The point being that yes, he often complicates things without needing to do so. — Manuel

There are plenty of philosophers I think this is true of , but not the Heidegger of Being and Time( I feel differently about his later work). I look for clarify, systematization and unity in a philosophy and I find them in Being and Time. You will not find them there to the extent that traditional preconceptions turn it into a muddle.

his role is obfuscation rather than clarification — Banno

I appreciate that his ideas are difficult to grasp, but I think the muddle is in your reading rather than in his ideas.

where he talks of being as a sort of standing forth, as putting the pieces on the
table, he is saying no more than Frege and others — Banno

He is saying something very different from Frege.

If he is saying no more than that things come into existence and cease to exist, then we would all agree, and puzzle over why he phrased something so simple in such a constipated fashion. — Banno

If you look over my previous quotes on this OP, you’ll see that that is precisely the notion of time that Heidegger is critiquing.

I would describe "is-ness" as apparency of existence. It refers to something that apparently exists as true or fact. It persists in time and we agree upon that it exists, i.e. it is real for us. — Alkis Piskas

That’s a good description of the approach to Being and ‘is-ness’ that Heidegger is critiquing.

“…what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. What mathematics makes accessible in beings constitutes their being.”

Heidegger explains that the fundamentally undiscussed ontological foundations of empirical science since Descartes are based on his formulation of objective presence.

“Thus the being of the "world" is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to
present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated.”

Why "now and then" but not "here and there"? After all, whatever being is, if it is structured by time it is also and just as much structured by location... Why the Heideggerian preoccupation with time? — Banno

You mean location as in the localization of points in an objective geometry of space-time? Because that’s an idealization that desperately needs to be deconstructed.

But you start by saying he saw no difference between Becoming and Being, then you say he derived one from the other (as Hegel did.). Is that a contradiction? — frank

You’ll have to let me know how this differs from Hegel, but when I say that Heidegger derives Being from Becoming , what I mean is that he has to somehow explain where Western philosophy and science got the idea that there is such a thing as static being or ‘is ness’ , given that becoming is fundamental. His answer is that the concept of objective presence is a distorting abstraction, a leveling down or forgetting of the larger totality of relevance that gives sense to such notions.

In the following quote, you can see Heidegger trying to explain how such ideas as external sensation are generated as ‘artificial’ modifications of the ‘as’ structure of becoming:

“Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it's possible at all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order. Understanding something without the “as”—in a pure sensation, for example—can be carried out only “reductively,” by “pulling back” from an as-structured experience. And we must say: far from being primordial, we have to designate it as an artificially worked-up act. Most important, such an experience is per se possible only as the privation of an as-structured experience. It occurs only within an as-structured experience and by prescinding from the “as”— which is the same as admitting that as-structured experience is primary, since it is what one must first of all prescind from."(Logic,The Question of Truth)

So this is fine (although heavily mystical), but what does it have to do with Nothing? — frank

It may sound mystical only because it’s so alien to the conventional thinking. To be honest , the traditional notion of time as sequence of nows sounds mystical
to me. Eventually , a reformed understanding of time will offer a new grounding for empirical science. There are already many efforts to move on from the old idea of time within cognitive science.

The nothing for Heidegger is the uncanniness of becoming.

“Uncanniness is the fundamental kind of being-in-the-world, although it is covered over in everydayness. Tranquillized, familiar being-in-the-world is a mode of the uncanniness of Dasein, not the other way around. Not-being-at-home must be conceived existentially and ontologically as the more primordial phenomenon." "The publicness of the they suppresses everything unfamiliar"
"Even as covered over, the familiar is a mode of the unfamiliar

“In order to continue to be recognizable and familiar to itself, experience must at every moment come back to itself otherwise. It must continue to be the same
differently. In each occurrence, Dasein is thrown into a world, is never at home with itself, is absent to itself and thus always uncanny to itself. It is this structure of uncanniness that Heidegger claims we uncover via primordial anxiety.

“Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence...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. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing.”(Heidegger 1995)

Maybe you could explain what the structure of temporality has to do with contemplating Nothing?

Seems like that would be more about Becoming than Being. — frank

Being and becoming are the same thing for Heidegger. He doesn’t begin with objectively present objects and then set them into motion or transition. He argues that this is the traditional idea of time we inherited from Aristotle. Instead he begins from change and derives. presence from it.

“What does it mean to be "in time"? This "being-in-time" is very familiar to us from the way it is represented in natural science. In natural science all processes of nature are calculated as processes which happen "in time." Everyday common sense also finds processes and things enduring "in time," persisting and disappearing "in time." When we talk about "being-in-time," everything depends on the interpretation of this "in." In order to see this more clearly, we ask simply if the glass on the table in front of me is in time or not. In any case, the glass is already present-at-hand and remains there even when I do not look at it. How long it has been there and how long it will remain are of no importance. If it is already present-at-hand and remains so in the future, then that means that it continues through a certain time and thus is "in" it. Any kind of
continuation obviously has to do with time.”(Zollikon)

Heidegger shows how the common notion of time dates back to Aristotle’s derivation of time
from 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 past, present and future don’t operate for Heidegger as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.

