I'm fully aware how organisms evolved on Earth, but it still doesn't offer an explanation of consciousness. That's why it's called the hard problem. — Cartuna

The only thing that can explain is consciousness itself. The felt experience. That's how you can explain your consciousness to others. No theory can do that — Cartuna

What about philosophical approaches that begin with consciousness and elucidate its structures? Are they theories, and do they offer explanations of a sort? I am thinking in particular of the ones that claim to dissolve (not solve) the so-called hard problem. Their trick is that they trace the history of the split between subjectivity and objectivity to a couple of turns in Western thought. We brought it on ourselves by separating what was never separate to begin with, creating an ineffable and irreducible ‘inner’ realm . A very hard problem indeed.

But Kant, for instance, isn't telling a causal story about cognition.

hypothesis
— Joshs

And that story isn't open to experimental disconfirmation. If Damasio's theory doesn't hold up in the lab, you have to change your tune, but Kant can ignore the whole process. — Srap Tasmaner

Kant’s metaphysics is telling a causal
story. It s simply grounding that causality in a certain idealistic structure. I would say that the embodied account of affect also relies on a set of deep conceptual assumptions that ground its version of reciprocal
causality. You could say it’s Kant infused with Husserl.

You have to destroy the presumed conceptual apparatus, or make affect constitutive of it, to make what you're saying more than psychological obiter dicta. — Srap Tasmaner

There are two ways of doing this. We can take the phenomenological route , and make affect and cognition two aspects of a single act. Heidegger and a few other do this , by making the content of a perceived or cognized meaning secondary to the organizational dynamics relating it to the cognizing subject. The meaningfulness of objects of experience is much more a function of how intricately it is assimilated to our pre-existing ways of anticipating events than its ‘intrinsic’ content.

Or we can make them entangled so tightly in a reciprocally causal manner that neither can be observed to act alone. Embodied cognitive approaches do the latter

“...emotions play a role in constraining and structuring the realm of explicit deliberation, restricting deliberation to a small number of options and structuring patterns of reasoning, so that we remain focused and relevant in our activities, able to act towards goals without becoming distracted by trivia. Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so that we only consider from a pre-structured set of options. Damasio's (1995, 1996) more specific hypothesis is that emotions are cognitively mediated body states. He christens this theory the “somatic marker hypothesis”. The idea is that somatic (body) signals are associated with perceptual stimuli, either as a result of innate or learned neural connections, and thus “mark” those stimuli. Different perceptions can be associated with various kinds of body states, which may serve as alarm signals or, alternatively, as enticing invitations. According to Damasio, a complex of such signals focuses and structures our cognitive interactions with the world. Once we incorporate complex learned associations between perceptions and body states, a vast web of somatic markers can develop. These signals serve to eliminate certain possibilities, which feel bad, from a choice set and focus deliberation upon other feel good signals. Thus cognition is constrained, enabled and structured by a background of emotion-perception correlations, that manifest themselves as a changing background of implicit representations of body states.”(Ratcliffe 2002)

passing alone, incites no emotion in you. Seen one car go by, seen ‘em all. No big deal. Only when some particular cognition about some particular car, or in some extraordinary happenstance involving that particular range of perceptions in general, does emotion arise. Can’t get all excited about a Ferrari Testorosa, without there first being one, right? Even the emotion of hoping to see one presupposes you’ve already cognized which object to hope for. — Mww

At even the simplest level of perceptual recognition , affectivity plays a central role. What allows us to notice, to pay attention to a stimulus in the first place is the way that it stands out for us against a background of other events or activities we are involved in. We notice what draws our interest, which is an affective phenomenon, and is dependent on my expectations and goals based on my prior experiences. If I am completely engaged in a conversation I may be looking right at the car and not even ‘notice’ it.
Something about it must draw me away from what I am involved in. When I do look at the car , my eyes will
be drawn to what is most interesting to me about the image I am seeing, such as the color or style. My eyes roam over the object already searching for aspects that matter to me. The very fact that I see a concatenation of disparate bits of stimulation as a single
object like a ‘car’ is due to my having constructed the object as a singularity, my intending the unity, and this intending is an interest in having my expectations of unity confirmed.I am motivated to construe a multiplicity of changing perceptions as a single ‘thing’ . This fundamental motivating principle is the desire for predictive validation. We are patten seekers, motivated by sense making.

