5. Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra Prelude - Nietzsche's philosophy of saying yes to life embedded in musical form. It's also a great example of how other media influence your love of a particular form, as without inclusion in Kubrick's 2001, this would not be the beloved piece that it is today.

4. Bach - Cello Suite #1 Prelude - There's a singular beauty to Bach's lone cello exploring this musical territory on its own. It is the awakening of the human voice without, of course, an actual human voice.

3. Tristan und Isolde - Prelude to Act I - Many say that this piece, featuring the infamous Tristan chord, is the birthplace of modern music with its tonal non-resolution. Conveys the, unresolved desperate longing of a person like no other piece I know.

2. Glass - "Lightning" - Classical piece or pop song? To me, the line is completely obliterated and reveals that sometimes our labels and classifications just do not matter. Music is music, and good music is good music.

1. Reich - Music for 18 Musicians - Without a doubt my favorite classical piece. Almost an hour of totally transfixing music. Minimalism reveals the breadth and depth humanity can achieve while working with the most limited of raw materials.

So, life is full of emotions. We live for emotions. Think about it. We work to get money to satisfy our needs because we want to feel as many good emotions as possible. We do everything in order to feel good. And if you disagree with that, i want you to tell me what we do that doesn't have to do with emotions. — Johnler

I think this is true in essence. In some way or another, the point of our whole lives is to be happy, as Aristotle rightly said. Happiness, of course, is an emotion, but it is also more than an emotion. It's a state of being. It's a basic attitude you have about life - your life and life in general. I would say that happiness as a state of being is permeated by the emotion of happiness. After all, if you never felt the emotion, how could you be living it as a state of being? So, I like what you said here. : )

I haven't made up my mind yet on the possibility of libertarian free will. I will say that if it does turn out to be impossible in a conceptual sense, in an a priori sense, just like the concept of a square circle is impossible, I would argue that desiring to have libertarian free will would make about as much sense as desiring to draw a square circle.Which is to say, it would make no sense to desire it. Because, why would you desire something that is not even conceptually possible, let alone physically possible?

I've been talking about pursuing a degree in Philosophy. I don't think I've ever heard a positive response. Some people (acquaintances, relatives, friends) just blurt out something like, "that's stupid", or "Philosophy is stupid", or "a degree in Philosophy is useless."

How would you respond? — anonymous66

"Philosophy is stupid but not as stupid as The Real Housewives of Orange County and look how much money those people make!"

It's pretty well established, as far as I know. Why wouldn't someone buy into it? — Reformed Nihilist

Perhaps it is. I wasn't too sure of the state of the scientific research. It seems to me to be pretty well established though, yes, though with the caveat that science is always up for possible revision down the road with new evidence to the contrary.

General well being? Absolutely. I find that our modern fetishization of happiness detracts from our general sense of well being, so I'll leave that one alone. — Reformed Nihilist

That's an interesting point Nihilist - A great topic for another thread that maybe already exists - but you may very well be right about that.

Yes, and yes. I am more emotionally self-aware. I act less rashly. I experience anxiety, anger, boredom and/or despair less frequently and they aren't, as a rule, the primary drivers of my behavior. — Reformed Nihilist

That's awesome! I feel I've had a lot of positive results with it too in a similar way.

Thanks for your post RN (great username btw) - your thoughts are much appreciated. : )

Mindfulness (I practice Tai Chi) is fundamentally a practice of increasing relaxed awareness. Increasng awareness, permits us to make more skillful choices in life, without any assurance of outcome. It can be analogized to navigating while sailing. Relaxation enables us to perform this navigation while minimizing the amount of energy required. — Rich

Yes, I find that to be true about making more skillful choices. I also find that I just enjoy things more. Even mundane things like washing dishes: when I do it in a rote, mindless way, it's something I wish not to be doing. When I put my full present awareness into it, I become absorbed in it and actually enjoy it.

Thanks for posting!

This is a good start, but let me qualify this. I am not arguing that "the objects surrounding me are products of my mind", I accept that there is something independent. What I am arguing is that the way I perceive, apprehend, and understand what's surrounding me is a product of my mind. This I called "interpretation", you prefer "understand". — Metaphysician Undercover

I see - I would accept that as true I think...

I guess I'm just not seeing the next step of how that makes everything subjective and contradicts correspondence theory though.

