@Reconstructo,
Reconstructo;132132 wrote:I think the point that is being missed here is that the moon as we conceive it, as an object in a web of causality, is largely the creation of our mental faculties.
Hypothesis are justified largely by their ability to predict. One does not predict the past. One can apply a justified hypothesis backward, but one should not forget that one is driving in reverse. As Hegel knew, time is impossible without concepts. The present is eternal (that is timeless) unless the past subsists as memory/concept and the future exists as a project(ion). Both past and future are concepts existing in the present. Human time is conceptual, lingual. Time is made of logos or discourse.
We are all too quick to take useful concepts for "mind-independent" reality -- which is itself a concept, and a paradoxical concept.
First of all, if there is a mind-independent reality, it is not a concept. The concept of a mind-independent reality is a concept. You continually confuse concepts with what they are concepts of. Second of all, you keep saying it is a paradoxical concept, but you never explain what is supposed to be paradoxical about it. Of course, even if it is a paradoxical concept, so what. Zeno thought that the concept of motion was paradoxical too. And, in the
Pirates of Penzance it was paradoxical that someone who was 28 had only 7 birthdays. He was born on a leap year. See, the paradox was cleared up.
I think the point that is being missed here is that the moon as we conceive it, as an object in a web of causality, is largely the creation of our mental faculties
If that means (as I think it does) that our concept of the Moon is largely a creation of our mental faculties, then I would go further and say it was entirely a creation of our mental faculties. But then, of course, there is the Moon, and the Moon is not at all a creation of our mental faculties.
It really doesn't matter how you say it, you should not confuse the concept of the Moon with the Moon.
---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 09:34 PM ----------
Scottydamion;132143 wrote:You need not worry about it unless you are truly interested, but it is important in understanding where some of these arguments are coming from. They reach beyond a limited human view of such concepts and tackle the world on much larger and smaller scales, revealing new information to consider.
By common sense I mean intuitive. The theory of relativity is in no way intuitive, but it is a correct view of the concept of time. Our intuitive concept of time is a useful approximation that has no need to account for time at mind boggling speeds.
But it is not intuitive that the Moon is older than people. That had to be discovered. I agree (of course) with the rest of what you say. But I never have held that what is commonsense must be true.