I might read it myself, sound intriguing.

Another massacre... Hamas has hostages this time, I've read.

And yes, as mentioned, exactly what the hardliners in Israel want.

Whatever is out there, strictly speaking, cannot be called "objects" - there no good neutral word for it that comes to mind, unfortunately.

So, let's take the neutral "thing" or "stuff", whatever it out-there is, in part, responsible for how we take these objects to be, they stimulate us into reacting as-if, external objects existed.

But in principle, they are not necessary. But in practice they are.

only that the relation of that project to this issue in philosophy resulted from a pre-imposed requirement (for something certain) — Antony Nickles

I mean, if you have Descartes in mind, as you did in the OP, then sure, certainty can arise in this topic. In such cases of looking for certainty, it's a kind of trap. There is some evidence that suggests that Descartes was in part motivated to write what he did to offer a defeating argument to the reawakening of Pyrrhonian skepticism during his time. Popkin writes about this.

Descartes went as far as is possible into skepticism and we know his results. Today, I think that's putting too much weight into something which has no answer: skepticism cannot be refuted, heck, not even solipsism can be.

Degrees of confidence is a more sensible approach on most topics.

that there is no fact (in me) that ensures things won't fall apart; that we may not understand each other or agree (and not based on an inability to communicate the manufactured sense of "my" experience, perception). His attempt to "solve" this fact of our condition creates the requirement that it be certain, that I "exist", or something does, as "perfect", like math. — Antony Nickles

There is no discernable fact in me. "I" cannot perceive it.

Yet, this stops short of a different issue, whether it (the self, or me or I) exists or not.

It could be a "fiction" of convenience, or it could be a real natural phenomenon, which need not introduce dualism.

that the need or event of our differentiating ourselves from conformity is in response to particular needs of a situation or the interests that we are willing to stand up for, in contrast to philosophy's singular "need" (requirement) that this ongoing duty be relieved from us by knowledge of a fact in us (the metaphysical conception of "me") — Antony Nickles

Sure. Of course, there are situations in which everybody thinks about this topic, and people tend to think about it when a particular situation arises: say you are praised or blamed for some big event. That often leads to an assessment of "oneself."

Philosophy's "need"... for some of them - this is one of those topics which fascinates the philosophers.

Invariably we are going to bring in temporality into the discussion because, it's necessary, almost by definition. We can't speak of anything absent temporality.

But now, I have the feeling that either we are in agreement, or I fail to see the problem you see. Which, if is the case, is all well and good. And if not, that's good too.

What I’ve been doing in this thread is discussing a boring experience in a quite interesting way. It’s actually pretty easy, and everyone does it, e.g., ranting wittily about how boring a movie was. — Jamal

Yeah, and that's what's paradoxical. We usually don't tell boring experiences in the manner we felt them, few people would tell you: I got to work at 8, sat at the desk for 30 minutes, proceeds to detail those 30 minutes, then talks about having coffee, etc.

So, we say these things are boring in a manner that isn't boring, somewhat jumping around it. I'm not saying that we should be boring speaking about boredom as in using bland language and uninspired phrases. To then say nothing about what you are already saying the with the word you are trying to elucidate.

Boredom can be fascinating and funny, in retrospect. Maybe another way that boredom isn’t boring is when the boredomee is not him/herself boring; like Proust, they may have a rich inner life that means that even when they’re bored they’re never boring, if we get inside their mind. — Jamal

Yes, I think there is something to this. It's a type of experience which occurs privately, even though we can all be in boring meeting or a boring office or whatever. Yet what would be the point of even speaking about it if doing so would only produce boredom? Strange.

Then that is rare for me.

Actually, the first 240 pages of Gravity's Rainbow were close to being unreadable. One almost has no clue what is going on. But once it takes off, it's nuts.

The topic of boredom itself is hard to speak about in a profound manner. I think David Foster Wallace's last book, The Pale King, tried to speak about boredom - working in a tax office - while attempting not to be too boring. He never finished the book, due to his suicide.

But if you are dealing with dark themes, it may act as a kind of unconscious impulse to know what's going on. :chin:

Edit: na man, I can feel I'm not making any interesting comments. May try again later. :victory:

That’s the puzzle.

One possibility that occurred to me is just that because I don’t usually read transgressive fiction, Crash shocked me so much that I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. If that’s what has happened, maybe it means that anything equally shocking would have had the same effect, even gratuitous trash.

But I don’t think so. It’s the way that Crash was shocking that had the effect, a way that distinguishes it as more than gratuitous trash. — Jamal

Then I'd suggest that you weren't actually bored, maybe you were reading it in a disinterested manner. But boredom to me, carries negative connotations that if allowed to continue for too long, is quite exhausting and frustrating.

Unless it's a short book (120 pages or less, for example), then it's doable. But 200 or more pages? That's tough.

It might be a different conception that drives our view, I believe I follow what you are saying. But, my intuition is that there may be something there, which we cannot explain, but which could be explainable to creature with a more complex and sophisticated cognitive system.

Now, you could also be right, in that, there may be nothing there or nothing else to explain, just a confusion due to miscommunicating or misconstruing or thinking wrongly about the topic.

