:) Thanks! -- I'm not done with it yet, either. I just get to things when I get to them....

Training them how to think, not in metaphysics. Is it really that hard to see how today's leaders went to Ivy League schools a whole lot? I know I say philosophy is useless, but I would contend that it does help people to think, at least.

Maybe you're not pursuing this line of thinking, though. It seemed right to me, but you're acting like it's wrong -- so it must be wrong in some way. But I feel like I'm not being given a fair shake, either.

Aristotle was the metaphysician, and Alexander was the politician. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle makes it pretty clear that abstract pictures of himself as a character and Alexander as a character are the pinnacle of human achievement, and thereby, goodness. (though he sneaks in a quick one to say that the life of the philosopher is actually the best one, which always makes me laugh). Further, the whole idea of the university can be traced back to Plato's academy and Aristotle's Lyceum -- there are definite differences as we live in wholly different economies, have different values, and all that. But that power structure, and the material reason for philosophers, is still there: the institutions of knowledge-production and preservation are given leeway to pursue their studies as a valid economic activity on the basis that they at least teach and train people to think.

So I think you're asking after the wrong evidence -- it's not like Alexander the Great used the four causes to create his empire. But it's not a stretch to think he was tutored in them, too. So it goes for the modern university, though the various principles and foci have changed. (considering we've produced more knowledge since then, I'd hope so!) -- and they'll change again. As they change I'm sure that philosophers will be able to put together a coherent picture of knowledge, at that moment. They've managed to do so many times throughout history, why not again? But it'll be a snapshot of reality at a moment in time -- and sometime down the line it'll seem quaint. And so the project will begin again, to re-assemble another snapshot of reality.


Note how this doesn't even make this kind of speculative physics false. I'm merely noting that there's more to metaphysics than it, that philosophy can be done other ways. Does that seem wrong to you?

OK. I thought you were replying to my point that metaphysics speaks to a particular logic of being rather than being some kind of unmoored, pluralistic, history of free speculation — apokrisis

Heh. I'd say that I'm not being that bad :D -- but I'm also not explaining myself well. I am directly answering your question, though, because I thought that'd be the most fruitful way to develop a discussion.

So in response to whether metaphysics is a method of inquiry, or a series of historical accidents, I think neither still fits the bill -- it's so much that it's honestly hard to define, in general. What metaphysics is depends upon the philosopher. And that's why I was focusing on Aristotle (which, in turn, invokes Kant, and that in turn invokes Heidegger, at least in developing these ideas and engaging with them)

On the whole I take the Aristotelian meta-philosophy, as I understand you to be pursuing, to be indicative of modern institutional philosophy: the quest for the ultimate answers about existence is a question for those informed of the sciences, trained by the institutions of knowledge -- themselves politically aligned to the elite of the world, training the future leaders of tomorrow. It very much fits along the lines of the Ivy League model of philosophy. And, internationally, a state college provides opportunities (hence why people travel internationally to attend them).

And I think that such a story could likely be assembled again. While it's hard to see how it fits together when we poke it, I think we get a sense that Aristotle's way of looking at the world did fit together, and so philosophy is just that practice by which we continue to refine the categories, the ways of knowing, the logics, and all the speculative questions while paying the bills by teaching tomorrow's leaders to be smarter than the the average bear.

The phase you are calling “metaphysics as ethics” is just the application of this style of transcending inquiry to the practical job of forging a new technology of self. Ideas about justice, virtue, balance, etc, were the new universals by which society could start to organise itself and so scale a rational view of being. — apokrisis

Is it a phase? Or is it just another way to do philosophy?

Eh, I should say by post-Aristotle, I'm specifically referring to late antiquity -- so before our modern world. I think modern philosophy is pretty much enraptured in the notion of metaphysics as first philosophy -- Descartes, after all, wrote The World, and he's the traditional starting point for modern philosophy.

Is metaphysics a method of inquiry aimed at some goal, or is it merely a history of intellectual accidents? — apokrisis

I think I'd say neither.

In relation to Aristotle it's hard to say, in my opinion. Was it as literal as an uncreative and tired copy-editor smugly naming it "After physics, cuz it's after the physics"? Is Aristotle's work actually literary, or given his demonstrated understanding of artistic writing, would it not be better to think of these as lecture notes which are as direct as possible so as not to confuse the poor students? Or does it really mean the summation of all things, as we've come to understand it? And did that really drive Aristotle, or is that more what we have come to see value in Aristotle, being obsessed with metaphysics ourselves? Wasn't it Heidegger that began this obsession with metaphysical foundations?

