A third possibility. Yes, it might not refer to anything. I'd just ask what do you want it to refer to? Reference appears alarmingly flexible - inscrutable, as Quine and Davidson put it. There simply might not be any fact of the matter.

But this is a side issue, I'm just flagging it because it might become relevant is someone (↪Joshs ?) wanted to follow through on Putnam's model- theoretical argument for anti-realism, mentioned previously — Banno

I just finished re-reading Putnam’s collection ‘Realism with a Human Face’. He leans a lot here on the later Wittgenstein and the American Pragmatists. His realism with a small ‘r’ , as he calls it, is a relativism almost all the way down. I say almost because although he calls analytic philosophy a dead end, he stops short of the value relativism of Rorty and the French Postmodernists.

On the one hand , he argues that “Logical positiv­ism maintained that nothing can have cognitive significance unless it contributes, however indirectly, to predicting the sensory stimulations that are our ultimate epistemological starting point (in empiricist phi­losophy). I say that that statement itself does not contribute, even indirectly, to improving our capacity to predict anything. Not even when conjoined to boundary conditions, or to scientific laws, or to appropriate mathematics, or to all of these at once, does positivist philosophy or any other philosophy imply an observation sentence. In short, positivism is self-refuting. Moreover, I see the idea that the only purpose or function of reason itself is prediction (or prediction plus "simplicity") as a prejudice-a prejudice whose unreasonable­ness is exposed by the very fact that arguing for it presupposes intel­lectual interests unrelated to prediction as such.”
“…the success of science cannot be anything but a puz­zle as long as we view concepts and objects as radically independent; that is, as long as we think of "the world" as an entity that has a fixed nature, determined once and for all, independently of our framework of concepts."
“So much about the identity relations between different categories of mathemati-cal objects is conventional, that the picture of ourselves a describing a bunch of objects that are there "anyway" is in trouble from the start.”
“…what leads to "Platonizing" is yielding to the temptation to find mysterious entities which somehow guarantee or stand behind correct judgments of the reasonable and the unreasonable.”

On the other hand, “…intelligence, in the sense of the ability to use language, manipulate tools, and so on, is not enough to enable a species to do science. It also has to have the right set of prejudices…” “…plausible reasoning that is often subjective, often controversial, but that, nevertheless, comes up with truths and approximate truths far more often than any trial-and-error procedure could be expected to do.”

“If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny with­out falling into total self-refuting subjectivism that they are objective (notwithstanding their "softness," the lack of well-defined "criteria," and so forthright), then the classic argument against the objectivity of eth­ical values is totally undercut.”

Continental philosophy. It may have something to do with the water in Europe.
— Joshs

It probably doesn't have lead in it. That's our special ingredient. With a sprinkle of asbestos. — Tate

And a smidgeon of Viagra to elevate the level of philosophical intercourse.

As Janus puts it...

Commonality of experience shows that the gestalts or meaningful wholes do not arise arbitrarily, not merely on account of the individual perceiver, taken in isolation. So the possibilities are that either real existents, including the objects perceived, the environmental conditions and the constitutions of the perceives all work together to determine the forms of perceptions. or else there is a universal or collective mind which determines the perceptions and their commonality.
— Janus

I accept that all of this is possible, I'm not trying to deny it, but for the second option we're having to invoke a whole load of speculated realms and mechanisms, just to avoid there being intrinsic properties and I can't see why. — Isaac

Or we could argue that discursive practices that neither originate entirely within the individual nor the community, but in a complex dance between them, establish and contest rules and techniques of reciprocal interaction with a world that we end up talking about as the experience of ‘real intrinsic objects’.
By substituting for the concept of intrinsic content the notion of reciprocal interaction we keep what intrinsic realness gives us , but gain much more.

But this requires a shift in our conceptualizations of empiricism from backward-looking notions like knowledge and epistemology to forward-looking terms like practice, production, contextual use and niche construction. I think this is the direction philosophy of science is headed( See the work of Joseph Rouse).

↪Joshs That's easy for you to say. :razz: — Tate

Continental philosophy. It may have something to do with the water in Europe.

