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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:scream:

Nope.

In defense of Hume! Against his mis-interpreters!

It's near the very beginning of his Prolegomena.

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

:cool:

And he is correct.

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

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

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

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

That's not trivial to do.

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

It is still fun.

The crazy view that there are problems and mysteries. Problems are those areas in which we can hope to get some insight, mysteries are those parts which we can't get insight.

:eyes:

A fellow... mysterian? Good to find one. We are a rare breed.

Please "do" so. But "show", don't "tell". Using words, not "words". :wink:

Extremely interesting discussion and I agree with many points on different sides. It is true that Wittgenstein does have a kind of school, in which people take the Investigations as if they were written by God. And I do think it quite annoying to have almost every issue in philosophy be "solved' (interpreted as: not addressed at all) by using our language careful within the context of what we are trying to say.

However, as others have said, this is not Wittgenstein's problem, but merely some who follow him in this manner. Many treat him respectfully without worship.

Lastly, there are others who have what I think are significantly worse "schools": Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze. But these are aberrations.

Anthony Nickels as many point out here, is fun to interact with and is quite interesting.

I find some of his discussions, especially his most recent one with Curt Jaimungal (a FANTASTIC podcast btw, Theories of Everything) to be very very good.

On other occasions, a bit less so, I'm not do drawn to the "meaning" crisis, as he uses the term and he is prone to use a lot of jargon in his papers.

But yeah, he has interesting things to say. :up:

Of course!

I don't recall if I discussed it much in that thread, but one thing that was very eye-opening for me was reading Galen Strawson's interpretations of Hume regarding causality and (especially) identity: The Secret Connexion and The Evident Connexion.

Though he can be quite dense in exposition, he's an excellent interpreter of those he discusses. It made me approach the Treatise with a different lens.

Yeah. That entire section is just amazing, so powerful and disturbing (in the good sense of the word).

Glad you like it too.

I also agree with you about that on Locke getting several things wrong. As for Hume, I like him at his best, which for me include his arguments on causality and the continued existence of external objects, in these sections, he is dreadful and provides some extremely strong arguments which we are still dealing with to this day.

Also, and it may sound kind of vulgar to say so, I think Chomsky is right here when he speaks about Locke and Hume (and others): they are not idiots. Meaning, no one of any sound mind could possibly deny the mind plays absolutely no role in structuring experience, because doing so is idiotic, it too evident that we have some innate stuff, how much of it should be considered innate and what it covers is what should be debated, not innateness per se.

So Locke may dislike innate ideas (of a very particular sort, again, Descartes does not argue that innate ideas arise the way Locke describes them), because they look lazy to him and have an appeal to authority he does not like. But he cannot possibly deny innateness completely, as evidenced by that quote I shared, or indeed, his famous discussion on personal identity, which is an innatist argument.

Fascinating discussion, I never did get around to starting a thread on Locke's "Essay", it is a wonderful book, perhaps my favorite one out of all the classics on the whole (Descartes through Kant).

Right now, I can't comment much on your reply other than saying that I agree that Locke is wrong here, and furthermore no rationalist (that I know of) argues for the kind of innateness Locke is arguing against.

But it is important to note, though Locke may want to downplay this, that Locke does believe in innateness. Just not those called "innate ideas".

As he says:

"Nature, I confess, has put into Man a desire of Happiness, and an aversion to Misery: These indeed are innate practical Principles, which (as practical Principles ought) do continue constantly to operate and influence all our Actions, without ceasing: These may be observ'd in all Persons and all Ages, steady and universal; but these are Inclinations of the Appetite to good, not Impressions of truth on the Understanding.I deny not, that there are natural tendencies imprinted on the Minds of Men; and that, from the very first instances of Sense and Perception, there are some things, that are grateful, and others unwelcome to them; some things that they incline to, and others that they fly: But this makes nothing for innate Characters on the Mind, which are to be the Principles of Knowledge, regulating our Practice."

Bold added.

