'cause I was writing in a hurry. Fixed.

The degree to which we agree will necessarily be limited by the fact that our approaches are completely different. You seem to be concerned with what we are justified in saying based on inferences to the best or "most plausible" explanation. Your approach is more in the positivist, objectivist, analytic mode, which concerns itself with being correct or right, where that means what we say is both justified and true. You would call that knowledge, I think. It is firmly based on the notion of correspondnece. — Janus

That's yet another impressive assessment, especially given the appearances and all. ;) You've done quite well inferring influences.

I, on the other hand, think correspondence is fine when it comes to empirical, inter-subjectively check-able knowledge, but that's as far as it goes. For me knowledge in the important sense is not something that needs to be checked and justified. It is more like the Biblical sense of knowing; the knowing of familiarity. — Janus

My attention is arrested by the phrase "in the important sense"...

Surely it's important to form and/or hold true belief about ourselves and the everyday events that we find ourselves within, right?

I mean can we be knowingly familiar with 'X' if it is the case that we hold false belief about 'X'?

What you would call knowledge I would call belief. — Janus

Well, in the JTB sense of knowledge, sure... I would as well. I would point out, however, that it's not just any belief. Not all belief are on equal footing.

So in that sense I can say I know the tree, but I do not know the public availability of the tree, or the ultimate explanation for it. — Janus

So why talk like that? I suspect that the underlying problem is with word choice. "The public availability of the tree"...

What is that? I mean is it comprised of something? Is public availability something that can belong to a tree? I think not.

We both know that the tree is publicly available. I mean, we can both point it out. We can both act upon it. It's a part of our experience. That's what being publicly available means.

My approach is more in line with the critical, phenomenological mode of inquiry. I am not concerned with being right in some intersubjectively established or establish-able sense, but with gaining enriching insight into experience. — Janus

I reject phenomenological frameworks for a simple reason. They're wrong. That's not to say that they're entirely wrong. It is to say that they lead to either incoherence or absurdity. They assume that we do not see the tree. They claim that we all see something different. I say that we all see something differently.

It is worth pointing out that enriching insight into experience is not incompatible with well grounded true belief, critical thinking, and/or analytical approaches. To quite the contrary, I suspect that the latter is crucial to actually obtaining the former as contrasted with/to mistakenly believing that one has acquired enriching insight into experience when one actually has not.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. It doesn't have to be either enriching insight or critical/analytical thinking. It can be both, and you have to be able to check(somehow) in order to know that you're not mistakenly believing that you have insight when you actually don't. Reality has a way of imposing itself upon us in uncomfortable ways when we have things wrong.

Knowledge, in the sense of the positivistic, objectivistic conception is great for science, technology and everyday practical matters, but that externalized mode will never tell us about the truly important things such as what love, goodness, beauty or truth is. — Janus

I think that you're attempting to stuff well grounded true belief into much too small a container. Again, it doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be both, that we form/hold well grounded true belief and that we can learn about things such as what love, goodness, beauty, and truth is. We can also do that while continuing to experience the more visceral things in life... the familiarity you speak of. If I may use a bit of poetic license, a balanced combination of the two requires understanding both, and allows us to disengage from the cerebral and re-engage into the visceral.

As an aside, you may be interested to know that I firmly believe Kant's CI is the very best measure of what counts as good/moral thought/belief and behaviour.

I have no doubt the thing before me is a tree — Janus

It is not doubted; it is certain. That's a start.

Here's my Reader's Digest history of epistemology. Descartes and Spinoza tried to find an algorithmic approach; it didn't work. Kant said that was because there was a bit of the world about which we could not speak. Despite that those who followed him told us all about it. A bunch of folk in the USA said we could only approach it asymptotically. Russell and his friends tried to deduce it all from atoms. Wittgenstein showed that that was a bad idea, and that because we are doing different things, any one algorithmic approach would be insufficient.

