I think the God one is less easy to predict. It might be beyond science. It might not be. — Coben

No? Then how will you obtain (scientifically-acceptable and -useful) evidence? For without evidence, science can do nothing. And there is no evidence. Thus...

If such an issue, as any of these, is beyond science, is it beyond any way of knowing? I would say 'not necessarily'. — Coben

Beyond knowing? Yes. Beyond our speculations and guesswork? No. In RL, there are many issues that an individual human cannot solve, so they guess. [Even when the issue has been solved by other humans, but this human doesn't know it.] It's a defining characteristic of humans, this guessing-without-sufficient-evidence, and we're not too bad at it. So we can guess, and we can speculate, but to no avail. Our guesses will remain guesses, unfounded by anything more intellectually substantial. [And a guess remains a guess if we call that guess an axiom or assumption, or even if we call upon Occam's Razor, which is not a logical principle but a simple rule of thumb.]

No? Then how will you obtain (scientifically-acceptable and -useful) evidence? For without evidence, science can do nothing. And there is no evidence. Thus... — Pattern-chaser

I was talking about the future history of science. You are saying it is beyond science, so this includes all future possible scientific theory and research.

If such an issue, as any of these, is beyond science, is it beyond any way of knowing? I would say 'not necessarily'.
— Coben

Beyond knowing? Yes. Beyond our speculations and guesswork? No. In RL, there are many issues that an individual human cannot solve, so they guess. [Even when the issue has been solved by other humans, but this human doesn't know it.] It's a defining characteristic of humans, this guessing-without-sufficient-evidence, and we're not too bad at it. So we can guess, and we can speculate, but to no avail. Our guesses will remain guesses, unfounded by anything more intellectually substantial. [And a guess remains a guess if we call that guess an axiom or assumption, or even if we call upon Occam's Razor, which is not a logical principle but a simple rule of thumb.] — Pattern-chaser

Before science decided, in the early 70s and over great internal resistence, that animals were conscious experiencers with emotions, it was taboo and professionally dangerous to assert that animals had intentions, emotions, goals, and were experiencers. Do you really want to argue that people who knew that animals were experiencers before that did not know? I think that's silly. If you want to argue that the only possible knowledge comes through science, this backfires also in general, since we require all sorts of trust intuition to even lay a foundation for using scientific knowledge. We wake up in bed and it sure seems like memory indicates that science is a good mode of knowledge creation, so we go with that memory. It's all fruit of a poison tree or it isn't.

You really think you can scientifically demonstrate all the things you know to be true? Must we all wait around for paradigmatically biases subcultures before what we believe is mere guesses?

How do you deal with the claim that this is simply relativism, that the only truth we can know is the truth 'for us'?
— Wayfarer

I think I would have to write a treatise to get across what I try to get across here, but then is it worth it, would anyone read it? — leo

I have created a new thread starting with your response, as it's tangential to the topic of this thread - is it OK if I post that?

Phenomenology does seem to aim at objective or unbiased truth, without, however, being subject to falsification. — g0d

I don't see phenomenology that way. I see it as a search for, and discovery of, ways of understanding that stand or fall only in virtue of their intuitive efficacy.

I have created a new thread starting with your response, as it's tangential to the topic of this thread - is it OK if I post that? — Wayfarer

Sure if you want, but maybe I should get my thoughts together and expose my point of view in a more systematic way, comparing it with other mainstream world views, showing what problems it solves, addressing potential criticisms, otherwise I think my view can easily get misinterpreted/misrepresented, and then once that happens people start talking past each other and then the thread devolves into some heated debate on semantics that doesn't get anywhere.

Or maybe it's fine if you post it like that, if it isn't exposed systematically then that leaves more room for imagination, and that might give rise to new ideas, and I think there needs to be some dose of imagination to see that point of view.

