• David Mo
    960
    A mathematical truth has nothing of prediction or experienceIsaac

    Leaving aside merely formal propositions, for now.David Mo

    Mathematics is formal science. Not prediction. A theorem is not predicted, but deduced from axioms.

    I assume we are speaking of objectivity because of the objects in the world.
  • David Mo
    960
    Why? What does this add to the methods we already have?Isaac

    Curiosity, I suppose. Amazement is the mother of science. Moreover, because of the consequences in practice. Belief in the reality of my actions is the surest antidote to apathy and spleen.

    Of course, a scientist can live with being a subjectivist. But you can't be madly in love with your girl if you think your girl doesn't exist. Except if you are Edgar Allan Poe and we know how Poe's stories ended. Bad, very bad.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    you can't be madly in love with your girl if you think your girl doesn't exist.David Mo

    Ahh yes. The search for external social group validation for one's beliefs. You know that's a fairly modern phenomena? It's not really seen in hunter-gatherer communities (but then there has been much less work done on them, so it might be found one day).

    It's what (generally) drives this desperate insistance that there are objective truths. The full assertion goes "There are external, objective truths in the world (oh, and the ones that there are happen to be all the ones I already think)"

    You see this in everything from scientific paradigms, through politics to ethics. The quest for some external social validation to shore up an otherwise crippling lack of confidence in one's approach.

    " We can determine truth from logic" - means 'I'm not getting the proof I need empirically, so I'll add a few laws in and make my assertion sound more authoritative'

    "There are some ethical positions which are beyond debate" - means 'a the ethical positions I don't agree with would be easier to dismiss if I didn't have to discuss them'.

    "We all agree on certain truths" - means 'We all agree (with me) on certain truths'.

    It's (unsurprisingly) more common among intellectuals who didn't receive the validation they wanted from their peer group for their success relative to those with physical skills.

    Now - get off my couch and pay the receptionist on the way out.
  • David Mo
    960
    Ahh yes. The search for external social group validation for one's beliefs.Isaac

    No. I was referring to the basic intuition that one does not fully exist if one does not realize oneself in the world. The opposite is the spleen of the romantics. Or isolation as the worst of punishments. It makes you crazy.

    But if you want to get into the other subject, too, we validate ourselves (not our thoughts alone, but who we are) in social interaction. By attacking or joining forces. The myth is that of Robinson. When you validate something empirically you are doing it from a culture that imposes its social norms on you. You are not alone with your test tubes, even if it seems so.

    For both, we need a concept of truth that is produced in interaction with the world and with others. Reality is what resists to me and what I shape. Individually and socially.

    Then comes determining the qualities of that interaction that make me think in terms of objectivity. But only after I have established these truths phenomenologically. As a statement, not as an elaboration of a truth.
    Now - get off my couch and pay the receptionist on the way out.Isaac

    Your couch? This is a no man's land.
  • Mww
    4.6k
    Agreed, for in no other way is criterion for truth irreducible, then to the form to which all substitutions in it must adhere. If substitution violates the form, the substitution is false.
    — Mww
    The substitution axiom is a mathematical axiom. I would like to know what it has to do with the existence of objects outside the mind
    David Mo

    We don’t use truth as a mark of existence of real objects, for they are necessarily presupposed by the cognition of them. It is, after all, impossible to cognize any real object that doesn’t exist.
    — Mww
    You have simply transferred the problem of truth to the problem of "cognition". You've changed one word for another.
    David Mo

    No, I haven’t. You are in effect asking for the truth of whether or not an object exists outside the mind, which would be necessarily given if that object affects our perception. But that affect in and of itself tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of what that object is. For that, cognition of it is required, and cognition is the result of the logical substitution of the matter of that object into the universal form of objects in general. And how that is accomplished depends on the cognitive theory one deems sufficient to explain the process.
    ——————-

    "When I state a true proposition?" is equivalent to "When I have a cognition of a thing?"David Mo

    When you state a true proposition about a thing, you have already cognized the thing in such a manner that does not contradict experience or possible experience, yes. Just a cognition is not enough, it must adhere to the LNC in order to for a truth claim to be valid. Hence, the logical substitution of the matter of some object in particular into the universal form of all objects of the same kind in general.
    ——————

    With the aggravated problem that you can't recognize and communicate a "cognition" if you don't speak about it through propositional language.David Mo

    Which is hardly a problem if that is the natural modus operandi of the human rational agent. Propositional language is nothing but a reflection of the intrinsically logical human cognitive system, so how else would we communicate, if not in keeping with how we think?

