless to say. Some may think it's just a bloated mess. I think it's the best book I've read. But that's the interesting thing about art- if we all liked the same things, it would be boring.

Though if you like philosophy, poetry, action, political injustice and ambition, I have a hard time imagining it would not be in appreciated in large part. But if difficult-ish prose is a no-go, then yeah, it's a skip.

I gave that to my daughter for Christmas one year. We share a love for it. Have you read “The French Lieutenant’s Woman?” — T Clark

Not yet, it was also recommended to me by @frank. Those are two recommendations so I will have to read it.

I have a massive reading library though so, I'll add it to read sometimes next year. Thanks for the heads up. Fowles was a fantastic novelist.

Sure, if you forgot then I'd say go for it.



Oh cool! I've heard about it, but have not read it yet, thanks for the recommendation.

Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer is no.1, hands down. Should be a philosopher's dream. Criminally unknown, imo.

Then in no order: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James and Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino (This one is significantly narrower than the others, but its left a very strong impression.)

As for Brothers Karamazov being no.5, well, maybe it still is, its reputation is more than well earned. But I just finished The Magus by John Fowles yesterday and it's vying for the top 5 spot - it's astonishing, still reeling from that experience. I've had a good year with novels. :)

I know many of you here are well read in novels - probably much more so than me. But having just finished The Brothers Karamazov I must say, what an absolute miracle of book! Certainly, among my top 5 books of all time.

I have no more words to say, because they will be meaningless.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Any single on of us? Likely not too much. Maybe some people would be less happy - heck maybe they'd be happier, it's difficult to say.

I'd miss out on everything quite literally. But the universe does not care one way or another.

No. This is science fiction frankly. Way too many assumptions are being made that are highly questionable to say the very least.

Economically yes. Though they do have a looming population decline that is very very serious and that may change the outlook for them. But as of now yes, that is what is happening.

We are in dire need of good leaders in this "West". I see danger all over and escalating. Let's hope it doesn't spiral out of control.

I don't see why we should believe that discourse of the "West" (whatever that means) can no longer be given.

It seems to me that there are quite sensible accounts one can put together about what's happening in the world. It takes a decent amount of searching different people specialize in different domains (foreign policy, economy, domestic policy, international relations, tech, climate change, etc.), but one sees a picture emerging which is frankly very grim.

Now that's one thing, the other is to assume that one is capable of giving a single account of everything that is happening. I don't think any one person can do that, there are too many countries, too many complexities, to expect someone to be able to do this.

But I don't see why that is even necessary.

I like QBism too, but I have no way to verify if my intuitions are correct, because I can't do the physics. An interpretation may sound elegant to us, but this doesn't ensure its correctness.

We like Qbism, others may like the Bohmian theory, or Many Worlds and if you accept the view, then you're going to say it's correct. But we need evidence to establish that, which we are lacking.

Are you talking about the "association of ideas" thing? — J

That's a part of it. But he also talks about how certain ideas cause us to react in certain ways, a lot of it on his Passions and Ethics section of his Treatise.

But I think you want something contemporary, so it might not be what you're looking for.

We interpret things mechanistically, yes. That doesn't mean that the world is the way we interpret it to be. It isn't. That may be part of the reason we find QM so hard to understand, we don't have the type of intuitions that would help up make sense of the phenomena.

And signs are mechanical?