I think the God one is less easy to predict. It might be beyond science. It might not be. — Coben

No? Then how will you obtain (scientifically-acceptable and -useful) evidence? For without evidence, science can do nothing. And there is no evidence. Thus... — Pattern-chaser

I was talking about the future history of science. You are saying it is beyond science, so this includes all future possible scientific theory and research. — Coben

Yes, I'm saying it's beyond science, but not that this is a failing of science. God is not detectably present here in the world (I mean detectable by any form of scientific measurement), and this will not change unless God does. Science requires evidence for its function; there is none; there never will be any. Therefore such matters are forever beyond science, no matter what new theories or research emerge. ... Unless science can change so as to be able to do its work without evidence? This could create a new discipline. We could call it ... philosophy? :wink:

If you want to argue that the only possible knowledge comes through science
[...]
You really think you can scientifically demonstrate all the things you know to be true? — Coben

I don't! No! I am arguing exactly the opposite of these sentiments! I'm appalled that I have expressed myself so badly that you think I'm championing science as the one and only knowledge-gathering tool we have. I apologise for my laxity.

I don't! No! I am arguing exactly the opposite of these sentiments! I'm appalled that I have expressed myself so badly that you think I'm championing science as the one and only knowledge-gathering tool we have. I apologise for my laxity. — Pattern-chaser

OK, well good. It seems like the options were science or guessing.

Or maybe it's fine if you post it like that, if it isn't exposed systematically then that leaves more room for imagination, and that might give rise to new ideas, and I think there needs to be some dose of imagination to see that point of view. — leo

On second thoughts, I have decided not to create another new thread, as duty calls and I won't be able to pay much attention to it. So I'll respond here.

I see truth as an ideal that we strive towards but never reach. Something absolutely certain that we hope to hang onto no matter what amidst the apparent unpredictability of existence. Many claim to have found truth, but what have they found? They are deeply convinced of something, they hang onto it no matter what, but is there anything more to truth than this? If others do not agree with their truth, is it that they do not see the truth, or that they see differently? — leo

I think that's characteristic of modernity, of the modern mind-set within which truth can only be conceived of in phenomenal terms. But if you go back to the history of philosophy, an overriding theme was the contrast of reality and appearance. Very generally, the ordinary man, the hoi polloi, was enchanted by, and captured by, the veil of appearances; the task of philosophy was awakening out of that illusory state and to a greater reality (as per the classic Platonist analogy of The Cave.)

Now the problem is from the modern point of view, we can't make sense of that, because many of the philosophies and religions which proclaim this idea seem to speak about it in completely different ways, and there's no way of telling which, if any, are right about it.

For myself, I believe there is such a state, signified by the idea of enlightenment (in quite a different sense intended by the European Enlightenment.) It's the possibility of that, the 'footprints of the elephant', so to speak, which have provided me with a moral compass (which is what is really at stake here).

In the secular West, the 'idea of enlightenment' was in some senses appropriated by the Church - that, if there is such a state, there is only one way to it, and that way is through orthodoxy ('orthodox' meaning 'right belief'.) As generally we've reacted against that, then the whole enquiry is often closed off. That's where the emergence of Eastern spirituality has been significant. And actually the essay we're discussing draws heavily, if subtly, on an Eastern philosophical orientation. In that framework, 'truth' is not something imposed on you, but something that you have to discover within yourself. So it's individualist, in one sense, but on the other hand, it's not grounded only in the sense of the individual ego.

Very generally, the ordinary man, the hoi polloi, was enchanted by, and captured by, the veil of appearances; the task of philosophy was awakening out of that illusory state and to a greater reality (as per the classic Platonist analogy of The Cave.) — Wayfarer

Very generally, Plato created a veil with the appearance of a greater reality that is nothing other than a dreamlike illusory state, an image on the cave wall that many to this day still fail to realize is only an image.

I have posted the following before:

What is often overlooked is the difference between the Socrates who knew that he did not know and the Socrates of the Republic who speaks of knowledge of the whole. One key to reconciling the difference is the banishment of the poets from the Republic. Their myths are replaced by a philosophical poesis. When asked Socrates is circumspect but clear in stating that he does not actually have knowledge of the Forms:

"You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon," I said, "although there wouldn't be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are saying, but rather the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it is really so or not can no longer be properly insisted on. But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. Isn't it so?" (533a)

The truth as it looks to him may not be the truth, and he is not insisting that it is. But he insists that there is “some such thing to see”. What he shows us is a likeness of what the beings must be, that is, an image. He too is a poet, literally a maker. The Forms are, ironically, images. Those who read Plato and think that they have ascended the cave because the Forms, the eidos, the things themselves as they are in themselves, have been revealed, are simply seeing new images on the cave wall, images created by Plato.

