I realize that there are any number of reasons why responding to this thread is irrational. For one, its author, YIOSTHEOY, hasn't been active for 7 months. Secondly, I've never read anything by Descartes beyond "cogito ergo sum". And thirdly, I only have a tenth grade education, so engaging in any significantly sophisticated discussion, is no doubt beyond my capabilities. But what I do have, is forty years of being a self-professed solipsist, along with an inordinate amount of time to ponder its implications.

That being said, one of the perplexing problems of "I think therefore I am" is how to define the "I" without the corresponding context of the "non-I". As with all things, "I" would only seem to have meaning as it relates to something else. Just as hot only has meaning as it relates to cold, up only has meaning as it relates to down, and hard only has meaning as it relates to soft. It would seem that things can only be defined in contrast to something else. Thus the concept of "I" may be impossible to construct without the contrasting concept of the "non-I".

So even if the solipsist is correct, and all that exists is the "I", the "I" must still have two distinct aspects. That which perceives that I am, and that which gives context to what I am. The question for the solipsist then becomes, if these two things, the "I" and the "non-I", are but two aspects of the same thing, then how can one of them, the mind, be said to have given rise to the other one? If the "I" can't exist without the "non-I", then how can it be its cause?

The answer would seem to be that the "I" can't be responsible for the existence of the "non-I". Therefore there must be something else which is responsible for the existence of both of them. Thus it would seem, that even for the solipsist, three things can be known to exist, the "I", the "non-I", and that which gives rise to them. "Cogito ergo sum", followed to its logical conclusion asserts that reality must be triune in nature.

Now anything beyond this point becomes highly speculative, but it's possible to hypothesize about the nature of that which gives rise to the "I" and the "non-I", and about why reality looks the way it does. But that is best left to another time.

Descartes cogito ergo sum was the first un-doubtable truth that he came to (IIRC) in his process of attempting to doubt everything (and thereby come to certain knowledge). As such the conclusion is normally taken to be in the very limited sense of "existence", lest it stray too far and lay claim to something which doubt could demolish.

As far as the question you seem to have been asking goes, which is "what is the true nature of consciousness (and by extension, our existence)?", we simply do not know.

We're scientifically "certain" that the conscious mind is seated in the brain, and that the mechanics of the brain determine it's activities, but beyond that and some of the low level mechanics which facilitate that functioning, we simply do not know.

We cannot defeat solipsism yet, perhaps as a consequence of not comprehending the true nature of consciousness. All we can do is appeal to experience, the prevailing consistency of causality, and the predictive power of our theories.

We're not necessarily left in any existential lurches though. Consider this: we currently do not know the true nature of consciousness. If we somehow discovered the truth what might change from our experience based perspective? Would pain be less painful and pleasure less pleasurable?

Even if we are but pixels or lines of code being run on a quantum Hewlett Packard of the future, that we are not "real" and have no "free will", what would change from our perspective? While exceedingly tantalizing, these potential undiscoverable truths, even if discovered, might have little to no impact whatsoever on the lives of human beings.

For instance, some people believe that our "realness/existence" is tied into our "free will" such that if determinism was true, they would assent to a linguistically similar position as the thrust of this thread: "we do not actually exist". Confronting this aspect of determinism involves the same sort of obstacles of cognitive dissonance as does solipsism and many other hypotheticals; when the way we cognitively (in reflection for example) value experience itself is based on something that can be so casually doubted, we are left calling into question the value of everything given that it all flows through conscious experience.

The solution to this dilemma, in my humble opinion, is to value experiences directly and for what they are as you perceive them rather than appealing to a more base foundation in search of elusive and supposedly ultimate truths. "Drop a heavy television onto your foot" is an old line that I'm unable to forget, because as a thought experiment it cuts straight to the strength of experience based values and the weakness of metaphysical values which would suggest that dropping a television on your foot is meaningless, inconsequential, not real, or otherwise unobjectionable.

Hopefully this is the content that interested you originally, and hopefully it is helpful!

Cheers!

Why assume that the thinking thing , and all its activities, is the most important and most characteristic part of being a subject? — J

One of the reasons I tend to stay out of cogito-ergo-sum threads is that I never read Descartes and am only passingly familiar with it. I find the topic interesting, though, and this line is a good lead in for a problem I've always had with the response to this line.

You see, I came across this line in my childhood. I already knew enough Latin to parse the line, so I must have been between twelve and fourteen, not quite a teen yet. And for a long while this has been (a) intuitive, (b) banal, and (c) rhetorically witty. I quite liked the line. Only later did I learn that my intuition may not have aligned with Descarte's, and it certainly didn't align with a lot of other people's.

So on to your quote: according to my intuition, the thinking thing's importance is contextual. While I doubt (a form of cogitating), I can't doubt that I doubt. It's like a plug. A moment of certainty. As soon as I pull back only slightly, out comes the plug and life flows back in. Which is why "thinking thing" is a rhetorical stand-in. At the moment of "cogito-ergo-sum" you're certain of your existence, but nothing else. It's a holiday from doubting, but little else. Nothing can follow from it, since at that point no other interest can be cogitated about. You gained certainty at the expense of your worldview. No meaning is left. Cogito-ergo-sum is a dead end. You can pull back, but you can't take your certainty with you. But you, the radical doubter, have a place of rest. However the you-that-needs-such-rest only exists by virtue of its connection to a world full of doubt, and you take back that feeling and rationalise it. For example:

The Cogito points to the indubitability of the disunity part. — frank

Pulled back too far, but if that's the way you make sense of it...

What does this mean? Is it unwarranted to conclude that he is a thing that thinks? Isn't thinking essential to being human? — Fooloso4

Pulled back too far, but if that's the way you make sense of it...

And so on. (There are many more examples in this thread, I just picked two from the page I'm currently on.)

I did come across a take on Descartes that resonated with my intuition once, but I forget what it was (a vague memory of "you can be certain you have a toothache, but not that you have teeth"). I want to say it's Ortega y Gasset, but I really am not sure. In any case, the collapsing of a world-view into the cogito and the reconstruction of the world-view in daily praxis feels quite compatible with phenomenology as I understand (which is not as far as some others on this board - I'm not a well-read philosopher).

Not sure I made much sense here, given that I'm not sure how compatible I've ever been with Descartes or his reception, but that's where I've always been.

Think
You might like to read this associated thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5901/existence-is-relative-not-absolute

2. The definition we have for the term 'alive.'
That varies, and is subject to debate, even on the sample size of one we have here on Earth. I know of no standard definition that would apply to a random extraterrestrial entity. What are our moral obligations to something we find if we cannot decide if it’s alive, or if it being alive is a requirement for said moral obligation? — noAxioms

I broadly agree.

3. The 'I think therefore I am,' proposal.
Fallacious reasoning in my opinion, especially when translated thus. Descartes worded it more carefully, but still fallacious. — noAxioms

You would need to explain why you think 'cogito ergo sum,' is fallacious. But perhaps we could put that one aside based on the results I got from searching TPF with the keywords 'cogito ergo sum threads.' Why do I always think of @Agent Smith, anytime I type latin?

4. The proposal that only life, can demonstrate intent and purpose.
Just that, a mere proposal, and very wrong given the word ‘demonstrate’ in there. — noAxioms

No lifeform on Earth can demonstrate intent and purpose more than humans can.
Do you have any sources of significant evidence which counters this claim?
Why do I more and more, think about @180 Proof, when I embolden text and underline it to?

As for my suggestion that all lifeforms in the universe contain protons, neutrons, electrons etc. I expected you to reject the 'all life in the universe is baryonic' label as useless, as everything with mass is baryonic
I have a really hard time with non-baryonic life, so I’m not on record disagreeing with that. Call it a truth then. The bolded bit is wrong. Dark matter accounts for far more mass than does baryonic matter. — noAxioms

The bolded bit is not wrong as dark matter is not yet confirmed and if it ever is then it might just mean the 'baryons,' category gets some new members. All baryons have mass, do they not? So, any dark matter candidate (let's go with Roger Penrose's erebon) must have mass and would therefore qualify as a baryon (if actually detected.)

The more I read about Cogito Ergo Sum, the less I understand existence.

Descartes presupposed I; he took existence as a starting point to prove existence. In doing so, he failed.

All I want to know is that I exist. I want to know that my thoughts are my own. But I have found nothing that proves certainty.

Anyone help? — Kranky

I thought we covered this in the other thread..... perhaps not.

Perhaps you misunderstand what philosophy is or perhaps in this case what philosophy is not.

Philosophy provides ideas and guidelines, it does not produce certainty and proofs about personal matters or in fact any matter beyond a formal system.

If you are still troubled by questions regarding your own existence I suggest you consult a psychologist, or psychiatrist; or perhaps your mother would be a good place to start.

It's not circular reasoning, it is called apodictic truth, i.e. a truth which it is not feasible to doubt. The fact that you're able to argue the case, defeats any argument you might wish to advance, because the fact that you can argue about it means that you exist.

Now, granted, in this case, it is feasible, although highly unlikely, that this thread has been created by a computer algorithm - so I can actually doubt whether this thread was actually generated by a person. But that concerns a different kind of claim to the one at issue.

So, 'professional' should surely be understood to mean 'professional academic' not just anyone who has managed to earn money from philosophizing. — Bartricks

Philosophy is a subject matter for debate. Your "bad" may be the "good". You can't trust your own judgment and declare categorically that what you deem good is indeed good and what you deem bad is indeed bad. Your judgment is by force subjective, and as such, it is prone to error.

Your argument of catchy maxims getting generated only by populist mass philosophers is refuted by
"You can't step in the same river twice", "The only thing I know is that I know nothing", "cogito ergo sum", "eppur si mouve", "Workers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your chains", "Meet the new boss: same as the old boss", "Philosophy... is a talk on some cereal box. Religion: is a light in the fog. Philosophy... is a walk on some slippery rocks, religion... is a smile on a dog."

I calls them as I sees them. If "professional" means earning money, then "professional philosopher" means philosopher who earns money, be he or she good or bad. "Academic philosopher" is most likely also professional, but not all professional philosophers are academic philosophers.

And I have seen my share of bad academic philosophers. (Bad as judged by me.)

OK, but here ordinary language clashes with ontology: "be" is classified as a verb, yes, but then does it make any sense to affirm that X causes - or else is an agency for - its own being (let's avoid the God's causa sui issues, please). For example, does the phrase "I am" entail that the "I" addressed causes - is an agency for - its own being? — javra

Well, as I see it, the English translation of cogito ergo sum viz. I think. Therefore, I am, is slightly inaccurate. My research, for what it's worth, shows that cogito ergo sum actually means: Thinking. Therefore I am.

Descartes' argument in syllogistic form (there are 2 arguments actuallly) would look like below:

1. If there's thinking then there's a thinker that exists [Argument 1]
2. There's thinking (cogito)
Ergo
3. There's a thinker that exists [Argument 2]
4. I am that thinker that exists
Ergo
5. I exist (sum)

Cogito ergo sum!

My issue is with premise 1 and I've already said what I wanted to say. Your point concerns argument 2. Descartes identifies with the thinker (supposing he manages to get past the hurdle that this thread is about viz. that actions don't necessarily imply an actor or that doing doesn't mean there has to be a doer). I don't see a line in Descartes' argument where he claims that "...is an agency for - its own being". The being/existence is inferred from an action/the doing of something - the thinker, according to Descartes, follows logically from thinking.

To know and to perceive are both ambiguous terms in ordinary language. We can get into this if you'd like. Knowledge by acquaintance, or else by experience - such as in knowing oneself to be happy/sad or certain/uncertain in manners devoid of inference - for example. Or seeing that apple one imagines to be: the perception of imaginary givens. I'm thinking so doing might deviate too much from the topic, though. — javra

Let's look at the issue of awareness from a different angle. In my humble opinion, if one is aware, necessary that one doing something with one's mind e.g. thinking, perceiving, etc. If you disagree, you'll need to describe awareness in terms on non-action i.e. you'll have to show that awareness doesn't involve an mental activity but that, as I mentioned in the post preceding this one, is the definition of non-awareness. This puts you in the position where, if you stick to your guns, you'll have to admit that awareness is the same as non-awareness. That's a contradiction, no?

In a state, like Texas? Or in a state of being then exists some given that is in that state of being. And who on Earth is describing this given that is as an entity?! Concepts matter here. — javra

Read above.

But where did the ego get introduced? Where is the step from "There is something." to "I am aware of something."
The nature of being could be self-fulfilling, self-sufficient. — Heiko

That "could be" is the key phrase. It brings into question the soundness of Descartes' argument.

Cotard Delusion described by Jules Cotard (1840 - 1889) RIP

Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome or Cotard's syndrome, is a rare mental disorder in which the affected person holds the delusional belief that he or she [...] does not exist[...] — Wikipedia

Please note the part underlined above.

Cogito ergo sum, kind courtesy of René Descartes, who was deeply satisfied, I suppose, that the cogito, ergo sum argument was, to him and to many of us, irrefutable.

The juxtaposition of Descartes and Cotard in this thread is intended for the purposes of what the US military calls shock & awe.

On the one hand we have Descartes claiming that the existence of the self simply can't be doubted and if one dares to do so, that itself is definitive proof that the self exists unequivocally.

On the other hand, we have people who suffer from Cotard delusion who are convinced that fae "...does not exist..."

It must mentioned though that the Cotard "delusion" is treated as a delusion which immediately defangs any attempt to argue that there's some truth in the alleged belief some people have that they "...don't exist..."

Nevertheless, it can't be denied that people with Cotard delusion present a direct challenge to Descartes' cogito, ergo sum argument. Here's Descartes, confidently asserting, "I exist" and there's patients with Cotard delusion insisting, as confidently if not more so that "they don't exist."

What gives?

Descartes says: Cogito, ergo, sum. I think. Therefore, I am.

The basic idea behind Descartes' argument, in a linguistic sense, is that the verb (act of thinking) entails a subject (that which is doing the thinking)

Hyperdrive (noun): An engine that allows spaceships to travel faster than light

Hyperjump (verb): To travel faster than light using a hyperdrive.

Anti-Descartes says: The spaceship D-105A is now hyperjumping to sector T23 in the Andromeda galaxy.

There's a verb, hyperjump but, because we know faster than light travel is impossible, it follows that the subject, the hyperjumper (D-105A) doesn't exist.

In other words, that there's a valid verb denoting an action doesn't imply the existence of a subject capable of that action.

A major point of difference between Descartes and Anti-Descartes is that thinking is real - we all think and that's proof - but hyperjumps and hyperdrives, unfortunately, aren't real and that's a Sunday punch for where, you might've already guessed by now, I want to take this thread. After all, there's a difference between real and not real and my argument makes the case of an action (verb) not necessarily implying an actor (subject) only in the latter. In the real world, an action necessarily implies an actor; a verb, assuredly, a subject for that verb.


