Not a good start. I'll overlook it for now. — creativesoul

Thank you, your majesty.

But in case it wasn't clear, you asked me why I quoted the words. And that's because I was referring to the words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction

(I'm sure you are aware of use/mention. Just giving you a little of your own condescension.)

But thanks for noting the picture. I like her face.

Philosophy of Knowledge and Reality

The Meaning of Reality
What do descriptive claims, that attempt to say what is real, even mean?

Bonus question:
What do mathematical claims, about numbers and geometric shapes and such, mean, and how do they relate to descriptive claims about reality?

The Objects of Reality
What are the criteria by which to judge descriptive claims, or what is it that makes something real?

The Methods of Knowledge
How are we to apply those criteria and decide on what to believe, what descriptive claims to agree with?

The Subjects of Reality
What is the nature of the mind, inasmuch as that means the capacity for believing and making such judgements about what to believe?

The Institutes of Knowledge
What is the proper educational system, or who should be making those descriptive judgements and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking?

Bonus question: How do we get people to care about education and knowledge and reality to begin with?

The Importance of Knowledge
Why does is matter what is real or not, true or false, in the first place? — Pfhorrest

Meaning? I don’t understand the question. Sounds quite silly tbh.

Bonus: Mathematics? What does Mathematics mean? I can tell you roughly what it is and no more. It is a field of play from which we can create rules and problems that can be proven logically - I guess maths is ‘abstractly applied reason’, meaning numbers are real and so theories involving explicit numbers can be shown to be correct or incorrect (unlike in day to day language where the articles in play are not explicit - ‘real’ - enough to remain universal).

Note: Just trying to offer something from a question I find kind of meaningless.

Object of Reality? Okay, maybe a little easier. We simply must distinguish between items of cognition to cognitise. The set up is a false dichotomy yet a necessarily useful one by which we can establish ground for ‘difference’. Essentially the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘existent’ is usually held in terms of empirical value - how can I measure and how consistent can my measurements be?

There is too much to go into here to sum this up in several pages let alone a few paragraphs (to say some simple takes a damn long time I’ve found!)

I believe I’ve touched on both Subjects of Reality and Methods of Knowledge above.

To give some more about ‘knowledge’ my preferred line of attack is relatively simple. I view ‘knowledge’ in a negative sense - meaning I ‘know’ because there is room for questioning and explanation. Without ‘room to maneuver’ there is no ‘knowledge’ to be had about anything. Obviously I understand that people don’t usually use the term ‘knowledge’ in an absolute sense, yet I do see some people that get hoodwinked by this because they forget to examine what ‘knowledge’ means within specific areas and that it doesn’t have a universal application - although some items are more far reaching than others.

Educational Systems - something I feel strongly about. The ‘best’ way is the most impractical way. Education shouldn’t be about creating a system that has a ‘one size fits all’ mentality, nor should education encourage a ‘factory-like’ attitude - the industrial revolution has passed! Basically education works best when ‘students’ are left to explore their interests and it is down to ‘teachers’ to facilitate their exposure to different items so they have a better chance of finding something that gives them a sense of meaning.

Again, this is a very complex matter and not something I can sum up any better than that - too many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that spring to mind against my own words here!

Bonus: People already do. It is more about nurturing our natural curiosity. It doesn’t need much encouragement just less of an authoritarian attitude made solely for the purpose of some imaginary scheme called ‘society’.

Importance of Knowledge? For starters we can’t talk about ‘importance’ without ideas of ‘true’ or ‘false’. Another rather silly question which is interesting because it is the inaccuracy of lingual exchanges that leads to a great many problems and mistakes (some good and some bad).

The meaning of any and all things meaningful consists entirely of the correlations being drawn. — creativesoul

What is the gong-tormented sea? Is there a clear distinction between the metaphorical and the literal? What part does sound play in meaning? Or feeling? The 'correlations' approach seems oversimplified. What exactly is a correlation in this context?

Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'

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

...For obvious reasons it's difficult to talk about non-linguistic thought and belief. — Eee

Call me what you may, but I've not come across any reason worthy of being called "obvious".

I've begun clearing the path of debris. Something wrong with my approach?

All statements of thought and belief presuppose truth somewhere along the line. All statements of thought and belief are meaningful to the speaker.

Agree?

What is the gong-tormented sea? Is there a clear distinction between the metaphorical and the literal? What part does sound play in meaning? Or feeling? The 'correlations' approach seems oversimplified. What exactly is a correlation in this context? — Eee

All predication is correlation. That's more than adequate.

