What we believe will nearly always overwhelm what we observe. This is especially the case for pillars upon which we orientate our lives - rightly or wrongly. We need to be delusional and misinformed in order to grasp at understanding as if some ultimate understanding exists … that is basically the core of ‘ethics’. — I like sushi

Depends on what is at issue. More to the point is when what we observe overwhelms what we believe. Language brings the world to heel with pass the salt and talk about late buses and busy family life and so on and so on. This world is where people live, but pull apart from this enterprise of busyness and ask basic questions, you discover all knowledge claims implicit in this are "open". This is a radical, and overarching openness that runs through all things, and is overwhelmingly alien to familiar thinking.

You do. Your choice is just not blatantly apparent because it readjusts constantly (to some degree). The taste of something will vary due to mood, environment and patterns. An example would be symmetry … it is generally a pleasing feature. There are circumstances where symmetry effects taste. Such experiences refine/readjust initial experiences. — I like sushi

You said it yoursef: your taste will vary due to mood, etc. I am not a mood. When a mood comes to me, I can deal with it, true, but the mood and its alternatives are givens. You are thrown into a world of givens. Choice intervenes, but choices are only among what is given to choose; and so many are now beyond choice: I can't choose to hate chocolate or adore traffic noise.

If these studies conclude that history is a progression, then they are already assuming a fixed basis of the movement of history, a founding value defining the progress as progress rather than mere change. Progress is a ‘good’ kind of change, a change that conserves its origin. This conserving is the good isn’t a placing of ethics in first position, it’s a confusion of ethics with Nietzsche’s aesthetic ideal, the attempt to freeze history. — Joshs

If the history is IN the occurrent ethical issue then I follow the epoche down to the wire: I call the history incidental, Hume's facts, along with everything else that would steer judgment that is factual. This would include physiological details, the dialectic tension between opposing values, claims about our natural constitution, legally and culturally arguments, and so on. You see, I am convinced Husserl was on to something in his reduction to essentials, the "originary presentive intuitions" but everywhere I look, I see Derrida deconstructing what is supposed to be originary. But then I follow follow Michel Henry's Four Principles of Phenomenology: So much reduction, so much givenness; so much appearing, so much being.
What then is given, and is there more or less givenness, being, appearance? Is there anything that can survive, that is, be intuitively free of, the "play of difference and deference," free of "taking something AS"? The answer, it seems, is yes nd no. No, because, and I am still working on the way to caste this, no, because language is the "through which" the given is given. Yes, because language does not construct affectivity (to speak broadly of feelings, likes, dislikes, etc.).
I don't want to freeze history. I want to discover what is "presuppositionless" in historically structured occurrent affairs, and affectivity (broadly conceived) is this.

We can still ask what is there in ‘ethics’ that cannot be taken out. That would be up to you … you see the problem therein? — I like sushi

But it is not up to me, I mean, I don't decide what is delicious, disgusting, joyful, wretched and so on. I may choose among things, but choices all presuppose an established value, which is there, in the ethical matter, and ethics and all of its complications turns on this.

I don't follow.

Good. What does phenomenology make of ethics - isn't this the approach you are suggesting? For my money what sits before ethics is behaviour that either repels or attracts us. Then comes the postulation. — Tom Storm

I ask then, what is in an attraction or repulsion?

Sorry about this elentic method of going about this. My argument is not popular, so I am not going to simply lay it out for all to misconstrue. Best if I let others come to see it as I do through their own reasoning. At least they can't blame me when they themselves have constructed the premises.

Except, our innate moral intuitions already underlie any such review. Reason here can only rationalize what we already feel to be true.

You are one of many who feels compelled to believe that ethics is Real with a capital R. I don't sympathize. Do you seriously think there is a material basis for ethics? This is
philosophically naive. — hypericin

Odd here: You speak of innate moral intuitions, then deride ethical Realism with a capital R.

At any rate, no it's not naïve at all. In fact, the idea is so obvious than I cannot even imagine seriously dismissing it. Keep in mind that an ethical situation is what I am calling a thing of parts, and what I mean by this is that is stands analysis as a simple ethical case apart from any theory, empirical or otherwise. There are the facts of a case, then there is the intuitive essence. This latter carries the argument.

Human beings are meaning making creatures. We can't help but contrive and codify, systems, rules, positions, behaviours. Why is ethics different to any other human behaviour? Or are you coming at this from a foundational position? — Tom Storm

If there is a foundation that reveals itself in the inspection of the phenomenon of ethics, then what would that be?

