The Harm of an Imperfect and Broken World
We are sadistic beasts..Think of the Viking beserkers mentality.. We are all that inside. Why? Because..toughen the f*** up right? The world isn't perfect so you have to LEARN through TRIAL and ERROR... You have to follow some formula.. the Indifference of the Stoics..You have to DEAL...Everything needs maintenance..needs fixing..As @darthbarracuda once stated for his distates of engineering.. everything is one step away from fail.. Always needing support..always needing to rebuild..and then build some more..
Everything needs to be fixed, maintained, created, synthesized..
Everything needs to be fixed, maintained, created, synthesized..
Comments (86)
In the process of fixing, cleaning, maintaining we are in effect applying what we have learned along the way, to do it different, to do it better than we did last time.
There is a street in Illinois called the Eisenhower Expressway and as I live and breath, the road improvements are timed to start again where it just ended. A cycle that carries us further into the future.
Haven't seen much change.. just more refined fixing.
Care to expand on the rant?
Therefore there is something to do. Helps solve the issue of boredom you've often brought up, no?
With fixing broken and annoying things? You can be bored while doing a task.
Or you can be interested. So...
It’s like a form of Stockholm syndrome. What other choice is there for most of us?
What's worse: the harm of an imperfect and broken world, or the harm of an imperfect and broken record?
What other choice would you want? Sit around and do nothing in a perfect world with no challenges?
Our alternative is realising we are movement. Movement isn't a goal to be achieved, it's already given in moment. We don't need to burdened with a ghost of what we must supposedly do next. We can just be, rather than thinking we have to achieve one end. Even we are aiming for an end, it needn't be a burden. We can act towards an end no matter if we end up achieving it or not, the moment of movement all on its own.
At all times, we are always choosing. To sit, doing nothing, in our (perfect or imperfect) world is a choice. Your notion of a perfect, movement less world is one without life.
If someone never suffered, they would still be movement. They would do doing (or not doing) whatever they were.Your understanding does not grasp boredom, it rectifies all movement as boredom. Rather than just hating suffering, it hates life/movement, turning every moment of it into a suffering-- "Ah really, I have to do or not to do today. Woe is me: I exist."
No.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not really.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nah. Just sit still and observe. Just learn to observe.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nah. No formula. Learn Schrodinger's cat experiment.
Quoting schopenhauer1
They were not indifferent. They just knew when it's a losing proposition.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Live under the bridge and let the engineers maintain the bridge.
A perfect world would have no challenges and no need for them.
Right, perfection need not move.. would be a very poetic way to say it, but its not the full story, and you know it.
Well then there would be no need for consciousness, and it never would have evolved. So your perfect world is essentially death, or at best a living death. And your argument is because we're not dead, we'd be better off dead. Or life is bad because it's not death. Pointless to anyone who enjoys life.
So a perfect unity would mean no need for need. You might describe it as a state like death, but death is only relative to what we know in life. You can also say it is like sleep without dreaming. The point is, once alive. We are always in maintenance mode. We can make this into a grandiose optimistic philosophy, but I don't think that is really going on. That is the dominant STORY so we can assent to the brokenness.
Yeah, sleep without dreaming is an unconscious state that if it continued indefinitely would be indistinguishable from death. So, your ideal form of life is death to begin with. There's nothing to be said to that.
I guess also the view from nowhere (and everywhere) might also describe it, if we were to get a bit mystical.
There's nothing mystical about it. There is no view. No consciousness. No subject. No view. Nothing. Death.
hope your right! I cant stand the thought of an infinite after-life.
I'm not talking about an after-life or lack thereof. I'm talking about Schope's proposed "perfect" life, which is a state indistinguishable from death.
We cannot know what that means though. Only from the third-person sense of thinking about the state of death.
We are?
No doubt some of us are, but you're overgeneralizing.
I've answered that in my other replies to you.
The world isn't perfect, and neither are you. ...especially if you're a sadistic-beast Berserker.
Of course. Not sure why you find that surprising.
Someone's formula is likely to be wrong.
Michael Ossipoff
"Stockholm syndrome"? Call it what you want. But that isn't a reasonable or meaningful characterization of realistic acceptance of the situation that you find yourself in.
It's obvious that right now you don't have a choice. (And no, suicide won't help.)
You're perpetually complaining, railing, raging against your being in a life. I've amply answered that, in previous posts...as have others too.
You've been rightly likened to a broken-record. You keep repeating your same complaint and beliefs, quite oblivious to all the answers that have been posted by others.
Quoting schopenhauer1
As we've discussed before, what you say above describes how it eventually is at the end-of-lives (...or at the end of this life if there were no reincarnation).
And, because, then, eventually you will be without identity, time, events, problems, situations that need dealing-with, menaces, lack, need or incompletion, or any knowledge or memory that there ever were or even could be such things...
