I'm not saying people should not be committed to such ideals, if that is what they feel is right for them, but the fatal error consists in prescribing such things for others, even for all people. — Janus

How is this an error, to encourage people to work toward the same goal, the "higher truth", or whatever ideal it is that one may encourage others to work toward?

The subtle imposition of meaning by the collective on the individual is what holds, at least for modernity, the seeds of nihilism, insofar as it forecloses on the possibility of any creative individual establishment of meaning. — Janus

But don't you see that this "imposition of meaning by the collective on the individual", already requires the other. There is no "collective" without that other, which is what you call the "fatal error". That fatal error of encouraging others to adopt the same goal "higher truth" or whatever common goal is adopted, is what produces the collective. Without it, there is no collective, just individuals seeking to fulfill their own wants and needs.

It is common in modern philosophy to describe how the collective, society as a whole, shapes the individual, but the collective is often taken for granted. This collective cannot be taken for granted, it is a unity which is caused to exist, and it is subject to similar principles of generation and corruption as any contingent being is.

Thanks, I'll give it a look.

it's extremely difficult to have a rational discussion with someone who borrows theories of time from Plato and who believes that empirical reality is the subservient handmaiden to logical truth. — Uber

It's not a 'subservient handmaiden'. The argument is, empirical claims rest on rational foundations, not all of which are themselves explained by science - which amounts to saying that science is not all-knowing.

The fact that you reflexively deprecate 'theories from the time of Plato' simply indicates that you have little grasp of intellectual history. Plato is arguably the fore-father of the Western tradition. By that, I'm not at all saying that he's an authority - Plato himself would never accept that mantle. But this is actually a philosophy forum, and at least some people who 'lived 2,000 years ago' are still relevant. Particularly Plato. So please notice your ad hominems here about 'rational discussions' as you've joined a philosophy forum, and are debating someone who is defending Platonism. Perhaps it is time you took your spectacles off and looked at them, and not just through them.

Speaking of which - I did respond with a lot of detail to your mention of Benacereff's
anti-platonist position in this post. I thought I gave a pretty detailed and meaningful response and that it's a pretty knock-down argument in favour of the role of Platonist realism in the natural sciences. But you didn't even address it (or probably even notice it, or take it in). And then you complain that I'm not 'dealing with your objections'.

What you're calling 'red herrings' are actually cogent philosophical arguments that you're not familiar with. So you basically resort to: hey, ain't science grand! Of course science is grand.

Do you understand that the status of naturalism does not hinge entirely on the latest hiccups in theoretical physics? — Uber

Yep. Got it. But it also means that when you gesture towards the 'tremendous progress of naturalism', you're pointing at something which is in a state of fundamental flux. Old-school materialism is already dead, and the way it's going, 'naturalism' is being completely re-defined and might mean something totally different next month. So - what are you pointing at?

there have been major theoretical and experimental developments in biology in the last 50 years on abiogenesis to the point where it looks like we may have a unified theory on the origin of life before we have a so-called theory of everything in physics. — Uber

Calling nonsense on that one.

Likewise there have been huge advances in neuroscience. — Uber

for which we can all be grateful. However, sign on the door says 'philosophy forum'.

Now, you seem to be trying to make it sound as though you have offered explanations, which I have failed to understand. I really don't believe that is the case. I believe I am a fair-minded reader with a good level of comprehension, but I do speak my mind, and invite questions and critique of what I say as well. Why not simply answer the question in plain language here and now, and then try not to be offended if I question or critique your answer, but answer any further questions honestly and to the best of your ability?

Why not simply answer the question in plain language here and now, and then try not to be offended if I question or critique your answer, but answer any further questions honestly and to the best of your ability? — Janus

Right. So the question was:

If you want to say 'authority' then whose authority are they to rely upon? How are they to judge which authority, if they choose to believe one, if not from their own experience, feeling, intuition and knowledge? — Janus

I had tried to answer that Buddhism - for one example - stresses 'be a light unto yourself, work out your own salvation with diligence'. To which your response was that:

[The Buddha] was really just a fallible human like the rest of us. — Janus

So, I have nothing further to add. If that is the case, then indeed, the whole idea of a 'higher knowledge' might indeed be nonsense, as you keep saying, which then circles back to the question, what the f*** are we doing wasting our time on a philosophy forum??

People who are interested in finding out about things, about anything, may be referred to as seekers of truth. This applies equally to science as it does to the arts and literature and, indeed, philosophy and religion (and psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, archeology. mathematics and so on and on). But there is no one truth that everyone is seeking. Many investigators do not even think of their investigations in terms of 'truth' at all.

So, what makes you think it would be a good idea to impose your idea of truth on others? Of course I haven't said anything against trying to encourage or convince others to see things the way we do. Isn't that what we are all doing here? Of course the flip side of that is that we should be prepared to be convinced to change our own minds if we find that someone presents us with a more fruitful or convincing way of thinking.

It is a matter of overcoming pride and admitting to ourselves ideas that we may not, for various emotional or psychological reasons, wish to entertain. Of course that struggle is a personal one and it is up to each individual above all else to be honest, inwardly for a start, about what they might be protecting themselves from.

