GENIUS FORUMS

df,

Also, you could call the totality the "whole event," being the set of all actions.

This is accurate. There is no fundamental difference between things and actions: being can be used as a noun or a verb.

Neil,

Neil: I agree with this definition. What I am questioning is if there are really any truths beyond science that we can grasp. It is vital to understand and affirm that our language was originally created from empirical observations as a tool.

DQ: That's true, but it's also the case that our brains have developed enough sophistication and complexity that we can now apply language and concepts in any manner we please. We have the power to take them beyond the confines of their pragmatic origins.

Neil: I want you to affirm that whatever your highly advanced brain does to language and concepts that they ultimately come from empirical observations.

I believe I've already affirmed this, while also affirming that it doesn't have much relevance to anyone who has achieved independence of mind.

An independent thinker is a bit like a skilled craftsman who can mold anything he wants out of raw materials, such as iron and clay. The mere fact that iron and clay come from the ground as raw minerals doesn't mean that they are forever condemned to remain in that form. A skilled metal-worker can change its chemistry, add other metals, and create almost any object he wants to out of the iron. And if he doesn't like what he has created, he can always melt it down again and create something new.

Through his imagination and skill, he has stretched the possibilities of iron beyond its raw limitations.

As a child your parents taught you the language so you didn't create the concepts yourself. But could you do anything if your parents did not teach you the concepts? Could you pop them out yourself? If you did they would come from empirical observations again. You can change your language and concepts but only using other language and concepts and other empirical observations. There is no source on concepts outside empirical observations. Can you affirm this?

Empirical observation is only one source out of many. There is also reason, imagination, intuition, changes in perspective, increases in wisdom, etc. These can all have a major say in the creation of new concepts.

There are branches of mathematics which are so strange and exotic that they cannot be applied to the empirical world in any way. Many of the concepts they use make no sense from an empirical perspective. Some of them can't even be pictured by the human mind at all. They have been created, and are sustained, purely by the logic of the system they inhabit.

DQ: I've stated many times that there is nothing beyond the natural world. We both agree that Nature is all there is. So I'm not sure why you remain obsessed with this "other worlds" thing. How about you throw it away, so we can move on.

Neil: Sorry, I was using "natural, material world" as in our realm of empirical observations. There could be a different planet, for example, or a different 'universe' (scientific definition) that would fall outside the "natural, material world" by this definition. Basically I am saying that to extrapolate from our area of observation (or statistical analysis) to a larger area is erroneous.

Well, it's only erroneous if you are seeking certainty in your extrapolations. However, as I said in my previous post, the philosophic search for certainty never relies on induction or extrapolation. Thus, the concerns you raise here aren't an issue for me.

Neil: No two trees are the same and yet we lump them all into a category and label them "tree". Why? For predictive power. We can remember the common and perhaps not-so-common traits of trees and can make rational decisions involving the properties we have attributed to this concept "tree". The difference between science and metaphysics is that science is modeling our empirical observations for predictive power whereas metaphysics is modeling beyond our empirical observations in the name of "truth". An intelligent scientist won't claim science is truth, only that it is highly useful and rigid models of life. A metaphysician will claim that he has arrived at some ultimate truth by doing row reductions on arrays of concepts that have been created for predictive power as though God himself had created or was bound by these concepts.

DQ: A good philosopher reasons from concepts that he has created for himself. These conceptions may well align themselves with traditional empirical-based concepts or they may not. It all depends on what he wants to reason about. The point is, he is in full control of what he is doing. He knows exactly how and why he is using a particular concept.

Neil: This seems off topic of the above to me.

On the contrary, it goes to the very heart of the matter.

At any rate, I must disagree. You have not created your concepts yourself. At most you have changed them or renamed or refined them. And if you want to be a philosopher who communicates with others, as all philosophers that are known to others must be (including you and me), you must use at least mostly the same concepts as others for communication purposes. Nobody is in full control of what he is doing, there is much more that I am not in control of than what I am and of course the large part of our development was completely out of our control. Back to topic....

Well, I personally have no difficulty in attaching whatever meaning I want to whatever word I please.

As for communication, I agree that communication is aided if one uses terms and definitions that resemble the way they are used by other people. But they don't have to exactly match. Sometimes it is effective to twist the accepted meanings a bit, or apply them in unusual contexts. It can help the listener see an old concept in a new light, and thus help him make new mental connections. It can also help him gain greater insight into the arbitrary nature of all concepts.

But when it comes to personally understanding truth directly in one's own mind, one doesn't have to worry so much about traditional meanings and concepts. One has the freedom to be flexible about it, to examine concepts from all different angles and sides.