...then it can be said that there will be timeless identity-less-ness and absence of needs, menace, lack, situations needing to be dealt-with, etc.
(As I've pointed out before, there's no such thing as "oblivion". You'll never reach a time when you aren't.)
Because our life (or finite sequence of lives) is temporary, and because the above-described state of affairs is timeless and final, then it can be said that the latter is the natural, normal and usual state-of-affairs.
But it won't do you any good to long for that end. Longing for it, or whining & complaining about being in life, won't get you there any sooner.
Michael Ossipoff
Fallacy of smugness.
Why does it wait through this reincarnation process?
Because you aren't ready for, or inclined toward rest, peace or quietude.
You've spoken of restlessness. Well doesn't that mean that you aren't ready for rest?
I suggest (along with Buddhists and Hindus), that the restful end-of-lives is experienced only by people who are already restful.
...people who are restful because they've achieved life-completion and life-style perfection.
At the end of a life, before the deep timeless and identityless-ness is reached, there's a time of mere absence of waking-consciousness, a time when the person doesn't consciously remember about his/her recent life, or know whether s/he is coming or going....but retains hir (his/her) subconscious inclinations, predispositions, and will-to-life.
That will-to-life is also inborn, in an infant, and a not-yet-born infant.
So, when you're unconscious (in the sense of not having waking consciousness or knowledge of whether you're coming or going), then is your will-to-life that of someone who has just died, or of someone who isn't yet born?
So, at that time during early unconsciousness in death, there's a llife-experience possibility-story, of someone about to be born, that matches your experience at that time. And, given your subconscious will-to-life, predispositions and inclinations, you will be that pre-birth infant.
So, this time, at the end of this life, you won't reach the late stage of death in which there's no experience of time, individuality, identity, need, etc.
It's said, and it makes sense, that there are typically a very great number of lives in one's finite sequence of lives.
As I often say, in reincarnation discussions, if there's a reason why you're in a life (and I've told why there is), and if that reason continues to obtain at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?
Michael Ossipoff
That doesn't follow. I could just say death is the end of life for that individual being. That is more empirically evident than your schema.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Besides doctrines from Hindu/Buddhist writings, what proof is there of this reincarnation of the individual?
I say it follows from common-sense. You express restlessness. Then why would you expect rest, final peace and quietude when unconsciousness comes, at the end of this life?
"To sleep, perchance to dream"
No, neither suggestion has empirical evidence.
No proof. Neither is there any proof to the contrary. I claim that neither suggestion has default priority.
None of us has died (and remembered it).
But, as I said, if there's a reason for our being in a life, and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then that suggests a resulting life.
I suggest that you're the one making a bold and less-likely suggestion, if you suggest that there's no reason why we're in a life.
Reincarnation pretty much follows from the uncontroversial metaphysics of the describable and explainable.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't think it's all that helpful to cast the universe in such human terms though. It's really more that the universe is indifferent - you can go with the grain or against the grain, the universe doesn't care one way or the other. We are in a corner of it that seems relatively benign, but that's an accident of our evolutionary adaptation to the situation we find ourselves in. Exposure to a nice, sunny day would be anathema to a mole rat.
No, but that seems like ideas I might want to read more on. The best response is to not have another person be born to experience the broken world that is always needing maintenance repair, novel change,and stuff to occupy the restless human striving. Schop would point to asceticism- deny your own illusionary will. I’ve fasted for three days, it is quite eye opening to ones own nature as needy animal..if we are to analogize need with brokenness then we are always broken, as we are never fully satisfied. Of course, satisfaction to its fullest extent is a state akin to death, or dreamless sleep, as @Baden brought up. So denying the will is not wholly feasible for most..what of love then? Spending time with significant other? Love is unevenly distributed, hard to build, hard to maintain, and often leads to more brokenness. What of friends? They can often disappoint or not come through and true friends can often be as hard to find as a significant other. What of projects? Often they are filling a void and lead to more need. They are the ultimate middle class way to salvation. A project brings with it a badge of honor. Is it social signaling? Is it to get into flow state? Is it for money and status? All indications of an initial broken state to begin with.
See, the problem is, most people don't find that problematic, because most people are built to cope with it just fine - in which case you might consider the possibility that it's you that's "broken" (I trust you understand I don't mean that in an insulting way, but as something for contemplation).
I always find the pessimistic stance a bit of a pose. As the great British poet and occultist Aleister Crowley said, "It is yet to be recorded that any man brought comfort to his fellows by moping."
Also, Love is not the only good in the universe. Strife is also good. (Love and Strife being the two fundamental forces in the universe according to Empedocles - "you can't have one, you can't have one, you can't have one with the o-o-o-o-ther." :) ) As the Daoists too noted a long, long time ago, there's a rhythm to life, activity and relaxation, synthesis and analysis, catabolism and anabolism, Blake's "Angels" and "Devils," etc., etc. - and none of us know whether either is ultimately "good" (in fact either can be good or bad depending on the circumstances, or depending on whether they're taken "too far" or not, which again is an aspect of tact, or virtue in the Aristotelian sense).
