The Standard Works - Our Measuring Rod?

[mfbukowski]

22 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I reject the model that makes a break between mind and world. In that Mark and I are in agreement. This position is usually called externalism. I'm also quite distrustful of theories that equate mind to consciousness, brain or nervous system. I just don't think that works. It seems an arbitrary boundary.

So your confusion is because you're trying to fit my criticisms into a more traditional view of mind. But it's precisely that Cartesian inspired view that I'm opposing.

Yes. I've never claimed we know things in their totality. Merely that the objects are given to us in experience. In the phenomena they are given to us in what we might say is errancy. So I'm most definitely not saying there's infallibility. I've been arguing quite the opposite. Just that there's not a divide between the mind and objects. 

 

First I'd say I reject Rorty's tendency to reduce things to talk. (I'm sure how universal this is to his thought) I'd be more than happy to reduce things to signs but not talk. Linguistics is just too limited here. 

So my rejoinder would be to say that objects are themselves signs. So it's signs all the way down which I think avoids Rorty's objection which hinges on a gap between "things" and language. If it's all signs then that objection disappears and avoids the human-centric analysis which I think causes Rorty problems.

Yes I wish I  had a buck for every time we get to this point and I still don't have any idea what you mean.    What is mind without consciousness??  How do you postulate that??

Talk is all we have.

Shall we carry on now without it?    The discussion would not get far.  Wittgenstein is even MORE into "talk" because he knows that's all there is  in communication.

Seems like a totally tautologous proposition to me.  Communication about philosophy requires talk.   Wanna try sign language?

And signs?   All they do is point to other signs- ie words pointing to other words IF I understand Peirce at all which I probably don't

So substitute "words" for signs-  and all other pointers and what do you get?  A universe of pointers pointing to each other.

Sounds just  like language to me- but  no you want some pointers to point to the word if I get it right.  ??

It's still all talking about talk and getting no closer to "the world" BECAUSE all we have is talk and our perceptions to talk about.

Edited April 27, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

4 hours ago, FormerLDS said:

I've spoken with thousands of Latter-day Saints on a personal level, and I've never met a single one yet who didn't struggle with the concept of personal perfection on some level.

Most just don't admit to it - especially to other members.  

The truth of the matter is, whether you'll admit to it or not, you're not doing what you say you should be doing.  You're not perfect.  

You were born into a congregation that handed you a list of do's and don'ts, but you've never yet been faced with reality.  You are nowhere even near perfect.

You have "Jesus Christ" written in stone on every single one of your churches, but you do not have His most fundamental of gift - the door prize he gives to those who believe and become His sheep.

I've never heard of a Mormon who thinks they can be perfect in this life. I've met a few who go a bit overboard into comparing themselves to others and getting caught up in what some call checklist Mormonism. However it's rather easy to show that's not Mormonism. Heaven knows there's plenty of GA talks warning against this.

There's two things we have to recognize. First off that we can be better than we are. Second that it is by grace we are saved. We'll always fall short of God.

[mfbukowski]

Nevermind I was mistaken here.  sorry

Edited April 27, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, FormerLDS said:

I've spoken with thousands of Latter-day Saints on a personal level, and I've never met a single one yet who didn't struggle with the concept of personal perfection on some level.

Most just don't admit to it - especially to other members.  

The truth of the matter is, whether you'll admit to it or not, you're not doing what you say you should be doing.  You're not perfect.  

You were born into a congregation that handed you a list of do's and don'ts, but you've never yet been faced with reality.  You are nowhere even near perfect.

You have "Jesus Christ" written in stone on every single one of your churches, but you do not have His most fundamental of gift - the door prize he gives to those who believe and become His sheep.

You've talked to thousands who don't admit it?

How did you pull that one off and decide "most" have a problem with what they did not admit they had?

I have no clue what you are talking about after 40 years of membership

Everytime perfection comes up, everyone says we can't do it here.   "After all we CAN do"?  Yes but that ain't perfection it's all we can do

Wanting to do more?  Sure but what's wrong with that?  Is it better to "sin boldly" as Luther said?

I'm not buying it.  I do not want to sin boldly I want to do the best I can in my limited abilities.   I tried to get A's in class- how about you?  Did you not try to get the best grades you could??

Edited April 27, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

51 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I reject the model that makes a break between mind and world. In that Mark and I are in agreement. This position is usually called externalism. I'm also quite distrustful of theories that equate mind to consciousness, brain or nervous system. I just don't think that works. It seems an arbitrary boundary.

So your confusion is because you're trying to fit my criticisms into a more traditional view of mind. But it's precisely that Cartesian inspired view that I'm opposing.

Yes. I've never claimed we know things in their totality. Merely that the objects are given to us in experience. In the phenomena they are given to us in what we might say is errancy. So I'm most definitely not saying there's infallibility. I've been arguing quite the opposite. Just that there's not a divide between the mind and objects. 

 

First I'd say I reject Rorty's tendency to reduce things to talk. (I'm sure how universal this is to his thought) I'd be more than happy to reduce things to signs but not talk. Linguistics is just too limited here. 

So my rejoinder would be to say that objects are themselves signs. So it's signs all the way down which I think avoids Rorty's objection which hinges on a gap between "things" and language. If it's all signs then that objection disappears and avoids the human-centric analysis which I think causes Rorty problems.

Signs ARE language.

Problem solved.

Language all the way down, signs all the way down.

Done. 

Reduce things to talk?  Not the case.  Another quote of the same thing is called for I see.  And this point IS what analytical philosophy is about.

Quote

 To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states.  To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences, there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

THINGS are causes which do NOT include human mental states.

THINGS are causes which do NOT include human mental states.

THINGS are causes which do NOT include human mental states.

NO sentences?  No truth, no descriptions to BE true or false.  Only descriptions can be true or false.

THINGS ARE NOT TALK.

You trip over things and THEN say the words.   

 

Edited April 27, 2018 by mfbukowski

[pogi]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I reject the model that makes a break between mind and world. In that Mark and I are in agreement. 

I thought Mark was arguing that there is a gap, and you are arguing that there is no gap? 

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm also quite distrustful of theories that equate mind to consciousness, brain or nervous system. I just don't think that works. It seems an arbitrary boundary.

I fail to see the divide between mind and consciousness.  If the mind is not consciousness, then how can it be aware of experience?

Clearly, Mormonism doesn't equate mind to brain or nervous system (given the pre-existence).  

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Yes. I've never claimed we know things in their totality. Merely that the objects are given to us in experience. In the phenomena they are given to us in what we might say is errancy. So I'm most definitely not saying there's infallibility. I've been arguing quite the opposite. Just that there's not a divide between the mind and objects. 

When I say "object", I am speaking to its wholeness - aka the object "as it is", because "the whole is greater then the sum of its parts".  If you don't see the whole of the object, then you don't see the object as it is; rather you only see it as you perceive it to be.  If you claim to only have direct experience with a tiny fraction of an object, then how can you claim that you can "absolutely" know the object as it is?  You can't.  That would require knowing it's wholeness and how it relates to everything else.  All that you can claim is that you know the object as you perceive it (relative). That is the holism I am speaking of.  You can't know anything with absolute certainty, without knowing everything absolutely.   It reminds me of one of my favorite parables - the blind men and the elephant.  We are like the blind men with only a relative knowledge rather then an absolute knowledge of the elephant as it is.

It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,
who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),
that each by observation, might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall,
against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl:
'God bless me! but the elephant, is nothing but a wall!'

The second feeling of the tusk, cried: 'Ho! what have we here,
so very round and smooth and sharp? To me tis mighty clear,
this wonder of an elephant, is very like a spear!'

The third approached the animal, and, happening to take,
the squirming trunk within his hands, 'I see,' quoth he,
the elephant is very like a snake!'

The fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about the knee:
'What most this wondrous beast is like, is mighty plain,' quoth he;
'Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree.'

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said; 'E'en the blindest man
can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant, is very like a fan!'

The sixth no sooner had begun, about the beast to grope,
than, seizing on the swinging tail, that fell within his scope,
'I see,' quothe he, 'the elephant is very like a rope!'

And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,
each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,
tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,
and prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen! 

And here it is as great song by Natalie Merchant:

 

 

Edited April 27, 2018 by pogi

[mfbukowski]

21 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I reject the model that makes a break between mind and world. In that Mark and I are in agreement. This position is usually called externalism. I'm also quite distrustful of theories that equate mind to consciousness, brain or nervous system. I just don't think that works. It seems an arbitrary boundary.

So your confusion is because you're trying to fit my criticisms into a more traditional view of mind. But it's precisely that Cartesian inspired view that I'm opposing.

Yes. I've never claimed we know things in their totality. Merely that the objects are given to us in experience. In the phenomena they are given to us in what we might say is errancy. So I'm most definitely not saying there's infallibility. I've been arguing quite the opposite. Just that there's not a divide between the mind and objects. 

 

First I'd say I reject Rorty's tendency to reduce things to talk. (I'm sure how universal this is to his thought) I'd be more than happy to reduce things to signs but not talk. Linguistics is just too limited here. 

So my rejoinder would be to say that objects are themselves signs. So it's signs all the way down which I think avoids Rorty's objection which hinges on a gap between "things" and language. If it's all signs then that objection disappears and avoids the human-centric analysis which I think causes Rorty problems.

I have more to say about this, probably tomorrow when I get some time.   I wrote more in a post but then realized that I got Peirce wrong so I deleted it, but I have much to say about Rorty

Not to mention bumping the thread back to page one at least for a while as a reminder to me if nothing else. 

 

[clarkgoble]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I have more to say about this, probably tomorrow when I get some time.   I wrote more in a post but then realized that I got Peirce wrong so I deleted it, but I have much to say about Rorty

Not to mention bumping the thread back to page one at least for a while as a reminder to me if nothing else. 

 

Just to clarify I meant to say I’m not sure how often Rorty reduces things to talk as opposed to a broader semiotics. Further some of that is clearly the topic where he is discussing philosophers debating which clearly is talk. So I’ll admit my ignorance there.