    Besides....so what? Haven’t you ever just sat there and thought about stuff, cognizing this and that one right after another, actually quite endlessly, without telling anybody about it?
    ——————-

    What they are an experience of, and thereby what they are known as, depends solely on the logical form of truth intrinsic to human thought.
    — Mww

    Do you mean to say that my experience of an emotion and that of a lizard is subjective?
    David Mo

    The experience is, yes. How could it not? You said it yourself....”MY” experience. There are no experiences that don’t belong to somebody.

    And we don’t experience feelings; we experience the objects responsible for the invocation of feelings. Objects give us knowledge of the world and objects also make us feel in ways about the world. Both are nothing but alterations of the subjective condition, but the former has to do with experiences in which causality is the object, whereas in the latter the causality lays in the subject alone, the experience be what it may. In no other way is it possible to account for the differences in feelings between subjects involved in the same experience, while the certainty of congruent knowledge from the same experience is not so questioned between involved subjects. We both know a Picasso when we see it, but you may find it beautiful while I find is a unremarkable mess.
    —————-

    the form of my cognition is something subjective, which does not depend on the known object. This does not seem to me to stand up. It seems that the object I know has something to say about the way I can know it.David Mo

    All objects are always cognized, whether already objects of experience, in which case you are merely remembering them as such, or whether the object has never been experienced at all. We don’t have a system for known objects and a system for unknown objects; we have one system with embedded facilities that enable us to tell the difference. All cognition is subjective and empirical cognition does depend on objects known or unknown. I say empirical cognition, because the other kind, a priori cognitions, depend on the possibility of objects, and the knowledge possible of them iff they exist.

    The object you know has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how you know it, except such object must actually be available for you to know about. The mechanisms for knowing are in your head, that to which the mechanisms are directed is outside your head. How can the external object direct the internal mechanism?

    Nevertheless, it is an age-old question, and apparently still around these days, as to whether we tell objects what they are, or objects tell us what they are. If it is me telling myself I know a thing, it should be me telling the object what it is. Otherwise, the object is telling me what I know which is the same as directing my intellectual capacities, so if I get it wrong, it is necessarily the object’s fault. But no, if the object is telling me what it is, how could I get it wrong, assuming my capacities are operating properly? I couldn’t ever make a mistake in my knowledge, and, I would immediately know that object in its entirety. I would have the thing-in-itself as knowledge, unless the object didn't tell me everything, in which case I couldn’t really say I know about it. Nahhhhh......way too many variables in that scenario, methinks. Parsimony rules, I say.

    Yeah, yeah, I know.....objects absolutely must tell the brain something definitive about themselves, because otherwise there is inexcusable violation of natural law, which is anathema to all manifestations of reason. Enter the metaphysical mind, invented by reason itself, in order to allow natural law but still account for fallible renditions of it. But in that case, it can only be reason responsible for our fallibility.......AARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!

    .....Would-You-Like-To-Play-A-Game........
  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Imagining stems from the brain's ability to form concepts and goals. The goal in the mind is just as imaginary as Santa Claus. It doesn't exist in the world outside of the mind. But it drives the behavior of the body to change current conditions to reach that goal - so that world and mind are in sync - homeostasis.Harry Hindu

    I thought we had reached some sort of an agreement that it might be processes/relationships all the way down, not objects which would imply the "physical vs. non-physical" dichotomy I was trying to stay away from. You might need to re-read our previous exchanges.Harry Hindu

    It does get difficult to remember where each sub-discussion stands in a topic like this one.

    Anyways while I am sympathetic to the idea of getting off the beaten path, I am not sure how to conceptualise a reality of "processes/relations all the way down". It seems to me that both processes and relationships require "things" as a substrate. How would you describe a process without the things it processes? How a relationship without the things it relates?

    If you refer to yourself as a "subject", and others refer to you as an "object", are we both talking about the same thing, or are we talking past each other?Harry Hindu

    They're not the same, or they shouldn't be. If people refer to me as an object, they refer to what they observe. That isn't all I am, or so I believe.

