Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On 15/12/2024 11:11, D wrote:

  On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
 

Many materialist simply cannot understand it - to them the world is what they think it is and see it as, and therefore Kant is simply nonsense.

 Yes, I think we've established that this is why we keep talking past each other on this subject. Were you at one point in the materialist camp, and then you reached enlightenment, or did you always feel that the materialist camp was unsatisfactory, and after Kant everything sort of clicked into place for you?
 

I was firmly in the materialist camp. Id been taught science and that was the way I understood the world.
Having to reluctantly dump that model in the face of the evidence was very hard.

According to critics like Peter Strawson, while Kant correctly seeks to explore what we can understand about our experiences, he mistakenly concludes that these limits are imposed by our cognitive faculties on a reality that could be structured differently.

>
That is exactly right, and to my certain knowledge it can be: Because Strawson cant do it doesn't mean it cant be done.

 This is true. I was curious about what you would say about Strawsons argument.
 

Id never seen it before, but it was very comprehensible once I looked up the meaning of some of t he terms he is using.
He4 sort of buys part of the argument but rejects the conclusions mainly on the grounds as far as I can tell that it doesn't get him where he wants to go.
Which seems to me to be the certainty of the materialist's credo.
He wants to know 'what's really there' and Kant says 'we cant ever know that'

Strawson seems to be a Beleiver. He wants there to be a simple objective reality that we can grasp. Kant says 'its there, but we cannot grasp it: It has to go through our processes of categorisation before it is intelligible to us'.

 I think the point is that, if we can never grasp it, we can never say it is or anything about it, and I think that is why he argues it collapses into idealism, or potentially, solipsism.

That is his mistake.  He is unable to grasps the difference  between 'realism-materialness, Idealism and Transcendental Idealism, which is a hybrid
To put it it a bastardised mathematical notation materialism is:
P,C=f(R) - what we Perceive is ONLY a function of what's really there. Ans so is consciousness.
Whereas Idealism is :
P,R=f(C)  - What we Perceive as Reality is simply an emergent property of Consciousness or Mind.
Transcendental Idealism rearranges the equation so that
P=f(C,R) - What we perceive is a function of what's 'really there' there AND of the means by which we transform it into a reality we can deal with.
He (Strawson) doesn't appreciate that  while the set of possible Rs is infinite, so is the set of impossible Rs.
And in the end it is not the business of humanity to attempt to comprehend something that is completely beyond them. Our job is to map it into something we *can* understand.
"Me Tarzan, you Jane. Banana tree that way==>"
Once you appreciate that everyday reality is a *transform* or a *map* of 'what's really there' you cannot cling to a single value of 'the Truth',   That is the purpose of Enlightenment, to make the point that reality as we experience it is not what's really there, but a transform of it - a map of it into co-ordinates that we fined easy to handle. Space time matter etc.
And furthermore, that we have a choice as to how we interpret it.
Which is what science is really doing.

 

Kant's system requires the existence of noumena to prevent a rejection of external reality altogether, and it is this concept (senseless objects of which we can have no real understanding) to which Strawson objects in his book.
>

Well there ya go. If you are creating a real metaphysical system you end up with awkward bits that many people don't like.
>
Strawson presumably didn't like quantum physics either :-)

 This is another very interesting topic. Which interpretation is true, is anyone
of them true? Or should we adopt the stance and "shut up and calculate"?
 

Ah. I think my understanding of Enlightenment and metaphysics is that none of them are true. They are all models, Some better, some worse.
You move through a mental model of what you *think* is there, never encountering directly what *is* there. Or at least that is a meta-model of metaphysics itself that works.
That is, we have genuine  choices in what metaphysics we adopt. Although we don't know that, and its very hard to change.
Realist/materialists - I never know wh9ch term is the best - are looking for a model which covers all cases.
But as Korzybski says "The map, is not the territory"
Some people don't care about the terrain, they just want a map that shows the bars. And the roads connecting them
To them the terrain simply does not exist. They only see the bars, and the roads.
her people want maps showing the mountains. They climb up and say 'look, the world is not only roads leading to bars' but the others say 'who cares?' 'not on my map'
...

The 'problem' of transcendental idealism is it must needs introduce an element that is anathema to materialist and realist alike , and that is the necessary postulating of  an independent entity that takes 'whatever is the case' - the 'world-in-itself'  - the 'noumenal world' and turns it into [maps it, performs a 'transform' on it]  the 'phenomenal world' that everybody casually takes as 'real'.

 I think this is the fundamental disagreement and what Strawson feels is the
fundamental error that collapses it into idealism.
 

I dunno.
Strawson is like Penrose. He starts off examining things like consciousness, and then collapses back into his old materialist world view that matter is real, consciousness is an emergent property of it and thereby fails to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Dyed in the wool materialists don't want consciousness and choice to be independent. They have already decided to make them emergent properties of *matter*, and so they think Kant is a cunt, trying possibly to reintroduce the supernatural by the back door.

 This makes a lot of sense to me.
 

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that point of view too.

My own thought is that right or wrong, the  answers that that model gives, solve a huge amount of subjectivity in the human experience.