Great. What are their assessments of the ontology of propositions? — Tate

For Heidegger. S is P is derived from the ‘as’ structure.
Heidegger's analysis of the derivation of propositional logic from a pragmatic ‘as' structure illustrates the immediately transformative nature of intentional aboutness. Heidegger explains that in taking something to be the case in a propositional judgement (for instance, S is P) , we are taking something as something within a wider context of pragmatic relevance. Making sense of something is an act that always has the ‘as' structure, as Heidegger tells us, but this structure of relevanting is covered over and flattened down in causal models.

“What is to be got at phenomenally with the formal structures of "binding" and "separating," more precisely, with the unity of the two, is the phenomenon of "something as something...In accordance with this structure, something is understood with regard to something else, it is taken together with it, so that this confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, at the same time takes apart what has been put together.”

“The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act.”

Propositions are the things people assert or agree to. If you adopt an ontology that rules them out, you're headed for some type of behaviorism.

Philosophers don't usually feel required to give an ontology to them. — Tate

Except for Heidegger , Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Nietzsche, and a host of other phenomenologists and postmodernist philosophers.

“But because discourse is always talking about beings, although not pri­marily and predominantly in the sense of theoretical statements, our analysis of the temporal constitution of discourse and the explication of the temporal characteristics of language pattems can be tackled only if the problem of the fundamental connection between being and truth has been unfolded in terms of the problematic of temporality. Then the ontological meaning of the "is" can be defined, which a superficial theory of propositions and judgments has distorted into the "copula”.( Heidegger, Being and Time)

My objection is not to the content but the structure of that argument. The "supernatural" element, even if "immanent", is introduced using a fraught transcendental argument*. It is the transcendental argument that is objectionable. — Banno

I don’t deny that Deleuze’s immanent panpsychism requires a transcendental framework. In fact he calls his approach an immanent transcendentalism. But there is no getting around a transcendental element. There is no brand of realism that does not depend on a transcendental , that is, metaphysical ground. So it isn’t a question of avoiding metaphysics but of how one’s discourse relates to it. Realist empiricisms naively depend on a metaphysical method, whereas Deleuze and other relativists make explicit the preconceptions orienting empiricism.

if "singularities are only what they are in reciprocal interaction with other singularites" then there are other singularities. Each account you give remains dependent on a something "external" to mind.

I maintain that all this theoretical stuff can be removed via the simple expedient of proposing realism. There is a world in which we are embedded, and which includes things we do not know.

Your arguments appear sophistic. Reality is a simpler option.

*and I mean argument of the form:
P; P only if Q; therefore Q.
It's valid, but only true if the second premiss can be demonstrated. — Banno

Q can be an externality in relation to mind only to the extent that it have its own internality, a subsistence , a being into itself that can be clearly separated from what causes or influences it. Realism depends on a determinably fixed distinction between inner and outer, and these tens depend on a notion of time as allowing for absolute self-identical repetition. A thing can persist as itself , and external to another thing, for so many milliseconds, for instance. This notion of how things exist in time rests on a particular kind of metaphysical thinking.

Truth is what leads to affective affirmation and Nietzsche was right about this, but wrong about will to power, whatever that could possibly mean (if all you do in life is overcome illness, as it was with Nietzsche, "will" takes on a perverse reification, is the way I see him). — Constance

Will to power is the self-differentiating creative impetus of willing. Deleuze says:

Will to power does not mean that the will wants power. Will to power does not imply any anthropomorphism in its origin, signification or essence. Will to power must be interpreted in a completely different way: power is the one that wills in the will. Power is the genetic and differential element in the will; it does not aspire, it does not seek, it does not desire, above all it does not desire power.”

Both, and assessing relative weight of all those factors is not a simple matter. — Enrique

Sounds like your ethical model is similar to that of Peter Strawson.

https://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/P._F._Strawson_Freedom_&_Resentment.pdf

↪Joshs

An inconsistent position because taken to its logical conclusion no purpose exists for willing anything, total apathy. It is also fallacious because reasoning is a substantive cause, proven by the nature of civic action, organizational structure and mechanisms of progress. I think those questionable moral approaches mentioned are to be conditionally resisted to the extent that they are damaging to oneself or somebody else, for pragmatic reasons. — Enrique

Do you believe that good and evil are the products
of freely choosing autonomous individuals through causal reasoning, or that wrong-doing is fundamentally shaped by social influences and causes, upbringing and biology?

indeterminacy due to a collapse of determinate language. One says she is in a room. Is this sustainable as a knowledge claim if she does not know where the room is? — Constance

As I recall , determinism for you is closely tied to intrinsicality, a property inherent to something that can be located dependably outside contextual change. I believe this kind of determinacy is another name for meaninglessness.

