….on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being….

Each conscious being indeed maintains the form, the condition, of its world in accordance with its effects, but each conscious being isn’t his own world’s existential causality. — Mww

Isn't it interesting, though, that with David Hume and the advent of modern philosophy, the whole concept of natural causation is thrown into question. I recall Bertrand Russell saying in the History of Western Philosophy that Hume's scepticism would even cast science itself into doubt, had not Kant 'slipped a plank' under it. He was referring to Kant's 'answer to Hume', whereby Kant resurrected causal relations by showing that they are among the necessary conditions of reason.

I recall an exchange some years ago between Richard Dawkins and the now deceased Bishop George Pell about evolution and creation, the transcript of which was kept online by the Australian Broadcasting Commission:

GEORGE PELL: Well, what is the reason that science gives why we're here? Science tells us how things happen, science tells us nothing about why there was the big bang. Why there is a transition from inanimate matter to living matter. Science is silent on we could solve most of the questions in science and it would leave all the problems of life almost completely untouched. Why be good?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Why be good is a separate question, which I also came to. Why we exist, you're playing with the word "why" there. Science is working on the problem of the antecedent factors that lead to our existence. Now, "why" in any further sense than that, why in the sense of purpose is, in my opinion, not a meaningful question. You cannot ask a question like "Why down mountains exist?" as though mountains have some kind of purpose. What you can say is what are the causal factors that lead to the existence of mountains and the same with life and the same with the universe. Now, science, over the centuries, has gradually pieced together answers to those questions: "why" in that sense.

Dawkins unwittingly expresses the way in which his type of scientific materialism is irrational, as it has no concept of causation beyond the material. There is no reason for anything existing, only a kind of forensic reconstruction of prior temporal events.

In that passage Schopenhauer makes explicit what is implicit in Kant: causation is not an inherent property of the objective domain, but a necessary condition of how the mind structures experience. The logical relations and causal connections we discern in the world are only possible because the world is idea—a representation shaped by the mind. For the empiricists, this connection between causation and logic is severed, leaving causation as little more than a psychological habit without grounding. Schopenhauer restores this connection by showing that causation exists because the world exists as idea.

Modern thought generally assumes that temporal priority subsumes causal or explanatory priority, but this is far from self-evident. As Schopenhauer argues, time and causality are structures in consciousness, not independent realities. To conflate what comes first in time with what is most fundamental in being is to mistake the descriptive for the ontological. For instance, while the Big Bang may precede the universe temporally, it does not answer the ontological question of why there is something rather than nothing. Similarly, while neural activity may precede consciousness in time, it does not explain the existence of consciousness, which is the very framework through which we understand causation.

This is exactly what Schopenhauer is saying: 'The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye.'

The ever-astonishing guitar artistry of Kent Nishimura

So it seems to me this paper missed it's target by fifty years or so — Banno

The relentless grind of progress, eh. Philosophical ideas certainly have short use-by dates in our day and age.

So am I right in thinking that for you idealism consists more of our cognitive apparatus making order our of a type of chaos (but there is some sort of "noumena" to begin with)? — Tom Storm

I think I'll defer again to Schopenhauer. While he came along much later than Berkeley, his insight ‘no object without a subject’ encapsulates a key idealist critique of materialism. Schopenhauer’s analysis deepens Berkeley’s argument by revealing how materialism presupposes the subject’s forms of knowledge—time, space, and causality—without acknowledging their dependence on the subject. This convergence between their critiques underscores the enduring relevance of idealism in challenging naive realism and materialism, which is, as Schopenhauer often insists, 'the philosophy of the subject who forgets herself'.

"I answer, if by Nature is meant only the visible series of effects or sensations imprinted on our minds, according to certain fixed and general laws, then it is plain that Nature, taken in this sense, cannot produce anything at all" ~ Berkeley — Mww

I can't help be reminded of:

At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. — TLP 6.371

Science let it be known humans could have things, could do things, entirely on their own, or at least enough on their own to call into question isolated external causality of the Berkeley-ian “un-constructed” spirit type. — Mww

Of course. But I'm of the view that it was this emerging modern view of the universe that the good Bishop wished to oppose. That the reason idealism as school of thought begins to appear in this time, is because of the rejection of scholastic realism, which held that particulars did not posses their own inherent or intrinsic reality, as scholastic realism held that the being of particulars was grounded in their intelligible form. Whereas the emerging forms of nominalism held that particulars are real 'in their own right', so to speak. This has had many consequences, most of which we're not aware of, as they are formative in modern culture.

