No Leo, Destiny is NOT Construct Aware.

[BlueOak]

26 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Distinction is more fundamental than concept.

X ------------------------------------ Y

I'll consider this a letter distinction, a space distinction, a shape distinction, a form distinction, a position distinction, a direction distinction etc, etc.
I'll consider this a shape, a drawing, an equation, typed lines on a page, a doodle, a silly anecdote by a blue tree, 

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, Ulax said:

I guess my previous question comes from the following question.

How you can ever make an argument for anything if you don't believe in transcendental truth?

Because the idea that there's a single, correct understanding of Reality is a metaphysical assumption, which is disconnected from our actual lived experience.

The notion that our concepts are correct or incorrect to the degree to which they correspond with this 'neutral' God's-eye perspective is what I'm critiquing here. (The philosophical term for this is a 'Correspondence Theory' of truth).

We can still arrive at shared  forms of understanding because human beings exist within a number of shared contexts, bounded by our common biology.

Something like science, for instance, isn't Transcendental, aperspectival Truth. Instead, it's a form of truth that's reflective of human needs, capacities, and interests.

Arguments and statements can be more or less correct from within a given purposive context . Basically, truth is always connected to something that's relevant to you for some reason + something you're trying to do or understand.

Perspective-dependent does not mean 'arbitrary', nor does it mean that truth is 'subjective'. In other words, critiquing the Transcendental View does not mean that 'anything goes'. If you want to build an airplane that flies, there are certain constraints that you have to adhere to - there's nothing arbitrary or subjective about it. On the other hand, airplane building isn't a feature of Reality that exists apart from minds who have some reason to build airplanes.

Edited August 15, 2024 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Be careful that you don't take distinction as merely conceptual.

Distinction is more fundamental than concept.

Hard agree. But diving into that gets into fundamentals ontological topics like 'being', which would derail this thread faster than a drunk conductor taking a speeding train through a sharp curve 😎

Edited August 15, 2024 by DocWatts

[Ulax]

36 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Arguments and statements can be more or less correct from within a given purposive context . Basically, truth is always connected to something that's relevant to you for some reason + something you're trying to do or understand.

How do you judge that something is more or less correct from within a given purposive context??

Quote

Perspective-dependent does not mean 'arbitrary', nor does it mean that truth is 'subjective'. In other words, critiquing the Transcendental View does not mean that 'anything goes'. If you want to build an airplane that flies, there are certain constraints that you have to adhere to - there's nothing arbitrary or subjective about it. 

But how do you decide what constitutes an 'airplane' or what constitutes 'flying', without appealing to a transcendental truth? 

[DocWatts]

22 minutes ago, Ulax said:

How do you judge that something is more or less correct from within a given purposive context??

But how do you decide what constitutes an 'airplane' or what constitutes 'flying', without appealing to a transcendental truth? 

1) There is and cannot be any generalized rule for relevance determination. I'll go so far and contend that this is a hard constraint imposed upon us by Reality. Any set of rules for determining relevance runs into an infinite regression problem - where you the need rules for determining how to apply the original rules, and then rules for those higher level rules, ad-infinitum. Turtles all the way down 

Relevance is determined by the needs of the situation. Best we can do is heuristics which are largely tacit, all of which have exceptions.

 

2) Fortunately for us, we don't need things to be Transcendentally True for sensible decision making. We just need heuristics that are 'good enough' for what we are trying to accomplish.

There's an illuminating parallel here to a concept within evolutionary science known as 'satisficing', which refers to the idea that evolutionary adaptions do not need to be optimal - just 'good enough' to be compatible with survival.

Likewise, the truth that guides our decisions just needs to be 'good enough' to fit our needs and goals. (And before you ask, what is 'good enough' is situational, there's no explicit rule that's going to be completely applicable to every conceivable situation 😎).

 

 

In sum, Reality, as it turns out, is quite resistant to our attempts to completely capture it within any formal system. There are limits to epistemology.

 

Edited August 15, 2024 by DocWatts

[Guest Nilsi]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Be careful that you don't take distinction as merely conceptual.

Distinction is more fundamental than concept.

Yes! Deleuze has developed this quite rigorously in his metaphysical magnum opus Difference and Repetition. I'll leave you with a few of his quotes:

Quote

"A concept is never a principle of explanation, it is always the product of the principles which it explains." - Gilles Deleuze

Quote

"Difference is prior to identity, but is itself a positive power that produces identity as its effect." - Gilles Deleuze

Quote

"The individual is the expression of a pre-individual singularity which is not at all a unity of the individual, but a pure and simple multiplicity." - Gilles Deleuze

Maybe we European academics aren't as "clueless" as you might like to think.

Edited August 15, 2024 by Nilsi

[Davino]

3 hours ago, DocWatts said:

It's like people who pursue nondualistic spiritual perspectives sometimes forget that distinctions serve a very valid and necessary epistemological purpose. And that they can be used in a flexible way, without the insistence that they're Transcendentally true.

My body is a distinction within reality; distinctions serve a very pragmatic purpose.

Distinctions cocreate each other, like when we distinguish up in space we codefine down.

Your body is like a carving inside Reality. What you are is what you are not. It's a distinction.

One has to think about this whole phenomenon from ground zero, how do you create Reality out of nothing? Distinctions.

Infinity is all potentiality, this experience you are having is a particular distinction within it. It's a possibility within infinity.

The sandbox metaphor is great, inside this sandbox you can make all forms and all forms are contained within it as potentiality. You can distinguish within it whatever you want, Reality is the ultimate Sandbox, the room and all the objects within it are distinctions and figments inside the All-Pervasive Consciousness Field.

