Aristotle's Rhetoric could easily be said to be all about finding, creating suppositions, or in this sense arguments. In one section (Bk. II - Chap. 23) he lists outright 28 topoi, topics, lines of argument - tools - that can be used both to create and then prove the arguments of suppositions.
No doubt. I'm not sure I ever read this text and it would've been in the 1980s if i had ... Good reference though – thanks.
For me, suppositions – philosophical statements – have implicit, sometimes explicit, assumptions, and it's these assumptions which require presuppositions to give the assumptions sense, or relevance, as commitments to either an ontology or some other discursive domain. Likewise, the implications of such suppositions (or assumptions too) extend or expand the scope of presuppositions further. They are not, however, "absolute" in Collingwood's sense (IIRC, what he calls "absolute presuppositions" pertain to entire cultures or historical eras and only thereby to discourses practiced therein), but are necessary in the sense of being implicit 'conditionals'.
That said, tim, I think we're on the same page concerning the (reflective) usage of suppositions. Philosophy makes proposals – supposes ideas/concepts, even arguments – rather than propositions (e.g. theories), and pays careful attention to their assumptions and the presuppositions which grounds assumptions contextually. Agreed? (Am I reading you correctly?) This is a methodological priority of mine which I've learned mostly from Peirce, Dewey and Witty (re: forms-of-life, world as totality of the facts, certainty as lacking grounds for doubt, meaning as usage), then later on clearly recognizing this in the scrupulous care with lines of thought or arguments made by Benny, Humester, Schop, Freddy Zarathustra, Bertie, Popper, et al. As someone else has already said on this thread or another, philosophy is more art than science – which is much more obvious to those of us who (struggle to) philosophize instead of just go on rambling about philosophies.
god must be atheistJuly 24, 2021 at 22:35#5713240 likes
My absolute presupposition would be "my sensations reflect truth (reality)."
This of course is only in retrospect. When my suppositions and presuppositions formed, this was not an issue. But even at that time -- as a baby, or newborn, I tasted my mothers milk and found it was palatable, and it was pleasant, and it took away my hunger -- I sensed that some things over and over again take away the pain of hunger and replace it with the pleasure of fulness. This established for me the presupposition in a non-philosophical, but empirical, experiential way.
god must be atheistJuly 24, 2021 at 22:36#5713250 likes
In the previous post, my presupposition may not be true... but it works for me. I don't need any more supporting levels of presupposition; I don't need a basis for that presupposition. It is the gestalt, the "is", the "est".
god must be atheistJuly 24, 2021 at 22:38#5713280 likes
conversely, what works for others? I daresay the same thing. Of course their opinions may be different from mine: their presupposition may be the existence of the Christian god and its influence in the person's life. From where I sit, their presupposition is false, and it can be replaced with mine for better effect.
Reply to 180 Proof Interesting. Do the 'laws' of logic count as presuppositions? I'd be interested to see examples of some common presuppositions versus suppositions as they might operate in someone's belief system.
For instance, Is a presupposition or a supposition of science the notion that reality is understandable? Or is this scientism? Is the idea of 'reality' itself a supposition?
Are there examples of presuppositions that we can't really do without (the afore mentioned laws of logic, perhaps)?
Are there examples of presuppositions that we can't really do without (the afore mentioned laws of logic, perhaps)?
If you're referring to my take on presuppositions in philosophy, then that depends on which suppositions – philosophical statements – and their assumptions you think we philosophers cannot do without. Something stated by Socrates or Plato, Aristotle or Sextus Empiricus, Descartes or Kant? First principle/s of a philosophical school, tradition or movement perhaps? :chin:
And 2) do you happen to know of any relatively simple or brief way to identify your own APs or anyone else's?
That's easy. Try to talk to someone who thinks differently than oneself. This quickly brings to the surface one's hinge propositions. The moment in the interaction when you want to call the other person crazy, evil, deranged, and such, is the moment where the hinge proposition surfaces and can be recognized.
I'm weirded out of course because of my ego. Then I'm weirded out because I don't know that people don't argue with me because they ignore me, i.e. I'm totally ignorable, or because my points are so very right on that there is nothing to argue about.
But what really worries me is that I'll get weirded out to the max the moment people start to respond to me. What if I get responses? I won't know what to do with them. I am not used to them. I don't have experience with the "responded to my points" paradigm. In a way I'm like a dog that chases cars, and then one day he catches one. Then what??
Do the 'laws' of logic count as presuppositions?
— Tom Storm
No. They count as a formal system of transformational rules.
However, the supposition that "logic dependably works", that one can trust logic, is an absolute one. You cannot prove that logic is true or efficacious because you would need logic to do so.
My absolute presupposition would be "my sensations reflect truth (reality)."
Indeed, this is another one. I would say express it as "my senses don't lie, most of times". "Most of times" is to allow for (rare) observation errors and hallucinations.
However, the supposition that "logic dependably works", that one can trust logic, is an absolute one. You cannot prove that logic is true or efficacious because you would need logic to do so.
This is a good one, but I would file the acceptance that "logic is logical" under sense-sensation. Our entire intuitive world, including language and understanding language, is based on the reliable relationship between sensation and stimulus.
I agree with time and space, though, that was right on. With a caveat as below.
------------------------
That said, there is a tendency among modern logicians that postulates that logic as used by humans is a product of evolution, and it has some, but not all to do with reality. In microphysics, i.e. in quantum space, an effect can occur before its cause; it needs the cause, but the cause will happen sometime later than the effect gets born. Also, there are a lot of other difficulties to conventional reason that QM presents: a volume of space contains more energy the smaller it is. In our logical world, if you add two things, their sum is bigger than either of the additives. But in quantum world the sum is smaller than the additives individually. ETC. Therefore MODERN LOGICIANS have divided the world of logic into two segments: human-intuitive, that is, evolutionarily ingrained logic, the one that corresponds to our senses and the logic of the language; this is called LOGIC 1. LOGIC 2 is non-intuitive logic, something that is part of reality, but it baffles every human the first time we learn about it.
Reply to Olivier5 "Logic dependably works", I think, is an assumption (re: logic is dependable), which in turn presupposes that some things work and some things do not work.
Reply to tim wood I only refer to philosophical statements as 'suppositions' which are not truth-apt, and not other kinds of statements which may or may not be truth-apt. "What it is" pertaining to an abstraction itself (concept of X) may be descriptive or definitional.
Presupposing, then, a part of thinking, implying the existence of absolute presuppositions (APs)
I read RGC as saying the cultures, or historical eras, consist in absolute presuppositions and, implied, that thinking only presupposes culture, or a historical era, which is not absolute (like e.g. Witty's language games presuppose forms-of-life). Maybe I'm misremembering him; however, I stand with Witty's presupposing.
To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter.
— 180 Proof
That's quite Deweyian (Deweyish?) I think. For him, judgments which are the outcome of controlled inquiry for a purpose, not propositions, indicate what may be asserted as "true" (or warranted).
god must be atheistJuly 26, 2021 at 21:34#5721750 likes
These seem along the right lines. And interesting because within a system of thinking some proposition can express an a priori truth. - universal and necessary. But that in itself no truth at all. Gravity as a force, now gravity as description of the free movement of objects in space-time along geodesics - no force at all.
My absolute presupposition would be "my sensations reflect truth (reality)."....In the previous post, my presupposition may not be true... but it works for me.
— god must be atheist
This gets tricky. APs underlie issues of truth or falsity. They are the grounds upon which relative presuppositions are reckoned true or false. Or perhaps yours a relative proposition that leads back to "sensations reflect reality." You might question whether yours do, but whether sensations in general do a whole other question.
You can't get away from the presupposition that your rely on your senses. What else are you going to rely on? Very basically.
A priori knowledge? They are truisms, they don't reveal any knowledge outside of themselves.
If you don't rely on evidence, and you can't rely on pure reason, then you got to rely on something. There is no other "something". So you have to choose between your senses and a priori truth. A priori may not lead you to anything, in fact, it does not. Experiential evidence may be correct or may be totally false, but take it or leave it, there is nothing else. A priori is certain to not be helpful as a most basic presupposition. Experience has at least a chance to be revealing the truth (from your point of view), so you bet on the horse that has a chance, not on the one that has no chance at all, when you are restricted to bet on one horse and only on one of the two.
Which in turn presupposes that some things exist, I guess
— Olivier5
These seem along the right lines.
Ok. Then in ECG fashion we should ask what is the question that this supposition answers. And that would be: is there something? But this question is self-answered in the positive, since the question itself: "Is there something?", this question exists as soon as it is asked. So the answer is always: "yes, there exist something, at least the question "is there something?".
To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter
Spoken like a true skeptic! Pyrrho would be proud!
I did some reading up on presuppositions and suppositions and here's what I found out:
1. Suppositions: Explicit propositions that could be true/false that one wants to work with to discover their implications e.g. suppose physicalism is true, what follows?
2. Presuppositions: Implicit propositions that are necessarily true for suppositions to make sense e.g. with regard to "suppose physicalism is true", presuppositions would be that the methodology used to conduct the analysis of what follows (logic) is adequate, that language is powerful enough to handle the situation, so on and so forth.
Reply to TheMadFool And so your point in reference to my position which you've quoted is what? I'm concerned wirh philosophical statements and that's all.
We have to presuppose language is adequate and that logic is too to have this conversation. When we challenge these presuppositions, we must again presuppose that both language and logic are adequate - we've hit a wall and we're now stuck.
Though there are differences between suppositions analysis and presuppositions analysis - the former supposes an explicit proposition's truth and investigates what follows while the latter consists of implicit propositions that have to be true to provide the milieu (for the former) - they both bear the signature of skepticism which is that:
To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter.
To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter.
That's why most of the assertions on a philosophy forum should be taken with a grain of salt. Unlike physical scientists, philosophers -- and theoretical scientists -- are not bound by proven physical facts. Instead, they are free to suppose -- to say "what-if, given a few assumptions, X is true?" This is how Einstein discovered the physical implications of living in a relative, rather than an absolute & deterministic, world. Hence, most modern scientific "facts" are relative to a point-of-view or frame-of-reference. And they are provisional, given certain presumed preconditions.
By contrast, many informal philosophical expressions are based on un-stated pre-suppositions (beliefs), in which the conditions & limitations on the truth of the statement are not clearly defined. That's why Voltaire warned that, before making a definitive assertion, "first define your terms". Unfortunately, all too many of those implicit "facts" are only loosely defined -- adequate to a narrow task -- and may be interpreted to suit a presumed inference. Even Skeptics argue from a complex worldview that seems to them to be The Simple Truth. So, it's easy to be skeptical of other people's beliefs (presuppositions), but harder to skeptically dig around in the foundation of your own worldview, for fear of undermining The Truth. :smile:
Suppose :
[i]1. assume that something is the case on the basis of evidence or probability but without proof or certain knowledge.
1a : to lay down tentatively as a hypothesis, assumption, or proposal[/i]
False Consensus : "Everyone tends to assume that most normal, decent, intelligent people believe what we believe.":
SKEPTIC magazine, v26 n2
It implies to me an importance in remembering that it's not just what I may know, but the system and framework within which it is know
Which connects with structuralism, and PoMo, although Collingwood's philosophy is more logically structured than that of the err... French structuralists.
Ok so things exist. Among those is logic. These are trivial presuppositions, trivially true. The non-trivial presupposition is that human natural logic works.
Reply to Gnomon Philosophers talk about (understanding) ideas and possibilities and scientists talk about (knowing) facts and probabilities, no? The latter propositions and the former suppositions, right? Yeah, in practice there are overlaps but the respective functions (i.e. epistemology & epistemes) are distinct.
?Gnomon
Philosophers talk about (understanding) ideas and possibilities and scientists talk about (knowing) facts and probabilities, no? The latter propositions and the former suppositions, right? Yeah, in practice there are overlaps but the respective functions (i.e. epistemology & epistemes) are distinction.
Yes. But, there is a wide range of those uncertain "overlaps" between "known" or "proven" facts, and "received opinions" or "heresies". The Scientific Method is a set of guidelines, intended to prevent scientists from confusing little "F" facts that are "adequate for some particular task", and capital "F" Facts that are True, now & forever, here & there. Philosophers have also devised long lists of Fallacies, to deter them from stumbling into the pitfalls of False Generalization from "known facts".
And yet, both professions still have room for disagreement on "facts" that fall into the gray area, between proven and proposed. Both groups try to walk the chalk line, but all too often stray from the strait & narrow. Which is one reason we have online Philosophical forums, where rational thinkers with slightly different worldviews, can share Facts and Opinions remotely without the danger of throttling each other.
For those of us, who are not omniscient, all our general "facts" are also personal "opinions". In all ages, the list of "proven" scientific facts is contingent upon further evidence, and always subject to change. For example, the Standard Model of Quantum Theory was essentially a contentious quorum consensus, similar to that of the official Catholic Canon of Nicaea -- not a revelation from above. And, many of the "propositions" of that theory would have been preposterous to Isaac Newton, who worried about his own proposition of "spooky action at a distance" : the pull of gravity.
That's why a touch of scientific humility is advisable for those on internet forums who wish to argue fixed facts and potential probabilities. Because Your Facts are pre-suppositions and My Facts are mere opinions. So, I could be wrong . . . . but I doubt it. :grin:
Scientific Humility : Humility means being open to the possibility of being wrong, being willing to consider other people's ideas and being respectful
https://in-training.org/humility-science-science-always-wins-11239
Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking at the present level of knowledge.
https://newrepublic.com/article/118655/theoretical-phyisicist-explains-why-science-not-about-certainty
I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It is a memoir by former American professional basketball player Charles Barkley.