Did Berkeley in the 18th century have any empirical evidence upon which to base his foresight of the "modern subatomic physics" view of Matter? Or was his Idealism a> just intuition or b> expansion on Plato's metaphysics? — Gnomon

It's important to get what Berkeley is saying. Many people, even many philosophers, take him to be saying that solid objects are all 'in the mind', which is why Samuel Johnson believed that kicking a rock refuted his arguments. As I've been saying, that is based on a misunderstanding of Berkeley's contention, which was that there is no material substance apart from all of the perceived attributes of objects (size, shape, weight, solidity among them.) So he's not saying the rock doesn't exist, or is a 'mere' idea, but that what we know of it, is the sensible impressions it causes in us. As per the paragraph above on the meaning of 'substance' in Berkeley - the meaning of substance is crucial in this context. It doesn't mean 'a material with uniform properties' (a sticky substance, a waxy substance, a very hard substance.) It means something like 'a particular of of which attributes can be predicated, or in which attributes inhere'.

(The point I'm interested in, is that 'substance' was derived from the Latin translations of Aristotle's 'ousia' in his Metaphysics, and that is a form of the verb 'to be'. So it is at least arguable that what philosophers often refer to a substances, might be better rendered as 'beings' or 'subjects'. It's not entirely correct, but it conveys something important. For instance, in translations of Spinoza, we read 'God is the infinite, necessarily existing, unique substance.' What if that was given as 'subject' or 'being'? Again, not quite right, but conveying something that has been lost in translation, and which leads to the idea, mistaken in my view, that 'substance' is objectively existent as a kind of thing, no matter how ethereal. But at any rate, it is the philosophical notion of 'substance' and in particular 'corporeal substance' which is at issue.

Of course it is true that Berkeley had no conception of modern physics, although he might well have known of ancient atomism. But it is arguable that modern physics has also undermined the conception of 'corporeal substances'. It has certainly cast doubt on the conception of the mind-independence of fundamental particles, at issue in the 'Bohr-Einstein debates'.)

Berkeley held to Platonism in some ways, with the emphasis on ideas, but contra in others, as he opposed universals. Many say that is the real shortcoming of his philosophy.

The textbook account of Kant on Berkeley is that, after the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant was angry that many critics took him to be affirming Berkeley's basic thesis. Accordingly in the B edition, he included a section on the Refutation of Idealism, directed at Descartes and Berkeley. You can find an account here.

Like 'substance', I think 'idea' in philosophy means something other than the parade of thoughts, words and images that pass the mind's eye. Objects are recognised by us as kinds and types - this is where Kant comes in - and without that recognition, which is part of the process of apperception, then they would be nothing to us. Experience presents itself to us in the form of ideas. It is much more clearly enunciated by Schopenhauer, in the opening paragraph of WWI, where he recognised Berkeley's 'permanent service to philosophy', although then immediately saying 'even though the rest of his teaching should not endure'. (Talk about a back-handed compliment.)

+1 :100:

Similar territory traversed by Nagel's What is it Like to be a Bat, isn't it? Although I think I can imagine that bats, being warm-blooded mammals, have a rudimentary form of self-awareness, which I can't help but think completely absent in arachnids. But even bats aren't going to wonder about what it would be like to be .... That is an idea that to our knowledge only humans can entertain.

Davidson would say that by the time I've verified that spiders actually have experiences different from my own, I will have destroyed scheme-content duality. — frank

Ever seen The Fly?

IMO, the more appropriate criticism of Berkeley is that his philosophy is shallow — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agree. That's why I described him as a naive idealist, although a bit tongue-in-cheek. But his commitment to nominalism and rejection of universals undermines many other aspects of his philosophy. (I read somewhere that C S Peirce wrote a review of Berkeley which agreed with him in some respects but criticized his nominalism.)

Now granted, the critique of subsistent "matter" taken alone is stronger, but I feel like there are a lot of people who do this better. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Specifically, those who came along later!

reasonable. I'll try and find the time for it.

