Thank you. I fully understand why you want to see the remarks in the context of his views as they changed over time.

These debates seem odd to me because I don't see what the opposition is. It sounds like these things are debates to the extent at what is learned and what is automatically generated (or rather, automatically being computed in some sort of cognitive apparatus). — schopenhauer1

I look at it through the lens of developmental psychology. The dynamic between the 'innate' and the environment points to neither aspect being the only process or ground of personal experience.

When Chomsky says: "Still, this approach seems reasonable to me; to give it some real content, it would be necessary to discover something comparable to a generative grammar in the domain of factual knowledge, which is no small task", that is asking for a science that goes beyond merely noting the dependence upon a repeatable experience of the world for the 'meaning' of propositions.

But it also goes beyond presuming a mechanism such as behaviorism does where different outcomes can be reduced to particular inputs.

I am not sure if this counts as 'hedging' in regard to what is innate or not but the following (written in the late 70's) suggests Chomsky is not putting the 'logic' of syntax as making or breaking the argument for a 'preexisting' structure in the way he opposed behaviorism, for example.

To be sure, someone who believes in a level of representation of the type proposed by Katz can reply: “In doing so, I propose a legitimate idealization. I assume, with Frege, that there exist semantic elements common to all languages, independent of everything except language and thought. In rejecting this idealization, you make the same mistake as those who confuse pragmatics with syntax.”

Certainly, this objection has some force. But I doubt that it will wholly withstand further reflection. Whenever concepts are examined with care, it seems that they involve beliefs about the real world. This idea is not new: Wittgenstein and Quine, among others, have emphasized that our use of concepts is set within a system of beliefs about lawful behavior of objects; similar ideas have been attributed to Leibniz. Thus, when we use the terms chair or table, we rely on beliefs concerning the objects to which we refer. We assume that they will not disappear suddenly, that they will fall when they are let go, and so on. These assumptions are not part of the meaning of chair, etc., but if the assumptions fail we might conclude that we were not referring to a chair, as we had thought. In studying semantics one must keep in mind the role of nonlinguistic systems of belief: we have our expectations about three dimensional space, about texture and sensation, about human behavior, inanimate objects, and so on. There are many mental organs in interaction. To repeat an observation of Wittgenstein’s, we would not know how to name an object if at one moment it looked like a chair, and a moment later disappeared, that is to say, if it does not obey the laws of nature. The question: “Is that a chair or not?” would not have an answer according to strictly linguistic criteria. Admittedly it is difficult to establish such conclusions. Too little is understood about cognitive systems and their interaction. Still, this approach seems reasonable to me; to give it some real content, it would be necessary to discover something comparable to a generative grammar in the domain of factual knowledge, which is no small task. My own speculation is that only a bare framework of semantic properties, altogether insufficient for characterizing what is ordinarily called “the meaning of a linguistic expression,” can be associated correctly with the idealization “language.” — Chomsky, Noam. On Language: Chomsky's Classic Works: Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language (p. 152).

The Business Party is not challenged by the focus on culture wars as long as property laws are enforced and debts are paid. A lot of the changes frightening the 'replacement theory' crowd have come about because of the expansion of corporate power and the weakening of local forces in relation to larger ones.

Let's all gather at a Target parking lot to stop them from selling butt plugs! Don't forget to bring your guns in case antifa shows up too.

The comment quoted by EricH does show Chomsky qualifying his general framework to acknowledge the transgressive inversion of the political institutions practiced by the GOP.

The general framework restricting the development of a more participatory democracy are a convergence of the structure built at the founding of the republic with the growth of corporations with legal rights and the 'virtual' senate created through international production and exchange:



A politics that would take on this infrastructure would be a major change in our way of life.

Why assume "the simulation" had a "creator"? — 180 Proof

A quality of Baudrillard's idea that the films do not connect to is how the 'real' is seen to have been removed as the result of a crime. The ways he points to clues obviously runs into the problem of starting without the realm of 'facts' as given because his claim of what was the result.

But it does give a weird intention quite different from fooling everybody for some specific purpose.

Yes, De Anima along with On Memory.

Your description is one of the interpretations of Aristotle's view of phantasia.

That is a good question. I think Jung would say yes, the pattern is there. Vygotsky is more circumspect. A pattern is underway. We do not know what it means.

I am attracted to Vygotsky's model of the self as coming about from structures that are not given in personal experience but make it possible. We have to treat the self as an object but that does not mean the quality is preconfigured by the restriction. Vygotsky says that reports from persons do not produce sufficient information. That view is sharply different from making it different than what it seems to be.

