. In other words, a human being is merely a robotic machine programmed (by evolution?) to do whatever is necessary to propagate its core program (seed) into the future --- to what end? But if invisible intangible abstract Energy is the universal ding-an-sich, it must also take on the causal, material & mental forms that we observe in the world. — Gnomon

Not a machine no, a creature of nature - not his exact words, but that's what he means. He appears to have something quite similar to evolution in mind and discusses some interesting ideas associated with such concepts.

He does not deny matter, but matter for him is a representation. Which is why his book is titled "Will and Representation", sometimes alternatively translated as "Will and Idea".

That notion is similar to the 21st century concept of Information*1 as the ubiquitous shape-shifting "substance" that exists in the various forms of Energy & Matter & Mind*2. Hence, the evolutionary offspring of the Prime Mover (power to create & animate Forms) is the essence of all things in the world. In that case, our perceptions of mind, matter & energy may be the "approximations" (representations) that Schop was referring to. Could universal generic Information be the referent of Will? Does that make sense to someone more familiar with his publications? — Gnomon

I think he would have some issues with the term "information", as it comes loaded with many ideas that are quite the opposite of his elaboration of "will". The will is a blind striving, with no goal in mind. While there are several elaborations of "information" theory that are clear that information is meant in a technical sense, it becomes very slippery very quickly.

The second option of mind as energy would likely be less problematic to him.

His second publishing of The World as Will and Representation, which now included Volume.2, supposedly establishes his complete view on the matter.

It's hard to say. If he believes, as he says, that will is the closest approximation to the thing in itself, how close is this approximation? Sometimes he sounds rather confident in saying that will is the ultimate stuff of the universe.

But when he discusses representations themselves, as they appear to us ordinarily, he very clearly recognizes that these appearances are rather mysterious.

So, the answer to your question depends on the problem of similarity. If will as experienced by us is a good approximation to the thing in itself, then we have a somewhat decent idea of it, if the approximation is misleading, then it's mysterious. As I read him, he tends to lean to the former view.

What he really struggled with, is with the idea of how from one thing (will), many could arise. He used to be confident about this but appears later in life to become rather troubled by this issue.

It's important to keep in mind that for Schopenhauer, the will as thing in itself is the closest approximation to the thing in itself "unaltered" as it were, it's the closest approximation we have of it, but it's not the actual thing in itself - though he should be much more explicit than he was on this point, he does state this quite clearly in Volume 2, though the specific essay's title is currently eluding me.

The so called "referent" would be the simple act of will - energy in today's term - which can be felt all the time, made more explicit when, say, we move our arms or legs and focus on the act of moving it. Or if we attend to it by being observant of our breathing, and so on.

But, again, this is not exactly the thing in itself, just its closest approximation.

The Mill House Murders - Yukito Ayatsuji

Re-reading:

Tales of the Quantum by Art Hobson

As far as I understand, the person who first adopted neutral monism, though I don't believe his used this term, was William James. Russell was influenced by it and then developed a version of it. I unsure if Whitehead would accept this very label, probably sticking to "the philosophy of organism".

Whitehead did influence Russell to think of the world in terms of "events", rather than object and properties.

In any case, I think that the actual problem is matter - not consciousness, we know very little about matter, much more about consciousness. But people tend to go the opposite route and say that experience is the problem.

Hah! Nope, it is not.

I normally leave a small comment when I'm reading non-fiction.

Gathering Evidence by Martin MacInnes

Yes, he even mentions something to that effect about not knowing the intrinsic nature of physics and that this intrinsic nature is irrelevant to the contemporary use of physics.



Indeed, a lot of this stuff (not all to be fair) are stories about what we guess the brain does in relation to mind.

I've seen you quote this, I believe. I got it from reading Russell's book and thought it was quite well put.

There is a lot here.

But as Bertrand Russell points out, in a long quote, worth citing in full:

"To return to the physiologist observing another man’s brain: what the physiologist sees is by no means identical with what happens in the brain he is observing, but is a somewhat remote effect. From what he sees, therefore, he cannot judge whether what is happening in the brain he is observing is, or is not, the sort of event that he would call "mental". When he says that certain physical events in the brain are accompanied by mental events, he is thinking of physical events as if they were what he sees. He does not see a mental event in the brain he is observing, and therefore supposes there is in that brain a physical process which he can observe and a mental process which he cannot.