    You don't try to get people to agree with you, and see things how you see them outside of a philosophy forum, like in everyday life? Being on a philosophy forum or not has no bearing on how you use words to communicate ideas about the world.Harry Hindu

    Just because I want to convince people doesn't mean I regard whatever I want to convince them of as an objective truth. I wouldn't claim, for example, that my views on morality are objective. At best they're reasoned.

    Then your mind has no purpose?

    How can "physical" stuff represent "non-physical" stuff, and vice versa, except by causation?
    Harry Hindu

    A purpose? I don't know. But it is important, since whatever it does is represented physically. So something "objectively real" is happening.

    As for representation: think about how a certain wavelength in the EM spectrum represents the colour blue.

    Imagining stems from the brain's ability to form concepts and goals. The goal in the mind is just as imaginary as Santa Claus. It doesn't exist in the world outside of the mind. But it drives the behavior of the body to change current conditions to reach that goal - so that world and mind are in sync - homeostasis.Harry Hindu

    This sounds somewhat similar to the "representation" idea I have been advancing. What you're describing doesn't sound causal to me.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    But, Harry, we do agree on almost everything.Banno

    Can we agree at least that you don't supply adequate responses to other's posts? When you can go back and re-read the post you're quoting as a rebuttal to your response to the post, then your response is severely lacking.

    If I can't get an adequate response, then it is quite difficult to discern exactly what we do and don't agree on.

    But, Harry, we do agree on almost everything.
    — Banno

    Why do you believe that?
    frank
    :rofl:

    Make a list of all your beliefs, from your presidential preferences down to the size of your shoe.Banno
    Here's the new presidential candidate that all Americans are "agreeing" on:
    https://verminsupreme2020.com/
    635852593653484070-Outtakes-AP-A-ELN-NH-Redm.jpg?width=534&height=401&fit=crop
    It looks like we can't even agree how to where our shoes (Yes, that is a boot on his head)
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    My words are about human minds in general because the theory is. Not being the author of the theory, the onus is not on me to defend it, but if the theory is interesting, my understanding of it accords with the interest the theory holds, and an arbitrary (because of all the theories with which I am familiar) persuasion (this one, as reflected in the words I use concerning human minds) arises.Mww
    OK, but there are many theories of mind - some of which contradict each other, or aren't compatible with each other or other things that we know, so why did you use this theory? Why is it interesting?

    First of all.....you must surely understand the vast dissimilarity between thinking and talking about thinking. In that is found the worth of the theory, as the means to describe what the mind is doing when it’s not being talked about.Mww
    No, I don't. How is talking about thinking different from thinking about thinking? How is talking about thinking different from thinking, when it requires thinking about the words to say, and how to say them? It's like you're saying that you cease thinking when talking about thinking.

    Thinking is all that we (our minds) do. I think, therefore I am.

    Words are just other visuals and sounds in our experience. If we can think in colored shapes and sounds (words), then how is that different than thinking in colors and sounds that aren't words? Words just add another layer of thinking - of aboutness.

    Second.....I can think whatever I want, and if you’re interested, thought is nothing but “...cognition by means of conceptions....”, and conceptions “...are based on the spontaneity of thought....”. Understanding is the synthesis of conceptions, so while I am not prohibited from synthesizing body with unextended in thought, the two conceptions so conjoined contradict the principles of causality for empirical objects, which all bodies, per se, must be. The human system absolutely mandates something from which certainty is at least possible, otherwise we have no ground for claiming any knowledge whatsoever, which in humans is the LNC. Therefore, even if I can think a contradiction, I must have in place some means to prevent any experience from ever following from it, in order to preserve my requirement for possible certainty, and by association, knowledge itself. This manifests in the fact that while I can think “unextended body”, I couldn’t possible describe the properties such a thing might be given, which means such a thing is not possible for me to know.

    So to answer your question, there are forms of those conceptions, it is just impossible to cognize anything by the conjunction of them on the one hand, yet serves as justifiable criteria for the valid cognition of things like lines and points on the other.
    Mww
    It seems to me that in order to think of an unextended body, you must have had an experience/knowledge of unextended things and an experience/knowledge of a body prior to thinking it. The mind can only imagine unique amalgams of previously experienced concepts, so there is a causal process at work.

    Rationality is the quality of a rational procedure, the form of it given through its schema, re: sub-categories, instances, iterations, occurrences, etc. I may never know I’m being irrational, if I never understand certain schema do not actually reflect states of affairs in the world. I might be crazy but think I’m doing alright. Why shrinks drive Beemers.

