Philosophy Now Forum

Ok I'm with you now. I guess if you asked 100 scientists if they exist, then probably 99 would probably tell you they do exist. I would image you would get the same result if you asked 100 people off the street the same question.

Ginkgo wrote:Ok I'm with you now. I guess if you asked 100 scientists if they exist, then probably 99 would probably tell you they do exist. I would image you would get the same result if you asked 100 people off the street the same question.

"So... ...if you asked 100 scientists how they know they exist what do you think would be the consensus?"

I meant the question literally.

You ask each of 100 scientists how they know they exist.

I imagine you'd hear about a few cats and computer programs but generally I believe they will agree they know they exist because they think, or they think they do, or some variation on this theme.

I'm not sure this question could even be asked in the ancient language; existence was axiomatic. Existence resulted in consciousness. Everything was seen from the inside.

cladking wrote:I'm not sure this question could even be asked in the ancient language; existence was axiomatic.

Not sure what you mean here. (Or how you could tell.)

cladking wrote:Existence resulted in consciousness. Everything was seen from the inside.

Isn't 'I think, therefore I am' seeing things from the inside?

As an aside; I suspect if you were to ask 100 scientists how they know they exist, more than a few would tell you to 'Get lost, philosopher!'
Would a good place to start be with an explanation of how you know that you exist?

uwot wrote:

cladking wrote:I'm not sure this question could even be asked in the ancient language; existence was axiomatic.

Not sure what you mean here. (Or how you could tell.)

cladking wrote:Existence resulted in consciousness. Everything was seen from the inside.

Isn't 'I think, therefore I am' seeing things from the inside?

As an aside; I suspect if you were to ask 100 scientists how they know they exist, more than a few would tell you to 'Get lost, philosopher!'
Would a good place to start be with an explanation of how you know that you exist?

Yes, this would be a introspective view on Descartes part. Descartes wanted to separate what we can know with absolute certainty from all types of knowledge susceptible to doubt. Descartes thought we experience the world exclusively through our senses and such sense data often proved unreliable.

On this basis Descartes decided to put all information gained through the senses into the unreliable basket. Descartes realized the only thing he could not put into the unreliable basket was his own existence. In other words, by asking himself questions about the nature of existence, there must be something that exists to ask such questions, hence:

"I think therefore I am"

uwot wrote: Would a good place to start be with an explanation of how you know that you exist?

I don't know I exist. At least I don't know I exist in the form I percieve.

Simply stated I developed what I call "generalism" from the ground up. It's not
strictly coincidence that I chose the same road as the ancient scientists. There's
no point in studying anything at all until you make the assumption that you exist
and that reality is exactly what is percieved. I was already on this quest of discov-
ery before I discovered the ancient science that is so similar to my own brand of
modern science.

To me all of reality is an estimation of probabilities arrived at through evidence
but I have no means of estimating the odds that reality is what appears to be. It
appears I'm an animal of very limited intelligence living among people who almost
all believe they are smart. They believe this because everyone sees what they ex-
pect and can't see what they don't expect. They believe this because of confused
language that propogates the notion and specialization. They believe this because
language has created vast knowledge in which we all share to a greater or lesser
extent. We mistake this knowledge as evidence of intelligence. We mistake tech-
nology as a manifestation of intelligence. Reality is a societal norm which is seen
from an infinite distance.

To other people i would normally say "of course I exist" but inside I know that this
is merely axiomatic and a means of manipulating the world and my enviroment to
my own ends. If one must serve in hell one might as well try to lead or at the very
least get comfortable.

cladking wrote:

uwot wrote: Would a good place to start be with an explanation of how you know that you exist?

I don't know I exist. At least I don't know I exist in the form I percieve.

That is the point Descartes is making. His senses could be deceived, mirages and other optical illusions, and it is prudent not to fully trust those that have deceived you. It is also possible that he is being deceived all the time, by an evil daemon, so he couldn't be sure that anything he perceived was 'real', even his perceptions of himself. What he could not doubt though, is that regardless of the truth of his perceptions, he was experiencing perceptions. 'I am experiencing perceptions, therefore I am.' isn't as snappy, but more literal.

cladking wrote:Simply stated I developed what I call "generalism" from the ground up. It's not
strictly coincidence that I chose the same road as the ancient scientists.

I'm interested in which ancient scientists you mean and particularly your source of information about them.
Generalism is a good place to start, there's no point diving straight into minutiae if you have no context. It's more or less how education procedes, children are shown a wide variety of disciplines to give them a broad view of the world they are in. As they develop, some find a particular aspect interesting and follow that. The detail becomes finer and the focus sharper, but that doesn't preclude interests in other fields. It is also a rough analogy for the history of philosophy and science, we can all see further thanks to the shoulders of giants we stand on. It is sometimes said that Aristotle was the last person to know everything there was to know, it's not true, but the point is that if you are general enough, you can have a broad brush picture of absolutely everything, but the fact is, there is too much world for any individual to be an expert on everything. Brilliant though Aristotle was, there is a whole bunch of stuff we know that he didn't.

cladking wrote:There's
no point in studying anything at all until you make the assumption that you exist
and that reality is exactly what is percieved.