On the matter of going "too far" in a virtue, consider what would happen if we did, say, ban conception. Wouldn't that be adding to the quantum of misery somewhat? But that's not what we set out to do was it, seeing as we were supposed to be into Love and all that?
So unevenly distributed? Ah right
What's wrong with uneven distribution?
I find it interesting that this very big important part of the human experience is so hard for people to achieve, maintain, and access. Only some people experience it and sustain it. That it’s not something more common is troubling and speaks to more brokenness to begin with.
So you want everything about life to be easy for you, and otherwise it's "broken". You're too demanding; you expect too much. That's the source of your dis-satisfaction. You expect a physical world to be perfect, some sort of custom-deluxe provided environment for you, and you expect human-animals to have immediate complete mastery of life.
You seem to want worldly life to be like the Biblical Literalists' Heaven.
You're too demanding.
Humanity is a uniquely-confused and pathological species. What else is new?
Michael Ossipoff
First, let's clarify that when you say "The Universe", you (I assume) mean what Western philosophers mean by "The World", by which they refer to all that is. ...Reality.
You're asserting that Reality is indifferent. I acknowledge your impression and feeling about that, but I suggest that it's a bit immodest to assert about that.
Michael Ossipoff
I mean, would you be happier if we were all identical clones raised in identical circumstances?
Certainly your standards can bring you disappointment.
Expecting life and the physical world to be made-to-order for your luxurious ease, comfort, and (perceived) need for constant entertainment is an unreasonable and unrealistic expectation.
But need we set standards for life, and whatever else Schope is setting standards for? And by what justification do we presume to set those standards?
Michael Ossipoff
A good choice.
Michael Ossipoff
:D
No one's saying what you should or shouldn't go with, given what you've seen or haven't seen.
I was just commenting about assertion. ...and a presumption that your own perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, and your emotional conclusions from, and reaction to, them, have universal authority about how things are.
No one is questioning the validity, for you, of your perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions.
Michael Ossipoff
False equivalency. Peoples ideal partner can vary. The point is an integral part of what most people consider a valuable good, is not achieved by most.
You tend to personalize or psychologize the philosophy rather than view it as a subject separated from the person who holds it. I suggest fruitful dialogue would be had from looking at the viewpoint and not throwing it back on the viewer. That would be a subtle form of ad hominem, and a turn away from the issues.
I will say that if I was to have set a philosophical trap, you stepped right in it. Your reply here reflects the exact point that the OP was making. The issue is not why don’t we learn to toughen up and accept our lot, but rather, what is going on here that this is our lot.
If you snort and chortle in really that we need struggle (cue German raving philosopher madman) in order to have goals to summit, then I will point you to Schopenhauers quote about the paradox and contradiction that is man..
.
It’s just in the nature of reply, that I mention your statements that I’m replying to. My criticisms of your positions sound like personal criticisms, but is that avoidable when criticizing positions?
.
.
I’ve answered at length about what’s going on here. Of course you’re free to disagree with my metaphysical explanation, and you evidently do.
.
As for acceptance of our lot, that’s where we disagree, because I suggest that (whether or not we agree about the metaphysical explanation), your non-acceptance is just unrealistic.
.
But no, I haven’t evaded or skipped over the matter of what’s going on here. I’ve answered about it. You just don’t agree with my answer, as is your right.
.
I don’t believe in ad-hominem critical attack-style, but what answer to you leave for me, other than to say that your non-acceptance of life as it is, is unreaslistic?
“I want it all! I want cushy paradise on Earth! I want and [believe that I] need constant entertainment!”
Michael Ossipoff
I've already said this, but, as for why we're in this situation, it's because of us ourselves. My metaphysical explanation is that you were born into a life and a societal world that is consistent with you.
...because, among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there timelessly is one with you as protagonist.
Consistency is the one requirement for an experience-story, because there's no such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts.
What kind of world would be consistent with the person that you are? For one thing, it would be a world with the sorts of people who would beget you, and with the society that those people would make.
Anyway, who said that a physical world and a life in one (...which is what you're inclined and predisposed to, in that timeless experience-story) is perfectly paradisiacal? Arguably that's impossible for a physical world.
And that's even if you haven't fallen into (unavoidably-present) behavioral traps and gotten yourself snarled-up in ugly, harmful, and regrettable conduct of some kind.
Michael Ossipoff
Exactly.
Oh ok, thanks for the sermon. But I haven't seen anyone else reporting on any universal particularism either. I suppose there are some people who claim "miracles" but such cases seem to fizzle out on close investigation.