How is "being a light unto yourself any different than what I have been arguing? I admitted that there are good elements to Buddhism.

As to my statement about the fallibility of Gautama; are you saying you believe he was infallible? If so, then on what would you base that belief?

I spend time on the philosophy forums because I like to have my ideas critiqued, and hope I might learn something from that process, or even just from writing to discover what I think. As I see it, we don't need "higher knowledge" to expand our ways of seeing and thinking about the world and our own experience. What you would call "higher knowledge" I would call "a sense of the numinous". Extremely little of modern philosophy has been concerned in the slightest with "higher knowledge". Would you say on that account that most of modern philosophy has simply been a waste of time?

If you did say that I would respond by pointing out that you, by your own admission, are not very familiar with modern philosophy, since you are basically predisposed against it, and are thus not in a very good position to judge its worth.

Extremely little of modern philosophy has been concerned in the slightest with "higher knowledge". — Janus

That's the problem with it, and why I didn't pursue it past my two years of undergraduate units.

What that seems to mean is just that philosophy is not for you. It's subjective and that's fine, but surely you don't expect others to feel the same, do you?

Not philosophy - modern philosophy, which is something of an oxymoron, because it has no conception of higher truth - which, remember, doesn't exist, and which I can't explain to you, and which you don't believe in. Just so long as we're all straight on that OK?

The problem is that you can't say what that "higher truth" is. I don't deny that there may be higher truths for you. And I can assure you that there are higher truths for me. But, those kinds of truths are matters of faith, not reason, of the heart, not of the head, as Kant definitively showed.

So, in that dimension, my higher truths, the things I really care about, belong to me and nobody else. I don't need or expect to be able to share them or have them validated by others. Religion, secular or otherwise, is a very personal matter. It's really exactly the same situation with regard to the arts. If you dream that there is higher knowledge that is capable of definitive demonstration then you are bound for either disappointment or delusion.

Wayfarer, your attempted refutation of the epistemological problem was a bunch of rambling hogwash about how neurobiology cannot explain mathematical intuition. I very much did address it in my next reply to your post. Your explanation completely avoids the actual problem: how do universals cause mathematical intuition? There are basically two answers. Say that they have no causal influence whatsoever. In that case, we don't need them at all. Or provide a causal explanation of how they interact with the physical mind, without somehow making universals physical as well. This latter effort was attempted by someone else on this thread and failed spectacularly, because it relied on vague and false notions of causality. The correct interpretation of that argument was that universals should also be physical. So the problem still stands, and nothing you have written about your magical realms comes close to a solution. I can understand why you are getting angry and frustrated with this debate: you are trying to defend a fundamentally defective worldview that needs a complete overhaul. And as you gradually realize this, you are caught in an almost existential panic, instead of doing the appropriate thing: rejecting the idiotic falsehood of dualism and accepting the fundamental truth of naturalism.

Please read again. I did not deprecate "theories from the time of Plato." I deprecated "theories of time" that came from Plato and others back then, because those ideas have been thoroughly shown to be false. Your red herrings are getting tiresome, and it's obvious you are getting so upset that you cannot even quote me correctly anymore. For the record, I have strong affinities to the ideas of many thinkers from ancient times, such as: Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Aristarchus of Samos, to name just a few. Notice who is absent from that list: people who said profoundly and systematically false things about the state of reality and people whose ideas became theological propaganda for desperate Christians looking to justify their fairy tales.

You will call nonsense on any attempt to answer a fundamental question unless a ready solution is handed to you on a plate. This is the attitude that separates your penchant for fairy tales with people who actually want to know how the world works.

Physics can be both in a state of flux and can still be making huge progress. You are focused on the controversies over string theory because they generate headlines. But you are blind to the enormous progress that has been made in condensed matter physics and other fields, which are influencing the answers to the very fundamental questions you are asking. Also, bear in mind that progress is not limited to science. Philosophy has made tremendous strides in the last three centuries with its broad rejections of idealism, dualism, and theism. These rejections by themselves do not mean that naturalism is right, but they make naturalism a powerful contender by default for the most powerful and accurate philosophical project that aims to describe the state of the world. I provided evidence earlier that naturalism is a very popular viewpoint among professional philosophers. So it's not just scientists who believe in naturalism. I understand it grates on your flawed understanding of reality to have naturalism be the canonical theory of philosophy, but deal with it and stop wasting my time.

how do universals cause mathematical intuition? There are basically two answers. Say that they have no causal influence whatsoever. In that case, we don't need them at all. Or provide a causal explanation of how they interact with the physical mind, without somehow making universals physical as well. — Uber

Physical mind?