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I guess I was not expected to give a cogent account but to wrestle with the problems without a particular result showing I got it or not.

I was assigned to read primary texts. I came to appreciate commentary later on. But I am glad I did not start with that.

What draws you to philosophy?

In regard to the relationship between language and the organic beings we are, the range of developmental psychology is worth considering. There is Behaviorism at one end of the scale where the experience of self is an epiphenomenon of other processes while the other end is like Jung who sees the evolution of instincts being incorporated into the architecture of symbols.

The range brings forward the question of what can be accepted as a given on the mater.

This is an interesting curve in the Bossa Nova genre:

I think some of the anxiety came from the revolutions of 1848 where institutions accepted some democratic reforms in exchange for protecting the status quo. The anti-liberal reaction to the revolutions became the grounds for the ultra-nationalist movements that followed.

Nietzsche tried a few lines of this when he was young. His rejection of Wagner signaled the end of that party. To my knowledge, Heidegger never addressed that part of Nietzsche's teachings despite the considerable effort to interpret other parts.

The aspect of cause and effect says to me that there is not a sentient being tallying up a person's score but rather there is a structure that is changed immediately by the 'good' or 'bad' act but the different effects play out in different ways over time. A sort of action at distance that seems accidental but is not.

I think of it like the Picture of Dorian Gray, where the canvas is constantly being updated but cannot always be viewed. The idea that one is reborn under that condition is a tragic one. The song Born under a Bad Sign comes to mind.

It seems to me that generations of humans have dealt with being a self. It has been framed in different ways, but I am pretty sure we all are in the same pool, treading water. The recognition of isolation is interwoven with different ideas about connection.

The situation is not self-explanatory. Very different kinds of investigation, philosophical and psychological, have and are being pursued.

The tiny boat is not close to any shore.

Yes, I can see how the gap between evaluations involves the experience of being lost. I brought up the gap, however, in order to address this challenge in regard to the politics involved:

Nietzsche has played that role for decades. Apart from the political aspect, the question is, is there any evidence that such readings get the philosophy right? — Joshs

Whatever Heidegger hoped for or feared in his political actions, the interim between the point of departure and the true "abode" provides no register for taking responsibility for any 'compulsion to malignancy' he may have participated in.

That gap is there in the things he said, not merely an interpretation of what he meant.

Is there a concern for the human things in this more originary thinking? Where do we see it? — Fooloso4

In Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, he puts the matter this way:

The thinking that inquires into the truth of Being and so defines man's essential abode from Being and toward Being is neither ethics nor ontology. Thus the Thus the question about the relation of each to the other no longer has any basis in this sphere. Nonetheless, your question, thought in a more original way, retains a meaning and an essential importance.
For it must be asked: If the thinking that ponders the truth of Being defines the essence of humanitas as ek-sistence from the latter's belongingness to Being, then does thinking remain only a theoretical representation Being and of man; or can we obtain from such knowledge directives that can be readily applied to our active lives?

The answer is that such thinking is neither theoretical nor practical. It comes to pass before this distinction. Such thinking is, in so far as it is, recollection of Being and nothing else. Belonging to Being, because thrown by Being into the preservation of its truth and claimed for such preservation, it thinks Being. Such thinking has no result. It has no effect. It satisfies its essence in that it is. But it is by saying its matter. Historically, only saying [Sage] belongs to the matter of thinking, the one that is in each case appropriate to its matter. Its material relevance is essentially higher than the validity of the sciences, because it is freer. For it lets Being-be. — Basic Writings of Heidegger, translated by Capuzzi and Gray, page 259

The above would seem to place us on the verge of a kind of quietism but this is shown not to be the case shortly afterwards:

And yet thinking never creates the house of Being. Thinking conducts historical ek-sistence, that is, the humanitus of homo humanitus, into the realm of the upsurgence of healing [des Heilens].

With healing, evil appears all the more in the clearing of Being. The essence of evil does not consist in the mere baseness of human action, but rather in the malice of rage. Both of these, however, healing and raging, can essentially occur only in Being, in so far as Being itself is what is contested. It it is concealed the essential provenance of nihilation. What nihilates illuminates itself as the negative. This can be addressed in the "no." The "not" in no way arise from the no-saying of negation. Every "no" that does not mistake itself as willful assertion of the positing power of subjectivity, but rather remains a letting be of ek-sistence, answers to the claim of of the nihilation illumined. Every "no" is simply the affirmation of the "not." Every affirmation consists in acknowledgment. Acknowledgment lets that toward which it goes come toward it. It is believed that nihilation is nowhere to be found in the beings themselves. This is correct as long as one seeks nihilation as some kind of being, as an existing quality in beings. But in so seeking, one is not seeking nihilation. Neither is Being any existing quality that allows itself to be fixed among beings. And yet Being is more in being than any being. Because nihilation occurs essentially in Being itself we can never discern it as a being among beings. Reference to this impossibility never in any way proves that the origin of the not is no-saying. This proof appears to carry only if one posits beings as what is objective for subjectivity.