However, take a moment to consider the last sentence in the paragraph above viz. "in the real world, an action necessarily implies an actor; a verb, assuredly, a subject for that verb". How do we know this? Well, if I'm anywhere near the truth, this principle (action implying an actor; verb implying a subject for that verb) is derived from the "real" world. I put real in quotes because, according to Descartes, the "real" world could, well, be not real and that throws a giant spanner in the works for nothing true could be/can be gleaned from the not real and that includes the foundational premise in Descartes' argument viz. actions (verb) imply an actor (subject). It's a premise derived from what is quite possibly an illusory world, a world that's not real and being so it loses its potency to such an extent I must add that Descartes' cogito ergo sum argument is blown clean out of the water.

In summary, the first step in my argument was to show that there's no necessary connection between actions and actors, between verb and subject. This was demonstrated in terms of a world that is not real [hyperjump (verb/action) and hyperjumper (subject/actor)]. The expected response is that in the "real" world there's a necessary connection between action and actor, between verb and subject. This, however, was shown to be a case of inferring from a world which according to Descartes' himself could be an illusion or not real and therefore unreliable or simply useless to make an inference about the real.

The cogito ergo sum is an unsound argument. It can't prove that thinkers exist just because thinking takes place.

Come to think of it, even if "aware" is an adjective - a state of being - you still must rely on the premise that asserts that being (verb) in that state implies something that can be (verb) in that state. — TheMadFool

OK, but here ordinary language clashes with ontology: "be" is classified as a verb, yes, but then does it make any sense to affirm that X causes - or else is an agency for - its own being (let's avoid the God's causa sui issues, please). For example, does the phrase "I am" entail that the "I" addressed causes - is an agency for - its own being? — javra

Well, as I see it, the English translation of cogito ergo sum viz. I think. Therefore, I am, is slightly inaccurate. My research, for what it's worth, shows that cogito ergo sum actually means: Thinking. Therefore I am. — TheMadFool

A disingenuous answer to the issue at hand. My point is that in the phrase "it is" the being (verb) addressed is not a doing: the specified "it" doesn't do the specified "is".

Your retort is to tell me the obvious about what the cogito translates into.

My issue is with premise 1 and I've already said what I wanted to say. Your point concerns argument 2. — TheMadFool

No it is not. I agree that argument 2 is faulty.

Let's look at the issue of awareness from a different angle. In my humble opinion, if one is aware, necessary that one doing something with one's mind e.g. thinking, perceiving, etc. — TheMadFool

You've here gone off into abstractions regarding awareness rather than sticking to concrete instantiations of its first-person occurrence - with the latter including, for example, an immediate awareness of one's own emotive states of being (e.g., being happy/sad), this in addition to perceptions, sensations, and understandings.

Mind, however, is an abstraction whose occurrence can be doubted. Some eliminative materialists do so often enough.

Also, what's the proof for the premise If in a state (awareness) then exists something that is in that state (the entity that's aware)? — TheMadFool

In a state, like Texas? Or in a state of being then exists some given that is in that state of being. And who on Earth is describing this given that is as an entity?! Concepts matter here. — javra

Read above. — TheMadFool

Another disingenuous answer to the issue addressed.

You want to avoid the issue of awareness and stick to the "I think therefore I am" argument, go for it. As I stated in my first post on this thread, I too find Descartes' cogito to be possible to doubt in practice.

There seems to be an excessively binomial use of the term 'Skepticism' here - either one is skeptical or one is not, but surely skepticism, by whatever definition, is a matter of degree? — Inter Alia

I'm not sure about this. In the sense of 'Skepticism' as 'doubt' then sure, it is a matter of degree. But that's not the only meaning of 'Skepticism' that has been intended in philosophy. Many have used it to mean that our beliefs lack a certain credibility status; perhaps that our faculties aren't reliable about certain matters, or we can't prove our beliefs using premises acceptable only to someone who does not believe them. Just two examples.

As one example, were a single light in the home to no longer turn on when I flick the light switch, the realism of an external world would indicate that there is something physically amiss with the light switch, the respective lightbulb, or with the wiring that dwells in between. The real problem might not be perceived nor thought of at first, yet the web of causal relations which such realism affirms facilitates my being able to discover what is wrong so as to resolve the problem. Other hypotheses, such as a Cartesian evil demon (or the materialist counterpart of being a BIV), could be conceived as alternatives to the reality of an external world. Yet, devoid of upheld belief in the very same external world, these alternative hypotheses would at best only encumber my ability to remedy the stated problem. This then can be expanded to why electricity operates the way that it does, to the question of where the electricity in my home originates from, etc. — javra

I'm not sure how something like the evil demon hypothesis 'encumbers your ability to remedy the stated problem'. You know from experience that when you turn on a light switch and the light doesn't come on, you probably need to change the bulb. That seems just as true on the evil demon hypothesis. The only difference is that neither the light bulb, nor the switch, nor the wiring exists when you aren't in the room, since these things are just projections of the evil demon. But that they are projections doesn't make any difference to how you would go about solving the problem. The advocate of an evil demon hypothesis can also easily accept all of the usual explanations about how electricity operates and where it comes from in your home. The only thing he denies is that any of these states of affairs obtains while unperceived. Still, I do think you might be on to something and I think its worth taking the time to flesh it out more. What, exactly, is it about the denial that things exist while unperceived which is explanatorily deficient? What questions, exactly, can't be answered by the evil demon hypothesis as well as they can be by Realism, and what is better about the Realist answers?

The question to me is one of why uphold something like the Cartesian evil demon rather than an external world? I.e., what justifies the upholding of such a conviction? — javra

What justifies the upholding of Realism? Are you assuming that unless there is some reason to think the evil demon hypothesis is true, Realism is somehow 'by default' more likely to be true?

For example, it is common knowledge that Plato, an idealism-leaning philosophical skeptic, was a realist. It seems logically sound to me that Buddhists, by virtue of upholding Nirvana to be, are all realists--regardless of possible divergences as concerns other aspects of ontology—for Nirvana (and the four Noble Truths) would yet be even if all sentience were to somehow be, or become, unenlightened (in the Eastern sense of this term) … in other words, the Buddha didn’t invent an axiom of Nirvana but, instead, discovered Nirvana's existential presence via enlightenment (this, of course, in Buddhist worldviews). Materialist realism is, of course, yet another variant of realism—one that strictly upholds an underlying physical reality (here thinking of QM, the vacuum field, etc.). In all cases, there are one or more things postulated to be even when not perceived, thought of, or talked about by anyone. — javra

I agree. Plato is a Realist in the sense that he holds that the Forms exist whether any one perceives them. He is an Idealist in a different sense to that in which Berkeley or Bradley or Stace were Idealists. The latter have in common the thesis that all that exists are minds and their perceptions. Plato held, by contrast, that the perceptible world is a mere shadow of a deeper Reality. Very different views.

Skepticism is the tendency for beliefs in representational theories of perception to collapse into beliefs in direct-perception and vice-versa.

I don't like discussions of skepticism in relation to idealism or realism, since both idealism and realism have been interpreted through the lens of representational metaphysics, and it isn't clear that either position constitutes a substantial ontological thesis. — sime

Could you be more precise about what a 'representational theory of perception' is? Then perhaps we could discuss further.

Also, take Realism to be the thesis that some entities sometimes exist when no one is perceiving them (W.T Stace's definition). Take Idealism to be the denial of Realism. What about this presupposes a 'representational metaphysics'. I suppose I'm still not sure what that means, but these seem like substantial ontological theses to me.



Unfortunately I think you are still begging the question.

The problem with this is that we understand computation to be a process. The laptop at T2 can't complete a computation without having undergone the process of computing starting at T1. — Marchesk

We do understand computation to be a process, and the Idealist maintains that there is no such thing as unperceived computation. Computers undergo this process when we perceive them to, but they do not do this otherwise. They don't even exist otherwise. A laptop which exists at T1 is in state X, and A laptop which exists at T2 is in state Y. To assume either (a) that both are the same laptop which endures over time or (b) that the laptop undergoes a process between T1 and T2 called 'computation' while no one is perceiving it is just to assume what needs to be proven. True, we ordinarily think of computation as a process over time, but the Idealist is saying that what we ordinarily think, is false.

But given that we're doing philosophy, a strong reason to trust the realist inference is because when we do watch our laptops, they undergo a process of computation from one state to the next. So we have no reason to think they don't just because we've closed our eyes. — Marchesk

We have no reason to think that they don't compute when we close our eyes, but we have no reason to think that they do either, without some sort of inferential argument. Having no reason to think that it is false that X is not a reason to think that it is true that X.

Big "S" skepticism seems lazy and cowardly to me. Come on Rene - don't give me this "cogito ergo sum" bullshit. Make up your damn mind. As I said previously, that type of skepticism is a luxury for those who can afford to sit around on their asses. — T Clark

I wouldn't want to deny that Big S Skepticism is not an issue which concerns people with more pressing 'practical' concerns, whatever they might be. But I would make two points. First, if the sceptic (of the sort I indicate in my last paragraph of the OP) is right, then we have absolutely no reliable source of belief in the existence of unperceived things. Such a belief has on rational basis at all and is of the same kind as the belief that there is a unicorn on mars (notice it isn't just that I can doubt this belief if I want to be an annoying and frivolous doubter. Rather, there is absolutely no rational basis for the belief at all). Now I don't deny that many people have things to do of a more consequential nature. If you are concerned with getting food for the starving, protecting the rainforest, saving endangered species or lessening terrorism then this kind of scepticism might seem abstract and useless. But I think if this sort of scepticism is right it teaches something very important. It is quite common for people of all kinds to deride different and unfamiliar belief systems, or even familiar but unpopular ones. It is even more popular to say of such systems that 'we know better' or that they are 'not based on evidence' or whatever other epistemic criticism. The realization that even our belief in unperceived existence is completely unfounded should encourage a great modesty and give pause when making that sort of evaluation.

Aren't you and Wayfarer mixing up two different types of skepticism? When Descartes says "cogito ergo sum" he is talking about facts. Do I exist? Does the world I see exist? Is the capital of France Paris? When you talk about skepticism about Naturalism, you are questioning the metaphysical basis of a whole system of belief. Those seem fundamentally different to me. The only problem I really have with Naturalism is that its proponents seem to believe it provides some sort of privileged outlook on the nature of reality, which I strongly believe is wrong. — T Clark

I am not sure I was mixing them up. When Descartes asks whether the whole world is a mere dream, he is effectively asking whether esse is percipi in waking life, as it is in dreams. If it were, that would surely entail that Naturalism is false? Although, it is hard to tell whether it would, since Naturalism is hardly ever clearly enough defined for one to tell what state of affairs would make it false!

I should note that I am not here suggesting that Descartes would have understood his topic this way. It seems to me that Descartes had very specific aims and goals behind his use of sceptical themes, and that these aims and goals are quite different to those of other writers who have used the same themes.

Is this an acceptable inference - To the best of my memory, every time I saw something and then closed my eyes, one of two things happened when I opened my eyes again. Either it was still there or I could find an explanation of why it wasn't there. If there were times I don't remember when I couldn't find an explanation, I am confident enough in my understanding of the world to believe that there was an explanation even if I couldn't figure out what it was.

That seems trivial to me. — T Clark

All of it seems true, but none of it entails that things exist unperceived, and I can't see anywhere that you even conclude that that is even probably true. I agree that every time I saw something and then closed my eyes, it was typically there when I opened my eyes again. I also agree that if it wasn't I could provide some explanation of why it wasn't. But why does this give me any reason to think that anything existed when I did close my eyes? What I am saying is, your inference might work, but it needs to be made more explicit what the inference is.

It seems to me that the evil demon hypothesis or one where reality is just a program running on a computer are metaphysically equivalent to realism as long as we can never step outside the universe/program/demon's imagination to see what is really going on. If Morpheus, Neo, and the crew had never escaped the Matrix, could never escape it, what difference would it have made that it existed?

This is a fun thread. — T Clark

This one wasn't directed at me, but I disagree. Realism says that the objects which I perceive exist when I am not perceiving them. The evil demon hypothesis says that the objects which I perceive do not exist when I am not perceiving them. It also says that the evil demon exists even when I am not perceiving him, and he is the explanation of the existence of the things I perceive. If 'metaphysically' is read in the usual way as concerning 'what there is', it is clear that these two hypotheses are not equivalent at all. I imagine that you mean equivalent for practical purposes, given your later remark, 'what difference would it have made'?

Sorry for leaving such a long post, but there were many insightful posts to reply to. Only one remains:

Possibleaaran’s excellent thread. — Wayfarer

Thanks. It being my first thread, I wondered how much response it would get. Incidentally I agree with you that, relative to the history of philosophy, Materialism is a minority position.

PA

Some isms are, debatably, not possible to reject. For example (debatably) it's not possible to reject the view that there is a world outside our own perceptions. — Cuthbert

Good to know. Reminds me of René Descartes' cogito ergo sum. The proposition, "I think" can't be rejected for to do so requires, most intriguingly, that I think.

However, I'm at a loss as to whether the proposition, "I think" is amenable to the construction of an Ism based on it. I was told or I read it somewhere, I don't recall, that Descartes did exactly that, putting, or attempting to put, all of philosophy on what to him was the firm bedrock of the cogito ergo sum. Ithinkism :rofl: can't be rejected.

Hmmm....@Banno, @180 Proof can you take a look at this.

"There's no escape from isms"- ↪TheMadFool

Ism there? — Janus

...so you are an ismist. You espouse ismism. — Banno

Though I don't doubt the value of the many Isms that roam the philosophical jungle, I was contemplating the possibility of rejecting ALL of them even if only for my and, hopefully, your amusement but with tiny chance that such a position - no position - might have real and significant consequences for philosophy in particular and life in general.

To my understanding, to reject ALL Isms, including nihilism, itself can be treated as an Ism and that's what the title of this thread spells out - "There's no escape from Isms".

It's something like the Buddhist desire conundrum which defies a solution. Buddhists à la Siddhartha Gautama, believe that desire is the root of all suffering. Thus buddhists are of the view that to end suffering one must put out the fire of desire. Unfortunately or...not, to not want to desire is, salva veritate, to want to not want to desire. In other words, we can't end desire without the desire to do so. :chin:

It's impossible to not be part of an Ism for to not want that itself is an Ism just as its impossible to end desire for to do that one must desire.

Can it? Rejecting the purported overarching status of any ism looks like an ism... — Banno

:up: :ok: Show the fly the way out of the bottle, sir/madam as the case might be. :smile:

Not all isms end with “ism”

To reject all isms is another ism. “Rejectism” let’s call it. — khaled

Vide supra...show the fly the way out of the bottle.