DQ: Because his purpose is very different from the scientist's, he often uses concepts differently from how scientists use them. He has different starting points and end points. This is something that Victor Danilchenko, for example, who represents the standard scientific mentality, has great difficulty in understanding. It's as though he senses the whole edifice of his knowledge beginning to teeter and collapse.

NM: This is just muddying the waters pal.

It highlights the dangers of treating concepts and definitions as though they were set in stone, and becoming attached to them as though they were objective realities.

DQ: While that is true, the beauty of this definition is that it is impossible for anything, anywhere, to fall outside of it. That is what makes the definition useful as far as philosophically understanding the nature of all phenomena is concerned.

Neil: You are making your mistake right here. How do you know that nothing can fall outside the definition? Because you defined it so. But how did you come to that definition? Ultimately all our definitions were derived from our subjective empirical observations.

DQ: On the contrary, I complete made it up. I created it totally out of the blue, with my own intelligence.

Neil: You think too highly of yourself here. Unless you have changed over to Jehu's position and believe you are actually God with all this going on inside your head, this statement is ridiculous.

It is closer to what Nietzsche said about becoming an innocent child and a creator. Not being a slave to anything at all is akin to being God, at least within the kingdom of your own mind.

DQ: The reason? Because I wanted to understand the shared fundamental characteristics of each and every phenomena in Nature. Creating categories into which every phenomenon necessarily has to fall is part of this process.

Neil: The task is impossible. Categories can be created in two types: Inductive ones and Abstract ones. Inductive ones come from empirical observation while abstract ones come from beyond empirical observation. How can you affirm or deny something that is beyond empirical observation? You can't.

You can, through logic. Logic has the ability to take you instantaneously to all parts of the Universe and examine what is there, at least as far as unearthing fundamental knowledge is concerned.

We don't have to empirically examine each and every phenomenon in the Universe to know that they all, without exception, fall short of constituting the totality of all there is. Logic is perfectly adequate for the task.

These abstract concepts seem to come from an ill extrapolation of inductive concepts outside the realm in which they can accurately describe. It's like a statistician sampling Austrailia and then claiming his inferences hold internationally. It is a flaw.

It depends on how it is done. For example, we can reason that all countries, like Australia, have been mentally created by the mind. It is the mind which delineates where a country begins and ends.

This isn't an inductive truth. It is a truth which has been deduced from the very nature of what a country is. We can further deduce that any country anywhere in the Universe is mentally created.

NM: So your definition can only hold, and only really as a model, for the world of your empirical observations.

DQ: The logic of the definition dictates that it necessarily applies to each and every phenomena in the Universe, including the things that we empirical observe.

NM: Then you have defined something out of the definition. If you say that all trees must by definition have bark then some quasi-trees that lack only bark may exist but you can accurately say that "no trees have bark", which is about as great a truth as "1+1=2".

Yes, you can arrive at a lot of trivial truths in this manner. But you can also arrive at some profound, earth-shattering ones as well.

DQ: If you use definitions that necessarily apply to all phenomena in the Universe, then you no longer have to rely on inductive reasoning and its associated uncertainties. Instead, the logical process becomes entirely deductive, which means that the conclusions you arrive at carry the same amount of certainty as the starting definitions themselves - that is, they are 100% certain.

NM: I tried to explain to you that all definitions come from induction. You don't have a priori definitions in your head. God did not make transcendental english dictionaries. IF HE DID then pure deduction would work.

And so it does.

If you have enough imagination, flexibility of mind and freedom from conventional thought, you can literally create your own mental dictionary. No problem at all.

I grant that the empirical world can prompt particular kinds of definitions and conceptions in our minds, but we have the freedom to reject or change them if we want. They aren't fixed entities forever rooted in the earth. They can be putty in our hands.

Since fallible, clumsy, stupid human beings wrote the dictionary to treat them as infallible definitions and use deduction on them leads to disasters like metaphysics.

Agreed. That would be a stupid way to go about it.

NM: Too bad the same cannot be said of "infinite" or "non-finite" (that it has a place in 'reality'). It is a useless concept in the natural world, we have to thank the abstract world of mathematics for this.

DQ: If a mathematical entity falls short of being the totality of all there is, then it is necessarily "finite", by my definition of the term.
What is this "totality of all there is"? ... it is the mathematical opposite of "finite" -- "infinite". Both are abstract terms. We can empirically observe nothing "infinite" which makes it abstract and thus it's counterpart is also abstract. This truth amounts to "1+1=2" and it is only because we defined it so. This truth has zero relation to reality.

