Individualism vs. Collectivism

[Nick_A]

I'm not interested in the way you twist/characterize things dishonestly when people have told you otherwise.

One thing I've verified is that when the omniscience of secularism is questioned it is comparable to the Christian sin against the Holy Ghost. It is simply unforgivable to question its conclusions or suggest a conscious reality greater than the collective called The Great Beast.. Just invited to drink the hemlock is getting off cheaply

"Verified" by a man who preaches at others rather than being accountable for his own false words.

This is typical secular intolerance. Rather than helping to experience the value of society philosophy is reduced to baseless egoistic emotional attacks.

What are these false words I should be accountable for?. What have I preached to others? Do you really call defense of the deeper ideas within Plato's cave allegory preaching? Do you call my explanations on the human condition false words that should be emotionally condemned? Apparently so because it is what happens.

Unfortunately you describe the secular collective quite well. Fortunately there have been those and still are those who are willing and able to transcend the limitations of a secular worldly perspective and open to a universal perspective revealing Man's objective meaning and purpose and the calling of Man's conscious evolution regardless of the growls from the Great Beast..

[Nick_A]

A good way to verify the dominance of the collective in secular society in America is how politicians and media discuss voters. There are no Americans but just members and advocates of various collectives. i read of black voters, white voters, women voters, gay voters, Jewish voters and a host of other collectives. The only thing that is never researched are American voters, those who have transcended classification as they aspire towards individuality. Of course what they look for in a politician is too politically incorrect to discuss and there are not enough of them to make research profitable. Individuality being a threat to the state is best ignored.

[Lacewing]

"Verified" by a man who preaches at others rather than being accountable for his own false words.

This is typical secular intolerance. Rather than helping to experience the value of society philosophy is reduced to baseless egoistic emotional attacks.

What do you call your projections, Nick? What do you call your false claims?

What is the value of those? Are they of value to anyone but yourself?

What is their purpose? To uphold the ideas and stories you make up, even if false? Is that what your experience is about?

Why do you disregard the truth that is being responded to you? Why won't you integrate it into a broader understanding? Would that be a threat to what you want to continue believing and claiming?

How would you categorize that if someone else were doing it? Blind-belief? Blind-denial?

[Skepdick]

There is objective human reason which has objective standards at its core and also subjective societal reason which creates its own reality.

Oh really? How does a subjective being such as yourself attain knowledge of these objective standards?

Seekers of truth who are on the path to becoming individuals further the cause of objective qualities of reason while those existing as part of a collective and define their individuality by the standards of the collective adopt an agenda of subjective societal reason.

A seeker of truth remembers that 2+2=4 while the great collective called "mob" will chant the declaration of its educated leader that now 2+2=5. Who can argue with education? Without it we could never know that there is now no objective difference between black and white so it is politically incorrect to discuss it. Progress

Seekers of Truth may one day learn that the deductive domain of logic/Mathematics does not correspond to the domain of reality.

Logic/Mathematics is invented BY humans.
Reality isn't.

[Sculptor]

A good way to verify the dominance of the collective in secular society in America is how politicians and media discuss voters. There are no Americans but just members and advocates of various collectives. i read of black voters, white voters, women voters, gay voters, Jewish voters and a host of other collectives. The only thing that is never researched are American voters, those who have transcended classification as they aspire towards individuality. Of course what they look for in a politician is too politically incorrect to discuss and there are not enough of them to make research profitable. Individuality being a threat to the state is best ignored.

The perfect democracy would be three people.

The effectiveness of democracy is limited by several things; population; the degree to which people buy-in to ethnic, racial, social and religious groupings; the degree to which minority sectional interests can control the message.
The consequence of this is that there is NO dominance of the collective. The media and the wealth that controls it has all the power.
The larger the population the more easy it is to divide and rule.

[Nick_A]

Belinda

What do you call your projections, Nick? What do you call your false claims?

Typical secularism. It believes it can discriminate between what is true and what is false

What is the value of those? Are they of value to anyone but yourself?

What is their purpose? To uphold the ideas and stories you make up, even if false? Is that what your experience is about?

I quote those like Plato, Simone, and Jacob Needleman. You ask what value and purpose they have? I say that they promote awakening. I ask you why you believe you are able to judge Value and purpose from a secular perspective.