Every object I see either fulfills or fails to confirm my prior expectations in some measure. This validation or invalidation is felt, and the feeling doesn’t follow the perception , it is simultaneous with it. Interacting with our world isnt simply a subject staring at objects. It is a constructive activity in which we anticipate forward into the world and objects reveal themselves
to us as responses to the way we reach out to them via our expectations. This is as true of experiences of things we have never seen before as it is of familiar things. We consider our everyday engagement with objects to be devoid of affect in themselves because the sorts of fulfillments and lack of fulfillment of expectations that
moment to moment recognition of objects involved
is so subtle as to go unnoticed as anything we could
calll affective. We must seem to encounter affectively neutral things , and from time to time an emotion. comes welling up after the fact as a judgement about our attitude toward things or people or situations. But the affects are the mortar that builds the very things we take as affect-less.

. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with. It follows that my understanding of the context of the argument should determine the words I chose in response to it, such that the one maintains consistency with the other. So yes, I choose words for a purpose.....dialectical consistency given from understanding.....but the “how” of the way it matters, is already explicit in the choice. Without the consistencies, there are logical fallacies, which are exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself — Mww

Words don’t just represent content , they enact it. What you are missing here is that words dont just throw out what we have already learned. The are a bridge between our past usage of the word and the current context. When we use a word we reinvent its sense in some small
measure. But this si t something we control , any
ore than we control how our expectations and something we perceive , like a car, combine or price a fulfillment of that expectation or a surprise or something in between.

We dont simply choose what we think or say. What occurs to us to say is already shaped and conditioned by the context. It is ‘affected’
by the always fresh way in which it is used. We are always slightly surprised by what we thought we had simply ‘chosen’ to say.

I think any major philosophical model implies a psychology. As regards Heidegger, you may be aware that Medard Boss and Ludwig Binswanger created a psychotherapy called Daseinanalysis based on his work.

A magnitude is anything measurable, it is size. As such, a magnitude is one single thing to be measured. But the measurement of the thing is expressed as a quantity of units of measure, and this invokes a multiplicity. So a magnitude is one, but a measurement of that magnitude is a multiplicity. If we say that a unit of measure is itself a magnitude, this is one unit of measure, not a multiplicity — Metaphysician Undercover

I’m talking about what is included in our concept when we use a word like magnitude. It may refer to one unit of measure, but when it does, built into its meaning is a multiplicity. If it didnt imply a relation to multiplicity , then there would be no point in saying ‘this is a magnitude’, rather than ‘this is a something’. Even saying ‘this is one unit’ implies multiplicity , because the concept of unit is incoherent without implicit reference to measure. It is one unit OF measure.

I understand the distinction you’re making between a quantity of units and magnitude as one unit , but both of those concepts fuse multiplicity and singularity ( in different ways) when we invoke either of them. The first concept involves a multiplicity OF singularities , the second a unit abstracted off from a multiplicity. But if we think ONLY the single something we are not thinking the concept of magnitude.

And of course I didn’t mention that it is not just multiplicity that belongs to the concept of magnitude whenever we think it , it is NUMERIC multiplicity. If numeric multiplicity isnt part of the concept of magnitude as we invoke it , then we are not thinking of a magnitude but a part.

if it is a succession, it is a succession of distinct things, and nothing to make them unified except that they are understood under the precepts of "one order". The order, being potentially infinite, is not necessarily a totality. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is this order I’m referring to with the name totality. What I mean here is that an order is a category of meaning. Motion, for example , is a category of sense. The behavior of motion can be potentially infinite , but the concept of motion , as a category , is bounded by its definition. It is a totality , or better yet, the category is a finite entity, as are all categories of meaning.

If we substitute the order of time for the order of motion, we have the same situation. Within the category of time, we can talk about an infinity, but the category of time itself is finite , it is a single concept.

This might all seem obvious as well as irrelevant to the issue we began with concerning Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle, but if time for Aristotle is built on the model of either motion or magnitude , then numeric multiplicity is intrinsic to the invocation of the concept of time , just as we saw with the concept of magnitude.

Imagine an infinitely long freight train passing by your window. Each car is loaded with something different. From your window you can only see a single
car. So from your window of ‘now’ it appears as
though there is only ever the same car but with always changing contents. If you choose to you can count these changing items, and you can count changes in the rate of change if you like.

So if I understand correctly, Aristotle has two concepts of time , time as continuity and time as discrete measurable changes. Each concept of time by itself is necessary but not sufficient. Both are needed.

If I have this right , then what Heidegger is objecting to is time as measurable succession. His notion of authentic temporality is not an order that allows for potential measurement of a ‘how much’ or ‘how long’ or ‘how fast’.
That doesn’t mean he denies we makes these measurements , only that such ways of treating time are modifications of a more fundamental experience of it.

feelings do not permit, allow, facilitate, or make account of, knowledge. Thinking alone is responsible for all our knowledge. — Mww

Have you read any Damasio? He has had a major impact on models of affectivity and their relation to thinking and reasoning.