The Totality directly refers to everything that we experience, both conceptually and physically. So it is very much a concrete conception grounded in reality. It only seems abstract to those who don't really understand it.

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David, you seemed to have again ignored my questions

Faust13 wrote:

David Quinn wrote:It all depends on how much you are willing to integrate your whole life into the truth of causality. The more you factor yourself into the equation, the more dangerous it becomes.

how is it dangerous??? as usual you fail to rebuttal my question, "how does causality undermine happiness, family, etc..."

I'm saying that It's cowardly and dishonest to 'integrate' your life by having others pay for your sorry ass. We're not living in Royalty anymore.

However, if you simply do what academics and lukewarm philosophers do and keep causality confined as an abstract theory which exists only in the imagination, you'll have no problems. You'll never be touched by it.

*yawn* I have no intention to keep causality confined to an abstract theory that only exists in the imagination, that's just pure slander on your part. I've been touched by causality, but its stressing of it becomes redundant. What happens now?? nothing. philosophers sometimes have a keen habit of needing to see sickness in other people in order to make their knowledge and egotistical self-importance seem valuable and precious. Very similar to priests and Christians.

David Quinn wrote:I believe I've already affirmed this, while also affirming that it doesn't have much relevance to anyone who has achieved independence of mind.

An independent thinker is a bit like a skilled craftsman who can mold anything he wants out of raw materials, such as iron and clay. The mere fact that iron and clay come from the ground as raw minerals doesn't mean that they are forever condemned to remain in that form. A skilled metal-worker can change its chemistry, add other metals, and create almost any object he wants to out of the iron. And if he doesn't like what he has created, he can always melt it down again and create something new.

Through his imagination and skill, he has stretched the possibilities of iron beyond its raw limitations.

this doesn't really say anything important about truth-seeking, only muddies it up. This paragraph can be used to defend postmodernism if you want to look at it that way, including the whole 'independence of mind.' Yes postmodernists and dishonest thinkers can makeup stuff using their own rubbish.

Empirical observation is only one source out of many. There is also reason, imagination, intuition, changes in perspective, increases in wisdom, etc. These can all have a major say in the creation of new concepts.

reason uses empirical observations. Imagination can be used for anything that doesn't involve Reality. To imagine things without trying to validate it with empiricism is just fantasizing. Intuition is empirical, and many times it's crude and inaccurate. Changes in perspective sounds silly, borderline relativism and postmodernism. Increases in wisdom is not at all a METHOD for finding wisdom. 'increases in wisdom' is simply that, it's not a method.

There are branches of mathematics which are so strange and exotic that they cannot be applied to the empirical world in any way. Many of the concepts they use make no sense from an empirical perspective. Some of them can't even be pictured by the human mind at all. They have been created, and are sustained, purely by the logic of the system they inhabit.

give examples.

However, as I said in my previous post, the philosophic search for certainty never relies on induction or extrapolation.

then what does it rely on?? Reason and logic? Those are based on empirical observations, and rely on empiricism to have any effects.

It highlights the dangers of treating concepts and definitions as though they were set in stone, and becoming attached to them as though they were objective realities.

some concepts are based on objective realities, such as causality, the Will-to-Power.

It is closer to what Nietzsche said about becoming an innocent child and a creator. Not being a slave to anything at all is akin to being God, at least within the kingdom of your own mind.

That's because Nietzsche was exactly that, childish and innocent. These things are bad if one wants to be honest. Not being a slave to anything? More like, not having integrity to be honest?

You can, through logic. Logic has the ability to take you instantaneously to all parts of the Universe and examine what is there, at least as far as unearthing fundamental knowledge is concerned.

give examples please.

It depends on how it is done. For example, we can reason that all countries, like Australia, have been mentally created by the mind. It is the mind which delineates where a country begins and ends.

it's mental and physical, borders of countries are physical.

Yes, you can arrive at a lot of trivial truths in this manner. But you can also arrive at some profound, earth-shattering ones as well.

list those profound, earth-shattering truths.

If you have enough imagination, flexibility of mind and freedom from conventional thought, you can literally create your own mental dictionary. No problem at all.

imagination doesn't help, imagination can end up making rubbish things, same goes for flexibility of mind.

We only translate truth into words, or images, or examples, or mathematics. But reality isn't a bunch of words, and communications. It's a flow of waves, bumping, and colliding. So you could say that our translations are limited to be communicated through our senses. It would take hours to explain how you ate a strawberry today if you went through the entire process of explaining it to someone through its entirety. However, we could explain it through its entirety, and therefore we could explain it in its absolute truth. So we are not so limited as the thread suggests.

