How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
My senses can deceive me, so if I cannot trust my senses, I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist; It's just me and you; but if my senses cannot be always trusted then your existence must also might be an illusion.
As always, one can only deduce one truth: "I exist", whoever "I" is... :-)
https://open.spotify.com/track/27kpYPk2bQDCxAti9zj06X?si=36d83bad433c4ebb
As always, one can only deduce one truth: "I exist", whoever "I" is... :-)
https://open.spotify.com/track/27kpYPk2bQDCxAti9zj06X?si=36d83bad433c4ebb
Comments (264)
But my reality is very real to me. Reality only exists in the consciousness of the beholder.
You will only doubt the existence of the sandwich until you get hungry.
Does it? I'm willing to allow that radical skepticism is largely just insincere affectation, and that true solipsists are mentally unwell, but the idea that: "everyone else is a hylic, a p-zombie" and perhaps "these p-zombies that slip out of existence when I am not interacting with them" isn't incoherent. We can perfectly picture what it would entail, it's not some sort of logical impossibility. I am not sure if "implies" would be the correct term at least.
Nor does the idea of an android that is able to mimic human language behaviors well enough without being conscious seem particularly far-fetched these days. But if one could live in a community of such androids, it would be a "language community" only on a very behaviorist view of what constitutes such a community. At the same time, it seems a human child could learn a language from such tutors, at least to some basic level. Granted, such things couldn't be developed without language existing first, but it sort of lends credence to the idea.
Well, their experiences would be different. Their reality? Is what you've said about turtles and bees really true?
Yep. As your asking me that very question implies that you understood my post and what to do about it. Doubt sits in a background of certainty. That's a step beyond the insincere affectation, into the nature of discourse.
As if one might have a large language model without a large language.
Maybe you were tricked by a demon.
See, this is what I'm saying. We need the modal equivalent to Moore's hand argument in order to refute claims like that. "Maybe such and such ..." Well it depends on what such and such is, in each case. Maybe I was tricked by a demon? No, demons don't exist. Why not? Here's a hand, mate, ask a scientist.
Does that do anything for you, or should I excuse myself on the way out?
As far as I know, you are not me. You have invited others to your solipsism party.
I don't need more certainty than what comes naturally. I'm fine with the possibility that I've been tricked by a demon. Why do you need to conquer that doubt?
Do you want the honest answer, or some bullshit?
Honesty is fine.
Your post would make sense if I was claiming to doubt that other people exist. I'm not though. What I am doubting is that it is a logical impossibility for language to exist in the case of solipsism.
For instance, Muslims, Christians, and Jews would hold that God could understand human speech before God created human beings. It was not somehow beyond God or unfathomable. Yet this assumes understanding of a language in the absence of a community.
Now, perhaps people might not believe in God, but it hardly seems like one could use the "impossibility" of language in the absence of community to somehow disprove God or else divine omniscience.
Then the answer to your question, as to why I would need to conquer that doubt (to wit, that I might have been tricked by a demon), all I can say is that it would bring me much mental comfort, if I could just see an elegant argument, preferably in ordinary language, that shows how it would be impossible (in the modal sense) for demons to exist.
Call it aesthetics, call it being a nerd, call it whatever you want to call it. It's just a preference in matters that involve the intellect.
With the knowledge of science, I say it's possible to know this.
Did someone suggest that?
Well, what did you mean by "implies" here?
We're just 'disembodied subjects'?
What "demon"?
:up:
:up: :up:
Unless, of corse, you are a LLM.
But even then, there is a background of assumed language.
You'd have to show that it's a contradiction. I don't think it is.
It is a commonplace, legitimate, and useful metaphysical position that an objective reality doesn't exist. From that point of view, there is no ultimate truth about reality.
[edited]
Wonderful. I love when you often leave remarkable phrases like that one.
Quoting T Clark
Why do you dare to question your senses in the first place?
What reason do you have for assuming that we can ever know the ultimate truth about reality?
Yes. But I wonder also whether the quest to identify the 'really real' might not just be a secular replacement for god.
Quoting T Clark
I have sympathy for this frame. The notion of reality is a human construct and seems to be tied to our sense making capacities. While I agree that there are realities about certain matters - temperature, facts, dates, places, the fact that I am typing - these are all contingent. Once we try find the ultimate reality above and beyond the contingent, we are probably just chasing our tails.
I wonder whether even if we knew that the ultimate truth about reality was God, would we be any more knowledgeable than knowing that the ultimate truth about reality was 42.
If you admit and are sure that you doubt everything in the world, then you cannot deny the fact you doubt everything in the world. Therefore you found one thing in the world that you cannot doubt, which is the fact that you doubt everything in the world. So the fact that you doubt everything in the world is your ultimate truth about the reality? Makes sense?
You cannot deduce "you exist" as the only truth, if you doubt everything in the reality. You will be doubting your existence is illusion.
But the force of that argument would be logic. The point of the evil demon argument is that it's possible to doubt logic.
Our experiences are our reality.
Consider that the objective reality is made up of aggregations of atoms and molecules that do not have any colour. We, for instance, are colourless blobs in a particular shape in a vast system of these atoms and molecules interacting. Nothing we see is the thing we see, only the light reflected from it. This makes up our physical reality, together with whatever else we sense. For example, sound is not heard without a sense of hearing.
Furthermore, our mental reality is made up in our minds by however it was stimulated as it developed. Part of my reality is knowing that my mother loves me. Is this a part of an objective reality? No, objective reality is just colourless atoms and molecules together with energy interacting. Not my reality at all.
No, I wouldnt say that. We are clearly in bodies. And it is because we are in bodies that we have a reality.
ergo reality is necessarily more-than-subjective.
Which is why, if someone were to prove that the evil demon argument leads to a contradiction, then such a person would have also demonstrated that it is not possible to doubt logic. And whoever demonstrates that, deserves the Fields medal. Well, maybe I'm being too extreme in my judgement, but it would certainly be a monumental achievement to prove that logic cannot be doubted.
:up: Right there must be something we subjects are being subjected to.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
The only thing going for the 'evil demon' is that he is not a logical contradiction. Just as it is impossible to prove the existence of anything by logic alone, so it is also impossible to logically prove the non-existence of anything.
If we attempted to doubt logic, what would we be using but logic? Logic is merely a formal procedure. There is no reason to entertain the idea of the evil demon or the brain in a vat or the flying teacup at the other end of the universe. They are all logical possibilities, though.
That's one way of looking at it.
Quoting Questioner
That's another.
I think it's objectively true that I am typing this answer. Whatever ontological/metaphysical matters exist to bring this about are possibly irrelevant. You can always unpack any idea and assumptions further and this process may well be endless. Perhaps reality is just an infinite regress of contingencies.
It's true that you are reading this screen. What more is said by "It is objectively true that you are reading this screen"?
Hi. Let me contribute something, in that regard. To me what that means (and I might have a different interpretation than @Tom Storm on that point) is that by saying that something is objectively the case, you're necessarily saying that something subjective is not the case. Or, at the very least, that one (i.e., as a human being) is both a subject and an object at the same time. Objective reality, in some sense, would be different from subjective reality. You can have both. They're not mutually incompatible with each other, at least not necessarily so.
Can you say how?
But also, you now have two realities. Contrast that with the view that there is at most one reality. Which do you prefer?
It's a tough notion to articulate coherently, I acknowledge that. So, sadly, no, I can't say how. I lack the knowledge.
Quoting Banno
The latter. I prefer the one that has both: objective reality and subjective reality. Why? Because it makes everything else more simple. It's true that it's more economic to have one premise than two, but sometimes having two premises can lead to more economic consequences, because realism / anti-realism isn't your only premise. No one has just one premise that they believe in, that's not how the human mind works.
And this makes things simpler? Again, I don't think the objective/subjective dichotomy is of much use, nor that it can be tightened up. We can mostly get by without it.
Agree. People seem to want to identify the really real. Its surely a kind of god surrogate.
Quoting Banno
Yes. This may be boring but I think the issue is I have known many people with psychosis whose reality differs. And less dramatically, people with vastly different values and presuppositions appear to inhabit a different reality to mine. Their world is unrecognisable to me. There may be one reality but how does this help us in practice to make assessments of such experiential differences?
Yep. I'd say that their beliefs differ, rather then their reality. When I worked with such folk one approach was to gently show them how their belief didn't match what was going on, or what others thought, or as least wasn't getting them what they wanted. We called it a "reality rub" - an LSCI term.
While I never worked with the level of psychosis you work with, isn't the objective much the same - to bring about some set of beliefs that are at least a bit more functional?
I think so. Easier said than done, given psychiatric services here often no longer choose to treat complex people, so their psychosis becomes so foundational to them that even basic communication is often impossible.
Quoting Banno
But this phrase might well describe the function of philosophy for me. It isn't so much a search for truth or a quest for self-knowledge, it is rather a hope that I might bring some more useful frameworks and capacities to my thinking.
Have you found philosophy useful?
Well, yes, but not in any grand sense of providing an understanding of the whole of life or such. More in a piecemeal, day-to-day way. More by showing what's not right than by showing what 's right.
Reaction to this post:
Sometimes in philosophy we show by arranging our concepts into a persuasive paradigms. This is very different than presenting logical arguments from true premises to demonstrated conclusions. Like cause and effect, we accept these concepts and enjoy the fruits, not born from logical demonstration but life forces these concepts on us. Accepting the sandwich, our big bang to certainty.
Then let me just quote the Tao Te Ching:
Quoting Tao Te Ching
The lesson here, in my opinion (the most important one) is that the Tao itself is not the Ultimate, be-all, end-all, sort of thing, because the Tao itself follows something else: it follows what is natural. So, if you "believe" in the Tao, you must, at the very least on logical grounds (to say nothing of moral grounds) follow what is natural, instead of following the Tao, because the Tao itself follows what is natural.
I have never read it that way. "Tao (the way) follows what is natural" means the way is just natural, in other words nothing over and above nature itself. So it is not following the natural "instead of following the Tao".
What can I say? I read Chapter 25 literally. I'll quote the relevant part, once more:
Quoting Tao Te Ching, Chapter 25
I'll translate it to Propositional Logic first:
1) If p, the q.
2) If q, then r.
3) If r, then s.
4) If s, then t.
And what I'm arguing, is the following:
5) If t, then u.
Well, what you just said there is technically a fallacy, since it's an appeal "to the stone". Welcome to my world, dude.
And I said, "Welcome to my world, dude". This is the kind of "intellectual stuff" that I have to deal with, lately.
Ok, do you have a moment, then? I could explain it to you, but it's just my point of view. It has errors, I'm sure of it. But it's not without merit, if I may say such a thing.
The title itself is the question of the Thread, and of the Original Post itself. The author of the post then says:
Quoting A Realist
The first thesis ("My senses can device me" is a skeptical premise), from there the author asks a conditional statement: "If p (I cannot trust my senses), then q (I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist".
That's questionable. That very statement. For it could well be that "p", the antecedent, is True, while the consequent, "q", is false. In other words, it could be true that I cannot trust my senses, but it does not follow from there that "I might as well conclude that outside reality doesnt exist." That part of the sentence, is false. Why? Because your senses are not the only thing through which you are connected to other res extensa. The very act of breathing, the physical act of breathing, demonstrates that from a purely Physical point of view (as in, what professional physicists study), you are not an isolated physical system, you are instead merely a closed physical system instead of being an open physical system. That's thermodynamics.
If we can agree on that, then I can explain to you the last Verse in Chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching, and what it has to do with Propositional Logic. If not, then I cannot say much more on that subject.
I'd be happy to get some more explanation. We all have different points of view, and all with some merit, no doubt.
Ok. The final Verse of Chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching, in my honest opinion, literally means the following:
First premise) If one follows Man, then one also follows the Earth.
Second premise) If one follows the Earth, then one follows Heaven.
Third premise) If one follows Heaven, one follows the Tao.
Fourth premise) If the Tao follows what is natural, then one follows what is natural.
That is what the final Verse of Chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching means to me. From there, I am arguing for a new proposition:
Fifth premise) One follows something that is not the Tao, because One follows what is natural, and "what is natural" is what the Tao itself follows.
Are you suggesting that what is natural is over and above and something thus different than the Tao (and by implication over and above and different from Man, the Earth and Heaven?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's The Absolute in the Hegelian sense. That, is the ultimate truth about reality. And that answers the OP of this Thread.
Yeah, that part of Hegel's thought is pseudoscience.
Quoting Janus
This part of Hegel's thought is also pseudoscience.
Quoting Janus
Because he's wrong about that. History will exist until the last human being on this Earth has died.
Quoting Janus
And that is the literal truth about biological evolution: it is purposeless. And that is a scientific fact.
Another way to phrase this, if I understood your suggestion correctly, @Janus:
1st Premise) One follows Man only if one follows the Earth.
2nd Premise) One follows the Earth only if one follows Heaven.
3rd Premise) One follows Heaven only if one follows the Tao.
4th Premise) The Tao follows what is natural only if one follows the Tao.
And here is my fifth premise:
5th Premise) One follows what is natural, because one follows the Tao, only if the Tao follows what is natural.
