A slapping of today's traditional thoughts on truth

[The Voice of Time]

Come on, you got to know where I'm going: over compensation. Often one, as they get older, over compensates, for being slighted when they were young. It's to be expected. They say that the best artists are mentally tormented souls.
You are quite bright and I have a hard time believing that you're only 21. I wonder what has fueled this in you, because by comparison, at 21 I could care less about this kind of stuff. Of course it was a different time, but I'm sure there were people like you during my time. But of course I see these differences as being largely related to our individual experiences, combined with monetary capabilities. Could it have been this isolation that you speak of? A way to count, plus opportunity, so as to fill your time and maybe to show them? I'm thinking probably. I hope you continue in your studies, and graduate college.

What fuelled it? I don't know. I don't consider it to be a fire you throw fuel on, the physics are a bit different. More resilient first of all, fires die easily, and more slow to grow.

I used fantasy early on to immerse myself and create worlds and the like I could live in. I was very centred about my own mind and what I could create with it.

Then basically I saw the movie "Sophie's World" and that coupled with a natural leaning towards asking questions about all sorts of things and growing up in an environment with politically organized people nourished a growing body of thought that in my early teens would become more oriented towards professional philosophy with my first readings of Karl Marx at the age of 13 and later interests.

Humanism (and humane-ethics) has always been a philosophical topic that's been expressed very close about me in all sorts of ways and manners, and my mother I remember held a "club", if you can call it that, for kids where we learned about "kids in Africa" playing African music and dressing up in straw-skirts.

When I was 13 -14 or thereabouts I was convinced nobody had asked the questions that really mattered (since those answers that were there didn't seem to make enough difference in my own life) and over the next three years I grew more personally involved in making philosophy and over time developed an image of myself as one who might be able to make the difference (joking with myself I might've appeared a bit of a megalomaniac with grand ideas, but despite it being a deep passion I have no actual belief in myself as a grand master or saint, it's just fun to imagine), so I became interested in the concept of "depth" and between secondary and tertiary school I developed several ideas that came to point towards a philosophy of importance.

At the age of 14 I held my first presentation in school about philosophy where I made an analysis of society which already showed parts of my philosophy of human needs but from a Marxist-inspired perspective since that was the only one I knew to talk from.

In tertiary school and afterwards and up until now the philosophy of importance is what's been my primary concern and has evolved into a philosophy of needs which you've all seen me talk about throughout the forums.

[lancek4]

Okay. lancek4 please stop talking like you're writing from the end of the 19th century. It's not called "concur", it's called "agree", its much more common and I don't have to look up in the dictionary to know it. It's not called "posit" but "held as true", again, I don't have to look up in the dictionary, and last, the word "proposition" is getting out-dated and instead we talk about "sentences" and "statements" (Wiki-quote: "To avoid the controversies and ontological implications, the term sentence is often now used instead of proposition to refer to just those strings of symbols that are truthbearers, being either true or false under an interpretation. Strawson advocated the use of the term "statement," and some mathematicians have adopted this usage."). I knew all three words from before but had forgotten them... why? Because they are words which only hardcore logicians/mathematicians or writers from a century or two ago would use! And they are completely unnecessary! They complicate things a lot. So, my little beg: make things less hard for me. Now on to my reply:

Your first paragraph: You mean ends are highly suggestive of an "objective", not an "object". Although it is possible to twist and turn on this, fundamental difference between objective and object is that objective only need as a minimum carrying of information the description of the "location" in some dimension or manner of movement to achieve it.

What lies at the end of the objective can be uncertain and unclear. As I said it is possible to twist and turn on this, for instance talk about intentions and our drives and desires and say that we have individual objects we attach to the objective, like duty, honour, excitement, and the like, but in a strict sense an objective is formal and nothing but itself and the objects that individuals associate with the objective is not of concern for the objective, unless they are counter to it.

To the later half of what you said I think I managed to get my head around it but I basically have no comment since it's not posing any challenge to me. It seems, that in more worldly terms, it talks along the lines of what I said above, that an objective can be separated from objects but that this, as you say "relies on a transcending effect that is not able to be located", and the reason it is not able to be located is because it is not of a concern for the objective the reasons why an objective is sought out, so you cannot necessarily find the object in an objective and therefore you cannot necessarily know how or why something happens, only that it does.

Your second paragraph: My original claim was that "the only practical purpose of the notion of reality is contained within ideas about it", and so you ask, "who or what uses?", when we talk about ideas the answer is anyone who has access to the mind, although "use" would assume a human directing of action about the one who accesses or a product of human labour like a robot or alternatively an animal/insect/bird/fish.