I'm not entirely sure that's all that's there... but for me, anymore, I have fewer opinions on metaphysics now than I have questions. At the most basic metaphysics is just that philosophy which addresses the question "What exists?" -- but even that says too much, because metaphysics is also considered the most general kind of philosophy at times, so that more than what exists is at stake, but rather, the whole kit-and-caboodle: ethics, ontology, aesthetics. . . a sort of Totality that encompasses everything. (and, indeed, I'd say that metaphysics -- especially post-Aristotle -- is more about justifying ethics than it is about truth, though of course truth is still important to both ethical stances so they argue about what is true too. Mostly taking Nussbaum's reading of late antiquity as read here)

And I think that sort of metaphysics is what I'd say Kant does a good number on: speak away, but I don't think it'll become scientific knowledge. So, at that point, what else could metaphysics be other than ethics?

I think this puts too much causal emphasis on philosophy. That is, anti-social persons will be attracted to absurdism, but it's not the expression of absurdism that makes them anti-social. In another time and place the anti-social person will be a moral realist, a Catholic Cardinal demanding the King submit to the Church, insofar that it allows them to take advantage of people to fulfill their own personal desires. The anti-social person does not care for moral realism or anti-realism -- these are the questions of nerds -- the anti-social person, however, recognizes that the nerds, at times, influence people: and that influence is what the anti-socialite wants.

I've pretty much remained consistent in saying that existentialism can justify bad things, but also saying that this isn't the whole story -- in a way I think that this reduction comes from a perspective that is still too rule-bound in their moral thinking. The nihilist is fine with changing rules, but the moral realist is not, and so thinks that the possibility of justifying selfish behavior with moral language is enough to defeat a particular way of talking -- I'd say the absurdist is just pointing out that this is what people often do, that it's absurd, at bottom, and frequently is a guise for selfish, rather than selfless, motives.

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic. . . — Jamal

As @Amity already said, but just in case anyone else is holding back out of a sense of topicality, the more poems and interpretations of poems the better.



Ahhh!

This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. Meiner Deutsch ist Kerput ;) -- but I remembered enough to get the phonic structure out of it, and it was nice to be able to read two renditions of lines for the purpose of preserving the meaning found in the original language -- the adjectives you use, I get exactly what you mean when you say them, though they are often physical metaphors: a line being "heavy", or debating between two translations on the basis of the way they "feel" in each language. That's exactly what I'm after.

First I should say I'm no expert on Aristotle either, just an enthusiast who in another life would have dived deeper. Just to keep things honest.

I'd say that's a good interpretation, but I'm not confident enough to say that it's the purpose. It's very much my interpretation, if you get what I mean. The best way I can make sense of Aristotle's corpus is through understanding it politickly -- in the sense of the life of the human animal (the ethics), and the life of the human species (the politics).

I think it'd be better to say that from our perspective, first philosophy is most important, and hence why Levinas picks up on that in relation to Heidegger and posits ethics. (as a Marxist I'd say, yes, Aristotle's purpose of the metaphysics is politics, but I think that might be too many steps to just say yup, ya'know?)

Again, it really all boils down to a definition of metaphysics. — Pantagruel

I'd disagree here. @Banno is taking the right approach by putting metaphysics in a lower position, IMO. You can define it how you like, but the history of metaphysics will still be there -- and this is what I'd say I'm talking about in talking metaphysics. It's not what we define it as, but rather what has been done thus far.

This is exciting: I have a copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience that includes printings of the original artwork that he drew into the book -- and it turns out they've got a multitude of the works archived digitally. Here's a link to several of the copies of Songs of Innocence -- and it's easy enough to scooch around the website to see the other illustrations. (Thinking about more poems to add to the mix, but thought I should share this good find)

Without agreeing or disagreeing, if not that way, then in what way must we read the essay? — god must be atheist

We must imagine ourselves agreeing with Camus.... :D

I don't think there's any one way to read a text, so there's no way you have to read it. I'm more inclined to say there are things which are obviously wrong: Camus is not writing a math textbook, and other of the multiple -- possibly infinite -- obviously wrong readings that are available to us.

