Don't ask questions! That would be philosophy!

You have to be aware of whom it is you are asking questions. Failure can cause you to lose IQ points.

I capitalize "Truth" when speaking of that tiny core of logical transcendental truth. It's logically true. It's the pure truth that Plato and Pythagoras were high on. "truth" is equivalent to hypothesis. It's "true" that the sun is a fusion engine, but this "truth" may be improved on. The transcendental Truth is stable, because it is a picture of the structure of our thinking. It's the lens, you might say, and not what the camera is taking a picture of. The picture is empirical knowledge, including natural science and psychology and literature...

That is a very perceptive question. It was presumed, I think, in the Grand Tradition, that the Philosopher knew something that the ordinary person (the 'hoi polloi') did not. Now, however, we have declared that there are 'no privileged perspectives'. In the flatland of scientific secularism, there is no higher ground.

Have you ever considered that "truth" has been Truth all along?

Yes, but isn't there a way to lead metaphysics away from speculation? Cannot we discover the nature of reality without this faith-based nonsense? It seems metaphysicians don't realize they can still use reason and logic when discovering the nature of reality.

Have you ever considered that "truth" has been Truth all along?



Yes, but isn't there a way to lead metaphysics away from speculation? Cannot we discover the nature of reality without this faith-based nonsense? It seems metaphysicians don't realize they can still use reason and logic when discovering the nature of reality.

That's B.S. and I hope you know it... You aren't half as logical as you think you are, as you don't even know what grounds logic..even if it's put beneath your nose......

The true meta-physicians are perfectly rational, and only speculative on the way there. It's the frauds who aren't rational. Mystics should leave the term alone, but they won't. Remember, the term comes from Aristotle....(or was it the folks who shelved his books?)

I can detect roasted coffee grounds a mile away. And, even if I am only half as logical as I think I am, it is better than......

I don't think that anything grounds logic. What makes you think that logic requires foundations? Indeed, pragmatism is the philosophy that disputes whether logic or knowledge or morality, require foundations.

Yes, perhaps I often mistake the metaphysician for the mystic. I often can't tell the difference for some reason.

Pragmatism is high-grade sophistry, and I applaud it for its sophistication, which I am thoroughly familiar with, unlike you, as you clearly do not understand Rorty's holistic attack on dichotomies...You are caught in the middle.

How could a true philosopher not seek the ground of logic? And of logos? This is Hegel's genius in a nutshell. He shows how such a thing is accomplished...by dialectical synthesis/abstraction...

---------- Post added 03-02-2010 at 04:41 PM ----------


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Have you ever considered that "truth" has been Truth all along?


Yes, but isn't there a way to lead metaphysics away from speculation? Cannot we discover the nature of reality without this faith-based nonsense? It seems metaphysicians don't realize they can still use reason and logic when discovering the nature of reality.

You don't sound like that at all. You sound like someone trying to grasp something very important. You and I and various others will agree to that. But how do you show it 'in the lab'? That seems to be the criteria nowadays, doesn't it? I mean you have so-called philosophers like Daniel Dennett and P & P Churchland putting forward serious arguments - addressing conventions for heaven's sake - that there really is no mind and that reality consists entirely of objects.

I refuse to acknowledge that materialism is a philosophy. I declare that it is the absence of philosophy, or the opposite of it, or the denial of it. Just so long as we are clear on that.

With regards to 'faith based nonsense' I think you, like a lot of people, and this is not at all pejorative, have a strong anti-religious tendency. This is understandable, considering the dreadful mess that Western society has made of religion

You don't sound like that at all. You sound like someone trying to grasp something very important. You and I and various others will agree to that. But how do you show it 'in the lab'? That seems to be the criteria nowadays, doesn't it? I mean you have so-called philosophers like Daniel Dennett and P & P Churchland putting forward serious arguments - addressing conventions for heaven's sake - that there really is no mind and that reality consists entirely of objects.

Reason and logic start from certain premises, and if your premises are that all that can be known, can be known by means of science, how can any discussion of metaphysics proceed?

With regards to 'faith based nonsense' I think you, like a lot of people, and this is not at all pejorative, have a strong anti-religious tendency. This is understandable, considering the dreadful mess that Western society has made of religion. It took me a lot of study and a lot of soul searching to get past this obstacle. Did that make me 'religious'? Well, kind of, or on the other hand, not really, depending on what you mean. But I don't freak out whenever I hear the word 'faith' any more.

To be honest, I have some insight into metaphysics now, because I practice Buddhist meditation. Now Buddhist meditation is actually not focused on metaphysics, per se, and Buddhism generally disdains metaphysical speculation. But it has lead me to understand that there really are non-material realities. But until you get past the point of thinking that religion is basically nonsense, I suggest you will not be able to comprehend what is meant by that. As I said, this can be a matter of 'sympathetic imagination' - it does not require conversion, as such, so much as a suspension of judgment (and reflexes!)

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 09:04 AM ----------

Further to the above - there is also a whole new avenue of inquiry into the traditional ground of metaphysics, launched by the phenomenological school, starting with Brentano and Husserl, which reframes the debate in strictly non-religious terms.

It seems to me that nonsense is nonsense on whatever it is based. There are a number of militant atheists who also talk nonsense. I am an equal opportunity nonsense critiquer.

Very narrow view. How do you feel about people who refuse to acknowledge that spiritualism is a philosophy? Anyhow, as Wittgenstein said, philosophy is an activity, not a theory.

5.621 The world and life are one.


5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)


5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains
ideas. If I wrote a book called The World as l found it, I should have
to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were
subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of
isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense
there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.--


5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of
the world.


5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will
say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field.
But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field
allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.


5.6331 For the form of the visual field is surely not like this


5.634 This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is
at the same time a priori. Whatever we see could be other than it is.
Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a
priori order of things.


5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are
followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of
solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the
reality co-ordinated with it.


5.641 Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk
about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into
philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical
self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with
which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit
of the world--not a part of it.

6.022 The concept of number is simply what is common to all numbers, the
general form of a number. The concept of number is the variable number.
And the concept of numerical equality is the general form of all
particular cases of numerical equality.

I'm actually not anti-religious, but I am perturbed when someone mistakes speculation for a well-reasoned argument. No matter if I were religious or not, I should understand that faith has nothing to do with argument. Faith, by definition, is belief without good reason or proof. And with argument we are seeking truth and demonstrating with good reason.