Then came Janus, who is certain there is a tree, but not what the tree is. Eve though the tree is made of branches and leaves and carbon and protons and neutrons and is part of a garden and present in sculpture and art,

we can never penetrate in an objectivist way the ultimate mystery of experience and intelligibility. — Janus

Then came Janus, who is certain there is a tree, but not what the tree is. Eve though the tree is made of branches and leaves and carbon and protons and neutrons and is part of a garden and present in sculpture and art,

we can never penetrate in an objectivist way the ultimate mystery of experience and intelligibility. — Janus — Banno

Sure, according to what we see, the tree is composed of branches, leaves, bark and so on, and according to scientific observations and understanding, carbon, protons and atoms. All that tells us nothing about how it is possible for us to experience all that. The scientific picture can't help us here because it is limited to scientific applications, as "one algorithmic approach (that would) be insufficient".

The final character in your short story also acknowledged as much.

Actually, I have no idea what point you trying to make, and I strongly suspect that you don't either.

All that tells us nothing about how it is possible for us to experience all that. — Janus

But theories of light and perception do tell us about how it is possible to experience trees.

You nod at something more. What is the something more?

However, the term "failing" indicates to me that you think that I am unaware of that fact; as if I'm not drawing the distinction between thoughts and thinking inadvertently. It's actually intentional.

I'm impressed with the fact you noted that. Kudos! — creativesoul

Thanks! (I think).

I gladly welcome you to join my thread - which is about that - here. I suspect it may be fun. Certainly more funner than lately... — creativesoul

OK, I'll check it out when I have a little more time. Then maybe I'll discover why you deliberately fail to make what I understand to be a crucial distinction. :)

Who is doing the perceiving? The objective understanding of the process of perception tells us nothing about how it could give rise to the most real thing we know: subjective experience. It's easy enough to see how the process of perception could produce stimulus and response, as with for example, thermostats and computers, but the genesis of subjective experience remains, as opposed to mere stimuli, an intractable mystery. No one, that I am aware of, has explained it; although plenty have tried to explain it away.

My attention is arrested by the phrase "in the important sense"...

Surely it's important to form and/or hold true belief about ourselves and the everyday events that we find ourselves within, right?

I mean can we be knowingly familiar with 'X' if it is the case that we hold false belief about 'X'? — creativesoul

What I meant by "important sense" is that it is the more important sense for me. I tend to think of philosophy in the older way of its consisting in "love of wisdom". For me wisdom consists, not in accumulating knowledge, but in learning to live well, and I see this as an entirely personal matter, between me and God, or between me and life if you like a more secular take on it (for me they are the same). It's great to share ideas with others, but my observations tell me that people generally believe what they want believe; find convincing what they want to find convincing, myself included of course.

So, it is navigating through those self-deceptive tendencies that we all have, while never failing to recognize that we can never be certain of anything, that is what wisdom consists in, for me. Sure it's necessary to listen to others and all, but personal experience must be the ultimate guide in this. And different people's personal experiences differ as much as their viewpoints do. That's why I'm not much concerned at all about inter-subjective corroboration when it comes to philosophy. I actually think it is fatal to descend into that pit of vipers.

So, in answer to your question about "the importance of holding true belief...", I think it is important to find the views that help us to live the best way, This may well equate to not deceiving ourselves, and I think it is important to try to recognize where we might be deceiving ourselves, but ultimately it is quality of life that matters above all else; and being fallible creatures, how could we ever be sure about exactly where our self-deceptions lie, in any case?

It is worth pointing out that enriching insight into experience is not incompatible with well grounded true belief, critical thinking, and/or analytical approaches. To quite the contrary, I suspect that the latter is crucial to actually obtaining the former as contrasted with/to mistakenly believing that one has acquired enriching insight into experience when one actually has not. — creativesoul

I disagree with this, because according to my experience the most enriching insights: those afforded by the arts and religion, have really nothing to do with "well grounded true belief, critical thinking, and/or analytical approaches". The latter is not "crucial" to the former at all. And it is impossible to "mistakenly believe" that one has acquired enriching insight into experience if one experiences enrichment; it isn't a matter of justified belief at all. Again you are vainly (I would say) trying to look at from the outside what must be lived from the inside. Different people gain enrichment in different ways; so inter-subjective corroboration will again be no use here.

