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Two Schopenhauer scholars argued in an interview that Schopenhauer's Will should have been named Energy.

About the philosophers:

Both Bryan Magee and Frederick Copleston are considered experts on Schopenhauer due to their extensive work and contributions to the understanding of Schopenhauer's philosophy.

Bryan Magee wrote "The Philosophy of Schopenhauer," which is a comprehensive study of Schopenhauer's thought and is widely regarded as one of the best introductions to Schopenhauer's philosophy. Frederick Copleston, on the other hand, wrote "Arthur Schopenhauer: Philosopher of Pessimism," which is a classic in Schopenhauer scholarship.

Citations from the video:

Bryan Magee: I think it would have been better if Schopenhauer would have used the word energy because he decided to give the term the name Will to this metaphysical reality and I think that has misled people ever since.

Coplestone: Schopenauer uses the word Will, perhaps unfortunately. One might use energy.

Bryan Magee: Yes he thought that if we analyze this world of experience - the world of science if you like - the world of common sense, which does consist for the most part of matter in motion and most of it is matter in colossal amounts, I mean Galaxies and Solar systems and so on, travelling through the cosmos at gigantic speeds, so the whole material Universe consists of matter in motion to a degree that so to speak defies our imagination to really conceptualize it and he argued following on from Kant that all what is ultimate in all this must be energy.

Schopenhauer argued that matter is as it were instantiated energy and that a physical object is a space filled with force and that ultimately all matter must be transmutable into energy.
...
Schopenhauer argues that what is ultimate in this world of phenomena in this world of experience is energy.


A user on this forum commented with the following:

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 11:17 amJust to note that the phenomenon of energy, so called (prevoyantly as Magee puts it, considering how the later science uses the term), is not what Schopenhauer referred to as noumenal. The closest we come to noumena is our own interiority, and "will" is based on this; here this metaphysical intimation is very different from terms an empirical scientist could relate to. I think there is something important about this, but the problem rises out of thinking noumenal "discovery" within should be coextensive with science's lexicon.

The two in this conversation agree that Schopenhauer "misled" people and "energy," an "impersonal" word, would have been better. I say rubbish!

One must simply recall Melville's Moby Dick, a striking example of what Schopenhauerian metaphysics should be telling us. The metaphysics of a term like energy is, frankly due to its neutrality, altogether wrong, and for obvious reasons, mostly having to do with VALUE. The infinite quantification of all things, essentially what science does, has nothing at all to do with the affective nature of existence as we witness it, for this latter is a qualitative determination, and belongs to the essential givenness of the world.

One has to look very closely at this notion of givenness, with an eye to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, as well (and his Lecture on Ethics, Value and Culture): We live mostly in a language world, and identify with this world. In this, we are taught to ignore the depths of our existence. Most philosophers are so enamored by language and logic that they are among the worst offenders, what, with making lecturing and writing their very living (which is what makes Wittgenstein such an extraordinary thinker. The gravitas of a lived life was not lost on him).

As i have argued, there really is no division between the noumenal and the phenomenal; the latter belongs inescapably to the former. It is folly to "draw a line." But this is, as written, only theoretically true, that is, true in language's totality. Language holds powerful sway in our everydayness, the naturalistic attitude, as Husserl put it. Liberation from this is a monumental task. Schopenhauer's view of the awfulness of metaphysics fails to see that this awfulness, paired with goodness (ugh! such a term is so trite and laughable in our culture) itself is what ethics is all about, and the noumenal setting of our existence is not ethically neutral at all. It is exactly as it appears: the striving for the one and away from the other. Thus: in nature (think Husserl) we witnesses the contingencies of our affairs, embedded in language, culture, historically determined, etc., but the noumenal "underpinning for this rests with the absolute, which is value, and value is precisely the opposite of neutral. Indeed, nothing could be more radical.

What is your opinion on the use of the term Energy instead of Will?

