GENIUS FORUMS

David Quinn wrote:Philosophaster wrote:

DQ: What is the deepest, most profound thing that you know to be absolutely certain?

Ph: Probably that logic works, by which I basically mean that if I know A and A implies B, then B must be true.

Have you discovered anything of eternal interest using this method?

-

I find logic interesting, but I am not sure what you mean by "eternal interest."

.

Kelly writes:

What if there's no subjective experience?

Yes, "I"'ve been through all this neutralization, intellectually, actually, spiritually, and damned if I'm not still here . . . .

David writes:

So in having passion for this, you are not just deviating a little bit from Kierkegaard's formula for truth, you are sweeping it aside and engaging in the complete opposite.

Luckily, it's only the dictionary I assume to borrow, and not an occupation of the man's entire skin.


.

Pye wrote:

Kelly wrote:What if there's no subjective experience?

Yes, "I"'ve been through all this neutralization, intellectually, actually, spiritually, and damned if I'm not still here . . . .

Can you not imagine that past events, such as the Big Bang, could have happened without anyone around to observe them?

Or do you imagine that everything that happened before your birth is a lie?


.

David,

Are you saying that he was absolutely sure his hand was there? He wasn't dreaming it?

That's actually the very reason why he's considered to have failed at his attempt to prove that one could be certain of things. He had to admit that he couldn't know that he wasn't simply dreaming it.

Such is our prejudice towards the empirical. A dream hand is actually just as real as an empirical one; they just have different secondary characteristics.

Dan,

Such is our prejudice towards the empirical. A dream hand is actually just as real as an empirical one; they just have different secondary characteristics.

That all depends on how you want to define certain terms. If the proposition we seek to prove is "I'm looking at my right hand", we'd have to define terms such as "looking", "my", and "right hand" rather ambiguously for it to hold true in a dream. In fact, if we defined the phenomenal experience of looking at one's right hand in a dream to be the same as just regular old "looking" then we'd have to concede that the hand is empirical even in the dream. The terms "my right hand" in the proposition would have to point equally to a right hand as defined by it's potential properties in a dream as it would for it's properties while awake, or the subset of those properties that hold true in both experiences. Either way, Moore didn't set out to prove that a rather ambiguous statement should be accepted as true. Rather, it was his intention to demonstrate that one could be confident that their actual hand, with all expected properties, was in front of them if they happened to be looking at it. A much harder, and if he had succeeded, more significant task.

EI: So he failed to prove anything? Why are you considering him important, then?

EI: So he failed to prove anything? Why are you considering him important, then?

Did I say he was important? I just brought him up to show David that analytic philosophers aren't against the notion of certainty by default. That's all. Moore was an important philosopher but I don't believe he was.

Really though, he did write Principia Ethica, and developed "Moore's paradox" (which I've demonstrated above). That's gotta win a guy kudos. Plus he was a highly influential figure who inspired Wittgenstein to write "On Certainty". I really don't think philosophers are in the business of "proof" anyways. That's for mathematicians. Nobody really knows what a true philosophical proof would even look like. A philosopher either has defensible or indefensible notions.

Philosophaster wrote:

DQ: Have you discovered anything of eternal interest using this method?

P: I find logic interesting, but I am not sure what you mean by "eternal interest."

Forget it. You've already answered it.

You're a strange fellow in many ways - you seem young in years, yet there is a weariness and cynicism in your words that one usually only finds in the elderly. Nonetheless, and probably because you are still young, you find this deeply dissatisfying and you yearn for someone or something to come along and rescue you from the situation.

These are just my impressions, of course. Feel free to correct them if I am wrong.

Do you consider yourself to have a purpose in your life? Do you still seek the highest wisdom? Or have you abandoned that sort of thing?

-

EI wrote:

I just brought [Moore] up to show David that analytic philosophers aren't against the notion of certainty by default.

Yet you concede that he did a poor job of it, which shows that he wasn't really serious about attaining certainty, after all. The certainty of ultimate truth is easy to find if you are interested enough.