Those who have access can try to alter the ideas contained within the mind, either by removing (or at least in some way suppress from expression in the way our ideas express through our own action), adding or modifying existing ones (alter the configurations in terms of which other ideas one idea associate with so the idea express in different circumstances and express with greater or diminished magnitude).

Applicability would mean to what extent a use would lead to the ability to cause an idea to express itself, or to what extent we can change the mind (the soup of ideas) in any direction or specific arrangement. Also, to what extent we can direct this to a period of time or a location in space or any other such specifying of time, place and situation. We apply our access to cause a result.

Your third paragraph: you can lack water in your glass without there being any water available, so the problem can very well exist independent of the solution (it seems your finishing claim "relies upon a denial of this property of discourse" is therefore falsified, in fact, some problems have existed for ages but has never found a satisfying answer, it's difficult to talk about a proper marriage when you never see your spouse ^^). It is neither true that a solution is always proposed in a problem (or at least semi-proposed in the sense that you know what you are lacking even if you don't necessarily have access to it), especially in technical problems this is true, because you might need to "invent" a solution that doesn't exist for us before we figure it out. Your problem formulation might be like "How do I create the best IPhone app ever!?", and there's nowhere in that formulation you'll find a trace of the solution, you might have an objective but definitely no object.

The objective will probably be quite complicated with lots of parameters, but for simplicity's sake, let's say it's "make the most praised app ever!", I know it's possible to twist and turn on this one as well but again, for simplicity's sake, bear with me, there shouldn't be an answer in that sentence to any object, although there will be an objective, namely the count of praises and the magnitude of each praise (hint hint on twist-and-turn: there is one object at least, namely the sources of praise, but they are not particular, and so doesn't effectively function as objects but are reduced to statistics).

Your fourth (plus preceding lonely line) paragraph: Truth as I said "is a product of management of the mind", the discussion of practicality is a mislead from a parallel discussion about my claim that the only practical way of thinking about reality is as the idea we have of it, practicality was never a topic of discussion in relation to truth, that's probably a mix-up.

However now that it has been mentioned, think of it like this. We have a notion of reality, this is contained within an idea of it. This idea resides in our minds. Perhaps here it is time to mention that it is not the mind itself that is managing but its external faculties, as I mentioned way before with my distinction between what is the mind, namely the container of ideas, and what are the faculties that work on it, like memory sorting and consciousness filtering and emotional responsiveness and so forth. As our mind is worked over time it alters itself, and when accessed and caused to express itself it will do so from a different composition than the time before, this composition is the truth, with reality being an idea it will also likely differ in composition, the arrangement of all ideas in any particular fashion with its inclusions and exclusions of its (former or new) members; that, is truth, with the implications of our beliefs and recognitions inside it.

This is all practical in the sense that it is something for which we can access, manipulate, make something out of or make do something. Each one of us therefore have one particular truth within us at any point of time, some parts of our minds will resemble what we get from other people's minds, and these become social truths, bases of knowledge we work from in our social dealings.

As to the chunk paragraph it is very confusing for me to understand what you mean and what you are getting at. You talk about postponement, repetition, free choice, discourse, but does it mean anything to the main discussion? Are you hung up in my brief mention of how a problem can be cast as a solution when a problem asks for the revealing of another problem (the problem cast as a solution)?

What does "truth as a precipitate" mean? I'm unsure how to deal with this paragraph, but if it is a criticism of some sort of eternal looping of "problems of problems" (or problems cast as solutions for other problems asking for it) I must say that problems cast as solutions are very useful; basically they are about getting one step closer to the "gap" that you have to jump to go from ignorance and confusion to knowing and clarity. At many times one will find oneself with a question so big and/or mighty it is impossible to jump the huge gap it presents, and one must try to get closer, and one does so by casting new problems as solutions to the problem, and therefore shortening the distance, sometimes this presents a dead-end, sometimes it is just what you need.

Your fifth paragraph: "how does one distinguish what is ones mind from its management or what it is managing", basically a mind is presented in any "now" as the best possible capture of the state of things at that time, but besides that the mind is continuously changing, but so are most things in our world, and it doesn't stop us from talking about them as if they are unchanged, unless something significant happens to them. The distinction is explained above with my mention of the distinction between faculties and the mind itself (which is the container, or more specifically what is contained within the container).

"It seems that the question, What are 'thoughts' ? Or What is an idea? must be operative in what you are developing." I have dealt with the issue of what an idea is before. What a thought is I don't know because people have different opinions, but I guess a thought is a kind of echo of words in your mind that come about in orderly manners so as to produce meaning... some kind of "talking to yourself" using words inside your head. To other people there's not always sentences involved in consciousness, like me I don't think too much in words, using images and even sounds and the like, and whether that is thoughts as well is a matter of discussion.