The World as Will and Representation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World ... esentation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/

Vol 1.: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195 ... tion_Vol_1

Vol 2.: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/445 ... tion_Vol_2

value wrote:Magee: Schopenhauer argues that what is ultimate in this world of phenomena in this world of experience is energy.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 11:17 amJust to note that the phenomenon of energy, so called (prevoyantly as Magee puts it, considering how the later science uses the term), is not what Schopenhauer referred to as noumenal. The closest we come to noumena is our own interiority, and "will" is based on this; here this metaphysical intimation is very different from terms an empirical scientist could relate to. I think there is something important about this, but the problem rises out of thinking noumenal "discovery" within should be coextensive with science's lexicon.

The two in this conversation agree that Schopenhauer "misled" people and "energy," an "impersonal" word, would have been better. I say rubbish!

I understand your argument but I still think that it is interesting to try to understand what Magee and Copleston mean with the term energy. It is obviously not the same type of energy as energy from fire.

Energy is described as 'the ability to do work'. It could be considered an invalid term by definition because in the case of Schopenhauer's Will it concerns the most fundamental aspect in the Universe and there is no 'what' to have an ability. Therefore the term energy would not be neutral when it is to replace Will but it would evolve out of an aspect that 'cannot be named'.

When viewed from that perspective I find it very interesting that Magee and Copleston seek to replace the term Will with energy.

My own perspective is that directionality might be considered a sort of energy when it is considered by itself because it would translate in what retro-perspectively can be considered 'work' in nature.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 11:17 amOne must simply recall Melville's Moby Dick, a striking example of what Schopenhauerian metaphysics should be telling us. The metaphysics of a term like energy is, frankly due to its neutrality, altogether wrong, and for obvious reasons, mostly having to do with VALUE. The infinite quantification of all things, essentially what science does, has nothing at all to do with the affective nature of existence as we witness it, for this latter is a qualitative determination, and belongs to the essential givenness of the world.

One has to look very closely at this notion of givenness, with an eye to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, as well (and his Lecture on Ethics, Value and Culture): We live mostly in a language world, and identify with this world. In this, we are taught to ignore the depths of our existence. Most philosophers are so enamored by language and logic that they are among the worst offenders, what, with making lecturing and writing their very living (which is what makes Wittgenstein such an extraordinary thinker. The gravitas of a lived life was not lost on him).

As i have argued, there really is no division between the noumenal and the phenomenal; the latter belongs inescapably to the former. It is folly to "draw a line." But this is, as written, only theoretically true, that is, true in language's totality. Language holds powerful sway in our everydayness, the naturalistic attitude, as Husserl put it. Liberation from this is a monumental task. Schopenhauer's view of the awfulness of metaphysics fails to see that this awfulness, paired with goodness (ugh! such a term is so trite and laughable in our culture) itself is what ethics is all about, and the noumenal setting of our existence is not ethically neutral at all. It is exactly as it appears: the striving for the one and away from the other. Thus: in nature (think Husserl) we witnesses the contingencies of our affairs, embedded in language, culture, historically determined, etc., but the noumenal "underpinning for this rests with the absolute, which is value, and value is precisely the opposite of neutral. Indeed, nothing could be more radical.

Can you please explain what you mean with the term 'absolute'?

I find the term absolute to be expressing existence per se in an as definitive sense as possible, as if a retro-perspective would allow the perception of such a nature as an independent concept, causing the idea that the world is deterministic (pre-judged) of nature.

My opinion is that value isn't absolute but instead is a 'beholder of meaning' (it attempts to describe something) which relates to existence wholly, similar as the idea of absolute, but only in such a way that it is a retro-perspective that has no ground in itself.

Value requires the assignment of meaning (Levinas seems to call this signification) and without that act of assignment an 'external world' (existence) cannot be meaningfully relevant. Therefore one has a first clue that value cannot be an absolute because value is dependent on an aspect that is not contained within value itself.