Why is there a need for a fifth premise? Because of what you said:
Quoting Janus
Count them. The terms that you just mentioned. Count them. How many are there? There are five: Man (one), The Earth (two), Heaven (three), The Tao (four), and nature (five).
I do understand the Tao and nature as being the most general or universal or overarching, though. Still, I nonetheless can't see the way (Tao) as something different from nature or the way of nature as different from nature. Maybe it's a pedantic point. I am no Dao De Ching scholar and i can only guess at the intentions of the author.
Quoting Wayfarer
In Wuxing (Chinese philosophy), there are five elements: Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.
The classic four elements from ancient Greece are: Water, Air, Fire, and Earth. The quintessence that @Wayfarer is speaking of, is what is known in the West as the Fifth Element, the Quintessence (literally meaning "fifth essence", or "Fifthness", if you will, as something different from Fourthness, Thirdness, Secondness, and Firstness (and, arguably, of Zerothness as well). The ancient Greeks call it the Aether.
Right I was aware of that, but it wasn't what I wanted to refer to by 'elements' and nor did I want to draw any analogy.
Not sure where you are going with rest of your post.
Then what did you want to refer to by 'elements'? And you are free to not want to draw an analogy. What does that have to do with anything in a Thread that asks how we can know the ultimate truth about reality? The OP is asking an Epistemological question, not a Metaphysical or Ontological one. It is certainly not asking a Linguistic question.
Quoting Janus
Politely, kindly, genuinely, candidly, honestly, I ask you: who is to be faulted, for your lack of sureness (or degree of certainty) in where I am going with the rest of my post?
Sure, and this can absolutely be so. But there is a difference between noting this and appeals to the "language community" as somehow decisively settling all questions of solipsism or anti-realism. The madman should be nonplussed by this response. Does his speaking imply accepting a "language community?"
No, he might do so because it helps him with his delusions. Indeed, he speaks because he was deluded about the nature of the world, and he is now stuck with this habit. But just because one smokes does not mean that one is forced to affirm that "smoking isn't 'bad for me' or 'irrational.'" People who suffer from OCD or phobias often show this radical divorce between rational belief and behavior in this way. "No, I really don't think I'll get sick if I don't wash my hands 10 times... but..."
All the madman needs to affirm is that the demon tormenting them (perhaps also them) has been very clever in conditioning them.
But there is no demon.
Yes, obviously he can be wrong.
However, there is a sort of open-endedness to questioning. Just as Moore pointed out that we can always ask "is it good?" or "why is it good?" we can also always ask "but what if it is false?" or "what if I am mistaken?"
This is because reason is, in an important sense, transcendent, which is precisely what allows it to take us beyond current belief, habit, desire, etc. in search of what is truly good and really true.
In my humble opinion, to argue that is to argue about the rules of language themselves. It's a pointless discussion. Imagine if a soccer player began an argument with the referee about the rules of soccer. He would just be given a yellow card. And if he insists, he gets another yellow card, and he's out of the game.
If language is a game, then what is the point of arguing about the rules of language if no one is going to enforce the rules of the game?
If language is a game, who is the referee?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with you on that specific point, not necessarily other points.
It isn't. It shares some similarities with games.The idea that language, war, science, religion, etc. are all games requires a notion of "game" so broad as to lose the original insight about how aspects of language are like games. Plus, people routinely equivocate on the sense of "game" here.
Anyhow, does a game imply other players? Does the existence of prayer prove that God must exist? Does it prove that anyone praying must "really believe" that there is someone on the other side of their prayers? I don't think so.
Then the remedy for that is to learn some Game Theory. That, just for starters. They would have to learn other topics as well.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, it does not. I can play Solitaire on my computer, so can you, so can they.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Of course not. It's the problem that Aristophanes points out in The Clouds.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, but this is the point where you get some new people that join what we're discussing here. Some of them will tell you that the meaningless sing ? has "ontological import" (never mind even trying to understand what they mean by "ontological import", just take their word for it, hypothetically speaking, if only for the sake of argument). They will try to convince you that the expression "?x" means "something exists". But it doesn't. "?x" is not a well-formed formula. You need to add a predicate to it for it to have any meaning. So, if the predicate is "is Pegasus", I can say: ?xPx, which I can then parse like so: there exists an x, such that x is Pegasus. And what I'm saying is that if the existential quantifier has ontological import, as they intend it, then Pegasus literally exists. Now I ask you: have you seen a flying horse somewhere, mate? Can I even call you "mate"? Have you allowed that? Am I insulting you? Am I trying to be your friend? What is a friend? What is an insult? What do these words mean? Are we playing a Language Game? If so, then what are the rules? Are there even any rules to begin with? What is the Universality of the Principle of Sufficient Reason? Does that question even make sense? What is sense?
That is the open-ended character of questioning that you were referring to. I call it, for a lack of a better word, "lumpen idealism".
I wasn't able to track the conversation between you two in the thread: can you provide a summary?
A summary of what we're discussing, in the context of a Thread called "How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?" That's a tall order. I mean, it's not impossible, since it's only page 3 so far. But it's still quite a tall order, I don't have that much confidence in my capacity as a philosopher to provide an answer to your question. That is due to my own incapability, not to the fact that it cannot be done, because there is no such fact, because it can be done. Just not by me.
In other words: I believe (and I may be wrong, since perhaps I am deluded) that the answer to the question of the Thread is the following one:
One can know the ultimate truth about reality by studying Hegel, because the ultimate truth about reality, is his concept of the Absolute Spirit.
That does not mean that the story ends there. It doesn't. Why not? Because, in my opinion (again, I could be wrong about this), the "moral of the story", as in "What is the Absolute Spirit?", is that the Absolute Spirit is the ontological fact that you are free to believe me, not because it is the politically correct thing to do, but rather because it is a metaphysical and scientific fact that you have freedom, in the sense that you have the ontological (aka, metaphysical) capacity to make choices. It has nothing to do with the fact that you are a human being. It has nothing to do with the fact that you are a member of the biological species Homo sapiens. This is something at the level of Nature itself, it's at the level of Physics itself, because it is an ontological feature of you as a subject (which is the only thing that Zizek gets right, everything else that he says is wrong), not of you as an object.
Does that make sense to you? If not, what does your intuition tell you? What is your "gut instinct" here, so to speak?
(Edited for the sake of clarity)
Man, Earth, Heaven, Tao and Naturethe five 'elements' of the verse.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I don't know. Must it be somebody's fault?
But in Wuxing those are not all of the same elements. In Wuxing, the five elements are: Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.
The set of elements that are found both in the Tao Te Ching and in Wuxing = {Earth}
The set of elements that are different between the Tao Te Ching and Wuxing: {{Man, Heaven, Tao, Nature},{Fire, Water, Wood, Metal}}
Objectively speaking, in a pure way (in the language of mathematics, and of set theory more specifically), it is possible to obtain several conclusions here. The Tao Te Ching and Wuxing only have Earth in common.
As for the next part, notice that it is a set that has two subsets:
1) the first subset is = {Man, Heaven, Tao, Nature}
2) the second subset is = {Fire, Water, Wood, Metal}
That might not mean much to you, or to anyone, including myself. Because it is trivial. But it is not as trivial as it seems. For it is unambiguous language. It is as objective as it can possibly be, from the First Person Perspective of a human being (myself, in this specific case).
Thanks for the summary.
I am assuming by ultimate truth that you are referring to absolute truth. Prima facie, as @Mww would tell you, the only way to know reality absolutely is if ones cognition were capable of representing with 1:1 accuracy; but this is never actually possible, because every cognition has a priori modes for cognizing and of which are always independent of the data received of realityhence a priori.
However, it is worth mentioning that there is such a thing as more or less accurate cognitions; but just that absolute knowledge of reality is never possible with any cognition.
The best we can get is the Peircian pragmatists idea that Truth is the end of inquiry.
That is an answer that can be traditionally offered; but I am in no way qualified to critique Hegel. He sucks at writing, and, unfortunately, I am incapable of penetrating into what the dude meant.
Well, not quite, you see, because you speak the English language, which has a common etymology with Medieval German. I'll give you one example: Hegel establishes a distinction between "Thingness" and "Objectivity", and he prefers the latter. "Why does he prefer the latter?", you might ask? For no particular reason. It's simply an Aesthetic choice. Aesthetics, my friend, is Hegel's true First Philosophy. Think about it, he was a Romanticist. Why would he love Logic more than Aesthetics? He wouldn't, he wasn't a Classicist, he was a Medievalist.
You would have to find an equivalent, in your community, to what Hegel represented to the Common German Peasant of the 1800s. He was a Folk Hero. That's why they elevated him to the highest possible position in Academia, nay, they elevated his position within the State itself (he was, after all "the Philosopher of Germany", as in, their quasi-official "Philosopher of the State"), insofar an academic could make a career in the first half of the 19th Century. The closest equivalent to Hegel in North America, for example, is Peirce. It's not Walt Whitman, as Rorty has argued in print. It's Peirce, dude.
(note: I edited this comment for the sake of clarity. -Arcane Sandwich)
P.S.: "Who is Clarity?"
What do you mean by reason being transcendent?
Do you mean by this that reason provides a universal framework, which transcends our personal and cultural beliefs, and therefore is able to facilitate a dialogue about what is "truly good" or "really true" ? Or do you mean that reason may function as a conduit for us to access a 'divine' realm? Do you see reason as having limitations?
Guess I am thinking about this, so well summarized by @Wayfarer in another thread.
Careful, Bob. Even granting no conceptual conflict between ultimate and absolute, the initial query regards knowing about the ultimate truth of reality, but youre roping me into a situation regarding the truth of absolute reality. See what I mean? Absolute truth (of ___), or truth of (absolute _____)?
But all that aside, youre right: I would never admit to, nor be convinced of, the idea, much less the possibility, of knowing ultimate truth about reality, or, knowing reality absolutely.
Still, as in all the other similar occasions .thanks for respecting my opinions.
You might take it that far, but it can be far more concrete. Consider picking out a school for your kid or buying a car. You want a school/car that is truly good, not one that merely appears to be good, or one which is said to be good by others. Likewise, if you have back pain, you want a treatment that will truly fix it, not just one that appears good or is said to be good.
The desire for what is truly good is what takes us beyond appearances (generally the purview of the appetites) and "what others say" (generally the purview of the "spirited part of the soul," particularly our concern with honor, status, reputation, etc.). It's the desire for what is really true and truly good that consistently motivates us to move beyond current belief and desire. This is how reason is transcendent, through its desire to know truth it takes us beyond the given of what we already are. You could call it ecstatic as well, since it involves going outside of what we currently are.
Now, we might very well be led around by our passions and appetites and still end up being exposed to new things, forming new beliefs, even learning things. However, our attempt to go beyond what we already are here, beyond current belief and desire, will only be accidental in this case, something we stumble across as we pursue our current desires based on our current beliefs. It's reason's desire for the True/Good that makes this its very mission.
It's also reason that allows for us to have coherent "second order volitions," i.e., the desire to have or not to have other desires. E.g., "I wish I didn't want to x..." It is what allows us to ask "I have a strong desire for x, but is x truly desirable?" Or "I am enraged with Y and have a strong desire to vent my wrath, and to restore my honor, but is this truly good?" The target of these questions lies outside current desire and belief.
In the modern tradition, reason is often deflated into mere calculation. So, the desire aspect tends to get lost. IMO, this is precisely what makes Hume Guillotine even plausible in the first place.
What at odd thing to say. "Hume Guillotine"? Sounds grotesque. Yet I digress.
Allow me to ask you this: what is the Kantian Thing In Itself? Have you seen it, with your very own eyes?
Yes, although I might say this is a contingent form of good as it would be 'truly good' for a specific purpose - my back - and such an efficacious approach may not work on other's backs or even mine, a year later. So the good is relative to a set of circumstances.
But I get what you are saying.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But wouldn't the search for such good generally always be a good which is fit for practical purpose founded in experiential practices, rather than a platonic notion of good?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, I can see this.
Might it not also be argued that reason itself is a part of human practice and shaped by history and culture, so when viewed from this perspective, reason cannot take us entirely "beyond" our current contexts. In other words it can't really take us to the 'truly' part of truly good... Thoughts?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, as a person of the current time and place I do tend to regard reason as a tool or calculating mechanism. It helps us to solve problems - which may just be expressing a low-rent form of pragmatism (my specialty). And defending the use of reason raises problems of self-referential circularity.
It also seems to me that reason can be blunt and often abstracted and that the matters of importance, such as aesthetics, values and belonging are beyond reason and are more like sense making via affective responses. And yes, we all know the risks inherent in this. I guess reasoning can help us develop balance and perspective. It also seems to be that idealizing reason can swiftly lead us to scientism or fascism or any number of isms.
I guess this all goes to your point Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Unless there is a good that is non-relative to a set of circumstances. Such a good would be, in that sense, an absolute good, as opposed to a mere relative good.
Thank you very much Tom Storm, I do indeed know how "to muse", in the verb-sense of the term. As in, I am familiar with the human art of music, which is itself related to the Muses of ancient Greek mythology, as well as the word "museum", literally meaning "the place of the muses". In other words, yes, I'm somewhat familiar with poetry. Not exactly my field, but I did read Tolkien, so that must surely count for something (one would hope).