Reply to Gnomon Philosophy doesn't "disagree" with science (or history) over "the facts" because science (& history) provides philosophy with "the facts". You and I, however, disagree over whether or not philosophy determines "facts" – I say philosophy doesn't, and only that it proposes ideas about or interpretations/evalutations of facts (as well as other ideas and interpretations). Only idealists seem to conflate ideas with facts so promiscuously and then leap to the conclusion that "philosophy is a/the science". For me, a realist, philosophy is not theoretical or a science. (Witty).
"Kantian principles ["System of Principles"] are nothing more permanent than the presuppositions of eighteenth-century physics, as Kant discovered them by analysis. If you analyze the physics of today, or that of the Renaissance, or that of Aristotle, you get a different set" (179).
So Collingwood treated Kantian a priori principles as examples of presupposition.
The idea being that the principles or absolute presuppositions (.....), are in truth short-lived ideas subject to change.
So.....no irreducible, apodeictic, time-independent criteria for human rationality itself, merely as a condition of being human. No metaphorical “one ring to rule them all” kinda thing, then. That’s fine.....nobody dives that deep into his own cognitive methodology anyway, simultaneously with the use of it.
Not to take anything away from AP’s, mind you, insofar as the common understanding is more apt to consider them as short-lived ideas subject to change, than the principles under which they are subsumed, which are neither.
?Gnomon
Philosophy doesn't "disagree" with science (or history) over "the facts" because science (or history) provides philosophy with "the facts". You and I, however, disagree over whether or not philosophy determines "facts" – I say philosophy doesn't, and only proposes ideas about or interpretations/evalutations of facts (as well as other ideas and interpretations). Only idealists seem to conflate ideas with facts so promiscuously and then leap to the conclusion that "philosophy is a/the science". For me, a realist, philosophy is not theoretical or a science. (Witty).
No. I actually agree with you, that the job of science is to test & "prove" hypothetical (philosophical) conjectures & factoids, in order to turn them into reliable & settled knowledge that can be used to predict the course of Nature. Unfortunately, scientific "facts", while temporarily "adequate for some particular task", remain subject to change over time. The scientific "facts" of Newton are now referred to as "classical physics", because they have been found to be inadequate at the quantum scale of reality.
So, Scientists "prove" philosophical hypotheses with practical tests, turning some of them into pragmatic theories. But then, Philosophers put some of those useful "facts" under a mental microscope, to discover the logical cracks in the facts. Einstein was a theoretical physicist, which is basically a philosopher who focuses on physics instead of meta-physics. He was once asked, "where is your laboratory?", and simply held up a pencil. By merely using imagination & math, he was able to turn classical physics on its head.
As the quote below asserts, Philosophers study "relations of (metaphysical) ideas", while Scientists study "matters of (physical) fact". When the two professions work together, human understanding progresses. Therefore, I also disagree with your denigration of philosophical reasoning, in that theoretical Philosophy is an integral part of practical Science :nerd:
Factoid : an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
Facts : The word “fact” is used in at least two different ways. In the locution “matters of fact”, facts are taken to be what is contingently the case, or that of which we may have empirical or a posteriori knowledge. Thus Hume famously writes at the beginning of Section IV of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding: “All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact”.
Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics : Philosophy has always played an essential role in the development of science, physics in particular, and is likely to continue to do so. ___Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-needs-philosophy-philosophy-needs-physics/
Philosophy may be called the "science of sciences" . . . .As a whole, philosophy and the sciences are equal partners assisting creative thought in its explorations to attain generalising truth.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Philosophy_and_Science_what_is_the_connection
I also disagree with your denigration of philosophical reasoning ...
I only denigrate idealist (anti-realist, subjectivist) "reasoning" and agree with you that philosophy and science taken together can be quite synergistic.
I only denigrate idealist (anti-realist, subjectivist) "reasoning" and agree with you that philosophy and science taken together can be quite synergetic.
That's a neat black & white worldview : " Idealism versus Realism". But is your world really that simplistic, and devoid of ideas about things that could be, but are not? Are pre-suppositions idealistic while post-suppositions are realistic? Aren't hypothetical presuppositions a necessary first step toward empirically "proven" theoretical models of Reality? I doubt that you are really dead-set against human imagination, as a tool for learning. Instead, your dichotomy may be better summarized as Spiritualism versus Materialism. Where would we be now, if Einstein had never imagined himself, counter-factually, riding on a beam of light? ( (rhetorical questions) )
Ironically, Quantum Theory could be interpreted as "anti-realist", in that the ancient search for the reductionist Holy Grail -- the Atom -- has now been reduced to imagining invisible and intangible "fields" of virtual particles. Yet, physicists are prepared to accept that abstract mental model as-if it is real --- just as Spiritualists accept the notion of a ghost as real, even though it is merely the remnant Idea of a formerly living (real) person. When quantum theorist Feynman was challenged to prove that that his models represented true reality, he responded "shut-up and calculate".
All I'm suggesting is that Reality is not that simple. It includes both Things and Ideas-About-Things, both wet Brains and airy Minds. Idealism is merely a philosophical focus on the ideas we conceive about the presumed reality out there, beyond the reach of our physical senses. Unfortunately, some people are so in love with the idea of their ideal realm (e.g. Heaven) that they are willing to have their real bodies burned at the stake rather than recant. That's not Idealism, it's extremism. :cool:
Difference Between Idealism and Realism : The two concepts can, in layman’s terms, be deemed different in perspectives; with idealism focusing on ‘what could be’, and realism focusing on ‘what actually is.’
http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-idealism-and-realism/
Are quantum fields real, or merely a mathematical tool ? : The point of all of above is, as far as science goes, what an experimentally established theory says is, for all intents and purposes, the reality.
https://www.quora.com › Are-quantum-fields-real-or-m...
Note -- "for all intents and purposes" means "not really"
Idealism : Scientific Materialism is the assumption that particle Physics is the foundation of reality, and that our ideas are simply products of material processes. Empirical Idealism doesn't deny the existence of a real world, but reasons that all we can ever know about that hypothetical reality is the mental interpretations of sensory percepts. Platonic Idealism (Myth of the Cave) calls those interpretations illusions, and asserts that true Reality is equivalent to an idea in the mind of God. Enformationism is compatible with both views, depending on your perspective.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
2. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. .[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Reply to Gnomon Too many misdirected and rhetorical questions. I never claimed or implied that "reality is simple" – less is more, parsimony demands; I find the "idealist", etc approaches, however, extravangant and unwarranted and patently unhelpful (à la woo). "Spirtualism" is wholly subjective and you're welcome to it but I'm under no epistemic (or existential) obligation to take such ad hoc whimsy seriously. Defeasible, not wishful or magical, thinking suffices for (more than merely heuristically) 'grasping' reality. :fire:
If the questions are misdirected, it's only because the target is fuzzy, or moving around. For example, what do you mean by "idealist (anti-realist, subjectivist) "reasoning"? That's not a rhetorical question. I offered "spiritualism" , but you are welcome to present other examples of "idealist reasoning".
Plato was perhaps the most influential "idealist" reasoner. And Aristotle is noted for trying to make his mentor's ideas more sensible and realistic. But, in fact he also relied on the notion of ideal essences underlying real substances. The point of Idealism is not to be "anti-realist", but to remind us that all of our knowledge of reality is a mental construct. Are you familiar with Donald Hoffman's book : The Case Against Reality? He doesn't deny Reality out there, but merely shows that we only know our ideas about reality, in here. :smile:
Idealism : In philosophy, idealism is a diverse group of metaphysical views which all assert that "reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from human perception and/or understanding, that it is in some sense mentally constructed, or that it is otherwise closely connected to ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
Why is it said that Plato was an idealist and Aristotle a realist? : Very briefly, Aristotle was a realist because he believed that "forms" or universals couldn't exist uninstantiated, Plato believed they could. I think it more proper to say that Plato was a non-dualist, rather than an idealist or even a monist. Also, one should not lose sight of the fact that Aristotle, being a disciple of Plato, was not only an empiricist (at heart or by temperament) but also a metaphysician (e.g. the ‘unmoved mover’). Someone here has drawn the attention on the misleading epithets, realist/idealist.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-said-that-Plato-was-an-idealist-and-Aristotle-a-realist-when-Aristotles-book-Politics-is-called-a-copy-of-Republic
Note -- Again, all I'm saying is that Reality is not really a simple stark Black vs White or True/False duality. That's why I have built my personal philosophy on the BothAnd Principle of Complementarity.
Interface : Window to Reality : Reality is not what you see
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Plato was perhaps the most influential "idealist" reasoner. And Aristotle is noted for trying to make his mentor's ideas more sensible and realistic. But, in fact he also relied on the notion of ideal essences underlying real substances. The point of Idealism is not to be "anti-realist", but to remind us that all of our knowledge of reality is a mental construct. Are you familiar with Donald Hoffman's book : The Case Against Reality? He doesn't deny Reality out there, but merely shows that we only know our ideas about reality, in here.
By "anti-realist" I understand subject-dependency (i.e. conflation of ideas (maps) with facts (territory)) that is disputed by the Private Language argument and self-refuting Protagorean relativism.
... ^ideas are "mental-constructs"; knowledge is more than it's constituent ideas.
Are you familiar with Donald Hoffman's book : The Case Against Reality? He doesn't deny Reality out there, but merely shows that we only know our ideas about reality, in here. :smile:
What does he think is difference between the reality "out there" and the ideas about reality "in here"? If he says the difference is that one is "out there" and the other "in here" I'm not sure he says anything of note, so assume he says something else.
Quasi- and Contra- are in the eye of the beholder. maybe what you mean is contra-180proof. I would call Hoffman's analogy of concepts with computer icons to be an update of both Kant and Plato.
By "anti-realist" I understand subject-dependency (i.e. conflation of ideas (maps) with facts (territory)) that is disputed by the Private Language argument and self-refuting Protagorean relativism.
Unfortunately, your Ideal "Realist" world would be a world without Homo Sapiens -- a world without Selves -- just TV cameras recording reality without meaning.
... ^ideas are "mental-constructs"; knowledge is more than it's constituent ideas.
Is that another "truism", or merely an opinion? If your worldview is holistic, then everything that is not simplistic and reductive is more than its constituents. Sounds like we agree on something. But I'm not sure what we are disagreeing about. :wink:
Field Guide to The Contrarian :
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201205/field-guide-the-contrarian
What does he think is difference between the reality "out there" and the ideas about reality "in here"? If he says the difference is that one is "out there" and the other "in here" I'm not sure he says anything of note, so assume he says something else.
Yes. Hoffman is saying something much more significant and revealing than "subjective is not objective". :smile:
The Case Against Reality : A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/
Reality is not what you see : In his doctrine of Transcendental Idealism, 18th century philosopher, Immanuel Kant argued that our perception of reality is limited to constructs created in our own minds to represent the invisible and intangible ultimate reality that he mysteriously labeled “ding an sich” [things-in-essence, as opposed to things-as-we-know-them]. In other words, what we think we see, is not absolute reality but our own ideas about reality.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
?Gnomon
Well, you've not challenged me on a substantive basis, so there's that.
Touche! You've made it murkily clear that, for you, there is no "substantive basis" for any ideas that don't fit into your subjective view of objectivity. Touche! :joke:
Quote from Aristotle and Science thread :
"In [a] paper, three scientists argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses."
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11494/aristotle-and-science Reply to Wayfarer
The quote seems to imply that, to reconcile Relativity and Quantum Theory, Plato's Ideal Forms (potential things) should be considered among the "real" things of the world. Hmmmmm. :chin:
"The quote seems to imply that, to reconcile Relativity and Quantum Theory, Plato's Ideal Forms (potential things) should be considered among the "real" things of the world. Hmmmmm." -- Gnomon
?Gnomon
I wonder if there can be a more compelling example of a difference which makes no difference.
I'm not sure what your point is -- other than a snarky remark -- but Potential is the difference that makes THE difference between something and nothing. It's what makes thermodynamics dynamic. It's what differentiates positive directional change from random non-directional disorder.
Into The Cool, by Schnieder and Sagan, says "nature abhors a gradient", meaning that any difference attracts change -- it's a hole just begging to be filled ; it's a potential on the verge of actuality ; it's a possibility that "wants" to be realized. :joke:
Into The Cool : Their central thesis is contained in the striking catchphrase “nature abhors a gradient”; they propose that it is the flow of energy down gradients that is the central driving force that balances the Second Law’s drive toward disorder.
https://ncse.ngo/review-cool
Thermal gradients are caused by differences . . . .
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/thermal-gradient
A voltage gradient is a difference in electrical potential across a distance or space.
Potentiality and Actuality : Aristotle describes potentiality and actuality, or potency and action, as one of several distinctions between things that exist or do not exist. In a sense, a thing that exists potentially does not exist, but the potential does exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality
Note -- in other words, Potential is essential to Reality
[s]Well, let's speak of snakes and trains, as does Hoffman in The Atlantic.. According to Hoffman, our snakes and trains are "mental representations" or "symbols" of some kind. Now, he seems to acknowledge (rather grudgingly, it seems) that our snake "mental representation" may bite us and our train "mental representation" my run us over if we step in front of it. I speculate he would even admit, if pressed, that our snake "mental representation" and our train "mental representation" will look like and act like a snake and a train, respectively, and that we will very appropriately treat them as if there really is a snake and a train in our interactions with them.