[mfbukowski]

16 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Just to clarify I meant to say I’m not sure how often Rorty reduces things to talk as opposed to a broader semiotics. Further some of that is clearly the topic where he is discussing philosophers debating which clearly is talk. So I’ll admit my ignorance there.

Yeah well that was what the other post was about which I erased because I said some stuff about Peirce which was probably wrong.   I think from here on out we should simply talk about- emphasizing the word talk because guess what- that is all we have- our own views or at least an explanation of what we know instead of what we think we know about someone else's view- someone like Peirce or Rorty.  

Rorty does not reduce things to talk

Which should be perfectly obvious from the quote I quote about 300 times a day which no one ever reads.  Every post I make contains it in my siggy and for those who block siggies then of course they are blocking half the post in my opinion- that is up to them

But if you want to understand a PERSON as opposed to the words he/she generates one should not block siggies, because they are the only context about a person we get on a message board. And I make it a point to quote the QUOTE FROM THE PERSON as opposed to characterizing what they said which is probably wrong.  Misunderstandings always happen and that is how they happen

At any rate here, yet again is the quote.

Quote

 

 To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states.  To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences, there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

     Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

 

There is a clear distinction here between the world of things and talking about the world of things but it is non-representationalist.  Talk about things is not tied in any way to the world of things because it cannot be without being a representationalist explanation which is logically impossible.  When we speak things do not appear out of our mouths, words cannot ever adequately represent things.  If this is what Peirce is doing in any way, he cannot be right in my view

Quite frankly I do not understand how you could read that and get the idea that 

" I meant to say I’m not sure how ... Rorty reduces things to talk ".....

So I would suggest that we post a quote from the person and ask for clarification of what was said instead of mis-characterizing what was said and then attributing that view to the person.

Let the person speak for themselves.

So now show me where Rorty "reduces things to talk".

Yes, when we are talking when all we have IS talk, things ARE talk.  Words are alleged to be representations of things in Cartesianism and any representationalist view is still Cartestianism in my view

How you can logically have a view which uses "signs" as "pointing to" the world in any way shape or form to me HAS to be "representation" because it is asserting there is a way we can talk about the world?

There is no way we can talk about the world as it is independent of talking about the world.

THAT I think is a fair representation of Rorty but that does NOT SAY that "Rorty reduces things to talk"

He says repeatedly that that is NOT what he is doing- even in that little clip from one page of one book that I thought captured the essence of his point

Yet no one actually reads that quote.  I find it very frustrating.

And as a Mormon I see a kinship in Rorty because he separates direct experience of the world from words about the world

That leaves open that visions and spiritual experience can be directly perceived and yet not satisfactorily put into words because words cannot represent God or the world of spiritual experience.  Peirce cannot do that.  Rorty agrees with Alma 32 and Moroni 10 in principle, Perice does not.  Perice does not understand God at all and his writings about God are horrible.  Rorty on the other hand accepted religious views very much like Mormonism.  As a Mormon I cannot understand how you would endorse Peirce over Rorty.

Edited April 28, 2018 by mfbukowski
Punctuation clarification

[mfbukowski]

On 4/26/2018 at 7:50 PM, pogi said:

I thought Mark was arguing that there is a gap, and you are arguing that there is no gap? 

I fail to see the divide between mind and consciousness.  If the mind is not consciousness, then how can it be aware of experience?

Clearly, Mormonism doesn't equate mind to brain or nervous system (given the pre-existence).  

When I say "object", I am speaking to its wholeness - aka the object "as it is", because "the whole is greater then the sum of its parts".  If you don't see the whole of the object, then you don't see the object as it is; rather you only see it as you perceive it to be.  If you claim to only have direct experience with a tiny fraction of an object, then how can you claim that you can "absolutely" know the object as it is?  You can't.  That would require knowing it's wholeness and how it relates to everything else.  All that you can claim is that you know the object as you perceive it (relative). That is the holism I am speaking of.  You can't know anything with absolute certainty, without knowing everything absolutely.   It reminds me of one of my favorite parables - the blind men and the elephant.  We are like the blind men with only a relative knowledge rather then an absolute knowledge of the elephant as it is.

I am not arguing for or against a "gap" depending on where the gap is supposed to be.

Like the men from Industan, there is a gap between the reality and the description.   So if you take that as your "gap" I admit to being guilty.  But in a sense even in that description there is no KNOWABLE gap.  None of the men of Industan can KNOW that there is a gap because as you say, they have not comprehended the whole.

They have no direct experience of the whole elephant more importantly the RELATIONS in use and how we as a culture see the whole elephant.

So we are on the same page, I am sure.  If you are not aware of Alfred North Whitehead I would suggest you take a serious look at his philosophy- he is the father of "Process Philosophy" which is the one of the main view taught at Claremont School of Theology which is now producing many of the new LDS theologians coming up.  Notice the reference to process studies in this link.  John Cobb has been there for years, and he is one of the main scholars of Whitehead. https://cst.edu/academics/ph-d/

If I were a bit younger, I might be over there taking courses, and I am considering do so regardless of being an old guy

But here is a secondary source speaking about Whitehead- I think you will see the importance of this view- it is something I have incorporated into my own views, though I do not talk about it much here.  Whitehead is NOT an easy read- as in introduction I would recommend studying secondary sources and THEN after you have some understanding of his philosophy, reading his writings will be easier.

Note here the point about James and the idea that objects as we experience them occur as "events".  So a chair at one point may be a chair, but change it's relation over time to how we use it, and what was a chair can be a ladder we stand on to put in a light bulb, say.  A wrench in a pinch can be a "hammer" when it is the only tool available.  So objects are not hard and fast in their use as we experience them, we experience them in relation to their use, in relation to their whole range of relations- what you I think are speaking of.  

Objects are "idealized significances" of their PURPOSE and use.  So a hammer is what we use as a hammer.  THAT is it's "idealized significance".  We might give a wrench the purpose of a hammer- that is temporarily its purpose or "signficance" as we think of the idea of needing a hammer and grabbing the wrench "idealizing" it as a hammer.  So an object is its "idealized significance".

And the ramifications of that are vast.  Here is a taste   https://www.iep.utm.edu/whitehed/

I have underlined some relevant areas of interest.

Quote

 

Whitehead also rejected “objects” as abstractions, and argued that the fundamental realities of both experience and nature are events. Events are themselves irreducibly extended entities, where the temporal / durational extension is primary. “Objects” are the idealized significances that retain a stable meaning through an event or family of events.

It is important to note here that Whitehead is arguing for a kind of empiricism. But, as Victor Lowe has noted, this empiricism is more akin to the ideas of William James than it is to the logical positivism of Whitehead’s day. In other words, Whitehead is arguing for a kind of Jamesian “radical empiricism,” in which sense-data are abstractions, and the basic deliverances of raw experience include such things as relations and complex events.

These ideas were further developed with the publication of Whitehead’s The Principles of Relativity with Applications to Natural Science (“R,” 1922). Here Whitehead proposed an alternative physical theory of space and gravity to Einstein’s general relativity. Whitehead’s theory has commonly been classified as “quasi-linear” in the physics literature, when it should properly be describes as “bimetric.” Einstein’s theory collapses the physical and the spatial into a single metric, so that gravity and space are essentially identified. Whitehead pointed out that this then loses the logical relations necessary to make meaningful cosmological measurements. In order to make meaningful measurements of space, we must know the geometry of that space so that the congruence relations of our measurement instruments can be projected through that space while retaining their significance. Since Einstein’s theory loses the distinction between the physical and the geometrical, the only way we can know the geometry of the space we are trying to measure is if we first know the distributions of matter and energy throughout the cosmos that affect that geometry. But we can only know these distributions if we can first make accurate measurements of space. Thus, as Whitehead argued, we are left in the position of first having to know everything before we can know anything.

Whitehead argued that the solution to this problem was to separate the necessary relations of geometry from the contingent relations of physics, so that one’s theory of space and gravity is “bimetric,” or is built from the two metrics of geometry and physics. Unfortunately, Whitehead never used the term “bimetric,” and his theory has often been misinterpreted. Questions of the viability of Whitehead’s specific theory have needlessly distracted both philosophers and physicists from the real issue of the class of theories of space and gravity that Whitehead was arguing for. Numerous viable bimetric alternatives to Einstein’s theory of relativity are currently known in the physics literature. But because Whitehead’s theory has been misclassified and its central arguments poorly understood, the connections between Whitehead’s philosophical arguments and these physical theories have largely gone unnoticed.

e. The Metaphysical Works

The problems Whitehead had engaged with his triad of works on the philosophy of nature and science required a complete re-evaluation of the assumptions of modern science. To this end, Whitehead published Science in the Modern World (“SMW,” 1925). This work had both a critical and a constructive aspect, although the critical themes occupied most of Whitehead’s attention. Central to those critical themes was Whitehead’s challenge to dogmatic scientific materialism developed through an analysis of the historical developments and contingencies of that belief. In addition, he continued with the themes of his earlier triad, arguing that objects in general, and matter in particular, are abstractions. What are most real are events and their mutual involvements in relational structures.

Already in PNK, Whitehead had characterized electromagnetic phenomena by saying that while such phenomena could be related to specific vector quantities at each specific point of space, they express “at all points one definite physical fact” (PNK, 29). Physical facts such as electromagnetic phenomena are single, relational wholes, but they are spread out across the cosmos. In SMW Whitehead called the failure to appreciate this holism and the relational connectedness of reality, “the fallacy of simple location.” According to Whitehead, much of contemporary science, driven as it was by the dogma of materialism, was committed to the fallacy that only such things as could be localized at a mathematically simple “point” of space and time were genuinely real. Relations and connections were, in this dogmatic view, secondary to and parasitic upon such simply located entities. Whitehead saw this as reversing the facts of nature and experience, and devoted considerable space in SMW to criticizing it.

A second and related fallacy of contemporary science was what Whitehead identified in SMW as, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” While misplaced concreteness could include treating entities with a simple location as more real than those of a field of relations, it also went beyond this. Misplaced concreteness included treating “points” of space or time as more real than the extensional relations that are the genuine deliverances of experience. Thus, this fallacy resulted in treating abstractions as though they were concretely real. In Whitehead’s view, all of contemporary physics was infected by this fallacy, and the resultant philosophy of nature had reversed the roles of the concrete and the abstract.