The popular formulation of determinism as an approach to ethics de-emphasises personal responsibility.

“…what we do and the way we are is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, whether that be determinism, chance, or luck, and because of this agents are never morally responsible in the sense needed to justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or treatments—such as resentment, indignation, moral
anger, backward-looking blame, and retributive punishment.”( Dirk Pereboom).

Buddhist philosophy denies the existence of substance in the philosophical sense, and also of the transcendental subject (ātman). But it still has an idealist school. — Wayfarer

Yes, postmodern social constructionist Ken Gergen mentions some of the affinities he sees between buddhism and his model of relational being.

“ Resonating with the thesis of co-action, Buddhists propose that as we remove ourselves from daily cares we come to realize the artifi ciality of the distinctions or categories on which they are based. In effect, our linguistic distinctions are responsible for both our desires and disappointments. We see that in conceptualizing wealth, love, status, or progeny as desirable, we establish the grounds for disappointment and distress. Further, we come to see that the division between self and non-self is not only misleading, but contributes to the character of our suffering. (Consider the common anguish resulting from the sense of personal failure.)


Over time one becomes conscious (Bhodi) that there are no indepen­dent objects or events in the world. These are all human constructions. When we suspend the constructions, as in meditation, we enter a con­sciousness of the whole or a unity. More formally, one enters consciousness of what Buddhists call codependent origination, or the sense of pure related­ness of all. Nothing we recognize as separate exists independent of all else. As the Vietamese master Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, we come to an appre­ciation of inter-being, that “everything is in everything else.”

show me the past and I will show you a present event affirming something called past. the future and the present suffer the same fate. All that can be confirmed is an altogether indeterminate present, for lack of a better word. — Constance

The present ( primal impression) isn’t indeterminate, it’s specious, complex. Retention and protention (anticipation) belong to the present. They are a part of the immediate ‘now’.

Gallagher(2017)writes “primal impression, rather than being portrayed as an experiential origin, “the primal source of all further consciousness and being” is considered the result of an interplay between retention and protention. It is “the boundary between the retentions and protentions”

The primal impression comes on the scene as the fulfilment of an empty protention; the now, as the present phase of consciousness, is constituted by way of a protentional fulfilment.

↪Joshs Sure, I'm aware of such oddities. It looks like a reworking of god as the answer to the three problems I listed.

Pan-psychism brings with it all the problems of any supernatural entity.

Information transfer. That brings with it much the same issue as my original question to Wayfarer - When one's mind constructs reality, what is it it constructs it from? When information is transferred, what is it transferred in? Information is pattern; patterns are in something.

Moreover, if there is a something, independent of mind, then in what sense does the theory remain a version of idealism? — Banno

The points you just made show a confusion concerning what postmodern models are aiming at.
First of all , God requires a stable notion of the good. If good and evil are relative to context and have no ground beyond this , then the idea of god becomes incoherent. The model I sketched is Nietschean, beyond good and evil and thus beyond god. The model is not supernatural, it is immanent.

You say pattens are in something. Why? Where did you get the idea that we have to begin with a something, an object, a thing or force or wave or law with properties and attributes? You got it from a long-standing tradition in philosophy and empirical science. Deleuze doesnt begin with things or facts that change. He begins with difference and shows how we derive things from change. He begins from multiplicities of differential singularities. The singularities are only what they are in reciprocal interaction with other singularites. And most importantly, the singularities are not things, objects, facts, entities, they are differential changes that only occur as what they are once and never repeat exactly the same. Construction constructs from prior constructions. Transfer transfers from prior transfers. Pattern changes prior pattern. What we call stable, predictable empirical reality is the result of only relatively stable pattens which are ‘composed’ of the above internally differential and differentiating changes, which never produce ( or originate in) fixed facts , properties or substances. One could say that each singular is its own world, its own god.