So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains?[/s]
Well, let's speak of snakes and trains, as does Hoffman in The Atlantic.. According to Hoffman, our snakes and trains are "mental representations" or "symbols" of some kind. Now, he seems to acknowledge (rather grudgingly, it seems) that our snake "mental representation" may bite us and our train "mental representation" my run us over if we step in front of it. I speculate he would even admit, if pressed, that our snake "mental representation" and our train "mental representation" will look like and act like a snake and a train, respectively, and that we will very appropriately treat them as if there really is a snake and a train in our interactions with them.
So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains?
It strikes me that if the "real snake" (or whatever it may be) cannot be known, the mental representation snake is what is of significance to us. It doesn't matter what the "real snake" is, nor does it matter if our snake is a mental representation.
,
So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains?
I haven't seen the article, but I have read the book. So, I'd say that the difference that makes a difference, between imaginary snakes and real snakes, is the practical distinction between Concrete and Abstract. Concrete things have physical properties, such as poison, that can have physical effects, such as death-by-snake-bite. But Abstract things, have their physical properties abstracted (pulled out), so what remains are ethereal meta-physical qualities (MPQ). MPQ are not inherent in snakes, but attributed by the observer. And one of the MPQ of both snakes-in-the-flesh and snakes-in-the-mind is that they can cause the real physical responses we call "fear". You may mistake a garden hose for a snake, but the fear-response will be the same. And some people have dropped dead from fear --- yet the cause was not bio-chemical toxin, but bio-mental shock.
If the mere idea of a snake can kill you, it's not due to what-is, but to what-seems. And what "seems to be" is important to humans, because we are motivated by feelings. Moreover, some of those feelings are pre-suppositions (beliefs) about what's real and/or important. Some of those suppositions are innate (learned by evolution), or empirical (learned by experience), but others may be superstitions (learned by education). But the emotional effect on the believer is real, whether triggered by "what-is" or by "what-seems" (physical or metaphysical). Yet, some of us belittle Meta-physics as not-real, even when such ideas have real-world consequences. For example, world-wars have killed millions for the sake of abstract ideas (Communism vs Capitalism), that are only indirectly connected to the real world. However, going to war over mere ideas may sound silly, so those who want to justify the physical effects of war (carnage) typically look for some real-world event to blame. Even when the "real" motivating reason is an abstraction like "honor", or "freedom", or "country".
The abstract difference that makes a difference is Subjective Meaning. :smile:
It strikes me that if the "real snake" (or whatever it may be) cannot be known, the mental representation snake is what is of significance to us. It doesn't matter what the "real snake" is, nor does it matter if our snake is a mental representation.
That description may be true of many people, who accept what they think they see as what is real. But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion. A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know.
That's the philosophical point behind the kick-*ss cover-story of the Matrix movie. Each of us must choose between the red pill of bitter truth, and the comfortable illusion of fake reality. :cool:
Late Lament :
[i]Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey is yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion[/i]
___Moody Blues
CiceronianusAugust 01, 2021 at 01:42#5739080 likes
Well, if you can't know the real, which it appears you, Hoffman and others claim, you can't know what is real, can you? The skeptical scientists and philosophers you refer to thus believe in the existence of a something which, it's maintained, we can for all intents and purposes treat as it seem to us, but is unknowable. I wouldn't describe the belief that only the unknowable is real as wisdom.
I wouldn't describe the belief that only the unknowable is real as wisdom.
Who said it was? What I said was, "A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know." Do you disagree with that assertion? The point of wisdom is to be aware of the potential for Black Swans in any risky endeavor. :smile:
Fitch's paradox of knowability [i]is one of the fundamental puzzles of epistemic logic. It provides a challenge to the knowability thesis, which states that every truth is, in principle, knowable. The paradox is that this assumption implies the omniscience principle, which asserts that every truth is known. Essentially, Fitch's paradox asserts that the existence of an unknown truth is unknowable. So if all truths were knowable, it would follow that all truths are in fact known.
The paradox is of concern for verificationist or anti-realist accounts of truth, for which the knowability thesis is very plausible,[1] but the omniscience principle is very implausible.[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitch%27s_paradox_of_knowability
Unknown unknownsare risks that come from situations that are so unexpected that they would not be considered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable : the book discusses what can be done regarding “epistemic arrogance”, which occurs whenever people begin to think they know more than they actually do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable
Black Swan Wisdom :
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2010/12/02/black-swan-wisdom.html
CiceronianusAugust 01, 2021 at 19:20#5741640 likes
But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion.
My response was that my understanding of the claim being made is that we can't know what's real. If that's a misstatement of your position, let me know.
Regardless, though, to answer your question, I wouldn't we say a major feature of wisdom is to know what we don't know; I'd say it is to know that we don't know what is the case, or something or other. Knowledge is a matter of context. We can't know what we don't know, we simply know we don't know it. We can't know what cannot be known, however, which you seem to think is the real. It seems a very futile view of the world, to me.
One of the problems with this position--that we can't know what the real world is--is that it perpetuates the view reality is "out there." It treats us, or at least our minds, as something apart from and observing the world rather than as a part of the world and in constant interaction with its other constituents.
CiceronianusAugust 01, 2021 at 19:30#5741700 likes
But they do, you know. They see exactly what they should see--the sunset. The fact that their position may make their view of it somewhat different than that of their neighbor is a matter of position. The fact that one of them is color blind and sees the sunset differently is a matter of the problem of color blindness. The fact the stars we see look like small points of light although they're huge, bright, burning spheres is a matter of distance. The fact we see as we do is a matter of being human as opposed to, for example, a murder hornet. There's nothing remarkable or mysterious about these things. But all is a part of the same reality.
Deleted UserAugust 01, 2021 at 20:37#5742050 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
CiceronianusAugust 01, 2021 at 21:20#5742380 likes
And of course there is no such thing as a sunset. I'll presume you're talking about the experience. If that, no argument, beyond observing what you observe, that the experiences themselves are all different and only by processes of abstraction and agreement is the phenomenon processed as an experience, and further shared as one.
But what is a sunset to the sun, or the horizon, or to the processes themselves that create it? Nothing more than a judgment of sorts attached to a cognitive asterism of unrelated objects.
I don't think we have within us a "thing" which is an experience of a sunset which has a separate existence, cutting us off from the rest of the world. Nor do I think experience is a result of abstraction or agreement. But if you're willing to say that when what we call the sun, through the earth's rotation, "sinks" below the horizon we experience a sunset, that's fine with me. If you mean to say that there is no sun, no earth, no horizon--or that what they "really" are is unknowable, then I believe we're at odds.
But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion. — Gnomon
My response was that my understanding of the claim being made is that we can't know what's real. If that's a misstatement of your position, let me know.
Do you really know what's real? My position is similar to that of Kant : our senses are probing the presumed reality outside our heads, but the picture we construct from those bits of data is a mind-made (subjective) representation (symbol), not the ultimate (objective) thing, as known to omniscience.
Hoffman is making a similar point, but using the metaphor of symbolic icons on a computer screen (interface). The philosophical problem here is to distinguish between Perception (one person's incomplete view of the world) and Conception (the seemingly complete model of reality constructed from incomplete information).
I am not confident that my world-model is an accurate depiction of Reality. That's one reason I dialog with people on this forum : to compare my subjective model with the variety of models held by other observers of Reality, in order to fill-in the gaps of my worldview. Some think that Matter is the ultimate Reality, while others think it's the immaterial Relations (invisible interconnections -- patterns) between things. "Which is real, and which illusion?" :nerd:
Ding an sich : (in Kant's philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, not mediated through perception by the senses or conceptualization, and therefore unknowable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
Interface theory of perception : Now, cognitive scientist Hoffman has produced an updated version of Kant’s controversial Occult Ontology. He uses the modern metaphor of computers that we “interface” (interact) with, as-if the symbolic Icons on the display screen are the actual things we want to act upon. For example, by clicking on a pixelated folder symbol, we emulate the physical act of locating and opening a manila folder with important documents. For our practical needs, such short-cuts are sufficient to get the job done. It’s not necessary for us to be aware of all the intricate details of internal computer processes. From his studies, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That sometimes leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Example of incomplete model of reality : people had been seeing real ponds for thousands of years, but Leeuwenhoek's microscope revealed a formerly unseen miniature reality in a drop of pond water. Now, a few centuries later, our microscopes and particle smashers have revealed the almost unreal foundations of reality, in quantum models, not of atoms or sub-atomic particles, but of mathematical "fields" of Virtual or Potential particles. So, when you speak of reality, are you speaking from knowledge of the totality of Reality, or from your own custom-tailored representation of the Universe?
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful.
___Lao Tzu
Is the hole real?
One of the problems with this position--that we can't know what the real world is--is that it perpetuates the view reality is "out there." It treats us, or at least our minds, as something apart from and observing the world rather than as a part of the world and in constant interaction with its other constituents.
:up:
CiceronianusAugust 02, 2021 at 15:56#5745160 likes
Do you really know what's real? My position is similar to that of Kant : our senses are probing the presumed reality outside our heads, but the picture we construct from those bits of data is a mind-made (subjective) representation (symbol), not the ultimate (objective) thing, as known to omniscience.
I think all knowledge is provisional, i.e. though based on the best evidence available, subject to revision as new evidence is discovered or obtained. Regarding the subject matter we're addressing, I think the best evidence is that we're living organisms which are part of a world, universe, environment--whatever you wish to call it. As such we interact with the world and our fellow creatures all the time. We're not outside the world looking in. What we think, what we experience, what we do or don't do, all take place in the world.
We don't know everything about the world of which we're a part. I think we have much to learn about it. But in our interaction with the rest of the world (or that portion of it we've encountered thus far) we've not merely seen, heard, touched its other constituents, we've measured them, we've eaten them, we've built with them, experimented on/with them; we have, in other words, tested and employed them, suffered from them, benefited from them, in various ways and what takes place when we do so is repeated time and again. To that extent, we know their qualities and characteristics. We have no reason to doubt that our cats and dogs or lawns or cars, etc., are in any significant sense different from what we believe them to be. We know quite well they are cats, dogs, etc., and not something "unknowable" or the product of an evil demon or a group of mischievous sprites or something else. When we have reason to doubt what we see, then we investigate, and learn.
Now one can say that we know only to the extent we can know as human beings. But that's a mere truism. Let's wait until we have a reason to believe a cat isn't a cat to ponder what it "really" is or whether we can know that it's not "really" some kind of thing or creature that merely appears to us to be a cat, doing what cats do.
Deleted UserAugust 02, 2021 at 16:27#5745250 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
We're not outside the world looking in. What we think, what we experience, what we do or don't do, all take place in the world.
I think you are over-reacting to presumed implications of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, which was not a denial of a real world, or affirmation of a heavenly realm, but a critique of the limits of human Reason. And his Idealism is not necessarily supporting traditional Religious or Spiritualist worldviews, Descartes also seemed to acknowledge our ability to deceive ourselves -- or to be deceived by a hypothetical demon -- about reality, in his "cogito ergo sum" expression : all I know for sure is the contents of my own mind. In that sense, Reality transcends my abbreviated and subjective world model. You may not go so far as Plato, to imagine an Ideal world from which our reasoning abstracts it's own version of Reality. But for scientific purposes, it's necessary to accept the limitations on our ability to know and to model Reality. :cool:
Kant’s Transcendental Idealism : In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations. Some, including many of Kant’s contemporaries, interpret transcendental idealism as essentially a form of phenomenalism, similar in some respects to that of Berkeley, while others think that it is not a metaphysical or ontological theory at all. There is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/
Kant’s Philosophy of Religion : Kant has long been seen as hostile to religion. Many of his contemporaries, ranging from his students to the Prussian authorities, saw his Critical project as inimical to traditional Christianity.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/
Deleted UserAugust 02, 2021 at 17:53#5745570 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
CiceronianusAugust 02, 2021 at 19:00#5745880 likes
Claim and believe what you like, can you improve on Kant?
I can ask what the "cat-in-itself" in this case is supposed to be, and if the only answer given is that it's something different from the cat but cannot be known or described, I can ask why it is that I should accept as "real" that which cannot be known or described. I can also wonder whether the "thing in itself" is a thing at all, and what it adds to our view of the world.
CiceronianusAugust 02, 2021 at 19:11#5745950 likes
Are you going to say something about our senses deceiving us, or being unreliable? If so, then if I say I've known many cats over the years, and know generally how they behave, that the cat has all the characteristics of Felis Catus, that he's been my cat for about 17 years, etc., uses the litter box, purs, meows, chirps, yowls, wakes me at odd hours by tapping my nose or knocking things off the nightstand or dresser, sleeps a great deal, it won't matter, I assume.
Deleted UserAugust 02, 2021 at 21:25#5746310 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
I don't understand, sorry. Is reasoning or scientific inquiry required to understand how I know that what's before me is a cat? I confess I've never before been called upon to describe the process involved.
The fact is, like Dewey, I don't think we reason, or engage in scientific inquiry, or even think unless we encounter a problem or experience doubt which we want to resolve. A cat presents no such problem or reason to doubt. There's no reflective process involved. There doesn't have to be.