Accepting more than one interpretations, that are non-congruent with each other, then obviously many of them are wrong, and only one or zero are right.

So what's the point of accepting more than one explanations, interpretations, etc? — god must be atheist

Heh, I'll note I disagree with your first assertion, that only one interpretation is the right one. What would it even mean to have a right interpretation? The closest I can imagine is that we have the same interpretation as the writer when they published the text -- the intent of the author is usually the way about making a "right" reading. But the problem with that is we don't have access to Camus' intent -- all we have are his words and the various facts of his life that we might use to bring sense to the words he wrote. We can't check up with him and ask "Did you mean this, or that? Or both?" -- and the "both" could very well be the answer an author gives, disappointing any interpreter hoping to demonstrate that their reading is the correct one.

But to answer your question -- even supposing there's a right interpretation, we wouldn't know if we had the right one. We'd only know if we had a coherent one. It's only by reading a multitude of interpretations and judging their relative merits that you'd be able to select the right one at all. So, at a bare minimum, even presuming there is a correct reading, the point would be to make sure the explanation or interpretation you have on hand is the right one or not.

I should have thought that philosophy was about finding the truth, which is necessarily singular, and not about pussy-footing around a set of acceptable interpretations. — god must be atheist

Is it possible for truth to turn out non-singular, in this process of finding it?

However, realistically in comparison to the norm, these are a type of suicidal and self-destructive behavior. I can't help but to think the whole philosophy is erroneous as a type of slave mentality wherein the slave self-destructs without his master. This differs from an atheism wherein believing in God is the point of departure for a life of absurdity, and the adherent goes on to live unaffected without religion. — introbert

I think that it'd be easy to justify self-destructive behavior from the point of view of an absurdist. However, I think I'd say that the reason Camus chooses these eccentric personalities is to highlight in what way his ethical stance isn't traditional. But also, there's just something not as gripping as the heroic accountant embracing the absurd task of never-ending calculation. So, yes, I think there's a bit of entertainment in his choices, and that's where you'd get the impression of self-destructive behavior as a sort of substitute for suicidal desire in light of the absurd.

But I don't think that we must read the essay in that way. And, obviously, I think this would count as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of absurdism. It was, after all, meant to overcome the absurd. And isn't self-destructive behavior just suicide, but more exciting?

Heh.

I'm often surprised by what others say of a poem. I think it's part of the pleasure: in some way we enrich our understanding or experience or reading by hearing what others have to say. I think the more we do it the less silly different thoughts sound. And, after all, it's just a poem -- so it's ok to have a bit of fun with it.

Naw, not at all. Maybe not the most natural reading, but I think that's part of what I really enjoy about reading and sharing readings of poetry -- what seems most natural at first isn't always the best reading, and sometimes our creative readings aren't quite natural, but all that meaning -- at least insofar as I understand poetic reading -- can still be found there.

I think the old religious man is completely ironic and intended to be funny and silly. It makes me smile whenever I read it. — T Clark

OK, that helps me. I was thinking how depending upon the old man the poem could be read as affirming the speaker, but that makes more sense for the rest of the poem which, I agree, feels lighthearted. So the speaker can be read as giving some warm advice to a filial woman much younger than the author -- so the speaker actually is Yeats.

That makes me pull back from any broader ideas about it being a reflection on humanities inability to see beyond appearances. I never had any inclination to see it from a modern perspective as an example of the objectivization of women. — T Clark

Ahh, I didn't see the more universal reading at all, on first glance. So the appearances are just what we humans see, and only God himself could possibly love that person.

I liked the use of "Ramparts" as a metaphor for her beauty.

I'm not sure I can follow what you're saying.

No, I didn't buy a cat today, and it follows that none of the other lines are true either. Is that what you mean by "'P' is false"? If so, yes "P" is false. If not, what are you saying isntead? — Dawnstorm

Yup, that's exactly what I was saying. So literal meaning is whether or not a statement is true or false. (note how this won't work for interrogatives or imperatives, so perhaps "literal" isn't the right word either -- since questions have a literal meaning, but I'm talking about statements here)

Poetic meaning is . . . what's being asked after. But one method we've been using is the notion of sharing our experience of a poem. It has the virtue of being open-ended, and for thems of us who just like poems too it's pleasurable :D I've gone so far as to call this sharing an "interpretation", but others have noted discomfort with that term, instead opting to say it's really just our experience of the poem that we're talking about.