Knowledge of anything can be causal. The laws of nature don't communicate with us, neither do the truths of mathematics, but we can create knowledge of them, and once created, this knowledge may have profound effects on reality.

apologize for my harsh language, Undercover. The words I used were inappropriate and should have been avoided. — Uber

The apology is accepted, and gratefully received, but I'm afraid that the real problem, which is the attitude behind those words used, remains. You've presented an exposition about how you understand the terms of physical and non-physical, and when I confronted you with problems concerning your metaphysical principles, you countered in two ways. First, you switched a key word for some other, more vague description, as if altering a few words would make the problem with your principles disappear. Second, when I suggested alternative metaphysical principles, ones which avoided the problems I pointed to in your principles, instead of trying to understand what I was saying, you dismissed it as "nonsense". So it became clear to me that you were not interested in discussing metaphysical principles, all you were interested in is preaching.

But I do not apologize for the general observation they expressed. Though not impossible, it's extremely difficult to have a rational discussion with someone who borrows theories of time from Plato and who believes that empirical reality is the subservient handmaiden to logical truth. At that point the problem is no longer dualism versus naturalism. It's the fundamental assumptions we make about the nature of the world. — Uber

Have you read Aristotle's Physics, his discussions on time? He displays a much more comprehensive understanding of time then you will find in most modern philosophy of time. Surely, you must understand that the nature of time has not been, and is not, understood by any human being. This means that if we are interested in the nature of time, we ought to consider all theories of time, to see what each of them has to offer. So, your statement, that you cannot have a rational discussion with someone who borrows theories of time from Plato, is nothing other than a statement of bias. It is an expression of your own irrationality.

Do you recognize that there is a difference between the past and future? If not, then it would be difficult for me to have a rational discussion with you, because such a recognition is implied in all that we say, think, and do. It would be a most hypocritical way of speaking to say that you do not recognize a difference between past and future. If you are truthful to yourself, and say that you do recognize a difference between past and future, how would you account for this difference? Would you say that the future is full of possibilities, and the past is full of actualities, or would you dismiss this as unacceptable Aristotelian terminology?

In Aristotle's description of time, he recognizes two ways that we apprehend time. First, and principally, time is a means of measurement, we use time as a ruler, to measure. Secondly, in another way, time is something which is measured. You offhandedly dismiss any way of looking at time which is not the way of modern physics, but modern physics provides no way to look at time as something which is measured. So if you think that the passing of time is something real, something which is measured by clocks, then you need a way of looking at time which is not the way of modern physics. And if you think that the way of modern physics is the only acceptable way of looking at time, then you exclude the possibility that the passing of time is something real, which we measure with clocks.

Take the argument about the unicorns. Why do we all agree that it's ridiculous, even though it's a logically valid syllogism? Because we all know that the properties of addition have nothing to do with the existence of unicorns. — Uber

This argument was completely irrelevant to the point I was making. That's why I say you dismiss my points out of bias without even trying to understand what I was saying. Clearly the logic which tells us that 2+2=4 is not the same logic which tells us that numbers exist as immaterial objects.

And why do we know that? Because we have a deeply embedded sense of causality that has developed through empirical experience. — Uber

But you're wrong here Uber, and you refuse to consider the possibility that you're wrong, to allow yourself to review your principles to see whether you might actually be wrong. It is not merely "empirical experience" which tells us whether something exists, because it is reasoning and logic which tells us what it means "to exist". Sure, you could define "exist" in any way that you desire, and whatever things fulfill that definition through empirical evidence, those things exist, but that is to be unreasonable. We need a reasonable definition of "exist". So it is not empirical experience which tells us which things exist and which do not, because reason must tell us what it means to exist. And if reason tells us that it's possible for things to exist which we have no empirical experience of, then we ought to accept that. Quit your childish protestations and behave reasonably.

Do you accept what I told you in my last post, that the capacities of the human senses are limited? If so, then it is clearly unreasonable for you to insist that the criteria for determining what exists and what does not exist is empirical experience. If you refuse to recognize the limitations of the senses, thus disallowing yourself from getting beyond the limitations of the senses, how are you ever going to proceed toward a higher level of understanding?

This was the basis of my criticism for your explanation of the epistemological problem. It was a completely unsound argument. Using a word like "active" does not amount to a causal relation between Forms and real things in the world, and throwing out all of modern physics is not the best way to engage in discussion about the nature of reality. — Uber

Let me see if I have this straight then. My argument is a completely unsound argument because it employs an understanding of time which is inconsistent with the understanding of time employed by modern physics. Now, I've described why the understanding of time employed by modern physics is inadequate, because it does not allow that the passing of time is something which is measurable. Therefore employing a different understanding of time does not necessitate that the argument is unsound. So I've addressed your counter argument, and you no longer have any reason to say that my argument is unsound.

Now we can have immaterial Forms without the epistemic problem in the way that the Neo-Platonists envisioned. Do you see, that the reason why modern materialists/physicalists deny immaterial existence, and dualism, plunging themselves into all sorts of contradictions and inconsistencies in their speak (because the language is developed on dualist principles), is simply due to a misunderstanding of time which they harbour?