Distinctions are not a human affair, distinctions create the human in the first place, distinctions are the mechanism for "form" to emerge and to dissolve. For example, what is death? The end of all distinctions. What is birth? The figmentation of consciousness.

Exercise: Take a pen and look a it, long enough that you understand that what a pen actually is...

It's a distinction! 

I do this almost everyday, as a hobby, I just stare in awe at objects and realize how I'm constructing them inside my Mind. Consciousness is Pure Magic.

 

[Guest Nilsi]

3 hours ago, DocWatts said:

It's like people who pursue nondualistic spiritual perspectives sometimes forget that distinctions serve a very valid and necessary epistemological purpose. And that they can be used in a flexible way, without the insistence that they're Transcendentally true.

I wonder what you make of Deleuze's "transcendental empiricism," which is precisely about finding the conditions of real experience not in some vulgar British way of distrusting intuition, or in some rationalist a priori concepts, but in the immanent process of becoming and difference itself; or to speak with Nietzsche: "The fundamental fact of human will, its horror vacui, compels it to seek, invent, and become - life itself is will to power, and nothing besides."

[Ulax]

50 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

1) There is and cannot be any generalized rule for relevance determination. I'll go so far and contend that this is a hard constraint imposed upon us by Reality. Any set of rules for determining relevance runs into an infinite regression problem - where you the need rules for determining how to apply the original rules, and then rules for those higher level rules, ad-infinitum. Turtles all the way down 

Relevance is determined by the needs of the situation. Best we can do is heuristics which are largely tacit, all of which have exceptions.

 

2) Fortunately for us, we don't need things to be Transcendentally True for sensible decision making. We just need heuristics that are 'good enough' for what we are trying to accomplish.

There's an illuminating parallel here to a concept within evolutionary science known as 'satisficing', which refers to the idea that evolutionary adaptions do not need to be optimal - just 'good enough' to be compatible with survival.

Likewise, the truth that guides our decisions just needs to be 'good enough' to fit our needs and goals. (And before you ask, what is 'good enough' is situational, there's no explicit rule that's going to be completely applicable to every conceivable situation 😎).

 

 

In sum, Reality, as it turns out, is quite resistant to our attempts to completely capture it within any formal system. There are limits to epistemology.

 

How would you approach something like legal reasoning? 

 

[DocWatts]

26 minutes ago, Ulax said:

How would you approach something like legal reasoning? 

Well we're venturing well-outside of my area of expertise here. But in general first I would try to gauge whether the issue in question is worth having an option on (not everything is). Then I would approach it from a meta-perspective that's informed both by own values, and the expertise of people with domain-specific expertise whose character and motivations I have reason to trust.

With that in mind, in forming an initial opinion, I would try to evaluate the spirit of the law in question, and whether that makes sense for the situation in question. I would also approach it with the perspective that Laws are akin to social-technologies, and ask whether the specific social-technology is causing unnecessary social harm or not. I would then try to hold that initial opinion provisionally, and update it as the situation and my own understanding changes.

Edited August 15, 2024 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

29 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I wonder what you make of Deleuze's "transcendental empiricism," which is precisely about finding the conditions of real experience not in some vulgar British way of distrusting intuition, or in some rationalist a priori concepts, but in the immanent process of becoming and difference itself; or to speak with Nietzsche: "The fundamental fact of human will, its horror vacui, compels it to seek, invent, and become - life itself is will to power, and nothing besides."

I'll admit that I'm unfamiliar with Deleuze, but I do find process driven epistemology and ontology to be more insightful than classical rationalism by a good measure. I've found Nietzsche to be a fascinating chimera of real insights, mixed with egoic self-deception. Good writer as well. I wish academic philosophy would take notes on how to make their insights as engaging as Nietzsche did. Rigor and  an engaging writing style don't have to be diametrically opposed.

I'm agnostic on the value of the will-to-power. I think its utility is entirely dependent upon what other types of insights it's driving towards.

Edited August 15, 2024 by DocWatts

[Forestluv]

….. 

Edited August 16, 2024 by Forestluv

[Extreme Z7]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Although it's so good I'm not sure if I will release it for feee.

So indecisive, he couldn't decide if he wanted to write 'for free' or 'for a fee'.

[Bobby_2021]

@DocWatts Thoughts are made out of the same substance as physical reality itself. (distinctions)

A concept is also made out of distinctions. Reality is a foreplay of sameness and differences. 

[Staples]

2 hours ago, Extreme Z7 said:

So indecisive, he couldn't decide if he wanted to write 'for free' or 'for a fee'.

@Staples Maybe...we get it fee free? 😂

[Bobby_2021]

You will be construct aware, own nothing and be happy.

- World Actualized Forum (WAF)

Edited August 16, 2024 by Bobby_2021

[docs20]

He was refering that is way more construct-aware than the other people in the videos, whose reasoning was much more similar to a monkey (meaning very basic and not nounced at all)  than to a human with a brain

[LSD-Rumi]

19 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There is much more to construct-awareness than social construction.

Social construction is the tip of the iceberg.

Would you elaborate with examples, pls?

[zazen]

Just because something is a construct, doesn't mean its useless. The concept of the noble lie was that some things may not be objectively true, but are created to exist in order to serve a utilitarian purpose or smooth running of society. If we de-construct all constructs, we'll end up eroding many psychological pillars that hold our world together, including our selves.

Money itself is a construct, a shared myth to facilitate our global economy. Organised religion is a noble lie to foster cohesion and ''positive'' behaviour - heaven is the carrot, hell is the stick.

Subjective beliefs have objective consequences. Subjectivity in a sense literally matters, because it can matter-ialise in reality.

What purpose does seeing everything as a construct serve? Beside feeling special for a moment as if we've stumbled upon a secret exposing the matrix - to loosen our grip on labels, concepts and identity and allow for more plurality?