    Normally though, I would be irrational if I insist on knowledge proven to be illicit. If I insist I can demonstrate the reality of an unextended body, for instance. Or, if I insist the interior angles of any triangle cannot sum to greater than 180 degrees.
    Mww

    Not sure what to do with this. Not sure rationality is something to be asserted.Mww
    But you just did, in bold.

    Are we ever irrational? Maybe from another's perspective, but from our perspective we all use the information we have to make decisions. We may be missing information, or have inaccurate information (we were lied to) that an observer has, so it would appear to the observer that we are irrational, when in fact we are simply missing, or inaccurate, information, or as you put it: " if I never understand certain schema do not actually reflect states of affairs in the world.", which is how I defined "subjectivity" - confusing the concepts in your mind for objects/events in the world.
  • BitconnectCarlos
    1.8k


    I'm not trying to say that.
    First of all, you have too much confidence in the absolute exactitude of chess computers. The possibilities for the development of the Sicilian Defense are endless. At one point in the '85 confrontation between Karpov and Kasparov the Whites played Bg2. Experts disagree as to whether this was a basic error or why. Neither do the chess computers. Therefore, if the best solution exists it is not in anyone's brain, artificial or otherwise. We have two options: whether it exists as a mere possibility of a current set of conditions of a conventional symbolic system or it exists in another world.

    I wasn't talking about chess computers being able to solve perfectly for every position on the board. I'm not saying that there's an objectively best first move or best move in every position. I was simply saying that the patterns and geometry inhere within the game whether they are recognized or not.

    Imagine this: A universe where no one understands the 4 move checkmate. White gets the first 3 move sequence a billion times, but he never grasps that he can take on f7 and the game is over. The solution doesn't exist in anyone's mind and therefore.... doesn't exist? But the second someone does grasp it he hasn't discovered a pre-existing possibility (because discovery implies that it was there all along)... he has made it a truth because he, the subject, has grasped it. That's how I would view something to be a 'subjective truth.' It would make sense if I were to ask you what your favorite color or food was.... not about something concerning an external reality like a chessboard.

    We have two options: whether it exists as a mere possibility of a current set of conditions of a conventional symbolic system or it exists in another world.

    A move sequence can certainly exist as a possibility. These possibilities can be evaluated and a solution can be found. It's easier in some cases than others.

    Don't forget the notion of evaluating a position just as it is. A certain position can exist on a board and it is likely experts and laymen will view it differently. It's up to the experts to provide a greater understanding; that's basically chess teaching in a nutshell. The reality exists and the teacher passes it down.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Anyways while I am sympathetic to the idea of getting off the beaten path, I am not sure how to conceptualise a reality of "processes/relations all the way down". It seems to me that both processes and relationships require "things" as a substrate. How would you describe a process without the things it processes? How a relationship without the things it relates?Echarmion
    We already "conceptualise a reality of "processes/relations all the way down"".

    Conceptualizing a reality of "processes/relations all the way down" IS perceiving or imagining processes/relations as objects at different layers/views (the view from on Earth as opposed to the view outside the solar system, or inside an atom).

    Our scientific theories even describe objects as being the relationship between smaller objects, all the way down. Objects are conceptions of processes/relations.

    They're not the same, or they shouldn't be. If people refer to me as an object, they refer to what they observe. That isn't all I am, or so I believe.Echarmion
    What do you consider to be all of you?

    Just because I want to convince people doesn't mean I regard whatever I want to convince them of as an objective truth. I wouldn't claim, for example, that my views on morality are objective. At best they're reasoned.Echarmion
    Saying they are reasoned is the same as saying your views are objective.

    As for representation: think about how a certain wavelength in the EM spectrum represents the colour blue.Echarmion
    This sounds somewhat similar to the "representation" idea I have been advancing. What you're describing doesn't sound causal to me.Echarmion
    How can you say that something represents another without causation? Does the representation exist before or after what it represents, and how does a representation come to represent something else?

    Can you say the opposite, that the colour blue represents a certain wavelength in the EM spectrum, but from a different view?
  • David Mo
    960
    cognition is the result of the logical substitution of the matter of that object into the universal form of objects in general.Mww
    I don't know what this means. You know something if you have an idea about it that you can rationally justify. Knowledge differs from belief because belief cannot be rationally justified. I don't know what matter and universal form have to do here. Is this Aristotelianism? Does this mean that to understand something you have to explain it in terms of a universal law?
    It is generally accepted that knowledge of the objects of this world has to do with experience. This has to be precised, but it is the starting point.

    it must adhere to the LNC in order to for a truth claim to be validMww
    Since I don't know what the LNC is I don't know what you're talking about.