Perfectly simple.

"The gong tormented sea" is a linguistic device/characterization that could be sensibly and correctly used as a means to refer to any arbitrary situation or thing we like. Better ones(uses) would pick out common situations at sea. "The gong-tormented sea" can only be understood if one draws the same or similar enough correlations between it's use and something else as the user of the phrase.

"The metaphorical" and "the literal" are said to be kinds/types of meaning. Both consist of correlations drawn between different things.

The different things can and often include both feeling and sound, as well as all sorts of other stuff.

This is a theme I like. Universal criteria. And that's why the philosopher isn't exactly or simply the solitary ego. Whim or mere opinion is no interest, correct? Correct thinking isn't 'just me' thinking. It let's the thoughts evolve as they 'must.' I don't mean anything mystical. I'm just trying to analyze what we vaguely mean by universal criteria or being reasonable.

We already know how to be reasonable, so it's just a matter of bringing what we mean to a greater vividness, focusing. — Eee

Bein' reasonable is thinking about our own thought and belief, including but not limited to statements thereof. That's the best place to start looking. After-all, if our notion of belief is not amenable to evolutionary progression it can - and ought - be dismissed out of hand as soon as we realize that it's not. It must consist of that which is able to evolve into meaningful statements that presuppose truth somewhere along the line.

Correlations.

Just giving you a little of your own condescension. — Eee

Touche.

:razz:

"One's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. " — Eee

I've no issue with this at face value. I agree. What I take issue with is the idea that that somehow applies to thought and belief that does not involve understanding a text. We're talking about all thought and belief and what they have in common at a basic level such that that content is capable of evolutionary progression...

Correlations.

@StreetlightX or someone, would it be possible to split this conversation with creativesoul off into its own thread? I don't want to shut down that conversation but I still don't see what any of it has to do with the OP of this thread, and never have.

Meanwhile I'll continue slowly answering my own questions.

The Methods of Knowledge
How are we to apply those criteria and decide on what to believe, what descriptive claims to agree with? — Pfhorrest

In a word, critically. By which I mean in the manner of critical rationalism, as opposed to justificationism. We should not start off by rejecting all beliefs, and then admitting only those that can be conclusively proven using the empirical criteria given above. We should instead start with whatever beliefs we feel like starting with, believing whatever seems true to each of us -- tentatively agreeing to disagree if different things seem true to different people -- and then, by examining the consistency of our own beliefs with each other, and of our own and others' beliefs with further empirical experiences, start ruling out possibilities, continuing to believe whatever seems true to us within the range of remaining possibilities. In this way we each get less and less wrong, and we come into further and further agreement. But we can never finish that process, never be absolutely certain about what one specific possibility is definitely real, and so never completely eliminate all room for disagreement. Within that range of possibilities, however narrow, we should pick whichever one requires the least information to describe the same set of empirical data, because that is the most useful to us, the easiest-to-use model that still fits within the narrowest range of possibilities we've settled on thus far.

I don't want to shut down that conversation but I still don't see what any of it has to do with the OP of this thread, and never have. — Pfhorrest

I'll defer continuing on that tangent until we find a better place.

@creativesoul
Perhaps we can continue on that old meaning thread you started long ago.

I'm more than happy to discontinue...

Be well.

:smile:

Sure. Pick any of them, as they are all related.

Thank you both.

Meanwhile ...

The Subjects of Reality
What is the nature of the mind, inasmuch as that means the capacity for believing and making such judgements about what to believe? — Pfhorrest

There are two things to consider about what people call "mind":

One of them is phenomenal consciousness, the topic of the so-called "hard problem of consciousness". This is basically just the having of a first-person experience at all. I consider that to be a triviality: I reject both eliminativism which says that there is no such thing at all, and strong emergentism which says that certain arrangements of things that have nothing like that at all can suddenly come to possess that in full, in favor of the view that everything has some degree of such phenomenal consciousness, varying according to the function of the thing.