To ask “what IS reason, you mean? Otherwise, I don’t understand the question. Anyway, not so sure it makes sense to ask what reason is. To reason about reason is intrinsically circular, whereas to reason from an ethical...or more accurately, a moral, predisposition.....is not. Ethics presupposes reason; reason does not presupposes ethics. So I don’t think there’s sufficient justification to substitute one for the other. — Mww

I don't wish to discuss reason beyond saying, with Hume, that reason is just a vessel (and Kant did analyze reason, calling it a synthetic principle, but then, you are quite right to say, as Wittgenstein would tell us, that this would be an analysis that presupposes exactly what is to be questioned. That's most egregious question begging. Then again, it is well understood that that Kant was not assuming the perspective of God. He was very clear about this).
The point I was making is that rationality as such, as principled thinking, is not sufficient for an analysis of ethics. But, one can say the same for anything at all one an think of; it's trivially true, for anything that can be thought at all requires reason, making reason always a necessary but insufficient condition.

Reason does not presuppose ethics? True. But it is more interesting than this in actuality. Not ethics, but value, and value is a presupposition of both ethics and aesthetics. Reason is, after all, an abstraction from the experience. There is no "reason" as an observable existence. There is judgment, then there is abstraction from judgment, which we call reason. Nor is there value which can be laid before our eyes. Value is rather an abstraction from experience.

So, to make the point I m defending, I think when one looks closely at an ethical matter, and puts aside all else that would otherwise intrude into an interpretation of what is there, one will "see" that matter for what it is, and it is not a discursive discovery, it is intuitive. Ethics has an intuitive dimension that exceeds the contingencies of theory.

What makes you think we should talk about ethics ‘in general’ before talking about Mill or Kant? This reminds me of what Foucault does with concepts like sexuality
or morality. Rather than giving us a history of something , which pre-supposes the meaning and then inserts it into the history, he gives us a genealogy of a concept, showing us that its history isn’t a history of changing applications or attitudes towards what has already been assumed in its basic structure. Rather, a genealogical analysis reveals a thoroughgoing transformation of the concept itself from one historical
period to the next. So in looking for the ‘parts’ of ethics which are transcendent to cultural contingency, we have to ask what it is that belongs to the genealogical structure in general. That may bring us to something on the order of local systems of intelligibility and their transformations. Ethics ‘in general’ may then be analyzed in terms of a drive toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation oriented around diversification of values. — Joshs

But you know what I'm going to say already, I suspect. In what I have read of Husserl and his intuitive foundation as a bedrock of philosophical analysis, I do not find a suitable account in the reduction of ethical issues. Only Levinas sees this. All matters bow low to ethics/aesthetics, for here is existential basis for all conceivable matters. And studies in the principles of historical progressions presuppose something more basic, and this is the intuited presence of value-in-the-world.

Is this to say that ethics is grounded in something apodictic, intuitively insisting, like the principle of sufficient cause? Yes, I actually believe this is the case.

Apostrophel, did you mean to say what we came up with speculatively trying to understand you? — god must be atheist

Not much in the way of speculation is called for. Merely description. When we want to philosophically analyze ethical issues, we generally look to theory. I am asking that this be put off until we actually know what it is that sits before you that you are theorizing about. Is there an objection to this?

Sorry, I couldn't make sense of this. — john27

You said, "Meh. Ethical actions tend to betray rationality more often then not, I'd think." I take this to mean you think talk about ethics is reducible to what reason can say qua reason. So, I am an ethical agent in so far as I am rational, and it is rationality out of which ethics comes into existence.
Something like that?

Ethics seems to me the study of how to discern adaptive conduct which optimizes – from maladaptive conduct which fails to optimize – habits/customs of (i.e. individual preferences/social priorities for) non-reciprocal helping. — 180 Proof

What is non reciprocal helping? I, mean, someone is not reciprocating in their .....help?

I wrote the following two papers explaining why ethics can't be defined. The thrust of my thesis was that ethics in fact comprises two separate and irreconcilable systems, each of which can be defined, but the two are always lumped together into one, and that causes a lot of confusion for philosophers. There are distinct similarities and differences between the two systems which I tried to describe in the papers.

Everyone on this site poo-pooed on these papers, those who criticized them, but mainly those who never even bothered to look at them.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10744/ethics-explained-to-smooth-out-all-wrinkles-in-current-debates-neo-darwinist-approach/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10903/shortened-version-of-theory-of-morality-some-objected-to-the-conversational-style-of-my-paper — god must be atheist

I'll read one. Then I'll get back to you.

But the distinction I pointed out to Mww seems pivotal: ethics is not about what is the case but what to do. It is not to be found by looking around at the world, but in deciding what actions one will take.

SO there's a start. — Banno

But you already know how this goes. One doesn't do until one know what lies before one. And further: the question cares nothing about what to do. It assumes one has an issue and things are in the balance. Philosophy steps in with its inexhaustible curiosity and asks the question about a thing's nature or essence. Asking such a question may not solve any particular ethical problem, but that is not the point. The point is, what IS an ethical problem qua ethical? The answer may reveal something that has meaning beyond actions, for in this analysis, the inquiry at one point has to be about ethical agency. Asking what ethics is implicitly asks what ethical agency is, and things get far more interesting.