Why do you disregard the truth that is being responded to you? Why won't you integrate it into a broader understanding? Would that be a threat to what you want to continue believing and claiming?

Explain clearly what truth you assert I disregard. If there is none, how could I integrate it?

How would you categorize that if someone else were doing it? Blind-belief? Blind-denial

Tell me IYO what makes blind belief and blind denial blind. Why are they considered blind?

[Nick_A]

There is objective human reason which has objective standards at its core and also subjective societal reason which creates its own reality.

Oh really? How does a subjective being such as yourself attain knowledge of these objective standards?

Seekers of truth who are on the path to becoming individuals further the cause of objective qualities of reason while those existing as part of a collective and define their individuality by the standards of the collective adopt an agenda of subjective societal reason.

A seeker of truth remembers that 2+2=4 while the great collective called "mob" will chant the declaration of its educated leader that now 2+2=5. Who can argue with education? Without it we could never know that there is now no objective difference between black and white so it is politically incorrect to discuss it. Progress

Seekers of Truth may one day learn that the deductive domain of logic/Mathematics does not correspond to the domain of reality.

Logic/Mathematics is invented BY humans.
Reality isn't.

Oh really? How does a subjective being such as yourself attain knowledge of these objective standards?

The essential question of philosophy. How can we transcend the domain of opinions and partial truths so as to experience the whole truth. Plato said we must remember them. But to discuss this idea honestly in secular society is too disturbing and causes trouble. We've learned by experience it is best avoided for the sake of peace.

Seekers of Truth may one day learn that the deductive domain of logic/Mathematics does not correspond to the domain of reality.

Quite true. Math reveals the partial truths of logical relationships. It cannot reveal their objective value. This requires knowledge of the third dimension of thought which some are only now beginning to remember what was always known. Remembering is one thing and putting them into practice is another. Simone Weil wrote

If the algebra of physicists gives the impression of profundity it is because it is entirely flat; the third dimension of thought is missing.

This is another one of these ideas offensive to secularism which are too offensive to explore so better avoided where secularism is dominant.

[RCSaunders]

Logic/Mathematics is invented BY humans.
Reality isn't.

Both true and profound.
Something most, "philosophers," not only do not know, but vehemently deny, including Descartes, Berkley, Kant, etc.
I'm impressed, Skeptic.

[Nick_A]

A good way to verify the dominance of the collective in secular society in America is how politicians and media discuss voters. There are no Americans but just members and advocates of various collectives. i read of black voters, white voters, women voters, gay voters, Jewish voters and a host of other collectives. The only thing that is never researched are American voters, those who have transcended classification as they aspire towards individuality. Of course what they look for in a politician is too politically incorrect to discuss and there are not enough of them to make research profitable. Individuality being a threat to the state is best ignored.

The perfect democracy would be three people.

The effectiveness of democracy is limited by several things; population; the degree to which people buy-in to ethnic, racial, social and religious groupings; the degree to which minority sectional interests can control the message.
The consequence of this is that there is NO dominance of the collective. The media and the wealth that controls it has all the power.
The larger the population the more easy it is to divide and rule.

I wonder why there are no Americans left in the eyes of politicians and media but only various collectives often fighting each other. Makes me shudder at the reality of what has been lost.

[RCSaunders]

Seekers of Truth may one day learn that the deductive domain of logic/Mathematics does not correspond to the domain of reality.

So what, exactly, were logic, mathematics, and language invented to deal with?

[Impenitent]

Seekers of Truth may one day learn that the deductive domain of logic/Mathematics does not correspond to the domain of reality.

So what, exactly, were logic, mathematics, and language invented to deal with?

idle time

-Imp

[RCSaunders]

Interesting, as always.

In the interest of interest, I've only addressed some of your comments. What is especially interesting to me is why we seem to see the same facts so differently.

You may certainly identify all those others things you describe as, "thinking," (most people do)...So you see, what you mean by thinking and knowledge are not what I mean by those very same words. If we are going to discuss either of those concepts we're going to have specify which we mean, I think.

Yes, I think this is so. The definition of "knowledge" with which you are inclined to work excludes pre-linguistic "knowledge." So babies can't "know" anything, if that's true. There remains two difficulties with this. One is that your definition, then, is stipulative rather than normal, for as you say, "most people do" include the sorts of operations babies perform under the definition of "knowledge." But the second is more serious: that without the ability to think, babies could never acquire language at all, so "knowledge" (so defined) would be impossible to us all.