    Haven’t you ever just sat there and thought about stuff, cognizing this and that one right after another, actually quite endlessly, without telling anybody about it?Mww
    Language is not just talking to someone. It's talking to yourself also. According to psychologists, when you are "sitting in an armchair" thinking your mind works in terms of words and images. Thoughts don't exist without that. Not to mention that our speculation from a couch depend on a previous history of socialized verbal contacts.
    I don't know what this has to do with the objectivity or subjectivity of our thoughts. I am afraid we are wandering.

    And we don’t experience feelings; we experience the objects responsible for the invocation of feelings.Mww
    I suggest you go to Google Scholar and search for "experience of emotions". I suppose you will change your mind about this. It is totally different to see a lizard than to be afraid of a lizard. The difference between a direct complement (that which is seen) and a circumstantial complement (that which causes an emotion). Because the lizard exists outside the mind (as a thing or phenomenon) and the emotion does not.
    That both knowledge and emotion contain a subjective part and a reference to an object does not mean that the emotion is not experienced or that there are no important differences between one thing and the other.

    The object you know has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how you know it, except such object must actually be available for you to know about. The mechanisms for knowing are in your head, that to which the mechanisms are directed is outside your head. How can the external object direct the internal mechanism?Mww
    It would be a miracle if something generated exclusively in my head allowed me to manipulate objects outside of my head. And here's the thing about knowledge. Which is not mere speculation but an effective way of moving in the world.
    The link between object and subject is the praxis.

    Otherwise, the object is telling me what I know which is the same as directing my intellectual capacities, so if I get it wrong, it is necessarily the object’s fault. But no, if the object is telling me what it is, how could I get it wrong, assuming my capacities are operating properly?Mww
    False problem: the object does not dictate the knowledge. Knowledge is the interaction between object and subject. The mistake is the disagreement between them

    eah, yeah, I know.....objects absolutely must tell the brain something definitive about themselvesMww
    Nobody thinks that way.
    .
  • David Mo
    960
    A move sequence can certainly exist as a possibility.BitconnectCarlos
    Ah well. I thought you were defending platonism.

    The reality exists and the teacher passes it down.BitconnectCarlos
    No. The future does not exist as reality but as possibility. Sartre called it the nothingness that is within being. It is beautiful.
  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Our scientific theories even describe objects as being the relationship between smaller objects, all the way down. Objects are conceptions of processes/relations.Harry Hindu

    But then how do we know there are processes behind the objects?

    What do you consider to be all of you?Harry Hindu

    It would certainly have to include my internal thoughts, the way I feel about things etc. I am not convinced that is all physical stuff.

    .
    Saying they are reasoned is the same as saying your views are objective.Harry Hindu

    I disagree. Morality has nothing to do with objects. It's about relations between subjects. "Objective morality" is a category error.

    How can you say that something represents another without causation? Does the representation exist before or after what it represents, and how does a representation come to represent something else?

    Can you say the opposite, that the colour blue represents a certain wavelength in the EM spectrum, but from a different view?
    Harry Hindu

    Yes, you can say the opposite. That's one major difference to causal relationship. Causality is unidirectional, representation is not.

    As to how it works, there is no before or after, since those are temporal and therefore causal relations. Green is a certain wavelength (or spectrum), and that wavelength is green.

    On the one side, you have the entire physical process: light is emitted, parts of it are reflected and strike the retina, electronic signals are emitted, a pattern of brain activity results. On the other hand you have "green-ness".
  • Mww
    4.6k
    Thinking is all that we (our minds) do.Harry Hindu

    Exactly. From which it follows necessarily that talking is not something our minds do. We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking, hence the origins and manifestations of thinking and of talking are necessarily completely distinct and separate, even if they are under some conditions related.
    ————-

    I think, therefore I am.Harry Hindu

    Correct. “I” think, therefore “I” am. That which thinks, exists thinking. Nothing more, nothing less may be derived from such problematic subjective idealism, for its negation, that which does not think does not exist, is absurd. The Good Bishop’s ultimate defeat.
    ————-