(Book 1. Chapter III. 3rd paragraph)

This part is frequently overlooked.

Yet we dismiss a guy sitting on clouds causing thunder. In any case, primitive societies are animists. I remember reading good psychological investigation into animism — like how we see faces on rocks and clouds even though there are no faces —, without any appeal to the actuality of those beliefs. — Lionino

Sure. And these are quite interesting to discover out psychological constitution which could bear fruit in other areas of inquiry.

You are changing your terms. Empirical evidence doesn't go against the unicorn, there is a lack of empirical evidence for the unicorn. Likewise, there is a lack of evidence for a being outside of space and time. — Lionino

Ha, now I think this is semantic. Ok, there is lack of evidence for the mental entity unicorn. So it is a fiction, fine with that.

How do you know there is no evidence for something outside space and time? Can we go to this place to verify or reject such a claim?

Are you sure there is no heaven? It is outside of space and time as we know, too. — Lionino

The Christian tradition posits a person who raised from the dead and said there was a heaven. In this world, I do not know of any cases in which a dead person has come back to life after several days.

Ergo, I do not believe there is something called heaven based on this tradition. Such a person today would be called a charlatan, correctly.

Am I certain there is no heaven? I don't reach certainty, but if you like, I'd say I think there is a 99.9% chance that heaven does not exist.

You can't give me certainty. So let's just say we are agnostic about everything and call it a day. Deal? — Lionino

That's too hasty. But if forced between certainty and agnosticism, I think agnosticism is a safer bet. I cannot go outside myself, much less outside of space and time to see what may or may not exist.

Primitive cultures believe thunders are caused by a god's will. We know today it is not the case. — Lionino

Yes. The point is that there seems to be an innate mechanism that causes us to believe in these things, which is why I do not think they should be dismissed that easily.

I don't understand this. — Lionino

You said:

let's take a universalist generic theist: "I believe a personal creator beyond the universe exists — Lionino

This creator is personal, meaning applies to one person, the one who believes? Or does this refer to people who claim a creator creates everything?

These are not the same.

The first claim is significantly weaker than the second one.

In my understanding, this concept is of a mind (so it is personal), it is outside of space and time (and by that of course I am excluding hippie distortions like "the universe is god", not to be confused with Spinoza's pantheism), and it is the cause of the world we see — I think my rendition of the concept is minimal to all theistic religions. — Lionino

So it's a mental concept, which postulates something outside of space and time. Ok, a mental concept, is a mental concept if we can apply it to something empirical, we can either affirm or dismiss the claim.

If a person believes in Unicorns, but we find no unicorns in the world, then this belief is a fiction, because empirical evidence goes against such a claim.

If you speak of a being outside of space and time, how are we to verify or dismiss it? I don't know how, so I don't know if such a being exists.

If in addition to this a theist says, I believe this being is all good and all powerful then we have plenty of evidence to show that this claim is false, we show them the world.

My point is simple, this insistence on agnosticism applies not just to the God question but to most questions. Yet we reply to most questions with "yes" or "no". There are those that reply "I don't know", surely, but we don't say the people that said "no" are being unreasonable, especially when "yes" would be more unreasonable then. That much says that you are applying a special ad hoc epistemic standard to God. — Lionino

Most people say yes or now to these questions, but I don't think most people care much about epistemology, or if they do, it's to a quite limited range. But you are asking for certainty, I cannot give you that.

From B and D, when we ask someone whether they believe in God they should say yes or no, the uncertainty of the topic is already implied, stating whether you are an agnostic theist/atheit is redundant, and any gnostic theist/atheist has an almost impossible-to-meet burden of proof, so I say the gnostics here are either lying or confused. The agnostic label should be reserved for those who are truly divided (even if the evidence sways their mind in another direction) and prefer to suspend judgement in the await for more evidence. — Lionino

As I said, if you are speaking about the Abrahamic tradition, of which I belong to and whose arguments I understand to some degree, then I am an atheist. I don't believe in heaven, I don't believe in hell, I do not believe a person rose from the dead, etc. Those are rather specific claims, which are capable of being shown to be wrong.