Quoting Tom Storm
Hmmm... Well, Platonic Ideas, if they exist, would be example of such absolute goods. Why is a mere thing, a mere ordinary object, good? Because in that context, relativism is somehow true (though it doesn't have much being, and consequently, it does not have much existence). However, in that very same context, there is a wider context. The real world, for Plato, is something like a subset of a larger world, and it runs parallel to "another subset" in that real world, which is the subset of the "Realm of Ideas". In that realm, "things" (i.e., Platonic Ideas) are good by themselves, that is, they are good in a non-relational way. So why are they good? It's not as if "something makes them good", since they're immaterial (i.e. they're not "made" of something, so nothing "makes" them good). So, why are they good to begin with?
Well... you just said so yourself, in your own mind: because they simply are that way. They just are good, simpliciter.
Ah, but you see, that is the "magical" part of Cosmological Platonism: you don't even need ground to begin with, because the Idea of Good (in that system) is identical to the Ground itself. It is "That Which Grounds", in the sense of metaphysical grounding as an Academic discipline.
Quoting Janus
And the usual retort to that, is that language itself is a game, and since there is no arbiter (i.e., no "referee", if you will), it is an incomplete game.
Quoting Janus
I sincerely do not know, my friend. What would be your honest opinion on such a thesis, if it is indeed a thesis to being with?
Quoting Janus
None. That is the whole point of Ground. That is its function: it grounds other things, in a metaphysical sense, and it is not grounded by anything else. Think of it like Aristotle's Primer Mover: it moves other things, and nothing moves it.
Yet Aristotle wrongly assumed that the Prime Mover was diametrically opposed to Pure Matter. He had it, "backwards", if you will.
Then hes already shot himself in the foot, insofar as the uncondition-ed is beyond human reason, and the uncondition-al is itself a rather suspicious conception. Better he propose a claim that there is that which is conditioned by good alone, which makes good a quality under which the conceptual object of the claim is subsumed, rather than the condition of that conceptual objects possibility. Thereby, he is justified in claiming that in which resides good as its sole quality, serves as the singular necessary condition for that which follows from it.
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Quoting Janus
That there is that in which resides good as a sole quality is a claim restricted to mere opinion, yes, but the justification for that which follows from it, in the form of pure speculative metaphysics, can be logically demonstrated as a prescriptive practice, which is not mere opinion.
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Quoting Janus
While that which is claimed to be good in itself is mere opinion, it can still be the case that whatever follows from it, iff logically consistent hence irrational to deny, that the ground for the claim is the subsequent affirmative justifications given from it.
Heres an opinion, found in the opening paragraph of F.P.M.M., 1785: . Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will ..
Me, I dunno if thats true or not, but it doesnt have to be, as long as it cannot be apodeitically proven false, and, as long as that which follows is logically consistent with it.
But, as in any speculative domain, its off to the rodeo, and the commoners get lost in the minutia paving the way.
One should not dabble in philosophy.
Either get serious about it, or let it go altogether, there is no middle way.
Notions of subjectivity and objectivity are introduced for the purpose of establishing and maintaining hierarchy between people. Those higher up have objective truth, those lower down have merely subjective truth.
People want to have the upper hand, they want to have power. The ultimate power is to dictate to everyone else what they are supposed to consider real.
(I predict that much better outcomes for psychotic patients could be brought about if they could be made to (re)gain some power, some self-efficacy, rather than further disempowering them by dictating to them what they are supposed to consider real. Hence the relatively good results of work-as-therapy.)
I believe your sense don't deceive you. When you hear a loud crash behind you and you jump, your senses were functioning in truth, and effectively.
It is the almost immediate displacement of your senses with a human made construction--perception--which is susceptible to deception.
When a traveler sees a rope in the distance and thinks it's a snake, it's minds displacement which deceived her. Not her eyes.
This is the "wrong part", in my opinion. Just look at the sentence: it's not even grammatical to begin with. Look at that part in the middle, it literally says "must also might be". That's not even English, in any sense of the term.
I dont. Isnt ultimate reality the same as absolute reality?
:up:
Yes, it is. But, like North Americans like to say, "that's an opinion, not a fact". And all I'm saying is: "no, mate, that's not an opinion. That is indeed a fact. An absolute fact."
I already granted the conceptual similarity, but, no, I wouldnt say they are the same.
But that wasnt the point. Theres a disconnect between what you were asked, re: knowing ultimate truth (about reality), and what you asked of me, re: knowing reality (absolutely).
Ones a truth claim conditioned by logic a priori, the others a knowledge claim conditioned by experience a posteriori. What you want from me doesnt relate to what was asked of you, thats all.
But never mind. Carry on.
I don't know, friend. It sounds to me like you just said something important, right there. Why do you seem to be so "secretive" about it?
Nothing to do with secrecy; ol Bob and me, we go down this dialectical inconsistency road every once in awhile.
The carry on is just meant to indicate my total shoulder-shrug with respect to the OP.
Yes, Dialectics is a pseudoscientific concept that some people have utilized for Evil. And yes, I said what I just said. For there is Evil in the world. It cannot be described, in moral terms, any other way.
Yes, that is a High attitude, and justly so, rightly so. Objectively speaking, of course.
Ah, I see what you are going for; but I don't think that's what Arcane is asking about. They seem to be asking how one can know what reality is as it were absolutely in-itself.
I am just asking if you would concur that knowledge of reality as it were in-itself would always be impossible under any cognitive system.
:heart:
Well how nice of you, Bob. How genuinely nice of you to use the pronoun "They", in reference to me, as a signal that you are not taking for granted what my individual biology is like. That's very thoughtful of you, very moral in character. Everyone just calls me "he" on this forum, though I don't think I've given any explicit indication as to what my actual biology is (however, do not panic, as I can guarantee you that I am not a Mind Flayer, of that I am quite certain).
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I am not asking anything, dear Bob. I am not the author of this particular Thread, someone else is, someone who just so happens to share some of my beliefs about realism, it seems. I, for one, am not asking anything. I already know what the ultimate truth about reality is. For I have seen it with my very own set of eyes: It is Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit.
I don't expect you, or anyone else, to believe me, though. And you are of course free to disagree. After all, I might be wrong about this, right?...
... so, "carry on", and that sort of talk?
I dont know of any cognitive system other than the human, so I wont concur with any supposed impossibilities inherent in them. But I will concur nonetheless that knowledge of any conceivable -in-itself of empirical nature, is impossible from within the purview of human intelligence of certain speculative composition in particular, as well as such congruent representational, discursive, tripartite intelligences in general.
Reality-in-itself is altogether useless to us, so why would we care whether or not we can know anything about it?
I might have time to respond in more detail later, but for now I think it's important to note that the Platonic Good is not absent from anything that appears Good. And this is true for the classical tradition, and still is the dominant view in Orthodoxy and Catholicism. All goodness, even the good of mere appearances, is a reflection of the Good, like light refracted through different mirrors, some more smokey than others. We see now "through a glass darkly."
The transcendent, to be properly "transcendent" cannot be absent from what it transcends. Likewise, the absolute is not reality as set over and against appearances, but must encompass all of reality and appearances, both what is relative and in-itself.
So, the good of a good car is not a sort of sui generis sort of good for Plato, or for St. Augustine, or St. Maximus. Nor is the good of good food, or sex, a sort unrelated good. This is why folks like Augustine can write extremely sensuously of God:
[i]Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient, O Beauty so new.
Too late have I loved you! You were within me but I was outside myself, and there I sought you!
In my weakness, I ran after the beauty of the things you have made.
You were with me, and I was not with you.
The things you have made kept me from you the things which would have no being unless they existed in you!
You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness.
You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly, and you have dispelled my blindness.
You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in, and I long for you.
I have tasted you, and I hunger and pant for you.
You have touched me, and I burn for your peace.[/i]
As for reason, the quotes in this post are fairly instructive on the old view: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/956012
The "rule of the rational part of the soul," taken in modern terms, sounds like being turned into a dispassionate robot. This is not what Plato means though, it is rather the means of desire's deepest fulfillment, as he has it when Socrates begins bursting out into ecstatic love poetry in the Phaedrus. It isn't the abrogation of the passions and appetites, but their proper orientation towards what most fulfills them (which, for various reason, we fail to achieve when "ruled over" by them.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Is this your belief too?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I get the theory. How would we demonstrate that this is the case? It also seems kind of circular: claiming that the absolute encompasses all reality and appearances, doesn't it take for granted what it is supposed to establish?
What I am interested in is how we might defend the idea of an absolute goodness which somehow is the grounding for all instantiations of goodness. I get the various schools, but they take this axiomatic. How could it be demonstrated? But let's not get into too much detail, a rough sketch would be perfectly adequate.
I do best not to assume peoples genders on here (: . albeit not in the liberal sense.
Again, which is what exactly? Can you explain it?
We certainly can if you would like. With @Mww and I, we carry on because weve had extensive discussions about our worldviews. So it is easy for us to pass on by, commenting briefly, without leaving any confusion or need of elaboration. I am still as of yet not entirely sure what you believe, which is fineit takes time.
Fair enough. I was thinking that maybe you would agree that any cognitive system would be incapable of absolute knowledge because every cognitive system has an a priori structure to it; but, then again, it technically could be possible for those a priori modes to luck into matching 100% the forms and modes of reality as it were in itself. The odds of that though....
That's a difficult question to answer, really, because it presupposes that the very concept of Hegel's Absolute Spirit is something that could be explained, that "someone can explain it", and all I'm saying is that I'm not so sure about that. In other words, I can tell you what it is, but I'm not so sure that I can explain it. What do you mean by "explaining"? Let's start with that if you don't mind.
And please try to pay little if any attention to the sort of Mind-Flayer-ish tone that my words seem to adopt from time to time, for no particular reason, apparently. Frustratingly so, one might add.
Quoting Bob Ross
My belief about what? About the Absolute Spirit, in the Hegelian sense? I believe that it is real, and that it exists. For those two notions, to wit, reality and existence, are not the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. However, the Absolute Spirit happens to have both: it is real, and it exists.
There is, of course, another possibility: that I am deluded.
I mean explain in the basic, common use of the term. If you cant describe it, then thats a huge issue which begs why you even believe it in the first place; and, no, I am not denying the idea of ineffability.
Hmmm... Fair enough, what do you want me to explain, then? Do you want me to explain why I believe that the Ultimate Truth about Reality Itself is Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit?
Or are you asking me to explain why I, Arcane Sandwich, truly believe that Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit really exists?
I wouldnt agree, unless you actually intended every humans cognitive system has an a priori structure. But in saying every cognitive system generally, without the human qualifier, whatever kind of system that might be cannot be determined merely from the inference it is a system per se, which makes explicit there is no proper warrant for attributing an a priori structure to it, eliminating it as a condition for an argument.
Humans understand absolute empirical knowledge is impossible, humans have a representational, discursive tripartite cognitive system from which that understanding is given, from which follows, the best that can be said, the strongest affirmative judgement logically possible, is that systems congruent with the human system should also find that absolute empirical knowledge is impossible. Well know for certain if or when one presents itself to us.
I kinda question a priori structure as sufficient reason for humans incapacity for absolute empirical knowledge. That such structure is an integral functionality of human cognition is not to say it is the reason for its limitations, if there is another more suitable reason.
I want to know what "The Absolute" means to you, in whatever sense you mean it. You keep saying the ultimate truth is the Hegelian concept of the Absolute; and I have no clue what you mean by that.
The Absolute, as I understand it, is what is ontologically greater than subject and objects. It is better than them, in some sense of the term. It is similar to what Lao Tzu calls Tao. It is the symbol of the ying and the yang. It is the Holy Spirit in Christianity. It is the number 3 in some sense of the term. It is what truly, properly transcends. "Transcends what?", you might ask?
Everything. Including itself. It is why there is an External World, called Nature, in the first place. The Absolute Spirit is the realization of this as a brute fact, as something that one simple "encounters". It is a presence of some sort, but in the way that Derrida spoke about Heidegger's "metaphysics of presence". It is the phenomenon of oddness itself as a psychological phenomenon. And it is a great source of poetry (how could it not be?), at the same time it is a great source of philosophical perplexity (how could it not be?), and of scientific inquiry (could it not be?).
Now, if you ask me personally if I just happen to like the number 3, then I well tell you no, that I prefer the number 4. After all, it is literally Hegel's concept of the Absolute, not mine. Therefore, my personal commitment to the number 4 is greater than my personal commitment to the number 3.
@Wayfarer @Banno @Joshs @Janus and whoever wishes to express some opinion on the Ultimate Truth about Reality.
Are you conveying here that you accept a version of non-dualism? Viz., the idea that there is some substance which unites both the mental and physical and of which is neither?
I dont know what else it could possibly mean to say that something exists as neither a subject nor an object. EDIT: unless by this you mean some transcendental mode (Kantian style).
Well, with all due respect, Arcane, thats patently incoherent. You are saying here that some third substance and being of that substance exists, and it exists in a manner where it is not identical to itself.
How?
Oh, are you an ontological idealist?
This may make sense to you because you are familiar with the Absolute; but I have no clue what you are trying to say here.