What I said about the nature of ideas is that essentially they are mathematical expressions for the bodily expressions we have. A mathematical expression says at what rate anything will be expressed as an action of the human body and whether it will happen at all. However, it's tricky to absolutize this, so we must continue. First, an idea is a unit in an informatic system: the mathematical expression of an idea in an informatic system is through preadjustment facilities, which are centres where many small arrangements and rearrangements of things unfolds in simpler exterior actions.

To show what is the peculiarities of an idea you must introduce further abilities and restraints, and those are the mind which is the sum of ideas in relations to each other (ideas not in relations to each other, not even by indirect means through other ideas, are not related and not of the same mind), and, secondly, the faculties extending the mind, and which work themselves on the mind and in so doing determining the ways it rearranges itself and alters itself. More specific than that is hard to be, but simply stated: an idea is the mathematical expression of the patterned behaviour of any physical entity that rearranges itself in group with other rearranging physical entities to produce an exterior simple action.

So an idea is not physical per se in that it equates any specific substance, instead it attaches itself as a pattern to a kind of source physical entity that it manipulates and the physical entity works as the original "representative" of the idea, think about a neuron, and many such physical entities together form a mind.

I will address particular issues later, but this whole thing reeks of someone trying to describe a true object. A true object is that which is spoken about and thus proposed as true as if it is really true, as if there is a true thing somewhere and one just needs to find the right arrangement of words to describe it. As if you are involved in a sort of historical progress. Are you at the forefront of a group effort of human progress?

[The Voice of Time]

No, I'm just putting words to what I see and what makes sense for me. But we are all products of our time.

If my personal efforts in epistemology are signs of progress then good thing for progress.

[lancek4]

Then I would have to say that while your meathod and ability is quite developed, it is your view that is limited. The objects of your analysis are topological, so your analyses miss the significance of the situation at hand. You appear to be involved in a project to 'uncover' the truth of an object. It seems you are using 'truth' as a sort of object to situate other meanings such as 'mind'. As if there is some 'universal and realizable' arrangement of terms that will 'reveal' the truth 'of truth', so to speak. But, if you are merely speaking of how you come upon or understand the 'world' - well that then is more like poetry than philosophy.

[The Voice of Time]

Then I would have to say that while your meathod and ability is quite developed, it is your view that is limited. The objects of your analysis are topological, so your analyses miss the significance of the situation at hand.

In what sense does the study of shape and spaces come into work? Nowhere did I present a problem which depended upon how something looked like (physically speaking) by itself, my study is with multitudes of objects behaving in a way that makes them into something else.

[lancek4]

Again, i think your approach may be off a little.

Ends, object and object. Every object has ends. Ends are what allows for an object in reality. An object has no ends 'in itself' 'out there'; only in knowledge do we find true object (ironically) by the ends of an object. The distinction that would have 'object' (physical, out there) and then 'object' (objective, purpose) is topological.

If you are privy to phenomenology, it suggests that every object has 'intentionality'. What this means is that the object 'behaves' as or to allow for reality. It behaves to grant position as well as direction. This is only established in and by knowledge, though; there is no thing in-itself, out there granting pieces of itself for knowledge. The out-there thing is merely an occasion for knowledge to function. The position of the object is the meaning we have that includes ends, that particularize it for distinction among other real objects as to size shape colour etc. Yet these meanings are likewise not merely positional, as if color shape etc are speaking of some in-itself object. Such meaningful circumstances also grant a situation for reality, a motion that is the 'intention' of the subject in reality particularized upon an occasioning of objects. Hence objects have 'a quality like intension' in the establishing of reality, and for the locating and stating the subject.

I like Zizek's rendition: the subject is the nil at the conflation of objects. When one looks for the subject, it cannot be seen, it is void. Only the situation of objects shows itself. Yet, the subject is needed to come to this realization. It does so through 'missing' its 'dismissal', so to speak, since consciousness, as a center of meaning, is the base of being and reality, the movement of meaning, projects, or rejects, its own actual basis of void for the purpose of establishing reality: consciousness 'makes equatable' itself to other objects, and it does this only through meaning, through a situation of knowledge.

(Yet again, one must be careful as to the subject as topic, and subject as some sort of single thoughtful human being.)