 Each answer has its own pros and cons. Since it's philosophy, there is always the risk that the conversation will still be going on in a 1000 years. ;)
 

My understanding is that TI is like realism and idealism simply another model.
An imperfect attempt to draw a more detailed map.
HOWEVER it does rearrange a lot of quantum physics into an entirely new framework

Thank you for your comments and explanation. I think I understand you better
now, and where the key-disagreement is.
 

Ultimately there is no real disagreement, in that in your world view you places things in a certain pattern. The transcendental deduction invalidates that pattern perhaps, but you - and Strawson do not want to take the leap to the logical conclusion because it is profoundly uncomfortable and deeply humiliating.
As a species, we don't know jack shit about anything.
We stumble by on half truths, and the only Truth is the enlightenment of knowing that to be the case.
We discover we have metaphysical choices that are life changing., Religious conversion perhaps - but we have no idea why we ought to make those choices.
And sometime, we prefer to stay exactly where we were. Chopping wood, fetching water.

A cross section of the history of ideas and philosophy of science maybe? It is very interesting!
>

I spent many years looking at religions, magical systems, cults and so on. And the paranormal and unexplained 'weird shit'. It is even more peppered with total bullshit than philosophy, but it does give a clue as to how  weird some peoples minds are.

 This is the truth! It seems to me that "magic" has collapsed into pop-psychology

It always was.
Yesterdays black magicians are today's politicians,  marketing executives and creatives.  Weaving spells to enslave you, take your money, and control your behaviour.
E.g. Critical race theory is a *spell*. It modifies the individuals metaphysics so that all they can see is race and conflict, and all they think they ought to feel is rage.
Disgusting piece of applied metaphysics.
It is all about modifying the worldview of individuals.
As I said, there are an infinite number of possible worldviews that more or less fit the facts, and the basis of e.g. AgitProp is to convince the individual to select one over another.
What Terry Pratchett called 'headology'
Back in the day everyone stuck a God in their worldview, and provided he was teaching humility, it all worked. Beware of gods who teach pride, superiority  and conflict. Nazism, Islam. Nasty shit.

in our current day and age. I am very interested in the subject, from that
angle. I think magic dovetails nicely with the philosophy of Feyerabend and
perhaps you can add a pinch of pragmatism as well.

I rejected Feyerabend. He missed the point, and I think he was another person trying to make philosophy fit his predilections. He has a chequered past too. Far too much politics in it.

At least that seems  to be the  justification I get when talking to "occultists" and wiccans.
 

I gave up on them both., They didn't understand what they were doing.
I remember popping into a little bookshop in my local town and meeting a girl who used to run an occult bookshop in London. I said hi and she said 'who sent you?'
Nothing would convince her that it was pure happenstance because that is where I lived. Apparently there was a psychic war that started after I lost touch with that lot.
To believe in other people's occult power over you is a corollary of believing that you have power over them. Shit way to live frankly.  The shop was closed next time I passed. She ran.
I mean look at Putin. Classic psychopath in a society ruled by fellow psychopaths. Black magician first class. Summa cum laude. What we in Britain call a total cunt, referencing the power of the vagina to cloud men's judgement...
He wins, or he loses, because his life is and always has been one long battle for supremacy and recognition. His god is power, and his worldview is nothing but a giant chessboard of pawns, and the game of power.
I wouldn't want to be him. Either he gets Ukraine or Ukraine or his own fellow pyschopaths get him. He has disallowed any alternatives. Battle and sudden death is all he has.
He needs to be put down like a rabid dog.
Do you see how people have huge subjective elements to their worldviews, and they are fluid, and can be changed by people with strong personalities?
And the most vulnerable are those who think they are smart. They can be baited with poisoned ideas.
The proletariat simply says 'your shitting me, fuck off' I have a lot of respect for the proles.
Nietzsche says 'be strong' I say 'fuck that, I want some peace'. I will be more or less invisible instead. :-)
But realism doesn't allow for this subjectivity. A realist believes in the truth of his ideas. That is supremely dangerous.
The idealist magician believes his ideas form other peoples reality.
Equally dangerous.

Funnily enough, I was very familiar with UFO cults and the like and the 'men in black meme' and when the film came out I was  super amused when one of my employees insisted in explaining what 'men in black' were.
>
I didn't think admitting I probably knew ten times more than they did was consistent with running an orderly business.

 Maybe you stopped too soon? If not, you would have had a nice old age, with many
young women to support you! ;)

Christ! One was bad enough. No support whatsoever.  The only thing I agree with Nietzsche on is that 'all women's problems are solved by pregnancy'
The Zulu says 'women are strange cattle'
They are dominated by hormones - more so than even men are. And they can sublimate them but never eliminate them.
The current pretence is that we are all free and enlightened, but no, we are not.
We are, just underneath, animals trying to mate, in a blind sort of urge.
And no amount of lipstick turns that pig into an angel
The best people are those who accept that as a truth and do not go into denial.
--
If I had all the money I've spent on drink...
..I'd spend it on drink.
Sir Henry (at Rawlinson's End)