Also, expand and elaborate on "Not all isms end with 'ism'". The statement gives off an air of profundity that calls for an investigation. Is it, as I feel, deep or is it, as I think, just another Dennettian deepity? Vide infra my response to Jack Cummins

I am not sure that we are just restricted to isms. For example, one can be a Jungian and that is not an ism. Generally, I think that isms are about putting ideas into boxes, and I am not sure that we need to make use of such boxes to label our ideas, but rather juxtapose them in the most creative ways to develop our viewpoints. — Jack Cummins

You're looking at this from a linguistic perspective, words to be precise and that too only at how they're spelt. Isms aren't about spelling, they're conceptual frameworks usually developed in order to make sense of particular aspects of or the whole of reality. Your view on this, taken to its logical conclusion, would require us to conclude that ethics isn't a study of anything because it doesn't in "ology" like theology, epistemlogy, and so on.

Depends on what you mean by "reject". The purported overarching status of any ism can be rejected without that rejection being an ism, but rather just an observation of the diversity of human fields of inquiry and opinion — Janus

Interesting to say the least. Kindly explain further. What makes you think this is so? Perhaps one needs to look into the definition of "Ism"

I was gonna say 'Escapism' - but there ya go...you just can't get away...and perhaps it is a good thing that we can't avoid -isms. — Amity

See my reply to Banno and Khaled vide supra.

I'm going to have to repeat myself I'm afraid: show the fly the way out of the bottle.

Maybe it is about having an encyclopedia or not, crystallizing works to make them comparable to each other.

Like a butterfly collection but with thoughts being held down by the pin. — Valentinus

Nice metaphor. Unlike the butterfly collection which one can reject and be left with no butterflies, rejecting the entire collection of Isms is, good or bad, itself yet another Ism. It's like this time when I wanted to get adhesive paper off my fingers to which they were stuck firmly. I used my left hand to peel the paper off my right hand but then the paper clung to my left hand. I then used my right hand with the same results. I then proceeded to use my feet and the paper bound itself to my shoes. Suffice it to say that my attempts to free myself were futile just like Isms, which if we want to get rid off results in us being sucked into yet another Ism.

Any conception can be rejected merely by re-thinking the conditions for it.

While re-thinking is the exchange of conceptual validity, which is an entailed judgement alone, re-thinking is not necessarily conceptual substitution, which is a separated cognition incorporating its own conditions.
(Re: I can easily think some concept does not belong to its cognition, without ever thinking which concept does so belong.)

Therefore, rejecting an -ism, which at the same time explicates rejection of the concept appended to it, does not necessarily require another —ism and its appended conception be substituted for it.

It follows that the statement, “rejection of -isms is itself an -ism, and hence contradictory”, is false. — Mww

The above passage needs @Banno's, @Janus' and @khaled's attention.

As far as I can tell, Mww seems to be saying rejecting an Ism doesn't amount to endorsing another, usually antithetical Ism. Every Ism no matter how complex or expansive, in my humble opinion, can be whittled down, distilled as it were, to a single proposition that can be true, false, or unprovable/unproven.

Let's work with an example, say matters divine. There's theism which boils down to the proposition, "god exists". If I give up theism, I'm essentially saying, either 1. god doesn't exist or 2. we don't know god exists. Both, as we all know, are Isms, atheism and agnosticism respectively.

As the example above illustrates beyond doubt, abandoning an Ism, keeping in mind the three truth states (true, false, unproven/unprovable) of the key proposition of an Ism, results in adopting another Ism.

In conclusion, Mmw view doesn't hold water.

So, you must then agree that the reader must agree that this theory indeed can possibly describe moral realism.

Any theory can possibly “describe” moral realism. That it is a form of moral realism depends on if it is purporting at least the following thesis:

1. Moral judgments are propositional [moral cognitivism].
2. Moral judgments express something objective [moral objectivism].
3. There is at least one true moral judgment [moral non-nihilism]. — Bob Ross

So, you went right back to a requirement that I do not believe in. I suppose that's a hard thing to get past. If you want to HIDE behind an academic construct instead of addressing the issue, that is not going to help. It does not matter, by the way, if you are right. The fact that even everyone but me agrees that the above is true is irrelevant.

In fairness, what you do not know about me is a lot of things. One that I am a software developer with 30+ years experience and so although I am not a philosophical logical guru, I do understand logic. I also chafe when people offer up the 'I've been a so and so for so many years' thing that I just did. I get it. Academic pursuit. But no, it isn't. Reality is academically interpreted and yet not only possessed of such considered structures. The trouble with science and academia is the same, every time, its odd constructions are considered right, until every single time, someone proves them wrong, or just not detailed enough to be useful. That's where I am at, trying to do that. And I face a true believer in the status quo, entrenched in a singular approach I know is masking the problem for him and others.

Nowhere in reality can I find and point to the tree of moral realism to verify that these 3 propositions must be true. I have to depend on you and this body of academic work that contends that these three are the right requirements. I do not. I refuse. If that makes me a caveman or a fool, I accept that danger. You have to let me know if that means I should no longer post here, because retreating (yes, it is a retreat) behind such structures is not helping anyone. But it is to be expected. My model predicts it. More on that in a bit.

It's one of those conundrums that's really sticky. Lots of moving variables and if you get even one wrong the whole thing looks like spaghetti instead of a string.

Does it feel like or seem to be moral realism? If it bears little resemblance to moral realism, the debate is ended because you are demanding us to lose our minds and believe that black is white as a starting point.

I agree with this. Rhetorically, even if the theory is a form of moral realism, people will not be convinced if it seems counter to moral realism. — Bob Ross

And I am not convinced. I am not even convinced now that moral realism matters at all if it must answer the 3 propositions. I am trying to argue for objective moral truth. That has ramifications that disagree entirely in my opinion with those three propositions as stated. It does not help at all that you keep regurgitating them back to me. I will try to address your comments about why they are necessary below.

I have already given my argument for the uselessness of moral cognitivism.

Moral cognitivism is the metaethical theory that moral judgments are propositional, which is a required position for moral realists to take. You cannot reject moral cognitivism and be a moral realist. — Bob Ross

Yes, I can. I just did. I do again. If that makes me incoherent, so be it. Maybe I am not whatever a moral realist is but I do believe that morality is objective and does not change, so you tell me, what is that WITHOUT the other requirements? What is that called? Because that is what I believe and my current state.

1) All beliefs are in error partially because perfection is impossible (anti-cognitivism)
2) Some moral statements are possibly true because they embrace the concept of limits towards infinity as infinity. (cognitivism)

Beliefs being fallible does not entail that moral judgments are non-propositional. Saying moral judgments are propositional means that one can formulate them into statements which are truth-apt. If you reject moral cognitivism, then, for example, “one ought not torture babies for fun” is incapable of being true or false. — Bob Ross

Well, ok, so, I think that statement is true, so, that means I must be for what you call moral cognitivism, but, the idea of anti-cognitivism is then the issue. But you for some reason did not do the redefine of that one here.

I suppose that is the one I most reject then and I am a moral cognitivist by ... someone's ... definition. Who cares is my answer. Morality is objective. I can offer arguments as to why.

I do not want to go into the deeper basis of my theory or model yet, because it is not only about morality being objective. It's about so much more, everything in the universe, indirectly. But I am one that believes effectively that there is nothing in the universe but truth and all of it is based only in morality. Indeed, morality is the reason for physical existence. I just want to get to a place where I can understand why and how anyone could argue against objective morality. So, on we go.

This ... proves ... to me ... that moral cognitivism (and anti-cognitivism both) are useless.

They are defined such that they are foils to each other and, thusly, you have to either accept one or the other (or suspend judgment): you cannot sidestep the issue by claiming they have low practical utility—even if it is true. — Bob Ross

OK, If I must decide, it does indeed seem that moral cognitivism is, within reason, acceptable. I know we will have to revisit that issue though. So, hopefully my objection is noted.

They are simultaneously false and true meaning they are both true and juxtaposed

That is logically impossible, because non-cognitivism is the negation of cognitivism. You are saying X and !X are both true, which is the definition of a logical contradiction. — Bob Ross

So, what is deemed a contradiction is often not. I understand you are saying that these are not interpreted phenomena that seem contradictory but that the negation was DERIVED from the opposite. Well, ok. But when in the history of mankind has the wording not been wrong on something? Never. I do not want to just digress into confusion either. On we go.

Here you are throwing out two entire models and expect people to read all and follow. I only expect one post at a time and you are expressing difficulty.

Correct. Moral cognitivism and non-nihilism are metaethical theories which are not themselves the same as the debate about realism vs. anti-realism; rather, they are subcomponents of the moral realist thesis, and, for the sake of brevity and because I have already outlined them in full in my moral subjectivism thread, I refer the reader there. This OP is about a moral naturalist theory that presupposes moral cognitivism and non-nihilism and ventures to prove objectivism. — Bob Ross

I can accept for now, with the objection in place.

1) There is no such thing as a mind-independent state of affairs. That's the biggest issue.

Are you an idealist? I am a realist (ontologically), so I think that most events are mind-independent. — Bob Ross

I consider myself both an idealist and a realist. So, about now you are shaking your head. Yes, I mean it. I am dedicated to balance. Balance and wisdom REQUIRE in my ethics that idealist is correct AND that pragmatism is correct at the same time. The contradiction is not there even though people erroneously believe that it is. Sounds familiar right?

Pragmatism is prone to realism, which is based in logic, yadda yadda. Idealism is based in mostly the idea of perfection, in various forms, which I am sure you are familiar with given your verbiage so far. The error of academia is that in pursuing only the realist or pragmatic path, they are almost guaranteed to fail. That is what, in my opinion, you are doing, and probably most people on this forum are doing. The paths of being and of desire (idealism) are being neglected. They do not have equal weight in your considerations. The trouble is that if truth were known, then logic would agree with my complaint. It is a 'childish' or imperfect logic that cannot find its way past this conundrum. Academia in its entirety has that flavor.

The thing is, and this is a case in point, I can argue with the academics some on their home turf and not be offended by their blindness. Most balanced types just hand wave the tediousness. Most idealists can't even do they because they lose it in the face of logic and reason. My question is to the rigorous academic, can you entertain the notion that you are merely wrong? That is to say, the structure that you are relying on to make these models is built on an incorrect base? Because that is what I will end up contending I think. If you can't and I can, I understand. You don't believe my strange tubes are cannons yet and you hide in your fort and think I don't have the holy hand-grenade.

2) If the good is a form, that is mind-independent, in the only way I think you mean it, which means more properly stated that the GOOD does not depend on opinion or choice, but is preset, a law of the universe, then I agree, you are talking about objective morality. But you later suggest that you are NOT talking about a law of the universe making your premises unclear (entirely).

To clarify this a bit, another way of thinking about it is that the Good under this view is identical to flourishing, and flourishing is objective. The methodological approach to determining that is two-fold: (1) the analysis of acts such that they are conceptually subsumed under general categories and (2) the semantic labeling of a particular category as ‘the good’. — Bob Ross

And this is a retreat to jargon again.

No

If you think that flourishing can be defined by two different cultures, and that either one could be correct, you are not what I call a moral objectivist. It is required by my belief model that neither can be correct. That is not relevant either. Truth is not at all related to anything but perfection. Moral objectivity is truth to me. No one can be perfect and knowing is the understanding or aware part of perfection. So, that is why knowing is not possible. The fact that virtues like knowing or being accurate are not perfectly possible to us is fine and it actually proves or is evidence for objective morality. The math of this phenomenon which is demonstrable within reality can be represented by the limiting force. That means it is a limit as intent approaches perfection, and asymptotic. There can be no belief strong enough to arrive at perfection in intent. When we see this effect in reality, we know we are near to truth, yet cannot arrive.

Your flourishing example is terrible and cannot be used. That is because either the intent is to the aim of the perfect good or it is abject failure. So, despite the fact that two differing cultures have nuances of that definition that they are both aiming at and succeeding in, flourishing by your (subjective) definition, the fact that they answer the objective progress towards what is my objective GOOD is not finally relevant. Progress is fine, sure. But both are still errors. They are not perfect. So we cannot be objective in intent. We can only try to be objective in intent.

Further, since there is an objective truth about flourishing, that objective truth is the ONLY real truth, the perfection of that concept. Everything else is just an error. But between the two sub-cultures one error is always objectively closer to the perfect aim by intent. This is relative morality (not subjective). It allows us to possibly use judgement. We can say this or that belief is better or worse than the other. With your way, it is my assertion that because you say, I think, that they are both objectively flourishing despite their possible amazingly different aims, you are saying they can be equally moral. They cannot. It is impossible. If you believe they can that is what I call subjective morality or moral subjectivism. That is in fact the definition of it.

For me all that is necessary for moral objectivism are these propositions:
1) Morality is objective and represented by a perfect intent, which is unique.
2) Moral perfection is all truth at once. Nothing that is possible is left out.
3) Between any two beliefs, one is always better than the other, because it is intended along a vector more proximal to objective moral truth.

Now the thing is these propositions are not academic. I am not schooled in how to craft them. I almost want to thank the fates that that is true. I see the closed mindedness that is prevalent when realism and structure, order, is too highly favored over chaos and balance. It is not pretty and those rocky walls will fall even if they are sorcerously smooth like Orthanc. Truth has better cannon than that.

3) This means you are asserting that these 'forms' which you do not define yet, are mind-independent. But you also have said in other posts that you are not referring to a law of the universe. So you are contradicting yourself and not in a good way.

That which is mind-independent is not necessarily a law. A law is a force of nature that dictates particular behaviors of objects. The action of a cup smashing to pieces is a mind-independent state-of-affairs, but it is not itself a law. — Bob Ross

You say it is not a law and that is not relevant at all. It depends entirely on law. Everything does. There is nothing in the universe but truth, and that is what philosophy is about discovering. We do not create truth. We can only discover it. If we make something, it is flawed. Same argument I used before. Perfection is a limit and we cannot arrive, only intend to make progress towards it by aiming directly at it the best we can.

But, again, as mentioned, and still not addressed, there is no such thing as mind independent. You did not confirm my refinement of that. You refuted it. So we have no common ground yet in shared understanding. We do have common ground in reality. So one of us is more correct and one less.

Mind is ubiquitous. Every iota of this universe contains it. There is no state for which there is not a mind component. That component is not zero, ever. The seed of our human mind is in inorganic matter. The fact that science does not yet understand this is irrelevant. The fact that an academic can go on and on about mind-independent states when they cannot exist is ... terrifying.

There are plenty of believers out there that assert consciousness is all there is. I am one of them. And although mind is only precisely one third of reality, it is ubiquitous and there is no mind-independent state. It is ironic in the extreme that the realist, taking the path of the mind to truth, suggests almost comically that there is such a thing as a mind-independent state. It's ludicrous from my perspective.

I still think you mean that there seems to be a respectable barrier between one mind and another. I think that is what you mean. Please confirm what you mean. I need some term or understanding I can follow. our minds are NOT actually separate from one another. We are just currently unable to muster the will or connection because it is too hard for us. We are not in a state of being that facilitates this awareness enough. We are making progress towards that state. But these many failures do not deny my assertion. The reality though DOES deny your assertion of any mind-independent state, despite the seeming support of the current limit of our being. The seed of any mind, of all minds, was present as a law of the universe at the start of time and will always be so. It is the only way mind could emerge and be deluded enough to consider itself laughably separate.