Hence, the object cannot be located by dividing meaning into some actual object and then some purpose object; to speak upon the divided aspects it not only topological, but also 'objectival' in that the divided object becomes in effect, for meaning, for truth, an object 'in-itself', what i call a 'true object', which upon extended commentary or expression of analysis becomes a metaphysics; put into 'practical' society it becomes ideology; put into the negotiation of individuals it becomes religion. Indeed, all these facets of being human can be interesting, but When we speak of the object,of truth, both situations of meaning (the object and the object) must be in play for significance.

*

The reason I tend to speak so 'rudimentarily' is because often those who rest upon the inherently complicated jargon of dense meaning, have not really come accross the significant issues involved in thier discussion. Often, it seems, they have blown themselves up, puffed up thier feathers to appear substantial and formidable to the other posturing birds against which they feel they must compete. I do not compete; the sole purpose of philosophy is a discerning of truth through learning from others. Thus, if I am to learn I must know if to whom I'm speaking is speaking the same language, so to speak. I also need to find out if I am incorrect, and this also requires a common base of communication.

[The Voice of Time]

You appear to be involved in a project to 'uncover' the truth of an object. It seems you are using 'truth' as a sort of object to situate other meanings such as 'mind'.

If it's true I would say it's rather the opposite. I use the mind to situate truth, like this sentence here: "we have different minds, and from different minds we work out different truths, each truth can be compared (a discussion is also a way of comparing) to find which one that when based upon will give the most likely reliable result"

As if there is some 'universal and realizable' arrangement of terms that will 'reveal' the truth 'of truth', so to speak.

Realizable certainly, universal is irrelevant, you'd need universal knowledge to know even a spec of universal truth, that's what I think. However, you can realize many small steps towards a better working truth all the time, whether these realization will last forever is not certain, but unless there's a dead-end they will take you a step towards perfection; things will work a little bit better for you and yours.

But, if you are merely speaking of how you come upon or understand the 'world' - well that then is more like poetry than philosophy.

Not for me. Poetry has no other end than entertainment, all other effects of it are side-effects, intended or not. I'm not an entertainer in this, I'm quite serious, one day I will probably publish my findings in a different form and shape, maybe rather soon in fact, but until that time my contribution is on forums like this and in my head and those people I talk to.

[The Voice of Time]

Again, i think your approach may be off a little.

Ends, object and object. Every object has ends. Ends are what allows for an object in reality. An object has no ends 'in itself' 'out there'; only in knowledge do we find true object (ironically) by the ends of an object. The distinction that would have 'object' (physical, out there) and then 'object' (objective, purpose) is topological.

Then you must know about a different form of topology than the one I know. You've still not described how the science of shapes and spaces can be used to determine the whatabouts of this?

If you are privy to phenomenology

not too much, but some things I find useful. Intentionality is not one of them, I find it impractical, not particularly useful. But maybe I just need to see somebody use it for something.

, it suggests that every object has 'intentionality'. What this means is that the object 'behaves' as or to allow for reality. It behaves to grant position as well as direction. This is only established in and by knowledge, though; there is no thing in-itself, out there granting pieces of itself for knowledge. The out-there thing is merely an occasion for knowledge to function. The position of the object is the meaning we have that includes ends, that particularize it for distinction among other real objects as to size shape colour etc. Yet these meanings are likewise not merely positional, as if color shape etc are speaking of some in-itself object. Such meaningful circumstances also grant a situation for reality, a motion that is the 'intention' of the subject in reality particularized upon an occasioning of objects. Hence objects have 'a quality like intension' in the establishing of reality, and for the locating and stating the subject.

Does not make a difference.

I like Zizek's rendition: the subject is the nil at the conflation of objects. When one looks for the subject, it cannot be seen, it is void. Only the situation of objects shows itself. Yet, the subject is needed to come to this realization. It does so through 'missing' its 'dismissal', so to speak, since consciousness, as a center of meaning, is the base of being and reality, the movement of meaning, projects, or rejects, its own actual basis of void for the purpose of establishing reality: consciousness 'makes equatable' itself to other objects, and it does this only through meaning, through a situation of knowledge.

Actually I'd dispute this. I don't think consciousness 'makes equatable' itself to other objects, first of all because consciousness is just a stream of information and not an agent of any kind like what you seem to suggest. Instead, I'd say vagueness blends the bonds inside the mind that bind information to each other quite thin and this produce indiscriminate behaviour of how the mind develops its interiors and how the mind aids to produce behaviour in humans and about humans.

(Yet again, one must be careful as to the subject as topic, and subject as some sort of single thoughtful human being.)