But then there's always JBS Haldane's comment about beetles, which does give one food for thought :)
Not achieved by "most?" I'm not sure if people have such a concrete idea of their ideal partner as all that, and anyway, isn't it sort of a good thing if you find yourself loving someone who isn't your pre-planned ideal? Didn't the Stones have a song about that?
Ah, that reminds me, yes: love is all about loving what is.
Hmmmm. In relation to a HUMAN EXISTENCE, wouldn't an experience of something 'unadulturated' by language and expression, which strips the individual authenticity of what is down into the simple and general, absolutely have an authority regarding how things are? If I say "My significant-other committed suicide and 'that' made me feel extraordinarily sad" wouldn't that communicate a universal authority about how 'that thing', namely the happening of a member of a relationship committing suicide resulting in the sadness of the other member of the relationship, is?
Yes.. but I'll respond to more later.
You are being purposefully provocative now to the point of distorting my position. Entertainment is not used in the sense that senses need tantalizing (i.e. games/electronics/etc).. it is ANYTHING not directly related to survival and maintaining comfort. ANY goal related to things other than the two aforesaid things can look like many things.. religious goals, meditation, charity work, reading, learning, taking a class, staring at a tv, playing a video game, etc. etc. If anything, a universe where everything is satisfied looks more like dreamless sleep (pace Baden's observation).
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I've never claimed that reality is other than the state it is. I merely made observations about how that state is. You have yet to address the issue that indeed, this is how the state is.
I'm not saying anything particularly controversial. I'm saying that most people don't find a significant other or at least in some satisfactory manner. Humans especially have a messy social way of trying to attain and maintain this. I'm just observing this phenomenon that not many people have this "good" that most people consider rather important.
Actually that seems like quite a controversial statement. Do you have a source for it or is it just your sense of things?
So love is easy to find, eh? News to me. All those forlorn love songs, stories and such, must have been from the "unusual" cases. Divorce rates hover over 50% I believe.. People unhappy with their love life are pretty numerous. Though if you need one cursory glance at some study done by searching on the internets, here is one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4757816/Mathematicians-reveal-odds-finding-love.html
But to reverse the somewhat obnoxious question, do you have proof that most people have a healthy flourishing love life? Is this important thing easy for most people? Is it reliable? Now you may scoff at the notion that basic forms of happiness should be so easy but that’s just because you’ve adjusted your exlectations to lowered circumstances that reality offers. Philosopher David Bentar writes at length regarding this psychological technique of adjustment. Doesn’t make the reality better just your relative position to it..like psychological armor..the beserker, the stoic, the man of equanimity. Constantly honing, adjusting, lived experience of trial and error, and of course fortune has its part. This is reality and we must deal.
When things go well for people, it’s even easier to scoff.
Cognitive bias: you are forgetting all the joyous music about love found.
Quoting schopenhauer1
A comparatively recent phenomenon, as is the general unhappiness we see around us, the suicide rate in the midst of plenty, etc. We may hypothesize the cause (I think it's the baneful influence of Cultural Marxism, Feminism and Postmodernism, as filtered down to the populace in "pop" form since roughly the 1940s, but what do I know :) ), but it is at least notably a relatively recent thing. I agree that social media is highly problematic - again, a lot of these things are analogous to sugar craving or various other kinds of addiction, like porn addiction. We're built to crave things that were rare but good for us in our ancestral environment, so when we have an abundance of them some of us are really thrown off kilter.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I wouldn't scoff at that at all, but I think the difficulty in modern times is artificially created by ideology, as aforesaid. Careful improvements on traditionalism, rather than throwing the baby out with the afterbirth, would likely have been the ideal path, but instead the "intelligentsia" from the mid to the late 20th century got it into their heads that the whole thing had to be torn down, "revolutionized," reformed, etc., etc. Result: greater unhappiness, greater difficulty for ordinary people to find ordinary happiness.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah, sometimes, although for most people for whom "things are going well," it's because they worked at it; they often came from some set of circumstances that offered a contrast to "things going well," which motivated them to get out of it.
In all seriousness, I'm not immune to bouts of pessimism myself, but I do think the mood is parochial and comes from a diminished, somewhat myopic overview.
Sure, but I was talking about someone speaking with absolute authority about Reality itself, Ultimate Reality.
But yes, of course it's true that experiences and feelings such as you describe, direct feelings and impressions, as opposed to narratives, descriptions, or evaluations, are what's more real. ...genuine experience.
Michael Ossipoff
Is that supposed to have something to do with what I said?
All I spoke about was assertions.
No one here would say that you should believe what you don't know of reason to believe.
...reason such as "reports on any universal particularism".
Evidently it's necessary to repeat, for you, the post that you're "replying" to:
I'd emphasized:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
By 'reality' I mean... Anything that can be experienced.
They do.