I assume you mean good and evil as the only categories.

At least those two, there could be more. Such as a neutral category. — Bob Ross

Holy lack of clarity batman! Pow! Ok! Well, I think you should state the list of categories and also mention that they are a single value on a sliding scale if they are. Because these things are all different conceptually, yes?

But, no, I deny it. As soon as you went there I was like, nope. I was ready for that. My model shows and for now this is unsupported entirely, that there is no such thing as a balance between good and evil. This also speaks directly to your (what I would call incoherent) ideas on flourishing. Good is only in a singular direction. If two things, aims, intents, disagree; then one is objectively better than the other, always. This means there is no way to balance good and evil for the good. The only way is not a balance at all. Its all one way. That is in fact the meaning of objective. Perfection itself as a concept is synonymous with objective.

There is a balance amid the progress towards the good that is helpful. But it is not good and evil. It is order and chaos. And I will go ahead and say clearly, the path of logic and reason is only the path of order. The path of idealism is the path of chaos. And balance is the third way, neutral with respect to those two only. But the evil and good bit is not a balance at all. It's one way only. That confusion, of a possible balance between good and evil is rampant in moral subjectivism. It has no merit.

So what precisely denotes good and what evil?

The good is flourishing, and the bad is the negation of that. In action, what is good is progressing towards The Good (i.e., flourishing) at its highest level (i.e., universal flourishing) and evil is the regression from it. — Bob Ross

This can only be true if all definitions of flourishing are perfect, e.g. precisely the same. That is not to say that progressing towards what someone erroneously considers as good is acceptable. No, that that they consider as good must itself also be exactly the same. Otherwise, flourishing is not good. And perfection is quite demanding, I assure you.

So, I still think your flourishing maze of reasoning is wrong, unless you clarify it.

How does a behavior fall into one category or the other?

It will be whether or not the action progresses or regresses from a world with universal flourishing—i.e., the highest Good. — Bob Ross

Yes, as long as the 'highest' Good, and I already warned you about the term 'highest', is the same for everyone. No two people can differ on what flourishing is, because that is subjective morality.

It is no help because you just basically gave no filter and expect that we can decide what makes something good or evil. You have not even said that there is a continuum. What relates the good to the bad?

This has nothing to do with that quote of me, which was:

For example, there is no mind-independent state-of-affairs (or arrangement of entities) in reality that makes it true that “one ought not torture babies” but, rather, it is true because it corresponds appropriately to the mind-independent category (i.e., abstract form) of ‘the good’ — Bob Ross

This is classic jargon and obfuscates understanding. It does not help in understanding.
There is no such thing as mind-independent.
Abstraction is caused by the virtual nature of perfection only. This is the limiting issue mentioned earlier. It is called virtual in honor of the virtues which have that quality. Each is perfect and an unattainable ideal only. Yet and still, the sum of all virtues combined is a perfection of perfections. It was always singular, but that is a way to say it to facilitate understanding.

There is in fact a mind-dependent state of affairs (objective morality) that makes it absolutely true that one ought not to torture babies. It must depend on mind, because everything amid truth does. The term torture includes the negative intent to me, so, it's evil by definition. The whole situation gets much more dicey if you said instead 'cause suffering' for 'torture'. As examples and conundrums go, that is vastly superior to yours. That is because the wise should indeed inflict suffering on the unwise to facilitate their earning wisdom. And then we should be led to speak about such a concept as, 'is harm really harm, as long as it is necessary suffering only?' THAT is a much better set of arguments and such. The term torture is too evil committed.

I was referring to, here, is that, in simplified terms, normativity is not objective; but the good is. The good is flourishing—which is the abstract category I was referring to—and this is objective. I do grant that I need to refurbish the OP to be more clear. If it helps, then use my summary I gave a couple responses back instead of the OP itself. — Bob Ross

Well, I think you should realize by now what my issue with flourishing is. It does not work as an example for the reasons I have stated many times now. You have not addressed my concerns in that sense. You are still just repeating it. I do not know what else to do to get you to address it.

In the OP, I focused too much on the methodological approach to determining what goodness is and not in clarifying the end result (of it being identical to flourishing). — Bob Ross

Which it isn't. Your flourishing is not the good as described. That is unless no two people can differ in any way on precisely the details of what flourishing is, not the fact that they are making progress towards their goals. That can be progress towards evil. It can be evil for one and less evil for another making the latter more objectively moral in their intents. Is that agreed?

And you wonder why I got confused. No. Stick with one theory at a time. You are laying out tenets of a subjectivist theory in an objectivist thread. People will of course respond to each/both.

The problem with that is that you argued as if I was arguing for moral subjectivism, which is not what is happening in the OP. For those tracking my threads, of which many have been, I wanted to provide clarity on how I overcame my main argument for moral non-objectivism.[/.quote]
We are past that.
— Bob Ross

Wow! There is nothing to support this wild conjecture at all up to this point. In fact I would offer a much more reasonable proposition which is this:
Anti-P1: The way reality is currently is clearly the best example of how it should be because it's the only example we have. Guess what? That's a tautology

P1 wasn’t supposed to be incredibly elaborate: it was meant to re-iterate the syllogism from my moral subjectivism thread. The elaboration of that premise is found there.

As for your ‘anti-P1’, it doesn’t negate P1 and it isn’t tautological. — Bob Ross

This is classic you so far. You just state these things and do not say why. That means I ignore you. I say it does negate P1 and it is tautological and round and round we go until you deign to explain WHY.

No they are not.

Better P2: Moral facts are statements about what choices should be made by any and all choosers.

We have entirely different theories of truth and, subequently, of facticity. — Bob Ross

Yes, but, the twain shall meet. We are both within reality. One of us is onto a better set of assertions and beliefs. This is collaborative. But explanation is needed. If you just assume the work without showing it, we all lose. I admit I am trying to learn here. Are you?

Facts are statements that agree with reality. — Bob Ross

They are not. They never do. They cannot.
Perfection is unattainable. Any lack of agreement is lack of perfection. No fact has ever agreed with reality. They only SEEM, SEEM, SEEM to agree with reality. It's always a delusion.

The mind path to truth is always delusional. It must be balanced by the other two paths, chaos and balance, in order to attain perfection.

A fact properly defined is only a belief that a chooser has decided is supported enough with evidence to deem it true. Each chooser is a local authority. Facts sadly often bear little in common with reality or truth.

Truth is the correspondence of thought with reality. — Bob Ross

Said like a mind path only advocate for sure.

No

Truth is objective and dependent of mind, yes, in all cases, but just as dependent of chaos and balance.

Truth is unknowable, unattainable, and unchanging.
It can be approached, in thought, in being, in will. That is good, to do so. The degree of miss to that perfect approach is the degree of evil, which is only properly defined as less good.

By states-of-affairs, I do not just mean temporal processes: I also mean atemoral arrangements of entities in reality. — Bob Ross

I know that. I agree.

States are possibly three kinds:
Being state
Thought state
Intent/will state

There are no other states. These three states combine to form the state.

Moral facts are morally signified statements which agree with reality. — Bob Ross

There are no other facts apart from moral.
Morality encompasses everything. Nothing is devoid of meaning. Everything is only meaning. That is non-Nihilism, to me.

But no, as mentioned, facts are all errors. So they never agree with reality. That makes your last statement false.

Better to say:
Moral statements agree with truth. Reality is only truth. All else is delusion.

We swim in a sea of delusion supported by free will. Only morality is true. Only morality is objective.

Moral statements are possibly true. That means they do not change.

This is a non-sequitur. — Bob Ross

Why? You should not just say that and not explain.

What I meant was that if truth does not change and a moral statement is made and is accurate to describe truth, then there is no reason to change that moral statement. And if you do, it becomes false.

What is TF, true, false?

Sorry, that is shorthand for ‘therefore’.

By the way this statement undoes YOUR P2 completely so you have two contradictory premises

C follows logically from P2 and P1.
You say what a moral fact is and then say they cannot exist.

One can define something and in the next breath claim that something cannot exist: there’s no logical contradiction nor incoherence with that. — Bob Ross

I disagree. There is no way to define something that does not exist. To try is insane.

The concept is perhaps approached only when defining 'nothing'. That one is really hard. But when you defined nothing you do run up against the truth of my assertion and not yours. Defining something that does not exist is worse than useless. Its insane. It has no relevance. It cannot be proved, disproved, or meaningfully discussed. It's just confusion.

Instead, by form or category, I just mean an abstract category we derive by validly subsuming actions or events into more general classifications. — Bob Ross
This is nothing more finally than conceit.

It is the conceit of thought, of a thinker, to think that, in thinking, all else came from thought alone

Categories are conceptual, and conceptualization is the process of subsuming things under more general concepts. I never claimed everything came into being from thoughts. — Bob Ross

Interesting. I do claim that everything comes into being from thoughts. But being is another path, just like intent and will is. The structure and order is thought.

It is a ruination of 'Cogito ergo sum!'

That is not what the cogito argument means: it is not that “thinking is the one aspect of being”. It is the argument that one exists because they can think.

Bob — Bob Ross

The which is exactly what I was saying and missed by you for no known reason. I can also use the other two paths to make similar theoretical statements:

I am because I think.
I am because I intend.
I intend because I think.
I intend because I am.
I think because I intend.

This set of statements encircles all the possible equivalent statements at that level. Without these statements the understanding is less than best. It highlights the think side only, a problem I detect amid most of academia.

It's compelling, tempting, and entirely wrong to pursue truth only through thought. It is fast, better in every way, more alive, to use all three paths. We cannot avoid finally using all three paths, but that is not the issue. The issue is stress or priority. In prioritizing thinking over being or intent/will/passion; we will fail more often and in very patterned ways. The failure of the mind path is cowardice.

In terms of “hiding” behind moral realism, it cannot be hiding if the OP is an exposition of a moral realist theory. If you have disputes with moral realism, or the underlying framework within metaethics, then we can discuss that. — Bob Ross

Well, perhaps I need to detail more of my model, but, I agree that this is kind of derailing this thread because of the way everyone, including me of course, is choosing to discuss it. I am a free form theorist, but I can learn this way, I think; assuming it's not just repugnant once I do get more of it. For now I think I'll read more of what others say here on these forums and digest it. Maybe I can. Who knows.

I am certainly not here only to annoy you, which is all I seem to be accomplishing now.

He seem to use the terms ‘objective’ and ‘truth’ very differently than me and the contemporary literature, which is fine; but I need more clarity from you on what you mean by them. I have already explained what I mean by them. — Bob Ross

Well, If I explain more of my model it would help. But I surmise that it would be rejected from start to finish here, although I think its way more useful to people in its verbiage and formulation than what I seem to need to do and say here to interact with you successfully.

I had hoped that interaction with lay and professional philosophers or logicians would be less problematic, that my rather unorthodox approach would be more what was missing perhaps, a theme that follows me wherever I go in life. So, far that is not the case.

Truth to me is all that is objective, the summation of it. It of course does not change. It is pointless to call anything that can change truth. You may make a truth statement about something in a state and that statement is true. It is not especially wonderful or meaningful to me. It's just as cool as saying, it's hot, or it's cold. Who cares? I mean I know people care about temp and I do to. That's not what I mean. Useful truth is only about laws of the universe that never change. Effectively, there are no other truths. There are only states. The laws of truth govern the state changes. So, that's truth.

Objective is the nature of truth, unchanging, eternal, conceptual. Only truth can be objective. If something can change, it is a state. Truth statements about states are less useful than truth statements about objective laws of the universe. So, that's objective.

That's a short sweet and easy to understand synopsis of the system. There is a lot more detail, but that is the highest level, the monad.

Maybe I am not whatever a moral realist is but I do believe that morality is objective and does not change, so you tell me, what is that WITHOUT the other requirements? What is that called? Because that is what I believe and my current state.

By something being ‘objective’, are you just meaning that it is ‘immutable’? — Bob Ross

Well, no. It does not change. So, to me you can also say, TF it is a law of the universe. It is truth or part of truth. And there are many such laws. But one can also say 'Morality is truth' or 'Morality is objective' or 'Objective morality is a law of the universe'. The 'rules' of morality do not change. Opinion is only error. Choice always contains error. Belief always contains error. Fact is just a certain type of belief, so, facts always contain error.

Who cares is my answer. Morality is objective. I can offer arguments as to why.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the view outlined in the OP, not your ethical theory insofar as it doesn’t relate thereto. — Bob Ross

That makes no sense to me at all. It's like you started talking about microscopic portions of the wall and their dimensions and such, but I am not allowed to discuss that same wall my way. It's ridiculous to me. Of course all opinions about the wall should be entertained when speaking about the wall. I mean moral objectivism is indeed what we are both talking about, just two apparently quite different models of that same thing. I do not mind leaping into such a discussion and saying, no, that's not what 'red' means to me. Here is what it means to me. I will tell you why and how I support my belief. I will not just say, 'Hey we are only discussing this way to moral objectivism.' I suppose if that is how it is, I need a new thread of my own.

That's what I tried to do with the first post on happiness and was told that moral objectivism was being discussed here. Apologies if that is also wrong. It seems I have nowhere to be me.

My position is a form of moral realism, and a part that is the affirmation of moral cognitivism. Are you a moral cognitivist or non-cognitivist? — Bob Ross

As discussed already in great detail I suppose I would have to be a cognitivist.

I consider myself both an idealist and a realist

By ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’, I was referring to metaphysical, specifically ontological, outlooks—not whether or not you like following ideals. Idealism, traditionally, is the position that reality is fundamentally made up of minds, and realism is the view that it is fundamentally made up of mind-independent parts. — Bob Ross

Well then tradition is not so useful to me. I'm more fluid.

To me there is the path of mind. That path is also the path of a single emotion, fear. Fear is entirely responsible for realism, Pragmatism, and what might be referred to as the limiting force amid moral objectivism.

I was thinking perhaps you are an idealist, and that would explain why you seem to think that nothing in reality is mind-independent. — Bob Ross

Everything in reality, all iota of matter and even dreams, all of it, yes, everything, partakes of fear. It cannot avoid it. It is objectively true. It is a law of the universe. But, yeah, assuming there is interest, I need another thread to discuss it it seems.

If you think that flourishing can be defined by two different cultures, and that either one could be correct, you are not what I call a moral objectivist.

It cannot be defined by two different cultures in the sense that they are both correct about what flourishing is while simultaneously having contradictory accounts. There is only one way there is to be flourishing. — Bob Ross

Ah, then we agree. Perfection is singular.

Moral objectivity is truth to me

So this would entail that what is true is equivocal to what is moral, which seems very implausible. — Bob Ross

No, because you will now go off into state changes that do not matter to truth at all.