Hence, the object cannot be located by dividing meaning into some actual object and then some purpose object; to speak upon the divided aspects it not only topological, but also 'objectival' in that the divided object becomes in effect, for meaning, for truth, an object 'in-itself', what i call a 'true object',

surely anything can be located that appears in the physical world. Sometimes it has multiple locations simulatenously!

which upon extended commentary or expression of analysis becomes a metaphysics

how? can you show me?

; put into 'practical' society it becomes ideology

This is certainly straight wrong. Ideology has nothing to do with a question in logic or of the nature of things.

; put into the negotiation of individuals it becomes religion.

You are stretching things quite far here, let religion be itself and do not force it to stand with things it does not know.

Indeed, all these facets of being human can be interesting, but When we speak of the object,of truth, both situations of meaning (the object and the object) must be in play for significance.

So if you're hungry it's not significant to look for food because you don't have any particular object to look for? Either you are not conveying the meaning you mean to or you're clearly not reading yourself right.

*

The reason I tend to speak so 'T' is because often those who rest upon the inherently complicated jargon of dense meaning, have not really come accross the significant issues involved in thier discussion. Often, it seems, they have blown themselves up, puffed up thier feathers to appear substantial and formidable to the other posturing birds against which they feel they must compete. I do not compete; the sole purpose of philosophy is a discerning of truth through learning from others. Thus, if I am to learn I must know if to whom I'm speaking is speaking the same language, so to speak. I also need to find out if I am incorrect, and this also requires a common base of communication.

Okay but I don't speak that language. So I've probably not "come across the significant issues involved in their discussion", I've never read an original piece of a philosophical work of "great historical importance", just opened a couple of books once and I own a copy of Aristotle's Politics which I've not finished. Though to me it should be quite up for discussion what exactly "significant" means. I may find some things significant that you don't, and you might find some things significant that I don't. I don't like originals for instance because they tend to be monotone, I prefer to read commentaries on original works instead, where people's problems with the work comes to light as well.

[lancek4]

Many valid points there (above.) I tend to pontificate at times.

Can you define 'religion' for me?
And 'ideology'? Humor me if you think I'm being patronizing.

[lancek4]

I guess our definitions of what is practical differ. What do you mean by 'practical'? I'm not sure how my walking into a store and buying a candy bar is related to the mind having ideas, what is significant about that, or what is significant about the truth being about how I was able to 'walk' or 'buy' or 'go to the store' Please relate the practicality you speak of to your statements as well as my situation of getting a candy bar.

[The Voice of Time]

You want a candy bar? You have the opportunity to walk into a shop that sells candy bars? You have money? Then it's practical. Something for which you can use and do something with. In this case you use the shop to acquire a candy bar.

"I'm not sure how my walking into a store and buying a candy bar is related to the mind having ideas"

They are both something you can do something with. End of line, very simple, said it before.

what is significant about that, or what is significant about the truth being about how I was able to 'walk' or 'buy' or 'go to the store'

If you're hungry for a candy bar it's very significant. Never felt a desire for candy? If you have, then ask yourself if acquiring candy is not a very significant part of being candy-hungry.

Please relate the practicality you speak of to your statements

That's what I spent the most time doing in my last reply! Showing you that my understanding of mind and of truth are very practical, they are very useful, applicable to problems so as to solve them. You cannot ask me to write it all over when it stands there so clear and so very straight forward and if you'd read my reply you would've read it, several times even.

[lancek4]

Yes practical. An idea is a thing that can be used to situate or negotiate walking or money etc. but that only says that there is a scheme of meaning, definitions of things in a relation, by which one (you) make sense of the true thing called - again a definition - reality or the world. It's nice if I'm looking for such a scheme, like if I'm having problems with life and I need to situate some meaning so I can proceed to do things and not be confused or frustrated or whatever, but if not, then it is only your idea.

What I'm saying is that there is no necessary relation between your scheme and what you actually do. Coming to ideas about what or how such things relate is just another thing you do. The only necessary relation is that you do ( go to the store) and do (coming up with an idea and writing about it): you do. It is not necessary for me; it could be sufficient to help me with my problems, but since obviously I am fine without applying your scheme to my practical activities, that which is relly practical has been missed, maybe by both of us, and Something else must be going on.

Can you define for me 'ideology'?

[lancek4]

Again, i think your approach may be off a little.

Ends, object and object. Every object has ends. Ends are what allows for an object in reality. An object has no ends 'in itself' 'out there'; only in knowledge do we find true object (ironically) by the ends of an object. The distinction that would have 'object' (physical, out there) and then 'object' (objective, purpose) is topological.

Then you must know about a different form of topology than the one I know. You've still not described how the science of shapes and spaces can be used to determine the whatabouts of this?
shapes, color, etc, are all things of knowledge. Topology, philosophically speaking, has to do with how knowledge is constituted for meaning. The 'forms','surfaces','depths', 'shapes' of knowledge, and what these are able to mean and how.