The critical aspects of SMW were ideas that Whitehead had already expressed (in different forms) in his previous publications, only now with more refined clarity and persuasiveness. On the other hand, the constructive arguments in SMW are astonishing in their scope and subtlety, and are the first presentation of his mature metaphysical thinking. For example, the word “prehension,” which Whitehead defines as “uncognitive apprehension” (SMW 69) makes its first systematic appearance in Whitehead’s writings as he refines and develops the kinds and layers of relational connections between people and the surrounding world. As the “uncognitive” in the above is intended to show, these relations are not always or exclusively knowledge based, yet they are a form of “grasping” of aspects of the world. Our connection to the world begins with a “pre-epistemic” prehension of it, from which the process of abstraction is able to distill valid knowledge of the world. But that knowledge is abstract and only significant of the world; it does not stand in any simple one-to-one relation with the world. In particular, this pre-epistemic grasp of the world is the source of our quasi- a priori knowledge of space which enables us to know of those uniformities that make cosmological measurements, and the general conduct of science, possible.

SMW goes far beyond the purely epistemic program of Whitehead’s philosophy of nature. The final three chapters, entitled “God,” “Religion and Science,” and “Requisites for Social Progress,” clearly announce the explicit emergence of the second major thematic strand of Whitehead’s thought, the “problem of history” or “the accretion of value.” Moreover, these topics are engaged with the same thoroughly relational approach that Whitehead previously used with nature and science.

Despite the foreshadowing of these last chapters of SMW, Whitehead’s next book may well have come as a surprise to his academic colleagues. Whitehead’s brief Religion in the Making (“RM,” 1926) tackles no part of his earlier thematic problem of space, but instead focuses entirely on the second thematic of history and value. Whitehead defines religion as “what the individual does with his own solitariness” (RM 16). Yet it is still Whitehead the algebraist who is constructing this definition. Solitariness is understood as a multi-layered relational modality of the individual in and toward the world. In addition, this relational mode cannot be understood in separation from its history. On this point, Whitehead compares religion with arithmetic. Thus, an understanding of the latter makes no essential reference to its history, whereas for religion such a reference is vital. Moreover, as Whitehead states, “You use arithmetic, but you are religious” (RM 15).

Whitehead also argues that, “The purpose of God is the attainment of value in the temporal world,” and “Value is inherent in actuality itself” (RM 100). Whitehead’s use of the word “God” in the foregoing invites a wide range of habitual assumptions about his meaning, most, if not all, of which will probably be mistaken. The key element for Whitehead is value. God, like arithmetic, is discussed in terms of something which has a purpose. On the other hand, value is like being religious in that it is inherent. It is something that is rather than something that is used.

 

On this board I often  mention that religion is what gives us purpose in life, and that is why atheism can be seen as a "religion", hence if we can understand that, we have an opening in Pragmatism to discuss religion with secularists.

If we define God in terms of purpose- the purpose of mankind is to achieve being the most perfect beings- in a human sense- we have an opening to discuss theology with secularists.

Seeing God as the "Man of Holiness" is central to the perfection of mankind, of becoming the best humans we can become.  That is a cause which makes Mormonism a theistic form of humanism and is why I am here. 

I hope that makes sense to you. 

 

[clarkgoble]

On 4/28/2018 at 9:38 AM, mfbukowski said:

I think from here on out we should simply talk about- emphasizing the word talk because guess what- that is all we have- our own views or at least an explanation of what we know instead of what we think we know about someone else's view- someone like Peirce or Rorty.  

That's probably wise. Doubly so since although we may be deeply influenced by these thinkers we probably differ from them as well. (I'm rather skeptical of Peirce's underlying ontology for instance)

On 4/28/2018 at 9:38 AM, mfbukowski said:

There is a clear distinction here between the world of things and talking about the world of things but it is non-representationalist.  Talk about things is not tied in any way to the world of things because it cannot be without being a representationalist explanation which is logically impossible.  When we speak things do not appear out of our mouths, words cannot ever adequately represent things.  If this is what Peirce is doing in any way, he cannot be right in my view

Ignoring Perice for the moment (although I do think this his view) I'd say if we accept causality as you say you do - that is that "the world" affects what we say - then we can reject Cartesian styled representationism yet see an tie between "the world" and the things said. That is the old point scientific realists keep making that reality constricts what we can legitimately say seems correct. (I'm not a scientific realist - the idea of convergence as they put it seems wrong) So to go back to my tried example it becomes harder and harder to keep saying the sky is pink when it is red. Maybe a few can lie in that way, but overall people get constratined by reality acting upon them. This isn't an issue of adequately representing things. Saying the sky is blue is not an adequate representation - at least in terms of what I consider adequate. However it is a constraint.

Now I think we could talk about what one means by representation but let's skip that for now and just agree that both of us don't think words/signs by humans fully represent a thing. Further let's just say that some statements/signs remain stable through continued inquiry. 

Quote

That leaves open that visions and spiritual experience can be directly perceived and yet not satisfactorily put into words because words cannot represent God or the world of spiritual experience.  Peirce cannot do that.  Rorty agrees with Alma 32 and Moroni 10 in principle, Perice does not.  Perice does not understand God at all and his writings about God are horrible.  Rorty on the other hand accepted religious views very much like Mormonism.  As a Mormon I cannot understand how you would endorse Peirce over Rorty.

Peirce does this with his distinction in phenomenology between firstness (what an experience feels like purely within itself) and thirdness (roughly reactions, speech, signs about the experience -- perhaps tied to Heidegger's "as" relation in phenomenology.

I may well have Rorty wrong - as I said I've only read a few of his books and that primarily many years ago during college. I took him to be saying that the speech is what matters and how communities adjudicate merging or translating talk was all that ultimately mattered. That to me misses out on the phenomena itself. But if I have Rorty wrong there I apologize. (BTW - I have people's quotes in their footnotes turned off so I don't see them)

To me what ultimately matters are the regularities in the universe. As those regularities stabilize we can talk about them or, as is more common in science, deal with symbols to more accurately describe the regularities. To the degree those symbolic descriptions of regularities themselves remain stable across continued inquiry then we may say they are true. In this case I'd say Newtonian descriptions of the phenomena available to them is stable and true even if the underlying metaphysics was wrong - so in terms of regularities Newton never was overthrown by Einstein. We merely found new phenomena the old descriptions didn't cover. That is the breadth of how general the statements were was wrong.

I'd add that I think Peirce does get at Alma 32 and Moroni 10 but he would simply say that he hasn't had the experience you and I have had as an answer. He was as spiritual as he was able with the experiences he had. I'd say Gauss - the famous physicist and mathematician was like that as well. He wanted to have a spiritual experience and fasted and prayed to have one. He simply never did. It reminds me of D&C 46 I've been talking about elsewhere. Some have knowledge. Some have the gift to believe based upon others experiences.

On 4/28/2018 at 9:38 AM, mfbukowski said:

So now show me where Rorty "reduces things to talk".

Yes, when we are talking when all we have IS talk, things ARE talk.  Words are alleged to be representations of things in Cartesianism and any representationalist view is still Cartestianism in my view

Maybe you can correct my erroneous views. What I was more getting at was that "when we are talking..." That is it always seems to me Rorty downplays further experimentation that may give more and more detailed answers. Admittedly this is my bias from years go after reading Mirrors. Glancing at the SEP this quote possibly gets at my issue. (Perhaps completely a misreading) "...we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature."  While I agree with him about the problem of mirroring it's that emphasizing conversation and social practice and downplaying inquiry and experimentation that bothers me. It's really not the issue of representation. Now I might agree with him that for a given set of empirical data there may be ambiguities. Because of those ambiguities we might be practically limited to something like what behavioralism did in psychology. But of course in psychology the problem with behavioralism was that the underlying structures did matter and treating things like a black box was problematic.

Perhaps a better way of putting my qualms isn't to say Rorty reduces things to talk. Rather he reduces them to black boxes and our talk about them neglecting inquiry and figuring out how to get better data.

But I consider myself the student here, so please enlightenment if I have it wrong.

Edited April 29, 2018 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

That's probably wise. Doubly so since although we may be deeply influenced by these thinkers we probably differ from them as well. (I'm rather skeptical of Peirce's underlying ontology for instance)

Ignoring Perice for the moment (although I do think this his view) I'd say if we accept causality as you say you do - that is that "the world" affects what we say - then we can reject Cartesian styled representationism yet see an tie between "the world" and the things said. That is the old point scientific realists keep making that reality constricts what we can legitimately say seems correct. (I'm not a scientific realist - the idea of convergence as they put it seems wrong) So to go back to my tried example it becomes harder and harder to keep saying the sky is pink when it is red. Maybe a few can lie in that way, but overall people get constratined by reality acting upon them. This isn't an issue of adequately representing things. Saying the sky is blue is not an adequate representation - at least in terms of what I consider adequate. However it is a constraint.

Now I think we could talk about what one means by representation but let's skip that for now and just agree that both of us don't think words/signs by humans fully represent a thing. Further let's just say that some statements/signs remain stable through continued inquiry. 

Peirce does this with his distinction in phenomenology between firstness (what an experience feels like purely within itself) and thirdness (roughly reactions, speech, signs about the experience -- perhaps tied to Heidegger's "as" relation in phenomenology.

I may well have Rorty wrong - as I said I've only read a few of his books and that primarily many years ago during college. I took him to be saying that the speech is what matters and how communities adjudicate merging or translating talk was all that ultimately mattered. That to me misses out on the phenomena itself. But if I have Rorty wrong there I apologize. (BTW - I have people's quotes in their footnotes turned off so I don't see them)

To me what ultimately matters are the regularities in the universe. As those regularities stabilize we can talk about them or, as is more common in science, deal with symbols to more accurately describe the regularities. To the degree those symbolic descriptions of regularities themselves remain stable across continued inquiry then we may say they are true. In this case I'd say Newtonian descriptions of the phenomena available to them is stable and true even if the underlying metaphysics was wrong - so in terms of regularities Newton never was overthrown by Einstein. We merely found new phenomena the old descriptions didn't cover. That is the breadth of how general the statements were was wrong.