Kevin Solway wrote:

skipair wrote:If things don't exist, why are we using the false categories of "things" as a proof for logic (all things are finite) and futher for cause and effect (things cannot arise in the absence of other things) when C+E is the very thing that tells us things actually don't exist? False premise or am I missing something?

Things do exist - ie, have boundaries - this is by definition - but things don't exist inherently, on their own account alone. Rather, they are dependent on other things - namely, that which is other than themselves, and the conceiving mind, senses, etc.

Ok, but these "things" that rely on everything else to exist still aren't real. The boundary between one thing and another will always be arbitrary. They are just words that represent a practical, but false concept. How can we use a false concept as a proof for anything?

S: Also, the examles that I've seen from the cause and effect proof have all been visual objects. What about a smell, which is still an object of the mind. How do you cut that in half? Half the intensity? Half the duration/amount of molocules entering your nose? Doesn't seem to pan out. Same goes for other senses.

KS: The point is that things are dependent on what causes them. A visual thing is dependent on having parts (eg, a left and right side). A smell is dependent on there being enough chemicals in the odour to trigger our sense of smell, and it is also dependent on being able to be contrasted with other smells, etc. The same goes for all the other senses.

Well, the only way we know abou the example of chemicals is from empirical science, not purely logic. And just because something can be contrasted to other things doesn't answer my initial question regarding the other part of the cuase and effect proof: thing are made up of its parts. In the experience of smelling an odor, or feeling a touch, the single experience of such events, such as the single experience of imagining a chair, how can we say these things are made of parts?

S: I posed the question can enlightenment exist without language in another thread. That is to say, if language did not exist, would it be possible to become enlightened? Also, what if there weren't any senses?

KS: ...to consciousness all things are symbolic in that all things trigger the idea of other things. So this is a kind of language that is an inherent part of consciousness.

Ok, but I'm talking about words. My guess is that this logical progression you speak of is dependent on creating a complex web of words with specific definitions, and without using words to facilitate reasoning, this type of reasoning would be impossible.

skipair wrote:Ok, but these "things" that rely on everything else to exist still aren't real.

Yes, they're not inherently real.

To me, "real" is whatever I have created - wherever I have drawn the boundaries.

Well, the only way we know abou the example of chemicals is from empirical science, not purely logic.

Ok, in that case, to be purely logical, we would have to say that the smell must have come from somewhere.

I agree with you that it wouldn't make any sense to speak of a smell as strictly having "parts".

In the broad sense, "parts" means that of which a thing is composed. And a smell is composed of, or caused by various things.

KS: ...to consciousness all things are symbolic in that all things trigger the idea of other things. So this is a kind of language that is an inherent part of consciousness.

Ok, but I'm talking about words. My guess is that this logical progression you speak of is dependent on creating a complex web of words with specific definitions, and without using words to facilitate reasoning, this type of reasoning would be impossible.

I don't regard words to be significantly different to any other symbol in consciousness. A certain thing in a certain context can mean just as much to me as a word in a certain context.

Words are only symbols which point to other symbols.

It seems to me that written words began as simple drawings of things we saw in our minds - a written form of a word that already existed in our minds.

Without the symbols in our mind (and the boundaries that create them), reasoning would be impossible.

Faust,

DQ: It all depends on how much you are willing to integrate your whole life into the truth of causality. The more you factor yourself into the equation, the more dangerous it becomes.

Faust: how is it dangerous??? as usual you fail to rebuttal my question, "how does causality undermine happiness, family, etc..."

The more immersed you are in causality, the more you are immersed in the illusory nature of all things, and the more all sources of emotional pleasure dry up.

I'm saying that It's cowardly and dishonest to 'integrate' your life by having others pay for your sorry ass. We're not living in Royalty anymore.

I consider it renumeration for services rendered.

DQ: However, if you simply do what academics and lukewarm philosophers do and keep causality confined as an abstract theory which exists only in the imagination, you'll have no problems. You'll never be touched by it.

Faust: *yawn* I have no intention to keep causality confined to an abstract theory that only exists in the imagination, that's just pure slander on your part.

I was just speaking generally.

I've been touched by causality, but its stressing of it becomes redundant. What happens now?? nothing.

You keep deepening it until you are fully conscious of the nature of Reality at all times.

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Kevin Solway wrote:Words are only symbols which point to other symbols.

It seems to me that written words began as simple drawings of things we saw in our minds - a written form of a word that already existed in our minds.

Without the symbols in our mind (and the boundaries that create them), reasoning would be impossible.

.

This seems to be Wittgenstein's conclusion also,I'm happy to agree.