And that includes impressions and feelings (until they're the subject of narrative, concept, commentary, assertion, argument or evaluation).
That's why I was telling Gurugeorge that his impressions and feelings are valid for him, but that his assertions about Reality aren't valid.
Michael Ossipoff
Then it's a whole other ballgame. It's no longer the feelings and experiences, it's words about them. Words and description aren't direct experience. Feelings, impressions, and direct experience aren't for assertion.
Sure, you can say that you experienced the presence of a bakery on a certain street, and that's a conceptual and verbally-describable matter, and so of course it can be usefully and validly asserted.
But we're talking about assertions about the whole of Reality itself.
One can express one's feelings and impressions. I've done so, on matters of Reality and religion.
But i don't assert my feelings and impressions, and I don't assert, about Reality or religion, or other non-describable, non-explainable matters.
However strong, intense and heartfelt is Gurugeorge's feeling that Reality is indifferent, he was right to express it as a feeling and impression, but it's just not the kind of thing to make an objective assertion about.
Michael Ossipoff.
Uh yeah, it's a direct response to your:-
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Clearly, if I'm ready and willing to take into account others' perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, I don't think my own have universal authority ;)
This presupposes that others perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions say something contradictory to what mine do, and also that others perceptions, feelings, experiences, etc. relate to the exactly the same things...
.
How very fair of you to evaluate the validity of other people’s perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions before making your assertion about how it definitely is. :D
.
I don’t know or care what other perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions you listened to or heard about, or why you found them unconvincing. That’s your business only.
.
It’s about assertion. Here’s what you said:
.
.
That’s an assertion. About the character or nature of the whole of Reality, an assertion is presumptuous.
.
Michael Ossipoff
.
Then that’s what you mean by “entertainment”, when you decry your need for entertainment, and to constantly keep yourself entertained.
.
You say that the world is broken. Don’t you see that you’re describing yourself and a personal problem that is specifically yours? If others don’t share your problem, then everyone else must be wrong?
.
Just out of curiosity: It’s fairly certain that, by “the world”, you aren’t referring to the societal world. You’re referring to something on a larger scale, bigger than human organizational or societal structure. On what scale are you saying that the world is broken. What “world” are you referring to?
.
Who is making it necessary for you to constantly entertain yourself and, in general, engage in deferred-satisfaction “instrumentality”? Who is withholding happiness from you?
.
.
Agreed. Deep, timeless, identity-less, care-free, incompletion-less dreamless sleep. …nightly, and also, with finality, at the end-of-lives.
.
But you’re overlooking the question of why you’re in life now. You just regard it as something to complain about. …some wrong (“broken”) state of affairs that for some reason has befallen you.
.
You’re in life because you wanted &/or (felt that you) needed it.
.
But, whether you agree with that or not, the question comes to: Then what to make of the situation? Spend this life railing against it? ….and then expect final rest afterwards? If you’re in a mess, it’s one of your own making. Why expect your mess and your decidedly inimical, unaccepting, entertainment-needing, hard-to-please, and un-satisfiable attitude to disappear at the end of this life? What you live is what you are, and what you are is what you’re consistent with. Are you consistent with final rest?
.
We can agree to disagree about reincarnation, but I suggest that, in particular, you’re in a societal world like this one because you’ve, in some way, been botching life, and are now in a world that is consistent with the person you were. But I’m not singling you out. I’d say the same about any one of us here.
.
.
Come again??
.
No one would deny that Reality is as it is.
.
Your perception of how it is, is different from mine. I’ll say to you what I said to Gurugeorge: You can express your feelings and impressions about it, but it’s presumptuous to assert about the nature and character of the Whole of Reality.
.
But your rejection of your situation—the situation of being in a life—is unrealistic. Instead of talking about it being wrong, or “broken”, it would make more sense to just make the best of it. What other course is there?
.
.
Like many others who comment to your various threads, I don’t know what you’re talking about, with your “instrumentality”. I mean, I know what you’re saying, but I just don’t know of anything that corresponds to your words. “Instrumentality” would indeed by a miserable way to live. So why do it?
.
I’ve admitted that life has survival demands. I and others have admitted that life has a natural ebb-&-flow of demands and requirements, and things that you like. (…things that you like that are already there, or that come without striving for them, even when you’re concentrating your efforts and planning on matters of getting-by, or being considerate or helpful to others.)
.
To the extent that life is as you say it is, then making the best of it won’t cause you as much unhappiness as continually rejecting, railing-against, rebelling against, and resenting it.
.
But don’t be so sure that you’re right about how it is. "Instrumentality" is an unnecessary lifestyle-choice of yours.
.
Michael Ossipoff
I get to do that, everyone gets to do that, including the people who's assertions about reality I'm taking into account in formulating my own.
And my statement, their statements, your statements, are either true or false. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
You're manufacturing a problem where there is none.