“Damasio claims that science, like philosophy, has historically paid too little attention to emotion, regarding it as something distinct from and additional to the structures and processes that comprise human cognition.In contrast to this picture, Damasio argues that the machinery of intelligence and reasoning is not only built upon the machinery of emotion but also from within it. The psychological correlate of this neurological organisation is that emotions constitute a kind of cradle within which cognition rests. Any neurological damage to the working of emotions therefore has a profound effect on human reasoning, which essentially takes place relative to a background of moods and emotions.”

“… there are cases where emotional impairment is reliably coupled with a catastrophic failure of practical reasoning. Neurological studies of the damage suggest that this coupling is no coincidence. A complex of intimately connected structures are involved, as opposed to distinct brain systems involved in distinct tasks that are coincidentally damaged together. On the basis of such studies, Damasio proposes that emotions play a central role in the cognitive processes that guide choices and ensure that we choose effectively.”

one cannot cognize a feeling, and one cannot feel pain or pleasure over a mere thought. A feeling is a condition of the self, a thought is a condition of the content of the self. Feelings may or may not have objects that define the condition of the self, thinking always has objects given to it, or constructed by it, that define the content of self. — Mww

Every word you wrote above was chosen for a purpose , for its relevance in the context of the argument you are trying to advance. So each word is two things at once. It conveys a conceptual content , a ‘what’, and it conveys a relevance, a significance , the ‘how’ of the way it matters to you in the context of the larger argument. This mattering and relevance is the affective or ‘feeling’ aspect of thought. Things are meaningful to us because of how we care about them. We always have some attitude toward the objects of our experience. Things are important, boring , engaging, frightening, enraging. So we do ‘cognize’ feeling, in that built into a cognition is why it matters to us just now. If I say
I see a train’ there is always some affective subtext to the sentence. The meaning of the sentence could
include excitement over who is on the train, or disappointment , or trepidation. It is never devoid of some affective attitude or comportment. And this comportment isn’t peripheral to or separable from the supposedly pure definition of the words in the sentence. It belongs intrinsically to what they are trying to say.

We cannot equate magnitude with quantity, this should be obvious to you. Magnitude is what is measured, quantity is the measurement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Tell me how you would define or explain what a magnitude is to somebody who was unfamiliar with the concept. How does one make it comprehensible without invoking a multiplicity of a certain type , a continuous succession that differs from a randomly changing flow in a specific way.

I really don't understand what you're saying Joshs. If it's a series of lines rather than a continuous line then we are not talking about a continuity anymore. That's the point which Aristotle made. If before is distinct from after, as A is distinct from B, then there is necessarily a third thing which separates the two. That there is something else distinct from A and B which is intermediary between A and B, negates the possibility that A and B are a continuity. — Metaphysician Undercover

What I am trying to get at here is that whether we are talking about a continuity or your example of a non-continuous succession in the form of something that separates the before from the after, in each case we have examples of a unified totality. A continuity is a unified totality, a succession of change that, like in the example of physical movement of an object, is a variation of a particular sort. If I move a marble from here to there and describe the path in terms of a continuous linear trajectory , notice how this flow of change is different from my me telling you to now imagine a rock, then a movie you saw, then tell you to look at your finger. There is constant change here but no continuity , no enduring identity like in the example of continuous motion. Also notice that even through the continuity is. it itself divided up , it is in the nature of this continuity that it less itself to measurement.

Now let’s look at before, after and the third thing that separates them. Can we talk about this structure in terms of an enduring pattern that stretches indefinitely , or infinitely long? However long we define the duration of this pattern of repeated before, during and after, notice that the pattern as a whole is a unity, a self-identical object, even though it is composed of a non-continuous sequence of events. Furthermore , the events which make up this non-continuous series are countable, allowing us to say that such and such a process took a certain number of minutes. So in both examples , the behavior is explained in terms of an identical totality , an objectively present whole.
For Heidegger, time cannot be counted or measured because it is not an objectively present series of before after and during. And it is not a continuity akin to the behavior of a moving object.

The self is an action, a relation , a transition.
— Joshs

That is only from a second-party speculation. The first-person subject acts without thinking himself an actor, relates without being the relation. Even if qualitatively or quantitatively transitioned to a modified self over time, the self as a whole retains its own identity. — Mww

The question is, is the self changed each moment of
time by its exposure to a world , or even to its own reflections? Is it always a slightly different self that comes back to itself moment to moment? ( See Galen Strawson on this) .If so, then we could say that the self retains its identity in a relative way over time, continuing to be itself differently, like an ongoing theme or style that never reproduces itself identically.

if that were the case, the fact that humans both think and feel would be refuted, or, be shown to be the same thing. The former being impossible, the latter being absurd, I should say. — Mww

It is a hallmark of radically temporal models like that of Heidegger that thinking and feelings are shown to be inseparable aspects of the same process. This is the case with enactive and embodied cognitive approaches also. For them the idea of thinking divorced from feeling is incoherent. Feeling is the cradle within which cognition rests, and is what allows thought to ‘make sense’.