I guess what I would say is, well, all of our perception of the external world is perspectival - from our own subjective perspective but OF objective things. But I still don't really see the leap to your conclusions from that.

There certainly is an existential theme and I think primarily on the subject of fear, certainly in the case of Batman Begins (the first half) and his transformation in the Chinese monastery. I have a strong affiliation to that deeper search for subjective peace in the name of objective righteousness and justice.

What you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power. You fear your anger, the drive to do great or terrible things.

When he was building his lair, the whole idea of embracing his greatest fear by being near it, as though learning to walk upright while a thorn stabs the side of your ribs, that genuinely resonates with me. There is a certain power that integrity enables. — TimeLine

Timeline thanks for your response! Yes, I wasn't even thinking about the film's thematic of fear, which is so essential to Batman Begins and to the early development of the character of Bruce Wayne.

So often the choices we make are choices we make because we are afraid, and we escape it by trying to keep the thing we are afraid of: death, poverty, boredom, violent harm, another Transformers film - at bay.

Bruce does the opposite. He chooses, with the guidance of Ducard, to embrace his fear and to build his world from our of his fear, even becoming his fear to overcome his fear.

These are two extremely different ways of experiencing and responding to our deepest fears.

To get a little more psychological about Bruce's fear of bats, I think it was very much rooted in his fear of abandonment. Abandonment being, of course, another very Heidggerian and Sartrean existentialist theme.

When young Bruce was attacked by the bats, he had fallen, and he suddenly found himself in a strange dark world all by himself without any of the people whom were most important to him - thinking specifically of his parents, Rachael Dawes, and Alfred. Of course, by the third film, when Alfred quits and leaves, Bruce's fear is actually realized to an extent - though Alfred's absence lack the finality of death. He is then attacked by hostile enemies.

Young Bruce's fears turn out to be very justified when Chill murders his parents, leaving Bruce alone and abandoned to the world where such evil can happen. And yet, as you say, he transforms the fear into a force of good, of justice, of integrity, to stop similar events from occurring to other people such that they have their own worst fears realized.

Hopefully something I said in there made sense and was somehow a little bit illuminating. I hope you have more to say I am enjoying this discussion of my favorite film franchise. : )

Hello and welcome! Hope you enjoy your stay and feel at home here!

For some reason I find this "equality in truth" to be strange and full of wonder at the same time.

I love this sentence of your blog post by the way. It's very Greek, isn't it? The idea of philosophy as full of wonder. Such a great description of things.

I wish I knew more about mathematics which would help me answer the questions you raise about the nature of truth as it pertains to mathematics and then more generally.

The truths of mathematics seem so much different than the truths of,say, the physical sciences which are founded upon those mathematical truths. If you've read Husserl's Ideas I he has a lot to say about the distinction between the a priori truths of mathematics and his phenomenology versus the empirical truths of physics and psychology.

My primary intuition when it comes to math and something like formal logic is that the origination of these truths come from certain assumptions or axioms that we take as extremely basic and true without much in the way of justification - as Heidegger says in Being & Time, it's hard to justify or ground first principles, if not impossible.

Because mathematics is a deductive system based on those axioms about number and such, truth carries through from mathematical statement to mathematical statement via deductive reasoning that preserves the truth of those original axioms.And the derived truths are all held to be equally true, because I am not sure what could distinguish degrees of truth here.

As you say, it is amazing and full of wonder!

Does anything I said there make sense? lol

The issue is, that since each of these things which are being related to each other, are "understandings", and these are within the mind of the subject, how is it possible to get beyond subjectivity, to assume an objective truth? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a good question. It's kind of an existential-ontological question. The human situation is that we are in the midst of a world of stuff and things etc. Much like Descartes once did, I find myself sitting here, writing (typing) in my dressing gown by the light of a candle at night, surrounded by various objects like my books, a coffee mug and my computer screen.

So there are two very distinct possibilities here.

1. The first is the kind of radical (just meaning to the root of things) subjectivism that I think you are proffering. Everything I perceive around me is in some way mind-dependent. I think this is in essence an idealist view. The objects surrounding me are products of my mind, and my beliefs about those objects relate various products of mine mind to each other and to me.