I like Zizek's rendition: the subject is the nil at the conflation of objects. When one looks for the subject, it cannot be seen, it is void. Only the situation of objects shows itself. Yet, the subject is needed to come to this realization. It does so through 'missing' its 'dismissal', so to speak, since consciousness, as a center of meaning, is the base of being and reality, the movement of meaning, projects, or rejects, its own actual basis of void for the purpose of establishing reality: consciousness 'makes equatable' itself to other objects, and it does this only through meaning, through a situation of knowledge.

Actually I'd dispute this. I don't think consciousness 'makes equatable' itself to other objects, first of all because consciousness is just a stream of information and not an agent of any kind like what you seem to suggest. Instead, I'd say vagueness blends the bonds inside the mind that bind information to each other quite thin and this produce indiscriminate behaviour of how the mind develops its interiors and how the mind aids to produce behaviour in humans and about humans.
i would say that is is consciousness that allows the world to be known. In the process of doing this, consciousness must distinguish things, and it does this, as an operation, by putting itself in a category of meaning equal, so far as to 'thing-ness', as to itself being likewise a thing among things of the one universe, equal in possibility to other things. This allows for then a 'privileging' of itself, as well its effort to close the discrepancy between objects through knowledge, which is a process of coordinating reality back to itself in meaning. Yet, because consciousness as an extistant cannot include its own 'meaninglessness' ( there is no object 'in-itself', not even for consciousness) into its own meaning, since consciousness is the base, the initiator of meaning, it tends to reify the true object in the attempt to avoid its own nothingness. It 'pushes' the object 'away from itself back into meaning in order to establish identity in the world.
If consciousness is a steam of information, it is because consciousness has identified itself with reference to a thing out there not itself, here called 'information', and establishes and refines itself in truth, in reality, in meaning, as not a 'thing distanced from its own actuality', but indeed a 'thing that is coming closer to understanding its own truth'.

[quote="

Hence, the object cannot be located by dividing meaning into some actual object and then some purpose object; to speak upon the divided aspects it not only topological, but also 'objectival' in that the divided object becomes in effect, for meaning, for truth, an object 'in-itself', what i call a 'true object',

surely anything can be located that appears in the physical world. Sometimes it has multiple locations simulatenously!
this is called a "parallax view". Perhaps read Zizek's book of e same name. He is a contemporary cultural theorist. Look him up on line, there's a bunch of stuff.

which upon extended commentary or expression of analysis becomes a metaphysics

how? can you show me?

as to my last post; because the idea is not necessary to account for action, but only individual action, the tendency for an individual to proclaim reality can be called a meta-physics.
Kant was dealing with just this issue. In his 'critique of pure reason' he was trying to present a metaphysics that indeed was true, but in his process he destroyed it, but ironically affirmed a 'new' way of establishing what may be true. His "pure reason" was his necessary base from which all truth must proceed. His "categorical imperative" was his way of describing any true thing that the individual thought so: such a true thing (a category) is 'imperative' for the individual's being able to have reality. The problem has to do with why these never comes true in critical discussion. Hence his analyses of analytical and synthetical a priori and a posteriori. '


*

The reason I tend to speak so 'T' where did this come from?? I put 'rudimentarily'. How funny! is because often those who rest upon the inherently complicated jargon of dense meaning, have not really come accross the significant issues involved in thier discussion. Often, it seems, they have blown themselves up, puffed up thier feathers to appear substantial and formidable to the other posturing birds against which they feel they must compete. I do not compete; the sole purpose of philosophy is a discerning of truth through learning from others. Thus, if I am to learn I must know if to whom I'm speaking is speaking the same language, so to speak. I also need to find out if I am incorrect, and this also requires a common base of communication.

Okay but I don't speak that language. well, we all are in a process of learning.

[The Voice of Time]

Yes practical. An idea is a thing that can be used to situate or negotiate walking or money etc. but that only says that there is a scheme of meaning, definitions of things in a relation, by which one (you) make sense of the true thing called - again a definition - reality or the world. It's nice if I'm looking for such a scheme, like if I'm having problems with life and I need to situate some meaning so I can proceed to do things and not be confused or frustrated or whatever, but if not, then it is only your idea.

Here you are destroying all the essentials of my ideas without understanding them. Let me try to tell you again:

If you and I walk down a street and we both feel hungry for candy, then my idea of using the candy store to satisfy our desires will not only express itself through me and make me do it, but I may speak to you, communicate to you, and you because you have common courtesy, will listen to me, and in so doing I will "access" your mind, and if you have no particular hindrance you'll likely go along with me to the candy store and we'll buy candy and satisfy our desires for it.