“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is
in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”

Whatever else it may be, you are going to get stuck on the word "is" and try to find some "essence" or a common attribute common to the word which may not (dare is say it?) exist. "Is" can only make sense in relation to something else. So what is "is-ness" cannot be answered unless it's connected with something else — Manuel

Excellent point. Heidegger argues that the copula ‘is’ has been treated since Plato and Aristotle as a neutral connector binding a subject and predicate together.
Heidegger says that when we say S is P , we are seeing something AS something within a wider context of
pragmatic relevance. Making sense of something is an act that always has the ‘as’ structure.

“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.” (Heidegger 2010b)

The problem comes when you say what is it that you are saying "is". For as soon as you say this is a table or this is a river, you've shifted from the word "is" to a concept "table", "river". But you aren't going to find something common to "is" by saying that a table is or a river is. — Manuel

Heidegger addresses this by making the problem the assumption objectively present objects that the ‘is’ simply links together.

“ If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the
hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of
logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of
representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a
"relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the
object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms
of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the
relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.”

I'm not sure why you call attention to this since that's made extremely explicit in that essay. :chin: — frank

I called attention to it because you wrote “I guess it's a matter of which "Being" we're talking about.”
I may have misinterpreted you, but I thought you were referring to my previous comment on Being as condition of possibility for understanding ‘use’.

Did you instead mean to contrast Heidegger’s notion of Being with that of other philosophers?

In "What is Metaphysics" he says it's what we experience when we contemplate the void. I guess it's a matter of which "Being" we're talking about. — frank

As one would expect, the ‘void’ means something different for Heidegger than what normal usage would suggest. It links to his writings on the ‘nothing’ and primordial anxiety. Taking a cue from Nietzsche, nothing is not to be thought in classical or dialectical
terms as a negation or lack but as productive, as no-thing. Btw, which translation do you have? Mine only mentions void once.

Asking "what is being?" is asking "How do we use the word 'being'?"; — Banno

Better yet , from a Heideggerian perspective , asking ‘what is being’ is asking ‘what is the condition of possibility of ‘use’? Whist is it that is structurally common to any and all varieties of use? Heidegger says it is the structure of temporality.

Have attempts been made by philosophers to reconcile a personalistic philosophy with objectivist perspectives? — Enrique

Yes, among psychological theorists influenced by phenomenology, there have been attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology. Others in this group believe this attempt is misguided.

My view is that empirical naturalism has evolved and will
continue to evolve, eventually becoming compatible with the personalistic stance. I don’t think it’s there
yet , but there is progress. For instance, this is from a paper I’m writing:

Influenced by their interpretation of phenomenology, a number of theorists give priority to a personalistic
over a naturalistic thinking, incorporating aspects of Husserl’s time consciousness in their readings of phenomenology. Varela and Thompson reject the claim that scientific objectivity presupposes a belief in an observer independent reality.

Evan Thompson writes:

“Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates with William James’ thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. By this I mean that our relating to the world, including when we do science, always takes place within a matrix whose fundamental structure is
I-You-It (this is reflected in linguistic communication: I am speaking to You about It) (Patocka, 1998, pp. 9–10).”

Ratcliffe says:

“The unquestioned givenness of the objective world that is constitutive of scientific descriptions cannot capture the way in which the given is disclosed by a meaning-giving background. Thus, if anything, it is the transcendental, meaning-giving account that has ontological priority over an objective/causal description.”( Ratcliffe 2002)

Zahavi concurs with Thompson, Varela and Ratcliffe:
“Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our
conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.”
All these writers support a mutual enlightenment between phenomenology and scientific naturalism , but there is disagreement over whether the phenomenological should be given priority over the natural.

Varela, Thompson, Gallagher and Fuchs all believe that phenomenology can be naturalized in the direction of a mathematization of Husserl’s account of time consciousness.

Varela writes:

“It is our general contention indeed... that phenomenological descriptions of any kind can only
be naturalized, in the sense of being integrated into the general framework of natural sciences, if they can be mathematized.”

Gallagher elaborates:

“A number of theorists have proposed to capture the subpersonal processes that would instantiate
this Husserlian model [of time] by using a dynamical systems approach (Thompson 2007; van Gelder 1996; Varela 1999). On this view, action and our consciousness of action arise through the concurrent participation of distributed regions of the brain and their sensorimotor
embodiment (Varela et al. 2001)

Thompson says:

“ The present moment manifests as a zone or span of actuality, instead of as an instantaneous flash, thanks to the way our consciousness is structured. As we will see later, the present moment also manifests this way because of the nonlinear dynamics of brain activity. Weaving together these two types of analysis, the phenomenological and neuro biological, in order to bridge the gap between subjective experience and biology, defines the aim of neuro-phenomenology (Varela
1996), ` an offshoot of the enactive approach. (Mind and Life)

