Language is pure Self-creation, therefore God.

SpeedOfSound · **#321** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 05, 2012 2:47 am

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Idealism doesn't claim that we can bend spoons...

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

jamest · **#322** by **jamest** » Feb 05, 2012 2:52 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:
Mr.Samsa wrote:
Idealism doesn't claim that we can bend spoons...

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

One has to have the faith to move mountains, in order to bend a spoon. You're now dragging this conversation away from the philosophy of it all.

SpeedOfSound · **#323** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 05, 2012 3:08 am

jamest wrote:C & P from SoS's thread about percepts (highly relevant, here)...

jamest wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:Alrighty then.

SoS, it would be helpful if you were to think about the origin and construction of social languages. 'Red', for instance, is a word that had meaning long before science started talking about photons with specific wavelengths. Hence, if such words are not indicative of photons with particular wavelengths, what do you think that they refer to? Indeed, how could such words help to effect social communication if they referred to nothing and/or had no meaning?

That's far down the road from my percept post and there isn't much interest in getting that much into it. It's one of those things that I just have to enjoy alone.

think · **#324** by **think** » Feb 05, 2012 5:51 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:
Mr.Samsa wrote:
Idealism doesn't claim that we can bend spoons...

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

I've noticed this is a very popular meme on this forum...do you care to substantiate this claim in any way? Perhaps a textual reference would be helpful. Everyone keeps talking about bent spoons, I'm not sure what it has to do with (idealist) philosophy.

think · **#325** by **think** » Feb 05, 2012 6:34 am

jamest wrote:C & P from SoS's thread about percepts (highly relevant, here)...

jamest wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:Alrighty then.

SoS, it would be helpful if you were to think about the origin and construction of social languages. 'Red', for instance, is a word that had meaning long before science started talking about photons with specific wavelengths. Hence, if such words are not indicative of photons with particular wavelengths, what do you think that they refer to? Indeed, how could such words help to effect social communication if they referred to nothing and/or had no meaning?

Still don't understand how you maintain that private language precedes social language together with the claim that private language is rational. I've asked this question a couple of times in greater detail, haven't seen a response yet. Did I miss it?

SpeedOfSound · **#326** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 05, 2012 10:34 am

think wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
Mr.Samsa wrote:
Idealism doesn't claim that we can bend spoons...

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

I've noticed this is a very popular meme on this forum...do you care to substantiate this claim in any way? Perhaps a textual reference would be helpful. Everyone keeps talking about bent spoons, I'm not sure what it has to do with (idealist) philosophy.

It seems to be the implication of idealism by jamest and mentalism by Little Idiot that all is mental. This means all is mind. LI justifies this by pointing out that we can dream and imagine spoons. James by some pure bastardized conceptualization of observers and observed with a stolen favorite phrase of the thing in itself.

If all that is given is a dream then a spoon in front of me is a dream then I should have no trouble bending it. If there is something about dreams that make bending spoons harder then creating them in front of me then there should be some account of this difficulty.

Mostly what I rail against is naive idealism as I have just described it to you. Myself I am damned close to idealism with my phenomenal reality. I just doubt like hell that something that can be called a mind is responsible for 'sense data'. Another fine fucking reductive rape concept.

think · **#327** by **think** » Feb 06, 2012 3:44 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:
think wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
Mr.Samsa wrote:
Idealism doesn't claim that we can bend spoons...

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

I've noticed this is a very popular meme on this forum...do you care to substantiate this claim in any way? Perhaps a textual reference would be helpful. Everyone keeps talking about bent spoons, I'm not sure what it has to do with (idealist) philosophy.

It seems to be the implication of idealism by jamest and mentalism by Little Idiot that all is mental. This means all is mind. LI justifies this by pointing out that we can dream and imagine spoons. James by some pure bastardized conceptualization of observers and observed with a stolen favorite phrase of the thing in itself.

If all that is given is a dream then a spoon in front of me is a dream then I should have no trouble bending it. If there is something about dreams that make bending spoons harder then creating them in front of me then there should be some account of this difficulty.