I'd add that I think Peirce does get at Alma 32 and Moroni 10 but he would simply say that he hasn't had the experience you and I have had as an answer. He was as spiritual as he was able with the experiences he had. I'd say Gauss - the famous physicist and mathematician was like that as well. He wanted to have a spiritual experience and fasted and prayed to have one. He simply never did. It reminds me of D&C 46 I've been talking about elsewhere. Some have knowledge. Some have the gift to believe based upon others experiences.

Maybe you can correct my erroneous views. What I was more getting at was that "when we are talking..." That is it always seems to me Rorty downplays further experimentation that may give more and more detailed answers. Admittedly this is my bias from years go after reading Mirrors. Glancing at the SEP this quote possibly gets at my issue. (Perhaps completely a misreading) "...we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature."  While I agree with him about the problem of mirroring it's that emphasizing conversation and social practice and downplaying inquiry and experimentation that bothers me. It's really not the issue of representation. Now I might agree with him that for a given set of empirical data there may be ambiguities. Because of those ambiguities we might be practically limited to something like what behavioralism did in psychology. But of course in psychology the problem with behavioralism was that the underlying structures did matter and treating things like a black box was problematic.

Perhaps a better way of putting my qualms isn't to say Rorty reduces things to talk. Rather he reduces them to black boxes and our talk about them neglecting inquiry and figuring out how to get better data.

But I consider myself the student here, so please enlightenment if I have it wrong.

OK well let me take this apart in some detail which may make spotting the spots of contention easier.  Let me pretend to be Rorty correcting your language in your essay here.

Quote

 

Ignoring Perice for the moment (although I do think this his view) I'd say if we accept causality as you say you do - that is that "the world" affects what we say -

 

First of all we cannot seem to ignore Peirce, even for a moment. 

I don't know if I "accept causality" in this sense. It is more that there ARE causes which are not human mental states.  That does mean "the chair causes me to have a mental state representing a chair". IF that is what you mean, no I do not accept that at all.  I mean in the big picture- obviously there is "something out there" causing human mental states, which is not itself a human mental state. Whatever it is is literally unknowable.  If that is "accepting causality" then I am in agreement.  But it seems to me to be a much bigger global "macro" kind of "causality" than specific at all.  It is more like "A quantum singularity caused me to be born" rather than "a thing in the world causes me to use the word "chair"

Quote

then we can reject Cartesian styled representationism yet see an tie between "the world" and the things said.

Only in the broadest possible sense- yeah there is something out there but it is OUR PERCEPTION first - the "raw experience" which we then "abstract) into words.

So some unknowable event happens.  We perceive the unknowable event as "the jar falling from the shelf" at first without words.  We hear the crash, look up, and our first vocalization might be some kind of expression of surprise.  Wife yells from the other room "What the heck was that??" NOW comes the first vocalization about "what happened"- "Dang it- the jar fell off the shelf!"

So if you want to call that a "tie between the world and the things said" I cannot argue with that BUT to me that is about one third of the explanation or really even less that that.   First is the unknowable event "in the world" which we then (2) perceive pre-linguistically > feeling noise, looking up, seeing object on floor, broken> recognize it as "the jar" which is the event- being "falling"and then (3) verbalize it as "the jar fell off the shelf".  So before we can verbalize the unknowable event allegedly in the broadest sense somehow "out there" in the land of the unknowable- we experience the mental states of perceiving the patches of blue on the floor, stitching that perception with the thing we call a "shelf", concluding that the patches of blue are the now smashed "jar" now on the floor and that the accompanying "noise" experience was the "jar falling".  We stitch those perceptions together BEFORE we recall the necessary words to make a sentence, plug those words into normal English syntax, and finally the words come out of our mouths "Dang it the jar fell off the shelf!"

So if you want to short cut all that into a "tie between the world and the things said" I can't argue with it.  Yes in a sense that is what happened, but there is a whole lot more going on there than expressing what's "going on in the world"

We are more talking about what is going in inside us- the perception of unknown sound and then piecing together "what happened" from an unknowable event of what we call "gravity" kicking in to move something reflecting blue light we call a "jar" ending up on the "floor"

Quote

 

(I'm not a scientific realist - the idea of convergence as they put it seems wrong) So to go back to my tried example it becomes harder and harder to keep saying the sky is pink when it is red.

 

You mean that as we turn our heads upward, we have the experience we call "blue" instead of the experience of what we call "pink or red" (I think you meant to say "blue")

So those are names we learn for experiences of what we call "color" are in English called "pink" and "blue" which are based on how we learn to express them, tying the experience to the social convention of what in English is "pink" or "blue".  We are talking about social conventions of language here, having nothing to do about the realm of the unknowable "what is really out there".

Of course when we say it is "pink" OR "blue" we are not talking at all about the world BUT our learned names we associate with experiences of the names of colors which we have learned.

It becomes impossible to call then other than what it is simply because THAT IS THE WAY WE HAVE LEARNED to describe the experiences as a young child when we "learn our colors"

Quote

Maybe a few can lie in that way, but overall people get constratined by reality acting upon them. This isn't an issue of adequately representing things. Saying the sky is blue is not an adequate representation - at least in terms of what I consider adequate. However it is a constraint.

Dunno. There are no "constraints" here, it is just a case of using the wrong word.  It is as if the person has not learned the language properly to call something blue "pink".

Quote

Now I think we could talk about what one means by representation but let's skip that for now and just agree that both of us don't think words/signs by humans fully represent a thing. Further let's just say that some statements/signs remain stable through continued inquiry.

"Represent a thing"?  Well there might be  sense in which a word "represents" the social convention of the linguistic NAME of the experience/perception of we have learned to call, for example, "a chair".  Wittgenstein was fond of speaking about how children learn language for this reason, and why he was so adamant about there being no "private languages".  A language game however simple, perhaps consisting of only one word.  Children might point at something and say "Mine!" to claim it or to state what they want, or a surgeon might say "scalpel" to request that a certain tool be handed to him.  Those are one word language games.  They remain "stable" until a scalpel is now called something else, or the tool is replaced by lasers, say, or whatever.  "Mine" refers to a relationship of owning as long as the word means that.

So the difference between us is that I always see the social relationship, and you see the object as a object.  For me objects are words in a language.  But that is not "reducing things to talk" for reasons I have detailed above.

They remain stable because language remains stable and only changes slowing over time

Quote

Peirce does this with his distinction in phenomenology between firstness (what an experience feels like purely within itself) and thirdness (roughly reactions, speech, signs about the experience -- perhaps tied to Heidegger's "as" relation in phenomenology.

I can't tell you about Peirce and I don't understand any of that clause.  But yes it is like Heidegger's "SEEING AS" if that is what you mean.

Quote

 

I may well have Rorty wrong - as I said I've only read a few of his books and that primarily many years ago during college. I took him to be saying that the speech is what matters and how communities adjudicate merging or translating talk was all that ultimately mattered. That to me misses out on the phenomena itself. But if I have Rorty wrong there I apologize. (BTW - I have people's quotes in their footnotes turned off so I don't see them)

 

Yes I think you have him wrong.

Yes speech is what is important IN COMMUNICATION  because it is all we have to...... Communicate!  

The "phenomena itself" cannot be communicated WITHOUT SPEECH.  Could a deaf mute who never learned to sign, say, be a philosopher even with a 200 IQ in perhaps how to invent new things?

Nope.  Philosophy is communication and talk.  No talk, no science, no philosophy, no communicable "knowledge"   One could be a deaf mute experiencing the beatific vision constantly during every day of her life and we would learn nothing from it about God.  There is no"phenomena"  "data" or "observations" or "experiments" possible in science without the ability to communicate them!!  

Quote

 

To me what ultimately matters are the regularities in the universe. As those regularities stabilize we can talk about them or, as is more common in science, deal with symbols to more accurately describe the regularities. To the degree those symbolic descriptions of regularities themselves remain stable across continued inquiry then we may say they are true. In this case I'd say Newtonian descriptions of the phenomena available to them is stable and true even if the underlying metaphysics was wrong - so in terms of regularities Newton never was overthrown by Einstein. We merely found new phenomena the old descriptions didn't cover. That is the breadth of how general the statements were was wrong.

 

We cannot know about "regularities in the universe" only about "regularities in our perceptions".

As those regularities in perception stabilize, we can talk about those perceptions as being regular, we can experiment with them and see if doing the same act produces the same perception etc.  No need to talk about "metaphysics" at all- Newton was never "overthrown" by Einstein because Newton's descriptions of HIS PERSONAL perceptions can be performed by anyone else and get the same perceptions.  Einstein was a bit harder to experiment with but now of course we are getting there and on some matters the jury of his peers on whether or not those perceptions are "regular" is still out.  We still have the double slit problem- irregular perceptions.   "Data" are experiences put into language describing perceptions, whether or not they are linked to "reality" which is unknowable.  Yes you still put together the right stuff and get the experience of a thermonuclear explosion but is "splitting the atom" a good description of what is happening in string theory?

Quote

 

I'd add that I think Peirce does get at Alma 32 and Moroni 10 but he would simply say that he hasn't had the experience you and I have had as an answer. He was as spiritual as he was able with the experiences he had. I'd say Gauss - the famous physicist and mathematician was like that as well. He wanted to have a spiritual experience and fasted and prayed to have one. He simply never did. It reminds me of D&C 46 I've been talking about elsewhere. Some have knowledge. Some have the gift to believe based upon others experiences.

 

I would say that of course Peirce has had a deep feeling of peace and satisfaction, a sense of deep love in his life and a passion for his purpose in life, as well as deep-seated feelings about right and wrong.

He just never associated those feelings with the concept of "God".  It is as if he never learned the name of the color "pink" but instead associated that word with another experience.

Perhaps if he saw the Moroni experience as being about "being firmly and deeply at peace that your choice of direction is right for you" he would have understood what it means.

