Philosophy Discussion Forums

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 12:07 am I know how you like to be disagreeable, so I thought you might set up a good rant.

There's a difference between being disagreeable and disagreeing. If you prefer I stop disagreeing when there's so much to disagree with, please let me know.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 12:07 amI see you as a modern scientific rationalist.

What's the difference between a rationalist (as in believing that rational is a good thing to be) and a scientific rationalist who depends on his abilities to process, as in rationalize, empirical data?

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 12:07 am I usually see myself as post-postmodern, even though I have no idea what that is.

Neither can I. The post-post-modern you mention can also resemble a future state of a world without people...one of my favorite non-fiction books. Labels are simple to conceive; what they simplistically seek to describe is usually the opposite of that.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 12:07 am How would you characterize most writers on this blog? I think they too are modern scientific rationalists.

It wouldn't be rational to argue against rationality. Most people would agree including many who aren't rational but don't known it...if you get my point. As for writers on this blog or any blog; everyone lives in a cocoon of their own perceptions since living and thinking can be complicated...especially the latter being nearly impossible for some.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 12:07 amBy then others will have become trans-meta-post-postmodern alchemists

...no doubt as presented in a new medieval morality play of Doctor Faustus as a reinvention of the human.

Jklint wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 7:46 pm
...no doubt as presented in a new medieval morality play of Doctor Faustus as a reinvention of the human.

In the new post-postmodern world reading is not-reading. Here's an article for you to not-read. https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The ... And_Beyond

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 7:57 pm Here's an article for you to not-read. https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The ... And_Beyond

Will a moderator please hurry up and OK my pseudo-modern Model of the Karmic Wheel?

dawwg wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 8:19 pm

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 7:57 pm Here's an article for you to not-read. https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The ... And_Beyond

Will a moderator please hurry up and OK my pseudo-modern Model of the Karmic Wheel?

We are all our own moderators now. I will gladly look at your Wheel. Where is it? I hope it won't take much time. I have to fit it in with my morning news programs.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 8:50 pm

dawwg wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 8:19 pm

Will a moderator please hurry up and OK my pseudo-modern Model of the Karmic Wheel?

We are all our own moderators now. I will gladly look at your Wheel. Where is it? I hope it won't take much time. I have to fit it in with my morning news programs.

In the queue for the Philosopher's Lounge.

dawwg wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 9:33 pm
In the queue for the Philosopher's Lounge.

Yes, it's not there. At least I couldn't find it. Can you tell me your basic idea?

Sculptor1: It is in no way the language of abstract form. Abstraction is the utter rejection of mathematics.

I meant "abstract" in the sense of being explanatory rather than descriptive.

GaryLouisSmith: Is mathematics a concept invented by the mind or is it discovered out in Reality?

I'd say it was discovered, not invented, which would mean it is not an abstract formulation. Is that your point? Have I called Miss Synonym Miss Antonym? Will she ever speak to me again?

Felix wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 10:22 pm

Sculptor1: It is in no way the language of abstract form. Abstraction is the utter rejection of mathematics.

I meant "abstract" in the sense of being explanatory rather than descriptive.

GaryLouisSmith: Is mathematics a concept invented by the mind or is it discovered out in Reality?

I'd say it was discovered, not invented, which would mean it is not an abstract formulation. Is that your point? Have I called Miss Synonym Miss Antonym? Will she ever speak to me again?

Consider Sleep. I mean the thing itself, not this or that person or animal sleeping. Consider the abstract Form of Tree, not this or that tree or this or that kind of tree. Do Sleep and the form of Tree exist? They are abstract things, as I use the word "abstract". And they are each individuated things in themselves different from all other abstract things. Nonetheless, that individuation is different from a particular individual exemplifying that abstract form. I am acquainted with Sleep and Tree apart from individual instances of each. You may disagree. I don't think those abstract things are either explanatory or descriptive. They just are. Here is Piet Mondrian's progressively more abstract tree. https://www.google.com/search?q=piet+mo ... kWvcAWgOJM: Beyond all that there is conceptual art where the object disappears altogether. https://www.artspace.com/magazine/inter ... t-of-55188

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 7:14 pm

Felix wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 3:58 pm

Language itself is a mental filter, it influences how you interpret what you experience.



That's an odd statement: mathematics is Science's primary tool, and it could be called the language of abstract form.

Right there is the crux of the fight Russell had with the Idealism that had taken over Cambridge in the 1800s. Idealism said that in order to know the world the mind had to go through mental representations of the world first. And those representations “colored” your view. It was the play between Sinn and Bedeutung. If I say that some jackals are threatening the chickens, you have to first encounter the meaning of the sentence (der Sinn) and then check what that meaning refers to (die Bedeutung).

Russell, who was aiming for realism, insisted that the mind knew the object, referent, Bedautung directly without indirectly going at it through the meaning of a sentence or mental representation. For Russell, the meaning of a sentence WAS the referent, the Bedeutung. There was no distinction between concept, mental representation and the object itself. Direct vs. Indirect Realism. Indirect Realism was in fact Idealism for him.