Mostly what I rail against is naive idealism as I have just described it to you. Myself I am damned close to idealism with my phenomenal reality. I just doubt like hell that something that can be called a mind is responsible for 'sense data'. Another fine fucking reductive rape concept.

So, basically, if this is all a dream then why isn't it a lucid dream? How did this fine piece of reasoning become the ubiquitous refrain of this forum...

GrahamH · **#328** by **GrahamH** » Feb 06, 2012 10:19 am

think wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
think wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

I've noticed this is a very popular meme on this forum...do you care to substantiate this claim in any way? Perhaps a textual reference would be helpful. Everyone keeps talking about bent spoons, I'm not sure what it has to do with (idealist) philosophy.

It seems to be the implication of idealism by jamest and mentalism by Little Idiot that all is mental. This means all is mind. LI justifies this by pointing out that we can dream and imagine spoons. James by some pure bastardized conceptualization of observers and observed with a stolen favorite phrase of the thing in itself.

If all that is given is a dream then a spoon in front of me is a dream then I should have no trouble bending it. If there is something about dreams that make bending spoons harder then creating them in front of me then there should be some account of this difficulty.

Mostly what I rail against is naive idealism as I have just described it to you. Myself I am damned close to idealism with my phenomenal reality. I just doubt like hell that something that can be called a mind is responsible for 'sense data'. Another fine fucking reductive rape concept.

So, basically, if this is all a dream then why isn't it a lucid dream? How did this fine piece of reasoning become the ubiquitous refrain of this forum...

"I should have no trouble bending it [a spoon]" isn't right, but if you could bend it, merely by willing it to bend, it would be a powerful demonstration that the mind commands the physical world, and might actually create it. Failure to bend the spoon is neutral, since any arbitrary reason can be invented for why it is inappropriate for the spoon to bend.

zoon · **#329** by **zoon** » Feb 06, 2012 10:26 am

think wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:
Mr.Samsa wrote:
Idealism doesn't claim that we can bend spoons...

Of course it does! The discerned reaching out and bending of the discerned spoon is all in the discerned mind. Your mind bends the discerned spoon. Thought you knew that?

I've noticed this is a very popular meme on this forum...do you care to substantiate this claim in any way? Perhaps a textual reference would be helpful. Everyone keeps talking about bent spoons, I'm not sure what it has to do with (idealist) philosophy.

I start from the assumption that the brain consists of atoms which behave entirely according to the (descriptive) laws of physics and chemistry, and that everything we do and say can ultimately be described in terms of those laws. If this is the case, then thoughts have no independent effect on what happens in the world. If I think "lets bend a spoon" and set about bending a flimsy teaspoon with my hands, the whole series of events could, in principle (admittedly easier said than done), be predicted accurately through my brain states, with no reference to my thoughts. Material causes underlie all human actions. If idealism is "any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence" (I'm quoting Wikipedia), then the assumption I have stated, that all human actions can be traced back to physical causes, also implies that the ideal or spiritual realm is not important in itself and so excludes idealism. (Of course, we are nowhere near actually predicting people as material objects, so it's useful to see others and ourselves in terms of thoughts and intentions, but they do not have ultimate explanatory power.)

There has been a huge amount of experimental work on brains and nerves, and there is no evidence that they ever operate outside the laws of physics and chemistry. Would you agree that it's an acceptable working assumption that they never do?

zoon · **#330** by **zoon** » Feb 06, 2012 10:43 am

GrahamH wrote:"I should have no trouble bending it [a spoon]" isn't right, but if you could bend it, merely by willing it to bend, it would be a powerful demonstration that the mind commands the physical world, and might actually create it. Failure to bend the spoon is neutral, since any arbitrary reason can be invented for why it is inappropriate for the spoon to bend.

(I changed an “it” to “if” in your first line, hope that’s OK)
I’m not entirely happy with this attack on idealism, because it certainly feels as though we control our bodies with our minds, and bodies are as solidly material as spoons. As I think Mr Samsa’s sig points out, willing my hand to move is as weird as willing a spoon to bend, we’re just more used to it. Monkeys have been wired up to control cursors using transmitters from brain probes. Surely the materialist line is that the comparatively simple descriptive laws of physics appear to operate across all these phenomena? Thoughts are not the most parsimonious ultimate explanation.