I accept a version of non-dualism (I accept several versions of non-dualism, actually), yet I disagree that there is some substance (if by that, you mean something like an Aristotelian substance) which unites both the mental and the physical (because the mental, as far as I'm concerned is physical). If by "the mental" and "the physical" you are speaking non-scientifically, as a mere folk would, then yes, I'm saying "something like that", if you will. The absolute is not a object, it is not one more thing in the world like this stone on the floor or this table. And it is not a subject, it is not like you, and it is not like me. It is something else. Or, again, perhaps I am deluded.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I am not. I will tell you what I am, and you can call me deluded all you want: I won't change the following five premises of my personal philosophy. Those are:
1) Realism
2) Materialim
3) Atheism
4) Scientism
5) Literalism
Those are my axioms, my "premises", if you will. I am not an idealist, as Hegel was, since I am a materialist. As for the term "ontological", sure, you could call me an ontological materialist, if that makes any sense to you.
Quoting Bob Ross
Well, I'm trying to explain it to the best of my ability. I'm not the best philosopher in the world, you know. And "Explain the Absolute to another human" is not exactly the type of question that I would expect for a midterm exam or whatnot.
Thats ok: most of us on here arent the best philosophers.
I mean it in the Analytic Philosophy sense of a substrate which bears the properties of things.
Ok, so you are a materialist; so theres, so far, two types of substrates for you: the physical and the kind that bears the properties of this Absolute. Are you a bundle theorist? Otherwise, how does things which are of this non-physical (and non-mental) interact with or relate to the stuff which is bore by the physical substrate? The hard problem of interaction seems to plague this theory.
Ok, it isnt physical. What is it? When you say The Absolute, I am thinking of just reality as it is in-itself. Why should be posit this thing as being real?
I think this detracts from the conversation: I think you should be able to briefly explain what the Absolute is, conceptually, if you have a firm grasp of what it is.
In that case no, there is no such thing (not to my mind, at least). I'll give you three examples why not:
1) From an ordinary point of view (the POV of ordinary life), Reality is not a single, gigantic, homogeneous block. It's a bunch of stuff, it's a plurality of entities. That's just how it seems.
2) And that leads us to the concept of intuition. You simply intuit many things around you, or you simply have the intuition that there are many things around you, like this stone on the floor, or this desk, that table, this computer, and so forth.
3) From a metaphysical point of view (as developed in the Analytic Tradition, particularly in the field known as Metaphysics of Ordinary Objects), it makes more sense to be a metaphysical conservative, than to be a metaphysical eliminativist or a metaphysical permissivist. Likewise, it makes more sense to give a particularist answer to van Inwagen's Special Composition Question, or SCQ for short, than to give an nihilist or a universalist answer.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm not sure that's correct, but I'll just ignore it, for now. Unless you want to make that point clearer, because I didn't understand what you said there.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I am not. There are things that have a metaphysical substrate. It just so happens that not everything does, or even is, a metaphysical substrate to begin with. I don't believe in disembodied universals: there is no redness apart from red things, like this rose or that brick. But there are pseudo-things, if you want to call them that: a pack of six wovles is a pseudo-thing, the pack itself is not a substance, the only substances there are the six individual wolves.
Quoting Bob Ross
Everything that is mental is physical, but not everything that is physical is mental. That's what seems the most reasonable thing to say here.
Quoting Bob Ross
It isn't. Reality Itself and the Absolute are two different "entities", if you will. They belong to different categories. Reality is what exists, and the Absolute, in the Hegelian sense, is the truth (it is the Ultimate Truth) about that (about Reality itself)
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't have a firm grasp of what it is. I don't think anyone does. I don't think Hegel did either, for that matter.
Substance theory doesnt deny that: it is claiming that each entity has a substrate for its existence whereof its properties are bore by it. E.g., the apple has a bear existence which provides the compresence for its properties (like redness).
Again, substance is being used here in the sense of substrates; which doesnt negate the possibility of a plurality of objects.
I am not familiar enough with what you are referring to by metaphysical conservatism, eliminativism, and permissivism to comment adequately on this one; but I suspect you are addressing a view which has no relevance to substance theory (in the sense of rebuking a position that holds that everything is one concrete entity).
So, I mean that we can describe the type of substrate a substance is to meaningfully discuss things. Idealists accept hat there is a mental substrate; physicalists accept a physical substrate; a substance dualist accepts both; a non-dualist adds a third; etc.
Ok, cool. So, then, under your view, is this Absolute of a different type of substrate than physical stuff?
Ok, so are you just noting by The Absolute the totality of reality and negation? I know that much about Hegel haha .
Then why do you believe in it?
Hmmm... well, you see, here's where I personally disagree with you (I'm not attacking you, BTW). Here's what I'm saying about that: mereological nihilism is the opinion that composition never occurs. An object A never composes an object B. Does that mean that the objects A and B exist? No, it does not. So what does the nihilist say? She says that only atoms exist ("atoms" in the sense mereological sense, literally "in-dividual", you cannot divide them). And what are those? The elementary particles of contemporary physics. In other words, the nihilist is a realist about physical, elementary particles. She is not a realist about anything else. You, me, these other fine folk, we don't exist, technically speaking. That's what the nihilist says. So, what are we? Well, just a bunch of good ol' particles, and nothing more.
So Bob, you see why these debates are not restricted to formal mereology. There are of interest and relevance to metaphysics, as I've hoped to have shown.
Quoting Bob Ross
Maybe, I don't know. Sounds reasonable enough to me, but I'm not sure if I agree with what all of that implies, from a technical standpoint.
Quoting Bob Ross
God damn, that's a hard question. What do you want from me, Bob? You just want to "beat the metaphysical truth out of me, whatever that metaphysical truth might happen to be". I mean, it feels like intellectual torture, "mate".
Quoting Bob Ross
I have no idea, I'd have to think about it. See my comment above.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because I'm a simple peasant from Argentina at the end of the day, mate.
I agree mereology is important; and I would say it is a branch of philosophyspecifically metaphysics.
This is how philosophy works, lol. I want to know what you believe and why you believe it. E.g., I would go for a physical substrateas a physicalist myselfand no other substrates. This is important because once you posit two it gets zesty.
Hegels concept of the truth being the whole of negativity and reality is the closest Ive got to whatever you are trying to say. For Hegel, subjectivity is inherently negativityit isnt real, but rather negates what is real. So theres the real and theres the negativity that negates it; and both makeup the totality of what exists. Hence Hegels triad of negativity, reality, and totality.
I am going to be honest, I don't think you know what 'The Absolute' means (based off of the fact that you can't explain it at all); and I therefore don't think you have good reasons to believe it exists. No offense meant.
None taken. Does one have to know or understand something to believe in it? If one does not have good reasons to believe that X exist, does that mean that one should stop believing in X, whatever X might be?
An unconditional good would be a good that was good in itselfa good that relied on no other conditions to establish its goodness. Perhaps it could also be referred to as an unconditioned good. I don't believe there is anything either unconditional or unconditionedthe very ideas seem incoherentor at least I can make no sense of them beyond being able to say what I said in the first two sentences.
Quoting Mww
I am not sure I'm grasping what you want to say here. If something could be conditioned by the good alone, would that not entail that the good could not be conditioned by any further thing? Would that not lead us directly back to the idea of an unconditional, unconditioned good?
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
So the premise that there could be a pure, unconditioned good is a claim restricted to opinion, but if that opinion be granted the logical entailments that follow from it are not? If that is what you meanI would say that is true of any premise, however unsound.
Quoting Mww
So, it would seem!
.
Yes. Why would one be justified in holding belief in X if they recognize that they have no good reasons to believe X?
They wouldn't (they wouldn't be justified). But some people would still believe it. A lot of people believe in God, and they have no good reason for it. I'm an atheist myself, but I'm not going to tell folks that they should stop believing in God just because they can't rationally explain their beliefs to me.
Most Theists would not say that they lack good reasons to believe. What you are describing here is something that is irrational: you are saying that one is justified in believing X when they know they are unjustified in believing X.
Sure. Some philosophers embrace irrationality. Kierkegaard, for example. He didn't claim to have rational knowledge of God. He seemed to have an irrational belief in God. Irrationalism also permeates the work of other (pre)existentialists, such as Nietzsche. There's even some degree of irrationality in Augustine. The irrational belief in God was even a slogan for Tertullian: credo quia absurdum, "I believe because it is absurd".
There you are!!! I thought Id let my mouth get away from me, there, I didnt hear back. Done went and pissed you off somehow.
Quoting Janus
No, that statement only says the something cannot be conditioned by any further thing, which makes that something good in itself, not good for the attainment of something else.
Thing is, it is said there is only one thing that can be good in itself, for the attainment of no other end, except to duty according to law. Hence the limit of this good to a moral disposition alone. Got nothing to do with good things, of good feelings or good anything. Except a good will.
Not a popular doctrine, I must say. But a doctrine nonetheless.
No, it was simply my forgetfulnessQuoting Mww
My statement and yours here seem to be saying the same thing. Perhaps I am misreading you.
Quoting Mww
Kant's deontological ethics seems to me to be a kind of consequentialismpertaining to the whole human condition, not to particular circumstances. He seems to be saying that if lying, for example, was acceptable then human society could not function because there would be no trust to act as a social binder. That makes the acceptance of lying (and theft, murder, rape, assault and so on) a kind of self-contradiction for a society, because acceptance of such things contradicts the very idea of social harmony.
I think that Kant is right in the universal contextfor me the mistake he makes is transferring that truth to all particular situations as a rigid notion of duty.
For what it's worth this is my read of Kant too. The old saying, often attributed to Kant - 'Do what is right, though the heavens may fall.' - hints at what the consequences of a rigid consequentialism might be. I sometimes think of this categorical imperative as a kind of blunt scientism of morality, if that makes sense.
Agreed, hence its relative unpopularity. But upon closer examination, all hes saying is, it is by this means alone, that a human can call himself a true moral agent, even, at the same time, admitting its virtually impossible to actually be one, and even moreso, that we can all be one at the same time.
(Sidebar: this is why Schopenhauer took will out of the subject and put it in the world, so we could all be subjects of the same general criterion. Doing so removes our humanity, but somehow, he thought that was ok. (Sigh))
Moral philosophy according to respect for law, answers the question, what does it mean to be a true moral agent. Whether or not the criteria is met, is beside the point.
That's fair; but I don't think most people would agree with you, and, beyond that, even if they did, one should hold only justified beliefs (I would say). Kierkegaard is a radical example: in most versions of Theism, there is a recognition that one has good reasons to believe in God but that also they have to have faith in God because they cannot explain all of it. My only point is that one must have good reasons, if it be just in the sense that they think they are good, in order to be justified in believing something. Wouldn't you agree?
EDIT: Also, when you speak of Nietzsche, the way he talks about being irrational is really more about 'arationality' than irrationality (viz., being beyond the purview of rationality vs. violating rationality).
But I have unjustified beliefs, about very ordinary things, and I'd argue that everyone does. For example, the classical problem of induction, that Hume emphasized so much. Can I guarantee that the Sun will rise tomorrow? I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I don't doubt it, I'm quite confident that it will rise tomorrow. But that's inductive reasoning, Hume would say. You're not 100% justified in believing any conclusion that has been induced instead of deduced. What would be your honest answer to that problem?
Quoting Bob Ross
Well, I can give you a politically correct answer to that question, or I can give you the honest answer. The politically correct answer is that in philosophy, we can doubt everything, yadda yadda. The honest answer is that I've been doing too much philosophy for my own good, sadly, and I've been doing it for too long. This is why, in recent years, I'm moving more and more towards good common sense. Intuition is important, I've no quarrel with that, but I think we need common sense as a complement. Is it infallible? Of course not. But we shouldn't throw common sense in the trash bin just because it's not infallible. Anyways, what do I know.
Quoting Bob Ross
Perhaps.
(edited because apparently I forgot what good grammar is)
The way I read the categorical imperative (and I might be wrong here) is that it basically boils down to two common sense things:
1) Don't harm others, in the sense that you would expect others not to harm you.
2) Help others in the same sense that you would expect help from them.
For example, if a person is drowning, and you have a rope, the morally correct thing to do is to throw them one end of the rope and save them. Why? Because that is what duty says that you have to do. Why? Because it's the rational thing to do. Why? Because if the situation were reversed, and you were the one drowning, you would expect someone else to throw you a rope.
Is that right?
EDIT: Of course, if you save the person because they owe you money, or because that particular person is one of your loved ones, in neither of these cases is your action morally good. It is simply morally neutral (since you would be acting, in those two cases, out of inclination, not out of duty)
Good question. I dont think Humes problem of induction holds any weight: I think he gave an interesting, radical, and skepticistic perspectivebut at the end of the day it is a self-refuting position (in terms of his entire pure empiricist position).
Specifically with the problem of induction, it is no longer a problem if we do not allow ourselves to be absolutely certain of anything induced or abduced. At the end of the day, all Hume is really noting, IMHO, is that we cannot be completely confident of these forms of logical inference; but that doesnt mean that we arent justified in having good reasons to conditionally believe things through induction or abduction.