Though not the only reason, I think my foundational assumptions of the world are largely accurate because of empirical evidence, the very thing you deny has any major importance. You think you can bring Forms into existence because of logical necessity, the very I think deny has any causal relevance in the actual world. There's no way to square that circle. — Uber

I do not deny that empirical evidence has major importance. What I deny is that we can make an adequate decision about what exists and what does not exist, based on empirical evidence. This is due to the reasons I described. To make such a decision we need to first determine what it means to exist. This determination must be made by reason. And, it is unreasonable to base a definition of "exist" in empirical evidence because we know that the senses have limited capacities.

So, what makes you think it would be a good idea to impose your idea of truth on others? — Janus

But this was not the question though. The issue was this:

This is the case with any "higher truth" whatsoever. Higher truths are real only insofar as people are committed to them, and they may be judged only by their fruits. I'm not saying people should not be committed to such ideals, if that is what they feel is right for them, but the fatal error consists in prescribing such things for others, even for all people. — Janus

Notice that you refer to the "higher truth" as an ideal. An ideal is something sought, as a perfection, so the "higher truth" is something sought, it is a goal. That's what an ideal is. Someone who believes in a "higher truth", as an ideal, believes that there is a higher truth, and that we ought to seek it. That is the commitment. It is not a belief that one knows a higher truth than others, and they are committed to this belief. To convince another to seek the same goal, a "higher truth", is not the same as imposing one's idea of truth on another.

I think you have not properly distinguished between an "idea" and an "ideal". An idea is a belief about what is, and ideal is a belief about what ought to be.

Undercover:

I actually have read part of Aristotle's physics. I have it in my library. So which part of Aristotle's physics and cosmology are we throwing out and keeping in? The part where objects fall at a rate in proportion to their weight? The part where the heavenly bodies are perfect spheres? The part where things are made of four elements? The part where everything orbits around the Earth in perfect circular motions?

So throw out these, but keep his understanding of time right?

When you say physics provides no means to look at time as something which is measured, you are basically implying that an absolute reference frame of time exists that ticks at the same rate for everything in the Universe. No modern physics does not have that understanding, because that conception of time is absolutely false. It can be and has been demonstrated to be false in numerous experiments, another thing Aristotle didn't much believe in! Modern physics does allow us to measure time, but it warns us that our measurements do not represent an absolute state of time, merely a relative one. It also warns us that time by itself does not make any sense separately from space, hence why we describe events and causes as unfolding in spacetime. On this basis, I challenged the notion that Forms can somehow be active in time without being active in space as well. In other words, what does it mean for them to be active, if not in spacetime? But of course to acknowledge that makes the Forms physical. Your argument remains unsound and will always remain unsound as long as you cling to a false understanding of causality.

Furthermore, reason about what it means to exist cannot develop except through empirical experience. Our "rational operations" in the brain, to quote Wayfarer, depend on the outside world, and then they develop concepts that go along with that dependence, such as existence, theories about the nature of that existence, etc.

Either way, reason by itself has not shown that Forms exist, because your argument is premised on causal concepts and not simply on logical principles. So you yourself rely on causal principles derived from experience in the formation of your argument (time, active, etc), then turn around and say that it was all logic. Aristotle himself represents one of the greatest warning flags about why you need reason informed through experience in order to reach the correct conclusions about the state of the world.

Finally, there is absolutely no such thing as metaphysical reason separate from the physical structure of the brain. Let's not equivocate: it is the brain that reaches conclusions about the world. Thank you modern neuroscience.

In the end I'm afraid you are the one who's wrong. But thanks for playing.

he problem is that you can't say what that "higher truth" is. — Janus

I try to, but it is never understood. As far as you're concerned, all such matters are personal. We invariably arrive at this point.

your attempted refutation of the epistemological problem was a bunch of rambling hogwash about how neurobiology cannot explain mathematical intuition. I very much did address it in my next reply to your post. Your explanation completely avoids the actual problem: how do universals cause mathematical intuition? — Uber

The article I cited, about Benecareff, is about the very topic in question. It is about how it is possible to know mathematical truths and proofs, if they are not empirical objects of perception. My response is that the very existence of this argument demonstrates the fact that the existence of mathematical knowledge and philosophical rationalism can't be accommodated by empiricism and materialist theories of mind - hence the necessity of devising sophisticated arguments about how indispensable maths is in science. But you're plainly not getting the point.

It's a shame you're not able to respond dispassionately, but never mind.

Our "rational operations" in the brain, to quote Wayfarer, depend on the outside world, and then they develop concepts that go along with that dependence, such as existence, theories about the nature of that existence, etc. — Uber

Kant argued in the Critique of Pure Reason that 'things conform to thoughts' - this was his so-called 'Copernican Revolution in philosophy' - but as you clearly have no familiarity with the subject, then there's little point in bringing it up. (And there's an example of 'apophaticism' for you.)

To convince another to seek the same goal, a "higher truth", is not the same as imposing one's idea of truth on another. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank you Metaphysician Undercover, well said.

The laws of nature don't communicate with us, neither do the truths of mathematics, but we can create knowledge of them, and once created, this knowledge may have profound effects on reality. — tom

:up:

That supports one of my basic arguments, which is that reason is not a result of evolution. The capacity for reason is the result of evolution, but the facts that reason discovers are always already the case. That is why they are 'dis-covered'.

