Comments

  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    These processes do not occur for a grain of sand (again, leaving aside strong arguments for panpsychism).J

    They're my feelings, also. I'm learning a lot from the readings of the various postmodernist philosophers, but I don't share with them the distrust of the meta-narrative. I see life as being utterly embedded in one. (Note to self - dig out Huston Smith's essay in The Truth about the Truth, Walt Anderson.)
  • Ontology of Time
    No, I have not backtracked. You asked three questions, about novelty, error and consensus, and I addressed them, with reference to transcendental idealism. What you think are 'my claims' is not what I'm actually claiming.

    Your reading is underwritten by an emotional commitment to realism (whether naive, scientific or metaphysical). But your return to the objects of domesticity - crockery and cutlery, cups in the cupboard - reassures you of the reality of the common-sense world. It is also why you so often express both resentment and hostility in this matter - because it threatens the common-sense understanding of the world. I can sense the exasperation in your posts - how can he say that? that is preposterous! They're not written to provoke, but this matter does provoke, because it calls into question one's innate sense of how the world is. But then, isn't that part and parcel of philosophy proper?
  • Ontology of Time
    But to admit agreement, error and novelty, you have to admit that sometimes our beliefs can be incorrect - can be at odds with how things are.Banno

    Again, if you read carefully, you would have understood it was something I was not obliged to deny in the first place. It is only characteristic of what you think I said.
  • Ontology of Time
    So is there stuff that is independent of mind, or not?Banno

    It's not a yes/no question.
  • Ontology of Time
    This is the bit where you walk back your own claims, were you are obliged to agree that there is a world that is independent of what you or I believe.Banno

    I never said otherwise! It's only your continuous and tendentious misreading of what I'm saying that is at issue.

    there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind.Wayfarer
  • Ontology of Time
    With that in mind, there are three questions that I'd like answered. Firstly, how is it that there are novelties? How is it that we come across things that are unexpected? A novelty is something that was not imagined, that was not in one's "particular cognitive apparatus". If the world is a creation of the mind, whence something that is not a product of that mind?Banno

    As always you misconstrue the nature of 'mind'. What you are saying is that idealism claims that the world is the creation of your mind, or my mind, or at least some individual's mind. That is not what is being claimed, it is an all-or-nothing interpretation of the matter. As I've often pointed out Kant himself acknowledged the validity of empirical realism - within its scope. Kant took pains to differentiate himself from Berkeley in this regard, describing Berkeley's idealism is problematic and dogmatic. Kant does not deny that there is an objective realm and a world separate to the individual mind. So your criticism of idealism is based on a too simplistic an idea of what is being argued for.

    Kant’s transcendental idealism does not claim that the world is a mere figment of individual minds, but rather that the structure of experience is provided by our shared and inherent cognitive systems. Novelty emerges from new external data interacting with our fixed frameworks. In Kant’s view, while the mind supplies the framework for experience, it must work in tandem with the manifold of sensory impressions. The unexpected quality of new data is what we call “novelty.” It doesn’t imply that the mind conjured it from nothing—it simply had to update its organization in response to an input that wasn’t fully anticipated.

    Error occurs when our interpretations fail to match that data. When someone holds a belief that is incorrect, it is because there's a mismatch between their mental constructs and what is going on. Although our experience is structured by the mind, it still emanates from the external world. A belief is in error when that mental structure misrepresents or fails to adequately capture the sensible data.

    Consensus arises because we all operate with fundamentally similar mental structures. This preserves the objectivity of the external world while acknowledging the active role our minds play in organizing experience.

    Remember my argument is that what we regard as mind-independent has an ineluctably subjective element or ground, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Not that the world is 'all in the mind' in the simplistic sense in which you will always take it.

    how things are remainsBanno

    The referent for that proposition is wholly and solely within your mind. That is one thing that is wholly 'mind-created'.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    there are plenty of philosophies and even religions of the world which do not place us humans in arrogance over nature. Whose core ideas is about accepting ourselves to be a meaningless cog in the whole that is nature and the universe.Christoffer

    For instance? The only example that stands out to me is Albert Camus.