As to whether there is such a thing as "God" or a higher being, I do not know, I cannot verify or deny this. Ergo, I am an agnostic on the God question.

Let's run the argument. "We don't know if god does not exist". The same argument applies just as well (more strongly in fact) to the theist. Ignore Christians or Baha'i, let's take a universalist generic theist: "I believe a personal creator beyond the universe exists". The atheist claims such a being does not exist. The UGT claims such a being exists. Who is more reasonable here?
Let's then say that "we don't know". Here is the problem: you don't whether you will wake up tomorrow, you don't know whether your HS history teacher was really licensed, you don't know whether your dad is really your dad, you don't know whether NASA is really saying the truth, you don't know whether you are dreaming as you read this, and yet you give a good, single-worded, definitive answer when you get asked about all of these matters. But somehow the God question is one of the very few questions where people feel the need to pontificate that we are aren't really sure. — Lionino

The goal is to seek better understanding. Perhaps the topic of God is not as simple as the "New Atheists" take it to be, for we know that most primitive cultures believe in such a "being" or "beings", so maybe there is a room for nuance here which would be slightly more problematic than claiming that I do not know if my father is really my father, of which more could be said.

If by God you are speaking about a "personal creator", by this you mean a being that has the power to give life to people? If that's what is being argued, then I do not think it is a strong argument.

If you mean that there is "personal creator" of some higher being who created the universe. Well, I would like to know some of the properties of said being. A higher being or a higher power is a very nebulous term, people like to hand-wave when asked about it.

But if it is given precision, maybe we can work it out.

Back to the problem of my father, yes, you are correct, I do not know with 100% accuracy that he is my father. I have plenty of evidence to suggest that he is, but pictures of me being a baby could be faked, maybe the baby in the picture is not me, etc.

Given the options I have, then I opt to believe that my father is my real father with, say, 99% accuracy. Hence, I have no good reason to be agnostic about this issue, because what my father is, is much better defined than God, or a higher being.

But God isn't an empirical hypothesis. It is how you frame your life. What God means, according to the religions, is how one should (try to) live one's life. (What science means is not just the philosophy of science, but how you do it in practice.) Admittedly, how that works out in practice can be a bit puzzling to outsiders, but that's how the ideas work. (The same is true of science) To put it another way, if you start by defining God, that may turn out not to be a hypothesis, but an axiom. And there's no arguing with axioms, except by their results. In this case, the argument has to be about what life the believer leads. — Ludwig V

It's not so clear to me, many people treat God as if it were something explanatory, sometimes even empirical, in the broad meaning of the term (which includes personal experience). Why did I get a bonus at work? God is gracious. What caused my existence? God. Etc.

But I do not think that asking for some properties or attributes or facets of God is asking for too much. The more which can be given, the better we can proceed. If it is limited to a Great Being, or a supreme force, then I do not know what this means, or at least, it is very nebulous.

So I think we can have arguments about God, even if there may be no chance of getting each other to agree.

But we would have way to check if this proposition is true, we can send a telescope to Jupiter, or several of them.

If you say that this donkey is immune to being captured by satellites, or that it is shy and only shows up once a year to one person who looks up at Jupiter at very specific instances, then someone is pulling my leg.

First, define what God is, then we can say if we know enough to say, with certainty, that such a thing exists or does not. Maybe we can't reach certainty, in that case we shift to probabilities.

I don't think it's illogical per se, in fact, today, maybe it's more logical that standard institutionalized religion, maybe not.

The issue is that it's a certainty claim: God does not exist.

If we narrow that down to saying something like, the Abrahamic tradition of God does not exist, then I think it makes sense to say one is an atheist in regard to that.

But to say that one is an atheist about any possible notion of God (which is very often very ill defined) assumes more than one can know.