The essence of value is found in the idea of the simplest pattern and there one finds the obligation to explain the potential of that pattern which cannot be a pattern itself.

The potential of a pattern is necessarily meaningful and that results in the assertion that the origin of the potential of a pattern can be referred to as 'pure meaning'.

Levinas said the following with regard the origin of existence (the cosmos):

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)

It seems that Levinas concluded that the origin of value is goodness.

I came to the same idea initially but I now believe that it is invalid.

Signification - the act of valuing (the origin of value) - seeks qualitative deviance which in retro-perspective is an aspired good, resulting in the philosophical conclusion that goodness (good per se) is fundamentally required.

I don't believe in a pre-judgement (determinism) when it concerns the origin of the universe. I don't believe that good is a 'given'.

Goodness (good per se) involves a judgement and therefore it is an after-the-fact retro-perspective view on what supposedly is the origin of existence. It supposes that existence has happened before describing its fundamental requirement and only the experience of existence would allow one to do that, which means that it cannot be valid because one is to explain the origin of that experience.

Goodness has a qualitative nature that cannot be legitimized in the face of the fact that one seeks an a priori explanation for quality - the ability to judge (before it was judged) - per se. Thus the concept goodness cannot be valid and one is to seek a higher pureness that would retro-perspectively give rise to the idea of goodness, which would be 'pure meaning'.

It might be difficult to view the origin of value as pure meaning because when viewed as an independent concept it could be perceived as boundless or infinite and thereby not apparently meaningful to the world of existence bound value.

Why would an aspect that is beginning-less of nature result in a pattern or that which is finite of nature? There is no logical bridge between the two ideas. The idea of a beginning-less pattern is absurd.

When it concerns the origin of the Universe one is to explain directedness (the source of form, the arrow of time, life's energetic organizing behaviour, etc.).

'directedness by itself' is a deviation and perhaps it is there that one finds a clue with regard the nature of the source of existence.

value wrote: ↑June 12th, 2023, 6:15 pm

value wrote:Magee: Schopenhauer argues that what is ultimate in this world of phenomena in this world of experience is energy.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 11:17 amJust to note that the phenomenon of energy, so called (prevoyantly as Magee puts it, considering how the later science uses the term), is not what Schopenhauer referred to as noumenal. The closest we come to noumena is our own interiority, and "will" is based on this; here this metaphysical intimation is very different from terms an empirical scientist could relate to. I think there is something important about this, but the problem rises out of thinking noumenal "discovery" within should be coextensive with science's lexicon.

The two in this conversation agree that Schopenhauer "misled" people and "energy," an "impersonal" word, would have been better. I say rubbish!

I understand your argument but I still think that it is interesting to try to understand what Magee and Copleston mean with the term energy. It is obviously not the same type of energy as energy from fire.

Energy is described as 'the ability to do work'. It could be considered an invalid term by definition because in the case of Schopenhauer's Will it concerns the most fundamental aspect in the Universe and there is no 'what' to have an ability. Therefore the term energy would not be neutral when it is to replace Will but it would evolve out of an aspect that 'cannot be named'.

When viewed from that perspective I find it very interesting that Magee and Copleston seek to replace the term Will with energy.

My own perspective is that directionality might be considered a sort of energy when it is considered by itself because it would translate in what retro-perspectively can be considered 'work' in nature.

This sounds like the sort of muddle you can read anything you want into.

Energy is a term physics deals with, and Will is a term related to conscious experience.

To claim both are referring to the same thing requires an argument, because at face value they don't. Maybe an argument which reduces one to the other, or that they're different aspects of the same something, or whatever. Without that, it's hard to know what the actual claim being made even means.

Throwing in extra terms like 'directionality' doesn't seem to help, because it just brings us back to asking 'direction of what?'