I don't think we reason (...) unless we encounter a problem (...).
Then what would inform us there isn’t? What would encountering a problem be compared to?
CiceronianusAugust 03, 2021 at 02:18#5747240 likes
Our cat sitting on the floor presents no problems to solve, creates no doubts that plague us, no needs to be satisfied, no questions to answer, no reason to think.
,
Deleted UserAugust 03, 2021 at 03:49#5747380 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Deleted UserAugust 03, 2021 at 03:52#5747390 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Reply to tim wood Most definitely. Like Schop's Critique of the Kantian Philosophy (Appendix, WWR vol. 1) who corrected and extended the transcendental paradigm. Or about a century later the fallibilists (Peirce, Dewey, Popper) who reject, if not refute, Kants 'transcendental certainties'.
Reply to tim wood Read any or all of my references for yourself, tim. You claim to have not read any of them yet which reduces to mere uninformed doxa your suggestion (or dogma) that no one has 'improved' on Kant. Please. Transcendental idealism 'solves' the problem of Cartesian dualism which Spinoza had dissolved over a century before; and, in that wayward "Copernican" process, Kant tilts at the windmills of 'Newton's science' as if it consists of metaphysical (or epistemological) certainties. Like Plato, Aristotle or Descartes, Kant is a great philosopher with an anachronistic philosophy for today. Yeah, I may be wrong (by no means is this opinion not controversial or heterodox), but you won't know that yourself unless you read more widely, my friend.
CiceronianusAugust 03, 2021 at 16:25#5749060 likes
You're then habituated to the idea. Is that how you understand knowledge?
I think that most of our lives, our experiences, are non-reflective. We're not engaged in reasoning most of the time. We don't have to use our reason be aware of what's going on about us. I don't think knowledge is the use of reason or is confined to the results of its use as "knowledge" "know" or "knowing" is ordinarily used. When we define "knowledge" in that fashion we discount, or perhaps even ignore, most of our lives. Knowledge then becomes very limited and narrow. It's no wonder that such a narrow definition of "knowledge" leads to Skepticism and Idealism.
What we know, as we ordinarily use that word, can include what we're familiar with from past experience; it can include there results of reasoning or scientific inquiry; it can include what we've perceived. For me, the fact that what we know isn't limited to what results from the application of reasoning or scientific inquiry doesn't mean we don't "really" know in that case.
And just here a mini-lesson in the dangers of reading and relying on secondary sources, and even more on quoting excerpts.
Like many philosophers, Kant could be interpreted, and quoted, from both sides of the religion question. Nominally, he was a conventional Lutheran. But some of his ideas would make his fellow Christians uncomfortable. It's true that his Critique of Human Reason, allowed room for Faith. But, he could also be critical of some religious beliefs.
My comment was only intended to show Ciceronianus that his interpretation might be looking only at one side of Kant's religious views : the notion of that which "transcends" reality. Which has been a common view among philosophers for thousands of years. Yet Kant was writing during a revolutionary transition period away from Idealism & Transcendentalism, toward Realism & Mundanism. And philosophical worldviews have swung back & forth since then with each new generation. Personally, I have no problem reconciling both views from the perspective of the BothAnd Principle. So, my worldview is both Ideal and Real, both Transcendental and Mundane. :smile:
PS___Since I have never met Kant, or read his works in the original language, all of my sources are secondary.
Thus Kant demythologizes the Christian doctrine of original sin.
https://iep.utm.edu/kant-rel/
There certainly are limits to human reason, but to claim the real is forever beyond our knowledge seems, to me, excessive, and unjustified.
Hence, your negative reaction to the notion of Transcendence. I will agree that denial of the mundane Reality of our direct experience is unjustified. But to deny that there is also something beyond the scope of our senses, is also unreasonable.
For example, scientists today accept many concepts that lie beyond (transcend) our direct knowledge, and must be taken on faith in the experts : String Theory, 11 dimensions, Parallel Universes, etc. I have no experience of such transcendental things, but I don't deny their possibility. I just don't have much use for that kind of transcendence.
However, the general notion of Transcendence, as a philosophical concept, is not a problem for me. And it can make sense of some perennial philosophical mysteries, such as : what existed "before" the Big Bang gave birth to space-time? :nerd:
Deleted UserAugust 03, 2021 at 17:16#5749250 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
right. You have a utilitarian functional understanding of knowledge. All of which is granted, granted, granted. With such knowledge you can buy beer and groceries. Now a challenge: what do you say knowledge is?
Seems a disingenuously rhetorical formulation: why ask if you've already decided I'm a philistine?
Now a challenge: what do you say knowledge is? What is the case - or must be the case - to move from opinion to knowledge? Not in any particular sense, but in the general sense.
The convergence of a Peircean community of inquirers reasoning towards the best explanation of transformations of matters of fact or translations of/within formalisms. Knowledge, "in a general sense", is a commons, or warranted public concern, unlike "opinons" which are merely unwarranted, subjective noises.
In this, knowledge is constrained, bounded by, and limited to what reason can present.
A truism. Hardly a "Copernican revolution". Reason – discursive practices, or language – is public and not private (i.e. located in the 'Cartesian subject' as Kant mistakenly assumes and Hegel corrects!)
CiceronianusAugust 03, 2021 at 20:09#5750210 likes
It appears that you accept uncritically as knowledge that which you think you know. And fair enough, that's how a lot of the world's work and play get done.
Well, I can, if pressed, come up with reasons for my acceptance of my cat as a cat, just as one can come up with reasons why we know a chair is a chair. But my point is that those reasons and their recitation isn't required for there to be knowledge in such cases. There are times when reasoning and investigation are required for us to know. But those are instances different from what we know and act on regularly in our day to day lives.
What do you do when need to take a critical stance? That is, when you have to know for yourself? What do you dig into, how, and how and why do you rely on that? Kant's answer, as I read it, was it's this way (that he described) or no way. The this way takes reason, which in the case of perception, is simply no part at all of the thing-(in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself) perceived.
We're justified in taking a critical stance where we have reason to doubt. But I would say if we don't have a reason to doubt, it's not appropriate to pretend there is one. This is Peirce's point in his criticism of Descartes and his exercise in doubting what he plainly didn't doubt if his existence and conduct is any guide.
I'm a fan of Pragmatism to a large extent as you may have guessed. Dewey referred to what he called the "philosophical fallacy" which roughly speaking is the neglect of context. According to Dewey, philosophers have a tendency to suppose that whatever may be the case in certain conditions will be the case under other conditions. The fact that reason is required to know in certain cases doesn't mean it's required in all cases.
The language is simple; e.g., "I see a tree." What exactly does that simple language entail to be meaningful? Care to take a try at it? The one thing it cannot mean is that you see the tree. If you disagree, then make the case.
I find it hard to think of situations where I'd say "I see a tree." Perhaps I would if, for example, someone asked me what I see outside my window, and there's a tree outside my window. Or perhaps if they showed me a picture of a tree and asked "What do you see, a tree or a kangaroo?" In those contexts, it would be perfectly appropriate for me to say "I see a tree" and it would be a true statement.
CiceronianusAugust 03, 2021 at 20:12#5750220 likes
But to deny that there is also something beyond the scope of our senses, is also unreasonable.
That's so. We know that to be the case. But this doesn't mean that there is in all cases something not only outside the scope of our senses, but something we can never know.
Deleted UserAugust 03, 2021 at 20:18#5750250 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
CiceronianusAugust 03, 2021 at 22:06#5750690 likes
There are times I wish that the formal study of philosophy I was exposed to in college dealt with such questions. I would at least recognize them. I have the feeling this is old stuff for you, but I don't know the routine, so I'm sure I'm missing the point you think is clear.
If there's a wall in front of me, I see a wall. If I saw a tree when I was in front of the wall, I saw a tree then. If I'm now behind the wall, I don't see a tree--I see a wall, now. I have no expectation of seeing the tree, nor, I think, would anyone expect me to see it. So, it isn't difficult for me to "admit" I don't see a tree in front of me when I see a wall.
That's so. We know that to be the case. But this doesn't mean that there is in all cases something not only outside the scope of our senses, but something we can never know.
I agree that Nescience is just as rare as Omniscience. So I muddle along somewhere in the middle, consoled by the knowledge than even Socrates admitted that "one thing I know is that I know nothing". But that was an intentionally paradoxical statement.
For Kant to say that, not everything, but merely the ideal ding an sich is unknowable, may sound defeatist to you. But to me, it's a wise form of philosophical humility : to avoid the self-conceit of a know-it-all. For an humble philosopher, most of the universe's potential knowledge is unknown to him. On the other hand, to know that there is much you don't know, leaves you with plenty to explore -- including the notion of Transcendence. :smile:
Socratic paradox : Socrates begins all wisdom with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one's ignorance. After all, Socrates' dialectic method of teaching was based on that he as a teacher knew nothing, so he would derive knowledge from his students by dialogue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
"All knowledge and understanding of the Universe was no more than playing with stones and shells on the seashore of the vast imponderable ocean of truth." — Sir Isaac Newton
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,. Or what's a heaven for?" ___Browning
Epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.
Transcendence : [i]existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.
"the possibility of spiritual transcendence in the modern world"[/i]
___Oxford
PS__I too, am skeptical of most claims about paranormal knowledge. But to claim that there is nothing "beyond the normal" leaves you open to be blindsided by a Black Swan. :cool:
Deleted UserAugust 03, 2021 at 22:11#5750750 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
CiceronianusAugust 03, 2021 at 22:16#5750800 likes
In this, knowledge is constrained, bounded by, and limited to what reason can present.
Yes. The paradox of human Reason is that it is the mechanism by which we come to know Reality, but it is also the ability to imagine worlds that don't exist in reality. So, it's the job of Philosophy and Science to sort-out the real from the unreal. But, it's a hard job, and there's still a lot of gray area for us to quibble about. :nerd:
Don Hoffman's : Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes From his studies, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That sometimes leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
I don't think we reason, or engage in scientific inquiry, or even think unless we encounter a problem — Ciceronianus the White
.....what may have been the problem needing to be solved, which inspired you to think we do not think unless there is one?
This wasn't addressed to me, but it's such a funny kind of ironic question that I can't resist an answer. Surely the "problem" here would be the desire to understand why we bother thinking, wouldn't it? :wink:
the "problem" here would be the desire to understand why we bother thinking, wouldn't it?
Damned if I know. “I don’t think we reason....” is itself a thought, albeit with negative predication, so if we only think if there’s a problem, and “I don’t think” is thinking....there must have been a problem that needed solving. So I went out on the skinniest of limbs and inquired as to what it might be.
While it is true that in order to solve a problem one must think, the negation of that truth, re: absent a problem equates to absence of need for thinking, is patently false. And I fail to see how pragmatism is gonna fix the apparent absurdity in dismissing a fundamental human condition.
Furthermore....he said with an abundance of serious countenance.....just because we’re so accustomed to not being aware of something, is not sufficient reason for claiming there is no something there.
But I was told the problem is more who than what, and desire to understand is a what therefore hardly a who, so.....we’ve gained not a thing.
You're not addressing the question "What do you see?" You're addressing an entirely different one: "How do you see?"
If I'm looking at a tree and someone asks me "What do you see?" I don't describe the process by which I see. As to hearing, if I'm listening to a symphony and I'm asked "What do you hear?" I say "I hear a symphony." If I'm asked "How do you hear (a symphony)?" There will be, of course, an entirely different answer.
Deleted UserAugust 04, 2021 at 15:04#5753050 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
CiceronianusAugust 04, 2021 at 15:06#5753070 likes
Do you think I see the process you described involving light bouncing off the tree and my eyes, my nerves and my brain? If not, and if you claim I don't see a tree, what is it you think I see? Something I can't see? Do I hallucinate? Or is it that you don't think I can see at all?
I think there's a problem with the claim that we don't see something because it's really something we can't see.
This thread has strayed from the OP topic of "Presuppositions" --- presumably referring to "unwarranted assumptions" and "biased beliefs" --- into the Epistemological questions of "what can we know, and what can we never know?" But I just came across a relevant description of the "Begging The Question Fallacy" in the current issue of SKEPTIC magazine. Rather than insert my opinion here, I'll just quote a few lines from the article : 25 Fallacies in The Case For Christianity, written by a trial lawyer.
"Begging the question is assuming the very thing you are trying to prove as a premise of your article. . . . A presuppositionalist begins with the assumption that Christianity is true and should be accepted unless definitively proven impossible. . . . . Being a presuppositionalist means never having to admit you're wrong, because you begin with the non-negotiable premise that your are right." ___John Campbell
Fortunately, we don't often encounter that kind of overtly biased argument on this forum. But posters sometimes seem to suspect, and to imply that their opponents are closet preuppositionalists, even for debatable scientific concepts. :cool:
Presuppositionalismmeaning ... (theology) A school of Christian apologetics that presumes Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought
https://www.yourdictionary.com/presuppositionalism
Reply to tim wood By knowledge I understand 'a discursive practice that is conditional and fallibilistic, therefore provisional, and manifest via know-how (e.g. performing), know-that (e.g. describing) or know-what (e.g. explaining).'
Deleted UserAugust 04, 2021 at 20:13#5754180 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Deleted UserAugust 04, 2021 at 22:30#5754690 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Stephen King has a catchphrase, born in the Dark Tower series.....”they have forgotten the face of their fathers”, a literary commentary on honor.