Wayfarer, the article you cited does not actually solve the problem. We already know why we can know truths and proofs: because of the physical structure of the brain.

I am very familiar with Kant. I just disagree with your terrible arguments about why reason precedes science and experience, when science and experience plainly demonstrate that reason codevelops with experience, and cannot exist apart from it.

How many other stupid arguments do you have in your bag of tricks? I can keep rebutting this nonsense for as long as you wish.

We already know why we can know truths and proofs: because of the physical structure of the brain. — Uber

And how can you know anything about the physical structure, without the capacity for abstract reasoning, whichi is required at the outset? You can’t set reason aside and see how it works, it is only disclosed by using it.

I am not the one resorting to ad hominem and outrage. Although I think it’s instructive that this debate pushes buttons, though.

So, what makes you think it would be a good idea to impose your idea of truth on others? — Janus

But this was not the question though. The issue was this:

This is the case with any "higher truth" whatsoever. Higher truths are real only insofar as people are committed to them, and they may be judged only by their fruits. I'm not saying people should not be committed to such ideals, if that is what they feel is right for them,but the fatal error consists in prescribing such things for others, even for all people. — Janus — Metaphysician Undercover

Looks like the same question to me!

An ideal is something sought, as a perfection, so the "higher truth" is something sought, it is a goal. That's what an ideal is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Seeking a higher truth may be seeking an ideal, but not all ideals that are sought are higher truths; in fact most are not. People strive towards all kinds of ideals: ideal weight, ideal physique, become the best athlete, musician, artist, writer, businessman, academic and so on; the list is endless.

To convince another to seek the same goal, a "higher truth", is not the same as imposing one's idea of truth on another. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, but I've already explicitly acknowledged that. I would add that expecting others to share your beliefs and ideals is a form of imposition, even if it is not overtly acted upon, it will show up covertly in forms of passive/ aggressive behaviour.

So throw out these, but keep his understanding of time right? — Uber

MU set you a good challenge relating to a physical understanding of time. Even if Aristotle could be considered wrong on other things, this was the thing you were questioned on.

And it is clearly right that there is some ambiguity about whether time is a something of which change is predicated, or whether change is the measurable differences of which we imagine a temporal flow to be composed.

Time and energy are clearly connected in physics - all change being energetic. But they also stand in an inverse relation to each other. In relativity for instance, the faster something goes, the slower it’s clock ticks.

Physics also seems to contradict itself on time with the reversibility issue. Our microphysics is modelled as time symmetric, while our macrophysics sees it as a flow with an energetic direction, a thermal arrow. And when we get down to the quantum physics, we have to make the unmodelled choice of whether to believe there is or isn't a physical collapse of the wavefunction to remove the ambiguity of whether the symmetry is broken, as we experience, or not.

And to take the next step, to reach a theory of quantum gravity that might account for time, the wheel looks likely to turn again towards a constraints-based view where the past is the actualised and the future is the potential. Having spatialised time for so long, we may have a QG theory based on reality's thermal history.

On this basis, I challenged the notion that Forms can somehow be active in time without being active in space as well. In other words, what does it mean for them to be active, if not in spacetime? — Uber

So here we now get to something interesting. The traditional notion of the Forms is rather spatial and geometric. They are static mathematical shapes that would have eternal rational existence.

Well in fact the ancient view was more than that. Horses and humans were forms that had a substantial thermal structure too - they acted energetically in pursuit of characteristic ends. They were organisations expressing energetic tendencies.

So how would we understand forms in modern physics, once we move away from the spatialised version that incorporates the local symmetry or reversibility of direction that space has, and understand time instead as the generalised irreversible constraint which is a thermalising flow?

Are we going back more clearly to Aristotle now? Are the forms to be understood as latencies waiting to be expressed through striving - the shape of the structure that will emerge to organise a flow?

Is the non-physical simply the unexpressed-as-yet future then? MU will want to be more scholastic and place the forms clearly in the past - prior to that which actually exists. And they might be prior in the sense of being latencies.

But when it comes to physics having all the answers, clearly physics knows that it has gone a long distance following a certain track - one based on microphysical time symmetry. It is assumed by the modelling that time is a spatialised dimension which exists - it has actuality. And so change or potentiality becomes reduced to being some kind of relativistic or epiphenomenal illusion.

Yet eventually we need to take the other view of time more seriously. It does seem better assimilated to our notions of energy and action. We have to do justice to that macroscopically obvious fact that it is an organised structure, a flow, with a direction. The past is a collective (thermally coherent) history that constrains the freedoms of the as-yet unlived future. In time, nature's latent forms and purpose will be expressed.

So how can forms be active if not in spacetime? The trick is to see that they are active in themselves once time is understood in terms of the very possibilities of the expressions of energetic change.

Physics boils down to action with direction. Time has been partnered in our microphysical models with direction for a long time. But it likely makes more sense being unified with the action in some way - the potential for change that remains despite the past being now concretely actual.