    Science communicators are usually closer to this bridge of explaining the truths of nature and the universe into a comprehensible subjective construct that we use to understand the world around us, but a scientist can also be the one who sift through raw data and mathematically discover something that does not have any interpretational properties. How one equation connects and intersect with another is not able to exist as a subjective experience, it is simply pure logic.Christoffer

    The 'comprehensive subjective construct' sounds much like Kuhn's use of 'paradigm', a framework of scientific practice that defines the accepted theories, methods, and assumptions within a given scientific community.

    Scientists, I'm sure, and scientific instruments, sift massive amounts of raw data today - I mean, the amounts of data generated by the LHC and the James Webb are almost incomprehensibly enormous. But surely the aim is always to integrate the data with the hypothesis, or alternatively develop new hypotheses to account for any anomalous data. What would something 'without any interpretational properties' be, in that context? And what would it mean? The difference between 'data' and 'information' is precisely that the latter means something. So if you mean by that data which does not have interpretational properties, then how could that mean anything? Wouldn't it just be the white noise, meaningless data, that is to be sifted out?

    if scientific objectivity, if scientific research arrived at a conclusion that aligned with religion and spiritualism, that there is a place after death, a meaning to the universe and our existence, and that we actually found it.

    How would you then think of scientific objectivity in relation to meaning and our subjective qualitative dimension of existence?
    Christoffer

    You're not seeing the broader epistemological point at issue. Modern scientific method begins in exclusion, idealisation and abstraction. It is an intellectual and practical methodology for framing what kinds of questions are meaningful to explore and what to exclude, and what kinds of factors ought to be taken into account in framing and exploring them. As I explain in Section One, The Cartesian Division, central to that method is the division of res cogitans, mind, and extensa, matter, on the one side, and primary attributes of bodies on one side, opposed to the secondary attributes, on the other. That is a construct. It is not and could never be 'naturally occuring' or 'part of nature'. It is thoroughly grounded in the acknowledged and conscious separateness from nature on the part of the scientist.

    So what you're saying is tantamount to asking 'hey, what if the James Webb discovered Heaven out there amongst the stars? Wouldn't that change your attitude to science?' Your question is based on misconstruing the premise of the argument. You're looking through scientific method, not at it (which also applies to @Philosophim).

    I'd argue that stoicism is a form of desperate detachment out of fear of engagement.Christoffer

    Not a credible criticism, based on any dispassionate reading of the texts.

    I've experienced it myself while studying the nature of prediction coding in relation to experience; how our brain operate and take action before our conscious awareness of it. Thinking deep about this, meditating on it, it effectively making me aware of that process happening can trigger an almost panic attack as...Christoffer

    ...it became evident that the self is a mental construct


    ---

    We only run the danger of being ‘carried away’ or ‘owned’ by our feelings and thoughts when we reify them, isolate and unitize them into ‘this and only this’. We cut ourselves off from the meaningful whole context of feeling and thought when we do this.Joshs

    I don't think that conveys the sense of philosophical detachment that is implicit in the traditional sources, Stoic and others. I think they too had an intuitive sense of the sense in which 'the world' is a mental construct, and how the attachment to sense-pleasures, possessions and identity is inimical to peace of mind.

    Agree with Zahavi.
  • Ontology of Time
    I think there needs to be a sense of enquiry, of wanting to understand.
  • Ontology of Time
    It does seem to be the case that our mind - our particular cognitive apparatus, with its characteristics and limitations - 'creates' the world we experience from an undifferentiated reality.Tom Storm

    Earlier today I was served up yet another youtube talk on this very thing, by an Oxford cognitive scientist (which I almost posted but decided not to). I do see a strong connection between cognitivism and philosophical idealism. I can't see how it's plausibly deniable, although from experience here, it seems mostly misunderstood, and it also triggers a lot of resistance. 'What? You mean you think the world is all in your mind :rage: ?!?'

    Do you think that this noumena or preconceptual world might be something like an undivided whole? A major part of higher consciousness seems to be effort to go behind appearances and in some way engage with this.Tom Storm

    The way I'm currently thinking about it, is that the in-itself, the world as it would be outside any conception of it, is not anything, by definition. In fact, perhaps even Kant errs calling it 'ding an sich' ('thing in itself') because it implies identity, a thing-ness. I prefer simply the 'in itself'.