I'm not sure why a paragraph of contextual meaning is sandwhiched between two references to truth. As you probably guessed, I didn't buy cat today. I don't quite see why this important. If I did, you might arrive at a different poetic meaning, or you might not, depending on your approach. Does the literal meaning change at all? I'd say no. — Dawnstorm

The meaning of the poem would change from false to true, in that case. So I'd say it does change. Or, at least, this is what I'm setting out as literal meaning, for now, given what I said above. I can see what you mean that "literal" isn't right -- let's just say truth-conditional meaning?

What's "P"? The words of the poem? P for proposition? — Dawnstorm

There I was using P for "Poem" :D -- so the whole string, including indentations.

So I think it's a bit obvious that no one would be interested -- except we curious ones philosophizing about poetry -- in the truth-conditional meaning of a poem. In a way what I'm asking is "OK, so let's just allow truth-conditional semantics to do its thing. Poetry can even be interpreted like that, but no one would do so. So what is left of meaning when we're not applying truth-conditional semantics?"

As for metaphor, I find it interesting that you provide a hierarchy of complicated that goes from basic to more complicated like this: synonymy -> metaphor -> substitution. A similar hierarchy I would have thought of is: simily -> metaphor -> conceit.

I'll probably have to read you more carefully before I understand what you're saying. — Dawnstorm

I'm not sure what the pathway to substitution is, but I think that's what I'd have to maintain, at least. Something along those lines. I'm uncertain if this is true, but for now I'm just going for consistency.

That's a wonderful one. In part it shows polarity really well since the words are the same, just being read in a different order. But also I like the parenthetical reminder to "read thoughts backwards", not necessarily as a dialectic but at a more personal, "inner monologue" level it's often good to reverse negative mind-worms.

"For Anne Gregory" by W.B Yeats.

Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'
"But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair."
I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair — T Clark

Part of me wonders who the speaker of the poem is. Not a young man, I imagine -- because a young man would be thrown into despair swearing their love, rather than informing the listener that their beauty draws in more people than actually loves them.

The old religious man is something I keep returning to, though. Is that meant to give credibility or undermine the view? Looking at Yeats' wiki page, I have a hard time deciding. Is the old religious man a speaker of truth, or attached to old texts that wouldn't likely matter for a young couple?

I've tended to notice that some or even many of the people who support a merit-based immigration policy balk at the idea of the state having a voluntary (key word here being "voluntary") eugenics policy in regards to reproduction: As in, encouraging (through incentives) the best and brightest to breed more while also encouraging (again, through incentives) the dullest to breed less. Basically, I'm wondering if there is a disconnect here considering that a merit-based immigration policy also functions similarly to eugenics: A state is choosing new residents and eventually citizens on the basis of desirable traits, with those who fail to qualify often being condemned to lifetimes of poverty, misery, and/or oppression — Xanatos

The reason eugenics does not work, scientifically speaking, is that it's false.

All morality aside -- we are not determined by our parental genetics. So regardless of why people might have an opinion on immigration, you're kind of asking people who love discriminating against people on the basis of merit to also love discriminating against people who are "dullest" -- whatever that might mean (I'd define it so my enemies are dull, and my friends are bright)

However, Brian's poem is far from a giggly Limerick - I think you know that, right?! — Amity

Heh, yeh I figured it out. It's the ending of each stanza that has that Limerick-y quality that had me going to that form (thinking in terms of form not being definitionally defined):

say something really old-timey
bah-dah-tah-dah-dah
bah-dah-tah-dah-dah
and now its longer and rhymy

Yup, definitely.

In a way I can think of your restriction on poems as rule 1 -- whatever we might, down the line, generalize for the purposes of aesthetic philosophy, rule 1 trumps all theorizing. The original experience of poetry is the reason we might be wondering these things in the first place, so it'd be silly if we ruled out other readings when that's exactly where we actually begin.

So what's the poems poetic meaning as opposed to its literal meaning? — Dawnstorm

The literal meaning is, reducing the poem to P

"P" is false

The poetic meaning --

in the context of the thread the poem is clearly about the superfluous nature of poetic meaning, how it's an amorphous concept and so it depends upon what we mean when we mean poetic meaning.


Did you buy a cat today?