The same goes for mathematics. Is it a tool in the mind or is it something outside the mind, perhaps in a Platonic Realm of Pure Forms? Is mathematics a concept invented by the mind or is it discovered out in Reality? And what about Infinity?

'There's a fox threatening the chickens" is something my dog whose native language is not English or any other human language might say and I'd understand the dog's meaning. So the dog is communicatiing a Gestalt.


When some English speaking pedant intervenes and analyses "what do you mean by 'fox'? " or "how can you tell the fox is threatening?" then you are into abstractions from the Gestalt. Abstractions can only be done by means of symbols .Symbols may be mediated through the dances of bees, spoken words, pictures, mathematical symbols, and so on.

The answering pedant says "I mean a furry mammal, one furry mammal, creeping on its belly
near the wire netting of the hen pen." you are into the cognitive area of symbolic abstractions. Mammals in general, furriness in general, all known bellies, wire netting, hens, the concept of 'one', and enclosures are presumably not present to the communicators, therefore they are conceptual abstractions from the whole(the Gestalt). When my dog is aware of the fox event her reaction is part of the Gestalt. Symbols abstract and analyse regardless of whatever symbolic system they may be.

There is overlap. Symbols would be impossible without the Gestalt of the event.However the Gestalt of the event could exist without any symbolic analysis. But wait! This analytical thing that humans do is also a component of the Gestalt.

Gestalt, Merriam-Webster
Definition of gestalt
: something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts
When he gets rolling, you're not responding to single jokes—it's the whole gestalt of the movie that's funny.
— Pauline Kael
broadly : the general quality or character of something


There do appear to be events and entities , some of them man-made such as good poems or good music, that are complete and meaningful in themselves and lack any urgency of one's having to act upon them either to possess them or to prevent them. The song of a blackbird may be a sign, symbol, or signal for the musicologist or the biologist, or alternatively it may be a Gestalt.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 10th, 2019, 5:32 am

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 7:14 pm

Right there is the crux of the fight Russell had with the Idealism that had taken over Cambridge in the 1800s. Idealism said that in order to know the world the mind had to go through mental representations of the world first. And those representations “colored” your view. It was the play between Sinn and Bedeutung. If I say that some jackals are threatening the chickens, you have to first encounter the meaning of the sentence (der Sinn) and then check what that meaning refers to (die Bedeutung).

Russell, who was aiming for realism, insisted that the mind knew the object, referent, Bedautung directly without indirectly going at it through the meaning of a sentence or mental representation. For Russell, the meaning of a sentence WAS the referent, the Bedeutung. There was no distinction between concept, mental representation and the object itself. Direct vs. Indirect Realism. Indirect Realism was in fact Idealism for him.

The same goes for mathematics. Is it a tool in the mind or is it something outside the mind, perhaps in a Platonic Realm of Pure Forms? Is mathematics a concept invented by the mind or is it discovered out in Reality? And what about Infinity?

'There's a fox threatening the chickens" is something my dog whose native language is not English or any other human language might say and I'd understand the dog's meaning. So the dog is communicatiing a Gestalt.


When some English speaking pedant intervenes and analyses "what do you mean by 'fox'? " or "how can you tell the fox is threatening?" then you are into abstractions from the Gestalt. Abstractions can only be done by means of symbols .Symbols may be mediated through the dances of bees, spoken words, pictures, mathematical symbols, and so on.

The answering pedant says "I mean a furry mammal, one furry mammal, creeping on its belly
near the wire netting of the hen pen." you are into the cognitive area of symbolic abstractions. Mammals in general, furriness in general, all known bellies, wire netting, hens, the concept of 'one', and enclosures are presumably not present to the communicators, therefore they are conceptual abstractions from the whole(the Gestalt). When my dog is aware of the fox event her reaction is part of the Gestalt. Symbols abstract and analyse regardless of whatever symbolic system they may be.

There is overlap. Symbols would be impossible without the Gestalt of the event.However the Gestalt of the event could exist without any symbolic analysis. But wait! This analytical thing that humans do is also a component of the Gestalt.

Gestalt, Merriam-Webster
Definition of gestalt
: something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts
When he gets rolling, you're not responding to single jokes—it's the whole gestalt of the movie that's funny.
— Pauline Kael
broadly : the general quality or character of something


There do appear to be events and entities , some of them man-made such as good poems or good music, that are complete and meaningful in themselves and lack any urgency of one's having to act upon them either to possess them or to prevent them. The song of a blackbird may be a sign, symbol, or signal for the musicologist or the biologist, or alternatively it may be a Gestalt.

Even a dog can understand a symbolic meaning.
My dog knows "cats and rats" and will go bananas if on a walk. She is very sensitive to context and will be more likely to look puzzled or ignore me were I to say that inside the house. Inside the house "treat" "food", "dinner" will get her excited.
Here's a new one "Mr Ocado". IN the UK one of our supermarket delivery companies is called "Ocado", she goes nuts when the van is about 50 metres away. But when we talk about the delivery two days before when listing the stuff we need on computer, she often runs to the door to see if Mr Ocado in coming up the driveway.
She has a list of known names for toys too.