The other is access consciousness, the topic of the so-called "easy problem of consciousness", which is about the functional ability of a mind to access information about itself; it is, basically, self-awareness. I hold that this is uncontroversially a functional property, held by anything that implements the proper reflexive function, whatever its substrate. I sketch out the necessary features of such a function as such: the system must first differentiate aspects of its experience into their relevance either for a model of the world as it is (a model made to fit the world), which I call sensations, and for a model of the world as it ought to be (a model made for the world to fit), which I call appetites; a function that I call sentience. It must then interpret those experiences into such models, forming what I call feelings, divided into perceptions on the one hand, and desires on the other hand; a function that I call intelligence. It must then reflexively form both perceptions and desires about those feelings, which reflexive states I call thoughts, divided into beliefs and intentions; a function that I call sapience. The descriptive (mind-to-fit-world) side of that sapience function is what I deem rightly deserves to be called "consciousness", as in access consciousness. (The prescriptive side of it will be the subject of my later answer about the will).

re: knowledge, etc :up:
meta (re: "wisdom") :up:
meta (re: "dissolving problems") :up:

[W]e aim to construct a single mathematical object ... [ToE] that will turn out to be just is concrete reality: "concrete" is indexical, it signifies only the mathematical structure of which we are also a part. Other mathematical objects are just like it, ontologically, except that we aren't a part of them; they are purely abstract, with no connection to the object of which we are a part. This is unlike Platonism in that it doesn't posit that there is the world we're familiar with and then separately some kind of Heaven full of Forms. In terms comparable to that, I'd say that there are only Forms, no Heaven in which they exist, and one of those Forms just is the concrete universe we're familiar with (which, like most mathematical objects, is constructed out of lots and lots of copies of simpler objects, which is why we see other "Forms" expressed within our concrete world). — Pfhorrest

Mostly I agree with this (you & Tegmark :cool: ).

Thanks for the applause. :)

The Institutes of Knowledge
What is the proper educational system, or who should be making those descriptive judgements and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking? — Pfhorrest

Freethinking proselytism is what I'm calling this, though I'm hesitant about that "proselytism" as a name for what I mean. I mean that education should be non-authoritarian, but it should also be non-secret; it should be collaborative, knowledge should be spread and shared, but it should not be forced on anyone. I think of this as the epistemic analogue of libertarian socialism, as this question is roughly the epistemic analogue of the question about governance; irreligious education is like stateless governance, and "proselytism" for lack of a better term, the sharing of knowledge and the lack of mystery about the truth, is like socialism inasmuch as that means roughly a kind of sharing of wealth, and there can be irreligious (freethinking) proselytism just like there can be stateless (libertarian) socialism.

Within such a freethinking educational structure, I think the system we already have in the western world, of primary research feeding into secondary peer-review journals and those into tertiary textbooks and encyclopedias is already the correct "legislative" branch of such "epistemic government". The analogues of the executive and judicial branches of government are teaching and testing, and I think that all three of those should be kept separate from each other just like the separation of powers in government: those who write the textbooks, those who teach their contents, and those who test students on their comprehension of them should be separate parties, so that no one party has epistemic authority to just tell the students what is true without anyone to check them. The testers should also, I think, fill a role like the religious role of a pastor, being a person to whom the student can come with questions to answer or disagreements to settle, and that should be the primary point of contact between common people and the educational system, through whom teachers and researchers are brought into the equation. In addition to private teachers, the "executive" role also has need for public educators, to speak up against widespread public falsehoods, and prevent the growth of "cults" of kooks, cranks, and quacks, in the absence of any epistemic authority, so that such groups do not grow and in time become epistemic authorities, i.e. full-blown religions, who would then undermine the very epistemic freedom that enabled their growth (in the same way that gangs and warlords spring out of the power vacuum in an insufficiently governed society, and then grow into new states).

Philosophy of Justice and Morality

The Meaning of Morality
What do prescriptive claims, that attempt to say what is moral, even mean?

Bonus question: What do aesthetic claims, about beauty and comedy and tragedy and such, mean, and how do they relate to prescriptive claims about morality?

The Objects of Morality
What are the criteria by which to judge prescriptive claims, or what makes something moral?

The Methods of Justice
How are we to apply those criteria and decide on what to intend, what prescriptive claims to agree with?

The Subjects of Morality
What is the nature of the will, inasmuch as that means the capacity for intending and making such judgements about what to intend?

The Institutes of Justice
What is the proper governmental system, or who should be making those prescriptive judgements and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking?

Bonus question: How do we get people to care about governance and justice and morality to begin with?

The Importance of Justice
Why does is matter what is moral or not, good or bad, in the first place?


Bonus question:
What is the meaning of life? — Pfhorrest

I can pretty much sum up my perspective on all these matters in a ‘simple’ way.

Any public, or even internal declaration is opposed to, and dependent upon social apparatus. Our worded thoughts declare an expression of communicated ideas and expressions and only partly hold a grain of ‘independence’ yet this is only possible due to the dichotic perspective we have an only talk of independence in light of interdependence.

