Wow Fooloso4, that's some gold you've provided in that link, not limited to Descartes.

I was familiar with the letter, but had not seen it, I do have his Philosophical Writings collection, and volume III is a compendium of everything he wrote to everybody, but, there's no way to divide them up by topic, making finding that specific one, very hard.

Many thanks, I look very much forward to continuing this here, I will surely learn a lot.

Was reading over your conversation with Antony, and it is very interesting, and very much echoes Chomsky's interpretation of Descartes, which is that The Meditations were written, in a sense, so his physics would be taken seriously.

On your point of him contradicting himself (or at least appearing inconsistent) as to physics being liable to doubt, in which case the soul is not immortal, or the opposite, that's very hard. You know Descartes far beyond me, so I can only guess based on what I am reading.

Although it is true that he is trying to not get into trouble with the church, it seems to me that Descartes was quite confident that we are thinking things, so I do not think he would let go of the notion of the immortality of the soul.

In other words, the physics are more problematic than the thinking thing, even if he says he bases this project on physics. It sounds more consistent given many other things he says. Edited: That is, I'd wager that if he discovered his physics was not true, he would still not doubt that he is a thinking thing. But, yes, these are quite connected, as he mentions.

Given your experience with the texts and Descartes, if you had to guess or even form a hypothesis, what interpretation would you lean in on?

Given that I read what I was going to read concerning Descartes "Rules for the Direction of Mind", I'll instead go directly to the Meditations, so as to be able to contribute more directly, instead of relying on memory.

Those are classics, no fair.

Btw, read your "insectious" as "incestuous", and I'm like damn, that's quite a spoiler...

What would be a perfect book then?

I think we can see that some animals have preferences, and so display intentional behavior. This might not be obvious in simple 'one-off' acts, but extended observation and testing I think would show the difference.

The idea that animals are machines and hence, for example, feel no pain seems absurd to me, and is abhorrent. — Janus

I agree and I do think animals (some of them at least) go beyond mere stimulus reaction, namely some presence of mind.

As to the animals being machines, surely disgusting and contemptible now. Much less so back then, which doesn't make it right, but should provide some context for judging people back then.

No, I haven't, like you, I've greatly decreased my time watching movies or tv shows, with minimal exceptions.

I am a compulsive book buyer, had this one for a while, but haven't read anything else by him. Unless it becomes boring for too long, I doubt I'll stop. Once you read 2 or 3 difficult books, Pynchon, Joyce, etc., it's hard to give up a book due to it being dense, with exceptions, of course.

I am reading unusually slowly, but it's very enjoyable and I always like visually stimulating books, of whatever genre.

As for the TV show, I would have a look, but I must read the book first, otherwise, I spoil a good novel reading opportunity.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I think so, making sense is something like "give it meaning", when I think of senses, I think about moving my quickly away from a hot object, or scratching my arm, or closing me eyes (if it's too bright).

Colors become an issue, I grant that.

I am slightly confused here, so I'm not trying to be too definitive about it (not that you are making any accusations). Just working it out a bit.

Wittgenstein, at least his latter work in relation to mind, can be quite misleading, imho.

Certainly Descartes would've disagreed with a good deal of that type of philosophy, with exceptions admitted about word-use (which he critiques the Scholastics for abusing, etc.).

Are the senses alone sufficient? Given the connection between mind and body, which he will discuss, perhaps the problem arises only in abstraction, when mind and body are artificially separated and not treated as a union. — Fooloso4

This sounds more plausible to me.

What do we do with edge cases, such as plants or oysters? Do we assume some minimal intellect here or is it all sense?

As we see with Zeno and the denial of motion. Does this fall under logical formulations? — Fooloso4

If I had to guess, I think Zeno's case arises when we confuse two different intellectual exercises, namely conflate what it possible in mathematics with what is possible in ordinary life. What's true of one does not necessarily follow of the other.

But that could be wrong too.

His mechanistic view of optics allows that animals without mind can see, otherwise they would not be able to move around in the world. — Fooloso4

I was referring to human beings in that example.

Sure, animals in his view, on today's terms would be mere reactive organisms.

he lists several things that come through the senses:

Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects that are very small or distant, that doesn’t apply to my belief that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on. It seems to be quite impossible to doubt beliefs like these, which come from the senses.

... the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds ... no hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses ... — Fooloso4

Of course. No sane person could doubt this.

But "thinking with the senses" should be sharpened a little, to make it more coherent. Minor quibble though.