[Skipping to next two paragraph to reduce typing]

The nihilating in Being is the essence of what I call the nothing. Hence, because it thinks Being, thinking thinks the nothing.

To healing Being first grants ascent into grace, to raging its compulsion to malignancy. — ibid. page 260-261

The benefit of grace and the suffering of a compulsion to malignancy seems to be a "human" thing but Heidegger says we will not benefit from knowing about this condition until we reach one not yet experienced:

More essential than instituting rules is that man find the way to his abode in the truth of Being. — ibid. 262

It can be a long time between trains.

Christianity has come to be different things at different times to different people. Placing Feuerbach in a more specific context was a thought I had about how the personal became something different than what was expressed before.

The basis upon which that observation is made is not the same as how I see the matter by myself. I am not going to do that here.

Or a beginning of a new one required more work than originally anticipated.

Project Management is born.

One does not have to decide about the limits of the law (in regard to Paul's view) to see how Augustine made the issue about a personal choice.
— Paine

Can you explain ? — plaque flag

Paul expected the world to change forever and the sooner the better.

By the time of Augustine, waiting for the change required an adjustment of expectations. A dual citizenship of sorts was encouraged. The cleanliness of the inside of the cup compared to the outside is now entangled with the future of the world.

Did Christianity contribute to a tradition of radical interiority? — plaque flag

One does not have to decide about the limits of the law (in regard to Paul's view) to see how Augustine made the issue about a personal choice.

And the idea that a person was a locus for changing or not changing things became a thing, set against a background of relentless continuity. The City of God versus the City of Men.

I am not ascribing to that view but think it is closer to what Feuerbach was talking about than the Gospels taken by themselves.

Okay. I see we are at the boundaries of the other's perspective.

Yes, another thread.

I will read your selected essays if you read The Concept of Anxiety.

Kierkegaard was pretty clear about what conditions he laid out required of an individual.

You will have to enlighten me how and where Heidegger 'generalized' that.

One challenge in that regard is how to see Heidegger as a bridge Kierkegaard saw Hegel unable to build.

Let me put it another way. The emphasis upon the Single Individual versus a 'person in their situation" is not a difference unless it is one.

Is that not the question?

Whatever else one might think of Kierkegaard, he saw the demand from a person to follow Christ as a direct requirement even if the metaphors were unclear. The wiki page you cite gives a few tastes from the Works of Love:

But the metaphorical words are of course not brand-new words but are the already given words. Just as the spirit is invisible, so also is its language a secret, and the secret lies in its using the same words as the child and the simpleminded person but using them metaphorically, whereby the spirit denies the sensate or sensate-physical way. The difference is by no means a noticeable difference. For this reason we rightfully regard it as a sign of false spirituality to parade a noticeable difference-which is merely sensate, whereas the spirit's manner is the metaphor's quiet, whispering secret – for the person who has ears to hear. Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 1847, Hong 1995 p. 209-210

Love builds up by presupposing that love is present. Have you not experienced this yourself, my listener? If anyone has ever spoken to you in such a way or treated you in such a way that you really felt built up, this was because you very vividly perceived how he presupposed love to be in you. Wisdom is a being-for-itself quality; power, talent, knowledge, etc. are likewise being-for-itself qualities. To be wise does not mean to presuppose that others are wise; on the contrary, it may be very wise and true if the truly wise person assumes that far from all people are wise. But love is not a being-for-itself quality but a quality by which or in which you are for others. Loving means to presuppose love in others. Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love, Hong p. 222-224

I remember Putin's shrug. The rhetoric at the time was to emphasize that Finland was an independent country that could join clubs as they wish while Ukraine was an internal component being stolen from Russia. That seems like a long time ago after months of attritional warfare.

The latest Russian threats are directed to what and whether new elements are brought into Finland on account of the change. I have no idea what is being considered in that regard.

This is an interesting approach since I have problems with classification.

I agree with Deleuze when he treats some concepts as created things. When one uses them as a point of departure, the thought is some of them and some of the one using it. That is a different activity from each of us expressing ourselves as well as we can with the words we can share as given starting points.

That is why I put effort into wrestling with 'primary' text. I want to have what is said to be mine, but I recognize when the feeling is not mutual.