Certainly by committing his life to philosophy he MUST have had that perception but never associated it with what we would call "an answer from God" about his purpose in life.

He sure as heck got his purpose right though no matter what he might have called it!!   But it was not a difference - I believe- in phenomena, just the classification he GAVE those feelings.

Quote

Maybe you can correct my erroneous views. What I was more getting at was that "when we are talking..." That is it always seems to me Rorty downplays further experimentation that may give more and more detailed answers. Admittedly this is my bias from years go after reading Mirrors. Glancing at the SEP this quote possibly gets at my issue. (Perhaps completely a misreading) "...we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature."  While I agree with him about the problem of mirroring it's that emphasizing conversation and social practice and downplaying inquiry and experimentation that bothers me. It's really not the issue of representation. Now I might agree with him that for a given set of empirical data there may be ambiguities. Because of those ambiguities we might be practically limited to something like what behavioralism did in psychology. But of course in psychology the problem with behavioralism was that the underlying structures did matter and treating things like a black box was problematic.

First of all, this seems trivial but it is not.  The title of the book is "MIRROR of Nature"- singular!!   Why is that important ?  Because he is pointing out ONE SINGULAR error of science and that is that it CAN REPRESENT reality.  It is not about instances of the error though it is explained that way- but the ERROR is ONE error, and sorry, but I think we are seeing that error right here in this discussion!!

There is no "downplaying of inquiry and experimentation" nor is there a "black box" in the final analysis

The box is black until we open it and PERCEIVE whatever perceptions and experiences it yields!   But opening the box is still not "about the world" it is fitting the PERCEPTIONS of what is in the box into the right SOCIAL CONVENTIONS to make them useful.

Your mere admission of "ambiguities in data" make my case!  Those ambiguities mean that we have not yet fit the perceptions into the right social convention to make those perceptions useful for predicting future perceptions

And YES those ambiguities might restrict how useful those pooled perceptions are and we have to make up a story which is not the conclusive last story of what actions predict what perceptions.  Again we are back to Newton and Einstein!  Newton's perceptions and explanations did not work with newer perceptions which were better defined and examined by scientists- how?  IN JOURNALS which are what?  Socially accepted conventions!  That is PRECISELY what "peer review" IS!!

"Do we let this paper into the social convention club?  Does it represent orthodoxy or is there sufficient description of other ways of seeing the problem that it might be time to overthrow orthodoxy?   And who are the patriarchs who get to overthrow orthodoxy?"

That is precisely what peer review is.  If some unknown suggests something new, fergetaboutit until he has enough social acceptance of his work to make a difference.  THEN he is taken seriously and admitted to the club of social convention of his peers.

Clearly published science is about placing the perceptions of given scientists of reputation into the socially accepted conventions of their peers!

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Perhaps a better way of putting my qualms isn't to say Rorty reduces things to talk. Rather he reduces them to black boxes and our talk about them neglecting inquiry and figuring out how to get better data.

"Better data" is nothing more than more similar perceptions by more qualified people to socially "confirm" a theory as being a useful way to get repeatable perceptions.

People are sick and take medication x and get better.  The definition of "sick" is known through social convention.  "Getting better" is also a socially defined convention predicting the length of life, with measures like blood pressure and other perceivable variables of what we call "health"

So we conclude that medication x causes us to perceive "wellness" when used "as directed" where before we perceived "sickness"

And yet sometimes placebos give the same perceptions.  So in these cases is science about the world or is it about our perceptions?

All you have to do is throw out the word "data" mentally and mentally substitute "standards defined by peer review" and your whole universe could switch from seeing discussions as being about "the world" to being about social convention AS we PERCEVE it.

This switch has been tremendously useful in my life in understanding that sometimes the placebo works, without explanation and perception is everything.

That in turn has been useful in defining the fact that belief in God can be a perfectly rational way of perceiving our perceptions of the world- and completely justifiable by both phenomenologists pragmatists and others.

Anyway that's my story and I am sticking to it.

 

[mfbukowski]

Does science examine the world or social convention?

What does a scientist do to learn about new alleged discoveries?

He "consults the literature".

"The Literature" is peer reviewed social convention.

One takes it on pure Faith that it has a connection to the "world as it is." If it did connect why is the literature always changing? Is the way the world Works constantly changing?

Edited April 30, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

On 4/29/2018 at 8:54 PM, mfbukowski said:

I don't know if I "accept causality" in this sense. It is more that there ARE causes which are not human mental states.  That does mean "the chair causes me to have a mental state representing a chair". IF that is what you mean, no I do not accept that at all.  I mean in the big picture- obviously there is "something out there" causing human mental states, which is not itself a human mental state. Whatever it is is literally unknowable.  If that is "accepting causality" then I am in agreement.  But it seems to me to be a much bigger global "macro" kind of "causality" than specific at all.  It is more like "A quantum singularity caused me to be born" rather than "a thing in the world causes me to use the word "chair"

I'll comment on a bit more, but why don't we put our focus here as I think this gets at our fundamental disagreements. My guess is that all the other disagreements hinge upon this one.

Now I'll accept blame for using an ambiguous word like causality. Let's distinguish between two senses of causality. I want to call these necessary and sufficient, but those are slightly erroneous terms too. 

Causality(1) - if C did not occur then the given mental state M would not have occurred. However if C does not guarantee M. 

Causality(2) - if C then M

I certainly don't want to argue for the heavy determination in Causality(2) since I tend to accept a level of ontological chance such that for any cause there are a range of effects that could take place. (Think the path of an electron through a double slit) However I do want to say that for any cause there are a set of possible effects and that these effects shape the outcome.

What I want to say though, is that this relationship of cause to effect is knowable. Thus I just fundamentally reject the idea that the "outside" is literally unknowable. I just don't buy that. If there's patterns to phenomena we can establish cause and effect. I think all our other disagreements follow from that. To me there is no absolute inside and outside. Indeed the problem I have with your approach is the idea that a mental state is somehow more knowable than this outside. It's all mediated and my knowledge of my own mental states seems no less so.

Quote

Only in the broadest possible sense- yeah there is something out there but it is OUR PERCEPTION first - the "raw experience" which we then "abstract) into words.

I don't want to get sidetracked into this, but I'm not sure I'd agree with this. The idea that there's a perception that then we abstract into words. Typically when speaking I'm just thinking, the words happen. Now I think it's safe to say there's some low level processing going on in my brain (and from a Mormon POV presumably our spirit in some way) but that's all invisible to me. All I have are these happenings. And those happenings aren't purely perceptions but are actions and engagements. Speaking (or writing) is but one example of that.

So were I to state my own position it'd be it's all mediation. Even we were to talk about that pure moment of experience in consciousness we have to distinguish between that presentation and the then mediated reflection on it. In that sense experience is something we're constantly having happen yet in a strange way because of mediated engagement with it, it's as unknowable as the external world. Those perceptions enter into causal relations leading to conscious thoughts and words, but there's always an essential mediated gulf there.

To me perceptions and the external world are cut off from us in exactly the same way. My engagement with a distant perception that has now temporally passed is no different than my engagement with this purportedly unknowable cutoff keyboard I'm typing upon.

Quote

First is the unknowable event "in the world" which we then (2) perceive pre-linguistically > feeling noise, looking up, seeing object on floor, broken> recognize it as "the jar" which is the event- being "falling"and then (3) verbalize it as "the jar fell off the shelf".  So before we can verbalize the unknowable event allegedly in the broadest sense somehow "out there" in the land of the unknowable- we experience the mental states of perceiving the patches of blue on the floor, stitching that perception with the thing we call a "shelf", concluding that the patches of blue are the now smashed "jar" now on the floor and that the accompanying "noise" experience was the "jar falling".  We stitch those perceptions together BEFORE we recall the necessary words to make a sentence, plug those words into normal English syntax, and finally the words come out of our mouths "Dang it the jar fell off the shelf!"

I don't disagree but I'm not sure "seeing color" and "verbalizing" are as different as you suggest. They are both happenings due to pre-processing by my brain I'm not conscious of. Now we can give a certain illusion of the steps you suggest by deliberative conscious reasoning. However the reason I'm skeptical of that is because at each step there's all this unconscious work that make me suspect that how things appear to be proceeding and how they actually are is different. From what I can tell cognitive science seems to suggest that as well.

Quote

The "phenomena itself" cannot be communicated WITHOUT SPEECH.  Could a deaf mute who never learned to sign, say, be a philosopher even with a 200 IQ in perhaps how to invent new things?

Maybe not the sorts of things philosophers are concerned with. But phenomena can be communicated via indexical functions like pointing.

Put it an other way, I don't know what it's like to be you and you don't know what it's like to be me, but we assume from common features that it's probably pretty similar. If someone unable to speak sees a sunset and smiles, I think he's communicated part of the phenomena he's experiencing. No words needed.

Quote

We cannot know about "regularities in the universe" only about "regularities in our perceptions".

It seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe. I recognize you deny that, but I just can't agree.

The only way, I think, to make that claim is to make an absolute divide between experience and the universe. Now of course Descartes did that, but I don't think he was ever able to justify that schism. If there is no gap then the arguments that hinge of a difference fall apart. It confuses errancy with world from my perspective.

 

[mfbukowski]

""They are both happenings due to pre-processing by my brain I'm not conscious of. Now we can give a certain illusion of the steps you suggest by deliberative conscious reasoning. However the reason I'm skeptical of that is because at each step there's all this unconscious work that make me suspect that how things appear to be proceeding and how they actually are is different""

 

Yep.

That's my whole point.

What's being "processed"?

Things?

You can't tell me what's being processed.

Your brain is doing it all. That's exactly the point.

Edited May 2, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

It seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe. I recognize you deny that, but I just can't agree.

 

Where did I say that???

I will quote some Whitehead to you.

Maybe that will help

Edited May 2, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'll comment on a bit more, but why don't we put our focus here as I think this gets at our fundamental disagreements. My guess is that all the other disagreements hinge upon this one.

Now I'll accept blame for using an ambiguous word like causality. Let's distinguish between two senses of causality. I want to call these necessary and sufficient, but those are slightly erroneous terms too. 