Wayfarer, the capacity for abstract thinking develops from the physical structure of our brains, especially the high density of neurons in the cortex. This is why when we are children we do not have much capacity for abstract thought, if any. Then we grow up and our brains change, our knowledge of language increases, until the point where abstract thinking becomes possible around the early teen years (and even before to an extent).

The metaphysical reason you are talking about does not actually exist, except as a fabrication of your particular brain. We have been over this already.

I did not call you stupid. I called your arguments stupid, because they are.

As a dualist, you show be able to recognize the difference.

I try to, but it is never understood. As far as you're concerned, all such matters are personal. We invariably arrive at this point. — Wayfarer

Again, instead of just succinctly answering the question here and now, you have diverted by referring to past instances where you have allegedly explained what a higher truth is beyond being a personal ideal or faith, and I have allegedly "misunderstood".

Empirical truths can be intersubjectively confirmed or dis-confirmed by shared observation, they can be tested, If higher truths are more than merely personal or cultural, then they should be the same for all people; they should be able to be clearly demonstrated to be so even to sceptics and the ignorant. Can "higher truths" be corroborated intersubjectively such that people can be clearly and definitively shown to be in error if they disbelieve them?

For example some people believe that Jesus is God, and that their faith is not merely a "higher truth", but the highest truth. Do you believe that? If not, are you thereby denying that it is a higher truth?

Wayfarer, the capacity for abstract thinking develops from the physical structure of our brains, especially the high density of neurons in the cortex. — Uber

The capacity for reason - indeed it does. And also the capacity for language. But the 'furniture of reason' - such fundamental operations as 'the law of identity' and 'the law of the excluded middle' - don't evolve or develop. What evolves is the capacity to recognise them. And once the mind recognises them, then it's capable of forms of understanding which can't be understood solely through the perspective of the physical sciences. At this point, the mind transcends it's biological origins.(Actually there's a current book, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will, Dr. Kenneth R. Miller - which I think makes a similar point, although I haven't read it yet.)

All throughout your posts, whenever you are trying to persuade or convince me, you have to use conjunctions - 'if-then', 'because', and so on. That is the sense in which rational discourse is 'permeated by reason' - which is from the quote I mentioned from Maritain on the cultural consequences of empiricism (amply illustrated in every dialogue on this forum). It is fundamental to what rational beings do. So, again, the fact that you find this 'absurd' or 'ridiculous' can't really do anything to support your arguments - you're rejecting the very faculty which enables you to make the argument in the first place.

From a couple of days back:

Platonic forms, necessary truths, laws of nature. None of them communicate with us. We gain knowledge of these things in the same way - conjecture and criticism, though our conjectures regarding the laws of nature are amenable to a particularly powerful method of criticism. — tom

Cool but that automatically deflates the canonical versions of Platonism, including the fairy tale varieties on offer from Wayfarer, where universal reason just magically "permeates" (his accepted terminology) the mind first, and then conjencture and criticism come later. — Uber

It doesn't - the reason being, that it is just the ability to recognise universals and abstractions that constitutes the rational faculties of h. sapiens. It is how reason works. So a Platonist will say, once evolutionary biology had been discovered: yes, h. sapiens evolves, just as evolutionary biology has shown - but, once humans have evolved to the point of being able to reason and speak, then that being is no longer describable wholly and solely biological or physical terms. So, yes, we have to have a physical brain, but no, this does not make the objects of reason - language, culture, ideas - physical in nature, or 'the product of' or 'the output of' physical processes or describable in physical or empirical terms. (An attitude which is described as 'evolutionary materialism', which is subject of the critique I have referred to by Thomas Nagel's 2012 book; see Thoughts Are Real.)

Furthermore, if my argument was a product of my particular brain, then we couldn't converse at all. But we inhabit a domain of shared meanings and references via language and culture - which is what enables us to have this debate. And that has physical aspect, but it is not solely or only or even principally physical. It has a physical aspect, that is all.

Can "higher truths" be corroborated intersubjectively such that people can be clearly and definitively shown to be in error if they disbelieve them? — Janus

I usually refer to the idea of 'domains of discourse' in this context. Clearly with regards to empirical method, the 'domain of discourse' is that of modern scientific method, which provides methodological and interpretive guidelines for the analysis of all manner of data. But it is interesting to note that, particularly in respect to social sciences and some other subject areas, that there is a 'replication crisis' in science, i.e. the inability of other researchers to reproduce the results of published experiments (see here.)

But in respect of subjects other than those covered by science (and there are some!) - then there are still processes of peer-review, there are teacher-student relationships, and so on. Consider how philosophy used to be taught in the ancient world - almost like guilds or crafts. Pierre Hadot has provided many great insights into these.

So in a culture which does recognise 'higher truth', which was probably the norm before the 'flatland' of today's secular culture, there are ways of both preserving and assimilating the notions of higher truth; this was arguably central to the whole University system in the beginning, although again this has now been 'flattened' by the loss of the vertical dimension.