Pragmatists, and analytical philosophers in general, have forgotten their fathers, a philosophical commentary on teachings.
Progress, I suppose.
I don't think this is universally true. Peirce, the pragmat(ic)ist I am most familiar was certainly very familiar with the philosophies of both Kant and Hegel.He did have a scientific perspective on philosophy, which does include the idea of progress. The analytical side of philosophy which is more akin to science and exemplified in the inquiry into the nature of logic and meaning has certainly progressed since Aristotle and Plato.
The synthetic side, which I think is more akin to art, consisting as it does in the intellectual exercise of the imagination, does not progress, but rather evolves, I would say. It is an old chestnut of science that scientists "stand on the shoulders of giants". so I don't think the fathers are entirely forgotten there either; they are acknowledged, but not slavishly followed, of course. Hegel spoke of freeing ourselves from the "aegis of tutelage" as represented by submission to tradition. Kant has something like that in mind also, I believe, with his "sapere aude".
CiceronianusAugust 05, 2021 at 02:03#5755520 likes
Reply to Ciceronianus the White It seems to me you are being pedantic, playing with words. What you suggest would be true of any question other than critical questions dealing with how to merely survive.
Good, well-thought, post. I note 1.) the transition from analytic/continental, to, analytic/synthetic, and 2.) the correctness of the pragmatist parenthesis.
Philosophically, Pierce blew himself up advocating objective idealism. Yea? Nay?
I mean...c’mon, man!!
“...A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an exact relation. (...) On the other hand, no exact conformity is required by the mental law...”
(Pierce, “The Architecture of Theories”, in The Monist, vol1, pg161, 1891., https://archive.org/details/monistquart01hegeuoft/page/n10/mode/1up?view=theater)
What....never heard of universality and absolute necessity?!?!?!
(Kidding. Piece was an intellectual giant, to be sure. Smarter than Kant if only because he was about a hundred years newer, with about a hundred years worth of.....you know, like..... progress, to work with.)
Of course not.....just a prejudicial lament on my part. Pass the cheese, if you’d be so kind.
sapere aude has its own elder-Kant thematic rendering, but "aegis of tutelage" doesn’t Google. Cool soundbite, though. Like something just itching to be said.
Anyway....don’t take my flippancy seriously; it’s only the little George Carlin in me.
CiceronianusAugust 05, 2021 at 14:56#5757100 likes
It seems to me you are being pedantic, playing with words. What you suggest would be true of any question other than critical questions dealing with how to merely survive.
Ah, "mere survival."
Words are significant (unlike survival?). But when we desire something, we're not engaged in problem-solving. You yourself seem to acknowledge this when you referred to a desire becoming a problem. If it hasn't become one, it can't be one, right?
An example of what you believe is a desire which is a problem would be useful.
Absolutely not. Presuppositions that ground what you say and do, and absolute presuppositions that stand in relation to those things as being like axioms. Nothing whatsoever unwarranted or biased about them.
Point taken. I may have missed your intention in the OP. Yet, in my experience, the term "presupposition" is typically used as a negative assessment of someone else's unwarranted beliefs. However, in the usage by Christian Apologists, it is intended to imply a positive meaning : faith in the Judeo-Christian God.
However, I suppose the positive or negative inflection is, as usual, in the mind of the Apologist, or Denier for the belief in question.. Anyway, I would tend to use "Axiom" as a more neutral (and scientific) way to label a self-evident assumption that is taken as true, prior to (pre-) empirical evidence. For Christians, the existence of God is axiomatic. Therefore, to me, "absolute presupposition" implies unshakable faith, not subject to counter evidence. Which may also be the case for mathematicians, who believe that mathematical "objects" absolutely exist as metaphysical ideals. :cool:
Do Mathematical Objects Exist? : I am slowly working on an article for Skeptical Inquirer about the ways in which religious apologists use mathematical arguments in their rhetoric.
https://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2012/10/02/do-mathematical-objects-exist
Words are significant (unlike survival?). But when we desire something, we're not engaged in problem-solving. You yourself seem to acknowledge this when you referred to a desire becoming a problem. If it hasn't become one, it can't be one, right?
An example of what you believe is a desire which is a problem would be useful.
I wasn't seeking to depreciate the importance of survival, which might have been the impression you received it seems. I should have written "bare survival"; I wanted to indicate those desires, or better feelings of need, which are urged by necessity and are inherently problematic as opposed to those which may be prompted by desire to improve living conditions or by mere curiosity, and so on.
Something is certainly a problem for us if it threatens survival or the basic needs for adequate food, water, warmth and shelter. Beyond that what would, for you, qualify as being more than merely a desire that becomes a problem insofar as we wish to satisfy it (as opposed to needing to satisfy it)?
Philosophically, Pierce blew himself up advocating objective idealism. Yea? Nay?
My familiarity with Peirce doesn't extend to scholar status, so I'm not sure whether I would class him as an objective idealist. From the reading I have done he is a dense (not in the sense of stupid, obviously), hard nut to crack. One day when I have more time free from what I need to do on the 15 acres I live on to make further progress towards scholar status. I certainly think he is a fascinating figure in the history of ideas.
Absolutely not. Presuppositions that ground what you say and do, and absolute presuppositions that stand in relation to those things as being like axioms. Nothing whatsoever unwarranted or biased about them.
I don't mean to harp on one note, but I didn't interpret the topic of this thread as referring to pragmatic mathematical axioms -- that are "rationally adequate for a reflective task". Instead, I thought it was referring to presumptuous beliefs and attitudes. Which implies an unshakable faith in what is True and Real.
Although Kant asserted that ultimate Reality is beyond the scope of human senses, I didn't get the impression that he was being Presumptuous. But merely making an unprovable Supposition for philosophical purposes. We can reason to hypothetical "facts" (conclusions) that we can't actually see or touch. As with Darwin's real-world observations, the "real" evidence may only add-up to a reasonable "theory" much later. Even then, it's "only" a theory, not an observable fact.
Maybe your debate with 180 about seeing a tree is based on presumed meanings applied to different contexts. "I see a tree" versus "I believe there is a tree behind that wall". One statement is grounded in sensory data (real), the other in imagination or memory (ideal). :smile:
Presumptuous :
[i]1. The definition of presumptuous is taking things for granted or being overconfident.
2. (of a person or their behavior) failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.[/i]
"To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter." — 180 Proof
Comments (138)
No doubt. I'm not sure I ever read this text and it would've been in the 1980s if i had ... Good reference though – thanks.
For me, suppositions – philosophical statements – have implicit, sometimes explicit, assumptions, and it's these assumptions which require presuppositions to give the assumptions sense, or relevance, as commitments to either an ontology or some other discursive domain. Likewise, the implications of such suppositions (or assumptions too) extend or expand the scope of presuppositions further. They are not, however, "absolute" in Collingwood's sense (IIRC, what he calls "absolute presuppositions" pertain to entire cultures or historical eras and only thereby to discourses practiced therein), but are necessary in the sense of being implicit 'conditionals'.
That said, tim, I think we're on the same page concerning the (reflective) usage of suppositions. Philosophy makes proposals – supposes ideas/concepts, even arguments – rather than propositions (e.g. theories), and pays careful attention to their assumptions and the presuppositions which grounds assumptions contextually. Agreed? (Am I reading you correctly?) This is a methodological priority of mine which I've learned mostly from Peirce, Dewey and Witty (re: forms-of-life, world as totality of the facts, certainty as lacking grounds for doubt, meaning as usage), then later on clearly recognizing this in the scrupulous care with lines of thought or arguments made by Benny, Humester, Schop, Freddy Zarathustra, Bertie, Popper, et al. As someone else has already said on this thread or another, philosophy is more art than science – which is much more obvious to those of us who (struggle to) philosophize instead of just go on rambling about philosophies.
This of course is only in retrospect. When my suppositions and presuppositions formed, this was not an issue. But even at that time -- as a baby, or newborn, I tasted my mothers milk and found it was palatable, and it was pleasant, and it took away my hunger -- I sensed that some things over and over again take away the pain of hunger and replace it with the pleasure of fulness. This established for me the presupposition in a non-philosophical, but empirical, experiential way.
For instance, Is a presupposition or a supposition of science the notion that reality is understandable? Or is this scientism? Is the idea of 'reality' itself a supposition?
Are there examples of presuppositions that we can't really do without (the afore mentioned laws of logic, perhaps)?
No. They count as a formal system of transformational rules. Keep in mind, I'm referring to nothing but philosophical statements in my previous post.
Quoting Tom Storm
If you're referring to my take on presuppositions in philosophy, then that depends on which suppositions – philosophical statements – and their assumptions you think we philosophers cannot do without. Something stated by Socrates or Plato, Aristotle or Sextus Empiricus, Descartes or Kant? First principle/s of a philosophical school, tradition or movement perhaps? :chin:
*&*&^%$$#^!!!!
That's easy. Try to talk to someone who thinks differently than oneself. This quickly brings to the surface one's hinge propositions. The moment in the interaction when you want to call the other person crazy, evil, deranged, and such, is the moment where the hinge proposition surfaces and can be recognized.
Quoting tim wood
That depends on how much goodwil and time one is willing to invest in the interaction, and whether one is willing to make the first step.
I'm weirded out of course because of my ego. Then I'm weirded out because I don't know that people don't argue with me because they ignore me, i.e. I'm totally ignorable, or because my points are so very right on that there is nothing to argue about.
But what really worries me is that I'll get weirded out to the max the moment people start to respond to me. What if I get responses? I won't know what to do with them. I am not used to them. I don't have experience with the "responded to my points" paradigm. In a way I'm like a dog that chases cars, and then one day he catches one. Then what??
However, the supposition that "logic dependably works", that one can trust logic, is an absolute one. You cannot prove that logic is true or efficacious because you would need logic to do so.
Indeed, this is another one. I would say express it as "my senses don't lie, most of times". "Most of times" is to allow for (rare) observation errors and hallucinations.
This is a good one, but I would file the acceptance that "logic is logical" under sense-sensation. Our entire intuitive world, including language and understanding language, is based on the reliable relationship between sensation and stimulus.
I agree with time and space, though, that was right on. With a caveat as below.
------------------------
That said, there is a tendency among modern logicians that postulates that logic as used by humans is a product of evolution, and it has some, but not all to do with reality. In microphysics, i.e. in quantum space, an effect can occur before its cause; it needs the cause, but the cause will happen sometime later than the effect gets born. Also, there are a lot of other difficulties to conventional reason that QM presents: a volume of space contains more energy the smaller it is. In our logical world, if you add two things, their sum is bigger than either of the additives. But in quantum world the sum is smaller than the additives individually. ETC. Therefore MODERN LOGICIANS have divided the world of logic into two segments: human-intuitive, that is, evolutionarily ingrained logic, the one that corresponds to our senses and the logic of the language; this is called LOGIC 1. LOGIC 2 is non-intuitive logic, something that is part of reality, but it baffles every human the first time we learn about it.
I read RGC as saying the cultures, or historical eras, consist in absolute presuppositions and, implied, that thinking only presupposes culture, or a historical era, which is not absolute (like e.g. Witty's language games presuppose forms-of-life). Maybe I'm misremembering him; however, I stand with Witty's presupposing.
That's quite Deweyian (Deweyish?) I think. For him, judgments which are the outcome of controlled inquiry for a purpose, not propositions, indicate what may be asserted as "true" (or warranted).
You can't get away from the presupposition that your rely on your senses. What else are you going to rely on? Very basically.
A priori knowledge? They are truisms, they don't reveal any knowledge outside of themselves.
If you don't rely on evidence, and you can't rely on pure reason, then you got to rely on something. There is no other "something". So you have to choose between your senses and a priori truth. A priori may not lead you to anything, in fact, it does not. Experiential evidence may be correct or may be totally false, but take it or leave it, there is nothing else. A priori is certain to not be helpful as a most basic presupposition. Experience has at least a chance to be revealing the truth (from your point of view), so you bet on the horse that has a chance, not on the one that has no chance at all, when you are restricted to bet on one horse and only on one of the two.
Ok. Then in ECG fashion we should ask what is the question that this supposition answers. And that would be: is there something? But this question is self-answered in the positive, since the question itself: "Is there something?", this question exists as soon as it is asked. So the answer is always: "yes, there exist something, at least the question "is there something?".
Not sure where that leaves us.
Spoken like a true skeptic! Pyrrho would be proud!
I did some reading up on presuppositions and suppositions and here's what I found out:
1. Suppositions: Explicit propositions that could be true/false that one wants to work with to discover their implications e.g. suppose physicalism is true, what follows?
2. Presuppositions: Implicit propositions that are necessarily true for suppositions to make sense e.g. with regard to "suppose physicalism is true", presuppositions would be that the methodology used to conduct the analysis of what follows (logic) is adequate, that language is powerful enough to handle the situation, so on and so forth.
Presuppositions form the enviroment of ideas, conceptual schema, methodological systems, etc. in which suppositions are studied.
:chin: WTF?
Presuppositions have to be true in order that a supposition is considered as true.
There are some who explore with a compass (suppositions analysis). There are others who explore the compass. (presuppositions analysis).
Intriguingly, there comes a point when presuppositions analysis fails:
Quoting tim wood
We have to presuppose language is adequate and that logic is too to have this conversation. When we challenge these presuppositions, we must again presuppose that both language and logic are adequate - we've hit a wall and we're now stuck.