Free will allows for errors in choice and state. One cannot be moral. One can only TRY to be moral. To be moral would be to be perfect. It cannot happen. When it happens I am guessing that would 'end' the universe in all dimensions we are capable of discussing.

If it is true that Gary raped that woman, then is it thereby moral? Of course not. If it is true that 1+1=2, then is it moral? Of course not. — Bob Ross

Again, truth does not apply to states. I would even use another word and clear up logic itself on that basis. A true state is a goofy thing to say/discuss. States can change.

If this model is correct, it accurately describes reality. I contend that it does. I have of course only put fear here in very low detail. And there are chapters of this treatment that flow into every aspect of reality.

Truth is correspondence of reality, or perhaps the whole, or what is, but certainly not equivalent to what is moral. — Bob Ross

Yes it is, to me. To me there is nothing but morality in the universe and that is synonymous with truth, or God, or Love; choose your delusion.

And note the word certainly there in your verbiage in light of my fear treatment above. It can become quite telling if you know what to look for. There is no certainty.

Your flourishing example is terrible and cannot be used. That is because either the intent is to the aim of the perfect good or it is abject failure

You are importing your own views and then simply demonstrating mine are incompatible with them; instead of analyzing my position on its own merits. This ‘perfectness’ being ‘goodness’ doesn’t exist in my theory: should it? I don’t think so. — Bob Ross

Yes, I agree. I am discussing objective morality as I understand and believe it to be. But that should be useful to you. If I have even some shred of a point, at all, you can use my model and assertions to fuel thought and discussion on yours. Clearly I was confused at the examples you gave and admittedly I thought you were on the track of subjective morality and then what you were saying sounded like objective morality.

If you build a tight model, I mean, you can make it, but does it really answer to reality? How can you judge two different models, then? How do you compare one to the other? Is intuition involved at all?

1) Morality is objective and represented by a perfect intent, which is unique.

I don’t know why morality is ‘represented by a perfect intent’, or what that means. — Bob Ross

Well it's not hard to imagine, is it?

Assume there are 16 discreet virtues for example. And assume there is a harmonic amid choice for each of these. There is a perfect vibration to choice for each virtue separately and then if you get all 16 perfect at the same time, you have a single perfect choice, the entire and only purpose of the universe. Does the universe end? Probably! Its conjecture of course, but that's the general idea.

2) Moral perfection is all truth at once. Nothing that is possible is left out.

Again, this just equivocates truth with morality. — Bob Ross

And again, that is precisely correct. I assert that is true. They are the same thing.

3) Between any two beliefs, one is always better than the other, because it is intended along a vector more proximal to objective moral truth.

Why would this be a part of the thesis? — Bob Ross

We need as choosers, as moral agents, some capacity to judge the error level of a choice or state. Due to the nature of the limiting force and the seeming impossibility of perfection, this 3rd contention becomes true and interesting. It means if we have a morality meter no two choices or beliefs could ever be precisely equal in moral value, goodness value. This all depends on, you guessed it, moral objectivism.

There is no state for which there is not a mind component. That component is not zero, ever. The seed of our human mind is in inorganic matter. The fact that science does not yet understand this is irrelevant.

Hence why I thought you may be an idealist. Anyways, you are confusing ontology with epistemology: our knowledge of the world is always mind dependent, but that does not entail that what fundamentally exists is mind-dependent. — Bob Ross

The physical reality we think we know, is not known. It is delusion. It is just emotion, just consciousness. The model I am getting to is a theoretical 'proof' for this truth.

There are plenty of believers out there that assert consciousness is all there is. I am one of them.

Ok, so you are an idealist. — Bob Ross

Not in my model, I am not.

Idealism is just as much of an error, a moral error, as Pragmatism is. Only wisdom is the right path. Wisdom is the middle path between these two, combining the order of Pragmatism and fear with the chaos of Idealism and desire.

There are plenty of believers out there that assert consciousness is all there is. I am one of them. And although mind is only precisely one third of reality

That is a flat-out contradiction. You can’t say X is all there is and X is one third of what all there is. — Bob Ross

I agree. That is only because I am not saying it quite right. But, unlike logicians I am more comfortable with that. So, I need your help actually.

I want to learn how to say it right, if that is possible.

I still think you mean that there seems to be a respectable barrier between one mind and another. I think that is what you mean. Please confirm what you mean. I need some term or understanding I can follow. our minds are NOT actually separate from one another.

I mean that it seems as though, and we have good reasons to believe that, our minds are emergent from mind-independent parts and that the universe is fundamentally mind-independent. — Bob Ross

And of course, I disagree entirely. I would say there is precious little reason, the limit as x approaches none, to suspect that. It is in fact a horrid suspicion, and groundless. It is much more likely that all seeds of emotive capacity were part of natural law. We only see discrete breakpoints because we are still deeply deluded. We do not have enough awareness yet. We are going there.

The which is exactly what I was saying and missed by you for no known reason. I can also use the other two paths to make similar theoretical statements:

I am because I think.
I am because I intend.
I intend because I think.
I intend because I am.
I think because I intend.

This set of statements encircles all the possible equivalent statements at that level. Without these statements the understanding is less than best. It highlights the think side only, a problem I detect amid most of academia.

It's compelling, tempting, and entirely wrong to pursue truth only through thought.

I never was, nor will I be, arguing for the cogito argument. I don’t see the relevance of this to my moral realist position. I do not hold cogito ergo sum: I don’t buy the descartes argument for it. ‘I’ do not exist simply because something thinks. — Bob Ross

Whereas Descartes fits my model well and indeed my model would allude to the other statements I made as equivalent and necessary as a full closed set.

I would also say that to think without existing is entirely incoherent. Why would you try to defend that? Yes, something exists because it can think. Any I that thinks, must exist.

For the sake of brevity, I am going to stop there for now; and see if that helps. — Bob Ross

I mean, I think I get you. I am not at all sure you get me. I would like to discuss the whole topic of objective morality.

I tried to trim this down after the fact. It was like 3-4 times larger before. Hopefully its still succinct and coherent.

So, you must then agree that the reader must agree that this theory indeed can possibly describe moral realism.

Any theory can possibly “describe” moral realism. That it is a form of moral realism depends on if it is purporting at least the following thesis:

1. Moral judgments are propositional [moral cognitivism].
2. Moral judgments express something objective [moral objectivism].
3. There is at least one true moral judgment [moral non-nihilism].

Does it feel like or seem to be moral realism? If it bears little resemblance to moral realism, the debate is ended because you are demanding us to lose our minds and believe that black is white as a starting point.

I agree with this. Rhetorically, even if the theory is a form of moral realism, people will not be convinced if it seems counter to moral realism.

I have already given my argument for the uselessness of moral cognitivism.

Moral cognitivism is the metaethical theory that moral judgments are propositional, which is a required position for moral realists to take. You cannot reject moral cognitivism and be a moral realist.

1) All beliefs are in error partially because perfection is impossible (anti-cognitivism)
2) Some moral statements are possibly true because they embrace the concept of limits towards infinity as infinity. (cognitivism)

Beliefs being fallible does not entail that moral judgments are non-propositional. Saying moral judgments are propositional means that one can formulate them into statements which are truth-apt. If you reject moral cognitivism, then, for example, “one ought not torture babies for fun” is incapable of being true or false.

This ... proves ... to me ... that moral cognitivism (and anti-cognitivism both) are useless.

They are defined such that they are foils to each other and, thusly, you have to either accept one or the other (or suspend judgment): you cannot sidestep the issue by claiming they have low practical utility—even if it is true.

They are simultaneously false and true meaning they are both true and juxtaposed

That is logically impossible, because non-cognitivism is the negation of cognitivism. You are saying X and !X are both true, which is the definition of a logical contradiction.

Here you are throwing out two entire models and expect people to read all and follow. I only expect one post at a time and you are expressing difficulty.

Correct. Moral cognitivism and non-nihilism are metaethical theories which are not themselves the same as the debate about realism vs. anti-realism; rather, they are subcomponents of the moral realist thesis, and, for the sake of brevity and because I have already outlined them in full in my moral subjectivism thread, I refer the reader there. This OP is about a moral naturalist theory that presupposes moral cognitivism and non-nihilism and ventures to prove objectivism.

1) There is no such thing as a mind-independent state of affairs. That's the biggest issue.

Are you an idealist? I am a realist (ontologically), so I think that most events are mind-independent.

2) If the good is a form, that is mind-independent, in the only way I think you mean it, which means more properly stated that the GOOD does not depend on opinion or choice, but is preset, a law of the universe, then I agree, you are talking about objective morality. But you later suggest that you are NOT talking about a law of the universe making your premises unclear (entirely).

To clarify this a bit, another way of thinking about it is that the Good under this view is identical to flourishing, and flourishing is objective. The methodological approach to determining that is two-fold: (1) the analysis of acts such that they are conceptually subsumed under general categories and (2) the semantic labeling of a particular category as ‘the good’.

That is what that paragraph of mine is getting at.

3) This means you are asserting that these 'forms' which you do not define yet, are mind-independent. But you also have said in other posts that you are not referring to a law of the universe. So you are contradicting yourself and not in a good way.

That which is mind-independent is not necessarily a law. A law is a force of nature that dictates particular behaviors of objects. The action of a cup smashing to pieces is a mind-independent state-of-affairs, but it is not itself a law.

I assume you mean good and evil as the only categories.

At least those two, there could be more. Such as a neutral category.

So what precisely denotes good and what evil?

The good is flourishing, and the bad is the negation of that. In action, what is good is progressing towards The Good (i.e., flourishing) at its highest level (i.e., universal flourishing) and evil is the regression from it.

How does a behavior fall into one category or the other?

It will be whether or not the action progresses or regresses from a world with universal flourishing—i.e., the highest Good.

It is no help because you just basically gave no filter and expect that we can decide what makes something good or evil. You have not even said that there is a continuum. What relates the good to the bad?

This has nothing to do with that quote of me, which was:

For example, there is no mind-independent state-of-affairs (or arrangement of entities) in reality that makes it true that “one ought not torture babies” but, rather, it is true because it corresponds appropriately to the mind-independent category (i.e., abstract form) of ‘the good’

I was referring to, here, is that, in simplified terms, normativity is not objective; but the good is. The good is flourishing—which is the abstract category I was referring to—and this is objective. I do grant that I need to refurbish the OP to be more clear. If it helps, then use my summary I gave a couple responses back instead of the OP itself.

In the OP, I focused too much on the methodological approach to determining what goodness is and not in clarifying the end result (of it being identical to flourishing).

And you wonder why I got confused. No. Stick with one theory at a time. You are laying out tenets of a subjectivist theory in an objectivist thread. People will of course respond to each/both.

The problem with that is that you argued as if I was arguing for moral subjectivism, which is not what is happening in the OP. For those tracking my threads, of which many have been, I wanted to provide clarity on how I overcame my main argument for moral non-objectivism.

Wow! There is nothing to support this wild conjecture at all up to this point. In fact I would offer a much more reasonable proposition which is this:
Anti-P1: The way reality is currently is clearly the best example of how it should be because it's the only example we have. Guess what? That's a tautology

P1 wasn’t supposed to be incredibly elaborate: it was meant to re-iterate the syllogism from my moral subjectivism thread. The elaboration of that premise is found there.

As for your ‘anti-P1’, it doesn’t negate P1 and it isn’t tautological.

No they are not.

Better P2: Moral facts are statements about what choices should be made by any and all choosers.

We have entirely different theories of truth and, subequently, of facticity.

Facts are statements that agree with reality.
Truth is the correspondence of thought with reality.
By states-of-affairs, I do not just mean temporal processes: I also mean atemoral arrangements of entities in reality.

Moral facts are morally signified statements which agree with reality.

Moral statements are possibly true. That means they do not change.

This is a non-sequitur.

What is TF, true, false?

Sorry, that is shorthand for ‘therefore’.

By the way this statement undoes YOUR P2 completely so you have two contradictory premises

C follows logically from P2 and P1.

You say what a moral fact is and then say they cannot exist.

One can define something and in the next breath claim that something cannot exist: there’s no logical contradiction nor incoherence with that.

Instead, by form or category, I just mean an abstract category we derive by validly subsuming actions or events into more general classifications. — Bob Ross
This is nothing more finally than conceit.

It is the conceit of thought, of a thinker, to think that, in thinking, all else came from thought alone

Categories are conceptual, and conceptualization is the process of subsuming things under more general concepts. I never claimed everything came into being from thoughts.

It is a ruination of 'Cogito ergo sum!'

That is not what the cogito argument means: it is not that “thinking is the one aspect of being”. It is the argument that one exists because they can think.

Bob

In terms of “hiding” behind moral realism, it cannot be hiding if the OP is an exposition of a moral realist theory. If you have disputes with moral realism, or the underlying framework within metaethics, then we can discuss that.

He seem to use the terms ‘objective’ and ‘truth’ very differently than me and the contemporary literature, which is fine; but I need more clarity from you on what you mean by them. I have already explained what I mean by them.

Maybe I am not whatever a moral realist is but I do believe that morality is objective and does not change, so you tell me, what is that WITHOUT the other requirements? What is that called? Because that is what I believe and my current state.

By something being ‘objective’, are you just meaning that it is ‘immutable’?

Who cares is my answer. Morality is objective. I can offer arguments as to why.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the view outlined in the OP, not your ethical theory insofar as it doesn’t relate thereto. My position is a form of moral realism, and a part that is the affirmation of moral cognitivism. Are you a moral cognitivist or non-cognitivist?

I consider myself both an idealist and a realist

By ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’, I was referring to metaphysical, specifically ontological, outlooks—not whether or not you like following ideals. Idealism, traditionally, is the position that reality is fundamentally made up of minds, and realism is the view that it is fundamentally made up of mind-independent parts.

I was thinking perhaps you are an idealist, and that would explain why you seem to think that nothing in reality is mind-independent.

If you think that flourishing can be defined by two different cultures, and that either one could be correct, you are not what I call a moral objectivist.

It cannot be defined by two different cultures in the sense that they are both correct about what flourishing is while simultaneously having contradictory accounts. There is only one way there is to be flourishing.

Moral objectivity is truth to me

So this would entail that what is true is equivocal to what is moral, which seems very implausible. If it is true that Gary raped that woman, then is it thereby moral? Of course not. If it is true that 1+1=2, then is it moral? Of course not.

Truth is correspondence of reality, or perhaps the whole, or what is, but certainly not equivalent to what is moral.

Your flourishing example is terrible and cannot be used. That is because either the intent is to the aim of the perfect good or it is abject failure

You are importing your own views and then simply demonstrating mine are incompatible with them; instead of analyzing my position on its own merits. This ‘perfectness’ being ‘goodness’ doesn’t exist in my theory: should it? I don’t think so.

1) Morality is objective and represented by a perfect intent, which is unique.

I don’t know why morality is ‘represented by a perfect intent’, or what that means.

2) Moral perfection is all truth at once. Nothing that is possible is left out.