I can't comment to much on your reply to Corvus and frank, but I can mention that Galen Strawson makes a distinction between diachronic and episodic selves, one being the continuous perhaps more common idea that, I am the same person I was, five minutes ago or this morning. If I see a picture of me in the morning, I will (and many others) say that that person is me.

Strawson's a episodic, he does not think or feel himself being a continuing thing, so if he sees himself in the morning through a picture, he doesn't have the feeling that that is him. He recognizes the face, but doesn't feel a connection to that person. He cites a few other examples, Henry James, if I'm not misremembering, being another one.

Ah. Sure, there's content in that, has to be translated, but it can be interesting.

What's interesting to me is that it's not too frequent - in my experience. That something one has read which one find boring, ends up having much impact. It can happen, and when it does, it's just so very strange.

Not in line with the theme's suggested by Crash but, there's something about very, very dark books that, leave a strong imprint in the mind. I don't know quite what it is - I wouldn't want to reduce it to the usual comments about drama or violence at a distance gives us pleasure because we aren't involved in it. There's such a massive mismatch between living a dramatic event - which are just awful, as opposed to seeing it from a distance in other people, other families. Then it's interesting or even fun. And it's strange.

I suppose I have in mind Kirino's Grotesque, utterly haunting, depressing, not a single like-able character, yet, wow, that thing won't leave my mind. The way hatred can be "gotten" or understood from an intuitive perspective, is kind of surreal.

Sorry if it's not replying to your OP, but, it got me thinking about certain platitudes that sometimes are mystifying. Oh well.

I know this is a year old, so maybe you wouldn't say exactly what you said, maybe you would. You think Plotinus' conception of the One to be comparable to Jungian collective unconscious?

I think that Plotinus' One shares certain similarities (anticipations) to Kant's "things-in-themselves", which is interesting, though undecidable.

Collective unconscious... well, that's more modern and in a sense, less defensible.

Typing out loud... :cool:

If Schopenhauer is right, which he might be, I share that intuition, I think that the mere awareness of say the feel of moving your arm, is the closest approximation we have to "what it's like to be energy" - in the external world.

But if he's wrong, then there's nothing it's like to be energy, because energy as used in physics, is a technical term which loses strength when it comes to human beings.

You are asking for proof of what are the conditions we act under as humans (as if philosophy's issues could be answered with science). These authors are trying to get us to see that being human is sometimes beyond the judgment and criteria (and morality even Nietzsche will point out) of our cultural history, our shared ways of judging, identifying, proceeding, etc; not as an ideal but a part of our situation as humans, that our our lives are larger than the limitations of knowledge, that we are not always "circumscribed with rules"(Investigations #68). — Antony Nickles

I entirely agree. Still, when the occasion arises in which some of these things could be addressed, perhaps in an indirect manner, then we should use such results, it's very rare for modern science to have much to say about the lingering problems of philosophy these days. There may be some exceptions, but on the whole, not much.

A case in which a person is raised by wild animals, could give some clues. Some.

I'm a mysterian, so, I have no issue with "being human is...beyond the judgment and criteria...of our cultural history."

My intuition is that there we can't give a satisfactory action to this topic. Then again, maybe good literature could give some kind of insight.

I am trying to show these authors take the creation of the self, thus the possibility of its not existing, not that we can't find an answer to the problem of skepticism,but that we are in the position were we "answer" for our actions and speech in ongoing various ways (not as a picture of matching up with what is "my self"--as above). — Antony Nickles

Sure, I think that the "actual" existence, the real thing not (merely) a fiction of the mind, of a self is quite unclear, I do not think we can say with confidence (not certainty, of course) whether such things exist or do not.

We act as if they existed and in fact, as I mentioned elsewhere, base our law on the assumption of the existence of something like a self.

It is not "metaphoric" as in just language or a social commentary; there is actual import in it for the analytical workings of the conditions of being human. — Antony Nickles

I'm not saying it's nothing, but in a court of law the difference between sleepwalking and intent to kill has literally prevented a person from going to prison.

How do you know this? Those experiments are just experiences more precisely and rationally carried out (than every-day-to-day ones). Thusly, it cannot be said that we receive anything if we take away the forms of our experience, since there isn’t even justification for there being causality. — Bob Ross

But this sounds as if experience is experience of something that is only a representation and nothing else in any case. I don't think that follows, are natural numbers a representation or are they real constituents of reality? That 2+2=4, regardless of how you write the numbers, will be a fact, regardless of people being around or not, it's a fact - it's true regardless of belief or consciousness.

As for causality, again, yes, we discover it through experience. But we have to options: either things "just happen", that is, there is no reason why light can't escape a black hole, which suggests that there is no reason why light could escape a black hole, or why a photon couldn't turn in to an electron.

Or there is a reason which we discover and attribute to the external world, and it happens to be an excellent approximation of what happens.

But this is just a semantic issue. I am talking about the thing which we normally call a ‘chair’, which is not a trashcan flipped upside down. My point was that the thing we point out as a chair is just as real as what we point out as an atom. — Bob Ross

I don't agree. It's not a semantic issue, but a conceptual one. We don't sit on what we interpret as "spikes", but we could sit on many things - that depends on what we take to fit under the conception of chair.