Varela’s attempt to ‘phenomenologize’ empirical accounts of time consciousness involves rejecting time as a fixed linear sequence of nows (what Husserl calls clock time) :
In fact, we have inherited from classical physics a notion of time as an arrow of infinitesimal moments, which flows in a constant stream. It is based on sequences of finite or infinitesimal elements, which are even reversible for a large part of physics. This view of time is entirely
homologous to that developed by the modern theory of computation. […] This strict adherence to a computational scheme will be, in fact, one of the research frameworks that needs to be abandoned as a result of the neuro-phenomenological examination proposed here” ( The specious present: a neurophenomenology of time consciousness p. 112)

“The traditional sequentialistic idea is anchored in a framework in which the computer metaphor is central, with its associated idea that information flows up-stream . Here, in contrast, I emphasize a strong dominance of dynamical network properties where sequentiality is replaced by reciprocal determination and relaxation time.”
Varela offers a concept of duration that is independent of linear time “…time in experience is quite a different story from a clock in linear time. Thus, we have neuronal-level constitutive events that have a duration on the 1/10-scale, forming aggregates that manifest as
incompressible but complete cognitive acts on the 1-scale . This completion time is dynamically dependent on a number of dispersed assemblies and not a fixed integration period, in other words it is the basis of the origin of duration without an external or internally ticking clock.”(Specious Present ).

“…the fact that an assembly of coupled oscillators attains a transient synchrony and that it takes a certain time for doing so is the explicit correlate of the origin of nowness.”

Ratcliffe disagrees with Varela’a project of mathematicizing phenomenology.
“…Roy, Petitot, Pachoud and Varela insist that fruitful interaction between phenomenology and science ultimately requires naturalisation of the former, ‘even though Husserl himself strongly opposed naturalism', where naturalisation is understood as integration ‘into an explanatory framework where every acceptable property is made continuous with the properties admitted by
the natural sciences.”

Ratcliffe believes something is missing from empirical naturalism and that something personalistically situated grounding of empirical data.

P differs from S by excluding ontic commitments from its examination of intentionality (i.e. whether or not e.g. dreams, sensations, moods, images, ideas, etc refer to anything actually external to intentions). — 180 Proof

For Husserl it is not a question of WHETHER there is anything external to intentionality. In one sense there is never anything external to it, and in another sense reference to something external to itself is the essence of intentionality. It consists of an egoic (noetic) and objective ( noematic) pole in an indissociable relation. The noematic pole is what you refer to as the ‘external’, but it is what Husserl calls an imminent transcendence. What Husserl’s method of the reduction does is to bracket off pre-conceived ideas about the nature of worldly objects in order to arrive at the primordial basis of subject-object , internal -external, self-world interaction.

“Certainly the world that is in being for me, the world about which I have always had ideas and spoken about meaningfully, has meaning and is accepted as valid by me because of my own apperceptive performances because of these experiences that run their course and are combined precisely in those performances—as well as other functions of consciousness, such as thinking. But is it not a piece of foolishness to suppose that world has being because of some performance of mine? Clearly, I must make my formulation more precise. In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within the universal realm of consciousness, within my realm, that of the Ego, and indeed within what is for me real or possible?” (Phenomenology and Anthropology)

I think the ultimate form of metaphysics is mathematics. — Verdi

My favorite philosophers derive mathematics
from quantification. Quantification in turn presupposes an enduringly self-identical object. Why? Because a calculation counts identical instances of a meaning whose sense is kept fixed during the counting . To count is to count continuously changing instances OF something that holds itself as self-identical through a duration or extension.

Husserl writes:

“ The consideration of the conditions in principle of the possibility of something identical that gives itself (harmoniously) in flowing and subjectively changing manners of appearance leads to the mathematization of the appearances as a necessity which is immanent in them.”
“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. Purely mathematical thinking is related to possible objects which are thought determinately through ideal-"exact" mathematical (limit-) concepts.”

Heidegger writes:

“Thus what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. What mathematics makes accessible in beings constitutes their being.”

So the question is , where do self-identical objects comefrom? If we believe the ultimate form of metaphysics is mathematics , we are likely to believe that self -identical presence is a fundamental grounding of the real. But my favorite philosophers argue that the objectively present object is a fabrication. It is a synthesis of constantly changing senses of experience . This means that mathematics , like objective presence, is a derived construction rather than a metaphysical grounding. What is metaphysically primordial is the process of subjective and intersubjective acts of sense making.

. Phenomenologists still make decisions and have preferences in the world (politics, spirituality, jobs, family, schools) - how are these made? — Tom Storm

How many of these decisions and preferences are made by use of an objectively causal method of reasoning? For instance, stipulating social or personal conditioning as a basis of political affiliation or child rearing.

Phenomenology replaces objective causality, even the sophisticated reciprocal versions that are emerging in various social sciences, by intentional
motivation. When applied to human cultural domains , it reveals intricate patterns and regularities that causal
models miss.