Eh? Not at all, they might agree with me. But they may not, and because I may be wrong, I am morally obliged to to look at other points of view, to cross-check.
You mean if we agree?
If I say, "This tea tastes like grass," and then you taste the same tea and say, "I agree," even though we both agree on this we can both not be sure that we both mean the same thing. We, objectively, mean the same thing... But this objective same is merely a faith.
Furthermore, if you cross check other points of view to determine some objectivity about something, you will be, regardless, imposing upon these 'other points of view' your point of view, your interpretation of these other points of view, the supposed objectivity.
No, not merely a faith, it's corroborated, such that the world would have to be very different from how we both think it is, for our estimates to be not, in fact, objective like we think they are. We are justified in being sure of our opinion, so long as we always leave room for doubt.
But doubt has to be on the basis of some anomaly. Just the mere possibility that things might be different, is not in itself reason to doubt our settled model.
IOW, so much would have to be revised, so many settled facts and theories looked at again, that the evidence that would make all the effort we'd have to make to revise our settled model justified, would have to be very "big" and unusual (Hume's point).
This is why people think of extreme examples (like bullets turning into soap bubbles) to illustrate the kind of evidence we'd need to have to even begin to really seriously doubt the settled, generally accepted model.
.
Of course. Anyone gets to assert anything. It used to be commonly asserted that the Earth is flat.
.
Didn’t someone say that, in the evolution vs anti-evolution debate, it was proved that there’s no such thing as un-utterable nonsense?
.
If you think that words can describe or validly, provably assert about the Whole of Reality, then that’s where we must just agree to disagree.
.
.
But your statement is definitely true, right? No? But isn’t that the nature of an assertion? …certainty or claimed certainty of truth and accuracy?
.
Statements aren’t necessarily provably true or false. Even in mathematics there are true but unprovable statements. But you claim to make a reliably true statement about the character or nature of the whole of Reality?
.
Maybe you’re thinking of logic, but if you think that logic applies to the whole of Reality, then we must agree to disagree.
.
As for the notion that words describe and cover everything, including the whole of Reality, remember that, for one thing, no finite dictionary can noncircularly define any of its words.
.
.
…manufacturing what problem? I’m merely pointing out an instance of presumptuousness.
.
Michael Ossipoff
No, an assertion just presents how one thinks things are, and if questioned one gives one's reasons. If something crops up that shows one was wrong, so be it. There's no "presumption" about it - what a strange concept to use in this context!
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
By your own lights, how do you know that it doesn't, o "presumptuous" one? ;)
Now that's funny, because, according to Merriam-Webster and Houghton-Mifflin, to assert is to state or declare positively.
In any case, in the statement of yours that I was referring to, you weren't just "present[ing] how [you] think things are." You were saying how things are.
All I said there was that we must agree to disagree. That was only about differing opinions.
But, in any case, even if we merely don't know whether an assertion can be validly made about the character or nature of the whole of Reality......if we don't know if such an assertion can be true, then any assertion that logic can apply to the whole of Reality would be questionable.
Michael Ossipoff
I really fail to see the difference, one's opinion about how things are is one's opinion about how things are, and that is an assertion. Nobody expects (or would accept) that some one particular person has a backchannel to reality such that their utterances are guaranteed to be true, so the lack of such a thing is no problem.
I think the nub of our disagreement is probably that you think that a statement about the Whole would have to have ascertainable logical/evidentiary links to the Whole (which would then justify or guarantee the truth of the statement), which would be impossible for a mere mortal.
I don't think knowledge is like that, I don't think logical/evidentiary links guarantee the truth of anything. Something can be as justified, as supported by evidence, as topped and tailed as you like, but still be wrong, whether it's about the whole or a part.
(IOW knowledge is not JTB, it actually never leaves the fundamental logical status of conjecture, a la Popper. All we ever do is make informed guesses.)
First, thank you for clarifying that…
.
“It's really more that the universe is indifferent - you can go with the grain or against the grain, the universe doesn't care one way or the other.”
.
…was meant as an expression of your opinion, rather than as a claim about how things are.
.
.
No, that isn’t necessarily an assertion. An assertion isn’t just an expression of opinion. To assert is “to declare or state positively” (as I already quoted two dictionaries).
.
Yes, every assertions reveals an opinion. But an assertion also expresses a claim about how things are. Do you see the difference now?
.
An opinion is different from a claim.
.
Here’s what you said:
.
.
Yes, that statement shows what your opinion is. But it also expresses a claim about how things are.
.
.
No one’s utterances are all guaranteed to be true.
***********************
.
True statements aren’t false, and false statements aren’t true,
.
If there were Slitheytoves, Jaberwockeys and brilligness, and if all Slitheytoves were brillig, and all Jaberwockeys were Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys would be brillig.