2. The second possibility is more of a radical objectivism. I am amidst a world of things that are external to and independent of my mind, that would still be there even if I were not there perceiving them. My beliefs about the world are beliefs about these objects that are external to my mind.and how they relate to each other and to me. In this case, the objects or contents of my beliefs are about objective things - things that are not mind-dependent.

Which possibility is definitively true? I have no idea. At first blush, both are very possible.

I don't know of a good rational argument that can prove that this existing external world of objectivity is not actually just mind-dependent subjectivity. But I also don't know of a good rational argument that proves the opposite view, that everything is definitively mind dependent and subjective.

So I come to an impasse, and yet I must make a decision about what I think the nature of things really is.

My intuition is on the side of objectivity. I wish I had a good argument for or against that intuition, but I do not. But when I have a belief about, say, the coffee cup sitting next to my computer screen, I very much believe that this coffee cup is external and objective qua physical thing to my mind.My belief is about an external physical object, and not just a belief about a subjective psychological state.

That, of course, is where Brentano and Husserl's idea of intentionality comes into play.

After having suffered from major depression for about a decade, I had a year-long reprieve during which it seemed nothing could affect my continued state of contentment. I believe this came about mostly as a result of therapy and self-help books. During this time (which was considered to be hypomanic by some), I was very thoughtful and creative. I developed a framework and tools that I thought might be able to help others achieve that enduring peace of mind. — CasKev

First off, congratulations on feeling better and persevering through your illness. I suffered from major depression for about a decade as well and have no felt pretty much full recovery for more than year. It's an amazing feeling to be happy, isn't it? My treatment involved a combination of medications that at the very least did not make me worse, CBT and DBT therapies, as well as self-help books too. I especially find a lot of Buddhist influenced works to be helpful. Two of my favorite works are "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Brach and "Self Compassion" by Kristen Neff. Both amazingly helpful to me. Anyway, kudos to you, and may you continue to live your life in health and happiness! : )

This topic has become so much more important to me in the era of Donald Trump, in which "Truth" seems to become not a correspondence between a belief and a fact, but simply strongly held belief regardless of whether it corresponds to anything objective at all. So, if Donald Trump believes that "It is not raining outside", the truth of the assertion "it is not raining outside" hinges entirely on whether or not Donald Trump believes it to be true. Not only does this seem to be a wildly, extremely incorrect epistemological theory, I think it's also an extremely dangerous one when it comes to our ability to make decisions about pretty much anything. Our decisions, after all, generally hinge on our beliefs, and if our beliefs have no correspondence with an objective reality, despite the fact that there is an objective reality, we risk taking actions, that may have very negative consequences, for very poor reasons.

Allow me to clarify the point. Assume any statement, like "a cow is in the barn". In order that this statement may be true or false, there must be an interpretation of its meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure I agree that there must be an interpretation of its meaning. Rather, I think it would be more precise to say there must be an understanding of its meaning. "Understanding" is something like a mental grasp or comprehension. I often like to refer to understanding as "getting it." When something like "a cow is in the barn" is uttered in relation to a set of particulars like, for instance, a particular cow and a particular barn, we must grasp the meaning of the utterance. In this case, the meaning of the sentence is that there is a particular animal, a cow, spatially located in a particular building, the barn. I think as long as we have something like "understanding" we don't need something like "interpretation" here to do any heavy lifting.

Also, there must be an interpretation of the physical state of the world. — Metaphysician Undercover

In this particular case, I think it would be more correct to say that we must have a *belief* about the world (physical or whatever) rather than an *interpretation* of the world. A belief here meaning something that you hold to be true, whether or not it actually is, in fact, true. In this particular case, you are holding it to be true that there is a particular animal, a cow, in a particular spatial location, inside the structure we refer to as the barn.

If truth is correspondence, then these two interpretations must correspond in order that there is truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

If truth is something like correspondence, I would argue that the correspondence is actually not between the meaning of the sentence and the world, but rather the belief you are holding and the world. I have a belief B about state of the world Y. Now, there is an actual state of the world, F, which we can call a fact about the world. The fact is the way the world actually is. If B matches up with F, then that is the actual correspondence relationship. Now, the fact is not an interpretation. The fact is simply the way the world is. The belief, on the other hand, is also not an interpretation, but rather an opinion about the world that you happen to hold as true. If the two match, then correspondence obtains and the belief is True.