In Husserl you will also find an explicit critique of idealism
— Joshs

Where in Husserl's writings would you look for that? — Wayfarer

This is from Crisis of European Sciences:

“One has expected the same objectivity from psychol­ogy as from physics, and because of this a psychology in the full and actual sense has been quite impossible; for an objectivity after the fashion of natural science is downright absurd when applied to the soul, to subjectivity, whether as individual subjec­tivity, individual person, and individual life or as communally
historical subjectivity, as social subjectivity in the broadest sense.

This is the ultimate sense of the objection that one must
make to the philosophies of all times—with the exception of the philosophy of idealism, which of course failed in its method: that it was not able to overcome the naturalistic objectivism which was from the beginning and always remained a very natural temptation. As I said, only idealism, in all its forms, attempts to lay hold of subjectivity as subjectivity and to do justice to the fact that the world is never given to the subject and the communities of subjects in any other way than as the subjec­tively relative valid world with particular experiential content and as a world which, in and through subjectivity, takes on ever new transformations of meaning; and that even the apodictically persisting conviction of one and the same world, exhibiting itself
subjectively in changing ways, is a conviction motivated purely within subjectivity, a conviction whose sense—the world itself, the actually existing world—never surpasses the subjectivity that brings it about. But idealism was always too quick with its theories and for the most part could not free itself from hidden objectivistic presuppositions; or else, as speculative idealism, it
passed over the task of interrogating, concretely and analyti­cally, actual subjectivity, i.e., subjectivity as having the actual phenomenal world in intuitive validity—which, properly under­stood, is nothing other than carrying out the phenomenological reduction and putting transcendental phenomenology into ac­tion.”

The homunculus, sitting in its body-machine, making observations and hypotheses. A pervasive myth.

Again, we are embedded in a world that includes a language, other people, and a culture in which to employ that language. A baby does not derive the world from first principles and observation. — Banno

I was tailoring my post for T. Clark’s interests.The point I was trying to emphasize was the relation between science and philosophy. If I were writing to you I would compose it differently.

So you say that enactivism considers "us" outside nature? Another kind of dualism? That is not what enactivism is about. — Raul

That’s right. That is not what enactivism is about. Enactivism is about the reciprocal coupling between organism and environment in which the organism has a certain autonomy in its functioning in the world. This autonomy gives our perception of reality a normative dimension. We experience nature relative
to our pragmatic goals and aims, just as any organism isn’t just shaped by its environment , but in turn shapes and ‘produces’ that environment.

Long ago it occurred to me that the path forward for "continental philosophy" should fuse the horizons of Gadamer's Truth and Method with Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception — Cabbage Farmer

As I indicated at the outset, it seems to me that phenomenology is indifferent with respect to "metaphysical" doctrines like materialism and idealism — Cabbage Farmer

So far as I reckon, disciplined phenomenology would remain compatible with materialism, compatible with idealism, compatible with the rejection of both of those doctrines, and compatible with skeptical suspension of judgment in such matters. — Cabbage Farmer

Was this your conclusion from reading Phenomenology of Perception, or are you taking issue with it? In it
Merleau-Ponty critiques both empiricism, which in his hands I believe encompasses materialism , and what he calls intellectualism , his term for Kantian Idealism.

“We must now show that its intellectualist [idealist] antithesis is on the same level as empiricism itself. Both take the objective world as the object of their analysis, when this comes first neither in time nor in virtue of its meaning; and both are incapable of expressing the peculiar way in which perceptual consciousness constitutes its object. Both keep their distance in relation to perception, instead of sticking closely to it.”


In Husserl you will also find an explicit critique of idealism and materialism.

In sum, I think that the phenomenological projects of Husserl and MP are far from indifferent to the metaphysical doctrines of materialism and idealism. So
much so that it could be said their entire focus is on revealing the limits of these approaches.

Darwin is a translation of Hegel into empirical language
— Joshs

You think so? — magritte

It would probably be more precise to say that Darwin is a translation of a becoming -based philosophical idealism that Hegelianism prominently articulates.
Peirce’s
motto apparently was “Darwinizing Hegel and Hegelianizing Darwin”.

The more we talk to nature using a scientific approach the more we realize nature doesn't care about "us" and the more the idea of "God" loses any importance at all. — Raul

You should try talking to nature through the scientific approach of enactivism. Its pragmatic grounding requires nature to care about us , given that the nature we encounter is partly a result of our own constructions and behaviors. This pragmatism is far removed
from a God centered thinking.

biology and social science are just different fields than physics. — Raul

They’re not just different fields. They rely on
philosophical presuppositions that are out of reach of many physicists. For instance , Lee Smolen’s partnership with an Italian philosopher was prompted
by his belief that a core presupposition of many contemporary physicists, inherited from
thinkers like Einstein, treats time as a human construction that is superfluous to the understanding of physical processes.
Smolen argues instead that time need to be seen as absolutely fundamental to physics in order for physics to progress. In recognizing this, he is just bringing physics up to date with where evolutionary biology has been since Darwin ( and Darwin is a translation of Hegel into empirical language ).