In other words, in the Theatetus Socrates first postulated that our senses gave us the criteria (measure) for knowledge, but abandoned that picture simply because our senses can be wrong, or not generalizable from person to person. Of course it remains to be seen how and thus why we need to posit an “intellect” rather than training our expression of cold to language. — Antony Nickles

Ah, you come from a later Wittgenstein angle, gotcha.

If I would predict his next step, it would be that the separation of sensation from that-which-could-be-deceived (“intellect”) would only be to maintain the integrity of our senses while controlling the framework by which we are deceived, to structure our failing. — Antony Nickles

Indeed, he does something like that. Aside from certain mathematical and logical formulations, the intellect too can deceive us, in ways that go beyond Descartes demon, because it applies to ordinary everyday life. Of course, we know much more about mental illness and self-bias and all that.

In general, however, I think Descartes is correct about highlighting the intellect, with small caveats.

That's fair. But I do think that if one takes into account his sometimes ridiculed account - which is severely underappreciated - of "common notions", I think such statements as his saying that all his (misleading or dubious) knowledge came from the senses, could be misleading as stated by him.

The issue I am highlighting is that it's not clear senses alone give us any knowledge, without an intellectual component.

Taking this into account, I think Descartes would surely agree that knowledge comes from the intellect, the problem is in the way we judge what the senses "say".

Put another way, it would be rather unreflective to consider the senses alone, they are way too poor to account for knowledge. And if this is the case, as I think Descartes would admit, then the senses provide "data", which is only such because of the intellect, otherwise, senses seem to lack mind.

It is in this specific context that senses are "sparks", as we will see when we get to Descartes observation about what literally hits the eye, as opposed to what we immediately interpret.

Again, this is my doubt.

I'm reading it slowly, want it to last. So far, amazing. Beautiful language, exotic location, interesting ideas, quite fun too, which never hurts.



This is my first Miéville, haven't tried the rest, though I hear Embassytown and The City and The City are also good.

So far, delightful and lots of eye candy, in a kind of dirty though industrially sophisticated way. Though quite different, reminds me of Imajica by Clive Barker.

I agree, but then we enter into difficult terrain, I think it wouldn't be too crazy to speculate (based on the evidence we have, in part) that they have intellect. So, a mammal that gets shocked touching a ball, say, will avoid it after a few interactions.

But then they have some kind of (poor in relation to us) intellect.

The real muddle is when we consider a case in which we see an organism which we intuit has NO intellect, maybe a Starfish, or "below" that, a plant. They react to sensations as if they had intellect.

That is, we cannot tell the difference in behavior between and intellectual response to sensation, and a reflexive one...

Descartes assumed, more often than not (again, some inconsistency here) that animals were kind of like machines. But that claim would no longer be supported by most these days...

Descartes says that there yes, but I'm skeptical if he believes that as quoted, given other textual evidence.

The senses are the spark. But it's a bit obscure to me to argue that senses think, they (seem to me) to just act in accordance to relevant stimuli.

What I'm not clear on, nor do I see it with the rationalists (nor the empiricists frankly) is if one can make a case that a person "thinks" with the senses in any way.

Again, it's a particular difficulty I've been thinking about for a bit. I'm inclined to say "no", but am not fully convinced yet, it could be a wrong view.

That's right they reach very similar conclusions so far as the usefulness and dependability of "folk psychology" (I dislike the term "folk", but, it's what we have...), the interesting thing to me is they kind of reach opposite conclusions.

Descartes tries to develop a method in which the reasons he puts forth for believing in something necessarily follow. Hume's big revelation was that we actually never observe such necessity, but merely postulate them.

Now, this brings forth an important conundrum, do we follow the principle of sufficient reason or do we go with Hume and say that this principle cannot be experienced in the world.

But that is an entirely different thread.

Still, very astute observation Frank. :up:

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

Somebody tells tomorrow that new military technology which looks bright at night, it could be confused for a star. Or we see the "star" moving very, very slowly, but we are uncertain because we are sleepy, tomorrow we ask was a star moving last night, and someone tells us that there's an airport nearby, and people confuse stars with planes because of that. Any reason, really.

Sure - this was a phenomenon common the classical tradition of the rationalists and the empiricists, they believed that the contents of our mind were transparent and, could be treated as such. They did provide a useful framework on how to proceed, but, as you mention, it was not quite right, but surely understandable and not worthy of reproach (not that you are reproaching them), given the time they (and in particular Descartes) lived in.

In any case, the shift to epistemology is definitive with Descartes, and that is still fully with us to this day and doesn't look like it will go away for the foreseeable future.

It's a part of it, I think, though he does have a very strong optimistic streak so far as the extent of human reason can go in attaining knowledge.