Moralistically speaking if one wishes to hone their sense of morality they necessarily have to address themselves in different situations that cloud their moral judgement. When I speak, like I am now, I shouldn’t be fooled into thinking I’m being ‘genuine’ to the reader as each public declaration is a kind of performance fro both my sense of self and how I perceive myself to be perceived. To truly explore my ‘moral content’ I believe it best that I try to disassociate myself as much as possible from making a public declaration. This is by no means an ‘absolute’ solution as I am then left to struggle with the communicable language (my social apparatus) with necessarily holds many emotional parts.

You may think such an impossible task does no more than instill doubt and hesitation rather than honing a sense of morality and action. It depends on how far you push and what risks you’re willing to take.

From this approach I can only say that it has turned me more to thinking about my emotions and feelings toward others as being reflections of what I frame as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Meaning if I see ‘love’ I like it as it shows me I am capable of ‘love’ by recognising it. Likewise when I feel negatively about something I also know it as my possession - this is harder to stomach as it basically means when I state that such and such an act as ‘horrific’ I know it because I know I am capable of it.

What I am talking about here is something akin to ‘empathy’. The difference is the ‘feelings’ I am referring to are those we don’t wish to admit as our possessions. We don’t tend to see ourselves as the perpetrator of a murder or rape because we’re more inclined to associate the experience with the victim. The disgust we feel is ‘disgust’ because we know we are capable of being the one causing pain and hurt yet we’re never willing to take on that role in - for want of a better term - ‘mal-empathetic’ way. This is probably for the better in most circumstances because to take a long journey down that road is going to cause some damage without a serious attitude.

When we experience something beautiful it is because we see our own beauty, and when we experience something ugly it is because we see our own ugliness. We obviously lean more toward one than the other, yet to actively ignore one or the other doesn’t seem like a sensible course of action for any prolonged period of time.

The problem with this ‘declaration’ is that it is a declaration. So if everyone agreed with my point it would merely play into the ‘social apparatus’ and refute the inner sense of being. For me this is as ‘true’ as anything can be ‘true’. If I’m antagonised or frustrated by someone then it is because I know I am also antagonising and frustrating in my manner.

We necessarily operate within limits. Pushing ourselves to the point where the lines blur is where we can establish and/or destroy a better sense of selfhood. It’s dangerous and I doubt this thought should remain anywhere but on the periphery of conscious thought - and that is conveniently where it must lie as ‘worded thought’ tends to damped our sense of self by playing to certain social situations and further feeds the sense of ‘independent’ thought even though such worded language is an approximation of our experiential being.

Those that ‘disgust’ us the most represent that aspect of ourselves we least wish to explore, that part of ourselves we dread and fear within. To ‘think’ about being so ‘disgusting’ would fracture our sense of self and potentially our sense of ‘fortitude’ against becoming like that ‘disgusting’ person.

This is the ‘simple’ version. Something I have tried to highlight previously with an approach to the use of hypotheticals. The reactions given in those threads were interesting.

Thanks for finishing off the questions! I can’t respond at length now but I hope that you enjoyed the answering and that others can give you some feedback before I get the time.

"3.21 Like Zen koans which provoke a suspension of conceptual thinking, works of art in particular (and aesthetic experiences in general) prompt suspension of ego - what Iris Murdoch referred to as unselfing - by presenting sensationally or emotionally heightened encounters with the nonself which make it more likely than not for one to forget oneself for the moment if not longer.

3.22 Altruism - judging, by action or inaction, not to do harm to another - begins with learning and practicing techniques for forgetting oneself: unselfing: suspending ego. (Ecstatic techniques (e.g. making art.)) This is the moral benefit of art, but not its function.

3.23 The function of making art (along with morality & rationality (see 2.5)) is to help expand - develop - Agency, or to inversely limit its shadow: Foolery (see 1.1)"
— 180 Proof

Is it possible you could go a little more in depth here please? I find your view of Art, Aesthetics and Morality a possible point of interest for myself.

Especially in regard to the bold. — I like sushi

3.21 says Aesthetics prepares us for Ethics and, in light of the preceding sections (statements 1.0-3.2), Ethics informs Aesthetics. E.g. Children begin learning 'right & wrong' through play and from bedtime stories (fables); Parents use games and storytelling to teach their children what's expected of them (good) and what they should avoid (bad). A dialectics, so to speak, of attention & intention.