SpeedOfSound · **#331** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 06, 2012 10:52 am

GrahamH wrote:
"I should have no trouble bending it [a spoon]" isn't right, but it you could bend it, merely by willing it to bend, it would be a powerful demonstration that the mind commands the physical world, and might actually create it. Failure to bend the spoon is neutral, since any arbitrary reason can be invented for why it is inappropriate for the spoon to bend.

I think they should invent some them. Science invents reasons why things happen at an incredible rate. Why are idealists so damned lazy? I'm just supposed to believe this crap with no follow-through, predictions, or experiemnts? :nono:

GrahamH · **#332** by **GrahamH** » Feb 06, 2012 11:19 am

jamest wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
jamest wrote:For instance, the sensation of flickering yellowishness, combined with the sensations of heat/pain and an acrid smell, suffice to yield the discernment of 'a thing' which English-speakers have arbitrarily symbolised as 'fire'. Hence, both the 'thing' and the word gets its meaning from the aforementioned language of the senses. As such, words and their meanings (English or otherwise) are not created, but translated.

So the meaning of fire is defined by the relations of other "sense symbols" . And this context does not regress infinitely, of course. It comes to rest as some sensation that simply is what it is. So, what are the meanings of the symbols "yellowness" and "heat/pain"?

The meaning of any particular sensation rests solely in what it is like to be aware of it. This cannot be expressed in social language or through its physical expression. Even the loudest scream could not convey the actual meaning of pain. Similarly, a million words could not convey what it is like to experience 'red'. Regardless, most people know what 'redness' is like, and I should imagine that everyone has experienced pain. And so, sufficient are the names we arbitrarily assign to particular sensations, whilst constructing our social language, to convey what we mean when we talk about such experiences.

It seems we might be quite close on this point. The difference between us being that that the "symbol" must be "experienced" to convey meaning in your scheme, whereas it merely needs to provoke a "detection response" in mine. We both have that the meaning of the "symbol" is that "know it when I see it".

Of course no amount of objective description equates the the actual (physical) effect of the stimulus. Mary's Room is no problem for physical brains.

I suspect you will have the "sub-conscious mind" doing what I have the brain doing, and integrating these "symbols" in contexts such that the contextualised meaning is what become consciously experienced.

When I see a familiar face I am not conscious of the component "sense symbols", I am simply aware of a familiar face. I have to do extra work to identify component features, and I can't break it down to individual atomic qualia.

I find my picture fits my experience better than your picture does. Something unconscious contextualises sensory information and only a small part becomes conscious. Therefore it seems most reasonable to say that it isn't consciousness doing unconscious work, but that consciousness is the result of unconscious work. Consciousness is understanding the contextual relationship between sensory event, motor commands and similar internal sense-command sub-systems (thinking).

jamest wrote:Amongst the greatest proofs we have that the eliminativists are wrong, is that there exists words (symbols) amidst our language - themselves devoid of meaning - which nevertheless are meaningful.

Meaningful in that they relate to some effect that happens to me when I am exposed to certain stimuli, but that's it. What does "redness" mean beyond recognition that I am responding to the presence of red, and the contextual links I have learned to associate with the colour?

A physical brain can certainly respond to the event of the brain detecting a colour stimulus. It can contextualise that response and learn associations between the detection of the colour and other detection events (other "symbols").

Of course is no challenge for such a physcalist view to account for words to become associated with such events.

jamest wrote:... Such is true not just of our symbols for the sensations, but for our emotions ('love', for instance). Indeed, it is true of every facet of experience that has ever been assigned a tag/symbol in our social languages.