Causality(1) - if C did not occur then the given mental state M would not have occurred. However if C does not guarantee M. 

Causality(2) - if C then M

I certainly don't want to argue for the heavy determination in Causality(2) since I tend to accept a level of ontological chance such that for any cause there are a range of effects that could take place. (Think the path of an electron through a double slit) However I do want to say that for any cause there are a set of possible effects and that these effects shape the outcome.

What I want to say though, is that this relationship of cause to effect is knowable. Thus I just fundamentally reject the idea that the "outside" is literally unknowable. I just don't buy that. If there's patterns to phenomena we can establish cause and effect. I think all our other disagreements follow from that. To me there is no absolute inside and outside. Indeed the problem I have with your approach is the idea that a mental state is somehow more knowable than this outside. It's all mediated and my knowledge of my own mental states seems no less so.

I don't want to get sidetracked into this, but I'm not sure I'd agree with this. The idea that there's a perception that then we abstract into words. Typically when speaking I'm just thinking, the words happen. Now I think it's safe to say there's some low level processing going on in my brain (and from a Mormon POV presumably our spirit in some way) but that's all invisible to me. All I have are these happenings. And those happenings aren't purely perceptions but are actions and engagements. Speaking (or writing) is but one example of that.

So were I to state my own position it'd be it's all mediation. Even we were to talk about that pure moment of experience in consciousness we have to distinguish between that presentation and the then mediated reflection on it. In that sense experience is something we're constantly having happen yet in a strange way because of mediated engagement with it, it's as unknowable as the external world. Those perceptions enter into causal relations leading to conscious thoughts and words, but there's always an essential mediated gulf there.

To me perceptions and the external world are cut off from us in exactly the same way. My engagement with a distant perception that has now temporally passed is no different than my engagement with this purportedly unknowable cutoff keyboard I'm typing upon.

I don't disagree but I'm not sure "seeing color" and "verbalizing" are as different as you suggest. They are both happenings due to pre-processing by my brain I'm not conscious of. Now we can give a certain illusion of the steps you suggest by deliberative conscious reasoning. However the reason I'm skeptical of that is because at each step there's all this unconscious work that make me suspect that how things appear to be proceeding and how they actually are is different. From what I can tell cognitive science seems to suggest that as well.

Maybe not the sorts of things philosophers are concerned with. But phenomena can be communicated via indexical functions like pointing.

Put it an other way, I don't know what it's like to be you and you don't know what it's like to be me, but we assume from common features that it's probably pretty similar. If someone unable to speak sees a sunset and smiles, I think he's communicated part of the phenomena he's experiencing. No words needed.

It seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe. I recognize you deny that, but I just can't agree.

The only way, I think, to make that claim is to make an absolute divide between experience and the universe. Now of course Descartes did that, but I don't think he was ever able to justify that schism. If there is no gap then the arguments that hinge of a difference fall apart. It confuses errancy with world from my perspective.

 

I think you are begging the question on causality.

"if C did not occur then the given mental state M would not have occurred. However if C does not guarantee M. "

You are already assuming that there is an external state C which is the cause of a particular mental state M.   C in such a case CORRESPONDS to and is the CAUSE of M.!!

That is question begging!

I tried to make the point that Rorty's "causes which do not include human mental states" are much more general than a correspondence relationship.  I used the analogy of the Big Bang being the "cause" of chairs and tables and people- NOT a chair as an object causing the mental state of a chair.

That is still straight Cartesianism- and it seems to me you are presuming it as a given in your choice of examples.   You have a discreet "occurrance" C as the "cause" of discreet mental state M.  Correspondence.

Below Whitehead is described as thinking in terms of 

Maybe this will help.  I got into James and Whitehead around the same time, and Rorty was much later.  In many ways, all these are saying the same thing from different perspectives.  No Cartesianism whatsoever.  Reality IS as it is experienced, feelings and all included in perception.  Reality is charged with emotion and feeling.

If your brain is processing, by definition that is a "mental state".  What else would it be? 

But to say it is your brain doing it automatically puts the whole concept into a third person scientific observational perspective- viewing someone ELSE'S brain.  One does not examine one's own brain and comment on the processes they see.  You intentionally make the process invisible to me and make it only (presumably) observable to someone else viewing my brain in action.

That's a Thomas Nagel point that distinguishes between a third and first person perspective and concludes that the third person perspective can never capture the fullness of the first person.  Descriptions of brain functions do not capture the immediacy of, say, a blue sky, by describing brain chemical activity.

And pointing is sign language.  Ask any deaf person.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/whitehed/#SH2a

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The critical aspects of SMW were ideas that Whitehead had already expressed (in different forms) in his previous publications, only now with more refined clarity and persuasiveness. On the other hand, the constructive arguments in SMW are astonishing in their scope and subtlety, and are the first presentation of his mature metaphysical thinking. For example, the word “prehension,” which Whitehead defines as “uncognitive apprehension” (SMW 69) makes its first systematic appearance in Whitehead’s writings as he refines and develops the kinds and layers of relational connections between people and the surrounding world. As the “uncognitive” in the above is intended to show, these relations are not always or exclusively knowledge based, yet they are a form of “grasping” of aspects of the world. Our connection to the world begins with a “pre-epistemic” prehension of it, from which the process of abstraction is able to distill valid knowledge of the world. But that knowledge is abstract and only significant of the world; it does not stand in any simple one-to-one relation with the world. In particular, this pre-epistemic grasp of the world is the source of our quasi- a priori knowledge of space which enables us to know of those uniformities that make cosmological measurements, and the general conduct of science, possible.

SMW goes far beyond the purely epistemic program of Whitehead’s philosophy of nature. The final three chapters, entitled “God,” “Religion and Science,” and “Requisites for Social Progress,” clearly announce the explicit emergence of the second major thematic strand of Whitehead’s thought, the “problem of history” or “the accretion of value.” Moreover, these topics are engaged with the same thoroughly relational approach that Whitehead previously used with nature and science.

Despite the foreshadowing of these last chapters of SMW, Whitehead’s next book may well have come as a surprise to his academic colleagues. Whitehead’s brief Religion in the Making (“RM,” 1926) tackles no part of his earlier thematic problem of space, but instead focuses entirely on the second thematic of history and value. Whitehead defines religion as “what the individual does with his own solitariness” (RM 16). Yet it is still Whitehead the algebraist who is constructing this definition. Solitariness is understood as a multi-layered relational modality of the individual in and toward the world. In addition, this relational mode cannot be understood in separation from its history. On this point, Whitehead compares religion with arithmetic. Thus, an understanding of the latter makes no essential reference to its history, whereas for religion such a reference is vital. Moreover, as Whitehead states, “You use arithmetic, but you are religious” (RM 15).

Whitehead also argues that, “The purpose of God is the attainment of value in the temporal world,” and “Value is inherent in actuality itself” (RM 100). Whitehead’s use of the word “God” in the foregoing invites a wide range of habitual assumptions about his meaning, most, if not all, of which will probably be mistaken. The key element for Whitehead is value. God, like arithmetic, is discussed in terms of something which has a purpose. On the other hand, value is like being religious in that it is inherent. It is something that is rather than something that is used.

Shortly after this work, there appeared another book whose brevity betrays its importance, Symbolism its Meaning and Effect (“S,” 1927). Whitehead’s explicit interest in symbols was present in his earliest publication. But in conjunction with his theory of prehension, the theory of symbols came to take on an even greater importance for him. Our “uncognitive” sense-perceptions are directly caught up in our symbolic awareness as is shown by the immediacy with which we move beyond what is directly given to our senses. Whitehead uses the example of a puppy dog that sees a chair as a chair rather than as a patch of color, even though the latter is all that impinges on the dog’s retina. (Whitehead may not have known that dogs are color blind, but this does not significantly affect his example.) Thus, this work further develops Whitehead’s theories of perception and awareness, and does so in a manner that is relatively non-technical. Because of the centrality of the theory of symbols and perception to Whitehead’s later philosophy, this clarity of exposition makes this book a vital stepping stone to what followed.

What followed was Process and Reality (“PR,” 1929). This book is easily one of the most dense and difficult works in the entire Western canon. The book is rife with technical terms of Whitehead’s own invention, necessitated by his struggle to push beyond the inherited limits of the available concepts toward a comprehensive vision of the logical structures of becoming. It is here that we see the problem of space receive its ultimate payoff in Whitehead’s thought. But this payoff comes in the form of a fully relational metaphysical scheme that draws upon his theory of symbols and perception in the most essential manner possible. At the same time, PR plants the seeds for the further engagement of the problem of the accretion of value that is to come in his later work. Because each process of becoming must be considered holistically as an essentially organic unity, Whitehead often refers to his theory as the “philosophy of organism.”

PR invites controversy while defying brief exposition. Many of the relational ideas Whitehead develops are holistic in character, and thus do not lend themselves to the linear presentation of language. Moreover, the language Whitehead needs to build his holistic image of the world is often biological or mentalistic in character, which can be jarring when the topic being discussed is something like an electron. Moreover, Whitehead the algebraist was an intrinsically relational thinker, and explicitly characterized the subject / predicate mode of language as a “high abstraction.” Nevertheless, there are some basic ideas which can be quickly set out.

The first of these is that PR is not about time per se. This has been a subject of much confusion. But Whitehead himself points out that physical time as such only comes about with “reflection” of the “divisibility” of his two major relational types into one another (PR 288 – 9). Moreover, throughout PR, Whitehead continues to endorse the theory of nature found in his earlier triad of books on the subject. So the first step in gaining a handle on PR is to recognize that it is better thought of as addressing the logic of becoming, whereas his books from 1919 – 1922 address the “nature” of time.

