TPF : Presuppositions

[Gnomon]

So a simple fellow like me may be inclined to ask what, if that's the case, they "really" are if they're not a snake and a train, and what the difference is between the snake and the train (or what we only "think" are the snake and the train) and what the snake and train "really" are. If there is a difference, how does that difference affect what we do with what seem to be snakes and trains? — Ciceronianus the White

I haven't seen the article, but I have read the book. So, I'd say that the difference that makes a difference, between imaginary snakes and real snakes, is the practical distinction between Concrete and Abstract. Concrete things have physical properties, such as poison, that can have physical effects, such as death-by-snake-bite. But Abstract things, have their physical properties abstracted (pulled out), so what remains are ethereal meta-physical qualities (MPQ). MPQ are not inherent in snakes, but attributed by the observer. And one of the MPQ of both snakes-in-the-flesh and snakes-in-the-mind is that they can cause the real physical responses we call "fear". You may mistake a garden hose for a snake, but the fear-response will be the same. And some people have dropped dead from fear --- yet the cause was not bio-chemical toxin, but bio-mental shock.

If the mere idea of a snake can kill you, it's not due to what-is, but to what-seems. And what "seems to be" is important to humans, because we are motivated by feelings. Moreover, some of those feelings are pre-suppositions (beliefs) about what's real and/or important. Some of those suppositions are innate (learned by evolution), or empirical (learned by experience), but others may be superstitions (learned by education). But the emotional effect on the believer is real, whether triggered by "what-is" or by "what-seems" (physical or metaphysical). Yet, some of us belittle Meta-physics as not-real, even when such ideas have real-world consequences. For example, world-wars have killed millions for the sake of abstract ideas (Communism vs Capitalism), that are only indirectly connected to the real world. However, going to war over mere ideas may sound silly, so those who want to justify the physical effects of war (carnage) typically look for some real-world event to blame. Even when the "real" motivating reason is an abstraction like "honor", or "freedom", or "country".

The abstract difference that makes a difference is Subjective Meaning.



https://www.britannica.com/story/can-yo ... d-to-death

[Gnomon]

It strikes me that if the "real snake" (or whatever it may be) cannot be known, the mental representation snake is what is of significance to us. It doesn't matter what the "real snake" is, nor does it matter if our snake is a mental representation. — Ciceronianus the White

That description may be true of many people, who accept what they think they see as what is real. But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion. A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know.

That's the philosophical point behind the kick-*ss cover-story of the Matrix movie. Each of us must choose between the red pill of bitter truth, and the comfortable illusion of fake reality.


Late Lament :
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey is yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion
___Moody Blues

Matrix pills
https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uplo ... ge-1-3.png

[Gnomon]

I wouldn't describe the belief that only the unknowable is real as wisdom. — Ciceronianus the White

Who said it was? What I said was, "A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know." Do you disagree with that assertion? The point of wisdom is to be aware of the potential for Black Swans in any risky endeavor.

Fitch's paradox of knowability is one of the fundamental puzzles of epistemic logic. It provides a challenge to the knowability thesis, which states that every truth is, in principle, knowable. The paradox is that this assumption implies the omniscience principle, which asserts that every truth is known. Essentially, Fitch's paradox asserts that the existence of an unknown truth is unknowable. So if all truths were knowable, it would follow that all truths are in fact known.

The paradox is of concern for verificationist or anti-realist accounts of truth, for which the knowability thesis is very plausible,[1] but the omniscience principle is very implausible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitch%27s ... nowability

Unknown unknowns are risks that come from situations that are so unexpected that they would not be considered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable :
the book discusses what can be done regarding “epistemic arrogance”, which occurs whenever people begin to think they know more than they actually do.

Black Swan Wisdom :
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2010/12/02/b ... isdom.html

[Gnomon]

But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and some poets, it does make a difference to know what is real and what is illusion. — Gnomon
My response was that my understanding of the claim being made is that we can't know what's real. If that's a misstatement of your position, let me know. — Ciceronianus the White

Do you really know what's real? My position is similar to that of Kant : our senses are probing the presumed reality outside our heads, but the picture we construct from those bits of data is a mind-made (subjective) representation (symbol), not the ultimate (objective) thing, as known to omniscience.