    Those terms, noumenal and noumena, are laden with many meanings. Prior to Kant, 'noumenal' meant 'an object of pure intellect' (nous). But Kant adopted the term within his own framework and put his own particular meaning on it. It lends itself to a kind of speculation, but wondering what is 'beyond' or 'behind' or 'above' appearances is like thinking about what might be beyond thought (I think :yikes: )

    Perhaps the most valuable thing we can do is puncture our arrogance: the assumption that we truly know the world, that there is a singular reality upon which we should all agree.Tom Storm

    Well, part of me wants to say there is. But that that world is not simply the world defined in terms of sense-experience and empiricism. There is much more to it, but that 'more' is not another intellectual construct. I was indelibly impressed by a quote attributed to Heraclitus by John Fowles, in The Aristos. 'The many live each in their own private world', he said, 'while those who are awake have but one world in common.'
  • "Underlying Reality" for Husserl
    hmm. I think it's very much your own interpretation, but I will yield the floor for now.
  • Exploring the artificially intelligent mind of GPT4
    Hey you’ll like this one. I was discussing Chalmers with Chuck (as I now refer to ChatGPT) and we were both of the view that Daniel Dennett’s eliminative materialism is basically self-refuting. I mused:

    One does wonder, were there a Hereafter, would this have finally become clear to him - but I guess we’ll never know! — Wayfarer


    Yes, one does wonder! If there were a Hereafter, one imagines Dennett waking up, blinking in surprise, and muttering, Well, I’ll be damned…—before immediately trying to explain it away in computational terms. Perhaps he would spend eternity trapped in a Bayesian updating loop, endlessly refining a theory that can never quite account for his own postmortem awareness.

    But, as you say, we’ll never know. Unless, of course, we do.
    — Chuck

    I particularly liked that closing remark. :cool:
  • "Underlying Reality" for Husserl
    So the "I am" has full meaning and evidence even if in fact I am dead. How is this possible?JuanZu

    I can't see that at all. The paragraphs that I've just been studying are those concerning his critique of naturalism:

    Reveal
    Husserl begins his critique of the natural sciences by noting certain absurdities that become evident when such naturalism is adopted in an effort to “naturalize” consciousness and reason; these absurdities are both theoretical and practical. Husserl says that when “the formal-logical principles, the so-called ‘laws of thought,’ are interpreted by naturalism as natural laws of thinking,” there occurs a kind of “inevitable” absurdity owing to an inherent inconsistency involved in the naturalist position. His claim in this article alludes to the more fully formed argument from volume 1 of his Logical Investigations (Husserl, 1970), which will be summarized here.

    The natural sciences are empirical sciences and, as such, deal only with empirical facts. Thus, when the formal-logical principles are subsumed under the “laws of Nature” as “laws of thought,” this makes the “law of thought” just one among many of the empirical laws of nature. However, Husserl notes that “the only way in which a natural law can be established and justified, is by induction from the singular facts of experience” (p.99). Furthermore, induction does not establish the holding of the law, “only the greater or lesser probability of its holding; the probability, and not the law, is justified by insight” (p.99). This means that logical laws must, without exception, rank as mere probabilities; yet, as he then notes, “nothing, however, seems plainer than that the laws of ‘pure logic’ all have a priori validity” (p.99). That is to say, the laws of ‘pure logic’ are established and justified, not by induction, but by apodictic inner evidence; insight justifies their truth itself.


    Here, he's saying that while logical laws have a priori justifications, so-called 'natural laws' can only be inductive. He's dealing with the paradox of how consciousness, which is always perspectival and structured by intentionality, can give us access to an objective world at all. He challenges the naïve realism of natural science, which assumes that it simply describes a world that exists independently of any observer. So in a key sense, it confuses observed with logical causality, and then mistakenly attributes to the former, the certainty that properly only belongs to the latter.

    One of Husserl’s key insights here is that the structure of consciousness itself is not incidental to how things appear to us—it constitutes the manner in which objects are given. The naturalist assumption that there is a reality “in itself,” wholly independent of the mind, runs into difficulty when we ask how it is that we can know this reality at all. As the passage suggests, merely accumulating experiences does not in itself explain the coherence of knowledge, nor does it explain why subjective acts of consciousness can make statements that claim objective validity.