I’m wondering what
would say Wittgenstein’s response to this sentence would be:

Reality doesn't care if you are looking or not. — Banno

Does it have a sense or status outside of conxtual use?
If not, then perhaps it does care if we are looking.

Physicians know already very profound facts and laws of nature that go beyond any philosopher's intuition. "Physics" has overwhelmed "Metaphysics" and no human intuition can add any value to the understanding of reality without a good understanding of present physics — Raul

It sounds like your aquaintance with philosophy doesnt go past the early 1800’s. It has been more than a century since physics deserved the title of queen of the sciences. It has been usurped by the biological and social
sciences , as they have assimilated newer philosophical
ideas. The best philosophy of the past century points to a future of thinking that today’s physics is still
far from grasping.

A person observes a seemingly chaotic and unpredictable stream of phenomena. Over time, that chaos resolves itself into regularities and patterns after the observer tries on for size various templates and schemes to make sense of what they are seeing( the ‘facts’ as you call them).
They then produce from this template a formal hypothesis (value system) and test it out on subsequent events( facts) to see how well it predicts the future based on the past. These subsequent events can either validate or invalidate the hypothesis( true and false as you call it).
Even if the hypothesis is validated by experience, one can try out alternative hypotheses. One of these may produce a different way of organizing ones experience that may be preferable to the older way, even if the older way has not technically been invalidated.

Is what I’ve just described science or philosophy? It is both. Why choose Kant over Descartes or Hegel over Kant or Nietzsche over Hegel? Because a philosophy offers a template( what you’re calling ‘ values’) for organizing experience ( what you call ‘facts’) that does a better or worse job of anticipating events than other philosophies.

A side note on "common sense":
I find it a bit silly that many people take "common sense" as obvious or as simple truth. Common sense indicates just that - a perception that is widely spread. It does not say anything about truth or validity of the matter at all. — Hermeticus

Indeed, although the dictionary definition includes:

1) good sense and sound judgment in practical matters.
"a common-sense approach”

2) : sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts

3) sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence

Notice that intelligence, soundness, prudence and good sense describe better or worse understanding of situations, independent of how widely shared the perception is. Combine this with ‘simple perception’, ‘practical matters’, ‘independent of specialized knowledge and training’ , and you get:

obvious or simple truth

If you can't make the steps of your point in plain language relying only on the usual canons of informal rationality, there's nothing else to appeal to. (I'm thinking of this a little in terms of the debates about the 'expressive power' of programming languages, if that helps.) — Srap Tasmaner

I was thinking of the corporate world, where the slogan ‘anything worth saying should be summarizable
in a simple sentence’ is often heard. But that’s the nature of business , isn’t it, the lowest common denominator. You make the most money by offering a product which is familiar and relatable to as wide an audience as possible.
In the corporate world there is nothing but the common.
Of course , what is ‘simple’, ‘plain’ and ‘common’ is relative to the community one is aiming at. One must begin by presupposing there is such a community of like-thinking persons, and this could be a very small group. Philosophers are accused all the time of not using ‘plain’ , ‘ simple’, ‘common’ language even though within their own community that is exactly what they are using.

I’m reminded of Heidegger’s ‘Das Man’, common sense as a flattening out of individual experience in which everyone is on the same page because the common understanding is designed to be vague , ambiguous and general enough to foster this sense of shared experience.

I think I would include in 'common sense' the precept that an utterance ought to be understood as it was intended and not some other way. On the other hand, you have to speak in such a way that your audience can grasp your intended meaning. (Plus all the other layers Grice describes.)

Did you have something different in mind? Have I failed to grasp the intending meaning of your post? — Srap Tasmaner

In the ongoing discussions of Wittgenstein, we have seen how sense emerges from and is constantly remade in mobile contexts of interaction. The emphasis here tends to be on contexts of relative agreement on criteria of knowledge, truth, etc, that language games enact.
What hasnt been discussed are relatively robust and temporally stable thematic styles or habits of understanding( worldviews, perspectives) that we can come to discern in each other through these interactions.

Speaking in such a way that an audience can grasp
your intended meaning sounds to me like an exercise
that is useful in only the most superficial sort of circumstance , not one that arises every day for most of us when we find ourselves dumbfounded, annoyed, infuriated, disappointed by the motives of others we think wenknow well. This isn’t a matter of not being able to interpret single utterances, but of not fathoming the deeper motivational justification for the actions of others. Single utterances are just the tip of an enormous iceberg , and we can easily convince ourselves that we understand those utterances perfectly well, until the fuller context of that speech bites us on the ass and we accuse them of being dishonest , hypocritical, irrational,etc. We have no choice but to react that way when we believe that the only proper sense is a common sense.

Put differently, truly common sense is often the product of an enormous effortful constructive achievement.

There is, it seems to me, no higher 'court of appeal' available than common sense. — Srap Tasmaner

Shouldn’t the highest court of appeal be one’s success at construing the personal system of meaning informing another’s utterances effectively enough that one doesn’t force a ‘common’ sense onto it?