The objective understanding of the process of perception tells us nothing about how it could give rise to the most real thing we know: subjective experience. — Janus

The key is that the self arises within perception. It is part of the whole act. Perception involves making a self~world discrimination. So the self and the world co-arise as ideas in a complementary way - a symmetry-breaking.

Any phrasing of the situation which posits an experiencing self is already presuming part of what must in fact arise as part of the perceptual act. A self-image has to be formed in response to a determination of what is the not-self - both generally in a long-run conceptual fashion and immediately right in every here and now moment.

So consciousness is a strongly felt state of contrast where a "self" stands in sharp distinction to "the world". We don't need to reify the self as then a thing. It is no more than the complementary part of a single (sign relation/epistemic cut) process.

A bunch of folk in the USA said we could only approach it asymptotically. — Banno

Heh. The right epistemic algorithm has been discovered. It is the dichotomy or dialectic. The "truth" is approached asymptotically in two directions. Or rather it emerges within the bounds of two complementary limits.

So as I just described, self and world act as complementary bounds. We become selves in the world to the degree we experience this strong sense of separation.

Remember how you agreed a point of view has to have two ends. To point at something out there, there must be the "other" that this very relation points back at. So if pointing at the "world" is interpreted as pointing at "hard recalcitrant fact", then looking at this same deictic relation the other way will reveal its complementary other - the maximally flexible and intentional "self".

We become subjective beings to the degree we can perform the perceptual act that points towards everything else in experience that can be labelled the objective "other".

So yes. It is really important that folk seem to be able to make a reliable self~world discrimination in almost any circumstance they encounter. It becomes routinised perceptual habit. It becomes locked into common language.

If they can't perform a quick and clear labelling, then their self doesn't exist as much as the world doesn't exist.

And that is what we see in dreams and other confused states where self and world blur - become vague.

So the basic epistemic algorithm has been found. It never really went missing. It is the logic of the dichotomy. Everything definite is the product of a developmental symmetry-breaking. For one half of a dyad to exist, that definiteness must be underwritten by its production of its "other".

Self and world are the "two directions" of the one experience-sharpening act. That is what is "revolutionary" in a modern epistemology like pragmatism.

I am taking more about the raw feeling of subjective experience, of being in a living world, and yet of being something more than merely that, too. How this is given is the "intractable mystery", and to be honest, nothing you said in response to me solves, or dissolves, that mystery in the least; at least not for me. I really can't see how any explanation "from the outside" could ever solve that mystery, or dissolve that profound sense of mystery. And I'm happy about that; why would I want to dissolve the greatest richness of life, and reduce it all to banal explanations, even if that were possible?

I am taking more about the raw feeling of subjective experience, of being in a living world, and yet of being something more than merely that, too. — Janus

I realise that. But epistemology has to be founded on some logical abstraction if it is going to "see" what is going on "objectively".

How this is given is the "intractable mystery", and to be honest, nothing you said in response to me solves, or dissolves, that mystery in the least; — Janus

Well the objective explanation is that your belief in your qualia is a socially-constructed point of view. It required philosophical training for you to come to frame your experiences of "the world" this way. And as I argued, this "coming to frame" is a double-edged business. You must produce a particular heightened sense of "you-ness" to have this heightened sense of "apartness" in which qualia are "subjective facts of the world".

So how I account for things should be deflationary. But they can't be for you while you take "you" for granted as being already always there, and not merely part of a co-construction.