He wanted to get rid of most of the influence of scholastics, which he thought were generally quite mistaken in terms of arguments and conclusions and reasoning in general.

But he did think that if one follow him in his specific method, no question we set ourselves to answer, will be beyond our reach. He's somewhat inconsistent, at least in his Rules for the Direction of Mind, where he sometimes seems to acknowledge that we do have certain limits.

It was a good corrective and obviously he set forth a immeasurable change in philosophy away from metaphysics and into epistemology, and he got an awful lot correct. But he was too optimistic about what we can know, even though he does point out, as you do, that many ways we are led to error.

But he's mostly remembered in popular cultures by being that guy who postulated two substances, as if there somehow idiotic, given the state of knowledge during his life...

I don't have to tell this to you, I'm kind of "typing out loud" here but, he really doesn't deserve the amount of crap that is often levied his way, in particular for his dualism.

Nevertheless, the basic orientation of arguing that complex thoughts are created by the combination of quite simple "things" (whatever they are ontologically) is remarkably modern and very fruitful.

But when we ask the world questions, like: is that a star I sense? Or an airplane? We want the world to speak, not our own intellects. All the human truth teller is doing is repeating what the world has said. The intellect is just supposed to aid us in hearing the world correctly, right? — frank

But you don't recognize a star by sense, you recognize by the intellect. You see with your eye, but judge with your intellect.

The world doesn't speak, we reach conclusions based on what we are able to discern. Here Descartes would likely introduce his famous "common notions", but I'm yet to read the Meditations a second time, more carefully.

I do remember him making quite astute observations about what we literally see and how we interpret what we see. I think his example was seeing a hat, and inferring a person, something like that.

But this latter part moves us quite ahead in the Meditations.

We can suppress them (the senses) to an extent. But it's the intellect which calls the shot when it comes to making truth claims, on this latter part, Descartes is quite right.

I am not decided on the issue. I certainly have rationalist sympathies, but am unclear if it’s an issue of senses misleading or us mis-judging the senses. We see something in the sky, could be a plane or a star. We decide that it’s a star, tomorrow we find out it was actually a plane. In the process of *judgment* do the senses play a part or not? It’s hard to say. Maybe we can’t seperate them as much as we think. Maybe we can.

And that’s already an issue. Do the senses decieve us, or do we misread them? The senses do what they so, react to stimuli (internal or external).

You could have involuntary movements in which case your hand is not being commanded by the will, in such cases you could say that the arm (or hand) is not yours. In ordinary circumstances this doesn’t arise. It’s important to keep in mind the history here, Descartes was breaking up with Scholastic thought and laying the foundations for modern science, this includes focusing on simplifying things, not attemtpting to explain everything all at once. Great thread.

Yes. It does - we need to account for the existence of math, for instance, and whatever it is that math is a structure of. One assumes elegancy. Who knows?

Sensible.

Well, in so far as there is something "beyond physics", which is my intuition, that guess is perhaps as good as any other.

What you say is true. And it's what the physics tell us.

But does this mean (I'm asking semi-rhetorically) that the nothing you and I have in mind is impossible?

Then what do we do when we say, speculate about "what was happening" (in quotes) prior to the Big Bang?

Seems to me that the nothing we have in mind and "real" nothing may not be so different after all. But it's not clear.

Wondering if your own orientation in philosophy had anything to say about this...

Mysteries are creature dependent. What's a mystery to a dog, is not mystery to us.

The universe just is, but its existence and resultant properties are ultimately a mystery to us.

Could a differently constituted creature, with perhaps more intelligence than us understand the "hard problem?". I do not see why not.

But I'd only add, that in turn, that creature that understands the hard problem, will have its own mysteries, or it isn't a natural creature.

I'll grant this no problems, but one ought to mention exceptions, like Cornel West.

Granted, such figures are rare, but they exist.

That's one way to look at it, and it good way too, it shows a path to intellectual honesty. Provided we are cognizant of the fact that the Ancient Greeks or Descartes, Locke, Leibniz or Kant were not idiots. We would have likely been religious back then, to believe in the contrary would assume that one is beyond current dogma and ignorance.

And, on the contrary, philosophy is the single most successful enterprise of all, for from it did the fields of knowledge we now call "science" rise from.

And Hume was almost surely and agnostic, given his skeptical principles. It was not too easy to be critical of the Church back then, but eventually it could be done.

A pearl of wisdom from Hume:

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”

Sure.

That's why that thread is there, for precisely such questions.

@Banno already asked, but I think @RussellA, @schopenhauer1 and @Janus could ask Chomsky for clarification on these issues.

