Hugo Holbling

These are excellent questions, Keith. I'm going to start a thread soon in which i'll discuss these points with Anthony Adams and i cordially invite you to join in. No doubt the big guns will turn up, and i especially want to hear from Gurdur and Kantian. Hopefully i'll post it this weekend, time allowing.

In brief, the word "intersubjective" is the answer you're looking for. To use a popular example, beauty may well be in the eye of the beholder, but you and i can agree on criteria that define beauty as we wish to understand it and then speak of x being more beautiful than y all we want (a valuable ability ). I can then row with you all i like about Veronica Varekova being ever so slightly more beautiful than Laetita Casta and your relativist arguments to the contrary will not help you.

Please don't disagree with me here, or ask for further justification. I'll go into this in more depth in a new thread when i have time to start it. Let's leave this one for Primal's doomed support of materialism...

AnthonyAdams45

Why?

Primal

Not really. This would assume that the intersubjective viewpoint was then "privileged"...why should it be? Also you are then assuming there is an intersubjectivity as well, how do you know?

Isn't the whole idea of "intersubjectivity" merely an arbitrary assumption?

Primal

Question concerning why the overmind is different in kind.

Because it can impose its will on other minds, doing so in a universal manner.

AnthonyAdams45

No, it is commonly experienced as described in Hugo's example: Unless, of course, you think there is an absolute standard of beauty. Even more interesting is that we may agree that Catherine Bell is more beautiful than either, find grounds for exactly the same kinds of discussion as absolutists have.

As to idealism and the overmind, I see that your fascination with the idea proceeds from a concern for wills. Remember that the British Idealists to perceive was to be passive, including Hume. Thus an overmind who served to bind reality together who be passive not active, receptive not creative, open not willful.

And the overmind would be different in kind because it imposed its will on others? As if no average ordinary will didn't do exactly the same thing. What is debate the attempt to impose your will on your listeners. You may pause at that word "attempt" and say "different." "The overmind doesn't attempt He does." (Ah the dreaded "He") But, no, without knowing what the overmind is attempting, we cannot have any notion of the success rate. Based on the wide variety of perceptions people have regarding most things, I'd guess the overmind (a superfluous concept, I'd agree) the overmind is either exceptionally devious or rather inept. Reminds one of the God of the Creationists. And don't forget that debaters succeed in imposing their wills quite often.

Oh, and relativists who are absolutists are just silly. Anyone who said that everything is relative and that they have the absolute truth would get a giggle out of anybody. Not because they're illogical, but because they obviously can't speak the language.

Hugo Holbling

Pshaw! You've got to be kidding!

I'll deal with this common criticism in my post, coming to a thread near you soon. Thanks for the suggestion, AA.

This comment leads me to suspect that you don't understand the concept of intersubjectivity, Primal. Nevertheless, i'll try to incorporate your questions into my post, as i proposed for Keith's questions above. If you'd like to discuss relativism further, look out for that thread. I'll leave this one to materialism and refrain from dragging you off-topic any more.

No.

Primal

Yes but Hugo is still assuming then a) We can come to a common definition. b) That a definition being common between us somehow makes it binding to us or others. Basically exactly what I am saying.

That doesn't make sense as then reality would already exist without need of an overmind.

Well I'm not aware of any objective idealism where one can impose one's will on God.....


Or engage their reason....


If we are to be objective idealists we must admit He is fairly successful.


The problem is you really cannot know for sure whether their viewpoint changes radically from yours in any way, unless you admit first that your own observations concerning others are accurate. That their minds are reflected by what you observe concerning them. However if tehy are their perceptions as is their surrounding, you'd actually have to get in their head to make the comparison. In essence then, you must assume a rather uniform reality in order to make your statement, in which case what the overmind is doing is working quite well.

Note: In terms of raw sensation(sight,sound,touch,etc), we all tend to operate in a similiar manner even according to empirical inference. It is in terms of beliefs concerning what we observe where so much digression occurs.


I agree if by "impose" you mean change minds and nothing more.(And even in this case I imagine there are more misses then hits as biases are slow to change.)

Well gee, nothing arbitrary about that criticism. "They are just silly."


So?


The correct language according to "your" standards.

Primal

BTW, anyone keeping tabs should take note of the bottom "arguments" made by Hugo and thus why I don't take relativists seriously.

Pshaw! Aren't you being a closed-minded,judgmental,asbolutist?



Well then bless your sweet little heart.



Well thanks such a dogma free answer Pat Robertson. How about if I counter with a profound "Yes"?

Hugo Holbling

Any attempt at humour sails past you, eh?

AnthonyAdams45

Which it does. Idealism does not require any individual mind to create the world, but rather says the world has no components beyond qualities (no bare particulars) and that no qualities have non-mental components. The entire enterprise of contemporary science is compatible with idealism.

Are you aware of any objective idealism that has no God? Are we limited to discussing objective idealism of which you are aware? Besides, you are quite aware of an objective idealism that has no God.... mine. And what is prayer after all, but imposing our will on God.


But isn't your reasoning an expression of your will, or does logical argument just propel itself out of your mouth. And surely the purpose of engage their will as much as their reason, since being heard is never enough is it, but also changing the mind of the listener.

Why? If we were to understand that idealism consisted of an overmind projecting the world like an old-time movie projector, you might have something, but no actual idealist understands it that way, except perhaps Plato, and Plato is a strange bird indeed. (And probably a dualist besides.)


On the one hand, which standards can I appeal to but my own. Secondly, I will appeal to their standards. Should their standards serve to prove that relativism is absolutism, then I shall ignore them, relying on the only standards I have to make such decisions on, my own.