I really can't see how any explanation "from the outside" could ever solve that mystery, or dissolve that profound sense of mystery. — Janus

Yep. If the inside is taken to just brutely exist, then there will always be that mystery.

I can tell you about pragmatism's epistemology in which the internal~external dichotomy is a distinction that must form as a mutual symmetry-breaking, but because you don't accept the logical force of that kind of emergentist ontology, your thinking leaves you no choice but to compute a mystery here.

Of course I don't completely deny mystery. There is still a fundamental issue when we ask the question "why anything?". So if I am talking about a triadic modelling relation as the way to minimise any mystery concerning "self", "world" and "qualia" (or interpretant, representamen and sign), then there is still the fundamental mystery of "why the existence of a modelling relation?".

However it is important to epistemology that the usual dualistic mind/world, explanatory gap, hard problem, causal issue has in fact been minimised.

If both insides and outsides must co-arise simply as a matter of logic (see Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form for instance), then the great Hard Problem mystery stands revealed as a socially-constructed mindset - the belief in a mind that actually stands causally apart from the world.

Idealism makes the existence of the world problematic. Realism makes the existence of the mind problematic.

Pragmatism sees mind and world as two aspects of the one irreducibly complex relation. The self exists, for "us", only to the degree the world exists, for "us". Which should give a clearer idea of who the foundational "us" really is ... a state of undifferentiated vagueness when you objectively get down to it. :)

why would I want to dissolve the greatest richness of life, and reduce it all to banal explanations, even if that were possible? — Janus

Again, no problem.

If selfhood is a construction, and its "world" is other to that, then you can see why building up a richly-felt world, one full of personal meaning, would be a natural desire.

You are just saying you don't want to reduce your rich world to banal accounts, like scientific equations. I could equally say that revealing the complexity of everyday experience to be the product of powerful and elegant constraints of complete generality is something perfectly marvellous to behold.

I don't think the beauty of rationality or mathematics stops me enjoying sitting in the garden or hosting a big family gathering. They are complementary rather than incompatible.

So the problem may be that you can tolerate only one image of "the world" - the one that you would describe as maximally subjective. And you would oppose that to the aridity of the maximally objective.

My own approach is saying that our actual "world" ought to be anchored in terms of these two extreme views. They should be the poles of our experience. And thus where we "live" is a spectrum of possibilities that arises in-between. We can move between the immersed subjective and the dry objective "at will".

People do that anyway if they have a normal rounded development. Society understands it is a good and pragmatic thing to be formally educated and also to enjoy life.

I am just providing the epistemic account which makes the case objectively. I am explaining how it can happen that we can make choices in our current mental style, smoothly moving between philosphical argument and just "being in the moment", for example.

If we didn't form these two poles of being for ourselves, we couldn't really be "selves" with that kind of choice of when and how to move.

But epistemology has to be founded on some logical abstraction if it is going to "see" what is going on "objectively". — apokrisis

Well the objective explanation is that your belief in your qualia is a socially-constructed point of view. — apokrisis

This is where we diverge. Sure, the way I conceive of my self (in other words the mode of "my belief in my qualia" is produced in socially constructed terms, but the raw feel of subjective experience (obviously prior to being conceived of as such) is not; it is the inexplicable foundation from which everything is perceived, and upon which everything else is constructed.

An objective account or explanation cannot be given of that, it must be directly felt, and then it cannot be denied or reduced to something else. Sometimes the arts and religion do good jobs of evoking that dimension of feeling, and opening fresh insights into it. But these insights cannot be explained in objective terms either, just as the meaning of a musical piece, a painting or a poem cannot. You seem to be losing one half of the human experience by attempting to reduce everything to scientific explanations (even if those explanations themselves are purportedly non-reductionist ;) ).

I "tolerate" both "images of the world"; but I say each has its place, and that it is not desirable that one should encroach upon the other. Mysticism should stay out of science, and science out of mysticism; and philosophy should be large enough to deal with both.