As to whether this is subjective or objective:

The fact is certainly objective. Regardless of what we think about the situation, the cow (Betsy, let's name her), is either in or not in the barn owned by Old McDonald, who has a farm. The fact of the matter is the objective state of affairs. In this particular instance, let's say that Betsy is NOT in Old McDonald's barn; rather, she is actually grazing in Old McDonald's field at Time T.

Now is the belief subjective or objective. Here we get into the issue of intentionality (one of my favorite topics, as a phenomenologist, I might add!)

A belief is a mental state / psychological state. Now, we have to distinguish the existence of the mental state itself, maybe we we can refer to as its form, from its actual content, which is not the same thing. I have many beliefs, and these are all psychological states, so it could be fair to say that they are the world as I perceive it, which means they are subjective.

HOWEVER, the content of the beliefs are assertions about the world being a certain way or not being a certain way. In this example, I hold it to be true that Betsy is in Old McD's Barn. The structure of the belief is subjective, but the content is asserting something objective about the world. Unfortunately for me, what I am asserting does not actually correspond to the way the world really is. The belief fails to obtain. As a consequence, my belief about the world is False. The world is not the way I believe it to be. It does not meet up with my assertion about it.

Interpretation never really needs, and I think, never does ever actually enter the picture here at all.So I think that any argument against the correspondence theory of truth that hinges on the concept of interpretation is doomed to miss the mark.

I welcome and am looking forward to any disagreements or objections you might have to this thinking though. : )

To give a further analogy, Newtonian physics was a science in its early stages that was vastly progressed by Einsteinian physics. That doesn't mean Newtonianism was not a science, but merely that it was an early stage of a more exact science today.

It's hard to define something like mental illness without first defining "illness" itself. The definitions I found of illness were pretty circular, but here is OED's definition of disease:

"A disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury."

So, in essence, an illness or disease is a disorder that affects the functioning of a human being (or etc) that produces specific symptoms.

So psychiatry would be the science that studies diseases that affect the functioning of a human being's mentality.

Health and illness are normative concepts, right? Health essentially states that a well-functioning body ought to behave in certain ways, and a well-functioning mind ought to behave in certain ways.

In the case of the mind, the mental should generally produce states of relative (though not constant) happiness, enthusiasm for life, positive thinking, and the like.

When the mind spirals down into the opposite states for a pro-longed period of time, I believe an illness is present. Psychiatry is the science that sets about to restore mental unhealth to health.

I believe there are tried-and-true methodologies and treatments that have scienced-back efficacy. The research supports the notion that treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), certain medications like Paxil or Prozac, as well as alternative treatments such as mindfulness and self-compassion, can go a long way in restoring mental health.

I know this from personal experience, as I have recovered from a long bout of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder using a combination of such treatments.

Psychiatry is far from an exact science, but I do believe it is a proto-science in its earliest stages, and one that can be quite helpful in finding solutions to mental un-wellness.

It seems to be that the way psychologists and psychiatrists diagnose mental illness is through conversation with the patient. The patient tells them what bothers them, what they feel, their thoughts, etc. So, if you have lost enjoyment in life, and experience constant sadness, you are diagnosed with depression (based on the things that you said to the mental health professional.) The way in which we diagnose depression seems to be way less reliable than the way that for example you would find a tumor on someones body, or a life weakening viral infection. The latter seems to have more epistemological validity than the former. What are your thoughts on this? And given this problem, can psychology really be called a science? — rickyk95

I believe it is a science, with the caveat that it is a very young an underdeveloped science. Psychiatric science has a long way to go, although I believe it's made incredible progress since the time of say Freud.

Fair point. So what is truth then?

I don't believe in things like abstract forms in the Platonic sense, so at best I would say that truth is an abstract concept. You could argue its either a logical or psychological concept, I suppose, but to me both boil down to mental entities.

I suppose the first question is: what is the nature or essence of this concept.

I'd have to think through this. My preliminary answer would be something like "Truth is a concept that denotes the reality of a particular proposition, belief, or statement."

Perhaps, taking it a step further, Truth with a capital T is something like the sum totality of all true propositions.

Or perhaps truth is the property a proposition has when it is in fact true. We say things like "Statement X is the truth." In other words, Statement X has the property of being a true statement.