No, mere substitution doesn't make a metaphor — Dawnstorm

I think I'd say substitution is more complicated than metaphor and that synonymy is more basic, at least to keep the partisan dialectic going -- but I wouldn't define metaphor like you do. In fact, I wouldn't define it at all. I'm willing to accept whatever comes from our use of "metaphor". (So, in this case, substitution is out -- good by me, as I think it's more complicated anyway)

Not a cheat at all. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for -- more poems and people's reactions to them.

And it was lovely to read. I wouldn't have found all that in the poem, which is why it's great to share.

I think I did find the basic experience you described -- the experience of being awoken from a gloomy day-dream. That clicked for me. And then upon reading what you shared I could see how the bird was playing a kind of joke -- and to set up a contrast between that joke and the sadness of gloomy daydreams. I liked you highlighting that for me because I could see it there on a second reading when I didn't on the first.

Ahh, OK. Cool. Easy to do. "Meaning" is notoriously slippery -- I wouldn't be surprised if we make the same mistake down the line.

So in my first and mistaken reading of you, I would say elucidation of poetry would require more poetry, as has been offered. And I didn't make the connection to the Serenity Prayer @Amity -- good catch!

I looked it up for a read to compare, and apparently there's different versions. So, in a way -- rather than a rift, this is more like variations on a theme. From ye olde wiki, though, just for a side-by-side:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Reading it aloud, definitely makes me feel the "giggliness" of the Limerick form, though, in comparison.

I'm confused. You keep talking about poetic meaning, but I said poems, art in general, don't mean anything. How can we be agreeing — T Clark

Well, that's entirely my fault, looking back. Let me try again, straight faced --

I think when you say:

I've come to see that art, including poetry, doesn't mean anything beyond the audience's experience in seeing, reading, or hearing it. Art is an artists way of expressing an experience which makes it possible for them to share it with others. — T Clark

I took that to mean "a poems meaning is an audience's experience in perceiving the poem",

rather than

"poetry has no meaning. what poetry is is an audience's experience in perceiving the poem"

So I was reading you as restricting poetic meaning to the experience, rather than making a distinction between meaning and experience.

To continue in the Kantian line of thinking, truth would be noumenal, so it would be unknowable. — Hanover

Only if we wanted it to be noumenal, though. If we wanted it to be phenomenal, then as the Gods of the meaning-verse we could make it phenomenal, and then truth would just be about empirical reality as opposed to the questions which reason posits and wants answers to but would require a different sort of mind to be able to answer in the mode of scientific knowledge.

Applying this to statements, the best we can say of statements is the best we can say of perceptions, and that is that they belong to us, are our interpretations, and are influenced by who we are. We see the cat, but whether it is as it appears to us is the unknowable. When we speak of the cat, we speak in terms of our other phenomena and compare, analogize, and use as metaphor what we interpret. It's all a matter of interpretation, which is consistent with an indirect realist view of the world.

The direct realist states the cat is just what the cat appears to be. I find that equivalent to the literalist who says the sentence says just what the words say it says.

The indirect realist states the cat is whatever it is, mediated by the person's perceptions and sensory faculties. I find that equivalent to the non-literalist who says the sentence is an interpretative description influenced by worldview and comparative analysis to other perceptions. — Hanover

Here I think we're diving too deep into literal meaning rather than poetic meaning -- the idea here being possibly shaking up the conversation on the usual delineations, since there's no reasonable way to determine which is better or worse. So I think I'd prefer to say, for an anti-realist, what you say is about right, but a realist would take this line of thinking and still commit to there being a cat on the mat, it being real, and all that.

On either way, though, we can make a distinction between the poetic and the literal, right? Here we are, right now, where meaning has already been bootstrapped to our capacities -- and so with our ability to make the intelligible ex nihilo, we make a distinction between different uses of language, one of which is in the modality of truth-telling, and one of which is in the modality of metaphor.

I'm thinking, given the notion of metaphor as a relationship between named entities, that this actually has something to do with substitution. The phonetic "Chair" stands for a chair I'm sitting on. In a way it is the most basic metaphor -- to treat a sound as a differentiated object of meaning.

This "switching out" between metaphorical pairs sounds a lot like correspondence, at least.

But this is hand-wavey. I think there's more to say about how poetry works before being able to tie metaphor to truth-conditions. Probably won't get that far in this thread, because making a reduction of truth to metaphor sounds like a titanic project :D -- but it is the kind of notion that I'm playing with in the background of my thoughts, at least.