Again, this just equivocates truth with morality.

3) Between any two beliefs, one is always better than the other, because it is intended along a vector more proximal to objective moral truth.

Why would this be a part of the thesis?

There is no state for which there is not a mind component. That component is not zero, ever. The seed of our human mind is in inorganic matter. The fact that science does not yet understand this is irrelevant.

Hence why I thought you may be an idealist. Anyways, you are confusing ontology with epistemology: our knowledge of the world is always mind dependent, but that does not entail that what fundamentally exists is mind-dependent.

There are plenty of believers out there that assert consciousness is all there is. I am one of them.

Ok, so you are an idealist.

There are plenty of believers out there that assert consciousness is all there is. I am one of them. And although mind is only precisely one third of reality

That is a flat-out contradiction. You can’t say X is all there is and X is one third of what all there is.

I still think you mean that there seems to be a respectable barrier between one mind and another. I think that is what you mean. Please confirm what you mean. I need some term or understanding I can follow. our minds are NOT actually separate from one another.

I mean that it seems as though, and we have good reasons to believe that, our minds are emergent from mind-independent parts and that the universe is fundamentally mind-independent.

The which is exactly what I was saying and missed by you for no known reason. I can also use the other two paths to make similar theoretical statements:

I am because I think.
I am because I intend.
I intend because I think.
I intend because I am.
I think because I intend.

This set of statements encircles all the possible equivalent statements at that level. Without these statements the understanding is less than best. It highlights the think side only, a problem I detect amid most of academia.

It's compelling, tempting, and entirely wrong to pursue truth only through thought.

I never was, nor will I be, arguing for the cogito argument. I don’t see the relevance of this to my moral realist position. I do not hold cogito ergo sum: I don’t buy the descartes argument for it. ‘I’ do not exist simply because something thinks.

For the sake of brevity, I am going to stop there for now; and see if that helps.

Bob

The logic of cogito ergo sum is neither rationalisation nor myth, it is the indubitable fact that, in order to be subject to an illusion, there must be a subject. — Wayfarer

The analysis of Descartes' argument is a bit off-topic here, so I'll resist commenting.

I have my doubts about Descartes, in that I believe his dualistic separation of the physical and mental as separate substances is profoundly problematical and has had hugely deleterious consequences for Western culture, but as for the essential veracity of his ‘cogito’ argument, I have no doubts. — Wayfarer

But I can't resist saying that I agree with you.

I had the idea that zombies don’t feel pain, at least they never do in zombie flicks. You have to literally dismember or disintegrate them to overcome them, merely inflicting blows or wounds does nothing. — Wayfarer

Yes. I did not put my point well. I was thinking of philosophical zombies, which would (if I've understood the idea correctly) not behave like zombies in the flicks.

There's a contradiction here. People is animal. A machine is not animal. But a machine can be people? That means a machine is animal and not animal. — noAxioms

I mean, deep down, you're a machine as well running under the same physics. I think you're confusing determinism with predictability. — noAxioms

Are these two remarks compatible? My point is that there is no easy and clear way to state what the Turing hypothesis is trying to articulate.

I think you are again envisioning imitation people, like Replicants. That's a very different thing than the simulation hypothesis which does not involve machines pretending to be people. — noAxioms

Thank you for the clarification. I misunderstood what the thread was about. My apologies. It is clear now that I haven't understood what the simulation hypothesis is. However, when I checked the Wikipedia - Simulation hypothesis, I found:-

Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct).

For me, a conscious being is a person and a simulated person is not a person, so this confuses me. Can you perhaps clarify?

why isn't 'dubit' a word? It ought to be. — noAxioms

Well, since you have now used it, and I understand it (roughly, I think), it is a word now. Who knows, it may catch on and then you'll be awarded a place in the dictionaries of the future!


I agree that BiV is a different kettle of fish and I don't particularly want to pursue it, but I can't resist one reply, because your remark was so incomprehensible to me. I don't expect to resolve our differences, just to clarify them a bit.

You do not understand what "refer" means, in other words. — L'éléphant

You seem to think I cannot refer to anything that I have not experienced. But the reference of a word is established in the language in general, not by what I may or may not have experienced. So when I can refer to the President of the United States even if I don't know that Joe Biden is the President.

Then you misunderstand what "true" means in statements. — L'éléphant

I agree with @noAxioms, except that I would add that it's not something it can justify on the basis of its subjective experience.

As I indicated, behaviorism has fallen into disfavor these days.

Behaviorism is not the assertion that the mind is a fiction, it is that we can understand behavior by treating people as black-boxes with inputs and outputs. (by "black-box" I mean that behaviorists were not concerned with how the brain actually works, but were instead concerned with how the mind behaved; they never looked inside the skull). Behaviorists referring to the "mind" as a convenient fiction needs this context to make sense; he wasn't saying that thoughts don't exist, he was saying that thinking machines can be understood by deducing things about the relationships between inputs and outputs. Even in the case where Skinner was really trying to make "mind" incoherent, it doesn't matter. His controversial contention is not an established product of science (as science in general is a mix of different fields, some of which are at odds with each-other, where overtime the more explanatory and predictive models are eventually identified and selected). Looking only at behavior as a means to predict it has its uses, but it quickly gave way to more comprehensive approaches.

I was using the term "cognitive science" as it is often used, to denote the study of human behavior through the lens of new technologies such as CAT, MNR, and PET scans. When I was a psychology major in the 1970s, we called it "cognitive psychology." "Psychology" became "science" as more hard science techniques joined the team. On this forum, many posters are not willing to recognize that CS is psychology at all. — T Clark

I've lost the context of your point then. Cognitive psychology/science doesn't asserting that "minds" don't exist. There may be some scientists making claims that vaguely amount to this, but I'm lauding the established fruits of science, not the beliefs and failures of any and every proponent of science. Some scientists contradict each other, especially when they're speaking about less proven models near the cutting-edge of scientific progress.

There is no "hard problem of consciousness." But that's another discussion. — T Clark

Are you really suggesting that the brain is not the seat of the mind? That if i damage your brain I won't also damage your mind?

Tell me what the hidden variable is. Where do you get the idea that "minds" come from anywhere other than nervous systems and neural networks? If I didn't know better I would say you're trying to get at "souls" or something.

Tell me how pain "reflects" electrical current running through living conductors. What does that mean? They have no traits in common that I can see. If you and I are watching basketball on TV, would you say that the television equipment is the same as the presentation of the game? — T Clark

I think you are indeed getting at the hard problem, why else would you want me to explain how subjective feeling can be produced by a physical system? Pain "reflects" what's happening in our brain because our brain has figured out that something has gone very wrong in the external world that demands immediate correction (our "intelligence" is meant to "reflect" things in the external world). We can prove this with elementary induction: every-time we injure our bodies, we feel pain, and when we consume pain-killers (which act on the mechanisms within our brain which play a role in the creation of "pain") we feel pain less.

If I surreptitiously dose you with a drug, your body and brain (and hence your mind) will react to it regardless of whether or not your mind is consciously aware that it has been drugged.

This is not a new argument. It's been around for hundreds of years. It is discussed often on the forum. For you to claim that you cannot fathom it is... well, I'm not sure what it is.

As I've said elsewhere, I think I may open another discussion on the general subject of the underlying assumptions and values of science without focusing on god. Maybe that will make it easier. — T Clark

I'm not focusing on god either though, we're talking about the merits of cognitive science. I'm saying that it approaches "minds" as if they are a thing that is produced by brains (not that "minds" are incoherent or non-existent), and you're saying that it somehow makes an empirical error by assuming that minds do not exist. (isn't the statement "minds do not exist" self refuting? A true logical "ouroboros"? (Considering cogito ergo sum and all).

It seems there is more than one tangential thread we could make. There's the values of science thread (whether or not, epistemologically, the philosophy of science is malformed), and there's also the "Is the mind the seat of the brain; do minds exist?" thread.

Let's earnestly try and eek out an agreement before we do so. Where do we disagree exactly: we differ on the nature of scientific inquiry in some meaningful way, or else we disagree about the epistemological implications of the results of our scientific inquiries; we also have an apparent disagreement about the relationship between minds and brains, and I'm hard-pressed to imagine how we must necessarily differ:

Do you remember learning about Phineas Gage? (the dude with the pipe through his frontal cortex). Do you believe that the alterations to his "mind" apparently caused by the physical damage to his brain were superficial or coincidental? We both agree that minds exist, and I point to the brain as the thing that generates it (and to changes in the brain correlating with changes in the mind as evidence), but what do you point to as the thing that generates it? Are you holding out judgement in case of some development that shows we're more than the contents of our flesh-sacks?

I don't understand where you're coming from, truly. I know that you perceive cognitive science (or science as a whole) as a profligate possibility-denier, but which possibility is it denying that you hold to be plausible (other than that minds exist in the first place, which I contend science does not deny)?

But, thanks again, we should let the thread owner get a word in. — Wayfarer

This topic got away from me, moving faster than I could follow. This coupled with being really busy with work and ailing mother, it got to be over a month.

Trying below to hit points that I feel require some response from the OP.

The title of this thread—“Does anybody really support mind-independent reality?”—is precisely the issue." — Wayfarer

Despite my efforts to the contrary and the lack of space in the title line, I don't think anybody articulated exactly what I'm trying to point out with this thread. I don't expect an answer from you since you don't claim said independent

reality.
Sure, @Apustimelogist might presume that the moon would still be there even if humans had not evolved, but the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered.
Hence my query about if one's definition of what is real is actually a mind-independent definition.

I offered that if we can produce concepts that don't seem to subjectively vary (e.g. the ticking of a clock), then is that not mind-independent? — Apustimelogist

Per my comment just above, no, it's still mind dependent. It only indicates that the clock still relates to you even when not being immediately perceived.

... the positivist says I can measure, test, observe, recognise, describe etc the world we are in and if there is anything else to it, show it to me so I can measure it? If you can’t, then why should I accept that it is there at all? — Punshhh

You need to accept more if you're to claim mind independence. I agree that this positivist position that you (Wayfarer mostly) continually knock down is not a mind-independent view.

[Idealism] explains why physicalism is based on false premisses. — Wayfarer

It may presume physicalism to be based on false premises, but it does not demonstrate it, or if it does, the quote to which this is a reference does not demonstrate it.

Cognitive science shows that what we experience as 'the world' is not the world as such - as it is in itself, you might say - but a world-model generated by our perceptual and cognitive processes. So what we take to be "the external world" is already shaped through our cognitive apparatus. This suggests that our belief in the world’s externality is determined by how we are conditioned, biologically, culturally and socially, to model and interpret experience, rather than by direct perception of a mind-independent domain. — Wayfarer

OK, I agree with all that, but our belief being shaped by perceptions does not alter what is, does not falsify this externality, no more than the physicalist view falsifies the idealistic one.

But the philosophical question is about the nature of existence, of reality as lived - not the composition and activities of those impersonal objects and forces which science takes as the ground of its analysis. We ourselves are more than objects in it - we are subjects, agents, whose actions and decisions are of fundamental importance.

This part seems to be just an assertion. How are we (as 'agents', whatever that means) fundamentally different than any other object, in some way that doesn't totally deny the physicalist view? It seems a very different view must be assumed to make these assertions. Fundamentally, I don't think there is 'importance' at all. Importance to what? Us? That's subjective importance, nothing fundamental.

And through critical self-awareness, we can come to understand that world we experience is already a mediated construction, not an unfiltered or unvarnished encounter with reality in itself. Which is what physicialism doesn’t see.

Naive physicalism maybe. Few would assert such direct realism.

Physicalism can't find any mind in the world it studies, because it begins by excluding it, and then tries to patch it back in as a 'result' or 'consequence' of the mindless interactions which are its subject matter and from which it seeks to explain everything about life and mind. — Wayfarer

Patching it back in isn't excluding it. That it isn't a supernatural entity of its own is, yes, something excluded.
Science very much does pay attention to the role of observers when relevant, such as the role of survivorship bias, which must be recognized to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions, and this topic is very much pointing out incorrect conclusions by most due to the dismissal of survivorship bias.

You [relativist] acknowledge that physicalism has significant explanatory gaps when it comes to the philosophy of mind — Wayfarer

I also acknowledge this, but any alternative to physicalism has the same significant explanatory gaps, so what's the point of bringing it up?

What does modern science have to say about the nature of man?
...
— D M Armstrong, The Nature of Mind

That is, as an object. — Wayfarer

Yea, pretty much, and I've agreed that both 'man', 'mind' and 'object' are words referring to concepts, so it seems rather circular to suggest that 'man' is dependent on 'man'. Nothing seems to ground this.

But philosophy cannot honestly sustain this stance. The human subject is not just an object within the world, but also the condition for any world appearing. Scientific objectivity depends on observation, and observation presupposes a subject—a standpoint, a perspective, a consciousness.

I think this doesn't hold water. Observation may depend on subjectivity, but not on a subject or on a consciousness, both of which are, in the end, presumed objects. Objects being ideals, they are not the source of subjectivity, but rather a product of it.
As for standpoint and perspective, those seem to be locations, which may or may not be deemed to be objects.

The below is a later post, to which I've added a few (n) references to comment on specifically.

. But just take the first paragraph in that section:

"1. Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation à priori. Without this presupposition we could not represent to ourselves that things exist together at one and the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously, or in succession." -- Kant — Wayfarer

Here, Kant seems to be talking about the mental representation of time, not of time in itself. In that light, I see no conflict and I agree with the statement, especially since time is most often represented as a flow, a succession of states of things, which yes, is no more than a mental representation and is hardly foundational in a view where mental is not fundamental.

... Aeon Magazine article on the Einstein-Bergson debate on time, specifically:

"To examine the measurements involved in clock time,(1) Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct.(2) But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession.(3) Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.

Bergson appreciated that we need the exactitude of clock time for natural science.(4) For example, to measure the path that an object in motion follows in space over a specific time interval, we need to be able measure time precisely. What he objected to was the surreptitious substitution of clock time for duration in our metaphysics of time. His crucial point in Time and Free Will was that measurement presupposes duration, but duration ultimately eludes measurement. --- Einstein-Bergson debate

If this is an accurate representation of Bergson's position, he doesn't take a very scientific view. There is proper time (the thing in itself), coordinate time (an abstrction), and one's perception of time, which is what Kant seems to be talking about. Concerning (3), both clocks and people measure proper time, hence my non-scientific assessment. (4) correctly points out that the difference between people and clocks is one of precision, but better precision doesn't make it a different kind of time.

(2) suggests that real (proper? schm-ime?) time is discreet but perceived time is continuous. There seems to be no evidence one way or the other for the former.

I don't get the 'crucial point' about duration and measurement (chicken-egg?). Under relativity, time is geometry, not a mental construct. Duration is a distance under that geometry. Measurement is any interaction between systems. Bergson perhaps sees things in more idealistic ways, where such circular dependencies become a problem.