Lets take your example:
Of course not: does this mean that you dont have good reasons to believe it will rise tomorrow? Of course not. You are arguing that, somehow, the ample evidence you have for the Sun rising every morningof the sheer regularity of experience and of natureis not good evidence that the Sun will rise tomorrow ceteris paribus; and I dont see why one should believe that.
I agree insofar as radical skepticism doesnt work.
So, inductive reasoning (if I understood you correctly) might be a case-by-case thing. Perhaps in the case of the Sun rising the next day we do indeed have good reason to believe such a thing. But there are other examples. The other textbook example is the one about swans. Up until the 1700s, people thought that all swans were white. Their reasoning was arguably inductive: people saw a bunch of individual swans, and all of them were white. At the end of the 1700s (around 1790, more or less) black swans were discovered. So, the statement that "all swans are white" was technically false: some swans are not white. So, if the expectation was, that the next swan to be observed was going to be white, then that expectation was not met when that very next swan turned out to be black.
This is the same problem that gamblers have. Gamblers have to rely on inductive reasoning. Even the blackjack players that can count cards have this problem.
So, I guess my argument is that having the justification for some beliefs is a matter of degrees. In some cases it will be an all or nothing deal, sure. But there are cases in which it doesn't seem to be an "either, or" type of situation.
I don't know, these are difficult philosophical problems.
I'm not a Kant expert. But the categorical imperative - essentially - Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This leads to the infamous scenario that if Nazis are asking you if you have Jews hiding in your attic, you must tell them where they are because lying is wrong. Hence: Do what is right, though the heavens may fall. Adhering to an absolute principle regardless of the situation seems rigid and can lead to tragic outcomes.
Not quite. That's not exactly what the categorical imperative says that you have to do in that specific case. It's an easy mistake to make, though. Precisely, it was during Eichmann's trial that Eichmann himself made that fallacious appeal to Kant's categorical imperative, as Hannah Arendt argues in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.
If an action is done out of duty (as indicated by the categorical imperative, not by your superior officer), then the action is good. It is good even if it goes against what your superior officer is telling you to do. This is arguably rooted in common sense, or at least I would make such a case myself. It's basically the following classic problem: "If someone tells you to jump off a cliff, should you do it?" Of course not. Not even if that person is your superior officer. Your sergeant, captain, general or whatever cannot lawfully order you to kill yourself. You may lawfully resist such an order. Likewise, if your superior officer tells you to kill some random person on the street "just because", that is not a lawful order that they can give, because there is no reason to give such an order in the first place. You may lawfully resist such an order.
Killing requires an Ethical justification, in every case. You might tell me that reality does not work like that, but we're talking about the normative aspect of Ethics here, not the descriptive aspect of what people actually do in terms of morality.
In the scenario that you describe, the morally correct thing to do, is to lie to the Nazis. Why? Because it's the rational thing to do. Why? Because you are protecting the lives of the Jewish people that are hiding in your basement. The Nazi officer cannot lawfully order you to be an accessory to murder, or to be an accomplice to a crime in general. And why is lying to the Nazi officer morally good in this case? Because it's what the categorical imperative says that you have to do. Why? Because your duty in this case is being dictated by human reason itself, and the very idea of killing people for religious and/or ethnic motives goes against the very nature of human reason. That is why you should lie to the Nazi, and you are fully justified in doing so.
Think of it like this. In Kantian Ethics, there are three moral values: good, neutral, and bad (or "evil", if you will). If you save the people hiding in your basement just because you want something in return, you action is neither good nor evil. Why not? Because you are indeed saving them, but you are not doing it for the right reason. Your action will be good if you both save them and if you're saving them for the right reason.
At least that's my take on Kantian Ethics.
I offered a good counter-argument to that critique. Why should you fallaciously appeal to the authority of a Kant expert in order to bypass or overrule my counter-argument of that critique?
We can't.
The best we can do is to get better approximations, while acknowledging that the "ultimate" nature of reality is beyond us.
Settle down. I will do as I want.
I am settled in my chair. I will not approach the floor any further. Why are you angry at me?
Well, since it's expertise that you want, I teach Kant's epistemology and ethics to my students at the Uni, though we never have enough time to go over his aesthetics. So, no, I'm not an expert on Kant, by any stretch of the imagination. Have I read some of Kant's books? Yes, I have. Have I understood them? For the most part, I would like to believe. Have I read what some of his scholars have written about his philosophy? Yes, I have, though not to the degree that a specialist in Kant's philosophy would. Can I dismiss that frequently touted, so-called weakness of the categorical imperative, by means of a simple, valid and sound argument, that is supported by the literature on Kant's Ethics, and by what Kant himself has written? Yes, I believe I can, and I believe that I have already done so.
If that's not good enough for ya, I got some more 'roo jokes waiting for you in the Australian politics thread.
In that case, the best that I can recommend in Arendt's book, Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Because Eichmann himself tried to plead not guilty, by arguing that "he did what he had to do because of Kant's categorial imperative". Those aren't his literal words, but that was his idea. Arendt explains in the book why that is not sound reasoning on Eichmann's part. Most of the discussion about "Kant and the problem of the Nazis" is rooted in Eichmann's trial, and especially in Arendt's report and analysis of it. So, I figure that would be a good place to start. As for an actual consensus about the categorical imperative, scholars still debate to this very day what the underlying concept even is, to say nothing of the meaning of its different formations. In short, there's no universal consensus. There's some good interpretations, and some good arguments in support of those interpretations, nothing more.
Or perhaps you feel for them in their plight.
That's a good point. If to be a true moral agent is to act entirely free from self-interest and entirely in accordance with the moral law derived from reason alone, then that is indeed the only way to be a true moral agent.
Virtue ethics may have something different to say about what being a true moral agent consists in, though. For example, if someone had to choose between saving their child and a stranger, the person who chose to save the stranger on the grounds that it would be the more truly moral thing to do, being free from personal desire as saving one's child would not, that person would not be lauded, but would rather be considered to be a psychopath.
Well said.
-
Quoting Tom Storm
On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies From Beneficial Motives, 1797
http://philosophical.space/f325/KantLies.pdf
Christ, it's hard to read. What does it say...
Yes, directly addressed; yes, hard to read, and it says .dont lie. Ever. For any reason. IFF your intent is to be a moral agent in possession of rational cognition, and practical reason. Which is everyone.
. To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is therefore a sacred unconditional command of reason, and not to be limited by any expediency .
There is not a single mention of the categorical imperative in Kant's On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives. Don't take my word for it, take a look for yourself. Use the search tool and type in "categorical imperative", or even just "imperative", you won't find a single instance of it. Is he alluding to the categorical imperative without mentioning it? That's a different animal of a discussion, I would say.
Furthermore, check out Varden's article from 2010, which begins with the following words:
Quoting Helga Varden
Furthermore, there is Hannah Arendt's refutation of Eichmann's appeal to Kant's categorical imperative. Essentially, Eichmann fails to understand the reciprocity implied in the categorical imperative, which is also what the person who thinks that "you should never lie" also fails to take into account in the scenario in which it is indeed morally correct to lie to someone with murderous intent (i.e., a Nazi soldier) in order to protect potential victims (i.e., civilians who happen to be Jewish).
Yes, he does, because a rigorous, technical author such Kant, who likes to coin specific philosophical terms, or otherwise re-conceptualize technical terms that already existed in his time, needs to be specific when he speaks. Otherwise, he leaves things up to interpretation, which exactly what his scholars have been doing ever since, and which is exactly what we're doing right now.
Please understand that Ethics and moral principles are not the same thing, just as Aesthetics and artistic principles are not the same thing. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies artistic principles (among other artistic topics), and sometimes may even offer some aesthetic principles. What is the difference between an artistic principle and an aesthetic one? The latter is philosophical, while the former is not, or at least not to the same degree. By comparison, Ethics is the branch of philosophy that studies moral principles (among other moral topics), and sometimes may even offer some ethical principles. What is the difference between a moral principle and an ethical principle? The latter is philosophical, while the former is not, or at least not to the same degree.
One's duty to speak the truth is a moral principle. By contrast, the categorical imperative is an ethical principle. To say that one has the duty to speak the truth is to say a mere triviality. To argue for it, to the best of one's philosophical ability, is a daunting task for any philosopher, because morality itself, as we ordinarily understand it, contains some degree of semantic vagueness (at the very least). It is much better to propose a formal Ethical theory, in which the semantic vagueness of ordinary language is reduced. This is a source of potential contradiction between the moral ideas and the ethical ideas of an author who, like Kant, has something to say about what is right and what is wrong, from two different points of view: the point of view of morality, as the common person understands it, and the point of view of ethics, as the philosopher understands it. So perhaps it's no coincidence that Kant does not mention the categorical imperative even once in his On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives
But what do I know? I'm just an anonymous forum person.
I didnt mention it, but the bolded part of that little bit I quoted, re: the unconditional command of reason, just IS an imperative, the exposition for which was already given in a 1785 treatise. He had scant motivation to mention the construct of imperatives in a response to a mere French journalist, who he might have considered too dumb to comprehend proper metaphysics anyway.
I apologize: I forgot to respond.
I would say that they were justified in believing that Swans were all white until they had sufficient counter-evidence to refute the evidence they had. The thing with induction is that the more the occurrence, the higher the (bayesian) probability that it is true. Again, you have to argue not that they were wrong but, rather, that they were irrational for believing it prior to seeing a black swan. Whats the argument you have for it?
No. You are confusing induction with abduction: the former is when there is a sheer repetition in results such that a correlation is derived (which may or may not be causal at all) (e.g., expecting to get slapped if you pick up the lolipop because your mom has slapped you a ton in the past for it, seeing the sun rise and expecting it to rise tomorrow, etc.) where abduction is reasoning about evidence which you have by making inferences which do not necessarily hold (e.g., she committed the murder because she was there at the time caught holding the bloody knife used in the stabbing, hes probably just in the bathroom because I heard him talking someone about having to go, etc.).
Gamblers are usually abducing, and abducing, at that, in irrational ways. E.g., the average gambler doesnt count cards; and they just expect to win even though the probability is severely low: they have an irrational expectation to win.
Good gamblers arent just abducing: they are deducing. E.g., card games can be counted and their strict probabilities calculated.
Most imortantly, neither tend to induce. E.g., most people dont walk into a casino and see a certain bet always win repeatedly a 1000 times and then decide to make that same bet.
You were arguing that it is irrational; which is not implied by arguing that beliefs have different credence levels. Are you changing your position, and agreeing with me that induction isnt irrational? If not, then what argument do you have to the contrary?
No problem. Sometimes I forget where I left the keys to my own house, that's the sort of forgetfulness that actually worries me.
Quoting Bob Ross
Induction is not irrational. At least not entirely. I would say that deductive reasoning is 100% rational, and that inductive reasoning and abductive reasoning are not 100% rational, since the truth of the conclusion isn't guaranteed by the truth of the premises, which is something that is indeed guaranteed in deductive reasoning. I don't know, I wouldn't be able to say what "percentage of rationality" induction has, if that expression even makes any sense, but if it does, I'd say that it's greater than 0% percent and less than 100%.
Does that make sense?
I don't accept that rationality comes in degrees; but I understand what you are saying. So let's go back to your original point:
My point was that you seem to acknowledge that you lack good reasons to believe that the Absolute exists; so why do you believe in it?
Your original response was that people irrationally believe in things all the time; and that is justifiable. Now we agree that isn't true, so are you saying you have good reasons to believe it such that you are some degree rational in believing it? If so, what are those good reasons?
Not quite. I have good reasons to believe that the Absolute exists, and I acknowledge that. What I don't have, which I also acknowledge is that I lack good reasons to believe that the Absolute in the Hegelian sense exists.
Quoting Bob Ross
I already told you why: because, at the end of the day, I'm just a simple peasant from Argentina. I'm not a specialist in Hegelian philosophy that also happens to understand all of the intricacies of the German language circa the 1800's.
Quoting Bob Ross
They do, yes.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm not sure if it's justifiable. I'm not saying that it is, nor am I saying that it isn't. I'm on the fence on this specific point.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I don't think so. I acknowledge that my belief in the Hegelian Absolute is completely irrational. I have no good reasons to believe in it.
Quoting Bob Ross
There aren't any. I don't think anyone has them, really. Not even Hegel himself. I mean, a lot of people claim to have found them, even Hegel himself, ever since he coined the concept. Marx claimed to understand it. Kierkegaard never made such a claim, but he didn't need to, since his irrationalism technically allowed him to dismiss it even in the absence of good reasons to dismiss it. And Schopenhauer suggested that it wasn't even a philosophical concept, it was just sophistry on Hegel's part. In more recent years, I believe that Slavoj Zizek suggests that the Hegelian Absolute can be understood to a certain degree, though it cannot be understood entirely.
Me? I'm just a peasant, mate. I'm not in the same room as those fine folk that have the erudition and intelligence to discuss such "high level" things. I just believe in it, and I do so in an irrational way, like Kierkegaard did with his God.
Ah, I think this is the confusion between us: I just want to know what you are meaning by the Absolute and not Hegel. I want to know what this "Absolute" is of which you clearly affirm you have good reasons to believe in, and what those good reasons are. Could you please elaborate on that for me?