The theory is an idealism in that it is grounded in ideas, not things or material causes. Singularities, in their differential structure within themselves and within the multiplicities that they belong to, are ideas. An idea does not have to be the product of a human mind, it can be located in the differential structure
of any event, as the temporal system of past-present-future that reveals the relations between elements
of the world not in terms of fixed causes external to entities but in terms of an anticipatory trajectory intrinsic to each element of relation.

realism holds that there are things we can't know. Antirealism, including idealism, holds that whatever is true is somehow related to mind.

The core problems for idealism are explaining consistency in the world around us, explaining error and explaining the existence of others. All three are dissipated by supposing that truth is not dependent on mind. — Banno

Not all irrealisms, anti-realisms, idealisms and relativisms assume that truth is related to the human mind. Deleuze begins from the ‘idea’, but this is not the functioning of a human mind, it is a property of all things animate and inanimate. It can be considered a form of pan-psychism, but it does not assume a notion of psyche as an inner , spiritual substance. Rather, it refers to information transfer involved in self-organization at the level of inorganic processes . “There is information transfer and self-organization in autocatalytic loops, and this fits the cybernetic definition of mind offered by Gregory Bateson when he identifies mind as synonymous with cybernetic system—the relevant total information-processing, trial-and-error completing unit.”( John Protevi)

It becomes easy even to find the structures and functions that can explain the existence of Santa Claus: quantum physics, with all their magics, have become now the magic hat that makes possible to find the physical reason for the existence of whatever we like to believe or to dream of. It is so sweetly romantic: we exist! Thank you, quantum physics! — Angelo Cannata

There are two ways to argue for free will. One is to defend classical metaphysical dualism and claim that the mind is not subject to the determinism of the natural world. The other is to demonstrate that empirical nature ( quantum physics, evolutionary biology) is itself non-deterministic. Writers from Putnam to Dennett embrace this non-dualistic approach to human freedom. Sounds reasonable , don’t you think?

Joshs I'm not doing all the work. If you care to set out the argument as you see it, we might proceed. — Banno

A yes or no would be a helpful starting point. Do you identify with Putnam’s position on realism in large part or do you have significant reservations?

Dummett’s Manifestation Argument
Dummett’s Language Acquisition Argument
Putnam’s Brain-in-a-Vat Argument
Putnam’s Conceptual Relativity Argument
Putnam’s Model-Theoretic Argument

Each would be a source of further discussion. — Banno

Are you sympathetic to Putnam’s anti-realism, and if not , what are your objections?

↪Wayfarer

Perhaps the most difficult exposition to fathom in transcendental metaphysics,....a speculative idealism if there ever was one.....is how I, as thinking subject, can at the same time be the object I think about. — Mww

What happens when one of my hands touches the other? I can be aware of myself as a subjectivity who senses, or as a body being sensed. But I can’t do both at the same time. I shift back and forth between awareness of myself
as a body and awareness of myself as a mind.

I would say there is no ‘thinking subject’ to be found before or outside the relation to an object. Subjective awareness is nothing other than relation to an object. Subjectivity is an activity in the world not an inner thing or substance.

Heidegger spent a whole career introducing a new way to think about the word ‘is’, such as S is P.
— Joshs

OK, so then we're back to "why?". I don't see a way out of this. Before diving into Heidegger, I'd rather just make sure we've got the frame of investigation right. If a claim is about the way the world is, it is a factual claim. If a claim is about some way we could look at the way the world is, then it's a normative or aesthetic claim and it needs a 'why' - why ought I look at thing that way, as opposed to any other.

That 'why' must itself be a factual claim "it will make you happier", "it will work better", "it's more useful"...etc. A claim which takes a position on the way the world is.

If all we have is a series of 'ways of looking at things' which never terminate in a claim about the way the world is (such as to advise I look at things that way) then I'm not sure I see the point. — Isaac

There are very different ways that philosophy can understand the relationship between series of ways of looking. at things. Descartes was among the first Western thinkers to assert that we are in such an indirect relationship to the world that we only have ‘ways’ of looking at it. But he needed a divine capacity of reason to explain how we know the ‘correct’ way of assembling its parts in our heads. Kant agreed with Descartes that there are more or less correct ways of looking at things , but these ways are organized by indirectly by pre-given categories of perception rather than directly by causal relations between material things.