Similarly there is no problem learning to associate words with emotional states detected as pervasive bodily responses. Emotions are primarily physical, i.e. sensory. Heart pounds, viscera convulse, skin sweats, adrenalin surges, etc.

jamest wrote:Ask yourself this: how can social language work (how can we communicate) if so many of its symbols are devoid of written meaning? The answer, of course, is because we have experienced their meaning.

The answer, of course, is that we share evolved responses to the world, and are linked by the the world. I can wave a bright red ball and say "ball" and a baby will learn to associate the visual stimulus with the sound, with the way the ball moves, with the shape of the ball.

jamest wrote:To narrate 'our reality' (the discernment of things - the world) using social language, absolutely demands that we utilise words such as 'pain' and 'red' and 'love' within such a discourse, because these words are the closest symbols we have indicative of that reality.

Nothing there to disagree with, nor to differentiate your philosophy from mine.

jamest wrote:Hence, the eliminativists/physicalists amongst us are being obtuse when thinking that the employment of social language can 'objectively' narrate our reality, only after we eradicate said language of every word indicative of that reality itself.

If the physicalists/eliminativists were right, our social languages would not be strewn with words of significance to each and everyone of us. Thus, they are wrong.

Count this as my third significant argument, since I regard it as a profound refutation of the eliminativist/physicalist perspective.

What you say might possibly be significant for some eliminativist position that held that these things (emotion etc) is nothing more than social language, but nobody here is making any such claim.

You need to look deeper into the issue how context defines meaning, and how brains hold contextual relationships between hard-wired and learned "symbols" in a causative system.

You haven't close to refuting physicalism here James.

You seem to have recognised that our relationship to the world is central to our conceptual landscape, and that meaning is grounded in some primitives that tie us to the world. This seems to be progress.

GrahamH · **#333** by **GrahamH** » Feb 06, 2012 11:26 am

zoon wrote:
GrahamH wrote:"I should have no trouble bending it [a spoon]" isn't right, but if you could bend it, merely by willing it to bend, it would be a powerful demonstration that the mind commands the physical world, and might actually create it. Failure to bend the spoon is neutral, since any arbitrary reason can be invented for why it is inappropriate for the spoon to bend.
(I changed an “it” to “if” in your first line, hope that’s OK)
I’m not entirely happy with this attack on idealism, because it certainly feels as though we control our bodies with our minds, and bodies are as solidly material as spoons. As I think Mr Samsa’s sig points out, willing my hand to move is as weird as willing a spoon to bend, we’re just more used to it. Monkeys have been wired up to control cursors using transmitters from brain probes. Surely the materialist line is that the comparatively simple descriptive laws of physics appear to operate across all these phenomena? Thoughts are not the most parsimonious ultimate explanation.

Of course, whenever we have a case of "a mind controlling matter" we have material connections between a brain and the thing controlled, so there is no way to say that an immaterial mind is involved. Idealism posits an immaterial mind as generating experiences of a matterial world that has no reality to it beyond the immaterial mind.

The point is that if we do "control our bodies with our minds, and bodies are as solidly material as spoons." then why can't we bend spoons as easily as we bend our joints?

Not being able to bend spoons with thought is metaphysically neutral, but being able to do it would refute physicalism.

SpeedOfSound · **#334** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 06, 2012 11:30 am

I think james has discovered that we are all the same species and that we can communicate based on that.

SpeedOfSound · **#335** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 06, 2012 11:32 am

GrahamH wrote:
Not being able to bend spoons with thought is metaphysically neutral, but being able to do it would refute physicalism.

That would certainly solve the issue. It would have to happen with the same frequency that that things work out for the physicalist model.

So why would we believe this kind of garbage?

SpeedOfSound · **#336** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 06, 2012 11:45 am

The simple truth is that spoons that I imagine are different to the spoons I find in my drawer for hundreds or even thousands of reasons. I know this we all know this. Nothing else makes any sense. Until I can do some little thing with my mind like bending a spoon then i have no reason whatever to believe the kind of twaddle that is generated by thinkers who offer reductive arguments to me via physical media.

I would settle for being able to use my mind to control one of them to make a lick of sense for a 24 hour period.