- - - - - - - - - - -

Sorry for the late reply. — boundless

Amateur late responder... :)

This post was directed to me, and here I am well over a month late responding to it.

My problem with this is that there are also philosophical models that do not make any 'stance' about whether 'the physical' or 'the mental' is fundamental. — boundless

Most in fact, naturalism being one of them. Pretty much anything except materialism and idealism respectively. — — noAxioms

Naturalism generally explicitly denies anything 'supernatural' (there is nothing outside the 'universe' or the 'multiverse'). Unless it is something like 'methodological naturalism' I don't see how it is metaphysically neutral. — boundless

1) My comment concerned what various 'ism's state about what is fundamental, but your reply seems to be about what is.
2) I disagree. Naturalism says that all of our phenomena have natural causes (obey natural laws of this universe) and it says nothing about what other universes exist or not. Yes, it by definition denies anything supernatural, but that's a thin claim because if they discover something not know before (dark matter say), then that suddenly gets promoted to a natural thing. If dualism was shown to be true, then these mental entities would become part of natural law.

Anyway, the 'third-person perspective' is said to more or less be equivalent to a view from anywhere that makes no reference to any perspective. I guess that you would say that there can't be any true 'third-person perspective', though.

My example of one was a spacetime diagram which has no point of view. How is that still 1st person then, or at least not 3rd?

I meant: is it dualistic to assume that there is indeed consciousness and 'the material world' and none of them can be reduced to the other with the proviso, however, that any of them are 'ontologically fundamental'?

Yes, it seems dualistic to assume that. No, neither needs to be fundamental for it to be dualism. They both could supervene on more primitive things, be they the same primitive or different ones.

Well, is it interesting, isn't it? I believe that, say, someone that endorses both materialism and scientism would actually tell you that the world is 'material' and totally describable. It would be ironic for him to admit that this implies that is not 'mind-independent'.

Not directly. It having a requirement of being describable is different than having a requirement of being described, only the latter very much implying mind dependence.

Anyway. If, in order to be mind-independent a definition of reality must not rely on describability would not this mean that, in fact, we can't conceive such a definition of reality?

Perhaps so. This is consistent with my supervention hierarchy that goes something like mathematics->quantum->physical->mental->ontology(reality) which implies that the physical is mind independent (mind supervenes on it, not the other way around) but reality is mind dependent since what is real is a mental designation, and an arbitrary one at that. There's no fact about it, only opinion.

Imagine 'how the world looks like' without any kind of sensations. — boundless

Nit: A thing 'looking like' anything is by definition a sensation, so while a world might (by some definitions) exists sans an sort of sensations, it wouldn't go so far as to 'look like' anything.

How do you account for the past, before any human-like intelligence existed? — Relativist

There were no sensations in the universe before life came into being. — Relativist

1) boundless made no mention of life forms. An observing entity is indeed implied, but I personally don't consider 'observing entities' to be confined to life forms.
2) The universe, not being contained by time, includes all times, so there is no 'this universe before life emerged'. This universe has life in it, period. A subsection of it before a certain time is a subset of the universe, not the universe itself.
Now if you deny this and have the universe contained by time, then it isn't really a universe, just an object that at some moment was created in a larger 'universe'.

Just being picky since this conversation makes little sense to me the way it is worded.

The point is: can you conceive a world that has absolutely no relation to 'sentient experience'? — boundless

It is related to sentient experience in that some sentient thing is conceiving it. But that isn't a causal relation. Objects in each world cannot have any causal effect on each other, and yes, I can conceive of such a thing, doing so all the time. Wayfarer apparently attempts to deny at least the ability to do so without choosing a point of view, but I deny that such a choice is necessary. Any spacetime diagram is such a concept without choice of a point of view.

The problem for me, however, is to explain from a purely physicalist point of view why there are these 'structures' in the first place. — boundless

I don't consider this to be just a physicalist problem. The idealists have the same problem. It's a problem with any kind of realism, which is why lean towards a relational ontology which seems to not have this problem.

- - - -

I would say that if one denies the existence any kind of external reality (solipsism) or affirms that, at most, there might be something else but we do not interact in any way with that is irrational. — boundless

I agree. That is contradicted by our basic intuitions. — Relativist

To emphasize what little weight I give to said basic intuitions, I rationally do not agree. Denial of existence of any kind of external reality isn't necessarily solipsism. At best, it's just refusal to accept the usual definition of 'exists', more in favor of a definition more aligned with the origin of the word, which is 'to stand out' to something (a relativist definition).

I always have had trouble with philosophical skepticism — prothero

I consider myself quite the skeptic, but not in the solipsism direction. None of this 'cogito ergo sum' logic which leads to that.

I do not understand the discussion and the posts in Banno's thread with a similar title, but that is only because I am not up to the level of depth of knowledge of jargon they are. They use short forms that I don't understand, and so be it, their knowledge and my ignorance takes away neither from their wisdom nor from mine.

But the title of this recent thread by Banno, and my in-person discussions with friends in recent days made me come up with the following thoughts:

"Cogito ergo sum." I think therefore I am. If I did not exist, I could not think, therefore thinking alone proves undoubtedly to myself that I exist.

But by thinking I must have thoughts. If I did not have thoughts, I would not be thinking. Therefore thoughts exist.

Thoughts exist, but not in the physical world. With any man-made instrument you can't point at or identify something physical, and know that "hey, now, that there thing is the physical manifestation of thought."

Instead, thought is thought to exist in the mind. And the mind is thought to exist only in the mind. Strangely, true, but really, there is nothing that you can point at, that you can see or detect with physical measuring devices, including your own senses, and say, "hey, here this thing is the mind." Mind only exists in the mind.

Many evolutionists, (not all), many physical scientists, and to the point, many materialist philosophers dismiss thought, soul, spirit, consciousness, as mere functions of the mind, things that don't actually exist. But if they don't exist, then thinking does not exist, and also I (from my point of view) don't exist. So don't you, from your point of view.

So materialist philosophers who deny the existence of intangibles are wrong.

Extrapolating from this: maybe god exists, too, in the same functional way as thought and consciousness exist. God can be thought of as a temporarily created existence by the mind.

Does god such as the thought- or belief-created image of it in our minds, have a physical manifestation? No, as far as we know. God never revealed anything of himself or herself to humans, so its existence is at best doubtful. But a certain image of god does exist, which is the image of god in the minds of the faithful.

I admit this is neither here nor there. But I surprised myself with this insight, and here it is, for you to chew up my insight, and spit it out or else internalize it, or else make extravagant extrapolations from it.

Go wild.

it may show that you are, despite and unbeknownst to, yourself, a realist after all. — Janus

I've never denied it. I've said already a number of times, I don't assert that the world "exists in the mind". What I argue is that all knowledge has a subjective pole or aspect which is itself never visible to empirical observation but which is still fundamental to the act of knowing. That's how I read Kant. I think Kant's insights are fundamentally true, but in my experience most scientific realists don't understand him. Kant himself was also a lecturer in science, a practical man, but he well understood the ethical implications of the scientific revolution in a way that many others seem not to.

Remember the thread on 'eliminative materialism' - the point I was trying to make there, even though nobody seemed to get it, was that it's because of the fact that the subjective pole of knowledge/experience can never be made an object of knowledge that 'eliminative materialism' is able to deny its reality in the first place. 'The mind' is not something known to empirical science at all! This leads to the so-called 'hard problem' and all the interminable blather that those academic philosophers carry on with about a pseudo-problem that they have created purely as a consequence of the inherent contradiction in their attitude. (They're at it again in a new thread now.) Basically they're terrified of the mystery of existence; they would rather believe they're animals, machines or robots than face up to that.

The existence of different epistemic methods gives rise to the existence of different epistemic domains: mathematics, science, and history. — alcontali

All part of a larger whole, in my view.

The distinction between objective and subjective is treated here as the illusion. — Valentinus

I think it's more that such a distinction was not part of Aristotle's lexicon. No philosophers of his day expressed their ideas in terms of "objective" and "subjective", it's much more characteristic of the modern period, although the significance is more than just lexical.

I agree with this, but I also maintain that the world is as it is independent of our knowledge of it. We do not know the world as it is but as it is for us. It is here, the world as it is for us that we find the two poles. Most of what is going on in the universe we know nothing of. Some of those things we will come to discover but others we will never know anything of given the vastness of the universe. — Fooloso4

I think the subtle point you're not seeing here, is that even 'this vast universe' you speak of, is still considered here from an implicitly human perspective. After all, science measures time in units relative to the rotation of the earth around the sun and distances of kilometers and so on. So that provides the framework, as it were, within which we picture the 'vast numbers of forever unseen things'. But the reality is vaster than even that, because it is not constrained by our human sensory and intellectual faculties. It's 'vast' in a way that even science can't imagine!

Key passages from Kant:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance – which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are called 'external', not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another - but that space itself is in us. — Critique of Pure Reason A369-370

Emphasis added to draw out the point that Kant sees empirical realism and transcendental idealism as compatible and not contradictory. I know this is a really counter-intuitive point but I think it's really important. (Incidentally there's a really good short essay on the continuing relevance of Kant that I like to draw attention to from time to time.)

We have images of molecules breaking chemical bonds. These images would not be possible without our instrumentation but are they merely artifacts of it or does the image capture what is really going on at the molecular level? — Fooloso4

I'm not sceptical in the sense of doubting scientifically-established facts as we rely on them every day. So for example, if I were studying chemistry, then text books on that subject would be the authoritative source and what I would endeavour to learn and understand. We apply such knowledge and pragmatically benefit from it. So I really don't want to disparage science. But philosophically speaking, the issue is rather different. What I'm drawing attention to is the distinction between scientific and philosophical analyses, because the latter encompasses value, meaning and purpose, which are generally omitted in scientific discourse.

Nowadays it is a widespread belief that evolutionary processes are physical in nature, that humans are a kind of by-product of a random process in an inherently and factually meaningless cosmos. This is supported with reference to scientific knowledge; but I'm questioning that, by pointing out the sense in which even so-called objective or value-free scientific knowledge is still ultimately a human endeavour (among other reasons). Scientific materialism tends to 'absolutize' the scientific perspective, whereas I can accept it as a pragmatic fact, but whilst being aware of the continuing mystery of existence.

And it's the fundamental ambiguity that turned up at the 'heart of matter' via the discoveries of quantum mechanics that has really driven this point home. The main difference between Bohr and Einstein seemed to me that the former was accepting of it in a way the latter couldn't be.

I'm pretty pleased at how well that piece from 15 years ago stands up. I still see my core beliefs there.

Which coincides with what I'm working on now. Lately I've begun to realize and understand that we are our beliefs. Our beliefs are the entirety of our being. One can understand this completely, and yet, trying to elaborate what these are, find them either trite and mundane, or nebulous and elusive, hard to pin down or specify.

And so they should be. Heidegger says "the more comprehensive a concept is in its scope...the more indeterminate and empty is its content" (Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 43) So, in fact, knowing that beliefs are the basis of being, we reach the point of the pure indetermination of content. I know that I am both the product and the author of my beliefs. I know that I exist. Cogito ergo sum.

Relative to another thread, for example, this would explain why people need religious beliefs; they need religious beliefs to found their being when they themselves are incapable of doing so. Either you assume responsibility for your own being, or you accept a whole lot of doctrinal gibberish that does nothing to fill in the gaps between obeyances.

Glory, for the Greeks, is the highest manner of being....Glory means doxa [which is "belief"]....I show myself, I appear, I step into the light. (Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 108)

The being of believing, the being of believers, the being of belief.
(I realize I also posted this on another thread but, it really fit there even though it was conceived here).

It's a shame that the other thread was too technical, but perhaps the discussion therein can be set out clearly with less technical language.

"Cogito ergo sum." I think therefore I am. If I did not exist, I could not think, therefore thinking alone proves undoubtedly to myself that I exist. — god must be atheist

This is considered a proof that I exist; but when formalised it can be seen to be circular. Consider the assumption: "I think"; notice that it already contains "I"? That is, it already assumes what it is attempting to prove.

The free logic of the other thread makes this circularity formally explicit.

Now remember that a circular argument is valid - the conclusions do follow from the assumptions. So all this does not make "I think therefore I am" wrong.

The same circularity happens in the arguments for the necessary existence of god.

thank you for starting this thread and writing the OP as you have done. — L'éléphant

You're welcome and thank you.

Descartes, for one, never claimed that humans are being deceived. — L'éléphant

Well, he kinda did. At the beginning of his meditations, he said something along the lines that he had hitherto held many false opinions purely because he'd swallowed the accepted wisdom. This is why he had to go back to square one, as it were, and put aside everything he thought he had known, starting with the self-evident 'cogito ergo sum'.

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms? — baker

I've never experienced any material benefit from my study of the subject. And I envy those who do - I'm aware of freelance writers and academics who've made a career out of these subjects. There are plenty who would tell me I've wasted a lot of my life chasing rainbows. I hope they're not right, but then, look at the icon I've picked. I might have succeeded at it, had the circumstances been different, but as it is, whatever I do here and on Medium is about it.

But I will say that I have experienced a definite shift in my overall orientation and equanamity in life. It's not as my younger self would have hoped a kind of be-all and end-all state but it's still something.

I said earlier on in this thread, that I often feel that what is taken as normality in our culture is actually a kind of false consciousness. I looked into that saying, 'false consciousness', it originated with Marx, about workers who falsely allow themselves to be lulled into a sense of security by identifying with their work, although I think it has also been adopted by existentialism. So a big part of what I've learned through this discipline is to be less bogus (or more 'fair dinkum' in the local vernacular), so as not to be so immersed in the false consciousness of materialist culture.

Here is a new metaethical theory I am working on that is a form of moral realism, and, since I find it a worthy contender of my moral anti-realist position, I wanted to share it with the forum to see what people think. — Bob Ross

Very well, from the start.

You say this theory represents moral realism. So, you must then agree that the reader must agree that this theory indeed can possibly describe moral realism. Does it feel like or seem to be moral realism? If it bears little resemblance to moral realism, the debate is ended because you are demanding us to lose our minds and believe that black is white as a starting point.

I do not have a name for it yet, so I will just explicate it. — Bob Ross

On we go, in good faith ...

For the sake of brevity, and because I have already covered arguments in favor of them in my moral subjectivist paper, I am presupposing moral cognitivism and non-nihilism in this thread. — Bob Ross

I have already given my argument for the uselessness of moral cognitivism. That applies here. To assert uselessness is useless.

I can give the same argument again?!?!?!

The brief is this:
1) All beliefs are in error partially because perfection is impossible (anti-cognitivism)
2) Some moral statements are possibly true because they embrace the concept of limits towards infinity as infinity. (cognitivism)

This ... proves ... to me ... that moral cognitivism (and anti-cognitivism both) are useless. They are simultaneously false and true meaning they are both true and juxtaposed. This state of things is normal. It is found in all truth worthy of the name. It is found in all wisdom.