“ “...affect binds us to things, making them relevant and ‘lighting up' aspects of the world in such a way as to call forth actions and thoughts. Without the world-structuring orientation that they provide, we are disoriented, cut off from the world, which no longer solicits thoughts and actions and is consequently devoid of value. In effect, [William] James is saying that our very sense of reality is constituted by world-orienting feelings that bind us to things .” (Ratcliffe 2005)

This inseparability of feeling and thought reflects the overall fuctional unity of a self-organizing system, which lends it a valuative normativity in which it relates to and interprets it’s world via an anticipatory posture based on the relevance to its goals and aims. If you want to call this a ‘moral stance , it is a morality of pragmatic goal oriented sense making.

“letting oneself be affected” presupposes an autonomous causality contained in that self that wills. — Mww

Not for Heidegger, who follows Nietzsche here. The self is not autonomous for either of them.

“Philosophers tend to talk about the will as if it were the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, Schopenhauer would have us believe that the will is the only thing that is really familiar, familiar through and through, familiar without pluses or minuses. But I have always thought that, here too, Schopenhauer was only doing what philosophers always tend to do: adopting and exaggerating a popular prejudice. Willing strikes me as, above all, something complicated, something unified only in a word – and this single word contains the popular prejudice that has overruled whatever minimal precautions philosophers might take. “

“As far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned: I will not stop emphasizing a tiny little fact that these superstitious men are loath to admit: that a thought comes when “it” wants, and not when “I” want. It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks: but to say the “it” is just that famous old “I” – well that is just an assumption or opinion, to put it mildly, and by no means an “immediate certainty.” In fact, there is already too much packed into the “it thinks”: even the “it” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself.”( Nietzsche)

I cannot be ahead of myself if I and my self are identical. — Mww

They are not identical. The self is an action, a relation , a transition.

Your guy is alright; he’s just plowing up a field that already has a good crop on it. Progress, I suppose, but not necessarily an improvement. — Mww

It depends on whether one thinks getting rid of the word ‘moral’ when talking about the psychological or philosophical structures of motivation, willand desire is an improvement. I agree with Nietzsche and Heidegger that it is. Why do you think the word ‘moral’ is necessary here?

Aristotle assumes a separation here between magnitude and motion, and that is why motion is a property of magnitude. So what is presupposed as "objectively present" is the magnitude, not any sense of "time" itself. But the magnitude itself is a contingent thing with generation, corruption, and changes, it cannot be represented as a continuous line. — Metaphysician Undercover

It doesn’t have to be a continuous line. It can be a series of lines. Magnitude , as the basis of continuity, is a more complex notion than a simple plurality or multiplicity. To construe a multiplicity as a magnitude requires that we assume numeric iteration, the ‘how much’, quantity. Numeric iteration implies identical repetition, the identical ‘again and again’ of number. Magnitude also implies the earlier and later, the less and the more.

Before and after require the application of a 'now', and the 'now' divides the time so that it is not a continuity. Therefore the assumption of before and after actually negates the possibility of continuity — Metaphysician Undercover

The quantitative ‘same again and again’, that the continuity of magnitude assumes implies discrete units. Otherwise , we couldnt equate magnitude with quantity.
In this way the two notions of time both depend on countable presences positioning themselves ‘in’ time as appearing and passing away, earlier and later.

What does it even mean for the ontological possibility for willing anyway? — Mww

It means the condition of possibility of willing.

Where’s the profit in classifying that which is merely a metaphysically determinable doing, under the auspices of a discipline concerning itself with that which is a being? If it is true humans will, the necessity of its means are given immediately, the matter of it being quite irrelevant. — Mww

Or.....how to make a mess of it, by overburdening what we do, which is determinable, with that which we do it with, which isn’t — Mww

The ontological structure Heidegger offers can also be thought of as a psychological structure. Think of him as critiquing older models of will.

Heidegger speaks of the intentional structure of motivated attending to as a letting oneself be affected, being-ahead-of-oneself (the moment of awareness as foreign and familiar at the same time). “One cannot construct being-in-the-world from willing, wishing, urge, and propensity as psychical acts.”(Zollikon).The desire for this conversation is determined by the task I have before me. This is the motive, the "for the sake of which" [ Weswegen]. The determining factor is not an urge or a drive, driving and urging me from behind, but something standing before me, a task I am involved in, something I am charged with. This, in turn—this relation to something I am charged with—is possible only if I am "ahead" [vorweg] of myself.” (Zollikon)