Sure, the way I conceive of my self (in other words the mode of "my belief in my qualia" is produced in socially constructed terms, but the raw feel of subjective experience (obviously prior to being conceived of as such) is not... — Janus

Sure, there is something that in the end (ie: in the deconstructed limit) there is something which it is like to be you experiencing. But it ain't direct. It is semiotically constructed all the way down to the "raw feelings".

So my point was that qualia are a product of philosophy. They are socially constructed in that they are a learnt way to conceive of experience.

The direct realist does it too. If he sees a green tree, that is how he categorises the experience. He just sees the tree that is there. And he sees that it is green.

And now you have learn that there is a psychological process to experience. You have learnt that what you are really looking at is an appearance. An image. A mental qualia. And you call seeing this the direct thing. You just look and you see the tree is an image, its greenness a quality that occurs only within "awareness".

So you have adopted another socially correct attitude. When you see the green tree, its greenness is a generic quality. It can be abstracted and thought about as a particular hue. The question can arise if I am seeing it too in just the same way. Yes, we both say we see a green tree, but what would we say if we could do the generic thing of comparing our perceptual states, comparing our direct beholding of the qualia in question.

Claiming to see your appearances directly is as bad as claiming to see the world directly. It is only due to a certain history of philosophy and psychological science that you conceive of "raw feelings" as something you ought to be able to see that way.

Now qualia do appear hard, definite, factual, when conceived of appropriately. They answer to a requirement of worldly invariance. They seem as undeniable as the real world that their social-construction might seem to deny.

Qualia realism, or appearance realism, is as bad as any realism. It is making an object of what you intended to be the subjective. Subjectivity escapes the grasp of direct qualia realism because it is a philosophy of mind that fails to talk about the matching problem of how a self arises to be the beholder, to be the interpretant, to be the point of view.

Object-making is half the process of organising experience. Subject-making is the other half. Given that irreducilbly complex relation at the heart of experience, talking about raw feelings and direct experience of qualia is failing to get to grips with the actual issue of subjectivity.

I don't have time to respond in detail, but to go straight to the point: all that you say is to me just another abstract story. compared to lived experience. You might say that I don't really experience thw workd directly, but that thought is pale and unconvincing in comparison to the fact they I do experience my perceptions of and feelings for things as being utterly direct; right here, right now.

...all that you say is to me just another abstract story. compared to lived experience. — Janus

But you say both that your experience (of the world? of qualia? of appearances?) is direct AND that that fact is an intractable mystery.

So perhaps I find your "intractable mystery" to be an equally pale and unconvincing thought. And it is certainly part of an abstract story you want to tell. You are not escaping your own line of criticism.

What I meant by "important sense" is that it is the more important sense for me. I tend to think of philosophy in the older way of its consisting in "love of wisdom". For me wisdom consists, not in accumulating knowledge, but in learning to live well, and I see this as an entirely personal matter, between me and God, or between me and life if you like a more secular take on it (for me they are the same). It's great to share ideas with others, but my observations tell me that people generally believe what they want believe; find convincing what they want to find convincing, myself included of course.

So, it is navigating through those self-deceptive tendencies that we all have, while never failing to recognize that we can never be certain of anything, that is what wisdom consists in, for me. Sure it's necessary to listen to others and all, but personal experience must be the ultimate guide in this. And different people's personal experiences differ as much as their viewpoints do. That's why I'm not much concerned at all about inter-subjective corroboration when it comes to philosophy. I actually think it is fatal to descend into that pit of vipers.