Though there are differences between suppositions analysis and presuppositions analysis - the former supposes an explicit proposition's truth and investigates what follows while the latter consists of implicit propositions that have to be true to provide the milieu (for the former) - they both bear the signature of skepticism which is that:
Quoting 180 Proof
Yep. AKA....principles. Does RGC say anything about those, in relation to AP’s?
That's why most of the assertions on a philosophy forum should be taken with a grain of salt. Unlike physical scientists, philosophers -- and theoretical scientists -- are not bound by proven physical facts. Instead, they are free to suppose -- to say "what-if, given a few assumptions, X is true?" This is how Einstein discovered the physical implications of living in a relative, rather than an absolute & deterministic, world. Hence, most modern scientific "facts" are relative to a point-of-view or frame-of-reference. And they are provisional, given certain presumed preconditions.
By contrast, many informal philosophical expressions are based on un-stated pre-suppositions (beliefs), in which the conditions & limitations on the truth of the statement are not clearly defined. That's why Voltaire warned that, before making a definitive assertion, "first define your terms". Unfortunately, all too many of those implicit "facts" are only loosely defined -- adequate to a narrow task -- and may be interpreted to suit a presumed inference. Even Skeptics argue from a complex worldview that seems to them to be The Simple Truth. So, it's easy to be skeptical of other people's beliefs (presuppositions), but harder to skeptically dig around in the foundation of your own worldview, for fear of undermining The Truth. :smile:
Suppose :
[i]1. assume that something is the case on the basis of evidence or probability but without proof or certain knowledge.
1a : to lay down tentatively as a hypothesis, assumption, or proposal[/i]
False Consensus :
"Everyone tends to assume that most normal, decent, intelligent people believe what we believe.":
SKEPTIC magazine, v26 n2
Which connects with structuralism, and PoMo, although Collingwood's philosophy is more logically structured than that of the err... French structuralists.
Ok so things exist. Among those is logic. These are trivial presuppositions, trivially true. The non-trivial presupposition is that human natural logic works.
Yes. But, there is a wide range of those uncertain "overlaps" between "known" or "proven" facts, and "received opinions" or "heresies". The Scientific Method is a set of guidelines, intended to prevent scientists from confusing little "F" facts that are "adequate for some particular task", and capital "F" Facts that are True, now & forever, here & there. Philosophers have also devised long lists of Fallacies, to deter them from stumbling into the pitfalls of False Generalization from "known facts".
And yet, both professions still have room for disagreement on "facts" that fall into the gray area, between proven and proposed. Both groups try to walk the chalk line, but all too often stray from the strait & narrow. Which is one reason we have online Philosophical forums, where rational thinkers with slightly different worldviews, can share Facts and Opinions remotely without the danger of throttling each other.
For those of us, who are not omniscient, all our general "facts" are also personal "opinions". In all ages, the list of "proven" scientific facts is contingent upon further evidence, and always subject to change. For example, the Standard Model of Quantum Theory was essentially a contentious quorum consensus, similar to that of the official Catholic Canon of Nicaea -- not a revelation from above. And, many of the "propositions" of that theory would have been preposterous to Isaac Newton, who worried about his own proposition of "spooky action at a distance" : the pull of gravity.
That's why a touch of scientific humility is advisable for those on internet forums who wish to argue fixed facts and potential probabilities. Because Your Facts are pre-suppositions and My Facts are mere opinions. So, I could be wrong . . . . but I doubt it. :grin:
Scientific Humility :
Humility means being open to the possibility of being wrong, being willing to consider other people's ideas and being respectful
https://in-training.org/humility-science-science-always-wins-11239
Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking at the present level of knowledge.
https://newrepublic.com/article/118655/theoretical-phyisicist-explains-why-science-not-about-certainty
I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It is a memoir by former American professional basketball player Charles Barkley.
So Collingwood treated Kantian a priori principles as examples of presupposition.
:fire: :fire: :fire:
So.....no irreducible, apodeictic, time-independent criteria for human rationality itself, merely as a condition of being human. No metaphorical “one ring to rule them all” kinda thing, then. That’s fine.....nobody dives that deep into his own cognitive methodology anyway, simultaneously with the use of it.
Not to take anything away from AP’s, mind you, insofar as the common understanding is more apt to consider them as short-lived ideas subject to change, than the principles under which they are subsumed, which are neither.
Thanks for the info.
No. I actually agree with you, that the job of science is to test & "prove" hypothetical (philosophical) conjectures & factoids, in order to turn them into reliable & settled knowledge that can be used to predict the course of Nature. Unfortunately, scientific "facts", while temporarily "adequate for some particular task", remain subject to change over time. The scientific "facts" of Newton are now referred to as "classical physics", because they have been found to be inadequate at the quantum scale of reality.
So, Scientists "prove" philosophical hypotheses with practical tests, turning some of them into pragmatic theories. But then, Philosophers put some of those useful "facts" under a mental microscope, to discover the logical cracks in the facts. Einstein was a theoretical physicist, which is basically a philosopher who focuses on physics instead of meta-physics. He was once asked, "where is your laboratory?", and simply held up a pencil. By merely using imagination & math, he was able to turn classical physics on its head.
As the quote below asserts, Philosophers study "relations of (metaphysical) ideas", while Scientists study "matters of (physical) fact". When the two professions work together, human understanding progresses. Therefore, I also disagree with your denigration of philosophical reasoning, in that theoretical Philosophy is an integral part of practical Science :nerd:
Factoid : an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
Facts :
The word “fact” is used in at least two different ways. In the locution “matters of fact”, facts are taken to be what is contingently the case, or that of which we may have empirical or a posteriori knowledge. Thus Hume famously writes at the beginning of Section IV of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding: “All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact”.
Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics :
Philosophy has always played an essential role in the development of science, physics in particular, and is likely to continue to do so. ___Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-needs-philosophy-philosophy-needs-physics/
Philosophy may be called the "science of sciences" . . . .As a whole, philosophy and the sciences are equal partners assisting creative thought in its explorations to attain generalising truth.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Philosophy_and_Science_what_is_the_connection
I only denigrate idealist (anti-realist, subjectivist) "reasoning" and agree with you that philosophy and science taken together can be quite synergistic.
That's a neat black & white worldview : " Idealism versus Realism". But is your world really that simplistic, and devoid of ideas about things that could be, but are not? Are pre-suppositions idealistic while post-suppositions are realistic? Aren't hypothetical presuppositions a necessary first step toward empirically "proven" theoretical models of Reality? I doubt that you are really dead-set against human imagination, as a tool for learning. Instead, your dichotomy may be better summarized as Spiritualism versus Materialism. Where would we be now, if Einstein had never imagined himself, counter-factually, riding on a beam of light? ( (rhetorical questions) )
Ironically, Quantum Theory could be interpreted as "anti-realist", in that the ancient search for the reductionist Holy Grail -- the Atom -- has now been reduced to imagining invisible and intangible "fields" of virtual particles. Yet, physicists are prepared to accept that abstract mental model as-if it is real --- just as Spiritualists accept the notion of a ghost as real, even though it is merely the remnant Idea of a formerly living (real) person. When quantum theorist Feynman was challenged to prove that that his models represented true reality, he responded "shut-up and calculate".
All I'm suggesting is that Reality is not that simple. It includes both Things and Ideas-About-Things, both wet Brains and airy Minds. Idealism is merely a philosophical focus on the ideas we conceive about the presumed reality out there, beyond the reach of our physical senses. Unfortunately, some people are so in love with the idea of their ideal realm (e.g. Heaven) that they are willing to have their real bodies burned at the stake rather than recant. That's not Idealism, it's extremism. :cool:
Difference Between Idealism and Realism :
The two concepts can, in layman’s terms, be deemed different in perspectives; with idealism focusing on ‘what could be’, and realism focusing on ‘what actually is.’
http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-idealism-and-realism/
Are quantum fields real, or merely a mathematical tool ? :
The point of all of above is, as far as science goes, what an experimentally established theory says is, for all intents and purposes, the reality.
https://www.quora.com › Are-quantum-fields-real-or-m...
Note -- "for all intents and purposes" means "not really"
Idealism :
Scientific Materialism is the assumption that particle Physics is the foundation of reality, and that our ideas are simply products of material processes. Empirical Idealism doesn't deny the existence of a real world, but reasons that all we can ever know about that hypothetical reality is the mental interpretations of sensory percepts. Platonic Idealism (Myth of the Cave) calls those interpretations illusions, and asserts that true Reality is equivalent to an idea in the mind of God. Enformationism is compatible with both views, depending on your perspective.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
2. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. .[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
To do so would detract from the theme you’ve intended here. Let’s just let RGC speak for himself, through you, without undue influence.
If the questions are misdirected, it's only because the target is fuzzy, or moving around. For example, what do you mean by "idealist (anti-realist, subjectivist) "reasoning"? That's not a rhetorical question. I offered "spiritualism" , but you are welcome to present other examples of "idealist reasoning".
Plato was perhaps the most influential "idealist" reasoner. And Aristotle is noted for trying to make his mentor's ideas more sensible and realistic. But, in fact he also relied on the notion of ideal essences underlying real substances. The point of Idealism is not to be "anti-realist", but to remind us that all of our knowledge of reality is a mental construct. Are you familiar with Donald Hoffman's book : The Case Against Reality? He doesn't deny Reality out there, but merely shows that we only know our ideas about reality, in here. :smile:
Idealism :
In philosophy, idealism is a diverse group of metaphysical views which all assert that "reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from human perception and/or understanding, that it is in some sense mentally constructed, or that it is otherwise closely connected to ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
Why is it said that Plato was an idealist and Aristotle a realist? :
Very briefly, Aristotle was a realist because he believed that "forms" or universals couldn't exist uninstantiated, Plato believed they could.
I think it more proper to say that Plato was a non-dualist, rather than an idealist or even a monist. Also, one should not lose sight of the fact that Aristotle, being a disciple of Plato, was not only an empiricist (at heart or by temperament) but also a metaphysician (e.g. the ‘unmoved mover’). Someone here has drawn the attention on the misleading epithets, realist/idealist.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-said-that-Plato-was-an-idealist-and-Aristotle-a-realist-when-Aristotles-book-Politics-is-called-a-copy-of-Republic
Note -- Again, all I'm saying is that Reality is not really a simple stark Black vs White or True/False duality. That's why I have built my personal philosophy on the BothAnd Principle of Complementarity.
Interface : Window to Reality :
Reality is not what you see
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Mere truisms^ ...
Hoffman's quasi-Kantianism is contra-Platonic.
"Essences"?
Read Witty, Dewey & Popper. Read Epicurus, Pyrrho & Sextus Empiricus. Read Nietzsche, Hume & Spinoza.
By "anti-realist" I understand subject-dependency (i.e. conflation of ideas (maps) with facts (territory)) that is disputed by the Private Language argument and self-refuting Protagorean relativism.
... ^ideas are "mental-constructs"; knowledge is more than it's constituent ideas.
What does he think is difference between the reality "out there" and the ideas about reality "in here"? If he says the difference is that one is "out there" and the other "in here" I'm not sure he says anything of note, so assume he says something else.
Quasi- and Contra- are in the eye of the beholder. maybe what you mean is contra-180proof. I would call Hoffman's analogy of concepts with computer icons to be an update of both Kant and Plato.
Quoting 180 Proof
Unfortunately, your Ideal "Realist" world would be a world without Homo Sapiens -- a world without Selves -- just TV cameras recording reality without meaning.
Quoting 180 Proof
Is that another "truism", or merely an opinion? If your worldview is holistic, then everything that is not simplistic and reductive is more than its constituents. Sounds like we agree on something. But I'm not sure what we are disagreeing about. :wink:
Field Guide to The Contrarian :
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201205/field-guide-the-contrarian
Yes. Hoffman is saying something much more significant and revealing than "subjective is not objective". :smile:
The Case Against Reality :
A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/
Reality is not what you see :
In his doctrine of Transcendental Idealism, 18th century philosopher, Immanuel Kant argued that our perception of reality is limited to constructs created in our own minds to represent the invisible and intangible ultimate reality that he mysteriously labeled “ding an sich” [things-in-essence, as opposed to things-as-we-know-them]. In other words, what we think we see, is not absolute reality but our own ideas about reality.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Touche! You've made it murkily clear that, for you, there is no "substantive basis" for any ideas that don't fit into your subjective view of objectivity. Touche! :joke:
Quote from Aristotle and Science thread :
"In [a] paper, three scientists argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses."
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11494/aristotle-and-science
The quote seems to imply that, to reconcile Relativity and Quantum Theory, Plato's Ideal Forms (potential things) should be considered among the "real" things of the world. Hmmmmm. :chin:
I wonder if there can be a more compelling example of a difference which makes no difference.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I'm not sure what your point is -- other than a snarky remark -- but Potential is the difference that makes THE difference between something and nothing. It's what makes thermodynamics dynamic. It's what differentiates positive directional change from random non-directional disorder.
Into The Cool, by Schnieder and Sagan, says "nature abhors a gradient", meaning that any difference attracts change -- it's a hole just begging to be filled ; it's a potential on the verge of actuality ; it's a possibility that "wants" to be realized. :joke:
Into The Cool :
Their central thesis is contained in the striking catchphrase “nature abhors a gradient”; they propose that it is the flow of energy down gradients that is the central driving force that balances the Second Law’s drive toward disorder.
https://ncse.ngo/review-cool
Thermal gradients are caused by differences . . . .