He usually responds to emails within mere hours, but, given that he is going to devote some of his time to TPF, it would be a shame not to ask for clarifications.

Alternatively, you can wait an see how he replies to Banno, and ask something in relation to his reply.

Very lively discussion. :up:

Let us pray to the quantum field vacuum, might be a sentence uttered by Lawrence Krauss.

It's missing something, but it's hard to argue, in today's age, that ancient stories are what is needed to scratch that very important spiritual itch.

We may need something rather new, but I doubt science can do it.

Perhaps you might get more mileage out of this thought experiment if you argue that I am this, where "this" denotes the existential intuition that you are something that is part, but also apart of the world.

But staying at the level of "being" or "thinking", we will have trouble, because of the abstraction and uncertainty of these words.

"Materialism is the view that every real, concrete2 phenomenon3 in the universe is physical. It’s a view about the actual universe, and for the purposes of this paper I am going to assume that it is true.

2. By ‘concrete’ I simply mean ‘not abstract’. It’s natural to think that any really existing thing is
ipso facto concrete, non-abstract, in which case ‘concrete’ is redundant, but some philosophers like to say that numbers (for example) are real things—objects that really exist, but are abstract.

3. I use ‘phenomenon’ as a completely general word for any sort of existent, a word that carries no implication as to ontological category (the trouble with the general word ‘entity’ is that it is now standardly understood to refer specifically to things or substances). Note that someone who agrees that physical phenomena are all there are, but finds no logical incoherence in the idea that physical things could be put together in such a way as to give rise to non-physical things, can define materialism as the view that every real, concrete phenomenon that there is or could be in the universe is physical."

I don't understand why you point to my alleged narrow-mindedness, though it could well be the case.

As for the supposed contradiction you raise, I take it to be part of our cognitive constitution. We understand the manifest image (as per Sellars term) and we understand a bit of the scientific image.

We are so constituted that we grasp the two aspects of the world, which are actually different views of the same phenomenon, one being more reflexive and careful (science).

It could easily be the case that some intelligent alien species would see how photons get colours as they are processed in the brain, or they could intuitively understand how gravity or qm works. That's not us.

You have the prerogative to reject this as silly or nonsense. But I personally try to be charitable for a bit, but, we need not be, of course.

You're not alone. Albert Einstein was walking with his friend Abraham Pais one afternoon, when he suddenly stopped and said 'Does the moon cease to exist when nobody's looking at it?' He was asking exactly the same question. I won't address it here though as it's a derailer. — Wayfarer

Well, one could say that the moon being mental is surely a very hard problem. :joke:

Seriously though, I hope I won't forget it but, if the issue arises in some thread, let's bring this up to see how this could be tackled, it's quite a provocative idea.

You could flip this perspective, you know. You're saying that, because we can't define the physical, due to the ambiguous wave-particle nature of matter and the other paradoxes of qm, that it could or must be the case that, if everything exists is physical then the physical must also include the mental. But what if we acknowledged that nothing is completely or only physical, on the grounds that what is physical can never be completely defined, and that what we experience as physical is instead the attribute of a class of cognitive experiences? — Wayfarer

It's a terminological choice, more than substantive one, though there is some substance. The qm phenomena are curious and interesting, but an extremely miniscule part of what I take the physical to be. In this sense I'd want to say that experience is the most fundamental physical fact we are acquainted with, I choose "physical" because I want to emphasize the world out there, which I think exists without me.

We could say that everything is an idea (or experience) or something mental. That's fine, so long as an idea has bearer which is not an idea.

With mental... It's hard. I don't want to say that say, what we call "Mars" is constituted (made of) something mental, I don't think it is. But I grant that whatever we know about Mars comes through experience.

Our commonsense notions lead us astray in regard to the nature of the world. That something can be at the same time a particle and a wave in superposition is a fact about the world, it doesn't make sense to us, too bad, it's what we have.

Yeah, using Straswon's materialism is usually counter-intuitive, so it's hard to express. Materialism as is used today in philosophy means roughly, something like physicSalism, the view that everything can more or less be described by the terms of physics. That's incoherent, it's asking way, way too much of physics, way outside its purview too.

No, by physicalism I mean everything in the world is physical stuff - of the nature of the physical - this means that experience is a wholly physical phenomenon. But if it is true that experience is physical, and history is physical and everything that exists is physical, then clearly the physical goes way beyond what we usually attach to the meaning of the word.

It's a monist claim, usually not accepted because people think that materialism must be physicSalism, I don't think it follows, but I'm in a very small minority here.

“In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou'd be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding.” -David Hume