Your explanation is not terribly satisfactory. You write, "baby's' earliest words, which we recognize as words, are similar to (and are obviously attempts to mimic) our own." But this swallows far too much. It slides by, without explaining, how babies "mimic" anything, since they can't know anything!

[One obvious note. The ability to mimic does not require knowledge, as many parrots or myna birds can, "tell you."]

So I think that needs some further explanation. Absent a pre-linguistic ability to process information, none of us could learn. And I think that's enough to satisfy most people's definition of "knowledge."

It is no doubt, "enough to satisfy most people's definition of 'knowledge,'" but most people are not philosophers, do not think very rigorously about such things and use words colloquially. All of which is good enough for everyday language.

When I talk about knowledge in a technical (philosophical) sense, I am identifying that which is unique to human consciousness and impossible to all other creatures. I'm talking about that which makes the kind of knowledge that is both possible and necessary to human beings but neither possible or necessary to any other organism, the kind of knowledge that makes it possible to ask questions, to make judgements, to think about the past and future, and to make rational choices. I'm talking about the kind of knowledge that makes all human achievement possible from philosophy to science, from the invention of language, logic, and mathematics to every technological achievement.

All the other things that are referred to as knowledge are not unique to human beings. Many animals obviously react to things in their environments, have rudimentary forms of, "learning," (conditioning), make, "choices," determined by instinct, etc. and infants display most of the things you are calling pre-linguistic thinking or knowledge (and I would call pre-knowledge).

[Note: Here is a simple illustration. One thing that often frustrates parents of infants and pet owners is when their child or animal exhibits obvious discomfort or seems ill. The child or animal cannot tell the parent or owner what is wrong. When a parent as able to ask a child, "where does it hurt," and the child is able to say where they are feeling their discomfort they are doing something that is impossible without linguistic knowledge. They have to have that knowledge in their own mind before they can express it to someone else.]

If you want to call what animals and pre-linguistic infants do knowledge, that's fine, but in that case any discussion of things like values, principles, science, philosophy, religion, or any other discipline must be excluded, since whatever is going in the consciousness of infants and animals is incapable of either recognizing or reasoning about values, principles, science, philosophy, or religion. Perhaps we can call the kind of knowledge necessary for dealing with those kinds of ideas, "intellectual knowledge," to distinguish it from all those other things which are frequently called knowledge.

Since the original question was about, "thinking," by thinking I mean that which requires intellectual knowledge to do. To differentiate the kind of mental activity that is impossible without language I'll call it, "intellectual thinking." Does that seem useful?

I know why people are put off by the word "probability."

I'm not put off by probability at all, so long as it used for those things which can be analyzed statistically (many samples) and do not require certainty, such as insurance actuarial tables or market forecasts, for example. I even listen to weather forecasts.

What I object to is the irrational application of the principles of probability to that which is already a fact, like the past and present, as though either could be different than they are. It is like asking what is the probability the coin will land heads up after the coin is flipped and has already landed tails up. Probability does not pertain.

Except for those things which are truly statistical (surveys, statistical analysis, etc.) I do not believe any knowledge is explainable in terms of statistical probability.

Everything cannot be reduced to statistics or probability. Before you can have any probability there must be something which is certain. Before there can be some probability of how a coin will land or a die will fall, there must be a coin with only two sides that must always fall on one side or the other and there must be a cubic die with only six surfaces that must always fall with one side down (or up). But if everything is only statistically likely a coin does not always have to land on one side or the other. How could it do otherwise? Well I know it couldn't, but if you believe everything is only probable, it must be able to not land on one side. That's the obvious flaw in trying to reduce everything to statistical probability. Wherever you begin to calculate a probability assumes something must always behave in some statistical way, but if everything were only probable, nothing would always do anything, and no statistic could possibly describe anything.

Let me see if I can supply a very "concrete" (pun intended) example, one in which certainty would certainly be a good thing, but high probability is all we have.