What does magnitude have to do with "now"? The point was that Heidegger wrongly portrayed Aristotle's conception of the continuity of time as a continuity of nows. "The 'now' is no part of time...any more than points are parts of a line..." Physics 220a, 18. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is continuous, because it has been designated to be an attribute of motion and magnitude, which are continuous, and it is in theory, divisible by the application of a now which separates before from after.. — Metaphysician Undercover

Heidegger’s critique of Aristotle’s concept of time goes well beyond whether Aristotle marks off ‘now’ points. You’ll notice that for Aristotle , before and after occupy separate positions. The after succeeds the before. This creates a continuity akin to motion and magnitude , as you point out. Motion and magnitude cannot be thought without presupposing an objectively present basis for motion and magnitude. motion and magnitude are changes in something that remains self-identically present through its changes. What difference does it make whether I mark off ‘now’ points on a line. It’s the supposition of the line ( the geometrical
realization of magnitude) thats the issue for Heidegger. Each before and after is identical in its difference from the previous, creating an endless continuous string of before and afters.

He does bring in the term "care," which I'd like to say is similar to "willing," but I don't find much textual support for this move. — Xtrix

That’s an interesting topic. Here’s what Heidegger says about willing in B&T:

“ "The phenomenon of care in its totality is essentially something that cannot be split up; thus any attempts to derive it from special acts or drives such as willing and wishing or urge and predilection, or of constructing it out of them, will be unsuccessful. Willing and wishing are necessarily rooted ontologically in Da-sein as care, and are not simply ontologically undifferentiated experiences which occur in a "stream" that is completely indeterminate as to the meaning of its being. This is no less true for predilection and urge.”

“If willing is to be possible ontologically, the following factors are constitutive for it: the previous disclosedness of the for-the-sake-of-which in general{being ahead-of-oneself), the disclosedness of what can be taken care of (world as the wherein of already-being), and the understanding self-projection of Da-sein upon a potentiality-for-being toward a possibility of the being "willed." The underlying totality of care shows through in the phenomenon of willing.”

So what on earth does this mean? I don’t think it denies a place for will and desire. But I think he’s trying to do two things. First, like Nietzsche, he wants to get away from the old philosophical idea of will as the choice of an autonomous metaphysical subject. Instead, he sees will as just as much determined by the matter as by he who who wills. Second, he wants to avoid the impression that will is a ‘free’ choice , unattached to ongoing relevant concerns and goals. Instead, before we choose to will anything , we are already thrown ahead of ourselves into a totality of relevance. So , really, we find ourselves willing just as we find ourselves in the world, pulled by the matter and projected by pre-existing concerns and engagements.

I don't say the past or future are illusions, but that they exist, as past and future, only now. This does relate to Husserl's notions of retention and protention. Do you think Heidegger would say that dasein, the 'being-there', is now? — Janus

isn't it true that we experience the past and future only now? — Janus

Heidegger would agree with you and Husserl that the past and future are not unreal , but rather the having been and future dimensions belong to the now equally with the present dimension.

What is our life: it’s looking forward or it’s looking back. And that’s our life. That’s it. Where is the moment? — Srap Tasmaner

“ Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence.”( Heidegger)

No offense, but you seem kind of like a computer that's been programmed to have philosophical discussions, but the code needs some tweaking. — frank

That’s why I’m on this forum, to invite tweaking. But that usually works better with substantive replies and questions than with one-liners.

There was a time when you seemed to understand that A and not-A are two sides of the same coin. You forgot? — frank

In classical logic, ‘not-A’ is represented by everything in a specified universe of meanings that is not ‘A’. In phenomenology, the ‘A’ springs out of the same pragmatic context as the ‘not-A’. The two sides belong to a shared context of relevance. Relevance is ‘irrelevant’ in classical logic.

Mathematical objects are locked in a permanent now because we have made them so. They cannot be what we intend them to be unless they are ‘timeless’ in this way. Is there some reason we cannot so intend? — Srap Tasmaner

Husserl makes a distinction between bound and free idealities. Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities.Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrence made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance.

Mathematical idealization is unbound (within the strict limits of its own repetition); no contextual effects intervene such as was the case in the attempt to repeat the same word meaningfully.

Derrida picks up on this , arguing that contextual change implies change in meaning-to-say, and a mathematical ideality can be manipulated without being animated, `in an active and actual manner, with the attention and intention of signification'.Such an ideality can be repeated indefinitely without alteration, because its meaning is empty.

“Numbers have no present or signified content. And, a fortiori, no absolute referent. This is why they don't show anything, don't tell anything, don't represent anything, aren't trying to say anything (Dissemination,p.350).”

I believe Wittgenstein says something similar , asserting that mathematics is pure syntax and is meaningless by itself.