So, in answer to your question about "the importance of holding true belief...", I think it is important to find the views that help us to live the best way, This may well equate to not deceiving ourselves, and I think it is important to try to recognize where we might be deceiving ourselves, but ultimately it is quality of life that matters above all else; and being fallible creatures, how could we ever be sure about exactly where our self-deceptions lie, in any case? — Janus

Well, for starters we need to realize that the very notion of 'self-deception' is self-contradictory. It doesn't really make any sense when placed under careful scrutiny. I mean think about it differently for a minute. What sense does it make to say that we deliberately set out in order to trick ourselves into believing something that we don't? It's not even possible. It sheds light on the matter to realize that deception requires intent, whereas our being mistaken does not. We deceive others, not ourselves. Others deceive us, not themselves. We can all be mistaken. We cannot possibly come to realize and/or recognize that we are mistaken, or what we are mistaken about all by ourselves.

If one sets out with the deliberate intention of figuring out what they're mistaken about, they must consult others. That's why we should not only be quite concerned about talking with others, but we should also recognize that there can be tremendous value in it. Enrichment.

So, to answer the question about how to figure out where our self-deception lies, aside from experiencing a sudden reality-check, consulting an other is exactly what you need to do in order to become aware of what you're mistaken about. Describing that experience in terms of descending into a pit of vipers almost guarantees that you'll not be in a mindset conducive to changing bits of your worldview that are mistaken. That bit about vipers... I would be willing to bet my life that it was entirely adopted.

...the way I conceive of my self... ...is produced in socially constructed terms, but the raw feel of... ...experience (obviously prior to being conceived of as such) is not; it is the inexplicable foundation from which everything is perceived, and upon which everything else is constructed. — Janus

The way we conceive of ourselves is existentially contingent upon language. The raw feel of experience is not. How can we separate the two via language use?

It is worth pointing out that enriching insight into experience is not incompatible with well grounded true belief, critical thinking, and/or analytical approaches. To quite the contrary, I suspect that the latter is crucial to actually obtaining the former as contrasted with/to mistakenly believing that one has acquired enriching insight into experience when one actually has not.
— creativesoul

I disagree with this, because according to my experience the most enriching insights: those afforded by the arts and religion, have really nothing to do with "well grounded true belief, critical thinking, and/or analytical approaches". The latter is not "crucial" to the former at all. And it is impossible to "mistakenly believe" that one has acquired enriching insight into experience if one experiences enrichment; it isn't a matter of justified belief at all. Again you are vainly (I would say) trying to look at from the outside what must be lived from the inside. Different people gain enrichment in different ways; so inter-subjective corroboration will again be no use here. — Janus

But how would you feel if I showed you
That there is so much more I could say
About urging some care when we view
Others through the filter of adopted way

You see those who lived long before us
Our teachers who taught yesterday
Shared with us their understanding
An experience no one can trade

Like the joyful laughter that love only brings
Things that our words cannot seem to say
Hugs and kisses forever imprinted
In our hearts way back then and today

We know their intentions were only
To help us by showing the way
A path to live life to the fullest
But sometimes belief it just fades away

Not as though stolen by darkness
For not all things different are bad
But rather a fading of misunderstanding
That was sewn by the pure love they had

If my words here are gentle within you
Then you know my intention to raise
As little disturbance a raindrop or two
A ripple does not necessarily betray

...according to my experience the most enriching insights: those afforded by the arts and religion, have really nothing to do with "well grounded true belief, critical thinking, and/or analytical approaches". The latter is not "crucial" to the former at all. And it is impossible to "mistakenly believe" that one has acquired enriching insight into experience if one experiences enrichment; it isn't a matter of justified belief at all. Again you are vainly (I would say) trying to look at from the outside what must be lived from the inside. Different people gain enrichment in different ways; so inter-subjective corroboration will again be no use here. — Janus

Are you still certain of this?

;)

It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be both.

But you say both that your experience (of the world? of qualia? of appearances?) is direct AND that that fact is an intractable mystery. — apokrisis

No, I didn't say that. I said that our experience seems direct. We cannot be wrong about its seeming direct. And I said that the question as to whether it *really* is direct is uninteresting to me. I would add that if you take as a question about what is absolutely the case it is an incoherent question, and as I said earlier an answer either way can be reasonably given depending on how you want to look at it.