When an engineer builds a bridge, he does not know-for-certain that it will stand up. On paper, his calculations reassure him it will -- but calculations are sometimes wrong, when they encounter the real world. He builds the bridge on the supposition that it is highly probable that it will work. If he didn't think it was highly probable, he would not waste his materials or time, and would not risk the dangers of failure. He's very, very sure that his bridge will stand up...and he's very, very probably right, perhaps.

But bridges fail. If he forgot wind shear, or some aspect of bank erosion that was gradual and undetectable beforehand, or the possibility of an earthquake, or frost damage...or any one of a hundred other things, his bridge may collapse. He is very confident it probably won't; but he doesn't know-for-certain. And he's being very foolish, and maybe even dangerous, if he thinks he does.

But knowledge is not predicting the future, knowledge is identifying what is true, what actually is and has the nature it has. Most bridges do not, "fall down," no matter what the poem says, and there are some very old bridges in this world. When an engineer designs a bridge if the design correctly estimates all the forces and stresses it will experience and chooses materials that have the right strength and flexibility to withstand all those forces and designs the bridge to correctly utilize those attributes and the builders follow the design exactly the bridge will not fall down. Bridges only fall down when the materials chosen or utilized are not adequate to the demands, or when there are forces or stresses it was not designed for, or there were mistakes in the design, or the builders failed to build it to exact specification.

I do not know anyone who claims to know without any doubt what future natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, gas explosions) will or will not happen, or whether everything any worker does is what they should do or if all the materials purchased for a project meet specifications (at least until QA and QC have done their jobs), because no one can know what might or might not happen in the future, especially when those events are determine by beings who choose their behavior. None of that is what is meant by certain knowledge.

The certain knowledge is the physics and chemistry of metalurgy that determine the characteristics of the steel to be used in buildings, the physics that determine structural integrity of buildings, and all the principles of welding and fastening that ensure such structures are soundly built. When all that certain knowledge is used correctly the bridges never fall down, which all the standing bridges prove.

Perhaps there is some confusion between, "certain," and, "precision." No one can know with absolute certainty the precise strength of a structural beam needed to support a precise measurement of stress. What can be known with certainty is that any beam above a certain level of strength will support any amount of stress below a certain level. It is not necessary to know exactly every detail of a thing to know what its nature and behavior are within certain limits absolutely.

Of course no one knows with absolute certainty any particular bridge will stand, and every bridge will eventually fall down, but only a fool would suggest one could know that nothing unexpected is possible. What one knows is, if nothing unexpected happens and everything needed to be known to build a bridge that would not fall down was known and correctly used, the bridge will not fall down.

Then "certainty," as you define it, is available nowhere in the empirical world; only in the abstract realms, as in maths. For we have some reason to doubt or question every proposition that we draw from the empirical world.

How odd. After you bang your thumb with the hammer you are not certain you are really feeling pain,

You are correct. Some people have neural conditions which mean they can hit their thumb and feel nothing. Some have "ghost pain" from limbs that have been severed for years. But the highest probability is that that is not what is happening.

My point was not about the cause of pain but about one's experience of pain. It doesn't matter what causes the pain, if you feel a pain, you feel a pain and cannot be wrong about it. If you don't feel a pain, you don't, but it is irrelevant to my point. You can be wrong about why you are feeling a pain or about its source or cause, but you could not be either right or wrong about any of those things if you do not actually feel pain. My point was, if you do feel a pain, whatever the reason for that sensation, how can you doubt it?

But it is what you call the, "empirical," world that all knowledge methods are about. If the empirical world is uncertain, so are your methods, including mathematics.

Mathematics are not "empirical." They are analytic, being operations within a defined system of symbols, rather than operations performed in the world of experience and real life.

That is what is wrong with Kantian nonsense. If there were not a multiplicity of physical entities there would be no mathematics, because there would be no use or purpose in developing a method of counting, which is the basis of all mathematics. In other words, if there never were any things to count, human beings never would have invented counting as a means of identifying different quantities of things, and the only function of mathematics are extensions of the basic principles of counting which has no purpose or meaning whatsoever separate form actual existents that can be counted.

If I have three apples and then find two more and count them I will count five apples.

The mathematics part of that operation is certain, because it's non-empirical. Three plus two will always equal five, and you can know that for certain.[/quote]
"Three plus two will always equal five," means absolutely nothing. It is a floating abstraction without a context. What is, "three?" What is, "two?" What is, "five?" I know what, "equal," and "always," mean, but I honestly have no idea what the other terms mean if they are not attributes of some actual ontological facts.