Just thinking as I go here, feel free to shoot holes in it. : )

For kant, things-in-themselves were independent of the wold of space and time, since space and time are mere a priori conditions of our experienced world contributed to experience by our mental faculties.

If we take this a paradigmatic case of the things-in-themselves, I wholly reject the notion. Is it possible that things exist external to space-time? Sure, as Nietzsche wrote, we can't definitely prove it. But such entities, whatever they are, or such ways of knowing entities, seem largely irrelevant to human experience to philosophical endeavor.

After the, the most we could ever say about them is that they might exist. That doesn't really add too much to the philosophical conversation IMO.

To me those would all be included in the world-for-us. We don't directly experience them via our senses but we do experience their effects on us and the world of our experience. In fact, they constitute the very world of our experience.

I don't see how, but I'd like you to elaborate on your point if you don't mind.

The term was selected by the Oxford Dictionary as 2016 Word of the Year.

The dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

It is similar to Frankfurt's technical use of "Bullshit" in that truth and falsehood cease to be significant. The post-truth world is the result of the ascendancy of the bullshitter, who is contrasted with the liar in that while the liar knows what is true and what is false, and knowingly speaks falsehoods, the bullshitter does not know or care for truth.

But of course truth is what is still there despite what you say about it. A post-truth world must fail. — Banno

A very timely subject. America is definitely a post-truth environment right now, I can tell you that.

Truth to me is one of the foundational and most important concepts in philosophy. Truth is the reason I mostly reject postmodernism, which I see as a philosophy that eliminates the special status of truth and replaces it with the concept of perspective or interpretation, of which many are equally valid.

Not all sentences express a truth or falsehood. For example, an opinion may be true, false, or neither.

But if you are asserting a purported fact about the world, I would argue that truth is the essential component that constitutes the fact.

"Mike Pence is currently the VP of United States." Russian meddling aside, unless he is removed from office through impeachment, I believe that this is an undeniable fact about the world.It is not susceptible to interpretation or perspective. A contradictory fact would simply be a false statement.

I find this to be a tricky subject because the concept "nature" is not too clear and distinct on my view, as opposed to say, physicalism, which asserts that everything is in some way physical.

Can you offer up a tight definition of "nature" so that I can try to evaluate my thoughts on weak naturalism?

No, I think that full-blown atheism is a fully positive belief in the non-existence of God. It's an active believe with profound influences on the way you think and live your life.

"People can't consent to being born."

Don't know if anyone has made this comment yet, but this is essentially the concept of thrownness in existentialist writing. We are thrown into the world whether we like it or not. That is part of our ontological constitution, as is the fact that we are also inevitably headed towards death. which we don't necessarily consent to either.

While I don't think that suicide is always wrong, I think it is often a sad choice and oftentimes it is deeply influenced by either mental illness, addiction, or both. I think the majority of people with relatively healthy brains consent to being alive once they are actually in-the-world.

If you see life as a secular miracle (or a religious one for that matter), you will spontaneously be glad to exist and I think in that case you retroactively consent to having been born. If you don't want to continue living, on the other hand, your point makes an interesting addition to the argument for euthanasia being a legal option in some circumstances.

Not academic philosophy, but just started reading Dawkins' The God Delusion which I've never gotten around to before.

I've also been reading snippets of Nietzsche, Russell, and G. E. Moore here and there.

I honestly think I disagree but cool thesis statement and I hope you go for it.

Here's a counterargument for you to ponder and possibly try to refute in your paper:

We often care about lives not because we have an emotional connection to them, but because we have an intellectual understanding that like you and your loved ones, they are also a life filled with hopes, desires, dreams, suffering, joy, and all kinds of other characteristics that you recognize in you and your loved one. On an emotional level, you may feel nothing for this person, but you may still care about their well being, in essence, because you have an intellectual recognition of their personhood and the rights and dignities that that entails.

Chew on that and see if you have a good counter argument to incorporate into your paper if you think my challenge is decent. Good luck! Fun topic.

Just a comment on this, but realism and idealism are compatible. See objective idealism. Perhaps also phenomenalism. — Michael

Interesting. I'll have to read up on this.