    This is where Husserl’s phenomenology originates—not in denying the reality of the world, but in questioning how the world is disclosed to us. His method, the epochē or phenomenological reduction, brackets assumptions about the apparently mind-independent existence of objects in order to examine the object-as-experienced. What he reveals is that objectivity is not something simply found in the world but something constituted through intentional acts of consciousness.
  • Ontology of Time
    You continually mistake the limits of your understanding, for those of others. That’s why I stopped interacting with you a few months ago - oh, that, and you telling me I’m full of shit - a policy I will now resume.
  • Ontology of Time
    nothing exists without the mindJanus

    As I’ve patiently explained many times, I do not say that nothing exists without the mind. I say that without the mind, there can be neither existence nor non-existence. The idea that the universe ceases to exist outside of any mind is simply imagining its non-existence. That too is a mental representation.

    The error that I’m pointing to, is taking the mind-independence assumed by naturalism as a metaphysical axiom or a statement about the actual nature of reality. That’s where the actual confusion lies. What reality is outside the purview of an observer is precisely what Kant means by the ‘in itself’. It is not nothing, but it is also not anything. (Although @Banno has a grain of truth in pointing out that really nothing can be said of it, it is nevertheless required to sometimes point out what it is that nothing can be said about. )

    …the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer’s Philosophy
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The US Speaker, Mike Johnson, is a young Earth creationist, holding that the Earth is about 6000 yearsjorndoe

    He should tell Trump there’s no use drilling for oil, then.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    Thought I’d mention this given how common it is for westerners to associate “detachment” to utter unconcern, including relative to the welfare of other beings in general.javra

    Excellent point! I have noticed in Mahāyāna Buddhism, there is a lovely expression, that emptiness and compassion are like the two wings of a bird - that realisation of emptiness leads to detachment, but that detachment without compassion (Karuṇā) is meaningless.

    And of course, it is true that objectivity is vital, in many areas of life and many disciplines.
  • The Mind is the uncaused cause
    He doesn't say it's a really hard problem? That leads to the natural reading that it is an especially hard problem.Manuel

    It's an especially hard problem for the generally-accepted forms of scientific naturalism, as they assume at the outset that whatever is real must be tractable in objective terms. The whole essay is a rhetorical argument against those assumptions.

    Interestingly, in another thread, we're discussing Husserl's critique of naturalism, which actually says something rather similar.
    In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology
  • "Underlying Reality" for Husserl
    . His aspiration was to objectivity and ideality, but then why shut himself up in subjectivity? Husserl himself in "The Origin of Geometry" gives us the tools to get out of the enclosure when he speaks of ideality as something constituted by repetition and reactivation through tradition. TJuanZu

    I have the feeling that you’re incorrect in this analysis although I’m not well versed enough in Husserl to put my finger on why. Perhaps you might consider glancing at the IEP Phenomenological Reduction article I mentioned above and find something in that which you consider to provide an example of where Husserl goes wrong with the epochē?
  • Ontology of Time
    I’d like to differentiate myself from the thread owner. And the so-called ‘step too far’ you keep accusing of me is nothing of the kind. It is plainly impossible to consider any sense of time without a scale or units of duration in mind. What time might be, or indeed anything might be, in the absence of any mind whatever, can a fortiori never be known.
  • Ontology of Time
    perhaps form misunderstanding Kant...Banno

    My understanding is not that time doesn't exist, but that it has an ineluctably subjective aspect. Meaning that the reality of time is not solely objective but is in some basic sense subject-dependent. Whereas, as I'm discussing in another thread, we're accustomed to regarding only what is objective as fully real. What is subjective is usually relegated to the personal.

    It (i.e. time) needs human mind to exist. Are we being extreme idealists here?Corvus

    My view is that this is not extreme.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    I should add that I can't claim to have reached any plateau of serene detachment, although I do see the point.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    I would prefer to say that scientific concepts are themselves qualitative ( mass, motion, energy,’etc), and what characterizes them as leaving out what you call the subjective dimension is that these are peculiar kinds of qualities.Joshs

    I see your point, but in the context of Galilean physics, the emphasis was certainly on the measurable attributes of bodies and its delineation from Aristotelian notions of purpose and teleology. Hence the wrangling in American philosophy about 'qualia' as the qualitative attributes of being.