The idea that reality is exactly as perceived is known as naive realism, I don't think you mean that.
You don't have to consciously make any assumptions about your own existence in order to study.

cladking wrote:I was already on this quest of discov-
ery before I discovered the ancient science that is so similar to my own brand of
modern science.

To me all of reality is an estimation of probabilities arrived at through evidence
but I have no means of estimating the odds that reality is what appears to be.

I think you have to distinguish between what reality is and what we can know about it. I personally do not believe that we can ever know what reality is like; I am completely swayed by Descartes argument that we could be being deceived by an evil daemon, or that Berkeley's claim that everything is ideas in the mind of god could be true, or Russell's pointing out that it is logically possible that the world came into existence only five minutes ago, complete with our memories and holey socks. Like you, I have no way of knowing what the probability of anything is, but I think a useful guide is Occam's Razor; start with the simplest explanation and stick with it until you have to add something or discard it.

cladking wrote:It
appears I'm an animal of very limited intelligence living among people who almost
all believe they are smart. They believe this because everyone sees what they ex-
pect and can't see what they don't expect. They believe this because of confused
language that propogates the notion and specialization. They believe this because
language has created vast knowledge in which we all share to a greater or lesser
extent. We mistake this knowledge as evidence of intelligence. We mistake tech-
nology as a manifestation of intelligence.

You can define intelligence to mean anything you wish, but I think our use of technology is a sign of some intelligence at least.

cladking wrote:Reality is a societal norm which is seen
from an infinite distance.

I have to say, I think this is confused language; what does it mean?

cladking wrote:To other people i would normally say "of course I exist" but inside I know that this
is merely axiomatic and a means of manipulating the world and my enviroment to
my own ends.

Have you ever said to yourself: 'I don't exist.' ? Try it, see if it makes any sense.

cladking wrote:If one must serve in hell one might as well try to lead or at the very
least get comfortable.

You go on ahead; I'm going for comfy.

uwot wrote: That is the point Descartes is making. His senses could be deceived, mirages and other optical illusions, and it is prudent not to fully trust those that have deceived you. It is also possible that he is being deceived all the time, by an evil daemon, so he couldn't be sure that anything he perceived was 'real', even his perceptions of himself. What he could not doubt though, is that regardless of the truth of his perceptions, he was experiencing perceptions. 'I am experiencing perceptions, therefore I am.' isn't as snappy, but more literal.

I'm not suggesting that DesCartes is wrong. I'm suggesting that his premise is inconsistent with taking reality as being axiomatic as the ancients did. The ancients believed "I am therefore I think". They believed living things and other people must exist as they appeared and also thought I am therefore I think. I strongly suspect that this belief is foundational to living things other than modern humans.

I'm interested in which ancient scientists you mean and particularly your source of information about them.

I believe living things are natural scientists. This included all humans until the language changed. This is based on an understanding of ancient writing which was metaphysical in nature. Almost no ancient writing survived because it couldn't be translated. Essentially the only surviving corpus is the Pyramid Texts and it's just a silly little book of ritual that has been completely misinterpreted. The ancient people would be vaguely embarrassed to know this is the only surviving book. I solved this work through the discovery of referents. When a word is used in context enough times its meaning becomes apparent. By solving words it allowed me to solve more words until a meaning appeared in a metaphysical language.

The idea that reality is exactly as perceived is known as naive realism, I don't think you mean that.
You don't have to consciously make any assumptions about your own existence in order to study.

Obviously if you're going to start with I am therefore I think it is imperative that you understand optical illusion, scientific observation, confirmation bias, etc, etc. This, to me, is a form of pragmatism and pragmatism certainly underlay ancient motives.

I think you have to distinguish between what reality is and what we can know about it. I personally do not believe that we can ever know what reality is like; I am completely swayed by Descartes argument that we could be being deceived by an evil daemon, or that Berkeley's claim that everything is ideas in the mind of god could be true, or Russell's pointing out that it is logically possible that the world came into existence only five minutes ago, complete with our memories and holey socks. Like you, I have no way of knowing what the probability of anything is, but I think a useful guide is Occam's Razor; start with the simplest explanation and stick with it until you have to add something or discard it.

I simply assume WYSIWYG. Reality is all and our job is percieve as much as possible. Most perception is extranneous so we must learn to attend to only that which has importance.

You can define intelligence to mean anything you wish, but I think our use of technology is a sign of some intelligence at least.

No. It really isn't. All technology is an accumulation of inventions and theory made by individuals using knowledge gained from their forebearers by nmeans of language. Technology represents language and not intelligence. It represents experimental science which arose through language.

I have to say, I think this is confused language; what does it mean?

