Reply #72: Claims "so-and-so is counterfactual and corresponds to no material reality"

[struggle4progress]

are common in this forum. Sometimes such an object is cogent; sometimes it is not. Factual claims corresponding to material realities can be interesting and important, but I do not think such claims exhaust all human experience worthy of attention. In particular, if someone believes his/her own ideas are all factual and only correspond to material reality, I will suspect the person is shallow and uninteresting, unselfcritical or perhaps downright dishonest

It is difficult to make sense of the world using only categories of thought "corresponding to material reality." For example, I do not know how to give such an account of statements like "She has the imagination necessary to be a first rate mathematician" or "He simply has no understanding whatsoever of the current conversation"

Similarly, "the counterfactual" does not deserve uniform scorn: we know that sometimes something-that-had-been-counterfactual can become something-that-is-factual; otherwise, no one would try to do anything

No purely naturalistic account can be given of a concept such as agape (αγάπη), as Kierkegaard notes -- and I suspect BurtWorm, in describing my interest in this notion as mere emotion and as an inadequately examined illusion, takes the view that the notion is counterfactual and corresponds to no material reality. But, for the reasons just mentioned, I myself would not regard agape as unimportant simply on account of counterfactuality, or as meaningless simply on account of failure to correspond to a material reality