Meh. Ethical actions tend to betray rationality more often then not, I'd think. — john27

But then, it is certainly a different matter using a conditional logical form to talk about the weather, on the one hand, and talking about assaulting Mrs. Griswald for her cookies. Reason is omnipresent. Perhaps, so is ethics, in a way. But one cannot call ethics an exercise in reason and think the matter done.

Ethics in general, is the nature of man.

A theory on the nature of man gives a ethical doctrine related to it.

Same as it ever was..... — Mww

Well, this just a tad general, don't you think? Reason could be here substituted for ethics and it would still be true. What kind of doctrine would an ethical doctrine be? And once you have that doctrine, what are the assumptions built into it that would expose a deeper understanding of ethics?

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter. This is all too common in discussions such as this. — SophistiCat

Keep in mind, there are metaethical answers to this question that vary wildly.

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter. This is all too common in discussions such as this. — SophistiCat

Why, metaethics? Whatever cold you mean by this?

No, you got the wrong idea. Read on. — SophistiCat

Note how the definition is supposed to identify " the target of moral theorizing. So, social theory, e.g., finds this target and then can organize its theorizing with this as its objective. It enables "empirically-oriented theorists to design their experiments or formulate their hypotheses without prejudicing matters." Well said, I say. Alas, if one is looking for something substantive about the nature of ethics, one is directed toward what it is these disciplines tell us.
Calling ethics the target of all thinking that deals with ethics is vacuous. This is a philosophical problem, not an empirical one.

What it is is a codification, elaboration, ossification, (and in some cases, perversion),of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species.

Consider, after all, the first moral utterance of every child: "It's not fair!" This is an untaught appeal to fairness and justice. — hypericin

What you describe is a structured event whereby "inborn" feelings of fairness and justice are taken up in fixed systems of thought. I am sure this is somewhere close to right. But those inborn concepts and feelings, how inborn are they? what is the separation between what is acculturated and what is "natural"? And even if something natural is discovered, ain't this at best a prima facie part of the normativity? That is, if I have a feeling, a pang of conscience, isn't this to be brought up under review to see if it's right? And this applies as well to way we apply the established code: we have laws, rules, legally determined or otherwise, but the ethical correctness of these is complicated.
Of course, we all see where this goes: These complications are what underlies any given determination, prescription, decision. One has to work things out if one is to go beyond the reflexive obedience of a traffic light, and this leads to interpretative trouble. But beneath this trouble (which is beneath the reflexive act) isn't there something more analytically fundamental?
I think there is. I think ethics is Real, not just a construct. All constructs are constructs OF something. All meaningful affairs are meaningful only to the extent that there is a material basis for them.

sn't ethics about deciding rationally what you ought to do? — Banno

Of course. But oughts are about normativity and they are everywhere. One ought to put on socks before shoes. But all oughts have their terms of engagement. At the basic level, what are the "terms" of ethics? Of course, there is a long history here, but Mill or Bentham, say, begged this question.

Rationality follows these terms rather than dictating them.

Good question, but it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that it's been given some attention already. — SophistiCat

It is not the definition of moral theory I am after. Note how this "definition" puts the burden of analysis on the "target", then proceeds to defer to psychologists, anthropologists and the rest. I ask, in order tp have a moral theory at all, you have to have something before you to theorize about. What is it there, in the reduced analysis of actual moral affair, that can make moral theorizing possible? If an anthropologist is going to proceed with an anthropological take on ethics, she is going to have a tendential perspective. I want to know, a tendential perspective about what? Does this yield yet another perspective that is deferred to? Or, if not this, then what?

We should all be crying our hearts out, but that's hilarious! — Agent Smith

Saved by irony? Is this truly the best we can do? Does "the world" really hand this to us as its essential bottom line?
Art in literature and history (difference? I think they are nearly identical), of course, are nothing without irony, and humor is literally made of it. Nietzsche loved Wagner, but his thoughts were bound up with drama. He loved the "narrative" (read "affect" of irony) of life brought into existence. This is what you get with a sick man who has known only physical suffering his whole life: for Nietzsche, living and breathing was an epic struggle. Naturally, he would work this up into a world view of inherent annihilation. What I mean is that when all affirmation of the world is denied any genuine foundation that can validate it, one ends up with tragedy. All of our affairs are tragic, therefore. But then, is this where thoughts on the matter end?
To speak of Gods, with a capital G, not as fictions but metaphorically as standins for something actual and basic, is to speak of underpinnings that are, if you will, their own presuppositions, that are flat out unanalyzable, and defy reduction altogether. What is Apollo? Is he the Socratic principle? And Dionysus, the impossible defiance of just this impulse to order? Impossible because the thing that can stand against reason cannot be conceived (to do so would be to bring the world to heel under the Socratic tyranny).
To me, this is where it gets interesting. Take the Birth of Tragedy for what it is: a meta narrative that presents a world lost in struggle and tragedy. But then, take a close look at this: the struggle itself is analyzable, for struggles are never abstractions. It is not as if we are in a failed logical proof whose conclusion is an ad absurdum. What is in play is actual value. The question is, what is this?