I should note that Husserl and Derrida treat the concept of idea in the Kantian sense:an ideal object of any kind is an ideality in the extent to which it is identically repeatable again and again. So mathematics wouldn’t be ‘timeless’ since it only exists by being repeated, but content could be considered timeless in that it is empty and thus unchanging.

But we never invoke number without an intentional meaning context to which we want to apply it, and here is where Wittgenstein and Heidegger disagree with authors like Russell and Frege on the role and basis of mathematics.

I thought you might find this helpful. It’s notes from Heidegger’s zollikon seminars:


The English language has an atomistic view of being, which tends to reduce being to discrete entities and objects. This view underlies modern logic, mathematics, and science. Ever since the German logician and mathematician Frege and the English philosopher Russell laid the foun-dation for "logical atomism" in modern, analytic philosophy, it has been argued that there are three meanings of Being: "the 'is' of existence," "the 'is' of predication," and "the 'is' of identity." 7 This atomistic view is especially contrary to Heidegger's understanding of the unified meaning of being (BT 202; ZS 155). Heidegger argued that this atomistic view reduced the primordial multidimensional meaning of being to these three theoretical categories, in spite of the fact that they are always already based upon an implicit preunderstanding of being (ZS 20, 96, 155, 236, 325) by human Da-sein in its contextual, practical being-in-the-world [Zuhandenheit, ready-to-hand].

By treating the "is" of existence, which Heidegger called the presence-at-hand of things [Vorhandenheid , as a mere propositional function ("there is at least one value of x for which the propositional function is true"), Frege and Russell tried to eliminate the whole "question of being" from philosophy altogether. Via the existential quantifier (3x) "being" was reduced to the meaning of "a" bring, that is, an entity. The "ontological difletence" between being and beings (entities) (ZS 20-21) was overlooked or forgotten as was the "analogical" character of the concept of being as understood in ancient and medieval ontology (analogia entis) . 8 Modern science too had come to deal only with "objects" (ZS 136-44). Yet being can never be totally made an object of reflection because of Dasein's finitude and being's historical self-concealment (see BT sec. 71-76; Contributions to Philosophy, 75-87, 312-54).

I don't know where this is coming from. Think of Einstein's thought experiments. Motion is relative to a stationary point. — frank

“Einstein's theory of relativity established the opinion that traditional philosophical doctrine concerning time has been shaken to the core through the theory of physics. However, this widely held opinion is fundamentally wrong. The theory of relativity in physics does not deal with what time is but deals only with how time, in the sense of a now-sequence, can be measured. [It asks] whether there is an absolute measurement of time, or whether all measurement is necessarily relative, that is, conditioned.* The question of the theory of relativity could not be discussed at all unless the supposition of time as the succession of a sequence of nows were presupposed beforehand. If the doctrine of time, held since Aristotle, were to become untenable, then the very possibility of physics would be ruled out. [The fact that] physics, with its horizon of measuring time, deals not only with irreversible events, but also with reversible ones and that the direction of time is reversible attests specifically to the fact that in physics time is nothing else than the succession of a sequence of nows.”( Heidegger, Zollikon seminars)

By hand, it might take you a minute or two to work out that 357 x 68 = 24,276. A calculator or computer will do it faster, but still take a measurable amount of time. But how long does it take 357 x 68 to be 24,276? — Srap Tasmaner

Wittgenstein says the meaning of something like 357x68 is the foundation of a language game, just as the statement ‘this is my hand’ is the foundation of a language game wherein it doesn’t occur to us to doubt the truth of the statement. One could then ask, how long does it take this thing to be my hand? The type of certainty that we accord the solution to the equation is what he calls a form of life. So the ‘time’ of the equation or ‘this being my hand’ is the time of its contextual use in a language game. It has no existence outside of the occasion of its use as a particular sense.

Timelessness has the idea of change wrapped up in it. The concept of change is dependent on eternity. — frank

This sounds like the Aristotelian idea of time as change , change as continuity and continuity as akin to the continuity of magnitude. Eternity is linked to infinity via continuity.
Heideggerian time is not a continuity, it is finite.

If we move to the secondary sense of "time", as what is measured, we find the conception of a continuity without any nows. — Metaphysician Undercover

But it is a continuity based on the continuity of magnitiude.

“Aristotle says that time ‘follows’ change and change ‘follows’ magnitude. Aristotle uses the notion of following to justify a claim he makes about the continuity of time and of change: the claim that time is continuous because change is, and change is continuous because magnitude is.”(Time for Aristotle)

Mathematics is a human activity. Humans do indeed exist “in” time (or, better, “as” time). When we think in symbols, we’re thinking in a certain moment in time.