.
Dogs aren’t turtles.
.
The Earth’s volume is greater than that of the building across the street from you.
The volume of a sphere is less than the volume of a cube whose edge-length is equal to the diameter of that sphere.
.
2 + 2 = 4 if the additive associative axiom and the multiplicative identity axiom are true (by the definition of the positive integers by repeated addition of the multiplicative identity).
.
There are abstract implications in the sense that we can speak of them or refer to them.
****************************
Each of the above statements between the rows of asterisks expresses a claim, not just an opinion. I claim that they’re true (not just that they express my opinion).
.
.
A claim has to be supportable.
.
.
Yes, theories, or supposed “laws” about the physical world, can be, and have been, later determined to be wrong. And so, statements about how the physical world works are conjectural, to varying degrees.
.
But that isn’t true of all statements.
.
Michael Ossipoff
But then in that case, there's nothing special about a "claim" as opposed to an "opinion." The most you could say is that a claim is an opinion with some attempt at support, or an opinion is a claim with less or no attempt at support.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
But I can "declare or state positively," I can stamp my little feet as much as I like (so to speak), but for all that, I may yet be wrong.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
But your opinion, if isn't just you letting off wind, is also a claim that something is true.
A statement isn't made more certain by it being couched in terms of "No guys, I REALLY REALLY think this (which is my opinion) is true, and here are my reasons ..." :)
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Well, no, not in that sense; but you'll notice that most of the things you laid out as claims are in the area of "analytic" or "true by definition" or "a corollary of the definition of x is that ..."
But that's not what we're interested in, surely? We're interested in objective truth, truth about the world. Following the line of though that passes via Hume and many other philosophers through to the later Wittgenstein, I would say that an analytic/apriori truth is a truth about the world only indirectly, only insofar as it's (truly or falsely) outlining our own linguistic and conceptual habits, our definitions, our criteria for calling things "A" or thinking of them as A. But you may define a thing as you like, whether it exists or not (as so defined, or differently defined) is another question.
Everything can in principle be challenged, everything is in principle open to doubt, including your claim examples, including even the deepest "synthetic apriori" axioms we use, including even the laws of logic. Where I part ways with the sceptic is in that I don't believe there's any reason to doubt until there's some anomaly that needs explaining. For doubt to bite, you need a reason to doubt, and the mere logical possibility of alternatives isn't a reason to doubt.
BUT, that permanent status of conjecture that all our statements have (including this one) means that the presumed authority of "claims" vs. "opinons," or the supposed importance of the distinction that goes back to Plato, between "Justified True Belief" as against "mere opinion" is - well, not exactly bogus, but doesn't bear the weight it's traditionally been thought to bear (e.g. cf. also Gettier problems).
Justification is really more a part of rhetoric/persuasion than it is of the actual knowledge-discovery process, which proceeds by PUNTING possible-ways-things-could-be and then SIFTING them, rejecting those theories whose corollaries and implications predict results that turn out to be false in experience. Claims that fail modus tollens cannot possibly be true (although even then, one can attempt to "save appearances" to some extent, by re-jigging the underlying definitions), but claims that survive testing may yet be true - and that kind of corroboration is (I think) the best we can do.
(All of this actually leaves me more open and willing to try on religious and mystical claims, btw. I'm much more open to the classical - Aristotelian, Thomist - arguments for God's existence than I used to be, for example.)
I didn't say that no utterance can be guaranteed to be true. I said only that no one's utterances can all be guaranteed to be true.
.
Of course, from the point of view of the hearer. From the hearer’s point of view, the only information conveyed by an assertion is that it’s an opinion that the asserter claims to be sure of.
.
For the equation 35x^2 - 34x - 21 = 0,
.
…the solutions are:
.
x = 7/5
.
and
.
x = -3/7
.
At this time, having just heard that assertion, and not having checked its accuracy, you currently have no way to know if that assertion is true.
.
To you, the hearer, the only information conveyed by that assertion is about my opinion, and my implied sureness of that opinion.
.
That’s how it for any assertion for which you don’t already have verification.
.
.
As I said, from the point of view of the hearer, the only information given by a claim is about the asserter’s opinion, and his implied sureness about sit.
.
Mistaken clams and assertions, and intentionally-false claims and assertions, are routine in the news.
.
A claim or assertion needn’t have any attempt at support. But support would help if you want the claim or assertion to be believed.
.
.
An opinion isn’t a claim. Even an expression of an opinion isn’t a claim.
.
You can reasonably argue that, for the purpose of communication, an assertion doesn’t contain information other than about the asserter’s opinion.
.
I don’t deny that. But the fact remains that an assertion or claim is statement of how thing are, rather than just a statement of opinion. That statement’s reliability is another matter.
.
It’s a simple and plain distinction.
.