In the Republic Socrates does not claim to know what justice itself is. He creates a myth of transcendent knowledge, of noesis, but in doing so points in the other direction to remind us that we are squarely within the realm of opinion; and as a matter of opinion questions of justice remain inconclusive. This is what Socrates famous “second sailing” is about. We do not have in our sights the things themselves, in this case justice itself, and so must take refuge in speech. We must rely on dialectic, on argument to reach conclusions that always fall short of knowledge and so must remain open to further consideration.

That natural selection operates in a way analogous to the the processes of experience, observation and experiment is arguably a valid way to think about evolution provided we do not fall into anthropomorphization by imputing human-like intention to the process. — Janus


I don't agree in the least, I think it's a case where biological theories or metaphors are extended well past their actual domain of applicability. Apart from anything else, it amounts to subordinating philosophy, reason, and everything else about us, to the implicit aim of propagation and survival — Wayfarer

What about approaches to evolutionary theory that don't posit survival as the end all and be all of adaptation, but consider creativity to be the defining feature of evolution? Piaget, Dewey and James, and Evan Thompson see a compatibility between the 'aims' of organic evolution and reason. Thompson goes so far as to talk about the organizational directedness of self-organizing systems as a forerunner of human cognition. Piaget would extend this self-organizing foundation further back to inorganic and finally cosmological processes, in a move that turns creative self-organization into an a priori of existence. Mark C Taylor's book 'The Moment of Complexity' sees a justification for a kind of post-religious religion(what he calls atheology) in the evolutionary behavior of complex systems in the physical , biological and human world.

Illuminating post, Fooloso4! :cool:

And again...finally! :up:

Way to cut through the crap!

The truth as it looks to him may not be the truth, and he is not insisting that it is. But he insists that there is “some such thing to see”. What he shows us is a likeness of what the beings must be, that is, an image. He too is a poet, literally a maker. The Forms are, ironically, images. Those who read Plato and think that they have ascended the cave because the Forms, the eidos, the things themselves as they are in themselves, have been revealed, are simply seeing new images on the cave wall, images created by Plato. — Fooloso4

Thanks. An interesting reading, but I'm not convinced by it. Raphael Demos notes that 'Plato hardly claims the power to grasp absolute truth for himself. Very often, when approaching the territory of final metaphysical ideas, he abandons the style of logical exposition for that of myth or poetry. There is something characteristically unfinished about his thought; he eschews neat systems and his intuitions often jostle one another.' (Intro to Plato: Selected Writings). We see that in the aporia, in those conundrums for which several plausible suggestions can be made, but none can be decided.

But, nevertheless, I believe that in the metaphysics of the Republic, there is an underlying sense of the 'ascent to truth'. It is made obvious in the analogy of the divided line, which divides the kinds of knowledge from lower (pistis, doxa) to higher (dianoia, noesis).

So the prisoners of the cave are those without knowledge of the forms:

"Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows.
So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about? If an object (a book, let us say) is carried past behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, and a prisoner says “I see a book,” what is he talking about?
He thinks he is talking about a book, but he is really talking about a shadow. But he uses the word “book.” What does that refer to?

Plato gives his answer at line (515b2):

“And if they [i.e. the prisoners in the cave] could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?”

Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. For they would be taking the terms in their language to refer to the shadows that pass before their eyes, rather than (as is correct, in Plato’s view) to the real things that cast the shadows.

If a prisoner says “That’s a book” he thinks that the word “book” refers to the very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong. He’s only looking at a shadow. The real referent of the word “book” he cannot see. To see it, he would have to turn his head around.

Plato’s point: the general terms of our language are not “names” of the physical objects that we can see. They are actually names of things that we cannot see, things that we can only grasp with the mind.

When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads (metanoia) and see the real objects. Then they realize their error. What can we do that is analogous to turning our heads and seeing the causes of the shadows? We can come to grasp the Forms through the intellect.

Plato’s aim in the Republic is to describe what is necessary for us to achieve this reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains true that our very ability to think and to speak depends on the Forms. For the terms of the language we use get their meaning by “naming” the Forms that the objects we perceive participate in."