    But you just did, in bold.Harry Hindu

    Hmmm......did I? Did I assert some rationality, or did I merely exhibit a quality represented by that which is asserted, from which some judgement of yours with respect to rationality, is facilitated? When I tell you about a thing rationally, I am not telling you anything whatsoever about rationality itself. Exhibiting it, yes; asserting it, no. You witness rationality, or the absence of it, and judge accordingly.
    ————-

    Are we ever irrational? Maybe from another's perspective.....Harry Hindu

    That’s what I’m sayin’, yep. Although, I think it’s possible to realize myself having been irrational, which is just me judging my own thinking introspectively.
  • Mww
    4.6k
    objects absolutely must tell the brain something definitive about themselves
    — Mww
    Nobody thinks that way.
    David Mo

    Yeah....how ‘bout that.

    Psychologists??? Google scholar??? Farging PRACTICE, fercrissakes!?!?!?!?

    I’m done here.
  • Pantagruel
    3.3k
    hence the origins and manifestations of thinking and of talking are necessarily completely distinct and separate, even if they are under some conditions related.Mww

    Someone better tell Jurgen Habermas this, because his theory of communicative action explicitly evaluates the emergence of rational thought in the context of the evolution of socialized communications.
  • BitconnectCarlos
    1.8k


    The reality exists and the teacher passes it down.
    — BitconnectCarlos
    No. The future does not exist as reality but as possibility. Sartre called it the nothingness that is within being. It is beautiful.

    I wasn't talking about potential futures here in terms of exploring potential variations. I was talking about an evaluation of the actual position (i.e. evaluating the board as it is.) This is a crucial skill because even if you have deep foresight into potential variations if you can't evaluate the position afterwards it's kind of useless. A layman and an expert will evaluate a position differently. Chess teaching is often the expert helping the layman grasp a higher version of that reality (what's really going on on the board.)
  • Cidat
    128
    From my point of view, the only thing one can be absolutely sure of is that the present exists. What that present constitutes, however, is a matter of speculation.
  • Pantagruel
    3.3k
    the present existsCidat

    "There is thought now" is an updated version of Cogito Ergo Sum.
  • David Mo
    960
    Farging PRACTICE, fercrissakesMww
    What language is this?
  • deletedusercb
    1.7k
    For all I know maybe this is the past. and then to come at it another way, the word 'present' carries with it, I think, the idea of past present future otherwise it is contentless. I don't know if that's all the case.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    But then how do we know there are processes behind the objects?Echarmion
    How do we know? This seems like a silly question. It is how we describe the world based on our observations. We even invent objects as processes. Think about a watch - an object that is a process of time-keeping. Would a watch be a watch without a particular relationship of gears and springs? Would you be a body without a particular relationship of organs? A solar system without the relationship of the sun, planets, gravity, etc.?

    It would certainly have to include my internal thoughts, the way I feel about things etc. I am not convinced that is all physical stuff.Echarmion
    You keep using this term, "physical". What does it mean?

    It seems to me that all that matters it that it is causal, not "physical" or "internal". If there is a causal relationship between your thoughts and my observation of your body, then I don't understand why we need to use this terminology that you insist on using.

    I disagree. Morality has nothing to do with objects. It's about relations between subjects. "Objective morality" is a category error.Echarmion
    Then you didn't reason your way to some moral conclusion. To claim that you used reason is to claim that you abandoned your subjectivity in favor of objectivity. I agree that there is no such thing as an objective morality, but that simply means that there is no way to reason one's way to some moral conclusion. Any moral conclusion would be based on one's own perspective, needs and goals, which means that it would be subjective.

    Yes, you can say the opposite. That's one major difference to causal relationship. Causality is unidirectional, representation is not.

    As to how it works, there is no before or after, since those are temporal and therefore causal relations. Green is a certain wavelength (or spectrum), and that wavelength is green.

    On the one side, you have the entire physical process: light is emitted, parts of it are reflected and strike the retina, electronic signals are emitted, a pattern of brain activity results. On the other hand you have "green-ness".
    Echarmion
    In a deterministic universe, effects represent their causes and causes represent their effects. Time can go either way. It is how we make predictions. If a particular effect necessarily follows a particular cause, then from different views in time, causes can represent their effects and vice versa.