An atom is not like this, I cannot, with significant flexibility, decide that an atom is a proton or that energy is made of particles. That doesn't happen with chairs or tables or keys, etc.

But they can’t be said to ground reality sans the model, which is where Kant goes wrong, since we cannot grant that anything we experience exists beyond it. Takeaway the forms of one’s experience, and nothing we experienced remains. — Bob Ross

We can't have a form of experience without something providing that form which is not experience. Otherwise, I could, by mere thinking change a notebook to a puddle of water. But I can't. Something prevents me, which is not my imagination, but a fact about something existing.

How did they define metaphysics? — Bob Ross

They didn't really have a definition, it was an activity. It was them describing what the world consisted in. As we know Descartes - with very good reasons for his time - thought the world was made of matter and mind.

Locke is much more subtle, and says we do not know if only matter exists, or if dualism is true. For all we know, he says, matter can think, it is not beyond the power of God to give this capacity to matter.

But they also discussed issues such as the self and skepticism, under the rubric of metaphysics.

I would say they study things independent of us: but the very concept of “independence of oneself” is conditioned by those forms of experience, and are not valid beyond that. — Bob Ross

That's fine. We don't see things similarly here.

So there's a conundrum. If John was sleepwalking, he did it, but he's not responsible. But what if we're always sleepwalking in a manner of speaking? Always playing out the same habits and grinding the same axes, or maybe only doing what we think we're supposed to do. That's a kind of loss of selfhood. — frank

I mean if you have that in mind, say, sleepwalking through life or drowned in consumerism or some other metaphoric use of the term, I still think the whole "reasonable person" standard applies, you would be responsible for your actions because you know what you are doing is wrong.

In the case of literal sleepwalking, as in, not being conscious of what you are doing in your "awake state" - your behavior in other words - then culpability feels wrong, there was no intent, no sudden impulse, just a reaction is sleep.

am saying your being you (individually) works through a process of putting yourself in line or against our culture (the social contract as it were), and that this happens as an event (not all the time), either moral, political, relational, etc. — Antony Nickles

Sure, I can see that. But aren't there empirical cases we could look into? As in a child being raised by wild animals in which they don't have other human beings as a reference frame, what would happen to them?

Maybe they don't have a sophisticated sense of self.

Well, let's try to imagine a context in which we would say this (not to be too Wittgensteinian about it). Perhaps if we were getting ourselves psyched or trying to get our confidence up in the face of someone treating us as insignificant (less than a person)--"I exist! I exist!"--and this would be in the sense that I matter, that I am not nothing. — Antony Nickles

I'd phrase it as "I am saying nothing", by which "saying" I intend to get across something beyond syllables, as in telling that person "I'm going to faint!", as a warning to be attended to or looked at.

which I am saying these other authors take up as what we must assert and express into the world--in a way that is not self interest, but takes ownership ("possesses") of what we want our interests to be in the world (Wittgenstein will call this our "real need"), that we own (up to) them (living our shared criteria for judgment, or averse to them; extending them, revolutionizing our lives). — Antony Nickles

Sure, he is aiming at that ownership status, as it were. Funnily enough, in his Appendix to the Treatise, he recognized that his entire system essentially collapses, when he says "my hopes vanish", when discussing the problem of not being able to find a self and not being able to find a real (as opposed to imagined) continuity in objects.

He is admitting, implicitly, that he is using in his system, more than should be allowed, under his system, namely assuming the self is unified and that objects have a real connection, despite not being able to prove it.

Extremely interesting passages often ignored. But it gets at a very important part of the issue, but it does leave the social aspect - which is crucial - outside, so, perhaps not entirely relevant to the discussion.

Or infinity. We can't fathom it, but it's always there lurking in the contours of thought. When I think of the self I seem to fall into thinking of it as the primal dividing line: between me and not-me. All other division seem to follow, me and the perceived, the real and the not-real, the good and the bad, something and nothing, etc. — frank

Yes, there are these kinds of intuitions, such as this is not me, or that is X not Y. Infinity too, is something we extrapolate to, without really understanding it much.

Curiously, something as murky as the self, is crucial for things like criminal law, which depend on such notions. Also, our moral intuitions come into play, in terms of, if John hit Bob, if John is provably sleepwalking, we can't blame him for such an act. But if he merely angry, then we do penalize him, etc.

It's a dense and informative OP, as expected from you. I am however a little perplexed by what the main point is, are you suggesting that the self exists only when we make propositions to others or that if we are alone, and we say we exist, we are not saying anything informative?

It's a very hard topic, hence the lack of progress for thousands of years. And there are many ways to confront the topic, one attempted solution is Descartes' and his argument that he cannot doubt that "he" is thinking, whatever "he" is.

We could also see the matter in the way you quoted Wittgenstein, which suggests that it is in the process of thinking and making attributions to others that we come to life.

We could also take Hume's approach, which allegedly echoes Buddhism, when he famously said:

"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."

Now, as has been commented on by several figures, he appears to deny or minimize something, he cannot help use: namely the "I". What is this referring to?

It could be that this is one of those problems in which our folk-intuition cannot do without, but which we cannot uncover through the most strenuous of efforts. Something can be an actual phenomenon, which we cannot delve into, nor explain, as I think is also the case of free will.