Oh... I thought we were disagreeing. — T Clark

Well, we're not!

So there!

:D

I did focus on the relationship angle of your post. It's in the relationship that I think meaning comes about, from the call-and-response of a speaker and an audience which flips back and forth.

Here I think you're right we disagree:

I agree with this. There are worthwhile things to say about poetry, but I don't think meaning is one of them except in the fairly trivial sense of knowing what the poet is referring to. Example - In "Wild Grapes" by Robert Frost, it's good to know that "Leif the Lucky's German" refers to Leif Erickson's German foster father.

I like to talk about what I experience when I read a poem. As I see it, that's different from it's meaning. From my point of view, most of the poem interpretations I've read are baloney. I do also like to talk about technical aspects of the poem - meter, rhyme, metaphor - and how they help me share the poet's experience. I don't think that's the same thing as meaning either. — T Clark

So you would claim that "poetic meaning" in reference to "meaning" is more or less an equivocation, that these are actually separate things. Do I have you right?

That is fine by me, because I'm also actually interested in the aesthetics of poetry unto itself -- and actually put this in aesthetics with the idea of exploring that more than the usual reductions, with the idea of it generating more shared thoughts to build from.

And, even more than that, while I have this odd suspicion, it is just an odd suspicion. And it's a lot easier to talk about how poems work and how it is they mean or what it is they mean.

Thanks for the introduction. Most enjoyable :up: — Amity

Of course! He's tons of fun.

The rhythm of the first two lines in each verse reminds me of something heard before.
Possibly a pop song or an advert...
Something along the lines of 'This is not just food. This is M&S food'.
No, it's a jingly kind of pop.
Ah, got it!
The Bangles... — Amity

Hah! I didn't pick up on that, but I see it!

I am against all of those who are rigid towards interpreting a poem. There isn’t anyone clever than other in terms of experiencing poetry. — javi2541997

I agree. I will note that I actually aesthetically enjoy rigid readings of poems, in the sense of applying some kind of aesthetic criterion(s) to interpretation -- but not when they're dogmatic. That seems anti-poetic, to me.

I want share another poem with you:

[He] said:
“the sea used to come here”
And and [he] put more wood on the fire. Ozaki Hōsai.

This haiku poem gives me nostalgia because the author is missing something that is no longer with him: the sea. — javi2541997

I love haiku. I read a small book that introduced me to how to read haiku and two of the features of haiku that I remember are there were fixed symbols with meanings (I forget which symbols were what, but I remember the kingfisher was one symbol with a few meanings that were fixed to it), but for the whole genre rather than by author. This allowed people to play with those as a kind of agreed upon beginning to make their own variations. So while poetry doesn't have to have conventions, it does have conventional meanings too.

The other thing I remember from that book was that haiku was meant more for friends, rather than high art. So you wrote haiku to share among family or in letters and such, to express feelings in the moment. This is how I relate to poetry, so I thought that was neat. (It's also how I get along with philosophy, for the most part: it's a social activity more than an institutional one, for me)

It brings it, but where was it, what did we put it in, and how was it transported? How can something be "in" the poem when the poem is sounds? How do we "make" sense? Do we build it?

You seem to be speaking in metaphor, comparing abstract thoughts to physical objects and the movement of tangible things.

I see what you're saying, but not really visually as seeing would entail.

My point is that all is metaphor and poetry. — Hanover

This is good.

I want to begin with this notion that all is metaphor and poetry -- itself a metaphor! :D

Now, in reference to truth-conditions, I think that metaphor would be seen as parasitic upon the world, as you read me in the above -- "in" meaning a cabinet rather than a sentence. And metaphoric meaning does exactly this! It's poly-amorous.

I wonder, though, to take a line from Kant, just because we begin with truth-conditions in our thinking about meaning doesn't mean that meaning starts with truth-conditions. I think it could at least be made coherent that we begin with, as you say, metaphor and poetry and, from that, craft truth-conditions.

(Side note: I don't think that either case would count for/against anti/realism -- i.e., as usual, I'm putting that to the side, insofar that we can believe that's an innocent maneuver, at least)

**

I was tempted, though, to also directly answer your question with Shakespeare -- famous wordsmith. My guess is he was actually listening to the vernacular at the time and recording it, with a few poetic flares thrown in for art. But those poetic flares are, I'd say, one source of how we craft meaning. We have a poem with a rhythm-rhyme scheme, and we need it to rhyme -- so we craft a new word that fits phonetically, but has a new meaning.