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 11:17 amThe two in this conversation agree that Schopenhauer "misled" people and "energy," an "impersonal" word, would have been better. I say rubbish!

value wrote: ↑June 12th, 2023, 6:15 pmI understand your argument but I still think that it is interesting to try to understand what Magee and Copleston mean with the term energy.
...
My own perspective is that directionality (as the source of form) might be considered a sort of energy when it is considered by itself because it would translate in what retro-perspectively can be considered 'work' in nature.

Gertie wrote: ↑June 13th, 2023, 1:53 amThis sounds like the sort of muddle you can read anything you want into.

Energy is a term physics deals with, and Will is a term related to conscious experience.

To claim both are referring to the same thing requires an argument, because at face value they don't. Maybe an argument which reduces one to the other, or that they're different aspects of the same something, or whatever. Without that, it's hard to know what the actual claim being made even means.

Throwing in extra terms like 'directionality' doesn't seem to help, because it just brings us back to asking 'direction of what?'

This topic is intended to find out what the meaning is of the term Energy 'as a replacement of Schopenhauer's Will' and whether that term can be said to be more appropriate than Will. The reply by thrasymachus shows that there might be arguments against it.

Did you watch the video? Is your critique based on the suggestion by Magee and Copleston?

With regard the concept directionality or directedness, that concept seems to be related to what is actually meant. That concept would describe (a characteristic of) the fundamental source of form, the arrow of time, life's energetic organizing behaviour, etc.

value wrote: ↑June 13th, 2023, 3:00 am

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 11:17 amThe two in this conversation agree that Schopenhauer "misled" people and "energy," an "impersonal" word, would have been better. I say rubbish!

value wrote: ↑June 12th, 2023, 6:15 pmI understand your argument but I still think that it is interesting to try to understand what Magee and Copleston mean with the term energy.
...
My own perspective is that directionality (as source of form might be considered a sort of energy when it is considered by itself because it would translate in what retro-perspectively can be considered 'work' in nature.

Gertie wrote: ↑June 13th, 2023, 1:53 amThis sounds like the sort of muddle you can read anything you want into.

Energy is a term physics deals with, and Will is a term related to conscious experience.

To claim both are referring to the same thing requires an argument, because at face value they don't. Maybe an argument which reduces one to the other, or that they're different aspects of the same something, or whatever. Without that, it's hard to know what the actual claim being made even means.

Throwing in extra terms like 'directionality' doesn't seem to help, because it just brings us back to asking 'direction of what?'

This topic is intended to find out what the meaning is of the term Energy 'as a replacement of Schopenhauer's Will' and whether that term can be said to be more appropriate than Will. The reply by thrasymachus shows that there might be arguments against it.

Did you watch the video? Is your critique based on the suggestion by Magee and Copleston?

I watched the video a while back, but didn't get much from it except they seemed to be re-defining S's Will as physical energy, and that energy as fundamental. Which is physics. If the boffins who study physics tell me that, then that's their field and I'll listen to them.

With regard the concept directionality or directedness, that concept seems to be related to what is actually meant. That concept would describe (a characteristic of) the fundamental source of form, the arrow of time, life's energetic organizing behaviour, etc.

That all sounds like physics to me

I don't know if S was trying to understand physics or something else, but today physics has moved on, and ''Will'' is associated with conscious experience, and notions like agency, purpose, value, desire, etc - which physics has little to say about. You can draw an anaology between conscious willing and physical processes, but today we tend to philosophically bracket that under the mind-body relationship, which ultimately can have implications about the nature of fundamental ontology too.

value wrote
Can you please explain what you mean with the term 'absolute'?

I find the term absolute to be expressing existence per se in an as definitive sense as possible, as if a retro-perspective would allow the perception of such a nature as an independent concept, causing the idea that the world is deterministic (pre-judged) of nature.

My opinion is that value isn't absolute but instead is a 'beholder of meaning' (it attempts to describe something) which relates to existence wholly, similar as the idea of absolute, but only in such a way that it is a retro-perspective that has no ground in itself.