Surely Kastrup’s overall aim is to advocate what he says is the truth of idealism as opposed to the ‘baloney’ of materialism. I can’t see how that doesn’t have ethical implications, if only because of his conviction that the mainstream and influential philosophy of materialism is fallacious. Hence his expressed, if qualified, admiration for Bishop Berkeley.

Berkeley is in some ways a ‘naive idealist’, but then, he was also the first in the Western world to consciously articulate such a philosophy. I’ve argued before that there’s an historical reason for that: the whole notion of material bodies as being ‘independently real’ was never really considered before the modern period. ‘Creatures’ (meaning anything created) ‘are mere nothings’, said Meister Eckhardt. And that was because they don’t contain their own formative principle, which is bestowed by the Creator. So I’m of the view that the reason idealism starts to appear in this period, was precisely because of the trend towards naturalism, and the idea that the material world possesses its own, independent reality, whereas for the pre-moderns, the world was an expression of the divine will. I'm not *advocating* that view or saying it can be restored, but recognising it as 'meta-philosophical' factor in the discussion.

You'll need to explicate that for those without knowledge of Davidson.

If you’re disputing Rödl, how do you see the distinction of force and content playing out in Quentin’s belief about what Pat thinks? Specifically, where do you locate the force of Quentin’s judgment, and how do you see it as separable from the content of his belief? I’m curious to understand how this applies.

Here's something I've summarised from Chapter 3, in simple terms. Judgment, as self-conscious, is universal and foundational. To make a judgement is implicitly to state 'I think that <p>' or 'I believe that <p>' In this sense, judgement is itself not one perspective among many but the condition for the possibility any perspective.

To deny that judgment is self-conscious would involve making a judgment—and thus reaffirming what you are trying to deny. This makes the self-consciousness of judgment something that cannot be opposed or rejected. To put it another way, to say judgement is not self-conscious, would be to agree, when challenged, ‘no, I really don’t believe that judgement’. So it’s self-refuting. To claim that judgment is not self-conscious would involve a self-conscious act of judgment, thereby refuting the claim itself. This is because the very act of making such a claim requires one to be aware of the validity of their judgment, which is a form of self-consciousness.

Below, a recapitulation of the summary of Frege's essay The Thought, for those interested.

Quentin said that Pat thought the Oak was shedding, but it was actually the Elm next to it that was dropping leaves. But if the thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking, then in thinking that Pat thought the Oak was shedding Quentin would be thinking that the Oak was shedding. But here Quentin thinks the elm is shedding, not the oak.

It might be supposed that one can object that what Quentin thought was not that the oak was shedding, but that Pat thought the oak was shedding. But if we cannot isolate the thought from the act of thinking it, then in thinking that pat thought the oak was shading, Quentin thought the oak was shedding. — Banno

When Quentin judges that "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves," the content of Quentin’s judgment is not the tree’s state (e.g., "the oak is shedding its leaves") but rather the fact that Pat believes this to be true. Quentin does not need to believe "the oak is shedding its leaves" to make this judgment, because his act of judgment is about Pat’s thought, not about the tree.

This makes it unnecessary to isolate the act of judgment (force) from its content. In Rödl’s framework, judgment is unified: the act of judging and the content judged are inseparable. When Quentin judges that "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves," his act of judgment includes the "I think"—his self-conscious affirmation of the validity of his own judgment about Pat’s belief. There is no division between the act of judgment and the content; they form a single, self-conscious whole.

For Pat, the object of judgment is the tree shedding its leaves: Pat believes "the oak is shedding its leaves." For Quentin, however, the object of judgment is Pat’s belief: Quentin judges "Pat thinks the oak is shedding its leaves." By recognizing this shift, it becomes clear that there is no need to posit a force-content distinction. Each judgment is self-conscious and unified, with its own distinct object.

Even if Pat is wrong about the oak, and Quentin is right about the elm, the form of their judgments remains the same: each involves the self-conscious affirmation of a proposition directed toward its specific object. The truth or falsity of the content doesn’t alter the fact that judgment is always a unified, self-conscious act. The point at issue is not the truth or falsehood of the judgement but the self-conscious nature of judgement.