Educated people believe essentially the same things. Even most uneducated see the world through a framework of knowns and assumptions derived from consensus and resulting from language. We see what we expect to see and can't see what we don't. Most individuals share a belief that humans are virtually omniscient in aggregate; everything is known by someone.

We can see only what we know and we see it from infinitely far. We are blind tothe fact that even in aggregate we know only the tiniest fraction of 1% of everything there is. We can't predict the future and two experts can be found to argue how something came to pass.

Start from scratch, you haven't even got started yet... no one has...

Blaggard wrote:Start from scratch, you haven't even got started yet... no one has...

The "start" is pretty much wondering about existence and asking broad questions, like "Why am I here?", or "What is Life". To "start from scratch" would mean to think for yourself on things to see what you think, and not so much of whatever philosophy or philosopher thinks.

WanderingLands wrote:The "start" is pretty much wondering about existence and asking broad questions, like "Why am I here?", or "What is Life". To "start from scratch" would mean to think for yourself on things to see what you think, and not so much of whatever philosophy or philosopher thinks.

That is what Descartes did. He systematically doubted everything that he had been taught, even everything that he could see, until he found something that he could not doubt. The thing he could not doubt was that he was experiencing things. One of the first things you do as a student of philosophy, is go on that trip. By doing so, you learn that all of us are just trying to make sense of the things we see and hear. The fact that not everyone has the same experiences leads to a wide variety of interpretations, the wider your experience, generally, the better a reflection of reality your interpretation will be, but ultimately everybody is acting on some faith. The point is not to turn that faith into dogma; if you accept the principal that 'I could be wrong', you can't go wrong.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'ancient language'; I thought perhaps you meant pre-historic, but hieroglyphics and cuneiform are routinely translated into modern languages.

uwot wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by 'ancient language'; I thought perhaps you meant pre-historic, but hieroglyphics and cuneiform are routinely translated into modern languages.

I think Wanderinglands could be saying that "ancient language" is a language that allowed the ancients to view things from the "inside".
Perhaps this is related to Wanderinglands' view that ancient formulations took the form of, "I am therefore I think". He might also think this makes language metaphysical.

In the end all I am doing is having a guess.

Ginkgo wrote: I think Wanderinglands could be saying that "ancient language" is a language that allowed the ancients to view things from the "inside".
Perhaps this is related to Wanderinglands' view that ancient formulations took the form of, "I am therefore I think". He might also think this makes language metaphysical.

In the end all I am doing is having a guess.

All languages come from inside the great Mind from which our minds are descended from, so yes - language is indeed metaphysical.

WanderingLands wrote:
All languages come from inside the great Mind from which our minds are descended from, so yes - language is indeed metaphysical.

Metaphysics is the process used to gain knowledge and that knowledge. I believe ancient language incorporated the rules of science as grammar and vocabulary and what it learned as "natural phenomena" which we improperly translate as "gods". The language was used naturally as thought because it was the natural human language that was spoken everywhere. It was a language people are still born knowing but is quickly lost because it isn't reinforced. This language no longer exists among humans but it is probably still the basis of animal languages and the reason we don't understand them as wll as they understand us.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-scien ... e-fat.html

I don't believe any modern human languages have anything to do with metaphysics. It's a wonder when we even understand one another. Words have no meaning of their own except through context but ancient scientific terms had fixed meanings. We say directly what we mean but each person takes his own meaning while ancient language drew a picture of the meaning and each listener would know he didn't understand because he didn't get the picture.

If we must call modern confused language "metaphysical" then a term will be needed to describe the ancient language.

cladking wrote:Metaphysics is the process used to gain knowledge and that knowledge. I believe ancient language incorporated the rules of science as grammar and vocabulary and what it learned as "natural phenomena" which we improperly translate as "gods". The language was used naturally as thought because it was the natural human language that was spoken everywhere. It was a language people are strill born knowing but is quickly lost because it isn't reinforced. This language no longer exists among humans but it is probabvly still the basis of animal languages and the reason we don't understand them as wll as they understand us.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-scien ... e-fat.html

I don't believe modern any human languages have anything to do with metaphysics. It's a wonder when we even understand one another. Words have no meaning of their own exce[pt through context but ancient scientific terms had fixed meanings.

Ever heard of the language of the birds?

http://www.crystalinks.com/birdlanguage.html

WanderingLands wrote:
Ever heard of the language of the birds?

http://www.crystalinks.com/birdlanguage.html

I wonder how I missed it. My research tends to omit most everything from after the confusion of the language. However all these topics are things I've been working on and I'm even familiar with the site.

"In Ancient Egyptian itself, the hieroglyphic form of writing was given the name medu-netjer ("words of the gods" or "divine language")."

I don't believe this is quite accurate. The Egyptians referred to all language as the "words of the gods", I believe. But it should be noted that a proper translation of "medu-netjer" is "the words of natural phenomena". They used their knowledge of nature for communication and thought. This made them extremely powerful.