3.22 says altruism can be learned and habituated by engaging in and making art because fully experiencing works of art (or nature in an aesthetic way) requires one to pay attention without intending to impose self-serving demands or whimsy of ego on the work (i.e. to move oneself out of one's own way, that is, to forget/immerse oneself); this 'attending without ego' is required in order to encounter an other as other, which is the sine qua non of altruistic judgment.

3.23 riffs off of 3.21 shifting the focus more explicitly to Agency the expansion of which is, I propose, the primary function of philosophy. To learn to reflectively inquire (e.g. making art) and reflectively practice (e.g. moral conduct) in tandem; to the degree these complementary exercises are habituated and optimized, Agency - capability for judging (see 3.11) - expands (and inversely foolery narrows (see 1.1, 1.12, 1.6)).

Any clearer? The references to other statements are included to help contextualize or build on earlier statements. Also, the highlit links embedded throughout making disparate implicit connections more explicit. I'm sure you'll tell me if that helps; I look forward to some elaboration on this "possible point of interest" of yours vis-à-vis my relation of aesthetics to ethics. My turn now to read your replies to the OP ...

Bonus question: How do we get people to care about education and knowledge and reality to begin with? — Pfhorrest

I call this task, the inspiration of the mind to actively pursue the truth, the real, the knowable, or the state of the mind being (or the process it of becoming) fully conscious or self-aware, "enlightenment". We cannot enlighten someone just by telling them facts. We cannot simply tell them to operate their mind some way either. We must somehow inspire them to exercise their mind, show them opportunity and motive to think for themselves of their own accord. To do that we must show them that achieving truth is actually possible, and thus that there is hope for them if they try to do so themselves. But we must conversely be sparing in our direct help, lest they come to rely upon us, take our help for granted, and deem it unnecessary for them to try to learn themselves. Instead, we need to help people to help themselves, to require that they take initiative in trying to pursue their own truth, but to stand by and hold their hand while they get a bearing for it, to ensure that their early attempts are successful, and build in them the confidence and skill that they will need to continue pursuing truth on their own.

At the same time, we must also show them that achieving truth is not a foregone conclusion that someone else will always handle for them without any action on their own part, because if they thought that was the case they would have no motive to try to learn themselves. So to that end, we need to point out to them how any authorities on knowledge that they may be tempted to rely on are fallible, and that without their personal action such authorities may fail, not necessarily catastrophically or globally, but in any particular case, in which cases the individuals involved will need to be ready to pick up that slack and stand up to ignorance themselves.

But teaching not only oneself, but also others, can also help to cultivate that feeling of enlightenment, the feeling that achieving knowledge oneself is both possible and necessary. So more than merely helping people to learn themselves, we can also enlist them to help us teach other people to learn themselves, with the promise that doing so will in turn enlighten them, help them learn to learn themselves, and in doing so begin to build the groundwork for the kind of joint, mutual pursuit of truth necessary to underpin the kind of educations structure I've previously outlined.

I was more interested in the ‘how’ of these items in terms of how they function.

Basically more of an essay rather than bullet-point responses.

Feels like you’re teasing me :) would like to see more of your working/evidence if possible. Thanks

Didnt see this thread until now. Gonna add som oneline answers when I get the time, hopefully during the weekend(daytime worker on lunch break...) but I'll start quickly with the last one.

The meaning of life is to live and let live. As comfortably as possible giving everyone else as much comfort as possible.

Thanks, looking forward to it. :-)

The Importance of Knowledge
Why does is matter what is real or not, true or false, in the first place? — Pfhorrest

All actions are driven by a combination of belief and intention, so no matter what you’re trying to do, half the battle of doing it successfully is having the correct beliefs to drive your actions.

Pfhorrest, I picked you to ask this as I see, you're quite involved! So, that you might know! Just how does one 'Newcomer' such as I, review and possibly 'Reedit' my posting in here? I at a loss here! Can you please advise?

P.S.: (In response to your post above) "Success, measured in terms of relationship of 'Belief's and Intentions', seem to me of 'Relative' terms. Concerning 'What exactly are these intentions, and beliefs'? That are 'Relative' to your actions-taken!" (?)

In the lower left corner of your post you should see a ‘...’ and if you click that you should see several options including Edit.

I’m not sure I understand your second question.

The questions in the OP relate more to peoples opinions about philosophy rather than philosophy itself.

Only the Metaphilosophy section. Did you not read past that? The rest of the questions are about ontology, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, mind, will, education, politics, etc.

Without a method for evaluating or generating a philosophy, all you have are opinions.