Also, this takes place in a mind existing in a brain existing in a body interacting with others out in a particular world that is somehow intertwined in whatever may or may not in fact be true about the very, very big and the very, very small.
Come on, does anyone here even come close to explaining fully either the essential or the existential parameters of “I” in the context of “all there is”?
Something did or did not bring into existence the existence of existence itself?
This question assumes the conception of causality.
Hell, concepts are a dime a dozen here. But to what extent are the concepts of any one individual relating to the existence of existence itself within the reach of actually demonstrating that they are in fact true?
“And human interactions are no exception? Mind is just more matter?”
The conclusions of reason don’t cause the things they infer. All books are made by humans, this is a book, therefore it is made by a human, doesn’t cause the book to be made by a human. So, one can say, reasons or judgments are a special kind of cause, cause as inference. They cause the inference machine to work. And yet, this all is founded in the conception of causality which is presupposed as meaningful in the ground of the inquiry.
Okay, how close does this assessment bring us to grasping once and for all if this very exchange that we are having is only as it ever could have been?
How “special” are reasons and judgments [yours, mine, theirs] if mind is just more matter interacting mechanically with other mindful matter per the immutable laws of matter?
connecting the dots here between the either/or world and the is/ought world.
One can ask whether causality is beneficial (ignoring the genetic problem, set aside by Kant, who the logical positivists followed (ergo, in the specific sense of taking up the so-called genetic fallacy in defense of the conception of causality) in allowing causality to be founded in psychology and thereby logic), and if he affirms an ethic that says one ought to do what is beneficial. The “is” in Hume refers to opinion, or what in Plato is the result of pistis or the faculty of reliance (i.e., in the simplest sense: I see the ground, I rely on it being under foot when I step). Is and fact are not the same thing. Fact is established by the discussion between Hobbes and the Royal society, and refers to voluntary action of persons such as Boyle, who ran tests. The fact, properly, is a tested thing according to voluntary (i.e, rational) action of the trained observer.
What on earth does this mean? As it pertains to conflicting moral narratives generating conflicting human interactions. Let’s bring Kant and Plato and Hume and all the rest out into the world that we actually live in and examine a specific context more…substantively.
In other words, as I like to say, an ethical quagmire that we are all likely to be familiar with.
One more pedantic contribution to the staggering vastness that must be now?
So, you claim all philosophy is worthless… Your cheap goading doesn’t persuade me of that… however, let us attempt to decompose:
What’s the opposite of “pedantic”, loose and vague? Or, is it clear and obvious everyday gossip?
On the contrary, technical philosophy is of fundamental importance if we wish to make more exact distinctions between what either can or cannot be concluded rationally. Or regarding the extent to which we are either able or not able to demonstrate what we claim to know is true is in fact true.
About, well, anything, right?
And I will be the first to acknowledge that, as a “serious philosopher” here, there are any number of deficiencies in my own thinking. So I tend to focus the beam more on that which those who do claim to be superbly proficient in grasping philosophy technically can tell us about the distinction that philosophers have made down through the ages between the either/or and the is/ought world of human interactions.
Taking into account such things as nature and nurture…genes and memes…the ego, id, and superego…mind as matter…theology…ontology…teleology.
As all of this pertains to the existential intersection of those things that most interest me: identity, values and political power.
The “serious philosophers” among us will either go there or they won’t.