I think agnosticism is better, with atheism being applied in specific instances.

That was remarkably well written M, even by your standards (of which I've always considered to be extremely high).

There's A LOT that could be said here in reply to what you said S and K and the unknowable and - I would add - even Hume and Locke, but, then we go back to Plotinus and even further back to Plato and then we don't get anywhere.

As I've said I think K's conclusions about the unknowable were very much anticipated and discussed very interestingly by others prior to him, though I suspect they did not notice the importance of what they were saying.

But. But. The emphasis Kant made on the given point of the unknowable was strong enough that the previously mentioned observations (made in a different manner), were finally taken to be as deep and as important as they should have been taken. Plus, all the other stuff Kant said about the synthetic unity of apperception, the synthetic a-priori and the law like nature of the "ought" among other things were also quite deep.

My own feeling is, that those who came after K (not S) were honestly more than anything bloated showmen, who sometimes said an interesting thing here and there, but otherwise presented other things so obscurely it was passed off as Hidden Truths.

As for the will not doing the job S wanted it to do, I would agree with you, tentatively.

Thanks for the clarification.

So you do like that Schopenhauer wrote what he did, or would have you preferred him not write?

I once thought I read you saying something along the lines of, Schopenhauer should've stayed quite or something along those lines.

But, you are also ironic so, it might have been that.



There's a lot of stuff in Schopenhauer and one need not take it whole. I think his pessimism has a grain of truth to it, maybe more than a grain, but I think he also exaggerates a little. I don't think life is THAT bad. But it can be very bad.

As for his metaphysics and epistemology, there's a lot of it which I personally find very insightful. However, having read Hume later than I should have, I am torn between S' views on the nature of the will and causality as opposed to Hume's.

So, it's complex. He is one of the last best system builders and one can only admire his honesty about many topics; while maybe thinking he was a not-so-nice person.

Yeah, I think so. My feeling is that we are by default Meaning Giving creatures, it's just what we do, we find it everywhere. So, to go on to say that such a thing is completely absent goes against our nature, in some respects.



At least a Pyrrhonian can be a big nuisance to other philosophers, which is always fun. :cool:

Solipsism is intellectually interesting, but as Borges pointed out, it admits of no reply but produces no conviction (echoing Hume's remarks on Berkeley.)

Nevertheless, I do think there is a connection between nihilism and depression and nihilism and anti-natalism too. The latter group especially are adamant that personal psychology has no bearing on the truth of the argument. Literally true, but misleading. If a person has a (decently) happy life, feels fulfilled and engaged, then that person would rather have life than not have it, if everyone had this view, who would think to come up with these "negative" argument in the first place?

This applies to nihilism too, while psychological states do not tell us if an argument is right or wrong, it does tell us about the motivation for such an argument. If one has not felt profound moments of meaninglessness for long stretches of time, or if one has not felt that life is just one damn sludge of pain, boredom and suffering, then who could imagine framing this argument?

It wouldn't occur to anybody to say these things. Still, I do think nihilism is more merits more respect than anti-natalism, because I do believe that most people have felt periods of meaninglessness, without going all the way to claiming that the whole of life is meaningless.

The Philosophical Writing of Richard Burthogge by Richard Burthogge and Margaret W. Landes

Wow. Only read 15 pages so far, but damn was Chomsky not joking when he said that Kant's ideas were very much articulated, by the Cambridge Platonists.

Awesome stuff, will update when finished.

Indeed. When it came to New Atheism, he was by far the best one. Not that the others were too good, but, he was much more kind which counts.

Ah, missed that.

Thanks for sharing.

They have and there are several ways to interpret that section.

But the main point is that when we try to "catch" the self in real time, we never quite do so. We mention the "I", but one has a very strong intuition that the self goes significantly beyond that word.

Do dogs have limits? Apes? Fish? Tigers or Elephants?

Are we a part of nature or are we an exception to nature, not subject to its whims?

Since I take it that we are natural beings, we have natural limits.

