Some Solid Ideas

Discussion of articles that appear in the magazine.

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Skepdick
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Skepdick »

A_Seagull wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 11:16 pm
Skepdick wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:31 am
A_Seagull wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 4:32 am And if you think that Hume is 'begging the question'.. then what question is he begging and how?
Exactly the same question I am begging of you right now. Do you have confidence in the existence of tilmorg even though you cannot perceive or conceive it?
Of course not!
Why not?

You have confidence in the existence of a book which you put in your drawer.
But you have no confidence in the existence of a tilmorg which I put in my drawer.

You are necessarily claiming knowledge that your faculties of memory and recall are accurate.

Is it my faculties or my honesty that you are skeptical of?
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A_Seagull
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by A_Seagull »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 11:56 pm
A_Seagull wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 11:16 pm
Skepdick wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:31 am
Exactly the same question I am begging of you right now. Do you have confidence in the existence of tilmorg even though you cannot perceive or conceive it?
Of course not!
Why not?

You have confidence in the existence of a book which you put in your drawer.
But you have no confidence in the existence of a tilmorg which I put in my drawer.

You are necessarily claiming knowledge that your faculties of memory and recall are accurate.

Is it my faculties or my honesty that you are skeptical of?
Both.. totally!
Skepdick
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Skepdick »

A_Seagull wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 1:12 am
Skepdick wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 11:56 pm
A_Seagull wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 11:16 pm

Of course not!
Why not?

You have confidence in the existence of a book which you put in your drawer.
But you have no confidence in the existence of a tilmorg which I put in my drawer.

You are necessarily claiming knowledge that your faculties of memory and recall are accurate.

Is it my faculties or my honesty that you are skeptical of?
Both.. totally!
One wonders how you get along in life if you believe yours is the only mind that works...

Alas. it has now been demonstrated that there can be things that exist independent of your conception or knowledge. The tilmorg in my drawer one such example.

P.S If you want to know what a 'tilmorg' is I will gladly send you photos. Just ask.
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A_Seagull
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by A_Seagull »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 1:21 am
A_Seagull wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 1:12 am
Skepdick wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 11:56 pm
Why not?

You have confidence in the existence of a book which you put in your drawer.
But you have no confidence in the existence of a tilmorg which I put in my drawer.

You are necessarily claiming knowledge that your faculties of memory and recall are accurate.

Is it my faculties or my honesty that you are skeptical of?
Both.. totally!
One wonders how you get along in life if you believe yours is the only mind that works...

Alas. it has now been demonstrated that there can be things that exist independent of your conception or knowledge. The tilmorg in my drawer one such example.

P.S If you want to know what a 'tilmorg' is I will gladly send you photos. Just ask.
There are lots of things I don't know... including why you bother posting on philosophy forums.
Skepdick
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Skepdick »

A_Seagull wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 3:32 am There are lots of things I don't know... including why you bother posting on philosophy forums.
Non-sequitur.

I think what you wanted to say was something like "Oh! Thank you for pointing out my error.". You are welcome.

What I am doing on philosophy forums is learning how best to burn down the Church of Philosophy. Or is that the Church of Sophistry?

Can't tell the difference anymore.
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A_Seagull
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by A_Seagull »

Skepdick wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:22 am
A_Seagull wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 3:32 am There are lots of things I don't know... including why you bother posting on philosophy forums.
Non-sequitur.

I think what you wanted to say was something like "Oh! Thank you for pointing out my error.". You are welcome.

What I am doing on philosophy forums is learning how best to burn down the Church of Philosophy. Or is that the Church of Sophistry?

Can't tell the difference anymore.
If you are wanting to learn then you will first need to listen rather than merely contradict.

And if you want to learn how to burn down the church of philosophy then you do have a lot to learn.

But Good Luck with that!
Skepdick
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Skepdick »

A_Seagull wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 8:38 pm If you are wanting to learn then you will first need to listen rather than merely contradict.