Value requires the assignment of meaning (Levinas seems to call this signification) and without that act of assignment an 'external world' (existence) cannot be meaningfully relevant. Therefore one has a first clue that value cannot be an absolute because value is dependent on an aspect that is not contained within value itself.

The essence of value is found in the idea of the simplest pattern and there one finds the obligation to explain the potential of that pattern which cannot be a pattern itself.

Well, it's like, don't get me started, because this question is THE philosophical question for me. This is why I read philosophy at all. Signification? This does beg the question, doesn't it? Levinas does not, as far as I've read, state the matter at its basis.

Wittgenstein would simply turn his chair to the wall in response to "explain what you mean by absolute." His Tractatus is infamously self critical, for he does take up this question but insists it should be passed over in silence. Once one really gets what he is up to, one understands the basic post modern problem with philosophy, which is the giveness of the world.

I don't think Wittgenstein's taboo on speaking the unspeakable stops us from talking about absolutes, talking around them within language to intimate what is not language. There is this paper by Derrida on Levinas, the Metaphysics of Violence that does just this. Levinas' Totality and Infinity does this. Those French theo-philosophers, Jean luc Marion, Jean luc Nancy and Michel Henry do this. This is analytic philosophy's biggest complaint: that talking like this is a kind of "seduction of language", but my thinking is that analytic types just don't understand the world very well. And they don't understand religion at all.

Anyway, absolutes. Here is a good knife, sharp, balanced, etc., but then, what if I need a knife for Macbeth? Then it being sharp is just the opposite of what is needed; someone might get hurt otherwise. This is an example of contingency, and all meanings of thigs are like this (see Stanley Fish's Is There a Text in this class for a fuller account). Subject to recontextualizing that gives them different meanings. Kant's categories included, and this is a pretty big idea that has to be put off for later. But what if one could conceive of something that in spite of all the possible contextual variations, remained what it was. That something could not be a language entity, for all things language can say are ipso facto contingent, and you could read Derrida (and Fish, and others) for this: language is an historical phenomenon (Heidegger), and when we take something up in language it is taken up "as" a concept in language; or, when we use a term, the term's apparent singularity is Really a diffusion of other meanings; etc. There are lots of ways to put this, but the point is, language does not "speak" the world of objects. Jupiter is taking that out there AS a term 'Jupiter' and, as Rorty said, there are no propositions "out there", only here, in us.

So back to the knife: Note that if it is to be used for Macbeth the sharpness as a good feature vanishes and becomes a bad feature, showing the contingency of good and bad. Now we ask the metaethical question: what about ethical goodness, what is it? This refers to the goodness and badness of the ethicality in all ethical issues, and ethical issues certainly are contingent, for as we all know, every ethical issue is tied up to the myriad facts in the world, and judgment of good and bad depends on these. But the metaethical question isn't asking about this or that issue, but ALL ethical issues: what makes ethics ethical? What is the essence of ethicality itself? And this turns to value, and value turns us away from language and toward the essential givenness of the world, (for which Husserl has provided us with a method, the phenomenological reduction {epoche}. I won't talk about Husserl, though. Too long a discussion. Just this: Husserl thought he had found to true foundation for a "science" of philosophy, which is the intuitive given or presence of the world that is presupposed by the natural sciences. But since this is ethics, I want to look at a reduction to the ethical.)