May be a cop-out but Hume's famous phrase here merits a mention:

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception."

Notice this does not claim, as is often said, that he denies that a "self" exists, only that he cannot catch it. It plays a fundamental role in perception, but when we inquire as to what it is, we stumble around it.

These people can speak about their thoughts despite having no corresponding mental language (ie, their mentation is not linguistic - not 'there is no mental language per se' - it could be a language of feeling, or otherwise (as discussed by another poster earlier)). — AmadeusD

And in speaking about such non-linguistic thoughts, only the linguistic portions get communicated. If someone could attempt to describe in some manner, non-linguistic thought, it would be interesting to see. But the issue here is, are we discussing thought (whatever thinking is) or something else? Until we have a better notion of linguistic thought, we are going to remain stuck.

It doesn't come from your brain. It comes from your linguistic faculties (larynx, tongue etc..) as a symbolic representation. Again, if you call that Direct, that's a side-step of convention. Fine. Doesn't really address the issue here, though. It's 'as good as', but it isn't — AmadeusD

Come on man. People can use sign language, or sight, as was the case with Hawking, to express thought. But it does come from the brain, not from the tongue or the eyes...

I disagree. We have (arguably, more than half) of people describing non-linguistic thoughts. We're good. And we know the results. It doesn't differ from expressing linguistic thoughts in any obvious way until the speaker is interrogated. — AmadeusD

Describing non-linguistic thoughts how?

Because it is, to me, clearly the reason for your position. You ahven't addressed this, and so I'll continue to push it until such time as an adequate response has been made. This isn't 'at you'. This is the position I hold. It seems coherent, and I've not yet had anyone even deny it. Just say other stuff. — AmadeusD

If you want to call it convention, call it convention. I don't have a problem with direct and mediated. You take mediation to mean indirect.

I will once again say, we only have the human way of seeing things, not a "view from nowhere", which is where I assume you would believe directness could be attained.

I believe it makes more sense to argue that we directly see objects (mediated by our mind and organs) than to say we indirectly see an object, because it is mediated. "We indirectly see an apple." is just a strange thing to say, because the left-over assumption is that there is such a thing as directly seeing an apple, but on the indirect view, this is impossible, heck, there would be no apple nor object to say that remains when we stop interacting with it.

This left over aspect does not make sense to me. I think it is false.

Nevertheless, so that we may not continue this to infinity, I will readily grant that I am using a particular convention, because I think it makes more sense.

More important to me than direct/indirect is mediation, which I assume you would say is what indirectness is about. Fine.

And if Kant was wrong? As many, many people think? — AmadeusD

I think one can have issues with things in themselves (noumenon in a positive sense) for instance or may think that his specific a-priori postulates are wrong or disagree with his morality, sure, but to think his entire framework is wrong, well I think this is simply to dismiss what contemporary brain sciences say, not to mention common sense.

In the language you are using, I have to accept this because this does not suppose any kind of phenomenal experience and so doesn't adequately describe all of what matters.
But If what you're saying is the eyes directly receive the light, I accept that.
You'll notice that nothing in this is the object, or the experience, or the subject. So we're still indirectly apprehending. Hehe. — AmadeusD

Sure - we have an issue here too, what is an object? It's not trivial. Is it the thing we think we see, is it the cause of what we think we see or is it a mere mental construction only? Tough to say.

Convention rears it's head again. You're also describing a process of allocation. That isn't apt for the distinction we're talking about. I could definitely tell a biologist they are not directly perceiving the distal object of a phloem. What their response is has nothing to do with our discussion. Your point is taken, but it speaks to conventions. — AmadeusD

I will grant this as stated. I actually don't think that we disagree all that much on substantial matter, more so the way words are used. And I admit I am using direct in a manner that goes beyond the usual framing as "naive realism", which if anyone believes in that, they shouldn't be in philosophy or science, or I would wonder why they would bother with this.