Meaning is about intentionality. In regard to external world states, intentionality can be thought of as deferring to the actual. This is related to the part of agentive action which not only develops the model of word states from observation, and uses that model to align actions to attain a goal according the predictions the model gives, but observes the results as the actions take place and defers to the observations in contrast to the model. In this sense the model isn't merely "about" itself, but "about" the observed thing. That is intentionality. Meaning takes place in agents. — InPitzotl

This may be off topic , but that’s one definition of intentionality, but not the phenomenological one.
In phenomenology , objects are given through a
mode of givenness, so the model participates in co-defining the object.

I misread it to mean that discourse pertains only to practices concerning things like the ordering of the courses rather than to their taste.

In my view an aesthetic judgement always carries a discursive dimension, and I don't see a discursive dimension being involved in simply liking or disliking foods. ( — Janus

What about when a group of top international chefs get together for some food tasting? Do you think that their rich background as taste creators comes into play in determining their preferences, and that , like artistic and musical taste , their preferences were developed and shaped within a discursive community of foodies?
Isn’t that why there are shared preferences and fads for certain flavors and combinations of flavors in given periods and places? Salsa has replaced ketchup as the preferred condiment in the U.S., due to the influence of the hispanic population. Now is this different than the expanded interest in latin music?

This to me is an attempt to escape the required justification for the existence of God. And, many Christians are using Wittgenstein's ideas to claim that many of their beliefs are this way. — Sam26

I can see why:



“Aesthetics and religious belief are two examples - for Wittgenstein, of course, crucially important
examples - of areas of thought and life in which the scientific method is not appropriate, and in which efforts to make it so lead to dis­tortion, superficiality and confusion.

In his lectures on religious belief he concentrates only on the first part of this conviction - the denial of the necessity to have reasons for religious beliefs. In their rejection of the relevance of the scientific mode of thought, these lectures are of a piece with those on aesthetics.

In seeking to answer the why and how of aesthetic
understanding, we are not looking for a causal explanation.

“Russell and the parsons between them have done infinite harm, . infinite harm.' Why pair Russell and the parsons in the one condem­nation? Because both have encouraged the idea that a philosophical justification for religious beliefs is necessary for those beliefs to be
given any credence. Both the atheist, who scorns religion because he has found no evidence for its tenets, and the believer, who attempts to prove the existence of God, have fallen victim to the 'other' - to the idol-worship of the scientific style of thinking. Religious beliefs are not analogous to scientific theories, and should not be accepted or rejected using the same evidential criteria.”

Wittgenstein did not wish to see God or to find reasons for His existence. He thought that if he could overcome
himself - if a day came when his whole nature 'bowed down in humble resignation in the dust' - then God would, as it were, come to him; he would then be saved.”

It is clear from remarks he wrote elsewhere, that
he thought that if he could come to believe in God and the Resurrec­tion - ifhe could even come to attach some meaning to the expression of those beliefs - then it would not be because he had found any evidence, but rather because he had been redeemed.


From Wittgenstein’s biography)

prepare to vomit

Now I’m going to have to look up John Cook Wilson.

The point was, you don't know you're in pain in an epistemological sense, with emphasis on knowing. You might use know in a way that's not epistemological, as StreetlightX pointed out above. — Sam26

Why do we need the term ‘epistemology’ at all
after Wittgenstein? What is it supposed to do? What is an ‘epistemological sense’? Maybe you could
clarify. Most of the philosophy I read unravels
the presuppositions behind it.

Take Rorty , for instance:

“Epistemology, in Rorty’s account, is wedded to a picture of mind’s structure working on empirical content to produce in itself items – thoughts, representations – which, when things go well, correctly mirror reality. To loosen the grip of this picture on our thinking is to challenge the idea that epistemology – whether traditional Cartesian or 20th century linguistic – is the essence of philosophy.”( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

“Explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call ‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein” (PMN, 174).

“In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which “the Relativist” keeps getting himself is to move everything over from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try (TP, 57).“

in what sense is scientific reason based in aesthetics? — praxis

“According to Kühn, aesthetic factors play no decisive role in theory-choice within normal science. He says that, in the puzzle-solving of which normal science consists, the usual stimulus for scientists' coming to embrace a new theory is its being demonstrated empirically superior to its competitors. Kühn has formulated five criteria, including those of predictive accuracy and degree of simplicity, on which one theory may be judged empirically superior to another (Kühn, 1977, pp. 321-323).

By contrast, a new paradigm's empirical properties will typically not enable it to poach adherents from a better-established paradigm, Kühn believes. After all, he says, a mature paradigm will have developed problem-solving resources that new paradigms are unable to match. Therefore, scientists in a revolutionary crisis will typically find their estimates of the competing para- digms' empirical properties weighing in favor of their current paradigm, and inhibiting paradigm-switch(Kühn, 1962, pp. 156-157).