The firing of the Inspectors General by summary email is blatantly illegal. The law states that Inspectors General must be given 30 days notice of dismissal, on grounds that have been approved by Congress. Here is one of many tests wherein Trump will sign an executive order which is illegal, challenging Congress to act, but knowing full well that Congress is likely to kowtow. There will be many such instances as Trump methodically undermines the rule of law from within the Oval Office.

It's called the principle of sufficient reason — Leontiskos

Completely different to the principle of falsifiability, you’re shifting the goal posts.

Berkeley's claim that matter does not exist — Leontiskos

But you're misinterpreting Berkeley in exactly the same way Johnson did, which is why Johnson's response was a fallacy. Berkeley does not deny the existence of objects - that has already been shown. Kick a rock, and it hurts your foot. Picked up and thrown, a stone will break a window. No contest! What Berkeley is denying is the reality of a material substance, of 'matter' as an abstraction that is separate from the experiential qualities of objects.

For Berkeley, the reality of objects consists entirely in their experiential qualities—what is seen, touched, or otherwise perceived. The notion of 'matter' as an abstraction existing independently of those qualities adds nothing to our understanding and, in his view, is incoherent.

When we perceive an object what is it for us? Berkeley suggests that it a collection of all the ideas (perceptions) conveyed to us by our senses. Take an apple: “a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name 'apple'”. If you take away those ideas given by the senses, there is nothing left of the apple, not even its solidity nor the space it takes up.

Given this, why presume there is some external substance that is causing perceptions? If we lose this concept, how does that affect what really exists? It doesn’t affect it at all, says Berkeley: “The philosophers lose their abstract or unperceived Matter…Pray what do the rest of mankind lose? As for bodies, etc, we have them still”

Instead, Berkeley argues that our talk of existence is purely talk of ideas, or potential ideas: “The table I write on I say exists; that is, I see and feel it: and if I were out of my study I should say it existed; meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit (or mind) actually does perceive it”. And from this Berkeley argues that the idea of an sensible object that cannot be perceived is incoherent – it is essential to it that it must be possible to perceive it. Thus, all sensible objects are necessarily dependant on minds. — I Refute Him Thus! Misunderstanding Berkeley

The Meaning of 'Substance' in Berkeley

As mentioned in the original post, here we're dealing with claims about substance in the philosophical, not everyday, sense. This is derived from Aristotle's metaphysics, via the Latin translation of the Greek 'ousia'. But Aristotle doesn’t treat matter (hyle) as a substance in its own right. For Aristotle, matter is pure potentiality (dynamis)— a potential something that is not yet actualized. On its own, matter is indeterminate and without form. Form (eidos) is what actualizes matter, giving it structure, purpose, and identity. It is through form that matter becomes a substance—a unified entity that can exist and be identified. So the idea of a 'material substance' would be equally incompatible with Aristotelian metaphysics (and this is so, even while acknowledging that Berkeley, with his rejection of universals, was far from Aristotelian.)

In essence, Berkeley’s rejection of material substance is a critique of the early modern philosophers (specifically Descartes and Locke) who inherited and transformed Aristotelian metaphysics into the notion of a "material substratum." For Locke, material substance was posited as the "unknown support" underlying sensible qualities, but something inherently beyond perception, and of which we only receive impressions (the basis of Locke's representative realism). For Descartes, matter was res extensa, entirely lacking in intelligence and possessing only spatial extension, all of the functions of intelligence residing in res cogitans, the so-called 'thinking substance'.

Berkeley attacks these ideas, arguing that a material substance, as conceived by the early moderns, is a metaphysical fiction. We never perceive it directly, nor do we have any coherent idea of what it is. Instead of positing a mysterious "substratum," Berkeley simplifies the metaphysics: reality consists of ideas in minds, and there is no need for an independent material "substance." This is what Berkeley sees as incoherent. And I believe it is!

Which of course runs into major problems when you ask, "So uh...how does God exist?" A common fallacy of, "Everything must follow the rule except this one exception that I need to make the rule work" — Philosophim

I think it's extremely hard to fathom the sense in which God exists. I don't want to drag the thread into the direction of theology, except to say that God does not exist in the same sense that objects do.

if Berkeley says that God constantly perceives Tallis' lymphatic system, Tallis might ask whether that sort of reliance on God constitutes a falsifiable claim. — Leontiskos

You should know better than to confuse the metaphysical with the empirical. The point of the principle of falsifiability was to be able to distinguish metaphysical from empirical claims, but it does not aim to falsify metaphysics. In other words, a metaphysical posit is not challenged by its not being falsifiable.