But I could be misreading you.

How do you know how accurate the knowledge humans can gain through the prism of their experience to reality? Why can’t reality be, for example, actually acausal, irrational, etc.? — Bob Ross

Because our experiments show us that the data we are receiving reacts from something that is not merely mental - in other words, there is retrodiction that fits in to events we can now see and evaluate. Which is why I believe that when are mental faculties happen to coincide with aspects of the external world, we have a science.

But it seems we disagree here on science. And of course, experience can be all you mention, but the same question can be raised: how do you know what you call irrational is actually irrational? But this then trends down to skepticism, which is not the main topic.

My point was that the chair does exist, if it there right now, independently of your observation of it; but that this is just a model of experience, and that is not to say that reality has chairs, atoms, nor planets like we perceive them. — Bob Ross

Chairs are folk-psychological concepts, heck, you if you put a trashcan upside down, you can call it and use it as a chair. There is flexibility in folk concepts that are severely restricted in the sciences. There we don't postulate folk concepts, we postulate very specific entities (electrons or photons, etc.) that must have those specific properties, otherwise they aren't photons or electrons, the rigidity does not apply to chairs or trees and much else.

A chair does not remain in the world, something very much like a photon will remain.

So, the phenomena vs. in-itself is an incomplete: the absolute is whatever exists beyond our possible forms of experience, and the in-themselves and phenomena are within the possibility of our experience. — Bob Ross

Here I disagree completely, things in themselves must be the ground stuff of reality. Adding another layer does fall prey to infinite regress. Which is why I think in these domains we stick to negative claims about what they cannot be.

But the knowledge of them is dependent on our experience, and so we can only say that we should expect them to behave within experience as if they persisted beyond our experience in a similar manner within a noumenal space and time—knowing full well we know nothing about what is actually happening in the world in-itself. — Bob Ross

Because atoms and planets behave as if we were not watching them. You have to account for how our science is able to retrodict things we weren't here to experience. Yes, the qualitative side of things, the color of the planet, what we call it, that is a mystery absent us. But not that they move in ellipses around the sun, or what we call "the sun", if you want to be very specific.

But my OP is using the definition of metaphysics which is the study of that which is beyond all possible experience, so within that terminology I am saying it is an illegitimate source of knowledge (which you seem to agree with, but disagree with the semantics). — Bob Ross

But who studies metaphysics as that which is beyond all possible experience? Not Descartes, not Locke nor much that come to mind prior to Kant.

Where we disagree then, is that I think epistemic structural realism is correct, science really does describe the structural components of the world, as they are mind-independently (not beyond all possible experience), but you go beyond and say, science describes our experience of the world, not aspects independent of us, so I think that's the main issue.

I would say it is a model of experience--not necessarily reality. It is empirically ungrounded, I would say, to claim that our experience gives us any sort of accuracy into reality (unless by ‘reality’ you just mean the human conception of it). — Bob Ross

I think this depends on the field in question. Like, if you have ordinary manifest experience in mind, then you can say something like we have a model of human experience, which is tautological - 99% of the time there is no other experience we have in mind.

If you have science in mind, then I do think you have a model of reality, as close as we can get to it. Sure, it is the human conception, there being no other we can access, unless we do so indirectly. It seems we disagree on what science describes.

On what grounds can your models of reality (or, more accurately, of experience) be said to tell us about something beyond that experience (i.e., ‘absent of you’)? I cannot know that the world has the chair of which I am sitting on right now nor that it persists in that world when no one is experiencing it—but I can say that one should expect, all else being equal, to experience it in the same manner next time. — Bob Ross

Science doesn't aim at model of a chair. That's actually too complicated and becomes enmeshed in our folk-psychological conceptions. By definition, there is not chair absent us, a planet or an atom is a different thing, something we postulate which belongs in the external world.

I would say that the ‘world in-itself’ as whatever is strictly beyond our experience is the ‘absolute’ and the ‘world in-itself’ within the model that we represent the world is one which would have to have certain properties (presupposed by the model itself)(such as causality, they “impact” us in some way, etc.). — Bob Ross

I don't follow your argument here.

I am not intending to say that metaphysics is solely the study of things-in-themselves: I am merely noting that it is impossible to know them (other than what is presupposed by the model that we represent them) and that we know nothing of the absolute. — Bob Ross

Then this is quite different from the title of the OP, because you say you have in mind metaphysics in the sense of beyond all possible experience, perhaps that could be considered a sub-branch of the field. I would add then, that physics in this sense, is metaphysics, because it postulates things that, though discovered through experience, do not depend on experience for existence.

However, we have no clue if there are stars and planets, let alone our own bodies, let alone space and time, beyond what is conditioned by our experience. You know what I mean? — Bob Ross

I think I follow, but there is more evidence to consider than what reaches consciousness. What reaches experience is but a small portion of everything there is. We don't experience photons - in the sense in which we are aware of them working in us - nor do we experience electrons or plenty of hues in the electromagnetic spectrum and so on.

But we have evidence for them. Yes, they are revealed to us in consciousness, given quite intricate forms of expanding human senses, we had no way of getting evidence for these things for thousands of years.

