At least you admit that they 'try' to account for how consciousness evolved. But this is disingenuous. You refuse to address the issue of the human mind because it does not fall within the purview of the physical sciences and cannot be accounted for in a strictly logical fashion. You are always suggesting that if something is not accounted for by science then it is not to be taken seriously. You don't address it because it violates your position of 'strict realism'.

The question of the human mind and its place in nature has long been of primary importance in philosophy. And it is especially apt in the context of this thread.

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Right, again it goes back to Descartes when he decided to speak of the world in terms of dualism.

In order for science to work, consciousness must be separate from the thing it is studying, but that creates quite a paradox that it can't fix. How can someone study something that is unrelated to them? That would be like me trying to read a book in Japanese.

Of course they try. And I think that one day they will succeed. No one can know a priori what science can do. History is strewn with the bones of those who predicted that science cannot do this or that. It was at one time said win confidence that science would never be able to tell the constitution of the stars. Not long after, the spectroscope was invented.

Of course they try. And I think that one day they will succeed. No one can know a priori what science can do. History is strewn with the bones of those who predicted that science cannot do this or that. It was at one time said win confidence that science would never be able to tell the constitution of the stars. Not long after, the spectroscope was invented.

Right. So you have a guy like Kant figuring out what the essential structure of our perception. He had the transcendental unity of apperception, but what is that? What is consciousness? What is the Being of beings? If qualia and transcendental intuitions like space and time are continuous, then they cannot be adequately described via words, for words impose unity. But an particular unity can be negated. We can zoom out indefinitely. It's a tricky matter that most folks dodge.

Of course they try. And I think that one day they will succeed. No one can know a priori what science can do. History is strewn with the bones of those who predicted that science cannot do this or that. It was at one time said win confidence that science would never be able to tell the constitution of the stars. Not long after, the spectroscope was invented.

You speak of science like its a thing.

Can science know what it's going to do a priori? It seems like if it was objective it would know itself well enough to be able to help us out a bit.

Science has came along way from from its roots in Scientia.

Do you blame them?

PS: I'm "certain" that you'll find this interesting!

And you also say that "thoughts are real." I am assuming that you would also agree that sensations, feelings, beliefs, memories, dreams, hallucinations, etc., are "real" as well, wouldn't you?

Now what I think you are saying more precisely is that my thoughts, for example, are "real" in the sense that they are "independent of anyone else's belief that they exist." In other words: "My thoughts are real to me." The same for the rest of what I listed above. Wouldn't you agree?

Yes and no. It's a sad thing to miss out on. The transcendental does have a certain splendor. (Beauty is the splendor of truth.)

Right. So you have a guy like Kant figuring out what the essential structure of our perception. He had the transcendental unity of apperception, but what is that? What is consciousness? What is the Being of beings? If qualia and transcendental intuitions like space and time are continuous, then they cannot be adequately described via words, for words impose unity. But an particular unity can be negated. We can zoom out indefinitely. It's a tricky matter that most folks dodge.

"Apparently I was wrong! I feel quoting Jackie Gleason and saying "To the moon!"

Six pages back I presented what I thought was a perfectly rational resolution to the topic of this thread, including the Idealism/Realism issue, and I got no responses, except for a thank you from jeepers. (You're welcome, jeepers.)

And in the meantime, kennethamy neglected to respond to my two further questions:




Answers please.

:flowers:

Well, that's what scientists tell me. Is there a dissenting scientific view? Of course, without people there would be no Moon as people know it. You don't have to tell me that. What is a "Moon"? I thought we were talking about the Moon?

I think that most folks (like me) don't know what you are talking about. That stops them.

We were talking about the seperation between human perspective or appearance and reality. It is here that speculative philosophical theories are constructed.

Which is why theologians such as Scottus Eriugena spoke of God existing in terms that words can't justify, as he constantly referred to the divine as super-goodness and super-knowledge; also why it is called the super-natural world.

Just because its super-natural, however, doesn't mean it can't coexist with the natural. Super-natural isn't other, it's just more than natural. What is super-natural can't logically be negated.

I sympathize, truly. But I'm only talking 'bout Pythagoras to Hegel. All that's needed to survive on Earth is pragmatism, or "truth." The exception being that science is largely mathematical, and mathematics is transcendental. QM is forcing transcendental self-consciousness on the scientist.

The evolution of consciousness is an interesting path isn't it?

Once "science" thinks it has everything figured out, we realize that the world exists closer to how Plato envisioned it than philosophers 1500 years after him.

6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the
simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.


6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a
psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing
that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized.


6.36311 It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this
means that we do not know whether it will rise.


6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has
happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.


6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the
illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of
natural phenomena.


6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as
something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.
And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the
ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged
terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything
were explained.

Isn't it though? Hegel demonstrated that man's transcendental self-consciousness depended on a temporal progress made possible by dialectic. Plato and the boys had the digital and the continuous transcendentals.Integers and ideal geometry. But did they understand dialectical synthesis? Zeno demonstrated the collision of these transcendentals by means of his paradoxes. Hegel explained how logos, which was both digital and continuous, was necessary in order to reveal the real. Abstraction is the essence of philosophy and human historical time, which is not the same as intuited time or physics time, but rather desire toward concept(a project) in the spatial present.... to desire concept is to desire nonbeing. The future penetrates the spatial present by means of concept or project. And humans synthesize new concepts. Thus the progress of philosophy, technology, and politics (from masters and slaves to classless democracies..)