    Rather than aiming for detachment, one should do the opposite and immerse oneself as intricately as possible in the contextually shifting meanings that affective attunement to the world discloses.Joshs

    What would 'immersing yourself' mean in practice? I interpret detachment more in line with what is taught in mindfulness-awareness training - that you are very much aware of the swirl of feelings, sensations and thoughts, without becoming carried into them or away by them. An analogy often given is the 'lotus effect' whereby water forms droplets on the leaf surface rather than the leaf becoming saturated by them. As quoted in the OP, ‘Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’


    lotuseffect.png
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    The Virtue of Detachment

    As seen above, a scientific orientation often leads us to assume that objectivity is the sole criterion for what is real. This approach seeks to arrive at a view from which the subject is bracketed out or excluded, focusing exclusively on the primary and measurable attributes of objects and forces. In this framework, the subjective is relegated to derivative status. However, in so doing, scientific objectivity also excludes the qualitative dimension of existence — the reality of Being. This exclusion lies at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness, which is inextricably linked with the Cartesian divide. Scientific objectivity seeks to transcend the personal, but it does so at the cost of denying the reality of the subject¹⁰.

    Since ancient times, both Eastern and Western philosophies have prized detachment as a virtue. It shares many characteristics with scientific objectivity but with a crucial difference. While both aim to transcend personal biases and arrive at an understanding of what is truly so, philosophical detachment seeks its goal through the transcendence of the ego, rather than by bracketing out the subjective altogether

    To understand this distinction, we must first differentiate the subjective from the merely personal. The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual. Philosophical detachment requires rising above, or seeing through, these personal inclinations, but not through denying or suppressing the entire category of subjective understanding.

    Skeptics and Stoics

    Husserl’s epochē has precursors in ancient philosophy. In ancient skepticism, particularly as practiced by Pyrrho of Elis, epochē refers to the suspension of judgment. It is the act of withholding assent to any belief or claim due to the insufficiency of evidence to determine its truth or falsity. By suspending judgment, Pyrrho and his followers sought to achieve ataraxia (tranquility) and freedom from conflicting emotions by recognizing the limitations of human knowledge and the potential for conflict in clinging to opinions. This pursuit of ataraxia — freedom from conflicting emotions and attachment to opinions — echoes the Stoic ideal of apatheia, which we now turn to examine.

    Stoic philosophy, which is enjoying a cultural resurgence, is built on the foundation of apatheia — not mere indifference or callousness, but a state of calm equanimity that comes from freedom from irrational or extreme emotions (mood swings, in today’s language). The Stoics believed that apatheia was the essential quality of the sage, unperturbed by events and indifferent to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. ‘Detachment,’ said one ancient worthy, ‘is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’

    The famous Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a work that has been continuously in print since the advent of printing, exemplifies this philosophy. In it, Marcus Aurelius recommends avoiding indulgence in sensory pleasures, a form of ‘skilled action’ that frees us from the pangs and pleasures of existence. He claims that the only way we can be harmed by others is to allow emotionality to hold sway over us. Like other Stoics, Marcus Aurelius believed that an orderly and rational nature, or logos, permeates and guides the universe. Living in harmony with this logos, through rationality and temperance, allows one to rise above the individual inclinations of what might be deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ as well as external circumstances such as fame and wealth. In cultivating these qualities, the Stoic sage enjoys equanimity and imperturbability in the midst of life’s troubles.

    As Marcus Aurelius succinctly puts it:

    You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VI, 8)

    Through these shared themes of epochē and ataraxia we can trace a lineage of detachment — from the ancient skeptics, to the Stoics, to phenomenology — each offering a path to seeing beyond the limitations of subjective opinion.

    ----

    10. Subject of David Chalmer’s famous 1996 essay, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.
  • Exploring the artificially intelligent mind of GPT4
    Again, amazing. The depth and nuances are quite remarkable, as also the apparent self-awareness ('I suspect....')