Yes, I would agree that these things don't reach the "in itself", but I think this domain is mostly beyond our understanding.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like modeling our experience is a part of metaphysics for you; which just means we are semantically disagreeing (which is fine). — Bob Ross

I think so to. We seem to have different reference points when speaking about metaphysics. It seems as if you follow a certain strain of Kantianism, while I follow an earlier strain, connected with Locke and Hume, Cudworth and a few others.

Which as you say, is fine.

Exactly. So why think that when it does predict something within experience that it would ever verify something that is beyond it? Which I think you anticipated my response here with: — Bob Ross

The issue I have is that, given the title of the OP, you are saying or insinuating that metaphysics is an illegitimate source of knowledge, I disagree with that, because I think it covers much more than whatever is "beyond all possible experience."

I never said the external world doesn’t exist; and astronomy and physics produce models of reality based off of predicting our experience (i.e., empirical evidence) and thusly are only valid insofar as they reference experience, which is conditioned by our forms thereof. — Bob Ross

While I agree that it is not possible to separate epistemology from metaphysics, I think you are trying to make the distinction way too strongly. Yes, models of reality - not models of models, the models we produce, if on the right track, tell us something about the way the world works absent us. Yes, experience tells us this, yes models are not reality, but they refer to it, not to a model.

All of archeological discoveries are conditioned, epistemically, by our possible forms of knowledge (namely space and time): if not, then please provide me with any empirical evidence you have of any archeology whatsoever which is not derived nor contingent at all on human (or animal) experience. — Bob Ross

Correct. But I ask you, is there any other way to get any knowledge at all about anything, that's not through a particular experience, related to the relevant creature? Knowledge is relational.

But you are limiting the historical scope of metaphysics only to things-in-themselves, not even Kant did this. He spoke about morals and religion as aspects of metaphysics.

And even Kant had things to say about things-in-themselves, that they are non-relational, and that they ground the objects of experience.

Finally, we should recognize, that appearances are part of empirical reality.

I disagree. When our cognition can be predicted, we have science. Whether or not one wants to imagine that that predictability suggests a correspondence to reality (beyond our cognition) is another matter. — Bob Ross

I think the topic of things-in-themselves to be, the single most interesting aspect in all of philosophy. And while this is true of me, I do not know why you insist on using this as the benchmark for metaphysics.

It's been known since the 17th century, that we have no access to this, except for a negative approach, as in saying, what they could be not. We can speculate. But here we are in free fall, even if we are carful.

If you think I am wrong, then I would challenge you to either (1) provide a means of providing empirical evidence for a claim which pertains to that which is beyond our experience or (2) provide justification for how we can know that our experience is accurate to the external world (of which is not appealing to models of reality which are determined by predicting our experience: which, naturally, are conditioned by our experience). — Bob Ross

Let's take Kant's proposal, one of several. Things in themselves are the ground of appearance and are non-relational. I happen to believe that thought experiments are empirical, because I don't limit empirical to the publicly observable, which is a mistake.

The way you are defining external world precludes evidence which shows that there are things absent us. Like planets or the stars. Yes, these are conditioned by our modes of cognition, but they happen to predict (and retrodict) things are subject to experiment and confirmation and refinement.

Unless you say that because all we have is a model, this model doesn't get to things in themselves, ergo planets and stars are not external to us.

I agree we possibly can't have knowledge of things in themselves, but I don't restrict metaphysics or reality to these terms - I don't see a good reason for doing so.

But a model doesn’t really make claims about things beyond possible experience: it just says, hey, look, we can predict stuff in experience if we treat stuff like they are this, so, until we come up with a more predictive model, let’s use that to navigate experience. It doesn’t say: this is actually how the world in-itself is. — Bob Ross

I mean, are we going to ask a model for it to predict something which is beyond all possible experience? That's incoherent.

But then, why is there any reason to believe that a more predictive model will tell us about things beyond all possible experience? We are still stuck in the same cage you set up. Astronomy says that X star in Y system exploded in a supernova 6 billion years ago, and the evidence supports the claim. That's a claim about the world absent human beings, we did not cause that event to occur, but can experience it.

Constrained by our possible forms of experience: space and time. Just because I experience the outer world in space and time, it does not follow that they exist in the outer world itself; nor that anything I derive from my experience, which is conditioned by them, pertains to anything beyond it. Instead, it only holds valid insofar as it references a possible experience from a being which has a similar ‘type’ of experience as myself. — Bob Ross

Astronomical and physics based evidence suggests otherwise, if you take these sciences seriously, you have to seriously consider that the external world exists. Not to mention archeological evidence. Yes, all these sciences are constrained by our modes of cognition, but when our cognition coincides with aspects of the external world, we get a science.

If that's not enough, or if you think this is not firm enough foundation, then, the only sense which I think cannot be "thought away", is solidity or impenetrability. Everything else is could be modified.

I agree, if by ‘about the world’ you take it to mean that one is deriving what the world fundamentally is in-itself: knowledge of the absolute, the whole, the totality of existence, that which transcends you, ontology, etc. — Bob Ross

That's part of it. It was part of what motivated Aristotle and Descartes, but notice that for neither of these two, was it ever possible to do metaphysics without epistemology. So either we assert, full stop, that we cannot know anything about the external world, or we say that some aspects we can tease out, most of them we cannot.