If you're asking "why do people believe in God?" And then proceeding to say that you're only interested in logical reasons, then I don't know if you'll get far; the average Chritian or Muslim or Religious Jew doesn't necessarily have a conscious logical proof in their mind that allows them to participate in their religion. — Noble Dust

Agreed, I do not think most people's reasons for believing in God are based in logic. As you say, there may be a few philosophers out there who believe in God BECAUSE of the ontological argument or because of a cosmological argument, or what have you.

But I doubt that is why the vast majority of people believe in God.

I think human beings have certain psychological needs that lead to the belief in God. Probably the biggest one is that we fear death and we need to find comfort in the fact that we are going to die.

After all, what could be more comforting to someone fearing death that, in a sense, you don't really die, but that you instead live forever. With God, that become possible.

So that's the psychological aspect. There's also the faith aspect, which I think complements the psychological aspect. We are raised, largely, in a culture of faith in God. We are taught from a very early age in church (or your house of worship of choice) that God does in fact exist. We are socizlized to this belief, and we are told that we ought to have faith in it, which means believing in it regardless of any reasons that may go counter to this belief.

A strong psychological need coupled with a culture of faith, and bam. Belief in God becomes very natural for a vast majority of people.

So why do other people NOT believe in God in the same culture? I think for many people, myself included, the culture of faith is ultimately intellectually very dissatisfying. It is very important to me to have reasons for my beliefs. When I have sought reasons to believe in God, I have found the belief to be lacking in justification.

I suppose to me the main argument that would back up a belief in God for me, would be the testimony of the scriptures. But to me, the testimony of the scriptures seems rather unreliable. They describe a world that seems very different from the one we actually live in. The Bible is filled with supernatural events: miracles, communications with God, and what have you. None of this happens in our reality to my knowledge, at least nothing that has been verified beyond a reasonable doubt.

Science and historical research do not seem to find any further evidence that such miracles occurred in history or could have occurred in history given what we know about the natural and historical world.

I think to change my atheistic belief, I would need very strong contemporaneous empirical evidence that the testimony of the Bible was possibly true (i.e. miracles started happening all over the place again, Jesus returned, etc.)

Lacking that, I very much doubt I will ever change from an atheistic viewpoint to a theistic one.

I guess I've always rejected idealism in all its forms, be it Berkeleyan, or transcendental or absolute.

Which means, I suppose, that I have always subscribed to some brand of realism, if one must fall into one of these two camps to some extent.

Since I basically reject idealism, I must not think that dreams are in any way a proof of idealism.

Why not? Well... I need to think this through.

Idealism, I think, is basically the notion that there is no real mind-independent reality, whereas reality is in some major way mind-independent for the realist.

Dreams are most certainly mind-dependent, on the other hand. Dreaming is a psychological process. The raw materials for dreams are derived from reality, but they do not then become reality. They are processed and synthesized in a way that is not real.

Unfortunately for me, I had a dream the other night that I was dating Jennifer Lawrence, but when I woke up I realized that this wasn't reality (again, unfortunately, for so so many reasons).

There is a certain state of affairs in the world, in which two people, me and J-Law, are very clearly not involved in any kind of romantic entanglement - hey, I've never even met the lovely lady.

While my mind is responsible for the fact that I am cognizant of this state of affairs, my mind doesn't dictate this state of affairs. Even if I thought I was dating J-Law, I would not be dating J-Law. Similarly, even if I dream that I am dating J-Law, I am still not dating J-Law.

The reality does not correspond to the dream. And this has nothing to do with my own psychological states. I guess this is what you could call a physico-social fact about the world. Physical in the sense that it involves two physical beings, me and J-Law, and it involves a social fact about us - we are not dating.

The only role my mind is playing here is that I am conscious of this fact. I am aware of it, I can think about it, be upset about it, fantasize about it. But none of this changes the reality of the situation.

Hence, realism.

I was reading a bit of Russell's "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" tonight because I had been reading Nietzsche and his theories of truth are so confusing I felt I needed an antidote and Russell seemed like a good place to start. :-)

I like that he makes the distinction between facts, which have no truth value, and beliefs, which do have a truth value.

Facts have no truth value, Russell says, because you can't have a false fact, and truth requires falsity. There are just facts. And there are facts of many different kinds, i.e. arithmetic mathematical facts, physical facts, etc.

I think part of the reason Nietzsche was making my head spin was because a) I couldn't really get clear on his notion of truth and b) I think in the current American political climate, it is so important to get in touch again with notions like fact and truth.