My central interest since college has been the relationship between affectivity, feeling, mood and emotional on the one hand, and cognition, intentionality and understanding on the other. My view is that the two phenomena are utterly inseparable, that there is no expereince that is without affective valence and quality. I would argue that the sense of a world for Wittgenstein, as use context, is that way in which the word matters to us , its significance and relevance. That is an affective feature. There are no facts without relevance, there is no relevance without value, so understanding a fact is already an affective process. — Joshs

I don't see how this can be disagreed with. Experience is not a thing of discreet parts; rather, parts are in the analysis. There is no pure reason and there is no sublime affectivity qua affectivity as some kind of stand alone features of existence. But a question like, what is experience? has to have in its answer something about affectivity and its features, and one feature I find impossibly there is that affect cannot be "defeated" as to what it is by contextual changes. It is what it is regardless of context. And even if this pain can be recast as pleasure (in the mind of a masochist, say) it is not that pain is pleasure, or that pain is therefore made ambiguous, but that it is no longer pain.

BUT: An utterance places pain in context, that is, when I think about pain, I am already in a system of predelineated understandings, and so, what is said is bound to contingency, bound to a foundational deconstruction (as I am calling it. I don't have the vocabulary quite ready to hand) that denies all "stand alone" claims (call them "Platonic" claims). And so, the utterance "pain is bad" is just as contingent as "snow is white". The point I would make is the injunction not to do X is grounded in existence in a way that cannot be spoken, but is "mysteriously authoritative." I think Wittgenstein would agree.

I see that the color red, e.g., is there, but is "speechless" apart from its contextual placement possibilities. Affect "speaks" an inaudible and uninscribable "language" of existence.

Curious to hear your thoughts or rebuttables concerning this overall idea. — javra

My thoughts are a work in progress. In play is the indefeasibility of affectivity (this being a general term for a classification of existentials like pleasure, joy, bliss, happiness, disgust, hatred, revulsion, misery, and on and on. I take facts to be Wittgesntein's facts: sailboats are sailing in the distance, or an ox is stronger than a chihuahua. There is nothing of affectivity in all of these. Facts are accidental, that is, they could have been otherwise and there is nothing that makes them necessary. This is on edge of talk about possible worlds, worlds of logical necessity, or worlds of causal boundaries. I take Wittgenstein to be talking about logically conceivable worlds, and in them, there is no affectivity. You could say there is the fact that I am unhappy or ecstatic, but, and here is the rub, as a fact, there is no "good" in happiness., and there is no "bad" in misery. This opens the discussion for an extraordinary exposition the nature of ethics and aesthetics. How is it that I cannot assail the integrity of the, well, "value of value" that is the good of enjoyment the bad of a toothache, in any conceivable arrangements of context? In all possible worlds of factuality, what is good in this analysis of the good has no place at all. And this is because affectivity of goodness is an absolute. It does not issue from a factual matrix, that is, talk about this kind of thing is beyond the deferential possibilities of any context driven ontology.

I have to work this idea out, though I have another life beyond reading and thinking philosophy and likely will never do this entirely. But you see the intuition (heh, if there is such a thing) of this is bound up with this "discovery" (again, is there such a thing? Rorty says truth is made not discovered. Oh my!) of what is in an ethical analysis: There is something, some "invisible X" that cannot be reduced to contextual inter-deferentiality (I made that term up. It seems to be okay), I mean, produced out of "difference" of the meanings of ideas. Ethics and aesthetics are, and the limb I am going out on here is a long and slim one, utterly metaphysical in their very mysterious analysis of foundational ...errr, properties. They issue forth an injunction: Don't do this; Do this.

Of course, ethical injunctions are language constructs, and the same that is true for facts of the world are true here, that is, there is nothing of affect in an injunction, and injunctions are NOT indefeasible. ut this is not about ethics. This is about an abstraction form ethics that reveals an absolute.

Derrida is maddening to read (for me) but when one catches on (such as I have) , one sees how massively interesting he is, especially vis a vis Wittgenstein's Ethics and Tractatus. I mean, this is literally life changing, if, though, one is that caught up in the enterprise if finding out what it is to be a human being at the level of basic questions.

Singularity doesn’t step out of plurality, but the other way around. There is no such thing as a centered structure. A play of signifiers is a differential structure with no center.

“Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play. This was the moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse-provided we can agree on this word-that is to say, a system in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences.”(Sign, Structure and Play, Writing and Difference p352)

This system of differences must be thought as a temporal process rather than a simultaneous whole. The system unfolds itself from one singular to the next. Each singular is determinate ( even though it never repeats itself) but not decidable , since it borrows from another element in order to be what it is. It is a double structure. You are right to at there is no determinability in the sense of an ability to retrieve and hold onto an exact same entity or meaning. Determinability for Derrida at the level of social structures is a relative stability of thematic meaning. — Joshs

I was thinking of an ontological indeterminacy. I mean, if I deconstruct my cat, and the arbitrariness of the signifier cannot be made non arbitrary independently of a context, then the context is the ontological foundation for what my cat is. But beyond this, there is nowhere to go. It is blind metaphysics to think that there can be conceived something beyond context.

This doesn't just annihilate metaphysics, it places annihilated metaphysics in the language construction itself, if I may put it that way. I mean to say, the utterance qua utterance is entirely foreign to the actuality that is in the palpable "fabric of things" and I talk like this notwithstanding Heidegger's claim that objects in the world are "of a piece" with the language used to conceive of them.

You won't agree, I suspect, but I claim there is something irreducible to this actuality. I am not convinced our understanding is locked within a totality of the Same. Yes, I suppose this is walking on water talk.

Needless to add, this subject matter - as complex and convoluted as it can get - is to me very intimately associated with ethics and intrinsic value in general. — javra

That is where it ends up, I think. Happiness, unhappiness and everything you can think of that fit into these (which is everything in experience, for even the plainest most uneventful conditions are saturated with affect. Boredom, perhaps, but that changes nothing) is the existential presupposition for ethics. I cannot even imagine ethics with without some pain or pleasure, or mood, or interest, even, in play, at risk. One cannot, yet, have a moral relation with AI, a dog or cat or squirrel, yes.

But you know, we cannot speak of happiness analytically (Wittgenstein would not), which is a very peculiar thing. We can talk about what makes a person happy or un, but happiness simpliciter is hands off. Can we call this an intrinsic good (or bad)?

What Levinas misses is that this radical other isn’t something to be found beyond being, it is within the structure of being itself. Intention always intends beyond itself, but this is. or the ‘Good’ any more or less than it is the opposite of the good.

“By making the origin of language, meaning, and difference the relation to the infinitely other, Levinas is resigned to betraying his own intentions in his philosophical discourse. But the true name of this inclination of thought to the Other, of this resigned acceptance of incoherent incoherence inspired by a truth more profound than the "logic" of philosophical discourse, transcendental horizons of language, is empiricism. The profundity of the empiricist intention must be recognized beneath the naivete of certain of its historical expressions. It is the dream of a purely heterological thought at its source. A pure thought of pure difference. Empiricism is its philosophical name, its metaphysical pretention or modesty.”(Derrida) — Joshs

I have Violence and Metaphysics here. Let me read it and se if I understand it.

I only have a rough idea of non-locality wherein physics everything is said to be connected --or entangled. This thing, this non-locality makes sense only if you consider life in general as being plastic relative to the physical world, then the world plastic relative to the greater cosmos--- which works for me. By your definition then, does non-locality infer all things of an evolutionary nature, follow in its development in the wake of a greater reality. Whether that be the slowly-changing earth or the ever changing cosmos? Indeed, if everything is connected, locality or non-locality makes little sense. — boagie

Before talk about evolution, let's talk about the structure of a perceptual act, the apperceptive nature of the encounter, the analysis of the knowledge relationship between the observer and the world. Phenomenology is a foundational paradigm shift in understanding what it is to be a human being, not to sound too high and mighty, but that really is what it is. Locality and no locality are redefined. How so? Go online and read about Heidegger and his phenomenological exposition on space and time. Space first. This will give you entirely different questions to ask.

I strictly mean technical culpability; else phrased, responsibility for wrongdoing for which adequate amends has not been given. As in being innocent rather than guilty of a crime. When I mentioned that newly birthed infants are birthed perfectly innocent, I intended that they're birthed perfectly free of culpability. Various peoples' perspectives differ on this, but that's my take. Still, for the spiritual/religious: karma may have brought us into this world, else the sins of our ancestors or some such, but - even when entertaining such perspectives - once here, we start off with a blank-slate of culpability. The same applies for our being existentially "thrown into the world", if this happens to be one's perspective.

As far as "guilt as a working ethical concept" the aspiration to be ethical to me in large part translates into the aspiration to be as free as possible of non-amended wrongdoings, i.e. to be as free as possible from wrongdoings and to remedy as best one can those wrongs one is guilty/culpable of. — javra

But you see, I wonder if sense can be made at all out of guilt. What makes a person guilty? We are always led to decisions made that cause some pain to someone. Then, what is a decision? A very sticky wicket. I cannot find that pure accountability; accountability is always bound to a system of established moral thinking. And then there are those pesky motivational issues. The very best freedom to decide can be lies in the standing apart from all this and assuming a perspective tha t is not conditioned, qualified, and this is not a nonsense idea. You get in the car,, key in hand, insert it into the ignition and it won't start. Up until that point, the process was entirely inexplicit, automatic, rote and independent of any meaningful idea of freedom. And let's say you were stealing the car: at what point in the historical events that led up to the failed ignition were your actions truly free? Wasn't it all just one seamless progression and freedom never really entered into it at all? Am I "freely" typing these words, or am I altogether ignoring typing so I can put ideas out there, and when I put ideas out there, is this not the same kind of automatic engagement?

Ever read Beckett's "Molloy". An interesting part where the dying Molloy Malone tries to grasp the moment of his being passing into oblivion, but there are only words, it is seems as if it is the WORDS that are passing, not Molloy, or was Molloy's identity only constructed of words in the first place? If one is guilty, WHO is the guilty party? There is no small amount of madness in this trying to observe one's self, and then in the observation finding only the observational structure itself. Molloy: "I must go on; I can’t go on; I must go on; I must say words as long as there are words, I must say them until they find me, until they say me . . ."

Anyway, a bit off point, but interesting, and it illustrates just how hard it is to find the guilty agency.

Or maybe I should ask (to be honest, in a semi-rhetorical fashion): Why should wisdom be considered a good by a so-called "lover of wisdom"? For example, is it supposed to hold some instrumental value, such as that of allowing one far greater manipulative control over others for the sake of increased capital; else, are all the understandings that it reputedly entails supposed to hold some intrinsic value that forsakes eudemonia (i.e., being of good spirit/daemon; hence, of a healthy and flourishing mind)? — javra

I think you've put your finger on it: The whole point is happiness, isn't it? Is it really, as Mill put it, better to be a philosopher dissatisfied than a pig satisfied? There is a bit of cultural condescension in this, I would think, but the idea is important. I think we would have to consider if there is anything such as profound wisdom that carries an affectivity. Emanuel Levinas speaks of the desideratum than exceeds the desire, and the ideatum that exceeds the idea. He is referring not to an intellectual apprehension, but something intuitive, a relation with the radically otherness of the world that beckons beyond to eternity.

Something of burning bush thinking in this, as if there is in the great beyond that intrudes into our finitude and in its grandeur trivializes all else. Buddhists and Hindus talk like this.

Struggling to wrap my head around this, how does non- locality figure into the processing of subject and object on an individual level? I understand that there is no separation between the world and consciousness, for to take away either, then the other ceases to be. Bare with me, perhaps I need read the thread more closely. — boagie

Can't say I follow, Boagie. Can you elaborate?

Innocence for me is defined by blamelessness. Ignorance is instead defined by lack of understanding (maybe we might both agree that knowledge does not entail understanding, though to understand is to know that which is understood; as one example, to know what someone said without understanding what the person said). Yes, as infants we’re birthed with both and loose both over time.

I however strongly question that a return to innocence, if at all possible, necessitates a forgetting of the understandings gained.

Hence the possibility of returning to innocence with a more awakened awareness than that first held in such state – rather than a going back to sleep.

Of course, all this is contingent on whether one believes that innocence, in the strict sense of blamelessness, can be regained once lost. — javra

Innocence and guilt make no sense to me at all. I think when we refer to a child's innocence, we are really referring to her purity and uncluttered experiences. Free of guilt, yes, but what is guilt as a working ethical concept (not as, say, a psychological concept, about feelings of remorse, resentment, etc.)? The kind of freedom to make this meaningful is impossible. When one stands on the precipice of future events, and chooses, this cannot be done ex nihilo. Contextual possibilities are finite and unique to that one. How is he responsible for, say, not living in a world that provides a conscience? If I were not given a conscience, what would I do?
At any rate, this forgetting of the understandings gained: Quite an idea. This, it might be argued, requires faith. There must be something that overrides the knowledge of our, if you will, thrownness into a knowledge of the world's miseries. Faith that all is redeemed in the end, somehow. That is why we have concepts of God: an ethical finality for the Good.
I would agree with you if only it is allowed a metaphysics that redeems. Otherwise, it seems disingenuous.

“I do not believe I have ever spoken of "indeterminacy," whether in regard to "meaning" or anything else. Undecidability is something else again. While referring to what I have said above and elsewhere, I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations (for example, discursive-syntactical or rhetorical-but also political, ethical, etc.). They are pragmatically determined.The analyses that I have devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague "indeterminacy." I say "undecidability" rather than "indeterminacy" because I am interested more in relations of force, in differences of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilized through a decision of writing (in the broad sense I give to this word, which also includes political action and experience in general). There would be no indecision or double bind were it not between determined (semantic, ethical, political) poles, which are upon occasion terribly necessary and always irreplaceably Singular. Which is to say that from the point of view of semantics, but also of ethics and politics, "deconstruction" should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism.”( Limited, Inc) — Joshs

But doesn't the "difference" make indeterminate any spoken utterance at the level of the most basic analysis? I do see that undecidability is preferred if there is a purpose that contextualizes, or "totalizes" (I think that is a Heideggerian term, borrowed by Levinas) such that terms can be set and played against each other. But beneath this, there is indeterminacy, beneath all undecidability, there is indeterminacy in the full sense of the term: what is singular in thought and expression is not singular in its essential structure. Singularity "steps out" of plurality of regionalized signifiers.

In other words, I don't mean that in the middle of deciding whether to go to market today I should get lost in the failure to decide what to do. My thinking, under construction, is that our affairs are pragmatic, our relations with the world are pragmatic, and pragmatism says nothing at all about foundational ontology of the Cartesian kind, some kind of substance. So, I suppose I am agreeing that decidability is a bottom line concept. But I also think that material substance is not just a stand in term for nothing at all, and I don't think that, res cogitans and res extensa are complete nonsense. Something in the hiddeness of the world intimates itself in the Husserlian reduction. It is the Buddhist's bliss (affectivity) which is this sublime ontology that is not discursive in its discovery, but intuitive.

Philosophers, I have observed, do not like this term, intuition, and I almost wince to use it.

I think Michel Henry is coming from an older Kantian influenced religious tradition, and a s a result he is neither in a position to effectively understand Heidegger nor Husserl. What he does is try to turn Heidegger into Kierkegaard, and I see Heidegger as having moved quite a distance beyond the latter. — Joshs

I'll take your word for that, though I think it is more that he doesn't really care what a defensible account would be at all. He is more interested moving on to something else entirely. In this paper, "The Power of Revelation of Affectivity According to Heidegger" I haven't really understood it yet, but It seems clear thus far that he has a phenomenological interpretation for Christianity which is Kierkegaardian (I didn't see that he was trying to make Heidegger into Kierkegaard, but rather criticizing Heidegger for defiling the affectivity with mundane meaning): affectivity (existential anxiety) is a momentous, transcendental structure of our existence. He wants to make revelatory anxiety a threshold to God.

By the way, when I mentioned "young at heart" I had in mind that this ought to be part and parcel of eudemonia: etymologically, being in "good spirit(s)" (or more literally, of a "good daemon"), which I can only see entailing having a light heart rather than a heavy one - again, despite all the sh*t one undergoes. Maybe this gets wound up with having/gaining a relatively clear conscience despite the hardships and loses and mistakes. There's no questioning that life happens and along with it the bad that jades, which deprives us of yesteryear's more vivid abilities to experience beauty or love, even a sense of wonder. For me, though, wisdom - the type philosophers were once upon a time reputed to pursue - ought be something like the song "Return to Innocence" in theme. Not a return to the ignorances of youth (never found the two equivalent), but to the affects that accompany unjaded souls. Now get reminded of Nietzsche parable of the camel, turned predator fighting the monster of thou shalts and shalt nots, then, at last, turned into a newly birthed babe in the same world as before.

Wisdom as a generative, even regenerative, grounding of such sort, that I'll go for. Intrinsic value to the max. Sounds like something worth attaining, at any rate. Next issue: how does one find it — javra

We want to have our cake and eat it, too. But these militate against each other, don't they. The more you return to innocence, the more you have to forget. One one knows solidly the tonnage of suffering of the world, and has the requisite compassion (some do not, clearly) there is no turning back, pulling the covers over the head and going back to sleep.
Remember, if I may, that miserable suffering is also an intrinsic value. Nietzsche certainly did have to take control because his physical life was a living hell, so much so that he could get behind it in his thinking.
Here is an odd but provocative idea: suffering and joy, the two dimensions of our ethical/aesthetic world. Do these not tell us by their own natures that only one of these is "intrinsically" desirable? I tend to think suffering is an instruction: Don't do that! And it is not culture of principles telling us this. Kierkegaard was perhaps right: principles are limited formulations, superseded by something so mysterious we had to invent religion.

Have a read of this abstract. The essay used to be online, but now is part of the volume from which this is excerpted; by Norman Fischer. — Wayfarer

How close this is to Heidegger's problem. Our pragmatism gets us out of trouble and scrapes in the world, but then it creates a false sense of existence, treating the world as "standing reserve". Our ready to hand existence is a great asset, yet can occlude primordial meaning.

It gets a bit complicated for me, though. While animals are, let's say their status as moral, affective agencies, is unquestionable, and I base this simply on their exposure to the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, heard tell of; their capacity for depth and, call it, intimations of profound things experience is capable of, seems limited. Consider the infant, blissful, but agency is missing. Who is blissful? Animals have limited agency, and I leave this term to debate. But would only add that there is a moment in symbolic, pragmatic dealings with the world, where a schism forms between ordinary affairs and reflection, which is, I hazard to say, what existentialism is all about, this break with continuity. What issues out of this is, granted, well, arguably, nothing but trouble. On the other, it seems to be a precipice where we encounter the impossible. Pulling away from spontaneous blisses of infancy (animal-being?) may be seen as opening to something far more primordial, perhaps absolute.