Or at least, that's how it looks to me. As for fundamental, sure, but this is a "game" we can play infinitely: no that is not fundamental, it is this, etc.

So, in other words, the ontological claims get stripped out, and what is left is the claim that we have reasons to consider the world that we experience as idealistic or physicalist (or what not) and not that the world in-itself actually is any of those. — Bob Ross

I mean, I think they are, if defended properly. But we have to be somewhat realistic, we cannot attain the kind of certainty you are looking for, that is, one that defeats skepticism about these topics. That's kind of what makes it fun, see which argument makes most sense to us.

But it's not definitive, nothing in knowledge is, so far as we can see.

I guess I am not entirely following: the model relates to possible experience. Metaphysics, as the study of what which is beyond the possibility of experience, is ontological in nature. For me, a model is not an ontology: the former is a map for navigation, which may or may not be accurate to the territory, and the latter is a theory of what the territory is. — Bob Ross

But then by definition, we cannot say what metaphysics is, because it is beyond all possible experience.

My point was simple, we have a model, which we use to navigate the world as is given to us. If there was no world, we wouldn't need a model. One needs the other. But again, "ultimate ends", are not things we can attain.

Good summary. I don't see anything that should be too controversial in that, heck if you just stated I think there is a world absent us, that could've avoided lots of unnecessary clearing up on your part, as far as I can see, maybe you feel differently about it.

What I think we are really ignorant about, is many aspects of the world absent us, which are not covered by physics, which is, although fundamental, far from exhaustive.

Kant's comments of "things in themselves" covers one aspect of it, but there are several. All in all, a high quality post. :up:

It can be taken as being that view. I think it is worth remembering that, ever since the shift in philosophy, from metaphysics to epistemology - Descartes philosophy - the original meaning of the word has shifted.

Look at say, Locke or Leibniz or Hume and others, they use "metaphysics" to refer to problems that are, more accurately described as belonging to epistemology. Hume's talk of the self, or Locke's talk about personhood, or Leibniz discussing innate ideas, these things pertain more to the way we think about the world, than the world itself.

Sometimes they do speak about the world, say, when Hume discusses problems about the continued existence of external objects: that pertains more properly to metaphysics, although there is always an epistemic dimension to all of this.

Cudworth, the most elaborate and fierce innatist of the 17th century, even more than Descartes and Leibniz is correct on the role of the senses:

They provide the occasion of experience within which innate ideas are able to arise. If we don't get experience, ideas won't develop.

"For these ideas of heat, light and colours, and other sensible things, being not qualities really existing in the body without us… and therefore not passively stamped or imprinted upon the soul from without in the same manner that a signature is upon a piece of wax, must needs arise partly from some inward vital energy of the soul itself… so that the soul cannot choose but have such sensations, cogitations and affections in it, when such external objects are presented to the outward senses.”

So even if what you say about Plato is true, and I don't doubt that, without sensation (which you said are treated dismissively, and I agree) we wouldn't be able to articulate anything. So whatever metaphysics is for you, senses must play a role, as must the intellect.

Not at all: it just means all of our knowledge is contrained by the possible forms of experience. Saying we have sense-data is a part of the contemporary model that is useful for navigating experience. — Bob Ross

Constrained in relation to what? Also, experience of what?

Absolutely sense-data or sensations or however you want to call it, is fundamental to any metaphysics. Beyond that, and being mindful that "metaphysics" is extremely contentious, I think the minimum requirement of agreement should be, that metaphysics is about the world.

Then you can add or subtract as you see fit. If we don't agree on that little bit, we will have a hard time talking with each other.

I am arguing it is illegitimate because it is purely imaginative: there is not an ounce of empirical content tied to it. — Bob Ross

That's not clear at all. Someone who calls themselves a materialist or an idealist use evidence all the time, they'll say that, for example, the collapse of wave function counts as evidence for idealism, or they'll say that the progress of neuroscientific evidence proves materialism is correct.

And so on.

So, you'd have to specify a bit, what you mean by not having an ounce of empirical data. As I see it, experience must count as empirical content, otherwise we are using the word "empirical" to mean, "publicly observable", these are not the same thing.

I wouldn’t say that modern physics is wrong, I would say that the metaphysical claims, which is separate but usually conjoined with the science, should be interpreted as models for the possibility of experience and not actual claims about the world in-itself. — Bob Ross

Sounds as if some kind of model-centric version would count as part of metaphysics for you. Because saying "model of possible experience" without specifying what this relates to, doesn't amount to much, so far as I can see.

Sure, relativity or classical physics are not changed if we consider ourselves idealists or eliminitavists. But given how a non-trivial amount of metaphysics come from "New Age" sectors, if someone argues that say, God created physics or that you can change reality just by thinking about it, then that would be wrong. And you may reply that such views are not metaphysics, and I would agree.

But I'm trying to cover as much as I can.



Correct. I replied in that manner to avoid someone asking "what do you mean by metaphysics?", if I say that sense-data is what remains if you deny metaphysics, then they know I'm talking about the world.

But the main point is better stated as you did.