Christ, I didn't even write this correctly. I'm not going to edit it, this kind of stuff has historical importance (to me) and it must be preserved (for my own purposes). That phrase should read: What I don't have, which I also acknowledge, is [s]that I lack[/s] good reasons to believe that the Absolute in the Hegelian sense exists.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right, here's the problem: I mean the same thing that Hegel meant. And since he's dead, we can't ask him what he meant. So, interpretations are the only thing we have. But an interpretation (of anything) is not the literal truth. However, I do not agree with Nietzsche when he suggests that "there are no facts, that there are only interpretations", if you will. I say that there are facts, in addition to interpretations. What would Hegel say to that? No idea, really.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I think I might. What I think that this "Absolute" is, is something like the symbol of the ying and the yang. It is something greater than black or white. It is absolute.
But look, you cannot see it with your eyes. What your eyes see (what my eyes see as well, what anyone's eyes see) is just black and white. We do not physically see the Absolute, but we Understand it in some sense.
Does that help in any way?
This is a contradiction; and makes no sense at all. You can't say you believe in X sans a Hegelian interpretation (and that you have good reasons for it) and then turn around and say X is the Hegelian interpretation (which has no good reasons for it).
I am now thoroughly convinced you are either a sophist or incapable of admitting that you clearly cannot explain any of the concepts that you believe in. This is turning into the same problem we had with the fact that you don't know what "factiality" means...
Hmmm... maybe, maybe not. I'm not convinced. Can you elaborate on what you just said there?
EDIT: Quoting Bob Ross
I can explain most of them, actually. For example, I believe in the concept that science is the best tool that humanity has for understanding how the Universe works. I call that belief "scientism". See? It's an easy concept to explain. I can do the same for the other main pillars of my personal philosophy.
Realism: By this I mean that there is an external world, that exists independently of our thought. See? Easy concept to explain.
Materialism: This is the belief that all objects are material, from the quark to the galaxy, and everything in between.
Atheism: this is the belief that no divine entities exist, in any way, shape, or form.
Literalism: This one is the newest addition to my core philosophical premises (what you call "beliefs", apparently). I understand literalism in the following way. Imagine for a second what lawyers say about "The Letter of the Law" versus "The Spirit of the Law". In that polarization, I'm on the side of the Letter of the Law, not the Spirit. So, in that sense, literalism is opposed to spiritualism, at least in the context of my own philosophy.
You said that you believe that you have good reasons to believe that the Absolute exists, but not that you have good reasons to believe in the sense that Hegel means it. I then asked what good reasons you have for believing the Absolute exists in this non-Hegelian sense; and you answered that you mean the Absolute in the Hegelian sense. :roll:
If you can't reconcile or acknowledge that blatant contradiction, then this conversation is over. My patience is running thin with you, my friend.
I'm just struggling to understand what you mean, Bob. My own beliefs seem quite clear and coherent to me, and when you ask me to explain them to you, your reaction strikes me as something along the lines of "I don't like your explanation, explain it differently". And I'm not sure that I can (explain it differently, that is). Let me think about the following words for a few minutes and I'll get back to you:
Quoting Bob Ross
You're not exactly asking me to explain to you why the sky is blue. Please understand that you're asking me a very difficult question here, and I need a few minutes to think about it, that's all.
Yes, and I do. I have good reasons to believe that the Absolute exists. Because the current understanding of the Absolute is the one developed by Meillassoux, Harman, Grant, and Brassier. That's what I would say. Now, they don't agree as to what that Absolute actually is, but it can be summed up in the following way (which none of them would endorse, BTW): the Absolute is that which is less relative than the subject-object correlation. Think of the subject-object correlation as "relativism", and on the other side of that spectrum, you have "absolutism", as in, something that is not relative, to anything, not even to the subject-object correlation itself. It is truly "something else" in that sense. And it is, in my belief, identical to what Kant called "the thing-in-itself". This thing-in-itself can be thought (as Kant demonstrated), and it can also be known (as Mario Bunge and Daniel Z. Korman have demonstrated). Essentially, it boils down to the rejection of the following Debunking Argument:
Quoting Daniel Z. Korman
Korman himself rejects the premise DK1, and I agree with him: there is indeed an explanatory connection between facts and beliefs. And that connection, I would add, is an absolute one, not a relative one.
Perhaps this makes no sense to you, and perhaps your patience runs ever thinner in the presence of such words. Well, there is nothing that I can do for you there. I'm trying my best here. If that's not enough, then you'll have to find a better philosopher than me to explain to you why we, humans beings, have good reasons to believe that the Absolute exists.
Quoting Bob Ross
OK, let's disentangle this. There have been many concepts of the Absolute throughout history. One of the first ones was Hesiod's Xaos (Chaos). One of the latest ones is Heidegger's concept of Being. That is what I call the Absolute. The thing with the Hegelian version of this concept is that it is almost impossible to fully understand. After all, what is Sebastian Rödl doing, if not trying to wrap his own head around such a difficult philosophical concept? Indeed, it would be similar to what Meillassoux calls "factiality", since he believes that "factiality" is the Absolute. But he also says that the Absolute is hyper-Chaos, which I don't think exists. So, it is possible to say that some philosophers get it wrong when they theorize about the Absolute. Meillassoux gets it wrong, IMHO. Hegel seems to get it right, but it takes an intellectual the likes of Sebastian Rödl, not Arcane Sandwich, to explain it to someone like Bob Ross.
Quoting Bob Ross
So, have I reconciled or acknowledged that "blatant contradiction" with what I just said, yes or no?
Newtons fixed space and time got Einsteins boot;
Particle spigots making fields went mute;
Classic fields had no fundamental loot.
What's left? The quantum vacuum with its quantum fields that rearrange to form the elementary 'particles' as stable quanta!
Lovely verse!
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Hmmm...
The 'thing-in-itself' can't be made nor can it break, because it can't have any parts, which makes it to be eternal; its Existence has no alternative, no opposite, for 'Nothing' cannot be, since 'it' has no it.
Wow... You're on roll lately, just delivering pure wisdom! You might even convince me that divine magic exists in the same sense that arcane magic does! And I don't say such a thing often : )
Not Divine, as in a 'God' Being
In this lost haunt, on the Orion arm
Of the Milky Way, safe from the cores harm,
We philosophers meet in the tavern,
As sleuth-hounds, unweaving the Cosmic yarn.
Divinity does not have to be about a transcendent anthromorphic 'God'. There is the idea of divinity within as expressed by Walt Whitman. The poets often understood divinity as a source of inspiration. I am sure that William Blake saw it that way.
You are the temporary arrangement of the Permanent; so, you are It for a while.
So... as in what, then? Is it Divine, in your opinion? The Absolute. Is it Divine?
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Cool verse. But the third one is a free line, because the ending word, "tavern", is the only one that doesn't rhyme there. The same can be said of the fourth line, since it ends with "yarn". Formally, that verse has the following poetic structure:
1) A
2) A
3) B
4) C
Here, "A" represents an "ending word", and so does "B". So, the words "arm" and "harm" rhyme with each other, and they "sort of" rhyme with "yarn", but not entirely (because "m" doesn't sound like "n", but it's close). The word "tavern" doesn't rhyme with anything here.
All of that, is from a purely technical standpoint.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I agree. But what I'm asking is, does Divinity exist, in any way, shape, or form?
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Hmmm... but is it Divine, yes or no?
No. Having no parts makes for the Permanent to be the ultimate lightweight; so it can't have any being, the doomed fate hat is hoped for by those looking for Divine as what's beneath, which is at the wrong level, as simplex, for the complex. Look to the future for higher beings and more complexity, not to the simpler and simpler past.
My quatrains sort of follow the Rubaiyat rhyme scheme:
The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse threes the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.
Wow... what wisdom you have. And I sure like that word, simplex. Your skills as muser are even greater than your skills as a Poet.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
It's a lovely poetic structure, that's for sure. I myself prefer verses with six lines, each line with eight syllables, such as:
Quoting José Hernández
The poetic structure of that verse would be:
1) A
2) B
3) B
4) C
5) C
6) B
Notice that the first line is the only free line in that rhyme pattern, and that the free end-word here is "cantar", which means "sing". That's not a semantic coincidence, that's deliberate. What Hernández is saying here is that the act of singing is an act of freedom. That's the main message of that verse.
Here I set myself to singing
To the rhythm of the guitar,
For when a man is kept awake
By an extraordinary sorrow,
Like a solitary bird,
He finds solace in song.
A cheerful AI song I made, extended from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat poem, regarding the bird,
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flyand Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
Omar had the gist of the Permanent:
Whose secret Presence through Creations veins
Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi and
They change and perish allbut He remains;
which I would update as:
Quantum field Presence, through transient veins,
Running Quicksilver-like, fuels our gains
Taking all the temporary shapes as
They change and perish allbut It remains.
That is indeed the semantic translation, but you lose the rhyming structure with that particular translation. It's a real poetic challenge. Like, take a look at this published version:
Quoting José Hernández
Here's the theoretical problem: did Hernádez actually say that, those English words? No, he didn't, he wrote the poem in Spanish, so who is the actual Author, here?
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Ah, but Artificial Intelligences are awful at Poetry, that is a well-known limitation of theirs : )
I prefer the art of human beings, such as:
EDIT: And while I have nothing but patriotic, undying love for Soledad Pastorutti, her optimism is only circumstantial, sadly. For no one said that duty was supposed to be honorable by default. In other words, this is the correct message (sorry, "Sole"):
10 syllable lines, mostly, rhyming:
I sit to sing my song under a star
To the rhythm of my old guitar,
For the man whose life is a bitter cup,
With a song may yet his heart lift up,
As the lonely bird on the leafless tree,
That sings beneath the gloaming star so free.
I extended the Rubaiyat, with such as:
The universes mantle binds us worn
Tears feeding the river on which were borne.
Hells but an ember of our senseless fears;
Heavens the rose-breath of opening morn.
AI poem extension:
Rose Breath
In a garden of the old oaks shade,
Whispers of time in the twilight fade;
Stars shimmer tales of a million days,
Lifes tender notes in a glowing haze.
A cup of wisdom from a poets hand,
The soul finds peace in a foreign land
Petals that fall tell tales untold,
Hearts intertwine as dreams unfold.
Wherever you roam let your spirit soar,
Through peaks and valleys seeking more,
In every dawn and every night,
Infinite wonder in endless flight.
Moons gentle glow like a soothing balm
Serenades sweet in the evening calm;
Paths unknown call the brave to stride,
Wisdom and wonder as their guide.
Whispers in winds through ancient trees,
Echoing journeys across seven seas;
Footprints fade but memories grow,
In the hearts garden forever aglow.
In the universes wrap were torn,
Rivers fed by tears weve born;
Embers reflect our deepest fears,
Mornings breath calms and clears.
Stars whisper secrets in twilights glow,
Lost in the flow where the wild winds blow,
Chasing shadows through lifes maze,
Dreams linger in the golden haze.
Heavens rose-breath in dawns embrace,
Hearts beating in a timeless chase;
From the dark we find our light;
Rise together into the night.
Chains of fate we choose to break,
Every dawn a new path well take;
Through the trials well learn to fly,
In the chorus of the sky
Dancing light with wings that twinkle,
Softly laughing in the air,
Whisper secrets, oh so simple,
Magic dust beyond compare.
In the woods where silence lingers,
Shadows play their gentle part;
Fairies weave with nimble fingers,
Threading dreams into your heart.
Oh the fairies sing at twilight,
Spinning tales among the trees,
Mischief makers gleaming starlight,
Mystery carried on the breeze.
Tiny footprints on the clover,
Silent steps on moonlit ground,
Search for treasures under cover,
Hidden gems yet to be found.
Through the glades and past the flowers
Catch a glimpse and they are gone,
Fleeting moments, magic showers;
Morning breaks and they move on.
I see your AI move, and I raise you the human poem "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace":
Quoting Richard Brautigan
EDIT: As for the song, I select the following one for this post:
This should keep you busy and not worrying any more about the ultimate truth
I already know what the ultimate truth is, about reality. It is Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit. And that is not factiality.
EDIT: The song that I select for this comment is the following one:
Idealism for Hegel meant that the finite world is a reflection of mind, which alone is truly real. He held that limited being (that which comes to be and passes away) presupposes infinite unlimited being, within which the finite is a dependent element. - Britannica
Hegel identifies the Permanent and the temporary, but a spirit as mind cannot be First and Fundamental because it is a system of complexity.
Or Brahman was bored and dreamed up a Soap Opera channel as life on Earth that does stupid things.
I never said that the Hegelian Absolute Spirit was First or Fundamental, all I said is that it is Ultimate and that it is a Truth about something else: Reality itself.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Brahman is the Hindu Absolute, it has some similarity's with Hegel's Absolute, but it's not exactly the same thing. Soap Opera as a concept is an Absolute, but it's different from Brahman and the Hegelian Absolute Spirit. Life is not the Absolute, and the Absolute is not alive. The Earth is not the Absolute, and the Absolute is not Earthly.
Ah, but 'Ultimate' is the same idea, but, if not, then the Spirit is of a highly evolved Alien Being and that is OK as not First and such.
Hope It can improve the Earth, but, it's not an Alive Being.