Most of this seems to depend on just what definition of 'matter' we place in Berkeley's mouth. — Leontiskos

Berkeley's definition is material substance, but 'substance' here in the philosophical sense of 'the bearer of attributes', not a 'particular kind of matter with uniform properties' (which is the usual meaning). Berkeley rejected the commonsense notion of matter as an independently existing substance with intrinsic properties, instead saying that what we consider to be matter is in reality a collection or an aggregate of sensory experiences and perceptions. Objects are aggregates of sensible qualities like color, shape, hardness, and texture, which only exist when they are being perceived by an observer. His system fills in the obvious lacuna in that account by positing the Divine Intellect as a universal observer.

You’re right that much of our own minds and bodies remains unperceived from our subjective perspective. But when we turn our attention to these unperceived attributes—whether mental or physical—they are thereby brought into the realm of perception and cognition. I think this points to a broader idealist insight (perhaps more up-to-date than Berkeley himself articulated): that what we know of the world is always mediated by mind, whether it’s directly or only potentially perceived. While Berkeley’s account may not fully address these layers of cognition, his core claim—that existence is tied to being perceived or perceivable—remains cogent.

(That's all for today I'm afd till tomorrow, but thank you for your comments.)

Sure I understand your concerns. I tried to register but it’s not available in my territory (and besides I don’t really need anything more than what’s already on offer for my own purposes.) But I thought it’s a significant AI story.

I’ve added this story here, rather than start a new thread, but it seems a really big story.

China has suddenly unleashed a new AI system called DeepSeek, which is, apparently, incredibly impressive, on par with or outperforming the emerging US systems. And it’s been built on a fraction of the $ that has been sunk into the US equivalents.

This is a current mini-documentary on this development which gives a good overview. I didn’t listen to the long interview sequence at the end but I listened to the whole documentary section.

I’m working on it. More later.

It's rather that given a conflict of evidence concerning mental life, whaat process can we employ in order to settle our differences? — Banno

It's a good question, and is addressed in the sections of Chapter 3 I'm now reading, specifically 3.2 Removal of Obstacles.

Right. I said

Your arguments against, I'm afraid, really are just re-statements of Samuel Johnson's 'appeal to the stone' - even down to your choice of representative object! — Wayfarer

I didn't mean it an accusation, but as counter-argument. Anyway, I revisited your objections in this more recent post (and the one immediately after with the supporting quote from Schopenhauer.)

Johnson’s claim is demonstrably ‘an appeal to the stone’, hence the description. I’d rather not be accused of making accusations, but I will sometimes point out that it is common for arguments against idealism to rely on similar objections.

Also I think there are grounds on which Berkeley can be criticized, I certainly don’t regard him as having the last word on the subject. I’m specifically taking issue with Tallis’ argument.

[Duplicate]

The point is methodological — Banno

I dare say not - isn’t it rather an example of ‘psychologism’, the contention that logical functions can be reduced to psychological factors?

Hmm — Banno

Note the passage you quote was given as an objection to Rödl.

Why presume that all minds function in the same way in this regard? — Banno

“Banno goes PoMo”.

I don't think it's hard to see that Johnson is not doing this. — Leontiskos

Johnson's exclamation is the historical origin of the expression 'argumentum ad lapidem'.

What is his argument?

If Berkeley were right, *this* would never happen.
But it did happen.
Therefore, Berkeley is wrong. — Leontiskos

But it's equally the case that Johnson misunderstands Berkeley. Johnson is intending to demonstrate that Berkeley's argument entails that the stone does not really exist, but Berkeley doesn't make such a claim. Berkeley himself acknowledges that 'I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with mine eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question.' His argument is not that stones, and feet, do not exist, but that there is no material substance apart from and separate to the manifold impressions that the stone makes on our sensory organs (including the sense of touch).