Either we hold onto some kind of metaphysics or we do not. If we deny that metaphysics is legitimate, then we are left with the view that all there is, is sense data, for us.

The argument then becomes, everything there ever was, is or will be is sense-data and nothing else. Such a view is so radical, I don't recall any traditional figure ever arguing for such a view, it's too outlandish.

But you ask, how do we separate the imagination from metaphysics? It is not trivial nor should we be expected to find a nice cutting point in which we are able to say "the imagination stops here and metaphysics begins."

All the traditional topics of metaphysics, materialism, the self, dualism, free will, things-in-themselves, the nature of objects and so on, would be impossible to formulate absent imagination.

It's part of our way of interpreting the world. I mean, look at how Einstein discovered General Relativity, literally, by imagining a guy falling off a building, contemplating how would that person feel.

And I think we can say that part of General Relativity is important for metaphysics. We shouldn't have a metaphysics that says modern physics is wrong. It would be a bad system, imo.

Maybe the rhetoric will change several years after this war is over - that is, if it finishes without an accident happening.

It's well beyond that point of sending Ukrainian solders to get back territory, it's just to lead them to certain death. Sad.

Finished:

Chomsky & Me by Bev Stohl

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Then his power is limited. Or he is not the kind of being we usually take him to be: all good, all powerful, etc.

Or we could have the wrong ethics - his are far beyond the ethics we understand.

Or he just doesn't care.

To be fair, this could be all considered "representation". That is to say, perceptions, conceptions, and imaginations (abstractions) are all architecture. The things-in-themselves are only known through the "furniture" of this representational stage. The furniture needs the interaction though. One can never have pure abstraction without the things-in-themselves running through the stage and its furniture transforming the sense-data into representation.

And this is the aspect that is emphasized by Schopenhauer and how he differs perhaps. He emphasizes that you can never have an object without a subject and vice versa, lest you get caught in the "furniture" and not the objects that interact with it. — schopenhauer1

I think this is quite fair, in that we can do away with some of what Kant emphasizes in the simple number of categories he uses to render objects manifest: "unity", "apperception" and so on.

Granted, one picks and chooses, his idea of "intuition" is rather important, I think. I tend to prefer Hume on the imagination, as he gives a more robust account, though I would have to read Kant more in-depth to see how he articulates the topic.

And for sure, I think Schopenhauer's idea of us being subjects and objects is quite sensible and rational.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to suggest that Kant's system fails or falls apart, it's very good.

Spacetime is indeed a form of synesthetic a priori judgments (which go beyond propositions as is the case with statements). But I don't see how a bunch of other things are considered synthetic and a priori too.

For instance, color.

It would be replied that color requires experience of an object, so it's not synthetic a-priori. But that's misleading, objects do not give us color, we add colors to objects via the innate apparatus we have, namely the eyes and the brain. The objects merely "open" or "awaken" our capacities.

Likewise, with spacetime, if we had no sense-data at all, how can we say these would still be synthetic-a-priori? We would need a world to apply this framework to, otherwise it's kind of useless.

Same with music and sound, and many other things.

As for causality, that is indeed a big problem. I was an ardent defender of Schopenhauer in almost all instances but reading Hume a few times makes me question Schopenhauer's confidence and Kant's "solution".

We can say, Kant (and Schopenhauer) argue how causality is an innate property of the mind as it deals with objects.

This does not guarantee that our notion of causality actually applies to external objects. We could be miss-attributing the moment of causality and in any case, the way we interpret causality may not be the way it works in the world.

There are even arguments that there is no causality in quantum mechanics, things just happen. I think this specific formulation is wrong, but it gets very murky very quickly. Note I amnot denying the existence of causality, but our application of it and our confidence in it on several occasions.

Yep! I am rather familiar with it, though I could perhaps use a brush-up or two. But it will be a while, since I've read him more than any other.

While I may disagree or be unsure of one point or another pertaining to his metaphysical system, I do believe something along those lines, is what is needed with Kant.

It's a bit hard to defend him exactly as he wrote his system over 200 years ago, we have updated science he did not have, which would've forced him to modify his form of sensible intuition, for instance.

Not to mention advances in linguistics which play an important role in our cognitive capacity. So, modifications of his system is in order. As would be the case with almost all the classics, obviously.

"Here we have a wide ocean before us, but we must contract our sails."

There might not NEED be real objects we represent, but are there in fact such objects? — Mww

I believe so, otherwise it seems to me we are stuck in Berkeleyan idealism. But in these topics we can't be certain. Maybe there aren't. Unlikely, but possible.

Thing is, though, under normal conditions, this perception enables this stimulated neural pathway, so….how to direct the external stimulation along the same pathway in order to generate the experience of the same object but without the perceptual conditioning event. — Mww

Exactly. As I understand it (which is Allais interpretation of Kant, whom I think has the best one) Kant is concerned with how we actually experience real objects in "ordinary" or manifest reality. If that's his concern, he is right to argue we need external stimulus, and you are also correct the brain does not care either way.