So here in this argument, and many other threads, I am trying to refer to the Platonist tradition because I believe it is central to Western philosophy, but has been eclipsed or rejected by many currents in modern thought. It preserves that very notion of 'higher truth' but it tries to do so on the basis of rational argument and metaphysical conjecture, rather than through force of dogma, which seems to be the form that you're most aware of (which as I say, may well be a consequence of the effects of ecclesiastical dogmatism on modern culture, kind of a 'shadow'.)

But it seems to me that Platonism, generally, makes use of the rational faculty to argue that there is really a domain of higher truth, the domain accessible by 'the philosopher' through the exercise of reason and the life of virtue, symbolised by the Allegory of the Cave. And as the Platonic dialogues are arguably amongst the foundational texts of the Western Canon, then by reference to such arguments as these, I am trying to re-interpret and come to understand this particular intuition of there being a 'higher truth'.

Wayfarer, the law of identity and all logical principles were discovered by human minds, and after being so discovered were remembered and written down by future minds. So although they are true, they are still a product of the physical mind. The ability to recognize abstractions is a product of the physical mind as well. We have been over this already. Round 3? Or are you just going to keep repeating yourself until you have the last word?

Again, you are wrong in your foundational assumption that metaphysical reason exists. This is the error you need to correct in your thinking. And yes, I will always side with modern neuroscience instead of the fabrications spewing out of your brain.

The reason why we can have this debate is because we have brains and live in a society that has developed the Internet and computers. So very much a material process, once again.

Apokrisis, if understanding Forms requires tying them to some kind of "energetic change," wouldn't that make them physical in some way?

Then we grow up and our brains change, our knowledge of language increases, until the point where abstract thinking becomes possible around the early teen years (and even before to an extent). — Uber

I'd just mention that you are conflating two things. There is nothing that special about human brains when it comes to its neural architecture. It is a larger ape brain, with some greater capacity for visuospatial thinking and planning, probably due to the evolutionary demands of being tool-users as much as anything, but not radically different in a way that explains "reasoned thought".

It is the grammatical structure of speech itself that starts humans on the path to reasoned thinking. Speech demands that the world be broken down into tales of who did what to whom - some division into subject, object, verb. So it is the evolution of human culture - those grammatical habits - that sees us stumble into something (semiotically) new.

Our ape brain does not grow its syntactic structure genetically. It has to learn syntax by exposure to actual linguistic communities.

Of course, the human brain picks up those rules very easily. It has become adapted for that by - among other things - a prolonged period of brain plasticity in infancy. But still, the rules have to be learnt by exposure to cultural constraints.

And then a properly rational mindset - one organised by modern mathematical/logical syntax, the laws of thought - is the next step up. We must also grow up in that kind of world to wind up thinking in that kind of way.

Anthropologists find that native people react oddly to western IQ tests. They don't reason in the same abstract fashion. They seem to apply "magical thinking" - or a rationality that is very much based on the agential dynamics of ordinary human social interactions. At least that was the case 100 years ago. These days, everyone on the planet gets some education on how they should think to pass as properly "rational". :)

Anyway, @Wayfarer would be right that rationality is its own culturally discovered, or invented, thing.

The ape brain is great at induction, generalisation, prediction. That is what it evolved to do. And we just have a version with somewhat more horsepower.

But a logical mindset is usually defined by the further cultural thing of deductive thought. Some kind of grammatical or syntactic habit where chains of reasoning are produced for public consumption. We learn to explain ourselves in a rational cause and effect fashion.

Well, as I say, first came the "magical thinking" - the basic social style of speech - where everything is some combination of a subject, an object, and a causal action. The world is understood and communicated as some play of agents expressing their intentions in a way that caused events to happen.

Then later - around the time of Ancient Greece - we all took another big cultural step in objectifying and abstracting that agent-based causality. We discovered that reality is regulated by deep and impersonal forms. At that point, we started to loose our faith in an idealist reality - one where everything had an agential cause - and began to believe in an objective reality, where now nature became impersonal ... and eventually even mindless and computational. The semantics was washed away, leaving only the naked Platonic syntax.

A long-winded way of explaining how we have wound up so regularly split into the theists and the reductionists. Socially, we have one foot stuck in the past represented by magical thinking. All causality must have a moving mind at the back of it. The other foot is then stuck in the present with its mechanical or syntactical ontology. Reality is a fixed machine. Causation eventually becomes some kind of illusion as the Cosmos is a time-frozen logical block where nothing every really happens.

I advocate for the middle path that is Peircean pragmatism - the actual science of semiotics. Once you can see genes, neurons, words and numbers as a cascade of constraints, the same informational trick carried out in increasingly abstracted fashion, then you don't wind up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. You can minimise the subjectivity of syntactical argument without pretending to have eliminated it.

The Cosmos can be agential and spontaneous in some fundamental way (agential when complex, spontaneous when simple) while also being mostly in a highly constrained and mechanistic condition in its current "2.725 degrees from its Heat Death" state.

And so the agential vs the machine models of reality - which themselves reflect a historic shift from a grammar of social relations to a grammar of grammatical relations(!) - can be resolved in the thirdness of a pragmatic relation.