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/thermal-gradient
A voltage gradient is a difference in electrical potential across a distance or space.
Potentiality and Actuality :
Aristotle describes potentiality and actuality, or potency and action, as one of several distinctions between things that exist or do not exist. In a sense, a thing that exists potentially does not exist, but the potential does exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality
Note -- in other words, Potential is essential to Reality
So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains?[/s]
Well, let's speak of snakes and trains, as does Hoffman in The Atlantic.. According to Hoffman, our snakes and trains are "mental representations" or "symbols" of some kind. Now, he seems to acknowledge (rather grudgingly, it seems) that our snake "mental representation" may bite us and our train "mental representation" my run us over if we step in front of it. I speculate he would even admit, if pressed, that our snake "mental representation" and our train "mental representation" will look like and act like a snake and a train, respectively, and that we will very appropriately treat them as if there really is a snake and a train in our interactions with them.
So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains?
It strikes me that if the "real snake" (or whatever it may be) cannot be known, the mental representation snake is what is of significance to us. It doesn't matter what the "real snake" is, nor does it matter if our snake is a mental representation.
,
I haven't seen the article, but I have read the book. So, I'd say that the difference that makes a difference, between imaginary snakes and real snakes, is the practical distinction between Concrete and Abstract. Concrete things have physical properties, such as poison, that can have physical effects, such as death-by-snake-bite. But Abstract things, have their physical properties abstracted (pulled out), so what remains are ethereal meta-physical qualities (MPQ). MPQ are not inherent in snakes, but attributed by the observer. And one of the MPQ of both snakes-in-the-flesh and snakes-in-the-mind is that they can cause the real physical responses we call "fear". You may mistake a garden hose for a snake, but the fear-response will be the same. And some people have dropped dead from fear --- yet the cause was not bio-chemical toxin, but bio-mental shock.
If the mere idea of a snake can kill you, it's not due to what-is, but to what-seems. And what "seems to be" is important to humans, because we are motivated by feelings. Moreover, some of those feelings are pre-suppositions (beliefs) about what's real and/or important. Some of those suppositions are innate (learned by evolution), or empirical (learned by experience), but others may be superstitions (learned by education). But the emotional effect on the believer is real, whether triggered by "what-is" or by "what-seems" (physical or metaphysical). Yet, some of us belittle Meta-physics as not-real, even when such ideas have real-world consequences. For example, world-wars have killed millions for the sake of abstract ideas (Communism vs Capitalism), that are only indirectly connected to the real world. However, going to war over mere ideas may sound silly, so those who want to justify the physical effects of war (carnage) typically look for some real-world event to blame. Even when the "real" motivating reason is an abstraction like "honor", or "freedom", or "country".
The abstract difference that makes a difference is Subjective Meaning. :smile:
https://www.britannica.com/story/can-you-really-be-scared-to-death
That description may be true of many people, who accept what they think they see as what is real. But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion. A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know.
That's the philosophical point behind the kick-*ss cover-story of the Matrix movie. Each of us must choose between the red pill of bitter truth, and the comfortable illusion of fake reality. :cool:
Late Lament :
[i]Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey is yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion[/i]
___Moody Blues
Well, if you can't know the real, which it appears you, Hoffman and others claim, you can't know what is real, can you? The skeptical scientists and philosophers you refer to thus believe in the existence of a something which, it's maintained, we can for all intents and purposes treat as it seem to us, but is unknowable. I wouldn't describe the belief that only the unknowable is real as wisdom.
Who said it was? What I said was, "A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know." Do you disagree with that assertion? The point of wisdom is to be aware of the potential for Black Swans in any risky endeavor. :smile:
Fitch's paradox of knowability [i]is one of the fundamental puzzles of epistemic logic. It provides a challenge to the knowability thesis, which states that every truth is, in principle, knowable. The paradox is that this assumption implies the omniscience principle, which asserts that every truth is known. Essentially, Fitch's paradox asserts that the existence of an unknown truth is unknowable. So if all truths were knowable, it would follow that all truths are in fact known.
The paradox is of concern for verificationist or anti-realist accounts of truth, for which the knowability thesis is very plausible,[1] but the omniscience principle is very implausible.[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitch%27s_paradox_of_knowability
Unknown unknowns are risks that come from situations that are so unexpected that they would not be considered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable :
the book discusses what can be done regarding “epistemic arrogance”, which occurs whenever people begin to think they know more than they actually do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable
Black Swan Wisdom :
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2010/12/02/black-swan-wisdom.html
You also said this, which is what I responded to:
Quoting Gnomon
My response was that my understanding of the claim being made is that we can't know what's real. If that's a misstatement of your position, let me know.
Regardless, though, to answer your question, I wouldn't we say a major feature of wisdom is to know what we don't know; I'd say it is to know that we don't know what is the case, or something or other. Knowledge is a matter of context. We can't know what we don't know, we simply know we don't know it. We can't know what cannot be known, however, which you seem to think is the real. It seems a very futile view of the world, to me.
One of the problems with this position--that we can't know what the real world is--is that it perpetuates the view reality is "out there." It treats us, or at least our minds, as something apart from and observing the world rather than as a part of the world and in constant interaction with its other constituents.
But they do, you know. They see exactly what they should see--the sunset. The fact that their position may make their view of it somewhat different than that of their neighbor is a matter of position. The fact that one of them is color blind and sees the sunset differently is a matter of the problem of color blindness. The fact the stars we see look like small points of light although they're huge, bright, burning spheres is a matter of distance. The fact we see as we do is a matter of being human as opposed to, for example, a murder hornet. There's nothing remarkable or mysterious about these things. But all is a part of the same reality.
I don't think we have within us a "thing" which is an experience of a sunset which has a separate existence, cutting us off from the rest of the world. Nor do I think experience is a result of abstraction or agreement. But if you're willing to say that when what we call the sun, through the earth's rotation, "sinks" below the horizon we experience a sunset, that's fine with me. If you mean to say that there is no sun, no earth, no horizon--or that what they "really" are is unknowable, then I believe we're at odds.
Do you really know what's real? My position is similar to that of Kant : our senses are probing the presumed reality outside our heads, but the picture we construct from those bits of data is a mind-made (subjective) representation (symbol), not the ultimate (objective) thing, as known to omniscience.
Hoffman is making a similar point, but using the metaphor of symbolic icons on a computer screen (interface). The philosophical problem here is to distinguish between Perception (one person's incomplete view of the world) and Conception (the seemingly complete model of reality constructed from incomplete information).
I am not confident that my world-model is an accurate depiction of Reality. That's one reason I dialog with people on this forum : to compare my subjective model with the variety of models held by other observers of Reality, in order to fill-in the gaps of my worldview. Some think that Matter is the ultimate Reality, while others think it's the immaterial Relations (invisible interconnections -- patterns) between things. "Which is real, and which illusion?" :nerd:
Ding an sich :
(in Kant's philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, not mediated through perception by the senses or conceptualization, and therefore unknowable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
Interface theory of perception :
Now, cognitive scientist Hoffman has produced an updated version of Kant’s controversial Occult Ontology. He uses the modern metaphor of computers that we “interface” (interact) with, as-if the symbolic Icons on the display screen are the actual things we want to act upon. For example, by clicking on a pixelated folder symbol, we emulate the physical act of locating and opening a manila folder with important documents. For our practical needs, such short-cuts are sufficient to get the job done. It’s not necessary for us to be aware of all the intricate details of internal computer processes. From his studies, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That sometimes leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Example of incomplete model of reality : people had been seeing real ponds for thousands of years, but Leeuwenhoek's microscope revealed a formerly unseen miniature reality in a drop of pond water. Now, a few centuries later, our microscopes and particle smashers have revealed the almost unreal foundations of reality, in quantum models, not of atoms or sub-atomic particles, but of mathematical "fields" of Virtual or Potential particles. So, when you speak of reality, are you speaking from knowledge of the totality of Reality, or from your own custom-tailored representation of the Universe?
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful.
___Lao Tzu
Is the hole real?
:up:
I think all knowledge is provisional, i.e. though based on the best evidence available, subject to revision as new evidence is discovered or obtained. Regarding the subject matter we're addressing, I think the best evidence is that we're living organisms which are part of a world, universe, environment--whatever you wish to call it. As such we interact with the world and our fellow creatures all the time. We're not outside the world looking in. What we think, what we experience, what we do or don't do, all take place in the world.
We don't know everything about the world of which we're a part. I think we have much to learn about it. But in our interaction with the rest of the world (or that portion of it we've encountered thus far) we've not merely seen, heard, touched its other constituents, we've measured them, we've eaten them, we've built with them, experimented on/with them; we have, in other words, tested and employed them, suffered from them, benefited from them, in various ways and what takes place when we do so is repeated time and again. To that extent, we know their qualities and characteristics. We have no reason to doubt that our cats and dogs or lawns or cars, etc., are in any significant sense different from what we believe them to be. We know quite well they are cats, dogs, etc., and not something "unknowable" or the product of an evil demon or a group of mischievous sprites or something else. When we have reason to doubt what we see, then we investigate, and learn.
Now one can say that we know only to the extent we can know as human beings. But that's a mere truism. Let's wait until we have a reason to believe a cat isn't a cat to ponder what it "really" is or whether we can know that it's not "really" some kind of thing or creature that merely appears to us to be a cat, doing what cats do.
I think you are over-reacting to presumed implications of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, which was not a denial of a real world, or affirmation of a heavenly realm, but a critique of the limits of human Reason. And his Idealism is not necessarily supporting traditional Religious or Spiritualist worldviews, Descartes also seemed to acknowledge our ability to deceive ourselves -- or to be deceived by a hypothetical demon -- about reality, in his "cogito ergo sum" expression : all I know for sure is the contents of my own mind. In that sense, Reality transcends my abbreviated and subjective world model. You may not go so far as Plato, to imagine an Ideal world from which our reasoning abstracts it's own version of Reality. But for scientific purposes, it's necessary to accept the limitations on our ability to know and to model Reality. :cool:
Kant’s Transcendental Idealism :
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations. Some, including many of Kant’s contemporaries, interpret transcendental idealism as essentially a form of phenomenalism, similar in some respects to that of Berkeley, while others think that it is not a metaphysical or ontological theory at all. There is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/
Kant’s Philosophy of Religion :
Kant has long been seen as hostile to religion. Many of his contemporaries, ranging from his students to the Prussian authorities, saw his Critical project as inimical to traditional Christianity.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/
I can ask what the "cat-in-itself" in this case is supposed to be, and if the only answer given is that it's something different from the cat but cannot be known or described, I can ask why it is that I should accept as "real" that which cannot be known or described. I can also wonder whether the "thing in itself" is a thing at all, and what it adds to our view of the world.
There certainly are limits to human reason, but to claim the real is forever beyond our knowledge seems, to me, excessive, and unjustified.
Are you going to say something about our senses deceiving us, or being unreliable? If so, then if I say I've known many cats over the years, and know generally how they behave, that the cat has all the characteristics of Felis Catus, that he's been my cat for about 17 years, etc., uses the litter box, purs, meows, chirps, yowls, wakes me at odd hours by tapping my nose or knocking things off the nightstand or dresser, sleeps a great deal, it won't matter, I assume.
Quoting tim wood
I think so: e.g. Schopenhauer ... Peirce-Dewey ... Wittgenstein ... Popper ... Meillassoux-Brassier ... Spinoza.
I don't understand, sorry. Is reasoning or scientific inquiry required to understand how I know that what's before me is a cat? I confess I've never before been called upon to describe the process involved.
The fact is, like Dewey, I don't think we reason, or engage in scientific inquiry, or even think unless we encounter a problem or experience doubt which we want to resolve. A cat presents no such problem or reason to doubt. There's no reflective process involved. There doesn't have to be.
Then what would inform us there isn’t? What would encountering a problem be compared to?
,
True enough. Still, I wonder.....
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
.....what may have been the problem needing to be solved, which inspired you to think we do not think unless there is one?
I think that most of our lives, our experiences, are non-reflective. We're not engaged in reasoning most of the time. We don't have to use our reason be aware of what's going on about us. I don't think knowledge is the use of reason or is confined to the results of its use as "knowledge" "know" or "knowing" is ordinarily used. When we define "knowledge" in that fashion we discount, or perhaps even ignore, most of our lives. Knowledge then becomes very limited and narrow. It's no wonder that such a narrow definition of "knowledge" leads to Skepticism and Idealism.
What we know, as we ordinarily use that word, can include what we're familiar with from past experience; it can include there results of reasoning or scientific inquiry; it can include what we've perceived. For me, the fact that what we know isn't limited to what results from the application of reasoning or scientific inquiry doesn't mean we don't "really" know in that case.
:up:
Like many philosophers, Kant could be interpreted, and quoted, from both sides of the religion question. Nominally, he was a conventional Lutheran. But some of his ideas would make his fellow Christians uncomfortable. It's true that his Critique of Human Reason, allowed room for Faith. But, he could also be critical of some religious beliefs.
My comment was only intended to show Ciceronianus that his interpretation might be looking only at one side of Kant's religious views : the notion of that which "transcends" reality. Which has been a common view among philosophers for thousands of years. Yet Kant was writing during a revolutionary transition period away from Idealism & Transcendentalism, toward Realism & Mundanism. And philosophical worldviews have swung back & forth since then with each new generation. Personally, I have no problem reconciling both views from the perspective of the BothAnd Principle. So, my worldview is both Ideal and Real, both Transcendental and Mundane. :smile:
PS___Since I have never met Kant, or read his works in the original language, all of my sources are secondary.