Hoffman is making a similar point, but using the metaphor of symbolic icons on a computer screen (interface). The philosophical problem here is to distinguish between Perception (one person's incomplete view of the world) and Conception (the seemingly complete model of reality constructed from incomplete information).

I am not confident that my world-model is an accurate depiction of Reality. That's one reason I dialog with people on this forum : to compare my subjective model with the variety of models held by other observers of Reality, in order to fill-in the gaps of my worldview. Some think that Matter is the ultimate Reality, while others think it's the immaterial Relations (invisible interconnections -- patterns) between things. "Which is real, and which illusion?"

Ding an sich :
(in Kant's philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, not mediated through perception by the senses or conceptualization, and therefore unknowable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself

Interface theory of perception :
Now, cognitive scientist Hoffman has produced an updated version of Kant’s controversial Occult Ontology. He uses the modern metaphor of computers that we “interface” (interact) with, as-if the symbolic Icons on the display screen are the actual things we want to act upon. For example, by clicking on a pixelated folder symbol, we emulate the physical act of locating and opening a manila folder with important documents. For our practical needs, such short-cuts are sufficient to get the job done. It’s not necessary for us to be aware of all the intricate details of internal computer processes. From his studies, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That sometimes leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html

Example of incomplete model of reality : people had been seeing real ponds for thousands of years, but Leeuwenhoek's microscope revealed a formerly unseen miniature reality in a drop of pond water. Now, a few centuries later, our microscopes and particle smashers have revealed the almost unreal foundations of reality, in quantum models, not of atoms or sub-atomic particles, but of mathematical "fields" of Virtual or Potential particles. So, when you speak of reality, are you speaking from knowledge of the totality of Reality, or from your own custom-tailored representation of the Universe?


Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful.
___Lao Tzu
Is the hole real?

[Gnomon]

We're not outside the world looking in. What we think, what we experience, what we do or don't do, all take place in the world. — Ciceronianus the White

I think you are over-reacting to presumed implications of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, which was not a denial of a real world, or affirmation of a heavenly realm, but a critique of the limits of human Reason. And his Idealism is not necessarily supporting traditional Religious or Spiritualist worldviews, Descartes also seemed to acknowledge our ability to deceive ourselves -- or to be deceived by a hypothetical demon -- about reality, in his "cogito ergo sum" expression : all I know for sure is the contents of my own mind. In that sense, Reality transcends my abbreviated and subjective world model. You may not go so far as Plato, to imagine an Ideal world from which our reasoning abstracts it's own version of Reality. But for scientific purposes, it's necessary to accept the limitations on our ability to know and to model Reality.

Kant’s Transcendental Idealism :
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations. Some, including many of Kant’s contemporaries, interpret transcendental idealism as essentially a form of phenomenalism, similar in some respects to that of Berkeley, while others think that it is not a metaphysical or ontological theory at all. There is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant ... -idealism/

Kant’s Philosophy of Religion :
Kant has long been seen as hostile to religion. Many of his contemporaries, ranging from his students to the Prussian authorities, saw his Critical project as inimical to traditional Christianity.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/

[Gnomon]

And just here a mini-lesson in the dangers of reading and relying on secondary sources, and even more on quoting excerpts. — tim wood

Like many philosophers, Kant could be interpreted, and quoted, from both sides of the religion question. Nominally, he was a conventional Lutheran. But some of his ideas would make his fellow Christians uncomfortable. It's true that his Critique of Human Reason, allowed room for Faith. But, he could also be critical of some religious beliefs.

My comment was only intended to show Ciceronianus that his interpretation might be looking only at one side of Kant's religious views : the notion of that which "transcends" reality. Which has been a common view among philosophers for thousands of years. Yet Kant was writing during a revolutionary transition period away from Idealism & Transcendentalism, toward Realism & Mundanism. And philosophical worldviews have swung back & forth since then with each new generation. Personally, I have no problem reconciling both views from the perspective of the BothAnd Principle. So, my worldview is both Ideal and Real, both Transcendental and Mundane.