This is a complete mistake. In the strict sense, he cannot observe anything in the other brain, but only the percepts which he himself has when he is suitably related to that brain (eye to microscope, etc.). We first identify physical processes with our percepts, and then, since our percepts are not other people’s thoughts, we argue that the physical processes in their brains are something quite different from their thoughts. In fact, everything that we can directly observe of the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of "mental" events in at least one sense of the word "mental".

It also consists of events which form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The study of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither, as we please; in fact, the words serve no purpose. There is only one definition of the words that is unobjectionable: "physical" is what is dealt with by physics, and "mental" is what is dealt with by psychology. When, accordingly, I speak of "physical" space, I mean the space that occurs in physics."

- Bertrand Russell "An Outline of Philosophy"

We fool ourselves into thinking we leave our bodies to look at a brain from a "neutral" perspective - this is not what actually happens.

I suppose a trivial thing which could be said about a "scientific method", would be to look for simplicity within complexity, you'd want to eliminate as much irrelevant information as possible.

If an idea is too complicated, or has too many variables, the less subject it will be to be considered "scientific". Of course, simplicity has to be used only in so far as it helps explain more complex phenomena, but if one forces this idea to the extreme, you won't get anything out of it.

There's also the curious aspect of "elegance" that arises in some of the sciences, which I know is somewhat controversial, but, for whatever reason, theories pertaining to physics say, and sometimes some aspects of linguistics, have this property to it.

Maybe more than ever. We face problems the human species has never seen before, and are also at the very cutting edge of new discoveries in almost all fields of knowledge, we need to make some sense of all these things.

And, we have the old Chesnuts - the problems that remain since Plato, which we are still wrestling with.

I think it's factual, and there's an interesting history behind this. Granted everything I say is my opinion, unless I'm quoting someone else.

The debate about "mind" and "body", these days are mostly terminological. It was substantive in Descartes time, and prior to that, but not so after Newton.

One can assert that "consciousness is not part of body". That's fine.

Now I ask the question, why? Because consciousness is "non-physical"? That doesn't make sense. Or maybe consciousness is unlike the rest of the world? Yeah, so is gravity.

Maybe you have something else in mind.

It might be interesting to discuss in some fashion, but as stated it's not coherent.

Consciousness is part of body, like lungs are or feet.

I'd say contained within rational idealist doctrine. It's not as if it's an established school like Rationalists and Empiricists, but I think Lovejoy's label is accurate.

It's a very long story, but worth sharing:

He's the guy Chomsky always references instead of Kant, because he says he finds his ideas to be "richer" (the ideas, not the theoretical side), which people rarely ask about and nobody reads. Me being astonished with Kant and Schopenhauer, simply had to find out why he says this and if it was true that someone said what Kant did before him.

I believe I may be one of the 5 or so that did bother to read him, maybe less.

His main work is a mostly unreadable theological-laden trilogy, which, with some effort, sections and pages of pure gold can be found. Luckily, after he died, he left an unpublished manuscript called A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, which is mostly about epistemology, and is amongst the richest books in innatist epistemology in the history of philosophy.

Far more than Descartes or Leibniz, in my opinion.

The name "rationalistic idealism" is given by historian Arthur Lovejoy referring to Cudworth and Henry More, in his Kant and the English Platonists, I believe. I think you've read that. I can't really think of a better label.

Defies categorization? In some respects, sure. But he certainly in the rationalist camp.

Haven't tried it?!?

I am shocked frankly. It's so much more efficient... :halo:

I'm not a fan of reductionism.

I'm a rationalistic idealist, like Descartes or Cudworth or Chomsky - along those lines, though not metaphysically dualist.

We probably agree on like 90%+.

Now that I have been informed that I am getting a Christmas card, I have to do one for you...

Sigh.

Fair enough. :cool:

Yep! Can count on you to put it in that sophisticated formulation.

Once a dualist always a dualist, right? — Mww

Hah.

Well man, what can I say? We eliminate as much as we reasonably can. Whatever remains, call it what you will, is what we have to work with.

I take it to be the notion that beyond this postulate (negative noumenon, thing(s)-in-themselves), we cannot know the nature of reality.

We can study representations, not noumena.