I don't take these things for granted. I believe that it is true that there are facts. I am not exactly sure how to define a fact, but I suppose as a first pass I'd say a fact is something about the way things really are. In other words, I suppose facts make up reality.

This is, of course, all leading up to some kind of correspondence theory of truth, which I believe during this period of Russell's thinking (1918 I think) he held, although at one point he held something like an identity theory of truth.

I feel very sympathetic to the correspondence theory of truth tonight. It seems so basic and yet feels so right.

My coffee cup has coffee in it right now. This is a fact (although give me a few more minutes and it won't be a fact anymore). The proposition that I put forth in a sentence before, that my coffee cup has coffee in it right now, is true because it corresponds to the fact that my coffee cup does indeed have coffee in it right now. (actually it's decaf, which some people may reject as real coffee, but nevertheless...)

Did Trump collaborate somehow with Russia with the intention of trying to win an election? I do not know the answer to that question (although I have a strong belief). However what I feel quite certain of right now, is that he either did or did not. There is a fact of the matter. One of those facts exists. In other words, there was an event that either took place (call it collusion if you will) or did not take place. If it did take place, if the fact is that Trump colluded, then my belief that he did collude would be true. If he did not, my belief would be false.

So there it is again, the correspondence theory. If my belief corresponds to the event in question, that it is a true belief. If not, then it is a false belief.

Either way, there is a fact of the matter.

Anyway, facts. I like 'em.

It seems to be that the way psychologists and psychiatrists diagnose mental illness is through conversation with the patient. The patient tells them what bothers them, what they feel, their thoughts, etc. So, if you have lost enjoyment in life, and experience constant sadness, you are diagnosed with depression (based on the things that you said to the mental health professional.) The way in which we diagnose depression seems to be way less reliable than the way that for example you would find a tumor on someones body, or a life weakening viral infection. The latter seems to have more epistemological validity than the former. What are your thoughts on this? And given this problem, can psychology really be called a science? — rickyk95

I think psychology and psychiatry are both very much sciences, although I agree that they are less reliable than, say, physics and chemistry.

I think, though, that we are at a very early stage of our conceptual understanding of what mental illness is.

Just as there are particular traits involved in a disease like cancer, there are particular traits involved in a disease like depression. In cancer, the main trait involved is the uncontrolled and harmful division of cells or something like that (I'm the worst scientist or doctor).

In major depressive disorder, say, the dominant traits are something like low mood / sad affect and pervasive negative thinking. There are ancillary symptoms too, but that seems to be to be the essence of depression based on my own readings and my own direct experience of the illness.

As time goes by,I think the science will become much more reliable.

I've always found pragmatism fascinating due to its status as kind of the first major American philosophy. American culture is extremely pragmatic, right? We value what works in the "real world" over theoretical speculation with little to no actual pragmatic effects. It feels like SUCH an American school of thought.

And, of course, the computer voice from OK Computer reminds us, "Pragmatism, not Idealism" : )

Pragmatism is a uniquely American contribution to philosophy that was first articulated in the latter part of the 1800's and the early part of the 1900's. As a school of thought, it emerged from the ideas of four principal characters: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey. Though it is difficult to summarize, one key idea pragmatism is known for is its theory of truth. According to pragmatism, the truth of a belief is determined not according to its propositional content, but rather according to its expediency in the achievement of practical results. In other words, the truth of a belief is determined according to its practical usefulness in the attainment of a desired outcome; a "true" belief is a "useful" belief.

Pragmatism was briefly fashionable, followed by a 50 year period of obscurity and, in more recent times, a modest revival. — geospiza

Great summary!

I'm reading Nietzsche at the moment and in certain passages Nietzsche often sounds like a continental pragmatist. Although he takes it a step further - truth is not just useful belief, but a useful fictitious belief. That seems a bridge too far for the classical Pragmatists like CS Perice and William James, but is is obviously very crucial to a more postmodern type pragmatism that we see more recently in schools like that of Rorty.

Yesterday I was having an argument with a classmate regarding the importance of Kant today. He argued that Kant was no longer relevant - most of his metaphysics has been displaced by science and his theory of morality is not in line with what morality means any more. I utterly disagreed with what he said, and decided to collect my thoughts into an article. I'd love to hear if anyone else thinks Kant is obsolete, and if so why?

