I’m using “ordinary” in its sense of: not special, not as: unexamined; it is in contrast to creating clarity by abstraction from any context or regular criteria and requiring only the certainty of logic or science. But we are just as capable of precision and rigorous analysis of our ordinary criteria as a “philosophical” perspective. The wish for philosophy to have science-like conclusions is to cover for, or hide from, our messy, vulgar lives and so sets aside “people” and creates the metaphysical, whether it’s the mind or “advanced brain processes”. Descartes is actually saying that our first impression from our senses, say vision, is not as clear as when we uncover the criteria and conditions for, say, the activity of seeing—the inferences we make, the reasons that matter to us for doing it. — Antony Nickles

That's correct, we can have precise and rigorous analysis of "ordinary" perception and we often judge people's sanity or sobriety on this basis. Nevertheless, I don't take it to be a case that cover for our "vulgar lives" we try to infuse our ordinary perceptions with science, rather, the scientific or philosophical perspective (there was no difference back then between these terms, which is worth keeping in mind) is more reflexive and considerate than ordinary perception, we are puzzled by why certain objects look as they do under certain conditions, or why apples fall instead of going to the moon, etc.

In ordinary life, we are usually not bothered or puzzled by these things much.

It's a bit nebulous to me if that is what Descartes is intending to say, but that can be put aside.

I am claiming that—although it seems natural to assume—perceiving here is not a natural ability or brain function, but an activity like pointing, or negotiating (which is a critical differentiation, not terminological), and that “perception” is seeing what something “consists” of, it’s conditions and criteria, as Descartes did with the wax. — Antony Nickles

Sure, you can say perceiving is an activity, like pointing, I'd only add that we naturally take perception to be passive, no effort goes into in, unlike pointing, though we know that a tremendous amount of stuff is going on behind the most trivial acts of perception.

The brain allows for vision, which gives us information; but we are trained (or pick up how) to identify objects ( say, apart from identifying colors)—to use criteria to judge a goldfinch from a robin, a rock from a turtle. Think of making an error in identifying an object; now did you judge wrong, or did your “brain” make a mistake? And what really is it to “identify things”? We don’t always identify things. We don’t need to. So there are certain conditions, contexts, where we only can be “identifying things”. Looking for the right cereal box? Trying to determine the genus of a new species? Do I take an apple as an apple? Every time? — Antony Nickles

Ah well, here I believe it is a mistake to put it in terms of "training", unless you extend training to include a teenager being "trained" to go through puberty.

In ordinary conversation I'd say, "I made a mistake.", naturally the brain plays a crucial role here, but I wouldn't usually say "my brain made a mistake".

Sure, we frequently overlook, or generalize or we aren't even attentive. I don't think I've said that we are always judging objects, nor do I see Descartes arguing for this either, on the contrary...

I thought of you when I quoted it. You had mentioned it before but couldn't remember where you read it — Fooloso4

Yes and many thanks for that. It really is an important topic, that is sometimes made fun of or more precisely ignored, these are the very ideas that should be developed in modern times, they're extremely valuable, imo.

What would someone who had never seen a lamp see? In the old Yankee Magazine they would post a picture in each issue of some old object someone found. The question was, "what is it?" Which meant, what was its purpose, what was it used for. Of course, someone who did not know the answer might use it for some other purpose. What they see, I would argue, is not something other than what they did with it. — Fooloso4

Sure, the use of a thing very much plays a crucial role to our understanding of it. If the lamp is off, they could take to be a piece of art, perhaps, or a weapon or maybe even a paperweight. If the light is on, then I think the options narrow down a bit, but I can imagine they could think of it analogous to a big flashlight, or a fire stick, etc.

But in these examples, it is quite apparent how judgment plays a role, such that if we stayed with perception, we'd not be able to discern much, if anything.

Thanks for posting the line about hats and coats which is a crucially important topic, which I am particularly interested in, because it is much understudied and I think it's exactly right.

As to how the actual Optics pertains to these - I can't comment much, I have to read them. If I had to guess, when we just look at something, what we literally see with our eyes are colours and shapes and distances, but we do not judge what we see with our eyes, but with our minds: this the shape I am currently looking at, which is grey, elongated and thin, is actually a flexible lamp.