    (I've been getting help with redesigning my technical writer website. I've dubbed ChatGPT 'Chuck' (it liked that!) and I reach out to Chuck for all of the minutaie of CSS and WordPress among other things. It enables me to do so much more than previously. I mention it on the site, saying the 'A' in 'AI' should be for 'Augmented Intelligence', because that's what it does.)
  • "Underlying Reality" for Husserl
    I await mention of Husserl's bracketing, or epoche.tim wood

    There's a book-length article on IEP, The Phenomenological Reduction. I'm still going through it but it's a dense and rich entry. The passage I'll mention in this context is under the heading, The Epochē:

    Husserl’s insight is that we live our lives in what he terms a “captivation-in-an-acceptedness;” that is to say, we live our lives in an unquestioning sort of way by being wholly taken up in the unbroken belief-performance of our customary life in the world. We take for granted our bodies, the culture, gravity, our everyday language, logic and a myriad other facets of our existence. All of this together is present to every individual in every moment and makes up what Fink terms “human immanence”; everyone accepts it and this acceptance is what keeps us in captivity. The epochē is a procedure whereby we no longer accept it. Hence, Fink notes in Sixth Cartesian Meditation: “This self consciousness develops in that the onlooker that comes to himself in the epochē reduces ‘bracketed’ human immanence by explicit inquiry back behind the acceptednesses in self-apperception that hold regarding humanness, that is, regarding one’s belonging to the world; and thus he lays bare transcendental experiential life and the transcendental having of the world” (p.40). Husserl has referred to this variously as “bracketing” or “putting out of action” but it boils down to the same thing, we must somehow come to see ourselves as no longer of this world, where “this world” means to capture all that we currently accept.

    ...Here it is important to realize two things: the first is that withdrawal of belief in the world is not a denial of the world. It should not be considered that the abstention of belief in the world’s existence is the same as the denial of its existence; indeed, the whole point of the epochē is that it is neither an affirmation nor a denial in the existence of the world.
    IEP

    I was struck by something I read in a wikipedia entry on the Buddhist teaching of 'two truths' (conventional and transcendental):

    By and large, Kaccāyana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. — The Kaccāyana Sutta

    This is is making an essentially similar point; because here 'the world' is not the objective physical cosmos, but the totality of experience, or in other words, the world as it exists in experience (another Wikipedia entry discusses the resonances between Husserl and Buddhist philosophy.)

    Personally, I think this is a far more practical line of enquiry than the metaphysics of objects or quantity, because it is grounded in the real nature of existence, not in grappling with abstract concepts.

    -----

    Husserl’s insight is that we live our lives in what he terms a “captivation-in-an-acceptedness"IEP

    Which sounds awfully like habituation, doesn't it? I bought a book over Christmas on exactly this topic, Look Again, although I have a habit of buying self-improvement books and then not reading them. :yikes:
  • "Underlying Reality" for Husserl
    whereas I'm inclined to grant the subject a kind of ontological primacy.

    An utterly formless, structureless flow of change.Joshs

    That would be what is traditionally called chaos, would it not?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I’m personally very impressed by Jamie Raskin - I thought he was a stand-out during Comer’s ridiculous kangaroo court hearings about Biden’s supposed corruption (oh, the irony). But Raskin lacks gravitas, or at least it doesn’t convey it very well on the screen, which is where it counts nowadays. Chuck Schumer does his best but again doesn’t have the heft.

    But something to bear in mind, is that DJT is making an enormous number of enemies. Who in the intelligence community or defence is likely to support him, after the way he’s denigrated them? He’s trying to replace everyone with MAGA loyalists, but how many are there, really? For every MAGA fanatic there must be half a dozen disenfranchised careerists who bear him only animosity. If push really came to shove and it comes down to ordering troops in against protestors…….
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    I don't understand what the issue isApustimelogist

    I understand your perplexity. What drew me to philosophy was the quest for enlightenment. This is something that is often said to be 'spiritual' but that actually is a very over-used word and not especially helpful due to its rather Victorian connotations. Suffice to say that I've always had the intuition that there's something deeply the matter with the consensus understanding of the nature of existence. There is some vital insight that is missing or generally not appreciated or understood. For many, that need is addressed by religion, but I wasn't able to accept the answers provided by the religion I was brought up in (Anglican, although I retain elements of it.) I think philosophy proper, too, addresses this sense, albeit in a much more rigorous way. But if you go back to the figure of Socrates, he was, in his own way, a seeker of enlightenment, not that he would ever make direct pronouncements on where that lay. But I always felt that his emphasis on self-knowledge, and the characterisation of Socrates given as he faced his own death (in The Apology and also in The Phaedo) makes him a seminal figure in philosophical spirituality.