PS___Since I have never met Kant, or read his works in the original language, all of my sources are secondary.

Thus Kant demythologizes the Christian doctrine of original sin.
https://iep.utm.edu/kant-rel/

Both/And Principle :
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

[Gnomon]

There certainly are limits to human reason, but to claim the real is forever beyond our knowledge seems, to me, excessive, and unjustified. — Ciceronianus the White

Hence, your negative reaction to the notion of Transcendence. I will agree that denial of the mundane Reality of our direct experience is unjustified. But to deny that there is also something beyond the scope of our senses, is also unreasonable.

For example, scientists today accept many concepts that lie beyond (transcend) our direct knowledge, and must be taken on faith in the experts : String Theory, 11 dimensions, Parallel Universes, etc. I have no experience of such transcendental things, but I don't deny their possibility. I just don't have much use for that kind of transcendence.

However, the general notion of Transcendence, as a philosophical concept, is not a problem for me. And it can make sense of some perennial philosophical mysteries, such as : what existed "before" the Big Bang gave birth to space-time?

[Gnomon]

That's so. We know that to be the case. But this doesn't mean that there is in all cases something not only outside the scope of our senses, but something we can never know. — Ciceronianus the White

I agree that Nescience is just as rare as Omniscience. So I muddle along somewhere in the middle, consoled by the knowledge than even Socrates admitted that "one thing I know is that I know nothing". But that was an intentionally paradoxical statement.

For Kant to say that, not everything, but merely the ideal ding an sich is unknowable, may sound defeatist to you. But to me, it's a wise form of philosophical humility : to avoid the self-conceit of a know-it-all. For an humble philosopher, most of the universe's potential knowledge is unknown to him. On the other hand, to know that there is much you don't know, leaves you with plenty to explore -- including the notion of Transcendence.

Socratic paradox :
Socrates begins all wisdom with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one's ignorance. After all, Socrates' dialectic method of teaching was based on that he as a teacher knew nothing, so he would derive knowledge from his students by dialogue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_th ... ow_nothing

"All knowledge and understanding of the Universe was no more than playing with stones and shells on the seashore of the vast imponderable ocean of truth." — Sir Isaac Newton

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,. Or what's a heaven for?" ___Browning

Epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.

Transcendence : existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.
"the possibility of spiritual transcendence in the modern world"
___Oxford

PS__I too, am skeptical of most claims about paranormal knowledge. But to claim that there is nothing "beyond the normal" leaves you open to be blindsided by a Black Swan.

[Gnomon]

In this, knowledge is constrained, bounded by, and limited to what reason can present. — tim wood

Yes. The paradox of human Reason is that it is the mechanism by which we come to know Reality, but it is also the ability to imagine worlds that don't exist in reality. So, it's the job of Philosophy and Science to sort-out the real from the unreal. But, it's a hard job, and there's still a lot of gray area for us to quibble about.

Don Hoffman's : Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes
From his studies, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That often leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html

[Gnomon]

This thread has strayed from the OP topic of "Presuppositions" --- presumably referring to "unwarranted assumptions" and "biased beliefs" --- into the Epistemological questions of "what can we know, and what can we never know?" But I just came across a relevant description of the "Begging The Question Fallacy" in the current issue of SKEPTIC magazine. Rather than insert my opinion here, I'll just quote a few lines from the article : 25 Fallacies in The Case For Christianity, written by a trial lawyer.

"Begging the question is assuming the very thing you are trying to prove as a premise of your article. . . . A presuppositionalist begins with the assumption that Christianity is true and should be accepted unless definitively proven impossible. . . . . Being a presuppositionalist means never having to admit you're wrong, because you begin with the non-negotiable premise that your are right." ___John Campbell

Fortunately, we don't often encounter that kind of overtly biased argument on this forum. But posters sometimes seem to suspect, and to imply that their opponents are closet preuppositionalists, even for debatable scientific concepts.


Presuppositionalism meaning ... (theology) A school of Christian apologetics that presumes Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought
https://www.yourdictionary.com/presuppositionalism