Mathematics does indeed presuppose time.
— Xtrix

This is like arguing that mathematics presupposes oxygen. — Srap Tasmaner

Then it needs to be made clearer. If we assume that what makes mathematics and logic possible is the view of time as the processual transformation of the past into the future via the appearance, endurance ( brief or prolonged) and disappearance of temporary objective forms, then we are thinking of time as external grid. This is the meaning of humans existing ‘in’ time, but not ‘as’ time, which requires a more fundamental and original concept of time.

The one way is based in an assumption that what remains the same as time passes (being) provides the fundamental description, and the other way assumes that things not remaining the same as time passes (becoming) provides the fundamental description. These two fundamental descriptions are incompatible ways of describing the proposed "enduring objective presence". — Metaphysician Undercover

But Heidegger claims that for Aristotle time itself is derived from motion, a continuous change within something enduringly objectively presence. So it would seem for Aristotle the scene of being and becoming is the objectively present frame of time as motion.

“The thoughts of motion, continuity, extension—and in the case of change of place, place—are interwoven with the experience of time.”(basic problems of phenomenology) “ So far as time is kineseos ti, something connected with motion, this means that in thinking time, motion or rest is always thought along with it. In Aristotelian language, time follows, is in succession to, motion.” “Because the now is transition it always measures a from-to, it measures a how-long, a
duration.”
Time is making present according to Aristotle, (the present at hand) and in so doing is a counting
of time as now, now, now. “And thus time shows itself for the vulgar understanding as a succession of constantly "objectively present" nows that pass away and arrive at the same time. Time is understood as a sequence, as the "flux" of nows, as the "course of time.”(Being and
Time).
“The succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present; for it itself moves "in time." We say that in every now it is now, in every now it already disappears. The now is now in every now, thus constantly present as the same, even if in every now another may be disappearing as it arrives. Yet it does show at the same time the constant presence of
itself as this changing thing.”

Hence we have definitions of "is" (existence, being) which are not dependent on time. — Banno

We also have definitions of God that are not dependent on time. Or I should say, that believe themselves not to be dependent on time.

Mathematics do not know time. For example the law of the excluded middle states that any sentence must be either wrong or true. It doesn't matter if one or the other or none was shown. It does not know change. — Heiko

The fact that it does not know change and time doesn’t mean that change and time don’t underlie it. If you stare at the period at the end of this sentence you say that it remains identically what it is as you continue to stare at it. But this is an idealization on your part. It is something slightly different from moment to moment. Or if I ask you to recall from memory the period you just looked at , you would say that recollected period brings back the identical period from memory. But memory reconstructs what it recalls. So recollection and perception do not preserve identity from moment to moment. We can ignore this fact for the sake of convenience of doing logic and math, but it comes back to bite us on the ass when we try to create psychological models of perception , empathy and social meanings based on formal logic.

So far as I am aware, persistence is not a notion used in formal logic. Nor does formal logic presume that individuals persist over time. — Banno

You don’t get formal logic without assuming that you can return to the same identical symbol from moment to moment in reflection or perception. The enterprise would collapse before it could begin without the idealization that allows this repetition of identity of ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ over time. They must sit still as what they are long enough for you to manipulate them. You might respond , ‘but we do manipulate them, and successfully’. And I agree, we manipulate moving targets without noticing that fact thanks to our convincing idealizations.

that there is stuff to talk about is a fine candidate for a hinge proposition. It's much the same as presuming the bishop moves diagonally is a precursor to playing chess. — Banno

Are you suggesting that Wittgenstein begins from hinge propositions ( taking them for granted) in the way that Frege begins from formal logic?

Epoché? — Tom Storm

Yes, a thoroughgoing reduction leads us to this simpler beginning.

Last chance. — Banno

Are these discussions a competition for you?

Take a look at the two paragraphs below by Husserl. The first describes sensations as we identify them objectively, as enduring, stopping and starting , speeding up or slowing down, like his example of a perceived tone. It doesn’t explicitly describe mathematical or logical symbols, but it shows how such objective sensations act as a model for symbolic objects.

Now look at the second paragraph. It describes what we really, originally perceive in a stretch of time. In actuality , there are no enduring tones or colors or shapes, just a flow which is changing so constantly that nothing ever doubles back , remains , extends, endures. How do we derive the objects in the first paragraph from this flow of the second paragraph? We discern similarities and regularities in the flow, and from these likenesses we ‘imagine’ identities such as a ‘tone’ or color or shape.
My question to you is, is it possible to generate the ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ of logical and mathematical symbolization fromthe moment to moment changes of the second paragraph? Keep in mind that, consistent with the dynamics of the second paragraph, recalling an instance from memory changes it , so ‘a’ is no longer ‘a’ when we refer back to it.

This is what I mean when I say that we derive the symbolic basis of logic and math from a temporal process that is more originary.

“Each individual object (each unity, whether immanent or transcendent, constituted in the stream) endures, and necessarily endures -that is, it continuously exists in time and is something identical in this continuous existence, which at the same time can be regarded as a process. Conversely: what exists in time continuously exists in time and is the unity belonging to the process that carries with it inseparably the unity of what endures in the process as it unfolds. The unity of the tone that endures throughout the process lies in the tonal process; and conversely, the unity of the tone is unity in the filled duration, that is, in the process. Therefore, if anything at all is defined as existing in a time-point, it is conceivable only as the phase of a process, a phase in which the duration of an individual being also has its point. Individual or concrete being is necessarily changing or unchanging; the process is a process of change or of rest, the enduring object itself a changing object or one at rest. Moreover, every change has its rate or acceleration of change (to use an image) with respect to the same duration. As a matter of principle, any phase of a change can be expanded into a rest, and any phase of a rest can be carried over into change.

Now if we consider the constituting phenomena in comparison with the phenomena just discussed, we find a flow, and each phase of this flow is a continuity of adumbrations. But as a matter of principle, no phase of this flow can be expanded into a continuous succession, and therefore the flow cannot be conceived as so transformed that this phase would be extended in identity with itself. Quite to the contrary, we necessarily find a flow of continuous "change", and this change has the absurd character that it flows precisely as it flows and can flow neither "faster" nor "slower." If that is the case, then any object that changes is missing here; and since "something" runs its course in every process, no process is in question. There is nothing here that changes, and for that reason it also makes no sense to speak of something that endures. It is nonsensical to want to find something here that remains unchanged for even an instant during the course of its duration.”(Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness)

that's not what is represented in a=a. — Banno

Tell me what is represented in a=a.

Thank you. I don't quite get what this more might be either. — Tom Storm

It wouldnt be more, it would be less. That is, the ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ presume too much about the minimal condition for ‘presencing’.

It is not what logic is based on. — Banno

There is no way around the fact that logic and any variety of mathematics cannot begin without first assuming a ‘present’ object ( which includes empty symbols). We can’t get anywhere in inquiring into the basis of a present object in these conversations because that is such an irreducible , a priori notion for you that any alternatives appear wrongheaded or incoherent from your vantage. So that leaves out of consideration the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl , Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein.

Ok, I will grant that it is an answer. But it is an answer that is both irrelevant and wrong. So it's not a good answer. — Banno

It may be wrong , but why don’t you do me the courtesy of answering my questions?

What does first order calculus depend on? A=A is a relation between A and A. But what presupposition lies behind the invocation of ‘a’? What does A have to consist of at minimum in order for it to play a role in a=a? We obviously have to assume that it is present in front of us as an entity of some sort. Doesn’t first order calculus assume this? Isn’t first order calculus a syntax, and doesn’t a syntax need something to operate on? — Joshs

Not only is this not an answer, it's not even on the same topic; but also, a=a is an extension of first-order calculus; and certainly not something it is dependent on. — Banno

Why isn’t it an answer? What does first order calculus depend on? A=A is a relation between A and A. But what presupposition lies behind the invocation of ‘a’? What does A have to consist of at minimum in order for it to play a role in a=a? We obviously have to assume that it is present in front of us as an entity of some sort. Doesn’t first order calculus assume this? Isn’t first order calculus a syntax, and doesn’t a syntax need something to operate on?

....what is it that connects?
....connected synthetically, with what?
....connected into what higher order object?
....where does the higher order object reside?
....what is the function of such object? — Mww

All perceptual experiences are based on associative
synthesis, wherein ‘higher’ senses are constituted out of simpler ones drawn from memory on the basis of likeness and similarity. ‘Real’ spatial objects are concatenations of new sense data, memory and expectations.

the thesis is that underlying these various Western interpretations is a fundamentally Greek one: constant presence, ousia.
— Xtrix

...and why should we fall back to this anachronistic greek interpretation when we have better ones in our formal logic? — Banno

Because formal logic depends on the notion of the self-identical object.

“A true object in the sense of logic is an object which is absolutely identical "with itself," that is, which is, absolutely identically, what it is; or, to express it in another way: an object is through its determinations, its quiddities [Weisheiten], its predicates, and it is identical if these quiddities are identical as belonging to it or when their belonging absolutely excludes their not belonging.”(Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences)

Language games take place in space, two. — Banno

Any evidence-quotes from the later Wittgenstein for the idea that a language game is ‘in’ space? I don’t think you’ll find him describing space in this way, as a picture frame. This a question for Antony.

placing space somehow independent of time would also be problematic - they have been together since Einstein. — Banno

I was going to mention Einstein. In the case of modern physics , it is true that space-time are inseparable , but that doesn’t resolve the issue of the relation between space and time , or the priority of one over the other, from a Wittgensteinian perspective.