Now, that's one way we do this. And I'd posit that the process is, from "our side" of phenomonology, more or less ex nihilo -- we are the Gods of the meaning-verse, creating its meaning as an intellectual intuition would a world. (But, being a good naturalist, I do suspect there's an underlying explanation, if we wish to look)

Would it not also follow that different types of poems work differently? — Tom Storm

Absolutely! In fact, that's part of what's interesting to me about poetry -- something as simple as a rhythm-rhyme scheme can evoke emotion, thought, and action all at once.

An aspect of poetry is the concentrated, careful word selection to intensify meaning. They also have to sound good when read aloud. I think it was jounro-poet Clive James who said if a poem doesn't captivate when heard, it will collapse and not be remembered. Or something like that.

I agree with this aesthetic direction, on the whole. I love poems written in the phonic script, and usually write my own that way. But sometimes I've come across poems that manage to establish another aesthetic. The Psalms is a good example of this kind of poetry -- it's considered to be written in ideas which are either repeated, contrasted, or act as a kind of resolution. The poems are separate and yet not separate too, and can be grouped by genre even within the Psalms to give an added dimension of interpretation.

I've come to see that art, including poetry, doesn't mean anything beyond the audience's experience in seeing, reading, or hearing it. Art is an artists way of expressing an experience which makes it possible for them to share it with others. — T Clark

I agree with this, too. This whole approach is why both poetry and theatre are of philosophic interest to me (they also happen to be interesting unto themselves to me, too :D -- else I wouldn't have the sustained interest to continue gathering examples) -- they necessitate dialogue, an other, a community, a group. The poem comes alive in the collective witnessing of the poem -- before that, it's just a script.

To the extent that awareness can be aware of itself, it seems (to me) to manifest as a silence, and an emptiness. I don't know if anyone else has another experience? — unenlightened

Makes sense to me.

Get's along with how I understand the notion of "listening" too. Listening well requires me to have that silence.

While I feel more confused than when I began, I'll say one positive thing I learned is I'm not really sure what I want from a theory of truth -- and now I can explicitly recognize that and begin to try and make a list. Also, I'd say it's opened my mind even further on how truth itself is an open question, still -- and that one of the inferences we can make from this belief is that we don't need to know what truth is, explicitly, to know how to use truth. Else, we wouldn't be able to say things like "Well, math should count in addition to pictures"

I think, most of the time, I've just been asking of a theory of truth that it be true of truth (self consistent), without begging the question. Further, that it not depend upon metaphysics, since as I understand metaphysics at least the theory would then beg the question on truth: we might be able to say, after having settled what is the case "oh, and here's the truth" after the fact, but that's not satisfactory -- we might as well just say the forms are behind the veil of appearances and be done with it if we're going to assume what is the case in order to understand truth.

Not sure what else to add to the list.

Well, that's no fun :D. And I don't think it'd help much: if politics isn't in the business of talking, it's in the business of shooting -- so silence isn't right. But we can't go about acting like we're saint-like in this matter, either. History is bloody and amoral. Very few people are actually "in the right" -- if they are, they didn't survive the game: they were exterminated by the people who wanted to build nations.

Kind of. And kind of not.

I only mean to highlight that the problems of Marxism are problems of human organization on the international scale -- that they trade on the use of violence, and the usual way of going about making a nation will make it such that any nation that survives the nation-building game will have a dark history which can be used to make propaganda with.

But since we, ourselves, also live in a nation that survived the nation-building game, we lack the ethos to make such pronouncements -- it's like Ted Bundy calling Jack the Ripper a murderer.

How else does one win the nation-building game?

I think that dictatorship, at least on the economic level, is exactly what's in place -- it's either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, but a dictatorship all the same. That's how we relate to property: by adjudicating who gets to dictate what happens to a thing. This is common between socialisms and capitalisms: they are dictatorships over property. When the investment banker decides you don't own a home, you're forced out on the street. When the boss decides you're not contributing enough, you're forced out of work. When the money-man says you're not worthy, then you die in a capitalist economy. The dictators just set it up in a way that they can alleviate their guilty conscience, saying that those who suffer deserve their suffering, for their imprudent individual actions.