Edit:

In fact, Kant goes so far as to argue against Leibniz' monads, precisely because Leibniz was introducing these as positive noumena (not that Leibniz used these terms), the fundamental and complete nature of reality.

And Kant argues, correctly, in my view, that we don't have access to this type of knowledge.

I believe it does. All I'm claiming, is that I believe the idea of the "thing-in-itself" is more coherent, for the type of limiting notion Kant was introducing.

It could be that "behind" or "supporting" the representations, there are a plurality of things. That's an additional thought, that is, it adds an extra notion to the idea of "thing-in-itself", which as stated, is singular.

Granted, saying this "solves" almost nothing, there is still stuff left to iron out, that is what kind of grounding relation exists, how does multiplicity arise, are we postulating the simplest possible thing, etc.?

I believe Kant would say that we can't answer these questions, as we would be entering the idea of "positive noumena", and fair enough.

My intuition (in the non-technical sense) is that this idea can be worked on at the margins anyway.

He's an empirical realist and a transcendental idealist. Kant has some very acute and critical things to say about common sense, incidentally, though the comments I have in mind appear in his Prolegomena, not the Critique.



We might think it or think it and perceive it or maybe imagine it - this is terminological, which is not to say it does not matter, it does.

The point is that individuation is an extra step, as applied to the concept of "things-in-themselves", it adds something to what would otherwise be singular, the thing-in-itself.

If we want to attribute only what is strictly necessary to such an idea as the negative noumenon, then it is simpler to assume the existence of a single "thing", than to attribute many things, and say all these several things each have a thing-in-itself as the grounds of the representation.

Maybe plurality is correct. It's not so clear to me.

As for the specific page in Schopenhauer, I do not recall, he probably does mention it in the Appendix, but I believe he also mentions it in both volumes, more so in the second one.

My memory isn't pristine either, though it's not an age issue. Limited "software" as it were... :wink:

That's right, I think on this point Schopenhauer was correct.



I think you are starting from the wrong end. We see plurality, much the same way we see color, we can't help but see them in objects. Doesn't mean the object has color, or that the objects are in fact separate from something another object.

We identify a tree from the surrounding ground (both as representations, of course), but that's something we apply to the environment, it could be considered a single thing.

I meant to say that isn't he making an assumption that things in themselves, are plural? The fact that he is referring to plurality by speaking of "things" adds individuation, which is an additional attribution to the general idea of the "thing-it-itself".

I'm not questioning that something like the thing in itself exists, I think such a postulate is quite necessary.

Thanks for the clarification.

Nevertheless, isn't Kant making an assumption by saying there are "things in themselves"? This includes plurality, how do we know if there is such a thing?

Yes, that is my understanding too. That doesn't mean that positive noumena are impossible, just that we can't comprehend how they could exist, or even if they could exist at all, but the possibility of such a thing remains open.

Kant sometimes oscillates between the "thing-in-itself" and "things in themselves", and these, obviously, are different in an important respect, in that one presupposes individuation, the other does not.

When what's being discussed is far from clear, we should withhold trying to find a reference relation until we have a better idea of what kind of thing we are talking about.

Do we have in mind noumenon in a negative sense or in a positive sense? Are we to think of noumena in singular or in plural? Are we to think of them as grounding relations or mere epistemic postulates about the limits of reason?

All of these are hard questions, which merit discussion and clarification. Absent this, we may be acting somewhat prematurely in attempting to find a reference relation.

In what sense do you intend to define it? Real, in English, is an honorific term; if someone says to you "here's the deal" or "here's the real deal", or if they say, "this is the truth" or "this is the real truth", they aren't implying there are two kinds of deals or two kinds of truths, they are just emphasizing the word.

There are things in the world which have a certain appearance and utility, which we call "chairs" and use accordingly, likewise we do something similar for mathematical formulations, within a specific framework of understanding. Same with fictional entities, people, history and cities, etc.

The substantive question, it seems to me, is the issue of mind-independence, is the thing you are describing as "real", something which exists in the extra-mental world, or is it a solely a mental construction, with no external anchoring?

What do we measure knowledge with if not with our lifetime? There was no possibility of knowledge prior to birth, nor will there be after death.

I suppose, if forced to speculate, that if I really attempt to focus on what happened the few instances prior to the spark of consciousness arose, there was just total "darkness", for want of any word whatsoever.

