Our ability to control our thoughts is vastly inferior to our ability to control light. — ovdtogt

Egad! I've never met anyone who could control light with his or her thoughts before. You must be barrels of fun at parties!

Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, there is a well-studied cognitive phenomenon called either "embedded cognition" or "embodied cognition" which quantifies the extent to which cognitive processing is actually a function of environmental cues. ie. consciousness exists 'in situ'. I first encountered it in a book called "The Embodied Mind". I think the principle has merit, and, to the extent it is true, has interesting implications for such things as "collective consciousness", which is one of my pet concepts.

Ok, I get that you are focusing on the process, but doesn't aren't the nature of the process and the nature of the contents intimately related?

We have far more control over light than we have over consciousness. — ovdtogt

Would you not consider your ability to direct your own thoughts to be indicative of a high degree of control over consciousness?

Absolute truth does not exist — ovdtogt

Let's see. The "truth" of anything resides in a statement or at least a cognition "about" something, right? So for there to be truth of any kind, there must bare minimum be something about which the truth is true. That would be a Kantian Transcendental Argument.

Now, what is the difference between "truth" and "absolute truth"? Well, nothing really. I think that the sense in which @leo is using the term "absolute" is, most basic or fundamental, or general. A truth that is applicable to the most broad set of referents. If A is true, and B is true, and C is true, then there must be some common aspect of A and B and C such that you can say (A,B,C) which is the intersection the A,B, and C, is true. Quarks exist. Mathematics exists. Thought exists. So there must be something common to them all, maybe "Reality" of which it is "universally true" to say "Reality exists". Kind of a tautology. Or is it a synthetic a priori? Either way, I'd go along with this general line of reasoning.

Universals are not a result. What ‘emerges’ if anything is the capacity to comprehend universals. But they don’t come into existence purely by dint of being comprehende — Wayfarer

This is true. Universals qua consciously comprehended entities is the more accurate description. I stand corrected.

"virtual objects"

Like an extension of the whole universals and particulars distinction. To the extent that universals are themselves emergent properties of a self-organizing system, I would stand by my statement. Again, you can't compare quarks to hunger, but both are equally real. Comparability isn't an ontological test.

I'm pretty sure all emergent properties are equally real, including subjective ones.

Cryptomnesia - I just remembered how much I like it.

Our linear logic got us to where we are now, but nonlinear eastern logic could pick up the ball and maybe leave us in the dust? — Athena

Definitely truth in that. The more science reveals the more the mystery deepens. Dark matter/energy is what...95% of all known stuff? Thats a lot of unknown forces out there....

To what extent you are more socialist than capitalist tends to be determined by your upbringing. — ovdtogt

Yes, this was the question I had in mind. I don't know this is strictly true. Perhaps the mass followers, yes, but many communist ideologues were well-to-do, Lenin, Marx, Mao.

Epoche" is the Greek form of meditation. — Gregory

Also the phenomenological method of eliminating or suspending naive judgements in order to see the essential nature of things. Could be likened to the Buddhist concept of Samsara.

Socialism is not sold. Capitalism is sold. Socialism is solidarity. Capitalism is survival of the richest. — ovdtogt

So do you think that those who gravitate to socialism have fundamentally different values than those who gravitate to capitalism? If so, are they reconcilable? Or can they at least co-exist under the same roof?

Stable state is simply a state of a system that doesn't try to change — Qmeri

Is stability alone a bit of an oversimplification though? Piaget coined the term "equilibration" which is a combination of stabilization and progressive development.

What does this have to do with the rapidity of social change and the disemboweling of cultural content?

A lot of cynicism. These might more accurately be described as anti-values.

As far as I am concerned the only core value is survival. — ovdtogt

I'm sorry about that. There are a lot of other valuable dimensions that can greatly enrich one's life.

Based on a massive acceleration of the production-consumption cycle, it would seem likely. Essentially, we have become a monetized culture, drifting further and further away from the core values of life. Durkheim's observations about anomie at the turn of the century. And Simmel's
ideas about the increasing role of money mediating social relationships. And Polanyi's argument for 'substantivist' economics mid-century.

True, it doesn't give us the why. Maybe there is no why other than the one we create?

Are you reifying, deifying or otherwise personifying reason?

I can have a justified true belief - that is, a belief that I have acquired in a manner that Reason approves of - without realising that Reason approves of it. — Bartricks

So then why is reason adopting an attitude towards that belief? (your words).