100%, we're in the same boat. This is exactly why I noted you answered your own question. You have described, exactly, and with great clarity, why both communication and phenomenal experience are indirectly achieved. Nice (yes, I am being cheeky here). — AmadeusD

Yes, these are expressions of thought - they form a crucial part of it - that part that connects to the quite obscure aspect of non-linguistic thought with linguistic thought, but it is the linguistic aspect that gets discussed virtually everywhere. The linguistic expression of thought is direct, it comes from my brain and I articulate to you that aspect of thought which is capable of expression.

You have just used thinking/mentation with a practical meaning other than this, and linked it to why it is not identical, or even similar, to you conveying an expression of your thought through the air (or whatever) to me, another mind. So, this, on your own terms, is false. I agree. — AmadeusD

We don't know enough about unconscious brain processes to say if non-linguistic thought is, or is not, language like.

When speaking about thought, the best we can do is to be practical about how we express ourselves about it, I have used thought in saying that it has likely has a non-linguistic basis, but this amounts to saying very little about it.

It's not what i require. THis is what meets the standard of 'Direct' in any other context. No idea why this one requires some massaging of that to make people comfortable. ONly discomfort with concluding that we do not directly communicate thoughts could require that weird side-step (on my view). Happy to hear another reason. One hasn't been presented so far. — AmadeusD

You really enjoy pushing the idea of discomfort.

I've said several times Kant's point, that the world is empirically real but transcendentally ideal. In empirical reality, we directly perceive objects, in virtue of our mode of cognition. Indirect would be something like attempting to find out a persons brain state if they are paralyzed, here we have to use some kind of experiments to figure on what's going on in the brain, absent this person speaking about his symptoms or sensations.

. It is using plain language as it is used elsewhere, in this context. If there's some special definition of Direct which includes indirectness, all good. But, you can see where that's going.. surely. You've not actually addressed the supporting discussions, I note, which are the empirical facts I am consistently mentioning, but are being ignored in favour of idea-fiddling. — AmadeusD

Plain language? Tell a biologist studying animals or plants and let them tell you that they are indirectly separating flowers based on colors. They will tell you they are directly identifying an object by its colors, even if colors are no mind-independent properties.

Claiming that we have to use the term 'direct' because there isn't a sufficient example of 'indirect' despite you having used that concept to describe X and Y. — AmadeusD

Not sufficient example is not the issue, it's the coherency of the argument. There are situations in which we do indirectly study things: coma patients, looking at the sun, etc.

Your thoughts aren't your statements. They are not identical. You are factually not directly conveying your thoughts. That is the nature of speech. I am entirely lost as to how you could call it anything else. It factually isn't direct, so your use of 'direct' must be a matter of your preference. This is why i keep coming back to "Why the discomfort?", That something isn't satisfying doesn't make it untrue. — AmadeusD

I don't recall saying that thoughts are statements.

Statements are an expression of thought, it's the only kind of thought we have acquaintance with, whatever else goes on prior to articulation, call it thought, call it mental activity, is not something that can be expressed and it is even doubtful it is open to introspection.

You are telling me that I am not conveying my thoughts because my statements are not identical to my thoughts, I say I am telling you what I think, in so far as we can use "think" to have any practical meaning at all. What you are requiring be given, in order to admit "direct" thought, is something that cannot be provided, as even the subject matter is extremely obscure.

Here it doesn't have much to do with discomfort, it seems as if you have defined thought in a way in which it must be indirect. Fine, if you want to do that. If so, then I think you would need to add that one does not have access to ones own thoughts, because when we express them, we are leaving out what matters.

But, it's not the thought. It literally is not the thought. You cant claim a direct transmission of your thought. That option isn't open. — AmadeusD

By this standard, as mentioned previously, I don't have access to my own thoughts. Then I think we would need a better conception of what this "thought" is which you insist we are not able to express or get across.

You've answered your own Q. This is exactly like asking "Why is something that has been made not-dry wet?". It serves as an analytical statement, essentially. — AmadeusD

If you say so.