Kühn identifies the factors that tend to induce paradigm-switch in arguments of a different sort: "These are the arguments, rarely made entirely explicit, that appeal to the individual's sense of the appropriate or the aesthetic - the new theory is said to be 'neater', 'more suitable,' or 'simpler' than the old" (ibid., p. 155). Kühn suggests that, without the contribution of such arguments, it might be impossible for a world-view to develop into a paradigm dominant in itscommunity:

The importance of aesthetic considerations can sometimes be decisive. Though they often attract only a few scientists to a new theory, it is upon those few that its ultimate triumph may depend. If they had not quickly taken it up for highly individual reasons, the new candidate for paradigm might never have been sufficiently developed to attract the allegiance of the scientific community as a whole. (Ibid., p. 156)

As a suitable test-case, Kühn picks the transition from Ptolemy's to Copernicus's theory in mathematical astronomy, which he maintains consti- tuted a revolution (Kühn, 1957, p. 134; 1962, pp. 149-150). He reconstructs the grounds on which mid-sixteenth-centurymathematical astronomers decided between these theories. Kühn claims that the Copernican theory could not have won adherents from Ptolemy's theory on the grounds of either predictive accuracy or degree of simplicity: "Judged on purely practical grounds, Copernicus' new planetary system was a failure; it was neither more accurate nor significantly simpler than its Ptolemaic predecessors" (Kühn, 1957, p. 171). Rather, Kühn believes that Copernican theory gained adherents on the strength of its aesthetic properties. According to Kühn, the arguments advanced in De revolutionibus show that Copernicus himself was aware that he could attract Ptolemaic astronomers to his theory most effectively by stressing its aesthetic virtues.

Kühn concludes that Copernicus's theory established itself in virtue primarily of its aesthetic properties and despite being able to demonstrate no empirical superiority over Ptolemy's theory. Therefore, he judges that, qua paradigm- switch, the transition from Ptolemaic to Copernican mathematical astronomy accords with his view of the role of aesthetic factors in revolution.“

( James McAllister)

Religion is based in faith, philosophy and science in reason, and the arts in aesthetics. — praxis

That distinction is a quaint old notion with a long pedigree in Western thinking, but it has been discarded by a range of thinking that recognizes the grounding of philosophical and scientific reason in aesthetics.

I'm not sure if you realize what you're saying. — praxis

I’m saying the same thing that Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Nietzsche , Kuhn, Rorty and Merleau-Ponty said years ago.

Here’s one attempt to apply Kuhn to religious conversion.

“Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm-shift can be used as a methodological tool in the study of religious conversion. The same way that the scientist is limited to work within a scientific paradigm, the believer can be said to exercise religion within a theological paradign. And as anomaly can lead to science crises and a change of worldrew, anomaly within the horizon of the believer can lead to existential crisis and religious reorientation.”(TOMAS SUNDNES DRoNEN)

No one can fully explicate these ideas. Again, this is a necessary condition. — praxis

You said this is a necessary condition because religion requires faith and authority. I’m not clear on the difference between religious faith and the metaphysical faith at the core of philosophical thinking. To believe in something you have to have a something to believe in, a way of thinking about the world. One can choose one particular faith over another in the same way one can choose one philosophy over another; on the basis of how well it makes sense of the most important aspects of life. People move from one religious structure to another all the time on this basis. I don’t see this supposed difference between philosophy and religion as any more coherent than that between philosophy and science or between science and the arts.
Each new era in philosophical history brings with it a new approach to religion that is throughly intertwined with the new philosophical worldview. This intertwining is only possible because philosophy and religion are just different styles of articulating a belief and value system.

Sounds reasonable except for the fact that no one understands religious philosophy. No one can answer questions at the "heart" of any religion. That is a necessary condition because religion requires faith, and ultimate authority to have faith in. You cannot have an exoteric religion because it would not require faith and religious authority — praxis

This understanding of the difference between religion and philosophy certainly runs counter to the use of the word religion in many philosophy and theology departments today, where religion is treated in a way not that far removed from the way that Tzeentch has articulated it.

Many authors, from Caputo to Sheehan and Critchley, look at religion in terms of the philosophical ideas they see at its heart , which has no necessary ties to structures of authority. These ideas are implicit in the religion , and made explicit in philosophical explication.

some guy wears his hair in some weird-assed configuration, and when I see it, I say to myself....wtf’s that guy thinking!!! He and I each apprehend his hair style as a personification of his character; he judges it cool; I judge it stupid. Aesthetic judgements, each.