Now forget the knife and othe r examples of contingency (everything) and consider a strong ethical counter example to contingency: say it is the case that you have to choose to either torture horribly one one child for an entire day, or have tortured a thousand children over and over for a thousand years. The very clear choice in this would be to think in terms of sheer utility, and opt for the former. And here is the point: No matter how many children are in the equation, or really, how the suffering is characterized, the ethical decision in favor of sparing the thousand over the one does not one whit diminish the suffering of the one. It is not like the case of the knife where qualities can be conceived to be good or bad, depending on context. NO context can alter the essence of suffering, for suffering is not contextually bound. It is not contextually bound because the question is a metaquestion, an apriori question about suffering's essence, and this essence is existential. Here we have something that is apriori true AND is existential. It is not like the apriority of logic. Kant's transcendentalism refers to logic's pure rational basis, and note: logic, like all of our terms is contingent! That is, as Heidegger put it, we take those weird insistences like modus ponens and the law of the excluded middle AS language entities so we can talk about the world, but as such they are bound what language can say, and again, and this can't be said enough, language does not "speak" the world. But suffering is not language, it is IN the world's essential giveness AND it does "speak". Put a lit match to your finger and you are not going to have a language experience. And what is the world saying in this pain? Why, it's bad, of course. (And 'bad' belongs to language, one can see. One has to look into the "space" between the pain and the term. This matter goes to talk about qualia, the "pure" phenomenological pain itself; it goes to Moore's Principia Ethica where he speakls of a "non natural quality", and so on)

For me, this argument is profound, for it demonstrates something most believe impossible outside of religious faith, ethical absolutism. In religion, we have, say, Moses and the stone tablets written by God that speaks a moral finality. IF this were true, then it would be an absolute commandment to obey. One cannot argue this for it is apriori true given what God is assumed to be, the absolute! And absolutes are not to be denied by definition. Simple as that. But here, we take the matter beyond an historical narrative, merely, and into the world itself. The world "speaks" its ethicality. It is not the contrived apriority of St Anselm's Greatest Possible Being, or the disembodied rationality of Kant. It issues from existence itself. And to speak like Levinas, it is a transcendental commandment that we witness in the face of the Other.

And you can argue against this, certainly. But it is just a "tip of the iceberg" argument, the bulk of it unseen here. There are issues with language and contingency and presence and the nature of ethics and absolutes, and so on. There is a reason Wittgenstein insisted we cannot talk about metavalue and metaethics and analytic philosophers simply don't (for a good read on their side, I always recommend John Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Soo well written, yet, so oblivious. Typical, really. Analytic philosophers love Wittgenstein because he made it clear that the unspeakable should remain just this, and so a program of clarity and positivism could rise up, and intellectuals want nothing more that this, to speak exactly and to find meaning in things with a firm grounding the totality of meanings across the spectrum of common sense and science. My thinking is that they don't really understand what it is to be human at all. Heidegger did, with Levinas and others in his wake building on his thought).

In a nutshell, that is my thought on absolutes. Husserl tried this with everything, ordinary perception with no references, mostly, the metaethics (meta aesthetic, meta value). Heidegger went another way, the way of hermeneutics, which is right, I think.

Ethics (and aesthetics), far and away, the strangest thing one can witness.

Gertie wrote
I watched the video a while back, but didn't get much from it except they seemed to be re-defining S's Will as physical energy, and that energy as fundamental. Which is physics. If the boffins who study physics tell me that, then that's their field and I'll listen to them.

But you have to see that Schopenhauer was following through on Kant. "Will" is intended to be a transcendental term, one especially conceived our of observations of the interiority of a human being (and that of a cow or a paramecium). Such interiority is metaphysicality itself! And what a nightmare! Energy "does" this, and this gives energy an ethical dimension. But the way we use this term energy, it has a connotative setting of natural science that is entirely alien to this metaethical dimension. See in the conversation how both interlocutors agree that energy hardly be called "wicked"! And then at 23:40 listen to Magee's paraphrasal of the text. THAT is what needs accounting for when talking about what Will is.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 13th, 2023, 11:13 am

Gertie wrote
I watched the video a while back, but didn't get much from it except they seemed to be re-defining S's Will as physical energy, and that energy as fundamental. Which is physics. If the boffins who study physics tell me that, then that's their field and I'll listen to them.