For Hegel, the series of ways of looking at things has a teleological , dialectical structure. The world is no longer a fixed scheme or gestalt , whose determined
structure we approximate more and more
closely. Instead , it is a becoming in which each scientific-cultural gestalt, scheme , paradigm, worldview, way of looking at things belongs to an evolving series on which the ‘parts’ of the world continuously change form, meaning and sense. For Hegel , the objective reality is not to be found in any of the contingent particulars of nature (physical laws, constants, properties) , but in the structure of dialectical progress itself. All local facts are in themselves irrational.

Postmodernism follows upon Hegel in focusing for the structure of historical change ( the way the world ‘is’ consists of its continual becoming according to a certain
nature’) rather than in empirical facts, which they also believe to be irrational.

But postmodernists jettison Hegel’s dialectical method. There is no grand overarching logic tying together the evolving historical series of ways of looking at things, no final overcoming of contradiction through unity, no Popperian asymptotic approach of truth through falsification.

This isnt to say that there isnt an ethic to be found in the postmodern notion of becoming. Even though experience is at every moment , for every thing animate and inanimate, in continual transformation , based on no preset rule, formula or scheme , and with no human cultural directionality toward ‘truth’, there is still a better and worse to be found. Cultural-scientific-personal beliefs can become ‘relatively’ stagnant and dogmatic. This stuckness is associated with a certain pathology.
For postmodern social theorists, psychologists and ethicists, the choosing of one of an endlessly changing historical series of ways of looking at things leads to violence, conformity , despair, nihilism and skepticism. Why would this be? Because such a slowing down of experiential change is a kind of fragmentation and self-alienation. In a world of naive realism , physical objects are dead things alienated from each other and from us.

In empirical representational accounts of social science, the experimenter is alienated from the subject , who is vulnerable to ‘biases’ that the third personal stand detects from a position outside of the subject.

Shifting from a modernist to a postmodern ‘stance’ amounts to setting into accelerated motion a becoming that is always already in process, but plodding for the modernist. Or can take us from alienated , fragmented experience to an ongoing relevance and intimacy in our relations with each other.

↪Joshs
what is wvc ? — Jackson

Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, from the notes of F. Waismann (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). Zettel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967).

'Physics does not yield a descrip­tion of the structure of phenomenological states of affairs. In phenomenology it is always a matter of possibility, i. e. of sense, not of truth and falsity. '(WVC, p.63)

Post what Wittgenstein said about phenomenology. You cited Monk. — Jackson

And Monk cited Wittgenstein. That’s a direct quote from
him.
'Physics', he said, 'does not yield a descrip­tion of the structure of phenomenological states of affairs. In phenomenology it is always a matter of possibility, i. e. of sense, not of truth and falsity. '

↪Joshs
Good to know somebody wrote something — Jackson

Especially if that someone is Wittgenstein, and they directly state that they are doing phenomenology.

many scholars regard the PI as a phenomenological investigation of human life.
— Janus

Who are those scholars? I never heard of that. — Jackson

Ray Monk, Wittgenstein’s biographer, wrote:

“The properties of space, time and matter that he was concerned with were not the subject of a physical investigation, but, as Wittgenstein was inclined to put it at this time, a phenomenological analysis. 'Physics', he said, 'does not yield a descrip­tion of the structure of phenomenological states of affairs. In phenomenology it is always a matter of possibility, i. e. of sense, not of truth and falsity. '

He's saying that the world is such that rules cannot be made without meaning something slightly other than we meant to rule on. A fact about the way the world is. I'm quite content with Derrida's claim here, but it is clearly a claim about the way the world is. a normal everyday factual claim. — "Isaac

Whether it’s a normal everyday factual claim depends on how you are understanding it. The way I understand it , it doesnt function the way that claims about things normally function. For one thing , it is not a propositional statement. Heidegger spent a whole career introducing a new way to think about the word ‘is’, such as S is P. So I would say what Derrida, in following Heidegger, is doing isnt a claim about the world but an investigation into what has traditionally been ignored by normal everyday factual forms of assertion. I could easily demonstrate this by having you elaborate on what you understand normal everyday factual claims to have in common.

Derrida appears to be saying that there are rules of interpretation that apply to his work. I could make up a different rule of interpretation "All works mean exactly what the author says they mean and nothing else". As a rule, it couldn't be clearer. So why do we not apply that?