    I think, overall, European philosophy and existentialism share more of that orientation than does English-speaking academic philosophy. Phenomenology was the wellspring of a great deal of that. I'll also acknowledge that this kind of philosophical spirituality is in the minority on the Forum.

    A relevant essay might be Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. Nagel defines 'religion' as
    the idea that there is some kind of all-encompassing mind or spiritual principle in addition to the minds of individual human beings and other creatures – and that this mind or spirit is the foundation of the existence of the universe, of the natural order, of value, and of our existence, nature, and purpose. The aspect of religious belief I am talking about is belief in such a conception of the universe, and the incorporation of that belief into one’s conception of oneself and one’s life.
    Nagel is a professed atheist, and an analytical philosopher, but he does at least grasp the sense of what those like myself feel is missing in secular philosophy.

    All that said, you may well still not see what the issue is, but I hope that clarifies a little what I think it is.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    First of all, you are an excellent writer.Fire Ologist

    Thank you :pray:

    Phenomenology can focus on the glass itself, which represents the subject, and is simultaneously colored by the “out there” as it vaguely reflects your own face on the inside of the window pane - the subjective imposed on the objective, in one simultaneous view.Fire Ologist

    That’s not quite it. The allegory of ‘me looking out the window’ is the self-awareness of the act of looking. A reflection of oneself in a pane of glass is not itself first-person - it is not a subject. That’s the key point. Remember, what this is addressing is the omission or exclusion of the subject so as to derive a view which is hoped to be, if not completely objective, then as near to it as possible.

    I would be astonished if consciousness as a phenomenon didn't turn out to be biological, and capable of scientific explanation. Subjectivity -- what it's like to be conscious -- may be a different matter.J

    Suffice to say here that the reason I start with the ‘Cartesian division’ is to highlight the way in which modern science and also culture simply assumes the ‘self-other’ or ‘self-world’ division. That in itself is a kind of implicit stance or way of being in the world, fundamental to the modern mindset. Modern thought has been completely world-changing in its sweep, but Chalmers is saying, ahem, pardon me, but what about 'consciousness'? (by which I think he actually means 'being'.) Hence my often-quoted reference to Bernstein's 'Cartesian Anxiety'. There's a section devoted to that in The Embodied Mind.

    The authors see the 'Cartesian Anxiety' as a fundamental tension in modern thought that arises from the legacy of Descartes' dualism ('the Cartesian division). This anxiety stems from the fear that if knowledge cannot be grounded on an absolute, objective foundation, then we are left with relativism, where knowledge can never be secure. The authors argue that this dichotomy—between a fully objective reality independent of our perception and a world where everything is merely a projection of the mind—is itself a false problem, one that has trapped Western epistemology in an unresolved crisis.

    Their alternative is grounded in enactive cognition, which dissolves this anxiety by showing that knowledge is neither an objective grasp of an external reality nor a purely subjective construction. Instead it is an embodied process that arises through our interaction with the world. Cognition, in this framework, is not about representing a pre-given reality but about bringing forth a world through lived experience and structural coupling with the environment. This challenges the Cartesian assumption that knowledge must be either a mirror of reality or a complete fabrication of the mind.

    The authors draw from Buddhist philosophy to support this perspective, particularly the idea of dependent origination, which suggests that there is no fixed, independent reality separate from our cognitive engagement ('everything arises due to causes and conditions'). The enactive, embodied approach to knowing moves beyond the paralysis of Cartesian Anxiety and recognizes that meaning emerges through our dynamic interactions rather than being imposed from an external or internal source.