My article can be found here: http://thephilosphere.com/why-study-kant-today — James McSharry

There are so many reasons to study Kant, not the least of which is of his historical importance.

In terms of contemporary philosophy, to me, most of the best philosophy has *some* kind of Kantian aspect to it.

I've mostly considered myself, insofar as I considered myself anything in philosophy, a Heideggarian-styled phenomenologico-existentialist. Without Kant, I think Heidegger's thought would be pretty incoherent and meaningless, specifically the notion of the transcendental conditions / a priori understanding of understanding and knowledge and reality.

Heidegger describes his phenomenological method as transcendental in nature. I think he's right that it is - Heidegger discussed the necessary conditions of what it is for a thing to be anything at all and the kind of being that it has. Without Kant, this project doesn't even get off the ground. And I think the Heiddegerian school is still very relevant philosophically today, with seemingly more and more anglo-american philosophers taking on Heidegger in either a positive or negative way.

Not to mention that even where I think Kant is wrong, his ideas are momentous. The a priori nature of space and time as conditions of experience. Appearance vs. thing-in-itself. The moral law. These are all very live and interesting philosophical debates being had or to be had I believe.

So yay for Kant. I disagree with him a lot, but he's highly relevant and worth studying closely IMO.

"The nothing noths."

Sorry, just had to bring Heidegger's possible meaningless description of nothing, or possibly deeply meaningful description, of nothing here. : )

At some point I read that there is no way to define law, or at least that is an opinion that is held. I disagree though. I think that laws are rules set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population. Is that not a reasonable definition? — MonfortS26

Have you ever read Hans Kelsen? He basically boils the idea of a law to that of a norm backed by coercive threat. In other words, a law amounts to something like, "You ought to do X because if you do not do X you will receive Y negative consequence."

Which seems to play right into your opinion that laws are rules (norms) set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population, although Kelsen's emphasis is not on control of the population so much as how law functions in holding a society together. He's more of an optimist.

For the opposite, more pessimistic view that you espouse, Foucault, I think, is all over that in his writings on power.

No, I don't think that's reasonable. Laws are put in place to protect the defined rights and freedom of individuals. Therefore they are not intended to control the population, but to ensure that each member of the population is best able to exercise one's own freedom. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think law often functions in both ways. There's certainly a power / freedom limiting side of many laws. On the other hand, many laws do also help to ensure the exercise of freedom. I guess laws can be a double edged sword.

Not sure, say more? I've always had trouble pinning down precisely what absolute idealism IS so I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I've just been reading passages about Nietzsche about how dreams reveal our deepest errors of thought, so I think right now I'm coming from a completely opposite place than your statement is. : )

Further, I've always been incredulous of interpretations by Brian Leiter and similar Nietzschian scholars that Nietzsche - in certain points of time and / or certain passages has some kind of robust scientific epistemology and realist metaphysics that support the natural sciences because the postmodernist side of Nietzsche has always overshadowed that to me. But in these beginning passes of H,ATH, he really does bring that side of himself out in a striking way.

Bitter, that all seems pretty right to me. I think at least in this period of Nietzsche's thought he would also basically agree. He does seem to be something of a scientific realist when it comes to the natural sciences in the early part of Human, All Too Human such that he would agree in perhaps the eternity of things like matter and energy. It's funny because he refers to this type of knowledge as "little, humble" truths as opposed to the grandiose Truths of metaphysics, which are false errors anyway. Although on my view there's nothing particular humble or little about physics, but I guess when you put physics up against a Platonic or a Christian or a Kantian system there is kind of humbleness to it.

There are so many passages, especially in middle and late period Nieztsche, where he seems to regard all truth as error, even scientific truths. This is the strain of Nietzscheian thought as well as postmodern thought that I have never been able to get on board with. That our universe is constituted by energy-matter is not a falsehood or error, even if those concepts are historical in nature; whereas the concept that there are things-in-themselves that are real essences of things versus their empirical appearances is a major error. At least that's how I see it, and i think how Nietzsche sees it, in this period.

Nietzsche has always been so frustrating to me because so many different passages in his different books seem blatantly contradictory and sometimes even internally incoherent. But I'm finding a real beauty, value, and truthfulness to Human, All Too Human right now.

Thanks for helping me think some of this through even more clearly, I very much appreciate it.