Or worse — Isaac

"All works should be read backwards and the sense of them taken from whatever meaning remains in the reversed text". Again, crystal clear as a rule, no one would be in any doubt as to how to follow it, yet it's a rule which apparently Derrida thinks is wrong. So on what ground are some rules right and others wrong? — Isaac

There are discursive contexts which are more or less stable , more or less consistent. Thus an event as experienced by someone can be more or less ‘true’ to a given context.
Can we call the more stable discursive contexts ‘rules’? Even if we allows ourselves to do so, this is not the basis of Derrida’s philosophy. Even within stable ‘rule-bound’ contexts, temporality is the fundamental ground. And what is temporality?

Temporality assures that every moment transforms one’s entire past. The entire world , with its rules, objects, facts, is now slightly changed as a whole every new moment.

Derrida articulates this in different ways, with different terms. One of these terms is iterability.

"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..(LI53)."

Is the above , is deconstruction, a fundamental ‘rule’ that we are meant to ‘apply’? Does it clash with alternate ‘rules’ that other philosophers offer?

quote="Isaac;712468"]All works mean exactly what the author says they mean and nothing else". As a rule, it couldn't be clearer. So why do we not apply that?

Is this an alternative to Derrida’s thinking, or does it presuppose it? Yes, all works mean exactly what an author says they mean and nothing else. But what does intention, as meaning to say, ‘do’?

"Through the possibility of repeating every mark as the same, [iterability] makes way for an idealization that seems to deliver the full presence of ideal objects..., but this repeatability itself ensures that the full presence of a singularity thus repeated comports in itself the reference to something else, thus rending the full presence that it nevertheless announces"(LI29)). ...the possibility of its being repeated another time-breaches, divides, expropriates the "ideal" plenitude or self-presence of intention,...of all adequation between meaning and saying. Iterability alters...leaves us no room but to mean (to say) something that is (already, always, also) other than what we mean (to say) (Limited, Inc,p.61)." "The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition(p.53)."

According to the above , we can rightly assert that what we write means exactly what we say it means and nothing else, We can absolutely believe this. And yet , this assertion does not clash with the underlying deconstructive ‘mechanics’ that make the assertion possible and give it its meaning. In making such an assertion we are implicitly but not explicitly deconstructing our intention.

And what about this alternative?

"All works should be read backwards and the sense of them taken from whatever meaning remains in the reversed text". Again, crystal clear as a rule, no one would be in any doubt as to how to follow it, yet it's a rule which apparently Derrida thinks is wrong. — Isaac

The same situation applies. One is offering a crystal clear rule. And Derrida does not deny this. He is simply trying to show that when we look closely enough within the terms’ of an intended meaning that is ‘crystal clear’ we may notice that it’s crystal clarity continues to be the same differently , not just in terms of how it is interpreted by those other than the creator of the rule , but also by the rule-creator. To mean a rule is to mean something slightly other, more, different than what we meant to legislate, in the very act of intending it. This doesn’t destroy the rule. It is its condition of possibility.

There is no counter example you can think of that cannot be submitted to such a deconstruction, which of course does not make any of your examples ‘untrue’
or Derrida’s deconstruction more true.

Derrida is pointing to what it is that makes intention, meaning , rules both operate and not operate at the same time.

Why should I doubt Minds, tables , bodies , quarks and chairs - after all, they are a more apparent "other" than "relational patterns". — Banno

To a chemist a chair is a conglomeration of molecules, to a furniture maker it is an assemblage of materials, to a historian it is a cultural object , to a cat it is a scratching post, to an actor it is a prop. Is there some common essence of chair underlying all these accounts, or is Nelson Goodman correct in saying “Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with 'the world'; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous.”

According to Goodman’s irrealism, none of the above accounts of a chair can claim to be “the way things are independent of experience”. There is no one uniquely true description of reality.

Do you really wish to argue that there are other minds, but not tables and chairs and trees and rocks? How are you to know about other minds, if not via your experience of their bodies?