If I extrapolate that state prior to being conscious, to a future state in which I will no longer be conscious, then I suppose the best "knowledge" I have, is that there will be "darkness" for a very long time.

Assuming there is no afterlife, or reincarnation and so on.

I have skimmed the essays a bit and have read one essay of his not directly related to physics per se, but related to the topic of "realism".

My own view is that his output tends to be more helpful to the moderately advanced student than to a lay educated audience. However, ymmv.

"But as for those other Objects of Cogitation, which we affirmed before to be in themselves neither the Objects of Sense, nor Objects of Fancy, but only things understood, and therefore can have no Natural and Genuine Phantasms properly belonging to them; yet it is true, notwithstanding that the Phantastic Power of the Soul, which would never willingly be altogether idle or quite excluded, will busily intend itself here also.

And therefore many times, when the Intellect or Mind above is Exercised in Abstracted Intellections and Contemplations, the Fancy will at the same time busily employ itself below, in making some kind of Apish Imitations, counterfeit Iconisms, Symbolical Adumbrations and Resemblances of those Intellectual Cogitations of Sensible and Corporeal things.

And hence it comes to pass , that in Speech , Metaphors and Allegories do so exceedingly please , because they highly gratify this Phantastical Power of Passive and Corporeal Cogitation in the Soul, and seem there by also something to raise and refresh the Mind itself, otherwise lazy and ready to faint and be tired by over - long abstracted Cogitations, by taking its old Companion the Body to go along with it, as it were to rest upon, and by affording to it certain crass, palpable, and Corporeal Images, to incorporate those abstracted Cogitations in, that it may be able thereby to see those still more silent and subtle Notions of its own, sensibly reflected to itself from the Corporeal Glass of the Fancy."

- Ralph Cudworth

The Secret History by Donna Tart

Second (and final, for a while) reading The True Intellectual System of the Universe by Ralph Cudworth

That's interesting, will have to wait and see how this pans out, but this is a promising avenue.

I can't guarantee you'll like it; some aspects can be subject to (probably) fair criticism.

It just hit me at the right time I suppose.

Spent three days reading:

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

That was a masterpiece.

It's been a good while since I've been engrossed in a book like that. Heck, I don't want to rush into my next book just to savor and think about what I just read.

Books like these are the reason literature is so fascinating, giving us a privileged peak into human nature.

Well this last offensive has been mentioned a few times, notably by Col. Macgregor, who has been pretty good in his predictions so far.

So it's not a surprise that NATO is also on the reaction, because if there is no big push from either side this summer, then we are in for an extremely long and ever more dangerous stalemate.

It's going to be a rather tense couple of months...

Nobody really knows right now what Prigozhin was really thinking, he says it was a protest of kinds. But is that the actual reason?

Maybe what you say is right, but then why stay in Belarus? Might take some time to figure out what was going on.

Haruki Murakami... — T Clark

He's fantasy or, magical realism. Not much sci-fi, a little in his Hard Boiled Wonderland...

Al Jazeera spoke to Daniel Hawkins, a journalist based in Moscow, who said that Yevgeny Prigozhin is still under investigation by Russian authorities for mutiny.

“Initially Putin said the charges will be dropped but that seems to be on the table again,” Hawkins said. “A lot will depend on the Kremlin’s response to his statement, and how that relationship will develop if there will be one at all.”

“[Prigozhin] said the whole incident was simply a demonstration of the weak spots of the Russian security forces, a demonstration of how – according to him – Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine could have gone if given to the hands of the most professional fighting force in the world.”

But how exactly that would look like is hard to say, Hawkins said.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/6/26/russia-ukraine-live-news-shoigu-meets-troops-after-wagner-mutiny

Apparently this was meant as a kind of wake up call to the Kremlin. Strange way to do so...

Ayyye. We idealists, probably. :halo:

Ahhh, that was Penrose's idea. If I remember correctly, there are a few others that believe in similar things.

I think you would very much enjoy Cosmosapiens by John Hands, he goes over these theories, and a few different ones, other than the Big Bang Model and much, much more. Though not pop-sci, it's not too bad to read at all.

It's quite exciting to see the JWST shake up our model of Cosmology. We still need more and better analysis, but, something needs modification. Took longer than I expected, honestly.

All in all, very cool. :up: