For Heidegger, overcoming metaphysics doesn't mean leaving it behind. Like Derrida, he recognizes that it is a matter of revealing what is left unsaid by metaphysics. Metaphysics is ontotheology, the twin features of the ontic, in the form of beings, and the theological, in the guise of the Being of beings, the manner of disclosure of beings as a whole. What metaphysics conceals is the establishment (and re-establishment) of the grounding of Beings as a whole in the uncanniness of the displacing transit of temporality. As long as there are beings there will
be metaphysics. — Joshs
I can very much respect this point of view in certain respects - especially when it comes to interpretations such as those of Social Darwinism. Nevertheless, I could present the case that the metaphorical bouncer at the bar is the constraints of objective reality itself, such that that life with is most conformant to objective reality (else least deviates from its requirements) will remain present to the world. But I'm not sure if this very abstract way of thinking about evolution is a worthwhile avenue to here investigate - especially since it makes use of the notion of an objective world which, on its own, can be a very slippery thing to identify. Yet tentatively granting this, it will be true that the possibilities of what can be will be qualitatively indeterminant, but this only in so far as these myriad possibilities nonetheless yet sufficiently conform to objectivity. Hence, as one physiological example, why there has never been an animal with binocular vision whose eyes are vertically (rather than horizontally) aligned: such positioning would be contrary to the objective world's constraint of needing to optimally detect stimuli against the horizon (best short example I could currently think up). — javra
Very true. I nevertheless yet find natural selection to be very intertwined with much of the human phenotype, behavioral as well as physiological. As an undergraduate I did some independent research (with human participants) regarding the evolutionary history of human non-verbal communication via facial expressions. Specifically, back then there was a prevalent notion among ethologists and cognitive scientists alike that the human smile evolved from out of the primate fear-grimace (in short, we smile so as to show fear and thereby appease those we smile to, taking away presumptions of aggression, and thereby reinforcing friendships). The experiments I conduced gave good reason to support the conclusion that our human smile evolved from the primate play-face (in short, an exposing of weapons (for primates these being teeth and esp. canines) in playful mock-aggression—basically, this with the intent of expressing “I’ve got you’re back” when done not as a laugh but as a sincere smile). The details will not be of much use here (though I relish them), but the issue remains: either way, our human smile (and, for that matter, all our basic and universally recognizable human facial expressions) evolved from lesser primate facial expressions, and together with the expressions so too the emotions thereby expressed. Although this does not play into human’s far superior magnitudes of cognition, it does illustrate just how intimately many a defining feature of being human is associated with our biological past from which we’ve evolved as a species. Hard to think of a more prototypically cordial human image than that of a smiling face. — javra
Habermas himself called the process "transcendental-pragmatic." — J
I remember hearing a lecture by Rorty (early 2000's) He said something like - 'If life has a meaning it is to make things better for our descendants.' How would he provide justification? I tend to think that Rorty, despite the Irony and anti-metaphysics, was essentially a romantic figure. — Tom Storm
Do you understand the role that natural selection plays in evolution, and that natural selection is not random? — wonderer1
That all evolution is in essence entirely accidental is a mischaracterization of evolution via natural selection. In short, NS is the favoring of certain varieties of lifeforms by natural constraints—such that this metaphorical favoring by Nature is itself not a matter of chance. The following is a more longwinded but robust explanation that to me amounts to the same:
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not.
Variation of traits, both genotypic and phenotypic, exists within all populations of organisms. However, some traits are more likely to facilitate survival and reproductive success. Thus, these traits are passed onto the next generation. These traits can also become more common within a population if the environment that favours these traits remain fixed. If new traits become more favored due to changes in a specific niche, microevolution occurs. If new traits become more favored due to changes in the broader environment, macroevolution occurs. Sometimes, new species can arise especially if these new traits are radically different from the traits possessed by their predecessors.
The likelihood of these traits being 'selected' and passed down are determined by many factors. Some are likely to be passed down because they adapt well to their environments. Others are passed down because these traits are actively preferred by mating partners, which is known as sexual selection. Female bodies also prefer traits that confer the lowest cost to their reproductive health, which is known as fecundity selection. — javra
I don't have philosophical background but you've concisely summarized a reaction I had to Rorty which I assumed might have been my lack of philosophical sophistication. How do you imagine Rorty might respond to this frame of his ideas? Surely it was put to him as it seems an obvious critique. — Tom Storm
Where did you get that impression? — wonderer1
The overriding idea here is we can only know what is ethical – what ought to be valued, what is worth valuing – by discovering whether certain procedural criteria can be fulfilled using the concept in question. For Kant, the criteria involved universalizability; for Rawls, they begin with fairness in an ideal “state of nature” situation (his Original Position). Habermas is in this tradition, and I’ve by no means mastered his theory of communicative action, which is complicated and has a lot of “rules of discourse.” But it is also procedural in that ethical values follow rationally from an understanding of what rationality itself is. And remember, for Habermas this understanding is not merely strategic or contextual. — J
“the conclusions that Rorty and Derrida draw” from the failure of more traditional rationalist projects.) — J
I know, there’s always the temptation to urge a kind of radical freedom, including freedom from the constraints of rationality. But Habermas is trying to make that position even less appealing. To commit a performative contradiction isn’t merely illogical, it also begins the process of cutting you off from community, and communication. I suppose the challenge from radical freedom can simply be repeated ad infinitum – So what if I go a little mad? So what if no one listens to me? So what if . . . -- but I think we enter somewhat fantastical territory at that point. — J
You mentioned Wittgenstein and ethics. Do you have the time to say more about his views? I haven’t read his Lecture on Ethics. Is the idea that values would not be found among the facts about the world? — J
Now Habermas asserts that, within rationality, (at least) two stances create performative contradictions. One is (borrowing from Rawls) the “first-person dictator” stance, in which I claim that trying to get my own way, as far as possible, is a perfectly rational position. The second is the familiar “free rider” stance, in which I claim that there is nothing contrary to reason in my letting everyone else do some necessary task that is difficult or tedious and requires near-total communal participation; my absence won’t be noticed, and I’ll get the benefit of the results. — J
I must say this is a cop-out somehow more ridiculous than the "God made the Big Bang then pissed off". — Lionino
I'm really curious what the thinkers here think of evolution. — flannel jesus
and not essays about philosophy in the proper sense of the technique. — javi2541997
I always threw out ethics with reason and truth and all the rest that was suspended and upended by the existentialists, and I paid less attention to whatever ethics were recovered and more attention to what wisdom or truth could be recovered. Ethics was like their vehicle for delivering metaphysics and secondary to me. — Fire Ologist
The notion of "suffering" makes sense as a uniting theme, even if there are more joyful existentialists (or, if we prefer, post-existentialists -- thinking Derrida and Levinas now more than categorical classifications) — Moliere
It is very strange how some people consider Kierkegaard a nihilist. When I read this OP, I decided to search for information to back up my points, and surprisingly, Kierkegaard appeared as an example of a nihilist. Very disappointed with this! I think K was a lover but pessimistic about how Christianity was ruling in Denmark. In his diary, K confessed he was a true Lutheran. If he was that religious and a believer in faith, how could some people label him as a nihilist? For a nihilist, life is meaningless and there is no despair about choosing the right decision because everything is pretty absurd (as Camus points out). — javi2541997
On the other hand, I personally believe that a true nihilist doesn't recognize the existence of a sacred authority. For example, the quote of 'without God, everything is permitted' by Vania Karamazov. This phrase is wrongly connected to nihilism, but what Dostoevsky goes beyond just that. — javi2541997
What I attempt to say is that while K and D are true existentialists for dealing with ethical dilemmas, Camus is a nihilist because he doesn't bother to debate about this issue. — javi2541997
Again, there is plenty of room left to talk about ethics. But the backdrop, where Dionysian instinct for Nietzsche lives, where either/or matters and matters not the same, the abyss, where existence precedes…, where Sisyphus absurdly climbs again. Precise in its starkness, yet somehow setting the widest stage. I love that stuff.
At this lonely place of separation, you build an ethics of authenticity, something intimately tied to a “self” and need foremost one’s lonely disconnected will, to chose, and only then be ethically. — Fire Ologist
Once we realize the absurd, specific acts are never a “should” (so not really ethical). You can do anything or nothing at any time or all of the time. The sole quasi ethical component is merely realizing that whatever you do, if you think it is not ultimately absurd, you are doing it wrong. — Fire Ologist
But to me it seems Camus is making no claims about what anyone should do. In my reading, Camus is making a metaphysical claim rather than ethical - the world IS absurd, regardless of what anyone thinks.
Everything might seem stable and understandable until all of a sudden:
"Of whom and of what indeed can I say: "I know that!" This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it
exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers." (Ibid. p 7)
And therefore, i suggest, Prof Deigh may have misunderstood Camus in a pretty drastic way. Am i right? — Jussi Tennilä
Yep. Not sure what's being missed here, but for clarity (as this may meean me ignoring much of your response in light of this):
- I understand this is what you are putting forward;
- I also understand you are attempting to defend the thesis above;
- I am of the view that you have entirely failed to do so, and that your entire position boils down to an arbitrary move. I figured I had been very clear about this, so it's possible I will need to continue pointing out where i Believe you are either ignoring me, or perhaps misunderstand if the above is how you're reading, currently. — AmadeusD
Wrong. It's not alien. It's incoherent. — AmadeusD
No. There isn't. ANd so far, you've don't nothing to defend this. All you've done is told me that I don't get it. I get it. It's wrong (is my position). It is a really common attempt to ensure one is making good decisions, based on some framework that isn't arbitrary. But, it is, at base. THe maths works. THe basis is false. — AmadeusD
This, is also incoherent. You are presupposing that there is some objectivity about ethics to be found. There isn't, you've not provided anything that indicates there is other than the assertion. So, i'm left with not much to say. — AmadeusD
Err, no. That's an empirical fact. If you are taking this to be the case, either you're a hard-line physicalist or you're making things up to suit your position, me thinks. I did provide an out for the former. THe latter, not so much. — AmadeusD
No. Not in any way, and you have literally not even bothered to discuss my point. You have just reasserted some Nietzschean/Wittgensteinian misleading statements. It's poetics not philosophy so say pain is "in the world". Your mind is in the world, sure. If you want to ignore that part, have hte cake and Eat it. — AmadeusD
Yeah, but you're wrong. So, what are you trying to do here except just in other words restate your position with no argument? "in the world" is absolutely meaningless in these passages, as they are. It may be something you grasp in your mind, but you've not said anything that fills the empty vessel that phrase provides me. — AmadeusD
This is hte exact opposite, and it is now clear that you're not engaging with the Physicalist position I'm mentioning, and that you've misread what I've actually said.
Your position could be supported in strict Physicalist terms. C-fibres firing would constitute pain on that account. You could then claim the pain exist in the world. But, if you're not taking that line, the move isn't open. My understanding of your position here is that you do not know what you're discussing very well, as these things are directly conflicting in your passages. — AmadeusD
This is a mere side-step of the clear distinction. It doesn't need answering, as the possible disagreement in this passage has been covered at least twice in this exchange: The mind is in the world. The Pain is in the mind. Claiming that your house is in (insert country) and nothing more doesn't help anyone locate it. — AmadeusD
Then you're flat-out wrong and I need not engage further. This is against the empirical understanding of what Pain is and how it operates.
It also seems you've jettisonned most of your position now, instead giving me the basis for ethics as:
Physical pain. Alrighty. I reject that. And we're good :) — AmadeusD
You don't think concepts are determinate? How is the concept of a circle not determinate? — Bob Ross
They communicate, and there is a structure to their language, just as there is to ours. The language of dogs consists of sounds, body stance, gestures of head, paws and tail, facial expressions, ear and hair erection. They are quite capable of reprimanding one another for rule breaking, status offenses and breaches of etiquette - and of responding appropriately to such a reprimand. — Vera Mont
Getting from a state of affairs to a claim about what action ought follow from that isn't something you've established here. You've merely asserted there's a grounding in states of affairs, and then popped off to shop around your ethical values without establishing any move from one to the other. I have merely rejected that you've done the above. Which you have not. You have indicated that your view of ethics is not in line with your own reasoning. — AmadeusD
I did not do so. This is a rather extreme misinterpretation I find it hard to understand. I have put forward the empirical fact that the pain exists in your mind, and no where else. You don't deny this, but still for maintain the positions which it precludes.
Pain has a causal relationship with your physical body. Nothing in this suggests the 'toothache' is invented, other than the language... More below, in some sense.. — AmadeusD
Hmm.. I don't think my position and reasoning says any such thing. The pain, in your scenario exists in the person's head. That is a fact, not an inference or a 'position' that I hold uniquely somehow. It is a basic, clear reading of the facts of how pain works (again, unless you are a strict physicalist and claim that pain IS the firing of c-fibres in response to overstimulation - So your final two lines of this post are likely because you haven't grasped what I'm saying clearly). Further, I can't ascertain what your case would show. That someone is insensitive? Sure. Feeling pain sucks. Doesn't mean it exists anywhere but the mind. Mental anguish is the same. Where does that live? — AmadeusD
For the - what? Fifth? - time: it's about SURVIVAL. I'm reasonably sure you'll let your bottle of wine and deck furniture be taken rather than your life. — Vera Mont
So, let Philosophy inquire to its tiny heart's content, it won't find anything deeper than survival as a basis of basic values. Once you're dead, you stop asking questions. — Vera Mont
By the 'one' who can't conceive, I have to assume you mean yourself. The value of things is tertiary. The value of civic responsibility is secondary; the value of social cohesion is primary. The value of keeping peace in the community - whether through the protection of property or of institutions or of traffic laws or of civil deneanour - is far more important than how anybody feels about their stuff. — Vera Mont
The internet.