Faust,

DQ: An independent thinker is a bit like a skilled craftsman who can mold anything he wants out of raw materials, such as iron and clay. The mere fact that iron and clay come from the ground as raw minerals doesn't mean that they are forever condemned to remain in that form. A skilled metal-worker can change its chemistry, add other metals, and create almost any object he wants to out of the iron. And if he doesn't like what he has created, he can always melt it down again and create something new.

Through his imagination and skill, he has stretched the possibilities of iron beyond its raw limitations.

Faust: this doesn't really say anything important about truth-seeking, only muddies it up. This paragraph can be used to defend postmodernism if you want to look at it that way, including the whole 'independence of mind.' Yes postmodernists and dishonest thinkers can makeup stuff using their own rubbish.

True. It all depends on the quality of logic involved.

Simply making stuff up won't really get a person anywhere. But skilfully creating his own definitions and exploring their logical implications to the very end can.

DQ: Empirical observation is only one source out of many. There is also reason, imagination, intuition, changes in perspective, increases in wisdom, etc. These can all have a major say in the creation of new concepts.

Faust: reason uses empirical observations. Imagination can be used for anything that doesn't involve Reality. To imagine things without trying to validate it with empiricism is just fantasizing.

Some things can't be validated empirically, only logically. The principle of causality, for example, can only be validated logically.

Intuition is empirical, and many times it's crude and inaccurate. Changes in perspective sounds silly, borderline relativism and postmodernism. Increases in wisdom is not at all a METHOD for finding wisdom. 'increases in wisdom' is simply that, it's not a method.

New perspectives generated by past increases in wisdom can help trigger new mental connections and new ways of conceptualizing about things, which in turn can trigger further increases in wisdom.

DQ: There are branches of mathematics which are so strange and exotic that they cannot be applied to the empirical world in any way. Many of the concepts they use make no sense from an empirical perspective. Some of them can't even be pictured by the human mind at all. They have been created, and are sustained, purely by the logic of the system they inhabit.

Faust: give examples.

Irrational numbers, such as the square root of minus 1.

DQ: It highlights the dangers of treating concepts and definitions as though they were set in stone, and becoming attached to them as though they were objective realities.

Faust: some concepts are based on objective realities, such as causality, the Will-to-Power.

More accurately, they are tools designed to undermine the deluded belief in objective realities.

DQ: You can, through logic. Logic has the ability to take you instantaneously to all parts of the Universe and examine what is there, at least as far as unearthing fundamental knowledge is concerned.

Faust: give examples please.

We can uncover, via logic, the truth that all phenomena are caused.

DQ: It depends on how it is done. For example, we can reason that all countries, like Australia, have been mentally created by the mind. It is the mind which delineates where a country begins and ends.

Faust: it's mental and physical, borders of countries are physical.

We can build physical objects to mark borders, but the act of creating these borders to begin with is purely mental. As is sustaining them on a moment-to-moment basis.

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Ataraxia wrote:

Kevin Solway wrote:Words are only symbols which point to other symbols.

It seems to me that written words began as simple drawings of things we saw in our minds - a written form of a word that already existed in our minds.

Without the symbols in our mind (and the boundaries that create them), reasoning would be impossible.

.

This seems to be Wittgenstein's conclusion also, I'm happy to agree.

I'm not so sure that Wittgenstein had a "conclusion" as such. But he did present ideas that he thought were true, and those ideas tended to change throughout his life.

Also, in the context of Wittgenstein, I don't think my statement was very clear. For with each symbol comes an experience. So every symbol points to other symbols as well as to the experiences associated with them.

And the experiences cannot be encapsulated like the symbols can be. For example, a tree has a symbol (eg, the symbol "tree"), but the experience of a tree is not a particular thing that you can circumscribe - not without losing the completeness of the experience. The experience of a tree shares something with the experience of all things.

I believe it is possible to perfectly communicate ideas to other people using language, but there is no way to perfectly verify that one has done so. And likewise there there is no way for the receiver of the communication to know for certain that he has understood what was communicated.

The only time one is able to know that one's ideas are communicated perfectly is when one is communicating with oneself (or thinking for oneself).

I'm not so sure that Wittgenstein had a "conclusion" as such. But he did present ideas that he thought were true, and those ideas tended to change throughout his life.

Poor phrasing on my part(ironically).What i should've said is that I reached a similar conclusion to the one you expressed after reading W. Tractatus.

The only time one is able to know that one's ideas are communicated perfectly is when one is communicating with oneself (or thinking for oneself).

*nods*

The absolute truth is death.

..... and taxes.

Ben Frank.

:-)