Confusing, in that understanding is the “background discursive valuation conventions” which grounds the knowledge of its time, but that has nothing to do with the way one feels about news cycles and the newest gadgets. There is a vast disconnect between the comprehension of what a news cycle is, and the personal impression it makes on a subject’s condition. — Mww

What larger cultural norms shape your response to someone else’s hair style? Until the beatniks and the hippies( let your freak flag fly) , 20th century mores concerning the range of hairstyles considers acceptable ran within fairly strict limits. Remember when classical
musicians were called long-hairs, or men with beards were considers intellectuals? They stood out against a backdrop of conformity in style. Normal was considered aesthetically proper. Today, we have grown up within a larger worldview concerning aesthetics like hairstyle and clothing choice such that the new conformity is non-conformity, self-expression, thinking outside the box. So in the first place , when you encounter someone with a ‘weird-assed’ hair configuration, your having been raised in a post 60’s milieu means that encountering individualism in fashion is built into our expectations when we walk down the street. We may never have seen a particular configuration , and it may be particularly extreme with respect to what we’ve seen before , but we have an interpretive slot to put it into thanks to our upbringing that someone living in the 1950’s would not have. What they would consider immoral or psychological deviance we would
recognize as just their personal expression. Beyond this most general cultural background , what will inform your aesthetic reaction to someone more particularly would be your relation to subcultural groups. You are more likely to react with nonchalance or enthusiasm if you are a member of an avant-garde theater or art group, for instance.


As far as news cycles are concerned, one’s belong to larger cultural worldivews has much more to do with interpreting news that. simply recognizing it as news. Why do you think there are today such polarized news sources (fox, brett art, new york times)? Because how one interprets the news, and whether one even considers it news vs propaganda, is a function of the cultural worldview one identifies with.

To say EVERY judgement so arises, makes explicit no judgement is possible WITHOUT a larger set of social values, which is quite absurd, for then it is necessarily the case I cannot make the determination of left-turn/right-turn on a split trail, in the backwoods of the Allagash wilderness, when in fact, I have perfect authority to make an purely aesthetic judgement (left turn looks pretty nice, think I’ll wander thataway for awhile), or a discursive judgement (I know the tent’s set up to the right and my knees are killin’ me). — Mww

What are you doing on a trail in the first place? There is a background context of relevant goals and purposes out of which emerges your decision rondo a hike in a particular place. Each of your subordinate decisions in preparation for, on the way to, and on that hike are i forms by those larger concerns, expections and understandings(what a hike means for you, what style , length, speed you prefer, what you want to get out of the expereince, whether you like to go alone).
By the time you have arrived at that fork in the trial, all of that background contributes to your decision about which side to turn. The contribution of this background becomes obvious if you are with a friend and they choose differently than you. Let’s say you both are trying to get back to the campground before dark. Your background of navigation knowledge comes into play, including your practice of use of maps, compass, sun , memory, which may be different from your friend’s.

The two of you may not be in a hurry and instead the choice of direction may have to do with your sense of which direction will be most enjoyable. In that case background knowledge comes into play. You may have an intuitive ‘feel’ that one direction has more possibilities than the other, but this feel doesn’t come out of thin air. Your years of prior experiences hiking comes into play in an implicit sense ,including the look of the terrain , type of foliage, amount of sun, proximity to water, among many other facts of information. All of this background is at the ready and you draw from it in making your decision.

Just because "a community of Wittgenstein interpreters" disagree with what it means for traditional answers to skepticism, doesn't mean they can say that Witt, or Cavell, are outside the analytical tradition and not using "philosophical argument" or that their work is merely "performative". — Antony Nickles

Would you agree that in their hands [calling this work "therapy"] is not meant as condescending and dismissive?
— Joshs

It's bald-face condescension, attempting to pigeon-hole and minimize the impact of the PI (it's not "linguistic" either; it's revolutionary). I think the desire to misinterpret this work comes from a modern (and old) philosophical desire that it is better if philosophy doesn't involve humans at all; that it is supposed to work out like math or science, were it doesn't matter who is doing it. — Antony Nickles

Is your critique based on a thoroughgoing knowledge of the work of the ‘Néw Wittgensteinian’ authors or is this a knee-jerk reaction to the blurb I quoted?

James Conant is one of those ‘therapeutic’ Wittgensteinians. Do you know about his background? He started out in that milieu in Boston where he was able to shape his view of Witt through interactions with Putnam, Kuhn and Cavell. Later he moved to Pittsburgh and furthe refined his thinking through study with McDowell. I think at least his work on Witt deserves more nuanced treatment than you have given. My guess Cavell would be horrified by your response to Conant, Diamond et al. But then they are academics who respect each others’ work and appreciate the original insights each brings to their reading of Witt.

You’re going to have to help me out here. I’m trying to figure out who to turn to ( other than Cavell) for a reliable and faithful interpretation of the later Wittgenstein. I am convinced that Peter Hacker and Ryle are not good candidates. I am impressed with Phil Hutchinson , but have not read any of the ‘New Wittgensteinians ’ (Diamond, Cray, Conant). So tell me, who is on your list of best Wittgenstein interpreters , other than yourself and Cavell. You’re put yourself a bit out on the limb if it’s just you, Austin, Witt and Cavell , but that can be a positive. Maybe your reading really is better than every other living interpreter. But we won’t k ow that without engaging in more detail with those secondary sources.

BTW, I would think you would consider it a sign of philosophical enlightenment to be outside the analytic tradition. What exactly do you consider worth preserving within the analytic tradition? Maybe you could throw in a few names from analytic philosophy who you admire ( other than Austin. I suppose there’s McDowell and Putnam too ). Conant certainly respects these figures.