You have fallen off the thread.

The issue at hand is whether or not the issues regarding appearances can be argued at all given the prevailing prejudices. I stated that the refusal to allow metaphysical argument was based not upon an actual case being made, but rather upon refusal to make a case at all.

I was in the midst of making a case for which your side did not accept due to your prejudice, which is not a reasoned argument or discussion.

I would very much like to make a case against appearances, as I had attempted to begin. I would like, that is, to do philosophy. It is you who refuse to engage in rational debate due to your prejudices. That is the issue here. You have, as I have previously stated, dismissed the subject at hand without providing an actual argument.

How could I begin to provide arguments for my side if you have already stated, which you did tout court, that such arguments are meaningless?

Pursuit of the real or of the truth should be the paramount concern of philosophy. They are pursuing anti-philosophy, which is politically, culturally and historically motivated. Parochial prejudice, plain and simple.

--

Now if you have reason to think that either the Spaghetti Monster, or the thing-in-itself, exists, put up the proof, and maybe we'll discuss it. But don't say it is up to me to prove that either one does not exist. It isn't.

I agree. Also there are strange birds like Rorty in the middle somewhere.

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 07:13 PM ----------



The thing-in-itself is a limiting concept. Mind-independent reality is an exaggeration of the thing-in-itself. Kant knew that the thing-in-itself was a limiting concept, and I have quoted him in that other similar thread.

Your "mind-independent reality" is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The burden of proof is on you. "Mind-independent" reality is a paradox. Objectivity is grounded in social interaction. A non-paradoxical substitute for "mind-independent" reality would be social or objective reality. Although they are easily confused, objective reality is not "mind-independent" reality.

So does that mean that you think that scientists are wrong when they assert that objects (like the Moon) predated people?

A hypothesis (from Greek ὑπόθεσις; plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι - hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose." For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it.

Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason.

They may do useful calculations that presume this but it's not even a scientific hypothesis, as it cannot be tested.



Also, if Kant is right, then our experience of substance is imposed by our human minds. Objects, so far as we know, do not exist apart from us.

It cannot be tested? What about carbon dating which proves that many rocks and fossils predate people? You think that scientists would take what you say seriously? That it is not a scientific hypothesis that the Moon is older than people?

"There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not said it" Cicero.

It cannot be tested? What about carbon dating which proves that many rocks and fossils predate people? You think that scientists would take what you say seriously? That it is not a scientific hypothesis that the Moon is older than people? Aren't you embarrassed to say such a thing?

"There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not said it" Cicero.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Humanity. The moon, as we conceive it, is obviously "younger" than we who conceive it.

We can't test whether the moon was here before us. However, to speak loosely, we have good reason to think it did. But to speak strictly, we can say that that the notion that the unknown factor(s) associated with our sensations and conceptions of this moon existed before us is coherent with our current objective understanding of the world. To contemplate the past requires a complicated network of inferences. We can't experience the past directly, but only infer it.

It may depend on which scientist you are talking to, but what I think Reconstructo is saying is that we fundamentally don't know what the Moon is. Break down all of the atoms into electrons, protons, etc... then go to quarks... ask a scientist "what is a quark?" and they can list off a set of properties but theories such as particles and waves are just useful constructs, their intention is to explain phenomenon not define reality.

A phenomenon (from Greek φαινόμενoν, pl. φαινόμενα - phenomena) is any observable occurrence.[1] In popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. In scientific usage, a phenomenon is any event that is observable, however commonplace it might be, even if it requires the use of instrumentation to observe it.

It may depend on which scientist you are talking to, but what I think Reconstructo is saying is that we fundamentally don't know what the Moon is. Break down all of the atoms into electrons, protons, etc... then go to quarks... ask a scientist "what is a quark?" and they can list off a set of properties but theories such as particles and waves are just useful constructs, their intention is to explain phenomenon not define reality.

Also our idea of time has changed a lot. First we found out that time is relative, a part of a combination of space and time. Now we have to deal with the idea that time may be an illusion that is only a useful one because of our scale compared to the rest of the universe.

When he says that we don't know that the Moon is older than people, he is saying that we don't know what the Moon is? What would make you think that? In any case, he is wrong. We certainly do know what the Moon is. It is a satellite of the Earth. Only in philosophy. You seem to know some science (not that you have to know very much to answer this question) is the Moon older than people? That's a yes or a no.

Well the normal mindset nowadays is 'reality is just the normal world, and we get to know more and more about it by science.' Any attempt to question the nature of perception or reality, in a philosophical way, is ridiculed by such primitive devices as this inane 'flying monster' idea. The way I see it, the so-called secular mindset has a very strong commitment to the idea that the world is exactly what it seems, and ridicules any attempt to question it because deep down, it might not be like that, and if it isn't the consequences are scary.

Hence the undercurrent of hostility in the whole debate.

Don't you reckon?

It is not a yes or no anymore:

According to our idea of time, yes.

He has already clarified what he meant right before your last post, and the second half of my post was the important half, but the first half helps set up the idea of physical illusion (leading into the illusion of linear time) and the quantum idea of time as being the important one.

Time is part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars.

Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in the International System of Units. Time is used to define other quantities - such as velocity - so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition.[1]

Among prominent philosophers, there are two distinct viewpoints on time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Time travel, in this view, becomes a possibility as other "times" persist like frames of a film strip, spread out across the time line. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.[2][3] The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz[4] and Immanuel Kant,[5][6] holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be travelled.

Well the normal mindset nowadays is 'reality is just the normal world, and we get to know more and more about it by science.' Any attempt to question the nature of perception or reality, in a philosophical way, is ridiculed by such primitive devices as this inane 'flying monster' idea. The way I see it, the so-called secular mindset has a very strong commitment to the idea that the world is exactly what it seems, and ridicules any attempt to question it because deep down, it might not be like that, and if it isn't the consequences are scary.

Hence the undercurrent of hostility in the whole debate.

Don't you reckon?

You think we were talking in the context of some other idea of time? And you think that the people may antedate the Moon in the context of some other idea of time? If they did, how would that even be relevant? Maybe, according to some weird notion of time, you were born before your parents. So what? How would that be relevant to whether your parents are older than you? (If I used the term "older" to mean, "younger", than my parents would have been younger than I am. So what?. That doesn't mean that my parents were younger than I am. Changing what we mean by out words doesn't change the facts).

What has motive to do with truth?

Time is not so simple. Sure, we all know everything until we actually have to think about it.

What have eggs to do with chickens?

I didn't say anything about the nature of time. And I didn't say we know everything, either. Straw-man

Chickens come from eggs. Motives have nothing to do with truth.