So, THAT would be your one thing. Start there and only there if you wish. I will continue to respond JUST to the OP though to offer more. Respond only to one at a time if you wish.

If anyone would like me to elaborate on them, then I certainly can; and I suggest anyone who is interested in that to read the relevant portions of my discussion board OP pertaining to moral subjectivism on those two metaethical positions. I will focus on a positive case for moral objectivism, which I deny in my moral subjectivist (anti-realist) view. — Bob Ross

Here you are throwing out two entire models and expect people to read all and follow. I only expect one post at a time and you are expressing difficulty.

My acceptance and balance with chaos is unusual to this forum. It is misunderstood. That is because academia and classical logical approaches are not inherently chaotic. They often dismiss chaos as the enemy. Chaos is an integral and required part of morality. You are not allowed to dismiss it. You must deal with it. That so far, in my opinion, is a large part of your ... problem.

Heaven knows, I am only one small man. If I alone in a single post offer up too much to deal with, what hope is there of tackling something as wiley and wonderful as objective moral truth or let's just say, the truth, in general? Not much I'm afraid.

On we go ...

The core of this theory is that ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ are not determined by mind-independent states-of-affairs or arrangements of entities in reality but, rather, are abstract categories, or forms, of conduct. — Bob Ross

There is so much wrong with this paragraph that it might take infinite time to detail it.

1) There is no such thing as a mind-independent state of affairs. That's the biggest issue.
2) If the good is a form, that is mind-independent, in the only way I think you mean it, which means more properly stated that the GOOD does not depend on opinion or choice, but is preset, a law of the universe, then I agree, you are talking about objective morality. But you later suggest that you are NOT talking about a law of the universe making your premises unclear (entirely).
3) This means you are asserting that these 'forms' which you do not define yet, are mind-independent. But you also have said in other posts that you are not referring to a law of the universe. So you are contradicting yourself and not in a good way.

For now, let's leave that complaint as this section and move on.

The (mind-independent) states-of-affairs, or arrangements of entities, in reality inform us of what is right or wrong in virtue of being classified under either category. — Bob Ross

You are unclear here as to the 'categories'. I assume you mean good and evil as the only categories. That is confusing because we all know there is a continuum there. If one is dealing with a continuum one must/should specify the dividing line between them. So what precisely denotes good and what evil? What filter do I use to distinguish between them? How does a behavior fall into one category or the other?

For example, there is no mind-independent state-of-affairs (or arrangement of entities) in reality that makes it true that “one ought not torture babies” but, rather, it is true because it corresponds appropriately to the mind-independent category (i.e., abstract form) of ‘the good’. — Bob Ross

This paragraph explains NOTHING OF USE about the former paragraph and yet that is what it purports to be doing. No help. Why?

It is no help because you just basically gave no filter and expect that we can decide what makes something good or evil. You have not even said that there is a continuum. What relates the good to the bad?

This paragraph only has use if of course, as assumed by it, everyone, sort-of agrees on what good means. They do not. In fact, that is the entire point of this discussion. Is what is good or evil objective or subjective?

So, in light of this and in an attempt to contrast with my other moral anti-realist theory, I would like to point out the flaw, from the perspective of this theory, of my moral subjectivist argument; so let me outline it briefly again: — Bob Ross

And you wonder why I got confused. No. Stick with one theory at a time. You are laying out tenets of a subjectivist theory in an objectivist thread. People will of course respond to each/both.

I'm here to hear your ostensible realism theory and the first thing you start explaining is subjectivism. What? Can we talk about the thing before we talk what isn't the thing?

P1: The way reality is does not entail how it should be. — Bob Ross

Wow! There is nothing to support this wild conjecture at all up to this point. In fact I would offer a much more reasonable proposition which is this:
Anti-P1: The way reality is currently is clearly the best example of how it should be because it's the only example we have. Guess what? That's a tautology. Have fun with that.

P2: Moral facts are statements about states-of-affairs which inform us of how reality should be. — Bob Ross

No they are not.

Better P2: Moral facts are statements about what choices should be made by any and all choosers.

To be is a horrible verb. It is misunderstood and misused constantly. States can change. Truth cannot. So if moral statements are true they cannot change. So, if there is something that IS, the verb to be, the suggestion is that it is that permanently. If it can be something else, then it IS NOT (only) what we are saying it IS. This is the trouble with is-a. It's ALWAYS a lie. So everything is a delusion? Yes. Except for one thing, truth.

Moral statements are possibly true. That means they do not change.
Choices result in consequences that are states. States can change.

If something 'should', then the something that 'should' can only be a state.

Hence, my better P2.

C: TF, moral facts cannot exist. — Bob Ross

I do not know what you mean here. What is TF, true, false? By the way this statement undoes YOUR P2 completely so you have two contradictory premises. You say what a moral fact is and then say they cannot exist. Again, putting TF in front of this statement with no explanation is messy at best.

Analyzing this argument from this theory, as opposed to moral subjectivism, P2 is false; because moral facts are not only about states-of-affairs, in the sense that they are made true in virtue of corresponding to some state-of-affairs in reality, but, rather, are made true in virtue of how the state-of-affairs sizes up to the abstract category of ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’. — Bob Ross

I like that. It's not discrete but it says the right things to be considered in support of realism.

So, the key misunderstanding of moral subjectivism, or so the argument goes (:, is that a fact is a statement that corresponds to reality and not solely states-of-affairs in reality—as abstract categories are still mind-independently true insofar as, although we can semantically disagree, the actions are subsumable under more general classifications and this is not stance-dependent—and thusly P2 is false. — Bob Ross

Smaller sentences might help. This is hard to follow. You merely claim it is a misunderstanding and although this sentence is perhaps one of the longest in history it does not say why there even is a misunderstanding.

You do not offer these 'more general classifications' so why was time wasted with P2 in the first place?

As I more cleanly mentioned in my earlier post and I even explained it, STATES are not truth. If something can change it is not truth. This does not deny the existence of truth. If we find any stability in reality it is because of truth.

Here is one for you: Logical:
Nothing can depend on anything that is not truth, finally.

Therefore nothing can depend on a state that can change. Stand on quicksand if you like, I do not like it.

Likewise, P1, if taken as true, only refers by 'reality is' to states-of-affairs or arrangements of entities in reality and not abstract categories of events or actions in that reality (nor what potentially could occur in that reality). — Bob Ross

You do not say what this means. So what if P1 only refers to states and not truths? And this is wrong anyway.
And realize what you did there. You just said that P1 changes. Its therefore not true. Why bother discussing what is not true. What is the point of that?

The meat of any matter of discussion on objective anything is only and always discussion of what does not and cannot change. States are right out! Do not proceed from state to state unless you reference them within a frame of truth that is unchanging. If the frame changes, discussion is useless. Do you understand the problem?

Discussing subjective morality is only possible in an objectively stable universe. Thankfully that is what we have. Properly understood that is the end of the discussion. On to determining what is objectively a should.

But instead we continue with delusions and since that is the process of growth, I accept this burden.

Although there is a lot I would like to say, I want to keep this brief—so I will say only one last thing: this is not a form of platonism. By abstract form or category I do not mean that there exists an abstract object, or a set of them, in reality that in virtue of which makes moral judgments (which express something objective) true—as this falls into the same trap that they are indeed states-of-affairs, or arrangements of entities, in reality and this violates P1. — Bob Ross

Is that a sentence? Smaller is better. Discreet! You asked me to address ONE thing instead of a complex and interweaved response to you, but sentences like this are a tornado through a trailer park. Wreckage abounds.

Don't use the word virtue the way you do. It confounds the issue. And it is wrong as stated. Virtue is an ideal, and that ideal is objective or, let's say, can indeed be imagined as such. Any given state is only a point along a continuum which has its end in perfection of that virtue. This does not deny the form. A state cannot deny truth.

It sounds like you are suggesting that because states exist, truth cannot. That is patently absurd. This is caused by the fact that P1 is incoherent in the way I mentoined.

Instead, by form or category, I just mean an abstract category we derive by validly subsuming actions or events into more general classifications. — Bob Ross

This is nothing more finally than conceit.

It is the conceit of thought, of a thinker, to think that, in thinking, all else came from thought alone. It is a ruination of 'Cogito ergo sum!' The latter explains that thinking is only one aspect of being. The former is an elevation of thinking to being and is simply obviously nonsensical.

First off, I apologize if this is not a forum for making longer posts or broader discussions; if so, feel free to delete this thread.

I’m writing this to get a non-skeptic perspective on truth. What can we know for certain? That is, what do we know or can know without any possibility for that knowledge to be incorrect?

The following is my take on this issue.

The truth of almost every assertion we make is shadowed by uncertainty. All conceivable shortcomings of our senses, memory and rationality leaves almost everything we perceive, think or believe about reality hopelessly uncertain; that inevitability is the human condition.

But, we have a glimmer of light left for us, fortunately... if you doubt everything uncertain, you are left with two unassailable truths that are both absolutely true and knowable... the fact of your existence right now (Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum) and the existence of your perceptions (qualia), also in the here and now.

However, if you try to logically build on those truths to extend certainty any further, you will fail... after all, once you’ve proved something to yourself, how can you be sure that your memory that you just proved it is accurate? Were you completely rational? This universal skepticism leaves all further philosophical inquiry moot.

Your only hope of escaping this dilemma is if there is someone out there with the powers of God; a divine being who has the reality-making power to go beyond the limits of the human condition.

I’m interested in and open to considering alternative takes, perspectives or views on this matter.

The tragic fate of Alan Turing does not diminish his role in computer-science. The test named after him was invented to determine, if a computer can think. Nowadays AI would quite easily pass this test, if not now, so in the foreseeable future. Does this mean, that modern-day computers actually are able to think like human beings? Or even, that they have consciousness like we have? The question has to be extended, though. How can we be sure, that other people can think and have consciousness? If we just infer from their bodily movements and facial expression, a robot in far future might be able to deceive us as well.

The road to solipsism is paved that way and if You have no problem with that, the discussion is over. If You do have a problem, though, You have to concede, that there is some fundamental problem involved and something is wrong about the usual way of looking at things. The decision between materialism and idealism might not be sufficient to understand ourselves and the world we live in.

The mind-body problem has a long tradition. Maybe René Descartes (* 31.03.1596, †11.02.1650) introduced it by postulating to types of “substances” or things: extended ones and thinking ones. The human body is an extended, material thing. On the other side we have (our) conscious experience, according to Descartes a thinking thing (cogito ergo sum – I think therefor I exist). Ever since the dispute gyrates around the relation between these two substances.

Materialism poses its weight on the concept of matter, stating that material stuff is the essence of existence. Everything else, including consciousness, has to be explained in terms of attributes of the physical world. Mind is only an epi-phenomenon due to the complexity of some material things, e.g. the human brain.

Idealism on the other side claims, that everything we can ever know about matter stems from our conscious experience. Therefore the concept of matter is only inference from data the senses provide us. Consciousness is at the base of existence and matter has to be explained as outcome of conscious experience. Everything is in the mind only.

Thus materialism and idealism are only extreme positions regarding the two substances. If we concede Descartes' arguments, the problem of mutual influence between the two substances arises. If we intend to raise our hands, can our mind have causal influence on our physical body? On the other hand scientists found out, that stimulating certain regions of the brain results in consciously experiencing sensory impressions. Science has made astounding progress and we can study the functioning of the human brain at work. It is possible to follow the excitation of nerves from the retina to specific parts of the brain – but that is all there is, no trace of consciousness to be found. Inside our brain it is pitch-dark so to speak.

“ No one thinks that when a tune is running in my head, a surgeon could unearth a little orchestra buried inside my skull or that a doctor by applying a stethoscope to my cranium could hear a muffled tune...” to quote Mr. Ryle (The Concept of Mind). And no one would introduce himself to a party by saying: Hello, here I am and I have brought my body with me. It may sound ridiculous, but the bifurcation of nature would indeed admit such propositions.

Interesting in this context are experiments conducted by the American physiologist Benjamin Libet. He wanted to find out, how long it takes from the moment we intend to execute a bodily action to the stimulus of the appropriate nerves. The unexpected outcome of these experiments was that the nerves acted an average 0.35 seconds prior to the intention. The nerves and muscles are activated before we intend to raise our arm. Not surprisingly this has led to discussions regarding free will versus behaviorism.

The complexity of integrated circuits in modern computers approaches rapidly the complexity of the human brain. Traditional computer-programs give the program a limited range and programmers can quite easily foresee the possible outcomes. AI is different though. Not even the designer can predict what will happen as these programs in a certain way program themselves and are able to learn depending on the scope of available data.

Give AI senses and the possibility to act, then the difference to human behaviour will diminish on the long run. Does this mean that we are just sophisticated machines and all talk about freedom of choice and responsibility towards our actions is just wishful thinking? Or is there something fundamentally wrong about our traditional concepts regarding mind and matter? I maintain that we need a new world-picture, especially as the Newtonian view is nowadays as outdated as the Ptolemaic system was in the 16th century. But this will be a new thread in our forum.

There are more than a few variations of solipsism, and not all of them reduce "the other" into incoherence.

A kind of hard solipsism would be "Only my mind exists and the other people and things I perceive are created by my mind, and have no continuous or necessary existence beyond my perceptions of them".

With this kind of solipsism there is no guarantee that a fundamental way to "make sense" of how "minds" work is available in the first place. Living pragmatically would be greatly hindered by going around and treating "the other" as if it's existence is dependent on one's own mind (i.e "not real"), but the fact that we would be left in a very confusing situation (having no obvious or necessary way to determine how or why we experience what we experience) does not negate it as a possibility. It would change nothing from the perspective of a pragmatist, but this also gives no necessary indication that hard solipsism definitely is not the case.

A weaker form of solipsism posits that the only thing we can be certain of are the goings-on of our own mind, and points out that the realist approach involves several presumptions that cannot be proven or falsified. This kind of solipsism most closely tracks with the main question of this thread. It is in essence strong skepticism applied to the nature (or "truth") of our perceptions, which reduces what is "certain" to something like Descartes "cogito ergo sum" or something not dissimilar.

Out of the hard solipsist position stems a rather useless worldview, but out of the weaker version of solipsism stems several positions that do in fact have some merit. Descartes was right to apply skepticism for the sake of applying skepticism (in pursuit of something unquestionable; something certain), and out of it came a very sensical hierarchy of epistemological foundations. Our own existence is not questionable (per Decartes), but our senses and perceptions are highly fallible and so must be questioned and tested using apriori reasoning and confirmation and re-confirmation (for precision and accuracy) of actual empirical evidence.

The possibility that we might be a brain in a vat is enough to provide some doubt that the "the objective world is subjective" (or at least arbitrary in the sense that it may not reflect the "external world" of the scientist). This is is not a useful position to wield, but confronting it can be a useful exercise which forces us to improve as best we can the epistemic foundations that we base what we call "knowledge" on.