How do you know that there are other minds? — Banno

Minds, tables , bodies , quarks and chairs are all contestable realities, conceptual abstractions that we make use of in various ways , which differ in ways subtle or profound from occasion to occasion , from culture to culture and from era to era. What is not contestable is that reality appears in terms of relational patterns that allow for some form of relatively stable anticipations of events. These patterns can be articulated in terms of objects like minds, brains, chairs and bodies. Other minds don’t have any more grounding than trees and rocks. But there is something other at every moment of expereince. I am other to
myself every moment in that self -reflection introduces novelty. I am already an other ‘mind’ with respect to myself. ‘Mind’ harbors no intrinsic content or features.

↪Joshs Your point, again, eludes me. What is the "constructionism" in your quote - it is introduced without explanation. — Banno

Didnt have a chance to finish the edit.

Then I will say again that your PoMo blade does not have a grip, that it cuts the hand the wields it as much as that against which it is wielded.
— Banno

It protects all wielding hands, by inviting coordination among indefinite multiplicities of would-be sword wielders . Let me rearrange your thought a bit with the help of Ken Gergen: — Joshs

Then I will say again that your PoMo blade does not have a grip, that it cuts the hand the wields it as much as that against which it is wielded. — Banno

It protects all wielding hands, by inviting coordination among indefinite multiplicities of would-be sword wielders . Let me rearrange your thought a bit with the help of Ken Gergen:

“Poatmodernist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.”(Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics)

Once these rules arise the context would no long be new and immature. It would have morphed into the sort of discursive system that Derrida is talking about
where norms of discourse are intelligible.
— Joshs

So the moment there's a discernable rule it's wise to apply it? — Isaac

We do t first have rules that just sit there waiting for
us to apply them. As Wittgenstein argued , a rule only exists in the moment of its application. The sense of a rule is its immediate, contextual use. To apply it is to create its sense. Before we choose to apply rules, we already find ourselves ‘thrown into’ a particular discursive world, as Heidegger put it.

A new , immature context is internally inconsistent, shifting, confused
— Joshs

Uh huh. What would be the problem with applying rules from such a system (as and when they arise)? — Isaac

Once these rules arise the context would no long be new and immature. It would have morphed into the sort of discursive system that Derrida is talking about
where norms of discourse are intelligible.

Why would an unstable (perhaps new, vibrant, but immature) interpretative context not be a better one to invoke the rules of? — Isaac

Because by its nature an unstable interpretive context has no consistent ‘ rules’. A new , immature context is internally inconsistent, shifting, confused. It offers no discernible pattern. One could argue that personal experiences of emotional crisis exemplify the slide from a stable to an unstable interpretive context. Fear, anxiety and anger are crises of intelligibility, a poorly structured territory of experience where our anticipations fail us.

If postmodernism is presented as just skepticism, there would be no reason to have standards of truth. — Jackson

Skepticism says there’s a real world external to our conceptions but we have no way of verifying the fidelity of our conceptions with that reality.
Postmodern authors say that we are always directly in touch with reality in the form of changing contextual webs of relations in which we participate. Within these webs there can be relative stability of intelligibility and ‘truth’.

[quote="Isaac;

712199"]Then you're arguments are missing an important detail. Why? If it's not that the way you see the world is true, then why would I want to see it that way, what's in it for me?[/quote]

To be fair to various postmodernists, it is not all conceptions of truth that are suspect, but truth as a human relation to context-independent , intrinsic facts.

For instance, Derrida is famous for asserting that there is nothing outside the rest, by which he means nothing outside some context or other. Yet he holds onto a purely context-dependent notion of truth.

“For of course there is a "right track", a better way, and let it be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.

Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”

I've a mesclun salad mix in punnets ready to plant, and garlic on order that should be here soon. I also plan to grow carrots in rotation. — Banno

now I’m hungry

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is of little use in iPhone design. Sure, some engineer might find it enlightening in such a way that they are able to produce a smaller antenna, or some such; but the Book of the Dead will not replace Maxwell's equations in antenna design. — Banno

The Tibetan book of the dead is of little use in iPhone design for the same reason that it is of little use in the design of Cartesian or Kantian philosophy, because it belongs to a discursive space of reasons that does not produce the kind of intelligibility that makes iPhone design possible. On the other hand , the space of reasons that frames iphone design includes not only Maxwell’s equations , but the fundamental philosophical architectures that make Maxwell’s applied work , and digital technologies in general intelligible. This takes us back to the rationalistic era of Leibnitz. No rationalism, no digital revolution and no iPhone.