…in spite of the fact that an assertion doesn’t convey any information other than an opinion and someone’s sureness about it.
.
.
Of course. As I said, it’s quite common for assertions to be errors or lies.
.
.
Certainly not. I now express an opinion that you regard my above equation-solution statement as probably true. But that expression of opinion about how you regard that equation-solution statement isn’t a claim that you regard that equation-solution statement as probably true.
.
That opinion of mine about how you regard my equation solution-assertion is based on my opinion that you know that I wouldn’t post that assertion without first checking its accuracy (making it, from your point-of-view, unlikely, but not impossible, that it’s wrong.)
.
.
An expression of sureness about one’s assertion doesn’t change the fact that the only information received by the hearer is information about your opinion and your sureness of it. Even without additional expression of sureness, any assertion implies sureness on the part of the speaker.
.
But of course you know that when someone emphasizes how sure they are about their assertion, that claim of sureness sometimes might increase the probability, from the hearer’s point of view, that the assertion is true.
.
.
The fact that the volume of the building across the street from you is less than the Earth’s volume, and that the volume of a sphere is less than that of the cube whose edge-length is equal to that sphere’s diameter are objective facts.
.
Besides, I claim that there’s no reason to believe that the physical world of our experience consists of other than a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with any one of the many mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
.
If you believe that this physical world has “objective existence” that the above-described logical system doesn’t have, then I ask you what you mean by that “objective existence”.
.
But yes, reliably-true assertions of objective truth about the world (…where “the world” has the Western philosophers’ meaning as “the whole of what is”) are limited to a describable subset of the world. That’s why I started this discussion by questioning a statement that you‘d made about Reality.
.
When I made my list of reliably-true assertions, I just meant that there are matters about which reliably-true assertions can be made. Some are about things of this physical world. Some are about matters that we’d agree are abstract. Some are even tautologies.
.
.
Words can describe certain physical facts about our physical experience, and about logical matters. It’s often pointed out that--aside from such exceptions--description, evaluation, narrative, concept, etc. have nothing to do with experience.
.
…and don’t (or at least can’t be reliably asserted to…) apply to Reality as a whole, or its nature or character.
.
That’s probably why Nisargadatta said that anything that can be said is a lie.
.
.
…especially without a definition for “exist”.
.
I don’t claim existence or reality for anything in the describable realm.
.
.
All assumptions are subject to question.
.
.
Any claim can be challenged, and would then need to be supported. I try to avoid making un-supportable claims.
.
But regarding “There are abstract implications in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.”
.
That’s just another way of saying, “We can speak of and refer to abstract implications.”
.
Do you challenge that claim? Haven’t I been speaking of and referring to abstract implications?
.
.
Of course. They’re just part of an implicational system. The implicational systems that I speak of have no need for any of their implications’ antecedents to be true., and I make no claim that any of their antecedents are true.
.
.
I don’t know all the laws of logic, and so I can’t speak to that, but the one requirement for the systems of inter-referring abstract implications that I speak of, including the life-experience possibility-stories that I speak of, is that any one such inter-referring system can’t be inconsistent, because there’s no such thing as mutually inconsistent or mutually contradictory facts.
.
There can’t be mutually-contradictory states of affairs. Things can’t be two mutually-contradictory ways.
.
(Of course there can be mutually contradictory propositions.)
.
.
From the point of view of a hearer, a claim doesn’t count for more than an opinion. But, as for what’s being said, there’s a definite distinction between a claim or assertion, vs an expression of opinion.
.
You want to look at it only as communication of information, from the hearer’s point of view.
.
But there’s nothing conjectural about (for example) a tautology. And a verifiable claim doesn’t look conjectural after it’s been verified.
.
Some claims are in error. Some claims are intentional lies. But some claims can be supported. All of the claims that I stated, between those rows of asterisks in my previous post, and also the equation-solution assertion that I made above in this reply, can be supported. And the claims between the rows of asterisks in my previous post, are, additionally, things that we both already knew.
.
For example:
.
False statements aren’t true, and true statements aren’t false.
.
A reliably-true statement can be a tautology, or a statement of what a popular definition (or a personal definition) is.
.
.
No, some claims, assertions, propositions, postulates, implications and theorems can be verified.
.
.
Yes, that’s a way of disproving a claim. …showing that it has a consequence which results in a contradiction, or a known falsity.
.
.
Some claims can be demonstrated to be true.
.
But yes, in physics, it could always be that new discoveries will replace current theories and (seeming) “laws” (…which, though replaced, might remain useful under special conditions, as does classical mechanics).
.
.
To me, it’s a matter of impressions and feelings, but not arguments, proof, or assertion. Of course people can tell of reasons for their impressions, but I wouldn’t call that argumentation if it doesn’t come with an assertion.
.
If Aristotle said that Reality is Benevolence itself, I agree.
.
Michael Ossipoff