SpeedOfSound · **#337** by **SpeedOfSound** » Feb 06, 2012 11:51 am

jamest wrote:C & P from SoS's thread about percepts (highly relevant, here)...

jamest wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:Alrighty then.

SoS, it would be helpful if you were to think about the origin and construction of social languages. 'Red', for instance, is a word that had meaning long before science started talking about photons with specific wavelengths. Hence, if such words are not indicative of photons with particular wavelengths, what do you think that they refer to? Indeed, how could such words help to effect social communication if they referred to nothing and/or had no meaning?

I missed the post right before this. I will try and tackle this in the Percept thread. You mad some good points in that prior posts. None of them help your case but good still.

Request permission to use pieces from that post in the other thread.

jamest · **#338** by **jamest** » Feb 06, 2012 12:37 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:
jamest wrote:C & P from SoS's thread about percepts (highly relevant, here)...

jamest wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:Alrighty then.

SoS, it would be helpful if you were to think about the origin and construction of social languages. 'Red', for instance, is a word that had meaning long before science started talking about photons with specific wavelengths. Hence, if such words are not indicative of photons with particular wavelengths, what do you think that they refer to? Indeed, how could such words help to effect social communication if they referred to nothing and/or had no meaning?

I missed the post right before this. I will try and tackle this in the Percept thread. You mad some good points in that prior posts. None of them help your case but good still.

Request permission to use pieces from that post in the other thread.

From me? Yes, sure. Just don't misrepresent me.

jamest · **#339** by **jamest** » Feb 06, 2012 1:10 pm

GrahamH wrote:
"I should have no trouble bending it [a spoon]" isn't right, but if you could bend it, merely by willing it to bend, it would be a powerful demonstration that the mind commands the physical world, and might actually create it. Failure to bend the spoon is neutral, since any arbitrary reason can be invented for why it is inappropriate for the spoon to bend.

My own position on this matter relates to something I said (in a recent thread, to you I think) regards my definition of 'The Mind'. There, I explained that there is a subconscious element to the mind - an aspect of it where 'sensations' are created, for example, as well as being the source of memory. It is the subconscious mind that creates [the sensations of] 'the world'. The point I was trying to make at the time was that the subconscious and conscious are ~one thing~, not two.

You have to note that a conscious effort to will a spoon to bend is actually an effort to oppose the will of the subconscious, in that the subconscious is creating a 'straight spoon' which remains straight due to an imposed order commensurate with the laws of physics. The point of mysticism is to unite conscious and subconscious as One, not to have consciousness oppose the subconscious. These matters are profoundly spiritual and we won't get far discussing them in this forum, but suffice to say that the conscious aspect of the mind cannot create the experience of a bending spoon. Something must happen first, which some religions have described as 'the loss of ego'.

We should leave it at that. I only wanted to comment on this issue for 2 reasons:

1) Philosophy does not need to prove itself via anything other than reason.
2) There is good reason why a conscious individual cannot willfully bend a spoon.

Please, let us refocus.

I've been a bit busy for the last day or so. I'll try to respond to the best counters later today.

GrahamH · **#340** by **GrahamH** » Feb 06, 2012 1:24 pm

jamest wrote:My own position on this matter relates to something I said (in a recent thread, to you I think) regards my definition of 'The Mind'. There, I explained that there is a subconscious element to the mind - an aspect of it where 'sensations' are created, for example, as well as being the source of memory. It is the subconscious mind that creates [the sensations of] 'the world'. The point I was trying to make at the time was that the subconscious and conscious are ~one thing~, not two.

You have to note that a conscious effort to will a spoon to bend is actually an effort to oppose the will of the subconscious, in that the subconscious is creating a 'straight spoon' which remains straight due to an imposed order commensurate with the laws of physics.

I think you get into serious trouble, as an Idealist, if you have "subconscious mind" creating the experiences of a world.
What is "the will of the subconscious"?

You are converging on physicalism with "conscious will" and "conscious self" as subordinate to "sub-conscious mind" That is very, very close to a "subconscious" brain in a physical world.

Language is pure Self-creation, therefore God.

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