Well said. The focus on Naess is appreciated. I would add the perspective of Gregory Bateson as one who saw a 'humanism' integral to the conditions of life. Bateson's development of 'feedback loops' and 'recursion' to draw parallels between the 'mental' development of types and changes in other organisms blows past Bunge's clumsy distinction between what is an 'ideal' or a 'material'.

Naess and Bateson also bring into question Bunge's need to dispel nihilism because it is degrading. That is an odd way to dismiss any discussion of a pathology as a well established condition.

Bunge points to a problem with specialization and then ends up tossing a lateral pass to a certain group of specialists. Others have made that move a part of their thesis. Bunge is excluding work on the basis of a value that is being negated by this list of thinkers.

Is that a set of judgements masquerading as facts?

Bunge's observation about constructive criticism, as a lack in philosophical discourse, does bring into question his dismissal of so many thinkers on the grounds of being useless wankers.

That part, however, was fun.

What do you take as examples of 'previous groundings'?

I get the map versus terrain distinction. Where we disagree is if the efforts of thinkers are properly understood as:

"previous groundings of signifiers so as to receive the stated grounding of the speaker."

That makes it sound like you have gained a height above the others where you have a better view. The presumption does not offend me.

But you are taking the 'previous groundings' as something that can be accepted as such.

So, where are you going to put all those who object to the map drawn under those conditions?

There is definitely much value inherent in this process. It exercises many things; one's discipline, one's ability to comprehend and reason, one's ability to fluidly shift between semiotic mappings, etc. — Ø implies everything

There is always the question of what the author was/is trying to say. I am not sure what the 'fluidity' you mention refers to. Is it the way academics talk amongst each other or are you saying that those original intentions are simply not available?

"Art" is treated very differently by different people. Do you have someone who frames this particularly well in your mind or do you have your own theory?

I did not mean to imply struggle had an intrinsic value in this context. Trying to read important thinkers is not easy because they are the ones handing out the difficult homework. Readers have to interpret a meaning to even have an inkling of what is being said. The movement from first guesses to better ones is a commitment to learn the lessons as they are presented. I have not had yet the experience of getting to the end.

That is different from settling upon a mark of what was intended. A mark that can be freely traded in the marketplace of ideas. Those two dimensions are entangled with each other. I propose that they cannot be dissolved into one.

I hope I did not imply as much.

I did say that the method has value. Maybe saying "too easy" sends the wrong message. I find a value in struggling and becoming familiar with a thinker that cannot be replaced by skillful summation.

Perhaps my perspective is a disability of sorts. I share many of the interests you mentioned but don't think of them as matters I have a clear relationship with. I feel most closely to what Kafka said:

"I am the problem, no scholar to be found, far and wide."

I hear many of the differences between philosophers as a problem of translation. The encyclopedic method of putting views into a common language where they can be readily compared to each other has a value but makes it all too easy at the same time.

Must a philosophical mind remove the ego? — TiredThinker

I am disinclined to take "ego" as a given, either as an experience commonly agreed to have happened or as a necessary supposition that means what it means well enough to refer to it as a self-evident thing.

As my grammar demonstrates, the intention to speak for oneself is a requirement of honest discourse but is not a proof of something by itself.

I think a lot about how memory changes its role as it becomes harder to do.
If I am a ball thrown, describing a parabola through space and time, it seems like there is no gap between when I was trying to escape my past and when I realized the connection was so tenuous in the first place. No effort or resignation was asked from me at that point in the orbit.

I can see how this shift relates to the anxiety in dreams. Many of the roles are the same but something has changed.

I think Nietzsche is saying that the problem with recounting cultural history is entangled with the problem of accepting 'natural' science as proceeding from a given ground. The question of cause and effect is raised in the context of what is past and present in all events. These passages are a small sample of an often repeated theme:

205
Need.- Need is considered the cause why something came to be; but in truth it is often merely an effect of what has come to be.

217
Cause and effect.- Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does afterward. — ibid, The Gay Science.

As you note, Nietzsche wants to cancel the teleological framework through which events are described. Nonetheless, he also wants to relate a record of the past that can be accepted as such. This is why he approaches it as a work of genealogy; What has come about may be a compilation of accidents and 'errors' but the sequence of events places us here, in the moment.

The 'will to power' perspective lets us gather evidence in a different way but is it a replacement for what it cancels? The question asked back at 109 about whether one view of nature has been brought to an end and another has begun still lingers after other matters have been decided.

I am confused by your use of the term 'historicism". It is used by the detractors of Nietzsche and Heidegger to object to the idea we are a collection of circumstances without any sort of inherent nature shaping outcomes in our experience.