The basic units of becoming for Whitehead are “actual occasions.” Actual occasions are “drops of experience,” and relate to the world into which they are emerging by “feeling” that relatedness and translating it into the occasion’s concrete reality. When first encountered, this mode of expression is likely to seem peculiar if not downright outrageous. One thing to note here is that Whitehead is not talking about any sort of high-level cognition. When he speaks of “feeling” he means an immediacy of concrete relatedness that is vastly different from any sort of “knowing,” yet which exists on a relational spectrum where cognitive modes can emerge from sufficiently complex collections of occasions that interrelate within a systematic whole. Also, feeling is a far more basic form of relatedness than can be represented by formal algebraic or geometrical schemata. These latter are intrinsically abstract, and to take them as basic would be to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. But feeling is not abstract. Rather, it is the first and most concrete manifestation of an occasion’s relational engagement with reality.

This focus on concrete modes of relatedness is essential because an actual occasion is itself a coming into being of the concrete. The nature of this “concrescence,” using Whitehead’s term, is a matter of the occasion’s creatively internalizing its relatedness to the rest of the world by feeling that world, and in turn uniquely expressing its concreteness through its extensive connectedness with that world. Thus an electron in a field of forces “feels” the electrical charges acting upon it, and translates this “experience” into its own electronic modes of concreteness. Only later do we schematize these relations with the abstract algebraic and geometrical forms of physical science. For the electron, the interaction is irreducibly concrete.

Actual occasions are fundamentally atomic in character, which leads to the next interpretive difficulty. In his previous works, events were essentially extended and continuous. And when Whitehead speaks of an “event” in PR without any other qualifying adjectives, he still means the extensive variety found in his earlier works (PR 73). But PR deals with a different set of problems from that previous triad, and it cannot take such continuity for granted. For one thing, Whitehead treats Zeno's Paradoxes very seriously and argues that one cannot resolve these paradoxes if one starts from the assumption of continuity, because it is then impossible to make sense of anything coming immediately before or immediately after anything else. Between any two points of a continuum such as the real number line there are an infinite number of other points, thus rendering the concept of the “next” point meaningless. But it is precisely this concept of the “next occasion” that Whitehead requires to render intelligible the relational structures of his metaphysics. If there are infinitely many occasions between any two occasions, even ones that are nominally “close” together, then it becomes impossible to say how it is that later occasions feel their predecessors – there is an unbounded infinity of other occasions intervening in such influences, and changing it in what are now undeterminable ways. Therefore, Whitehead argued, continuity is not something which is “given;” rather it is something which is achieved. Each occasion makes itself continuous with its past in the manner in which it feels that past and creatively incorporates the past into its own concrescence, its coming into being.

Thus, Whitehead argues against the “continuity of becoming” and in favor of the “becoming of continuity” (PR 68 – 9). Occasions become atomically, but once they have become they incorporate themselves into the continuity of the universe by feeling the concreteness of what has come before and making that concreteness a part of the occasion’s own internal makeup. The continuity of space and durations in Whitehead’s earlier triad does not conflict with his metaphysical atomism, because those earlier works were dealing with physical nature in which continuity has already come into being, while PR is dealing with relational structures that are logically and metaphysically prior to nature.

 

 

[clarkgoble]

14 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Where did I say that???

If you don't believe that then how can you say it's unknowable? I'm confused here. Do you believe the external world is in part knowable or not?

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I think you are begging the question on causality.

"if C did not occur then the given mental state M would not have occurred. However if C does not guarantee M. "

You are already assuming that there is an external state C which is the cause of a particular mental state M.   C in such a case CORRESPONDS to and is the CAUSE of M.!!

That is question begging!

Well I have to assume some things for discussion to take place. If you simply want to throw out causation then it'll be hard to say much. However again inductively through continued tested we can generally distinguish in science mere correspondence from causation. One can always say there's a gap such that we don't have "absolute" knowledge but then the discussion really becomes, what level of skepticism is appropriate when not dealing with pure deductive reasoning.

But maybe I'm missing something. This doesn't seem like question begging but merely accepting something we all already believe. If you don't then of course that's fine but I'm not sure how discussion can take place at that point.

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That is still straight Cartesianism- and it seems to me you are presuming it as a given in your choice of examples.   You have a discreet "occurrance" C as the "cause" of discreet mental state M.  Correspondence.

I think we're at the point where we each accuse the other of being Cartesian. My point is that to postulate and inside and an outside is straight Cartesianism. From my perspective there's just experience. My experience of my memory is mediated just the way my experience of a keyboard is. There is no inside or outside. We might postulate a cause but then what counts is the evidence I have for something being a cause of something. Which then again gets us into the question of just how skeptical you want to be. My critique there would be that most skepticism of this sort is mere paper doubt that people don't actually believe. Philosophers can be that kind of extreme skeptic because they can always find a gap in any logical argument where pure deduction doesn't hold. However again, I'm not sure how useful such doubts actually are.

Now of course with respect to a particular claim of causation I might be more sympathetic. But to doubt causation as an abstraction entirely seems to go against pretty thoroughly tested experience and abstraction.

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And pointing is sign language.  Ask any deaf person.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/whitehed/#SH2a

So is a weather vane a language user? This is not a subtle point (no pun intended) but rather gets to the issue of pointing in science.

[pogi]

57 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I think we're at the point where we each accuse the other of being Cartesian.

Poor Descartes gets a beating around here! 

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, pogi said:

Poor Descartes gets a beating around here! 

That's because one cannot show God's existence through the correspondence theory.  Medieval versions were abysmal failures in my opinion.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/

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Aquinas’ balanced formula “equation of thing and intellect” is intended to leave room for the idea that “true” can be applied not only to thoughts and judgments but also to things or persons (e.g. a true friend). Aquinas explains that a thought is said to be true because it conforms to reality, whereas a thing or person is said to be true because it conforms to a thought (a friend is true insofar as, and because, she conforms to our, or God’s, conception of what a friend ought to be). Medieval theologians regarded both, judgment-truth as well as thing/person-truth, as somehow flowing from, or grounded in, the deepest truth which, according to the Bible, is God: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14, 6). Their attempts to integrate this Biblical passage with more ordinary thinking involving truth gave rise to deep metaphysico-theological reflections. The notion of thing/person-truth, which thus played a very important role in medieval thinking, is disregarded by modern and contemporary analytic philosophers but survives to some extent in existentialist and continental philosophy.

I mean how does one show that startements about God "correspond" to reality??  How could one possibly prove that?  That is the principle reason I find it so absurd for believers to advocate the correspondence theory of truth.  And yet in apologists unschooled in these matters you constantly see support for the idea that truth must "correspond to reality" which instantly negates any possibility of statements about God being "true" because his "reality" is acknowledged by everyone to be unknowable.

The only problem with that argument is that it applies just as well to "the world as God knows it" - things as they are in themselves.

Just as one cannot show correspondence of statements about God through comparison to the reality of God, it never enters their minds that one cannot also for the same reasons speak of "things as they are" and check them against "things as they appear"

It's got to be appearances all the way down or there is no God.  But that's ok because it IS all appearances!!

  EVERY thought humans have are human mental states.  That is totally obvious.  I can't see frankly why some do not see that. Thoughts cannot be things in the world, they are always thoughts which are human mental states. Knowledge itself is a human mental state which we can never move outside of to see if it "corresponds" to anything else.

We humans are caught in the realm of things as they appear, and so the correspondence separation between thought and reality just cannot be logically argued by theists.

But so few get that.

That is precisely why so many scientists who think their descriptions "correspond to reality" are not theists!!  God is simply not observable so statements about God cannot be verified, including the idea that he exists.

It's so simple and so few see it.  I am continually flabbergasted. Theists especially those who believe that a vision can be "true" and tell us things about God simply cannot be correspondence thinkers.  Truth must be more than correspondence to make statements about God "true".  It's painfully obvious to me.

Quite honestly I think it clear that this is why the church eschews the idea of "philosophies of men" because we have no replacement for the correspondence theory especially when we condemn "Postmodernism".

Because God appears and affects our lives - in a literal sense as well as in a figurative one, "Appearances" alone must be able to be seen as "true" in some sense.  We are talking here about unseen forces all around us being as "real" as chairs and tables, so if statements about such entities as God are to be "true" we need a different view of truth than correspondence.

[mfbukowski]

Clark said

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It seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe. I recognize you deny that, but I just can't agree.

 

I denied that I ever said that and then Clark,  NOT SHOWING any evidence that I said it,  responds:

10 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

If you don't believe that then how can you say it's unknowable? I'm confused here. Do you believe the external world is in part knowable or not?

I just feel again like I need to quote Rorty yet again, Clark.  Gosh!! 

Regularities in our experience do not have to "entail" regularities in the universe.  Does the universe get angry when we do???  Does it feel sad?  Why do regularities in our experience have to - or NOT Have to - "Entail"- which is a LOGICALLY NECESSARY relation- a change in the universe??

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en·tail

verb

inˈtāl,enˈtāl/

1.involve (something) as a necessary or inevitable part or consequence.

"a situation that entails considerable risks"

synonyms:involve, necessitate, require, need, demand, call for; More

 

Does every stone at the bottom of the sea logically "entail" a ripple in the ocean perhaps thousands of feet above, on the surface?  Do regularities in our observations of atoms logically entail that they are that way?

Think of astronomy where things may be thousands of light years away!!  Do regularities in our experience "entail" "things as they are"?  What ARE "things as they are"?

Physicists say we may never know the "ultimate nature of reality" as being string theory, or other theories I am not acquainted with.

Why would regularities in experience logically entail regularities in the universe?  What about mirages and color blind people?  What about optical illusions etc?

YES I acknowledge regularities in experience.

YES I acknowledge "regularities" in the universe -BUT precisely how they relate is totally unknowable BECAUSE we can only get to the level of "appearances" and NOT KNOW that the star we see "actually" blew up 20 years ago or a thousand years ago.  What makes experiences "creepy" or what makes things blue?  Being process ed through a human mind.

Regarding causation:

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Well I have to assume some things for discussion to take place. If you simply want to throw out causation then it'll be hard to say much.

EXACTLY!!!   There is nothing to discuss about causation!!!   That is precisely what Hume said hundreds of years ago!!

Clark I know you know this!

https://www.iep.utm.edu/hume-cau/#H3

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David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the British Empiricists of the Early Modern period, along with John Locke and George Berkeley. Although the three advocate similar empirical standards for knowledge,  that is, that there are no innate ideas and that all knowledge comes from experience, Hume is known for applying this standard rigorously to causation and necessity. Instead of taking the notion of causation for granted, Hume challenges us to consider what experience allows us to know about cause and effect.