And if you want to learn how to burn down the church of philosophy then you do have a lot to learn.
And if you are willing to learn, you need to stop taking it personally when people point out your errors in cognition. Learning from your mistakes is (quite literally) the most effective way to learn how to learn.

There is a reason I can argue for, or against any position. There is a system to it, which renders arguing futile.

Otherwise, philosophy offers nothing that you can't learn elsewhere, only without the machismo and antagonism.
Most of philosophy is narrative and re-interpretation of ancient ideas in new drab without any substance.
I Like Sushu
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by I Like Sushu »

It just makes sense to address what is and isn’t a commonly held concept - in reference to ‘drawers’ we wouldn’t apply concepts like ‘time’ or ‘numbers’ as physical contents of a ‘drawer’.

Anything else is simply a language game.

Note: I’ve not read the article so my dog isn’t in the race (whatever it is?)
Scott Mayers
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Scott Mayers »

RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 1:08 am
Philosophy Now wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 6:08 am Bharatwaj Iyer examines substance with the help of Hume & Vedantic philosophy.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/132/Some_Solid_Ideas
Plato, Hume, and Kant thrust more wrong ideas into the corpus of philosophy than any others. The world of philosophy still suffers from the infection of Platonic realism.

Anything that exists is what it is because it has the attributes (qualities, characteristics) it has. A things attributes do not make a thing what it is, its attributes are what it is. The attributes of existents do not exist independently of the existents they are the attributes of.

There is no mystical, "substance," to which attributes are applied, impressed on, or adhere in.
This is actually a complete misinterpretation of 'forms' that I hear a lot. Often people don't read directly the works of Plato and so have faith in other more modern interpreters.

The concept is similar to where we get "formula" as a word from. The abstraction of a concept is treated as 'absolute' in that it is not 'real' as an accessible factor because it is a generic description of something that includes ALL species of the concept. The idea is that since we cannot literally represent the general concept, but that concept is itself 'real', just as one's illusions are 'real' AS illusions, there has to be these ideas that are impossible to literally witness as direct specific things.

The use of the concept 'chair' is often a good example of Plato's idea of forms (or absolutes in abstract). This is also what some refer to as 'ineffable' truths. That is, if something exists that is perfectly UNIQUE, it couldn't be unique if it could be actually witnessed or it would at least require having something in common with something else and no longer BE 'unique'.

A 'chair' is an inferred concept that we are begged to understand through experience as 'denoted'. But no matter how many particular 'chairs' we could discover, none represents the concept most general in reality. This is because it is a definition of "any artifact one uses to sit on". Obviously it doesn't matter which is the first experienced literal chair one learns exists. But the "idea" of it as a universal is nevertheless real, even if it is an abstract description.

Mystical interpretations are always bound to occur on this concept. For example, the original word YHWY (Ye ovey == the source) was originally defined as 'ineffable' to mean that it is a 'source' of being nothing, something, and everything. Since this 'contradicts' how we understand things as a subset of reality, we cannot SPEAK of anything particular about the concept of such an absolute origin. But in time, this turned into a 'taboo' as though there were a literal curse that said: you are NOT ALLOWED to SPEAK of the name that references the ultimate source as some 'god'. Thus this is how the religious devolved from an original logical reflection about realities.
Scott Mayers
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Scott Mayers »

On original concepts about 'solids', this was literally treated as distinct from the complementary concept, "fluid" and what the ancients often would think of in terms of 'certainty' versus uncertainty. The concept of 'chaos' (== gas) was the 'waters above' in the Bible versus the literal fluid of water that gravity pulls down. When the 'The Spirit of God(Nature) hovered in between the waters above and below', this retelling of it is from an explanation of the unique nature of this invisible magic of the air or anything in it, like the smells, light's capacity to flow through it, our necessity of needing it to breathe even though it seems as 'nothing'.