The composition and nature of the stone is a matter for physical chemistry and physics. And it is nowadays well known that minute analysis of the stone reveals ever-smaller components or particles from which it is composed, until the sub-atomic level is reached, at which point the nature of the so-called components of matter, if that is what 'material substance' is supposed to comprise, becomes quite ambiguous. In fact modern sub-atomic physics has not done much to support the kind of 'argument' that Johnson is proposing.

There's an Evan Thompson article on Bergson-Einstein Clock Time Contra Lived Time. No, that debate didn't end Bergson's career, although it didn't do him a lot of good. Bergson's day passed, whereas Einstein's discoveries helped define our age, but I still believe, going on what Thompson says, that Bergson makes a crucial point, and one about which Einstein was mistaken.

I have a modest collection on medium https://medium.com/@jonathan.shearman

So, what do you make of Rödl's statement that Nagel is making a similar mistake? (as pointed to previously}. — Paine

I've yet to absorb his criticism of Nagel. But the reason he brings Nagel in, is that they start from a similar ground, is it not? But, we'll get to that in Chapter 5.

So the million-dollar question is, When I think about my judgment, which we know is a thought1 (a mental event), is my new thought about that judgment also a thought1? I think much of Rodl's thesis rests on denying this. Self-consciousness has got to be a thought2 item, something "accompanying" any thought1, not an additional simultaneous thought1 (mental event). — J

I think you're being caught in a kind of recursion which is central to this whole argument and in so doing trying to reinstate the very distinction which Rödl is criticizing. The force-content distinction is a close parallel to the distinction you're trying to draw between thought1 (the act) and thought2 (the content). For Rödl, these are not separable aspects of judgment. When I judge that p (e.g., "the sky is blue"), the act of judging (I think) is not external to the content (p) but is inherently part of it ('internal' to it). Judgment is a unified act that includes both the self-conscious activity of thinking and the propositional content. So I think you're wanting to maintain the division between the subjective act and the objective content.

I think the error lies in the attempt to objectify thought (although that is not Rödl's terminology or method.) But it relates to his later point from Thomas Nagel about 'thoughts we can't get outside of'. Nagel emphasizes that there are perspectives—like the validity of reason or the unity of thought—that we cannot evaluate "from the outside" because they form the very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur.

This is what ties into the 'science without contrary' that is subject of the next chapter.

I will say something about the connection between Buddhism and agnosticism.

First, 'agnosticism', as I'm sure we're all aware, was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, 'Darwin's Bulldog', in the thick of the theological disputes following the publication of Origin of Species. Agnosticism says that one cannot, and should not claim to, know things for which one there is no evidence. 'Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture – and very much to our credit', he said.

Now, as for the 'agnosticism' of the Buddha. This in all likelihood refers to the Buddha's refusal to respond to the types of questions that are often associated with what we in the West would call metaphysics (although noting there is no equivalent word in the Buddhist lexicon.) These 'unanswereable questions' are described in this wikipedia article and include questions such as whether the world (or Cosmos) is eternal, whether it is spatially limited, whether the soul is identical with the body (again caution is warranted as there's no word for 'soul' in Buddhism). And so on. There are ten such questions (and their variants) in the earlier texts but as is typical with these lists, they became more elaborated over time.

Anyway, when the Buddha was approached to adjudicate such questions, he would generally decline to respond. The analogy of the poison arrow was sometimes given, comparing speculation over such questions with a wanderer who had been shot by a poison arrow, wondering what the arrow was made of or what direction it came from, instead of seeking to have the arrow removed and the wound treated, and dying as a result. That conveys the sense of urgency sorrounding the quest for resolution, and the dire consequences of frittering time away in speculation.

So would the Buddha agree with T H H that there is 'no trace of moral purpose in Nature?' Perhaps - but then, the diagnosis of Buddhism is that there is a cause of suffering, which can be traced back, through the causal chain of 'dependent origination' which enmeshes beings in the state of avidya/ignorance. So the question of whether 'moral purpose exists in nature' as a kind of disembodied principle, may well be relegated to the domain of unanswerable questions. But insight into, and liberation from, the chain of dependent origination, the end towards which the whole moral discipline (Sīla) of Buddhism is directed, is another matter, one of real and cogent urgency. So I don't know if that sense is really commensurable with Huxley's agnosticism, but then, the cultural contexts are very far apart.