This is what the practicality of ideas mean. It is not "scheme of meaning" merely, it is rooted in the world of causality, if I wanted to I could test it out like any scientific experiment, but long before I'd do that the idea should've caught minds because it's basically very intuitive. It gives a new fresh context for things we usually take for granted in our everyday lives, it's a perspective of inquiry, and when we use this perspective of inquiry with the terms coined for it we are able to do it in a very clear way, allowing for us to map data about the causal nature of it all and find working and optimal patterns.

In the candy-store example the perspective of inquiry would allow for me to try out different codes for accessing your mind given what I could discern about your state of mind. "Code" here is basically any sentence that achieves its target objective, like "I like
this shop over here, let's go and buy some!", and for the situation that may be enough to access your mind and make you follow me to buy some.

What I'm saying is that there is no necessary relation between your scheme and what you actually do.

Certainly there is. Because it is what you do! Are you trying to tell me that your mind does not affect your behaviour? That your muscles are not receiving instructions from a central processing unit, that is, your brain? My definitions put words to things that are already there, how more related can things be?

Coming to ideas about what or how such things relate is just another thing you do.

If you deny the existence of causality.

The only necessary relation is that you do ( go to the store) and do (coming up with an idea and writing about it): you do.

Causality does not find that things to be that poor of knowledge.

It is not necessary for me

In a statistical-philosophical sense, yes, I guess "anything can happen", but I still find it way more practical to talk about the reliable causal nature of me wanting tea and me acquiring myself some tea.

it could be sufficient to help me with my problems, but since obviously I am fine without applying your scheme to my practical activities

It is not a matter of life and death no.

that which is really practical has been missed, maybe by both of us, and Something else must be going on.

And what is this something else?

Can you define for me 'ideology'?

Wikipedia does it for me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology Quotes from that thread have been used by me earlier in this thread, so the essential pieces should already be defined for you.

If not Wikipedia a shorter definition is found here: http://onelook.com/?w=ideology&ls=a

noun
▸a system of ideas and principles on which a political or economic theory is based
▸a set of ideas with a strong social influence

Ideology is not a "base word" if you can call it that, it's not a word dealing with simple descriptions you can easily recombine for your own use. It's a name denoting a particular fashion of creating and putting together ideas, with its own very complex history. A shopping list is a set of ideas (on display), it is not an ideology however. It's meaningless to stretch things so extremely out of their domain like you've tried to do with both ideology and religion, let things be themselves.

[The Voice of Time]

shapes, color, etc, are all things of knowledge. Topology, philosophically speaking, has to do with how knowledge is constituted for meaning. The 'forms','surfaces','depths', 'shapes' of knowledge, and what these are able to mean and how.

Never heard of it, therefore, I cannot speak of it; I do not know the subject.

i would say that it is consciousness that allows the world to be known.

I don't see the necessity in that. Is a computer conscious? Can it still not know the world? Or is knowledge something unique to you that only certain things like humans have, and in that case, what is this special thing about knowledge that means a computer cannot have it?

In the process of doing this, consciousness must distinguish things

Why must it do so?

and it does this, as an operation, by putting itself in a category of meaning equal, so far as to 'thing-ness', as to itself being likewise a thing among things of the one universe, equal in possibility to other things.

You dare speak of "necessity" when there's not a trace of necessity in any of this? Never have I experienced my consciousness do this kind of thing, is your consciousness fundamentally different than mine? I have experienced the faculties of my mind do labour, but never has it appeared in my consciousness as anything but results, and I'm incapable of confirming that what you say there is something my mind has ever done either.

On the other hand I've quite often experienced my mind treat things that appear similar when recognized with indiscriminate responses. A very classic example is how we will react to very high temperature of an object in an indiscriminate "aaauh!", only as long as they are all hot, we won't care so much what the object is (unless we are about to loose our cup or food in the ground or something precious to us, we might try to catch it in spite of the knowledge it is warm but in desperation not to loose it).

This allows for then a 'privileging' of itself, as well its effort to close the discrepancy between objects through knowledge, which is a process of coordinating reality back to itself in meaning. Yet, because consciousness as an extistant cannot include its own 'meaninglessness' ( there is no object 'in-itself', not even for consciousness) into its own meaning, since consciousness is the base, the initiator of meaning, it tends to reify the true object in the attempt to avoid its own nothingness. It 'pushes' the object 'away from itself back into meaning in order to establish identity in the world.