(source)

Platonism generally says that sensible objects are not proper or real objects at all, but only images of the form - the form, being of a purely intelligible nature, possesses a higher reality, because it can be grasped directly by nous, not by the sense alone. But the forms transcend existence, or they are real in a different way, or on a different level, to things of the sensory domain. That is what gives rise to the later hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism of Aristotle and the Scholastics.

Piaget, Dewey and James, and Evan Thompson see a compatibility between the 'aims' of organic evolution and reason. Thompson goes so far as to talk about the organizational directedness of self-organizing systems as a forerunner of human cognition. Piaget would extend this self-organizing foundation further back to inorganic and finally cosmological processes, in a move that turns creative self-organization into an a priori of existence. — Joshs

Sure, absolutely, 100%. That is why I think the idea of an unfolding telos has to be present in evolutionary thought. There has been a rediscovery of the Aristotelian sense of final cause, the reason for the existence of things, in biology.

But it's still fiercely contested by many mainstream theorists. The whole idea of there being an underlying aims and purposes undercuts the very basis of modern scientific method commencing with Galileo. Stephen Jay Gould: "Replay the tape a million times ... and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again." (Wonderful Life, 1998.) Contrast that with Simon Conway Morris, an expert on the Burgess Shales, who argues in his book Life's Solution on the basis of convergence, that evolutionary processes do indeed 'converge' on the same kinds of outcomes (examples he gives are the many ways that eyes have evolved, and photosynthesis has evolved.)

That is why I think the idea of an unfolding telos has to be present in evolutionary thought. — Wayfarer

The actual point there is that what might be seen as the "telos" emerges naturally from within complex systems, and you want to misread that to support your belief in a transcendent telos, given from "above". :groan:

emerges naturally — Janus

as if by magic!

Anything not understood appears to be magic. There will always be plenty of mystery. Where I diverge from your way is that I do not reify the fact of mystery, of our lack of any complete explanation, to the idea that there must therefore be some transcendent guiding intelligence at work, because that would be argument from incredulity, wishful thinking and confirmation bias at work, not reason acting responsibly. Of course, if you want to admit you really just have nothing more than blind faith in such things, then I would have absolutely no argument with that.

The Forms are, ironically, images. Those who read Plato and think that they have ascended the cave because the Forms, the eidos, the things themselves as they are in themselves, have been revealed, are simply seeing new images on the cave wall, images created by Plato. — Fooloso4

That's a load of crap. Plato is pointing our minds toward the Forms, he is not claiming to reveal them to us. We cannot see them, we can only apprehend them with our minds, so there is nothing for him to reveal, you must grasp them directly with your mind. Nor is Plato creating images.

Yes, it is an immanent process, but as Thompson would argue, at the same time that enactivism eschews metaphysical foundations, it challenges the objectivist presuppositions underlying physical causation. It does not simply reduce intentionality to mechanism

It does not simply reduce intentionality to mechanism — Joshs

I agree, since I don't believe the biological in general can be coherently reduced to the mechanical, even if some biological processes can be fruitfully modeled in mechanistic terms. It is for that reason that I don't agree that animal behavior, any more than human behavior, can be comprehensively understood in the mechanistic terms of "stimulus and response".

Anything not understood appears to be magic. — Janus

This explains why my world is so filled with magic! :smile:

But, nevertheless, I believe that in the metaphysics of the Republic, there is an underlying sense of the 'ascent to truth'. It is made obvious in the analogy of the divided line, which divides the kinds of knowledge from lower (pistis, doxa) to higher (dianoia, noesis). — Wayfarer

This is an image. Socrates calls it an image. Images are at play on many levels in the Republic.

Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. — Wayfarer

They would only be mistaken if, using your example, the books we see are only images of the one real book which exist in an eidetic realm. Two peculiar things about this - first, the connection between eidos (Forms) and images in the mind, second, since the Forms are singular, what would be contained in the book and how does this relate to the content of books as they exist in our experience, that is, within the cave?

When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads (metanoia) and see the real objects. Then they realize their error. — Wayfarer

When the prisoners are released from their shackles they see puppets, which are themselves images. They are still in the cave but can now see the work of the puppet-masters, the image-makers, the opinion-makers, the poets. It is only when one is able to ascend from the cave into the light of the sun that he is able to see that the light in the cave provided by the fire is the image of the light of the sun. But in turn the light of the sun is an image of the light of the Good.