But you have to see that Schopenhauer was following through on Kant. "Will" is intended to be a transcendental term, one especially conceived our of observations of the interiority of a human being (and that of a cow or a paramecium). Such interiority is metaphysicality itself! And what a nightmare! Energy "does" this, and this gives energy an ethical dimension. But the way we use this term energy, it has a connotative setting of natural science that is entirely alien to this metaethical dimension. See in the conversation how both interlocutors agree that energy hardly be called "wicked"! And then at 23:40 listen to Magee's paraphrasal of the text. THAT is what needs accounting for when talking about what Will is.

I assume by ''interiority'' you mean conscious experience, if so you seem to be saying S believed conscious experience is a form/manifestation of physical energy. I expect most physicalists would agree that conscious experience is ontologically reducible to to mass and forces, which have some relationship to energy. Tho they can't explain how. But once conscious experience arises, there's an evolutionary account for the utility of our human moral predispositions. Which will be different to a cow's, spider's or a frog's, who have different evolutionary histories.

If you want to instead claim conscious experience is fundamental, well panpsychists and idealists take that view. But that's necessarily speculative, and you'd need to offer compelling evidence or argument, which I honestly don't think exists. We don't have access to that kind of knowledge imo. But if you have an argument for whatever your ontology is, from S or elsewhere, which you can clearly and concisely lay out - that would be interesting. As it stands, we don't even know what S actually means by energy.

Gertie wrote
I assume by ''interiority'' you mean conscious experience, if so you seem to be saying S believed conscious experience is a form/manifestation of physical energy. I expect most physicalists would agree that conscious experience is ontologically reducible to to mass and forces, which have some relationship to energy. Tho they can't explain how. But once conscious experience arises, there's an evolutionary account for the utility of our human moral predispositions. Which will be different to a cow's, spider's or a frog's, who have different evolutionary histories.

If you want to instead claim conscious experience is fundamental, well panpsychists and idealists take that view. But that's necessarily speculative, and you'd need to offer compelling evidence or argument, which I honestly don't think exists. We don't have access to that kind of knowledge imo. But if you have an argument for whatever your ontology is, from S or elsewhere, which you can clearly and concisely lay out - that would be interesting. As it stands, we don't even know what S actually means by energy.

I'm actually saying "physical energy" is not at all what conscious experience is a form/manifestation of. The term belongs to contexts that do not and cannot deal with the most salient features of existence, ethics and aesthetics. Schopenhauer

Physicalists? Physicalists want to reduce experience to physicality in one way or another, and the question about this relies entirely on what is meant by the term 'physicalism'. It has a wide range of applications, but in ontology, it is generally taken to be a strong repudiation of metaphysics and a strong affirmation of natural science. Apart from thinking like this having a radical epistemic deficit, given that physicality does not produce anything remotely like knowledge of objects in the world, it simply ignores the ethical dimension of our existence, which is what Schopenhauer is all about.

I think since Einstein, physicalists have little trouble explaining energy vis a vis physicality, you know, the relation between mass and energy. I imagine there are technical questions about this, but these appear within the "normal science" and its paradigms.

Utility? Yes, morality, it seems, is conducive to reproduction and survival. A bit like saying a stone makes a good weapon: one dimension of what a stone is. But, of course, hardly exhaustive of the geology of rocks and minerals.

Idealism is a misleading term. Certainly not foundational. Hermeneutics is better: whatever idea one may have to explain something, its justification lies with within the context of its relevance. Beyond context, there is metaphysics, and this is no less than the openness of knowledge claims qua knowledge claims (and not the localized openness of a particular field). Panpsychists? To me this kind of thinking, along with idealism, simply misses the point, which should be about the descriptive account of what lies before us and what has to be true given its being there. Period. But this leads to explanations regarding the structure of the epistemic relation, and this is something physicalists and idealists alike cannot provide.

THE great faults in the philosophical enterprise are the epistemic deficit, and the ontological deficit concerning value. Every analytic philosopher knows this. They just ignore it.

When you say, "But if you have an argument for whatever your ontology is, from S or elsewhere, which you can clearly and concisely lay out - that would be interesting. As it stands, we don't even know what S actually means by energy," I am intrigued.