This is a story. I do not, at any point of time in that writing, see a reference to something which I've ever experienced, and I'm curious as to what "plane of existence" it happens on as you lack a reference to the physical world. Does this happen in the brain? In the mind? Is that what you are saying?

It feels much more down-to-Earth to say consciousness privileges the mind and the body because there's more of the self in the mind than any other thing; after all we live with our bodies and experience it at any point of time, how could anything else be more privileged to access our minds than our own bodies which continuously are fed into our minds and which constitute our most basic identity of self?

Consciousness certainly has a meaning to itself. It's the direction from which the stream of information is coming from. To say it has no meaning is like saying the upriver has no meaning to the downriver, however, if you stood at the downriver you would find that things changed and that the river is not the same at any point of time, so you'd divide the river up into "incoming, passing by, and past by", to keep track of the same spot of river and not follow the same spots of water as it goes downwards.

In a network of ideas constantly evolving with each other, ideas will acquire the information which makes them what they are from a place, from a somewhere, and if I were to know about consciousness right now there would have to be a way for me to directly tap into it. Tapping into it a pattern would emerge, since information is basically patterns and ideas are run by acquiring and maintaining patterns, the ideas would have to acquire information from the tapping, and in so doing they would already have an identity for consciousness, namely: consciousness is what it presents.

Because of this people will have different experiences of what their consciousness exactly is, since consciousness would present itself differently based on its content, like I mentioned earlier with some people thinking in words and some people thinking in imagery.

If consciousness is a stream of information, it is because consciousness has identified itself with reference to a thing out there not itself, here called 'information', and establishes and refines itself in truth, in reality, in meaning, as not a 'thing distanced from its own actuality', but indeed a 'thing that is coming closer to understanding its own truth'.

Not so. A stream of information is not all it is, it is just an easy way of talking about it. What it is, is imagery, sound and the products of other senses and feelings, all this happening in a stream. To say that this "is out there" is preposterous! When you are unconscious, do you have consciousness then? So how come these things you called consciousness has now suddenly disappeared! Does this mean what is out there has disappeared? No! And any normal mind would not be so stupid as to believe that.

So it's quite contradictory to say we somehow define our consciousness by exterior means (at least necessarily, you can of course be taking mindblowing drugs or just be plain stupid and then find the idea working for you), when there's nothing more close to us than consciousness, and nothing so simple for us to know about. This is of course not to say we do not use worldly matters to expand on our understandings of our own consciousness.

Like an argument for the existence for consciousness could be as simple as a matter of closing your eyes and experience the shift in the world of being for you and ask yourself whether the world truly disappeared, this would be defined in your ability to close your eyes, and would be a worldly reference and not consciousness itself but a function related to it.

this is called a "parallax view". Perhaps read Zizek's book of e same name. He is a contemporary cultural theorist. Look him up on line, there's a bunch of stuff.

I'm familiar with Zizek. But he talks way more than he makes sense. An interesting fellow, but not sure I'm too much capable of taking him seriously always.

as to my last post; because the idea is not necessary to account for action, but only individual action, the tendency for an individual to proclaim reality can be called a meta-physics.

Physics is not necessary to account for the action of a fist hitting a wall, all you have to say is "it was painful, and John says I got bruises from it". It fully accounts for it event, but it's rather shallow, doesn't offer much practicality. With knowledge of physics you can bend the variables of the universe to your advantage and make another punch that might leave no bruises because you found the physical conditions that create them and have avoided those conditions.

In the same way my ideas are not necessary to account for action and events, but without them things are more shallow.

Kant was dealing with just this issue. In his 'critique of pure reason' he was trying to present a metaphysics that indeed was true, but in his process he destroyed it, but ironically affirmed a 'new' way of establishing what may be true. His "pure reason" was his necessary base from which all truth must proceed. His "categorical imperative" was his way of describing any true thing that the individual thought so: such a true thing (a category) is 'imperative' for the individual's being able to have reality. The problem has to do with why these never comes true in critical discussion. Hence his analyses of analytical and synthetical a priori and a posteriori. '

... Okay... that was Kant.

*

The reason I tend to speak so 'T' where did this come from?? I put 'rudimentarily'. How funny!

Dunno, I must've marked the word perhaps and the computer changed it without me realizing it. It probably happened when I looked it up in the dictionary.

well, we all are in a process of learning.

Yes, but not necessarily all things we wish to know. For instance, I can very much do without knowing Mongolian. In fact, I think I'd rather not ever learn it even if I could learn it instantaneously, as it would just mess up my mind with lots of purposeless ideas deriving from it that I have little to no use for.