I am willing to bet that Moore was more than happy to stay within the tentative, provisional, uncertain realms of academia and that whatever interest he claimed to have had in true certainty was a sham.

-

David Quinn wrote: You're a strange fellow in many ways - you seem young in years, yet there is a weariness and cynicism in your words that one usually only finds in the elderly. Nonetheless, and probably because you are still young, you find this deeply dissatisfying and you yearn for someone or something to come along and rescue you from the situation.

These are just my impressions, of course. Feel free to correct them if I am wrong.

Do you consider yourself to have a purpose in your life? Do you still seek the highest wisdom? Or have you abandoned that sort of thing?

You are right that I am weary and cynical and dissatisfied with my life.

I don't know about "rescue." I don't think that there is a "rescue" beyond working at long-term but ultimately mundane goals and cultivating self-control and self-knowledge. At least, I have never seen anyone point out anything that I would consider superior to that.

I don't consider myself to have a purpose in life. For the most part I go day to day and do whatever amuses me at the time. I doubt that there is anything I would call "highest wisdom," but if such a thing does exist, I also doubt my own ability to attain it, because I am very lazy.

.

Kelly writes:

Can you not imagine that past events, such as the Big Bang, could have happened without anyone around to observe them?

But of course I can imagine this. I can imagine, deduce, reason, predict - all sorts of things from being in existence as a conscious subject.

Kelly: Or do you imagine that everything that happened before your birth is a lie?

No, this is not what I imagine. I think perhaps you mistake this talk as that of solipsism, of which I am not on about at all. In existence, I can see that people have existed before me, a cosmos with many phenomena and events preceding me; and I can pretty much assume to reason that there will exist people and a cosmos after me. But all that has been my experience dissolves with all that was this conscious "me."

I am one of many temporal phenomena that rise in the world and dissolve. The defining characteristic for our type of consciousness is that we know this. The defining characteristic of our suffering and our clinging is that we mostly refuse to know this. In refusing, we become all sorts of things, from eternal heaven-seekers to reincarnation-believers to fame-seekers to ghost whisperers, assuming that the hub of phenomenal existence that we are can somehow carry this temporal collection of itself past its own existence. Paradoxically, my knowing of my temporality delivers me precisely to the life I might have otherwise sought to exceed, living one foot here, and the other foot in nothing . . . .



.

Pye wrote:

Kelly wrote:Can you not imagine that past events, such as the Big Bang, could have happened without anyone around to observe them?

But of course I can imagine this. I can imagine, deduce, reason, predict - all sorts of things from being in existence as a conscious subject.

And what about the total absence of things, which includes the total absence of subjectivity? Can you imagine that?

Kelly: Or do you imagine that everything that happened before your birth is a lie?

No, this is not what I imagine. I think perhaps you mistake this talk as that of solipsism, of which I am not on about at all. In existence, I can see that people have existed before me, a cosmos with many phenomena and events preceding me; and I can pretty much assume to reason that there will exist people and a cosmos after me. But all that has been my experience dissolves with all that was this conscious "me."

Is "cosmos" as you're using it not the Universe (the Totality)? If it is not not, how can it begin and end?

I am one of many temporal phenomena that rise in the world and dissolve. The defining characteristic for our type of consciousness is that we know this. The defining characteristic of our suffering and our clinging is that we mostly refuse to know this. In refusing, we become all sorts of things, from eternal heaven-seekers to reincarnation-believers to fame-seekers to ghost whisperers, assuming that the hub of phenomenal existence that we are can somehow carry this temporal collection of itself past its own existence. Paradoxically, my knowing of my temporality delivers me precisely to the life I might have otherwise sought to exceed, living one foot here, and the other foot in nothing . . . .

Does this "temporal collection" exist separate to the causes that make it, at each and every moment? Do you believe that it exists inherently?

.

Kelly Jones wrote:And what about the total absence of things, which includes the total absence of subjectivity? Can you imagine that?

A better concept to tackle might be that which is "beyond consciousness". Does that fit into the "eternal truth" of "subjective experiences"?

I'd also like to know if your "I" is the same as "subjectivity", or if it's the same as "temporal collection"?