As to the turning of the soul, this too has a double sense - a turning away from the things of the visible world toward the truth, and a turning toward the truth itself. This is analogous to the turning away from the images on the wall to the source of those images, but the source of those images, the puppets, are themselves images. And this is where we remain in looking toward the Forms. They are the work of the puppet-master Plato. We are able to see that our opinions are shaped by opinion-makers, but we do not thereby transcend or escape the realm of opinion. Plato gives us a likeness of the truth, but unless one is able to compare that likeness to the truth itself one cannot tell how close or far that likeness is to the thing it is a likeness of. The education of the philosopher is an education in self-knowledge, knowledge of our ignorance.

Platonism generally says ... — Wayfarer

Platonism is a misunderstanding of Plato. Fundamental to the education of the philosopher in the Republic is the ability to see things as they are in themselves. The Platonist may believe in transcendence, but unless one has actually seen things as they are in themselves, she is dwelling in the realm of the imagination, imaging what things in themselves must be.

But the forms transcend existence — Wayfarer

The Forms are what most truly are. It is only the Good itself as the source of what is that is beyond existence. But Socrates says:

So, do we have an adequate grasp of the fact—even if we should consider it in many ways—that what is entirely, is entirely knowable; and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable? (477a)

If the Good itself is beyond being, then the Good cannot be something knowable.

"the books we see," "the puppets," "the images on the wall," etc. are actually things in themselves.

Not according to the argument in the Republic. This is the point of my saying that the prisoners are only mistaken if the things we see are only images.

Not according to the argument in the Republic. — Fooloso4

The worse for the Republic then.

By what criteria would we be saying that some occurrences are things in themselves and some aren't?

The worse for the Republic then. — Terrapin Station

The education of the philosopher and the education of the gentleman are not the same. The salutary teaching of the gentlemen who will govern the city is based on a noble lie. The education of the philosopher involves not only the ability to see past the lie but the recognition of the necessity of the lie and thus how to replace the prevailing lies with more salutary ones when necessary. Nietzsche, who read Plato as a philosopher, called it the revaluation of values.

By what criteria would we be saying that some occurrences are things in themselves and some aren't? — Terrapin Station

In some cases, such as shadows and reflections, it is easy enough to make the distinction, but if we reject the idea of Forms then the distinction does not hold. It is then not a matter of truth versus opinion, but of opinion versus opinion. And then the question becomes, by what criteria should we hold to this opinion rather that some other?

In some cases, such as shadows and reflections, it is easy enough to make the distinction, — Fooloso4

How would you make it?

Take away the things that they are shadows and images of and the shadows and images disappear.

To be clear, I think the idea of things in themselves is problematic as is the idea that shadows and reflections are not real or do not exist.

Take away the things that they are shadows and images of and the shadows and images disappear.

To be clear, I think the idea of things in themselves is problematic as is the idea that shadows and reflections are not real or do not exist. — Fooloso4

That's the point I'm making. Shadows and images are something, they're "things-in-themselves"--discarding them via just arbitrarily or by fiat putting them into a separate bin doesn't make much sense.

That's the point I'm making. Shadows and images are something, they're "things-in-themselves"--discarding them via just arbitrarily or by fiat putting them into a separate bin doesn't make much sense. — Terrapin Station

The problem with calling them things in themselves is that they are dependent on something else. One might say, however, the same thing about the Forms since they are dependent of the Good. But Plato says that the Good is not. The Neoplatonist Plotinus makes a great deal of the idea that the Good as the source of what is is not something that is. Some contemporary theologians, most notably Tillich, follows this line of thinking and thus claims that God as the source of being is not.

In any case, Plato's distinction between dianoia (thought) and noesis (intellection) as well as the hypothetical character of dialectic indicates why all such theological speculation ends in aporia. Reason functions by way of ratio, that is, understanding on thing in relation to another. The singularity of the Forms means that they are not accessible to reason. If they are to be known they must be grasped as they are in themselves. So, for example, shadows can only be understood is relation to the things they are shadows of.

The ontology of the Republic is the image of an epistemology. In the absence of knowledge, however, this ontology is at best a likely image, but it is one that Plato shows the careful reader that she should be skeptical of. The cardinal mistake here is to mistake this image for the thing it is supposed to be an image of.