 

Quote

 

However again inductively through continued tested we can generally distinguish in science mere correspondence from causation. One can always say there's a gap such that we don't have "absolute" knowledge but then the discussion really becomes, what level of skepticism is appropriate when not dealing with pure deductive reasoning.

But maybe I'm missing something. This doesn't seem like question begging but merely accepting something we all already believe. If you don't then of course that's fine but I'm not sure how discussion can take place at that point.

 

You KNOW there are problems with induction, known from Hume himself

Your statement was that "regularities" between experiences were "ENTAILED" logically by regularities in the world!  And of course in induction especially there is no logical entailment so I don't know why you would bring that up- it just weakens your case.

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I think we're at the point where we each accuse the other of being Cartesian. My point is that to postulate and inside and an outside is straight Cartesianism. From my perspective there's just experience

Sounds good- but not sure what you mean

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 My experience of my memory is mediated just the way my experience of a keyboard is. There is no inside or outside. We might postulate a cause but then what counts is the evidence I have for something being a cause of something

 

.Again, not sure. Sounds like you are waffling on causation.  Good.  Evidence is precisely the problem!

Quote

Which then again gets us into the question of just how skeptical you want to be. My critique there would be that most skepticism of this sort is mere paper doubt that people don't actually believe.

Oh but they should!!  That is the whole problem.   How does the experience of believing in Joseph's vision experience CORRESPOND or entail the existence of God??

Quote

Philosophers can be that kind of extreme skeptic because they can always find a gap in any logical argument where pure deduction doesn't hold. However again, I'm not sure how useful such doubts actually are.

Seriously?  You are a theist and you don't find that a useful belief even though pure deduction doesn't hold??

I have mentioned that more than once and the fact that Perirce's view of God just does not work for these same kinds of reasons.

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Now of course with respect to a particular claim of causation I might be more sympathetic. But to doubt causation as an abstraction entirely seems to go against pretty thoroughly tested experience and abstraction.

 

 

 

So why are you more sympathetic on some??

Hume doubted it 250 years ago and his insights are still relevant today and have been a MAJOR trend in philosophy. 

"But to doubt causation as an abstraction entirely seems to go against pretty thoroughly tested experience and abstraction."

Strongly disagree.  The idea is going strong after 250 or so years.

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So is a weather vane a language user? This is not a subtle point (no pun intended) but rather gets to the issue of pointing in science.

Oh gosh, surely you are not saying that a deaf mute can be compared to a weather vane because both point.

The difference is use of language and consciousness quite obviously.

When weather vanes point they do not talk.  I don't think anyone would see that as a use of "language".

But I think you are right in that we probably should skip metaphysics with each other

 

Edited May 3, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

Quote

It seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe. I recognize you deny that, but I just can't agree.

On 5/3/2018 at 12:42 AM, mfbukowski said:

Clark said

I denied that I ever said that and then Clark,  NOT SHOWING any evidence that I said it,  responds:

You said, 

• You are already assuming that there is an external state C which is the cause of a particular mental state M.   C in such a case CORRESPONDS to and is the CAUSE of M.!! That is question begging!

Note that my claim was (emphasis added) "it seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe." If you raise the correlation issue, then you are rejecting that it would seem logically. If you accept it then I'm happy because it certainly makes our discussion much easier. But alas I'm completely confused as to what you believe here since you keep calling this so-called external world unknowable and then get upset when I take you at your word.

Quote

Regularities in our experience do not have to "entail" regularities in the universe.  Does the universe get angry when we do???  Does it feel sad?  Why do regularities in our experience have to - or NOT Have to - "Entail"- which is a LOGICALLY NECESSARY relation- a change in the universe??

So then you do agree with this after denying it? Again, I'm rather confused. Have we reached an aporia? I'm having a very hard time reconciling this to the quote at the top of this comment.  It seems like my inference from your comment was correct since you agreed with it after objecting strenuously to my having attributed it to you. Now perhaps this is just a correspondence and there was no cause from your earlier comments for me to get this correct. Color me skeptical however.

Quote

Does every stone at the bottom of the sea logically "entail" a ripple in the ocean perhaps thousands of feet above, on the surface?  Do regularities in our observations of atoms logically entail that they are that way?

No. But a single stone is not a broad regularity in experience. One is relatively singular while the other is relatively general and appears across many measurements in many circumstances. Contrast this with say the effects of gravity. 

Now of course the rock is a regularity but it involves more complex measurements of waves to detect that. (One of my good friends from my physics classes back in the day actually did those sorts of things for the navy to map out so I don’t want to say it can’t be done. Just that it’s difficult - and classified.)

 

Quote

You KNOW there are problems with induction, known from Hume himself

There are problems with certainty with induction. But if one adopts fallibilism that's hardly a problem. I don't think knowledge is certainty (in the sense of the beliefs known being unable to be false). This is just a linguistic issue over knowledge. 

Quote

Sounds like you are waffling on causation.  Good.  Evidence is precisely the problem!

Again I don't think I'm waffling so much as just acknowledging fallibilism. I'm not holding myself to the criteria of Descartes and the application of foundationalism and deduction. Once we lose that I think we lose most of our problems. I just don't think it leads to the problems you appear to be asserting. Possibly asserting. (Actually I'm not entirely sure what you are asserting)

Quote

Oh gosh, surely you are not saying that a deaf mute can be compared to a weather vane because both point.

The difference is use of language and consciousness quite obviously.

When weather vanes point they do not talk.  I don't think anyone would see that as a use of "language".

Which is precisely my point and why I don't think language is sufficiently broad enough. Thus the example of the weather vane. The reason for objecting is because once you move from language to signs you then realize that all mediation is just signs and there's no particular good reason to treat them differently. How the wind moves the vane to represent the wind is not fundamentally different from how light from an object going through our nervous system to our brain. Indeed reasoning need not be linguistic at all if we consider our body's unconscious comportment with all that sensory data. The baseball player catching a ball involves no language but appears to be rather significant in terms of reasoning out the position of the ball.

Edited May 4, 2018 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

You said, 

• You are already assuming that there is an external state C which is the cause of a particular mental state M.   C in such a case CORRESPONDS to and is the CAUSE of M.!! That is question begging!

Note that my claim was (emphasis added) "it seems reasonable to say that regularities in our experience entail regularities in the universe." If you raise the correlation issue, then you are rejecting that it would seem logically. If you accept it then I'm happy because it certainly makes our discussion much easier. But alas I'm completely confused as to what you believe here since you keep calling this so-called external world unknowable and then get upset when I take you at your word.

So then you do agree with this after denying it? Again, I'm rather confused. Have we reached an aporia? I'm having a very hard time reconciling this to the quote at the top of this comment.  It seems like my inference from your comment was correct since you agreed with it after objecting strenuously to my having attributed it to you. Now perhaps this is just a correspondence and there was no cause from your earlier comments for me to get this correct. Color me skeptical however.

No. But a single stone is not a broad regularity in experience. One is relatively singular while the other is relatively general and appears across many measurements in many circumstances. Contrast this with say the effects of gravity. 

Now of course the rock is a regularity but it involves more complex measurements of waves to detect that. (One of my good friends from my physics classes back in the day actually did those sorts of things for the navy to map out so I don’t want to say it can’t be done. Just that it’s difficult - and classified.)

 

There are problems with certainty with induction. But if one adopts fallibilism that's hardly a problem. I don't think knowledge is certainty (in the sense of the beliefs known being unable to be false). This is just a linguistic issue over knowledge. 

Again I don't think I'm waffling so much as just acknowledging fallibilism. I'm not holding myself to the criteria of Descartes and the application of foundationalism and deduction. Once we lose that I think we lose most of our problems. I just don't think it leads to the problems you appear to be asserting. Possibly asserting. (Actually I'm not entirely sure what you are asserting)

Which is precisely my point and why I don't think language is sufficiently broad enough. Thus the example of the weather vane. The reason for objecting is because once you move from language to signs you then realize that all mediation is just signs and there's no particular good reason to treat them differently. How the wind moves the vane to represent the wind is not fundamentally different from how light from an object going through our nervous system to our brain. Indeed reasoning need not be linguistic at all if we consider our body's unconscious comportment with all that sensory data. The baseball player catching a ball involves no language but appears to be rather significant in terms of reasoning out the position of the ball.

The main problem here between us seems to be mostly misunderstanding of language in our discussion.

What I am doing in several of the quotes above is characterizing my understanding of your position. I am not stating in my position in those instances, for example in the first part of this post.

Here for example I am characterizing your position.

"You are already assuming that there is an external state C which is the cause of a particular mental state M.   C in such a case CORRESPONDS to and is the CAUSE of M.!! That is question begging!"

From this you conclude that I am "raising the correlation issue."

I was not.

I was saying that your understanding of the correlation issue was question begging.

And the rest of the post goes on in a similar vein.

We are talking past each other.

The following underlined sentence is what I am asserting:

Regularities in experience do not logically "entail" regularities in that which cannot be experienced.

To me that is a tautology.

I cannot understand how anybody could NOT see that sentence as a tautology.

That is the point I was attempting to make.

If you want to take it further I suggest we just discuss that sentence underlined above like good analytical philosophers would.

 

 

Edited May 4, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

 

The following underlined sentence is what I am asserting:

Regularities in experience do not logically "entail" regularities in that which cannot be experienced.

To me that is a tautology.

I cannot understand how anybody could NOT see that sentence as a tautology.

That is the point I was attempting to make.

If you want to take it further I suggest we just discuss that sentence underlined above like good analytical philosophers would.

First, be aware that by logic I don't merely mean deductive logic. Just for clarity. I suspect we both are making assumptions about what is reasoning. So to me it's not a tautology at all but you're question begging by leaving out hidden assumptions. For example one obvious one is that the objects in question aren't in experience but are outside of it. Yet that seems precisely a premise we disagree upon – that issue of inside and outside. 

Edited May 5, 2018 by clarkgoble