I agree with the first statement wholeheartedly.

Actually it is an emerging scientific methodology. I don't think it is meant to have any philosophical aspects. That being said, I don't see any reason why it couldn't be consistent with any number of interesting philosophies. I will admit it has been over a decade since I read "The world as will and representation" so I wouldn't be up to offering a very cogent attempt.

Thanks ...but I must have missed something, it doesn't explain how consciousness came from matter ? — 3017amen

Because it is a fundamental property of systems across every domain to self-organize and exhibit new properties.

If matter makes the clay that makes the bricks, what consiousness made the matter? — 3017amen

Complex-adaptive systems routinely self-organize into stable states that are nevertheless far from equilibrium and exhibit interesting new features.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system

:up:

You could look into areas like encephalization. I have an excellent book entitled "Conceptual issues in Evolutionary Biology"- a few years old now but a really wide and deep resource. "Topobiology" is another one.

The gravitational constant is a fact. Likewise, so is self-awareness. Just because you cannot explain it you do not therefore have a right to dispute its facticity.

You have said this is inconsistent with knowledge being made of an attitude that Reason is adopting towards a true belief someone is holding. — Bartricks

Do you know what I mean by metacognitive? An attitude towards a belief would be cognition about a belief.

I mean, if you say so, ok. But it sure seems that "adopting a certain attitude" towards a judicative mental state really is by definition a meta-cognitive function, which is what I would contend is not essential to knowledge.

Ok but this

Sometimes someone can know something - that is, can have a justified true belief - without knowing that their belief is justified. — Bartricks

and this

having a true belief that Reason is adopting a certain attitude towards (the knowledge attitude). — Bartricks

seem to be in disagreement?

My proposal, then, is that knowledge itself is constituted by having a true belief that Reason is adopting a certain attitude towards (the knowledge attitude). That analysis leaves open when and where Reason will adopt that attitude towards a true belief that one is holding. — Bartricks

Why does one have to have an awareness that something is knowledge for it to be knowledge? Farmers know a great deal about how and when to plant, probably without any kind of reflective awareness about anything vaguely epistemological. I would argue not only do they possess knowledge, but that a very important and fundamental kind of knowledge.

I think what you are describing is a theory about knowledge, not knowledge simpliciter.

That my intuitions are sound, that I have taken away good information. I have often selected books from a variety of fields and found strong thematic connections. In one sense not surprising as my choice is based on what I have already read.

I didn't intend it to be so but they are oddly related. — Valentinus

I always take that as a good sign that I am learning the right things....

In terms of tendency to overemphasize the material/empirical you mean?

It's all good, but everything really converges in the last two chapters, so a very rewarding read.

Finished the R.G. Collingwood.

The last chapter, on philosophy as literature, really is world class and worth reading on its own.

Finally get to start Popper's trilogy postscript to the logic of scientific discovery: Volume 1 - Realism and the Aim of Science.

Bertrand Russell says that if a theory predicts something very improbable and it is found to be true, the theory is validated in proportion to the improbability of the supporting evidence. From an information standpoint, extremely improbably events do carry much more information. So being able to believe the right improbable things potentially becomes a gateway to more actual information.

Something really interesting, and I think it relates to the whole idea of contextualized truth. Also to my earlier question whether masterpieces of philosophy actually contained objective truth or only insofar as they were great pieces of writing.

Collingwood says that "technical terms" are not fundamental within language because they require explanation. Because

The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it.

Based on this he argues that

"The language of philosophy is therefore...a literary language, and not a technical.

It makes me think of an observation by a systems theory philosopher I just read, that the foundation of any metaphysical theory is its "elegance" - ie. the overall narrative beauty of a metaphysical theory is the substantiation of that theory.

Talk about merging subject and object.

Compare, for example, the way someone like Plato is interpreted by the generations of people who have done it. Whether that be Plotinus or Strauss, they own their translations of what was meant by saying this or that.
But those who would make the narrative about what was happening then and now, in order to make those expressions a part of explaining one sequence or another according to some measure, that is a different activity. Our desire for an encyclopedia of events makes the latter more attractive at the expense of the former. — Valentinus

I see. Interestingly, Collingwood's idea of philosophy incorporates both. He says that every philosophy is in part a borrowing of philosophies of the past and in part a collaboration with those of the present.

He says "the business of philosophy is not to be an encyclopedia of knowledge".