Below it, what I see it an irregular sized object, with some orange, black and white. When I judge what it is, it's a book with deckle edge pages, which accounts for its irregular shape.

I could argue that my merely seeing with my eyes, is clear, as nothing is obstructing my vision, but it is not distinct until I judge what my eyes are seeing. I believe some account along these lines, is what Descartes might argue, in relation to Optics.

I'll get back to you on that if I learn anything new in the secondary literature.

But if there is the possibility that Descartes’ terms need not necessarily be read as metaphysical, then isn’t that the imposition of a framework (even by Descartes), and in the face of textual evidence of an alternative? — Antony Nickles

You can attempt to do an epistemological take, without the metaphysics and argue, that in "vulgar" (or ordinary) life, many of these objects are confused and unclear, but when we go into a scientific/philosophical perspective, our ideas of these objects become clearer and more distinct.

as an activity apart from the brain’s sensory vision—this as a ball of wax by the ordinary criteria we judge “makes up” or matter to us about a ball of wax, or a thing to throw at someone, or an adhesive for a poster to a wall, etc. and not “perception” as a mental process like vision or requiring “mind” to be an object, rather than our (and our shared) means of judgment and identification. — Antony Nickles

This would be terminological and not too controversial, this can be called an "activity", without much trouble.

Yes, the mind being an object can be problematic, because despite Descartes heroic attempts to clarify what a mind is, we, to this day, aren't sure what it consists of. But I'd only point out that without a mind, perception alone amounts for very little.

So, there is a sense in which the mind/brain is the organ we use to judge and identify things, while adding the qualifier that it is people that judge and think, and not minds, which doesn't change the main point, but is worth mentioning.

But he is realizing that our ordinary criteria for judgment are enough without metaphysical abstraction, thus that we can conclude these are people from only hats and coats. — Antony Nickles

The metaphysics can get into the way and distract the extremely valuable point he is making. Again, giving an epistemological reading of his account can be fruitful, and we can think about not two different aspects in the world, but different aspects within which we divide the world.

One aspect being the less reflective ordinary life, the other being the scientific/philosophical one, the latter being the domain in which we notice that what we are literally seeing are hats and coats and not people.

I think it's important to note, as I have been reading a few decent secondary sources on the matter, that Descartes gets his "clear and distinct ideas" from his work in optics, in which he attempts to explain how stimuli relate to the eye and the brain, which was quite fantastic for the time he wrote it.

Sometimes we can't see things clearly, maybe there's dust or fog, sometimes we can see well but we can't judge the object well, because we are sleepy of confused.

Keeping this in mind, that he is thinking of his scientific works adds valuable context to what he's arguing for in the Meditations.

And as a side note, his comments in the Second and Third Meditations on out "common notions" in simply superb. He already made Sellar's "manifest image", "scientific image", 400 years prior to Sellars, really impressive reasoning.

I like Kastrup and I think he says interesting things, but he is knocking on an open door. First of all, very few people actually believe in "materialism" meaning, that very few people think that all we are bits of matter that can be reduced to tiny particles and that emotions are just chemicals.

They can say that, but if a loved one dies, we can ask them why they are crying over chemicals, and we'll see how much they really believe in this stuff.

Secondly, actual intelligible materialism, that is when materialism actually had a distinct meaning, was back in the time of Descartes up to Newton, that materialism postulated that the universe was a grand machine, like a master clock, made by the best imaginable artisan, God.

But mental properties couldn't be explained by these mechanical properties, ergo dualism. But then Newton came along and showed that the world does not follow our notion of machines, and intelligible, defensible "materialism" collapsed, as Newton himself expressed, in his famous "It is inconceivable..." quote.

Lastly, we know so little about personal identity and how it actually works, that it just makes no sense to say objects in the universe are "disassociated complexes" of a universal mind.

If we don't have a clear notion of identity conditions for ourselves (see the gender debate, or DID personality disorder, which Kastrup frequently cites, the latter which is extremely difficult to manage, and not well understood at all), what sense does it make to say that objects in the universe are disassociated?

It's an interesting perspective, but it's missing extremely important historical elements which render this kind of idealism incoherent.

What it means is that, out of 8 billion or so people in the world, several could survive, maybe millions, or more, or less, who knows.