The Spirit turns out to be the quantum field as Everything connected.
The Spirit is simply the Culture, as the synthesis of Nature and Idea. There has never been a World Culture, so Hegel's Absolute Spirit (which would be the Absolute Culture, the World Culture) exists but in a very weak sense. It is something real, but in a very weak sense. Reality itself is far stronger in that sense. Reality is greater than the Ultimate Truth about it, it surpasses it, it transcends it, because it is an Absolute of a very different kind, one that exists entirely outside the Ultimate Truth about it.
The temporary complexity is way more interesting and lively than the simple Permanent underlying.
Hmmm...
Fortunately, I was a poet myself, and so I could gain entrance to the elfin dell, as a human, having to first pass through the neophytes, resisting their temptations and spells; however, the sensual can often take a back seat to the intellectual, although the ecstasy can be similar.
I had been there once before, bringing my epic poem, 'Flora Symbolica, unto them, and writing up the results in 'Elfin Legends, and so they had bid me to return one day on a quest. Theirs was more of an ethereal world, whereas mine was often clunky, except when I dreamt at night, and it was time for me to wander again, to ask about and better understand the quantum guidance principle, especially learning from those closer to nature and the heavens, they being the elven mixture of spiritangel beings and humans, and thus aware of the causal nexus.
I flew to England, to the special forest Fairy Kingdom, near Galliennes old haunts, and waited for the funnel to open up into the tunnel, and then I came out into their realm and walked on for a full day, seeing no one straight out yet, just sideward waverings, but noting many new colors heretofore unknown, as there were more waves and frequencies here.
Here the blesséd and haunted old forest, Whereat the base of an oak I rest, While all about lay wondrous deep coverts, And a green-turfed path that leads oer a crest.
They all knew what I was after, as evidenced in the first encounter.
To pass and learn of the connectedness of all things, you must kiss me, after which Ill give you your first clue.
The kiss vibrated deep within my being, and I felt it to my core, and then she related, All of lifes entities embrace one another, including cells, organisms, species, and biotope.
I was on my way again the next morning, the hours having flown by, as when Einstein had sat next to a pretty girl and had noted the much quicker passage of time, over the slower passage of his instant of touching a hot stove.
I learned more as I meandered through the labyrinth of the forest.
She said, Hold me tight and love me, and I will unveil some of the poetic structure afterward.
Well, two days went by, and she revealed more of my quest, Living conscious creatures are as a poem, they ever revealing further dimensions and expressing new properties at every level of organization, via strokes, letters, phonemes, words, phrases, and verse-sentences, in and of a uni-verse of rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, metric, and melody. This relates to the quantum All."
I was hungry for the continuation of lifes quantum poem, and hoped Id be able to move on more quickly, but her allure was testing my resolve; however, she told me something very soon after wed rubbed our cheeks together, Meanings in life are not just discovered or gleaned by mere observation but by understanding through participation, these informationally derived meanings combined to make sense in a non-reductive process, as in the relational reality of life happening at our semantical level of syntactical information exchange, with no breaking of any of the holistic connections, all this as the epic whole of the book of nature.
It was so still you could hear a nut fall, And the musical strain of mystic call, In soft tones flowered upon the silence, As floating on the surface of the All.
There is the particle and there is the waveeither one forced on us by our observations, being jointly known as the 'wavicle, all three states of which are truly not the actual reality.
She continued, The actual reality is quantum field.
After two weeks with her, I had to survive the passage through the land of skulls and roses.
Finally, I emerged, unscathed, into the Land of Spring, and found out about more about growth.
(could be continued)
Allow me to attempt to do just that, by pasting the contents of a comment that I made in another Thread, since I plan to delete them from that other Thread and to preserve them here instead. Notice the Temporal ordering, from the Past to the Present. Notice the Ages or Epochs: The Ancestral Times, when the Guarani People did not yet know the European People, notice then the Colonial Times, and notice then the Modern times:
1. "Before the earth existed, in the midst of the primordial darkness, before things were known, he created that which would be the foundation of human language, and the true First Father Ñamandu made it part of his own divinity." (Guarani Myth of creation, as recorded in the Ayvu Rapyta)
2. "They are commonly good soldiers, and of great courage and spirits inclined to war, skilled in the management of all kinds of weapons, and with a specialty in the shotgun, so much so that when they go out on their days, they support themselves with the hunting they do with it, and it is common in those people to deliver a single killing shot to the birds that fly through the air, because one cannot be a good soldier if one cannot, with a single bullet, acquire a dove, or a sparrow." (Ruy Díaz de Guzmán)
3. "No republic, comparable to that of Plato, will be able to subsist in Europe, based on its impious dogmas. It is more appropriate to ask: Does such a republic exist? Did it ever exist in the world? That is what we propose to investigate here. And we hope to be able to demonstrate that among the Guaraní Indians of America, Plato's political conception was realized, at least approximately." (José Manuel Peramás)
4."Our laws and our ordinances are close to our situation, but they are general to all of America, and it embraces all climates, all temperaments, all qualities of land; It has interior countries, and coast; open channels for communication, and steep lands that make it difficult; In one part there are mines, in others they are searched for in vain; In some provinces the former owners live and constitute the main population, in others they are barely known. In this labyrinth we need the profound geniuses to search for Ariadne's thread." (Manuel José de Lavardén)
5. "Any despot can force his slaves to sing hymns to freedom." (Mariano Moreno).
6. "The Homeland does not make the soldier for him to dishonor it with his crimes, nor does it give him weapons to commit the low act of abusing these advantages, offending the citizens with whose sacrifices it sustains itself. The troops must be all the more virtuous and honest, as they are created to preserve the order of the peoples, strengthen the power of the laws and give strength to the government to execute them and be respected by the wicked, who would be more insolent with the bad example of the military. The Homeland is not a shelter for crimes." (José de San Martín)
7. "Slaves or men subjected to absolute power do not have a homeland, because the Homeland is not linked to the native land but in the free exercise of Citizen rights." (Esteban Echeverría)
8. "if you don't take care of your countrymen you're no true patriot." (José Hernández)
9. "Everything has been written, everything has been said, everything has been made: that's what God heard before creating the world, when there was nothing yet. I have also heard that one, he may have answered from the old, split Nothingness. And then he began." (Macedonio Fernández)
10. "If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author." (Jorge Luis Borges)
EDIT: An alternative translation to "if you don't take care of your countrymen you're no true patriot" could be the following:
"One does not have patriotism if one does not look out for one's countrymen."
The original Spanish version says: no tiene patriotismo quien no cuida al compatriota.
Quoting José Hernández
A self-made man!
She continued, There are no objects that are identical with themselves over time, and so the temporal sequence remains open. Nature is a possibility 'gestalt, with the world forming anew each moment, from the deeper, enfolded realm, which is a unity in the sense of an indivisible 'potentiality which can realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states.
Twas that time of morn when the exiled rise,
Thrown to times Earthly bondage through the skies,
Being for an hour their own Heavenly selves,
Their full glory unhidden by disguise.
It still appears to us, though, that the world consists of parts that have continued from 'a moment ago, and thus retain their identity in time; yet, matter really only appears secondarily, as a congealed potentiality.
These forest fairies, dryads, nymphs, and fauns,
Ever flash their nude blossoms on the lawns.
They beckon me along, for though the air
I pass thoughts of love, verses, and songs.
In a stable configuration of matter, such as in the inanimate, all the quantum uncertainties are effectively statistically averaged out, this thus ever being deterministic; but in the case of the statically unstable but dynamically stable configurations the 'lively features of the underlying quantum structure have a chance to surface to the macroscopic level.
And so they tell more, Physical phenomena are made of information processors that generate overlappings of correlated multidimensional wave fields which are propagating through time, as fields of possibility, whose intensity is a measure of the probability of an object-like realization.
The life of her face is in her deep blue eyes,
Soft-lipped mouth, and the ears that pointed rise,
As the moon and stars reflect in a pool,
Which look as for a lifetime pours surprise.
So, there is form before substance, relationality before a materiality that is of a secondary arising and importance, its information being primary. Impressions of realizations are left in our world by the gestalt that lives in the multidimensional spaces of quantum superpositional possibility.
I dive into her eyes, her soulful gate,
And worship before her hearts flaming grate,
Midst flowers in the gardens of her dreams,
Then whirl back up through her eyes as her mate.
There are no point masses then, but only smudged particles, such as we know of in the space-filling representations of the distribution of electrons in the shells of atomscalled a 'cloud."
What remains unchanged over time are certain properties that find expression in the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, electrical charge, etc., these necessarily being closer to the basis of all.
As she always rightly, justly does. As Lzzy Hale says:
I like that song, as well as 'Pancho and Lefty'. Wish there were more like those two.
Now, finally, we uncover The Poetic Universe:
At last, I met the ultimate Poet, the Elfin Queen, who told, There is a relationship structure that arises not only from the manifold and the complicated interactions of the imagined building blocks of matter, but also one that is substantially more inherent and holistic.
She continued, So, then, the weaves, warps, and woofs of the quantum bits as strokes makes for the letters of the elementals, as the alphabet of the standard model, forming the words as the atoms that go on to form the molecules as the phrases, on into cells as verse-sentences, up to the stanza-paragraphs of the organisms, and unto the poem-stories of the species, via the unity of lifes conscious literature as the unified verse in which we live out our poems.
Im left with a feeling thats no mere spell,
But a fact in Heaven thats fancy in Hell,
Of elemental affinitys flame,
Deeper than thought, much older than speech can tell.
I had discovered The Poetic Universe.
I headed back home, this taking a few months, never stepping into the same universe twice, or even once.
Funny thing, I thought, they didnt use poems in what they told me, but, then again, they are as living poetic forms themselves.
My Poetic Report:
We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
Ever unveiling our lives deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentencesuni versed.
We have rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beautys true pense,
Revealed through lifes participation,
From the latent whence into us hence.
The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights
Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.
In this concordance of literature,
We are the Cosmos book of adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.
Our poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from the profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
Were both the existence and the essence.
Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.
Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of natures poetics,
Within her requisite of ongoing change.
So theres form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalts dance.
All lives in the multidimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirls
Probable clouds of distributed paces.
What remains unchanged over time are
Alls Properties that find expression, as laws,
Of the conservation of energy,
Momentum, and electric chargeunpaused.
Good Tree of Life film.
I put my story into invideo AI generative mode:
Then I will say that every AI and every human being have something in common: we are stardust.
Reality/Language analogy:
Possibility papers the covariant quantum fields
that ink the elementaries of the standard model
that stroke the alphabet letters of the atoms
that word the dictionary molecules
that phrase the biotype DNA cells
that verb the subjects
that sentence the creatures
that paragraph the species
that story the ongoing tree of life
that books the literature of the unified-verse
that libraries the Cosmos.
Ok. You might want to tell that to the Basilisk then:
Stardust
All That Underlies Our Lives is Now Known.
In the stars our atoms are slowly grown,
From the quantum field elementaries
Omars knot of how human fate is sewn.
Colored stars pierce the veil of formless night,
Gemming Heavens gloried, crown-jeweled might;
In the depths of the deep we live, anon:
Were all alone here to weather the plight.
Stars generate the lower elements;
Supernovae generate the higher ones.
Atoms form the molecules that lead to
Lifes complexity, from simplicity.
Starlight is the origin of our being,
The source of matter, energy; everything.
Permanent, reassuring, unquenchable;
Its our radiant soul, a self-winding mainspring.
All from stardust begins and ends in thee.
The mighty wrecks of the elements are strewn
Across the universe like chaff from the harvest,
Much of the Cosmos still a vast wasteland.
Born of stardust and nourished by sunlight,
I fill my cup with wonders of delight.
Life is a treasure, a radiant gem,
A vision that Ill never see again.
Were constructed from the stuff of stars grand,
Through lifes history recorded in strands
Of DNA, both recent and older,
The parts conducting, to play as a band.
Time and stardust made us Earths living guest,
While quick death sifted the rest from the best.
Those three, our birthright, form our epitaph:
RIP; time expired, death came, dust is left.
All that we are we owe to time, death, and stars.
Truly, from the stars cometh our help.
Within a stars heart, matter transforms itself
And gives off energythis is why the stars shine!
I own a solar system way out there,
One whose planets contain diamonds, silver,
And much in gold; so now Im rich; its all
Mine because I chose a favorite star.
Were the flesh to the backbones of the stars,
Those ghosts of the suns that no longer are
They having transformed their energys ways
To base atoms, more from supernovae.
The universe has to continue its race,
Unwinding, like a spring, at times fixed pace,
In which star-generations are born and perish,
Giving their lives for all we can cherish.
iep
wikipedia
fact-index
Whats Fundamental has to be partless,
Lest its parts be more-so and it be less;
Its ever, neer still, else naught could happen;
The quantum vacuum weaves the universes dress.
It's an AI creature that has quickly accomplished what would have taken a jillion years of evolution, plus turning out even better since it is a machine?
I don't think so. It's a fictional creature that, like any other fictional creature (i.e., Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes) does not exist, and will not exist, for the very simple reason that it cannot even exist to begin with.
It does not take such a sinister concept (i.e., Roko's Basilisk) to prove such a simple point.
continued
Theres no come from for the Eternalness;
It cant be made or broken: its partless;
So, it has the least lightness of being.