    The last part seems to be a result of your dualistic thinking. You keep using these incoherent terms, "physical", etc. You keep referring to objects as "physical" when I said that objects are how the mind conceives of processes/relationships. So you keep referring to mental phenomenon as "physical", yet assert that those things are "external". Objects do not exist out in the world, except in other minds. They are mental things that participate in the process of mind. What is external and internal (all the way down) is process. Mind is the process of representing a world that is all processes, as objects.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    Thinking is all that we (our minds) do.
    — Harry Hindu

    Exactly. From which it follows necessarily that talking is not something our minds do. We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking, hence the origins and manifestations of thinking and of talking are necessarily completely distinct and separate, even if they are under some conditions related.
    Mww
    That's not how it seems to me at all. If you can think without talking, but can't talk without thinking, then that tells me that thinking is fundamental, and that talking is a kind/manifestation of thinking.

    Hmmm......did I? Did I assert some rationality, or did I merely exhibit a quality represented by that which is asserted, from which some judgement of yours with respect to rationality, is facilitated? When I tell you about a thing rationally, I am not telling you anything whatsoever about rationality itself. Exhibiting it, yes; asserting it, no. You witness rationality, or the absence of it, and judge accordingly.Mww
    Exhibiting it is the same as asserting it. How else do you show the existence of rationality. I would ask for the same type of evidence for the existence of God, wouldn't you?
  • Pantagruel
    3.3k
    But then how do we know there are processes behind the objects?Echarmion

    Everything from a purely physical standpoint is a process. Particles cling together for finite durations then proceed on their way, in the "direction" of whatever impelled them to begin with plus the sum of interactions. It is only because we have a psychological affinity for a specific spatio-temporal scale (the observable universe) that we preferentially identify things as "things". Change the spatio-temporal scale slightly and some things begin to look more like processes....
  • Mww
    4.6k
    We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking (...)....
    — Mww
    That's not how it seems to me at all. If you can think without talking, but can't talk without thinking, then that tells me that thinking is fundamental, and that talking is a kind/manifestation of thinking.
    Harry Hindu

    Bullseye!!! Remember that definition, “thinking is cognition by means of conceptions”? Images are the schema of conceptions, but we cannot communicate via images, so we invented words to represent our conceptions. Think first, speak later.
    ————-

    Exhibiting it is the same as asserting it.Harry Hindu

    When I do 20 pushups, have I asserted (told, mentioned, conversed with respect to) anything about my strength? When I tell you I like football, have I exhibited (manifested, displayed, shown acquaintance with) anything to do with football?

    How else do you show the existence of rationality.Harry Hindu

    That which exists, exists necessarily, and its negation is impossible. That which exists cannot not exist.

    Rationality cannot be an existence because rationality does not exist necessarily insofar as its negation is possible. Rationality can not exist when irrationality does.

    Existence is a subcategory of quantity, rationality is a subcategory of quality. Asking how much rationality we have is senseless in juxtaposition to asking in whether or not understanding is properly conditioned by reason.

    Philosophically, the quality of rationality is demonstrated by the accordance of pure reason with possible experience. Or, if you prefer, from altogether more mundane point of view, the accordance of logical inference with observation.

    Piece-a-cake, trust me.
  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Everything from a purely physical standpoint is a process. Particles cling together for finite durations then proceed on their way, in the "direction" of whatever impelled them to begin with plus the sum of interactions. It is only because we have a psychological affinity for a specific spatio-temporal scale (the observable universe) that we preferentially identify things as "things". Change the spatio-temporal scale slightly and some things begin to look more like processes....Pantagruel

    Right, but note that your description of the process is based on particles. So the particles ("things") seem to be required to have a notion of a process.
  • Pantagruel
    3.3k
    Right, but note that your description of the process is based on particles. So the particles ("things") seem to be required to have a notion of a process.Echarmion

    Yes, I used the term particles consistent with the accepted model of physics. It in no way constitutes or represents an atomistic ontology. Technically, particles are instantiations of underlying fields. I was expecting this response however.
  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Yes, I used the term particles consistent with the accepted model of physics. It in no way constitutes or represents an atomistic ontology. Technically, particles are instantiations of underlying fields. I was expecting this response however.Pantagruel

    I do know that this is the case, but are fields "processes"?
  • Pantagruel
    3.3k
    I do know that this is the case, but are fields "processes"?Echarmion

    I would say that the manifestation of particles is a process for sure.
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