Nuclear War would be worse, given the radiation and the sheer force, so it's unlikely more of them would live than given extremely dire climate change scenarios, but we are splitting hairs, in terms of the amount of people who may survive or not.

It's not about being alarmist or not alarmist, it's pretty darn bad, which is why the links I provided, contribute to such damning conclusions, that we are in very deep shit.

You react to people as you think you should, I'll do likewise.

It could, but it alone would be insufficient for all human beings on Earth to die.

Another issue would be nuclear war, that would end everything.

It's not good, nor am I minimizing it, but just stating what I believe would be most likely. The collapse of cities and states is pretty bad...

Not the end of the species, but the end of organized human societies yes. It's an important distinction.

People won't be able to live in Florida or Saudi Arabia, water scarcity is and will become massive issues, lots of migration, etc.

We won't all die, but it won't resemble much what we have now, relatively safe cities, food readily available, being able to go outside for too long in certain areas, etc.

So it is pretty bad, though not literally the end.

Not meaningless, it signals that we are going above predicted deviations.

It may not formally lead to the conclusion that we already have exceeded the 2030 deadline goals, but it's certainly a statement announcing that this is likely to happen.

The McKibben article should also cause concern. It's hotter than predicted in addition to having El Nino, so that's worse.

I can see it clearly here where I live, the Dominican Republic, the amounts of seaweed we are getting from the bottom of the ocean off the coasts of Africa is insane, causing as much as an 80% drop in tourism, depleting oxygen and harming peoples health.

It's just awful.

Yes, and we can't predict, a-priori, how bad it will be on top of the already burning ocean, so it's a kind of Russian roulette.

Yes, that's rather sensible, however bad it seems now, very soon, it's going to be significantly worse than predicted, because every new study is confirming this, including this one by McKibben:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/maybe-we-should-have-called-this

Very soon, yes. A bit later, Florida isn't going to be livable, barring a gigantic infrastructure change not seen since the Southern part of Florida was built.



Indeed. Some were hoping we got to that point in 2030, not prior. So, it's a bit worse than predicted, which isn't promising.

Which is fair enough. So, we rely on reason to gain knowledge, but then what is reason?

It is interesting to note that in The Second Meditation, Descartes says: "If the "I" is understood strictly as we have been taking it, then it is quite certain that knowledge of it does not depend on things of whose existence I am as yet unaware; so it cannot depend on any of the things which I invent in my imagination."

He immediately proceeds to say that using the imagination to try a grasp this topic, of what thing I am, is like trying to use dreaming as guide to seeing things more accurately.

Based on previous comments too, Descartes takes it that the imagination is misleading and leads to all kinds of mistakes.

He does conclude later on, in the same page (in my book) that it turns out the imagination is part of his thinking, but I ask, is it part of reason?

Could the I be something created by the imagination and not reason? Or maybe reason and imagination are combined in a such a manner that they cannot be separated.

It's not so clear to me that the imagination must by nature be misleading.

More like running. But yes, to extinction.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/17/global-warming-likely-to-breach-1-5c-threshold-for-first-time

Great. . .

On the positive side he is certain that he exists, certain that he thinks, and imagines, and senses. On the negative side, just as what he imagines and senses can be called into doubt, so too can what he thinks, for they are all part of his thinking. If what he thinks can be doubted, if even what he doubts can be doubted, is he then hopelessly lost is doubt? Will his certainty that he exists be sufficient to serve as his Archimedean point? — Fooloso4

I mean isn't the point that what he is thinking about may be false, or misleading or an error, but that he is thinking can't be coherently doubted... can it?

For an evil demon can cause me to think more than I do - become more active or perceptive in my thoughts. Alternatively, I can be put in a state of dreamless sleep, in which case, there is no thinking. But if I am awake, that there is thinking going on - a conscious buzzing if you like - can't be denied, at least so far as I experience things myself.

Others have access only to my behavior, they have to infer that I think.

As for existing - well, one could argue logically - that thinking need not be restricted to body, thinking could be a spatial phenomena. There is no evidence for it, but also no evidence against it. But even in this case thinking would exist.

Can existence be a hallucination caused by a demon? Perhaps. But even in dreams, we exist in some manner...

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.