But I think it's had more than a fair run. — Vera Mont
They were two irrelevancies among many. Ethics isn't about your preference or what you happen to value at any given moment. It's about interpersonal transactions conducted in such manner as to promote the cohesion of a social unit. — Vera Mont
It doesn't need an 'ethical dimension' - whatever an ethical dimension is - because survival is the root cause of the need for social systems, moral codes, ethical and legal frameworks.
Whether you value something or not is irrelevant to the prohibition against stealing. The point of a prohibition is that if people take one another's stuff without the owner's permission, it causes strife within the community. If a supplier of meat sells tainted meat, it hurts the members of the community. If a soldier skives off for an assignation while on guard duty, he puts his comerades in danger. If a carrier of disease breaks quarantine, he endangers everyone he meets. If a man seduces his colleague's daughter, that causes conflict in the workplace.
It's not about how you feel about your things - it's about the welfare of the polity. — Vera Mont
Sorry; I see no case to answer.
If you have made a case for something or against something, I can't follow what it is. I sincerely do not believe that your taste in wine, or concern for your lawn-chair is the basis of an ethical system. — Vera Mont
So, do you agree that some concepts are absolutely simple, and thusly unanalyzable and incapable of non-circular definitions, but yet still valid; or do these so-called, alleged, primitive concepts need to be either (1) capable of non-circular definition or (2) thrown out? — Bob Ross
You all require miracles and pretend you don't. I have actually been very clear about this. The fact that no one is mentioning it supports my claim about their positions. — AmadeusD
That's because it's been around a whole helluva lot longer than ethics; the concept of ethics comes long after animals with brains big enough to think of it. They couldn't have got there without surviving the evolutionary steps that precede it. Nor will you have children, wine and Brussels sprouts without having survived to get them. (Also, I fail to see the ethical component of Brussels sprouts, but that's just me. ) — Vera Mont
I say: No, what hte hell, Its literally in the mind of the actor. There is no value 'in the world'. Value is a function of cognitive judgments. I agree, this is philosophy, and if you want to settle for one free miracle, that's fine. My point is this is not acknowledged — AmadeusD
See? It's probable we're not disagreeing. But there's no way to ascertain some objective ethical consideration without arbitrarily deciding what is worth caring about. There's an inference that one can be ethically 'wrong' which begs the question as to what 'wrong' is. — AmadeusD
This, to me, is prevaricative poeticism. There's nothing in this statement. It is just empty concepts. Nothing gives me any reason to think Ethics exists, at all, outside of Human deliberation. — AmadeusD
For some people, it's no use at all. But for the majority of living things, it's the primal drive. It doesn't need a specific utility: it is the rock-bottom foundation of awareness and effort; the first cause by which all things needful, useful and beneficial are measured. — Vera Mont
Pink herring, conflating a careless figure of speech with the primal instinct. The lawn chair was never alive. You might go out into the storm to save your neighbour or your dog, because life matters - fence-posts don't. — Vera Mont
That's backward. What makes anything ethical is its contribution to survival. — Vera Mont
I don't think it needs to be exposed any more times than I've already done.
If you have a more convincing source for the concept, by all means, expose away! — Vera Mont
The concreteness of our existence is that we have physical and mental requirements and an innate will to survive. In isolation, very few humans can survive on their own in adulthood; none at all from infancy. So ethics and morality are constructed on the requirements for survival in groups. — Vera Mont
For Derrida an element of meaning, an ‘identity’, can only be what it is by relying on something absolutely foreign to it and outside of it. But this outside doesn’t sit alongside an inside of meaning but inhabits it , belongs to the inside itself.
"The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and hence that it bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual "element" as well as between "elements", because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence; it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence.” — Joshs
Except clearly, there is no consensus on this and it has changed over time. If you want to claim that the vast majority of history has been Ethically "wrong", I would have to chuckle.
So, if the language of Ethics is 'good' and 'bad', lets say, prior to their enunciation and being understood to agents (i.e justification) ... it is useless. And Im fine with that. There is no such thing as absolute good and bad. Im fine with that. — AmadeusD
Except clearly, there is no consensus on this and it has changed over time. If you want to claim that the vast majority of history has been Ethically "wrong", I would have to chuckle.
So, if the language of Ethics is 'good' and 'bad', lets say, prior to their enunciation and being understood to agents (i.e justification) ... it is useless. And Im fine with that. There is no such thing as absolute good and bad. Im fine with that. — AmadeusD