So to ancient thinkers, 'solids' were only the means to certify some state of something 'containable', The sun was 'Aten' (or Oden in the norh) and referenced the only known absolute 'circular' container. Knowing eggs give birth but are often less perfect as a sincere circle, these are the source of life as "Adam". In general, anything made of 'Earth' that was not 'fluid' was the term Adam or Item, or similar related roots. Even 'Eden', is a word that referenced the PLACE where the Aten first arose and where Adam (as 'mankind') came from and all that follows (Eve-rything else).

In Egyptian origins before the borrowing into Judaism, Nut and Nun (notice "not(hing)" and "none" referenced this two 'fluids'. Nun was 'water and Nut was the sky. Why they thought water was NOT 'solid' in the sense of what we might think of as most certain, deals with thinking that water was a kind of inbetween of what is nothing of the air and something of the solids.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by RCSaunders »

Scott Mayers wrote: Sun Jun 30, 2019 8:14 am That is, if something exists that is perfectly UNIQUE, it couldn't be unique if it could be actually witnessed or it would at least require having something in common with something else and no longer BE 'unique'.
... everything that exists must share some quality or qualities with other things that exist. Nothing can be totally unique or isolated.
Please see, "Corollary 3" in my recent notes on Ontology.

The rest is just a confusion of ontology and epistemology. "But the idea' of it as a universal is nevertheless real, even if it is an abstract description."

Ideas are certainly real, but they are not material and have no ontological existence. Concepts do not determine the nature of the material existents they identify.
Scott Mayers
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Scott Mayers »

It's an alright claim and I share some aspects of it. My ontology assumes that the Absolutes Nothing, Something (any finite), and the Infinite, where 'infinite' means any X such that X is assigned as X to the power of infinity. [This is to cover any number of infinites or infinitesimals. For this to be true of Totality, it requires relative 'impossibilities' as well. Taken as a whole, Totality doesn't then require even 'laws' because each 'world' acts as sets and any 'laws' are interpretations AFTER-the-fact of those worlds with coinciding patterns that are consistent throughout.

So 'absolutes' still have a role. "Totality" is one such concept. It is both and neither finite, infinite. Where absolute nothing has to be included in Totality as one possibility, it is the only one that can 'originate' by any 'patterned' worlds. Absolutes may or may not be real as we could not touch notice them. But they can still be represented by labels or pointers. Then worlds can be constructed from these ideas as long as we don't literally care for what the initial pointers (as variables) contain (as having constants).

But I'm getting off topic. I agree in essence to what you mean. If we can even remotely think of something certain, it has to relate to everything in some way.
I Like Sushu
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by I Like Sushu »

Scott Mayers wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:23 am But I'm getting off topic. I agree in essence to what you mean. If we can even remotely think of something certain, it has to relate to everything in some way.
Does that actually mea anything? Are you a fan of Derrida by any chance?
Skepdick
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by Skepdick »

I Like Sushu wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 8:42 am Does that actually mea anything? Are you a fan of Derrida by any chance?
To ignore Derida (and his friends) is equivalent to claiming a solution to the Symbol-grounding problem.

Stanley Cavell (who never crossed paths with the post-modern movement) manages to arrive at strikingly similar conclusions by asking the question: "I can know the meaning of a word, but can I know the intention of a word?"

He then goes on to conclude that unless an intention can be inferred by the person reading a text it cannot be said that the words have any meaning.
It sure rings a bell of familiarity with "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte".

And it's quite obvious as to why that's true when one considers the Infinite monkey theorem. Shakespeare's works wouldn't mean anything if produced by said monkeys using said method.

Intent is necessary, but insufficient for "meaningful language", and there aren't a whole lot of philosophers who understand the intention behind their own words.
I Like Sushu
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Re: Some Solid Ideas

Post by I Like Sushu »

Skepdick -

That doesn’t answer my question. I never said anyone should ignore Derrida either? The last by that person sentence was obscure to say the least. I’ll await their explanation.
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