Your point about people asking "what do you mean by Fox?" is annoying. Are they more or less stupid than a dog?
My dog already seems to know what a fox is, she knows full well that it is not the same as a dog as she reacts completely differently to a fox.
Maybe she is just smarter than the ordinary semantically obsessed and semiotically skeptical philosppher?

Belindi wrote: ↑August 10th, 2019, 5:32 am /Gestalt

I think you have done a good job of explaining or characterizing Gestalt theory, a type of Idealism. No doubt you will have many agreeing with you. I would say that what you wrote is the most popular philosophy around today. I of course am the one who believes the opposite of Gestalt Idealism. In my philosophy, the Gestalt, the Whole, doesn’t exist. What is real are what you called the abstracted pieces. I think you would say that when those pieces are pulled away from the Whole, they die. And that leads directly into a social theory of the Great Family of man and beast.

I think you like the feel of being one with all of Nature. Therefore Gestalt theory suits you. I have no objection, but it is obviously not my feeling.

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I of course am the one who believes the opposite of Gestalt Idealism. In my philosophy, the Gestalt, the Whole, doesn’t exist. What is real are what you called the abstracted pieces.

Thank you.

The problem with direct realism is knowing what is a "piece". As far as I can understand direct realism, the boundary between a "piece " and another "piece" is a subjective and arbitrary boundary.

True, a lover may make a poem to his mistress's eyebrow; and a pianist may play a definitive performance of the nocturne. Jesus may be the paradigm of the perfect man. That particular fox I saw hunting the chickens that night was uniquely the most perfect example of its species and I will never again feel what I felt when I saw it creeping beside the hen pen. All of these are subjective.

GaryLouisSmith: Nonetheless, that individuation is different from a particular individual exemplifying that abstract form. I am acquainted with Sleep and Tree apart from individual instances of each.

Transpersonal psychology supports this view, e.g., Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, but of course it is contrary to the theory of evolution. I suppose Plato would have said this is to be expected because the materialist can only see the play of phenomenal shadows projected on the wall of the Cave.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 10th, 2019, 2:17 pm GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I of course am the one who believes the opposite of Gestalt Idealism. In my philosophy, the Gestalt, the Whole, doesn’t exist. What is real are what you called the abstracted pieces.

Thank you.

The problem with direct realism is knowing what is a "piece". As far as I can understand direct realism, the boundary between a "piece " and another "piece" is a subjective and arbitrary boundary.

True, a lover may make a poem to his mistress's eyebrow; and a pianist may play a definitive performance of the nocturne. Jesus may be the paradigm of the perfect man. That particular fox I saw hunting the chickens that night was uniquely the most perfect example of its species and I will never again feel what I felt when I saw it creeping beside the hen pen. All of these are subjective.

The anti-realists, those who say that universals don’t exist, assume that in the world of things outside the minds, all things are determinate. Universals are indeterminate, therefore they are not real, i.e. among the things outside the mind in the world.

To be determinate, means to be well-defined, all properties specified, all relations clearly seen, all boundaries exactly demarcated, no indecision. The only way to completely determine a thing is by having all of its relations to everything else, to the Whole, to the Gestalt present and accounted for. It is the Gestalt that determines what a thing is and therefore that it is.

Let me, as a philosophical realist, say that I agree that universals are indeterminate. In the case at hand, without considering the Whole it is rather vague just what a fox or jackal is, or a brood of chickens or the idea of threatening. Those things isolated from the Gestalt are as nothing.

Not exactly nothing. They are each something, but a vague something, indeterminate, unspecified, without particularity as this or that.

There are two paths we could take in considering this. One is to say that those vague universals are subjective and the other is to say they are objective. What would it mean to say they are objective or real outside the mind, as I have said? Consider a jackal. They figure prominently in Hindu mythology. A jackal spirit. Very vague indeed. And if real, certainly scary.

So here you are a farmer with chickens. The Jackal spirits are out and about. Which means that real, material jackals are threatening your chickens. You put up a fence, but you also utter mantras that will chase away the Jackal spirits. And for good measure you call in the higher gods to protect you. Of course the religious, spiritual part of that is all very vague. Your head swims in cosmic dust. You tremble. Uncertainty is everywhere. You hope, but you just don’t know for sure.

Universals as real things are troubling. If you could just shove them all into the subjective consciousness and be rid of them, it would be a blessing. But can you? I don’t think so. They will just rumble around in there and you will go mad.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 6:46 am

Greta wrote: ↑August 9th, 2019, 1:38 am
How do you comprehend anything when blinded, deafened, scalded and frozen all at once? Obviously it's impossible to differentiate or discern anything in such a state. BTW, this is not miles from descriptions of how people felt when they returned from near death experiences. All light is blinding. All sounds are painfully loud. They either feel like they are burning or freezing. Their filters apparently had taken a while to start working again.

You could simply have said that when you have a headache you need the filter of aspirin or when kids in the next room are making too much noise or the neighbors are playing their music too loud then you need ear plug filters. Or when you have money worries you need a fairy godmother. None of that is what I am talking about. I was answering a philosophical question, not the psychology of everyday life. In particular I was arguing against Kant.

If you are using those examples, you are not understanding my point. Our mental filters make life possible.