The iphone has nothing in it of Hegel or post-Hegelian thinking. Look to the next technological revolution for those kinds of devices (already envisioned by Dennett and other post-Hegelians) followed by Nietzschean and postmodern devices. There’s always a long lag time between the laying of the philosophical foundations and the final instantiation of those ideas in the form of machines, so it will be a while before we see them on the market.

- if anything goes then everything stays. If all narratives are to be treated the same, then the conservatives in the U.S. liking to say that the facts of nature don't care about our feelings is as valid as your own account of feelings. Your account suits the right as well as it suits the left. You will be aware of the discussion as to the extent that PoMo underpins some of the intellectual defences of Trump's lies. — Banno

All narratives are valid in the sense that they mark a necessary moment in the development of culture and science. This is different than saying all narratives should be treated the same, and that we should have no preference for one over the other. One won’t have an adequate understanding of any narrative if one doesnt know how to place it within the context of an overarching historical development. This means seeing it as subsuming a more traditional narrative and being subsumed by a more complex and intricate narrative. We will always prefer what we consider to be the narrative that subsumes all others, because it allows us to see the older narratives as valid while being able to transcend their limitations. Trump’s thinking harks back to early 20th century politics in the U.S. Thus it is valid in that historical context, laying the groundwork for the more progressive thinking that followed and depended on it , and would have perhaps been considered progressive by the standards of that era . It has since been subsumed and superseded by more complex thinking, in the opinion of many of us , so now we demonize it. We can attempt to coax Trumpists to progress beyond the limits of that moldy narrative , but there are limits to how far any of us can move within and beyond a worldview that we inhabit. Best to politically separate Trumpists and post-Trumpists rather than trying to punish, threaten , cajole , bribe or harangue them into moving in our direction

we can say whatever we like, yet not just anything we say will do. The world places strictures on our narratives.

And again, I don't think you disagree with this.

So what is it you want here? — Banno

Things we say or theorize, and actions we perform that ‘won’t do’ change our circumstances in ways that make it possible for the theories that ‘will do’. This was an important point of Nietzsche , Heidegger, Deleuze and others. Negation and contradiction are treated as failure, lack, accident by the philosophical tradition up to Hegel and Marx. Dialectical progress is supposed to transcend lack and contradiction.
But this implies that the right way corresponds to what is true and the wrong way is simply error and mistake.
Postmodernists argue that what is important about scientific and philosophical progress is not that we get on track with what ‘will do’ and discard as a waste what
won’t do’ , but that all change in thinking
‘ does it’ in some sense. That is, contributes to moving us into new realms of scientific and philosophical practice.

It’s not that the world places strictures on our narratives, it’s that our incipient ventures into new
territories of interchange with our world necessarily have the character of vagueness and confusion. We initially don’t seem to be able to make our way around in the new world we create for ourself because we haven’t yet found a way to articulate its larger dimensions in concrete terms, even if we can generate what seem to be clear propositional statements. We call this ‘error’ and discount its value.

If we point to Einstein’s formulas as an example
of ‘getting it right’ we picture a world external
to us that is shaped in a very precise way that the theory fits perfectly like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
But if I were to suggest that Einstein’s formulas are just elaborations and translations of Kant, then the metaphor of puzzle piece becomes less powerful.
If you might accept this idea just for the sake of argument, then the question is , can we view the move from Descartes to Kant to Hegel as threading the needle just so, crafting a puzzle piece that fits ever more tightly onto the puzzle of nature? In my view , every outlook by every human being on the planet correlates with some
figure or other on the developmental trajectory of philosophy. There are no outliers, no individual
with a ‘wrong’ worldview , an outlook that ‘won’t do’. All outlooks are valid in their own way , are useful in their own context, and belong to the larger developmental history. Nature doesn’t produce strictures , only opportunities for personal change that at some points is muddled, confused , incoherent and at others crystallizes into clarified notions. The development of ideas feeds on itself, is self-reflexive, complexifies and diversifies itself at the same time as it becomes more intimate with itself. The world is self-reflexive, not correlational. Strictures and sayings that ‘won’t do’ are not wrong paths , only phases of the right’ path, the only path , the historical path toward increasing integration and intricacy of intersubjectively produced experience.