Thus Kant demythologizes the Christian doctrine of original sin.
https://iep.utm.edu/kant-rel/
Both/And Principle :
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Hence, your negative reaction to the notion of Transcendence. I will agree that denial of the mundane Reality of our direct experience is unjustified. But to deny that there is also something beyond the scope of our senses, is also unreasonable.
For example, scientists today accept many concepts that lie beyond (transcend) our direct knowledge, and must be taken on faith in the experts : String Theory, 11 dimensions, Parallel Universes, etc. I have no experience of such transcendental things, but I don't deny their possibility. I just don't have much use for that kind of transcendence.
However, the general notion of Transcendence, as a philosophical concept, is not a problem for me. And it can make sense of some perennial philosophical mysteries, such as : what existed "before" the Big Bang gave birth to space-time? :nerd:
Seems a disingenuously rhetorical formulation: why ask if you've already decided I'm a philistine?
The convergence of a Peircean community of inquirers reasoning towards the best explanation of transformations of matters of fact or translations of/within formalisms. Knowledge, "in a general sense", is a commons, or warranted public concern, unlike "opinons" which are merely unwarranted, subjective noises.
A truism. Hardly a "Copernican revolution". Reason – discursive practices, or language – is public and not private (i.e. located in the 'Cartesian subject' as Kant mistakenly assumes and Hegel corrects!)
Well, I can, if pressed, come up with reasons for my acceptance of my cat as a cat, just as one can come up with reasons why we know a chair is a chair. But my point is that those reasons and their recitation isn't required for there to be knowledge in such cases. There are times when reasoning and investigation are required for us to know. But those are instances different from what we know and act on regularly in our day to day lives.
Quoting tim wood
We're justified in taking a critical stance where we have reason to doubt. But I would say if we don't have a reason to doubt, it's not appropriate to pretend there is one. This is Peirce's point in his criticism of Descartes and his exercise in doubting what he plainly didn't doubt if his existence and conduct is any guide.
I'm a fan of Pragmatism to a large extent as you may have guessed. Dewey referred to what he called the "philosophical fallacy" which roughly speaking is the neglect of context. According to Dewey, philosophers have a tendency to suppose that whatever may be the case in certain conditions will be the case under other conditions. The fact that reason is required to know in certain cases doesn't mean it's required in all cases.
Quoting tim wood
I find it hard to think of situations where I'd say "I see a tree." Perhaps I would if, for example, someone asked me what I see outside my window, and there's a tree outside my window. Or perhaps if they showed me a picture of a tree and asked "What do you see, a tree or a kangaroo?" In those contexts, it would be perfectly appropriate for me to say "I see a tree" and it would be a true statement.
That's so. We know that to be the case. But this doesn't mean that there is in all cases something not only outside the scope of our senses, but something we can never know.
There are times I wish that the formal study of philosophy I was exposed to in college dealt with such questions. I would at least recognize them. I have the feeling this is old stuff for you, but I don't know the routine, so I'm sure I'm missing the point you think is clear.
If there's a wall in front of me, I see a wall. If I saw a tree when I was in front of the wall, I saw a tree then. If I'm now behind the wall, I don't see a tree--I see a wall, now. I have no expectation of seeing the tree, nor, I think, would anyone expect me to see it. So, it isn't difficult for me to "admit" I don't see a tree in front of me when I see a wall.
I agree that Nescience is just as rare as Omniscience. So I muddle along somewhere in the middle, consoled by the knowledge than even Socrates admitted that "one thing I know is that I know nothing". But that was an intentionally paradoxical statement.
For Kant to say that, not everything, but merely the ideal ding an sich is unknowable, may sound defeatist to you. But to me, it's a wise form of philosophical humility : to avoid the self-conceit of a know-it-all. For an humble philosopher, most of the universe's potential knowledge is unknown to him. On the other hand, to know that there is much you don't know, leaves you with plenty to explore -- including the notion of Transcendence. :smile:
Socratic paradox :
Socrates begins all wisdom with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one's ignorance. After all, Socrates' dialectic method of teaching was based on that he as a teacher knew nothing, so he would derive knowledge from his students by dialogue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
"All knowledge and understanding of the Universe was no more than playing with stones and shells on the seashore of the vast imponderable ocean of truth." — Sir Isaac Newton
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,. Or what's a heaven for?" ___Browning
Epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.
Transcendence : [i]existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.
"the possibility of spiritual transcendence in the modern world"[/i]
___Oxford
PS__I too, am skeptical of most claims about paranormal knowledge. But to claim that there is nothing "beyond the normal" leaves you open to be blindsided by a Black Swan. :cool:
You can't see beyond/through it?
More "who" than "what." John Dewey.
Yes. The paradox of human Reason is that it is the mechanism by which we come to know Reality, but it is also the ability to imagine worlds that don't exist in reality. So, it's the job of Philosophy and Science to sort-out the real from the unreal. But, it's a hard job, and there's still a lot of gray area for us to quibble about. :nerd:
Don Hoffman's : Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes
From his studies, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That sometimes leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
Ok, thanks.
This wasn't addressed to me, but it's such a funny kind of ironic question that I can't resist an answer. Surely the "problem" here would be the desire to understand why we bother thinking, wouldn't it? :wink:
Damned if I know. “I don’t think we reason....” is itself a thought, albeit with negative predication, so if we only think if there’s a problem, and “I don’t think” is thinking....there must have been a problem that needed solving. So I went out on the skinniest of limbs and inquired as to what it might be.
While it is true that in order to solve a problem one must think, the negation of that truth, re: absent a problem equates to absence of need for thinking, is patently false. And I fail to see how pragmatism is gonna fix the apparent absurdity in dismissing a fundamental human condition.
Furthermore....he said with an abundance of serious countenance.....just because we’re so accustomed to not being aware of something, is not sufficient reason for claiming there is no something there.
But I was told the problem is more who than what, and desire to understand is a what therefore hardly a who, so.....we’ve gained not a thing.
Glad you noticed.
Maybe.
Stephen King has a catchphrase, born in the Dark Tower series.....”they have forgotten the face of their fathers”, a literary commentary on honor.
Pragmatists, and analytical philosophers in general, have forgotten their fathers, a philosophical commentary on teachings.
Progress, I suppose.
You're not addressing the question "What do you see?" You're addressing an entirely different one: "How do you see?"
If I'm looking at a tree and someone asks me "What do you see?" I don't describe the process by which I see. As to hearing, if I'm listening to a symphony and I'm asked "What do you hear?" I say "I hear a symphony." If I'm asked "How do you hear (a symphony)?" There will be, of course, an entirely different answer.
Sounds to me more like a desire.
Do you think I see the process you described involving light bouncing off the tree and my eyes, my nerves and my brain? If not, and if you claim I don't see a tree, what is it you think I see? Something I can't see? Do I hallucinate? Or is it that you don't think I can see at all?
I think there's a problem with the claim that we don't see something because it's really something we can't see.
"Begging the question is assuming the very thing you are trying to prove as a premise of your article. . . . A presuppositionalist begins with the assumption that Christianity is true and should be accepted unless definitively proven impossible. . . . . Being a presuppositionalist means never having to admit you're wrong, because you begin with the non-negotiable premise that your are right." ___John Campbell
Fortunately, we don't often encounter that kind of overtly biased argument on this forum. But posters sometimes seem to suspect, and to imply that their opponents are closet preuppositionalists, even for debatable scientific concepts. :cool:
Presuppositionalism meaning ... (theology) A school of Christian apologetics that presumes Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought
https://www.yourdictionary.com/presuppositionalism
You don't think that having a desire for something can become a problem until it is satisfied?
I don't think this is universally true. Peirce, the pragmat(ic)ist I am most familiar was certainly very familiar with the philosophies of both Kant and Hegel.He did have a scientific perspective on philosophy, which does include the idea of progress. The analytical side of philosophy which is more akin to science and exemplified in the inquiry into the nature of logic and meaning has certainly progressed since Aristotle and Plato.
The synthetic side, which I think is more akin to art, consisting as it does in the intellectual exercise of the imagination, does not progress, but rather evolves, I would say. It is an old chestnut of science that scientists "stand on the shoulders of giants". so I don't think the fathers are entirely forgotten there either; they are acknowledged, but not slavishly followed, of course. Hegel spoke of freeing ourselves from the "aegis of tutelage" as represented by submission to tradition. Kant has something like that in mind also, I believe, with his "sapere aude".
The problem would be how to satisfy it, or repress it, or eliminate it, not the desire itself.
Philosophically, Pierce blew himself up advocating objective idealism. Yea? Nay?
I mean...c’mon, man!!
“...A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an exact relation. (...) On the other hand, no exact conformity is required by the mental law...”
(Pierce, “The Architecture of Theories”, in The Monist, vol1, pg161, 1891., https://archive.org/details/monistquart01hegeuoft/page/n10/mode/1up?view=theater)
What....never heard of universality and absolute necessity?!?!?!
(Kidding. Piece was an intellectual giant, to be sure. Smarter than Kant if only because he was about a hundred years newer, with about a hundred years worth of.....you know, like..... progress, to work with.)
Quoting Janus
Of course not.....just a prejudicial lament on my part. Pass the cheese, if you’d be so kind.
sapere aude has its own elder-Kant thematic rendering, but "aegis of tutelage" doesn’t Google. Cool soundbite, though. Like something just itching to be said.
Anyway....don’t take my flippancy seriously; it’s only the little George Carlin in me.
Ah, "mere survival."
Words are significant (unlike survival?). But when we desire something, we're not engaged in problem-solving. You yourself seem to acknowledge this when you referred to a desire becoming a problem. If it hasn't become one, it can't be one, right?
An example of what you believe is a desire which is a problem would be useful.
Point taken. I may have missed your intention in the OP. Yet, in my experience, the term "presupposition" is typically used as a negative assessment of someone else's unwarranted beliefs. However, in the usage by Christian Apologists, it is intended to imply a positive meaning : faith in the Judeo-Christian God.
However, I suppose the positive or negative inflection is, as usual, in the mind of the Apologist, or Denier for the belief in question.. Anyway, I would tend to use "Axiom" as a more neutral (and scientific) way to label a self-evident assumption that is taken as true, prior to (pre-) empirical evidence. For Christians, the existence of God is axiomatic. Therefore, to me, "absolute presupposition" implies unshakable faith, not subject to counter evidence. Which may also be the case for mathematicians, who believe that mathematical "objects" absolutely exist as metaphysical ideals. :cool:
Do Mathematical Objects Exist? :
I am slowly working on an article for Skeptical Inquirer about the ways in which religious apologists use mathematical arguments in their rhetoric.
https://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2012/10/02/do-mathematical-objects-exist
I wasn't seeking to depreciate the importance of survival, which might have been the impression you received it seems. I should have written "bare survival"; I wanted to indicate those desires, or better feelings of need, which are urged by necessity and are inherently problematic as opposed to those which may be prompted by desire to improve living conditions or by mere curiosity, and so on.
Something is certainly a problem for us if it threatens survival or the basic needs for adequate food, water, warmth and shelter. Beyond that what would, for you, qualify as being more than merely a desire that becomes a problem insofar as we wish to satisfy it (as opposed to needing to satisfy it)?
Quoting Mww
My familiarity with Peirce doesn't extend to scholar status, so I'm not sure whether I would class him as an objective idealist. From the reading I have done he is a dense (not in the sense of stupid, obviously), hard nut to crack. One day when I have more time free from what I need to do on the 15 acres I live on to make further progress towards scholar status. I certainly think he is a fascinating figure in the history of ideas.
Quoting Mww
when I searched I get a book, then this:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1367/fichte-theorist-of-the-i/p3
I don';t believe I invented the term; I'm pretty sure I read it in Hegel and not in a secondary work about Hegel.
Quoting Mww
:up: I like George too!
I don't mean to harp on one note, but I didn't interpret the topic of this thread as referring to pragmatic mathematical axioms -- that are "rationally adequate for a reflective task". Instead, I thought it was referring to presumptuous beliefs and attitudes. Which implies an unshakable faith in what is True and Real.
Although Kant asserted that ultimate Reality is beyond the scope of human senses, I didn't get the impression that he was being Presumptuous. But merely making an unprovable Supposition for philosophical purposes. We can reason to hypothetical "facts" (conclusions) that we can't actually see or touch. As with Darwin's real-world observations, the "real" evidence may only add-up to a reasonable "theory" much later. Even then, it's "only" a theory, not an observable fact.
Maybe your debate with 180 about seeing a tree is based on presumed meanings applied to different contexts. "I see a tree" versus "I believe there is a tree behind that wall". One statement is grounded in sensory data (real), the other in imagination or memory (ideal). :smile:
Presumptuous :
[i]1. The definition of presumptuous is taking things for granted or being overconfident.
2. (of a person or their behavior) failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.[/i]
"To my mind, a philosophical expression amounts to a supposition – 'Suppose X, then possibly Y' – that is, a proposal for reflective consideration (e.g. dialectics, gedankenexperiment, daily (fitness / therapeutic) praxis, etc) tested only by its comparatively rational adequacy for some reflective task, and not a proposition asserting what is or not a fact of the matter." — 180 Proof