However, I think the Cartesian account of perception is correct, I have to find the quote from Allais the puts this issue very well, but essentially, the Cartesian account is concerned with how our brain constructs what we experience in principle, not in "ordinary life", in which we are concerned with the actual "real objects" we encounter on daily basis.

while it doesn’t prove that speculative system is not the case, it doesn’t disprove it either. All that can be said is the brain does all the real work, which nobody contested anyway, even without knowing how it does its work. — Mww

Again, completely agree, especially with the last sentence, which is no minor point.

Those dispositional states reside in us as a condition of our human intellect. Metaphysics doesn’t call them states, per se, but something consistent with the theory which suggests their necessity. Kant calls them pure intuitions with respect to the perception of objects, the categories with respect to understanding the perceptions, pure reason as “the One to Rule Them All”.

Scientifically, what would a dispositional state look like? How would we know it? — Mww

To quote Kant:

"This schematism of our understanding with regard to appearances and their mere form is a hidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty."

I'd perhaps add: not unveiled at all. Or if that's too strong: at least at the depths we would like.

The science for dispositional states is too far off, we don't really have an inkling how concepts arise nor how ideas work, other than some very weak "theories" pertaining to neuroscientific brain imaging or worse, the occasional evolutionary storytelling, which doesn't shed any light on this topic.

But if ideas don't exist in a dispositional matter, we could not explain how all of us experience the world in an extremely similar manner. We never see perfect triangles in the world, we see curved lines connecting, but interpret them as a triangle. Same with straight lines.

When we reach the level of trees or rivers, things are much more complex, but the mechanism must be similar.

So yes, it all comes from the brain interacting with the world, but we know so little of both, we cannot provide a scientific theory of how this works. Something like Kant's program is the best we can do, provide a detailed outline of some of the operations we can tease apart.

Sure. But what I had in mind is something like Schopenhauer's version or maybe even Mainlander, though I have to read him more closely to see if he does simplify Kant.



That's the thing, in principle I don't believe that there need be real objects which we represent.

It can be done by electrical stimulation of the brain, and we would see, for all practical purposes, the same object as if there were a "real empirical object".

Does this change synthetic a-priori knowledge? Maybe. It suggests that what we have are dispositional states which objects "awaken" or "make clear", when we have experience of them.

But the experience is accidental and not, strictly speaking, required for the idea to arise.

It's a technical term, which can be used in several ways. The issue is, is there a better way to think of what counts as "empirical"?

What prevents this word from applying to ideas?

You have baited me. :cool:

So knowledge a priori, because it is legislated by logic and can have no empirical content, must get its content from representations that do not arise from anything sensible, which leaves only understanding as its source, the representations of which are conceptions. Because there is no knowledge possible at all from a single conception, it follows necessarily that knowledge a priori is the conjunction of a manifold, or a plurality, of conceptions, the relations between them logically conditioned by the LNC. — Mww

As I've told you, I find Kant very good, but I think this level of technicality may be excessive, so I'd either change the vocabulary to something more intuitive, or I'd simplify his system a bit. I always remind myself that Kant was a Newtonian, hence his emphasis on Space and Time being forms of sensible intuition and not spacetime, worth keeping in mind.

Having said that, the potential Issue I see, is that it's not clear to me that a-priori knowledge need not have "emprical content". If we knew enough about the brain, we could simulate everything we experience with electro-chemical stimulation. What matters is what the organism reacts to (in terms of what "sets off" our mental mechanism, not behavior to be clear), not what there is in the world, in so far as we are dealing with philosophy of mind.

Then we might quibble and argue if electrical stimulation counts as "empirical content". Maybe, maybe not. The word empirical can often be restricted to publicly observable phenomena, things we can all see with our eyes.

But it need not be. Empirical content can be thoughts or ideas, so far as I can see.

It didn't occur to me at the time, since I know you tend to comment on Kant discussions. Had I known you don't visit this area much, I would have tagged you.

Good, detailed reply for the OP.

The traditional issue of mind being "non-physical" reckons back to antiquity and even early modern science, in which the concept of the soul was used somewhat interchangeably with the mind, indicating that we understood physical phenomena much better than we actually did (and still don't).

In modern talk, the domain of the mental is a very hard nut to crack, being that outside some narrow fields of insight, such as a bit from neuroscience, some from linguistics and a bit from psychology, we know so very little of it.

And it makes sense too, given that we are analyzing our most unique gift from nature: thought. So, it's not surprising.

And while being an atheist is perfectly fine (I suppose I am one too), not much is gained by attempting to argue that the mental is opposed to the physical is some obscure manner. Otherwise, we are repeating the mistakes of the 17th century. Saying the universe is mental or physical does not highlight much about it, in my opinion.

Agreed to a large extent. It seems to me this question hinges on two different, albeit related issues of what "touching" is, that roughly corresponds to Sellars' "manifest" vs. scientific image of man.

In ordinary life, we touch things all the time, keyboards, fruit, other hands, etc. There can be no doubt touching happens here: just peel an orange.

Things become significantly more complicated in the scientific image in which the forces of physics must be taken into account in considerable detail.

So yes, there are aspects of touch that are the bread and butter of physics, though they often don't directly play a role in our ordinary usage and thinking of our concept of touch.

As for brute emergence, I'm the odd one out and think it happens all the time. That's a different story though.

"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator."

- John Locke