Ain't it? It's like being in love. Once there, you don't want to talk about it because talk takes, if you will, the ready-to-hand out of the whole affair. But then, being IN something so completely makes one wonder if one hasn't yielded to the unconsciousness of being IN it, and thereby failing to be open to its generational grounding. I want to be a 'teenager in love" but it's just that I don't want to be a teenager, unaware, blind, driven rather than driving. — Astrophel

Did I say generational?? I meant 'generative'.

Hey, if the pinnacle of wisdom isn't about being young at heart, in spite of all the suffering and such, then I don't want it. Said emotionally, rationally, both. — javra

Yeah, quite so. But am I...myself, if I am not aware at some second order of thinking? Odd to ask such a thing. I look back at childhood, see the fluid nature of events, and the smallest of things were glorious. Gone now is the glory of spontaneous existence. Kierkegaard (try not to be put off by the biblical obsession. He wasn't at all naive) called this a sinless condition, or, pre-sin, and the adventurous fantasies were common. He thought, with Wordsworth, that growing up and becoming encultured (inherited sin, not original sin) was inherently sinful, and he simply was referring to the unquestioned engagement of one's affairs. It is only after one steps away that one can be sinful, for then one recognizes her own relation to eternity and the groundlessness of everydayness. The "distance" between what one is and what one can understand what one is becomes apparent. This is an existential crisis I don't want to be left out of.
Do we want to be like children? Yes and No, is the only answer I can accept.

There is a saying you will find in mystical literature of various cultures, ‘the good that has no opposite’. This is distinguished from what is normally considered ‘good’ as that is always conditional, i.e. what is good is what is not bad, a good outcome, pleasure as distinct from pain, gain as distinct from loss, and so on. In an instrumental or utilitarian view, then morality is about ‘maximising’ these goods, but logically speaking, they’re dependent on their opposites in order to exist. Whereas the ‘good that has no opposite’ is outside those kinds of reference frames. — Wayfarer

Isn't this the obvious truth? When I am IN a good experience, a really good one, I am not aware of anything else. Its "dependence" only comes into play when engagement is compromised.
Tried to access your music but it wouldn't play. Any suggestions?

I find this statement beautiful. — javra

Ain't it? It's like being in love. Once there, you don't want to talk about it because talk takes, if you will, the ready-to-hand out of the whole affair. But then, being IN something so completely makes one wonder if one hasn't yielded to the unconsciousness of being IN it, and thereby failing to be open to its generational grounding. I want to be a 'teenager in love" but it's just that I don't want to be a teenager, unaware, blind, driven rather than driving.

I wrote a paper comparing Varela and Thompsons’s approach to meditation to phenomenology. It’s titled A Phenomenological Critique of Mindfulness. You might find it interesting. — Joshs

I read it. A fascinating engagement, but then, I can't give a technical response since that would take a lot of rereading of texts and putting things together, and it is a technical paper. I am actually doing just this, but it is a process.

Tentatively, though, some thoughts: you know, the claim made by Varela and Thompson that Nagarjuna was not elaborating on the Abhidamma, but was simply elucidating is questionable. This early text is considered the closest to the Buddha's original thought, and when it speaks of "ultimate reality" it is meant to be revelatory, not analytical. It is in the analysis that arguments rise up. Derrida comes to mind: The moment you think at all, you have a muddled or diffused event, and this "unstructured" way of designation is simply the "structure" of the way utterances work. Completely indeterminate when discussion turns to questions at the most basic level because determinacy itself is simply indeterminate. To speak at all is inherently deconstructive. So all this talk by Nagarjuna is perhaps right for simply dealing with metaphysical insistences, for, as Varela and Thompson say, "as one becomes mindful of one’s own experience, one realizes the power of the urge to grasp after foundations". But this grasping is a flaw to be overcome, not indulged. One can say just this of the entire enterprise called philosophy and I think a Buddhist is bound to this. After all, there is only one bottom line to all this, and it is not cognitive. It is affective.
Reading Michel Henry on Heidegger, I find, "The essence of revelation peculiar to affectivity and taking place in it is completely lost to Heidegger, confused by him with the essence of the ontological understanding of Being to which it nevertheless remains heterogeneous both in its structure and in its phenomenality." I think this is right. It is close to Kierkegaard's insistence that when rational systems approach actuality, it is a train wreck, and Heidegger's ontology is, after all, a readable, rational presentation.
But you're thesis that in calling upon Nagarjuna to work out groundlessness contra Husserl et all, who insist groundlessness of this kind is untenable seems right, though I continue to work out the details.
As always, thanks for this.