Numbers are actually a conceptual means of identifying attributes of certain ontological facts. That attribute is quantity. Like all other attributes of ontological facts, they do not exist independently of the facts they are the attributes of. Just as mass times acceleration equals force means nothing if there is nothing with an actual mass that is actually accelerated, (there are no masses, accelerations, or forces independent of actual existents), five plus three equals eight means nothing if there are not three actual existents and five actual existents, (there are no fives or threes independent of actual existents).

For those who have swallowed the Kantian lie that truth is determined by definition, why is 2 plus 3 equals 5 defined that way. Why not define it, 2 plus 3 equals 6? If it were defined that way it would be true according to Kant. It would be convenient too, since it is defined that 2 times 3 equals 6 making it the same as 2 plus 3. Perhaps all the additions should be defined to equal the multiplications (or vice versa). It would make the times tables easier to learn. Of course it would be a math that was absolutely useless in the real world, but so is all the rest of Kantian philosophy, and hardly anyone objects. If, "all bachelors are unmarried," no matter what an actual ontological bachelor is, it is true even if actual bachelors are pickles. Anyone can see how useful that is.

But is what you have in hand "apples"?

Yes! But the question is irrelevant. The issue has nothing to do with whether you are counting is what you think it is or not, the point is that unless there are actual entities to be counted, numbers identify nothing and therefore have no meaning.

Which is directly related to my suggestion:

How about concepts? "What is a concept?" would be the question. I think it is fundamental to everything else we have been discussing, but I await your pleasure, sir?

Yes, that's fine. In a way, we're already nibbling around that one. What do you want to say or ask about it? Can you speak in terms of a particular concept, for example?

I'm more interested in what you think a concept (any concept) is, rather than any specific concept. I do not think concepts are possible without language, for example. That might be a first question. If we can agree on that, perhaps we can discuss the relationship between words, concepts, and definitions, and most importantly, what any particular concept means. If you feel really ambitious you might tackle the question of universal verses particular concepts. Any of those things that interest you might be a good place to start.

If you are reluctant to commit to a view of concepts, I'll be glad to provide my view.

All my best!

RC

[Skepdick]

Seekers of Truth may one day learn that the deductive domain of logic/Mathematics does not correspond to the domain of reality.

So what, exactly, were logic, mathematics, and language invented to deal with?

In so far as logic/Mathematics are the same as natural languages - their purpose is the capturing and communication of ideas.
In so far as logic/Mathematics are different from natural languages - their purpose (straight from wikipedia) is the study of such topics as quantity (number theory), structure (algebra), space (geometry), and change (mathematical analysis). It has no generally accepted definition.

And I would add my own to that list: computability, describability, provability.

The most reductive thing I could say is thus: Mathematics/logic/computation is symbol-manipulation given a set of rules.
And the most literal thing I could say: Mathematics is a grammatical game which is overly-preoccupied with syntax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax

[Skepdick]

The essential question of philosophy. How can we transcend the domain of opinions and partial truths so as to experience the whole truth. Plato said we must remember them. But to discuss this idea honestly in secular society is too disturbing and causes trouble.

The reason it "causes trouble" is because "the essential question" is unanswerable. Which in simple language means: no subject can transcend their subjectivity to arrive at objectivity.

We all aspire towards Platonism - we all fail at it.

Quite true. Math reveals the partial truths of logical relationships. It cannot reveal their objective value.

Seeming as "objectivity" is a subjective construct, and "values" are inherently subjective it seems to me that "objective values" are a double oxymoron..

This is another one of these ideas offensive to secularism which are too offensive to explore so better avoided where secularism is dominant.

From where I am looking (the skeptic-agnostic chair) both secularism and theism are two sides of the same coin. Dogmatism.

The entire game of "having beliefs" is dogmatism - so I've given all of mine up. So I've traded in all my "beliefs" in exchange for methods which are instrumental to my goals.

[Skepdick]

Typical secularism. It believes it can discriminate between what is true and what is false

Nobody knows what Truth is, but instrumentalism/pragmatism can discriminate between what is useful and what isn't.

And from there onwards it's as easy as:

True => Useful
False => Not useful.