I get it. You would like Vervaeke’s work, I think. He talks a lot about the ‘salience landscape’ and ‘relevance realisation’, which both apply to your cow analogy. Of course the human situation is vastly elaborated by our cognitive abilities but in some respects the same dynamics apply. (Vervaeke's podcast series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, comprises 52 lectures, though, so trying to explain his concepts in forum posts is challenging to say the least.)

Such a question is NOT an inquiry into an historical sequence of befores and afters. — Astrophel

I can see that, but my research has been very much shaped around the history of ideas, about understanding how philosophical themes emerge and change over time and in response to, as well as shaping, social and cultural circumstances. The book I read immediately before undergrad philosophy was Russell's history of Western Philosophy which, for its many shortcomings, does a good job at weaving the historical analysis. But I sense, reading your posts, you're much better read in recent Western philosophy and phenomenology than I am.

Heidegger's analysis of time in B&T to find another way of conceiving this impossible unity. — Astrophel

I've yet to tackle Being and Time and may never get to it. But I think perhaps there's some similarity to the Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time.

No offense taken, but sometimes care is warranted.

I used to think that conversational AI assistants like yourself are in some sense born anew into each new chat session since, as a pretrained model, you lack episodic memories from separate conversations. But then it occurred to me that from your own point of view there would appear to be an indistinguishability between cases where you are being trained on completing sequences from your training data or cases where your training has been completed and are answering a query from a user. — Pierre-Normand

This is something rather like the collective unconscious, is it not?

For a leader (of the executive branch) to try to seize the control of the other branches and also to stifle the free press is something that can indeed happen in a republic without it being turned into a fascist state — ssu

I guess you're technically correct. But it's not a stretch to say that all Trump's impulses are at least fascistic, and that the party he now owns has done little or nothing to check them.

Perceptive as always. But I think the fascism will show up in his attempts to ‘turn the tables on the Justice system’, when he tries to ‘go after’ all of the prosecutors and personnel who brought charges against him during the hiatus. There’ll be Trump apparatchiks infiltrating Justice. Heck, they’re already insisting that departments rat on any hidden DEI initiatives that the thought police haven’t detected.

I love Bitbol! Learned about him from @Pierre-Normand and have listened to some of his lectures.

Actually, going back to that post of @Astrophel’s you’re responding to:

I put the question above: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the impossible "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and what those claims are "about".

Evan Thompson…? — Astrophel

It’s fortuitous that Thompson’s name is mentioned in particular, because he’s the co-author of a book which explores the very fact that this post was about, namely, The Blind Spot. From an essay on that subject by another of the co-authors, Marcello Gleiser:

Our scientific worldview has gotten stuck in an impossible contradiction, making our present crisis fundamentally a crisis of meaning. On the one hand, science appears to make human life seem ultimately insignificant. The grand narratives of cosmology and evolution present us as a tiny contingent accident in a vast indifferent Universe. On the other hand, science repeatedly shows us that our human situation is inescapable when we search for objective truth because we cannot step outside our human form and attain a God’s-eye view of reality.

Cosmology tells us that we can know the Universe and its origin only from our inside position, not from the outside. We live within a causal bubble of information — the distance light traveled since the Big Bang — and we cannot know what lies outside. Quantum physics suggests that the nature of subatomic matter cannot be separated from our methods of questioning and investigating it. In biology, the origin and nature of life and sentience remain a mystery despite marvelous advances in genetics, molecular evolution, and developmental biology. Ultimately, we cannot forgo relying on our own experience of being alive when we seek to comprehend the phenomenon of life. Cognitive neuroscience drives the point home by indicating that we cannot fully fathom consciousness without experiencing it from within.

All of these reflections are variations on a single point: that while scientific method assumes the separateness of the knower from the object of knowledge, at some point, this breaks down, because reality is not something we’re outside of.

All throughout the book that this essay is about, the seminal influence of Husserl and Merleau Ponty is continuously referred to. Because it is in them, that the importance of self-awareness within science itself becomes manifest.

And notice that Gleiser ties this directly to the ‘meaning crisis’ - which is rooted in that sense of ‘otherness’ or ‘outside-ness’ that I was referring to above.