    However, in response to @Joshs remarks above, I'll note that the Buddhist principles in the book provide a normative dimension to the practice of enactivism which is often absent in contemporary approaches. Buddhism pursues a transformative insight, which has resonances with Husserl's epochē (which is made especially clear in the IEP article on the Phenomenological Reduction). This transformative element provides a kind of 'pole star' that differentiates it from moral relativism but without falling into dogmatism.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Thanks. Depressing reading. I really understand the hostility towards 'woke culture' - the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) is about the only free-to-air TV I watch. Their news bulletins are excruciatingly 'woke', invariably airing social justice and identity politics in the main broadcast every evening. I also understand the hostility towards 'cultural Marxism' in the Universities. But the 'cure' these kinds of people is offering are far, far worse than what they see as the disease. And besides, Donald J. Trump has no allegiance to any ideology whatever - he's only interest is self-interest, but all these reactionaries have hitched their wagon to his star, and besides, most of it is sheer lust for power, masquerading as some kind of righteous quest to correct social ills. They're all stinking hypocrites as far as I'm concerned.

    Kill the program and gains may evaporate.BC

    I know, from what little I've read, the ripple effects of Musk 'feeding USAID through the woodchipper' are going to affect entire countries. As I said already, it's the opposite of philanthropy - it's large-scale misanthropy, again masquerading as ideological correctness ('stamping out waste and fraud'.)
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Do you hold the view that America will be a Christian nationalist dictatorship before the end of this year?Tom Storm

    If they’re not, it won’t be through lack of trying.

    And the part of the US who don't want this and oppose this will just sit there and take it? That's just lazy.Christoffer

    There are some protests starting to appear but it’s going to take a lot more than protests. The Democrats don’t have a clear leader.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Some of the consequences of the USAID shutdown

    Here’s the wreckage as of Feb. 14, as compiled by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.


    At least 11,500 Americans and 54,575 foreigners have lost their jobs. Nearly $1 billion in payments for work already done has been frozen. Nearly $500 million in food is sitting in ports, ships and warehouses. In Syria, a country struggling to recover from chaos, food and other support for nearly 900,000 people has been suspended. In West Africa, 3.4 million people in 11 countries have lost drug treatment for deadly tropical diseases. At least 328,000 HIV-positive people in 25 countries aren’t getting lifesaving drugs.
    — WaPo

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/21/usaid-trump-freeze-marocco-foreign-aid/


    (I recall, but can’t re-find, a remark by a Republican, dismissing concern, along the lines of ‘some kid crying because he didn’t get his milk bottle’.)

    Caritas Internationalis, which coordinates Catholic relief services, was even blunter. Alistair Dutton, the group’s secretary general, said in a Feb. 10 statement from Rome: “Stopping USAID abruptly will kill millions of people and condemn hundreds of millions more to lives of dehumanizing poverty. This is an inhumane affront to people’s God-given human dignity, that will cause immense suffering.”
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    I do often notice a general deficiency of wonder both in myself and among others, although at least I wonder why.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    What with Trump wanting to sack the whole CIA and most of the FBI, while spouting Russian propaganda - well, let’s just say, his security detail will have their work cut out.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Bear in mind many of Trump’s actions directly contravene what would have been Republican policy before he took over. Marco Rubio used to lambast Obama for not being tough enough against Putin. Now he’s completely capitulating to Trump’s adulation of him. That’s only one example and there are many more. So Congress has entirely abdicated any responsibility to try and restrain him.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    In other words, how resilient is the Republic of the USA? In your opinion?kazan

    Not resilient enough in my view. Trump is methodically dismantling and dissolving independent agencies and actors and replacing them with party apparatchiks and people who will swear loyalty to him over the Constitution. He is acting so brazenly and with such reckless haste that the judicial system cannot keep pace. He’s also now protected by the Supreme Court guarantee of immunity for all official acts by a President. You may remember he said on the campaign trail, vote for me in 2024, you won’t have to vote again. He walked it back later but I think he really meant it. We are watching a right wing takeover of the American Republic.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    No wonder Husserl expressed admiration for Buddhist principles. But I think more germane to the theme of ‘seeing truly’ are the opening sentences of the IEP article:

    There is an experience in which it is possible for us to come to the world with no knowledge or preconceptions in hand; it is the experience of astonishment. The “knowing” we have in this experience stands in stark contrast to the “knowing” we have in our everyday lives, where we come to the world with theory and “knowledge” in hand, our minds already made up before we ever engage the world. However, in the experience of astonishment, our everyday “knowing,” when compared to the “knowing” that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a pale epistemological imposter and is reduced to mere opinion by comparison.

    ‘Wisdom begins with wonder’ comes to mind.
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