Shajan624 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:38 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 5:04 pm
Where did the "shared assumptions" about the triangle come from?
We don’t know enough about ‘minds’ to answer this question. But the assumptions can be clearly stated and agreed upon and that is good enough to use geometry effectively.
We don't need to assume anything about the nature of the mental realm right now (although if we can agree there is only mental realm and no realms of different essence, i.e. idealism, that would help). We only need to answer the question of whether the assumptions arise from people independently figuring out or being told the meaning of "triangle", and/or whether we are drawing on, for all intents and purposes, a
pre-existing transpersonal meaning of "triangle". Do you think we can confidently answer that question?
Shajan wrote:AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:04 pm
"Tracing back" means to start from where we are and retrace the steps taken, so we can't jump back into the ancient past and make assumptions to do that. We start with our experience as it manifests now in our concrete experience of the world. Physicalism is a problem precisely because it ignores that immanent experience and settles for pure abstraction instead. What do we gain from replacing physicalism with another worldview which does the exact same thing?
I am not suggesting to ignore immanent experience. That wouldn’t make any sense at all!
I am saying experience has a component that cannot be translated into ’representations’ for systematic analysis. Physicalism would say 'unrepresentable' is an illusion. I am saying it is as much real as the representable and we should look into the evolutionary history of 'representations' to understand the reasons for this split.
I get that. What I am trying to do is see if we can dispel the bolded conclusion (we should remember it is a conclusion, not a given of our experience) by way of phenomenology of perception-cognition. Your conclusion appears to be that there is a subconscious realm which remains forever beyond our representational capacity, i.e. what is 'unrepresented' will always remain 'unrepresented', and the epistemic
best we can do is figure out why that conclusion about the 'unrepresented' is justified by studying the evolution of human representations via language, art, myth, etc. Is that about accurate? If so, I disagree with that conclusion. Furthermore, I probably disagree with your
interpretation of the evolutionary process in representations, i.e. that the "invention of language" was primarily a means to "cover up" the noumenal realm ("things-in-themselves"). There is some truth in that, according to me, but not nearly enough to capture the essence of what was occurring.
But, the overall point being, if we
start with our conclusions and their disagreements, there is really nowhere left to go. Instead we should start with what can be easily agreed upon in the givens of our experience, without any added assumptions or biases from our respective presupposed conclusions, and see what conclusions naturally flow from those agreements.