The ultimate kind of rationality is the one that results in the view of the world with us in it. Subjectivity emerges alongside the objectivity it believes it observes. We arrive at the Kantian realisation that we exist in our own semiotic Umwelts. But that is all good. It is how "we" get to exist. And it is all thanks to some developmental journey in terms of constraints - an education that was plugged into the world as being functional.

So theism becomes fine, even if it is "magical thinking" ... at least in the kind of minds it constructs within certain kinds of worlds.

And scientism is fine too ... on the same kind of judgement.

The question becomes where is this really leading - which is what was being discussed earlier in regard to the fate of the planet in the next 50 years. My criticism is that we are living socially as agents according one grammar, and then trying to understand our situation philosophically according to another, the grammar of abstract grammatical relations. The machine model of reality which patently leaves "us" out of it (even though we are then clearly there as the "gods" that make that mechanistic world for our own now unmodelled, unconstrained, purposes).

Neither of these grammars of thought are actually the grammars of metaphysical naturalism - the semiotic approach which is about seeing a world with us in it.

Theism legitimated the notion of transcending godhood. Machine rationality gave us the technological means to pretend to be those gods. We could enact the new modern project of Romanticism. We could believe we were aiming at beautiful creations while exponentially shitting up the planet.

So between the rationality embodied in social grammar and that embodied in mathematical grammar, there has to be another grammar that is both larger than these, and yet resolves these as aspects of that larger whole.

I mean biologists (like Aristotle) already think in that ecological or systems fashion. Naturalism of the full four causes kind has ticked along at the back of things. But a forum like this really brings out the historic division between the idealists and the realists - those that tend towards agential thinking and those that insist on a machine model of rationality.

[Sorry Uber. This isn't all directed at you. I'm just letting a reaction to your post run for the fun of it.]

Wayfarer, the law of identity and all logical principles were discovered by human minds, and after being so discovered were remembered and written down by future minds. — Uber

The key word is 'discovered', right? Uncovered, made manifest, realised. They're not the product of evolution, nor the product of the brain. Indeed if Darwin hadn't been born in a milieu which was the product of the rationalist tradition of philosophy, which gave rise to the Scientific Revolution - then, no Theory of Natural Selection (which, by the way, was also prefigured by the Greeks). We wouldn't have computers nor the complex communications mechanisms we're using.

They are very much the product of the brain interacting with the world. You are just playing semantics now. The last refuge of the defeated.

Consider how philosophy used to be taught in the ancient world - almost like guilds or crafts. Pierre Hadot has provided many great insights into these. — Wayfarer

Sure, ancient forms of philosophy provided different methodologies for self-transformation; the common aim was to realize eudamonia, flourishing or the good life, and achieve a state of ataraxia, or tranquillity. I have read Hadot's book Philosophy as a Way of Life (I think that's the exact title but I can't be bothered to go to the shelves and check). In some ways this ancient dimension of philosophy is like the modern 'human potential' movement.

The Pyrhhonian Skeptics, the Cynics, the Cyreniacs, the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Neoplatonists all had their own practices which sought to achieve these states of eudamonia and ataraxia. None of them, other than perhaps the Neoplatonists concerned themselves with questions of transcendence or an afterlife. They mostly exemplify practical methodologies for achieving peace of mind. No assumption of any "higher dimension" is necessary. This lack of concern with, and even in some cases denial of, the "higher' is certainly the case at least with the Skeptics, the Cyreniacs, the Cynics and the Epicureans. The "higher" is probably essential to Neoplatonism, but arguably not to the Stoics, where the logos could be seen as being similar to the Chinese notion of the Dao, simply interpreted as the 'the way of nature'.

I have read some of the original works of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius and Sextus Empiricus, and many more secondary works about Ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, so I am actually reasonably well read in these areas of philosophy, so your contention that I simply don't understand the issues holds no water. I have noticed this is a common tactic with you: to assume that those who disagree with you simply don't understand. I think this is an intellectually dishonest move and actually does you no good service.

Nothing you have said here clearly explains anything about "higher truth" as far as I can tell, it just seems to consist in deflection, hand-waving, vague allusions, and the same old tropes you seem to never tire of repeating; and I have read it carefully. And you haven't attempted to answer any of my questions honestly and directly. Here they are again, in case you want to give it another go:

Can "higher truths" be corroborated intersubjectively such that people can be clearly and definitively shown to be in error if they disbelieve them? — Janus

For example some people believe that Jesus is God, and that their faith is not merely a "higher truth", but the highest truth. Do you believe that? If not, are you thereby denying that it is a higher truth? — Janus

There is two other questions I would like you to answer honestly:

Do you actually claim to know for sure that there is a higher truth?

Do you want there to be a higher truth?

I'm not trying to be unkind; I'm just telling you what I genuinely think; I think you need to be prepared for the hard questions if you want to post on forums like these. I welcome any hard questions about anything I have said, and I will do my best to answer any such questions honestly and directly. And I am open to changing my mind as well if there is a good enough argument for doing so.