Speaking of qualia I would that qualia (what things are like to us) just is seeming. What something is like for us, for example experience being experienced as direct, is just how it seems. Also I would not agree that I am telling and abstract story; I am telling you directly how things seem to me.

Well, for starters we need to realize that the very notion of 'self-deception' is self-contradictory. It doesn't really make any sense when placed under careful scrutiny. I mean think about it differently for a minute. What sense does it make to say that we deliberately set out in order to trick ourselves into believing something that we don't? — creativesoul

I haven't said we do it deliberately. Generally we would not be aware that we are doing it, but we can come to see it. I know this from experience.

If one sets out with the deliberate intention of figuring out what they're mistaken about, they must consult others. — creativesoul

Sure I read books and listen to others; and have gained a lot from doing so; I have never denied that. On the other hand I have participated in these forums long enough to know that almost nobody changes their existential beliefs on account of someone else's rational arguments. For sure others may point out things I haven't considered; it happens all the time, but that is something different.

No one has pointed out anything to me, in this thread at least, that I have found convincing enough to seriously question my own intuitions about my own experience. My own experience is the final arbiter. And I think that is how it should be with everyone; they should listen not to authorities or rational arguments, but to their own conscience to try to discover whether they are deceiving themselves in any way. I'm talking here about existential understanding of course, not about science or other academic disciplines.

So, to answer the question about how to figure out where our self-deception lies, aside from experiencing a sudden reality-check, consulting an other is exactly what you need to do in order to become aware of what you're mistaken about. Describing that experience in terms of descending into a pit of vipers almost guarantees that you'll not be in a mindset conducive to changing bits of your worldview that are mistaken. That bit about vipers... I would be willing to bet my life that it was entirely adopted. — creativesoul

You keep distorting what I am saying through your own lens and thus failing to understand. Of course interactions with others can give "reality checks" particularly if your self-deceptions are in regard to personal relations. That's not what I was talking about at all, though. I don't want to repeat myself, so if you go back and read carefully what I have said you will hopefully understand what I am talking about. If not, that's fine; I'm not here to convince anyone to see the world the way I do, but merely to share the way I see the world and to hear how others do. As I have said several times what I am referring to does not fall into the province of inter-subjective corroboration at all.

I haven't anywhere suggested that the fact that you are interested in positivist or objectivist approaches would preclude you from having a creative side. All I have said is that I am not primarily interested in such approaches, and I definitely don't think they are appropriate or useful when it comes to understanding one's lived experience (apart form the obvious benefit of analytic skills; I mean look at Husserl!). The fact that you said earlier that phenomenological systems are "wrong" or words to that effect, shows that you do not appreciate the idea that an approach might be fruitful without even being subject to the rigid dichotomy of 'right/ wrong', in the kind of way that objectivist or positivist claims are usually taken to be.

This may well equate to not deceiving ourselves, and I think it is important to try to recognize where we might be deceiving ourselves, but ultimately it is quality of life that matters above all else; and being fallible creatures, how could we ever be sure about exactly where our self-deceptions lie, in any case? — Janus

Deception requires intent. We cannot intend to deceive ourselves. There is no such thing as self-deception.

You're chasing a chimera...

More on certainty. It is a type of belief, not a type of truth. — Banno

Can't it be both? If you drop a ball then it is certain to fall, and this is the case even if I'm not certain that it will.

Deception requires intent. We cannot intend to deceive ourselves. There is no such thing as self-deception.

You're chasing a chimera... — creativesoul

Sure we do. What are delusions if not intended beliefs that are meant to cover up the truth that is so depressing?

Do you really believe that all intent is utterly conscious? If so, I would say you are deceiving yourself...I wonder what motivates you to such a belief...

I wouldn't say that; I would say they are distinct insofar as one is linguistically mediated and the other is not. We experience the difference and so of course we.can talk about it.

Of course you can do one or the other; whichever you like, but you can't do both at the same time.