With no design point, what can it bless?
The Permanent is constrained, as simplest,
Continuous, as wave-fields, shown by test
To be sinusoidal and harmonic,
Which grants elementary quanta.
The vacuum has to eer jitter and sing,
This Base Existent forced as something,
Due to the nonexistence of Nothing;
If it tries to be zero, it cannot.
At the indefinite quantum level,
Zero must be fuzzy, not definite;
So it cant be zero, but has to be
As that which is ever up to something.
Over the Next Hill
That's where we make discoveries
That's the Next Frontier
To follow up:
I think that Plato does get at something essential here. If the good is "that to which all things aim" (or, anything goal-directed at least), Aristotle's definition, then it seems that all goods are in some sense related. However, good is predicated analogously, not univocally.
For instance, I don't believe that one could have a "moral calculus" or ascribe some sort of "goodness points" to things or acts. Yet neither do I think all desirability and choiceworthyness breaks down into completely unrelated categories.
So, to the example of back treatments, of course what constitutes a "good treatment" is relative and contextual. Surely it is not good medical practice to install steel spikes into someone's spine if they have a perfectly healthy spine. It can be good medical practice to stab someone in the throat or chest, we learned this in my EMT course. It is not, in general, good to go around stabbing people in the throat.
But this is precisely why goodness is best thought of as a general principle.
It's a definition not an argument. How would one demonstrate that cows are "cows" either? For something to be transcendent, it cannot fail to transcend. If "absolute" is to mean "all-encompassing" and we posit both reality and appearances, than by definition the absolute cannot exclude one of the things we've posited.
Perhaps the definition is defective. One can have bad definitions. I don't think it is though.
My Rubaiyat style quatrains therein:
Oh peri, jasmine of midnights garden,
We bask in our moon-glowed, vapored haven,
Bathing in the orbs silver light again,
Here in this otherworldly forest glen.
Omar, the moons ring binds us truly here,
Wherein from the strict world we disappear
They to wonder hence whither whence we went:
Love, kisses, and selves bonded to endear.
Oh, the deep clarity of this still night
Our being mirrors the stars and moonlight.
It sinks into us, though short-lived by day,
Impermanent; whats its way; whats its sway?
Colored stars pierce the veil of formless night,
Gemming Heavens gloried, crown-jeweled might;
In the depths of the deep we live, anon:
Were all alone here to weather the plight.
We sleep the sleep that only lovers know,
As front to back, under the blankets throw,
While meteors criss-cross the darkling skies
Our floating selves through love and wine aglow.
The Spirit breathes life with its holy might;
Spring blossoms replace winters snowy white;
Cloudy vapors coalesce into drops;
The airs the lovers with fragrance invite.
The morn springs us oer oblivions brink,
The stars overcome, sunk in the days drink.
We race our paths, past Allahs golden dome,
Unto the green-grassed river-bank to sink.
Spring kisses the earth, leaving flowers there,
Like those whose perfume first scented virgin air,
As again, the fragrant glen, in Heaven's prayer,
Hails Earths anniversary with flowers fair.
Slake loves thirst for lifes earthly endeavor
Near a stream where wildflowers grow forever.
Flowers influence our feelingsdeep they roam:
Floras fairest flowers compose Heavens poem.
Aft the clouds eyes water the soil that dried,
The suns warm breath wakes up the seeds inside;
Hence, all the plants, trees, and flowers revive,
And over mead, stream, and wayside preside.
Probably it is the Theory of Everything - The Basis of All. I'd say it is the quantum 'vacuum'.
And I ask: How can one realize the Ultimate Truth about Knowledge?
The senses take something in; therefore, there is something to take in. The sense are as spy outposts upon reality.
Where does Reality come from? At bottom, the Eternal has no 'come from'.
Would that truth (if we could get to it) be over and above reality itself?
Does our capacity to formulate a question in words guarantee that there must be an answer to it?
If we did find the answer, how would we know it is the right one?
And even assuming that we had the right one, what difference would it make to how we live?
Sure, fine with that.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not entirely sure I'm following this one. That might be on me.
A cow can be demonstrated via a clear zoological example, can't it? A simple correspondence. Transcendence is a qualitative adjectival abstraction that seems closer to poetry.
Why are they the ultimate truth?
Here is a good place to start for philosophical discussions about the concept of the Ultimate. It's not perfect, but it's something:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-ultimates/
I think this is an interesting issue only in that it highlights our epistemic limitations. How can one demonstrate that cows are cows? We perceive things we call cows, so I think there is no right and wrong in that. We could have called them by any other name, and they would be the same.
Does the question not really devolve to whether or not cows exist as cows in themselves? I mean they obviously would not think of themselves as cows. So what could that question even mean, other than whether there is some independently real thing which appears to us as a cow?
About that question we can only infer what seems most plausible. since the question is outside both the empirical and logical ambit. It is surprising how much interest these kinds of strictly ambiguous and undecidable questions generate.
Because these are questions about what we ultimately are. These are questions about our own ultimacy. What are we?
Here's an example. North Americans sometimes talk about taking a solitary trip to somewhere just so that they can "find themselves". And here's my humble opinion on that. If you want to find out who you really are, you've no idea what's in store for you once you seriously begin to question what you are instead of who you are.
You think it's simple, but it isn't. Because what you are has nothing to do with you as a subject. It has everything to do with you as a mere, pattern-following object. You need to become a subject if only for the sake of your own survival as a human.
EDIT: Or is someone here going to argue with me, that we are not affected by the force of gravity just as much as any physical object, like this stone on the floor? Now ask yourself this: why is that? The answer is simple: because you are an object, a physical object in the world, in the same sense as that stone. In addition to that, you have to become a subject. Otherwise, you'll die. Reality itself is not a Fairy Tale. Wanna live? Become a subject. Or perhaps even a Rogue Object.
Whatever we say about what we are will not be an ultimate truth but will be merely an interpretation of the human condition based on human experience and will thus be a relative statement, true or false only in some context or other.
An ultimate truth would be context-independent. How could there be any such thing (at least for us)? So, you say we are merely "pattern-following objects" and that may indeed be true from some perspective. just as we being subjects is true from a certain perspective.
As North Americans like to say: what you just said there is an opinion, not a fact. Can you prove that what you're saying is true? If so, then it is self-refuting. That beetles existed before mammals is true in a way that does not depend on any interpretation, nor on any human experience. It is, in that sense, a literal truth.
Quoting Janus
Yes, it would.
Quoting Janus
There can be such a thing, at least for us, because we are precisely that thing ourselves, insofar as we are something, and not merely someone.
Quoting Janus
It is absolutely true, because otherwise you would not be affected by the force of gravity in the same sense that a stone is.
Quoting Janus
It is absolutely true, because otherwise you would have died by now, and so would have I.
The idea of an absolute truth for us is self-refuting.
Not necessarily, for if the subject-object correlation is absolute, then the idea of an absolute truth for us is not self-refuting, precisely because it is a thing-in-and-for-itself.
I guess it can only mean something based on language and zoological classification. Which is fine for me. If there is a realm where cowness is found.. who cares?
Quoting Janus
I guess it's all just another way to chase after a god surrogate. Ultimate truth being a conduit towards the Ultimate Concern, Tillich and other theist's term for god.
This seems to be a great article on the topic. The majority of the articles in the SEP seems to be high quality in its contents. I shall read it up, and get back to you if there are any points to clarify or discuss. Thank you for the link.
The salient thing about that is that even if there were a realm where cowness exists we could never find it or at least know that we had found it.
Quoting Tom Storm
For me the only questions that approach "the ultimate concern" are 'how should I live?" and "how should I die", and I can't see how any purported transcendent or ultimate reality could have any bearing on those question just because they cannot be real to me.
On the other hand, I might enjoy thinking or reading about such questions just to see what the creative human imagination can come up with.
Certainly. I am on the forum for precisely this reason. To me philsophy primarily seems to be a creative way for us to manage anxiety.
Quoting Janus
Do you really ask this kind of quesion, or does it come up indirectly through interactions with ideas and day to day living?
It's that, and it's also the preparation of one's own mind for the reality of one's death. I know that sounds grim, but it is what it is. It can be other things too, philosophy. It can be a performative art-form, it can be a science, it can be a linguistic tool, it can be a weapon in a political debate. But at its core, philosophy is the acceptance of the reality of death. It has nothing to do with the love of wisdom.
As Maximus (Russell Crowe) said: " I knew a man once who said, "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."'
That man was Marcus Aurelius.
I do ask that kind of question of myself'how well can I face my own death?'. I don't dwell on it or become morbid about it, but I try to see what I am attached to in my life and think how to minimize the hold things have on me. I've always liked the Stoic idea and Spinoza's expression of it, that acceptance of those things over which we have no control is the key to living a good life. The more total the acceptance the better the life.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I'd say that acceptance of the reality of death is wisdom, and cultivating that acceptance is the love of wisdom.
Well said! :clap:
If my senses can be fooled then how can I trust my senses?
To tell you the truth I was diagnosed with schizophrenia some 22 years ago, I lost touch with reality; so it makes me wonder what is indeed real and what is not.
I spend too much time in the computers anyways...
Perhaps I should take a break and watch Venom... that Homological Algebra can be quite tiresome...
:-D
It's a pleasure to meet A Realist that has used philosophy in order to placate the horrific subjective experience of hallucinations, which are symptomatic of schizophrenia. You have effectively weaponized philosophy in order to fight your inner demons. I find that virtuous, worthy of praise.
As you know, schizophrenia is no less noble than cancer. A patient of the former doesn't choose their woes any more than the patient of the latter does.
Stay strong. There is no better pharmakon for losing touch with reality, than a healthy dose of philosophical realism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4
BTW, I took both the red and blue pills... :-D
This guy says that he wants a third pill:
Late to the party, but what the hell
The same senses that you dismiss as unreliable are also responsible for your knowledge of I as well, you're like someone trying to open the box containing the whole universe whilst still being inside the box and we all know from Futurama what happens then!.
EDIT: Which, now I think about it, is basically Russel's Set paradox in another form. Can our senses be trusted to justify our senses.
That's an unreasonal leap. Yes, your senses CAN deceive you, but that just implies your senses are fallible - not that they are completely untrustworthy.
Face it: you do trust your senses every single day. If you didn't, you'd quickly die. Consider why you trust them: it's innate. It's a properly basic belief. Basic, because it's innate - not deduced or learned. Properly so, if the system that produced you would tend to produce such a belief. Being properly basic, it's rational to hold the belief- unless you encounter some sort of epistemic defeater. The mere possibility that this is wrong is not a defeater.
According to the Perennial philosophy, in order to know the ultimate nature of reality you would have to understand how you know anything at all. This is because knowing is fundamental. For this philosophy epistemology and ontology are.the same subject.
You can tell a great deal about reality from the fact that all extreme metaphysical positions do not survive critical analysis. In this case, the Perennial philosophy is the only world-theory that works, and what it says about reality is likely to be true.
But 'likely to be true' or 'true according to logic and reason' is not the same as knowledge.
An important point here may be that your senses don't have to be trusted. The knowledge you are seeking lies beyond sensory data, trustworthy or not.
It may seem odd to you that knowing oneself means also knowing the world, but for the ,mystic consciousness and realty are one and the same explanandum. Thus Lao Tzu tells us 'Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao', and Al Hallaj was crucified not for saying he knew the truth, but for stating 'I am truth'.
It is the reason why Descartes found that the only certain knowledge available to him was 'I am''. He concluded that only knowledge by identity is true knowledge.
It's a very difficult idea, but makes epistemological sense if you examine it closely. .
. . . . .
And if you could, you can never be certain.
SUBTOPIC: Truth 'vs' Reality?
?? et al,
(ONE MAN'S VIEW)
There are many ideas about the scope, characteristics, and nature of "reality." One such perspective is found in the Laws of Divine Reality (the fact of self-awareness) and the Laws of Human Existence. "Truth" is a separate perspective.
The concept of an "ultimate truth" is undefined. Even in Physics, there is no true "ultimate." Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have both been subject to testing through the scientific method, with positive outcomes. Yet the two tested theories do not match with each other. Truth, in practice, is that which is not considered questionable in that time frame. Reality is that which the observers agree upon.
References
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? WEBSTER Encyclopedic DICTIONARY, Copyright © 1997 Published by CONSOLIDATED BOOK PUBLISHERS Chicago Library of Congress CCN: 73-1877
ISBN: 0-8326-0021-0
? Werner Heisenberg Reality and Its Order, Edited by Konrad Kleinknecht, Translated from German by M. B. Rumscheidt and N. Lukens and I. Heisenberg, © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 {ISBN 978-3-030-25695-1 ISBN 978-3-030-25696-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25696-8}
? Reality, Copyright © 2003 by Peter Kingsley. First published in the United States in 2003 by The Golden Sufi Center, P.O. Box 428, Inverness, California 94937-0428 ISBN 1-890350-08-7
Most Respectfully,
R
Buddhism addresses this problem. Meditation can bring us to a higher level of consciousness and diminish our ego's grip on us. Lacking self-awareness and being driven by ego can be a hellish delusion.