But it's a dictatorship all the same, if you're born on the wrong side of the property line.

Is Marxism hijackable? That, my friend, is the right question. — Agent Smith

I agree!

And I'd say that it is not.

All the concerns about the one true Marx are understandable -- due to the anti-communist propaganda machine that has been and continues to operate on the popular USian conscience -- and I've shared the sentiment in a previous life. I get the feeling, but I'd say it's wrong.

There's a funny line with Marx going on -- there are those who want to say he is pure, but the real applications are somehow wrong, and there are those who want to say the real applications are the heart of the matter.

On the interpretive angle both agree that the real instances of Marx's work are undeniably wrong, tyrannical, and so forth. Lenin as misguided zealot, more or less re-iterated over the course of every socialist country.

But there are people who benefited from the efforts of socialism. Socialism is not the paradise people imagine. The warts are on the level of systematic violence against innocent groups. However, in comparison to any modern nation.... well, that's just the recipe for making a nation: genocide, repression, appropriation, and exploitation are the name of the game. That's how you win the nation-building game (and it's a pyrrhic victory).

***

That nation-building ends in a pyrrhic victory, most of the time, is the fact upon which any propaganda machine can be built from. If you want your people to avoid notions that might make them like those people, then you utilize the dark facts of any nations history to paint that nation as bad while using the positive facts about your own nation to paint it as a good one, so people are attached to your nation and fear the other nation.

I think that's where a lot of attitudes towards Marxism and socialism are from. Marxism is a full on tradition with political actors that continue to influence the international world, though. Like any tradition it comprises of many, but what it is not is a foregone conclusion of obvious evil and wrong.

To spell out my position in the most literal manner for your convenience: there are people who get paid less than they should be paid, and what I'd change in your formula -- in answer to "what more do you want?" -- is that if you work you can make a decent living, regardless of what you do.

If you work, and have a decent job, you can make decent living. What more can a human want — god must be atheist

I'd cut out "and have a decent job" -- that's clearly saying there are jobs for people who count, and jobs for people who don't count. So if you don't have a decent job, you work hard, and yet don't see anything from your work.

How do you form a government without a market? — Yohan

Through collective action. It's not necessarily but is usually violent collective action.

Whatever a state's genesis, though, in maintaining a modern state we usually engage in violent collective action or the threat of said violent collective action in our negotiations with other states (and in the policing of our own citizens) The old economic definition of a state being the firm which has a monopoly on the use of violence.

All these different terms get confusing, but the basic idea is free trade vs forced community sharing. When government interferes with free trade, then the problems of capitalism emerge.
Communities sharing is good. Thats the positive value communism is based on. But when its FORCED it leads to unintended consequences.
Trying to control nature always leads to unintended consequences. We have to work WITH nature, not against it. — Yohan

Well, this isn't doing a lot to dissuade me from Marxism's work on capitalism.

My belief is that markets cannot exist without a government -- they are as artificial or natural as any other social arrangement. That's because property rights are not naturally endowed upon us -- naturally speaking, we can take whatever we're strong enough to take (and in terms of a social species, that usually translates into numbers of people more than raw individual strength). It's only by creating an artificial market that people begin to trade things, since taking them directly has a punishment associated with it.

Sounds like classical liberalism. In which case, Marxism's description of capitalism is apt.

From here:

Capitalism

The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.

Wage labour is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own the means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital). In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a “free” act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.

Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labour. In societies which produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction. In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time. That extra labour is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.

The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power). The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.

Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as “primitive communism” and feudalism. It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the “cash nexus” which characterises capitalism. The transcendence of the class antgonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism. — marxists.org

Proof is in the pudding. There are lots of linguists doing lots of fieldwork. Maybe they'll find something, maybe they won't. Arguments that they must, or that they cannot, hang in the air exactly the way a brick doesn't. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, that makes sense to me. I certainly don't want to be read as saying either that they cannot or must -- if anything I've been pushing against notions like that. I certainly don't expect the meandering thoughts I have to in some way impinge on a project people have dedicated their lives to. I'm sure these thoughts have been thought by people better educated on the matter than I :D

I guess, for us -- .or really, for me, since I think you're still pretty much on board with correspondence theory -- I have to think on your question and get at another approach that does utilize something that I'm more confident in.

(EDIT: "Homebase" for me is Kant, but I'm also confident that he's wrong :D -- so who knows)