I take it that mediation and directness (or indirectness) are different things, again with Kant: empirical reality, transcendental ideality.

Direct means there is no mediation. NO way-points. NO stops along the way. That is not hte case either with receiving external data to create a phenomenal experience or in communicating thoughts. They are necessarily indirect. — AmadeusD

If this is how directness is defined, then nothing is direct.

But then indirectness loses any meaning, there is no contrast to it, for even speaking about directness is indirect.

The issue here is insisting that mediation must mean indirectness. I don't see this as following.

Why would it indicate that? If there is not a way to directly apprehend something (i.e literally have it enter you mind without mediation) that doesn't mean we just give up and say ah well, closest we can get should be called Direct then. That is shoddy thinking, frankly. Somewhat cowardly, in the sense of retreating from the facts. If the case is that your communication is mediated and therefore indirect, we can then just call that direct and get on with it outside of day-to-day living(ie, this discussion is outside of that) — AmadeusD

No. We only have our concepts and our mode of cognition to interact with the world, there are no other avenues available to us. This has nothing to do with giving up, this is facing our situation as human beings. A flower (or whatever it is absent us) "in itself" is nothing without something that gives it some significance. "Closest we can get?" The only thing we get. Maybe there are intelligent aliens with a more sophisticated mind than ours, they would then see a flower in a different manner from us, perhaps see aspects of it we cannot.

This does not remove the fact that we deal with the world the only way we can.

This is not a consideration in this discussion. If it is, it is. Benefits are not relevant to whether something is the case. — AmadeusD

Maybe it is not for you. I consider the ability to form sentences to express whatever it is that goes on in my head to be a direct process. I can't make sense of such statements as I indirectly state my thoughts in my sentences. I can say I'm expressing a thought that needs elucidation, but I wouldn't call it an indirectly expressed thought, unless I am purposively saying one thing to mean another thing and am being obscure about it.

I don't understand how its possible disagree, without being plain incoherent, that something heavily mediated is indirect. The definition of direct seems to preclude a mediated system to be claimed as direct from one end ot the other. — AmadeusD

Why is something heavily mediated indirect? Why? In other words, how does mediated necessitate something to be indirect? If I follow that route, I am going to end up saying I indirectly mediated my view of this thing.

Because I have mediation, I directly saw this thing, without mediation I cannot see anything. Again, this is in empirical reality, I am not talking about "ultimate natures", or the "ground of things" - not even physics attains this.

If I said, because of mediation I indirectly saw a flower indicates to me that there is a single proper way to see a flower, but this is false: knowledge is perspectival and relational.

I certainly don't accept naive realism; nor do I know of any scientist who does.

We accept that communication (of thought) is necessarily indirect. I don't see why that's so unsatisfactory, myself.
I suppose 'progress' would depend on whether you take an 'idea' to be different to a 'thought'. Thoughts are specific instances of ideas, surely. I just don't know if that adequate teases out separate concepts for each. — AmadeusD

I don't think it is. I see why you may want to say that and the reasons for it aren't bad, but I also don't see any evident benefits from saying that communication is indirect. Speaking for myself, I don't see a need for it, I think it causes more confusion than clarification, though we agree that there is something going on prior to language, so the issue here is one of preference as I see it.

I don't know quite well what an "idea" or a "thought" is, or how they differ. Yes, I have said that people can write down what they think, but this leaves the precise question of what "thought", which is very hard to clear up. And that's no surprise, it's been a problem for the philosophers for thousands of years.

That is, to my mind, clearly indirect on any conception of the word 'indirect' that I am aware of, and is coherent. I just don't have any discomfort with it! I can't understand that discomfort others have with concluding hte above (obviously, assuming it were true). — AmadeusD

I just don't see how this doesn't boil down, at bottom, to an issue of taste, I don't see substantial disagreements other than what word we use to describe specific processes. We agree on mediation but disagree on how mediation plays into a direct/indirect framework.