But the question really is, can you go this distance? Concisely laying out an ontology is a tall order, but the above statement that "THE great faults in the philosophical enterprise are the epistemic deficit, and the ontological deficit concerning value. Every analytic philosopher knows this. They just ignore it" is the beginning.

No, of course not.
There are good reasons why he would want to make a distinction between "The Will", and the light from his lamp.

thras -

...the point, which should be about the descriptive account of what lies before us and what has to be true given its being there. Period. But this leads to explanations regarding the structure of the epistemic relation, and this is something physicalists and idealists alike cannot provide.


THE great faults in the philosophical enterprise are the epistemic deficit, and the ontological deficit concerning value. Every analytic philosopher knows this. They just ignore it.


When you say, "But if you have an argument for whatever your ontology is, from S or elsewhere, which you can clearly and concisely lay out - that would be interesting. As it stands, we don't even know what S actually means by energy," I am intrigued.

OK, so can you account for the nature and content of our conscious experience and make a clear and concise argument for your claim?  If so, please lay it out, in unambiguous language.  Note - a concise argument using clear, unambiguous language is the request. 

Gertie wrote
OK, so can you account for the nature and content of our conscious experience and make a clear and concise argument for your claim? If so, please lay it out, in unambiguous language. Note - a concise argument using clear, unambiguous language is the request.

I can deliver arguments, keeping in mind that the confidence one has stepping out of one's door is grounded in an "argument". But if you want real clarity, then it has to be YOUR clarity. It doesn't do much good if every affirmation issues from me without a sharing of what things are at issue. this is the problem, because you won't find standard approaches very helpful. Natural science has no place here for the obvious reason that it doesn't deal with epistemology or value or metaphysics.

The nature of conscious experience has to begin with cleaning house, and this requires a reduction, which simply means finding what it is that is to be talked about and analyzed. Note that Kant was talking about ordinary judgment, logic as it is found in everyday affairs and their extension, natural science. NOT the everyday affairs themselves. One has to walk away from this, just as a scientist does when she takes up technical matters in her field.

As to being concise, see how straight maieutics goes.

So where to begin? With simplicity. Kant is out. Physicalism needs to be discarded to talk about this "nature" of consciousness, and to be rid of this, we look at basic assumptions. E.g., how does, on a physicalist's model, anything outside of consciousness get IN consciousness? This is a critical question, for physicalism is an objective theory that is grounded on observation of objects in the world, and it is reasonable to ask, how this essential epistemic foundation for ALL such observations works.

That is unambiguous. One object brain physical-thing facing Mount Kilimanjaro. How does the former have an epistemic relation with the latter?

thras

Gertie wrote
OK, so can you account for the nature and content of our conscious experience and make a clear and concise argument for your claim? If so, please lay it out, in unambiguous language. Note - a concise argument using clear, unambiguous language is the request.

I can deliver arguments,

Great. Just your own unambiguous and concise argument accounting for the nature and content of our conscious experience please. (Consider the ground cleared of other ontologies and arguments and their problems).

Gertie wrote
Great. Just your own unambiguous and concise argument accounting for the nature and content of our conscious experience please. (Consider the ground cleared of other ontologies and arguments and their problems).

One object, a brain physical-thing, facing Mount Kilimanjaro. How does the former have an epistemic relation with the latter?

There are two sides to this, the ethical/aesthetic and the epistemological. This question above penetrates to the epistemic issue. Like I said, Kant is out simply because he makes the whole thing so convoluted. This is the short cut. the assumption, departing from Kant, is this: we really don't care about agreement among those in a perceptual community. I see a cow and say, look, a cow, and you agree. It is simply not a point of interest whether what you see is "the same" as what I see. Pragmatic agreement is enough, meaning what I say aligns well enough to make a connection, participate in a consensus about cows, and solve problems regarding them.

So the question needs an answer. I wonder what yours is.